Addiction, Divorce, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Podcast |
Kevin Boon | The Masks We Wear
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
When you fill out your calendar, do you intentionally set time aside to reflect and for introspection? Probably not. Most of us don’t do so. However, as Kevin shares in this episode, doing so for his grief has made all of the difference in his life.
Kevin speaks to the cumulative losses of his career, his father, his mother, and subsequent divorce. He also shares the impact of having a small nuclear family and missing out on a larger, extended family community growing up.
We often don’t think about how our nuclear family of origin impacts our grief. However, it has everything to do with how we respond to it. Kevin grew up, as many of us do, unable to express his grief. As a result, it manifested in different ways. That is until he discovered the work of Grief Recovery. Kevin shares his experience working with me, addressing his grief through my program Do Grief Differently.
Learn through our conversation how, as a male and someone who has experienced various losses, it is possible to recover from all of the emotions that make up grief; anger, sadness, bitterness, and everything in between.
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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk 0:00
Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Kevin Boon. He has worked the first 20 years of his career in the technology industry, and for the past 10 years has coached and consulted with startup entrepreneurs, and small to medium-sized businesses. He has a degree in economics, interest in history, politics, and has been interested in what it takes for economies and communities and for people to thrive. Thank you so much for being my guest, Kevin, also a Grief Recovery client of mine. Very interested in you sharing your experience with that at some point when it fits into your story, but let’s get started on really what brings you to grieving voices?
Kevin Boon 0:50
Well, I think that it takes me back, I think, to when I first kind of discovered you I was you know, I was going through some challenges in my life, I had, you know, had some career, I went through a job loss, I had my parents that had both kind of passed and went through kind of like what I would call, you know, I don’t know, health challenges that lasted for quite a few years. So there was just that part where there was just a lot of ongoing challenges with that I had a job that was stressful, and then eventually that job ended. And then within boat, you know, within about a year after my mom dying, my relationship ended. And so it was, for me, it was the three areas where basically, I had meaning in life. And within just a very short time window does work on. And so, and I knew I was grieving, I was, you know, working through and trying, you know, different methods and looking at different ways to support myself, but I was in a pretty, you know, tough state, it was a it was a really, really tough time to for going through that. And so I found you on I think it was what’s the guy? It’s it was a YouTube interview that you did with I think it was Brian Edwards. And, and it was just the topic was grief. And and what you said in those conversations, were just some things that just kind of said, Ah, there it is. That’s, you know, those are pieces and spoke to me, that was basically what it was. So I knew that I just, you know, I needed to reach out. And we did and we did did some work together, which was great. So so that was kind of that was my experience, you know, going through just the loss of those really important things in my life.
Victoria Volk 2:53
Would you say it was a dark night of the soul?
Kevin Boon 2:57
It was the dark night of my soul? Yeah, absolutely. And it was, you know, one of the things that you are one of the things I know that in the grief work that you do. You know, it says that, you know, grief is cumulative. And what that means to me is that you know if you have stressful experiences, if you have experiences that give you heartache Oh in your life, and if you don’t deal with those in some ways at the time, then they build. And what I realized, I virtually had like what I call a lifetime of working really hard and jobs always being on the go productive than trying to show up in a family trying to show up with my parents and a whole bunch of different things. A lot of times there were just things that would come up that would just never get resolved stead of going and sitting down and having a drink or eating food or watching TV. That was the way of tuning out. And I think that hit had been really hard to do what I call the introspection and this is what I think this worked help me to do a little bit of.
Victoria Volk 4:00
It’s like having a scab, right, this really gaping wound that scabs over, then you find yourself like picking at it in these moments of frustration or anger and it never resolves, right? It just always is a gaping wound, it’s always an unhealed wound and we go to the doctor when we have a broken arm or broken leg. But I think society is maybe getting better about going to a professional when they have a broken heart. But yeah, your progression of going through the program and seeing where you started and then seeing where you landed at the end. It was beautiful to be witness to that and you just see people and I saw you just get lighter and lighter like you just you carry yourself different you show up differently. Did you feel that way in your life and relationships and connections with other people and
Kevin Boon 4:54
Yeah, it definitely was something we’re at the end of that I came out lighter. And I was carrying, I would say a lot of unresolved grief with my mother. You know, it was interesting because my mother died in, you know, 2018. And I remember just kind of, and I was we, you know, the whole family, we were with her in palliative care when she passed, you know, it was trying to, you know, kind of be there. But I was almost like, in this place where I was feeling numb. You know, I didn’t know what the emotions were like, I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t, you know, I couldn’t let this go. I think when I went through the grief work, especially around my mother, that was where the tears started to flow. And I thought, holy smokes, this is, you know, this is deep stuff, and it just started to get me into this place is like, Oh, okay. You know, like, just these little pockets, where it was like, Oh, my God, this happened. And this is how I felt. And sometimes it’s not even so much about what somebody does, it’s, it’s about just the feelings that you it’s, it’s even their state of mind, you know, my mother would be in a place where she, a lot of times was worried, or she was anxious, or she was depressed herself. Like she, you know, she had moved from England, you know, you know, and kind of lost that connection with her family. And I think she was going through her own grief, I realized so much around how, especially when I was little, some of them were memories that I had, but some of them were not memories, you know, they were, they were just things that I go, Oh, my God, I just felt intuitively into this place. And it’s like, all there it is, you know, and it’s and so, so I think that the work of your work helped me to open up to some of these bigger windows of things that maybe I hadn’t paid attention to. before so.
