Till The Wheels Fall Off
Till The Wheels Fall Off (TWFO) podcast is hosted by Matt and Paige Robinson. TWFO focuses primarily on the relationship dynamics between spouses and partners of alcoholics or addicts and ways to best navigate the difficulties of codependent, addicted, unstable, and narcissistic behavior. The program is enjoyable and informative for anyone seeking self-betterment, inspiration, perspective, or direction with themes ranging from boundaries, recovery, marriage, and parenting with tons of humor built in. With over twenty years of experience in codependency recovery, addiction recovery, mental health battles, and navigating life's hurdles, the duo offers a valuable and unique perspective that is both inspiring and relatable.
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Till The Wheels Fall Off
#262 - Are You Coping or Are You Healing?
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In this episode, Matt and Paige take a deep dive into the difference between coping and healing. From self-care routines to emotional boundaries, they explore how coping can be both a bridge and a trap—necessary for survival but not meant to last forever. They share personal stories about burnout, triggers, and stress, discuss concepts like allostatic load and polyvagal theory, and offer real-world examples of when it’s time to stop managing chaos and start creating change. This conversation is a reminder that while coping helps us find peace, only change allows us to keep it.
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But you have to change it. You have to learn how to process it and integrate, you know, have it available to you and then start just acting differently and accepting what it is and looking at it for what it is. And your body will eventually catch up to that. Like you can't avoid triggers for the rest of your life. It's not possible. It's not healthy to avoid triggers.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of Till the Wheels Fall Off. I'm Matt.
SPEAKER_04:I'm Paige.
SPEAKER_00:What's the difference between coping and changing? Like we all know kind of intuitively what coping with stress is, uh, how to do it. We talk about it a lot on the show, actually. A lot of what existing and surviving in a relationship where there's toxicity is about coping. But is that the same as changing? And what are the benefits of coping versus changing? And what's the difference? How do you do this? We're gonna talk about it a lot. We've got a lot of experience with coping and a lot of experience with changing. And are you coping right now or are you actually changing?
SPEAKER_03:Or healing, if you want to say that.
SPEAKER_00:I like healing. That is better. Are you coping or are you healing? That's even better. Let's go with that one.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:But we're gonna talk about it today. It's gonna be a pretty interesting um episode going back to a lot of the tools that both of us have learned in getting through this and what we still do today in a lot of ways in different aspects of our life, because as it turns out, it's not necessarily that one is better than the other. They're both just very necessary. Uh, so let's find out where you are today as we get through this. First things first, thanks to Soberlink, the sponsor for today's show. If you don't know what Soberlink is, it's the world's greatest accountability device that is disguised as a breathalyzer. If you were somebody like me and you're in a relationship with someone and your drinking has become a problem and your words no longer have meaning, Soberlink may be the thing that helps you rebuild that trust that is gone. Remember, trust, trust is lost in buckets and it's rebuilt in tiny little droplets. And every time you show a negative test, it is a droplet back into that proverbial bucket of trust. So you set up a network of people that get notified every single time you use the device. So I would set up Paige, for instance, and whenever I would use the device, it would show her, hey, he's doing the deal. And this serves two purposes. One, it holds you accountable because whoever you set up, and you can set up multiple people, they get notified every time you do it. So it's gonna keep you from stopping at the liquor store, stopping on the at the bar on the way home and using the device. Two, it also gives you a group of people who are in your corner rooting for you, which is a really valuable thing to have at a time like this. So it's not just a kit, you know, it's not just a gotcha tool. It's just also something that is gonna help you rebuild trust in your relationship.
SPEAKER_01:Gotcha.
SPEAKER_00:What did you just reach over here for? I'd say the rock. Gotcha. Okay. Uh Soberlink has never, it's never been easier now to get into one of these things. It used to be that you would have to buy a device and they weren't cheap, like 500 bucks. And then you would have to get a monthly plan, which is like a hundred bucks or more than that a month. Um, because like a cell phone, right? There's a consistent, like there's data reporting. This thing isn't just like a plastic breathalyzer. This thing has facial recognition technology, it's self-reporting, uh, it's tamper-proof. It has a standby team 24-7 that reviews the data and they know the difference between someone who's got on like a heavy cologne versus someone who has you had something to drink. And if they notice something funny in the data, they will ask you to retest. They are not trying to catch people or ruin relationships. They are just trying to provide the best data possible. And it is a world-class device. Now they're offering rentals on these things. So for as little as 19 bucks a month, when you sign up for a one-year plan, that's all it takes now. 19 bucks get you started right now, today. Get a device, get going, minimal upfront out-of-pocket costs. And since you're an awesome listener of our show, if you go to soberlink.com slash wheels, they're going to send you a$100 visa gift card that you can use on anything you want. You can use it on the monthly plan cost. You can use it on Amazon. You can use it at the grocery store. Uh, you can use it on Tufo merch, which we'll talk about here in a second. Um, it's yeah, multitude of uses. Again, go to soberlink.com slash wheels while you're on the internet. Go over to tufo.com, check out our free Facebook community that is built just for you guys. It is uh, it's a I think the probably one of the most or the last pure places on the internet where people are just genuinely trying to help each other. And it's amazing. It's um it's great. It's got thousands of members, listeners of the show. You have to be a listener of the show, by the way. And if you go, uh we ask questions, it's welcome back, welcome back. If you're a listener, that's how we greet people. You guys should know this by now.
SPEAKER_02:Or hey y'all.
SPEAKER_00:Or hey y'all.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome to Paige's perspective.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's how, but it's it's built for you guys. Um, we've got merch up there. Paige has got one of the rocks right there. Show them the rock. It's got our logo on the front. On the back, it says, Thank you for being my rock. This is a really cool way to acknowledge the journey that someone else has walked with you through recovery. We've also got some merch up there. We've got um, we've got some hat. Is there any hats left?
SPEAKER_05:One hat.
SPEAKER_00:We'll get the last one.
SPEAKER_05:One hat left. It's a white one, I believe. We have wait, wait, one or two. I think it's one.
SPEAKER_00:There's some hats left. There's um some sweatshirts and things like that. And we are actually some repping some of the new stuff we've just got in.
SPEAKER_04:Um it's so cozy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, super cozy, super comfortable. If you have our previous sweatshirts, these are this hoodie versions of those. So they're oversized, they're super comfortable. They got designs in the back, which we're not going to show you right now. Yeah, they're the same.
SPEAKER_05:That would be weird to stand up right here in front of the camera, but yeah, they they're this they're the same brand, but different designs.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, different designs.
SPEAKER_05:I'm still around. And we've got t-shirts as well.
SPEAKER_00:Be on the lookout. We'll put that on social media, we'll put it on our website and get all these photos and everything else taken um in short order. All right. On to the episode. What?
SPEAKER_04:You're hitting things.
SPEAKER_00:And I apologize for any of you that are sensitive to mouth noises or anything like that.
SPEAKER_05:You brought the whole package in here?
SPEAKER_00:I brought the whole bag of dark Reese's thins. Dark Reese's thins.
SPEAKER_05:It's the best dark chocolate.
SPEAKER_00:Dark chocolate with the Reese's is better than a regular chocolate, milk chocolate. Fight me, it's true. And nothing's better than a thin version of anything because you can eat more of them if you're not like thin Oreos. Yeah, this is being recorded right before Halloween, so we're we're snacking a little bit here. Yeah. Sugar or fake sugar.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, so good for us.
SPEAKER_00:Anyway.
SPEAKER_06:So I wanted to get into this.
SPEAKER_05:Um, are you coping or are you healing? Because there's a lot of the times where I will see people in the community or I'll know people who are like, oh, you know, I'm doing great, which you are. I'm not dismissing that at all. It's it's awesome. I love that you're doing things, but your life might still look the same. Like, yeah, you're doing things, but are you really doing things? Are you just coping? Are you doing these uh the self-care that we talk about? But when we talk about self-care, if you know it's not just, you know, bubble baths and working out and things like that, it's also making really difficult decisions and setting boundaries. So we just kind of want to talk about the biology of coping, the biology of stress, um, some examples of how you may be coping instead of actually making changes or healing. Um, and I think I don't know, I'm kind of excited to have this conversation because I, if you listen to my Paige's perspective, the beginning, I say, I'm uh, hey, y'all, welcome to Paige's perspective. Tools to cope with tools to help you cope with life, right? And I do give you tools to cope with life, but I also give you tools to actually change your life and to help you within your healing. So coping is extremely important. I'm not dismissing that, but we have to separate them a little bit so that we can see what is really working in your life and are you using it as an avoidance tool?
