Episode 101

Brandon Burns chief executive officer for Peaks recovery centers bringing to you another exciting episode of Finding Peaks today very excited to be talking about uh emotional intelligence big topic out there on the web good or bad in between you’ll know by the end of this episode join today by Lauren atencio lpcc Lac Clinical Director men’s program couldn’t do it without her and Samantha Archuleta LPC Lac all the clinical things primary therapist intensive outpatient program for Peaks recovery centers she has all the clinical things she has all the clinical things I I thought about that because it’s easy to do with like the Chiefs in the room but then now we’re now we’re moving between titles so um anyways she goes by Sam too by the way folks out there we don’t got to do the whole name there but that’s how that works all right thank you both so much for being here today thank you for visiting us busy schedules clients chats all the things we get to take a little reprieve and do a little philosophy around emotional intelligence we love it because that’s what it’s about for me so let’s get to it because we’re disruptors as you know all know out there and we’re going to do some disruption here today or maybe not we’ll see um but emotional intelligence it’s a big topic out there in the world wide web um when you’re looking through or researching this information you’ll run into things like EQ like emotional quotients there are tests and strategies and ways for identifying emotional intelligence that exists out there but we’re not going to dive into that today because we think there are components of it that are more kind of valuable to go through rather than focusing in on like how company systems and you know people develop employees and things like that but I think starting with a general definition of what is emotional intelligence it is the human ability to recognize understand even exploit and manage one’s emotions in the most positive way I guess uh speaking to it so um when you know okay I’m gonna get ahead of myself here I’m getting excited got a little caffeine coming in this afternoon so let’s just roll with the definition human ability to recognize understand even exploit and manage one’s emotions positively from the clinical perspective are we onto something here yeah I mean an emotional intelligence is pretty much everything we deal with right I think the idea behind managing emotions regulating emotions all comes into play when you look at mental health when you look at substance use most of our clients are just looking for ways to control emotions or push them down push them away whatever it is because a lot of the times especially in the men program we see is there’s absolutely zero insight into their Emotional Self and just their emotional being as a whole right it’ll be how are you feeling oh I’m I’m angry and it’s like okay yeah so tell me about the angry I don’t know I’m just always angry and it’s so it’s just really hard for our clients to identify what emotion is present and I think that is kind of the way it is in society right we just put these General labels on emotions you’re sad you’re happy you’re mad and it’s really what does that actually mean you know we’ll have clients walk by and they’ll be like hey how are you today I’m okay well what does that mean because a okay is not an emotion so and you’ll find that they they really can’t tell you because they are so disconnected from that Emotional Self yeah I think when I hear the idea of exploiting or controlling our emotions it can be kind of a trigger word for people like controlling your emotions don’t feel your emotions process them but when you can develop through emotional intelligence you have the ability then to understand the emotion which then gives you more power over it exactly going into this place of oh I have no control over my emotions well if you understand them more and not run from them then you learn how to manage and control them but it’s it’s really hard emotions are overwhelming I think a lot of the clients we see they feel deeper than the normal human feels because they have have these extensive trauma histories they have these maladaptive behaviors all put in place because their Emotional Self is just overloaded and it takes them out of their window of tolerance so much and a lot of what we do at Peaks is just okay let’s just get familiar like sadness isn’t a bad thing to have it actually is a beautiful thing to have so let’s get to know it more so yeah yeah it’s a good view of spirituality there like the negative emotion or what are perceived as negative emotions actually can be very enlightening and build awareness and we can uh gain awareness around it and one through that acknowledgment move forward in a positive way and I think you know around being sad it’s just okay to be sad sometimes yeah it’s just okay to be grieving it’s just okay to be emotional without the what or the why but also at the end of the day we don’t always want to be in a position of non-knowledge and not knowing what we’re going through and you know you bring up just walking by clients every day I mean it’s just kind of fun coming into you know philosophy major out of college coming into a company culture of clinicians that’s what it’s like folks to work around clinicians like how are you doing I’m doing good you know how are you really you know and what does good mean and all those types of things so welcome to my world out there that’s generally how it goes uh before we kind of move on you know we talked about it on the the past 100th episode but I think it’s a common trait as well too in the world that there’s action thoughts and emotions right we’re going to act first the thoughts and emotions will follow kind of categorically speaking do you see this emotional intelligence thing you know kind of working out in the same pathology or do you take this more from like a clinical approach to be like okay we’re going to focus in on the emotions out of that awareness we’re going to go back to action thoughts and emotions or how do you see that kind of fitting within that trifecta I think a part of that is the awareness that leads um I actually run a group just the other day it’s DBT focused which a lot of this speaks to like regulating being able to manage the things happening being able to process and respond in an appropriate way is when we can be mindful and be intentional and be aware of our emotions it causes a space between the action so if we can feel the emotion the sensation the emotion pause through mindfulness um reflection awareness then we can act in a way that is more No Limit with who we want to be our values and our goals which I is that for me how you play out emotional intelligence yeah I think what I’ve seen a lot is emotions Drive the actions and thoughts most of the time and so we have to kind of look at all of those components in order to kind of assess you know okay so sadness is your trigger that allows for you to go out and find substances find you know different self-harm mechanisms these different things and then your thoughts kind of Shame you in a way for that emotion you shouldn’t be feeling sad you shouldn’t you should have all of these it’s the kind of us therapists call it shooting on yourself um
very clear um but it it all ties together in such a big way and what I’ve seen is that the actions and thoughts are a ways of controlling the emotion if I can just have the right thought if I can just do the right thing then all of these emotions that I’m carrying will get just go away but again going in that’s not really how it works we have to identify the emotion in order to be able to process it and then thoughts and actions start to kind of control themselves after that so I think they are very very tied together in a big way and we definitely approach that clinically yeah well we we were we’re I promise we won’t dive in we’re chatting a little bit about the old free will decision making power and that type of thing prior to the episode so if I lack awareness and insights to him my emotions uh and out of that can’t develop you know an appropriate action that changes thoughts and the emotions you know that follow what would be an appropriate way to think about how to I guess where does Action make sense first under the condition that I don’t kind of have this emotional intelligence yes yet I don’t know how to regulate it I’m stumbling in the world I lost my job I’m out of my relationship all of these things are kind of falling apart it seems like in those scenarios uh action matters and so where would where do we I guess just giving the