How Dysfunctional Families Shape Trauma and Addiction | Heather Hayes

 How do trauma, addiction, and family dysfunction shape recovery and emotional healing? 

Heather Hayes, internationally recognised interventionist, Licensed Counselor, and founder of Heather R. Hayes & Associates, joins Abdullah Boulad for a powerful conversation on addiction, trauma, recovery, and the hidden emotional struggles behind high-functioning families.

In this episode, Heather reflects on her personal journey through addiction and recovery, growing up in a chaotic family system despite material privilege, and how those experiences shaped her life’s work helping individuals and families navigate complex mental health and substance use challenges. Together, they explore the emotional roots of addiction, the impact of family dysfunction, sensitivity and self-esteem, and why unresolved trauma often sits beneath destructive behaviours.

The conversation also dives into the evolution of addiction interventions, the importance of compassion over blame, and the parallels between family intervention work and hostage negotiation. Heather shares insights from her experience training with FBI hostage negotiators, explaining how communication, emotional safety, and trust can transform difficult conversations and motivate change.

This episode offers a thoughtful perspective on addiction, trauma, emotional regulation, family systems, and the human side of recovery.

About Heather: Heather Hayes is a Licensed Counselor, Board Registered Interventionist, and founder of Heather R. Hayes & Associates, with more than 30 years of experience helping individuals and families navigate trauma, addiction, eating disorders, and complex mental health challenges.

00:00:00 - Growing Up in a Chaotic Family and the Early Roots of Addiction
00:02:28 - Heather’s Journey to Sobriety and Entering Rehab in 1982
00:03:35 - Why Heather Dedicated Her Life to Helping Others Recover
00:04:40 - How Wealth and Privilege Can Increase Addiction Risk
00:06:22 - The Emotional Instability Hidden Behind Material Success
00:09:05 - Toxic Family Dynamics and Their Impact on Mental Health
00:11:13 - Low Self-Esteem, Social Pressure, and Substance Abuse
00:14:19 - Why Highly Sensitive People Are More Vulnerable to Addiction
00:16:43 - Studying Psychology to Understand Addiction and Heal Herself
00:19:07 - The Breaking Point That Led Heather to Seek Treatment
00:20:58 - Working with Trauma, Eating Disorders, and Heroin Addiction
00:24:05 - The Evolution of Modern Addiction Interventions
00:26:10 - Inside Heather’s Training with FBI Hostage Negotiators
00:28:46 - The Biggest Mistakes Families Make During Interventions
00:32:12 - The Power of “I Feel” Statements in Difficult Conversations
00:35:52 - Addiction Intervention as a Form of Human Negotiation
00:39:06 - Why Family Denial Makes Recovery More Difficult
00:44:05 - What True Success in Addiction Recovery Really Looks Like
01:00:15 - Trauma Bonds, Stockholm Syndrome, and Dysfunctional Relationships
01:16:36 - Heather’s Message of Hope on Mental Health and Communication

Follow Abdullah Boulad: 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdullahboulad/  
https://www.instagram.com/abdullahboulad/  

Follow Heather Hayes:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-r-hayes/

You can order Abdullah’s books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0BC9S5TCF?ccs_id=c64f2588-7eb1-4592-b4d1-647a0f379b51

Follow THE BALANCE Rehab Clinic: 
https://www.linkedin.com/company/thebalancerehabclinic/   
https://www.instagram.com/thebalancerehabclinic/  

#LivingALifeInBalance #podcast #trauma #communication #mentalhealthpodcast #wellness #wellnessjourney #health #healing #wellbeing #traumainformed #love #mentalhealth #recovery #support #addictionrecovery #interview #relationship #couple #families

Transcript

Heather Hayes 00:00:00  By the time I hit my adolescence, I started using drugs and alcohol. I reached out and said, I need to get some help. Everything on the inside was missing. I was a very sensitive soul.

Speaker 2 00:00:12  How can someone having everything ending up with addiction and struggling?

Heather Hayes 00:00:17  Growing up with the privilege and wealth is actually a risk factor. People who have substance use disorder or eating disorders or struggle with depression are some of the most sensitive, caring people that I've ever worked with. When someone has mental health issues or substance abuse, they're suffering. Their family members are suffering too. Yes, we all hurt each other no matter how much you love each other.

Speaker 2 00:00:42  How many interventions have you done?

Heather Hayes 00:00:44  Probably somewhere around 4000. We've got more evidence based treatment and knowledge about how to treat substance use than we do. Cancer. Yes. We heal in relationship. We heal in connection.

Speaker 2 00:01:04  Welcome to the Living a Life and Balance podcast. My guest today is Heather Hayes, a licensed psychotherapist, interventionist, and internationally certified hostage negotiator with over 40 years of experience in crisis and addiction recovery.

Speaker 2 00:01:19  I hope you all enjoy, Heather. What motivated you to do what you do today?

Heather Hayes 00:01:25  Well, first of all, thank you for having me here. you know my story. It's an interesting story. So there's no way for me to tell my professional story without starting with my personal story. So I grew up in a family that was very complex. My grandfather was a United States senator. My father was a very well known, individual in his field. He was a writer, grew up in a way where everything looked good and we had to perform well And by the time I hit my adolescence, I started using drugs and alcohol. And so I went off to college. This is the short version. We can do the long version later if you want, but I went off to university and while I was there, I thought maybe if I changed my major to psychology, I'd be able to stop using so many drugs and drinking so much. And so it didn't really happen right away. But eventually, my third year in college, I reached out and said, I need to get some help.

Heather Hayes 00:02:28  And so I went to rehab and that was 1982. February 24th, 1982. And I got sober. And while I was there, I, you know, I landed in treatment and it was I mean, again, 1982 was a long time ago. There weren't many women in treatment. There were very few young adults in treatment. And so I was there with all of these actually addicted physicians and spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I didn't belong, how I needed to get out of there, how things were just gravely misunderstood. There had been, you know, surely I didn't belong here, even though I asked go and I would say probably 2 or 3 weeks in when my head started to clear up and I started to be able to think more, more reasonably and rationally with more clarity, I realized that I didn't want to live my life the way I was living my life, and that I really needed to make some significant changes. And with that, in, in, in really a short matter of time, I knew more than I'd ever known in my life.

Heather Hayes 00:03:35  Anything that I wanted to help other young people who had been through what I'd been through because I could see so many signs and so many places where someone could have intervened. Someone should have intervened. Someone if they had the ability to say, this isn't a bad kid. This isn't a kid who wants to get kicked out of schools or in trouble or wrecked their car. This is a child who's in pain and struggling and asking for help that maybe things could have been, you know, intervened on earlier. And so so with that, you know, I just continued studying psychology, went to graduate school, had a real craving and a passion to learn everything I could possibly learn and be the best I could be, you know, get the knowledge I could get. And, that's how I ended up here.

Speaker 2 00:04:28  Yeah. And good. You did.

Heather Hayes 00:04:30  Think. Yes, good I did. The other alternative was really bad. Yes. Right.

Speaker 2 00:04:34  Yes. We'll talk about that too. Yeah. I when, you grew up privileged.

Speaker 2 00:04:40  Yes. We can say yes. You had everything. Yes. How can someone having everything ending up with addiction and struggling.

Heather Hayes 00:04:49  Yeah. That's a great question. You know today we know that growing up with privilege and wealth is actually a risk factor, that people who grow up with privilege and wealth have are twice more likely to have mental health or substance abuse problems. I think it makes it more difficult to get help, because there's so many different layers of padding that keep it from, showing itself like it's harder for people to have financial consequences. But that is part of the myth is, is how you know, what is addiction substance use disorder look like, you know, and in our minds, it's for me, at least in the beginning, I thought, well, you're homeless or you're older or you're drinking in the morning. And I didn't do any of those things. And so I now know that I didn't do anything any differently than the others around me in my private school. We were all experimenting, but it always affected me differently.

Heather Hayes 00:05:45  And I do know and believe that there's that genetic biological, different, different. So it impacted me differently than some of my friends who maybe did more but didn't have the consequences. And it was sort of the throw of the dice. You know, my had a grandfather who was an alcoholic. my parents didn't really drink. My, other side of the family didn't really drink a lot. But the more I began to kind of look at the family system and unpack things, I was able to see that we did have mental health issues in there. We did have substance use. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:06:22  Probably you had it all from a more material perspective. Was there anything missing you?