SPEAKER_00:Good. It's a good opening there. I um Did you even hear me? Yeah, I did as I was over here fiddling with my candy and whatnot. No, I absolutely did. I think um, I can even hearken back to the early days in my own recovery. And a lot of what I did in the early days was it was coping. Like I had to learn how to cope. Um my addiction, as I kind of saw it in a lot of ways, was a maladaptive coping mechanism. Whenever I felt stressed or sad or inadequate or fearful, uncomfortable, you name it. Did I say stressed? Stress times two, if I didn't, because stress was a big one for me. I would reach force substance because it was a way for me to cope through that. It wasn't changing anything that was causing this stuff, but it was my way of coping.
SPEAKER_05:Right. Which is important.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's just a very toxic way to deal with it because addiction's got its own pitfalls, right? If that the reason I became addicted was because it did work for a period of time. And anyone who's ever used drugs and alcohol like I did will tell you that. Like we did it because it worked at one point. At some point, though, it takes over and it actually stops working, and then it becomes a problem in and of itself that causes other problems, and now we've got our hands full. And um, I've got a lot of experience with coping with substances, and then when I got sober in early recovery, coping in some of the most extreme ways possible is we will talk about some of like the stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, and we'll talk about Seneca and a lot about what those guys thought and how to create like this inner citadel. Acceptance is the answer.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, I don't want to go through like a 30-minute conversation of this, but we will bring it into context because it's not just I want to I want to talk about other things before besides that, but I think it's important for people to understand where that is appropriate and where it like it it's not fully helpful for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00:At the end of the day, spoiler alert, you cannot cope your way through really bad environments forever. Uh, eventually this will start to show up in your physiology, as we will talk about when we get into some of the allostatic load, vagal nerve, polyvagal nerve theory, um, and some of the ways that stress actually affects your body. And so coping is a very important skill that all adults need to have. Don't get me wrong, you will go through stressful periods in your life. And it is important to know how to deal with that. If you're someone like me and you're in recovery, it is literally life or death that you learn how to deal with this stuff. But at some point, coping becomes it's not necessarily avoidance. I think it's just the absence of action. It is the absence of change. Um, you're still doing something that's beneficial to you, don't get me wrong. But what you'll do as life gets more and more stressful is you'll just spend most of your time coping. That's what you do. You I have something on my chin.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, keep going.
SPEAKER_00:You're you're you're just going to be coping nonstop. Um, and that's what I found myself doing doing uh a great deal of. But in early recovery, I will just tell the story now and then we'll get on to the episode itself. I've got a lot of experience in dealing with stress and coping. And in the beginning, I was convinced that you could not hurt me if I didn't give you permission, that nothing could hurt me if I didn't give you permission, that I could create what um what is referred to often as the inner citadel within my life, which I could retreat to into my mind and into my soul. And in that place, I gave you permission about what I gave permission as to what affected me and what did not. And this is like sort of this extreme idea, wholesale uh acceptance is the answer. I literally tattooed it on my rib cage. It was so important to me.
SPEAKER_02:But it's a cool tattoo.
SPEAKER_00:It's cool, I guess. But there's this um this quote by Marcus Aurelius. And if you're not familiar with Marcus's work, he was a he was a Roman Emperor. Um no Greek Greek wait. Oh my brain just went blank. Um one of them old guys from the Mediterranean is pretty sure he's a Roman Emperor anyway. But he he wrote um he wrote in his journal every day, and at some point we published this poor bastard's journal, and it's called Meditations, and it's the thoughts of Marcus Aurelius, and Marcus Aurelius was uh of the Stoic philosophy thinking and wrote some of the most beautiful words about how to cope whenever life gets crazy. Also, just some very wise thoughts that have transcended generations, thousands and thousands of years. It's a book that I love, and I read, and every time I read it, and I've read it a couple times now, it's like book fairies go and put something else new in there. I've got it highlighted, my copy's got notes in it, and it's just amazing. But there's this, I think it was in Meditation Six, I can't remember, six one, maybe, maybe six eleven. Um, it says, The mind unconquered by violent passions is a citadel, for a man has no fortress more impregnable in which to find refuge and remain safe forever. You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength. And I took that shit straight to heart.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I took that shit straight to heart. Me and Paige used to have debates over this all the time. Isaiah Berlin wrote, Um, I think the book was I Inner Citadel. Don't quote me on that. Isaiah Berlin's got this quote.
SPEAKER_05:You're on fire today, boo.
SPEAKER_00:I'm just not on fire. I like it.
SPEAKER_05:No, I think it's very human. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:He said, uh, when the natural road toward human fulfill human fulfillment is blocked, human beings retreat into themselves, become involved in themselves, and try to create inwardly that which some evil fate has denied them externally. If you cannot obtain from the world that which you really desire, you must teach yourself not to want it. If you cannot get what you want, you must teach yourself to want what you can get. This is a very frequent form of spiritual retreat in depth into a kind of inner citadel in which you try to lock yourself up against all the fearful ills of the world. We can this is a stage of healing, I think. I think that we will all go here. And I think that it's very valuable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying don't do this because I think that this is such a valuable tool at certain times in your life, through certain things that you go through. Perseverance is important. We talk about resilience in the show a lot, and it is important. If you're going to get through this, whatever you're going through, some form of this will be required at times. Um, I had to go through it, you had to go through it in some ways, or you tried, you rebelled against it from the beginning, but yes. You tried, but I I went through this. Let's let's give an example that's not too emotional here. Let's say that you work in a really, really toxic environment. So you have a toxic boss. Let's say you've got an extreme workload, let's say it's just crazy. I dealt with this during COVID. I was in logistics during COVID, and I hate all of you for sitting at home and just ordering shit. You made my life hell. Thanks a lot. Almost ruined me. It's why my beard is gray from doing this all day. Oh my God. But anyway, uh, I was walking in every day and it was just a mess. It was like there were way too many orders, not enough truck drivers to go around, customers that were pissed off, people that were demanding of a where's this stuff, and we just we could not, there was not enough supply for the demand. It was just, it was insane. Prices were going through the roof, everyone was mad, and it was not a fun time to be in logistics. And it was upsetting, like really upsetting. It's it's hard not being able to perform your job. It's hard having to change things that have been, you know, policies like on the fly. It's it's really tough. It's really tough emotionally to get through that kind of thing. And I would come home every day and just be like, it literally every day was the worst day of my professional career, every single day. For years, this was like this. At some point, though, I remembered what I had learned about you know, Marcus Aurelius' teachings and everything else in this inner citadel. And I realized that it was my expectations, not the world, that was causing me stress. It was causing me anxiety, it was causing me pain. Because my expectation was that my life was supposed to be not stressful because it had been at one point. It had been calm and peaceful, and we had it not to say it didn't have its challenges, but we we were able to get through it. And then during COVID, it was a whole new level of just suck. And I had not accepted the fact that this was normal. And so one day I literally told myself this is normal. This is, you should not expect anything other than to come in here and it to be crazy and people to be upset, and that is okay. That is what normal is now. Um I had to stop teaching myself to want what I previously had, which was a stress-free life. Now think about how toxic this is at 30,000 feet. But this is what you have to do to survive sometimes. This is what you have to do. Let's say that you've been in a relationship with a lot of toxicity and you're trying to get through a tough patch. You have to accept what is right now. And I had to stop giving myself permission to get upset at what I wanted, which was God forbid I wanted something less stressful, right? God forbid you want safety. God forbid you want like this. Can this can go too far. Be careful with this.
