Episode 140

you can’t change what happened but you can certainly change your understanding of it only 7% of communication is the words that come out of our mouth and it used to be sobriety was the measure you know if you’re sober you’re successful that gave me chills cuz I know a lot of sober people who don’t feel like they’re being very successful right now spiritually mentally and emotionally that I have to come to terms with this might not turn out the way I want it to turn out that’s the grief [Music] hey everybody and welcome to another exciting and integrated episode of Finding Peaks Yours Truly Chris Burns president and founder I am joined today by somebody who dare I say I rever in our field Dr Michael Barnes PhD licensed addiction counselor licensed professional counselor also founder of the Michael Barnes family Institute correct which we’re going to get into here as well you sit on the board as the senior clinical adviser for The Foundry as well among other things author uh entrepreneur father uh grateful to have you Dr Barnes thanks so much I I you know just so happy to be here I I love doing these things so and I appreciate you know everything you all are doing and it’s really nice to it’s really nice to do something with another treatment center I I always like that collaborative stuff so it was really nice I always like as we were talking at the Symposium earlier we have the 50th annual uh winter Symposium going on we were just kind of checking in when when the first one we went to and um this kind of thing and Dr Barnes was you know was about 13 14 years ago you were looking at the pamphlet and say man I got to be at this conference and now you’re a keynote speaker yeah yeah what has that been like to kind of that that maturation process alongside kind of our Colorado provider group well I mean to be quite honest it a lot of it was really luck and a lot of it was really happen stance and I’ve been very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time A lot of times and um I had been on the faculty at University of Colorado Denver in the counseling program ran into Steve Mallette who was my supervisor uh at at Cedar and asked him who are you and what do you do and and um next thing I know I’m visiting over at Cedar and next thing I know I’m the clinical director at CER and it just sort of happens and um so um you know the state has changed a lot but I still I love the energy the you know that the conference was just such a fun time because you get to see all these old friends and people that you’ve worked with and over the years and it doesn’t have the same adversarial feel that some places has and the competition of of uh programs so um it’s been really interesting to watch the the growth of the clinical programming and the sophistication in increase from you know pretty kind of simplistic um clinical work to really being trauma informed and Trauma integrated and um you know culturally aware um and so I I think it’s um that’s the thing that’s most gratifying is to think maybe I had a little bit to do with that growth of the trauma integrated and and sort of brought a lot of that to the state when I came from Florida and maybe you have a lot to do with it you have a very unique lens of which you saw our field through I think uh a little bit differently than the average clinician and I hadn’t known that until we checked in at the Symposium but maybe talk with the viewers a little bit about how you worked as a clinician within the hospital system and how you kind of viewed the recovery process and maybe how that changed or shifted a little bit as you came into Behavioral Health so that where that story really starts it’s really interesting because I hadn’t thought about it in a long time is during Co I found a box in my garage when I was cleaning it out that had all of these papers that I written that I wrote back in the 1990s at Florida State and I opened the box and there was a paper on top that said um residential alcoholism treatment think how long ago it’s been since you heard anyone say that um it’s very specific yeah yeah um is a time for a family systems paradigm shift and I was being trained as a family traumatologist a person who works with severely traumatized families and worked uh as a um medical family therapist um so my phds as a family therapist but I I didn’t never I never really wanted to be in private practice I always liked working in Hospital systems and so um when I think about you know we tell clients all the time and we tell families all the time that addictions a chronic progressive potentially fatal Illness but we don’t really treat it like that and so as someone who’s worked in big hospitals I when I think of a chronic illness I I think of really a medical condition that is dealt with by a team of just like we do and uh but like I I what I did was I started reading as much as I could about diabetes and I started reading as much as I could about like multiple sclerosis and and I really went back to say chronic disease management has a really different view of how family should be involved than addiction does and addiction so what I did was I went back and I looked at 10 websites of 10 of the best treatment centers in the country and I because I I was getting ready to do a presentation and I want to talk about best practices but not from a scholarly perspective but what what do my peers do and it was all about you need to heal so that you can support this person in their recovery well that keeps that person in the identified patient role and when I started reading about medical chronic illness the the research said that when families start to heal together the person who has the chronic illness actually is much more like to manage that illness successfully when they come out of the patient role and really get rejoined into the family as a healing entity and so that’s my view and the idea of well you know you need to support your loved one is true and so the mission statement of our of the Michael Barnes Family Institute is helping families move Beyond we a family that supports a loved one in their efforts to recovery to we are a family in recover Rec y from addiction and Trauma and that that really opens the door to we’re all in this together and so the research would say if we’re all in this together and we have a an agreed upon um belief that this illness didn’t just impact Joe or Fred it impacted me too and it impacted