Be Responsible For Your Own Recovery

Stop making other people be responsible for your recovery by doing all of it for you. 

Transcript

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It's time again for Doc Jock, your addiction lifeguard podcast. I am Dr. Jock DeBerker, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Jock, your addiction lifeguard, the addiction recovery podcast. I wanted to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for. It is intended for entertainment and informational purposes but not considered help. If you actually need real help and you're in need of help, Please seek that out. If you're in dire need of help, you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them. But don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help. It's not. It's just a podcast. It's for entertainment and information only. So let's keep it in that light. All right. Have a good time. Learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional. So you're thinking about your own recovery and you know that people are yelling at you and telling you that you need to get some kind of change going on in your life. And so you decide you're going to start to work on recovery and then step one, start employing other people. And by employing other people, I mean like getting them to do the work for you. This is a common issue that I run into. with people who are first starting to get into recovery when they don't want to get into recovery is they will start getting everybody around them to do everything and they think it's some kind of a clever trick to manipulate people into doing their work on recovery when they're not doing it themselves so here's the scenario somebody is using and they're kind of out of control and then they finally say I need to I need to change I need to change and that's what they're they're thinking in their head and But they don't really want to change. And I've talked about this before. Nobody ever wants to get clean and sober. They need to. And so they start getting other people to do the work. In other words, you get your parents, your wife, your husband, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, whatever, to find a therapist for you, to find a rehab for you, to find an IOP for you. to find someplace where you can detox. And that's your request. Like, oh, can you help me find something I can't see? You know, it's funny because the people who are always making those requests, it seems like, are the ones that aren't working and aren't going to school or aren't doing anything. They're just kind of sitting around. And yet the person who is the relative, they get super activated because they've been waiting, you know, impatiently waiting for you. to finally get your act together and start working on getting help. And then as soon as they hear you say something like, oh, I need to get some help, they immediately jump into action. And then you just kind of see that and you watch it and you're like, oh, okay, well, great. Now I don't have to do anything. And what you're doing as an addict is you are diverting attention away from you. And then you're also deflecting your own responsibility in your own recovery. So it's just a crazy way to approach it. Seemingly, from a logical standpoint, I mean, if you're in recovery and you're listening to this, you know, because you probably did this. And if you're not in recovery and you're listening to this, you're probably going to do this. And it's the wrong thing to do. Really, the important part of recovery is you taking action steps towards recovery. And so when you get other people activated in the process of your recovery rather than you doing it, you're not actually invested in it, and it's not your recovery. And it's comical to watch. From a non-clinician standpoint, it's comical to watch these people just get super activated into someone else's recovery. Now, I, as a therapist, when I get a phone call... from somebody who is saying, oh, I need help. This is usually how it starts. I need help with my son. I need help with my husband or my wife or whatever. And as soon as I see that, that's usually the first or second sentence out of their mouth, I immediately go into, well, I'm not talking to you. I'm not going to talk to you. And I don't. I used to Invest a lot of time on these people that were in that place and try to get them to understand that what they're doing is enabling and that it's counterproductive and it's destructive and it's causing the person who's an addict to just make them jump through all these hoops that they shouldn't. And they would listen patiently. As I talked about it and they would put up their arguments as to why it's important that they get involved in this. And I would say, no, that's not actually not true. And I'm doing this outside of a session. I'm doing this on the phone. I would spend 15, 20, 30 minutes with them and I realized, okay, hold on. The first problem is I'm talking to the wrong person. The second problem is I'm doing free counseling to somebody who's not even listening or inviting this into their life. This is just, this is crazy. So I don't do it anymore. As soon as they call and they say, I am the loved one of the addict and they need to make an appointment. So I'd like to know what times you have available. I say the same thing to them. I'm sorry, I don't make appointments through third parties. You're going to have to have that person call me. And about 80% of the time, guess what happens? The other person never calls because they had no intention of ever really showing up. The other 20% of the time when they do call, they call, they make an appointment, they show up for one, maybe two sessions, and then they never come back. Because they're not invested in this. So you as an addict, if you need help, you need to be the one that's actually engaging and working on that. And if it means that you have to just go into full-on surrender and just walk into a hospital... or walk into a treatment center or walk into an IOP on your own, then that's what you gotta do. And listen, man, that's the way you get into recovery is you do the work. If you've got other people doing the work, man, you are doing yourself a disservice and you're manipulating your loved ones and you're just gonna make them resent you even more. And I'm sure that you're not really wanting that as an outcome. Hopefully you still care about the people that care about you. You haven't gone so far into it that you've lost that part of it. But man, that is absolutely going to make it so that you are going to have more and more resentment building up on their side. And you've got more to