Breakfast of Choices
Everyone has stories of transformation. And some of them include moments, or years of intense adversity, a time when it felt like there was no hope. This podcast, "Breakfast of Choices," holds space for people to share their true, raw and unedited stories of overcoming extreme struggles, like addiction, mental illness, incarceration, domestic violence, suicide, emotional and physical abuse, toxic family structures, relationships, and more. Trauma comes in so many forms.
Every week, as a certified Peer Recovery Support Specialist, Recovery Coach, Life Transformation coach and your host, I will jump right into the lives of people who have faced these types of adversity and CHOSE to make choices to better themselves. We'll talk about everything they went through on their journey from Rock Bottom to Rock Solid.
Through hearing each guest's story of resilience, my hope is that we'll all be inspired to wake up every single day and make our own "Breakfast of Choices". More importantly, that we'll understand we have the POWER to do it.
When someone shares their story, it can be unbelievably healing. And it can be just what someone else needs to hear at that exact moment to simply keep moving forward. So I hope you can find "that one little thing that sticks," along with hope and encouragement to just keep taking it one day at a time.
And now let me be the first to welcome you to the "Breakfast of Choices" community, a non-judgemental zone where we learn from, lean on and celebrate one another. Because the opposite of addiction is "connection", and we are all in this together.
If you would like to tell your story, I sure would love to listen. Please email me at Breakfastofchoices@gmail.com.
Respects,
Jo Summers.
Breakfast of Choices
You Were Never Broken: How Letting Go of Labels Changes Everything- The Infinite Recovery Project-with Guest Jason Shiers
What if everything you've been told about addiction recovery is missing the point?
Jason Shiers' story begins with profound loss – his father killed when Jason was still a child, followed by a descent into addiction that started with food at age 5 and progressed to heroin by 13. By 15, he was in psychiatric care. What followed were decades of prisons, institutions, homelessness, and eventually, a 22-year journey in traditional recovery that left him maintaining sobriety while still feeling fundamentally broken and empty inside.
Despite becoming a highly-credentialed psychotherapist with an impressive list of qualifications, Jason found himself perpetually trading one addiction for another – drugs for food, food for relationships, always seeking something outside himself to fill the gnawing emptiness within. The breaking point came when he realized that he wasn't alone; even as a therapist, he was surrounded by recovery professionals privately struggling with their own hidden addictions while publicly portraying wellness.
The profound shift in Jason's life occurred not through adding more credentials or techniques but through a fundamental realization: he had never been broken. The stories he'd been telling himself about who he was – the traumatized child, the addict, the psychiatric patient – were just that: stories happening within him, not the truth of who he was. In that moment of clarity, the perceived gap between who he was and who he needed to be simply vanished.
Jason's Infinite Recovery Project challenges conventional recovery paradigms that label people as permanently damaged. Instead of pathologizing human suffering, he helps people recognize the intelligence behind their addictive behaviors and rediscover their inherent wellness. His approach isn't about learning new techniques but about unlearning harmful beliefs and reconnecting with our fundamental okayness – what he calls the "pilot light" that can never be extinguished, no matter how dark life becomes.
If you've ever felt that traditional approaches to addiction, trauma, or mental health haven't quite reached the core of your struggle, this conversation offers a refreshing alternative – one that honors your intelligence, recognizes your pain, and never requires you to see yourself as broken to find healing.
infiniterecoveryproject.com
Founder, Director and CEO Jason Shiers
From Rock Bottom to Rock Solid.
We all have them...every single day, we wake up, we have the chance to make new choices.
We have the power to make our own daily, "Breakfast of Choices"
Resources and ways to connect:
Facebook: Jo Summers
Instagram: @Summersjol
Facebook Support: Chance For Change Women’s circle
Website: Breakfastofchoices.com
Urbanedencmty.com (Oklahoma Addiction and Recovery Resources) Treatment, Sober Living, Meetings. Shout out to the founder, of this phenomenal website... Kristy Da Rosa!
National suicide prevention and crisis, hotline number 988
National domestic violence hotline:
800–799–7233
National hotline for substance abuse, and addiction:
844–289–0879
National mental health hotline:
866–903–3787
National child health and child abuse hotline:
800–422-4453 (1.800.4.A.CHILD)
CoDa.org
12. Step recovery program for codependency.
National Gambling Hotline 800-522-4700
Good morning. I am here with Jason Shires on Breakfast of Choices Life Stories of Transformation from Rock Bottom to Rock Solid. I am your host, jo Summers. I am very excited to have Jason on today. I have been talking back and forth with him a little bit and I'm going to read you a little something of what intrigued me about Jason and why we're sitting on a podcast together right now. This is something Jason has something called the Recovery Project, which we'll get to, but this is something that I read. It says a message to all you guys following. Here's why you should listen to me about addiction.
Speaker 1:I'm a certified advanced psychotherapist in transactional analysis, a qualified person-centered therapist, nlp practitioner, cbt therapist. I train directly with Michael Neal. I'm a certified transformative coach. I've done the Hoffman process, studied with Rupert Spira, been in recovery for 30 plus years, still reading. Does that make you lean in or does that make you scroll? Because when I see posts like this on social media listing credentials like a shopping receipt, I don't lean in, I switch off. You know what it really says. I don't know who I am, but I hope these titles will convince you that I matter.
Speaker 1:I used to think that too. I used to think if I stacked up enough certifications, read enough books, studied with the right people, then maybe I'd finally feel qualified to help someone. Maybe I'd finally feel like enough, it didn't work. I just ended up with a longer list of letters next to my name and the same gnawing emptiness inside. And if I ever respond to someone with a comment that starts well, I'm qualified to be right, because please come and shut the laptop for me, because none of that makes me more useful to you. And that also should tell you something about finding a guide. I want to sit beside you, not above you, not as a therapist or a coach or a guide, but as someone who knows what it's like to search your whole life for freedom.
