Head Inside Mental Health
Todd Weatherly, Therapeutic Consultant and behavioral health expert hosts #Head-Inside Mental Health featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment with experts from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care.
Head Inside Mental Health
Breaking Free: Mental Health, Addiction, and Family Support with Heidi Stewart
A lawyer-turned-therapist opens up about watching family members struggle through addiction and mental health challenges while navigating her own recovery journey. Heidi Stewart, who works at the Aegis First Episode Psychosis Clinic in Asheville, NC, shares profound insights from both sides of the treatment equation.
Heidi challenges the "tough love" approach that permeates American attitudes toward addiction and mental illness. "The way I deal with it is 'I love you' and I set a boundary," she explains, offering a more effective alternative to cutting ties. This perspective comes from painful personal experience – watching her father battle alcoholism, losing two brothers to substance use disorders, and supporting her adult daughter through ongoing recovery.
The episode highlights a comprehensive care model that wraps psychiatrists, nurses, therapists, peer support specialists, and education/employment experts around each client. For families walking this difficult path, Heidi offers practical guidance on setting loving boundaries, navigating the legal system, and maintaining hope. The message echoes throughout: recovery is possible with the right support.
Hello folks, thanks for joining us again here on Head Inside Mental Health, featuring conversations about mental health and substance use treatment, with experts from across the country sharing their thoughts and insights on the world of behavioral health care. Broadcasting on WPVM 1037, the voice of Asheville Independent Commercial Free Radio, I am Todd Weatherly, your host, therapeutic consultant, behavioral health expert, and with me today on the show is someone I've known at least a couple of decades. I consider her a dear friend. I have Heidi Stewart. Heidi Stewart has been dedicated to community service and supporting diverse others with legal and dispute resolution services, including collaborative governmental and non-governmental organizational management and development roles. In fact, heidi and I met being community mediators.
Speaker 1:Together with an undergraduate degree from Warren Wilson, our local college, heidi attended NC Central University School of Law for her law degree. Heidi has served as adjunct professor at AB Tech Community College, a member and past chapter president of the Asheville Toastmasters Club of Toastmasters International. Heidi has served as an arbiter for the WNC Better Business Bureau and as past president of the 28th Judicial District Bar. Coordinator of Buncombe County. Child Care Resource and Referral Assistant, development Director of the Mediation Center. Director of the Family Visitation Center, providing safe child exchange and supervised visitations for families who have issues with domestic violence and child abuse or neglect.
Speaker 1:Most recently, heidi earned her Master's in Social Work from ETSU and currently works as a family therapist at the AGIST First Episode Psychosis Clinic as part of Family Preservation Services. One of our local DHHS LME contractors still practicing law in her off time because she doesn't have any spare time, that's for sure. She also became a certified peer support specialist in 2022, serving as a family peer support for the past two years through the Healthy Transition Program funded by SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration. Heidi, welcome to the show. I'm glad to finally get you on.
Speaker 2:Glad to be here. Thanks, Todd.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Well, you've done so much and you are this great resource for people in our community. I certainly send people over to the AGES Center. I've sent people to you in your law practice because you know what it means to navigate the law system when you're also someone who's facing recovery or facing you know legal problems as a result of a mental health condition and you know attorneys that know their way around that are sometimes few and far between and the contracting, all the stuff that goes into that. But you also have a pretty precious and heartwarming in some places, heart-wrenching in others personal connection to recovery and mental health treatment and all those things. And I don't know where you want to start. We always seem to have no problem coming up with things to talk about and we always end up talking about mental health, no matter what One of my other projects is getting my license clinical addiction specialist certification right now, and that is a big passion of mine.
Speaker 2:So I actually am having the agency, although I work with the first episode psychosis clinic with the families whose children are experiencing the first episode of psychosis, or at least within a two-year period for kids, yeah, but it's also on the heels probably in a lot of cases of substance use, right.
Speaker 2:A lot of times, yes, that's what they're doing, they're self-medicating, and so you know. So that is something that I am passionate about because I have, you know, personal experience. I have lived experience with my family. My father was an alcoholic. He did recover. My oldest brother, or my second to the oldest brother, was a narcotics addict and he passed away when he was in his 50s. My brother that was a little bit younger than him, was an alcoholic and he passed like a year after my other brother.