SPEAKER_05:It can go too far because we have choices and we have options. Like you I could have quit that job. I feel like this mentality is very appropriate whenever you don't have choices and you don't have any, you you you can't leave like at this moment. Now you can make steps to leave, like you can make steps to get yourself out of out of that environment. Um, but I think it just keeps you in this, this, this space of like, I have no choice and I'm just gonna have to deal with this. So I have to shift my perspective. But the reality is these days, we do have choices. We have a lot of decisions that we can make. We don't, we aren't stuck in that environment. And the longer we tell ourselves, like, oh, we just have to like deal with it and tolerate it, our body's not gonna let us, you know, stick that way for a long period of time. It just never sat right with me. Like I understand how important it is and how it is for like, you know, way back in the day when you didn't have options to to leave a relationship, or maybe it was challenging to leave a job or something like that. Then yes, this mentality is great, but why don't you look at all of your options first before you go to that mentality?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agree with you 100%. This was this was a survival skill for me that I had to learn. But in going to that extreme, what I did learn was that I had a lot more control over my emotions and my ability to cope than I ever dreamed. Yeah. Um, it's just not a place that you can live forever because as we will talk about, it does come with its own downsides.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, you know, it's there's cause and effect here. Don't get me wrong. This is not a place you want to live forever. I tried it though, and I was convinced I could do it, and I did it for years. Literally years, I lived in this until I got to the point where it started to affect my health and it started to affect um my mental health, it started to affect my physiology. Um, my blood work markers were fucked up. I mean, this is it's it will affect you at some point. It comes back to haunt you.
SPEAKER_05:It's supposed to be meant as a bridge and not the destination to where you want to go.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful way to put it.
SPEAKER_05:It is necessary in crisis, but if if you're doing it permanently or you're expecting to do this for long term, it's gonna be harmful long term. But like I said, it's a great tool in your toolbox, but we still need to look outside the box and not just utilize this tool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and and living in that place for as long as I did, I I can I have a pain tolerance like you wouldn't believe for emotional and physical pain because I am a chronic pain sufferer and I'm also an opiate addict. That's just a the way it is for me. And so I have to learn how to deal with a lot of that stuff too. Rob Henderson um and he was on Chris Williamson's show and wrote this. I'll just read this really quick. Rob Henderson explained this idea really simply. He said, if your leg is wounded, you can try to treat the leg. If you cannot, then you cut off the leg and announce that the desire for legs is misguided and must be subdued.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I get it. Makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:Basically, is what Williamson says. Basically, if you can't win at a game, you stop playing. Say that you never cared about the game and create your own game with rules which you can more easily win at.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_05:This is reframing if you can't win, don't try, is what you used to say. I mean, that's how not necessarily.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, Vic Victor Frankel wrote about this in sort of a a tangential way in Man's Search for Meaning, where he talks about finding purpose in suffering. Um, that's kind of what we're getting at in some ways here. You know, this is a man that was wrote a book about living in a concentration camp during the city.
SPEAKER_05:He did not have a choice.
SPEAKER_00:You're right about that.
SPEAKER_05:He didn't have a choice.
SPEAKER_00:You're right, but I think that the the idea, the concept, and the ability is a powerful way to bridge, as you put it, agreed. Getting through some really difficult things in life.
SPEAKER_05:But like I said, that's not that's completely different than dealing with something that you have the power to change over. Because that's something that we discuss in these episodes all the time is that you are not stuck, you are not powerless, like you do have the ability to make changes. You don't have to be the victim forever. You can actually step up and make changes and do something different instead of just coping or tolerating or dealing with whatever it is, the situation you're in, because you do have a choice. Um, we're we live in a time where we do have more choices. But what you're explaining, the the guy didn't have a choice. So he had to make something out of it and make it beautiful.
SPEAKER_00:And in my career, I could have told myself I didn't have a choice because I was I'm the sole provider for our household. And so I could tell myself I didn't have a choice, but I did. I had choices.
SPEAKER_05:Um and that's hard to accept.
SPEAKER_00:It is, but I had choices.
SPEAKER_05:Because you know how challenging it is to make a decision that is, you know, scary. It's unfamiliar. It's something completely different than what you've been doing for a long period of time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And there there are like addiction advocates that will say that addiction is what people had to do to survive. And in some ways, I can understand the argument. In some ways, I think that's really almost kind of like this this restructuring of this argument that makes something toxic seem beautiful in some ways. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. You know, I've we've kind of had conversations about that, but I haven't really been able to articulate it in a way that makes sense for me. Where where we talk about how like going through all of that um can be a beautiful thing because you learn a lot of stuff. But I'm like, I don't think going through that is a beautiful thing. I think it's the tools that you learn from it that is a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00:And then the and then it stands to the the question is that could you learn these tools without having to go through that?
SPEAKER_04:And it's like, I don't know. I don't know. That's a whole other conversation that we need to dig into.
SPEAKER_00:Fun philosophical discussion someday, maybe. Okay, let's get into the conversation of coping as we talked about that. Cause I because that will probably come up.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, we're just kind of gonna go through this again. Um, so again, coping is not bad. It's just how we manage unpleasant emotion unpleasant emotions. It's how we we we deal with life and chaos and things like that. Um, but again, there's another step forward that we need to take. Uh, but like an example would be like if you're journaling about your toxic situation, but you're never really confronting it. Uh, that would be more of coping because we do discuss journaling and how important it is to do that. Um, but the reality is that you're still not making any changes for your situation. Sure, it gets it out to the world. It's like venting and talking to people. That's important. But these are coping skills and not necessarily healing or changing. I mean, it is healing because it is part of the healing process. Like the coping is start is is starting of the healing process, but it still needs to go further than that.
SPEAKER_00:This is putting ice on a splinter sticking out of your leg without ever taking the splinter out.
SPEAKER_05:There you go. That's a good one.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you're just come up with that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's like you're so good at that.
SPEAKER_00:That wasn't good.
SPEAKER_05:I thought it was.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but having a broken leg and just icing it rather than getting this like structurally repaired.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And I'm gonna go through a lot of examples later, but right now I'm just gonna go through like just two more real quick. Uh, working out to blow off stress, but staying in the same overcommitted life. So we talk about the coping skills within um your uh self-care routines or whatever. It's extremely important, but you can't stop there. Like you actually have to do something about it, or it's gonna come back to you in other ways that are very uncomfortable. Um, maybe being detached from conflict, but still living in the tension. That's another one. Like detaching. We talk about detaching and how it's not really a tactic. It's necessary, it's just something that happens. Um, but eventually you'll have to recognize like, what does this detachment really mean? And what do I need to do about it? Because it's not somewhere you want to live in forever. So coping helps you through the storm, but it doesn't like rebuild your life or the rebuild the house that was torn down within the storm. Right. You actually have to take action.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And there should also be noted that there is some nuance and there's a great area here. Well, let's say that you've got a pretty stressful life, but you start working out at lunchtime and you find that your stress has decreased to a manageable level. You might have just needed to exercise. And is this a form of coping without changing? Yeah, but it's very manageable, right? What you will find is that addiction, since we're talking about addiction for a moment, addiction is progressive. And over time it generally gets worse, not better. Generally, not always, but generally it gets worse, not better. So it gets heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier. And the things that you have to do to cope become so taxing on your day and in your mental state and your emotional state that it is no longer the juice is no longer worth the squeeze. It takes so much to keep up with just staying back to like neutral that it's it's at some point something has to give. Something has to give. And that is a uh a veiled way of saying you have to get away from that situation.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and I think another important aspect about coping is that some people aren't ready for massive changes, obviously, right? You know, to make big, big, big decisions or take action. So what you do is you start is that you cope and you do these things that we teach you, like um with the self-care stuff, and it helps build you up to take action in a way that you know is necessary for you. I think that's been a pretty standard way for our listeners, like from that have started from the beginning and and the the layers that they peeled off. It started that way. It's like it's the coping, and then it's like, all right, I'm doing all these things, I'm building myself up, and then I can finally take action that's really gonna be beneficial for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so there were some researchers back in the 90s, um, Bruce McEwen and Elliot Stellar, I think it's how you say his name, Stellar or Stellar, I'm not certain, but developed this idea of the allostatic load. Um, there is such a thing as chronic coping. Your body can only handle so much. Chronic stress has real, measurable biological consequences. And we kind of all accept this. Now, the allosthetic process and the allosthetic load certainly has criticisms. Like, what are we actually measuring? Are we measuring um homeostatic markers like uh cholesterol levels or lipid levels in your liver? But I think it's very reasonable to say that you know and I know that when you get stressed, your body responds. Have you ever gotten sick because you've been so stressed? I have. I know that you have. You can get sick. Some people get like they get GI issues, um, headaches, like constant migraines. Your blood panels will come back all out of whack. Chronic stress is bad for the body. How bad to what degree? It differs with every single person. But what we do know is read about it, allostatic load. Read about how chronic coping keeps you in this, it keeps your stress systems on high alert and active. Your cortisol, heart rate, inflammation, all these things that are are detrimental to your overall physiological health start to deteriorate because of stress. There's also polyvagal theory. Polyvagal theory is a pretty interesting one. I think that it is in some ways, it has become almost like horoscopy and almost like attachment theory, where it became like a one-size-fits-all idea for what's going on with you. And I think it's an oversimplification in a lot of ways of what is really happening whenever you're under an immense amount of stress. But I think that what we can agree on is that the framework that the nervous system only really relaxes whenever you're in real safety, um, not when you're just managing danger better, better has merit. And there's merit to that idea that there's therapeutic value. It gives people the language for understanding safety and what shutdown is versus connection. Uh the polyvagal theory basically breaks down your nervous system into three different components, and it talks about how you can be in a um social engagement state, a fight or flight state, or a shutdownslash freeze state. And in one, you're safe and connected. This is when you're you have warmth and you can make eye contact and you can empathize with people, and then you can get into fight or flight, which many of us know this is your sympathetic nervous response. Um, anger, anxiety, racing heart rate, these are symptoms of that. And then there's shutdown freeze mode, which is when your nervous system becomes so overwhelmed that it starts to shut down to conserve energy or avoid pain. And this is numbness, uh, dissociation. And so a lot of these people, a lot of people will hear things like this and try to oversimplify it and try to almost work around this as the like the soul theory that encompasses everything that you're going through. It is a kernel of the truth, but it is not of the whole truth, in my belief, anyway, and just the science that I've read about this and everything else. It's it's very interesting. And I think it gives us it's let's put it this way, it starts really good conversations.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:I can just say that is that your body at some point cannot be fooled anymore by coping. Nope. It cannot. I tried this, okay? I was going, I was going to, when I was going through COVID, like I only had a handful of skills that I knew how to work with. One of them was box breathing. I could breathe, I could journal, I could make gratitude lists, exercise, I could exercise, I would go to AA meetings, I would talk, um, I would all the things therapy discuss. Everything that we discussed, I was doing every effing one of these things.