Speaker 1:Yes, titles, open doors. Yes, some people feel safer knowing you've trained. And yes, I've worked hard and have a list of them. But here's what's important Nothing I've learned is more valuable than learning to be human. If the Infinite Recovery Project ever becomes a place where you need a PhD in suffering to belong, we've lost the plot. So hang me, if you like. I'm human too. I get insecure. I want to be seen. I've said things I regret. I've done things I've been judged for. I'm going to go ahead and stop there, jason. I want to be seen. I've said things I regret. I've done things I've been judged for. I'm going to go ahead and stop there, jason. I found that to be extremely open, honest, raw, vulnerable and freaking beautiful. That's what I found in that. Just let me sit next to you. I've been where you're at. That says it all and I'm very excited to have you on today.
Speaker 2:I got really touched listening because it's the essence of everything, you know, just like stripping away the credentials and stuff that we collect as professionals just to somehow thinking that we're more qualified or better able to listen, but actually stripping that back to just being human, you know, like to just the presence, the feeling of presence and the feeling of being heard and being seen, and how valuable that is in my work. And I only learned that after all the credentials you know, it was like it was too simple to start off with. You know, if you somebody's on that journey to being a therapist or professional in the helping field, it seems like they need years and years and years and years and letters and letters and credentials and studies and so on, and actually the most powerful thing you can do is sit with another person and say absolutely nothing and just really hear them.
Speaker 1:I'm getting a little emotional hearing you talk about that myself, Jason, because it's so, so true. I talk a lot about self-love, about fly first, loving yourself, because the self-hatred in the addiction world, the substance use world, is so raw and so real that I really feel like maybe a lot of people just don't understand that and find that to be maybe fluffy when I'm talking about self-love. But it's extremely, extremely important to me to sit with someone and just let them know that they have the right to be worthy and to love themselves. I can tell, reading a lot of things that you wrote, you have that in your heart as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, people have, like there's a narrative that we're kind of subjected to socially. You know self-love candles around the bath, going to the gym and getting a massage or something and you're not talking about that, right, I just wanted to make that clear. You know, you're talking about the feeling, the beauty of another person's heart. You know, just in the presence of a moment, or the sound of silence when two people can just sit and hold eye contact and just feel each other's presence. You know, that's kind of what I'm talking about when I talk about self-love.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. There's a difference between self-love and self-care, a hundred percent. And so just in looking over a lot of work that you've done, I really, really feel that from you. So that's why I was extremely, very touched and very happy to have you on today. So thank you again. I know you're in the UK and we have six hours difference and we worked it out and it's what? 7.30 for you, I think, right now in the evening, 1.30 for me. So again, thank you for that. And you know, jason, I spoke with you a little bit and maybe just if we could talk a little bit about where your story starts and how you got involved in this field, and when I was asking you about that, we both kind of looked at each other and laughed, because when somebody says, you know, tell me a little bit about your story, we know it goes back really far right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes it's amazing when somebody turns up in my office or virtual office and says, well, I just became an alcoholic last year and I say, how old are you? And I'm 30. And I'm like, yeah, maybe it started before that. Now it's kind of like if you've really looked, you kind of know that it's been. That experience of feeling separate, less than different, you know, has been with you for a lifetime, you know for sure. And I guess that's where my story kind of also starts.
Speaker 2:You know, my story starts with a tragic loss of my dad. He was killed, you know, when I was young and you know, and then into escapism, and you know, food became the drug of five or six years old. Food was my escape, my comfort, my grief, coping mechanism, you know, completely unbeknown to me or anyone else around me, you know. Then chaos and then theft and crime before 10 years old and being kicked out of schools and sent into by 10 years old, sent into the psychiatric system dedicated for depression. By 13 years old I was a heroin addict. I was sectioned by the time I was 15 in psychiatric care. You know, it was just like like that. It was not, it was not pretty, it was not fun. It was not. Nobody knew what to do with me. My mum was at her wit's end trying to cope with me, you know. And I'm not surprised, you know cause I've got my own children so challenging it can be and I've got got.
Speaker 2:I've got pretty good ones, you know, and it's like I just find them challenging. So, yeah, you know, that was my journey into the system, you know, into drug addiction to prisons, institutions, psychiatric sections, long lists of diagnoses nobody knew what to do with me, nobody had a clue and then ending up in treatment, a 12-step treatment center. By the time I was 23, after 10 years of being in and out of prisons and psychiatric wards and homelessness and chaos, to be told, I was an addict and blindly taking on the label of addict and blindly going to meetings for 22, 23 years, you know, like maintaining some form of recovery. You know I use the word recovery in a I see that bracket, you know, because if I look back now I would call it anything but recovery and I would call it substitution. You know, I would call it that, I would call it whack-a-mole, like I put down one thing and I picked up another. I put that down, I picked up something else and there was always something showing its head ready. Like I, I went straight back from drugs to food. You know like there's so much detail here that I'm skipping over. But like you know, like even in the treatment center I was. I was stealing food out of bins, out of the kitchen. I was stealing food off the dinner tray. If somebody left the treatment center in the morning and they still got delivered a meal, I stole the meal. You know it was like I gained 150 pounds in eight weeks in a treatment center. I went on to have six or seven cosmetic surgeries in those 22 years of recovery, trying to escape my inner world, my feeling about myself and my body In gambling sex relationships.