Victoria Volk 6:53
Yeah, and what I hear and you saying that, and what, you know, when you went through the process, it brings the importance of understanding how important our environment is into our development. And like, you spoke to your mom’s own stuff she was experiencing and going through, and like, let’s say a family has a dog, but everybody in the family is kind of anxious, you know, they’re just kind of like, unsettled within themselves and just kind of anxious family maybe even angry. Yeah, you often see that reflected in their dog, you know, there’ll be an aggressive dog or a really scared dog. I actually had that purse, I just comes to my mind. Now we had tried to adopt it, we adopted a dog poodle, which isn’t kind of a nervous dog anyway, but my children were young, and this dog just did not that nervous energy, and the energy of the children. It was too much for this dog, and he did not adapt well to our family. Right. Gave him to a retired couple. He was like a completely different dog. Yes. And I think just as dogs respond to their environment, in either in how they behave and react, so do we as children growing up in that environment. So if it’s, if they’re if you’re in an environment that’s really angry, and there’s a lot of fighting, and there’s a you know, lack of stability, emotional stability, yeah, might be someone who has trouble coping and managing your own emotions as you get older. Right. It’s, this is why we say adulthood is childhood reenactments. And so I just wanted to highlight that, it doesn’t mean you’re crazy as a Griever. That’s where people kind of get stuck in feeling like it’s all them. We’re all products of our environments and our experiences. So thank you for highlighting that and mentioning that.
Kevin Boon 8:49
Yeah, absolutely. And I would add something really important. It’s, you know, as I went through looking at my childhood, my parents immigrated, like I said, from England, they came to Canada when I was like four months old, like I was a baby in arms, coming to Canada, and then we lived in Canada for four years. We went to Australia for four years. But what we were we were that typical nuclear family, you know, so, in my family back in England, you know, there was uncles and aunts and grandparents, like if I was in that environment back there, you know, we would have gone weekends over to visit the grandparents or visit the uncles or you know, kind of do things with this wider audience and what I realized as I started looking at my own and I caught my grief journey was just living in the nuclear world. Where are this little nuclear niche where it’s your mom and dad are your primary caregivers. That’s not a lot of that’s just a pretty narrow perception of the types of personalities that are out there. And it just so happened that my mother you know, was you know, somebody who worried a lot something. He had a lot of anxiety, she was, you know, lonely, depressed, like, in her own way to pick that up, like, it was like, you know, I’m intuitive like I’m, I’m empathic, I know that I am that, you know, and as a child, she was the person who I spent like 80% of my time with. And then my dad on the other end was, he was always like working at jobs and always busy. But I knew that you know, money and survival were part of their, you know, their, their modus operandi type of thing they were, that’s where they operated from. And so what I’ve discovered for my own journey is that, number one, how much of a loss it was to not have that wider circle of influence. Like even mentors, when I think about my life growing up, like, I don’t think I really ever had what I would call a mentor, until I got into like adulthood in my 30s or 40s. Like, like, like to not have, like, you know, when kids like, you know, they say that when a child thrives at some level, there’s somebody that they meet along the way, that says, hey, you know, they, they pay attention to them. They say, you know, what, you’ve got this skill here, or you can do this, or they have a different perception. And I realized in my life, that part of my grieving was the grief that I didn’t have that bigger, expanded network of people within my community, if you will, or tribe, whatever you want to call it. You know,
Victoria Volk 11:30
Don’t you find that interesting that what you do now, and what you’re interested in is all about community. And, you know, it’s like you’re looking to build something that you didn’t have, right? You’re looking to support something you didn’t have? And I, yeah, I think our passions generally do come from our pain.
Kevin Boon 11:54
Oh big time. And, you know, it’s, it’s interesting, because I’m a big fan of Gabor Ma Tei. And Gordon Neufeld, they have a book and it’s called, I’ve actually got it here, it’s called hold on to your kids. And the whole premise of this book describes the fact that as a culture, you know, for the last two or three generations, and going back to the baby boomers like this goes back to the baby boomers, but what they say is that we have a culture, where children at a very young age, lose their family attachment, and they become peer attached. So they become attached to their friends and schools, or if you put a knife pad in front of them, they become attached to people online, whatever it is, and that peer attachment is crippling our self-esteem, you know, that’s part of the message. And I and I look at that, and I and so this is where my interest in kind of like being able to present this stuff and to talk about some of these ideas because this is a big challenge. It’s, you know, in any ways, for me, it’s not just me, you know, I have my own unique experience of this. But there’s a bigger expanded challenge that we face in society, with the fact that, you know, most kids today are becoming pure attached at a very young age. And the whole society teaches us to, you know, that, Oh, you know, we got to go to school, you got to go to preschool, well, you got to go to pre, preschool, whatever it is, and we get kids out of the house, and they’re in this peer attached world, which is not as reliable now, if they go at home to their family, and their parents are stressed because they’re, they’ve got jobs that are busy, and they’re running around all the time, then it’s also hard for them to get the family attachment. So there’s a bunch of things where sometimes we’re just not able to slow down as a society. And so you know, what does a child need? You know, and what does a child need? You know, a child needs a gabber Mati and others talk about they need attachment. And they need authenticity. So it’s a place where they can be themselves, they can be true to themselves, they don’t have to try to fit in and get marks in school, they can be themselves what is, you know, what is that true essence of self. So that’s been my search. And the grief work is a really important part to that. So that’s, yeah, interesting.