all of us so if we all work together then that means we all heal and if we begin to look at things like 12-step work and going to meeting less as treatment and more as this is what people with chronic illnesses do they manage their illness by by doing healthy things for themselves and so I think of how many families have said to me when does this IOP end so that we can go back to normal and it’s like whoa come on hold on a second yeah that normal ship sailed a long time ago and so um and the last one that the research is really clear on is that person manages their ill better when other people in the family are willing to look at their own illness and to to when they can have a conversation not about hey how are you today and are you okay but um let me tell I’m really struggling today you know I’m to where everyone has that opportunity to say yeah you know I’ve been pretty impacted by all this too wow and for some reason the chronic issue of addiction hasn’t been dealt with in that way I remember it’s actually bringing up for me when I saw you speak shoot almost 11 years ago now in Aspen at the Limelight I think you were working for Cedar at the time and I remember you were talking about this this very thing you’re talking about right now and I remember thinking to myself yeah that doesn’t work Dr Barnes but this is amazing stuff out here on the ground level only to sit with you today and be like man you were speaking some truth 11 years ago well I was talking to we were talking today about that present I did with all the Neuroscience oh yeah and it was like it was so long ago it was you know 2013 and the looks on people’s faces are like what is this guy talking about yeah and now you can’t go to any conference without multiple people talking about that and and I don’t think you know I think that’s pretty cool to be honest um but I’m so grateful that we’re at a point now where um when you talk about neuroscience and talk about memory systems and you talk about how that impacts the the work that we do that that people aren’t looking at me like I have six eyes but it’s like oh yeah yeah we we’re trained in that now and so it makes a lot of sense from that approach too because when you kind of explained it from the medical side you know with type two diabetes you know mom might come home and dad would help her get the M&M’s and any things sweet out of here we’re not going to have the bread we got this thing hey we all did it together we’re in this fight I can remember my grandma was diagnosed years ago it was this thing everybody came in we did a house cleaning together we worked together to solve the problem oh it gives me chills that I’m saying it and some reason for addiction for so many years we’ve said it’s Joey’s problem let us know when you’re better yeah we love you and we want to be with you but it’s really you’re you you have to prove to us that you’re ready and um yeah I had a we were talking about laps and I said we were talking about how do you talk about a lapse and I said well I don’t know the answer really is how do you talk about it so that it lasts for three days rather than three years right and it’s how do you have a productive conversation about look we’ve all been trained we understand laps happens how do you get back on what do you need to do to get back on into your recovery program I you you were doing great how do we do that as opposed to the you know the the Rockets three months the Rockets burn you know blown up and the shame that happens and and usually families can get grasp that idea of it’s a really different conversation and I remember I had a mom say to me um well I can’t talk about relapse to my son I said why not and she said well it it’ll make him think that I condone it and I said I don’t think you have any you don’t have any role in it I I said yeah it’s like that’s his to decide and but the idea of you can talk to him about what you’re learning and how you’re learning it and what that means to you um without and and it’s not condoning it and so that’s the thing that’s been missing yeah and um the reality is if I ask my son or whomever six times in about four hours if he’s okay then what I’m saying to him is I don’t think you’re okay you know um um a guy at UCLA and I can’t think of his name did a study many years ago and he said that only 7% of communication is the words that come out of our mouth 93% is our nonverbals our tone of voice our facial expressions when we say it and you know you hear people having an argument and someone say that’s not what I said and they say well but it kind of is what you said you didn’t say those words but sure and so that’s a big part of what we’re trying to do in our family Institute is teach people to remember that you can’t not communicate or in Family Therapy we say what are you communicating when you don’t think you’re communicating and that’s what families I think get such change with when they realize they have to get really clear yeah and and be relational and that’s one of those things like we were talking about with kids earlier as we’ve learned like yeah actually being relational with kids in the developmental stages of their life is really crucial we didn’t know that but for some reason when people with addiction issues or substance Related Disorders check in all of a sudden we’re not relational it’s like here’s the RX here’s the plan let us know when you’ve checked the boxes it’s not like how do you feel to your point elapse gosh I bet you’re having some shame come up man that probably sucks wow yeah it does suck dad like I know man I’m but I’m here with you you know how do we get back on path together maybe you know I just love that and you can see those again again back to like the people feeling safe with the people that they should feel safe with is so valuable yeah it it’s um there’s I think families get such a bad rap in many in many environments and you know I hear I hear people saying well I just brought you the healthiest member of this family and when they drop a client off and and you know I’ve been a family therapist for 30 years and uh I remember I had a student that said what’s the best way to work with an unmotivated client and I said I don’t know I’ve never worked with an unmotivated client yeah and the whole room started started laughing and I said well you know all of my people that I work with are pretty highly traumatized and that that they’re just Mo they’re