Deep Dive with Dr D
Discussions on life and living with Dr D. A man who has risen from the lowest depths of life to the amazing life he has now.
Deep Dive with Dr D
Radical Responsibility: Taking Ownership Without Shame
Radical responsibility transformed my life from homelessness to success, and it could change yours too. After hitting rock bottom multiple times, couch-surfing and living on the streets, I discovered a powerful truth: accepting my reality without shame gave me the power to change it.
The turning point came through counseling when I learned to take honest inventory of my life—the good, bad, and ugly—without judgment. This radical acceptance freed me from the paralyzing grip of shame and self-pity that had kept me stuck for decades. By acknowledging "this is what it is today" and taking ownership, I reclaimed my agency and power to transform my circumstances.
For those struggling with addiction recovery, trauma healing, or life transitions, this mindset shift is revolutionary. I spent years blaming my mother for my childhood trauma, my abuser for my patterns, and "the system" for my struggles. While these factors certainly impacted my journey, staying in victim mode prevented me from moving forward. True healing began when I forgave my mother, processed my abuse enough to prevent it from controlling my daily life, and stopped waiting for someone else to rescue me.
My mantra now is simple: "Do the work, be consistent, expect great things." Not every effort yields immediate success—that's just reality—but consistently taking responsibility dramatically increases positive outcomes compared to remaining passive. Remember, "I was halfway through life before I realized it's a do-it-yourself thing." While we all need support (I certainly didn't achieve success in isolation), the first step always comes from within. You absolutely have it within you to do amazing things when you embrace radical responsibility for your life.
Find me on other socials here: https://linktr.ee/davidandkatrina
Hi everyone and welcome back or to the show, whichever one you are. I appreciate you if you take the time to give a listen to the podcast and the last one I talked about career paths. The title is career paths are not linear how I found my calling in higher education and during that podcast I talked about. You know the reality that I've worked in in blue collar jobs and white collar jobs and that you know it doesn't have to be this or that. It can be one or the other, or you can do both or you can do whatever is going to work for you. Today I am going to talk about a topic that easily has probably helped me the most out of all of the things I've learned along the way, as someone who's rebooted my life a couple times along the way, someone who's literally was couch surfing and on the streets to now having a pretty successful life in many ways, someone who has been to a lot of counseling, and this is actually where I learned the topic I'm going to talk about today and I'm going to give my spin on it, excuse me, and it's the term radical acceptance and in this podcast, the title of this podcast is Radical Responsibility Taking ownership without shame. Ownership without shame For many people like myself who have had a past that can be riddled with active drug and alcohol use, with behavior that goes with that, for people that have tripped and fallen and made mistakes in a variety of ways. I think what happens in some cases is people really get stuck in hanging on to the guilt of their past, and what I want to encourage you to do is do what you need to do to heal from that past right, whether it is, you know, going back and apologizing to people, whether it is a healing from your own trauma, whatever that looks like, from childhood, so that you can move forward, so that you can just take what happened in your past, deal with it and then move on, leave it in the past. And radical acceptance I should explain this is this concept of it's. So so it was man. It really changed the trajectory of my life in a lot of ways and my life as a person in recovery.
Speaker 1:Radical acceptance says you look at your life and where it is today the good, the bad, the ugly and you say to yourself you know what this is, what it is. You do it without judgment, you do it without shaming yourself. That can be hard, but you do it as best you can with just taking stock, like I said, the good, the bad, the ugly of where you are in your life right now. You just say this is it, this is what I have, and I take ownership for that. And in some ways you might, I don't want to take ownership, but you kind of got to do that. This is what it is right now. Does it mean it's going to be this way permanently? No, does it mean it's always going to be this way? No, what it means is is this is what it is today. And there there's some power. When you do that, you kind of take ownership and your power back by saying I have what I have in my life today. It is what it is, it's not all bad, it's not all great and I'm going to move forward with what I have right now. And by doing that you can take that ownership and you can say I can make the change I need to make to change my life right.