Victoria Volk 14:30
Two words that come to my mind when you’re talking about that, you know, the attachments, you know, peer attachment and family attachment is add in like adding a grief event right, like a traumatic loss or a really challenging time or a mental health challenge with a family member or parent or a child. All of these other components of life that happen that are unfavorable to us, and how do you cope? You know, it’s so we all have different ways. is that we do that that are unhealthy. Usually, that’s so I think we’re speaking to is all these different threads that kind of really just create this tapestry of really what’s needed as is balanced to. And I thought of to when you were talking about with the peers, it’s really about teaching our kids and to, it really matters who you surround yourself with, not just as an adult and emulating that. But as a child, like how do you how do you help children discern who is going to be that peer, that is going to uplift you and inspire and encourage and, and really, truly be a friend? You know? Yes. And a role model? In as what a friend really is?
Kevin Boon 15:49
Yes, it’s the healthy relationships, right? Because, you know, we can talk family attachments, but if you’re, you know, if your parents are abusive, or neglectful, or they’re stressed, whatever it is, you’re going to struggle within that environment. And I think it’s people I don’t know, it’s people like Oprah, I think I remember for her, you know, she had a challenging childhood. But she had, you know, people along the way that just, you know, were there that paid attention to her and inspired her, you know, things along that lines. And I think that that’s the part that it’s really important, I think, for society to figure out how do we find that place where a child’s going to attach to create a connection, where they go, oh, you know, I’m important, you know, and, and this gets into, like, I think some of the bigger challenges we’re having in our society right now, where I think that people have, you know, we try so much in our technology world, to try to have like, you know, the, the one, you know, the one app that’s going to solve all our problems, or the, you know, the special thing that if we can talk to a million people, then you know, people are going to be saved, whatever it is, through through whatever, whatever this method that we’re teaching, but the reality is, sometimes I think that people just, you know, we need to have that personal connection, that personal interaction and as children, that that’s about attention, somebody’s paying attention to you in a in a real positive and in an uplifting way that that pays attention. You know, that’s, that’s so, so important.
Victoria Volk 17:27
And that’s the Grief Recovery experience. Right?
Kevin Boon 17:29
Totally, totally. Absolutely.
Victoria Volk 17:31
It really is, you feel heard for the first time. And oftentimes, that’s what many clients have said is, I felt like I had a place where someone really, truly understood and where I could really, in a safe space, you know, dig into that.
Kevin Boon 17:46
Yeah, more fully. And I realized, I realized, as I was going through my experiences, I realized that it was really hard to be able to have somebody here, you know, and, you know, and so, you know, and I don’t know, trying to be vulnerable, and just saying, Hey, I’m feeling this right now. It’s like, there was a period of time where it was nobody, no one was really interested in having that conversation with me. You know, and, and if anything, you know, as a man, I would look weak, you know, that was it, if I, if I, and I think that this is this, you know, this is the part that I found that the majority not I don’t know, if it’s, I don’t even know what the percentage is. But a lot of people do not have an ability to talk and be with somebody in grief. I don’t know. And I don’t know why that is, I think our society has kind of tried to focus, you know, we focus on the material world, we focus on the world outside of us, getting things done productivity, having jobs, doing all this stuff. But we, we don’t pay attention to the inner world, I think most of us are so out outward, focused in terms of what we what we do, you know, and as a result, we neglect things like a grieving experience, you know, we don’t give ourselves time.
Victoria Volk 19:11
I believe that there would be a really good percentage, I don’t know what it is, but I’m just speculating here of a male in your situation, who essentially lost everything, lost your marriage, lost your parents, your mom and all this in a short amount of time you had you moved a lot of change in a short amount of time, your career, a lot of men would have probably contemplated suicide. Oh, had that ever crossed your mind?
