Ep. 7 Why Leaving An Abusive Relationship Is So Much Harder Than It Looks with Maggie Mccane

Why do people stay in abusive relationships even when the danger is clear from the outside? In this powerful conversation, Mark sits down with licensed clinical social worker Maggie Mccane to explore the complex psychological dynamics behind trauma, domestic violence, and healing. Drawing from years of experience working with survivors, offenders, and individuals navigating deep emotional wounds, Maggie explains why leaving an abusive relationship is often far more complicated than people realize. Financial control, manipulation, fear, isolation, and trauma bonds can all keep victims trapped in cycles of violence that are incredibly difficult to break.

Maggie also shares insights into how trauma shapes the way we view ourselves and the world around us, introducing listeners to concepts like “stuck memories” and EMDR therapy a powerful approach that helps people process and heal from traumatic experiences. Together, Mark and Maggie discuss the role of community, faith, personal growth, and trauma-informed therapy in helping people reclaim their lives. This conversation offers both compassion and clarity for anyone seeking to understand the deeper realities of trauma, recovery, and the long journey toward healing.

Contact Mark Astor:

Website: https://mentalhealthaddictionlawfirm.com/

Phone number: 561-517-9405

Email: mark@astorsimovitchlaw.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markastor

TikTok: Mark G. Astor (@astorsimovitchlaw) | TikTok

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

It is so much more complex than it looks on the outside because there are likely financial ties to this man. There's likely children involved. There's so much manipulation and power and control dynamics at play. He's probably isolated her from a lot of supports, like friends and family. Again, financial. He's probably tied up the finances that he's in control of a lot of that. He's probably used threats of a further violence. So it's not just I'm gonna hurt you, but I'm gonna hurt children. I'm gonna hurt your family. So there are so many reasons.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

It's the journey with drug and alcohol attorney Mark G. Aster. Welcome to the journey with Mark Astor. I'm your host, Mark Astor. I've spent a lot of years sitting across the table from people during some of the most challenging moments of their lives as an attorney, as an advocate, and as someone who understands that the road isn't always straight. What I've learned is that success, recovery, and growth rarely look the way we expect them to. There are detours, hard conversations, and moments to change everything. On this podcast, I will talk I talk with people who are willing to be honest about their journey, what worked, what didn't, and what they wish they knew sooner. Today I'm joined by Maggie McCain. Good morning, Maggie.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Good morning, thanks for having me, Mark.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

You're welcome. It's nice to finally meet you. So let me tell you a little bit about Maggie. She's a licensed clinical social worker. She's based in Arizona. Her background, which is incredibly impressive, is working with child welfare corrections. She's worked in multiple clinical settings, along with years living internationally in Europe and Honduras. She's fostered teens, supported clients in crisis, and worked with complex trauma across systems and cultures. She offers both traditional trauma therapy and faith-integrated counseling for clients who desire Christian-based support as part of the healing. And I know that was part of the podcast I listened to, and I really want to talk to you about that. I am so glad that she's here. And so thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, I'm so glad to be here. I'm excited for this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

I know that you're a clinician. How long have you been helping people? How long have you been working in the clinical field?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

As a clinical therapist, almost 10 years, but I really feel like I've been striving to help people. And that's been a mission of mine for much longer than that, even.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Okay. So how long has your sort of healing journey been going on for? Because I based on what I heard, you're a healer first and foremost.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Yeah, yeah. I think I've always used the term philanthropist, but I do think that's shifting.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Let's go back a little in time. Where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Okay. And then when I was 10 years old, my family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, and we went to an international school. And so that totally expanded my worldview. And when you asked the question, when did I start helping people? I think it was around that time that I started to meet people whose lives and upbringing were so starkly different than my own. I can remember having a conversation with a young girl who grew up in Africa. And she said that people in her country were can be so hungry that they die. And of course, we know that happens here in the US. But at that time, my 10-year-old brain, I couldn't even comprehend that. So I think at that moment, that was a moment in my life where I started to think, I want to do something about this. What can I do to support others who are struggling or suffering?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Tell us a little bit about your upbringing. Mom and dad in the picture, siblings.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yeah, I was very blessed to have both my parents in the picture. They're still married and together to this day. Again, really blessed that my dad had a great job and my mom could stay home with us. And there's four of us kids. So just a really on honestly like an idyllic upbringing for a really long time.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

And you've got siblings. Are you the oldest, the youngest in the middle?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

I'm the oldest girl. So I feel like I fall into both categories of I have some older sibling traits, but some middle sibling traits too. Because it's my brother, myself, and I have two younger sisters.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

How long did you live in Switzerland for?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

For three years.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Because I grew up in England. Oh, okay. I grew up in England. I moved here right before my 21st birthday. Um, and I'm 59 now, so it was quite a few years ago. I'm not to age myself. So, how'd that shape you? Because life in Europe is very different from what we experienced here in the US.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Totally different. Honestly, I don't know if I could even name all the ways that it shifted me. There was so much that came with living in Europe and such formidable years of my life. Our brain is so underdeveloped up until the age of 25. And so to have those sorts of cultural experiences so young, it's something we all talk about that we're immensely grateful for.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Okay. So you spent three years there. Then you did you then come back to the US or did you go live somewhere else?