SPEAKER_05:Present moment awareness, crowdness.
SPEAKER_00:And my body was literally breaking down. No matter what I did, and this is, and I am someone that is as good as anybody at this sort of inner citadel, you know, reading the works of Marcus Aurelius, and like, I know this shit, and it still was affecting my body. Uh, at some point, you cannot outcope. Your body cannot be fooled anymore. Your environment matters. Your body knows when peace is real and when it's not. Chronic coping is more or less functional freezing. Um, you're gonna get numb, you're gonna get fatigued, you're gonna get detached, and it's gonna start to affect your life in a in a multitude of ways. But true healing lowers your baseline stress, it lowers the stressors, and that is done through environmental changes. The basis of our course is social learning theory, which essentially states that your environment has a great deal to do with the way that you're able to cope and respond to stress and your triggers and your environment is a huge player in that, but we can't always change our environment. Uh, very sympathetic to that, that there are reasons why we stay in these situations. I am one of them. I have my own reasons. I stayed in that work environment. Um, some of you have these same reasons for the reasons that you stay in your marriages and you stay in your relationships. Maybe there's children, maybe there's finances, maybe you're just not ready yet. Uh, it's very real. I I just want you to know that if you're thinking that self-care is going to be the cure all, you're wrong. Right. Just unfortunately. It is a beautiful bridge and it is a great place to go whenever you need respite. You need to find some, some, some calm from that storm, but it is not a place to live for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, I hate to ruin it for you.
SPEAKER_05:Well, your body's not going to let you. It will, it's going to come out. I did this for a very long period of time for a lot of different things in my life. And it always comes back to bite me in the ass to where it's like, okay, I'm doing all the things that I knew would get me to where I need to be, but it's not working anymore. And that's because my body and my mind are trying to tell me that I need to make a change, that I need to set boundaries, that I need to feel something or feel my feels and process them and actually do something about it instead of breathing myself out of it or trying to cope with it or, you know, like um uh just talking positive affirmations and all that. Like it just doesn't work when you have major stressors in your life. It's it eventually they're not gonna work. And when they're not working, you really got to pay attention to that and and try to ask yourself, you know, what is it that I need to change within my life to help me get through these emotions?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, we deal with this personally even now, up to this point with doing the show where like Paige, this is your journey of having to go back and revisit painful moment after painful moment after painful moment. And you've been very real about the fact that there's nothing easy about that.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, yes. I've been very open about it. And whenever I became super overwhelmed, I went back to my toolbox. Like, okay, what am I gonna do? What do I need to do here? I'm gonna breathe, I'm gonna take time off, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna meditate, I'm gonna do puzzles, I'm gonna breathe, I'm gonna do all the grounding techniques I know. It didn't work. It didn't work.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it worked until you got back into the situation.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, it worked until I got, I slowly started getting myself back into it. And I realized that I didn't have healthy boundaries for myself surrounding what we do. Um, and none of the coping mechanisms were going to help me when I get back in it because my body's not gonna let me. I would have literal, like my body, it was I can tell my mind all day long, like everything's okay, you are safe, um, you're gonna get through this. It's not that deep for you. But my body literally does not listen to my brain. I would read something that has nothing to do with any of our listeners, but something like directly towards me. Um, and I would be very, I would go into that fight or flight mode. And that's not something that it's it just happens. It's not, what is the word I'm looking for? I can't think of what I'm talking about, can you?
SPEAKER_00:No, I'm thinking, is it just sort of autonomous?
SPEAKER_05:Yes, sort of, it's it it's my body just does it. It's not anything that I'm choosing to do. Like I it's not, it's it's subconscious, I guess. It just automatically happens. It's like a trigger, it's a trigger. And you know, I'm like, oh my gosh, I thought I healed from this. I thought I got through this. No, I didn't get through that because I don't have boundaries surrounding what I do. And that means that I need to take action and set boundaries around what we do to make sure that I'm protected and I'm safe.
SPEAKER_00:And and that's sort of a a gentle bridge to the conversation about sort of the content that we make here on a very regular basis. We went from making one episode a week to now we're making three episodes per week. And we are, we've always said, like our first job is to be parents. Um, second, husband and wife. Third, we've got careers, and then we have this thing, which is very important to your lives, to our lives uh in a lot of ways. But it's also at the end of the day, it's at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to our personal priorities and our own, our own mental states and emotional states. And so we're gonna dial back the content a little bit, the cadence of it. You're still gonna get content, maybe just not as frequent.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So maybe you'll get a full episode like these Wednesday episodes every other week. Maybe you'll get our like individual ones on those weeks that we don't have this one, or something like that. We haven't quite figured it out. But what we're saying here is that this is how real this stuff is to us, is that we know and we practice it in our own lives. I would suggest you do the same. Is that is that when when nothing has changed internally, your environment is the last thing you have to look at changing. So your amount of exposure to this sort of thing. So, like for a lot of people, they will move out of the home that they're in with this person that's causing them so much trouble. And what they'll find is holy shit, I've never felt this calm. I forgot what it felt like to feel this calm. And, you know, maybe that person makes changes and then they get back into that home and things are okay. But if they're not, your body's not gonna lie to you. It's not gonna tell you. So we've been trying to work through this very same thing with this content because remember, before we started the show, we were just like happy husband and wife living our lives. And then we'll go back and revisit this stuff over and over and over and over. And it's different for me because I was the one, I was the offender in a lot of the stuff. This is also very common because it's part of my recovery. This wasn't part of your recovery. This all this revisiting. At some point, here's a cool thing about spouses and partners is at some point, you guys get to move on. Yes, you get to walk away. You get to be like, I've learned from it.
SPEAKER_02:I have I've lived that, I've done that.
SPEAKER_00:And now I'm going on to live my fucking life. Yeah. Uh, for someone who's dealing with addiction, it will be a lifelong process, always to some degree that you will have to acknowledge and treat that part of you that wants to use a substance because you know what happens when you do. And I've I've accepted that myself. I don't think that y'all should have to. Yeah. And so it's only it's different.
