Episode 77
A Powerful Recovery Story

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Description

We have a special guest in this episode, Rob Decker, the President of Rise with Lions. He opens up about his unique recovery journey, which led him to start a safe, sober, and fun environment to raise awareness about mental health, addiction, and suicide. We discuss wanting to change the conversation about the shame and stigma placed on mental health and addiction.

Talking Points

1. Rob’s unique journey to recovery
   
2. Peaks’ new approach to recovery
   
3. Harsh realities of Rob’s story
   
4. Making the connection from head to heart
   
5. Parenting and recovery
   

Quotes

”Our world runs rampant with despair, isolation, and pain. I want to use my experiences to offer hope, healing, and restoration for others who feel lost and, in their own minds, believe that there is no hope,” says Rob. “There is a ‘silent crisis,’ the number of people with a mental health issue is growing at an astonishing rate. It’s time to bridge the gap with mental health systems and provide informal support for all who deal with various issues. It’s time for men to RISE AS LIONS.”

Rob Decker, President of Rise as Lions

Episode Transcripts

Episode 77 Transcripts

hey everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of Finding Peaks Yours Truly Chris Burns president and founder better known as and more comfortable as recovery cheerleader seriously more comfortable people are like I’m like no I’m here to cheer you on I have my co-hosts here Chief clinical Officer Jason friezma grateful to have you back on the show Jack good to be here man it’s been a minute grateful to have you yeah it’s been about six weeks and we are so grateful to have Rob Decker he’s with rise as lions it’s a non-profit here in Colorado Springs working with people with mental health to get them integrated in the community Through Sport fitness connection and healing I’m so grateful to have Rob on the show today I’ve really been looking forward to this episode and Peaks recovery is going to be um Faithfully sponsoring this softball program and we want to continue to move in the direction of creating resources in the community that makes sense for folks with mental health health and we’ve been talking a lot lately on the show I know I have about the myth of normal and kind of this Counter Culture and the fresh lens we get to stare through today and the opportunity to heal through that lens really really cool so grateful to have you on Rob um I want to start with what brought you into recovery needing it myself turns out we needed it right well turns out I had a lot of unresolved trauma in my life and it seeped out into other areas leading into addictions I was heavily self-medicating you know with pornography and drugs and alcohol and fitness even Fitness like you know became unhealthy for me and so when I started seeking out answers and and finding those answers I was like man I gotta I gotta give this to other people man you know yeah absolutely and it’s so interesting because you have a little bit different of a story when you’re seeking those answers I think you know Common culture especially when we’re struggling with addiction right we won’t say mental health yet but addiction right I think the common thought process is I need to go somewhere I need to check in I need to get a treatment plan I need to do all of these things and you did elements of that but it was different your journey was different are you willing to just kind of engage a little bit with the viewers on that Journey what it looked like for you in those early stages well for me like I struggled with the thought of you know wants an addict always an addict and staying attached to that because that wasn’t my identity what I realized in my in my journey was that I was self-medicating a lot because there was a lot of stuff that I was not dealing with I didn’t have the the tools to deal with there was a lot of burdens within me a lot of relationships that needed some mending right and so you know that was a little bit of my Approach was like well how do I get away from the stigma of calling this thing a disease or that I was addicted I need to get to the root of these problems I have to understand my behaviors and how I got here and and I wanted to be that I knew it was going to be super hard um to unpack a lot of that stuff because now you’re talking about childhood trauma and um you know um you know behaviors that were created over time that needed to be dealt with I had to rip the Band-Aid off rip out the stitches clean out the wound and let things heal the right way I I just wasn’t into the Band-Aid method yeah right yeah and being able to see that clearly is tough too especially when you have so much energy in our culture telling us to do it one way right yeah to be really difficult yeah and I’m kind of a rebel in that sense you know what I’m saying like I can figure out a better way to do it but you know but with the one way that was provided to me I just saw way too many flaws and a form of codependency on that way and I just couldn’t buy into it man I just I was like there’s got to be there’s got to be other ways you know and I know that we’re all unique in our own ways and you know working in recovery and with people in recovery for someone it could be one thing one one thing that you alter that really can change their life and for other people there’s five different modalities in order to reach that that freedom that they need in their life and I know that we are all made differently right