Episode 95
Conscious Recovery with TJ Woodward

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Description

In this episode, Jason Friesema brings on Brandon Burns, Clinton Nicholson, and special guest TJ Woodward, author of Conscious Recovery. Our team breaks down the premise of conscious recovery with TJ while shining light on the effectiveness of these practices. To learn more, check out consciousrecovery.com

Talking Points

1. Introduction to TJ
   
2. Conscious Recovery
   
3. Holding space
   
4. Looking at trauma and shame
   
5. Our team’s experience with Conscious Recovery
   
6. Where to find TJ and Conscious Recovery
   

Quotes

“The way we work with trauma and the way Conscious Recovery approaches it is what is showing up for you right now, what’s present within you, where is this within your body, can we be present with it? Because with addiction, we’re trying to run from it, and many of us have spent decades, some of us, running from the traumatic experience through addiction, and if we can get a client to be present for 30 seconds and realize, ‘oh wow, I can do that’ that’s where we can actually start to heal the trauma without saying, what happened to you when you were seven.”

– TJ Woodward: Conscious Recovery

Episode Transcripts

Episode -95- Transcripts

hello and welcome to another episode of Finding Peaks I’m Jason friesma the host Chief clinical officer Peaks recovery uh joining me from Peaks Brandon Burns CEO of Peaks recovery and this guy I forget his name Clinton something uh CEO of Peaks recovery and we are um just privileged to welcome T.J Woodward from conscious recovery uh LA area I believe um joining us today and we we’ve had the privilege of having TJ in our program for the last two days providing um I don’t think training is the right word if I’m going to be honest with you I I there was some training to it but um I think an experience maybe for our team and so um I guess I just kind of want to start if you TJ if you wouldn’t mind kind of introducing yourself and maybe a little bit of your background and and then we’ll go from there yeah well and today Woodward creator of conscious recovery and conscious recovery is a modality but it really is more of an experience like you said and as a matter of fact we even call what we just did for two days the conscious recovery experience because it’s not a training because we’re not really teaching we’re providing a space for people to actually reconnect deeply with themselves and each other and see what emerges in the room so um that’s that’s what we did the last two days and I just want to like out right out of the gate say I’m super impressed with your team and the depth and you know I go to a lot of treatment programs and I can immediately kind of assess where people are at and you all have created did a very very safe container for your people to be very authentic and open thank you for that thank you absolutely and that’s a wrap thanks for coming
[Laughter] um but no I really really um I appreciate you honestly um there’s no higher compliment you could pay I think um it is what we work diligently on is um our culture and working through uh disruption at times and and trying to do that in as genuine way as possible and trying to find directionality and and vision for our team and I think um conscious conscious recovery just um like the chatter that I’m hearing from the clinicians like my phone is blowing up and like how are we how can we incorporate uh some of these principles into our curriculum and and it isn’t a 180 turn that’s what’s great it’s it feels like a 10 degree shift like we just have some refining to do which uh I’m I’m really excited to participate in but where did what was conscious recovery born out of like where did it come from well I can I’ll say two things about that one my own personal recovery journey and it’s something I’ve been talking a lot about there were decades I never talked about it and suddenly I find myself talking about being 18 months sober and being suicidal and the Paradigm that I was swimming in if you will sounded something like don’t worry about anything but not drinking you are a miracle go help someone else and I remember thinking but I want to die and there really wasn’t a conversation at that time of what to do with that and I met a woman who literally changed my life her name is Mary Helen and she took me on a journey that I think was a two-fold a twofold journey and that is reclaiming my wholeness and returning to my true nature and also looking at everything that I had started to believe about myself in the world that was preventing me from being truly present with myself so that’s one piece and I also started working in the addiction treatment field in 2008 and I quickly realized that most treatment was looking at symptoms and behaviors without getting down to the root causes in addition to that many clinicians consciously or unconsciously were looking at their clients as damaged or broken in some way so if anything it was like there was this resonance from my own experience of not really addressing the underlying root causes and seeing myself as broken and then coming into the field and seeing that that was kind of the Paradigm so I became really curious about a different point of view and a different approach I know that we share a common love for the word and the concept and the way of being with curiosity yeah so I became very curious about how I could be part of shifting that and offering a different approach so from the get-go like what were some of the barriers that you ran into as far as kind of taking on this new approach or sort of trying to create something that was at the very least outside the box for the time and then also what were some of the Allies that you ran into what were some of the people that actually supported you along the way well I’ll just be fully transparent in 2008 I had to kind of be in the closet with it so I came into the field sort of through the side door my education my degrees are at spirituality spiritual counseling spiritual leadership so I didn’t come in as a trained clinician I came in with 22 years of my own recovery and this work I had done with spirituality and so I came in knowing that I was going to be present with the person