Heather Hayes 00:06:29  Everything on the inside was missing. You know, I came into the world and I was a very sensitive soul. And I spent a lot of my time alone in this way. My mind. I was always sort of seeking. So even at a young age, I can remember being like 6 or 7 years old and wondering like, why are we here? Why do people hurt? Why is there so much suffering? Why historically did we have things like slavery? Like how did we do that to people? And so I was always kind of deeply questioning, which was, I think for someone so young, I mean, I guess I came into the world in an existential crisis already trying to figure it all out.

Heather Hayes 00:07:18  And then in my home life, there was no consistency. So it was about looking good, making good grades, being smart. by the time I was four, I could count from 1 to 10 in six different languages. So it was a lot of here's what you do, and not a lot about how I felt inside or what my, what I liked to do, or so I would be told, Play the piano. And I said, I don't like to play the piano. No. You do. You like to play the piano. You're going to play the piano. I was miserable and terrible. High expectations. And then my parents divorced and remarried each other three times. So there was a lot of chaos. And so, I mean, they didn't just have fights, they had divorces. They didn't just reconcile. We'd have little weddings with our little flowers. And so it was very.

Speaker 2 00:08:10  unstable.

Heather Hayes 00:08:11  Unstable, unstable is a good way to put it. Yeah. So that was a lot that was missing.

Heather Hayes 00:08:17  And I think feeling like I was in an environment that nurtured me for the things that I loved and liked, and in some ways they did. You know, I had horses. I rode horses competitively. I will tell you to this day, the horses were one of the things that saved my life. The horses gave me the ability, at 21 years old, to say, I need help, I'm going to do this. There's a better life for me because I had this bond and this connection, and there was something that I knew I could do, that I wasn't the best in the world, but I could. I was okay at it. I was pretty good and it felt good, and I got self-esteem from that. So I had a lot of opportunities. But I think when it came to this, the horses gave me the stability too. So that was just that was missing at home and all the pressure.

Speaker 2 00:09:05  Yeah. So you think your relationship with your parents was also an unhealthy attachment.

Heather Hayes 00:09:11  Oh 100% yes. Yes. So I'm the oldest born and my parents had a, you know, obviously chaotic marriage divorce fights. So I was the oldest. So in a lot of ways I would be pulled into the middle of their fights. I became my mother's confidante. my mother had a, I, she had a personality style where one minute you had to be on her team, which meant not talk to your dad, and then the next minute talk to your dad. So it was all black and white and, you know, a lot of splitting between each other. And they'd fight and they'd be angry. And when you're a child, you are egocentric. So I thought, well, maybe if I can be better, make better grades, be a better kid. so my relationship was very strained with them. I was in some ways more the adult in the family and the secret keeper for my mother and the protector. And it was really difficult. And I think that's part of why, at 12 years old, the first time I had a drink, I thought, oh, relief.

Heather Hayes 00:10:16  Like, I don't feel the pressure. Everything feels kind of, okay, I'm going to do this again. Yeah. And it took me out of that pain, you know, until it didn't. Until it became the pain.

Speaker 2 00:10:29  Yeah. For how long has this been going on?

Heather Hayes 00:10:32  So I my drinking and driving again is that of a young adult teenager. So from 12 until 21.

Speaker 2 00:10:39  Oh yeah.

Heather Hayes 00:10:39  All your all my developing years of adolescence. Yeah. I mean, the other side of that, the beauty of it is that I've been sober for almost 44 years now, and I've grown up with lots of therapy and lots of, in a program of recovery and lots of healing that I never would have had had that not have happened. So I've had many more decades of health and new ways of life than I did of the hurt and the pain, but it still takes time to unpack all that and heal from it. Certainly, yeah.

Speaker 2 00:11:13  When you mentioned the self-esteem or your self-esteem, which you have gained back through horseback riding and so on.

Speaker 2 00:11:21  So you, you felt you, you, you were an insecure child. Because of what? Because of.

Heather Hayes 00:11:27  I think, insecure. Because nothing was ever good enough and home life was so unstable. I was a bit of an awkward kid, you know, it's very bright. There's a lot of pressure put on smarts. And I went to a really small school for gifted children when I was younger. And then we moved and we moved from Texas to Georgia to Atlanta. And then so at 12 years old, awkward age pre puberty, I went into this big school with kids who all had grown up together and knew each other. And culturally Georgia was very different than Texas. And so I just felt awkward and out of place. And it was a real struggle for me to try and fit in. And I was always really, really, really thin. And so they'd call me Heather Feather and Skinny Bones and, it was just it was hard. It was a really hard time. And it was in that time where I kind of began to start to use substances, and that was the way I could fit in.

Heather Hayes 00:12:34  That was the way that, I mean, the kids that were drinking accepted everybody. And so I could. I could do that. But when I got sober, and all of a sudden I came to and I lost my crutch because the alcohol and the drugs had become the way I socialized and related and interacted with other kids and coped and dealt with my problems and managed my pain. When I sobered up, I went, I suddenly I was back to where I had been. I was shy and quiet, which I'm not and had certainly hadn't been. Like you could probably go to a party and hear me down the road before you got there. I mean, that's the kind of what my drinking did. Yeah. so I was insecure. I didn't know how to relate. Didn't know how to study, didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I liked or didn't like or, you know, I knew that sort of false self that we talk about in psychology, that person I would try and put forward.

Heather Hayes 00:13:32  But I didn't really like her because she was a big partier and self-destructing, and that was not working. so it took a lot of time. I was very insecure. even when it came to wanting to study psychology, I needed lots of reassurance in the beginning that, am I doing it okay? Am I doing it all right? Which in hindsight may be better than going in arrogant, not knowing what you don't know. I mean, you know, and thinking I knew everything, I didn't. So, because of that, I mean, the benefit of that was that I had a lot of great supervisors and a lot of good mentors and took a lot of really good trainings and kept at, you know, getting educated and stayed in therapy forever because I wanted to do better and be better.

Speaker 2 00:14:19  Already as a child, you've been a sensitive person. Do you think if if someone is more sensitive to the world, sensory and emotionally, they are more higher at risk of, First getting addicted, and second also to have less self-esteem around compared around them.

Heather Hayes 00:14:41  The surrounding I do think so. I think some of the most of you know, I've probably worked with 4 or 5000 families over my decades of doing this, and people who have substance use disorder or eating disorders or struggle with depression, like, are some of the most sensitive, caring people that I've ever worked with. And I think part of what happens, too is like, I was sensitive, I was I was caring, I worried about the world. I had really actually good morals and values, and yet the substances made me someone who didn't have morals, who went against all my values, who, would lie to you, would, you know, take money from my parents and, you know, like that it wasn't who I was. And so part of my saying I need to change and get better wasn't because I got arrested, I didn't it wasn't because I lost a job and have one wasn't because my grades were bad. I mean, they were bad. It was because I lost myself and sort of my true north.

Heather Hayes 00:15:53  And so I do think people who backed your question. Yeah. come in and want to medicate or cover up those feelings. Don't have a way to say I'm hurting. are more prone to go towards substances or other really behaviors I hate to even like. I don't want to pathologies it because there are things that we do when we're in pain that help us to cope, and that may be having an eating disorder that may be using substances that may be cutting. It helps us to survive a hard part and then it doesn't work anymore. So often those things that helped us get through things then backfire.

Speaker 2 00:16:34  And eventually this sensitivity which led to all these issues struggle. Yes. You have gone through.

Heather Hayes 00:16:42  Yes.

Speaker 2 00:16:43  Has become later on your superpower working with people? Yes. And and realizing that this is, something beautiful also to see it needed to be. Probably. Yeah. You went to study psychology. Was this in the first place? Probably to treat your own? Yes. Yourself?

Heather Hayes 00:17:02  Yes, absolutely.

Heather Hayes 00:17:04  Went to treat myself. Went because I thought maybe it would help me figure things out. Yeah. And it did it. In fact, in some ways, you know, it wasn't like I studied psychology and suddenly said I needed help. You know, I went into my first psychology class, and 4 or 5 weeks into the semester, they got to the substance abuse part, and they put this big questionnaire up on the board. I mean, back then we didn't have PowerPoints. We had like overhead projectors. It was up on the screen and it went through and it said, do you ever drink more than you intended? Yes. Do you ever regret what you've done when you've been drinking? Yes. Do you ever, not remember what happened? Oh, yeah. Who doesn't have that? So I went through this checklist. There were like 24 questions, and I said yes to, like, 21 of them. And then I got to the bottom and it said, if you say yes to two or more of these, you may have a problem.