Speaker 2:I went to four or five different fellowships and smiled at an A meeting saying how great my life was, because that's what everybody did. Became a psychotherapist, ended up with a multiple list of credentials, because each time I thought, well, if I could just understand this one, I could understand myself. Got to a point where I was kind of, you know, highly credentialed and qualified and so on. And other people started coming to me that I knew that were also counselors, worked in the field and so on. Uh, sponsored people and people came for therapy and they were all doing the same thing as me. They were going to meetings saying their life was great and secretly hiding addictions you know like in relationships cheating, infidelity, pornography, gambling. Food was always an issue pretty much for everyone. So I was kind of disillusioned.
Speaker 2:You know, at that point I was like looking around thinking I've got all these qualifications and I'm clueless about myself, about, about happiness, that's what it was. You know, I'm clueless about happiness. What is happiness? Where does happiness come from? What's this elusive spiritual awakening that we talk about in the steps, because nobody seems to have had anything that that looks life-changing to me. I'd never wanted a sponsor.
Speaker 2:In that 22 years I did have sponsors and I did the steps many, many times, but pretty much always it was out of desperation rather than admiration. You know, it was not like that. I looked to somebody and thought I really want what you've got. It was usually the fact that I had the most clean time and there was nobody else kind of similar. So I had to pick somebody, sometimes with less clean time than me, that had some sort of recovery that they were portraying in meetings, you know. So it's the only choice that I had, because I was active, I did service, I went to conventions, I did everything you know in the 12-step process, but I was still desperate inside. I was still empty, I was still lost, I was still confused, I was still acting out, I still had secret addictions, I was still full of shame. You know, all that stuff was still going on. And actually when I really got to know other people, they were too, you know, they were too. So I had this endless quest for peace. You know, if you want, you know how I see it today. I would say I trusted my internal knowing of home because I never gave up looking for it. I never gave up seeking, searching.
Speaker 2:Now, in 12 steps, in therapy, often people would say seeking is the problem, you need to stop seeking. Seeking is the addiction and that's what you need to just give up. You need to accept you have a disease and you need to stop seeking and you need to do meetings and pray and so on, and then you'll be free. You know, and that was bullshit, you know that is not true and I don't suggest that to anybody because you know, everybody knows of home, everybody knows of a place of peace within themselves because you're born in it. You know, you know it inherently, know it, and the thing with seeking is is misguided. You know, you know it inherently, know it.
Speaker 2:And the thing with seeking is misguided, you know. So we seek outside ourselves. We seek in sex relationships, money, things, cars, houses, jobs, titles, status, everything that does not give us anything but a temporary respite from our own longing, our own internal longing. So we kind of innocently misattribute peace and happiness for things. You know, we get a thing the internal sensation, longing of the body and mind stops. We think, oh God, yeah, this is it. But the next day it starts again for something else a new jacket, a new car, a different girlfriend, a bigger house.
Speaker 2:So I kept on that, you know, and I did all these spiritual things until I had an awakening. I mean, I kept going and I had it. You know, and I did all these spiritual things until I had an awakening. I mean I kept going and I had it, you know, and I don't know if that's the truth for everyone. Some people I know are still seeking and searching and they haven't had it and they haven't found their place to it.
Speaker 2:But I had an experience where it was like it's difficult to put into words for me, but it was really like that. I saw myself from a different standpoint. It's like all my thoughts, I'd spent my whole life in the suffering of my thoughts. It's like I got up every day and I created a story of myself. I am Jason, I'm the little boy who lost his dad. I'm an addict. I've got 15 different psychiatric diagnoses. I've got a sex addiction, love addiction, gambling addiction, money addiction, gambling addiction, money addiction, drug addiction and I have to go to all these meetings to cope, right. So these were the thoughts that I had every single day.
Speaker 2:And then I suffered because there's this, there's this imaginary gap, right, and it's like this idea of where I think I need to be to find peace further clean, more qualifications, more money, better girlfriend, smaller body. And then there's here where I imagine I am big, fat guy, all this stuff that I tell the story of about myself, addict, a trauma sufferer, blah, blah. So this gap that doesn't even exist looks like it exists in my mind and if I can just close the gap, then I'll find happiness. So I'm in the seeking of closing this gap my whole life, and what happened was the gap just disappeared in a moment. It just disappeared. I realized that all this stuff I'm thinking, all this stuff I'm creating in my mind is not me. It's just happening inside of me. So who am I then Like? So it just came in this real spiritual realization who am I? This stuff is happening, but actually I've always been okay, I've always been okay. Am I? This stuff is happening? But actually I've always been okay, I've always been okay, I've got 100% track record of being okay and I've spent my whole life worrying that I'm not. What is that about? You know where does that come from? So it's like this whole gap collapsed in a moment, you know, literally a moment.
Speaker 2:Over these two days. I was in America, in Los Angeles at the time, but over these two days it was like I just started looking at all these areas of my life thinking it's just all the problems. You know, the apparent problems, the gap. You know, if I had more money, if my bank account number was bigger, if my waist size was smaller, if my chest size was bigger, if my girlfriend looked different, you know all these things that I imagined I wanted needed, they just disappeared. It was like they were gone. You know, they weren't there anymore and I was thinking, shit, nothing in my life has changed, nothing's happened and I'm free, you know, and it was like that was. That was my, my freedom moment.
Speaker 1:So, for me, what you just described to me is you learn to love yourself just the way you are, just not on the labels that were given to you. Not the diagnosis, not the trauma, the peace. We can do chaos and drama anytime. We know how to do that. It's the peace and joy. We don't really know how to do right. And you came to a place where you're like fuck, I'm actually okay. I have made it through all the hard things that I have been through in my life. I'm okay here. I am right. Isn't that amazing? Like it's amazing.