go through when you're going through step nine and making amends. So... That's a tough situation to be in for a loved one when you're watching the person that you love disintegrate right in front of you and fall apart and perhaps die. It's painful. I mean, I walk that path with people every week. I don't want to say every day, but every week when the loved ones are coming into my office and they're just upset and they're sad and they're you know, just depressed about it. And I walk them through that. And other times I have the addict comes in and they're trying to figure out, you know, how do I stop this? And they can't because it's compulsive and they keep relapsing and everything. And I'll walk people through that too. So I've seen both sides of it. And then I've also seen, unfortunately, the attempt at repair of the damage that the person got engaged in when they started manipulating those around them. And you know what? None of it's good. Like it's all bad. The only outcome that can be good is if you just take responsibility for your own recovery. So step one in the Doc Jacques steps of procedural steps of recovery. Step one, man, pick up that phone yourself and make that call. I'm all for a judge. or an employer forcing recovery on somebody because, you know what, that means that that person is suffering. They're going to lose something, and they don't want to lose it, so then they go. I mean, that's great, man. I'll call the cops on somebody, and I'll testify in court for you, which I've done many times to try to help somebody, get them into recovery rather than go to jail. But, you know, you've got to make that call. It's going to save your life, and it's going to save you in the process of your sanity and everything else. So you've got to become responsible for your own recovery. Now, there's another part to this, and that is what motivates somebody to not engage in their own recovery. What the heck is that all about? You know, me as a sane, stable person, not as a therapist, but just as a human being, it seems like, you know, if somebody is injured, that they would go to a doctor. Let's say you broke your arm. You wouldn't walk around with a broken arm for, you know, and just ignore it. And it's painful every day. And you can't function. You can't, I don't know, you can't lift things. You can't, you know, you can't do anything because your arm is broken. Like, literally in half. The... The arm is broken in half. You wouldn't just ignore it. And so the logical person says, oh, ow, pain, and then they go to the emergency room. And a doctor puts it in a cast, and they splint it, and they tell you to do this and do that, and magically in 6, 10, 12 weeks, your arm is fine. Not true with addiction. Not true at all. you think that your addiction is the answer and you've convinced yourself that because you are insane and insane people do crazy things, right? So you've convinced yourself that getting high or getting drunk or gambling or shopping or whatever your addiction is, you think that's the cure, right? So it's kind of like the analogy of the person with the broken arm. They think the cure is to swing their arm around in the air. And it's like, what are you doing? You're swinging your arm around in the air. This is crazy. Stop doing that. Well, that's what, you know, when you first did it, it felt good because like the bones kind of moved back into place a little bit. But that doesn't allow the arm to heal and immobilization does, right? So same thing with addiction. First, you start using and it's kind of, oh, this works. Yeah, I'm out of my mind. I'm crazy. I got away from it. The pain, the trauma. And then after, you know, days, weeks, months, whatever, it's not working anymore. And you just keep doing it and you're doing more of it. And now that's become a problem because now you can't stop doing it because you're addicted to it. You got a dependency on it, physical or emotional. And so now you can't stop doing it. Well, the person who has the broken arm is going to eventually get to the point where they say, oh, ouch, arm hurt. Go to hospital. So you would hear that eventually. hopefully, unless you really are insane, your head is going to tell you this. It's going to tell you to go. So with these action steps you need to take when you're an addict, you've gone insane. That's why we talk about it. Bill W. talks about, in the big book, and they do the 12 steps, they talk about turning yourself over to a higher power to bring you back to sanity. And you're insane, right? And in the 30s when you were insane, that really meant like you were getting put in a straitjacket and thrown into an institution that you couldn't leave voluntarily. It was not voluntary entrance and it's not voluntary exiting. You had to be discharged. And that's when a doctor deemed you capable of being discharged. So you were in there. You could not get out. You couldn't just walk out. It's not like today. So when they used the term insanity, it was a serious accusation and a serious breach of conduct that somebody has to be demonstrating. And it was a real shaming kind of thing. Crazy people were just not, they were not okay. It was not okay to be a crazy person. So anyway, so you getting to the point where you're saying, I need help. That is just it. I need help. I was listening to a clip of Ben Affleck talking to Howard Stern in an interview. He's talking about his own struggles with alcoholism and recovery. And he said he used to go to... He would go to meetings, and I didn't hear the whole interview, so I don't know if he went to rehab or not. Perhaps he did. I don't know. But he was just talking about his time when he was going into the rooms in AA. And he said he would go into the rooms, and he'd get really angry because he'd be listening to some old-timer talk about... I've been sober for 30 years and I don't have that compulsion to use anymore. It's just not even touching my life anymore. And he'd get really angry because he's like, man, what are you talking about? First of all, you're sitting in this room. You're telling me you've been sober for 30 years. What are you doing here? And you're sitting here talking about things that aren't even relevant to me because I'm in real pain. I need help. This is not helping me. And he didn't understand the messaging of what... what that person is telling him in that meeting about the importance of sobriety and how you aim towards it or whatever. So he'd get really angry about it and he'd leave the meeting and he would go back out and he'd think, I'm not getting help anywhere and he'd drink again. Then he'd come back into the rooms and he'd see people again that