Man That Can with Lachlan Stuart
Welcome to Man That Can with Lachlan Stuart—the podcast dedicated to empowering men to break through barriers and achieve their full potential.
Hosted by Lachlan Stuart, this show dives deep into the challenges men face, offering actionable insights, real-life stories, and expert advice. Whether you're focused on fitness, business, personal growth, or fatherhood, you'll find inspiration and tools here to help you rise above any challenge and become the man that can.
New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. Tune in, get inspired, and start living the life you’ve always wanted.
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Man That Can with Lachlan Stuart
Opening up on Addiction and Recovery with Drew Wilde #511
Have you ever wondered what it takes to break free from the relentless grip of addiction? How about the power of acceptance and self-reflection in the journey of recovery? Drew Wild, a.k.a the Addiction Guy, takes us on his profoundly raw journey of battling with alcohol and prescription drug addiction. Drew's engaging storytelling will give you a look into his first trip to rehab, the realization of his addiction as a form of distraction, and the transformative path of self-reflection and acceptance.
Drew unravels his own personal transformation as he shares insights from his perspective as a recovery coach. Learn how he surrendered to the need for change, discovered the power of hope and self-education, and forged a path towards recovery. Drew highlights the need for compassion towards those battling addiction, as he underscores the role we play in our lives and how they impact our behaviors.
In the final segments, we explore the influence of environment, emotions, and unresolved life experiences on addiction with Drew. He narrates how he altered his surroundings to assist in his recovery, but warns that a change in environment alone isn't the cure.
The conversation then shifts to understanding addiction from a trauma perspective and the role of acute and developmental trauma in maladaptive behaviors. As we wrap up, Drew provides a peek into his coaching practice, the significance of a supportive system, and the power of engaging with our inner selves.
Drew's story of resilience and recovery is sure to leave you inspired, educated, and understanding addiction on a deeper level.
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Do Something Today To Be Better For Tomorrow
and it's killing me very slowly, but it is killing me. Surely, this life of whatever you want to call this other fucking path, you know recovery, sobriety, healing, personal development, personal growth. You know, whatever that journey is for you, I was just like surely that can't be harder than the life I've created for myself right now.
Speaker 2:The man Let Cam Project podcast, a podcast in powering queer driven men to live more fulfilling lives. We are here to challenge your beliefs, redefine success and talk about the important stuff in a relatable way. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. My name's Lockies Stuart. Let's get into it.
Speaker 3:Today we're going to dive into a topic that touches many lives, yet is clouded with a bit of stigma and misunderstanding, and that's going to be addiction. With us is a man who's walked the challenging path of addiction, faced its darkest corners and emerged with insights that are both profound and transformative Drew Wilde. Welcome brother, thank you, bro. You're also known as the addiction guy, which is pretty bloody cool. So your journey from rock bottom to redemption is nothing short of inspiring. And I was saying I listened to about three hours worth of podcasts of you chatting yesterday, which was great to understand more about your story and your thoughts around addiction and the road to recovery, and for me it was cool because we have a lot of things that we align with. But I'm also going to try and play devil's advocate to a point, because I'm sure there's people I love that.
Speaker 3:You know there's two sides to every story, of course, for everyone listening. Before we delve into the conversation, a quick shout out to our amazing listeners. Sixty four percent of you have hit the follow button on Spotify. We want to get that up. So if you're listening and you haven't hit follow, do that for me or make me happy. And seventy three percent on Apple. So if we were to make this a battle between Apple and Spotify, apple's dominating, absolutely dominating. So make sure you hit follow if you haven't already. So please take a moment to do that. Not only will you never miss an episode, but you'll also make me an incredibly happy dude. Let's keep the momentum going, drew. Welcome to the show. Let's dive in with a hard hitting question to kick it off. Let us go. Have you ever found yourself trapped in a cycle, knowing it's causing you harm, yet feeling powerless to break free?
Speaker 1:I loved it. I loved it for damn near fucking, probably Shit, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 years of my life, yeah.
Speaker 3:What? At what point was it that you realized you were stuck in that cycle?
Speaker 1:The first. I think the first experience is when I was a lot younger. I was probably I don't know, maybe 21, 22 when things started getting really bad and I realized I actually couldn't stop. Like there was, there was something in me, there was this compulsion. There was something that was like this. It felt like an out of body experience. I didn't feel like me that was in control. It was like I need this to survive, like this is like it was like my medicine, you know, and I need this. And there's a real tipping point from like you know, at just being like something that was happening on the weekend to like this is now an everyday occurrence. And if I don't have my quote, unquote medicine, you know I shit, like is I'm in pain. Ultimately, this is kind of what I felt.
Speaker 3:So you're referring to the medicine. Quote, unquote medicine as your vice, yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:My vices, my crutches for me at that age were mostly alcohol, but, you know, recreational drugs at that point 22.
Speaker 1:Yep, definitely got worse later on, but yeah, I mean 22 was when I first ended up in rehab for the first time came out. I sort of stayed clean this over for like maybe like nine months and then just sat on that merry-go-round. They're like what? Like, if you read those words again, like that was my life for like another eight years. It was just a cycle and I call it the cycle of addiction. It's like, for whatever reason, I decided I could, you know, I could go and have a drink again. You know, it might be a good day, it might be a shit day. Get a message, make it like hey bro, like you want to come to the pub, but I have a pint. Yeah, cool, and for me I was like rolling the dice.
Speaker 1:I was like Russian really. I literally never knew if I was going to be out for a week again by this point in my life. I also had addiction to prescription drugs, so I had a heavy dependency on Valium, which is a benzodiazepine. Thanks for rehab actually. Oh, really, shut up rehab for that one. Yeah, rehab is a great way to pick up the addiction. They use it to help you. And I understand why they use it.
Speaker 1:They use it to help you detox. Alcohol is actually one of the hardest substances to detox from and most dangerous. Yeah, you can go. If you've been drinking heavily, steadily daily for a long period of time, you can basically go into what they call DT's and have seizures and die. It's crazy that it's one of the hardest to wean yourself off.
Speaker 3:Yet it's still one of the hardest to get rid of. You've got to wean yourself off, yet it's still one that's legal.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, don't fucking start it on that. But this is where I don't want to demonize the vice, and we'll eventually get to that point. The whole ethos of what I talk about is that the thing isn't the thing For me. 100% sure it was drugs, prescription drugs and alcohol, but I truly believe everyone's got something. This is where I say addiction and distraction is synonymous. If everyone that is listening or watching this is really fucking honest with themselves I do this in like I give talks quite often right, and quite often it's to a mainstream audience I'll start these talks. I'll be like put your hand up if you're identified as an addict. No, no, no no.
Speaker 1:He does a hand guard where you get some super excited dude who's real fresh into like some variety. He's like yeah me, yeah, cool man.
