The 1% in Recovery Successful Gamblers & Alcoholics Stopping Addiction
The 1% in Recovery Successful Gamblers & Alcoholics Stopping Addiction
Jacquie from Florida Talks about Trauma, Abuse, 12 Step Rooms, Healing and ACA
"Healing is possible, but time alone won't heal trauma – emotional work does." This powerful insight frames our conversation with Jackie, who brings 28 years of sobriety and hard-won wisdom to the discussion of trauma recovery.
What happens when you've maintained your sobriety but still feel emotionally broken? Jackie illuminates the path many recovery journeys follow: first comes the "grace period" where simply being sober feels miraculous, followed by the inevitable surfacing of underlying trauma that originally drove the addiction. As she explains, "All of the reasons that we escaped reality are going to surface because we haven't healed any of them."
The conversation takes unexpected turns through lighthearted french fry preferences before diving deep into why facing our past is essential for true freedom. Jackie shares her journey through multiple 12-step programs, therapy, and internal family systems work, explaining how each step brought different pieces of healing. Her explanation of how childhood trauma creates protective "parts" that continue running our adult lives offers a profound framework for understanding seemingly irrational behaviors and reactions.
Most compelling is Jackie's perspective on generational healing. "In my family, I am probably the first person willing to look at any of it," she shares, illuminating how our willingness to heal stops patterns that might otherwise continue for generations. Her sister and mother's contrasting approaches to emotional pain demonstrate that while not everyone chooses healing, those who do create ripple effects of transformation.
Whether you're in recovery, supporting someone who is, or simply interested in emotional health, this episode offers compassionate insights about the courage it takes to heal. As Jackie reminds us, "Pay attention to what life is trying to get your attention on, because life is talking to you all the time." Let this conversation be one of those signs pointing toward your own healing journey.
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Welcome. Today we are going to be talking about trauma. We also will be talking about 12-step groups, connections, healing. We have a special guest from Florida. Welcome again to another episode of the One Sense in Recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day. Work hard, work hard in recovery, work hard in your relationships, work hard in your job, business school, just work and to love unconditionally. Just put more love out there and just watch more love return. We always say recovery is beautiful. Your EQ is your IQ and you cannot outthink an emotional issue. So what we encourage people to do is to join the Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle. That's where people can join the community and share about recovery, the 12 steps, something that has worked, maybe also a goal or a dream that's achieved, or if you have a question and need help, let me, or the community, just give some good advice, suggestions, however you want to interpret it, so you can move forward and hopefully just continue on this road of recovery. So, without further ado, let's welcome Jackie. How are you doing, jackie?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well. Thanks so much, Hugo, for having me. It's a privilege and an honor.
Speaker 1:Thanks. How are you feeling?
Speaker 2:I'm feeling good. I feel like I'm always nervous to speak and I don't know why that is, but that's never went away In 27 years and being in recovery, that's never went away. And then it goes away as soon as you start talking.
Speaker 1:Exactly Just once you start talking about your authentic self, what has happened. So tell the audience one thing you love.
Speaker 2:One thing I love oh, I love lots of things. So I guess the standard answer would be like my children or my grandchildren. But I also like I love French. Oh, I love lots of things. So I guess the standard answer would be like my children or my grandchildren. But I also like, I love French fries, you know a specific type, I mean waffle fries. Oh, I love any kind of fry, like I pretty much haven't met a French fry that I don't like.
Speaker 1:If I had to, I would pick the crinkle fry or the waffle. If I had to, I would pick the crinkle fry or the waffle. I do like a crinkle.
Speaker 2:I do like a crinkle. I like a waffle at certain times. I definitely like the hand-cut, homemade ones. The best for sure.
Speaker 1:Almost like those big steak fingers. Oh, they're so good. Do you have a specific way to? Are you just like? See, I'm not one, I don't like loaded, I just like the fries by themselves me too. I don't like a keep throwing a bunch of cheese bacon together no, nothing you're just messing this up yeah, just salt.