viewers out there an understanding of okay if you’re dysregulated in this way maybe the best thing we can do first is to act yeah 100 it’s going back to like making these little choices in order to tend to that emotion right because we spend so much time running from it the action allows for us to run um kind of going into that trauma response fight or flight sadness makes me my trauma response go off and now I am going to run away from it as fast I can that’s the action if we can teach them on the other hand hey you don’t have to run away from it because this isn’t actually a temporary feeling this is actually something that will be resolved then it allows for space for them to to implement more action in order to find some emotional regulation skills in a big way well and I think we prior to the episode we were talking a little bit about how it takes an action to kind of instigate the rest of the change and I think it takes that discomfort itself like when we’re tired of being sad tired of being angry tired of being those things we are able to then say I need something different and that decision to make a different choice or say I even out loud I just need something different that’s an action in itself to then keep getting the help and making better choices act on just make a phone call act on reaching out to a friend for help act on I’m going to call a counselor today and yeah right as small as like go for a 10 minute walk out outside right I was saying even um right before this like we’ll have clients sometimes like where I’ll be like just be nice to yourself for 10 seconds right like just little tiny things I think we get so caught up especially with emotions on this big picture like I’m gonna be able to manage this and I’m going to be happy but it really just it requires you to do little tiny action in order to get to the Big Goal you’re kind of seeking out and we talked about it too we kind of did the whole episode for the viewers out there prior to coming on about this but um uh the the concept of and and we and I’ve talked about this on several past episodes now but how dopamine essentially works and and what biological structures and systems are trying to do is exist within homeostasis right that we are to be content sort of in the middle so when we experience pain the dopaminergic effect or homeostasis is trying to lead to some pleasurable state that balances it all back out until we’re you no content again and then you know kind of the problem with drug use right the reason it almost works is because it gets us that great pleasurable state but if the if the biological system is trying to return it back to homeostasis we’re going to start experiencing pain along the way and that’s you know you know insert there you know of course tolerance and all of these things that take place in drug use but it it really starts to make sense and I just want to highlight that because so much of feeling pain for us because it is so miserable to be in those moments of suffering it feels like the world or our situation should just be this state of kind of Happiness on the other side and um but that doesn’t strike me as the goal through biological systems but just curious from that clinical perspective how we could share or reinforce maybe that view with the viewers out there yeah kind of like I was saying before is like we have a lot of clients come in and they’re like I just want to be happy and I think that is such a broad statement we can’t just all be happy all the time like it goes back into the idea of contentment I want to feel content to the point where if I do feel happy I can embrace it and if I do feel sad I can also embrace it but having this idea that happiness is this attainable place is something that is just not realistic and it’s impossible and so if you are on your mental health substance use journey and you’re like my goal is just to be happy that expectation is just never going to be met or that goal is going to be never met and then it takes us into a place of I’m right back down where I was because I feel so discouraged well and I think in moments when we’re our clients start to heal and feel happiness again even moments and bursts that come down back to homeostasis is very hard because they’re like oh no I’m getting bad again I’m getting sad again I’m getting depressed again so then reverting back to Old patterns becomes easier because those neurons are stronger it’s been a pattern for x amount of years and being able to grab the skills that we teach that self-regulation those other things first is something that I think we try to teach in our curriculum both inpatient and outpatient of let’s try to grab these other skills first these new skills that we give you yeah yeah and really normalize it like normalize emotions in general like hey man you are going to feel sad I you know I had a client left recently and he was like I just feel so good I’ve never felt this good in my entire life and I was very honest I was like that’s gonna change at one point in time you are not going to feel this good so what are you going to do when that happens because cause I’m not saying if that happens when that happens because it’s just an inevitable thing I think last time we were on here Clinton talked about the idea of like we live in this life and then this world of like shame and it’s just sad a lot unfortunately and so I think you do have to be realistic when it comes to emotions because if you’re not then you’re always going to be let down and you’re always going to be so fearful of what’s next goes into the control conversation as well there’s so much fear and emotions because we don’t know how to control them or they’re so unknown and it’s it’s really just something that’s within inside us that if we go into those small actions it’ll teach us how to control it more absolutely it reminds me of the uh comment I’m gonna antagonize this because it just keeps coming across my desk the Bros science of cold plunging at the end of the day you’re doing something that’s causing a dopenergic response of pain so the reality is it’s going to take you to the other side of pleasure my problem with it regardless of the Sciences of it is it again is going to take you back to homeostasis and again we continue to externalize strategies and how many times as a society do we have to mess with our dopamine structures to recognize how poorly the outcome continues to be at the end of the day when we’re swinging it from one side of the fence to the other over and over and over again when the reality is just to kind of sit in the middle and be content and that’s sort of my transition here from the external to the internal world of our emotional intelligence and we’re going to dive into the components of it now folks out there so for all you uh cold plungers out there keep row sciencing it forward and finding Peaks at peaksrecovery.com information and finding Peaks however reach out to me tell me how frustrated I just made you because I want to talk about this he really does just eager inside I’m trying to antagonize you all out there to be like you know what Brandon if you say cold punch is stupid one more time uh bring it I would love to talk about it um or if you’re super passionate I would love to have you as a guest on here so we can do this together um so there are five components there’s kind of like uh you know Samantha you did the kind of some research into this as well too there are I ran across other five components you know they’re all along kind of the same lines but these were the most consistent ones I found so I’m not trying to speak to all of its components but the five ones that came up in particular were uh of emotional intelligence were self-awareness self-regulation internal motivation intrinsically speaking empathy and social skills and so you know what what I think is valuable for us and what we’re trying to do because we’re not going to talk about the quotients or the tests or those types of things that exist out there but these sort of things um I think we commonly work through within a clinical setting uh and uh certainly across the organization I think trying to promote you know Wellness on behalf of each other as a staff but starting with self-awareness you know we were talking about uh kind of the beginning of the episode and the challenges around Choice um you know we’re not going to antagonize the Free Will thing here too much but it seems like okay I made a choice because I lived in harsh circumstances or the world told me or kind of causally drove me in this way I took drugs and alcohol to cope with the world that I was living in I didn’t