Addiction Relationship Coach Dedicated to Empowering Women with Tanya Giola

Tanya Giola produces a podcast called Faith Over Addiction where we address Women who are supporting those who are struggling with addiction

So we are looking at the families who are helping their loved ones and hopefully not doing unhelpful help, but we also look at the identity of the person who's trying to help their identity in Christ and not losing that identity as they help the person that's struggling.

Want to be a guest on ABCs of Parenting Adult Children? Send James Moffitt a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/parentingadultchildren

Richard Jones. I am an RN with over 34 years of Nursing Experience, much of that experience working with young adults in the corrections system. 

Parenting Adult Children Call To Action 

Transcript

James Moffitt (00:02.722)
Hello and welcome to ABC is a parenting adult children podcast. My name is James Moffitt and I will be your host today. I'm joined by Tanya. Tanya, how do you say your last name? Julia. Isn't that complicated for all those letters? my God. So Tanya is going to be our, our guest for this podcast this evening and Tanya, I appreciate you joining me. my sister's name was Tanya and we were both adopted in a orphanage in Germany.

Back when we were like one and two years old and she's no longer with us, but so I saw your name and I was like, Tanya Some some people call it Tanya some people call it Tanya. But anyway so Tell the listening audience a little bit about yourself Sure, absolutely. So I also run a podcast called faith over addiction where we address Women who are supporting those who are struggling with addiction

So we are looking at the families who are helping their loved ones and hopefully not doing unhelpful help, but we also look at the identity of the person who's trying to help their identity in Christ and not losing that identity as they help the person that's struggling. I got you. Addiction is a recurring theme in many of the

podcast episode because we have both parents that are struggling with addiction and then we've got young people, young adults, teenagers that are struggling with addiction and all the complications that come along with that. my purpose, my vision, my dream for this podcast episode and for the private Facebook support group I have for parents is to

to bring redemption and hope and support and help and all of those things to the parents that are listening. so I appreciate you being here and I appreciate you having a podcast that deals with these issues. so tell us a little bit more about your podcast and a little bit more about your experience. If you've had experience with addiction or if you had loved ones that were struggling with it.

James Moffitt (02:28.654)
and how you work through all that. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you, James, and that I get the opportunity to speak because it is it's really it's really a subject that as Americans, everybody I haven't run into anybody who doesn't either have a family member or is a friend of someone who is struggling with some level of addiction. And we're not just talking about drugs and alcohol. We're also talking about gaming, phones, pornography.

You know, addiction is anything that takes away food. Absolutely. Yes. Food's a big one. mean, there's a doctor, a naturopathic doctor who says the weapon of mass destruction in the United States is the fork because we're killing ourselves that way. addiction in the way that I frame it is anything that takes you away from living your best life, living the life that Christ designed for you to live.

It's something that says I am not engaging with the people that I love. I'm not engaging with my feelings. I'm not doing my best work because I have chosen because of whatever pain, trauma or need to move away from something that's hurting me. I've chosen to numb out over here. So it could be Netflix. I mean, it could be all those other things. So I subscribe to something more like Celebrate Recovery, which was created by Saddleback Church over 25 years ago.

Yep. Very familiar. Which is, you know, it's still a 12 step program, but it's a biblically based 12 step program that they're going to use the eight principles from the Bible that really talks to us about the fact that God's plan for us is so much deeper than this and that his love is so great for us that we don't have to spend this time hiding. So with my personal experience, which very naive 25, 26 years ago,

I left a marriage, didn't really understand what my commitment was, didn't really understand my identity in Christ, came out to Colorado to ride horses for a guest ranch and met and fell in love with my husband. And as I'm doing that, he presents to me that he smokes a little pot. Well, OK, I drink some alcohol now and again.

James Moffitt (04:50.286)
I didn't realize the depth of what was happening because I just didn't. That wasn't an experience in my life. And as I began to really look at this and we both got into AA and I got into Al-Anon and I walked in and James, went 12 months, 12 steps. We're out of here. We got this solved. Now, what I'm going to show you for those who are watching is here's my 20 year chip. It was not solved in 12 months.

So as I stepped into this, I became more and more aware of the issues that I had, more and more aware of how I needed to control, how I needed to fix, how I needed to be, I needed to have a job in the relationship. And as long as he was still using whatever his, his choice was, then I had a job. I was the fixer. I was the person who made everything. Okay. I straightened everything up.

And he was very functional during that time. He held a job. He had friends. He did all kinds of things. What I didn't realize was he came from a family where numbing out was acceptable. If you got angry with people or if something was a blow up, then everybody went their own separate ways, did what they needed to do to recover and then came back together. That sounds healthy in some ways, but they never actually dealt with

problems. Right. Whereas the family that I came from was totally different. We came from this model that says if you can talk about it, then you can work it out. But the problem was we were over talkers. We kept talking and talking and talking and talking. And it kept festering just as much as if you had gone and put it in a closet. So it was a very interesting combination. And when I look at how our marriage got set up,

It was not biblically. My reading is two whole people come together to form something new, a new union. Right. We were two holy people in the sense that we had holes in our systems and understanding and we came together in an enmeshment format trying to fix each other. Right. So he, he wants a spouse and he wants a loving relationship.