SPEAKER_00 4:38

No, then we moved right back to Cincinnati, Ohio, which was obviously starkly different than Europe. And then I was there until I was 18. And then I was a little bit of a rebellious teen. So at that point, I wanted to get as far away from my family as possible. So I applied and got a really good scholarship to the University of Arizona. So that's what brought me out here.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Okay. And have you been there ever since?

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Pretty much. When I graduated my undergrad, I didn't know what I was gonna do. And so that's where I found the opportunity to move to Gracias Lumpira Honduras to teach first grade at a bilingual school. And so I moved to Honduras. It was actually myself and two girlfriends. But then while I was there, I quickly realized that I did not like teaching at all. And I got involved with a domestic violence advocacy group. And then again, that was a huge moment in my life that really shifted the trajectory. That's where I was for sure prompted to go to grad school and study mental health and social work and social justice.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

So I was way back when I was a young, I was uh my first the first part of my legal career was actually as a prosecutor here in Bob Beach County. And one of the things that I got very involved in was the prosecution of domestic violence cases.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

And how we handle those cases, especially first-time offenders. Right. And obviously, if it was still in misdemeanor court, the goal was, at least from our perspective, was to get them into some type of treatment that'd be consequences for them if they didn't successfully complete, and hopefully they don't come back.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

But that wasn't always the case. You might deal with an individual, and I don't want to focus on men, but I would tell you that the bulk of the domestic violence offenders were men.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

You know, you'd go from somebody getting a shove, and the next thing you know it's a slap, and the next thing you know, somebody's in the emergency room because their face is broken, and now we're dealing with a felony situation. Totally. At that point, at least here in Florida, it's not a matter of going to treatment, it's a matter of going to prison and how long can I lock you up for?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

And that's what we focused on. So I know that kind of work, but you have to have a passion for really helping people. Because you're dealing with an individual at his or her worst, and now you're the victim in a case. And one of the things, and I'm gonna digress for a second because I want your insight on this. One of the things I had this one individual, this one guy I prosecuted, I think I prosecuted him three times. Twice as a misdemeanor, one they quitted him on, because these cases went to trial, and one they convicted him on. Then there was a then it progressed, and he got prosecuted for a felony because the same woman who stuck around, he went from pushing her to breaking her ribs. And I always talk about the cycle of violence because that I couldn't we back then 30 plus years ago, I could not understand why even after the first shove, this lady stayed there, and we had clinicians or clinical people inside the state attorney's office, and they used to talk about the cycle of violence, right? He's angry, he pushes her, he apologizes, she recovers from the push, and then it just it just cycles until things get out of control. Can you talk about that for a second? I know I'm digressing, but that was an important topic for me.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

No, this is such an important topic. Honestly, Markin, there's so many directions that I would want to go with this because okay, so even to cut go back a little bit further, when I was in Honduras doing the domestic violence advocacy work, one night I was walking a woman home and we encountered her abuser. And it was a very scary moment. But it was in that moment that I realized that we are putting so much effort and energy into helping support this woman, which of course we should be. I'm not saying we shouldn't do that, but no one was putting in any effort to support this gentleman, this man that was involved in this crime. And that really was like a turning point for me. And where I think like the seeds began to be watered of building this practice that I now have today, where we do try to focus on men-specific healing because I do think it's an area that not a lot of people want to touch. And we know that men typically are the abusers in these violent crimes. And so ensuring that they get the time, energy, support to heal from their traumas and their wounds because people aren't born violent. And I'm sure you must have that hope to some degree in regards to the work that you do too. So I really have become passionate about looking at a man who has committed a crime. And yes, he is totally responsible for that. But what happened in his life that led him to commit these crimes? And that was the exact type of work I was doing when I was in the prison system of what happened in your life? Where did you miss learning alternative, healthier, adaptive coping skills so that you could deal with this in more productive ways instead of continuing this cycle of violence that you're describing? So, just to provide a little bit of my passion in this conversation, because we do see I could be a little bit off with the statistics, but it's something like a woman has to leave seven times before she finally leaves a domestic violent relationship. And it is so much more complex than it looks on the outside because there are likely financial ties to this man. There's likely children involved. There's so much manipulation and power and control dynamics at play. He's probably isolated her from a lot of supports like friends and family. Again, financial. He's probably tied up the finances so that he's in control of a lot of that. He's probably used threats of a further violence. So it's not just I'm gonna hurt you, but I'm gonna hurt children. I'm gonna hurt your family. So there are so many reasons that, again, we're saying women versus men, but obviously men are victims of domestic violence as well. So any victim in this relationship, it is so challenging for them to leave. And I work with a lot of like women on the other side of this piece as well. And they get really frustrated when the public is frustrated with them. Like, why don't you just leave? They hear that all the time, and they will say, it's just it's simply not that easy. There are so many complexities to this relationship, and that's how people get stuck.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Yeah, and I'm glad you said that. And what's interesting is so this woman eventually did leave the guy and she went into a relationship with another guy who was as bad, if not worse, than the first guy. And I said to myself, how does that happen? Is there some, even subconsciously, an attraction to a guy like that? She's attracted to that. Not the violence, but there's something, there's obviously a core element to the both of these individuals that she's attracted to.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yep. Our brain and body are constantly striving for homeostasis. So we always want what is familiar. It is very hard for us to change patterns of familiarity because that's just constantly what is easier to help our brain and body survive. So most of the time, people who are attracted to those who are violent grew up in a home with a violent parent that has become familiar to them, that has become normal to them, as unsafe and as uncomfortable as, of course, it feels, it is familiar and it feels comfortable to some degree. So that is why we definitely see, unless people, of course, do good trauma work, you're not resigned to be in only unhealthy relationships, but you do have to put in quite a bit of work to unlearn those patterns of behavior and learn healthier, more adaptive ones that you can find a partner who respects you and treats you well.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