know what was going on I ended up in a place like Peaks recovery centers now I’m doing clinical work and I gain awareness about the condition and what led me to that in that moment and for the viewers out there for another episode that’s where I would start to antagonize I think we got a lot of choice decision making power because once we gain awareness responsibility starts to insert itself in that regard but achieving self-awareness or self-regard self-actualization or emotional self-awareness is not just like immediately available like my phone is here for a lot of people at the end of the day so you know as a component you know clinically speaking um is this the first it feels first Steppy to me kind of in a clinical approach but I don’t want to draw too much on the cards here um what is your perspective of self-awareness and where do you see that really starting to come in as a component of emotional intelligence it seems to be highly highlighted as the first so it seems like the priority yeah I might be a little biased here too so Sam I have a little bit more but I I am definitely an Insight therapist I really really really strongly believe in self-awareness because I don’t believe that if we don’t have some kind of self-awareness then there is no motivation or kind of almost ability to change right I think there’s so many different behaviors that we display when it comes to emotions that we think is this is normal like I I’m supposed to just cry and lash out when I’m angry and I’m supposed to like do all of these different things and and really what I I agree with in that statement that I think awareness is the first step because as long as I have awareness to know oh I lash out and freak out because that’s how I’ve protected myself my whole life is that when I get angry people leave me alone and so once I find awareness there I can then say you know okay I’m gonna practice not lashing out if I do how do I wrap back around in order to start to change these behaviors for me I I again am huge on self-awareness because that is the only way we move forward and it’s the only way we kind of find that motivation to say okay I’m not bad I just have different behaviors that served me in the past and now they just and so now I have to learn what’s going to serve me today I actually totally agree with you and I think emotion focused therapy is a good place to like speak on this a little bit is when we ask clients how are you doing or when Brandon got here we said how are you doing and he paused and thought about it and I think that’s what we talk about when we talk about emotional intelligence being able to pause and say okay this is kind of where I’m at and actually where I’m at what my body feels we often talk about Sensations with our clients because they can get in touch with the warmth of anger but maybe not the anger and why it’s there so if we can get to the warmth we can get to the anger to the sadness to the feeling left out or frustrated and we can get to those other things when we can get in our bodies I think the other part of this is that people have become so scared and you know intimidated by their Emotional Self that awareness has actually just gone off the table because in order to bring awareness into the conversation would mean that you would have to feel this this stuff and so not having awareness is almost kind of easier at times because it’s like okay well then I don’t really have to know all of these parts of me and I can’t change that and all of these different things so well and I think we can change Behavior without changing that but it’s not sustainable right so we can change the behavior I don’t want to lash out when I’m angry so I’m going to go isolate well that’s probably not also the healthiest for you and so we get back to anger and we kind of toggle between those two because there’s not the intrinsic awareness of what’s actually happening for you or why it’s coming up or the history of it when I think too like there’s some personal responsibility in there as well right I think we’ve we’ve talked I think we talked a little bit about that before is this idea that like Peaks is 30 to 45 days you know Samantha Lauren like we’re all not gonna be there when you leave like there has to be that awareness there so when you go home and you’re talking to your wife and you notice yourself starting to shake because you’re getting so anxious aware of the conversation is going you can’t just run to the office and be like hey Lauren what’s what do I do you know like there has to be okay so this is what I’ve learned about myself I get nervous in confrontation confrontation was never displayed in a great way for me and so therefore they might have to take a step back and utilize some of those tools but there has to be some personal responsibility again in actually taking action in that yeah a big a big piece that we didn’t uh I the host I’ll be clear did not introduce in the beginning was emotional intelligence is just not internal awareness but also awareness of the emotions of the individual in front of you and so insert family work here as well too right and prioritizing that and so we need to not only be internally self-aware but you know under that uh scenario you gave where you know I brain and leave treatment and now I’m in front of my wife something’s escalating or whatever and I’m getting anxious you know what’s going on the person on the other side and this is the I think the big piece of family systems and and just want to roll through and hear you hear your both your thoughts on it is that person needs to know when they’re at the same time triggering emotions and and building that up and go and maybe what do we do in a moment like that and so one maybe let’s just reinforce like family systems and when somebody goes to treatment many of us have to learn along the way what we’re going through because on the other side of it for as much as we were trying to get the person into treatment you know we often discover through a treatment episode that family systems have a lot to do with the anxiety the build-ups or rejection the feelings all of that sort of stuff and so it feels right sized I think to just kind of insert it at this time and encourage for the viewers out there strategies around family systems fulfilling sort of this emotional intelligence as well too and not just leaving it to the individual yeah you know we get a lot of clients who come to treatment they feel so much better and now they’re gonna help their family feel better they’re gonna change their family they know exactly what their families need to do now in order to help with their emotion and then and it becomes difficult because this is where we what I’ve discussed with clients is like you only have control of what you like are doing you can’t make them do anything you can’t force that um and so there has to be again some awareness and emotional intelligence of why am I getting anxious in this moment with my wife or why do I why am I falling back into people pleasing behaviors and it’s because that we feed off of those emotions so much with our family and so there has to be you know like we do offer family sessions within treatment residential treatment and IOP um in order to kind of solidify communication and one thing I always tell families is that like we’re going to stay stuck in the context forever you guys just need to say how you’re feeling because it’s like a lot of well you can’t do this and you can’t do that and it’s like okay why why can’t he do any of those things well because I’m scared okay we can work with you’re scared but we don’t work well with you can’t do these things things so I don’t know if no I think to add to that it’s the empathy piece which I think is the pillar on this or one of the five main and having empty and being able to say like Brandon clearly looks uncomfortable in this and or Samantha’s clearly uncomfortable like I can take up more space or I can take up less space or whatever that other person might need because you’ve taken the time to be vulnerable share the feelings do the emotional awareness regulate yourself and then you can help and support that in another person as long as both people are willing and able to do that piece which I think is where our family programming our family sessions and all of that can help the client go back into the best environment possible and they have to change the way they show up in the environment as well like there has to be recognition of okay I can’t get angry with my wife because um you know she gets triggered and I get triggered and so how are some skills we can use to say hey I’m