Speaker 1:Honoring you, bro Hell yeah, fuck, yeah dope, but yeah, like no hands will go up, cool, okay, and I eventually I'll get to a question and I'll be like cool. So put your hand up if you know that you have something in your life that you lean on, that you turn to when you just don't really want to be in the full experience of life, when it's a little bit stressful, when there's some feelings that you don't really want to feel, when things are about overwhelming, and every single way in the room will go up and I'm like cool. So what's the fucking difference between when I asked you if you had an addiction and what I've just spoken about now? The only separation between those two is the stigma that you have attached to that word addiction. And it's a spectrum. Of course it's a spectrum, there's a full spectrum.
Speaker 1:Like I took it to the, you know, level 10. Yep, leveled up. Yeah, I took it to level 10, 100%. But you know there's a lot of people that you know, like I'd say, food is probably one of the biggest addictions on this planet. We spoke about this like overworking.
Speaker 1:Massive on Huge and that ties in with addiction to stress. Yeah, I can find myself in that too, 100% still to this day. I can find myself in that.
Speaker 3:And so when we look at addiction, so would you say it's? You've said medicine, which I think was awesome because it's, it's, and it ties into what you said a moment ago, where it's almost something more than what the addiction actually is. It's. You're trying to fill a gap or avoid distract yourself, essentially, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what it actually is is, for most people, it's actually their solution. Yep, it's just a really fucked up and maladaptive solution. Like it's helping If you ask anyone like why do you eat the way that you eat? Why do you engage with porn in the way that you engage with porn? Why are you such a people pleaser? Why do you work as many hours as you do? Like ask them what they get from that. Yeah, a lot of the time, if you ask someone you know say like food or if they have a drink, they get, I get. I get home, I have a drink, I have a glass of wine. Just helps me unwind. Okay, helps you unwind so you find a bit of peace. The comfort helps you to soothe, helps you to pacify. It's like now we're starting to figure out that this is actually giving you something outside of like just like looking at that substance, right, so it's like okay. So you've got a problem like unwinding. You've got a problem just being still. You've got a problem with you know doing nothing.
Speaker 3:Do you get much pushback on that, with people not accepting that, where they're like no, no, no, no, it's just, it helps me unwind, but it's because I feel like, even in with people that I work with, it takes them some people a while to accept.
Speaker 1:Oh, 100% Like some people just aren't ready and willing to look at that, and that's fine, that's cool. You know, I'm not speaking to those people, really, that's true.
Speaker 1:Like if you're totally happy living the life that you're living, your behaviour patterns that play out. You know whether they're adaptive or maladaptive. For most people, like, a lot of these patterns aren't creating enough pain in their life for them to actually want to even doing anything about them. So that's where I sort of talk about this tipping point, this line in the sand, like I'm forever grateful that I chose something that really truly, like fucked up my shit so badly. I really had no choice. It was like I will die or I can heal, like that was my ultimate. I made it.
Speaker 1:But you know, for someone who you maybe, as the overworker, like what's their rock bottom? Maybe like the wife and kids end up leaving. Maybe that's their wake-up call. Maybe they hit some immense burnout, hit a wall, have a heart attack I don't know whatever that is. Or like they just they just become so disconnected from themselves they don't know who they are outside of work. Maybe that's a wake-up call. But something like that can be a lot harder to hit that breaking point, to actually see that oh shit, this isn't serving me anymore and there's a lot of people that as well. These adaptations so ultimately there's a survival adaptations I can talk about more on that later. They work really fucking well for them. They've got them into some really successful situations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not trying to the light to say, look, this isn't working, you're like well look at the results that I've got dude 100%.
Speaker 1:And then so I'm like, but at what cost Do you? Know, what I mean, at what cost. It's like cool, you might have the you know multi-million dollar company. What's your relation like? Are you happy?
Speaker 1:I know a fuckload of people that have millions of dollars in the bank account, that are miserable, absolutely miserable. They don't know who the fuck they are outside of work. They don't have a relationship with themselves. They don't have any friends. They don't have anyone to share their success with, to share their money, with their abundance, with their fucking toys and all that stuff with the family's been left behind. They don't even know they're in fucking kids. The wife's, you know probably running off fucking someone else because you know she he's in the office for 17 hours a day.
Speaker 3:The thought of that makes me angry. Yeah, Like really makes me angry. I think about it a lot because a lot of the men that I work with which is why I'm grateful that you're here to sort of speak more into the addiction- side of it.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I do swear, but I hope you do.
Speaker 3:That's fine If anyone gets offended. I've sworn enough to. They've already left.
Speaker 3:They're gone Like this is a good show, but man, he's a foul mouth dude. But I think about it a lot because I've seen it. Similar to you worked with a lot of high net worth individuals whose family what you know partners may have left them or their kids don't talk to them. They're extremely overweight and don't have a good quality of life because of energy. They don't know who they are or what they stand for. They're just like. This is what I get up and do every day and without that I'm nobody. I'm nothing.
Speaker 1:And we see it with athletes.
Speaker 3:We see it with business owners. We see it with even parents to a degree when the kids leave right Mums especially.
Speaker 3:Yep All the time. And I say that's a one role that you're playing in your life, but you need to consider what you want financially, what you want in your relationships, what you want from a career standpoint, how you want your mindset, your physical all of those things are important to consider because they all lean on each other. You may have a focal point at different stages in your life, but we've already you know how old are you?
Speaker 1:35.
Speaker 3:Yeah similar age, so we've been through so many phases of our life already. So the 20s. You know we were drinking booze and getting amongst you on prescription drugs.
Speaker 3:I was on whatever I could get my hands on and then now I've come out the other side. I'm a different phase where I'm like that was naughty. I don't want to part of that anymore. I'm in a new phase and for a lot of people they don't think that far enough ahead. It's like we can look back for experience around what we did, like what we didn't like, and we can look forward to the future for inspiration. And it's within that inspiration like what kind of relationships do you want to have? All those things that we've both touched on, what do you want those to look like? Because now is the time to decide and actions that you take moving forward are going to.
Speaker 1:And I think you know we've kind of touched on this even before we started the podcast. It's like you don't know what you don't know, like I didn't even know this world that I now live existed. I had no fucking clue. I didn't know there was anything outside of this box or this frame, this conditioned experience that I had been led to believe was my pathway. You know, I was told. You know, basically I got decent marks at school, I played rugby, I. You know the expectation was that I went to university. I think I did maybe like 90% of a marketing and management degree before I ended up in rehab. Oh right, blame it on the marketing degree. Yeah, you know I. And then the expectation was like you leave university and you go get the corporate job. And I think you know it's different for everybody. You know what that condition experience is for a lot of people. You know, particularly, I see, in Aussie, it's like, you know, there's a lot of tradies and again, there's a culture that comes with that. It's like this expected culture. It's like you work fucking Monday to Friday. Friday everyone gets hyped because they're like oh yeah, I get to finally fucking leave this experience that I fucking hate every day because it just pays the bills. I'm just like you know. I'm just just ticking a box to get some money in my account to make sure I can pay my rent and have enough money left over to get on the person, maybe get a bag, and then wake up Sunday hung as fuck, eat some shit food and drag my ass back to work on a Monday. I didn't know there was a world outside of that. I'm with you. I literally didn't know there was a world outside of that and I shared with you. You know it wasn't until.