James Moffitt (07:13.766)
I want that too, but I also want to fix him. He wants somebody who can support him. And we're just, we're in this total tangle, James. We're, we're in this tangle. And then we decided to bring kiddos into the world. boy. Yeah. And that's, that adds a whole knee twist. Absolutely. Well, this was my second marriage. And so I'm getting married and I said to him, when he proposed, said, this is a package deal. I want a baby. I'm at the age, I'm at 30,

I'm at the age where the doctors are saying you either need to get on with it or decide this is not what you're gonna do So I said I wanted a baby. So we had our first baby boy when I was 36 beautiful healthy happy little boy, and I'll tell you a little story about that in We brought him home and like all new parents we quit. We don't really know what to do, but we fumbled

scariest moment of your life as a parent. I know they give you this this beautiful, beautiful, God made little boy who's perfect and we get him home and we're like, okay, what do you what do we do? Well, and my mom said, said, Tony, I haven't had an infant for 30 for 33 years because my sister would have been three years behind me. She's like, I kind of remember this stuff. So we got all kinds of support. But as you know,

When you bring children into an environment that's really unhealed, that's pretty chaotic, it just, it shines a light on what's already there. So we were sitting at dinner one night and arguing and my little boy is laughing. He is laughing so hard. He can sit up in his high chair. He can laugh. Well, what I came to learn later was this was a defense mechanism of he wanted us to get happy again.

Because when you're that little when you're basically preverbal except for a couple words your whole life depends on your parents and if your parents are not Don't seem like they're doing the right thing. You're gonna try and pull them out of it with whatever skills you have So this baby that I thought was so happy and always Joyful part of that what the defense mechanism and I don't want to scare parents be aware that

James Moffitt (09:36.64)
As we learn more and more, be aware that what's going on for you, even when they're preverbal, even when they're in that toddler stage, they can feel you, they can hear you. They understand that there's trouble happening. So we had a really chaotic and mashed, I'm the angry one. My husband is the disconnector environment that we were bringing that baby into.

Yeah, that's a, what do they call that? Dysfunctional family? Absolutely. Dysfunctional adults marrying dysfunctional adults, bringing a child into this dysfunctional relationship. And my gosh, the child's in trouble. But the cool thing is, and one of the things that we share in common is our faith in Christ.

I don't share a whole lot about that on the podcast episode because, podcast episodes, I should say this is like the 47th or 48th one. I try to be inclusive and I try to observe diversity, you know, and I don't want to, I don't hide my faith, but I also don't, I try not to be too pushy about it. You know what I'm saying? But seeing as we both come from

faith background, it's good that we're talking about this. then, and I want parents that are listening to this podcast episode, I want you to know that the faith option is always there. It's like in the South, there's a church on every corner, right? I don't know where you're from. I'm here in South Carolina. Literally, we've lived in South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, and every one of those Southern states, there's a church on every corner. And so,

guess what I would say is that no matter what faith you subscribe to, lean into that. If you don't subscribe to any type of faith, then I would encourage you to maybe start visiting some churches, because a church family is a huge support system. You can get a lot of help reading your Bible, all that sort of stuff. Prayer, reading your Bible, those things. So I want to encourage people that are listening,

James Moffitt (12:03.188)
to feel free to investigate that and explore that avenue. Absolutely. And we brought him into the church at two weeks old. We were going regularly. But here's the interesting thing with addiction on both sides is you're living a double life. You're producing what you think people want to see, right? Right.

And you're also keeping at home what you don't want them to see. Now, we both learned as we evolved that that wasn't necessary, especially as we got into celebrate recovery and we started helping develop that program years and years later. As I'm looking at this from the child standpoint, we had some real blessings. We were in an environment. We were living on a guest ranch when we brought him home. We were in an environment where he was very loved, very cared about. He had some.

great had some of them have passed great grandparents who loved and cared about him as well. Lots of outdoor stuff. know, every child has that. No family is perfect as far as I can see. Sure. You may enlighten me on that one. So he's coming into the world like this. And then at we had a second child, we built a house.

And then at three and five for them, our lives blew up. It just wasn't happening anymore. We came home from a Christmas party. My husband was really, really drunk. We then rolled into court's cops and what I call chickens. We were running 400 chickens at that time and our lives got turned upside down. wow.

So we separated for 23 months. Here's the positive of the separation for 23 months was we have in Colorado and there's a couple of states, Arizona, Colorado and California have the Betty Ford clinic for children. Okay. And if you know anything about Betty Ford, she was one of the first presidential wives to really recognize the issue with alcohol. She set up a whole bunch of centers, but this one for children is about children who are dealing with their parents' addiction.

James Moffitt (14:19.363)
And it is absolutely fabulous. The things that they teach the children, couple of which are, hey, as we all know, this is not your fault. You didn't choose this family. Here you are. Right. Let's walk through this. And there are things being put in your backpack that are not of your making. So guess what? As you get older, you can unpack that. But you have to know they're there.

And then the other thing that they really taught my boys was your job is to be a kid. Your job is not to take care of mom and dad. Your job is not to fix this. Your job is to be a kid. So we married that with a strong church who took really good care of us. And then we got to help start a Celebrate Recovery, which is a 12 step program that is Christian based and our whole family went. So the boys did pre-covery.

And we did recovery. Now I want to be real clear. I have my own issues in that love addiction, relationship addiction. If I can help you to be well, then I can be well. When I can't help you be well, then I'm not well. Therefore it becomes my job to take care of you. So I'm pushy, controlling, difficult, all of those things. In fact, if you ran into the two of us, you would think my husband was doing A-OK.