highly motivated to stay as safe as possible and that sometimes that safety keeps them stuck in the same patterns and it’s my job to address that with them rather than to write them off and if that if and I said to the students if you think your clients don’t know that you’ve written them off you’re kidding yourself trauma resilient not treatment resistant right right right right yeah mateline Pia she’s one of our admissions people that’s her thing yeah yeah so she gets on the phone and they’re like I’m treatment resistant you’re trauma resilient trying to stay safe we get it yeah but you just you just spoke to that so eloquently and that’s the truth yeah it is the truth and and um think what’s the first thing we do with a client who’s not who’s in a precontemplative state we use motivational interviewing and we don’t give up and we keep talking and we keep you know asking those questions and two-sided Reflections and but with families we tend to say well they just don’t want it they’re not ready and uh there’s there’s some research out there on motivational interviewing with families with addiction that’s pretty promising yeah and you talked earlier too about the kind of I know Lisa Smith talks about this too with reclaim recovery but kind of like a parallel recover recovery a lot of times and specifically at um the Michael Barnes Institute but as well as The Foundry how you guys do family programming maybe talk a little bit about how the families are kind of running through somewhat of a similar process to the individual how does that work yeah it’s really interesting so if you think about what I just said about a family recovery rather than family support that you know how do you make a decision that you need to recover well you have to come to terms with you have a problem and so so much of of what we’re really doing is educ so in our program it’s educating in really General ways until the family can say to us I have all of that and it’s like yeah yeah the idea of well it’s not my problem it’s his problem is or you know well I don’t know why I’m the one that needs to change I mean if he would just change and go back we could go back to normal and all of those things but once that family begins to decide on their own yeah that’s really interesting that’s fasc and they think they’re reading all of that stuff about their loved one to help their loved one and then they realize holy cow so the parallel process is do I have a problem do I have the problem that they think I have families go through the exact same thing why why are they telling me I need to do this I’m just here to support him I love him right um am I powerless do I have powerlessness and so what do traumatized clients use as a way to try to assume some power hypervigilance and control the two the the you know the cornerstones of the of the trauma Survivor and it’s the same hypervigilance and control that clients use in order to keep their addiction going but it’s it’s I mean it’s different but it’s a similar process and so um do I really need to go to those meetings just like clients will say well I want to get sober but I don’t necessarily want to I don’t think I need to go to all those meetings client families say the same thing and it’s like well I’m not going to alanon and then eventually they begin to realize I’m getting a lot out of this group with these other families maybe um when when someone brings up alanon and says you know I went to the best alanon meeting the other day and and and someone says well these people are really great they’re just like me yeah it’s like well where is it and suddenly now they’re going to that meeting and so I think sometimes we expect too much too fast and um you know think about it how often do you try to solve a problem that you don’t think you have oh yeah well and how often do you take recommendations that you think don’t match the problem that you’re trying to get out and one ear and out the other yeah and so that’s really kind of where I’m at with that is and we’ talked about it earlier that families will say well what do you think we should do and I I’ve learned that if I just tell them that there’s a natural defensiveness or something and I say well that’s a great question let’s talk about like what have you tried and so don’t like not getting into that but much more Wow Let’s collaborate look at what you’ve done and then think well maybe maybe there are some things that we can come up with but I I I can’t tell you I love that approach it’s it’s very present it requires kind of being where your feet are and you know meeting that family system where they’re at I guess one of my questions for you Dr Barnes are you seeing because as you’re talking I’m starting to feel it and I see it in our program a bit are you seeing that parents especially at the population we were talking about young adults are you finding that they you know grief week’s a real big thing for folks in treatment sometimes they go through grief they grieve necessary are you finding that families parents need to go through an authentic grieving process absolutely right it’s interesting I did a research project several years ago when I lived in Florida in my previous life and one of the one of the questions that we asked them to talk about what life is like as a parent and as a family member and one of the things that came out clearly was trauma was a big piece of it so in the study I asked them what’s the number one cause of your trauma associated with your loved ones addiction and you know you’d think emergency room visits and you know getting arrested and they said the shattering of dreams that I have to come to terms with this might not turn out the way I want it to turn out that’s the grief and that and they don’t want who wants to grief I I don’t want to G but that idea of that’s part of that parallel process is am I gonna am I going to be open to the reality of what I’m really facing and allow myself to work through it and so I think I think that grief piece is not addressed probably as well as it could be in treatment I think it should probably be a bigger thing and the fact that you’re noticing it and I’m certainly noticing it too I think more of us are starting to see it and um you know the other thing that’s so interesting is with insurance they’ve sort of done away with experiential therapy that you know and you’ve experienced it I’ve experienced it I’ve had great experiences with