Speaker 1:There's always been this innate inner fucking rebel in me. Like I'm just like a massive fuck the system sign and kind of do that. So I am an always question why and that's kind of what got me into this. I'll expand more on like the sort of under threads and undercurrents of addiction. But I've always questioned why, like, why? Why I don't want to do that. It doesn't like this, that looks boring as shit.
Speaker 1:What, trying to, like, you know, just save all my money or work 40 hours a week to live my best life after 65. Like what? No, and but again, like I wasn't surrounded by the people that I am now, like I wasn't surrounded by entrepreneurs. I wasn't surrounded by people that are running against the grain. I wasn't surrounded by people doing things differently Like. The most contrasting person in my life was probably like my bro that left school early to become a chippy and he cracked it Like you know. He was the one making more money than all of us. You know we're at uni racking up a student debt and he's, you know, on apprentice wages.
Speaker 1:Killing it, and then eventually you know he's got a very, very, very successful construction company back in NZ. But you know that wasn't a world I was exposed to and it wasn't. It wasn't until I shared with you. My dad passed away when I was about 26. And the two gifts he gave me one inadvertently he got it here to brain tumor and, like inadvertently he gave, the biggest gift he gave me was like your health is your wealth. He wasn't unhealthy but he was very sedentary, like it didn't work out and move his body.
Speaker 1:He had a very high stress job and, yeah, like you know, it kind of adds up. Don't look after you. Then you know what are you going to expect Something's going to break at some point in time. Unfortunately for him, it was you know, it was you know he left, and so that was, you know, a big gift that came was like your health is your wealth, and that sort of got me on this path of health and wellness, which led me to like where I am today. And the second piece was, like I said to you, we're having these conversations before he passed and I think he wished he did things really differently. He wished he'd loved a bit of a different life and a bit of a different experience. And he just like, just like, do whatever the fuck makes you happy. That's it. Go and figure that out. But first of all, most I had to figure out that, like me, figure out who the fuck I was.
Speaker 3:Was that? Let's go back to figuring you out and thanks for sharing that and so feel lost. But, as you said, there's a gift that comes from moments like that, and there's plenty of people who've had plenty of gifts rock up with their door and they still are choosing not to open them.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I could talk about that. I call them gifts and strange wrapping paper. But it's like we're always getting the tickle, and if we don't listen to the tickle, we get the book. And if we don't listen to the book, we'll get the Mack truck coming through the door. Yep.
Speaker 3:And it's not like when we think, when I think about it from the position I'm in now, where I've grown a lot and I've changed my perspective and, very similar to you, go after a different style of life, one that makes me happy, and if I don't like something, change it, rather than just doing something, because that's what was expected of me. I think about and I want to tie this back to you is you had these gifts rock up. What was it that made you prepared to listen to it at that point in time? Because, yeah, there's going to be a lot of people who've. If they were to just take an hour to reflect on things that have happened in their life, they could see that they could open that right now. So what made you ready?
Speaker 1:It's such an individual experience I get asked this all the time and then we say this you know, when I'm presenting with my business partners as well, it's such an individual experience and it's not something that someone can be kind of coached into or dragged into or potentially even be mirrored back to themselves. It's something they need to be willing to ultimately look at and take some form of like real radical, fucking self-responsibility and like it. For me it was like a switch flick. That's the only way I can explain it is like a switch flick For me.
Speaker 1:It was the second time I went back to rehab I think it was 28, and I remember sitting at the end of the like. You're just like and I've been to everyone that's listening has ever been to rehab, they'll know you get these fucking shitty single beds, the kind of beds you're only getting these rehabilitation centers. I was sitting on the end of this bed and I was just like, head in my hand, just like how am I here again? How am I here again? And that moment for me it was like yeah, it was very, it was profound, it was pretty subtle, but it was very real and visceral in my body. It was just like I'm done Like this I've done everything.
Speaker 1:I've done absolutely everything I possibly can to try and keep these things in my life and I've done not a lot to try to keep them out. And it's killing me, very slowly, but it is killing me. Surely, this life of whatever you want to call this other fucking path recovery, sobriety, healing, personal development, personal growth, whatever that journey is for you I was just like surely that can't be harder than the life I've created for myself right now, like, choose my heart, choose my heart. And so I was like, cool, alright, I'm going to give this a crack, I'm going to go all in and see what I can make of it.
Speaker 3:What were some things that you had to accept about yourself on that path to recovery?
Speaker 1:I mean, first and foremost, that it's just a full acceptance that I had a problem with drugs and alcohol. That step one was like, yeah, just this acceptance Was that hard. It was almost like a surrender At that time. It really wasn't, it really wasn't, it was. It actually felt like a breath of fresh air. That's how I explain it. So it was like, oh, my body actually finally let go. Like, instead of trying to hold on to this old life, it was like, oh no, I'm actually ready to let go of that.
Speaker 3:And you fully believe that there is nothing that anyone could have said or done that would have helped you earlier.
Speaker 1:Nothing. I say this all the time. I get messages every single day by family members of every single day moms, dads, partners. Hey, my son, daughter, husband, wife is in this experience. What can I do? I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:The hardest thing I have to tell them every single time is there is, you know. I go spend on this a little bit, but ultimately it's shortest form. There's nothing you can do until they want to help themselves. You cannot help somebody that doesn't want to help themselves Full stop. They're not receptive, they're not open to it, they're not there yet. They haven't hit that breaking point.
Speaker 1:It's a very individual experience and all I say is like what you can do is number one you can go and educate yourself on, you know, addiction full stop, what it actually is, where it actually comes from, where it actually stems from, so that you can have a bit more understanding and compassion for whoever your loved one is that's going through that experience. And what you can do is also look after you, go and do some work on you, be that fucking lighthouse you know. Show whoever this person is in your life that you know that this other world and realm of being and you know who they can be and become is actually possible. Because there's so many people that are in that experience. We feel so isolated and so alone and that there really isn't a lot of hope. And so even just to have a space that creates, just to hear somebody else's story Like I remember walking into rehab for the first time at 22. And just hearing some other people share similar fucked up stories- I was just like we're normal? Oh my God, I'm not alone.
Speaker 1:I didn't know anything about addiction back then. I'd never been exposed to anything like that, and so, you know, I literally thought I was going to show up and give me some magic pill and, like, send me on my way. Yeah you're done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sweet, I'm good, I'm healed yeah, no, not quite the case. Whereas I'm going with that, yeah, like it was. Just to hear somebody else with like, share their own personal lived experience and have so many similarities Like that, eradicate so much shame, like the undercurrent to so many people that do experience any form of addiction, is a shame. There's a lot of shame that comes with that and that comes with the stigma attached to that as well, attached that word. And so to hear somebody else like, for you to like, share openly, share your heart, share vulnerability, share some of the fucked up, twisted shit that you've done, and somebody next to you going here, same yeah.