And I was flat out crazy because I'm the really, really vocal one. So as we stepped into that, we got the things that our children needed. We got the things that our marriage needed because we had to be really because the courts got involved. It was public in our little mountain town in Colorado. We we had to accept the fact that we needed help and we reached out and we got help. So that is something that I really want to put in front of

people, especially Christians, because they will often feel shame. And if you are so shamed, you won't step out and ask for help. In fact, that's the time where you curl up with the novel or the, you know, the soda can or whatever you're doing and you hide and that's not helping your kids. Right. One of the, one of the things that I did, when I started this podcast,

James Moffitt (16:41.137)
back in May of 23, is I got to thinking about the foundation of the podcast and what it was all about and why I was doing it and all of that. And so I decided that the first episode would be introducing the podcast itself and what the vision and mission statement and all that was. And then the very next episode that I did was to talk about marriage relationships, what it meant means to be a husband, what it means to be a wife.

You talk about fixing one another. Sometimes we erroneously get into, we fall in love and we realize that the other person is not perfect and they've got these little quirks or they got these addictions or they got these problems. And you're like, I love them so much. I'm going go ahead and marry them. then while we're, when we become married, then I can fix those issues. Right? No, it's not our job to fix the other person. Right.

And so I wanted to talk about, I wanted to build a foundation for the parents, for the man and the wife, to understand that before we even start talking about raising children, before we even start talking about parenting, we need to talk about what does a healthy marriage relationship look like? What does a godly marriage relationship look like?

you know, and what is, what is, what is the man's responsibility in the, the relationship? What's the woman's responsibility and all of that. I did a whole hour episode on that and I wanted to, I wanted to build that foundation going forward because it is a foundation. It's very important that moms and dads, do what they can to, to not fix one another, but to address

elephant in the room right to to to look at the look at the problems look at the issues look at the addictions whatever you want to call it and and get the support that you need not to try to fix one another but you know whether it whether it be the support what did you call them I forget I forget what you called it the program that you went to

James Moffitt (19:02.543)
well, we took the kids to the Betty Ford Children's Clinic, but we also were part of Celebrate Recovery, which is at Saddleback Church. Right. Celebrate Recovery. There's lots and lots of programs out there. Celebrate Recovery is one of them. It's really good. It's faith based. I would tend to lean in that direction because I'm a person of faith. And I think it's really unique that there is a support system out there.

for children who are in a family that have moms and dads or younger adult family members that may be addicted to whatever. So that's really unique. And I think you're the first person that's even mentioned that. It was an incredible experience for us. And it launched us on a journey.

In fact, you can come back several times. They were willing to take my kids at three and five and explain it in three and five year old language, but it's really for seven through 14. So we went back a couple of times and as my husband processed his addiction and I processed mine, we went back and we were able to even give more to our kids and do more healing. In fact, they have what's called Beamer books and you can get these online and it's, what happens in addict families with addiction is

Oftentimes emotions are not clearly understood because what can be said is you didn't really feel that way. That's not really what happened. You didn't really see what happened. And so the child is inside themselves going, well, I feel sad, but you're telling me I'm not sad or I feel angry and I thought this is what happened, but you're telling me I'm not angry. So Beamer is a light bulb boy and okay.

Yellow is happy. know, red is angry. White is, I think, fearful. We'd have to look at it again. But I had my second child had a really hard time telling emotions. And so we worked really hard at what emotions were happening so that he could read that. I mean, think about going out into the world. You're working with a boss, you're working with a co-worker and you can't really read facially what's going on. Also in addicted families, there's a lot of masking.

James Moffitt (21:26.715)
because as you said, we're not each other's savior, right? Often what I've experienced with the clients that I work with is the wife is doing so much cleanup. She's so loud in her husband's ear that he doesn't even have an opportunity to hear Christ. He doesn't have an opportunity to hear from his higher power, however you want to name it, because she's right there taking care of everything. And so when I work with clients, I talk about boundaries.

And here's the key. If you don't have good boundaries to start with, like you said, what is your role as a husband? What's your role as a wife? What are you designed to do? And what are you willing and not willing to do? What are the negotiables and the non-negotiables? So looking back on it, I said, I want babies. I didn't talk about how we were going to parent, what parenting was going to look like, how we were going to raise the kids. Are we going to do it like this? You know, I came with my idea. He came with his idea.

But we didn't talk about it. So I share this on my podcast. It's kind of like two foreign nations getting together. You know, if I'm coming from China and you're coming over here from Uruguay and we both speak different languages and we come from different backgrounds, then we get into this and we think, OK, we're going to do it the way my parents did it or we're going to absolutely not do it the way my parents did it because I didn't like that. Right. However you come at it. But you're very unwilling to budge.

but here's the meta conversation. There's a conversation going on that you're actually talking about, but there's a meta conversation underneath that maybe you don't have the skills to talk about. There. There's the key is if we don't have the skills to talk about it, then we're leaving that kind of legacy for our kids too. Cause I have one set of grandparents that over talked and talked about everything. I have another one that didn't say anything about anything. I know very little about them.

kind, caring, wonderful, loved me kind of people both sets, but that conversation was never had. It just somehow things worked out well sometimes and not well other times. So I think you can go either side balance wise. The question is, what kind of legacy do you want to leave for your kids? What kind of kids do you want to raise? What's the outcome you want?