Speaker 2:I don't even I used, I mean obviously, years ago. I like ketchup, some vinegar, every now and then, but now just salt, I'm good to go no, I hear you.
Speaker 1:and or they're the caun fries when they're seasoned, those?
Speaker 2:are fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are. See, I'm also particular, I like just I eat sweet potatoes, not really baked potatoes, but I eat French fries and I don't like sweet potato fries. Are you a sweet potato fry too?
Speaker 2:Definitely not. I do not like sweet potatoes in any shape or form, but I like regular potatoes in every shape and form.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's jump into the questions. Trauma, you know abuse is part of your story. Please help the audience understand the necessity of dealing with trauma as we're trying to, you know, recover from addictions.
Speaker 2:Okay, so my experience on this is that I knew I had trauma, but when I first got sober I could talk to you about it like we were having a french fry conversation, but I wasn't in my body, so I wasn't connected to the pain or any of the feelings surrounding that. So it was easy for me to talk about what I remembered and things like that. When I started getting sober, I went through the steps, did all of the things and all of that and my life got better. And it was awesome that and my life got better. And it was awesome when at some point and I've been around a long time, so it happens to everybody at some point at some point some of the reasons that you drank or drugged or whatever you did to escape reality starts coming back to the surface and you'll find that you cannot step your way out of it, no matter what you try to do. And in my case it was a lot of emotional pain just started kind of bubbling up to the surface and I didn't know what to do. So I think the importance of that is to know that it's going to happen, that nobody's exempt from that.
Speaker 2:We all kind of get a grace period. This is only my interpretation. I feel like we get a grace period right, we get to get clean, we have God before, during or after. At some point, hopefully, you have a higher power and you feel good. You're on the pink cloud. The pink cloud bursts, you're sponsoring people, you're taking action. It's not about you anymore or all about you anymore and all of that. But at some point all of the reasons that we escaped reality are going to surface because we haven't healed any of them. So it's going to happen. So if you know it's going to happen and you can kind of mentally prepare for it, I like to mentally prepare for things I don't know about you. I don't like to be caught off guard and a lot of the healing that I had to do kind of just leveled me and I had to deal with it, whether I liked it or not. It you know it brought me to my knees emotionally.
Speaker 1:So, I think it's one of those things that once you start going to meetings or once you start therapy because I'm open, you know I've been now 28 years without drinking, 25 without gambling. You know I spent seven years in therapy, but it's almost like, whatever you start, you know dealing with whatever addiction, the dual addictions, you know childhood stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You just don't know exactly. And I think what scares people and maybe you could address this is people are almost deep down that subconsciously afraid they might uncover something that either they don't want to know or are just totally oblivious to it. And I'd rather just you know life isn't. You know that whole thing is. You know, when people come in, well, I'm not that bad. You know I haven't had a car repoed, or you know I'm not in bankruptcy. You know, or it's like, but you know there's so much evidence that my life could be so much better, yeah, yet you know we hang on to, we try to justify. You know why we don't need to do that, and that's going to be part of question two. But do you think people just don't want to start because what they might uncover?
Speaker 2:Listen, I have a sister right, I'm a need to know kind of girl, so I would rather at some point I made a decision and obviously 12 step programs helped me to arrive at this decision that when things like this started happening for me, I made a decision with my higher power to I would rather get to it before it gets to me kind of thing that I'm ready to heal and I'm willing to face my fears and walk through all of this. But that was after several getting leveled kind of things that I made that decision. Now you have somebody like my sister, who's not in recovery, who when I talk about anything that's ever happened in our family of origin is like la, la, la, la la, I don't want to know, I don't want to heal, I don't want to feel she doesn't still to this day, and that is her choice and that's fine, and my mom was a lot like that. But when I went to my mom needing answers for things when I was starting to be like this is what's happening, this is what my therapist is asking me to do, she did not want to sit down with me. She's another one who does not want to feel her feelings and I respect that, but she was helpful in kind of helping me piece my own pieces together so I could do my healing.