Speaker 3:I did worse than that.
Speaker 1:You're like oh wow, I'm with my people, these guys get it.
Speaker 3:What are some of the common forms or experiences that shames attached to for people? If we could give some examples for anyone listening that can sit down and go oh fuck, someone else has done that. Or holds that. So explain that again or ask that question, so again shame, you say, is it underlying in the currents for addiction? So what are some of the main pieces of shame that people hold on to, or examples of shame?
Speaker 1:I think it's just just there. They know that their behavior isn't socially acceptable I guess for one of a better word and so they internalize it. It gets buried, gets shoved down, like the difference between guilt and shame is. Guilt is I've done something bad, full stop, and it might remedy the thing that I've done that's bad. Shame is an internalization of guilt. So shame is like I've done something bad and I'm a bad person as a result of what I've done. So it's dependent on the particular behavior and it's this internalization of I'm a bad person which is a thread for so many of people that I've worked with.
Speaker 1:And this is where we're getting to like core wounds. Right, and this is really what I'm only ever working on with so many of my clients is actually figuring out what a lot of these core wounds are. But yeah, it's just the biggest piece I work on with a lot of my clients is the inner critic. I think a lot of people could relate to that. Like the inner critic is that that shame runs so deep that that internal narrative and voice is just like you're a fucking piece of shit and it's ultimately it's their driving force. It's actually what compels them and gets them to do things in a way and just a very mal again, a maladaptive survival response For me. I remember having a mentor early on in my journey and he looked at me and he's just like Drew man, you need to be so much kinder to yourself and like this dude may as well have been talking Japanese to me Like it went so far over my head.
Speaker 1:The words is a new. I didn't even understand what you're saying to me and like, evidently, like that's been such a huge part of my journey is learning how to be in a relationship with me, learning actually how to like be my own best mate. We're the one person we spend the most time with, yet we're, 95, 99% of the time, the one person in our lives we actually know the least about.
Speaker 3:It's interesting to think about, because I would have assumed years ago, when I sort of introduced to that same concept, that I would have been my own best mate, because there were moments where I think that I was a good person. 90% of the time I thought I was a shit person. I thought I was a bit of a pig.
Speaker 3:I was like but I look after myself occasionally.
Speaker 3:So therefore I'm a good bloke and I know more about me than anyone else.
Speaker 3:But then I started thinking about how I spoke to myself, which seems like such a insignificant thing.
Speaker 3:However, it's the driving force behind everything, everything, everything, and when I speak to people about like, I prime myself every day with how I want to think, how I want to act and how I want to behave, and I've been doing that since 2014 and I'm still not conditioned to the level that I would like to be conditioned, because you mentioned before the impact that it has on other people when addiction strikes or trauma strikes or bad, bad whatever it is strikes. That motivates me to want to be better in every single way, because I don't want to one put myself through that, because I care deeply about myself and, secondly, I don't want to put someone else through that because, as you said, there's not a single thing they can say or do to stop the train wreck that I could have potentially been going on. So, if anyone listening, even if you're complacent with your life and you're content, there is an opportunity to start thinking about a compelling future, something that does excite you, that makes you want to grow and better, and it's just like what else is there?
Speaker 1:Just start to question things. That's what I say to people. Start to question things, start to kind of just observe yourself. Sounds a bit weird and woo, but just kind of observe yourself and be like is this what I want from life? Am I content? Am I happy? You don't have to.
Speaker 1:And a lot of my clients that I work with don't hit that stage. I don't actually work with someone that would have been at that level. You need a detox, you need a rehab, you need that's not generally the type of person I actually work with. There's a level of stability in their life, but they're just hit some sort of their breaking point is different and, for whatever reason, some X, y and Z's unfolded and they're like I don't want to live this way anymore. I'm sick of this. I'm bored. It's the same shit on repeat. I'm sitting on the hamster wheel.
Speaker 1:So yeah, like you said, if you're just looking at your life and you're feeling like you're sitting on the hamster wheel, you don't really know what to do, like fuck, you come to the right place. You listen to the right podcast. Just the fact that you're listening to this podcast shows that you want more from life. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like that's, the fact that you're actually willing to chuck on a podcast of this caliber on your way to work or while you're at the gym and actually listen to some humans that are doing something fucking different shows that there is a part of you that wants something different, just doesn't know how the fuck to get there yet. And so I always talk about like no, do be, it's all very noteworthy, like know something, you can read all the fucking books you want, you can listen to all the podcasts you want, but if you're not actually putting that knowledge into action, it's meaningless, really means nothing. There's a lot of people, unfortunately, out there that go like they love to go from no to teach. Yeah, they might know a thing, and then they'll try to teach a thing. They bypass the actual doing of it and therefore the embodiment, the becoming it, the being it, and that's something I'm really passionate about in the way that I teach as well is like I will you know?
Speaker 1:I've qualified in numerous different modalities and practices that I help my clients with to move through different experiences. But you know I'll give them whatever comes up in session. I'll then give them what I call like embodiment practices, like here's your practice that's actually going to help you integrate what we've just learned and that's where the rubber meets like hits the road. You know that's where the needle shifts. It's in the doing of the shit that starting to do things a little bit differently, integrating can be a small like integrate a morning routine. I integrate some sort of a morning practice. You know, I don't know I could for you. I don't know where anyone's at in this podcast, I don't know what you're like sort of average demographic is, but you know, just do something a little bit more fucking wholesome and a little bit different.
Speaker 3:For the way I look? Yeah, because I think intent such an important part like for what purpose will I integrate a morning routine? For majority of our audience, high performing man and the way I look at it it's like warming up for the gym. So I look at you know my morning routine, while it has a framework, is different depending on what the day looks like. So you know there's no point going into the gym not warming up at all because you're not going to be able to maximize your output. There's also no point going into the gym and warming up your legs when you're doing an upper body session. It just doesn't make sense. So if you know you've got a busy day where you're talking to a lot of clients for example, it might be coaching day, or it might be sales day, or it might be whatever the day is do specific warmups or routines in the morning to have you prime so you can perform at your optimal level. You can be the individual that you know will add value to whatever space or interaction that you're having.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean at its core. What I say to most people is is creating a morning routine that creates self awareness, that sits, like you said, sits in attention. You're spending a bit of time with yourself, to actually just be with yourself, to move out of autopilot, which most people are running in 24 seven. They'll wake up, grab the phone, have a scroll.
Speaker 1:You know already the energy is dropping because they're seeing Sally's and Fiji and you're fucking got to go to work and then you open the news and it's all doom and fucking gloom and you know you kind of get slump out of bed and you got to go after work and like again, it's just autopilot. It's like what if you actually woke up and you took some time for yourself to tune into you, to figure out you know who you want to be for the day, what you want to be for the day. So it's some intention and remind yourself of potentially, maybe your goals, who you're aspiring to be, what you want to embody and move through the day with that. I call it like putting on armor, like if I'm starting my day with that, I'm starting my day. It's like recharging your phone. I'm starting at 100. Yep, shit's always going to happen, but like I'm only going to come down to maybe like 60 or 70, you know, if I'm starting my day by opening a phone and having a scroll, you know I'm already at zero.