in front of me and look for what’s whole within them and look for their perfection I wasn’t really talking with many people about that but one thing that happened early in my work a friend of mine who was a therapist was really struggling with a client and he said can you go sit with her and I remember just sitting with her and looking for the wholeness in her and holding that space we hear that term a lot holding that space and she had all these awarenesses and these breakthroughs and he came to me later and said what did you say to her I had been trying to get her too like his language I’ve been trying to get her and I said well I didn’t say anything I just saw her as a whole and perfect being and he looked like something was short-circuiting and walked away so in the beginning that was a long answer there weren’t a lot of allies but what I discovered is so many people that I loved and respected were really doing this work maybe they weren’t talking about it or framing it in the way of how do I behold the wholeness in a person but we found this commonality and what I love now is more and more of us are having this conversation and there is a dramatic shift now absolutely so how do you hold space for people what does that mean to you like what is that because you just mentioned you know it’s a term we like to throw terms around here and the old treatment world you know trauma informed care holding space what in the world does that even mean I’ll tell you what it means for me what it means for me and and you know I I use this quote today in the training and yesterday even though it was kind of spontaneous you know Dolly Dolly Parton who I love yeah said it takes a lot of money to look this cheap yeah right what I’ll say is it takes a lot of work to look like I’m doing nothing yeah right to hold space truly because we hear that term thrown around and usually that looks like something like oh I’m just going to be you know I’m going to listen to you sure which is holding space but what I’m talking about is being truly present and being curious with someone and not trying to direct or control or have my own bias on that we talked about that yesterday at lunch right having our own unconscious biases and how that shows up so to the best of my ability am I really present with you yeah or am I responding or diagnosing or solution seeking in my mind so holding space really is about being truly present with someone so that they can have their own inner journey and start to connect with their own inner wisdom well I’ll I’ll quote pema’s children yeah who talks about empathy being knowing your own Darkness well enough to sit in the dark with another yeah so interesting I used that quote today in the defense recovery experience you know at Peaks she talks she says compassion’s not a relationship between the Healer and the wounded but between two equals only when we know our own Darkness welcome we be present with the darkness in another and I actually add to that only when I know my own light well can I be present with the light in another
sting I think that’s great sorry thanks right that’s the space um I I think it’s interesting that you come from this uh spirituality background um and in you know to just be transparent with you it’s something that we are exploring at Peaks too is like okay we I think we’ve done a good job we we do a pretty good job of helping people kind of figure out um some of the where their shame roots are and their seeds and all that and and we do a good excavation process and I think we do a pretty good job helping people build containers for some of this some of these things and build some of those schools tools but launching people into purpose and spirituality has been that’s our next Frontier I think and and it’s probably not just with Peaks I think that’s probably the case across the board and um I wonder uh I wonder if you can just speak to that a little bit and just speak to the spiritual journey um and how it relates to conscious recovery yeah so spirituality obviously is one of those words that might people have all their own connotations of what that means and so I’m very careful in conscious recovery to say what does it mean to you not what does it mean to me what I will say though is I’ve identified the three root causes of addiction as unresolved trauma spiritual disconnection and toxic shame I will speak about what I mean by spiritual disconnection because it’s not about connection disconnection from something outside of ourselves it is that we came into the world as a whole and perfect being and then we were programmed whether we call that trauma or you know points of view or school or religion or all these different things that come at us if you will that program has to believe that we’re not essentially whole and perfect that we’re not this infinite being and so we disconnect from that from this trauma and develop shame and these core false beliefs so to me reconnecting with our true nature or our essential being really is what spirituality is about for some that might include religion for some that might include yoga for some that might include walks in nature the externals might look really different but all of it for me the essential core of spirituality is about a reconnection to something that’s already here not about a destination to attaining something that’s missing love that well you know my follow-up there is the trauma word Jason you know how much I love I was waiting for you it has a topic but you know for the viewers out there we’ve challenged trauma we’ve walked through it we’ve done episodes on it but I think you know for me in Reading conscious recovery in your text and also going through uh the experience over the past few days I think your view of trauma is correct and what I mean by that is that I think sometimes as an industry we hyper focus on the hardship the actual traumatic event itself somehow to uproot that get it out the door and then we can sort of continue forward on our journey but that’s not the focus from your description of trauma and would just love for the viewers to hear your side of that tale yeah and Trauma is you know I’m using a very broad umbrella if you will about trauma and that’s any experience honestly where we’re not seen as