Speaker 2:And then I have been so blessed to have a daughter. My adult daughter has a substance use disorder. Lovely, lovely young woman. But she fell into that trap. I try, I tried to warn her. You know that we have a propensity to do that and you know we don't know, we, we say it's a disease, we say it's a mental illness. Um, I, I kind of go with gabor mate. It's like what is the pain that we're trying to address? You know, I know when I was using my brother, my oldest brother had gotten killed by his roommate and I just couldn't like I couldn't handle it, and that was back in the day, you know, when I was living in Arizona, close to San Francisco.
Speaker 1:So so, yeah, treatment wasn't as prominent as it is today as well. No, no.
Speaker 2:And I've seen miracles occur Like this medicated assisted treatment. I know people, a lot of people, old-timers, who are in NA don't feel that that is recovery, but in my opinion it's saving lives and people can work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the numbers are pretty clear. I think that you can fall on either side of some of that argument and some of it might depend on age and condition and length of time and recovery and all those pieces, but you're seeing people return to life, not engage in other substance use, be able to basically have a successful recovery, because they're on an MAT schedule.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:And I… You're pouring into someone.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean I think your life is your life right, your life is your life right and if what you're able to do is go back out in the world and be productive and everything else, I'm not sure that it's any of my business or that I really care how you're pulling it off, so long as you're not hurting anybody else or causing yourself imminent harm and danger that you'll fall off. But you know MAT, I mean you've got, especially you know the population I see it working with the most and that is delicate, is the veteran population. You got guys that are coming out of you know they're coming out of environments that were highly traumatizing first of all. Many of them, however, also have, you know, these chronic health conditions where they've had some injury and it's caused them to have arthritic conditions and spines and knees and you know, multiple places in the body or something that just never healed right and has never felt right, and these guys are on.
Speaker 1:You know they may have sought drugs to try and just relieve the pain and they find themselves on an MAT and it's the thing that can keep them from one experiencing very high levels of pain but two, also turning to substances as a way of seeking for relief, and I don't know that I would want to be a person who tried to interrupt that with somebody. I don't know what your life's like. I think we get really judgmental. That's the problem. It's like you don't know what walking in that person's shoes is like. So before you decide that you're going to judge somebody, think about it for a second.
Speaker 2:Exactly that's what I've always tried to tell my kids. You know, you don't know what's going on in their life. They might have just lost their mother. You know, the last, the last year of my master's program, I actually did my internship over at the Veterans Restoration Borders and ran groups, the seeking safety, substance use groups. And you know, I think the thing was is that it was really important for them. A lot of them, their families had cut ties with them because they had alcohol use disorder and substance use disorders and they basically had, you know, cut the relationship with their child, even though they're adults, I know, but if they served in the service and they'd been through some trauma and had some kind of a mental health disorder usually dual disorder you know that's not the time and I'm passionate about this whole thing, about how important it is to have family support you and let you know that you love them no matter what they do.
Speaker 1:It doesn't mean you're going to give them money to support a habit, but you need to maintain contact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, and even just you know, like my daughter, I'll send her a little, you know, cause I get all these little daily, today's hope and daily sayings and things like that. No, I'll just, you know, I think, oh, that's really, that's really good. I think that she'd really enjoy that and I'll just send it to her with a little heart and say I love you, just so that she knows that I'm thinking about her, you know, because there's so much blame and shame a teenager, but you know, thinking that you, you know you effed up and you and you're never going to be whole again or nobody's ever going to respect you again, and you know there's something wrong with you. And why? Why can't you know? Why can't you do like other people? Why are you different?
Speaker 2:And you just kick yourself in the ass and negative self-talk. It's not like like angel and devil, it's like I'm not worth a shit. Yeah, it's just constant, constant, constant. And when you see somebody, like over on Lexington Avenue here in Asheville, and they're just down and out, you can see from their body language, you know that they've lost everything. And I just want to ask them where's your mom? Call your mom or you know. But then they can't do that because their moms in a lot of instances.
Speaker 1:Just as bad off yeah.
Speaker 2:They've judged them and I know I work with families here and, and you know, having psychosis, like you said, it can be drug induced psychosis. You know, but they don't. You know the family doesn't understand that this is just a mental illness and that they can recover, recovery is possible.
Speaker 1:Sure is.
Speaker 2:And it's like 80 something percent of people who are experiencing psychosis or drug addiction. If they have the support of their family members, they can recover. They will recover Statistically.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think they get mixed messages too. I mean, if you go into a hospital setting, it depends on the doc that you get. And you might get some doc that says, yeah, well, this is the way they're going to live, this is the baseline, don't expect them to ever have hope or live independently or have a job or do any of those things. And they get this message and it's hard to come back from and it's not true and this doctor doesn't know, but they're the professional, so this family believes that that's what it's going to be right. Or they hit the street and they might have a chance of getting better.