Heather Hayes 00:17:58  If you say yes to three or more of these, you absolutely have a problem with alcoholism. And I went, oh, I want to take the test again, because I didn't know they were going to say that at the bottom. And now I'd like to go back and say it and say no. So I was already trying to bargain with you. No. Not me. It can't be me. I can't have that. I don't want to have that denial. A lot of denial, a lot of denial. And and then I said, well, of course I have to go out and act like this because I'm an alcoholic. And you would too, if you had this disease. Like, now we know it's wrong with me. And it became my excuse, coupled with it's actually a really bad formula to be doing a lot of drugs, particularly cocaine and drinking a lot and studying psychology because you also, I ran the risk of going through and reading all the other diagnoses and I'd say, oh no, I've got this, I've got that, you know, like the doctor in med school that thinks they have every ailment that they read about.

Heather Hayes 00:18:52  So by the time I got to treatment, was actually so relieved to learn that I just had substance use disorder, that I wasn't crazy, I didn't have all those other issues that I thought I had. So.

Speaker 2 00:19:07  And how long did it take you then from starting studying psychology to get into treatment?

Heather Hayes 00:19:14  I would say I probably changed my major my second year, and it probably took me about nine months to a year, but, you know, terrible car accidents. also like part of the studying psychology was part of the bargaining with myself. So I'm going to learn about this because in my family, if you had knowledge and you, you could always figure something out if you think hard enough. So I'm going to learn about it. I'm going to wrap my arms around it. I'm going to reel this in and fix it. And then I started looking at my relationship with alcohol and drugs. So I'd say, okay, I'm not going to go out and drink tonight or I'm going to go out, I'm going to have two drinks and I couldn't do it.

Heather Hayes 00:19:59  And so I also began really, testing myself and trying. And I started seeing a therapist who I'd seen when I was a kid. I didn't know he was also a recovering alcoholic. So he planted these seeds along the way, too. And he'd say, well, go out and have two drinks and don't have any more. And then let's talk next week about how that went for you. And I'd come in and I'd say, oh, well, it didn't go so well. Here's what happened. You know, you must not be really good at your job because I'm not getting any better. So when I did finally and he would say every now and then, do you need to go to rehab? And I'd be like, no, that's for those people. Yeah. So when I really did finally say, okay, I need more help. He's who I reached out to. And he helped me get where I needed to be.

Speaker 2 00:20:49  And today you help families, people, children.

Heather Hayes 00:20:53  Yes.

Speaker 2 00:20:54  To get into treatment. Intervention. How is your work around that?

Heather Hayes 00:20:58  So that's great. So I went off to graduate school in Boston. I'm going to I'm going to drag you back to 1985 real quick, please. I went off to graduate school in Boston. So let me even back up before that. So I was at University of Georgia, and it's a big party school, and I had a 1.19 on the 4.0 scale. And so that's basically all F's. I left, I went to treatment, I went to another school for a year, got my grades up, and then I went to Emory University, which is actually quite prestigious university in the States. And I graduated with high honors with the 3.9. So that helped. I was like, here's your brain on drugs. Here's your brain off of drugs. Oh, actually, I am a good student. I can do well. So I went off to graduate school in Boston and I worked with I did my internship working with heroin addicts out of the Boston projects, and it was a very interesting time.

Heather Hayes 00:21:56  So I'm southern, I'm 23, I'm young, and I'm working with these big burly, you know, some had some. You know, I remember the first time I did an assessment with a client, I, you know, was trying really hard to do it right. And I'm looking at my little, my little cheat sheet. Ask about the family. Oh, how's your family? Oh, oh. Ask about the dad. Oh, my God, you know. And he said, my father, you know, he died on. Oh, okay. What did he die from? Well, they found him in the trunk of the car and I'm like, well, what was he doing there? Well, he was running the numbers. Well, suddenly it dawns on me like, oh, the Mafia. Like I'm in a whole different environment. Environment. Right? So I quickly kind of learned how to gain some skills, not be. Here's a place to not be so sensitive, to not take things so personally.

Heather Hayes 00:22:49  It was a really painful time because it was when our clients who were IV drug users, suddenly there was a whole new diagnosis and that was HIV and Aids. Yes. And so we had that layer of complication and shame and clients not getting their needs met because of their sexuality or because they were intravenous drug users. So I finished up grad school. It was a great experience. came back to Georgia and helped open up an adolescent unit. And so for years I worked with the teens. I had a private practice, I did consulting. Working with the physicians who were addicted. I, did everything I could to. Learn about trauma and how to help work, because I was working with these teen girls and I was the only female therapist there. So the boys went to the men and the girls came to me. So I quickly had to learn about how to work with disordered eating, trauma, emotional neglect, self-harm. So I just kept getting trained in every way I could. And so I had a very big, very successful private practice.

Heather Hayes 00:24:05  And then somewhere around the turn of the millennium, I think I started, because, you know, being a person in recovery, you know, I do have that part of me that loves to kind of excitement and different things. And I thought, well, what am I going to add to this now? Like here I am, I've got this great private practice, I'm doing all these trainings. So the first thing I did is I got trained in equine therapy. And because I have horses and that's my love and I didn't, you know, I have I ride horses competitively and my horses are athletic, competitive sport horses. So I love equine therapy as a modality. I do not like watching people chase my horses around or do exercises with them, and they don't like it either. So I thought, well, okay, this isn't that. So then I thought I'd always done interventions, but I hadn't done a lot of them because I didn't like them. So I did my first intervention in 1986, and I didn't like how I was trained, because we were taught that you had to get the person to come to you on a ruse.

Heather Hayes 00:25:09  So we're having a birthday party. Come over. The person who you want to go to treatment shows up, and then everyone reads these letters and says, here's everything you've done wrong when you were drinking. And here's how I feel about it. So I thought, ooh, like, why would you want to tell someone? You've got to go get honest with yourself about your substance use, but we're going to lie to you on the front end to get you there. And I was a woman in recovery. And when I came into, you know, I didn't need anyone to tell me everything I'd done wrong. I needed to hear that there was something, okay. And right about me. So around the turn of the millennium 2000, I met other people who were doing different models of intervention that were more by invitation. They were more transparent, they were more compassionate and kind and loving. And I thought, oh, well, I like this. This is different. And I like coming in and thinking about how do I do this in a way, help this person get help.

Heather Hayes 00:26:10  Help the family members who are also there and need support and help as well. Begin to move more into health. And so I said, I really like this and I like the thinking outside of the box. So the next thing I knew, I was doing like 80 some interventions a year. And so I shifted the focus of my practice. The other thing that happened around that time, because it's always been really important to me to give back to my community and to be of service and to never take anything for granted, you know. And so I was doing a lot of work for my county. I was trying to come in and help with child and family Protective Services, do some pro bono work with children who had gone through abuse and had had suffering and didn't have resources. And I was introduced to, one of the detectives at the sheriff's department, And he came up to me and he said, you know, we'd all worked together. I mean, I did a lot to kind of help the guys in uniform, too.

Heather Hayes 00:27:16  And they said, we've got this new model of hostage negotiating where we want to bring a mental health professional in and have them be part of the team. Are you interested? And I was like, yeah, sure, I can do that. I think, you know. So the next thing I knew, I had been trained through the FBI school. I had been trained through, NYPD, which is where negotiation, the whole, area of hostage negotiation started. It came out of the work that they did up there. And so I'd been trained with some of the best. And so I added that to my tools in my toolbox. So the shift of my practice, you know, changed a lot and evolved into now I do a lot of, I think of it as sort of like concierge mental health work for families, you know, and coming in. I've got a team of ten incredibly well trained, incredibly compassionate, clinicians that work with me. And we come in and we help families come up with health plans, care plans, I do interventions.