James Moffitt (23:51.24)
When you take home this blank slate little bundle that does come with its own pre-wiring, but what environment do you want to have?

Right. That's good stuff.

Let's back up a little bit. Let's talk about addictions. You made a comment about how we're great at masking. When I think about that, I think about social media. On social media, on Facebook, on Snapchat, on TikTok, all these different social media platforms. You don't ever see the garbage. You don't ever see people having a bad day. You don't see ruined...

vacations, you don't see any of that stuff. All you see is the best and brightest that we have to offer. you know, we look at some of these, some of these people are friends and family and some of them are not, you know, and if, their family members are coming across with that and you're like, yeah, I know the real story to this. That's not the way it really is. Right. But we have, we have young adults and people that look at, like you said, screen time.

They're getting dopamine hits off a tech tick top because they're sitting there scrolling for hours and hours and hours at 35 or 40 second videos. And, and it's like, people are putting their, their, their best foot forward and they're, they're projecting their, their best image for everybody to look at. You know, they're not going to, they're not going to tell you about their addictions. They're not going to tell you about their bad day, you know? So, so people.

James Moffitt (25:33.715)
It's like you said that sometimes we don't know how to, sometimes we don't even know we have an addiction, right? Unless, know, especially if you're single, if you're a single young adult or whatever, and you're like you said, food, alcohol, drugs, pornography, whatever your addiction might be. If you're single and you're not really that accountable to anybody other than yourself and God.

Then maybe you don't even know you have an addiction and then, and then, but maybe if you get into a serious relationship or if you get married and all of a sudden, you know, you've got somebody else in your life that's looking at you and going, Hmm, maybe there's a problem, know, and you're, you know, and you're, and you're, you know, you're, look at that, y'all look at that together or separately or whatever. And then all of a sudden it's the elephant in the room. You're like, okay, so we admit there's a problem.

You know, the person that's addicted may not even want to deal with it. They may not even want to fix it. They may go, well, I've been living this with this for so long. Why can't we just, why can't I just continue smoking pot or having four or five or 20 drinks at night before I go to sleep or whatever the issue may be. But the problem with that is, that if addictions are left by themselves and they're left untended to, then they're going to destroy you. know,

too much alcohol, too much drugs, too much food, too much pornography. You name the addiction left to its own devices, it's going to kill you. It's going to destroy you. know, it will, it will disintegrate. Everything will disintegrate. and so, so, so, so let's dig a little deeper. Behaviors make sense. So if I was a young child,

who felt alone in the evening because my parents were, you know, maybe you can even do this with church. Maybe they were off at a church meeting. They were not there. They were someplace else. And suddenly I'm given what we used to call the Sears and Robots catalog or swimsuit edition or something like that. And that makes me feel something. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy and it makes me feel OK. And it makes me feel a little

James Moffitt (27:48.443)
cared about or taken care of. It's a really, I'm painting a really interesting picture, but this is how it starts. Then when I want to feel something because I was in pain by being not neglected in the sense we say of no food, no water, you know, not taken care of, but emotionally neglected, right? Suddenly it heightens. You know, my dad said it used to be that, that you had to go to the druggist and it was behind the counter and a brown wrapper and you can't get it. Well,

Now I can just flick the phone and I can see just about anything. Sure. So now I'm feeling this warm feeling and it makes me feel better and I don't feel so alone anymore. And I feel like there's something out there. Right. But it's a false. It's a false feeling. So you're self-medicating. Yeah. So if I keep turning to this every time that I feel hurt and you can put alcohol in or you can put food in there. Food's pretty simple to put in there. So, you know,

I was hurt and mom said, here, eat a cookie and I feel better. Then the next time I feel hurt, I eat another cookie. Then the next time at 1314, my friends hurt my feelings. Well, I go to the local convenience store and I have a pack of those donuts. Then the next time I feel hurt by my girlfriend and I'm like, okay, this really, really hurts.

So I'm going to go have a little alcohol and cut up with my friends and I feel a little bit better. So these behaviors make sense on why they're happening. But you get to a level where even though it makes sense, it begins to disintegrate. I don't even want to do it anymore, but I don't know how to deal with this pain. And we know these grooves in our brain. We get in this groove and we keep doing this.

same thing over and over again. Even Paul says it in the scripture, Paul says, I keep doing what I don't want to do, even though I know it's not the thing that I want to do. So we're in this groove. We're in this pattern. We know it will solve our pain. We try and push it away. I mean, how many people have been on a diet and they're like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to Right. And then what are we? We're February 5th.

James Moffitt (30:03.483)
How many of us are off our intermittent fasting or off our no sugar or no longer eating raw or all those things that we know would be good for us. We've got this other dopamine hit that we're going, okay, boss yelled at me today. Child is out of control and I just can't face today without, I've got it on my desk.

This is an avocado pudding with no sugar, but I hit the avocado pudding because I'm like, it's late in the afternoon and I need something to keep moving forward. Some of these are more harmless than others. But when we look at these grooves, this is never what Jesus meant for us to turn to. He meant for us to open scripture. He meant for us to call out to him. He meant for us to find our identity in Christ instead of solving our pain.

with resources instead of going to the source. So that's the shift. These behaviors make perfect sense. And when we're trying to squash the behavior, we're only dealing with the symptom rather than dealing with whatever the issue is underneath. Right. So I wanted to tell you, I figured out how to, how to beat the redundant cycle of breaking new year's resolutions. You know what the fix is? What's the fix? Just don't make them.