Speaker 1:But access to the resources is super challenging and I've certainly, like you and I have worked a little bit together on folks that are in that position. They're just trying to find enough resources to help them grapple with this condition, especially schizophrenia. I mean you're talking about a major psychiatric condition. It's one of the hardest to manage, it's very difficult to medicate, it's very difficult to have a person stay organized. And then you've got a family that you know at one point in time didn't know anything about it. They suddenly have to become experts about it and fortunately, somebody like you, I can send people to, but you're just a first step in a long, long road and I guess one question I have is what are you seeing on the street these days? We're post-Helene and post-election and everything else. What's coming into you now? Is it different? Is the need increased? What's what's going on down there?
Speaker 2:It's really been amazing. I was just talking to to someone about that today. Actually, we used to just get referrals, like here in Asheville, you know, we get referrals maybe once every couple of weeks, and last week we got three, one out of town, one in Franklin, one in Macon County. So it's not just Asheville, you know, and it's not just one every couple of weeks anymore. This hurricane has pushed a lot of kids I call them kids or emerging adults also is, I think, the correct terminology 15 to 30 years old has just pushed them off the scale, and especially if they're smoking this high potency marijuana that's going on.
Speaker 2:Right now, it will kick them into psychosis. Right now, it will kick them into psychosis.
Speaker 1:And then you know they may have had what's called prodromal tendencies to become schizophrenic, but this marijuana or a traumatic event like a hurricane will kick someone who has those prodromal tendencies right into psychosis and that's what's happening. Well, I was just Dr Rocky Murata out of Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut, kind of one of those you know, one of the most preeminent authorities on schizophrenia and psychosis, and runs their unit there. We were talking about this topic the amount of the increase in the rate of admission at psychiatric hospitals as a result of the high doses of marijuana that are out on the street today. You're seeing doubles and triples in numbers of people that are coming in. It's getting to epidemic proportions. But you're seeing very, very complicated conditions walk through the door as a result of what's available on the street.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times, like you're saying, you know they may go into the mental what we have here, sweet and Creek Mental Health and go through the program and get stabilized on medication and then get referred over to this program. But that's not going to stop them from smoking that marijuana or Delta 9 or whatever they're using.
Speaker 1:And as they get out, they're going right back to it.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And so then there's this whole follow up. That's why we have this, why this all the way across the country actually came up from Australia and over from Europe. Basically, this comprehensive care model where you have a psychiatrist, a nurse, a family therapist, individual therapist, two peer support specialists and employment and education specialists who are all wrapping their arms around this person and you know the peers have a get together, I think twice a month, like they go bowling or they just sit around and do vision boards or whatever you know, get pizza or whatever. To learn how to socialize again, because that is one of the aspects of psychosis is with this whole self-isolation.
Speaker 1:It throws you off. You don't know how to go back out and make friends. They don't.
Speaker 2:They just sit inside and, you know, play games or stare at their phone or listen to voices. So it's really, really it's a great program and I'm glad that we're finally doing something like this, because I don't have the statistics in front of me, but you know, schizophrenia is a very, very expensive disease for our society.
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny to me because you're talking about this. You know came from Australia and came from Europe. This care model and for me that lives on the largely lives on the private pay side. That's just standard. Yeah, you know people who can pay for it and have been doing so for years. That model plus some is the standard of care. That model plus some is the standard of care. And for everybody else, where insurance is not going to cover it or Medicaid doesn't know about it or they're investigating some, they're bringing it from another country and the level of care lives right here.
Speaker 2:It already lives here. Yeah, we can do it right now.
Speaker 2:We know how to do it already. Yeah, that's what I was talking to a mom yesterday doing an intake, and she said we can't afford this shot. This shot costs a thousand dollars every time. And I was like, well, our program is fully funded. It's fully funded by the state and SAMHSA, and then we work with UNC, chapel Hill, so you know, so you don't have to pay $1,000 for your son to get a shot which will last for about a month. There are other ones, you know, but I had no idea it was that expensive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really expensive. I mean a lot of these shots, vivitrol shots, or Risperdone or Abilify. They're all pretty expensive, mind you, technically you're buying a month's worth of meds at a time when you get one, but insurance companies aren't playing fair ball when it comes to coverage. And then you've got families who aren't insured or their plans are very limited or they're on Medicaid and you're not seeing the levels of coverage that you need to provide for care like this. I mean it's it's a complicated issue that people end up facing and the result when people don't, you know I've got a, I've got somebody right now. That's that I'm trying to work with that. You know they just came out of a two week stay in the hospital. They've been in and out of care so often. You know would yell and get agitated and everything like that. So RHA won't touch him anymore. Won't work with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they do, they do that.