Heather Hayes 00:28:25  I don't like the word intervention because it sounds so rough, but I work with families to help motivate the person who needs help to get help and the others in the system, and also provide other services. I work with recovery companions that may go in and help once someone gets out of treatment, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 00:28:46  But many exciting things you mentioned. We'll get into each of them, please. But if we stay for a bit with the intervention, you know, I understand over the decades this has changed. Yes, yes. from. Okay. That's your only chance to more invitational. So what are the do's and don'ts, right? When we think about families, and how can they support a loved one to get into treatment, right?

Heather Hayes 00:29:12  So it's it's really complex and complicated and every family is different. But it's important to remember that when someone has mental health issues or substance abuse, they're suffering. But you know what? Their family members are suffering too. Yes. And so traditionally, we would put all the focus on the person who had the issues.

Heather Hayes 00:29:35  We call that our identified patient, little Susie. She has anorexia. She's our identified patient. So we take the person and put them into treatment. And the family would get no relief because they're still worried about little Susie. So in a big do is looking at the identified patient is the whole family system. It's the whole family system that that is impacted and needs change and needs compassion and needs understanding. And it's important to come in and not pathologies people like we've done a lot of. we've evolved as a field. But initially we did a lot of saying, oh, families are sick and they need to get better and you're an enabler or you're in denial. And those became such a pejorative. Like, I would have mothers come into my office in tears saying, well, I'm I'm an enabler. And to them that meant I want to kill my kid. I'm like doing all these things that are making my kid worse. I mean, what a horrible message for a mother who loves and cares.

Heather Hayes 00:30:37  So it's important to help families see that the things that they do to help a loved one are what we all do when we have a heart and compassion and don't want someone that we love to suffer and be in pain. What's different is that mental health and substance use disorder don't play by the right rules. So the things that we do to help may not. And to help families come in and say, does this support health or just contribute to demise? Not to come in from that coercive place of, here's what we're going to take away from you and here's what we're going to, you know, do if you don't go get help, that'll get someone into a place to get help. But it does it in a way that's so lacks dignity. It's dehumanizing. It's unnecessary. And so it's really coming in and honoring everyone in that family system and seeing that there's more to the story with why things have gotten that way. And family members also have the ability to say and need to be able to say, I'm not okay with this anymore.

Heather Hayes 00:31:49  It's too painful for me to watch you do this or your your, your your actions are actually abusive to our children. And that's got to stop. So, you know, again, I'm going to do what's healthy for everyone. And and if you don't go get help, that may mean I'm going to do something differently myself because I can't live like this anymore.

Speaker 2 00:32:12  Yes. So what you're doing right now is you talk from your own feelings and self and not blaming the the, the person, the addict or the. That's right, the patient themselves. So you speak out of how you feel, how it's making you right. be in that moment and for consequences coming with it.

Heather Hayes 00:32:37  And, you know, with that we you can't argue with me about that. Like if I say to you, you had six drinks. Yes. No, I didn't add four. No, it was six I counted. No, it was four. Yeah. But if I say to you my heart is breaking and I am in so much pain, I know more than anything.

Heather Hayes 00:32:59  You want to be a good father. And when I see you and you're impaired and you say things that break our child's hearts, I know that's not you. And you don't want to be like that. That's different than me saying knock it off. You know, you're verbally abusive and you can't argue with me about how I feel, which is that my heart's breaking and I'm scared and I'm worried.

Speaker 2 00:33:28  So if I just summarized, I summarize that. So stop that. Not to blame. Right? not to push someone to go into treatment because, I mean, we know from from experience that someone has to have his own motivation to change to, to to be successful. but talk from your own feelings and and state and is it so?

Heather Hayes 00:33:56  The one place I would disagree a little bit.

Speaker 2 00:33:58  Yes.

Heather Hayes 00:33:59  Is. Which is. That's good. is that sometimes you do have to push a little bit, but you have to. It's about how you push. So most people won't get help if there's not pressure.

Heather Hayes 00:34:15  And so let me think of an example of that. So if I am saying things that hurt my children when I'm intoxicated, or I drive with them in the car and I've been drinking and they're scared, if we don't talk about it, then I don't feel the consequence of that.

Speaker 3 00:34:34  Yes.

Heather Hayes 00:34:35  But if you say to me, you can't do that anymore with our children, I'm going to protect our children. I'm going to keep them safe. And in fact, you know, I'm going to keep you safe. That that sometimes does give those boundaries that say it can't go on forever. I mean, it can, but you're not going to harm us in that way. And I do believe one of the things I like about doing interventions is that I do believe when our thinking is impaired, we can't make good decisions, right? So how am I going to make a good decision about wanting to take better care of my health related to my substance for the rest of my life, when I can't even think clearly to do that? So there is a beauty and a benefit of having someone going to a place and having that period of time, those weeks where you begin to think more clearly, like I talked about in the beginning, and see things more realistically and begin to get some new tools to to be able to learn how to manage my own emotions and my own pain.

Heather Hayes 00:35:40  And then a person can make a decision about whether they want to change the way they live or not.

Speaker 2 00:35:47  How many interventions have you done?

Heather Hayes 00:35:49  Probably somewhere around 4000.

Speaker 2 00:35:52  Wow. Can an intervention be also a type of negotiation?

Heather Hayes 00:35:57  It's absolutely a negotiation. And in fact, you know, I think that often being a hostage negotiator is not nearly as difficult as doing interventions. I mean, there are things about it that are, are, are much more difficult and not as straightforward, but it can be a negotiation. There is a place of, of saying, you know, this is okay, this isn't you know, we'll do this for you if you do that for us.

Speaker 3 00:36:29  Yeah.

Heather Hayes 00:36:29  You know, with hostage negotiation. you know, there's always a motive. There's always something a person wants. It's often, not what you think of the bank robbers and, you know, or like, a, you know, situation like they had in Stockholm. It's more it's often, domestic violence that's gone wrong.

Heather Hayes 00:36:49  A person who is suicidal. A person who has a warrant for their arrest and barricades himself in. It's called a barricaded gunman. And the language is really different. so when we talk about families and family systems, we talk about our loved ones. In the hostage negotiation world, the person holding everyone hostage is called the target. So it's a whole different. I mean, it's sort of a strategic like.

Speaker 3 00:37:19  It.

Heather Hayes 00:37:19  It lacks that. I can't say it lacks like compassion because stakes are high, but it's probably about as big of a crisis in the moment as you can possibly have where someone's life, someone's, you know, someone's life is in danger. And the underlying philosophy of hostage negotiation is that there's zero acceptable losses. So we do everything we can to save lives so we don't have an incident like we did in Munich or other places. but I do think that's a beautiful guiding principle over here with substance use disorder and mental health, too, because we've got a lot of really good treatment.

Heather Hayes 00:37:59  So why can't we say over here there's zero acceptable losses, too? Because there's no reason why we can't offer help like substance use. Like we've got more, evidence based treatment and knowledge about how to treat substance use than we do cancer.

Speaker 3 00:38:20  Yes.

Heather Hayes 00:38:21  And yet, you know, it's so few people are exposed to it. So few people have the opportunity. There's so few resources. It's still very misunderstood. It often falls into a place of stigma and judgment. And, you know, you just need to pull yourself up by your bootstrap or quit acting so bad, or we're going to put you in jail because we don't know what to do with you. So the resources aren't there either. I don't know how I got there from a hostage negotiation, but there is a whole negotiation process too. And then part of that negotiation, just like in a in a hostage situation, there's some things that are non-negotiable. Yeah. There's some things that just are nos.

Speaker 2 00:39:06  When I think about the families and the family dynamics or what are the most challenging parts when you do an intervention? what's so challenging about it?

Heather Hayes 00:39:15  I think part of what can be challenging is getting the whole family system to engage and understand that they have their own work to do.

Heather Hayes 00:39:24  There are a lot of things that can get in the way. I think that sometimes if you have other family members that have their own issues, their own struggles that they've not dealt with, it can make it harder for them to see the need. You know, often, you know, like the drugs today are very different, like the drugs today in the United States. The drugs are basically poisoned, like we have a fentanyl epidemic, like we have people overdosing. You know, every day, something like 300 a day dying from fentanyl overdoses. And it's often in the cocaine, it's in the fake Xanax. It's in the heroin. It's, you know, it's in the marijuana. So we live in a very different world. And I often have parents who grew up in the 70s where the marijuana wasn't as potent. And they say, well, I did a lot of drugs when I was a teenager. And look, I'm here today and I'm fine. So my kid is going to be okay too.