a whole and perfect being and so if we use that definition we can say that being on planet Earth is a traumatic experience right and so it’s not and we talk talked about this a lot in the experience and I love that you’re asking this because it’s not what happened it is what happened but it’s not only about what happened it’s really about what I decided about myself as a result of what happened so one you know we could have the exact same experience and it could be very traumatic for you and it’s like no big deal for me right I have had experiences that would seem fairly innocuous like not a big deal to people but it was very traumatic for me not because of what happened but because it was that moment that I decided I was stupid I wasn’t lovable I wasn’t good enough and this isn’t logical right right this is not a logical process because as an adult I’m like oh I have evidence to show that I’m not stupid but I believed it so deeply that I couldn’t read well I could not write well like that idea that belief or that frequency was showing up so consistently and I couldn’t talk myself out of it so you know um I don’t remember which trauma specialist said this but trauma doesn’t show up as a memory it shows up as a reaction so the way we work with trauma and the way conscious recovery approaches it is what’s showing up for you right now what’s present within you where is this in your body can we be present with it because with addiction we’re trying to run from it right right and many of us have spent decades some of us running from the traumatic experience through addiction and if we can get a client just to be present for 30 seconds and realize oh wow I can do that that’s where we actually can start to heal the trauma without saying what happened to you when you when you were seven beautiful viewers that’s what I’m talking about right that’s what Brandon’s been trying to say that’s what I’ve been trying to say for the last 100 episodes in one of your favorite forms so I I greatly appreciate it and so well told um and and I think getting to the third you know issue here and what the cause is Right toxic shame uh they seem back to back in a way are they back to back are they toxic shamed unresolve trauma or are they walking alongside each other’s how are those interrelated and how does conscious recovery approach that relationship you know when I wrote the book I really sat with what’s the order of these three root causes and I changed it I changed it because I don’t remember what the original order was but I realized in my own Journey that I did come into the world as a whole and perfect being and a series of traumatic events happened and then I disconnected and because I disconnected I developed shame so for me unresolved trauma spiritual disconnection and toxic shame are in that order it doesn’t mean that’s true for everyone sure but these all exist within us and again I want to go back because I think there’s such importance in trauma isn’t about what happened but it’s what we decided when did I separate from myself in my own journey I actually remember a moment that I closed down most people don’t have that moment but when I was seven I remember feeling the physical sensation of my heart closing and it was at that moment that I made these core decisions that we can call shame I’m unworthy and I’m not lovable and so from that moment throughout my life every experience I had was going back to those core false decisions or core false beliefs so that shame was running the show Even though on a conscious level I had no idea that’s what was happening absolutely yeah well stated and I think that I mean I think that’s just a beautiful way of explaining the how like how we end up where we are and I’m always curious about so what do we do about it right so that’s always the piece that I I mean Jason is probably the most brilliant how therapist I’ve ever met I mean I don’t know we’ve got it [Laughter] I was gonna say I don’t know got a close second here Jason yeah um really it’s I think that we get people to this to quite a bit of insight and to Jason’s Point earlier like we really do um excavate well uh in the sense that we are not uh attempting to just focus on what was the trauma but also what were the messages that came from it so you’ve let’s say you’ve established some of that what do you do next like what is the next step in that process in the conscious recovery Journey well so I want to start with what it’s not for me or what it’s not only right because a lot of the modalities will say things like opposite action or use affirmations or change your narrative and I think that’s all useful right so the opposite action one is if I believe I’m stupid well take a class realize that you’re not you’re not actually stupid so you could find evidence that’s contrary to the core false belief that a lot of that’s still in the mind right and I realized at some point in my own Journey that it wasn’t a logical or a cognitive process because the core false belief developed before my brain was even developed enough to understand what was happening so it wasn’t that I had to talk myself out of it no you’re not stupid right that’s the affirmation I am very smart I am capable and all of that is useful that with conscious recovery we’re saying where did it originate what was the experience of that not what happened but what was the experience of that how is that still alive within you and can we go back and look at the possibility that we can make a different decision not in our mind as a 25 year old or a 60 year old or however old we are but as that four-year-old as that six-year-old so we could call that inner child work but what I’m really saying is and I got myself into some trouble so I think it’ll be fun to say it in this interview so one of the I think it was a Clinical Director came to me during I was at a treatment program and she said a clinician just told me you said you could change the past I’m sure you didn’t say that I said it how did I say what I meant the only past past that actually exists and it’s the past on my mind it’s the story that I’m carrying and so we know eyewitnesses if we if something happens on the street we see an accident the four of us will have a different story right yeah and does it mean