Yeah. From what I I read about you, Maggie, and also from what I learned about you when I was listening to that podcast, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the bulk of the work that you're doing in your professional career is trauma-based. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

So tell me a bit about that. Like, how did you say, okay, you know what? I'm gonna open up my own practice. I'm gonna be an entrepreneur because that's what because as a lawyer, right? I mean, we my wife and I have a practice. We have our practice, which gets the work done and deals with the clients, and then we have our business, which hopefully puts food on the table for us and also the people that work for us. So you gotta be a little bit of an entrepreneur if you want to go and open up a business, whatever it happens to be. So, how did you make that decision?

SPEAKER_00 12:32

So I was doing clinical work, pretty much always trauma, honestly. I think just because this conversation that we were just having excites me, right? Let's figure it out, let's help people heal. You were not resigned to continue the negative patterns of your life and your upbringing and things like that. So I just get really passionate about people's ability to change. So that's how I continue to stay in the trauma world. But then I was in different behavioral health agencies early in my career. And honestly, it just felt, and you probably feel this too. I think we all feel this across the country that the big systems, whether it's insurance-based or otherwise, are just not doing the best. And my clients that were suffering because of it. The insurance mandates just continued to increase. And I felt like claustrophobic. Like we were doing less and less good clinical trauma work and more and more paperwork and documentation and things like that. And so I just really felt there's gotta be a better way to do this. There's gotta be a better way to help support people. And I'm a person of faith. I'm a Christian. And so I really just felt I was in church one day and the sermon was on this idea of Rehoboth, which I'm happy to explain further. And it just went off like a light bulb. And I could just see it all working out of starting my own business, really actually helping people heal without the red tape of insurance. So that's why I started my private practice and then it quickly grew to a group practice. I think the idea of the business and the operations and the systems just feeds me. I just really enjoy that almost as much as I love the clinical work. So it's just honestly been a really exciting journey to continue to grow the business.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

I find I find that fascinating because the one thing they don't teach lawyers in any law school anywhere in the country is about the business of running a law firm. And I didn't learn it either. I ended up actually working for a company that teaches that topic. Oh, okay. And that helped me to open up my own law firm. And for the first seven years, it was my wife and I just doing everything. And the last two years, or excuse me, the last three, we hired staff, but we also we are I went from working for that company to becoming a client. And we just hired a chief operating officer. So I love what you're talking about. You really are an entrepreneur. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Exactly what you're saying. I hired a coach very early on in starting my business because I I knew nothing about running a business. I felt like I could probably put the pieces together if it was just me, but I knew that I was gonna want to grow this and make it again, like help as many people as we could. So I hired a coach early on. She taught me how to do systems and marketing. And then since then, I've hired a couple of different coaches to help me with like my personal development and things like that. So absolutely we need training and education.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