Heather Hayes 00:40:20  And that can be that can really be a hindrance. I think also the fact that it's because we haven't come in and helped educate at a grassroots level for people what it is, what it looks like, what a problem with substance use is about. Like people don't know how to recognize it. They don't know how to talk about it. They don't know how to understand it. So if you don't know those things, then you can't spot it in your loved ones. And you know who wants to? Like nobody wants it to be their child or their grandmother or their, you know, because it's it's also really painful. Especially if you've had it other places in your family trees. So those are the kinds of things that can get in the way of families being able to say, we really want to get this help or we really need to get this help.

Speaker 2 00:41:17  Yeah. So it's easier. It's easier if it's just one person and you don't have like multiple patients within a family dynamic.

Speaker 3 00:41:26  That's right, that I cannot.

Heather Hayes 00:41:28  I'm trying to remember a time when that happened and I can't really think, you know, it's often and families are complex and often, you know, you've got generational trauma and, issues that have happened long before, like nothing happens in a vacuum.

Speaker 3 00:41:42  Yeah.

Heather Hayes 00:41:42  So you know. But the beauty of that is you also can get generational healing. Yes, as well. And can change the patterns and change the norms. And healing can become quite contagious too.

Speaker 2 00:41:56  And someone from the outside, can have a neutral respect and understanding of the situation.

Speaker 3 00:42:04  Yes, yes.

Heather Hayes 00:42:06  I mean, that's interesting too. I think that, like my role as a clinician, my role as a therapist, I am always really wary of people that I hear speak that say, well, I saved x number of lives today, or I've saved this many people in my career. And I came in and I told this family what to do, and I made them all better, and they listened to me. Or they're not better because they didn't listen to me like, no, you know, my role, I come in my role and my responsibility is to get as trained as I can possibly be, to work under strong ethical principles and guidelines, to do my own work on myself so my issues don't cloud others.

Heather Hayes 00:42:57  And then I come in and create a space where families can heal, and I can offer tools they may or may not take them. Hopefully they will. But families are far more important than I'll ever be. Like, I'm like a blip on the radar. And I come in and I say, here's some options, here's some more, you know, way different ways to work, different ways to live. Here's some things that I see, but it's the families that take that and support each other generationally. And so it's important as a clinician to come in and really help come from that place of not I know more than you and I'm the trained person, but to come from that place of mutuality where it's like, we're in this together, right? And I'm like a shepherd. Like I've got some tools I can offer you, and I've got some resources I can give you. And maybe you'll take them and maybe you won't. I hope you do, because there's a better life. And let me also help show you that there's hope out there and things can get better.

Speaker 2 00:44:05  Is there? Are there any numbers or percentages on on interventions made or tried? Right. Successful versus unsuccessful?

Heather Hayes 00:44:17  Two things. How do you define success?

Speaker 2 00:44:20  Yes. Getting into treatment.

Heather Hayes 00:44:22  Well okay. So if I have a family system of eight family members and one person gets into treatment and they do well and the other seven Don't do any of their own work, and they're still struggling and they're still in pain. Have I been successful?

Speaker 2 00:44:42  Yeah, that's a bit more complex. Yeah. Family system? Probably.

Heather Hayes 00:44:46  Yeah. And if one person goes to treatment and they continue relapsing, but the seven over here do their own work, get better, heal their trauma, their relationships are stronger. They've reconnected in a way that's healthier, that, you know, they have more meaning to life. Is that successful? The other thing is that it's really hard to do research. Yes. I mean, is research getting someone to do treatment is research. You're still sober at the end of treatment or you stayed as research.

Heather Hayes 00:45:16  You're better at a year. So it's it's really difficult. Yes. You know, I think a lot of centres have tried to do that, but you really you call somebody up and they say, I'm okay. Maybe they're not. Maybe they are. So the best research we have is with the addicted physicians and the addicted pilots because they're monitored for a period of five years, because we don't want our pilots flying drunk and our doctors operating high?

Speaker 2 00:45:42  No, we don't know.

Heather Hayes 00:45:44  So we really come in and put in these safety measures. So they're tested regularly. They have certain requirements. And at five years time 88% are sober and really reporting a better quality of life. Their relationships are better. They're, you know, feeling better. They're not struggling. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:46:05  Let's go now to the hostage negotiation, which is not a standard thing people hear about. So what do you do? Exactly, exactly there. And what can you. Can you give us some examples of what type of people and situations have been dealing with?

Heather Hayes 00:46:21  I work as a volunteer for our local.

Heather Hayes 00:46:24  I live in a community right outside of Atlanta. It's a large, large community, large county, and we have a crisis negotiation team. And so the role of the mental health professional on the crisis team is to help coach the negotiators who are talking to the person who is barricaded themselves or holding themselves holding someone hostage. I am, you know, when we come in, we set up a command center and some are out there gathering the information. There is a person who's on the phone with or speaking with the person who has wants or needs. There's the person sitting second chair who is listening, helping also there in case this person gets tired. And then there's me. Okay. So others are out gathering information. So I'm helping put together a psychological profile. I'm listening to them as they talk. I'm able to say, you know, when you said this, you got more emotional. I heard, you know, talk about this. Don't bring that up again. You are getting too emotionally attached and exhausted.

Heather Hayes 00:47:29  Let's switch out. So it's part of being a member of the team. And I'm really there to help support profile, come up with ideas. Look at the bigger picture and help, bring in cultural issues or to say to them, call the pharmacy with see what kind of medications they're on. Oh my goodness, this is an antipsychotic. So the person who's in there, you know, may have a thought. It has a thought disorder. They're being treated for that. Like here are the different scenarios of what may or may not happen. Here's how to proceed. and I've been in a lot of different situations. we practice a lot. I trained the team a lot on mental health, and then I'm on call to go out when we have a situation. and some of them are, you know, there have been times when we've been called out because a loved one is worried because they're, we had a woman who called in because her brother had threatened to kill himself. And we got there and we attempted to make contact.

Heather Hayes 00:48:32  And it's a very it's a different situation. People are like, well, you thought he was going to kill yourself himself? Why didn't you just go right on in? Well, you've got people with guns like safety first. Like we've got to make sure everyone is is safe in this. And so, there have been times when we've gotten into that situation and been able to talk someone out, offer them hope. And then there have been times when we've gotten there and the person had already, you know, taken their own life. I had a situation, a hostage situation once where we were called out because, you know, this big cell phone towers, huge tall towers, and at the top they've got these tubes on them, if you look up. I had never had not quite noticed that until this night. Well, in my county there's a one very tall mountain, and on the top of the mountain is this very tall cell tower. And this young man was high on methamphetamine, and he had gotten up on the ladder up to the top of the cell, and he was hanging on to the cylinder.

Heather Hayes 00:49:37  And we got called out and it was pouring rain. So it was slippery. It was wet. We're trying to look up and see him. It's hard to see. It's the middle of the night rain, and every time we try and talk to him, maybe you start to swing on it more and and say, I'm not coming down and I'm going to kill myself. And, you know, this went on for like six hours. Oh, and one of the things that we noticed was that if we tried to send the support team up with blaze to get him down, he'd start again. So we got the family history at a long history of of methamphetamine addiction. He had a long history of psychosis, and I really was expecting the worst to happen. And then I started to notice that the more we spoke to him and try and engaged. The more agitated he got, the more he would threaten to take his life. So finally I said, turn all the lights off and get quiet.

Heather Hayes 00:50:40  Be close, but pull back a little bit. And so eventually, about 45 minutes later, we heard, hello? Where did you guys go? Are you still here? I want to come down now. And so again, in pulling back, eventually we were able to get up there and get him down. So it was sort of a tricky, difficult situation. Probably the most painful situation I was in. we had a call out for a, a woman had left her husband because of domestic violence, and then she had gone back and she lived in a this is an area of our county that has a very high Hindi Muslim population. and she had gone back to her husband and they had had a fight and he had pulled a gun on her and she left an escaped and called us. We arrived on scene. They had a female negotiator interviewing the father of a middle eastern family. And I said, okay, let's have a man like this is, you know, culturally, this is a very sensitive issue.