one’s true and one’s not no we just have a different lens and so it’s not again it’s not what happened so I’m carrying around a story about a traumatic event and it may not have even happened the way that I thought it did what I’m not saying is we’re going to say to someone it probably never happened like someone who has sexual trauma or something that’s a very real thing but what I’m really saying is a repeat it’s not as much about what happened but more about what I decided so if I can start to care for the five-year-old the six-year-old that inner child can start to make a different decision with more information rather than saying I’m broken because this happened or this was my fault or I’m damaged in some way and the steps really are feeling it’s okay to feel that way because most of us push the feeling down or it wasn’t safe or we left our bodies or we use whatever what we used to call coping strategies that I call Brilliant strategies to manage that and it really is about getting down to that when that originated not so much what happened but what we decided maybe we can make a different decision kind of changes the past right interesting too provocative be okay no we’re great okay good we’re good here I think you know for for me it highlights I I think we’re you know I think sometimes if not often times family systems individuals within family systems struggle with why is Johnny behaving like this why does he just needs to get a job needs to get some structure in his life you know tying his boots and get out there into the world and like do the thing and then we start talking about something like trauma like whoa you know and it sort of a uh a deflection starts to take place they’re like that can’t be a possible reason for which some of that’s too fufui or whatever the case might be for a lack of better words but what I want to highlight and what you did there is that that path to empathy for the viewers and family systems who struggle with what the individual is going through because we’ve all been at a party a place Amala setting somewhere and we have these awesome experiences where we’re gathered with our friends and in relationship with family systems and then we get home and we call and say wasn’t that the greatest time when we tell our story and then our friend on the other line is like that’s not what happened you know in that moment and I think that’s powerful to appreciate that this isn’t just Within These settings where the narratives get disrupted it’s often the case that we’re experiencing the world differently and that showcases I hope for family systems out there um how these narratives can go from a real positive thing for person a but a real devastating thing for person B even though the setting was the same for both individuals yeah and we often hear there’s your version my version and the truth is in the middle but I actually say they’re both 100 accurate because of our lens yeah and let’s like even pull that back a little bit more and look at politics look at religion look at everything in the world if we were just to say your point of view is 100 valid because it’s your lens imagine the change that could happen instantly yeah right and it’s because we’re so deeply entrenched in good and bad and right and wrong that’s not always easy for us to see that all of it is correct based on our point of view and when we can start to work with the client and say is it possible you’re creating reality based on the lens that with which you’re looking at life through not from a place of blame or from a place of right and wrong but from a place of curiosity then we can say wow if you’re not happy with your life how do we clear that lens how do we start looking at what we’re in I go back to the same thing who are false beliefs if I believe I’m unlovable I will literally see it everywhere it’s not possible to see anything else as much evidence comes my way to not support that I will reject it right I’ll find that person or that situation to confirm the core false belief and this is all for most of it’s happening in the unconscious and so many treat much a lot of treatment a lot of therapeutic modalities focus on what we can see but what we really want to do is like what’s the Unseen here and how do we start to heal that yeah and just one final you know or addition to that too just to support the family systems out there who have trouble you know tracking the story that they’re being told by their loved one it’s like I went to buy a red car and I was like there are no other red cars like this in the City of Colorado Springs only Subarus and I at that moment bought the car and then I’m driving around and I see all the red cars again right it went from this very yeah it’s non-existent to it’s existing everywhere and I think that we commonly have these experiences as individuals you know Community society and so forth um and so I think it brings closer to the viewers the opportunity to have empathy for what the individual has seen because we we have these common and shared experiences yeah because then family systems well I’ll say in my family system there was a lot of like no that’s not true that’s not what’s happening but it was true for me right and so that empathy or that Compassion or that openness to saying wow you see that differently than I do I wonder what that’s about right and then we go back to the Curiosity and so if I’m working with someone or if there’s someone in my family who is struggling with an addiction rather than judging that let me be curious about that absolutely