Speaker 1:And you know so. When he comes out of the hospital after this two weeks worth of stabilization, where does he go?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because he also lost his housing placement, you know, because he tore up the place and et cetera, et cetera. So you can guess where he is. He's homeless.
Speaker 2:And he's over there on the corner where I go home to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a whole city over there, you know.
Speaker 1:Or you know he's holed up in some shed near somebody's house trying to figure it out, and you know, in any of those places, oddly enough, what you can find is drugs. So if you've got a substance use problem, you can probably get your needs met among a variety of other things, and so that person just dives even more deeply into this area of living that exists in our country. That's very hard to extract somebody from and treat them for, and that's what happens. There's a huge subset of our population suffers from severe and persistent mental illness, and I tell you, if you became homeless and you lived on the street for a while, if you didn't have something in the form of trauma or significant mental illness or PTSD before you got there, you do now. I mean to go home with your family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why I don't understand why we don't have low barrier shelters around. You and me both know, with social workers and doctors, kind of like this whole thing, like this whole wraparound for people, so that they gain back some self-respect and are able to, you know, have what I mean, because statistically that they've shown that this is true. If you have a home, you know, and you have food, if you have the basic needs, you know, you got a chance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can.
Speaker 2:The basic needs, you know you got a chance. Yeah, you can recover. But, how can you do it when you're I mean, I watch them over there on the corner where I live, down from the mall. You know they know each other, they are their tribe, they are their own tribe and they have a whole culture. You know that they support each other in Unfortunately it's not that healthy of a culture, but at least it's their family, you know well and it's.
Speaker 1:And there are lots of people. If you give them a chance to be housed and have care needs met and things like that, they they either turn it down or they don't last in it very long. They return to that community because that's where they feel connected that's right um, but you know the. You know that, uh, haywood road. We had um reverend brian combs on the show not too long ago and they just opened.
Speaker 1:they just opened three new um mental health recovery beds or a respite beds over there, haywood, which is, I mean, it's nowhere close to meeting the needs, but but I see I'm just glad that they're making the effort as they always do. It was, and hopefully somebody can make access to that. My person was not willing, unfortunately. He preferred the street over being in a respite bed, and that's what happens. That's what you see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't want to have. I mean a lot of people, like I said, if they have schizophrenia especially, they self-isolate, they don't want other people up in their stuff, they don't want to ask questions.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I know I asked one of our clients the other day so what's good with you today? And boy, that was not the right thing to say. I was like oh God.
Speaker 1:They've done a thing good with me today. Let me tell you all the way.
Speaker 2:Why would you ask me? That you know I'm like sorry, I'm going back to my office.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, I tell you, this is a question I like to ask folks. I had Sue Polson on the show too, I had Meredith Schweitzer on the show, and I just get you know the local band of advocates around here, of which I include you as a founding member, at the very least, if you were to have it your way and you were to lay out a system that caused this whole, because I think what we do is we throw a lot of Band-Aids at things and if anything, the system's getting worse, not better, because the need's growing and the complexity is growing.
Speaker 1:And if you were going to put a system in place that addressed the needs that kind of walk through your door and, you know, walk through the other service care doors that are in our community what would you put in place? What would be the answer to you?
Speaker 2:You know I've often thought there was this prison model in Indiana, of all places, that they had people in the prison learning how to do electrical work and carpentry work and use the tools and build these affordable houses, you know, kind of like many houses we have now. And so they learned. You know they learned a skill. They, you know they had housing and they well, I know the jail's not all that great and groovy, but you know they had learned something that they could take out into the world. And do you know they had three squares a day? They probably had. I know there are social workers in the prison system too and mental health workers there. So now we're getting to the point where they're doing medicated assisted treatment in the jail system, which is something that we all, as lawyers, needed for a while.