SPEAKER_05:It's different. The conversations are different. Like and your recovery conversations are completely different than our recovery conversations. So um, yeah, I've just with all of this, uh, I've had to definitely listen to my body, set boundaries, and make changes where necessary um to take care of myself. You know, like I know, I know me, I know my body, I know what I can handle and what I can't. And I have to just scale back a little bit and have those boundaries. And that's healthy. I think that's important. I think it's important for us. It's important for me, it's important for our kids. It's important, it's important for you guys too, so that you understand that we live this life too, and that we are practicing what we preach.
SPEAKER_01:It'd be rather hypocritical. Right. It would.
SPEAKER_05:And it's at a different, it's it's I don't want to say it's at a different level, but it is kind of at a, it's a different situation, I guess I could say, but it's still a life thing. Like we talk about life skills all the time. The things that you learn like this right here, it can be applied within your work environment, your parents' environment, your friend environment, your relationship environment. So we're utilizing it in our um this recovery environment, in our podcasting hobby environment, you know? And I think that that's important. I think it's important to share that with y'all and be transparent and let you know what we're going through and that we are practicing what we preach. And I feel very clear on this based on the episode that we are discussing today.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So coping can work. Don't get me wrong. Like it can work. It can, it can, you'll you'll see some massive benefits from it sometimes. But sometimes coping can just be flat out avoidance. Yes. You can be trying to cope with something for so long that you're avoiding the inevitable, which is generally your worst fear, which is that in a lot of cases, I can't I can't be married to this person anymore. That's like I think probably the one that's most fitting to this show. It could be I have to leave that job that's paying me a ton of money that I cannot fucking deal with anymore. I'm gonna have to scale back my lifestyle. I'm gonna have to change the things that I aspire to in life materially anyway. Um, there are some tough decisions we have to come to because at some point coping is just purely avoidance. Let's talk about some of those.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, so like relationship tension. Coping would be to detach or suppress your emotions. This happens a lot in these situations, you know. But we have talked about how having conversations with those in active addiction doesn't typically work for you, but I think it's important for you to have the conversations.
SPEAKER_00:You might have a good conversation, but you're not going to have a good outcome with someone in active addiction.
SPEAKER_05:Exactly. Because we can teach you how to have that conversation all day long. I think we had an episode on it. We talk about it in our program. Um, but the reality is that you need to have the conversation and see how it goes and then make decisions based on that. But like coping would be again, detaching or suppressing that emotion. And then changing would be initiating a hard boundary or conversation. So having something, like actually having that conversation and then like evaluating it and looking at it and thinking, okay, well, this didn't really go as I wanted. What do I need to do about it now? Right. Like that's a big thing of with what I discuss a lot, is that okay, you feel how you feel, what are we gonna do about it? And that's how change is made. It's like, okay, what can you do about it? Because you have a lot more power than you think. Um, another situation would be burnout. So coping would be like bubble baths, weekends off, which I I tried to do that as well, like the weekends off type thing, um, which is still a boundary of mine, but I I need to scale it even more. But changing would be like redefining workload or your values. And that's definitely something that I've had to do within the past month is to redefine exactly what it is that we're doing and um what I can do to scale it back to make sure I am protected from it. So that's actually changing. Coping would be, like I said earlier, like, you know, just taking those bubble baths and breathing. You know, it just doesn't, it's not gonna work. It doesn't work. Trust me, I tried. Um, a situation if there are triggers. Uh coping would be avoiding the reminder. So this is kind of interesting that you popped open that can.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sorry about that again. I've thought about that five times. I'm like, why did I fucking do that? I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_05:It's no, listen, it's interesting because coping would be to avoid that. Okay. Coping would be to not be around cans all the time.
SPEAKER_00:It would be So you're saying I shouldn't go back and edit that out.
SPEAKER_05:No, because we have to learn, because here's the thing, and I and I'm not being insensitive, I promise. Trust me, I've been there with triggers, but you have to change it. You have to learn how to process it and integrate, you know, have it available to you and then start just acting differently and accepting what it is and looking at it for what it is. And your body will eventually catch up to that. Like you can't avoid triggers for the rest of your life. It's not possible. It's not healthy to avoid triggers. Um, if that was the case, then we would probably avoid going out of our houses considering that there is alcohol everywhere, you know, and you can't.
SPEAKER_00:There are some people that try to live this way. I've heard about them. I've never actually met one, but I've read their stories online, um, written but authored by them, but they will quite literally try to shelter themselves from any kind of alcohol. Like they'll change the way that they go home because there might be a bar they used to go to, there might be a liquor store. And I understand like early on, maybe you do some of these things, but these are people who are like deep into recovery who were like years in, but not really have ever learned how to cope and process this shit. Okay. And to this day, whenever they see alcohol, if they're somewhere, they start shaking. Okay, that's violent.
SPEAKER_05:They haven't really dealt with the underlying issues on how to process it and deal with it and manage it. You can't hide forever, man. Because let's be real, a a can opening that's not dangerous. I know that it does lead to dangerous situations from you know in people's minds.
SPEAKER_00:Diet Coke, they say, is pretty bad for you. It is really bad for you.
SPEAKER_05:And I don't, we're like, y'all, it's weird. We're on a kick of Diet Coke, and it is unlike us because we drink water like it's going out of stock.
SPEAKER_00:I still drink a gallon of water. I just drink a gallon of Diet Coke on top of it.
SPEAKER_05:We've been on a Diet Coke kick. It's really odd. Um, but in order to change or heal, you really have to deal with that stuff. You cannot avoid it forever. It's just not healthy. Um, another situation would be like emotional pain, and your coping would be, oh, stay calm. Let's journal, let's brief through it, let's do all this. Which, okay, that's that's okay. Sure. That's gonna help you in the beginning. But you're in order to change or really heal, you have to make the life adjustment that is creating the pain.
SPEAKER_00:You have to get away from the thing that's creating the pain.
SPEAKER_05:Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:End of story. Like that at the end of the day, like you could do all these things and you can cope, you can get through some hard times. But if your life is coping, we have a problem. And both of us have lived in this zone before where your entire fucking day is essentially coping. And then at some point you recognize this is usually long after you you get really good at coping, you realize how much energy it's taking to cope. And you go, fuck, you know what I could do.
SPEAKER_04:I could just make a change. Legit.
SPEAKER_00:But I but what I hate is that someone would hear that and go, Well, it's not worth coping, then. No, it is. It is like those tools are so important. Like that is those are the tools, that's the fabric of life that really is that to learn how to deal with uncertainty and to learn how to deal with stress. But if it's constant and that is all you're doing, like you're training for the Olympics of Olympics of coping, you know, full-time coping artist over here, that you you have got to change the environment and the things that is causing you to cope. Yeah, you've got to change that.
SPEAKER_05:You have to solve problems. That's not solving problems.
SPEAKER_00:No, you're not solving a problem in that situation.
SPEAKER_05:So I know we've talked a little bit about self-care and whatnot, but I kind of want to talk about the self-care trap, like when regulation replaces resolution. Um, I know that there's a lot of stuff on the internet that probably talks about self-care, self-care, self-care. Hell, we talk about self-care all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:But I feel like we dig into it a lot deeper than what most people think self-care is.
SPEAKER_01:Surface level self-care.
SPEAKER_05:But yes, but it doesn't necessarily equal healing. It's problems being solved that is gonna equal healing. But like, you know, we tell people to breathe and journal and ground and do all those things. Again, great tools. But if you're using them to tolerate the dysfunction instead of change it, it's not healing, it's just maintenance. You're just maintaining, you're just like going almost, you're really just surviving at that point. It's another level of surviving instead of thriving.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_05:It's surviving with better tools, right? You know? Um, like you can't yoga your way out of chronic stress caused by, you know, you being avoidant from it, about avoiding it. It's like, oh, yeah, I would love for you to go to yoga. I think it's beautiful, it's very helpful. It does teach you a lot about life. But again, it'll only be temporary. You've got to make some actual changes within your life. Um, it just doesn't repair, it doesn't repair things. You know, like just taking care of yourself doesn't really address what the problem is. That's why I have a problem with it's like just focus on yourself or just stay in your lane or just do what you need to do because you're still not solving the actual problem. You're still just coping. You're still just dealing with that one part of yourself when in reality you've got to do something a little bit deeper or a little heavier.