so I’m going to Pivot the conversation just I mean I could talk some more about trauma and but I decide not to um but Brandon so the three of us had your experience yesterday and Brandon I want to start with you I I’d love to hear kind of what it was like for you and maybe what shifted for you a little bit because it seemed impactful there you go you’re doing therapy now all right um no you’re just talking about yourself it’s not the same uh you’re too powerful yes it is too powerful in the host cjson I like it uh um well I uh you know Jokes Aside I’d greatly appreciated the whole experience I actually you know we’ve been dealing with a lot you know from out outside pressure in the Peaks and you know we’ve got a full census a variety of different things going on so work has been a challenging environment I actually went into the day thinking like I’m gonna you know put my toe in the water just for a second I’m gonna go back to my opposite work but uh quickly put the laptop down put it back in the office and was in it and it was really important that I went through the experience yesterday it wasn’t just a distraction from like the work world but sort of a grounding in the experience of being a part of my team again uh and being vulnerable with them and I you know the the moment where you asked us to kind of look into you know each other’s eyes for two minutes and just sit there with that you know Shane and one of our therapists that was literally the first formal time I had been sitting with her and here I am with like an employee and so I think it was grounding and reconnecting but I also loved you know our first little part of the experience together you know what is your experience and just to keep asking that question you know to me and commonly a lot of people come and say well how was your day and it’s like okay well my day in it for me I always get into a tangent about how my day was and this was like how was your day going it’s like I’m fearful right now you know we know what that is from the outside pressures and these things we’re going through as an operation okay Brandon what are you experiencing um loneliness okay Brandon what do you experience dang there’s the fear again you know and it was just an ability to walk through something I think I was able to sputter out hope at the end yeah you know within the Commerce which was my last response or whatever but it was it’s it’s an open-ended question with that doesn’t require like a really long answer to it I just felt that was really powerful and right sized and it reminded me of how like simple this process can be to get inward uh I think that’s what you were trying to do but overall just starting with that I just felt there was a powerful experience and applicable almost in any setting I went home last night with my wife and I was like just ask me what my experiences are
yeah yeah that’s going to help this so um so yeah that would be I appreciate it I think yeah I it was powerful being in that experience with you too Clint what was the question would you experience what did I experience yesterday what are you experiencing now [Laughter] uh uh gosh I had I went through a lot of experiences I first of all I don’t get to sit in trainings very often um you know experiences very often yeah um and when I do I’m usually and I I mean I’m very transparent about this I’m very guarded like most of the time I feel a sort of um need to sort of protect the people around me especially if we’re talking about like my team and my staff and the company as a whole like I just I just want to protect it and so it took me a while just to get out of that space um and uh it was I think the eye contact was probably the two minutes of eye contact it’s hard to hide you know and luckily I was able to um the very first person that I engaged um was a was a clinician and um man there’s something about that moment in her energy just really pulled me down and grounded me and it allowed me to stay open uh much longer than I typically allow myself and so in that sense it was a reminder of one it was a reminder of how guarded I walk around to it was also a reminder of how easy and how important it is to let that down because by letting somebody else in you get to experience you know you talk about you know your own lens but I do think that you can see and at the very least feel the world through other people’s lenses I really do if you allow yourself that opportunity in that space and and then for the rest of the day it allowed us to have allowed me to engage in a a conversation that I would typically be very resistant to um again I am a very solution focused guy I’m a very let’s get to the heart of it let’s figure out how to get through this let’s um let’s not process this let’s push through this and that says a therapist so yeah and so that’s um it’s also very eye-opening and a very good reminder of um that in in a lot of cases I is it I I had to ask myself that question is it fair for me to ask a client to go there if I’m not willing to go there myself so yeah I appreciate you sharing yeah and I it’s the last time Jason freezeman it’s on Films
here’s the blooper reel yeah um and my experience um I mean we you did a great job allowing us to debrief yesterday and uh which I really appreciated but I really um I I found so much I had so many layers of things going on I was I honestly was joyful to be honest with you in a lot of ways because it does feel um really affirming um with with what we do uh I I care deeply about these men in this room as much as [ __ ] as we give each other but like I really do and um I thought it was powerful for you to offer them an experience um I I was proud that as a leadership team we could show up and be present with people and and really level the playing field that felt like like it just felt like we were all people in there together and and I think uh it’s at an amazing table for that and um he foreign probably what I left with too is like I’m wrestling with this spiritual idea I’ve I have recently called myself spiritually homeless which seems really similar to your disconnected thing so that um and that’s unresolved for me if I’m going to be transparent so um and Brandon and I have started talking about this a little bit reading some Alan Watts but um yeah so I I appreciated it and and honestly one of my other strange experiences is uh you handed us a pamphlet with um kind of the five tenets of conscious recovery um but on one of the other folds like your number one thing is like are you experiencing burnout or something like that and I’m like oh yeah this is a Sav in a place that I didn’t know I needed to Sav yeah and uh and I’m grateful for that and and again the energy um which we’re all pretty attuned to uh experienced a shift over the last couple days and and uh it’s pretty powerful and I’m grateful to you for that well thank you you know it’s I went to a program maybe three three years ago and at the end I asked what stood out and a young woman