and uh and I always felt different you know so I guess I was in a place of wanting to do things differently yeah I love it it really goes into one of our core values and I’ve shared this with you and that’s to disrupt the industry right and you are disrupting your arm of this industry and kind of the community-based resources that we have or don’t have here in Colorado I mean throughout the country and it’s just it really is a message of Hope for me um how has it been Jason on the clinical side of things and I know we’ve discussed this before but through the lens that you get to stare through and the opportunity you have to walk with clients and specifically your team what has this new kind of energy brought about for your team that has really created a breath of fresh air if anything at all yeah I think listening to your story I haven’t even started oh yeah we’re through the outline of your story you know we really are looking at um that we at Peaks we treat suffering right people are coming in and they’re suffering and it could be mental health you know depression it could be addiction it could be sex addiction it could be a wide variety of things but to your point like these are all kind of symptoms of like what what is really going on underneath all this and in very very very frequently it’s unresolved trauma for sure that is um needing to be addressed and treated and moving away from you know words like co-occurring or even you know we we have to use them as a practicality talk about substance addiction and that sort of thing substance use disorder but we didn’t even like to say the word Addiction very much anymore in Peaks either like we really try are trying to meet people where they are um in in what we’ve been able to do with that is just create kind of a curriculum that just says hey we’re just going to help everybody’s kind of suffering I I’ve suffered in my ways Chris has suffered in his you’ve suffered in yours and like um and and kind of if we kind of have a process to kind of get to the root at least of some of that suffering that we can get to so yeah that’s how I’ve seen it and it’s it’s invigorating yeah because otherwise it’s it’s a lot of labels differentiate people and and I think to your point um it’s very shaming to say I’m an addict and I’ll always be an addict that’s yeah it’s a shame statement all right 100 it’s very shameful and that’s just not a modality I could buy at all so I’ve actually heard that it’s a form of tribal humility to come together as a group and to shame ourselves like bro there’s way better methods for me well I would actually see that that’s tribal humiliation yeah which is not the same as human I’m sorry yeah okay I I’m I’m not clinical bro yeah that’s my seat yeah 100 so you exactly that’s exactly what that was it’s humiliate tribal humiliation and to me I still don’t see the benefit of it I still think there’s better ways to go about it right because I think a lot of us we go into our addictions and our self-medicating and our our poor relationships because of shame and being attached to shame yeah right and I think we need to break away from that yeah yeah to your point it really is and I steal brene Brown’s it’s a different kind of call to courage I think it really is because I can’t sit here five years ago you know and and call my call to courage wasn’t mental health I was I just wasn’t mentally healthy I had a lot of people around me maybe that thought I was and were praising me because of the chip but I wasn’t I wasn’t in a place in my recovery where I could be courageous enough to work on some of the underpinnings that were informing my every existence specifically my day-to-day behavior um and so now it really is a call to courage and it’s a call for all of us to show up together and to get this tent out broader and bigger and vaster than we’ve ever seen so that all of our friends family and the people places and things that we care about the most can see themselves within it right well you know out of love like I just want to see people free and unfortunately within some groups like I’ve been shamed I’ve been you know I’m a white knuckler or I’m a dry drunk or this is what you really are you’re in denial like no that’s that’s not what any of this is and I understand there’s going to be resistance coming my way but that’s okay I mean I I lived in a world where um I needed to perform to be light right like I had daddy issues as a kid so I performed perform performer and and I’ve gone to a place of my healing in my journey it’s like well dude some people just aren’t going to like me right and that’s okay yeah and I’m okay with that but that doesn’t stop the mission like I suffered from severe rejection and abandonment and neglect like dude in this process of building a non-profit and helping our community like those things are going to happen I’m going to get neglected I’m gonna get rejected right people are going to abandon me in the process and that’s okay right because it’s not gonna my eyes stay on the prize through the whole process you know but anyone can have that like I truly believe with all my heart mind and soul that anyone can have that freedom right and and that’s what I like for me I just want to be a face for that and I want to be an inspiration for that and I want to go into our community and just give it to to everyone that’s willing to be receptive enough to receive it you know I think that’s great man and I I want to go back to something you said you said daddy issues and those can be right let’s talk about it those can be I got double daddy issues