Speaker 1:I always say this for people in early recovery, because there can be this mindset you know, I don't have any skills and I say well, you know, take a look at that. Take a look at that. Think of all the time and effort we put into active addiction. Right, there was actually a lot of patience that you had. There was a lot of perseverance. So you do have skills. So you can look at your past and go, oh, it was all bad and maybe there was a lot of bad, but there was also some good that you can take out. There's skills that you can take to help move your life going forward. So there is power in saying you know what? I radically accept my life as it is today. I'm going to take radical responsibility and this is mine to change. You'll hear this saying in a lot of different ways and I'm going to say because I want you to take ownership for your life.
Speaker 1:There are speakers out there that talk about and it's not Brené Brown, it's the other one that you know. She says it really well and it sounds really raw, but it's the truth and that is no one's coming to save you. No one is coming to save you. No one is is coming to save you. You have got to reach out your hand. There's a lot of help out there. There's people waiting to help you, but you do have to kind of take that first step.
Speaker 1:And for me, this radical acceptance was a really big first step for me because I remember it was when I was rebooting my life at 40, 41 years old and I felt like you know, I had just thrown it all away and the counselor I had said well, just hold on a second, just look at what you have, take stock, accept it as being what it is in that moment in time and then move forward, take ownership and and there is power through that all of the success that I've had in my life as far as my job opportunities, my uh relationships, my friendships, my, my relationship with my wife, with my son and really on a continual basis in my life today is taking ownership. It can be easy to be pointing outward right, well, that person did this or that entity did that and that entity did that. When I talk to people in treatment, I'm going to give you this example of kind of taking blame out of the equation for yourself. I want you to write the word blame and then put a big black mark through it and put that up and just take blame out of your vocabulary. I say to them you know, if you're system involved many people in early recovery are system involved, meaning they have requirements from the courts or their probation officer or families, family systems. They have a spouse or a parent who are saying either you do this or else right, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:I say this happened to me, this was in the. This was in my first second year recovery, very first recovery in the mid-90s. I was mad because I had to call this line every day and if my color came up, I had to make my way to downtown Tacoma and I had to pay out of my pocket to pee in a cup to prove that I wasn't using drugs. And I was like, oh, you know, if they want me to do it, they should, you know, just pay for it. And I remember this guy came up to me and he says I hear you, you know, you're frustrated because your system involved and you have to do all these things. He says listen, I want you to do something. And I'm thinking, gosh, what's he going to do? You know, is he going to give me a loan? He's going to help me? And that's not what it was. He says I want you to do whatever you need to do to get out of those systems and then stay out. And in essence, what he was saying and I didn't even realize it way back then is accept what I have, radically accept where I'm at and do what I need to do to get out of those systems, jump through the hoops right, and then stay out. And I was like that was an epiphany for me way back then.
Speaker 1:And then, years later, when I'm in counseling and I had returned to use and I'm getting back in recovery and I had a you know another failed marriage and my business had failed, my dog had died, all of these things, and I was like woe is me. It can be a comfortable place to be right. The self-pity, the woe is me. I can't catch a break. And that counselor was helpful in helping me to just accept it for what it was and gain my power back by saying I do have a say in my life. So that's what I encourage you to do. There's massive, massive power in that self-ownership that can really help you take the steps you need to take to transform your life.
Speaker 1:And I, you know, kind of the victim mindset and here's what I also say about this is I don't want you to be a victim your whole life, right, I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and neglect and you know the crazy of my childhood If you've followed my podcast, if you've read any of the things I've written about my life. It was a crazy life and I for a long time blamed my mom. I stayed in that victim mindset. I am doing the things I'm doing in my relationships and with active addiction and all of the things I remember. I blamed my mom. I even blamed Lynn Gilmore, the man who sexually abused me, like it. Well, of course, I'm doing the things. You know that. Look at the environment. And I was a raisin and and and and I, I was a victim. Absolutely Right. No child Right. They don't have a say in those scenarios. So, yes, we were victims of that, but I as an adult had to heal from that.
Speaker 1:And one of the most powerful pieces of work I've done as a person in recovery and this is through the help of counseling and education and people I've talked to and trusted and they've helped guide me is I forgave my mom. Yeah, I'll. I'll never forget I was able to. I feel that sense of release when I just say that because I remember I wrote my mom a letter and I actually forgave my mom through educating myself. I took a class years ago at Pierce College. This was 1997, 98. I took a class on families with substance use disorders, family systems and that chaos. And it was through that class that I was able to look at my mom through a different lens and I say this to this day my mom was doing the best she knew, how, with what she had. So I was able to step out of that victim mindset and forgive my mom and let that go. Our relationship actually changed when I did that.