I’m feeling angry I’m gonna go take a walk I’m gonna go do these different things in order to not just like have this huge emotional blow up and then separate and we just go right back to our maladaptive behaviors and no change occurs moving forward absolutely I as we were talking about before the episode I want to go back to that moment of the first time you show up in the family system you know that idea like I go to treatment I go home things wrestling with wife and I’m gonna put forward hey I’m experiencing anger and I’m going to talk about this because that’s what I was taught to do in this moment but I I want to honor just like stepping on a treadmill for the first time just like going to the gym for the first time just like going to clinical for the first time just anything for the first time that requires more work on the other side of it as we were talking about the kind of the first emotional feeling is like stupid yeah yeah Lauren got me all worked I’ve been dreaming I was able to do it one-on-one like open share like hey now I’m sitting with open chair like I’m gonna read through my list here and I’m going to tell you how my feelings are now it’s real life and I just want to honor that aspect of self-awareness that the moment we get the courage to actually do something that we’ve now become aware of there’s a tendency for which it feels silly and worthless um for me I don’t know where that comes from maybe it’s a societal maybe you know maybe it’s a an American issue you know I don’t know but there is that sort of first impression of like this feels dumb and I want to honor that yeah yeah especially
especially sometimes like I’ll be like okay I want you to write down affirmations and it’s like uh okay how is I am strong gonna help me you know like I don’t really understand but I but I think one thing that we need to consider is that we as humans we get in routines and we have behaviors that are routine based and so if I don’t go to or if I’m not used to confronting my wife about something then that’s not going to be the easy thing to do but we have to continue to practice new behaviors in order to kind of fire new neurons in our brains in order to make it a habit instead of just something I do occasionally rewiring that feels really important because and no one most people the first time you try something new you’re not gonna be great at it I’m not gonna shoot a layup the first time I go try if I haven’t played in 15 years but I am gonna know kind of what to do I know the skills Lawrence told me how to dribble so if I just push it up that’s that’s the next step in this and keeping practicing it eventually I’m going to be able to make that layup easily and that’s very similar with these skills they just I think feel a little scarier because it’s all happening internally when it’s all up to them right and then I think you see clients who struggle with that anticipatory anxiety so much that I saw this um thing on Netflix where like they showed a monk and like a normal person get burned by something and the normal person um felt more pain right before the prick of the burn because their anticipation was causing the pain to happen and the pain of the burn was actually less than the anticipation of it and so I think that’s another thing is that when we’re not very aware of our emotions we don’t feel like we can you know manage them in the way that we that makes us feel comfortable is we start going into our thoughts catastrophizing All or Nothing making something you know I’m gonna go have this conversation with Brandon and he’s probably gonna fire me and it’s like no there’s it’s not going to happen and most of the time the conversation goes better than we even expect yeah absolutely that’s hard too yes I also have no power to do that in company cultures um
yeah and I feel that sometimes he boxes me eyes like Brandon I got this one fire somebody let me do it yeah um
I love the place we work I think we have such a great culture I’m glad we can haha about CEO of firing people especially Lauren yeah if Glenn and Jason Marie right now they would love it yeah um so so self-awareness we gain it or we’re nurturing it we’re moving toward it why because we want to continue to make right choices in the world right I can’t make the right choice when I’m emotionally burden or I don’t understand why I’m responding in the way or reacting in the way that I do through awareness I can gain in time incremental moments of confidence for which allows me to better take a step back and finally go you know what I’m not going to flip the person on the road off right now uh I’m actually okay with where I’m at the person probably didn’t even mean it and I just can’t wait to get to work and get a coffee um and but it’s uh progress not Perfection and it’s certainly directional um and we’ll get into the internal motivation and choice about it but uh so next step self-regulation or we can perceive it as self-management namely managing emotions problem solving reality testing impulse control I think in the clinical sense of things it feels right to me that you know because we’re not in the world we’re in treatment we’re doing reality testing what is it like to be in front of mom what’s it like to be in front of brother who triggers the most those types of things um but now that we have awareness around the condition we need to figure out how to regulate those emotions we’ve kind of glossed over it a little bit through the prior element but let’s do the the Deep dive on self-regulation here starting with whoever’s most passionate I know we both looked at each other and she passed it I think I think of um the depression cure and our DBT skills of the ability to regulate our physical body then when we get in those instances our physical bodies already more close to homeostasis so it’s harder to get to those escalated pieces because we’re so close to homeostasis already our body wants to stay there and it lets us stay there so if we’re getting enough sleep exercising if we’re we’re able to self-evaluate those things allow for kind of the pause that’s necessary before the behavior again and that’s the regulation piece that I try really hard to talk to clients about and allow them the space to take that pause and figure out what’s happening yeah I think goes into that kind of saying too of like feelings are not facts like you can’t make decisions you can’t put all of your money into this emotion and and what’s happening with you and you know that because you’re sad you’re going to be sad forever like there has to be some awareness even around going back to our thoughts how am I challenging my thoughts and in welcoming my emotion I think the the silliest thing we do sometimes is just tell clients like you just have to feel it you know and that sometimes is like I what what does that even mean like clients don’t know how to feel their emotions most of the time and so going into this idea of just like go back checking in how am I feeling right now okay I’m triggered what triggered me okay they talked back to me you know the group isn’t welcoming me as much as I want and understanding okay sadness is a is a legitimate feeling when you’re rejected so let’s just Embrace that legitimate feeling and see how we move through it together see how we Implement DBT skills implements even CBT skills to notice how our thoughts are kind of pushing our emotions in certain directions as well and and really getting into a place again this just goes into self-awareness of like I know when I’m anxious my chest gets tight I start to you know get hyper Vigilant with things my thoughts start going crazy and so I just have to take a second and really evaluate what’s actually going on with me because if I just assume what’s going on with me then I am going to make a decision to fix it based on an assumption and that is not going to work because most of the time the assumption is incorrect absolutely when I think about like regulation and and I think this might be a value to the viewers out there you know we I think there’s a tendency for people to think about I’m going to regulate the whole thing versus like just the parts as we move through it and for me um as somebody who enjoys running out there in the world for my movement my exercise my my physical wellness um the first kind of jumping on a treadmill or just running in general the experience is like the world tells me I got to go really fast I got to compete well I got to be the best that I can possibly be and there’s this defeatedness that really comes in and ultimately what I’ve learned about running is like low heart you know uh heart rate zone training