Kevin Boon 19:38
It’s you know what, there were times when I thought, You know what, I just don’t know if this is going to be, you know, if I’m going to be able to do this, and I think I knew well enough, though, that there were people that I loved and people that I cared about. And I thought that if I did that, it would be hard experience for them. And so I think I was able to connect to that in at least a certain way. I, you know, I do have a friend from my university days who committed suicide. And he, you know, he had gone through something similar, he had lost his relationship. And he was a family guy. He wanted to be that family like that, that was so important for him. And I know that he kind of just, you know, he kind of just bandied around for about four or five years. And then I don’t know, and I heard the news, kind of, like, after the fact that wasn’t in touch with him, because it was kind of like, you know, 20 years after we had graduated, so to speak. But, but it was sad, you know, and the other challenge is, is that when he passed, very few people talked about that, you know, the suicide or why he did it, or anything it was, it was talking about his memory, good guy, all that kind of stuff, and, you know, kind of celebrating that, but nobody wanted to go to that place as to you know, why he might have done that? Or even to have that discussion, you know, so I do you know, to answer that question, I had thought about it, but at the same time, I never lean that way. Let’s just put it like that. I just, I think I thought you know what, no, I know, I can’t do that. So what I did instead, to take myself outside of that realm was I realized that I have to create some sort of purpose for myself. Because and what I did was I developed purpose in what I called ritual. And ritual for me was around walking. And so that was an ability where I just started, I made a commitment, you know, I’m going to walk an hour and a half to two hours every day. And in that time, I’m going and I’m going to disconnect from electronics, you know, so it’s not listening to an iPad, or a podcast episode or something like that. It was about disconnecting, and just going into ritual, so calling in whatever it was just, you know, to be able to reflect, to work through things so,
Victoria Volk 22:11
That’s an amazing tip. And it’s connecting to the present moment and to nature to at the same time.
Kevin Boon 22:17
Yeah, absolutely. And it was interesting, because I did that for when I when my marriage first ended, and I moved out of my house, that was what became my ritual for the first year and a half, after moving out, it was something that was really important. And then I did lose connection to that for a little while. And then I’ve I’ve moved recently, and I would say that within the last month or so I’ve actually really taken that up again, but I find the ritual piece and the intention. And things like that are just a really are a really important part to finding a way to bring yourself into being centered so,
Victoria Volk 23:01
Intention is huge. I will I will agree with that. Yes, intention is huge into anything that we do, you know, even if before you go into a difficult conversation with someone, you know, thinking about your intention, like what do you want to bring? You know, do you want to bring anger and bitterness and resentment to this conversation? Or do you want to bring compassion and open ears and, you know, that are open to listening and honoring the other person to and their feelings? I don’t know, what made me say that or what came, but I felt like I needed to say that, but intention is huge. In a lot in most situations.
Kevin Boon 23:36
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that I noticed, and I and I agree with you on all of that, it’s, it’s the people my age, right? So I’m in my mid to late 50s. You know, I’ve been around for a while, right? Like, my, my, I’ve got history, right? And it’s like, when I think back about that whole grief thing about being cumulative, you know, and I think people that I know my age, like when you’ve had 50, some odd years to kind of like not process your stuff, then either you’re going to do one or two things, you’re going to be on medication, you know, you’re going to either, you know, soothe yourself with alcohol or drugs or whatever it is, or, or whatever, you know, watching TV, whatever the like zoning out. And I think that, you know, part of, and I feel that we have a lot of people that are in that place, you know, that’s where they live, you know, they live in the world of either addictions, or zoning out or whatever it is, or you know, they’re on prescription medications, and I just really didn’t want to go that route. And I think the worst case scenario that happens for that is that I think that as my dad got older, he went through and had dementia cysts symptoms, you know, and I think what happens there’s a certain period where your cognitive abilities kind of shut down or whatever it is, or they change you’re not able to quite do it and if and if the grief has kind of accumulated over your lifetime With the trauma that you’ve experienced, and you haven’t processed it, I don’t know what the stats talk about. But I’m a big believer that things like dementia, or things like around are caused by unresolved grief, or that’s my opinion anyway, just based on what I’ve what I see with it, when I look at the work you do, and especially the work when you do it one on one or in small groups, but you and I’ve done the work together one on one, it’s like, it’s something that we need to just have a bigger, a bigger awareness, like a bigger availability for because I think that a lot of people are looking to be heard, but they’re not there was an article and I’ll just share it in Canadian in one of the Canadian news things, and it just said that there’s a crisis in mental health in Canada. And they were just talking about, you know, with COVID, with all the, you know, the challenges that we’ve had the last few years that there’s a crisis in mental health, and they said that the biggest challenge is the fact that people can’t really get access to help they need. And therapy is, you know, people usually there’s waiting lists, and what ends up happening as either people are put on medication, or they don’t get treatment. And that’s a huge challenge that we have societally.
Victoria Volk 26:13
I think there were always mental health challenges. I just think that during COVID, for a lot of people, I believe it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, you know, it was like this one last straw for a lot of people, but I think we’ve always had it just, you know, as a society, I think it just kind of turn a blind eye to it. And it’s not me, it’s not happening to me, it’s Nobody I know. So, you know, yeah, that mindset.