it and most of our clients will never see it until unless they get sober for several years and then go back yeah uh or to do something fun they pay out of pocket for yeah absolutely but 43 years ago when I started in the field that’s all we did was experiential work and work and um and individual therapy was a minimal part of what we did um it was all group group process and um I think that helps the grieving process like it helps a grieving process when you’re being sort of supported in that experiential piece and um and I’m a big advocate of tella Health um because it’s hard to get the steamboat if you’re a family member you know half the year you can’t get there half the time well half those people would never walk in the front door in the first place so they have this safety piece they’re in their own home which is really nice and I used to in the beginning because I was just such you know you get I used to throw a lot of shade at but now that I’ve been had the opportunity to zoom out I’ve think tell health is extraordinary that was my presentation at the conference this year was um um so I did a study at Cedar where I I started noticing something and we had a great family program it was literally literally known as one of the best in the country it was renowned and every Tuesday in that I would come in do the trauma lecture and talk to the families and I started noticing that it wasn’t the demographic that I expected it to be and so we did a study where January 1 2017 we did pre- and post um with with every family member and it it turned out exactly how I thought it would turn out the average person was between the ages of 55 and 65 female mother of the client okay who wasn’t there the wife of the client the partner of the client it was just Mom just moms wow and occasionally a dad uh occasionally a partner dad had to work right yeah but like yeah that and so I started to really think um and and now that I have an Institute and I’m out talking to people about it that people will very quickly say oh no no no no we have an inperson program and I say that’s great I mean I it is the gold standard I mean we but what if I can’t get there it’s not the gold standard for me if I can’t get there it it and it could be the best program in the world and so that’s when I really started to look at technology as a a way to
um to to make family services available to everyone our whole you’ll be happy to learn I mean it it was a pandemic thing and it was a cause of the pandemic but now we stick with it our whole family program is virtual this whole virtual platform pemma white does an extraordinary job and she prefers it that that way we got people all over the country oh and that’s the beauty of it is think of the relationships that are being built and like hours you can do it on your phone you can do it wherever you are and so I I think we’re we’re finally beginning to realize that just be I once had a supervisor that says I don’t care how you always did it like it’s not working we have to we have to change it and I think that’s one of the things that I’m seeing is that you know complains about like high-speed internet is everywhere now that you know it’s pretty reliable like we can do these things and so um and the research is really pretty clear that there are certain things that online can do better and there’s certain things that in person can do better but if you put them together side by side they’re pretty comparable and so um I think you know I and I know it’s not possible but it would be nice if every family that couldn’t travel to a family program got to have a virtual program like yours as well or a virtual program like ours and you know and some places do that and some don’t um but you know it’s it’s a philosophy that that they get to decide yeah I really I like the way that you approach that I love the way you approach family systems and really honor the process that is like the family recovery and it gets left out out so often and I’m sure we’ve talked about it before the show I’ve seen it in my career but I assume the recovery outcomes have to be double if not triple if not quadruple when the family involves thems within the process that their loved ones in and I’m sure you have data to support that too yeah it it it’s really true that um there’s not a lot of good data and the the hardest someone once asked me what’s your success rate there was someone in the field and I knew I could goof with them a little bit and I said 100% and they said oh stop and I said well the only people who ever return our calls are people who are doing well and the people who aren’t doing well don’t return our calls so 100% of our clients are doing well yeah and I said no no like the problem is we have to find out how to do the data collection better and you know who’s not afraid to tell you if their loved ones not doing well families all the time and so that was one of my thoughts as I started looking at allowing our families to come forever into our groups that um when someone’s relapsed that we notice their family shows up at group again and we can begin to look at you know how often is that happening how often are people coming back to get that support again and um you know the newbies in the group are oh my gosh relapse but it’s really powerful and it’s really helpful just like if you know our ogs the people who have been around forever and come in and say well he just had four years of sobriety uh and to be able to celebrate that yeah but also to realize when we talk about laps we’re not being negative right we’re being that actually doesn’t quantify lack of success no whatsoever well and that’s another one of those things in chronic disease management it’s like people with diabetes relapse way more than people with addiction and it’s like you know it’s it’s a it’s where we are right now and you get back on the the the process that you’re using to you know manage your blood sugar and um let’s try to keep it as short as possible so we don’t have other medical concerns but that’s where that medical piece comes in handy to let’s not shame anybody but it is hard yeah you make a really good point on that data because you know the viewers might be thinking well yeah know you’ve been doing the since 1935 where’s your stats to that point it used to be sobriety was the measure you know if you’re sober you’re successful that gave me chills because I know a lot of sober people who don’t