You brought up an interesting topic here, personal development. So the company I worked for, I ended up working for them because I saw the founder speak at a breakfast meeting one day, and it was a time in my life where I was completely lost. Nothing professionally going on, nothing personally going on. I was 47, 48 years old and had absolutely nothing to show for anything. I had a broken marriage, had a career that wasn't going anywhere. I was financially destitute. It was a really crappy time. But I saw this guy speak about the business of being an entrepreneurial lawyer, and I basically begged him for a job. But here's what I didn't realize at the very core of this company, they're a personal growth company for lawyers, and they believe that financial growth has to be preceded by personal growth. And I had never so the guy that I worked for, his name is Arjon Robbins. He's basically the Tony Robbins of the legal profession. And I'd never I had never experienced that. And I realized two important things. Number one, you have to take a hundred percent responsibility for your life, both personally and professionally, the good decisions and the bad. Okay. And I would say that my personal life took a little longer to get to grips with. And so my wife and I have only been married two years, but we were off and on for seven years until I I I finally came to grips with the idea of actually getting married again, because when I met her in 17, I promised her, I said, if you're looking to get married again, you got the wrong guy. She had been married and divorced. And it took me a long time to come to grips with that. And I think for a lot of guys, the idea of just getting married is, oh my god, my entire life's gonna change. And it did, but actually, if anything, it got better, not worse. But I married my best friend this time. I didn't marry the shiny object that I was very physically attracted to. Not that my wife isn't beautiful, but she's a beautiful spirit. Yeah. And she's my best friend. And I always tell people, she married me despite my faults, not because of them. I appreciate what you were saying on the on the personal growth level. Let's talk about trauma for a second. And tell when you talk about trauma, tell me what you mean by that.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Okay, so the way that I have conceptualized trauma, because of course I've worked with lots of people who have had kind of the classic experiences that you would think of when you say the word trauma, the sexual abuse, physical abuse. I work with veterans, those who have gone to war, things like that. However, that definition, and research will say this, is just growing old and it doesn't capture everyone else who has been traumatized. And we know they've been traumatized because trauma is anything that changes the way you view yourself or the world around you. And so there's lots of people who haven't experienced what we're now referring to as the big T traumas that I just described and fall into a category of still having traumatic events that change the way they view themselves, the world around you, but referring to them more as little tea traumas. I actually just read an article of another woman that I respect who says she doesn't like the term little tea traumas because it sounds like it's minimizing the experience. So I can't remember what she calls them, but for the purpose of today, we're gonna stick to little T, but I'm certainly not trying to minimize anyone's trauma. But it again, so it's just this idea of something happened that changed the way they view themselves of the world around you. Francine Shapiro, who is the founder of EMDR therapy, which again, I'm happy to share more about that. She wrote a book, and in her book, she gave an example of a young girl. And I said this a little bit earlier, but Mark, do you know how what age we are when our brain is fully developed?

SPEAKER_01 18:37

I think it's I think it's 25. And I thought that before, and I actually did hear that on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

So anything before the age of 25, our brain is still trying to form connections and make sense and to develop these patterns and figure out how we are going to live and what's normal and what's homeostasis and all of those things. So there was a young girl who was upstairs in her bedroom and she had two loving parents, and they were downstairs and there was a thunderstorm. And the little girl felt scared upstairs. So she called out to her parents and they didn't hear her because it was a thunderstorm and she was upstairs. But because her brain was underdeveloped, her brain interpreted that moment as you are not important. Okay. It was a false interpretation. Our brain does make mistakes, but that is a synapse that was formed in her brain. So then the rest of her life, she struggled with relationships because she had this negative cognition that said, you are not important. And it wasn't until she did trauma work because she went to therapy and they couldn't figure out, like, hey, you seem like you're doing fine. You know, you're successful in so many areas of your life. And she's, I don't know why I can't figure out this relationship thing. But then they did trauma work, they did EMDR and they were able to go back to this negative cognition of you are not important. And they were able to rewire that and change that. So I feel like that opens up so much growth and healing for such a large majority of our population because I talk to people, right? Like my friends and family who say, maybe I struggle with anxiety or maybe I'm a little depressed, or maybe my relationships aren't the best. But I don't know why. Work goes is going really well. I get up every day and I exercise and I eat healthy, like I'm doing all the right things. Why am I not at my 100% potential? And so that is when I was like, we need to be talking about this way more because we have people who are not operating at their fullest potential and they cannot figure out why. So we need to expand, continue to expand this definition of trauma so that more people feel included and more people feel motivated and inspired to be like, okay, let me go to therapy and do this good work and receive this last 10 to 20% where you can just feel the best about yourself, which is what I think everybody deserves.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

Yeah, one of the things that you talked about in the podcast I listened to was the idea of trauma being a stuck memory. I wrote that down because I never had anybody describe that before. And I was like, that makes so much sense. Yeah. Maybe you could shed a little light on that because I think that example of the young lady who way back when she was a child and there was a clap of thunder and she screamed for her parents, they didn't hear her, right? As opposed to they were ignoring her. Sounds like she that was with her for years.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