Speaker 2:Well, we talk about that being the biggest mental health system there is in our country. It really is.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, something like that where, like I said, a wraparound program where they learned skills, life skills, how to cook, how to clean, you know all those basic things that for some reason, once you start using and get out on the streets, you know you forget anything because you go into this mammalian brain and start, you know, just trying to survive, and you know get the next hit. Or you know just trying to survive, and you know get the next hit. Or you know get the next toke or whatever, to make you be able to deal with things. So, and community is really important. I think that's one reason why I was attracted to this program, because you know I'm, I show my parents love and I show the kids love, whether they show me love back or not.
Speaker 2:You know we have, like on the first Tuesday of each month, I have a family group. Come in, the parents come in and I have a really nice meal catered in from Red Fiddle Viddle and we all sit around and talk. Last Tuesday we had a young woman out, alabama Stone, who is a peer support specialist down in Wilmington, appear by Zoom and talk to the parents about what it was like to have psychosis and to recover from psychosis and you know what her parents did to support her. You know, I'll send you. I've got a podcast of hers if you're interested. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd love to see it. She sounds great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know. So the parents were asking questions. You know she was answering them. Right now she has an MFA. Now she's getting her master's in social work and working for a recovery agency down a first episode psychosis agency and working as a peer support specialist.
Speaker 1:So In Wilmington.
Speaker 2:In Wilmington. Yeah, so it's just, you know, there is hope and that would be the thing that I would do if I could, just to have people who have recovered come back. You know, I mean she's funky, tell the story. People who have recovered come back. You know, I mean she's funky, she's got like whatever that stuff is where you gum up your hair and stuff like dreads. You know, I mean, she's a cool, she's a cool person, I just love her and funny as hell. But you know, that's the kind of thing I would do.
Speaker 2:And you know, most people who are in recovery are highly intelligent people. They just haven't figured out how to deal in the world and that's something that I think is important for them to know that they're not alone, you know, nor are these parents alone. Who has substance use disorder or schizophrenia or bipolar or schizoaffective disorder, all these things that they've been diagnosed with? That I try to tell the parents, Todd, that doesn't. That's not who they are, that's just a diagnosis that's been attached to them. They're special, they're highly intelligent, they're sweet as pie, you know, I mean, and what I've seen happening with all of that wraparound support is amazing. Like we've got one who's you know, going to AB Tech. Where he was, he was comatose. For the first time I met him, he was in a dark room sitting in front of a television, thinking he was part of a gang, you know.
Speaker 2:And now he's going to be, tech and you know, some have finished their high school diplomas. And you know, just because we're here saying you can do it and we've done it too. I dropped out of high school, believe it or not. When I was a junior in high school, I dropped out. That's how I got to North Carolina. My mom was in Scottsdale, arizona, and I was using out in Scottsdale and I had to get out of it. So I came to Brevard, north Carolina, where my dad lived, and you can imagine what a culture shock that was.
Speaker 1:I mean, Scottsdale is still a small town, but it is a pretty big culture shock.
Speaker 2:Who are these people?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I did, I graduated from high school.
Speaker 2:After I quit, you know, it's like I was like God almighty, I was like living, like I said, living in somebody's closet you know, so recovery is possible, you know, I don't know, the Western North Carolina pulls you in.
Speaker 1:You've been here ever since.
Speaker 2:You can't go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you can't remember I tried, I went to oregon, came back. Well, yeah, I mean, I think the message is recovery is possible, you know what I mean because it really is it is and you know private treatment's great and if you can get it, get it, yeah.
Speaker 1:But and I tell people, you know families, specifically, you know the ones that send you and to other agencies stay on top of it. You have to be a person. The system is not going to come and get you because it's overwhelmed. But if you've gotten yourself into the, in front of people who can help you and in front of people who have services to provide and you've been given access, get everything you can out of that system.
Speaker 2:Like the other thing about this todd, is there's this, this rumor about tough love running around this country. You know, like kick their ass out. You know you to do some. Don't put up with that shit, you know. And so what I have learned and what I communicate to anybody who will listen to me is you know, the way I deal with it is like I love you and you know I set a boundary. This I will not have somebody using in my house. You know I love you and it's not okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not okay for you to cuss at me, but I'm always trying to preface it with I love you and you know not, not, you know, get the hell out of my house, you know.
Speaker 1:I love you. This is what I will support, this is what I won't support. These are my hard limits. Clarity is kindness, like we say.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean and we have a choice because you know, our kids know us better than anybody and they can punch our buttons and know how to get a reaction. Well, what happens if you don't react? If, like, one of my favorite things to say is you know you might be right, I'll think about that and then I'll go in my bedroom and close the door, you know? And then they're like yeah what is this?