Speaker 2:It's kind of abstract to explain, right To say that I am not my thinking, you know, but it was like there was two of me, you know there was me, that was okay. And then there was this thinking part of me, thinking experience that happened inside of me. We could say, but it was not me, whereas before I was totally identified with the thinking experience that was going on on a daily basis. And someone said to me well, your dad was killed, right. And I said yeah, and he said and how many times did that happen? I said it happened once. He said, yeah, and you've spent your whole life, every single day, suffering that loss, as if it's happening right now. And I thought, shit, yeah, I do.
Speaker 2:I tell that story myself as if I imagine myself the victim of that experience. That that's my life and I've had this, been given a difficult hand was the way I used to describe it to start my life. But then now I realize what a gift that was. Not that I would wish it on anyone, but now it's a gift, you know, it looks to be a gift.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, that spiritual awakening. You know that you're talking about. I see, when people are sitting around looking at each other, in meetings, in group even going looking for the person that's had the spiritual awakening you know what I mean. You can see the eye. Is it them? Is it them who's had it? I want that. And you're so right about you're trading one addiction for another all the time. It's okay. Well, I'm good because I'm not doing meth anymore. I'm just drinking now. So I'm good. I'm not an addict. No, it's not really how that works. And it's funny. You just described the whole thing. You just literally described all of it in five minutes. That was pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, just to add to that, like just to say that it was not abstract, because it was abstract in a way that I couldn't comprehend it and it took me a couple of years of being able to formulate what actually happened. But like to make it real, let's just make it really real for somebody who's been clean for a while 20 plus years and going to meetings and so on. Let me tell you what changed. You know, like that my eating disorder of since five years old to perhaps 42, 43 years old, disintegrated overnight. It stopped. I never had, it's never come back since.
Speaker 2:My relationship with the psychiatric system stopped on that day and it's never happened again since I contacted my therapist that I'd been with for years at that time and said the next session will be our last one and I never went back to that therapy.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've done many things since but I never went back to that because it was based in the fundamental misunderstanding that I am a back to that, because it was based in the fundamental misunderstanding that I am a broken individual that needs fixing. So all those things changed my relationship with money, my relationship with not straight away, but pretty soon afterwards I met a girl and I'd been longing for love my whole life and I now have a loving relationship with somebody very beautiful, who can't even speak about it so much, who really knows me, who sees me and knows me so deeply and it's so scary sometimes and it's so beautiful too, you know. So all that stuff changed in that moment too. So it was not just an abstract realization of the mind, it was a massive shift, you know, in so many ways If you can.
Speaker 1:You've tried a lot of things. You've done a lot of things. You've tried all the things. You did the meetings, you did the steps, you did the 12 steps, you did all of the recovery things that you were told to do. Right, what do you attribute that? Overnight? Because it really wasn't overnight, it was your whole life. But what do you attribute that change to? When you look at it now and you look back on it and you go God, dang it. I was already okay all that time. I was freaking okay. Why did I do that to myself? How do you justify, how do you make that?
Speaker 2:It's a good question because it is the foundation of my own infinite recovery project and when I look back at it, I can't say it as an exact science, but I can say it as I see it.
Speaker 2:You know, as I experienced it, it was that I was in the room with somebody who knew without a shadow of a doubt, who didn't doubt whatsoever, that I was okay and I was just telling myself a story. And then over recent years after that, I had two people, two mentors in my life that knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was okay and I was the one trying to convince them that I wasn't. Listen, if you knew I've had 15 different psychiatric diagnosis. If you knew I was medicated when I was 10, if you knew I was taking heroin when I was 13 and I was stealing from my own parents and going to jail. If you knew how bad I was, you'd know that it's a good concept that you've got, but it doesn't apply to me, you know, because I was terminally unique. You know, terminally unique in how bad I was. You know how bad I thought I was.
Speaker 1:What you were telling yourself right, how bad you were yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but these people, they never doubted me. You see, and when you hang out with people who truly know that you have well-being inside of you, that you are not broken, you are not damaged, you are not nothing wrong with you, there's a part of you I call it the pilot light. The pilot light is always on, you know, like the boiler. When you have a little light inside and you check if that light's on and you turn the heating up and it all lights up, it's like those people knew I had that. They knew and they never, ever, ever doubted it. And what happens is when you hang out with those people, you start to see it yourself. You start to go what if they're right? What if they're right that I'm okay? What if they're right that I'm not damaged, I'm not broken, I'm not? All these things that happened to me? Then you know that's quite scary to let go of your story of victimhood of a lifetime.
Speaker 1:That's it right there. You just said it. That's it right there. I see so many people want to hold that story so tight. They want recovery, so to speak, but they want to hold that story like the Linus blanket and drag it around from place to place and don't want to put it down. And that's where the pain lies. That's where it is. That's what we have to deal with, right? It's not all the addiction, it's not all the substances, it's not the food. It's that story that you tell yourself. I always tell people please don't say you're broken. Let's not say you're broken because you know what those cracks are, where the light shines through. Let's let that light shine through. You're not broken. You never were broken, you know. Are you familiar with breathwork? Do you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've done many. I don't teach it or anything, but I'm familiar yeah.
Speaker 1:So I just did some breathwork before we got on this morning. I had a really some good clarity and a good release this morning. But we have brought that into the treatment center. One of one of my best friends, sherry Lynn. She, she teaches breathwork and I'm honored to be able to stand alongside her and help not facilitate, but be there for the clients when we do this and watching some of the releases that they have and how scary it is for them for those feelings to come up that you actually are going to deal with.
Speaker 1:Because we don't deal with our feelings, right, we just shove and shove and shove and mask and stuff and we don't want to deal with those feelings because we might actually have to let that story go. And I see it I mean I literally see it happening almost every day right now, almost every day that just what you said like you, you're okay, you're actually okay, you're not all those things you've been telling yourself that you were, and you found people that believed in you. Yeah, and stop telling you that you were broken. Right, if you're going to keep going and getting diagnosed and getting medication and getting diagnosed and getting medication, you'll be broken for your whole life, right. I understand that I'm not knocking medication. Some people need medication. Please don't think I'm saying that in a whole is bad. I'm just saying you sometimes have to deal with those feelings, you have to deal with those traumas and you have to learn to rewrite your own story that you play over and over in your head and you're okay. You're actually okay.