SPEAKER_00:You know what's interesting, I think, is that repair is what we all want, right? We all want repair. We all want to find a way to rekindle what we once had. And uh it seems like everything is all the efforts are concerted toward that, just that one thing. When the reality is that very few people will get there. Very few people will because it's really not up to you. Like we just said, you cannot you cannot cope your way into getting someone else sober and healthy and emotionally mature and safe. You can't do that. You can try. Good luck. Let me know how it goes in 20 years. It doesn't work, it just doesn't work. And I wonder why there aren't more resources for how to leave a bad relationship, how to leave a toxic situation, how to leave a toxic boss, how to grieve the loss of what you wanted, how to just deal with the loss in general. Like why there aren't more resources for that? Because that's really what people need.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, but we still live in a world where it's like the goal is to keep the relationship together and uh healthy, yeah, but unhealthy, no. The goal is to keep people whole and safe and make sure that they are you know safe for their children.
SPEAKER_00:There's a difference between a relationship going through a rough season and a relationship that has never had a good one, but you told yourself it.
SPEAKER_05:Or I mean possibly it did in a short period of time, but it's probably hasn't been that way in a long, in a long time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So what's up?
SPEAKER_05:You want me to keep going?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. You're like, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:It's usually how I go. Okay, anyway. Um, so real self-care is asking you, what do I need to face, not just soothe? And I love that because that's actually giving us the uh option to make some changes and to actually solve some problems. And there was this note that I pulled that said emotional emotion regulation without problem-focused action doesn't reduce psych uh physiological stress markers long term. So I was just thinking about like problem-focused action and taking action or whatnot. Like, that's what our program does. That's what our community calls do. That's why we allow crosstalk. That's why we allow people to speak what's on their mind. Like the problems that are solved in those calls and those meetings are amazing. It's like someone asks, I don't know what to do here. I'm having this situation. How do I handle this? And it's not like, okay, you need to just, you know, go to the gym or you need to breathe or you need to, you know, do some present moment awareness.
SPEAKER_00:Focus on you.
SPEAKER_05:Focus, it's it's stay in your legs. It's it's here's what I did to get through it. I had to contact a lawyer, I had to do this, I had to make sure I had all my ducks aligned. I had like it's amazing and it's beautiful to witness because you come out of those meetings just feeling a little bit lighter. Like, okay, I've actually got some action that I can take today that's gonna benefit me later. And it's not always big stuff. Sometimes it's smaller stuff, it's whatever they're dealing with in the moment. Um, so anyway, that's just a little plug within our program is that we have a 10 module online program that we built with a licensed therapist. He's the clinical architect on it. Um, we talk about how your relationship has been impacted. Um, we have an addiction module, we have trauma bond information, we have self-care, we have self-awareness, we have boundary setting uh exercises. Uh, should I stay or should I go? Communication. We have so much. It's so much built into it. And it's self-paced. Um, you can I typically encourage people to do at least one module a week if they have the time. Um sometimes it's heavy stuff. Sometimes it's really heavy. Um, I don't think it gets there are some parts that aren't super heavy, but it's still like, oh, this is inf interesting. And it's stuff that you can use within without uh within your life and not just your relationship. So if you're interested, go to independentlystrong.com um or twfo.com and you can check it out there and you get a weekly call on Wednesdays with other people going through it.
SPEAKER_00:All right, let's go through some examples.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, I'm glad that you saw my note there because I was just gonna keep going to the other one. Okay, so let's think, let's look at some real life examples of coping versus changing. I know I mentioned some earlier, but let's think of a relationship conflict. So coping would be going silent for a few days to keep the peace and pretending that everything is fine, or maybe you just sit back there and overanalyze. Yeah, giving them space, or it's like, well, you frame it as frame it as like uh keeping the peace, you know, like literally. You're like, I'm not gonna speak how I feel because it's just gonna cause problems or it doesn't matter, and da-da-da. But changing would be like we need to talk about what happened happened and then address the behavior, even if it's uncomfortable. Again, this is very difficult with somebody in active addiction. It doesn't necessarily work, but I do think that it's important for you to have a conversation with somebody. You need to let it out and not suppress your emotions because the way you're feeling is how you feel and it's valid. So um coping would be just like shrugging it under the rug. Like you, you can't do that. You need to look at it and like address it somehow. Uh work stress.
SPEAKER_00:Let me do this one.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, go for it.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Getting through work stress. You can sit there every morning. You can journal. You can make a gratitude list about why you're grateful for your job. You can make a gratitude list about why it's a privilege, in fact, not a uh a burden to have the responsibilities that you have. Uh, you can talk about the anxiety caused by your job and your therapy sessions, you could have conversation with professional coaches and professional groups about it, and you can sit there and uh continue to show up every day in a job that's burning you out and it's sucking your soul dry. That is like what coping in a job looks like. And I speak from experience here because I've done that for a very, very, very long time. Uh, or you could update your resume, or you could set boundaries and um tell your boss what you are and are not gonna do and just see if they fucking fire you or not. Um, you could schedule a meeting with your boss and talk about your workload and your expectations. Uh, you could advocate for yourself. And at the very end of the day, the fact of the matter is that job is not does not need to be part of your life long term. End of story. You are sacrificing your happiness for a certain lifestyle, and that is what it finally boils down to is that there's just my happiness and my health, and this is the stuff and all this stuff. And sometimes you write it out, sometimes you have to write it out, sometimes you don't have a choice. I know the economy's tough right now. I wouldn't encourage anyone to go tell their boss to shove it right now. Don't get me wrong, but I've I've been through this and I've I've coped for a very, very, very long time. And guess what? Still miserable, nothing's changed, still miserable, nothing's changed, and I can cope all I want, and I'm still miserable. I know what has to happen ultimately. It's gonna be a change of structure of that position, and there is a there are things in the works right now to make that happen, but it is miserable and it sucks and it doesn't get better.
SPEAKER_05:But it took you a long time to understand that like there are changes that do have to be.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, dude, I didn't come to terms with this in the matter of how long is this episode now? 52 minutes? Try multiples of 52 weeks. It's taken me.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, you threw an F-bomb in there. You haven't thrown one of those in a while.
SPEAKER_00:I've been trying to get better about that.
SPEAKER_05:That means that you're serious about it.
SPEAKER_00:I was honest.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, so I'm gonna talk about parenting overwhelm. There's a lot I was honest. Are you not honest most of the time?
SPEAKER_00:That's just when it's just you're me, man. There's an F-bomb in that's it.
SPEAKER_04:No, you really haven't been.
SPEAKER_00:I've been trying to get better about it because seriously, and then I'm the one in the background.
SPEAKER_04:I go, I'll be saying all the bad words. I'm like, I need to do better about this. I've even talked to our um the support group about that. I'm like, yeah, I need to kind of chill on that, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_00:There were clips where I was I would have to mute so much stuff because I'm just cussing and I'm like, oh, that's not that's not class. There's no class in that, man. Come on now. Honest or not, I I can I have a bigger vocabulary than that.
SPEAKER_02:Agreed.
SPEAKER_00:There is power in a well-placed F-bomb.
SPEAKER_02:Agreed.
SPEAKER_00:It just can't be all the time. No, because then it's just trashy.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, I felt called out on that, but that's okay. That wasn't for you, that's for me. I'll work on that. Well, you're the one who taught me how to talk like that. Let's think about it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, it was me. It's my fault.
SPEAKER_05:Let's think about this. Really? You work in the trucking industry.
SPEAKER_00:That's true.
SPEAKER_05:Okay. And your family, when I speaking first, when I first, okay, we're getting off topic, but this is a story. When I first met your family and I was around them, the F bomb was everywhere. There was shit, there was F, there was G D, there was everything. And I was just like, I never heard my mom say that F word. Like we my parents would say damn, they would say hell. She would throw shit around sometimes. I think I heard her say it one time behind closed doors growing up. And I I don't remember specifically what she was talking about, but I remember her saying that. And I was like, so when I met your family, like even you kids were saying it. And I'm like, I uh red flag, apparently, guys. Like, there's another one of those red flags.