Kevin Boon 26:43
Yeah, definitely. Well, and I think the other thing, too, today that accentuates it is technology, right? And, you know, the, I don’t know, if you’ve ever, if you’ve watched the movie, the social dilemma, or the, you know, looked at some of the work that there’s a center for humane technology, that kind of, it’s the organization that came out of the movie, the social dilemma, it’s run by Tristan Harris. And they actually have on their website, they actually have eight specific areas where technology does harm, and most of them are in the areas of mental health. So it’s designed to maximize our screen time, you know, our phones are built on like a little gambling casino, where we’ve got little buttons that give us rewards, and we’ve got, you know, things that we’re striving for, like likes, or you know, whatever it is, and, and it’s like a casino, you know, it’s, it’s, we’ve, we’ve built this mentality, and yet, and then we give that to kids when they’re young, right, or even in their teens, like it’s, and I think those are the things that are kind of probably magnifying it, that a level that we you know, that’s that’s adding another layer to what has already been there, like you said, it’s always been there.
Victoria Volk 27:57
So you’ve shared a few tips throughout in different insights, what is the best piece of advice you ever received, during your time dealing with when you had your dark night of the soul or when you were really struggling, the best piece of advice you received, or perhaps what you would share with people now, after you’ve gone through kind of addressing your grief.
Kevin Boon 28:22
I think it’s, you know, it comes down to what the Grief Recovery Method does. Or what you do within your work is it’s having a listener, you if you carry grief, or if you carry trauma, or if there’s anxiety, whatever you’re going through, it’s really important to have, you know, one, two, or two or three people, three or four people in your circle that can be listeners. And so when we did our work together, you were a listener throughout some of that, I have my sister who I’m well connected to, she’s a listener, like we work, you know, we and she understands me, so to speak, you know, which is really, really cool, right? And, and then I have one or two other friends, in particular male friends, who I’m able to have the conversation with i One of the things that I had also done was I joined a men’s group when I went through some of these challenges, and I found that the men’s group allowed me to give voice to what I was feeling and what I was going through. And interestingly enough, I really discovered that most men struggle with this stuff. It’s not just me again, it’s and for men more than ever, you are more than more than women, probably they have a harder time verbalizing it or getting it out. You know? So to have that space has been really, really important to.
Victoria Volk 29:51
Yeah, we just don’t have the language. We don’t have the language and I’ll put it in the show notes. But I recently came across something it’s called the emotional wheel. And it’s really expressive words of how you feel right? But it gives you more language. Yes, you can get in order to really, it’s like, yeah, I might be sad, but it’s not just sad. It’s what’s deeper than that, you know, there could be bitterness there too, could be anger, it could be frustration. Grief is so much more than just, it embodies all of it, and even joy. Even joy.
Kevin Boon 30:26
Yeah, definitely. It was interesting. I was having a conversation with a gentleman the other day, and, and he works, you know, hard. He’s, he’s about my age, and he works at a job he’s does management, he’s just works very hard at his work, right. And he’s, he gets up early in the morning, he’s, you know, works long days, he’s got to manage teams. And we’ve just talked about over the time, but the thing that he said to me was, he says, you know, he, and it was just because I shared my story with him, he opened up to me and started to share that, you know, he’s been going through depression challenges, and he’s been seeing a therapist and trying to kind of connect to what that is, and, and again, on the outside, you know, you’d see this person and you say, Wow, they’ve got it all together, right? They’ve, they’re doing great, you know, they’ve got a great job, they’re, you know, they’re, they’ve got a nice home, all that kind of good stuff. But there’s just something there that, you know, that if it wouldn’t have been, let’s say, where I started that conversation at some level, that would have probably not come out, you know, in normal circumstances,
Victoria Volk 31:32
Right? You went first. And sometimes I think that’s what we need to do is go first to give other people permission, that it’s okay to share. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So what has your grief taught you?
Kevin Boon 31:44
I don’t know, my grief, my grief has taught me, it’s taught me that all aspects of me are important, not just the surface aspect in the corporate world, right. You know, they, you know, I used to have, and I used to, I heard the catch term corporate speak, you know, and you speak, corporate speak. And it’s like, you know, while we’re doing this, and we’re doing all this great stuff, and you see it in great marketing language, and you present this image to the world that wow, things are just shiny and rosy. And, you know, what a great place, you know, and all that stuff. But what Greif taught me is that, you know, there’s, there’s two worlds, and both worlds are important. In fact, the the world around our emotions, in our psyche, is probably the most important world. And because that’s the world that if we do well within that place, then it impacts how we do in our other parts of our life. But when we neglect that world, to focus on some sort of an image, or mask, or whatever it is that we were, you know, the Eleanor Rigby song right, Paul McCartney, or the Beatles, were they saying, you know, putting your mask at the face in a jar by the door, right? So it was like, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that song where they go through that, that, that thing, but it’s all about this idea that, okay, I’m, I’m in my home right now. I’m feeling a certain way. But now I’m gonna go out into the world, I’m gonna put this mask on. And I think for the longest time, that was what I did in the world. And what I didn’t realize what I didn’t know that how much hurt and how much grief and how much was unresolved in there. So grief has taught me that I’m much bigger, and much more whole than I than I ever imagined that I was, let’s say, you know? So it’s important. You know, it’s that. And when you talked about the idea of joy, right, and being able to connect to both, you know, the grief, emotions, but also the positive emotions. I think there’s positive emotions that come from grief, when you’re able to really sit with it for a period of time and let it out. It can. It can make room where that all There you go, that is such a relief. I’ve gotten that off my chest. And let me just sit in that. And then oh, like, it’s like thinking about, let’s say, my experience with my mother, you know what I loved and cared deeply about my mother, and that love and care needed to come out. But it couldn’t come out until I let go with a grief. I don’t know if that makes sense. But,
Victoria Volk 34:31
Yeah, it’s like, days and days of clouds and rain and no sun, and then all of a sudden, the sun comes out, right? Yeah. And it’s this beautiful thing, and you bask in it, and you feel warmth, and joy and lightness. And yeah, I totally get it.