So can you talk about the whole concept of the stock memory? Tell us what that means.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Yeah. So that's exactly one way that I describe it so that it makes sense to people. Is so we would go back in EMDR and go back to that stuck point, right? Because her brain got stuck. It started to interpret things differently. And then teach your brain. What we would do in EMDR is teach your brain that yes, you felt unimportant in that moment, but that was so long ago. We need to bring your brain back to the present where you are right now. And you are important. We can choose to feel important. We could choose to look at our lives and say, hey, I want to feel important. My job makes me feel important. Maybe my kids make me feel important. My friendships make me feel important. I don't need to continue to stay stuck in that negative belief from my childhood. And I think a lot of people, I don't know, I've talked to some people recently who say things like, I don't have a distinct memory. Of trauma. And so I can't do trauma work. And so I just want to kind of touch on that to help anyone who's listening who might feel that way of your EMDR work, again, the trauma work that I do, your brain will take you wherever you need to go. So not that it's going to create new memories, that's not something that we need to worry about, but it might remember things that it had previously shut down or closed off because it didn't want to remember. It didn't want you to have to think about those things that happened from the past. I had a trauma early on in my life, and it is to this day, it is totally blacked out for me and my memory. And I'm okay with that, right? Like I don't need to go back and like re-remember the details of what happened. We can trust our brains that sometimes it doesn't want us to remember things. That doesn't mean we can't do good trauma work around the beliefs that were curated from those experiences.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Okay. Talk about EMDR. Tell us what that is. Because I've heard that word used a lot because we spent a lot of time in the clinical arena. But tell us what that is, how it works, and how it can help people.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah, totally. So it stands for eye movement desensitization reprocessing. Such a mouthful. So everyone just says EMDR. And the founder, again, Francine Shapiro, has since before she passed away, she said she wished she would have named it something else, because it actually doesn't have to be just eye movements going back and forth. They now use any form of bilateral stimulation. So if you have your whole body and you cut it in half, we have to stimulate alternatively either side of your body. So we can do that with your eyes open with a light bar like the one behind me, and a dot will go back and forth and you just look at it. Or I have these handheld pulsators. So you just hold them in your hand and they vibrate alternatively. You can use headphones and it buzzes alternatively. So whatever is preferred for the patient. And we talk, we start with a presenting concern. And so again, this could be my relationships just suck. Like I just can't figure out my relationships, or that there's this person at work that just totally irks me and I cannot get past how annoying this person is. For some people, and this is really interesting. I don't know if this is too much of a rabbit hole, but if someone has a pre-verbal trauma, so it happened before the age that they were able to speak, it might be stored in their body. And so there's not any words or explicit memories that come with it. So we might start with a feeling in your body of man, I just have this like chest pain that won't go away. Or what's so popular is digestive issues or like the hardened, bloated stomach. And I no matter what I do, it won't go away. Okay, something is stuck there, right? Something happened that your trauma got stored in your body. So let's start there. Any of these are starting points. We start the bilateral stimulation and then we just track wherever our brain takes us. And so that can be a really hard thing for some like high achievers or perfectionists to like want to control where my brain is going. And so that's where we do a little bit of work of just we got to release control and just follow where your brain takes you. And it's good EMDR of the person saying things like, I have no idea why this is coming up, or this is so random, or this doesn't seem connected at all. Your brain might start like bouncing. We're tack, we're tapping into our subconscious brain and it's going to start tapping into memories or past events to help itself heal.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

And so let's say somebody comes to you that you're doing the EMDR. How long do they spend? How long does it take?

SPEAKER_00 25:26

This is why honestly I love EMDR so much because of course there are many factors, but I have seen people come to me totally stuck. Like I can think of this one woman who was very into meditation and yoga and personal development and self-healing. Like she had done so much introspective work and she just still felt stuck in this one area. And I'm not exaggerating. We did three sessions of EMDR and she was like, everything is better. That completely changed everything I needed it to change. So she had done some good kind of background work. We were just able to get her exactly where she needed to go in just a few sessions. There's other people that are maybe less self-aware or have done less personal work. And so then it might take a couple more sessions to help get them there. I think one of the first things that I teach clients, if they don't already do this, is the idea of self-reflection and thinking about your thoughts. And this is why I really promote journaling, is because we need to understand where is my brain going throughout the day? What am I saying to myself? What are my thinking patterns? So a good way to start practicing that is just journaling so that you can write down whatever thoughts are coming up for you and then read them back and be like, wow, I like speak really negatively to myself, or I have a lot of negative feelings about my spouse that I didn't even realize. Or I worry so much about my day to day and I didn't even because we just think all day long. It's in the background. Like we're not typically conscious of our thoughts. So getting conscious of our thoughts is a great way to help us get to that root of, you know, what a thought that keeps coming up is I'm not good enough, or I'm unlovable, or I'm undesirable. And then that would be like good trauma work that we can easily get to and move someone along really quickly.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

That's amazing stuff. Okay, let's move on. So I I you said that you are a person of faith. So I was raised in a conservative orthodox Jewish family. So I can somewhat understand where you're coming from. I can't tell you that it's been a significant part of my life in the last 15 or 20 years. But when I was listening to the podcast that you did, you talked a little bit about, I think you described yourself as a quote Christian therapist. And I was like, well, I've never heard anybody say that. And you mentioned your personal faith. So can we, is it okay if we take a few minutes to talk about that? Sure. I thought that was fascinating. Sure. But I also noticed that you also talked about the idea of sort of connection to a higher power, and that doesn't necessarily have to do with religion.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

So help me understand how that that works in with the how that fits in with the work that you do. Because you might have somebody who's of a different faith or doesn't believe or all of that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

Yep. Absolutely. And I think I struggle with I probably did use that term. I'm not saying that I didn't do it, but I always struggle with the label of a Christian therapist or something like that, because I don't want people to get the wrong idea that I you have to be a Christian to work with me or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

You didn't get that idea. I didn't that I just thought it was an interesting way to describe yourself. And what I interpreted was that you are somebody who believes in a higher power, which I think really is really an important piece to the whole recovery journey, right? And 12 steps and surrendering and all of that stuff. And it doesn't have to have a religious connotation.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