that it’s actually really beneficial for us to be just moving at a very suppressed heart rate and over time that’s going to lead to a better Runner than a Brunner who’s just constantly shooting their heart rate up into anaerobic activity and you know one of the things that’s challenging that I kind of I learned from very simple statements like this guy somewhere out there in the world smarter than me said uh when you’re running you have to remember it’s you’re running at your pace and then the person next to you running in front of you behind you whatever are on their own running sort of Journey that’s challenging for me to hear right away because if somebody passes me when I’m running even though I should be like regulating my run in lower heart I’m like you know I gotta get that person I’m gonna catch up to him and all that type of stuff but so there’s an energy in which like I I’m talking about here that it’s difficult to regulate even in moments of what feels positive to just be slower than the person running out in front of me where the intensity is to like kind of want to catch them um and that was just a process for me in a very basic principle of the world uh such as running and so I just want to honor that regulation um takes place in time and it’s not regulation of the whole it’s regulation of the parts that leads to a better whole yes kind of just stalty there I don’t know I love it yeah it was right I was on point though and it makes so much sense when you look at that piece of I need to regulate this moment and these smaller pieces because that does lead to the whole piece and when you’re running the way that you run now the whole piece is more regulated and then we can Elevate and practice it again and do the same things and keep elevating what that looks like and increasing our EQ or emotional intelligence beautiful beautiful Sam gets a mic drop all right uh third component internal intrinsic it’s internal motivation but we’re thinking intrinsic like it’s it’s uh versus extrinsic right extrinsic just being external to the situation I’m motivated to do something because I want to go to this concert you know Type Thing versus it’s within me and that’s what’s driving it but I think um you know going back to the beginning of the conversation around self-awareness like we externalize strategies for internal wellness and we need internal strategies actually to navigate the external world and so to think about internal motivation intrinsically uh makes sense here as a driver versus extrinsically so I don’t know if the viewers I don’t know if that’s important to you guys out there but it just felt important for me to share it with you but the idea here is to drive to improve achieve and change uh action emit opportunities and creating optimism and resilience Sam at the beginning of the episode Target you here because you were like hey it’s not always easy to be internally motivated about situations um but I think under the the framework for framework here for which we’re building it up as an internal motivator it might be difficult to achieve like maybe the thought around okay um I wanna I just want to be a better uh parent it could be an internal motivator but just because you have the thought doesn’t mean the action is going to follow so just want to honor the challenges here of this but um God is with it I think a lot of motivation can be difficult and I look at clients that come to us depressed and really um feeling unable like I have this desire to be a better parent to be a better spouse and I don’t know how like I don’t know how to get from point A to point B and we talked a lot about the motivation can be in the action of asking for help or those little things we talked about earlier in the episode and that’s where I can buy into like motivation being possible for people even when it feels impossible it’s the smallest thing and being able to recognize that
to like so much I think it’s just the society we live in but I think so much internal motivation is external like when you say like I want to be a better parent most of the men who come through our men’s program what that means to them is that they’re making enough money to provide a home and food they are making sure that they’re paying for all their kids like it’s all of these it’s kind of like that idea of if I meet this standard if I am the best dad I’m going to be the best provider the best husband all of these different things if I meet that then internally I’m going to fix myself internally I’m going to feel better and we’ve had so many clients come in they’re like I’ve achieved everything I have got the best job I’ve got my dream job my dream car my dream wife kids all of these different things why do I still feel so bad and that’s where you really have to take it and say like hey yeah external things aren’t going to help you unless you’re internally kind of self-aware and able to understand that I can engage in any emotion because my life externally as well but if you are looking for external things to make your internal self motivated then that’s just always kind of going to let you down in a way yeah back to my running examples because it’s the way that I um understand like intrinsic motivation for me what’s valuable about running is that it’s to at least for me at 38 years old it’s one of the few Sports out like I can’t just pick up a basketball tomorrow and start you know doing LeBron James stuff uh that’s impossible that takes a career in a lifetime it feels like uh running at the kipchogee levels right the the the the Olympic Marathon athlete and I mean he’s just awesome out there um he runs a two-hour nearly flat marathon time I’m not trying to be kipchogee in my running that would be sort of an external you know kind of measurement of that but I do know intrinsically speaking I can compete at the highest level for myself within that framework and that’s what’s motivating for me like just the idea of crossing the finish line and you know I finished a marathon the last one I did in three hours nine minutes it was 18 minutes faster than the prior one but when I crossed that line and it’s fun being in races like that there are people cheering but it was really just me at the end of that situation and it just felt good that I had accomplished something that I’d moved my goal in the right direction and then I competing at a higher level and enjoying you know kind of the experience alone so there’s a lot of external stuff happening within running but at the same time the motivation at the end of the day to get out of the bed and do a six mile run it has to be moved intrinsically otherwise you know to me I would have fallen on my face I thought I got to do this two hour time thing
that fits from a clinical sense I I think about our empty chair process I think when within our grief and loss week and we do the empty chair process we ask the clients to feel big emotions and these are emotions that they have not wanted to feel because they’re scared of them they feel like they’ll never get out of them and it is they internally are motivated okay I’m gonna sit in this chair and I’m gonna do this stupid activity with you and and all these things right and then and then they have this big release like I’m feeling grief I’m feeling sadness I’m feeling anger I’m you know everything is coming up and then after you ask hey how are you feeling I feel so light right it’s like okay you’re so scared to face this one thing but you actually just prove to yourself you could do it because you got internally motivated to sit there open up be vulnerable and on the other end you’re alive you came out and you did it and I think what I find it it does help with the internal motivation of like oh wait maybe I can do these hard things called emotions and maybe I can move through um the death of my parent or you know the the lost time I have because of my addiction like it really kind of puts it in their face to say oh I can’t do this when I think of that I to not exhaust self-awareness it has to go back to self-awareness and I think in our residential and our IOP program we’re constantly going back to self-awareness to show like okay I did this scary thing that was confronting Lauren when I thought she heard my feelings to prove that I could do the thing and it builds up to these more difficult and bigger emotions to keep proving yourself that it’s okay and it’s going to be okay and you’re okay and when you do that it allows for the whole your whole system to be able to continue to take those steps run the next marathon get up in the morning and run that six miles because you just did three you