were these old timers that would talk like that. And he said, unfortunately, um i didn't lose everything like i didn't lose big huge things um you know i don't know how much that affected his marriages and it certainly affects his kids but i maybe he didn't see that as a big thing but uh he said i didn't lose you know a lot in the process of trying you know when i was drunk but trying to get sober and then he realized um that going to rehab really is not the cure and going to the rooms while helpful is not the cure. There's no magic potion or pill or processes, expensive rehabs and things. He said, those, that's not, that's really not the cure. He said, the real, the only real cure for addiction is suffering. And I was like, wow. Okay. Somebody said it out loud in a public setting. This is awesome from somebody who hopefully people are listening to because they're fans of his. Um, But he said the only real cure for addiction is suffering. And he's right. And I've said that in these podcasts the entire time I've been doing them. You only move towards getting clean and sober when you either have lost the one thing that you didn't want to lose or you're about to. That is suffering. And this is the problem. When you turn your recovery over to other people... to be responsible for putting together your recovery, you are not suffering. You are continuing to manipulate, and you're probably doing it from your parents' basement, or if you're a spouse, you're doing it from home while the spouse is out working. You're commanding them to take responsibility for your recovery, and they are not responsible for your recovery. You are. Plain and simple, like you are responsible for your recovery. No one else is. I'm a counselor. I'm a therapist. I walk people through recovery every day for a living. This is what I do eight hours a day, every day. And I walk people through their recovery and I will not do any of it for them. I make my clients call me. I make clients pay for sessions. I make clients figure out what they're going to do. Like if I say, okay, I want you to do stuff outside of this session. Like we're seeing each other for an hour a week or two hours a week or three hours a week, but there's 168 hours in a week. I want to know what you are going to do with the rest of the 168 hours and not just the one or two. So now we're down to, what, 166 or 167. I want to know what you are going to do. And I make them try to figure it out. Like, well, I don't know. And then I make them ask me. Like, I don't know what else I can do. And then we start going through the list. Oh, well, there's meetings. There are podcasts. There are YouTube videos. There are books. There are all kinds of things you could do. outside of the 167 hours left in your week from coming to see me, and I make them start picturing, like, what are they going to do? And I will give them suggestions, but I don't tell them which podcast to listen to. I mean, I would love to be able to tell them to listen to mine, but I don't. But I say, I'll make a suggestion. Like, I'll say, okay, what I want you to do is open your phone, open up YouTube, and I want you to type in Ted Talks alcoholism or Ted Talks cocaine addiction or Ted Talks recovery or Ted Talks addiction. There are probably hundreds of videos that pop up. I haven't actually counted them, but I mean, it's a lot, right? Because the Ted Talks have been going on for, I don't know, 20, 30 years. So they, oh, I didn't realize there were this many. I was like, yeah, look at that. And I say, and there are podcasts. And you can find podcasts and they're like, well, I know which ones are good. And I'm like, well, I actually have a link here that will give you multiples of really good podcasts. Here you go. But I don't tell them how many to listen to. I don't tell them when to listen to it. I don't tell them that you have to listen to it. I give suggestions. Here you go. Because I want my addicts to be responsible for their recovery. Because ultimately, it is your recovery. You know what? You're responsible for your addiction. You're responsible for your recovery. And when somebody is refusing to do it, or they just don't follow through... Man, I know they are never going to get there. And so I, unfortunately, had to sit there and listen to them, you know, go on and on about the things that have happened to them in the last few days or weeks or whatever about, you know, how bad things were. And I can't do anything about it. Like, I won't. It's just like, yeah, that's a shame, man. I'm sorry you got arrested again. Got another drunken public. You got a DIP. You got a DWI, a driving while intoxicated. Do you need me to come to court? I'll come to court. Just give me your attorney's number and I'll talk to him. And I will do that, right? Because I don't want them to think that I'm abandoning them. And I know a lot of therapists won't do this, but I do. And I don't want to abandon them. So I will go to court and testify. But that's kind of the thing. And I'll talk to an intake coordinator with a rehab after they figured out, you know, that they want to go to rehab. If they're really stumbling and not knowing the process of how to get into a rehab, I'll walk them through that. But they got to tell me they want to go, that they're going to go or that they need to go. I don't care how they phrase it. But you can't make your family responsible for your recovery because if you don't get into recovery, guess who is going to be responsible? Your family. And now you've just tightened the noose further around their neck because they're trying to run away, but they're getting choked out because they feel trapped. And ultimately, it is a full-on manipulation on your part to avoid actually getting into recovery. And that's a shame because it's your recovery. So don't make it somebody else's recovery. Make it yours. So take responsibility for it and do what you're supposed to do to get there. man it's another episode in the tank i appreciate you listening to me this is doc jock your addiction lifeguard and this is a recovery podcast if you need help please reach out to me you can reach me through my website you can send a message to me but please subscribe and comment if you like the podcast pass it along to the next person and if you want and you want to show some love you can do a donation through the contribute button on your podcast listening platform so if you need help go to rehab go to the hospital go to a counselor get help wherever you are but it's not worth saving your addiction by ending your life it's crazy to do that so please get clean and sober and until next time this is Doc Shock saying see ya