When you think of the parts of us as human beings, we have our physical part, mental part, emotional part, spiritual part. Those are just the facts, right? And I think that we as a culture and society do a really good job of talking about some of those things, but the spiritual part makes us uncomfortable. And I think it's because of religion. When unfortunately, we just know that religion has failed so many people in devastating ways. So I totally get that. So the way that I present it to my clients is when I say spiritual, I do not mean religion. What reminds you that you are connected to something greater than yourself? Because we have to find that hope in something bigger. Because again, I'm working with people who have experienced trauma. People have hurt them, relationships have failed them, life has wronged them. We need to find hope in something bigger. And so whether that is like a formal belief system, or whether that's the universe or the stars or water or energy, I have a lot of people who say things like that. Lovely, let's work with that. Because we all have that inner sense of connectedness that's really important to find and acknowledge.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Yeah. And actually, one of the other things you talk about is the whole sense of community and connection. And I know that at least part when we talk to families about what recovery looks like, if they work the program and they work what we call a continue of care, part of that is probably going to be living in it in some type of recovery residence. And the idea being that you are in a supportive, encouraging, nurturing environment that really supports recovery as opposed to going back, living in the environment you were living with, spending time with the friends you were living with who encouraged drug use and the other types of things. And so maybe talk about that because I thought that was an important piece of what you talked about, the whole idea of community and connection.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Absolutely. And research will prove that time and time again, that we need to be in some form of healthy community in order to grow and feel that sense of connection with others. All harm is done in isolation. Again, our thoughts can mislead us. So we can get stuck and twisted up just sitting there thinking about all these things by ourselves. But to have a community, someone to bounce ideas off of, learn from, be corrected by, someone to help us see our blind spots in life. This is how we grow. This is how we maintain growth, even.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Do you think everybody experiences growth? Or do you think a lot of people just go through life? They don't address their traumas, they don't grow. I mean, do you think that's the case? And that's why they continue to experience a certain level of misery in their lives. Or they don't achieve, they don't meet the person they want, they really said, oh, this is the person I ideally should spend my life with. They don't achieve their financial goals. Do you see a lot of that? Do you think that's part of the problem?

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I think there's, yeah, too many people who are very much stuck.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

One of the other things you talked about is the idea of finding the right therapist. I thought that was fascinating because I've never had anybody call me and say, I want to know, are you the right lawyer for me? Of course I'm the right lawyer for you. I'm like, maybe I'm not the right lawyer. Now there are times where people will call us, and it just may be that there's some abrasiveness. And I tell myself, if if a client or a potential client is rude to you or disrespectful, we had somebody recently the call and was yelling and screaming and they used a racial slur. I said, and I said to them, we know I'm not taking that client on. I don't care how much money they have. That's just never going to be tolerated. So that's not the right client for us. And I may not be the right lawyer for everybody as well, because I'm very we're dealing, we're in the business of trying to save families. And you have to have an honest conversation about that. And it's and in my world, it's okay, at least with permission, to tell somebody if you don't take action, this person might die. And some people take offense to that. But I think I owe them honesty as long as I'm coming from a place of love. When it comes to finding the right therapist, what should somebody be looking for?

SPEAKER_00 32:37

What you're saying, Mark, is so interesting, actually. The reason it's so important to find the right therapist is because we want you to grow. That's the whole point of therapy, is growth and change. I guess maybe in your industry, that's people, but people are growing. So that's I'm working through this out loud. Would there ever be a situation where you would say, I'm not the right guy for you because you're clearly not growing or changing with me? We're not getting the results that we wanted. So maybe I'm just not the guy for you.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah, that let's talk about that because that is an interesting question. So with the time we speak to a family, we're typically the last protocol, right? Our typical client is mom and dad call us, usually mom calls first, and they have an adult child, somewhere between 25 to 40. And and there is a long history of drug use and mental illness and treatment that doesn't work if they'll even go. There's probably men non-compliance. They may well have been a guest of the state through either the criminal system or the mental health system. And now the family has said, we can't take this anymore. Can you help us? And the answer to that is yes, but recovery takes time and it's a journey, not necessarily a destination. And we may spend a significant uh amount of time going through what does it look like working with us from a legal perspective, but what does it look like from a clinical perspective? What does the actual journey look like? Because we'll get you on the path and give you the tools through the court system to keep somebody on the journey. But what does that look like from it in terms of time, energy, and resources, right? What's it gonna cost you? How long is it gonna take? And how tired will I be after all this is done?

unknown 34:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

So that's a conversation to have. And sometimes the family will say, Can we think about this? And one of my mentors says who has taught me causes have effects, effects have effects have consequences. And I'll say to the family, can we is it okay if I'm honest with you? Yeah, I we want you to be honest. Here's the deal if you don't get your loved one into treatment and keep them there long enough in a clinically appropriate facility, I'm afraid that something tragic is going to happen. Is that honest enough for you? It is, but I'm really afraid they're going to hate me. Why do you care if they hate you? I don't want my child to hate you. I get it. You know what? They might well hate you for the first 60 to 90 days. Because I know that looks like your child, but it's not your child. What do you mean? I'm not a clinician, but in my world, that is somebody who's had their brain hijacked or kidnapped, whatever word you want to look like, look at. And so I think from my perspective, the hardest decision is sometimes the family is so traumatized, right, they can't see the forest for the trees. They've been dealing with this for so long. This is their normal. And the idea that things might change is frightening. And as our subconscious brain is wired to keep us safe, and it equates change with danger. And while they understand if I don't get my loved one into treatment, they might die. The idea that that things might change for the better is a little frightening. Oh, and oh, by the way, I'm going to want the family to do some work too, right? They have to be part of the recovery process because if they don't do work on themselves, here's what happened: in a year from now, your loved one is going to be a totally different person, and you're going to be still here, and you're not going to be able to relate. You probably won't be able to support them. And so it's so critical. This is why they call it a family disease, because the whole family is being destroyed and traumatized.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