feel like they’re being very successful right now spiritually mentally and emotionally and so I don’t think days in sobriety although it can quantify or in for mental health I don’t think it equals success I agree with you and I think that you know insurance companies and people are looking for that well so where’s the guarantee right and um I don’t know why our chronic disease is all that different to them than all the other chronic diseases they pay for like you’d you’d think that on some level there would be a level a Level Playing Field with well it’s of chronic illness and people are going to lapse and need ongoing treatment and just like that person who has U diabetes and needs to have a surgery or because they didn’t manage it but they it’s not like they say you don’t get that surgery right yeah or like don’t come back until you’ve done certain thing for x amount of days and then we can talk talk it’s like let me love on you let me walk you through this and and some of these chronic issues are avoidable similar to addiction but life’s hard sometimes you know all of this stuff to talk about parents grief is backed by the American dream you know Gabor mate spoke to this just so beautifully in the myth of normal it’s like I had to get up on and I say this all the time but I had to get up on Pike’s Peak to get the pot of gold that my family never had to realize there’s nobody up here yeah yeah and it’s like the age-old journey that a lot of people that suffer with trauma think that they’re going to get to this Pinnacle that’s on our TVs it’s in our newspapers it’s on our websites and we get there and not that you can’t have both end but the old adage that it’s Lonely at the Top can be really really experienced because we Sprint to the Mountaintop and we forget what matters along the way you know one of the big differences between chronic disease management and the medical environment and and for us is that we still see recovery as a as a destination and they don’t they see recovery as a process and to them recovery is this very Jagged line of ups and downs and doing well doing bad doing well doing bad and then eventually it starts gradually going up in plateaus and the person is managing their illness pretty well but for us the like you said sobriety is the deciding factor and so you’re only in recovery when you never go back or when you when you’re really that sober person um yeah but that’s not how others view it you’ve probably heard Dr Barnes where they get into recovery and they go you’re either going towards recovery or away from it oh man I’m having a bad day going souier yeah but oh man but with you may have some um some remission with your diabetes yeah may not a new season may come may spark some that’s a really good point and think about what we were talking about earlier about young adults and like brain development and developmental they don’t go through developmental stages because of the drug use well that person’s not going to benefit from Rehabilitation they’re going to benefit from habilitation like they still have things that they like rehab implies that you’ve already gone through all of that you have a healthy sense of self you’ve you’ve learned to cope your your brain has developed you’re ready for it we’re just going to bring you back and for the young guys that I work with and you you’ve worked with getting sober is the scariest part because they don’t know how to do any like they haven’t gone through those and so for that person to see recovery as a destination it’s going to take a while maybe for that person to get to a point where they really believe everything and they really understand everything and the the brain development has a chance to happen and to kind of work through you know they go to sober living and and positive things that um I think the recovery is a destination for that person could be a a real killer yeah to be honest really can be and I experienced that a lot in the early stages of Peaks those were like this end point and when they got to it it wasn’t the room they thought they’d be in in the shame catapulted right and if if there’s I don’t know at least in my experience of 16 years doing this I don’t know that there’s anything more synonymous with addiction than shame and so what can we do today Dr Barnes to meet people where they’re at in an effort to just remove the shame or at least dismantle it or to your point as we’ve talked counterbalance it you know I think about shame a lot and and it’s one of the things that I love about 12-step work is that I think it’s really the best place to heal shame to be to be honest I agree you know when someone comes into a room and says something that they did in their addiction and everyone in the room looks at each other and goes ony yeah I remember I remember that and so that I and so that idea of I am with my and and so I was I was reading a book um it was written in ’95 it was written by William white and it’s called Pathways and he talks about tribes and he said that when we think of culture and culture being these overriding Rights and Wrongs goods and bads um um meaning belief systems and philosophies of life and then we talk about the the culture of addiction and how it really is a culture but it’s a culture that intended to support active addiction well white takes it down to an even smaller figure of people that he calls tribes and tribes are the people who use the same drug as you and he said if someone is going to hang around with a group of people for 20 years an act of addiction they’re getting something out of that and that so often when they come into treatment the treatment environment is so negative about nothing good ever happens with the addiction is that it it’s not true for that person I got my affiliation with that person I got my friendships with that person uh you know now I’ll use while you sit with the Naran in case I overdose and and there is fellowship in that yeah and white said that if we cannot convince a client convincingly that they can get the same things in recovery that they got out of that group that lifelong recovery is impossible and that’s where I think the shame piece is to be able to hear that and to say what what did you get out of that instead of always and we certainly have to talk about the consequences and the bad things that have happened but um if we’re gonna join with them and help them to be able to talk about things without