Kevin Boon 34:48
Yeah, for sure. So that was a bit long-winded, but hopefully answered that question.
Victoria Volk 34:55
No, I was it was a good beautiful answer, actually. Is there anything else that you would like to share that you didn’t get a chance to?
Kevin Boon 35:01
Yeah, I would like to just say one thing. It’s, you know, my parents as they went through their life, I think one of the biggest challenges that they had was economic uncertainty. And the other passion that I have in being able to kind of bring to light in the work that I’m doing now is to really talk about how we build economies, where we were, as a society, we start to take people out of this mindset of having to live in economic survival, because I feel that when people are focused on economic survival, that that creates trauma, it creates grief in its own way, it creates the ability where, you know, we don’t pay attention to children, things along that lines, and when we build structures within societies that kind of, you know, make it hard for people to be successful. Like, I don’t know, I think in the US, right, we talk about the fact that the gig economy has emerged, right? Like, you know, and people are going out, and they’re working multiple jobs, a lot of times at minimum wage, right. And, and it’s, it’s hard for them, it’s, they call it the decline or the stagnation of the middle classes. And I think that these are big, big challenges in a culture that just add to our collective trauma, it adds to our grief. And it means that we stay stuck as a society. So for me, my philosophy is that, you know, not only do we want to work with people to help them help their individual lives and work through the challenges that they have, but there’s a collective thing that we can do, from systems, you know, in terms of how we build economic systems, and things along that lines that can really help to, to just change, to change the experience, like we live in such a technology-rich world, that abundance abounds, and phenomenal levels, right? And yet we hoard wealth, we and or we create rules around it that you know, that it’s kind of like you know that people get stuck. And so when we’re trying to live to a material world, we’re getting stuck in our ability to really be able to just enjoy and connect to our true selves as the authentic self, if you will. So,
Victoria Volk 37:28
Two thoughts come to my mind, as I hear you talking about that just the economic impact, right of all that you shared, there is an economic impact to grief. It’s huge. The Grief Recovery Institute did a study on this. It’s the grief index study the company empathy, which is an app for Grievers, they released publication regarding economic repercussions of grief as well. And so I’ll put that in the show notes as well as where people can find that. Yeah, I just Yeah, exactly what you what you share, there is an economic impact, definitely on as a whole, right, as a whole.
Kevin Boon 38:11
Yeah, definitely. There’s, there’s another index, that’s, you know, that you might be interested into kind of connect the dots. But in the US, it’s called the job quality index. And this is it’s I don’t know if you just research or just Google job quality index, but they, they describe the fact that within the last 40 years in America, that jobs have basically transitioned from were like back in the early 70s. You know, I forget what it was like, but like, it was like, the majority were either medium, medium to high paying jobs, like over 70%, something like that. And today, the, amount of low-paying jobs has actually gone to over 60% and those of transition from manufacturing to the services economy. So America used to manufacture most of their stuff, you know, people used to live comfortable middle-class lives, a lot of those jobs changed or went away. And today we work in service jobs, you know, that pay much lower. And in those impacts like this is this is why I think that the grief part for me, from my own personal experiences has been my foundation that says, Okay, this is where we need to look at economics, this is where we need to look at technology, this is where we need to look at the outputs of what we bring into the world. And so to build thriving economies, you know, and you see it like in some economies like in Europe and other places where they have, you know, a decent middle class where they’ve got a good social safety net, you know, things along that lines where people live comfortable lives. Whereas I think in some of our cultures and America is probably one of them, but we neglect that, you know, just the fact that, you know, a woman who’s pregnant that gives birth to a baby has to go back to work in like three weeks or whatever it is like, you know, to have a real maternity option or a paternity option for people to spend time in those important attachment, important attachment years with children is so critical, you know, in our society. So I, my belief is that it has to happen from two levels healing. Number one is each one of us has an individual responsibility for ourselves. But I think on the other end, there’s a collective responsibility that we can start to do to build systems that create more prosperity. And frankly, that’s the essence of just the podcast that I’m in the process of launching, to be able to bring those topics to light. So,
Victoria Volk 40:53
Sounds wonderful. Yeah, I think that’s a good topic. Yeah. Awesome. Well, where can people find you if they’re interested in what you’re doing and learning more about you?