Heather Hayes 00:51:58  We need to get more information. But we've also got to be sensitive to who we have, talk to them, gather the information. We then learn from the mother that her 11 month old baby was still in the house. And so we again tried to make contact. And the next thing we knew, we heard two shots. So often when you hear shots. All bets are off in the Swat team goes in. And so he had taken his life and he had shot the 11 month old baby. And as I stood there seeing all these law enforcement guys that I worked with on Swat team carrying this child who's still alive in the moment, out, they had tears in their eyes. We had tears in their eyes. Horrible, horrible situation. I mean, there were no words to. She also ended up, passing away hours later. So there are times where it's really hard and it's really difficult.

Speaker 2 00:53:03  I mean, this these situations are probably one of the most complex situation you can have as a therapist or negotiating in general.

Speaker 2 00:53:17  What should you avoid in these, in these moments and and how how should someone behave? Because not every negotiator probably has as a psychological support.

Heather Hayes 00:53:31  You're right. Like not every most of the negotiators don't aren't therapists. But I think it's important. You know, part of what we do is to really help give them support as well, and to talk about how difficult it is for them when they've seen, you know, our first responders and our military are trained to not be emotional and not react. So it's very uncomfortable for them. But I think my role, at least in those small area in which I have it, has made it where they often will reach out to me privately because they know I understand, or I've been there. And, you know, it's also been important for me to continue to take care of myself as well, too. Yeah. You know, because it it can be difficult and to remember. You know, that incident happened, but we had also a couple months before been award given an award by the suicide prevention, or one of the suicide prevention organizations, because we had saved more people than, you know, we'd have saved an enormous amount of people from taking their own lives.

Heather Hayes 00:54:39  So, you know, it's often important to balance those things out, too. Doesn't take away the hurt of the ones who don't make it, though.

Speaker 2 00:54:47  How has this work affected you at this in general?

Heather Hayes 00:54:52  I mean, it's definitely, can be hard and painful, but I also like after that incident and I'm telling you, that was the most difficult of all. And I've been in a lot of different hostage situations. And that's the one that if you say to me, which is the was the hardest. Yes. That's it. If you say to a lot of the law enforcement officers I work with, what was the hardest. They'll pull that one back up. You know, for me, after that happened, I immediately went, and had eMDR, which is a trauma reducing therapy. so I knew what to do. I went and talked to my therapist about it. I took some time to, you know, pull back a little bit, take a little bit of a rest, stay with my horses.

Heather Hayes 00:55:37  More lean on my husband more, appreciate the things that I have in my life. You know, there are also ways to, you know, find gratitude in life, too. And so I think it makes me a stronger person. I know how to think of my feet. I know how to come in and, look at a situation. and sum it up kind of quickly. but from an emotional standpoint, I mean, it's, across the board. All people who work in health care were often not good at taking care of ourselves, but it's one of the most important things that we can do to help others is to heal ourselves.

Speaker 2 00:56:16  And you mentioned Stockholm. What comes to mind is, of course, the Stockholm syndrome.

Heather Hayes 00:56:22  Absolutely, yes.

Speaker 2 00:56:24  Can you explain that just quickly?

Heather Hayes 00:56:26  If I had known you were going to ask me this, I'd be able to pull those dates out of my head and I pull out. Johan. I can't remember his last name, but, there was a man who was actually out from jail on on sort of a they'd let him leave for a few hours, so he decided he was going to go into this bank and and rob them.

Heather Hayes 00:56:45  So, you know, this average day in Stockholm, there in the bank and all of a sudden machine gun goes off and, you know, he says, you know, this is a day like you've never had before. And he, you know, bam took took individuals hostage. He took them hostage. He took them into the safe and locked himself in there with him and began talking about what his demands were, and his first demand was that he wanted his roommate from jail to come and join him. So now you got these two hostage takers, and you've got these hostages. And what he didn't know was that they actually had cameras in the safe so they could. I mean, this is like the 80s, I want to say. And so they were able to see and observe and watch what was going on. And so as they were watching, they began to get interested in this dynamic that was happening. So the hostages began to look like they were actually taking care of the hostage takers.

Heather Hayes 00:57:53  And they began to, you know, talk to them in a more humanistic way. And so they noticed that, like, for example, one of the one of the hostages was claustrophobic. And so she's locked in the safe. And so the hostage taker actually put this rope around her and let her go for a little walk outside the safe and back. And she said later when she was recalling it, he was a good man. Yeah. He put this rope around me and he let me go for this walk. And so the dynamic that we began to observe and see is now known as Stockholm syndrome, which is where as a part of their adapting to a trauma in the moment, they began to almost acquiesce. And then after, after the situation was over, after it was resolved. it depends on where you read. But there were, stories that they actually helped raise money for the defense of the hostage takers. They talked about how kind they were. They were more worried about what was going to happen to the hostage takers Then what was going to happen to them.

Heather Hayes 00:59:08  And so again, we began to understand this dynamic of Stockholm syndrome, where I think under stressful, abnormal situations your thinking can get so impaired. I mean, we really see that with parents with addicted children that their thinking becomes dysregulated and so suddenly they're almost taken hostage themselves by the kids. And the kids are saying, no, you better give me some money, or else I'm gonna, you know, go out and self-destruct. I mean, I've had mothers who have ended up going and buying drugs for their children. Now, if I had said to them two years before, you're going to go buy drugs for your kids, they would have like, said what? You know, you're fired. What's wrong with you? But over time, somehow it becomes that they think, well, if I do it, I'll keep them safer than if they go into the bad neighborhood. The thinking gets so out of whack and distorted. And so again these like what we call trauma bonds, where there's a connection between the hostage takers and the hostages.

Speaker 2 01:00:15  And why do people do that. How? How do they feel connected to that person? I mean, if you explain it with my child who's addicted and I want him to.

Heather Hayes 01:00:25  Say yes, yes.

Speaker 2 01:00:27  Yes, yeah. Makes a little bit.

Heather Hayes 01:00:29  Makes a little bit more sense. Yes.

Speaker 2 01:00:31  If I'm not educated how to behave differently, but in general, like a hostage situation, like, like it was in Stockholm.

Heather Hayes 01:00:39  It's perplexing, isn't it? It's. It doesn't make logical sense and there isn't anything logical about it, you know, so I think I think personally it's also a way to survive. So if you have power over me and my life is in danger because of you, you know, if I try and fight you, I may not and you may make it worse. So if I begin to what they call fawning and say, okay, let me help you. Let me. And I don't think you do it consciously, but it's also a way that helps you to survive.

Heather Hayes 01:01:13  You're in survival mode, right? That's right. How do I navigate this situation in a way that's going to keep me safe? But then sometimes that attachment really does become, I mean, dysfunctional, you know, it's the type of attachment that's really, and it's hard to understand and it's hard to look at. And yet psychologically it happens.

Speaker 2 01:01:38  And probably also in, in relationships that that happens.

Heather Hayes 01:01:42  Domestic violence.

Speaker 2 01:01:43  Domestic.

Heather Hayes 01:01:44  Violence, you know, which I think is much more I think it's much more complicated and complex. And often you've got relationships where you've been in not for three days with a hostage taker, you know, you've been in for months or years. And, you know, there are a lot of the cycles that come through where the person, you know, there's the cycle of violence where you have a violent act, and then the person has remorse. And I'm so sorry, and I don't know what's wrong with me. And please forgive me. And, you know, then that building back up and the person.

Heather Hayes 01:02:14  Oh, well, it's going to be different this time. And, you know, it makes it really difficult for people, men and women to get out of abusive relationships because often it's so, complex. And for some they had that in their histories growing up. So it's also got a familiarity to it. And everything gets confused, like pain and suffering can often get confused with love. I'm hurting when they're not here, so that must be love. But it's not, you know, it's it's that cycle. It's that dramatic, chaotic energy that often gets misunderstood. And a lot of that, again, there's a lot of work on attachment theories and how people connect.

Speaker 2 01:02:58  And this this can be with one person, but also probably with with an organization or.

Heather Hayes 01:03:04  Absolute or cult or. Right, right, right. Or a government or a, you know. Absolutely. You know, there's been a lot of, you know, you've seen a lot of research on how. there was a study that was done in Stanford back in the 60s or 70s, where they looked at they took a group of students, and this number were this prisoners and this number were the prison guards.