Just don't make it. And I wish that worked, but if you're not growing, you're dying. So do you want to head towards death or do we want to move towards growth? Yeah, I just don't call it New Year's resolutions. just call it, this is the issue I'm working on, right? I say that to be funny, right? Absolutely. So when I'm talking with women who are talking about their kids, I'm like,

What do you think is going on underneath? Where are they feeling either out of place, unloved, afraid, where have they been hurt? What's been going on? Now here's the problem. We get into a lot of mom shame when that happens. I didn't protect them here or they didn't get what they needed over here or this didn't happen over there. Well, here's the wonderful thing. You're still alive. The child is still alive. You can go back.

James Moffitt (32:24.047)
and work through those things that maybe they didn't get that maybe that didn't happen the way that, that didn't fill their bucket, but you have to stop hiding in shame. And that's one of the things that I found has become, for women who are dealing with folks who are struggling with addiction is it's sometime feels safer to stay in our shame and say, I can't, I just can't do it. I can't be there anymore. I can't.

Can't be that or get loud and ugly and say, if you would just, then I would be okay. Whether they get healed or not, you are okay. And that's what I want to tell everybody listening. You are okay. Whether they get healed or not. Here's your work is the figure that out. How can I be okay? And the big book says this too for AA is you.

can live a good life whether your person, and they use alcohol, whether your person is drinking or not. So let's think about it the other way. If they're not okay and I go down, then the whole ship is sinking. But if they're not okay and I decide I can find my identity in God, I can understand that I'm worthy, loved, cared about, really know who I am, then I can continue to love on them with boundaries most likely.

but I can continue to love on them.

James Moffitt (33:52.541)
Yeah, I heard, I heard somebody say something that the other day that I thought was pretty powerful. And they said, they said that while we can't fix people, we can love them through it. Yes. And that's, so there's been a switch. used to be, and bless their pea picking hearts. When AA started, they were really about going out and finding the people and loving on him and, total absence, abstinence.

What we have come to is reduction of harm and that lets people get their head on straight as they begin to decide what's the next step. But it isn't close the door and shut them out because what we know what we've learned over those last almost 100 years is the family is so crucial when that person feels cut off and pushed away from their family. It just it just rips them from the inside out. Now you may not.

be able to have that child in your house. You may be able to have dinner with them or help them through some other processes, but you're still saying, I love you. I care about you. You're an important person to me. And so we've moved into that space of more what God's love is about. Love is the whole thing. And even if we look at the Garden of Eden, God said, look, I'm not abandoning you, but you're

your responsibility is not meeting the access that you have. So there will be consequences. So if you have a child living in your home and they don't have the responsibility level to follow whatever guidelines you've set out or there's destruction of property or you're unsafe, maybe their access is too much. And can I give you a little story about that? yeah, absolutely. Okay. So my oldest was 16.

we're not having any problems with alcohol drugs or anything like that. And I said, Hey, you're driving. I'd like you to have a credit card just in case there's an emergency or you need to do something with that. This is only for emergencies. Well, you can imagine what happened. It was a little too much, a little too fast. And I'm really proud of this boy. So I gave him access, but he didn't have the responsibility to manage it. So I gave him too much access and his responsibility wasn't there.

James Moffitt (36:12.667)
He comes to me about three weeks later and he hands over the credit card and he says, I can't, I can't manage this. I can't manage this. He had been putting it in the vending machine at school. There was about a hundred dollars in bills, but I'm really proud of him because he came and said, I can't manage the access you've given me. We need to work out something else. And so we had, we got back to the right access, right responsibility. And then there were consequences.

He had to slowly pay off the a hundred dollars he had spent on the credit card at the vending machines. Right. Then. So I have a second son. Then the second son, I did the same thing with no problems, just a different personality that said, OK, he would call me. He'd say, the car is low on gas. want to put gas in the car. Can I go ahead and put that on the credit card? I'm like, absolutely. That's what it's there for. Thank you for handling that. It's one less thing that I have to do.

The personality difference was there. had to look for different ways to manage the first one with his access and responsibility. The second one was able to manage that. So every person has this different setup, but that's with addiction. It's not about throwing them out of the house. I'll never speak to you again. It's about how much access can they have based on how much responsibility they're willing to take. Right. And the thing I was thinking as you were speaking and the thing that I wanted to say was that

was that a person's addiction is not who they are. That's not their identity. Their identity is who they are in their heart, in their spirit, in their mind, right? And I think sometimes we place too much emphasis on the addiction and we give it too much weight in the total picture.