could probably do three more yeah and on the parental front too it I I it’s you know and I said I was like that’s a true intrinsic you know internal motivator but I can see how it can be immediately externalized you know and I think about or under those conditions I think about um like I’ve in my role at least at Peaks like when Chris Burns and Bobby Pat coming to my office and like hey what’s going on with this or whatever right and those moments like what I rely on is just like what my truth is about the situation um and it’s kind of a facetious example but in generally speaking we’re not always going to make the right decisions right but I know at times when I don’t make the right decision at work or within my relationships generally speaking I was doing it from a place of like wholeness and trying to do the best that I can so when I think about the best parent out there I think about somebody doing the best they can with the tools and insights that they have for that situation and ways to keep it intrinsic would be like hey son I want you to know like I love you dearly and it sounds like you know I did something wrong here that frustrated you but I just want you to know I’m trying my best and out of this now I at least know how I can arrive at this better without thinking about it like oh I gotta make the most money to provide for my family under the conditions and situation that I am I’m going to do the best that I can and that’s the motivation right definitely and also just being a role model right like knowing because of the internal motivation I have my son is now going to grow up and he’s going to find internal motivation to ask for help to know that his worth isn’t defined by his sound calorie these different things that you can actually you know break that generational trauma chain whatever it is is like okay I’m gonna be self-aware internally motivated and the people around me are going to see that and hopefully follow maybe maybe maybe possibly if we keep working on it all right diving through the list empathy is the fourth seen a situation from another’s perspective uh the old Golden Rule doing others is you would have you know done unto you but empathy is I think important one in family systems for an individual certainly who’s struggling but for individuals themselves as well too there’s a difference between sympathy and empathy as emotional states um let’s get into it what are your emotions about empathy
I think one one thing that we find is clients lack a lot of empathy the and compassion for self so it it kind of really shuts them off to kind of understanding emotions not judging emotions you know you’ll hear clients say oh I was the worst person in the world when I was drinking or I was worthless when I was depressed and it’s like okay wait so you were in pain let’s talk about your emotion let’s talk about that you were in pain you didn’t know what else to do so you drank in order to manage the pain because you have absolutely no idea how to manage this pain and it has to kind of go be twisted around in that way of like hey you are not wrong you’re not a bad person sure maybe some some bad things happened that is because your emotional intelligence wasn’t kind of within the self-awareness place right of to say oh I can manage this I can I can move through this no I can’t and so there has to be some empathy in the sense of too like understanding experiences oh I laugh shout because that was the way I protected myself okay we can find empathy for that for that you don’t have to beat yourself up for lashing out every time let’s just figure out why you do it and let’s not judge it anymore it goes into like the brene brown stuff of no emotion is good or bad like they’re just emotions and the fact that we label them good or bad makes it so we judge ourselves more I also think with empathy and that idea of being able to interact with others I think that’s a big part of emotional intelligence and when I can have empathy for myself and the things I’ve been through when Lauren lashes out at me I can say oh that wasn’t about me and that was hers and we get to sort of we talk kind of whose side of the street is it I can clear my side of the street and also leave her side of the street where it’s at for her to do her work on without taking it personally or feeling like a bad parent or a bad friend or whatever it is it allows for the separation with the empathy and compassion still present and I think empathy is an important thing to acknowledge here within emotional intelligence I didn’t do all the studies and put this together but it feels right sized I just want to bring forth you know my high school girlfriend uh broke my heart and what happened in that moment is I go to my buddies and I’m like hey guys she broke my heart can you believe that tears and they were like screw her dude you can do so much better you can do all this and it feels like slipping into sympathy and it also for me created like a victimhoned mentality that she wronged me I don’t have any part in this upon reflection I had a lot to do with it
but it I I think I think a lot of our strategies and friendships are we find ourselves in sympathy land and it creates victimhood and I just want to address that or talk about or get your clinical insights into it because we can steer off the path quickly from empathy here empathy to me would have been a friend standing hey man I recognize she really broke your heart and that sucks and I see your pain and I’m a witness to it um but I can’t sit here with you in this and so as your friend like I’ll hang out with you tonight but what are we going to do moving forward to like move on because you got to know your value Brandon like you’re a good dude you look okay as a person let’s like let’s get out there and buck up a little bit and figure it out from there so friends don’t always have the best sort of language but the true friends in my life are the ones that held me accountable to my situation and that felt like empathy versus sympathy or even like holding space for that emotion right I think the one of the biggest issues with emotions is that we are we live in a society that says if it’s broken fix it emotions are you’re broken and so what do we do we want to fix it oh screw that girl let’s go hook you up with this girl over here you know like we have to fix it’s it’s so uncomfortable for me that you’re sad that I want to fix it I don’t want you to be sad anymore right and then that just goes into The Narrative of like hey you’re not allowed to be sad because it makes people around you uncomfortable right and so being able to have empathy of like yeah I see you’re sad like let’s just sit here like let’s just you know let’s go for a walk like we don’t even have to talk about it like but we have to stop trying to fix emotions because those are just things that we shouldn’t have to fix it’s natural yeah I agree with that and then with accountability piece having the idea of let’s hold this space for now and then when we’ve moved through this motion and we feel more regulated we’ve been able to work through it how do we then become accountable and I think there’s a almost a detriment when we bring them too close to each other and being able to keep them a little bit separate like you said like tonight we’ll sit here we’ll do this and then tomorrow tomorrow when we’ve worked through this and you’re feeling a little bit better let’s move forward let’s evaluate let’s reflect and I think having both back to back can be helpful totally boom boom boom fifth one for the viewers out there social skills this was a hard one for me to wrap my head around um just as just using you know run Brute Force language like social skills trustworthiness connected and confident because it feels like it kind of it kind of feels now like we’re in a hierarchy that you achieved the first four to arrive at the opportunity of social skills and I take social skills to be able to like I’m reading Lauren’s emotions about how I’m behaving right now in this moment or even if I’m it’s not about my action but about Lauren’s actions I perceive that she’s something more than angry or she seems like she’s grieving something right it seems like a a sort of intelligence about the other person was like the best way that I could frame it but right off the cuff it was like yeah social skills does like that makes sense but in terms of emotional intelligence am I under something there in the way that I’m thinking about it yeah I think well Lauren was speaking about just a minute ago of like if I can have my emotions and sit with them and have this it gives permission to others and