Kevin Boon 41:05
Yeah. So right now, they can connect with me on LinkedIn. So it’s my it’s, it’s K Boon, I think it’s our @kboon on LinkedIn. And then I’m going to be launching my podcast, standing in both worlds is the name of the podcast. And you’ll be able to find that on most places where you get your podcasts. So that should be live in the next month or so.
Victoria Volk 41:33
Amazing. Now, at the time of this recording, it’s going to be several months until your podcast actually goes Yes. But that will be put in the show notes by the time people listen, and where they can connect with you. And I also want to add that, if you are interested in going through the process that Kevin did, which inspired me, actually, you and several other clients I took through the program, I’ve expanded on it. And it’s now called do grief differently. And it’s a 12-week program that combines both the Grief Recovery method as it is because it’s brilliant as it is, along with another program called Youmap. And so I bring those two together, because, like in your experience, when you’ve lost everything, and you ask yourself, you know, you go through the grief experience of working through your stuff in which is a continual process. It’s always a continual process. Once you learn the tools, you always have them but then you ask yourself, well, what now? And so Youmap is like your guide your Northstar in doing that. And so if you’re interested in that, I will put the link in the show notes for that as well. In the meantime, I hope you come back and listen again. And remember when you unleash your heart you unleash your life. Much love.
Addiction, Grieving Voices Podcast, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Podcast, Takeaways and Reflections |
Takeaways & Reflections | The Energy of Addiction
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Addiction isn’t just applicable to a substance use disorder. Often the anxiousness of learning to live life as a griever can lead to overdoing, busyness, workaholism, etc. We can become addicted to being busy in an effort to avoid feeling our feelings. “Keeping Busy” is actually one of the 6 Myths of Grief.
In this week’s Takeaways & Reflections episode, I reflect on alcohol and the other ways addiction may be impacting life as a griever. I also dig deeper into the energetics of addiction and emotions; sharing about a healing modality in which I recently got trained, too.
Shame and guilt are often two emotions associated with addictions of any kind. Participating in behaviors that are used in an effort to avoid only exasperating the guilt and shame that already existed. This cycle continues and makes it that much more difficult to get out of the pattern of addiction.
Of course, addiction can become a mental health disorder; however, an important question to ask anyone who is struggling with addiction of any kind is: “What happened to you?” The origin of addiction often can be traced to something that happened, a circumstance, or a situation the person was exposed to long-term. And for so many, memories of pain often stem from childhood.
To break the patterns and cycle of addiction, one must be honest with themselves and others, expose the shame and guilt for what it is so the emotion loses its power and grip, and take positive action with support.
If you are struggling with addiction, substance use disorder, or another mental health challenge, I’ve recently added a “Mental Health” resources tab on my website. If you are a Military, Veteran, or First Responder, there’s a section just for you as well.
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If you or anyone you know is struggling with grief, substance use disorders, or a mental health challenge, free resources are available HERE and HERE.
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The Energy of Addiction
Looking at using alcohol in my early 20s as a way to cope and numb out and band-aid my emotional pain. But we don’t typically connect the dots of our present-day experience, to grief and to trauma, and things that we’ve experienced, likely as children, we really don’t think about either the environment that we grew up in as being the catalyst for our behavior as adults, which our childhood environments directly impact our belief system and how we cope with adult life. And we learned from our parents how to do that. And it can be unhealthy, or it can be healthy. But for the mass majority of us, our parents did not receive healthy coping skills, either. And so these patterns and the cycles of unhealthy coping continue through the ages, through lineages through generations. Today, I’m also going to dig deeper into the energy aspect of addiction. And that will be the focus of today because it’s really important that we look at our emotional and physical bodies as it pertains to energy as an energetic beings we are energetic beings.
Healing Modality Training “Biofield Tuning”
Recently, I completed a new healing modality training called biofield tuning. And so this episode is very timely in what I’ve been learning about energy, and particularly are biofield or the energy that extends five to six feet all the way around us. And it’s like this toroidal shape. So if you were to slice an apple in half that is what our energy fields are biofield looks like. And we have this earth energy that’s below our feet that helps us to stay grounded and feel grounded and connected to the earth energy. And we have this energy center at the top of our crown that connects us to the sun’s energy and is all about our relationship to time in nature. And connecting to this power source, the positive power source, whereas you the earth energy is this negative terminal. And so if we think about ourselves like a battery, that’s essentially what I’m saying here is that we are like a battery. And just like you plug in an electric car or any device to charge, or you have to charge your battery on your car, there’s a positive and negative terminal.
Our bodies are energetic bodies or act in the same way. And so if we are not grounded and are not centered, this energy flow that goes all the way down the center of our bodies that down our spine are meridian. And if this is all new or unfamiliar to you, I’ll just briefly explain what these points are down in Meridian and they’re called the chakras and at the Root Chakra. That is where the base of our spine is the root chakra. Moving up, the next point is the sacral chakra, which is a few fingers below the navel. The next chakra up is just a few fingers above the navel is the solar chakra or the solar plexus. The next chakra up is the heart chakra, then the throat chakra. The third eye chakra is above the brow, and then the crown chakra is above your head. And so we have these chakra points all the way down in Meridian, but we also have chakras in our hands. And our feet are like her ankles, knees. In other points, we call them half steps in biofield tuning. And so that’s what we are looking at and addressing when we are giving a biofield tuning session.