And so we deal with that. Or we deal with a situation, Maggie, where the person goes into treatment, they're 30 days in, and the family calls and says, We're good. We don't need you anymore. What do you mean? I spoke to my son, my daughter, they got it. What do you mean by that? Well, he said, they're fine, they've got it from here. I'm like, we're only one month into what I consider a 12-month journey. Well, they're fine, they're not using. I know they're not using, they're in treatment, they're taking their meds. I know they're taking their meds, they're in treatment. This is the process. But my experience is if you allow them to leave on day one, within within a week, probably a much sooner, there will be a problem. And this happens a lot. They make a start, they make a stop. And we I do a lot of work with my team. We have to understand that and appreciate that. And no amount of yelling or screaming or putting people down is going to change that. And obviously, we don't do that. But my point is that there's so much trauma here. Yeah. That once the pain, the pressures of the pain goes away, they're good. Okay, we don't need that, we don't need the court anymore. And we see a lot of that, either not being able to make the commitment, which can have very tragic consequences, or making the commitment, and now everybody has to do the work. Their loved ones in treatment, and the family still need to work on themselves, and it's very frightening. And they're like, Oh, we're good, we got it. And we have the they'll start us, they'll make a stop. And that's frustrating for us because we know what happens. And we always try to come from a place of love. And we want, I tell every client, I'm one of the few lawyers who doesn't want repeat business. If you have to come back to me a second or third time, something went wrong. I want to get it right for you the first time, so you never have to call me again. I know it sounds a bit cliche, but we want to get it right the first time. Yeah, no, so very traumatized structure.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

System, it's the whole family system.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

And that's something I've had to learn. You know, I've been very blessed to have people like you, who I consider friends and colleagues, who say, hold on a second, let me explain to you how this what's really going on here from a clinical perspective, so you can understand that. It's a bit like I had to learn why does someone who's a domestic violence who's been abused go back to the same person over and over again? I had to under learn to understand the dynamics of what's going on here because any change is threatening to the subconscious mind. So the woman who doesn't want to leave the guy who continuously beats her up, there's a real clinical thing going on in the background that we don't understand. You do, as civilians, right? We or non-clinicians, we don't understand it. And I've had to learn that.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Yeah. So it sounds like you do amazing work, Mark.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

We do, we get great results. But it I always tell people, because I like I said, I was lost. People ask me, they say, uh Mark, are you in recovery? You know what my answer is? Only I am, but only from the legal profession.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

It's funny. One of the things I love to do is I love to work with law students. So on Saturday, this was the second time I've done this, that we had a national trial competition down here in South Florida, and they recruit lawyers to be judges and to be to score, to be a scoring judge. And also they want somebody who actually sits as the real judge, and they have to preside over this thing. And I've done it twice and I loved it. They do it in a real courtroom, you're sitting on the judge's bench, and you are the judge. It's so much fun. It's so fulfilling for me just to work with these students.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_01 39:48

But here's what I experienced. So before we went into the courtrooms and we were assigned to our teams that we were going to judge, they had us in one of the courtrooms and they were assigning people, and I was sitting there on my own, and in front of me was like four lawyers. And this happens all the time, which is why I don't spend a lot of time in the legal profession. The lawyers were all talking about, they were all sharing war stories, how brilliant they were, and how they got the judge to do something for them and yada yada. And I'm thinking to myself, yeah, but how many people did you help last week? How many people did you help last month? They don't have these conversations. And I'm not poo-pooing the legal profession, I'm just saying that I think that as lawyers, we get so fixated on how brilliant we are.

SPEAKER_00 40:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:30

Get that what we're really here for is to help people and serve a little bit, right? And it's okay to get paid to do that. No one should work for free. Although, as you as our business has grown, we've been able to give back, which is a beautiful thing. Yes. But when I first started out and had no money. Oh, and by the way, I lost my dad 11 months in, so I had to figure out how I was going to pay for a funeral and support my mom. I had to put food on the table. But I think, at least from my perspective, that was part of my personal growth and why I got so much out of working for a personal growth company. And I think that's lost. And so I don't enjoy spending a lot of time in the legal profession. It's not my friends. It's I don't know. But it's I've also got a bunch of doctors in my family. And of course, when the doctors get together, they all want to talk about their cases, right? So I get it. But I think at the end of the day, we're here to try and help people solve their personal problems, right? We might look at it as a lawyer from a legal perspective, but it's not. It's a personal problem, right? It's where nobody can in the family can sleep. It's why the mom and dad are fighting and maybe their marriage is dissolving. It's why the siblings all moved out because they can't stand to be around this other person. There's a lot going on here, even in a law firm dealing with these kinds of patients.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

I'm so impressed. I'm so proud of you for looking at it as a full system issue that needs to be corrected, because I think that is something that oftentimes gets missed. That we've put, again, so much focus on the person that is struggling, but it's their whole, their whole system that needs the support. I think that often gets overlooked. And it's very easy for the caretaker or the mom or the spouse to be like, we need to put all our effort and finances into the recovery of the person who's struggling, but to your point, exactly. And then they're gonna get better and then come back to a person who hasn't grown at all, who still has the same cognitions and thought processes and ways of doing things from the past and hasn't grown, that could be very problematic for both parties.