SPEAKER_00:No, they say it's a sign of intelligence, I think.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, so honestly, like I picked up on that over the years, and and now I do it so much, and I'm like, that's actually not me and who I like am to the core. Like, I'm actually well, and now I am.
SPEAKER_06:I mean, I've been trained that way. You know, it's true.
SPEAKER_00:Getting blamed for one more thing.
SPEAKER_06:I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying that I was definitely influenced. Influenced is more than fair. I was influenced.
SPEAKER_00:More than fair.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, I don't want to say blame. I have a I have a choice.
SPEAKER_00:You could have kept being Miss Cleaver if you wanted to. You're right.
SPEAKER_06:I could have.
SPEAKER_05:Well, the peer pressure was real with this one. Okay. Anyway, let's go into parenting overwhelm. Let's say that you um are staying up late scrolling to decompress after the kids go to bed. Like that's a way of coping, but you're not really changing anything. It's not going to help with you being overwhelmed. Um, in order to change, you should probably create a bedtime routine for yourself. Um, maybe ask for help or renegotiating responsibilities with your partner if you have a partner who's able to do that. Um, but basically, change has to happen. We can't just like sit there and decompress.
SPEAKER_00:Pause. There is a period in a kid's life where all you do is cope. And it's about five years long from the time that they're born to the time they're about five and they start going to school. Hold on for dear life and cope as best you can. I do agree. It doesn't get any better.
SPEAKER_04:No, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00:Like in that period of time, I've remember looking at each other and being like, well, do we just suck at this? Like, this is horrible.
SPEAKER_05:I don't remember much of it. It was a blur, but I tell everybody it's the first five years of your kids' lives. Like you've you're just hanging out.
SPEAKER_00:And then it starts over again when they're teenagers, kind of.
SPEAKER_05:I think that's where we're at.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. So that's fun. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um asking for help goes a long way though.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, it does.
SPEAKER_00:But you shouldn't necessarily. No, I'm thinking about in a healthy dynamic where it's like we're both making efforts and it's like, hey, I I'm just overwhelmed right now. Can you take some of the slack? Yeah, bro. I got you.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, like we're able to ask those.
SPEAKER_00:Uh I'm not talking about one parent that's carrying the burden of it all and then feeling like they have to like some like you know, being pitiful, asking for help that they should be getting anyway. I'm not talking about that. We've had combos about that in relationship or in discussions about that. I think we did it with Celeste uh in the mental load of motherhood.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Talked about that. That's not what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_06:No.
SPEAKER_00:Talking about like if you were struggling right now and you're like, hey, can you can you run them to the dance studio because I'm just like I can't. Totally. I got you.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, we got each other in that.
SPEAKER_00:And I could ask you to take in baseball or something.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. Same for sure. It's mutual respect there. Okay, emotional neglect in a relationship. So coping would be listening to podcasts about this, I guess. Um, staying busy and telling yourself you're fine alone. Like basically, like getting all of the information, but not really taking the information and doing something with it. Right. So you can educate yourself all day long about it and then you're not really thank you. I was you were reading my mind because I was gonna ask you for one.
SPEAKER_00:Um what were you on about?
SPEAKER_05:I was saying that before you got distracted with the candy.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know, because I'm like, I really wanted a piece of candy.
SPEAKER_05:Uh again, it's just like education, educating yourself and not taking action. Like, are you really utilizing the tools that are being provided by the things that you read or you listen to? Um, and just kind of telling yourself, like, I'm just gonna do this alone. It's okay.
SPEAKER_00:Like this, this this show very well could be that thing for you as you're sitting here and it's more or less like mental masturbation about what needs to change rather than just taking action to change.
SPEAKER_02:Possibly.
SPEAKER_00:You could just listen and listen and listen and listen, but nothing's going to change until you take action.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And that's and I've I've listened I listened to business podcasts for as long as I could possibly stand it before you actually take it. I finally got the balls to do something about it.
SPEAKER_05:No, it's true.
SPEAKER_00:I did it for years.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I know. And I think that I've I've done the same thing too, like even with our stuff. I I took it in, but I didn't and I've utilized some of it and I've applied some of it, but I'm having to apply it in different parts of my life. So it's making it a little bit more difficult or complicated, I guess.
SPEAKER_01:For sure.
SPEAKER_05:But yes, I had taken it in a lot more without taking action, and now I'm finally taking action. So it just kind of like it's like a train, you know. You you um you can start going and then you just have to wait until it like catches up or whatever. I don't know. Um, but changing in this part, if like if there's emotional neglect in your relationship, you naming your needs directly and deciding what you'll do if they continue to go unmet is part of changing. Um, I had to do this. I had a tough conversation with Matt regarding this and what we were just talking about earlier. Um, instead of me just like being angry about it or just letting it slide or not saying anything or telling myself that it's okay, I'm just gonna deal with it. I actually had a very important, meaningful, direct, intimate conversation about how I need, I need something, I need space, I need something to change, you know, and it was scary. It's like, oh, I don't know how this is gonna go. How are we gonna do this or whatever? But I'm like, I'm in a safe relationship. I shouldn't be afraid to say these things.
SPEAKER_00:And and how did it go?
SPEAKER_05:And it went great. It went really well. I feel like I have released a lot. Now I know this doesn't, if it doesn't go great within your relationship or if they're like really not respecting you and your boundaries and it's deflective and it's like a very difficult conversation to have, and you feel unsafe and you feel worse than when you were in it, that's a sign to do something about it. That you were not in a safe space to where you can have open conversations about things. Um, nothing's gonna change if you don't just like if you don't change or if you don't have a conversation. So we had these conversations, it went great. I was scared, but I was like, I'm much lighter now that it did happen. But I'm grateful that I have somebody who is there to hear me out. And it's not like he's necessarily validating, like we're taking action, like you're really listening and being there for me and other other way around. Like it was just a productive conversation. That's what intimacy is. That's what you know, being emotionally connected is is being able to have conversations that are really hard, um, where you fear how the outcome is gonna what the outcome is gonna be, but you do it anyway because you know where you stand and however they react, it doesn't matter. You know where you stand and what you need to do to go forward. So if you would have responded to me the opposite, the opposite, I would still have to do what I said I was doing.
SPEAKER_00:It would just suck more.
SPEAKER_05:And it would suck it would suck way more because I would not have the support of my partner, which is like what you want from your partner. Like you, I I feel like I feel like I've really had so much I've supported him through a lot of things. Um I may have my opinions on something. Things, but I've always been very supportive of the things that he does and I allow him that space. And if he needs to take time or whatever he needs to do, go for it. I I respect you for that. Um, but if it would have gone a different way, I would have definitely it would have been way more challenging. So, and I know a lot of our listeners, it's very hard to have difficult conversations with your loved one. But if that's the case, that means that something needs to change and no coping, you know, mechanism is gonna get you through that. No, it'll just help build yourself up, but you just have to be very um aware of what you're going through.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Uh financial stress is another one. Uh, if you are someone that gets um a lot of joy out of purchasing things, like there are a lot of people, you know. I've looked at credit delinquencies and credit usage, and it's actually down the most recent quarter, but how accurate is that data, even? I don't know where it's coming from. But um, there are a lot of people who who cope that way. Um, and you can pretend like your bank account doesn't exist and just deal with it tomorrow and spend, spend, spend. And uh ultimately the you're gonna have to pay the piper uh at some point.
SPEAKER_02:Catch up to you.
SPEAKER_00:What would change is if you actually sit down and go through your numbers, and it's gonna be a very humbling and sombering night when you sit there and you go through that stuff, you make a budget and you face the anxiety head on. That's what change actually looks like. It's creating a budget for yourself. I think everyone's been there before with their finances, you know.
SPEAKER_02:We did this a few years ago. It was fun.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know about fun.
SPEAKER_02:I thought it was, but I love numbers and it's it's enlightening.
SPEAKER_00:It's always enlightening, you know, because no one likes to really think about it. Um, especially when you're going through shit, because it is a way that we get relief. Um you know, there's something to be said about this for the reason they call it retail therapy, because that's it feels like it provides us something like that, but it's it's not always the best, especially when you know you have finite finances, it's limited.
SPEAKER_05:It's man, retail therapy is only temporary.