those can really inform so much for young men so much and I would like to explore with you kind of how that started kind of what it informed and kind of what it brought you to kind of that that overarching story that really kind of caught your attention so I got the two for one deal you know um when I was in fifth when I was five years old and I graduated kindergarten I came home and I brought home a certification hey you graduated it had had my name on it Robert Yancey right well my dad informed me that that wasn’t my real name because he wasn’t my real father so here I am like oh so you’re not my real dad so where’s my real dad so he’s not around either so the guy that’s been calling me my dad’s not my dad and my other dad’s not to be found and um just the amount of rejection and loneliness that came with that and early on in my life I was a huge introvert I just kept to myself until I started adapting a lot of behaviors of my my dad you know he unfortunately was in drugs and alcohol and violent and you know he had his struggles and demons that he never addressed right and I started to become him which led me to be this extrovert in a sense and that’s the path it took for me so by the time I was 14 or 15 years old man man I was getting loaded drinking smoking weed and then all that just evolved to all these other drugs and eventually being addicted to cocaine right and and I mean to the point where dude I would drink a bottle of vodka at night and I’d wake up in the morning and take all these uppers just to get the party going and that was my life day in and day out all through my 20s that was that was life and I know that I was numbing myself through that whole process until I eventually LED myself into just a horrible relationship like you know there was this need for stimulation through these really wild relationships because someone that actually loved me and cared about me that didn’t work for me because I didn’t understand that right but what I understood was violence and aggravation and constant fighting and so those were the relationships that were stimulating to me and I eventually was so deep in one of those relationships that she falsely accused me of rape and attempted murder which led to my suicide attempt that left me with a severed spine two broken arms and a collapsed lung and the outcome of that wasn’t very good because the cops show up and hit me with rape and murder charges you know doctors are telling me you’re never going to walk again if you do you’re going to be fully medicated like you’re not going to work like Sports and Fitness that’s not part of your life now bro like you know and that’s that’s where it led so the rejection of all that led to all these decisions as a teen and a young man you know and even at when I sobered up I was still that 15 year old boy living in that 34 year old body right and so now I had to be like okay there’s some work to be done yeah right because this little boy needs to go hey there’s a little kid that lives inside of me you know but I can’t have the wrong little kid living inside of me um and and so that’s kind of where it led me yeah and I it’s I love that you bring up kind of that little kid inside and I think this is a really great topic and thank you for sharing so vulnerably but and how that informs right you said I showed up at 15. at 34. you know I think we talk about developmental um maturity sometimes in the developmental process and oftentimes How We Do show up at that age and you give a really good example of how that 15 year old informs my every behavior and my 35 year old ecosystem absolutely um and I just just like your responses your everyday response is like yeah dude that’s how a 15 year old Rob acts like yeah well you got to get it together yeah like you gotta you gotta put that little boy down yeah how were you able to make because it really is for me it’s been the Journey Of My Life um how did you make that connection and it really is and I talk about it often but it is kind of this million mile March from head to Heart how did you connect that because the story you just brought up and I don’t I know you didn’t get into detail I mean has a lot of people in our world right now feeling like they’re going to be disconnected for the rest of their life you know and they have no hope right well you know for me I developed a relationship with God and and that that relationship with God gave me purpose and I understood that I was here for a reason and that reason was to take all my life experiences and share them with other people so maybe they don’t have to walk a similar path as me so I found out my whys and my purpose and and that’s what I went running with and in order to take it to the next step with helping and I’m sure you both see this in the recovery World you’ll get the person that is gung-ho one year sober like oh I’m gonna be a sober coach and I’m going to lead the way but they haven’t addressed their childhood traumas they haven’t so when they come when that stuff starts to hit them well they haven’t even processed their own stuff and then before you know they’re hitting the bottle again because they don’t know how to manage all that and they have to self-medicate I didn’t want to be that I didn’t want to be that at all I wanted to be the guy that was just free in my life and so I had to seek and seek and search and you know I had to figure it out myself and I was willing to do so because I wanted the quality of my life to be so Grand that it just poured down on people I you know I tell people a lot when I share about my family especially my son Caleb you know I want this ceiling in my life to be my kid’s dance floor like I want them to give such a leg up in this life that they did they’ll have their own personal experiences but they don’t need mine right they don’t need mine and so I want to give them a different life so that they can take everything that I’ve done in in community and life and make it Greater because at the end of the day I believe our purpose is to help people guide them to the light help them heal right and we can all just get along bro you know what I’m saying and and that’s kind of what I want to do in our community and raising a family is I want to be that light right but being that light means you’re going to have to go through a whole bunch of darkness and address something things and you’re going to get into your house that you grew up and you’re going to