Speaker 2:It sounds kind of nothing. Much doesn't it Just saying I'm okay Because it's a kind of term. Much doesn't it just saying I'm okay because, like, it's a kind of term. That's just we say all the time but for someone who's spent a lifetime being diagnosed and being told you know where every professional's office you go into and they're sucking in air by that I mean they're going you're really bad, you know. It's kind of like you've got all this thing and it's like you're a big job or you're a hard fix or you're really worse than everyone else. You know that was like every professional I went to Seriously. And then you're going to somebody and they're saying that's not true, you're okay and it's like that's what the foundation of my work.
Speaker 2:I call it undoing rather than doing. I call it slowing down rather than speeding up. I call it unlearning rather than learning. I tell people I've got nothing to teach you that you don't know, you already know it, but you've just forgotten. You know it's kind of like you've forgotten, you just don't realize that you're okay. You know it's like you are okay and you just don't know it and it's like so.
Speaker 2:So I'm not teaching people anything new, I'm undoing all that shit that they've been told that's not true over the years, to see what's left underneath it, which is the inherent part of us, that's always been okay, that's there, that's never left, that can't be damaged, can't be removed, can't be taken away, not by anything. Because if anyone qualified for the most craziest shit that they've done in their life, you know, and they had the most letters and diagnosis and lists and things you know it was me and like so I, you know, I like use myself as a guinea pig, as saying that you know, I was pretty bad, to be honest, and it's like this applies to everybody every person, Absolutely, Absolutely I.
Speaker 1:I love this so much because I really, really believe in everything that you're saying. I really wholeheartedly believe that we're okay. You know we are okay. We have to remember that we're okay. We've had some bad shit happen to us. We've had some bad shit happen in our lives. We haven't made the best decisions. That does not define who we are. That's not who we are. Those are some things that have happened and some things that we have done, but it is not inside who we are. Jason, do you mind if I ask how your dad was killed?
Speaker 2:I was killed in an accident. Okay, like a car accident or a truck accident, yeah, but he went out and just never came back.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay. How did you explain that to yourself as a child, do you remember?
Speaker 2:This is the thing you know, the trauma of kind of losing both parents, really, because one was killed physically, the other was killed emotionally. You know the trauma of kind of losing both parents, really, because one was killed physically, the other was killed emotionally, you know, and she didn't know what to do with that tragedy of being lost with two children and so on. So we never talked about it, nobody ever talked about it. You know, I've got somewhere now in my office, because it was about 10 years ago, when I was in a training, they said why don't you get your old medical record? So I applied for them.
Speaker 2:It took took months and months to get them from the eighties, the psychiatric report, and um, it's, it's crazy, there's no mention of grief in them. There's no mention of grief in there. You know, it said that I'm actually said one of them said I have hyper, hyper motor retardation. In other words, I'm slow, slow, you know. It's kind of like I'm depressed and they needed to medicate me for depression. You know, and there was no mention of grief in that report. You know, and it's like I was nine years old or 10 years old and you know it, just like it's crazy, the the gap of understanding for professionals at that time to now like uh, the lack of hope for any child that's in that trauma response and that dark place of not being able to make sense of the world, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, I'm sure you've heard of the book, maybe even read the book. The Body Keeps the Score, yeah.
Speaker 2:I've read it.
Speaker 1:So true, right, that is stored in your body and you held onto it and you didn't process it. You didn't deal with it, you didn't talk about it. It was just there and all of the therapy you went to as a child, you never spoke about grief, right. They never. They never, like you, lost your father. They never mentioned it, they never tried to talk to you about it. I can certainly understand where your mom was. She was grieving herself, not even knowing how to process it her own self, let alone process it with two small children. But for someone to never have spoke to you about it and you just held on to it, you just literally let it eat you and rot you from the inside out yeah, you know the sub.
Speaker 2:The subtitle of my book is the intelligence of addiction, you know, and it's like all those things. Now it's like I was just talking to my daughter she's so smart, she's 15 and she's doing psychology and I said I'll give you, they're trying to teach her about brain chemical imbalance, which is a she's an incorrect theory for depression. You know that was banded about for a long time and it's been proven that it's known. So I said to to listen. I said I give you one tip you can be the smartest kid in your class, you know. I said everything that you're learning about there's one. If they're trying to teach it to you as if people are damaged and broken and needing help, it's wrong theory. You know it's wrong. There's nothing to learn in that.
Speaker 2:But if they're trying to teach you about the intelligence of the human being you know intelligence of all the systems. You know it's kind of like that if you lose somebody and you have to cope with your internal world, then finding drugs and alcohol is an intelligent response to that internal loss, because your system seeks for safety and ease and comfort. You know. So everything you look at you look at it through the eyes of intelligence. Trauma response is intelligence. Depression is an intelligence. If your system is overloaded with too much going on, it shuts down and it needs a break.
Speaker 2:Addiction is an intelligence. It's a way of finding ease and comfort. You know, you have to see it through the eyes of intelligence. You know, and that's why that is the subtitle of my book, because it is an intelligent response. And seeing these things through the lens of intelligence, you know, helps us make sense of what's really going on and particularly like in the in the body, keeps the score. You know the most common thing talked about is the fmri scans of the veterans. You know, like looking at the brain activity of the prefrontal cortex shut down and the amygdala overload and the nervous system activation and so on. It's all intelligent, you know. It's intelligent from perceived threat point of view. You know that's what happens in the system.