Speaker 1:Lynn Gilmore, here's what I say I've done the work I needed to do through counseling and education to let him go Right now. Some may not agree with what I'm about to say right now. Some may not agree with what I'm about to say, but this is just where I am and I'm okay with it. And I want you to be okay with whatever decisions you make, with releasing your past, is that I don't know if I'll ever fully forgive him, but I've let it go enough that it doesn't continue to affect my life. I want you to figure that out for yourself in the different pockets of your life so that we don't stay in that victim mindset that I believe, because I've done it, that self-deprecating that oh, woe is me. I'm a victim that kept me stuck. A victim that kept me stuck when I stepped out of that through doing the work. Man, oh boy Again, there was a lot of release in that and I was able to grow in ways that I just never thought possible before.
Speaker 1:And then I want to talk about my friends who are in recovery. When you do these things, you can really take ownership for the choices you make in your life, moving forward in recovery and the outcomes Right, I say this this is one of my quotes is do the work be consistent, expect great things? I'll say it again Do the work be consistent, expect great things? I'll say it again Do the work be consistent, expect great things? Now I do follow it up with this Does it mean that every effort we make, if we're putting in the effort and we're consistent, that it's always going to turn out great? No, I'm a realist, right, that's just not the reality of life. I just had this short conversation with a neighbor and a friend is you know, life can be life, life be lifin' right, and it's not always great, but I always keep that in my mind is that if I'm putting in the work and I'm being consistent, the likelihood if I were to put a little caveat in there that things will be great are much better than if I'm not right.
Speaker 1:I've lived a life where I've just kind of sat there and like, whoa, it's me, why can't I get a job, even in recovery, like why can't I have a good relationship, why can't oh my gosh, that self-deprecating, that loathing, right Again, comfortable place to be, because you really don't have to take a lot of risk there, do you? The risk is in owning something that you do have a say, you do have control, you do have it within you to do amazing things. That's my overall goal in life. That's my mission is to help people see that they have it within them to do amazing things. I say there's no magic with this. I say that no one's going to come to your doorstep and say, hey, I'm here to help you and just change your life, not really how it works.
Speaker 1:Certainly I say this I have not attained the success I have in my life, in all the areas of my life that I've enjoyed success in isolation. It's been with the help of many, it's been with the help of many, but it has been me taking those concerted efforts to do the work, to ask for help, to continue forward, to be consistent and, even when things don't turn out great, to not slip back into that real negative mindset that I used to be in, to not be in that victim mindset To say, okay, well, that is what it is, and either I can keep trying or maybe I need to go down a different path. And so I want you to consider those things for yourself in your life. There is a beauty in taking ownership I say true ownership for what happens in your life on a daily basis. You can do what is called in the title of this podcast, that thing of that radical responsibility, right, truly taking a look at your life and assessing what can I do on a daily basis to improve my life, to enhance my life as a person in recovery, to enhance my life as a father or a mother or a business owner, or whatever it is right. We can easily trip into those places of well, if that person hadn't done this or if that place hadn't done that, and certainly some of those things might be valid, like, trust me, I'm not perfect and I can get into those ways of oh well, if this would have happened or if that would have. And here's what I'll give you. You can do that for a minute, but don't stay there too long. That's not going to help you get to where you want to go in life. That's not going to help improve your life if you stay in that victim mindset. So there is a lot of power in saying this is mine to change, this is my life. And I'm going to close this up One of my favorite quotes.
Speaker 1:In some words or another. It says I was halfway through life before I realized it's a do-it-yourself thing. Life before I realized it's a do-it-yourself thing, yeah, that's a good one. So, wherever you're at in your life, if you're halfway through life, here's your sign You're halfway through, it is a do-it-yourself thing. Now I always say that and say this with it. There are people out there that will support you, encourage you and help you, for sure. But we have to take those first initial steps to do the things we need to do. We have to put in the work. I hope for you amazing success in your life as a whole. I hope you can take that radical responsibility to either improve or turn your life around, and the mission of my life for you is for you to see that you have it within you right now to do amazing things. Until next time.