have to open up some doors you’re going to open up somebody you’re going to let some stuff out bro you know and there’s gonna be some dark stuff in there you know and so even if I haven’t completely I won’t say healed from certain situations I’ve developed enough tools to be able to cope with things when things get hard yeah right because sometimes we don’t completely heal like when I start talking about certain things in my life I might get teary-eyed right it still impacts me right but now I can deal with it right now I have the tools right and and the mental maturity to cope with those things and get through them now you know and again I believe anyone can have those things yeah yeah and I love what you said with the why on purpose I mean you want to see somebody in early recovery take off like a wildfire show them their purpose put it in front of them we talked before the show you were meeting with another guy in recovery yes you were sharing and purpose and you were like I want to help you highlight this and enhance it and be a part of it and he was like me really right and it’s just the opportunity we get to see people light up when they know that they’re seen heard and valued right it’s incredible and a lot of us so the guy that you’re talking about like he grew up in a big family so he was never seen and I felt the same way like bro I’m you you know and someone gave me a shot right I’m not dude I see like I see in you what you don’t see in you right now and uh I want to help you I want to help you through that process I want to I Want to Hold Your Hand bro like let’s let’s do this together man and then what what you’re going to do is you’re going to see somebody in a similar situation and you’re gonna go help him and that’s how change happens right beautiful that’s how change happens and that’s what we want we want change right we want transformation I don’t want a change in human behavior I want true transformation yeah that’s what I want to see yeah you know it’s easy to put down the drink right well I wouldn’t say it’s easy to put down yeah we’ll retract that but but it’s one thing to put down the substance in the drink but not address the stuff that led to that right to that behavior but how do we get deeper so there’s a true transformation so I can actually walk into a bar with all this alcohol everyone smells like liquor it doesn’t even fade you right right like I don’t have to run oh my God it’s like like yeah no it would be there right like and to be able to have a sincere conversation with someone who’s struggling right like yeah you know and and that’s that’s the transformation that I’m hoping to see through everything that we’re doing in our community right it’s a beautiful thing man and it’s it’s a transformation and a story of which our young ones can hear I remember in the early stages of being a father um two three-year-olds three four-year-olds and trying to explain my recovery at that time even just three three four years ago and they’re like they look at me like you’re not making sense and now from this mental health piece and the way that we talk about love and connection and community and family they’re like makes sense dad makes total sense to to my seven-year-old who now um Can critically think a little bit he’s like man that checks out really good dad and he just kind of and what you said man I’m gonna steal it and put it in my pocket because everything I say is from somebody else that I heard along the way but I want my kids my ceiling to be my kids dance floor and I know what you meant by that it had nothing to do with money it was mental health from a mental health perspective I wanted to be as mentally healthy the best I’ve seen is the worst you’ll ever see I don’t want people you know what I don’t want my kids having to chase people’s approval they have mine yeah right I love you I remember the first time my kids struck out like we already moved the kid up a level in baseball like dude you’re doing good bro but he doesn’t get he’s five right and he struck out and he just it ripped him and I was like you know what bro you can strike out for the rest of the season and guess who loves you Daddy loves you bro yeah Daddy loves you so where it was different for me it was different for me right like that wasn’t the same response right it’s just like yeah you know you’re not basically clean version you’re not doing sure your job right right yeah yeah you strike out knock it down no you’re grounded yeah you struck out yeah yeah yeah yeah you know and so I want to be able to provide and even within that like I’ve noticed like I’ve even cleaned up so at one point I remember you know my son fell down and you know the things like that were said to me about hurting and crying right like they were pretty hardcore you know and I remember the first time it really happened to my son I was like hey dude get up and Shake It Off bro you’re good and in that moment I realized dude I just cleaned up what my dad said I just gave you you know what bro come here you know and I embraced my son he just needed like dude yeah a little one they do this together you know and and I realized that even in in those deep-seated traumas like there’s still some some behaviors that seep through and that was one of them and I’m like dude that was learned I learned that and I cleaned it up my version of it but it just wasn’t good enough not for my kid you know not for what I’m trying to pay for my family things have to be different and there’s a lot of work in that bro because you’re constantly mindful you’re constantly aware like bro my head hurts yeah but it’s it’s worth it yeah it really is man and I love that too and I can remember that coming up Mike I’m like chill out Chris yeah get dressed whoa suck it up buttercup my kid would be like what the [ __ ] what is this where are the buttercups like I want one of those yeah that sounds good man I’m hurting yeah I’ll do a snack yeah feed me Dad I’m crying I want to I want to wrap up with um yeah and I’ve just appreciated this the authenticity in the show and your story and your journey and your willingness to come on and share with the community so much but I want to check in with Jay as we wrap up and maybe talk to the viewers a little bit how you’re informing the clinical team to walk with people throughout this journey to make that million mile March from head to Heart yeah I mean I think so much of it comes down to uh