Speaker 1:It's your fight or flight. It's your response. Yeah, absolutely. It makes sense that that is shut down. Overloaded, doesn't know how to handle it, right. We're not meant to live in fight or flight. That's supposed to be a response, right? And when you're living in it, it's no wonder that we shut down. I mean, your body can't, can't you know? When we're firing like this, your body doesn't have a response to that other than to stuff and mask and, like you said, try to feel better. Give itself something to try to feel better. It's not that you're broken. You got to wake up again. You got to wake up and remember what happened and deal with that. And it's not fun and it's not easy and it's a process in itself, but it's a whole lot easier than living your whole life, your whole life, into your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, thinking that you're broken, if you're lucky enough to live that long in addiction.
Speaker 2:Because we're not, we're not broken, we're okay that's, that's my motivation for my infinite recovery project, for my book, for my process, because, uh, I mean, like how else would a child come to believe that they're broken if it was not installed into them by professionals? You know, like we go to these professionals, um, who don't actually know they, they're not malicious, I'm not making anyone bad or wrong here but I'm saying that these people don't know, so they've been taught a model of mental illness, a model of pathology, and then they pass that down. So we are, as human beings, vulnerable in a suffering and struggling state. Go to a professional, receive a diagnosis or a pathology or a label of some type. We innocently go away.
Speaker 2:Telling the story of this is the cause of my problem, but it was never a real thing. To start with, it was a subjective opinion that somebody had been educated in a theory. You know, I learned that I was broken. It was installed into me by professionals, you know, and I have no blame or anything. In fact, I'm grateful for that today because that was what motivated me on my journey to create what I'm doing. But what I'm doing in my work is helping people see what's right with them and I'm not installing any further idea that there's something wrong with them. You know, because that's because two things one is once you believe you're broken, and the story we talked about earlier. It is a story and I can see that and you can see that for people, right, but the person in it can't see it.
Speaker 2:It looks so true to them and feels so real to them that you just tell them that is just a story of your mind. They're like no, it isn't, that's my life, you know. It's like they really hold on to it with strong beliefs.
Speaker 2:So that's the one thing, and the other part of it is stigma. You know, like the stigma because then they don't want to come forward for help because it's stigmatized. I've got this thing addiction isn't it a disease I've broken for life, don't I have to not drink or use one day at a time, forever, you know so nobody wants to step up for that. 90% of people that have an addiction don't ever come forward for treatment. Why do you think that is Because of the common narrative about what it is. So my project was about one, undoing the stigma and helping people feel free to come forward, because you see that it's an intelligent part of them. And two, helping people recover without having to adopt a label, a diagnosis or a pathology about what's wrong with them. You know.
Speaker 1:Boy, how popular are you, Jason?
Speaker 2:I'm hated by professionals. I can tell you that because it's so triggering for them because their whole identity, their financial security, their life, their partner, their relationships, their kids' view of them, their status in the community as professional expert addiction, blah, blah, blah. So when I'm offering a completely different lens of something, I get a lot of pushback and a lot of resistance, which I expect, not because people don't want to listen or look at a different way of seeing addiction, but because their whole ground that they walk on feels threatened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and I can definitely see that. I can definitely see that that would be the case and almost a how dare you attitude, right? How dare you? You're in this, you know you're a therapist yourself. How dare you kind of buck that system, right? I could see that being a little sticking point for you, but you're doing it, but you're doing it.
Speaker 2:It's a paradigm shift. It's a completely different model of illness versus model of wellbeing. You know it's two complete opposite paradigms, in the way, the lens that we look through, and you know it's such a beautiful. I mean. The other thing I often say is like how could people who are asleep know what it is to wake up? Because when people come right, they just want one thing they just want to stop. Please, just help me stop. I just want to stop, I need to stop, I've got to stop. You know it's like I can't carry on.
Speaker 2:My kids, my life, this that you know and I'm like is that it Is that all you want, because this life is so beautiful, so amazing. How could they know that? How could they know what beauty is available? They couldn't possibly know. So I'm like saying to them hey, if you just want to stop, that's the easy part. There's so much more. Do you want more? You want more than that. You want a beautiful life. You want to have joy and contentment and connection every day. You want to have beautiful relationships. You want to feel touched in your heart. You want to feel awake and alive and connected to the world, because that's an offer too, if you want it.
Speaker 1:I just had someone say to me literally last week, she said I had her describe just that what do you see for yourself, what do you want your life to look like? Let's forget the story you've been telling yourself what do you see, what do you see your life looking like, what would you want for yourself? And she said it all. And she actually said it beautifully. And she said but, but how can I have all that? I can't have all that. How can I have that? I said how could you not? How could you not?
Speaker 1:And really the story she'd been telling herself forever is there's no way that I can have all that. Because I'm broken, oh my gosh. And not wanting to let that narrative go, you know, I want to hold on to that because I want to be broken, because how, how do I let that go and change my whole life now, oh my gosh. You know, when I drag that blanket around with me until I die, and it was just the look at the look on her face. You know how. But I can, but I can really have that Like just the not no belief that the world is beautiful. Yeah, and I think that's why a lot of my work, I feel like they the not no belief that the world is beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's why a lot of my work, I feel like they are not the science. You know, the science is fixed, you know, of what we're really pointing people to their well-being, but the art like, how do you point people to that? You know, how do you help people have an experiential realization? Not not just me telling them, because I can just tell them they're okay and it means nothing to them, but I can show them Just by listening to somebody. I tell you now, everyone who's in the dark will tell you something that's a door opening for you.