Heather Hayes 01:03:25  Yes. And then they ended up watching these dynamics play out where, you know, the prison guards became mean to the prisoners and the, you know, so again, it can happen a lot of different situations, you know, systemically.

Speaker 2 01:03:40  On one hand side, the positive thing I get out of it is because we are human. We try to connect on a human level and, and to detach a bit from the technical side of, of a situation. That's right. That's when we drive a car, for example. Right. we can get angry on the other car driver. Right. But once we meet per person in person and the gas station, and we have the same needs at that moment, it becomes. Hello. Right. And it becomes human. Right. And and it's a it's a survival mode to connect on a human level. Right. And in many, many instances probably.

Heather Hayes 01:04:16  So let's switch off all this dark stuff for a second. Yeah. And let's talk about that because that's such a good piece about healing.

Heather Hayes 01:04:24  is that we heal in relationship. We heal in connection. And in fact, there's been a lot of research. There's a center called the Stone center out of Amherst, and there was a psychologist named, Judith Jordan and, who developed a theory called relational cultural therapy. And one of the things that she and that they talked about there was that we as individuals can't heal alone. Yeah. That we have to heal in connection. And in fact, we spend our our lives wanting to connect and connecting with people. And so what ends up being painful or causing discomfort or disorder in our lives are when we need to attach, we have to attach to, to, to, to exist, crave that attachment. But then the relationships that we have, the connections are painful. So there's a need to connect. But yet the connection is painful. So we do things that get in the way and keep us from connecting with others. And so it's important to realize that it's only through looking at these like, these are our family members and we come together like often we're connected in a way that's not healthy.

Heather Hayes 01:05:43  It doesn't work well that we really have to come through and look at how do we disconnect, not because we don't want to be connected, but that we want to learn to reconnect in a way that's healthier. That brings us, meaning to life. That gives us a zest, that gives us passion, that gives us the ability to say, okay, life is is much better. And I've got these things that I need, and I feel good about who I am and what I do and who I am in relationship with you.

Speaker 2 01:06:13  you're absolutely right. I mean, the question is, do we seek connection to others to soothe something underlying.

Heather Hayes 01:06:21  Right? Right.

Speaker 2 01:06:21  The feeling of safety, being, being recognized, being useful, and so on. Yeah. Or is it, I mean, because if I, if I think back being a tribe somewhere, hunting. Gathering. Right. We were living in these communities. And being in such a community is like being together, observing each other. Okay, we feed back.

Speaker 2 01:06:45  Keep each other right. How safe we feel, how safe we are. And that's environment.

Heather Hayes 01:06:50  That's right. You know, Sabertooth Tigers today. We're okay here in the cave, right? Right.

Speaker 2 01:06:54  Whereas if we're alone. Yeah. We cannot, we cannot. Right. We we cannot feel safe. Right? This this can, become worse. Right? And and I believe I believe it can also be because of that people seek connection, and with to find meaning in life and, and it has also an effect on their self-esteem, probably because they need it from the outside. Right? I mean, we are human beings. It's we need that all.

Heather Hayes 01:07:29  That's right. We're social animals.

Speaker 2 01:07:30  Yes.

Heather Hayes 01:07:31  You know, different people do it in different ways. Some are more introverted, some are more extroverted. But we we do crave and need that connection. And I think part of it is it's not that if I'm hurting, should I seek connection with someone to make the pain go away? It's.

Heather Hayes 01:07:49  I'm hurting. Who is my safe person that I go to, that I can ask for what I need and they can give me what I need. Back. Or even, you know, so if I've had a bad day or I've had a situation that was painful for me to watch, I know I can go to my husband and I know that I can say to him, honey, I need 30 minutes. I've had a really bad day. Can I just tell you about it? And he'll listen and he'll be loving and open hearted and he'll say, you know, what can I do to help support you? And, you know, but often we end up not being able to do that because maybe we were grew up in families where we had a need. But mom and dad are so busy fighting that nobody meets it or or I wasn't heard until I suddenly, got physically sick. So I learned to summarize my feelings, and then all of a sudden they quit fighting because you're ill or I act out or, you know.

Heather Hayes 01:08:54  So children will adapt in different ways, and that may grow into a pattern of ending up with people who can't meet your needs, who can't be there for you, who don't provide that safety. And and the truth is, is, you know, we all hurt each other no matter how much you love each other, you know. So, you know, I, I will undoubtedly say something that's going to hurt my husband's feelings. And I didn't mean to do it, or vice versa. But what's different about that is do we come in and repair it and say, you know, oh, gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize, you know, and I don't want you to feel that way in relationship to me. I'm sorry. You know, I did that. I absolutely did that. And I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 01:09:37  Now.

Heather Hayes 01:09:37  But and I'm going to do it differently. Right.

Speaker 2 01:09:39  That's you're very conscious about yourself and about your relationship and your goals.

Heather Hayes 01:09:44  Helping others to have those tools and that ability to.

Heather Hayes 01:09:49  To be able to do that. Yeah. And changing the way you can act and heal.

Speaker 2 01:09:55  Does being a therapist make you a better mother and and wife.

Heather Hayes 01:10:00  It depends on who you ask. So that's an interesting question because since I've been 21 I've been a therapist, so I don't know any different. I would like to say that there are probably things about it that make it more complicated. Like, I probably, maybe I might read too much into something or analyze something a little bit too much. but then there are other ways in which I think that I maybe have more sensitivity, have more awareness, have more skills. So. But when I'm a mom, I just. And I'm a stepmom, I don't have biological children. So when I'm a mom, I just really try hard to be a mom and not be a therapist as best I can. I will tell you though, that my two amazing stepchildren. Their father is an attorney. they both are studying psychology. so my husband will joke and say, well, you can tell who had more of an impact around here, you know? So.

Speaker 2 01:11:00  Yeah, I asked because I just observed myself, you know, working in the mental health field and speaking with patients and analyzing and situations. And at home, I tried to be completely different.

Heather Hayes 01:11:13  Yes.

Speaker 2 01:11:13  Yeah. I tried to be just observing. Yeah. Not telling. Not saying. Not directing. Otherwise it's. I have to give just the space and be there if they need it. That's it. I can be reactive, but it's. I've just experienced. It's counterproductive just to be on top of things all the time. And that's something.

Heather Hayes 01:11:34  They didn't ask to be our patients.

Speaker 2 01:11:35  No they didn't.

Heather Hayes 01:11:36  They did not ask to be our client. So there's a little bit of like yeah.

Speaker 2 01:11:40  But even with patients, we we have seen this in our treatment facility. We have this role we call the personnel managers. They live as companions with the with our with our clients in-house and support them through the treatment. We have tried different types of qualifications and people psychologists, psychotherapists, ex addicts and so on.

Speaker 4 01:12:06  Right, right right, right.

Speaker 2 01:12:06  And the most successful ones are the ones who are not psychotherapists or therapists in the first place, because the clients feel overwhelmed. Right?

Heather Hayes 01:12:16  Being over overwhelmed, analyzing everything like just let it be exactly right. And there's that that peer support. And you know, with trauma, other things, it cannot be everything. Like even if you've had a trauma, like if you just talk about it nonstop, that's not helpful either. You've got to have that ability to almost welcome the ability to say, oh, now I get to, I need to go do something different. I need to go ride my horse. I need to go take a break. I need to, now I have to go make dinner for everyone so I don't have to think about the bad day I was having. And. But it is important. Like, it is important for me to be a step mom, to be a wife, to be a friend, not be a therapist, not bring that in.

Heather Hayes 01:12:59  And, you know, for me, you know, I have this whole other part of my life, which is my horses. I ride horses competitively. Jumpers. And so, that's a place. That's a space where I go, I go into the I go, I compete, I am on my horse, and it's a completely different world, and people don't know what I do for a living. And we talk about horses. It's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 4 01:13:27  It's good.

Heather Hayes 01:13:27  Yeah, yeah. I mean, when we sat down, I told you, you know, if you wanted, I could talk about horses for the whole podcast, too, because I, I love it. So I think it's important to have those things that also, you know, whether they're hobbies, whether they're, passions. It could be reading. It could be. But those things that fill our own soul. Because if I'm not full, I can't give to anyone else. So that's, you know, where it starts, right there.

Speaker 2 01:13:55  Well, what's the biggest change you have seen in in your patience.