shame then we have to be really curious with them and it’s like wow that’s really interesting that is is a Cutting Edge can you get that maybe in a meeting yeah is there I want you to pay attention to some of the guys in here or maybe some of the staff that you know are in recovery begin to look at maybe some of the things that they have and how do you get that here but if we if we if we don’t address that then um the shame isn’t going to go away I love what you said there because it’s I remember going up to speak in my first meeting and they were like you’re going to tell your story for an hour I was 12 months in a day sober and I’m and they’re like stay out of the problem get into the solution but I kept thinking the problem was the solution the whole time I’m like I want to talk about this feels very heavy and loaded but these were my people this was my community this is where I was fortunately or unfortunately seen valued and heard yeah there’s something to this I think it dovetails into kind of something that I certainly wanted to chat with you about before we get done with when our Solutions turn into problems your book author when did you publish when was that published it was published at the end of 2023 okay okay pretty recent but it’s it’s so telling maybe we can kind of climb into that a little bit because I remember being in fifth grade and I remember my right leg tapped something fierce and I was the middle child and I couldn’t sit still I couldn’t keep my hands off of people and they would ask me a silly question like what’s wrong with you and I didn’t know so I gave you a terrible answer but then in sixth grade I took my first drink I was hanging out with some guys that were older than me and right away my light my right leg stopped to shake stop shaking MH a community that I was fearful of I was almost thrusted in into the middle of and I felt seen valued and heard in that moment and so it was really difficult for me to not take that drink in seventh grade and eth grade and 10th grade and 12th grade in college um and it began to kill meh but there was a moment in my life where if I didn’t have it I don’t know where I would be how does that happen well I mean like trans transgenerational traumas and and um you know the passing of addiction from one generation to the next and all of those things um you know I think our understanding of family Dynamics are way more um kind of informed than they were at any time and I think the the role of of trauma plays into that so I think there’s there’s you know Paul early who’s a fellow in the American Society of addiction medicine says there are three ways that people become addicted they they either have a genetic predisposition or the epigenetic factors of of that something changes yeah something changes associated with the DNA and um or you you’re self-medicating or you’re in an environment where that’s all you know it is so normal and I think about that the idea that if I what I don’t get in my family I’m going to seek out and my family had generational addiction lots of trauma that we didn’t I didn’t know what trauma was I just thought things were like every family was like that and so um um I I think that’s so one of the things I was talking to today I was teaching a class today that we were talking about when when you start using an 11 or 12 you not only get the relief but it sort of you organize your life around it yeah and getting it you know procuring it using it being with your friends you probably go through multiple friend sets until you finally get the one that really uses the way you want to use people yeah and you know you lose those childhood friends the neighborhood kids that aren’t going to do what you’re going to do and and I just think there’s you know we always want to get to that factor of why does that happen and because something’s missing um you know the sematic psychotherapy look at attachment as not just relationship but when a child cries they’re in distress they’re needing someone to come and reg help them regulate and so the sematic folks think what attachment really is is a child in disregulation being regulated by a parent who is re reg um regulating their own autonomic nervous system and so some of us didn’t grow up with that my mom didn’t know how to do that she she loved us dearly and did everything she could but no one ever helped her regulate right and so you know I think it’s Case by case and it’s part of each client’s Story how they got to that yeah and I think it’s easy for me because I to me everything is a trauma you know it’s it’s clear yeah you know uh not not to make that happen so it’s interesting if I have a if I’m at The Foundry mhm and we have a client 25 years old and uh I’ve looked at his his career as a as a user short as it probably was and I see that they’re um they’re kind of a failure to succeed they you know it’s always been a struggle academically and you know um you know they may have been good at sports but you know there were other issues yeah I’ll always ask them so what’s the big secret in your family what happened in your family that got you here and they’ll say I don’t know what you’re talking about I said come on like wow no one gets here without something and and then we find out from the family program that his brother died in a car accident when he was 12 and mom went into a severe depression after the accident and his drinking started two months after the accident and then the you know there’s just always something and so the trick in that to me is how to bring the family into that discussion Without Blame right without shame too yeah it’s the yeah how do I insert you into this and you’re a part of it without pointing fingers and that’s a interesting transition how do you how do you find is the best way to walk with families into that process because we talked earlier about you know sitting with clients and hey what do you need me to do you know that’s yet to be explored so how do you approach that with families I’m sure you don’t give them the to-do list and say hey get get done with one through five and we’ll see before next Group Well the way we’ve designed the app is is is to start with their strength and their strength is that they love their family member and they want to learn everything they can learn to help that person remember they’re being brought into a culture that they think that the goal is to support their loved well we’re going