Speaker 1:There's only one way down, and that's when we're much more susceptible as well to then reaching outside of ourself for these creature comforts to help support me and just deal with life.
Speaker 3:Can we talk about like genetics and environment. So, rolling on from what you've just said there, like, for me, a big part of that is environment, like creating an environment that makes you want to, you know, build towards a compelling future and a great life, as opposed to leaning on those medicines.
Speaker 1:As we call it. Oh, environment has fucking everything. It's such a key component and such a big piece of what I teach and preach is creating an environment that's conducive to the life that you want to live in, the person that you want to become. You know, it's something that I think I don't often give enough credit to Like. I intentionally moved from New Zealand to the Gold Coast because I'd found my people and like my environments, everything, and that's not just where I live, but it's the people I surround myself, probably actually more so, the people I surround myself with. You know it's an oldest like personal development quote, jim Rohn. Jim Rohn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with audit your inner circle, like if you're looking around, you're in a circle and the five people you're spending the most time with the same people you've been like fucking, drinking or partying with for the last 20 or 30 years, having the same bullshit conversations that you've been on repeat for, like you know, last 20 years. Is that really serving you as elevating you? Is it helping you to grow and expand or does it help? Does it? Do you feel contracted? What helps you to feel expanded? Like? Who are those people gone? Find those people.
Speaker 3:It's when you say that I've, because I'd love to hear your thoughts and I probably get going to get educated here. But I really struggled to believe that addiction is anything more than environment. Because I know when I used to smoke, I used to drink direct creation or drug use, and I smoke for years and then I just stopped. And when I made the decision to stop I changed my environment. I tried to quit smoking so many times and then I'd find myself back at a pub on a Friday and you know, you'd have a few beers and then it's like make an Obama smoke. Then I'd have a smoke and I'm like I've already started, I'll just go buy another pack. Then the next morning I'm waking up and I'm like damn it. And I just kept going through that cycle because I was in that environment. The moment that I removed myself from that environment I haven't had a cigarette for like 10 years I still smell it and I'm like mmm, yummy.
Speaker 3:But because I'm not in that environment. I'm in a completely different environment around people that if I were to pull out a diary they'd be like what are you doing? What are you doing? What is? Going on. And so for me, when I hear about addiction, as you said, there is this spectrum. I completely understand that. But for me, when I look at individuals that talk about it, I'm like okay, well, the environment you're in has you perfectly set up to do that 100%, and I'm probably going to get hate for that.
Speaker 1:but I'm also hoping to be educated on it, because I mean, I've got two trainers thoughts I'd say, yeah, you're spot on, you know. I'll start with environment. You can't heal within an environment that's ultimately inviting in those same behavioral patterns that you're wanting to be free from. You cannot that's not possible. And so environments usually the first thing I'll look at with a lot of my clients is like, let's start with environment. And I guess my question for you would be if did you notice, like when you change your environment and stop smoking, was there something else that maybe popped up that you turned to, that maybe that energy was focused into Training? Okay, there we go, definitely.
Speaker 3:And with the hindsight that I have now, I still remember I just was almost like a social anxiety. I really struggled to connect and communicate because I didn't know much about many things. All I wanted to do at that time was be a professional athlete completely. You know, smoking and drinking dickhead. But so when people talk, Like most of the video athletes do you feel yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:But as I'm sitting there and I'm thinking about this, I'm like I'd sit in conversations and people were talking about things that I had no idea about, so I didn't feel like I could contribute to that conversation and I felt kind of worthless in that situation. So the easiest way is like I'll just go bung a smoke and go sit outside, or I'll go get the next round of beers. Yeah, that makes sense and I'd come back and I feel like I had something to offer, which is weird when I think about it.
Speaker 1:So again, you're getting something from that right Like you're coming in.
Speaker 4:You've got the beers, everyone's giving you a pat on the back.
Speaker 1:Lucky. Yeah, like Lucky's a good dude, he's got a round love that you're getting a hit you're getting love.
Speaker 3:You're getting approval right. Set that life button on Instagram 100%, no different.
Speaker 1:And so this is where, like cool, yes, environment can change some things, but it doesn't go far enough. Because what I experienced is that if people were only changing environment and you just take away that one thing, that's been your crutch or your vice or your you know, whatever the thing that you've lent on your coping mechanism for so long what you start to notice is like just playing a giant game of whack-a-mole yeah, you hit one down and something else is going to pop up somewhere else in your life. That energy was still going to use. You're still going to have the compulsion in your body that wanted or didn't really want to be with self is still there, so it will find another way to kind of shove that discomfort or dis-ease down.
Speaker 1:So this, I guess kind of circles into my whole view on addiction is that I started at rehab you know 22,. It was a 12-step based rehab. So like if you want to go back and addiction like way back when instill in the legal system, you're just treated as ultimately a moral failing, like you're just a shit person and you're making bad choices. And unfortunately it's still seen that a lot of people like you just flawed your weak and you're a stain on society. So, okay, yeah, maybe that doesn't feel true to me. Then the 12-step narrative came in and that came with a bit more compassion. So that was a disease based moral of addiction. So it was like you've just got a disease for which there's no known cure and we'll give you the tools to help you manage that disease, and in that I laugh with another addiction specialist over in the UK that I met.
Speaker 1:So we used to laugh about this all the time, like there was a part of me that fucking loved that because that part went yeah, let's run with that, because you don't have to look any deeper.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was.
Speaker 1:You don't have to go any deeper than that. You've just got a disease. And so it was like, oh cool, I've just got a disease for which there's no known cure. But again in my body I was like that doesn't feel fucking true. It sounds like a cop out. It sounds like you actually don't know, you're just regurgitating what you've been told to tell me. So I guess, fast forward, ended up back in rehab 28,. Ended up Well, I'm trying to figure out this timeline. What got me to rehab? So I ended up in the health and wellness industry had a reason. We said successful business in that when I was on Like when I was on I was on.
Speaker 3:When you're on party.
Speaker 1:When I was working and switched on and engaged. That was great. I had quite a successful health and wellness business. I ended up winning all expenses for the company I was working with at the time. I ended up winning this all expenses paid trip to Las Vegas. Uh oh yeah, uh oh. Anyway, that was an absolute blowout and that was sort of like the start of my final demise.
Speaker 1:Got me back into rehab, switch flicked and started with all I kind of knew, which was the 12 steps, and I've said this openly like I've got no problem with the 12 steps. The 12 steps to start with definitely saved my life and set me on that path and that road. But there were some pieces of the 12 step that didn't resonate with me, and the biggest piece that didn't resonate was this disease based model, which just didn't feel true. What I did resonate with was the dis-ease that I felt in my body. I felt a lot of discomfort in my body. I found it very hard to sit, fucking.