Speaker 2:If you're trying to point somebody to their well-being, they'll tell you about a moment they had a realization a friend, a dog, a pet, an animal, the beach, nature, a tree, something you know it's like where they just were free in a moment, a fire, about a fire at night, and it was like, and I just feel at peace. Well, what happens in that moment? Where does all your darkness go? It's kind of like yeah, I never, you know, I never really thought about that. So get them curious about themselves, because they're already actually having that experience. They're just well entrenched in the story too. You know it's kind of like which is the dominant narrative of their own mind. So you invite them into curiosity about themselves rather than trying to force your opinion that they're okay onto them, because nobody takes that, nobody can receive that, you know. But they can become very curious about their own experience when you start to point to things that are already happening for them, you know.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that and that's just a new way, that's a new methodology. Really, right there, the curiosity of it. I love that.
Speaker 2:And it's a childlike quality as well, isn't it? Curiosity. You notice how curious children are. They touch it, they put everything in their mouth, they taste everything, they check it out. They want to know what it is. Curiosity is very childlike thing. So in your curiosity about someone else's life, they feel very heard and they feel very received, you know, and it's kind of like and it brings something out in them, it relaxes them. You're creating that sense of safety for the nervous system to actually allow that wondering for them about what. Well, why is that? You know it's kind of well. Why is that in those moments, in that day, at that time with that person, what is it that happens? For me, it's a wonder about themselves, you know.
Speaker 1:Then they're starting to question it.
Speaker 2:I like that I like that a lot.
Speaker 1:Carrie does this thing at Breathwork. Where she has them do a, she calls it a heart opening. Where they grab onto we. Where she has them do a, it's called she calls it a heart opening. Where they grab onto um. We do a little different every time, but this last time it was grabbing onto a moment where you felt peace in your life. You, you felt the most joy and the most peace that you've ever felt before. Grab onto it, bring it to your heart and then put your other hand over it and hold onto it. That's yours, that is.
Speaker 1:That is part of your story, and I've had so many people say after that oh my gosh, there is peace in my life, there is joy, there is things that I can look at and reach out to and go. That happened too. That actually happened. Also, not just the negative, right, there was also some positive. I forget about that sometimes. So what you're saying is so. That just is so clear to me right now for you to say you know just the curiosity side of it. You know I love that. That's beautiful. So on your recovery project, tell me, tell me kind of what you do, if somebody was interested, and kind of learning a little bit more about what you do. How would they go about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah it's. It's all in wheels in motion at the moment because the book is just about to be released, anytime in the next couple of weeks. There's two books there is a workbook and the main book. I'm going to run processes online. They're not live yet. I'm going to do training for therapists and professionals and I'm going to offer it to treatment centers as a replacement program for their process.
Speaker 2:So all this has kind of been coming together at the moment as a structure from a business point of view and so on, and depending where people, what they want to do, you know, as professionals, obviously things are going to be different, but even for professionals it's the same experiential journey to yourself. It is a journey to yourself and, as we said before, most professionals have learned a pathology. They have not gone on a journey to themselves and that's you need to go on that journey, because you can't teach this work and you can't share this work without having gone on that journey yourself to yourself, to know yourself, to know your vulnerability, to know your heart, to know where your trauma responses show up in relationship. You know it's like, if you don't know that, if you're unaware of that, if you're unaware of that place of wellbeing within yourself, that knowing of okayness, then you cannot possibly point someone else to it. You know, regardless of your credentials, regardless of how many years you've studied and what the letters after your name are, you can't you know. So that's the journey for professionals, for people in suffering. It's the same journey. It's a journey to yourself. It may come about differently, maybe different exercises, different processes, different nervous system, meditations and so on and stuff like that, different contemplations and reflections, but for one, we're undoing what's not true and we're looking at, let's say, they believe addiction is a disease.
Speaker 2:Then it's really easy to undo that. Well, where did you get that from? Who told? Well, somebody told me. Who told you? How did they know? Where did they learn it from? Take your time, get on the internet and see where it originated and see what it really is. You know it's kind of like.
Speaker 2:So when people start to do that, they go yeah, well, I kind of blindly believe that. You know it's kind of like. I'm sure it's true, though how do you know? Well, I identify with the right, okay then.
Speaker 2:So we start to look at what's not true and and help people come to their own realizations that I have blindly took on someone else's beliefs, cause that's the truth. I've took on someone else's beliefs. So then we understand what is a belief, you know. Like what is it? It's kind of like it's a piece of information that's been delivered to me. You know that I have then taken on and told about myself as true, you know. Well, are there any beliefs that are true? No, there's nothing that's true. You know there's no facts anywhere.
Speaker 2:Well, how do I operate? In fact, my whole mind is based on a lens, you know, of belief that I've created as a response to the level of adversity. And then there's this character at the central point of my whole story that I call I or me. And like, what is the source of I or me? Well, that's also belief as well. Who am I if I cut myself open? Is there any personality, is there any character in that? No, that doesn't exist't exist, you know, as a fixed thing. So I am a series of thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, and at the center of all stories that I tell is a character I call I, I call Jason. Well, who is Jason? And upon investigation, I can't answer that. Nobody can answer that, because there's nothing that solely identifies who you are, you're not your age, you're not any of these things. You know, it's kind of like.
Speaker 2:So so we go on that investigation towards ourself, finding out who we are, what we've learned. That's not true. And so we get to undo all this stuff that we've learned to believe and then we're kind of feeling a little bit naked, like, oh my God, I'm not really this 50 year old guy who's just a dad to two kids, who's a psychotherapist. None a 50-year-old guy who's just a dad to two kids who's a psychotherapist. None of those things define me. Because I existed before those things, before my kids. I existed Before psychotherapists. I existed Before 50, I was 49 and I still existed then. And then 48 and 47 and I was still me. Okay then, so that's not me, I'm not my job title, I'm not my status, I'm not my real. Then who am I? It's kind of like.