said what on Earth does this have to do with self-care I came here to learn step one step two steps three step four on how to care for myself more yeah and what you’re speaking to is really the intention and when I left yesterday I’m like did we address self-care and today something really powerful came up someone said we’re talking about caring for the soul which is really different than only caring for the body or the mind right and so when we think of self-care we might think of a spa day or extra time off or a vacation but when our soul is hungry to be fed that’s the sole care that’s what we’re really talking about and what we’re really addressing not not through words or through a teaching but through an experience is is it possible that our work could be energizing is it possible that when I’m truly present with someone without the agenda of wanting to fix someone that I can actually feel more energized so not only is the person sitting in front of me going is it going to be more effective for their own process but I’m not here to think you’re broken and my job is to fix you and so in working in the field I see well-meaning clinicians counselors texts coming to work and like you know these people are damaged and broken they may not say it but there’s a felt sense of it and my job is to give them the solution and the solution my job is to fix them my job is and that can be really exhausting and then we can go into did I do it right why didn’t this person get it why didn’t the group go the way I wanted it to and so when we’re opening so my husband told me to never use the acronym again but I’m going to use it I say I’m studying to be a cop curious open and present right when I’m curious open and presence something emerges that is something so much more powerful and the reason I’m giving this very long answer is that feeds the soul that energizes me on a way that’s Way Beyond taking an extra day off Way Beyond setting a boundary we talked a lot about that today yeah and of course I’m provocative I’m like what if we don’t need boundaries not in the way that we believe that we do right we have to delete a bunch of old finding Peaks if that’s the case we can talk about that yeah we can talk about that but I I’m speaking of the energetic boundary right am I guarded am I guarded with the person I’m in front of and how we might think that that’s actually protecting ourselves but actually that might be what’s depleting us so so when I take that down and I’m a human being with you and I would say a spiritual being with you there’s something that happens that can be really energizing so at the end of a long day of work like at the end of today I might be physically tired but I’m I’m emotionally and spiritually energized you know living on purpose and being a person who has meaning and purpose that you talked about and I love that you’re bringing that into your program because a lot of programs aren’t addressing that yeah I don’t think someone can stay sober by what they don’t want I just don’t want to go I don’t want to go to jail again and I don’t want my wife to leave me all those things what do I want right and I want to be fed we all want love and connection and when we experience that it’s energizing absolutely yeah it you know you’re you’re your approach and book I think it does and rightfully so and I think uh challenges the disease model and the disease models being challenged on multiple fronts these days uh so I think it’s very right size but to that sort of diagnosis the patient you know clients in front of you and it’s like okay they’re broken and I’ve got to somehow fix this you know going through the process yesterday I don’t I’ve been able to be in a good group setting in a while so it was nice to be a part of that um you know intervention that you created for six of us within it but was spectacular about it is how how little work you were actually doing and how energized the group became and back to the disease model you weren’t trying to fix anything within that setting and you allowed for a healing process to really sort of start like a flywheel to start taking place within that moment it reminds me of one of the metaphors that came up yesterday you know like when somebody cuts themselves you know outside of a significantly deep wound that requires you know emergency room attention right if you if you kind of just nurture and let it sit there the body will heal itself and it reminds me here that in spirituality it has the ability to heal itself as a process and being in that setting uh clearly reminded of that potential that we’re talking about healing versus fixing and curious if you wanted to speak just a little bit more you know my intention is that we all change our name from Treatment Center to Healing Center yeah and then eventually like a wholeness Center a wellness center but this idea that you’re sharing that like our body does naturally fix itself so does our mind and so does our spirit but we often can’t do it alone that’s the Paradox right the issue is in the Western Medical model we’re like what are your symptoms and how do we get rid of them yeah right and so addiction is a symptom and it looks it’s not a pretty one right and so no one says oh it’s great that you keep going to jail or it’s great that you keep you know doing cocaine at your work we’re not saying that all that what we’re saying is that’s a symptom of something and what’s actually beneath that and how can we actually start to heal that and return to our wholeness so my job isn’t to diagnose and treat you but it’s to be curious with you because what happens is we end up taking on the identity of the diagnosis and you know maybe it’s controversial but I don’t think that’s the client only doing that I think it’s the clinicians as well yeah right and if I’m seeing someone as borderline personality disorder instead of I wonder what this person is really longing for which is love and connection and if I’m in the symptoms and the behaviors and trying to navigate negotiate that not only is it exhausting it’s not affected and you know we have clients you know the insurance companies dictate we don’t get them as long as we all know we need them right bottom line I don’t think there’s anyone in this industry that says you’re