Speaker 1:Still, I was that wriggler. I've got a mate that calls a lot of addicts natural born leg jigglers, which I love, the natural little leg jiggler, and so I definitely felt that and so, anyway, I just kind of set that path and I was really grateful as well and thankful that a lot the company that I was aligned with at the time had a really heavily weighted value system on personal development. So I was also exposed to a lot of different ways like different experiences of personal development outside of that scope of 12 step. So anyway, I ended up in this workshop Shout out to Preston Smiles and Lexie Panos.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:The old yeah, they are legends.
Speaker 3:Is that the?
Speaker 1:bridge one you did. Yeah, yeah, I worked with Pee for quite some time. Amazing man, fucking dope, human. Yeah, when did the bridge experience grow? And there was one simple practice I won't explain the practice Like, if you have the great fortune of being able to step into one of these rooms, I truly believe it to be the most transformative experiential workshop on the planet. But, yeah, one of these practices we did just fucking cracked me.
Speaker 1:I always have, up until that point, I'd always said I'm really okay with my dad dying. I just haven't been in the right space or environment to actually feel it yet. And this particular practice has fucking cracked me. I was just bawling my eyes out, absolute weeping, and I was just having this huge, like cathartic release, and as much as I was crying and bawling my eyes out, like you know, when it started to pass, I actually started to feel more free. I started to feel lighter, I started to feel I felt really fucking good and I was like holy shit, like there was just a spark that went off. It was like this has got fucking nothing to do with a disease and this has got everything to do with my inability to feel and process my emotions. And so I started following that thread and that's what led me down what I call like the trauma train.
Speaker 3:The trauma train.
Speaker 1:All aboard. But again, like that word trauma has it's such a buzzword in the space these days and a lot of people it's very misunderstood and that's why we intentionally don't actually use the word trauma and a lot of our front facing shop for our recovery program. Because of that misunderstanding, and for me as well, I would have said if you looked at my childhood from the outside, looking and I would have been like bro, my life was cushy, like what? Where's the trauma there? Like I was loved, parents were together. You know well off upper middle class, fucking white you know, upbringing.
Speaker 1:Anyway, for whatever reason, it just felt so true, it felt so right. I started following people like Gable Marta. He's like the fucking goat when it comes to like addiction and trauma, and his ethos is like let's stop looking at the addiction and let's start looking at the pain. What is what's underneath that? What's creating that compulsion? That's that's creating that, that desire or that, that necessity for someone to reach for something from outside of themselves in order for them to make them feel, you know, give them an altered experience. Ultimately, I need something from outside of myself in order to make me feel better, or not feel as much as the case may be in most situations. And so you continue to follow that thread and I was like, fuck, this makes so much sense. Like this, this is actually everything. This is why is no one speaking about this? This just makes sense.
Speaker 1:It's not the drugs, the alcohol, the porn, the overworking, the people pleasing, the procrastination, the, you know, whatever that behavioral trait may be. That's just a symptom of a much deeper rooted issue. And so you know. Again, trauma, you know I talk about it as like in Prince of the past I love using the word like undigested life experiences.
Speaker 3:Undigested. I like that one.
Speaker 1:Undigested life experiences. You know, just you know, trapped emotions, stored emotions, stored feelings, feelings gone and felt, just these. We've all had experiences that, particularly in men. We've all had particular experiences that there's been an overwhelming sense of emotion, of feeling that no one has fucking taught us how to be with, how to what to do with. There's also a very unhealthy narrative that you know boys don't cry, men don't share, men don't talk, men don't open up about their feelings. We don't expose ourselves vulnerability like that, and so we'll shove it down. We'll continue to shove all this shit fucking down, down, down, down, down, down, down down.
Speaker 1:And all that stuff wants to do is this energy, this emotion I talk about is equals energy and emotion Like this stuff wants to come out, it wants to be processed, but again, we're not given the tools, we're not shown how to actually feel. No one shows us how the fuck to feel really, and so what we do is, as the stuff starts to bubble up, that's when we'll like reach for whatever our coping mechanism is, whatever our advice is, whatever our behavioral trait or adaptation is, that helps us to pacify, self-soothe, run, hide and escape. And so, yeah, I kept following that thread and it just started making sense. And yeah, I mean I guess that's the essence and ethos of what I now do teach and preach is that let's stop looking at the thing. The thing isn't the problem. Let's stop villainizing the symptom and let's go and look at what's underneath that, what's the driving force there and, ultimately, what are those core wounds that all of us have, just not a lot of us willing to look at.
Speaker 3:How would anyone know that it's becoming an addiction Like? At what point would you, even from your experience, know that it was an addiction and not just like a quick passing phase?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I mean, if it's causing problems in your life, then there's probably something to look at there. I think it's really as simple as that. You know, if it's causing problems for you or the people around you, there's probably an issue. And that can be, for, like I said, man, this can be behavioral traits. You know, people pleasing is so fucking common. These are survivors. So what we're talking about here is actual survival adaptations.
Speaker 1:So, going back to trauma, you know unfortunately so I sort of there's different facets and realms and worlds of trauma, but the two that are most spoken about and most poignant for probably people that are listening, number one is acute trauma, and unfortunately a lot of people have experienced acute trauma. That would be things like sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, growing up, bullying. Things like this is very they're ultimately, particularly when we're younger, they're literal, perceived threats to our life and so we adapt and respond in a particular way to find that safety or to find that love. And that works as a kid, when we're younger, or even, as you know, in our teens and in our 20s. But when we sort of become grown-ass men, they usually become quite maladaptive adaptations. What is also mostly prevalent and I truly believe this is sort of like the 90% of the trauma.
Speaker 1:Of all trauma comes from what we call developmental trauma. Developmental trauma it's actually a lot harder and more difficult to see and like acute trauma. I love working with it because it's actually a lot easier to work with, because it's a very distinct moment in time that someone has an imprint and potentially a memory of that we can really just go to and work with and work on. Developmental trauma is much more subtle. The simplest definition of developmental trauma is just not getting your basic human needs met in the way that you wanted and needed them met as a child. This is where it can get a little bit more subtle and a little bit more confusing, because that's just your lived experience. So if that's just your lived experience, it's hard to see that as that having an impact on your life. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:So it's more like the interpretation of things. 100%.
Speaker 1:So for me just to kind of wrap this up and give someone an example For me, this is where everything started falling into place for me and made sense, as I fuck this makes all the sense in the world. When I started peeling back these layers, I was like, okay, what I started to realise and recognise and have had conversations with my mum about this as well, so I know this to be quite true is that mum had two miscarriages before me. She was 40 years old when she had me. As children, we're tiny little sponges. We're like the living emanation of a felt sense, like all we can do is feel. And actually all we can also do we can't regulate our nervous system. We have a complete inability regulator on the nervous system, so we regulate and attune to our primary caregiver, which is, 90% of the time, is our mothers, so we're ultimately feeling everything that our mum's feeling. Wow, yeah, it's fucking crazy this is my segment for Wichita.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we come down the path of psychology, yeah. And so you know you could imagine my mum's, 40 years old she's pregnant again for the third time. She's experiencing like deep levels of fear, terror. She's scared that she's going to lose me, that she'll never be a mother. I know for a fact that she didn't have the support that she wanted. She was living in Christchurch, all her family was up in Auckland and New Zealand. She was probably just genuinely overwhelmed and stressed, so her nervous system was extremely dysregulated and I felt that through different practices. So I mean I was. I came out two days late. I didn't want to like, was it called? I didn't breach, I couldn't turn around. Was this a Serian Yep? Like my whole energy, like I didn't want to come out into this fucking world.