I’m not going to rescue you I’m not going to save you and then we’re building Community emotional intelligence and we’re building that within our friendships and our relationships of if I can get comfortable with Lawrence grief she can get comfortable with mine and then we have some vulnerability some compassion some increased empathy all the way back to better self-awareness we’ve then reflected together we’ve done this thing that causes us to bond and have empathy and build that together we think it plays yeah absolutely that and I think it also plays into the authenticity piece right if I if I feel you know Brandon and I have a conversation and I don’t want Brandon to see me angry then I’m gonna change who I am so you don’t have to see how I’m truly feeling in that moment so it’s it goes into this place of okay am I being authentic or am I just trying to please you am I trying to make it again going back to the discomfort thing am I just trying to make you comfortable so you don’t feel uncomfortable with my sadness or anger or any of these things it’s no I want in my relationship to be like hey I’m not feeling well and be authentic in that but I think a lot of times with emotional intelligence when we either don’t know how to feel emotions we don’t there’s not a lot of self-awareness we kind of just do the chameleon thing and I’m just gonna do what you need me to do I’m gonna feel what you need me to feel I’m going to make sure that everyone in this room is comfortable because I can’t manage my emotions to the point where like I don’t want to make anyone else uncomfortable and so it goes into like how authentic are you being and that that is a huge barrier with social skills how lonely is it to feel something alone you know like there has to be a moment where it’s okay Brandon I just I do not feel right today and have the empathy have the understanding and have the idea that I’m not making you uncomfortable because I’m just being who I am in that moment absolutely kind of reminds me I’ve walked in Rachel’s office here and there you’re yawning or something I was like why don’t you just take a nap you’re like no I’m not and I don’t know why it’s coming up it’s I’m not trying to like read too much in the situations but I I felt like I what I said was why don’t you just take a nap take a little 15 a little shut-eye you know yeah let’s talk about it in the world I I think this is a crazy idea and uh with upper middle management in front of me you can enforce it let Clint know about it for sure but like what would it be like to work in a company system where people could just acknowledge like I’m tired and they took 15 minutes to shut their eyes and their team members knew about it as well too so when Sam wakes up from her nap the team knows at some point if I feel tired Sam’s got my back right yeah we work in he’s more like nurturing type environments I might be getting way off base here I guess I want to say that it like I can read emotions I can read that you were you were sleepy so tired that day I don’t know if those are emotional states but it looked emotional but I do love that about Peaks is that like I you know I I as a leader um within the company I still show my emotions like you know we were in the meeting the other day we were all checking in and I got a little emotional and you know shared with them there’s some imposter syndrome coming up and I’m this is how I’m working through it this is how I’m and to be able to have this based firm my team to see their you know leader as vulnerable like it creates the ability for everybody else around you to say oh it’s safe for me to feel my emotions and one thing that TJ I think the best thing that TJ Woodward said to us when he was here was true self-care is to just show your emotions just to be where you’re at in that moment because yeah we can do all the spa days in the world but that doesn’t get rid of the emotions right so let’s just say it and talk about it and most of the time that’s very helpful yeah absolutely yeah we’re getting big here at Peaks Recovery Center she’s name dropping TJ Woodward was from conscious recovery just want to point that out there good we get we get pretty big here at Peaks recovery centers and I showed a motion in front of you this morning Jason tried to hand me that business card for the viewers out there why do we still use business cards like what’s the value if you’re out there think about it Rolodex do you have one no but we keep giving each other business cards Chief clinical officer tried to hand me one and my face must have looked like to him about to Superman punch you to the moon right now
yeah it’s a healthy place in the arena so uh going through this the kids only have so much time out there on the Facebook probably getting tired getting tuckered out through their popcorn and soda by this point so let’s just skip to brene Brown’s Alice of the heart we’re bringing this up as a book and a title we use a lot of Brown’s work uh whether it’s strategies or just information for patient care at the end of the day she has all the things to say about emotional states and I think her work’s profound but Alice of the heart um Simon how it can be helpful specifically for the viewers out there you know one of the three things or three emotions states that she came up with a research that commonly people associate with and we talked about a little in the beginning happy sad and Matt how are you feeling I’m mad how are you feeling I’m sad how are you feeling I’m happy and we just have that as a framework to describe our emotional states but brene Brown goes on to say when we don’t have language as expansive as our actual experiences we force our experiences into languages and then languages end up shaping what we are feeling at the end of the day and we can see how we can kind of you know lose this the the two were the two emotions that I know how to separate and that um regard help me out where am I going into the episode
two emotions two emotions the big ones brene Brown always said uh shame versus guilt right yeah shame is I’m feeling like a bad person guilt is I’m feeling like I did a bad thing right and separating those out and a lot of people I think in our in my experience experience the shame side of something out of doing something because there’s a consequence or a finger pointing or don’t do that again type thing um and we receive that differently and then that can play out on trauma and that sort of thing but this is a good example of when we really start to distinguish emotional states they actually are separate and different and it actually was my dad just trying to hold me accountable to something and I should be receiving that because running across the road at three years old across the highway or whatever can be dangerous and I just didn’t know that awareness back to emotional intelligence but uh I know uh at least one of you has read this book yeah in that regard and so uh you know help the viewers out there dive into it and why they should be checking it out and kind of the benefits within you know uh treatment I love love it’s not just a normal you know open the book and you read the it’s I like to look I like to tell clients it’s like the textbook of emotions like it helps you to really Define what an emotion is really understand it and it goes back to the self-awareness thing I think you and I are very similar in the sense of I need to understand something before I like dive into it and like start exploring it with myself and and I use it a lot with clients who are just very very detached emotionally so at least they can put words to their emotion right she has different sections in the book um based on different kind of emotions and she breaks it down you know uh comparison Joy all of these different things that she really just kind of like puts words to what they are and I think that becomes a lot easier to start conceptualizing oh this is how it works for me oh comparison the thief of joy that makes sense I don’t feel Joy a lot like being able to relate to that and I think Renee Brown’s way of explaining emotions is pretty beautiful and and pretty relatable to the Humane experience I would say absolutely I’ve listened to it on Audible and so I haven’t it’s kind of breathing it’s kind of ringing I haven’t done the textbook part of like really engaging with it but the things that stuck out to me and you both know grief is near and dear to my heart is when she can talk about grief is love and I think that was really helpful for me because grief doesn’t have to be the scary thing it can be an act or a feeling of love that doesn’t always feel great