Yes, it needs to be dealt with and yes the person who is Wrapped up in that addiction needs needs support. They need love they need help They need the correct tools that they need to bring to bear, know, whether that be church whether that be prayer whether it be reading the Bible whether it be a good close friend somebody to talk to a Therapist whatever whatever that tool is and sometimes it takes multiple tools, you know and

James Moffitt (38:34.973)
We have parents out there that, you know, our parent support group, I hear stories weekly about parents that, you know, have kiddos, you know, and when I say kiddos, I'm talking from 12 to 40, right, pretty much. That's kind of the age group. Adolescents, teenagers, young adults, whatever the age group is, they have those

those loved ones who are struggling with an addiction of some sort. We have families that probably, maybe the parents are addicted to stuff and their kids are addicted to stuff too, so you've got a whole family that's just embroiled in a mess. Why do we come to Jesus? Because we're sick. The church is not a place where perfect people go. The church is like a hospital. Everybody that goes in there is imperfect.

they're sick and they've got skeletons in their closet and they've got issues they're working through, you know, and we're not perfect. We're sinners saved by grace, right? And the grace of God is what we need to overcome a lot of obstacles in our lives. And so, that grace is available to everybody. You know, when Jesus died on the cross, it wasn't just for Middle Eastern people or white people or black people or Asian people. He died for everybody's sins.

and His grace is sufficient for everybody. Whether you believe in God, whether you believe in Christ, or what your faith is, God loves you unconditionally. I know as humans, as people, we don't understand unconditional love. In so many ways in our families, our love is conditional.

Well, if you get good, if you go to school and you don't skip school and you don't drink, don't do drugs, you get good grades and you graduate from one that I'm going to love you. But if you don't do those things, well, I might not love you quite as much or I might be angry with you. You know, there'll be some consequences there and God's not that way with us. You know, he, has unconditional love and, and in that, that ultimately gives us the hope that we need, you know,

James Moffitt (40:58.045)
And that's what redeems us from all of the stuff. Well, and you may have grown up with a very angry God because there's a there's a perception that God is angry with us and we need to do all these things right. And that's where we get that performance love concept that we have to perform. We have to do the dance to get the hug. And sometimes we do the dance and then there is no hug. Then what?

You know, I've performed, I've done the right performance. And you've seen this with dogs. you ever seen a dog where he's like, he does the trick. Maybe he sits or he begs or he shakes hand and it keeps going through his repertoire until you give him a treat. Right. Right. And he's going to do all these things. Well, he's doing a learned behavior. He's doing a response behavior, which is what often happens with kids is

We've said, okay, we're going to spend more time with you when you act like this or when you do this or when you do that. That's where as parents, we have to stop and say, I will never forget my youngest son had a pretty serious incident at a camp he was working at. He crossed some boundaries. He got fired. Um, he was about 13 or 14. He got fired and

I, I said, okay, let's go to lunch. And so we went to lunch at a favorite outdoor place and lunch got to the table and he started to cry. And I thought he was crying because he was remorseful for what he did. And he realized he shouldn't have been there. And he started to cry. said, I just did something really awful. Why are you being so nice to me? My heart just went.

Okay, mama, you're doing the right thing. But my heart also broke for this child that thought if I don't do the right thing, I'm not going to be loved. And that's totally what who God is is the sun shines on good and bad people. The rain falls on good and bad people. God has locked us all up in disobedience so he can show mercy to all of us. There is nothing, not a thing you can do.

James Moffitt (43:14.887)
that God will not love you through, will not bring you back around. And I think I'm sure you've heard them. Some of the prison stories, some of the stories about people who have really been in hard places, found God and said, look, now I'm totally loved in a way that my parents couldn't give me because they didn't have it to give. If you're not, if you haven't been graced with it, you don't have it to give. Just like James, if I

If you said, I'd like some oranges. And I'd be like, I'd be happy to give you some oranges. Well, I have to have oranges to give you, right? I have to either go buy them or pick them off or something like that. I have to have it to give. So with my son, hopefully that begins to show him that, Hey, yeah, you need to be convicted that what you did was not the right thing to do. And there needs to be some correction, but it doesn't take away the fact that I'm going to love you no matter what.

what you do. I'm going to love you. There may be some restricted access because the camp said, sorry, you can't work here anymore. Right. Right. Wrong decision that was within their guidelines to say, and then we needed to do the next right thing. But the last thing I needed to do was go home and yell at him. I mean, he already knew it was wrong. Right. Right. And boundaries are important and boundaries come up a lot in a recurring theme and a lot of the episodes that we have.

Every healthy relationship needs boundaries. And one of the things that I like, one of the things I like to tell parents, especially parents that are embroiled in some kind of crisis in their family, whether it be addictions, infidelity, alcohol, whatever it might be, you need to practice self care. You need to figure out a way to step back from, from the war that's going on around you.

and find a quiet place, whether it's getting in your car and driving for 20 minutes, listening to music that you like, or prayer, or meditation, or reading, or self-care is so critical for parents as well as for young adults. We need to step away from the battle, per se. I'm not saying that we need to ignore the issues, or the symptoms, or the addiction.

James Moffitt (45:37.297)
But sometimes you just need to take a mental and emotional and a spiritual break from the battle and figure out what it is that you need to do for that self care. Because if you can't love yourself and if you can't find that self care that you need, you're not going to make it through the battle. It's like you can't help somebody else if you can't help yourself. Right? You're going to end up alienating the other person. And I mean, we use the oxygen mask.

all the time of you need to put your own oxygen mask on first, because what if you pass out trying to put it on the baby? Right. What if you pass out trying to help the other person? Then both people are going down at that point. And I think it's it. People get confused about what self care is. And I love the things that you said that that was fabulous. Self care is stepping back and saying, how do I love you without losing me? Because I lose me.

then I've, I've abandoned myself and I talk about this a lot with clients. When you abandon yourself, then you are looking to that other person thing, job, you know, food, whatever to save you and it can't do it. Right? So you have to stay present for yourself, present to God, present to what life has for you. And then you're able to care for the other person, but we've got it totally backwards.