to shift that with them in time but that idea of well let’s teach you what you want to know what is addiction how does it work what’s powerless is it really an illness those kinds of things and then we’re going to the next module is going to be on trauma and um and by the end of that module the family start to say well I have all of that my dad myom yeah and once that shift begins to happen the next module is on family trauma and how addiction traumatizes family systems whether it’s granddad’s addiction whether it’s Dad’s addiction whether it’s son’s addiction whether it’s husband’s addiction whatever and and and I so we call it like developmental learning we don’t have those like they’re always getting the discussion of you know it’s a family issue it’s a family recovery but we don’t I don’t expect them to jump into um just I’ll do anything right they say that sometimes but but that that’s aspirational in most cases um we did a study at Florida State where we we assessed families with addiction who were brand new to the process first Tre men or what have you first first and then we studied families who had longstanding multiple and what we found is that they both wanted different therapists completely different this person got frustrated if I tried if we tried to be too collaborative with them look we don’t know what we’re here to to learn like coaching is really what they want they want somebody to say here here’s the things here’s organ here’s a game plan yeah and if you get too collaborative it’s like if we had those answers we wouldn’t be sitting here with you but the people who are have been through the process a lot of times just couldn’t tolerate a hierarchical therapist and the idea that we think we’re the expert because we have a degree doesn’t fly it’s they’re the expert because they’ve been through it for so long and they understand and that they want a collaborative therapist one who’s going to listen that discussion of what have you tried rather than you need to do these things that works with this one that doesn’t work with this one yeah and so I think sometimes our Family Programs are too programmed and they’re not really able to adjust to the needs of what a family it’s kind of like no no no you need to learn these things and we’re going to we’re going to do that um and so we’ve tried to create a A system that has both therapists and coaches because some people need coaches and some people need therapists and as they’re working through the process that we’re we’re kind we’re able to sort of meet them a little easier where they are and the other thing is not expecting them to just jump into the system like right they have to be ready to do that yeah because that can feel unauthentic too when they don’t and then you’re like hey you didn’t do the homework but as you’re talking I’m starting to kind of like zoom out of what I’ve done for the last 16 years and just kind of come over to the family corner and to see that some of those folks might be coming in with more shame than their loved ones oh my gosh especially with what we got you know talking about the American dream and what we have on our TV and what you’re supposed to be as you know someone in this United States of America today the shame for them and so ensuring that you’re allowing them to walk into a seamlessly safe process to not catapult that shame is something that I don’t think we’ve thought about as providers enough well and how many of those family members grew up in families where there was addiction and said I’m never going to talk to my kids that way M and I’m going to love my kid and and I’m not going to be mad at them if they have problems and then over the course of time and and so it’s interesting like think of compassion fatigue that we think of as therapists burnout and secondary trauma when that term was first identified it was identified in at UCLA I was at Florida State we were working on secondary trauma and the person who identified the term um compassion fatigue wrote a letter to my supervisor and said wow it sounds like we’re talking about the same thing you’re you’re talking about secondary trauma and we’re talking about burnout and when we first started and I I remember seeing the letter and I remember Dr Figley who was my mentor saying what do you think of the name compassion fatigue I said I think it beats the hell out of secondary trauma yeah it’s so much better I’d rather believe I have I have compassion fatigue than I that I’m just being traumatized and but but my point of that is we thought it was really about families of adct addicted families Where What Where compassion fatig was that the there there’s two functions happening one is we have to figure this out and that we’re going to spend all of our so we talk about an 8020 rule that what we find is the families spend 80% of their time on one family member and 20% on other family Y and they’re hyper they have the exact same trauma symptoms as someone with PTSD they have hypervigilance they have control they have intrusive thoughts they don’t sleep they have um they’re disregulated and we do collect data on this the the symptoms that families bring in and it’s pretty compelling to look at they’re they are as traumatized as could be and so um they’re just functional as can be yeah and that idea of so why I called the book when the solution becomes the problem that’s a term we’ve used in Family Therapy for a long time because it it it it basically says that families do the best they can like and it’s based on how they understand the problem and what resources they have available to them and as therapists some of our job we think is to give them resources and then they don’t use them and we get upset when the resources that we give them don’t match their understanding of the problem and I wouldn’t use resources that I didn’t think matched and so that idea of spending more time on the on the um the understanding there’s a a famous quote about that says the problem isn’t the problem the problem is the family’s constraining about the problem because we have a problem sure but but it’s our understanding of it that gives us the ideas of what we should do about it mhm and so that’s why when I say we start with educating not expecting a lot of change until the person begins to say h wow I think I’m seeing this differently wow that’s that’s a that’s the change that we’re talking about that’s huge it actually reminds me