yeah I I love the concept of grief as a conversation especially into the philosophical umbrella because I I can’t remember I was talking this about in company culture recently but like what would it be like us to grieve the death of somebody before it happens before we are even aware that cancer is going to show up in one of our loved ones life or grieve you know a relational Fallout and those types of things as a build up to the reality that we are guaranteed these experiences in our lifetime and that feels because you’re passionate about just feels real loving to be like a personal sort of love to walk through grief and understand our time limitedness in this world perceiving the loss of others uh in real time and and why it’s so big and important to me because I feel like again we externalize these concepts of death and relational pitfalls and lacunas and stuff you know into Hospital systems or you know accounts that will take care of it out there in these types of things versus really engaging with the reality of the world that we live in and grieving it in real time not in the way that they’ve died and will experience grief in the same way but that like there is something about kind of the thought of like losing my wife if I really sit with it I can start to actually grieve it in real time and so I just love that you brought that up I don’t know if you want to add anything more to that as a as a lover of grief in the clinical setting I think I’m a lover of it in the clinical setting because it gives us a backdoor to trauma and it gives us that ability to say like oh this grief feels so important and it touches on the very important things gets us right to our core values right to our self-awareness in a way that sometimes going through anger can’t I think too like this just idea of grief is in kind of like you said like this anticipatory thing is like every single one of us are gonna feel grief love mad sad all of these fear all of these different things and so when do we get to a place where we Embrace instead of just pushed away when do we get to a place where we I’m almost I I hate this in a little bit but honor it like I I am living The Human Experience at this point I am this is part of who I am because I you know you know recently lost my grandpa because I loved him so much the grief is hard but at least I have that love on the other end and you know at least I got to experience the love from him even when the grief is hard there has to be some kind of balance it goes I think we had talked about I don’t know exactly so I might butcher it but the Kevin McCauley thing with the pain versus pleasure is like with that great pain I definitely can feel that pleasure and that’s what Bernay Brown says too is that I can’t select and selectively numb if I’m numbing my sadness I’m numbing my happiness if I’m numbing my shame I’m numbing but you know it’s not selective you have to feel everything or you’re going to feel nothing and so being able to maybe Embrace those emotions more and not vilify them but just understand like this is a part of me and I am capable of moving through it no one no matter what that looks like beautifully stated this is kind of rhetorical it’s the last question in all of this but what are the consequences of not getting emotional intelligence right and I’m not talking about the emotional quotient and what it means to be a better leader with emotional intelligence talking about the consequences of personal wellness and a person achieving recovery from depression or retrieving recovery from a substance use disorder what are the consequences if we miss this opportunity or we don’t uh engage in it or believe that we can actually do something like have emotional intelligence how do we see that playing out in our clients lives well it becomes unfortunate because then they’ll never get to know themselves I mean I think they emotions or make up so much of who we are and if if we don’t reach a place where we can find emotional intelligence that self-awareness then we’re never going to be able to find a place where we truly know who we are find that identity peace that purpose peace it becomes a little bit hopeless at times so I think there it’s it’s a huge cost um especially when we look at you know substance use am I going to relapse because I’m not emotionally in tuned am I going to lash out or you know even going into the suicidal place of like I can’t manage these so much that I want to take my own life to feel relief those are the costs of not really figuring out what emotional intelligence is and what my emotions are and how they Define me in a way I couldn’t have said it better I think it leads to the loneliness the isolation the despair that we often are working to help clients work through so that it is manageable and we can work through that I think it’s lonely if we can’t know ourselves we can’t know others and that’s the most isolating thing and it feels sad
it is something that I think we should value more as a society um and again going into a place of like maladaptive behaviors will not stop if you don’t gain the self-awareness into your emotions and take the actions in order to manage and regulate them it’s just they just can’t stop that’s where they Thrive that’s where depression thrives that’s where addiction thrives that’s where everything kind of unhealthy in our lives really clings on to and makes us believe that we’re not good enough in a way absolutely my episodes on finding Peaks are generally longer than the other two hosts and I just want to acknowledge that for the viewers and with you both here today because for me at the end of the day and Alan cook we all know Alan cook he told me as long as he was like clinical work is not rocket science and I absolutely engage and believe in that wholeheartedly but I think what we do as a society even though it’s not rocket science we tune into something and we see oh Brandon and Sam and Lauren are talking about emotional intelligence self-awareness duh next thing right we’re talking about it and taking the time to discuss about it because it does matter and even though it’s outside the context of like a complex math equation or whatever it takes practice and it takes insights and it takes leaning into the information and it’s something that you genuinely have to explore to discover the wellness at the end of the day it is not a page Turner it is not an instant change in one’s life to become aware of an emotion once we’re aware of it now we have to do the more difficult work on the other side of regulating that emotional state moving through our intrinsic motivators finding empathy for self and others and gaining those social skill sets along the way and this is a lifelong project for those who are out there so maybe an inconvenience at times to talk about things for an hour but at the same time like the issue matters and we’re greatly lacking it in the community sense of things and the cultural sense of things and personally speaking when we move towards Wellness we unfortunately reject it immediately in that regard and move on to the next thing or scroll the screen and I just want to say that because I think this stuff matters and for those out there it hasn’t always mattered to me it hasn’t always seemed a value but the closer you get to these clinical people the more and more you’re like damn it those are things I got to work on yeah so thank you clinical world for that so and and with that Sam is the first time we got to do this yes very exciting loved your insights uh on all of this Lauren this is like third or fourth time doing this with you always enjoy your time and presence it’s a pleasure thank you both for being here I’m always reminded of how many chats you receive in these time periods because your botches are just stinging all the time so if anything I hope we could get a little reprieve away from that chaos that is the work life at times at Peaks recovery so for all the viewers out there thanks for joining us questions at findingpeaks.com thanks cube in the back keeping me on point with how the viewer’s finest thoughts questions ideas send them to us because we’re curious for all you cold plungers out there questions at findingpeaks.com if you want to come in here and represent I got a chair here for you I’m down to tango let’s do it all right uh we got Chris on the social media on the tick tocks Facebook’s twitters we we do all the things and they’re super positive out there no politics no confusion just love find us out there on those things until next time Brandon Burns Chief Executive Officer of Peaks Recovery Center signing off love you all thank you