And so I think this is a misnomer in the scripture. Yes, long suffering is part of it, but I don't completely give myself up so that I can save you because I've never had the capacity to save you. Christ has the ability to save both of us. But you know, it's the old joke, right? Where the man standing on the roof and and then he ends up drowning and he gets to heaven and he says, well, why didn't you come and save me? And and

Jesus goes through, did you see the boat? Did you see the helicopter? Did you see the dive team that came down for you? And you refused, you know? Right. You've got to step in too and say, hey, I am willing to be saved. I'm willing to receive. And that's what happens a lot with addiction is

James Moffitt (47:56.697)
love may have been given for performance and then when performance isn't happening, it's taken away and then I do the tricks again and then it doesn't happen. And so now I don't want to try. And then I just shut down receiving because I don't know what to do anymore. I'm confused on even how to receive love from you. And so it's just simpler not to get anything. I'll just, I'll just close down. Yeah.

looking at these questions, wondering which one I should ask. I haven't answered James honest. Good. here's a good one. what unique challenges arise host sobriety and family relationships. I really liked that one because, okay, so if I've been the wife and we could do it either way, husband or wife.

If I've been the wife and my job has been to hold the family together, or I perceive my job has been to hold the family together, to make everything right, make it look right, make it look like the magazine, right? And then suddenly, or not so suddenly, right? The other person gets sober and they say, Hey, I want to help with the finances. I want to be a full parent and raising the kids.

I want to make sure that, that, you know, maybe we go to my family for Christmas instead of we always go to your family for Christmas. They're beginning to take adult responsibility. Whereas I've been the manager of everything. Right. I don't want to give up my power. I don't want to give up my control. In fact, I'm out of a job. How many of us like to be out of a job when we're not choosing to be out of a job? Right. We think, so bright. He's going to come along and everything's going to be okay.

that's when we see marriages break up actually, because you're looking at him and go, I don't know who you are. Right. So there has to be some real tenderness, some real grace, some real forgiveness on both sides that says, okay, this is new territory for both of us or we're returning to something that we had before, but now we've got to renegotiate it. So if I'm the person who has been holding everything together,

James Moffitt (50:11.165)
And you suddenly say, well, I'll take all my stuff back now. I'm like, wait, that doesn't work for me. I don't know who I am now. So there's a, so there's a transition that has to happen. There's a huge transition. And the other thing that happens is remember behaviors make sense. So I've been hurt. I go to whatever my numbing agent is, and we could list the whole thing again. And now I'm not using that. So.

that person who has been not having feelings for years and years and years or stuffing those feelings or using whatever suddenly has feelings and they're not sure how those work. So it can be an explosion. can be going inside. It can be looking at you blankly. You've said something and they look at you blankly because it's not that they didn't hear you. They're just trying to go in. Okay. I've got words. Cause what happens with addiction is we stay up here.

I've got words coming in, but now I need to see how that feels in my heart. And I'm not sure what that really feels like. So it's like baby skin. They're going, okay, I, I need a little more time to process. And we've got this baby skin going on and there's a real tenderness there. The next phase is, right, I'm getting a handle on this. And now I'm beginning to know what I want because in the beginning it was

I will do whatever I need to do to get out of this pain, to get whatever my, my fix is. Right. Right. So now I begin to say, maybe I do want to go back to college or maybe I really hate my job or I don't like where we live. Or maybe I don't like this church. Now I'm beginning to have feelings because I'm not going over here to this. So that phase changes everything. And then there's another phase. This is, it happens around the third or fourth year.

where they're like, okay, I've been living this way for three or four years now. Is this really any better than the way I was living before? Has there been significant change enough to keep giving up this thing that has been soothing me, taking care of me? I mean, think about a baby blanket or a pacifier or the thumb. I've given this up, right? So there's even this story of one of Richard Nixon's daughters who was a cocaine addict and she was talking to a reporter and she said,

James Moffitt (52:34.06)
If it wouldn't kill me, I would do cocaine right now. Right. There was such a high, such a euphoria, such a feeling that she couldn't get anywhere else, but she also knew she would die if she did that. And she valued her life over death. So there's that connection too of, mean, think about a great time in your life and you'll go back there in your memory and you'll say, it's great. It's great. It's great. It was wonderful. It was perfect. You know, we really had a great time.

you've forgotten you've painted over maybe the negative consequences of it or some of the things that weren't so great or how hard you had to work to get there, right? It didn't just set up as this is all perfect. So we also have, we don't have true fact and impact memories, right? So if the fact is I love that chocolate cake, I've forgotten that it gave me a headache and it made me really sluggish cause I ate half the pan, right?

I've forgotten that, but I really liked the chocolate cake. So how am I going to manage that fact and impact memory? And the family has a different memory. So they saw something different than what the person saw. Right. And that really upsets the apple cart.

James Moffitt (53:55.59)
Yeah, it's it's a, it's a, equally important transition that everybody has to work through. Well, that's where the family gets confused. They're like, okay, they get sober. Everything's fine. We go on about our life. Well, that's not it. Everybody had a role when the addiction was going on. Now those roles have completely shifted and the family has to work to shift their identity and their understanding. And oftentimes they don't want to. I've had a client where she said,

It was a lot easier when you were drinking. wow. Right. Because total control managed all the finances. Happy person when they were drinking. Now they have these emotions. They have the sad, the happy, the mad, the up, the down, all those types of things. And it wasn't it wasn't familiar. Right. Even if familiar isn't exactly great. We like familiar. We will often trade familiar over great because we don't want to do the work to get there.