SPEAKER_00:Like a lot of people.
SPEAKER_05:It's literally like a drug or an alcohol.
SPEAKER_00:Like you're sometimes it feels good. Don't get me wrong. Don't get me wrong.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, and I've I've done it occasionally.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, we bought a pizza oven.
SPEAKER_05:Oh, yeah, we did.
SPEAKER_00:Still super excited.
SPEAKER_05:We did, I'm excited about that. But we're still pretty mindful. Like we don't go crazy and we talk about our purchases too. But um if you're avoiding, that's coping. If you're sitting down and actually looking at your stuff, that's changing and healing and going through the product process. Um social media burnout. Yeah. Um, so coping would be taking short breaks or deleting the app for a week. I encourage people to do that a lot.
SPEAKER_01:All the time.
SPEAKER_05:All the time. But guess what?
SPEAKER_04:It doesn't always work.
SPEAKER_00:You still have to get down like you know what does work though is an app that I've forgotten to use. We've used screens in and then brick. It works. It literally just keeps you off of it. You will find other things to occupy your time with, setting a daily limit for yourself, just like we do for our kids. Um, or like if I I don't know why we do this. I've been guilty of this in the past, is that we follow accounts that are triggering. Whether this is politics or it's something from a controversial creator, but following accounts that trigger us, like, why do we do that shit?
SPEAKER_02:Are you talking about us? No, in general?
SPEAKER_00:Us, the oh, just the population. Okay, gotcha. Right. Gotcha. Yeah. People, like, why do we do this? To I I don't know, but unfollow that shit. It doesn't exist. Like it doesn't change the fact that stuff is out there, but the way in which they frame it is designed to get a rise out of you so you engage with it. And you're they get paid when you do that, by the way.
SPEAKER_02:Right, they do.
SPEAKER_00:They get paid every time I see someone angry in someone else's comments. I'm like, they're getting paid by this.
SPEAKER_05:Right, you're just fueling them. They don't even give a fuck.
SPEAKER_00:They're trolling most of the time.
SPEAKER_05:Most of the time it's rage bait. So yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, rage bait's a business now. Don't be fooled, man. Stop doing it, they stop getting paid. But yeah, um, give yourself a break from social media, man. This shit can be bad.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I mean, or yeah, get off if you have to. Yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Um, this is something I've tried in the past too, is uh burnout recovery. So, like from my job, I went, I I uh I tried to resign a couple of years ago, or was it last year? I think it was last year. I tried to resign. I'm done. Here's my date. No, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_02:That's two years ago.
SPEAKER_00:No, we can't lose you. Don't do that. Take a month off. And I remember coming home and being like, they told me to take a month off. And Paige was like, Well, that's kind of cool. It doesn't fix anything.
SPEAKER_04:Not what I said.
SPEAKER_00:It doesn't fix anything. That's where we were at. It's like, should we just take it?
SPEAKER_04:Like, all this is is allowing you like to stay longer. It's just a breadcrumb of like, here, this is what I can give you. If you just keep going.
SPEAKER_00:If you return to the same routine, it's going to end up in the same abject failure. And it that is true. You have got to redesign your schedule, your um which is what we've done here.
SPEAKER_02:That's what we're trying to do.
SPEAKER_00:You have to whatever it is, saying no to commitments that just absolutely drain you. You have to learn how to delegate things, uh, redefine what being productive actually means.
SPEAKER_02:That's a good one.
SPEAKER_00:Whatever, you know, there's a million ways. We can do this with emotional pain too. This is a really, really common one where um we can I've I've done this and I'm guilty of this. We can over-spiritualize things. Uh, acceptance is the answer for one. Um, you know, a lot of people kind of reframe that in another way, like everything happens for a reason, instead of admitting that like that's a really hurtful, shitty thing, and that just sucks. And just sitting in the suck.
SPEAKER_05:I I did this for a long period of time, and I've actually come to the realization recently that I would uh justify or rationalize things this way, um, instead of just saying, you know what, this hurt me. And if you say it like that, like you're able to process it more whenever you say, This hurt me. Um you have to allow yourself to grieve or get angry um or you know, set new boundaries that prevent that harm to being repeated. That's why I have a problem with some things saying, like, oh, you can't be angry. You can't, it's like, guys, like we're we're meant to be angry. We're supposed to be angry. Like it's literally telling us something. We just need to do something about it. So if we rationalize and justify every emotion that's negative we have and saying, oh, this is happening for a reason, you're not gonna get through it and you're not gonna process it. It's gonna come out in other ways.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and we can sometimes cope with boundaries too. We can kind of like beat around the bush with boundaries. We can say, Oh, look, I have boundaries, but if you don't enforce those boundaries, it what are they really? It's sort of like a coping mechanism in some ways. Like you are saying, oh, it's fine. When we know damn well it's not fine, that's not okay. Like you stepped over a boundary of mine. And so what do you do? You go vent to your friends about it. I know that I've been guilty of this as a manager before. I know that uh you probably have to if you're managing people. It's like, this motherfucker did X, Y, Z. And the question's always, well, did you tell them that's not okay? Do I really have to say that? Like, who wouldn't know? But you do. You would be shocked. You do. You have to be firm with some people about things. And you have to have that. That's why you get paid the what you get paid. You have to have those tough conversations with people. You have to have boundaries. This is the same thing in relationships. You can't just say it's okay if it's not, and then complain about it without actually enforcing the boundary and having the tough conversation, having that confrontation, whatever it is to advocate for yourself and your boundaries.
SPEAKER_03:Ooh, that was good. I like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's that's a tough one, man.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:So they all these I think we've we've gone through differences between coping and changing. And I hope that you can start to see like what we're getting at is that you can cope and you should learn how to cope. And coping is a valuable skill for finding peace. It is a valuable skill in maturity. It's a valuable skill in spirituality. This is a valuable skill that you will need in pretty much every single aspect of your life. Because if life is guaranteed anything, it's uncertainty. And there will be things that come up that you've never dealt with before, and you will need those skills to learn how to get through the other side and to persevere and be resilient. But I hope you know the difference that you can't cope forever. And there is such a thing as putting an end to coping by just simply changing your environment or your circumstances. There is a there's a difference. And I hope that you know what that looks like, and I hope that you know that we are trying to be respectful to your situation, understanding that we don't know what you're going through right now and that you have reasons for what you you do, what you do, but allow us to challenge you on some of those reasons. Allow us to challenge your reasons respectfully, gently, lovingly as you look at am I coping to cope when I could really just change something and just do away with all this nonsense that I spend my hours of my day doing. Because what I would hate to do is rob anybody of the valuable skills that both of us have learned in overcoping. But I would also hate to keep you stuck forever in a situation that we know everyone knows you'd be happy with outside of. So it's it's nuanced, right? It's what we do here. Uh, we have these non black and white conversations. These are very gray, and it's sort of that that that weird shade in between the two outcomes. Uh, I hope that you get the experience of of learning to cope. I hope that you get to use it. And then I hope at some point you also get to see when it's too much, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. I like how you said that it's a coping is a way of finding peace, but I would say it's not a way of keeping peace.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's a good one. I like that. That's a bumper sticker. All right. That's all we've got, y'all. We appreciate it. Uh again, keep an eye out for what we decide to do with our own boundaries with the show and everything else, and how often we're going to be releasing content. And we appreciate all the support we've got. Both of us have talked about burnout here lately, and we've got nothing but support about it. Take care of yourselves. Uh, we love you guys, but you have to take care of yourselves. Like, we love, we love you guys so much. Like we appreciate that. We have the most unreasonably reasonable listeners and fans, and just thank you guys for for for letting us feel like we can be human too in this. As much as you guys may enjoy this stuff, understand that we're humans and uh that we need that. And so we're gonna make some adjustments, as we've just talked about, because we can't cope anymore. At some point, we have to make a change. And so we're going to start small with the changes and then go from there and see how we feel. Yes. And and we'll let we'll we'll always been transparent with you guys. We'll keep you in the loop. We'll keep you apprised of any decisions that we end up making and understand that we reserve direct to change our minds, and that could change tomorrow. But we don't know what that looks like yet. We'll keep you in the loop and we love you. And until next time, I'm Matt. I'm Paige. And we'll see you.
SPEAKER_05:Bye.