Speaker 2:So then we question this whole human experience. It's a very human first experience and in this process a lot of untrue stuff falls away. You know that's not true. I realize that's not true anymore. I realize that's not true. And you know, at the center of it is our connection to our heart and the truth of who we are, you know the love, the love of who we are, the love of being human. And people start to get glimpses of that beautiful experience of just being alive. You know just the connection, just the helping an old lady across the road or carrying someone's shopping bag, or saying hello to somebody in the morning. My God, that was so amazing, somebody just said hello to me. You know it's going to start to feel alive again, you know, start to feel awake, alive.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that Connection is the opposite of addiction. I say that every day. I don't think I was the first one that said that, but I think I say it every day. It is the opposite of addiction. And I say we're all in this together because I feel like we are all connected, we're all energy. We're all connected in some way, shape or form. And I think when we stop carrying that story, stop carrying that pain, stop carrying that trauma and dragging it around and living in it, we can begin to realize there's a big world out there, there's a lot of life left to live and we don't have to live it how we were. We can make changes and rewrite that story anytime we choose.
Speaker 1:So I'm really loving what you said today. I'm loving your approach. I feel like we have the same approach. So I don't know, there's some weird validation today that I have. So I wasn't looking to have validation today, jason, but I'm feeling like, oh my gosh, there's another soul out there that believes how I believe. So I'm finding that beautiful right now. So that is pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Thank you for that. Thank you, and after reading, you know just a lot of your information that obviously, when I hear from someone and we start talking about coming on the podcast, I need to do my due diligence right and see who I'm talking to and this person is, you know, before we're going to have an open, vulnerable conversation, right. And so just in reading all of your material that you have, you know that's out there right now. You are the person that I thought you were going to be. I find that very awesome, very authentic, just as who you are. How you write is who you are, and that's very cool.
Speaker 2:Very cool to experience. Very cool, very cool to know. Thank you for noticing.
Speaker 1:I feel, acknowledged.
Speaker 2:It's nice, right, it's nice that somebody can see that, because I'm quite often dealing with people that think I'm some argumentative, awkward guy with some new theory of addiction that they don't quite understand, just because they're a professional. It's like that's not what I'm seeing, that's not what I'm doing and that's not who I am. I see, if anybody takes the time to get on a call with me and spend time with me, they know that I am a heartfelt, sensitive man. You know I might be a big man covered in tattoos who made himself look tough because he was scared, you know. But actually I'm not that you know. That's not who I am and thank you for noticing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, and, and you know, just thank you for being real and authentic enough to and I'm not going to say buck the system, because that's not what you're trying to do, but just being real. You know, just being real and and putting out there in the world that people aren't necessarily broken just because someone told them that they were right, and I think that's huge, I think that's a huge takeaway for today. And, like you said, you can't just tell someone they're okay and they go, okay, good, I'm healed. But there is ways you can show them and there is ways that you can sit with them and connect with them and love them through it, for lack of a better term and there is ways to do that.
Speaker 1:And I know again, I talk about in class all the time, you know, fly first loving yourself, because it's very, very important to love the person that you already are. You know you've already been this person. You're already sitting in front of me, you're already here. Let's love this person right here. You know you don't have to get to here, be something else, or, you know, get this next, okay.
Speaker 2:If I quit this, then they're going to love me. No, that's not how that works. Let's love you right where you're at. Yeah, I want to add a little second, quick second, or something. The other day this was cause I still do a lot of my own work Somebody said to me she said would you still be you without the five-year-old you know?
Speaker 2:And it's like, and I and I and I went inwardly to myself and I sat and it's like I had this vision of myself as a little boy and it's like, and I was trying to do this, like in my mind, this picture in my mind of pushing this little five-year-old self of mine away and I was like no, no, I don't want to let go of that. You know, I want that. That's me, that's who I am. So it's like that's what you were just saying. He's like I want to, because that little boy is sensitive and he's angry and he's tough and he's all those things. That's me, that's who I am. I don't want to get rid of that part. I don't want to find bliss and freedom and perfection in the human experience. You know, I want to embrace who I am and that's I'm already me. That's what happened to me that shit happened and that's who I am and it's like and I'm embracing being him.
Speaker 1:Yep, I love that. I love it Because, again, people do go through some traumatic events, right, and you know the numbers are 80 to 90% of trauma is where addiction comes from. It's just the not dealing with the trauma and we all have things that happen to us in our lives, but we're all not in addiction, right, and so somehow there's a little disconnect there. Somehow everybody's not an addict and a lot of people have had trauma. So you know, there's definitely that connection of rewriting that story that you tell yourself or that somebody told you, most likely the story that somebody else told you who you were. So I thank you for today, really thank you. I appreciate it and I hope that you will. I know your book's not out yet, but when it comes out I hope that you will link that to me so that I can put that in the show notes and to have that up there for you. Tell me, tell me again what it's called.
Speaker 2:The Infinite Recovery Project.
Speaker 1:And that will be the book the Infinite Recovery Project. Okay, perfect, I can't wait, I'm excited.
Speaker 1:I'm excited for that, so I'll be looking for it here in a couple of weeks and I hope that you don't mind, I'll be sharing it as well, sharing it out there, and I would like to kind of go through it myself and you know, look at the workbook and go through it and just I feel like it's huge. So congratulations for you for doing that. I appreciate it. Well, thank you so much, jason, for coming on today and sharing a little bit about who you are. I see you, I see you, and just thank you again for agreeing to come on and wanting to come on and sharing today. You never know I say this all the time you never know when someone's going to hear that one little thing that sticks. Hopefully, today's the day that somebody heard something that made sense for them.
Speaker 2:So thank you, thank you.