uh maintaining curiosity with people like never being very certain about what their experiences and and always uh recognizing um somewhere early in my training as a clinician too somebody told me that all Behavior makes sense in context and so when somebody is in our program and they are freaking out or they want to go home or whatever it is that’s going on and and it feels confusing it’s our job not to like be like a hammer necessarily but it’s like well somehow this makes sense for this person and let’s just help them find how this makes sense a little bit of what you’re sharing Rob like you know like your response to your son when he fell and you you clean up your Dad’s version there’s a reason I mean you inspected it yourself because you’re you’re insightful like that but like there’s something that drove that and and that energy was like from your dad and your authentic response was like I just need to nurture this little boy who fell down like that’s that’s what a parent will do in this situation I don’t have to tell them to dust it off and like get up and keep going even though that was certainly more encouraging yeah I think I think overall like um just kind of uh holding on to that aspect and not um not focusing on Behavior so much but really trying to get to know somebody and and that’s where the change occurs yeah uh inside out not necessarily I mean we have to have something outside in yeah correction as well but like I think a lot of it is like how do I change this inside part yeah and then the result will be a change in my outward Behavior yeah I think and you can see that in the ecosystem too it’s just well do you find it like is it common for you to see like the unwillingness for a lot of your clients or patients to let go of the things that have happened in their childhood or do they not recognize the toxic behavior that took place because it was so normalized for them and like to be able to you know yeah we spend a lot of time uh in our curriculum Annette at Peaks like helping people gain a lot of insight right because I I certainly could believe that it’s really difficult to change something you’re not aware of like and I think um so we do spend a lot of time like okay what is driving this what are you grieving what what ruptures have you had in your family system or what developmental Milestones did you kind of get hammered at like the story you shared about like proudly coming home graduating kindergarten and like get this like shocking news dropped on your lap like you’re an adult you know or something like that that creates a problem yeah like you weren’t ready as a little kid to walk through that without some support and all that and like so once people realize that then we can kind of build in the skills behind that and build in some strategies for kind of walking through that and being able to recognize when him kind of getting outside of myself in this way yeah well I see that even with my parents at that time like they just didn’t have the tools and skills for all that kind of stuff you know and now I look back and I think a lot of what has provided healing in my life is that I saw my parents as you know messed up human beings like myself that faced a lot of trauma and never resolved it you know and and you know just being able to forgive them and saying you know what you did your best you knew you know that right there the weight that came off my shoulders it’s like man and the amount of healing just like you’re just I think that we put our parents on this pedestal and I think that anyone listening like you know a lot of times we still have Strife with one of our parents you know and you know forgiveness is a pretty powerful tool yeah just just saying it really is and I and to your point like sometimes we do like these family trees too where it’s like yeah your parents are probably messed up that they probably had messed up parents you know what I mean yeah and it does take somebody to dig their heels in and say I’m I’m I’m making my ceiling my kids I’ll tell you this like Breaking the Chain is work breaking those like devastating it’s work yeah but like I believe we’re in a a generational culture where we need to a lot of us really just need to yeah and and that’s going to shift our culture if you can break away because I just think again we’re going to go back to shame and all that stuff like people are walking the streets and shame right you know and their behavior is you know and I love that I love that we’re pushing up against this wall that has been so normalized in our recovery culture for so long because the people that we have the opportunity to serve really really deserve it yes um and it’s um it’s it’s really cool to be aligned with people like yourself in the community kind of fighting that same fight and talking about important issues that need to be explored a bit more thoroughly not only for young men but young women as well right um so I appreciate you coming on Rob no I yeah thank you for having me yeah absolute pleasure bro yeah it’s been so cool man thank you for what you’re doing with us you know it’s uh that’s huge that’s huge I mean when when someone comes alongside you and says hey we’re about what you’re doing yeah that’s encouraging yeah I appreciate it thank you yeah absolutely well until next time uh find us on man it’s been a minute Instagram podcast Tick Tock Spotify been a little bit off Tick Tock lately I’ve been working on some grief but I’m gonna get back on here soon it’s funny when I’m doing my grief stuff I’m like Tick Tock ah it’s tough man it gets super pumped on it on top of everything oh it’s right here like all these other platforms yeah but until next time it’s been a pleasure peace