Speaker 1:Fuck this man, fuck this, fuck this. That's what I'm feeling, that's what's out there. No way, why would I want to come out and engage in that? And so the other thing that I really felt and again this is there's there's no malicious intent, intent from anyone's parent to impart this stuff onto their kids.
Speaker 1:None at all. It's all completely unconscious, but we feel it nonetheless, and we can't separate what's ours, what's theirs from what's ours. So we'll give it a story to make it mean something about us, to make it make sense. So I also had this experience and this current that I felt from my mom of like I need you that was what I was constantly feeling was just like I need you, I need you, I need you to survive, I need you, I need you. Which is really fucking confusing because ultimately, what it felt like I was exposed to was like the definition of conditional love and so, tied into two things, created this core wound of like I'm not loved as I am. I've got to be something other than me in order to be loved and received.
Speaker 1:And it also created an extremely dysregulated nervous system right from the day I was born. So if you've got an extremely dysregulated nervous system, it's very hard to just be fucking still. You're always on red alert. You're basically these are what we call survival adaptations You're doing everything that you can to seek. Again, unconsciously, we're always as particularly as kids as well we're always trying to seek safety or love, and so my adaptation was seeking love, because that's what I thought I had like. That's how I had thought I had to show up in order to survive. Does that make sense? It's like I need that love from everybody else.
Speaker 3:And so did that make you a people pleaser, then Fucking 100% and it showed up the most in my intimate relationships.
Speaker 1:So if you want to look at your shit, go and look at like the patterns of your intimate relationships. So I would basically always end up in relationships with a woman that would keep me at arm's distance, woman that would, I feel I'd have to prove myself to, woman that would give me a maybe. And as much as I fucking hated it, unconsciously there's a part of me that's going oh, this is familiar, oh, this is mummy. I like the comfort of the shit, mummy, yeah.
Speaker 1:Which sounds really fucked up and twisted, but this is actually how we're 95% of us are behaving.
Speaker 1:We're seeking out familiarity, unconsciously. This is how the ego works. The ego keeps us safe. Its job in the psyche is literally to keep us safe. Unfortunately, how it keeps us safe is by seeking out familiar, seeking out what is familiar, seeking out familiarity, and we create these patterns of behavior as a result of our upbringing that we just think is us, we think that's who we are, we think that's our identity. I was the ultimate people pleaser man. I was the ultimate nice guy we know, constantly tracking every situation, every room, every scenarios and every conversation. If you were like okay, bro, how are you? What do you need to be like? Who do you want me to be? What answer do?
Speaker 1:you want me to give you to make sure that you approve of me and love me and fucking validate me.
Speaker 3:I feel like there's a lot of people living like that.
Speaker 1:Dude, it's rife, it's rife, it's rife particularly for men as well. There's a lot of fucking nice guys out there that wear that nice guy mask.
Speaker 3:Give me some substance, man. What do you really love? What do you stand for?
Speaker 1:But I understand that as well, and this is where we have to bring in a bit of compassion. It's like I get that. That was my mask. That was literally like if I wasn't getting that love or that validation, it felt like I was dying. I don't know if anyone's watched the. There was a friends reunion. I haven't watched it. I can't remember who's the actor that plays Chandler, matt. Yeah, this is not Matt. That's not Matt. Anyway, the guy that plays Chandler.
Speaker 1:The friends reunion came out and this was before he came out openly talking about his journey with addiction. And I was watching this friends reunion and I was like this dude fuck, he's been going through this some shit. I can just read it, I can see it from a fucking mile away. And there's one thing he said that I was like fuck, there it is. He said if I cracked a joke or made a joke or set a line that was meant to get a laugh and it didn't get the laugh that I wanted or needed, it felt like I was going to die. I was like there's the wound right there there, like no wonder you ended up walking that path of addiction, because that wound was so painful. You needed something to ultimately keep you above those flames of these things that we don't know how to be with. We don't know how to feel, we don't know how to process and how to navigate.
Speaker 3:So my way of thinking now is that if someone's listened to this far through, they're probably well aware that there's some stuff they need to work on. Yeah for sure, up until this point. If you've never been exposed to a conversation like this and you maybe were unaware of why you were looking for certain medicines or vices, it's now in your hands on whether you're going to do something or you're going to continue on the same path. Ultimately and it comes back to that, what we've spoken about a number of times throughout this conversation radical responsibility or just continue putting your head in the sand. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Thank you. What are the next steps for someone? If they wanted to work with you, for example, if they like man? I love what Drew is about. I love his way of understanding addiction, your lived experience. How can they go one step further now?
Speaker 1:I mean they personally want to work with me. I mean I just say just literally, like slide into my message box Slide in, slide in, real comfortable with that now.
Speaker 1:I love it and that's where most of my clients come from. I actually don't know where they come from. They drop out of the fucking sky. Yep, they follow me, they've been watching me for a while and they at some point in time hit that breaking point that we spoke of. And they reach out and because I genuinely give a fuck like I give a lot of fucks to these people and I'm very engaged in my inbox that like I'll just voice message back I'm like, hey, what's going on? Like how can I help? And they're shocked. They're like, oh well, there's like a human that gives a fuck. Yeah, which?
Speaker 1:I find sad because, unfortunately, you know, there are so many people that that Lonely and don't have.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, well, like that that they're just out to fucking grab someone's money or they're you know whatever. Like I, yeah, I'm not going to bag too many people out, but I could. But yeah, no, like I fucking genuinely care. Like I take a lot of time to just point people in the right directions and I'll be the first one to say, like, if we're not a fit, I'll. I know I'm connected with so many people that that will be one of them will be the right fit, yep, and I'll point you in the right direction. If I know for a fact that, like, we're not meant to be working together, I'll, I'll. I'll lead you in the right direction. So, yeah, I mean you could slide into my message box.
Speaker 1:We've got, I work with two of Australia's leading addiction and trauma experts. We partnered up two years ago and created my old group program used to be called Lion the Sand. We turned that into a company Nice. So Lion the Sand proprietary limited week. You spent 18 months curating and recording the core content, which has become a 12 week program, yep, so that's also an incredible place to start.