Speaker 2:So there's going to be people in and out of recovery that never want to feel a feeling. In fact, they spend 99% of their life making sure they will never feel a feeling, if they can help it. Unfortunately, life lessons nobody can escape life lessons. You can escape a lot of feelings, but if they're life lessons, like the reason you're on this planet right now, you're not escaping it. It's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or you have to deal with.
Speaker 2:I say relationships always tend to be the best ones or current ones, absolutely, and it doesn't matter whether they're personal or work relationship or friend relationships. They will all mirror you.
Speaker 1:Every judgment, you ever have. Right and you hear those things is. Whatever annoys you so much of another person is probably a reflection of what you don't want to look at within yourself.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, or haven't accepted yet, or the piece that you've abandoned or denied Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the last thing on this part is, I remember my therapist says, because my brother was very similar to your sister, and he says well, even though he grew up in the same household, his experience is different than yours.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And that that helped me a little, because I was like you. I was so angry at my brother. I was like, what the F are you talking about? Like, are you oblivious? It's like I know I'm not crazy. I mean I there's a bit of crazy. It's like I know I'm not crazy. I mean there's a bit of crazy, but I'm not this out of touch with reality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's tough because you know, I came from a reality where my sanity was questioned and things like that. So when you come from that and your sibling was in the same environment you were in, they were telling you that didn't happen and whatever, and yet they still had their own experience. It's kind of like a mind F of sorts.
Speaker 1:But it's also. You're looking for support, You're looking for validation and it's not happening. They're doing it worse than your parents or your other family members and you're like they're doing it worse than your parents or your other family members and you're like God. If anyone could understand, it would be you. Yes.
Speaker 2:It almost feels like some weird betrayal, yes, but I also feel like, in a way, it doesn't feel like this at the time. In a way, it forces you to look elsewhere for that outside validation.
Speaker 1:Right, and then I'm just amazed. But let's jump into question two so we can.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because you said, you stated you know you could identify the abuse at an early age, at the age of four. Yeah, I state you know I can. You can go to my YouTubes. You know I stayed at the age of eight. This is very young even for me, but yours is extremely young. Okay, encourage people you know how to really what they kind of can benefit from looking really deeply at their childhood, their families of origin. You know, because what we're trying to do like what I'm trying to do is I want to help people carve out their future, but you always have to go back to find out, okay, what happened. You know what was I feeling, and so you know. Because people always say time heals. Now, emotional work heals, Time does not. So why do we need to go back in time? What would you tell a person?
Speaker 2:Okay. So, just like in recovery communities or 12-step programs, we examine, we self-examine, so you know we don't continue the behavior right. So it's the same thing with going back right. So that's why we do inventories and we examine why we did the things we did. We only scratched the surface there, the reason we need to go back, where a lot of people are like no, no, no, no, that's in the past. We don't have to deal with that.
Speaker 2:But if your past is recurring in your present and it's playing out all the unconscious, unhealed things which, unless and until you process your past, hundreds, if not thousands of years of your ancestral line have been largely unhealed. So in my family I am probably the first person that I'm aware of to even look or be willing to look at any of it and to go back and piece it together and go oh my God, and I did the same thing unconsciously that my mother did, and I did the same thing unconsciously that my mother did, and I did the same thing unconsciously that this and so, unless I'm willing to make whatever it is conscious, I'm going to continue to play that out, and so will my son and my grandkids. So I think the necessity is again, just like in recovery. How free do you want to be? How much of your future do you want it to be dictated by an unconscious, unhealed, unprocessed past?
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, it is that because I've talked to some people. You know we've both been in, you know, for a long time, and you know it's like different people have different goals. You know when they step in, you know for them it's just I just need to just do this. You know, just, almost like, and I think there's a majority of people that just want to just stop the addiction because that's all we or that's all they're getting grief over. You know you're drinking too much, you're gambling too much, you know you're drugging, and so as long as you stop that, then maybe the and this also will lead into question three, but it also goes into, you know well, as long as then my spouse, family members will back off, because originally that's some of why we just want people to just back off you know, stop off.