Speaker 2:you know, but I feel better. You know, and I'll think about it. You know, but I'm not going to be manipulated anymore and there's a highly, you know, it's a highly manipulative disease. Yes, it's a lot.
Speaker 1:You know they say this about depression, not saying about substance use. But it's, it's a liar and a cheat. You know, the person is not but their condition, if their, if their condition is speaking through them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not. It's almost not session.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2:And that's what they, they always say. You know, if you how to know if a drug addict's lying, if their lips are moving? You know, and it is. I've had, you know I've had some losses because and it's been very traumatizing for me as a parent to be violated by having things taken away, taken from my house that were important. And you know my father, he put his house up for bond for my brother and then he jumped bond and took off, you know, and my father got to pay the bond on his house. So you know it can be really hard to keep loving them. But I think the main thing to do is to know that it's a mental illness. They're not doing it on purpose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't take it personally.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I mean you can, but that's not healthy. It's not healthy. And I will say that. You know one of the things that I end up helping families a lot with, and you know about this as well and even in communities, if there's not even a strong drug court or some other process, a lot of times if you've got somebody who's helping you, somebody like you or me, you can get, you know, well, I'll put bond up for them. Don don't do that. Get the court to divert them to treatment. You can either be in jail or you can be in treatment. Which one would you rather get? Which one would you rather do and work a diversion agreement out with the court? And you know treatment is time served and things like that. It can be a really effective way to get somebody the care that they need, especially when it's somebody who's unwilling to get that care without that holding over their head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point. And you know, I don't know if you're familiar with the word anosognosia, I am.
Speaker 1:It's one of my favorite terms these days.
Speaker 2:Someone does not realize that they are mentally ill, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm willing to accept it.
Speaker 2:Yes, um, and so you know. So that is something that, yeah, I know you may not want to do that, but you know, if you want to come back and live in my house, you know this is the deal.
Speaker 2:This is what needs to happen, right, and I understand that you don't believe that there's anything wrong with you, but this is what we're going to do. If you want to live in my home, and then if they say I don't want to live in your home and they go out on the street, and then they come back knocking on your front door saying, oh my God, there are people throwing up out there. You don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Can I come home? Well, let's talk about uh. What are the balance? What are what are the rules of the house going to be? Are you going to uh, go do your treatment? Are you going to show up in court when you're supposed to? You're going to, you know, pay your fines. What are you going to do?
Speaker 1:Or even at home or supporting them. They don't have any money and they don't have any resources and they need you to support them. So it's like well, if you want my support, if you want me to help you get that apartment or start living your life, and everything else. One you're going to have to go to treatment. You're going to have to follow their advice. Two you're going to have to go to treatment. You're going to have to follow their advice. Two you're going to have in order for me to support anything that comes after that. I'm going to have to see that you're committed to this and that you're going to get a job and that you're contributing your own expenses and you set a plan for them to achieve something and get their engagement and participation in that plan.
Speaker 2:And you know, if you're not doing that, you're doing them the service and that's something that I do see a lot, where parents want their kids to like them and they don't. They don't set clear boundaries. And then their kids, you know, they don't have boundaries and they don't know how to set boundaries for their own lives. They don't know how to set boundaries for their own lives. Right, that's a.
Speaker 1:That's a hard. I mean it's a hard road to hoe with with families. It's a hard skill to teach and for them to learn because it feels so emotionally wrecking for them. I know that it does. But the the other side of that of not setting limits with people and doing that sort of thing, it is a mess. Yeah, it's like getting a leash on your dog.
Speaker 2:You know when you go for a walk you don't want to let them off the leash and have them go get run over by a car. You know you want to be able to.
Speaker 1:Or go roll in poop somewhere. Yeah, after you take them out, you're able to get them roll in poop somewhere. Yeah, after you jump in the creek and then jump in your car, exactly because they most certainly will do that.
Speaker 2:100 do it. Oh my gosh yeah well, um, howdy it's.
Speaker 1:As usual, we we're overdue for coffee and lunch and things like that but, um, I love talking to you. I love just knowing that somebody out like you is out there helping families and helping people. So let's be sure to get together and do what we do best, which is talk about this. But I want to thank you for coming on the show today. It's been Head Inside Mental Health on WPVM 1037, the Voice of Asheville, todd Weatherly, your host here with Heidi Stewart. Heidi, good to see you.
Speaker 2:Good to see you, todd, bye.