Speaker 1:I've got a million resources and the like link in my bio and my Instagram which I'm sure you'll attach to show notes and all of that. But you know, like, just start, start somewhere, start somewhere. And it starts with that, like I'm done. Again, like I said, that's different for everybody. It starts with I'm done and actually I don't truly believe it's possible to fully heal without some sort of a guide or a program or a system that's going to help you sort of mirror back to some of the things that are really truly unconscious, that you know, we just can't see on our own. Yep, you know, I know that you've probably had that experience yourself. I'm sure you've got your own mentors and teachers and coaches and whatever it is that.
Speaker 3:I was literally on the phone with a client before this and he had this moment where he got to go. I told you so and I was like you motherfucker, because I, you know, we've been working together for about five years and there was this court case and I was like, mate, don't go down that route. I've seen it tear so many people apart, my dad included. And he's like, no, no. And then he's like sometimes you just don't know what it feels like until you go through it yourself. And he's like now he's been helping me with a matter and he's like mate told you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I was like fair play, yeah, and I was sure play like just having a shipper.
Speaker 3:Well, and I can see you know I use every tool in the book. Yeah, I don't know. I think I read I all of that sort of stuff I can, and I'm very self-aware and I still have people that I pay to coach me, but sometimes I'm very fortunate, as you would be as well the people that you have in your life 100%. Sometimes they can point out a blind spot that someone else has missed it. My partner does it all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Same same, same, same same. So, but it's whether you're prepared to listen to it or not, and I think that comes back to. One thing that stood out is that you said at the beginning is just learn to question things. So even when, oh, bud gave me that advice a couple of months ago, I should have asked myself why would he be giving me that advice? What am I not seeing? I didn't do that.
Speaker 1:And was getting curious, and this is something that I love to kind of hammer home and it's something that I've been implementing a lot with my clients. Recently it's becoming really popular and the world of realms, of sort of psychotherapy, is something called IFS, which is internal family systems, and so ultimately, what internal family systems as modality helps us to see is that, like, we all have parts you often speak about. I've got this part, you know, right, you've probably heard it from clients all the time there's this fucking, there's this part of me that's, you know, that's the people, please, there, and all this part of me that I'm always fucking procrastinating Passes me off. Or there's this part of me that, yeah, like man, I do a drink. You know, I drank four, five, six beers at night and it's just, you know. But I don't, you know, I don't like it, I don't like that, I keep doing it.
Speaker 1:And the biggest problem is that we, a lot of us, have really fucking like tumultuous relationships with these parts where we actually actually have. Quite often we'll find we're quite a deep hatred towards these parts and what we'll find is that if we're meeting these parts with a hate, we're just like the old adage, what we resist persists. We're just going to accentuate more of the same. And so it's like how can we actually get curious about these parts, how can we start to engage with these parts in a way that is, you know, as I said, getting a little bit curious, looking at them with intrigue and even starting to hold a bit? This sounds really weird, but holding a dialogue with some of these parts and starting to be like hey, like what, what are you, what are you, why are you here? What are you doing? How do you serve me? And what we'll actually find is that most of these parts have been created from, like a really fucking young age to ultimately protect us.
Speaker 1:So, under this sort of like IFS frame, as they break it up into, you have your, your what do they call it? The managers, which you are, like proactive parts that help you to again stay above the flames of the, the fields of what they call the exiled parts. So the exiled parts of the shit that, like we bury real deep, we don't want to look at, we don't want to feel, we don't want to go close to, because they feel big, scary, overwhelming too much. And so the managerial roles will come in and they're like the managerial parts are like the people pleases, the procrastinators. You know they look good on the surface and they serve us to a certain extent, but again, at some point in time there's a tipping point where they actually just become really maladaptive and they don't work for us at all. They're actually taking away from us.
Speaker 1:And we have the firefighters, and the firefighters are the like reactive parts that are like whoo, like come in real quick when something's feeling a little too much, and those are kind of those like addictive responses, that like reaching out for, like the quick fix, the quick hit, whether it's like the work or the gaming or the porn or the, or the drink or the you know the smoke, whatever it is it's like that quick hit that's like whoosh, no, no, we'll shove that down. And so what we'll start to realise is that if we actually start to talk to some of these people, you'll realise that there have actually been put in place to protect you and to keep you safe from a lot of this shit that was just way too much for you to be with when you're a however old you were whenever that that imprint was created and you actually find that a lot of these parts. They don't actually like the role that they're playing either. They're kind of bored, they're kind of tired of playing the same old role and so when you take them through this process, it's so fascinating. It's really fucking cool to witness they hold this dialogue with this part and they actually start to build a really different relationship with this part. And you you might find that, say, like the inner critic or the the the part of you that really like beats you up and kind of tears you down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know it's, it's helped you to kind of play small, because if you were to actually stand out, you know the story might be that whatever there's a story around like actually reaching your full potential and that that's not safe and that's some. Somewhere in point in time you created that belief and so it's. It's kept you safe in the sense that it's kept shutting you down. May I help you to play small and and doesn't even want you to make these big moves and you start to realize, okay, wow, cool. Actually that's really fascinating, like, hey, thanks, like I appreciate you for like keeping me safe in the way that you have up until this point, but you don't really help me anymore.
Speaker 3:So like what would happen.
Speaker 1:Would it help for you to either take a backseat or do you want a new role? Do you want a new job to play? And you'll find these parts are like fuck yeah, what else could it? And you'd like start to talk to them. Now you find that they're like yeah, they usually do the opposite. So usually, like the inner critic becomes like the cheerleader.
Speaker 3:Yes, and they're quite quickly.
Speaker 1:So again, it's a bit of a deeper process than how I'm explaining it, but we want this on a bodily experience, not just a cognitive experience as well. That's something I really want to hammer home. All of this shit is stored in our body. It's not stored upstairs.
Speaker 3:Going back to what you said earlier, like you have to be able to feel things 100%. If you don't allow yourself to feel what success would feel like, or that self acceptance or whatever it may be, is like, logically, we can read it anywhere, yeah, we can listen to it anywhere, but it's that whole embodiment piece that's missing for other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So in a short as form, it's like how can we actually just meet these parts with a lot, of, a little bit more kindness and compassion and understanding and then actually welcome them and be like hey, cool, like thanks for the work that you've done up until this point, but you don't really serve me anymore. So how can we create a different relationship and a dynamic? And just, I've finding some really profound results coming through with implementing this with a few other modalities that I use. It's just, it's just so. It's just crazy.
Speaker 3:It's really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So Drew Wild, everyone. You can find him on all the socials. I'm going to put it all on the in the show notes there and remember, if you got value from this episode, please share it. Reach out to Drew in the links in the show notes. But I have taken away so much from this one and I honestly there's episodes that I have where I get nervous going into it because I really don't understand a lot. I'll try and prep and do it. I try, I do prep and I do a lot of that, but then when you're in the conversation and learning about processes and frameworks and perspectives, my brain just going love on it, love on it. But it's like, okay, this is now an area for me to explore more because it's just somewhere that I haven't gone and I hope that I'm sure listeners will be the same that if you haven't looked into addiction in detail, it's now given you a great place to start. So thanks for coming on, mate thank you, appreciate it.