Speaker 1:So I think that whole thing about you know the past, you know, I just tell people how free do you want to be? Because it says that in the very beginning of the big book, you know the whole goal is total freedom. And I try to tell people total freedom means total freedom from everything. You know where you feel like you can just walk into your truth, you can walk the life that you want to live. What do you think about that? The very beginning when? Uh, what do you think about that? The very beginning when, when Bill starts talking about, uh, you know we're trying to get to a point of total freedom or on the road to total freedom.
Speaker 2:I think that that's, you know, the goal right, the ultimate goal for everyone, you know. You know and probably is everybody's ideal goal for their life. It's just a matter of definitions, like your definition of freedom is probably very different than mine and other people's definition. And Bill himself in one of the letters in language of the heart I can't remember the title, but it talks about, like, the three different kinds of sobriety, right? So it's the same thing with life.
Speaker 2:You know life and and 12 step programs mirror each other a lot. And he talks about the person who comes in and, um, just like you said, just get sober and does, you know, pretty much nothing else, and his life gets better. Um, but he doesn't heal anything. And then you have the mediocre or whatever he talks about, you know, doing bare minimum, just to get by, kind of thing. And you know, and his life gets a little better and you know he deals with stuff that has to come up. And then you deal with the person who goes all in or has no choice to go all in or for whatever the reasons they go all in and that doesn't mean that they make their whole life 12 step programs, because I've seen that too. But like they do process their past and they do whatever at least that's how I interpret it now and their life does become a life beyond anything they could have ever imagined or dreamed.
Speaker 1:And they do. Yeah, I did a podcast on those like three state Well what I said. There's abstinence which is almost like a dry drunk.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sobriety, where you do a certain amount of work and you get more relief. And then there's recovery, because a lot of people try to interchange those words I'm sober, I'm recovered, and I say to me there's a big difference, you know, because you know it's just like almost anything in life. You know you can go to the gym and you can do I go to the gym twice a week and then some people go, I go four or five. You know it depends on you know what you're trying to, you know achieve.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Me is is uh, you know you just want a little bit of health, or you want, you know, you really get to. You know, prime, optimal health. You know same thing like to me as recovery, uh right, well, let's go into a question three. So you've been in a number of 12 step groups.
Speaker 1:Um, that wasn't the original plan, but it led to another group, which led to another group, and each group kind of reveals certain things about yourself to yourself. Explain the necessity, because a lot of people will think that they can. Oh, they're going to one group, that's enough, or I don't need to go to meetings for the rest of my life, or that's too many meetings a week. I said everything can have time. You know you can go to a certain group for three months, six months, I mean just explore it. So the question is how have the specific groups helped you in your healing journey?
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, yeah, well, like I was sharing earlier. So AA saved my life, right? So I wouldn't even be on this podcast right now if I wasn't conscious, right, I'd be dead or whatever, maybe living, maybe not, who knows. So AA I will always owe my life to. So I will always be active in AA some way shape or form.
Speaker 2:When I emotionally bottomed out after a relationship at like four years sober and I could not step my way out of that emotional pain and I literally felt like I was going to die, I went to Al-Anon and Al-Anon was very helpful. It did not help with that pain, but it helped me to learn how to kind of separate some of the enmeshment that I was in, which I didn't even know I was in, with my family, with other people. It helped me to learn how to say no. It helped me to stay on my side of the street and when you're a codependent, I didn't even know what that meant. Stay on my side of the street, you know, stay out of other people's recovery, stay out of other people's stuff. Don't do for others what they can do for themselves. So it was very helpful for me in that area. Did it address my emotional pain? No, it did not. But it led me to sponsoring an Allotine group. That's where I saw a bunch of brave people children, teenagers who were sharing their real, raw, authentic feelings and that's where I was like that's what's inside me, that's where my emotional pain is right now. I feel what they're feeling and I don't know how to help them. And I'm supposed to be sponsoring them. That's what led me to a therapist. So every one of these things led me to the next thing and they were all helpful in their own ways.