going to be great in 28 days that’s what’s happened right now suddenly we all believe that’s the model um so what can we do in those 28 days we can Empower someone to realize that they do have the ability to heal and that there’s something within them that is so powerful that can actually heal and that they’re not their diagnosis they’re not their addiction that’s a symptom of something so let’s unplug from that and look at how we can start to return to our true nature that can happen in 28 days and that happens through experience not teaching yeah I think I think you’re exactly right and I think you know we mentioned managed care and the amount of skill I think it takes too to like have all of these paperwork and and diagnosis things in your head and then you close the door with the client or with the group and you let a lot of that go and you just be with people because it’s all sitting out there and you got to pick it up and write a note and do all the things but um to create that genuine space um with all that chatter it takes a lot of skill and increasingly so yeah and and and I want to be clear what I’m not saying is there’s not something useful to that and we’re all doing that and that is intended to be helpful and it can be helpful what I’m saying is in addition to the diagnosing treating let’s look at the ability yeah for that that cut to heal yeah absolutely right and you know we could get into a whole holistic you know conversation about physical health as well but for this conversation rather than looking at someone as their diagnosis can I look at at very least it’s something they have but it’s not who they are at very least that’s at least a pivot that would make me really happy yeah yeah the the potential for Transcendence to move away from the thing that I’m calling myself an object an addict into something that is uh has not only more potential that but isn’t just that thing at the end of the day and I this is what I really love about this part of the movement and the disruption of the industry and the disease model of care right if I no longer can adopt an attitude that I am this thing and see myself as a subject with real healing potential and power I can actually move away from something called addiction and that’s gonna that’s gonna be a whole other episode to talk about what that might look like for an individual at the end of the day and I’m certainly not suggesting at the end of the day that that means somebody can use again in the future because our the situation is complex subjectively speaking right for any individual but I think that’s a real powerful feature that has been kind of lost within this disease model where people are carrying away continued stories about themselves three five years ten years down the road that are just no longer true about them right and even if it is a disease like let’s just start with let’s say we do buy into the disease model we wouldn’t be curious about what caused the disease right like even if we do have that framework and I I personally okay sure I could say it is and I can say it isn’t yeah but what I ask is what gets created and we this this came up yesterday but what gets created when I say to someone or to myself you have a chronic lifelong illness that can never be cured but only treated one day at a time right and that can be really depressing some people would say that’s empowering right because I know I have this disease and I know I need to take my medicine every day so I I hear that narrative but if we’re saying and you you pointed to it I’m just an addict or an alcoholic so I’m never going to be able to do this right right and it just simply isn’t true yeah and it is a collective narrative that that we’ve started to and you know take it a step further to be a little more controversial you know we we believe that there’s a chemical imbalance in the brain that causes some of these what we call disorders but we literally don’t know if that’s true now sometimes it’s been science has said oh it’s true oh wait it’s not quite true yeah and I’m not I’m not um there’s nothing wrong with that because true science is continuing to explore right right so there’s validity in that but what does what gets created when I say well you have this chemical imbalance so we just need to treat it you can never actually heal that and how long it prolongs the potential Solution that’s over here right well you develop your your whole identity is just a collection of symptoms after a while right you just become symptoms and it’s uh and I think that to your point you lose that whole self you lose that connected self you you just start to identify it with your faults or at um or your uh coping strategies or as you call them your brilliant strategies yeah and I think that that’s a real um I think it takes people in the opposite direction you know because that’s not who we are we’re not a collection of symptoms right yeah and the exciting part is now science is saying oh wait maybe DNA isn’t even solid maybe genes aren’t even solid our brain isn’t even solid right we know that through repetitive usually they say through repetitive Behavior we change the grooves in our brains rather than transmitters we can literally change the brain so even if someone says I have a chemical imbalance in my brain even if that’s true we can change it right and I don’t think we only change it through Behavior but some of the deeper work and what you’re speaking to is like there’s a place within me that’s unharmed and unharmable there’s a place that within me that’s greater than just this chemical imbalance even if it exists right and so I’m not saying it doesn’t exist but let’s look at all the different possibilities physical intellectual emotional and spiritual interesting right so even if I do have a genetic predis disposition to something that doesn’t mean I don’t have the ability to start to change that right right well I think it’s a unique component of um this modality other modalities are specifically designed to gear how why theirs is right and others are wrong and this is so much more inclusive in its nature it allows for all of the things can be right why not yeah sure whatever your whatever your lens is go ahead take your lens and then you can still use these tools you