Heather Hayes 01:14:00  Every day watching clients and, you know, doing interventions. Sometimes I don't see them after the initial few months. but what's always so rewarding is when I hear from them or run into them and, you know, hear them talk about how beautiful their life is. Or I have a, a former client who just got married and, and I saw the pictures, you know, were on social media and I thought, oh, how beautiful that. So I know how, you know, special she is. And she's found love and she's healthy and you know. So watching them grow, watching, you know, but again, it's not like I watched them grow. It's sort of hearing down the road maybe, maybe I don't, you know, that things are good and they're okay. And that's my greatest wish for people is that they find healing and whatever that means for them, you know.

Speaker 2 01:14:56  What do you do in your daily life to to stay in balance.

Heather Hayes 01:15:00  So I have the most incredible, farm home. I've 11 acres. I've got three big, beautiful dogs, ones. Three. She's still super puppy. I've got cats, I've got chickens. I've got three horses, a miniature horse, a donkey. so I love, I have a garden. Beautiful flowers like that. Gives me a lot of peace. I have an incredibly amazing husband. He's funny. He's. He's loving. He's smart. He's supportive. He's. You know, we have a we can laugh together, have fun together. I love to cook. I love to, sometimes I just love to watch movies and Netflix and relax. I love to go out with my friends. I love to connect with them. and sometimes I love to just be still. Yeah. Just to sit outside in the deck and enjoy the the beauty. I mean, life is really good. And I've had times in my life where it was chaotic and it was, you know, difficult and it was hard.

Heather Hayes 01:16:23  but I'm at a place now where, I mean, I just I have this sense of gratitude and and appreciation for things. It's all been. It's been a real blessing. It's been a real gift.

Speaker 2 01:16:36  If you could speak to anyone in the world right now, what would you suggest to them to do to implement in their lives?

Heather Hayes 01:16:45  Stay open. Keep the communication about mental health and substance use going. And my advice would be to help make it a normal dinner conversation. Okay. That's twofold. That means we have to have a family dinner.

Speaker 4 01:17:02  Yes.

Heather Hayes 01:17:02  So connect, but also get to a place like we did with breast cancer where we're able or other or nicotine smoking where we can talk about it and help others understand that it's not anything to be disgraced, feel disgraced about or shame about, that it happens. Here's what it looks like, and you can get better from it. And you can actually have an, you know, substance use. And many of the mental health issues are the only issues where not only do you, if you're here and you get sick with an illness.

Heather Hayes 01:17:38  For example, I have lupus, so when I'm sick, my lupus flares up, and when I go into remission, I'm better. I get back to where I was. So you get back to that baseline with substance use and some of the mental health issues, like not only when you're down here can you get back to where you were, you can actually get better than you ever were because you end up having a life where you've got more tools, more skills, more ability to manage and find that passion, you know? And we don't really say that about other illnesses. So, you know, it's there's a lot of hope. And if you get the right treatment and, and, you know, hang in there and let it, it'll, it'll get better. And we need to come in and also help. You know, I talk about the fact we have in the States. We have fire drills at school for our kids. What happens if there's a fire? We have, tornado drills.

Heather Hayes 01:18:40  Unfortunately, we have active shooter drills in schools. Like, we're teaching our kids early how to respond to these crises, but our kids are more likely to die from an overdose or suicide than they are from a fire or a tornado or, you know, the others. So where are our sort of like, where are substance abuse drills? Like, why aren't we in also teaching kids how to be aware and preventive and, you know, to make those changes early, early on, you know, if we start having those conversations with, with our children and their 15, it's too late.

Speaker 4 01:19:21  You know, when.

Speaker 2 01:19:22  When should be.

Speaker 4 01:19:23  Young.

Speaker 2 01:19:24  Communication.

Speaker 4 01:19:24  Starting.

Heather Hayes 01:19:24  Young and also looking at what our ideologies are, you know. Do we live in a chemical called. We live in a chemical culture. You know, like if you have a headache, don't just take a, you know, take a pill, take an extra strength pill, like there's a chemical answer if you are having a good time, if you have a drink, you'll have a better time.

Heather Hayes 01:19:42  You know, you'll be cute or handsome, you know. And so look at it, that messaging to our children like that family time and celebration and dealing with stress. You know, if you if our family members are going to substances to do that, that's what we're teaching our children, you know, how do we teach them to have healthier relationships with those so that it's not a crutch that it's not, you know, the only way we celebrate those kinds of things. And if you get in trouble with it, here's what it looks like. Or if your friend in school is in trouble with it, here's what you do. Here's who you talk to. Here's how you get help. Not getting someone in trouble, but getting them help.

Speaker 2 01:20:24  So communication and education around the problems, around the issues at home.

Speaker 4 01:20:30  At home.

Heather Hayes 01:20:31  In our schools, in our places of worship, in our communities.

Speaker 4 01:20:37  You know.

Speaker 2 01:20:37  Probably also in the media.

Heather Hayes 01:20:39  In the in the.

Speaker 4 01:20:40  Media movies.

Heather Hayes 01:20:41  You know, we also write there are many, morning programs in the United States that start the day.

Heather Hayes 01:20:49  And they will be, they'll have someone come on and prepare. You know, I love to cook, so they'll have the chef come on. And then they're all drinking wine and I'm like, it's eight in the morning.

Speaker 4 01:20:58  Wow.

Heather Hayes 01:20:59  And I'm also thinking, like, morning drinking is a symptom of late stage alcoholism. It's not pretty when people have to drink in the morning to not go into withdrawal. It's actually it's it's painful. So we wouldn't take other late stage symptoms of illnesses and glamorize them like that. So again, yeah, The media. And what do we, What message are we trying to convey? Oh, there is a good, you know, trend these days. with our young people where they're having mocktails, they're not drinking as much. You know, and I love that. I think that's great that they can have that choice, that that's not the peer pressure.

Speaker 4 01:21:44  You know.

Speaker 2 01:21:45  I think it's an interesting topic. Media and the influence when it comes to. I mean nicotine has been banned.

Speaker 2 01:21:51  I believe also alcohol should be banned on on and on on on movies like, because you can you can see so often, you know, then they gather in the evening. I, I have to relax now from a hard day and I take a glass of wine.

Speaker 4 01:22:07  That's it.

Speaker 2 01:22:08  And it's like normalizing drinking habits.

Speaker 4 01:22:12  Right.

Speaker 2 01:22:12  And if you see that okay. That's others do it. So I can do it too.

Speaker 4 01:22:16  Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Hayes 01:22:17  No it is. It's difficult. There's a whole I mean that that's a whole nother podcast, that whole perspective of of media. And then you also have influencers today. You know, so you've got social media and what you know, people what our kids see on social media like now. Peer pressure used to be I go to a party and my friends are drinking. Peer pressure now has this infinite platform because peer pressure can be. I get on Instagram or Snapchat, and I see people across the country, across the world who are using substances. And now that's also part of my pressure, right? So, you know, and what do I do to get liked? And I'm looking at someone's posts of their outsides and I'm comparing that to my insides, which feel bad.

Heather Hayes 01:23:06  And, you know, it's it's very complicated, very.

Speaker 4 01:23:10  Complex.

Speaker 2 01:23:11  Social media, a huge big topic by itself.

Speaker 4 01:23:14  A.

Heather Hayes 01:23:14  Huge big.

Speaker 4 01:23:14  Topic by itself. yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 01:23:16  I'm not a big fan of, or social media.

Heather Hayes 01:23:20  It's not going.

Speaker 4 01:23:21  Anywhere. No.

Speaker 2 01:23:22  I want to thank you. Thank you for. For being here. I know you have a busy schedule and and thank you for all the work you do. it's, It's incredible. like thousands of people with interventions and and also the hostage negotiations, which is unique. It's, I admire that a lot. Thank you for for sharing that stories with us today.

Heather Hayes 01:23:50  It's a, I mean, it's really like, a divine blessing to be able to do what I do, and it's not it's it's not me. It's me sort of staying out of my way and letting that energy come through, and. But, it's always an honor. Every family I sit with. It's an honor to be able and a privilege to be able to sit with them.

Heather Hayes 01:24:09  And today, it's been an honor and a privilege to sit and and speak with you, too. So thank you. Thank you for making it so easy.

Speaker 4 01:24:16  Yeah.

Speaker 2 01:24:17  Thank you very much.