Speaker 2:And then when I went to therapy and we started examining and processing my past all the trauma, all the abuses, all the different reasons that I medicated and became an addict and an alcoholic to begin with and once we started excavating all of that fun things and dissecting all the enmeshment and putting everybody and giving everybody's back their stuff, that was never mine to hold. I was just a placeholder for my parents' incapable or unwillingness to heal their own pain. So you know, you have to separate all of that. All of that and most of the work that I did in therapy was a lot of what they call parts work or IFS they call it today.
Speaker 2:Back then they called it like sub personalities and things like that, where you have to basically go to all these traumatized pieces and it basically looks like each time you have a trauma, little pieces of you break off and then they become your protectors and they protect you from all of the things. And they're all little ones, essentially right, they're all like under 10 and they're running your show even in your 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. So if you don't examine them, you basically have like little children running your life in all kinds of areas. If you don't heal that, that same kind of concept is exactly what or sort of what they help you to uncover and get underneath the root causes in ACA. So that led me from that to ACA because I was like, oh, these are more my people, and not that the other people aren't my people, they are, but for very different reasons. Obviously, some are sicker than people, and not that the other people aren't my people, they are, but for very different reasons. Obviously some are sicker than others and clearly I was one of them.
Speaker 1:I think, and you shared something that I did not know Tell the audience how ACA began.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, so all right. So this is very loose. Oh okay, so all right. So this is very loose paraphrase interpretation because I'm not like well-versed in you know the history of ACA, but what I do know, or my interpretation of that, is that it was founded in 1978, right, this guy, tony A, who was an AA guy, also tried, like the Al-Anon has their own version of what they call adult children, of um alcoholics, and I too tried that program.
Speaker 2:That was not for me, um, and he was not finding relief, like I was not finding relief in Al-Anon and things like that, even though you know he was told, like you know, go and do that.
Speaker 2:And um, same thing, he was, uh, running Alateen groups and he saw the need with his own stuff, his own unprocessed stuff, with these kids, and he started this whole program pulling from, you know, our 12 steps, from AA's 12 steps and um Bill W's like own words into, like um, there's quotes in ACA talking about how he hopes that in the future, that um, there will be other 12 step programs to address the deeper issues, like all those root causes that we're supposed to get to in 12 steps that have been on your four step inventory for 20 years you'll actually get rid of that root and branch that they talk about, because who wants to have the same people on their 12, you know, on their inventories year after year and nothing gets done. Like then you're basically just checking a box, that you took care of it and you're never healing from it and you're never getting free from it unless you get below the surface.
Speaker 1:Excellent, thank you. Okay, any final words, any like, either something that you remember, either from the big book, heard at a meeting, some little quote, anything you want to finish with.
Speaker 2:Listen, there's so many and there's no original thoughts, right, you know, they did teach us that in 12-step programs, and there's so many good gold nuggets, and every time I reread all of our literature, new things pop out at me. 27 years later, right, there's always more to learn, and I don't know what your audience needs to learn, and so I'm not about to interpret that for them, but just pay attention, try and be more consciously aware of what life is trying to get your attention on, because life is talking to you all the time. If you want to know that, walk outside and be aware. How is life greeting you today? What is life trying to show you today? What's coming up in you that you don't really want to deal with? Maybe don't put it away. Maybe write it down or talk to somebody about it. Maybe it's not as big as you think it is.
Speaker 1:Correct. I'll finish with this because this is one thing that I heard, because it kind of follows our interview Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional and that's why we need to do emotional work, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Totally agree.
Speaker 1:Okay, With that we are going to conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery. Life is wonderful.