can still approach things from this point of view because it doesn’t actually say that your lens is wrong it doesn’t actually it doesn’t create more shame it’s this and right and someone has at once asked me can someone get sober and stay sober on conscious recovery alone and my answer is I hope not because there’s not one answer right I’m going to share with you all I’ve never shared this but I had a nightmare and I woke up like startled and the nightmare was I was dead and there was a group a conscious Recovery Group and my picture was on the wall and they were like this is the one and only win I’m like oh my gosh please no no no no right because this is a curiosity right I hope I sincerely hope that what I believe today won’t be true in six months with more exploration or that I’ll say oh there’s more to it than that right right because you know the world the World is Flat that was once a fact right it was it was a shared fact now people well that doesn’t mean it was true well we now believe it’s round but who knows there might be other things happening I keep telling Jason maybe it’s a hologram right so it’s like um all I know is not all there is to know right and that alone right that alone is like there is no one answer it’s disarming but empowering at the same time well because people are a lot of people are uncomfortable with not knowing right and um that is I think particularly true of uh our clients who are in early recovery right because it can be very scary for them not to know so predictability becomes a way they believe they’re feeling safe and that might be true for our industry too I mean here’s the way it works here’s the science let me stay in this box it’s very comfortable yeah and I think that’s and it’s a it’s an excellent highlight of an industry in change and in the process of changing too right because when we get stuck in narratives as we talked about on these episodes um and with you know multiple guests now uh uh that when these narratives are in front of patient care they become restrictive as well too in a sense so when somebody’s like you were talking about yesterday you know the person well he’s drug seeking
it’s not of course that’s what they’re doing right but when we create those narratives we move away from introspection and what is our opportunity in the moment to treat this individual to help them do something better than drug seek in this moment and the challenge is really on us not then but so much of the historical application of treatment has been applied Johnny’s not doing the job Johnny’s drug seeking if they just showed up better if they just went to the meetings if they just did 90 and 90 all this external stuff and it seems so restrictive and so uh incoherent now at least in what we experience at Peaks and what conscious recoveries I remember the first time I started to question the narrative well everyone who relapses with someone who quit going to meetings like maybe that’s true but then I was like but why did they stop why did they you know even if I have a judgment why did they stop engaging with their support group so what’s actually happening because it’s not just that external thing that caused it there’s something much more much deeper happening yeah
agreed I think we’ve solved it guys I mean I could tell you know I can talk for 10 hours right yeah so clearly yeah as we do uh as we do wind up or wind down or whichever we’re winding yeah um I guess I I want to go back to um I think the part of the Brilliance of the conscious recovery is some of it’s Simplicity of just like reminding us that we were with people and and I do tell the clinical team often like you know all of these this curriculum we built and we have a binder this thick and how we introduce it to clients and all that we are the tools though it’s the relationship um and we can’t lose track of that and it’s easy to lose track of it with all the noise going on but but um people just need to know that they’re not crazy and that toxic shame gets resolved through these relationships and and building the confidence I was thinking of I was meeting with one of our um clients who’s wrestling with the mental health issue and his only approach to this point his life has been to take meds and and the meds aren’t working anymore and I had to tell them like hey it great news it’s time for you to show up and do your part too and like we’re here with you and we’ll we’ll offer you the tools but um we can’t do it for you we can’t do the lifting for you we’re with you though on this journey in in um and it’s such a great reminder uh to all that and uh TJ so with that um if you could talk to the camera and talk about conscious recovery if you could do a little bit of a sales of what you do and what you’re working on and what’s next recovery is intended to help people reconnect with their true nature and unplug from the symptoms of addiction or mental health concerns and really look at what’s underneath it and actually do the deeper healing so whether you’re a person in recovery a clinician in private practice you own or operate a treatment program there’s books there’s workbooks there’s online courses there’s trainings which are also experiences and there is curriculum so we my intention for you and for everyone on planet Earth quite frankly is to remember that you are a whole and infinite perfect spiritual being and if the word spiritual doesn’t work you have infinite potential within you and so you can go to consciousrecovery.com to learn more also I’ll do a little plug for wholehearted.org I’m on that platform along with Gabriel mate Marianne Williamson and some other people there’s a bunch of free talks and courses whether you’re a professional in behavioral health or an individual in recovery thank you and with that we will wind up our episode um uh TJ I want to thank you again for being here and uh thank you guys too for joining this discussion um yeah it’s just been a real honor and um I I really uh really enjoy having this conversation it feels really affirming please uh follow us on Facebook Instagram uh we do have a tick tock account rolling around out there um Twitter
if you have any questions feel free to email us at questions at findingpeaks.com and uh with that we’ll sign off take care everyone