of my mother and I’s relationship you know for years when I grew up my mother was addicted um what I should have said all these years was my mother struggled with severe depression of which sometimes she engaged with substances to get out of the chair turn the lights on do the things that normal people do how did I learn that last year I’ve been in recovery a long time yeah and especially for a 39-year-old and I had my mom out last year she was visiting the boy she’s a great grandmother and I was talking to her about substances and she said yeah I just been depressed my whole life I’m 38 years old mom I never knew you were depressed oh yeah makes a lot of sense makes tremendous amount of sense cu the world told me that you were this thing and then I believed it and I said those things too and it couldn’t be further from the truth I’m grateful to be able to see my mom in that way today because it invites so much compassion um yeah I asked a doc I was teaching a doctoral class and I asked I said I’m G to ask a simple question can you change the past and every single person in the room said no the past happened and and so when we think about perception of problems we also tell a story about the past that has some truth and some not truth and and they looked at me and they said well clearly you disagree with this I said clearly I disagree with you and I said you know if we can begin to understand the circumstances of the story that we tell and um and I had an experience with my mom that was very similar to what you had and I began to realize just how traumatized she wash and I had compassion for her and the anger that I had for a lot of the things that had happened when we were kids and the conflicts and stuff and it was you can’t change what happened but you can certainly change your understanding of it and it’s really different if my belief is that my mom was really mean as opposed to my mom was really like traumatized and sure and so if we can change the story we we can change our response to the to the past and and I was watching a therapist who was a Vietnam vet doing therapy with a Vietnam vet and I’m sitting behind the mirror watching it and um it was one of those guys that was a really angry vets and you know really blamed himself and drank himself almost to death and and the guy started the other guy started doing um EMDR with him and all of a sudden the guy came out of the EMDR and he said you know I was only 17 years old when I went to Vietnam and the other guy says yeah so was I and he said any 17-year-old would have done what I did I a kid it’s like thank you Jesus you know thank you that’s EXA junior senior in high school that’s what and and he said I guess I’ve been pretty hard on myself now they had done multiples it wasn’t just like one session did it but I was watching and I just thought that’s where change happens yeah so when the solution becomes the problem is that when the problem is understood differently it opens the door for new Solutions and there’s so much reparation and healing in that absolutely of the past can we change it no but can we begin to inform it differently and heal from it in a present way and to your point I love that you said that because it’s something that my mom wouldn’t be able she would be able to articulate if I asked her but I haven’t asked her but she just shows it in community and in connection with me that she’s seen today and she’s valued and she’s heard and you can tell sitting with her there’s nothing else in this world that matters I mean it’s like we got grandkids we got some food on the table I got my son who sees me this is heaven yeah you know and I’m so grateful to have such extraordinary humans and professionals around me like yourself like a lot of the people we have in our field like a lot of people we have in this Colorado provider community that is tight it and connected I just I love being able to sit in front of you and just ask you questions and learn about how we can move into this process together one day at a time yeah I think it’s awesome and I think this is how we changed the world I love that people you know I always tell guys you know even in early recovery I’m like you ready to change the world cuz you’re already doing it it’s a beautiful thing and The Purpose Driven lifestyle that this recovery process can give people can really set Folks up on a trajectory trajectory of success that is absolutely stunning and beautiful to watch and so I really really appreciate Dr Barnes I mean just having you on the show being able to sit with you an hour before our viewers are all the better um through just hearing you explain things and just a really valuable and uh to my point earlier an authentic way um so people can hear them taste them smell them integrate them uh it’s really bring a privilege Dr Barnes before we go your website um just for the viewers make sure they can find you on there your book as well as the foundies website three things so um my website is www Dr or. drr Mike Barnes um.com okay and Mike not Michael Mike I was Michael when I was in trouble so I so I always Christopher Michael I always do Mike so um and um the The Foundry website is www. nrt next right thing behavioral health or Nick and it’s nrtb
docomo in in Broomfield we’re opening some new iops um that are um going to be downtown again like where we used to be cool and so just so many good things happening and uh you know there’s a lot of good treatment in Colorado these days so really happy to be a part of it yeah so grateful for you Dr Barnes and Ben Court the founder up there um and what he does for the community you know when I look at something like nrt I think that’s got an integrous backbone and I know how Ben stands on that and you all stand on it you are you do what you say and say what you mean and I think that just matters so much more than actually what we’re doing the why that you speak so clearly thank you so much Dr Barnes and I appreciate it like it’s really nice to hear that and I do really appreciate it and that um we’ve talked about it I’ve been really lucky to fall into the right places and uh and so I’m pretty grateful about the career that I’ve had you and I both Dr Barnes appreciate you so much until next time everybody please check us out on Spotify Instagram anywhere you get your podcast you can watch past previous episodes this one we’ll be out in no time until next time peace that was awesome [Music]