Right? That makes sense. Good stuff. All right, so one last question. How does humor play a role in navigating addiction recovery?

How does humor play a role in anything? Think about it. It's the ability to laugh at yourself, not really laugh at the other person, but the ability to laugh at yourself and say, okay, I goofed this up. So when we were raising the first 17 year old, my husband and I came to him and we said, there was some situation going on. I don't even remember what it is. And we looked at him and he looked at us and we're like,

We've both been 17, but we've never raised a 17 year old. We're not quite sure what we're doing. Let us get some more information. And it just struck us as so funny because nobody had an answer here. We didn't really know what we were doing and we were standing in our honesty and our integrity. And it gave us the opportunity to release all those good endorphins and just laugh and say, okay, none of us really get it. We hear you.

James Moffitt (56:06.446)
I hope you hear us. Let's go do some more research and figure this out. So you can laugh at yourself and say, you know, I don't need to be taking myself so seriously because I really don't have an answer. I can figure it out, but I don't have an answer. Or the other piece is, you know, those bids that come across that say when somebody, somebody will go into either a family story that everybody thinks is funny.

or a voice our boxer used to talk and the boxer had a specific voice. I do. You don't love me anymore. Nobody's feeding me anymore. Right. The boxer had this voice, right? That meant, Hey, let's bring some levity into this. Let's look at this and say, nobody's going to die today. Nobody's going to lose a limb or money or, you know, we're not going to have enough food. Let's bring some levity into this and, take a breath.

That's what humor does is it allows us that pause. allows us to take a breath and it allows us to reconnect.

Sometimes laughter is the best medicine Absolutely, and you know Jesus laughed the disciples laughed they They were men together all the time I'm sure they had inside jokes and things that were going on and the chosen really kind of gives us an opera the chosen as a TV show about about Jesus and his life Historically accurate in in a storytelling kind of way

But it gives us the opportunity to see that these were human beings and there had to be some levity in there. Right. So I want to read the listener takeaway for you for our listening audience, because I thought it's kind of important to know. This is listeners will gain insight into strengthening family bonds, overcoming post addiction challenges and setting empowered boundaries rooted in faith and compassion.

James Moffitt (58:06.682)
Now I'm going read that again slowly because I want it to sink in. Listeners will gain insight into strengthening family bonds, overcoming post addiction challenges and setting empowered boundaries rooted in faith and compassion. That's a that's that sums it up very well. And tell people again about your podcast. Sure.

So my podcast is called faith over addiction. It's on all the channels over out there. You can find it. There's a YouTube of the same name and then the website is Tonya joya.com and, that is where you can find more information about grace and recovery, which is a program that I run for women who are really looking for answers. And oftentimes these women have done everything they know to do.

and have still felt that they are lost or shamed or outside of God's love. And we want to bring them in, love on them, share some real tools on how you can build yourself, your identity, and then really love on the people that you care about because that's what you've been trying to do all along. And somehow it has gotten twisted or confused. We've got some great

not only boundary setting, but other methodologies that allow you to see behaviors make sense, that boundaries, you're setting those out of love, not out of anger or frustration and that you can leave a legacy that brings your children into a loving relationship with you, with folks in the family and that it's okay, as you said earlier, to do some self care so that you can come back and be even more loving without losing yourself in the process.

So that's Tanya G I O L A. Is that correct? Sorry, I can't spell my own name. So it's T A N Y A G I O I A at dot com. Sorry.

James Moffitt (01:00:16.934)
T-A-N-Y-A-G-I-O-I-A dot com. Very good. Yeah. So say it one more time for the listening audience. It's T-A-N-Y-A-G-I-O-I-A dot com. Awesome. And if you're listening to the podcast, you can always like stop and restart it two or three dozen times until you get it. It's not an easy last name. No, it's not. All right. Tanya, I...

Is it Tanya or Tanya? It's Tanya. Tanya. Tanya, I appreciate you being a guest on our episode today and talking about addiction recovery. And you bring a lot of wonderful insight into the behaviors and the redeeming power of Christ and all the things that all the tools that are available for people if they'll just reach out and grab a hold of them. Right. So.

So I will say thank you for the privilege of your time. talking to the audience. Thank you for the privilege of your time and for listening to today's episode. You can listen to this podcast on Spotify, Amazon music, iHeartRadio, Apple podcast and public radio. If you're on Spotify, you can watch the video version of this podcast. If you go to the, if you're on your app and you're on Spotify, can go to the about a section of this ABC, the parenting and

adult children and you can see the URL for the website on the website. You will see the following information a schedule of release dates for upcoming episodes contact information you can click on my email address send me an email you can there's a little microphone you can click and leave me a voicemail and if I get any if somebody contacts me I will do my best to get back with you and by all means if you listen to an episode click on the review

Tab at the top of the website and leave a review for the episode that you listen to what did you like about it? Would you not like about it if you have any comments questions concerns? Whatever I would like for people to start using that that review option for other listeners So thank you for listening to the podcast episode Tanya Tanya. Thank you for being here and for participating I can't speak anymore and I'm going to say goodbye and have a blessed day. Thank you, James