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Yeah. And if we're dealing with somebody who's been traumatized by a parent, whether it was intentional or unintentional, and the parent hasn't dealt with that issue. We had one case where we had we were retained by mom and dad, and dad was very difficult. He was a tough customer, and the son had a serious behavioral health issue, and one of the things that we learned was that allegedly the father had an intimate relationship with the son's girlfriend. Oh okay. And when we confronted the father and said, This is what's going on here, he became very adversarial. And my wife was dealing with the client, and he was very rude to her. And she said to him, You're not hearing me. You are part of the problem. You're part of the problem. He's gonna stay in treatment, he has to deal with it, but you have to do some work here. You had an intimate relationship with his girlfriend. He trusted you, and you violated that trust. Absolutely. Needless to say, we parted ways with that client because this was the lawyer's fault, right? I've almost used all of the hour with you, and I've really enjoyed it. I feel like I could sit and talk to you all day, actually.

SPEAKER_00 43:27

I agree. I didn't realize the work you do is just so phenomenal, but I love hearing kind of the parallels of the work that we're doing. It's really fascinating. I wouldn't have guessed that.

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Yeah, I always tell families when they call us, listen, if you just want papers filed, I'm probably not the right lawyer for you. Hey, there we go. We want to go on the journey with you because we know that there's gonna be ups and downs, right? Good days and bad days, and we need to cross those bridges and deal with those issues. So I tell families that we're in it until we're no longer in it. But if you just want a bunch of papers filed, file either just find a cheap lawyer. Who file the papers. On a Saturday night, when your kid runs out of treatment, they're not taking that call. I am. And I had one instance where I had a young man who ran out of treatment and I was with the cops at like 11 o'clock on a Saturday night there to pick them up. I like to think that we walk the walk and talk the talk. But look, I'm a work in progress too. And there's a reason you call it the practice of law. Hopefully you get a little better as you do more of it.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

So absolutely. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

Before I let you go, I if families are listening to this, hopefully they're going to be listening to this. How do they find you? Do you do is everything in person or do you do virtual stuff? Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Yeah, so we're located in Tucson, Arizona. People can find us through our website, which is rehobith Tucson.com. We also are on Instagram and Facebook if you want to follow along with what the things that we're talking about or what we're passionate about. The way our license works is that you do need to be in the state of Arizona for us to provide services to you. So you could be anywhere in the state of Arizona and we could do telehealth, or if you're in Tucson, we could do in-person appointments. It's actually a little bit interesting. I can double check it's still valid, but I actually do think I'm licensed to do telehealth services for those folks in Florida. That was just a kind of an easy add-on to my license. But for those who it's just not possible for us to work together, I spoke earlier about my passion for journaling. So I actually did write a guided journal that's available on Amazon and you can purchase through our website. So that I think that's a good way people were saying, I want to work with you, but I live in Tennessee or Texas or something. And it has prompts of the types of questions I ask in a therapy setting to start that self-reflection, that understanding of your thinking. And then I also put all my favorite resources that I give to clients in the back of that guided journal. So I'm hoping it's a really helpful resource for those who do want to grow, but we can't work together.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

So I did see that on your website. Is that the journal that you talked about? Looks like a book? Okay. And they can get what's it called? How do they get it?

SPEAKER_00 45:52

Yeah, it's called the Therapeutic Journey. And there is that link on our website, but it's just on Amazon. So if they looked up the title or my name or something like that, it's R-E-H-O-B-O-T-H Rehoboth. And then our website is just Tucson, T-U-C-S-O-N.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

What does that word mean?

SPEAKER_00 46:11

Rehoboth. So yeah, that came again when I was at the behavioral health agency, just feeling more and more constricted by insurance policies. And Rehoboth is a Hebrew word that's found in Genesis of the Bible. That means open space to prosper. And that's exactly what I wanted to create for my clients is just a space where they could grow, that there was room for them to grow. They weren't being constricted by insurance policies and procedures.

SPEAKER_01 46:34

I love it. Thank you for being a guest today. So nice to meet you.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

You so much for having me, Mark.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

You're welcome. And for those that are watching and you're interested to learn a bit more about what we do, our main website is mental health addictionlaw firm.com. That's mental health addiction law firm.com. And if you can't find that, just Google me. I have a lot of social media content. One of the things we like to do, Maggie, is give as much information away as we can for free so families can decide if they even want to have a conversation with us.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

Oh, great.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

Until next time, I'll see you on the journey. Take care.