What is Biofield Tuning?
The term biofield actually refers to our body’s electrical system in its entirety. So as I kind of described earlier, it’s both the electrical current that runs through our bodies and also the magnetic field that surrounds it, that toroidal shape that I had mentioned biofield tuning. It’s a sound therapy method that works directly with the system as it’s connected with our conscious and subconscious minds, including our memories, and the theory of it is that our memories aren’t actually stored in our minds. They’re stored in our biofield and the biofield informs the body and the body informs the biofield. So all physical, mental, and emotional disorders can be perceived as dissonance in our electrical system.
Biofield tuning is able to locate, diminish and resolve this dissonance and in doing so alleviate and even eradicate the corresponding physical, mental, and or emotional symptoms like Reiki energy healing. Biofield tuning sessions can also be conducted from a distance. So during a session, if it’s in person or otherwise, the client is fully clothed on a treatment table or comfortably in their bed or in their chair. And the practitioner activates a tuning fork and scans the biofield slowly beginning from about six feet away because as I mentioned, our biofields extend five to six feet out from our physical bodies, what we’re actually listening for or feeling for is this resistance or turbulence in the biofield we’re listening for a change in the overtones and undertones of the tuning for and when we encounter a turbulent area, we continue to activate the tuning fork and hold it in that specific spot. And research suggests that the body’s organizing intelligence uses the steady coherent vibrational frequency of the tuning fork to literally tune itself just as we tune a piano or tune a guitar. So the dissonance resolves in the sense of resistance gives way. And this appears to correspond to the release of tension within the body. So people relax, they breathe more freely in the body enters into an increased flow state and that’s where the energy is actually flowing and moving where the body can function at its optimum.
As a result, clients often report that they have they feel lighter, they’re able to breathe more freely, and have a diminishment or resolution of their symptoms. If you’re familiar with other energy work or other healing modalities this might sound like it’s somewhat of a targeted nervous system, biofeedback, and the founder Eileen McKusick has come to see this process as consciousness hacking. It’s almost like a side door entry into the psyche working with what has been hidden in plain view, which assists people in making changes they otherwise could not on their own. Some conditions do respond very well to biofield tuning and others do not so much. But with these tools in our toolbox and practitioners who are sharing this with clients, we are increasing our voltage. We are increasing our body’s voltage as we do this work and as we address our energetic bodies, and so if we can clear that dissonance in our bio-field which informs the physical body, imagine how much better you can feel. Imagine the problems that you can solve just by laying on a bed or on a practitioner’s table. So I do encourage you to look into this more I will put a link to it in the show notes. I don’t have this just yet as of this recording on my website, but I do offer Reiki energy healing, I will be offering this soon to the masses. So stay on the lookout on my website if you are interested or reach out and I can connect with you once I get everything up and running. I do highly recommend the book tuning in the human biofield. It’s written by Eileen day, McKusick, the founder of biofield tuning.
The Energy of Addiction and Emotion
When we speak to the energy of addiction and emotion, any emotion we repress will suck a lot of juice out of us depleting energy from our body systems. And there is the energy of the emotion itself. And then there is the energy required to keep it repressed, right, it takes a lot of work to repress our emotions. And we often create these energetic walls, which appear to be like these high energy frequency barriers that block the perception of the conscious mind, from even going to that place, going to that emotional place. And so when we use sound, to deconstruct those constructs, and to free up that energy, and then we give it back to the system as a whole, we suddenly have reserves of energy that we didn’t have before to get things done. This is where often so many clients will report feeling not just lighter but have more energy, some people can experience some detox-like symptoms, like headaches or fatigue initially, and things like that in the first day or two. But that’s a good thing. Because detoxing is is good, it’s out rather than in we, you know, we want that stuff to come out rather than staying in.
And so once we’re moving that energy, and it’s coming out, that’s a good sign. That means the energies moving we’re getting clearing up those dissonances in our biofields. And so with substance use disorders and alcohol and things like that guilt and shame are often a huge aspect of addiction. The right side of the second chakra, which is the sacral chakra speaks of guilt and shame, guilt and shame are similar, but they are different. And the simplest distinction is reflected for guilt is I did something bad. Whereas shame says, I am bad. There’s a psychiatrist named David Hawkins. And in his book power versus force, he says that of all the possible human emotions shame is the heaviest and it’s the lowest on the frequency scale. Shame is a very difficult emotion to feel because it feels so terrible.
And so what a lot of people do instead of feeling that is we repress it, and then we displace it onto others through finger-pointing and blaming and blaming other people instead of feeling shame is a very common phenomenon, particularly among alcoholics. And there tends to be a lot of repressed emotions in that sacral chakra that second chakra, and it’s not uncommon to be jam-packed with a lot of stuff. But the root chakra and the second chakra are very much connected, everything is connected, but they tend to couple each other. So the result is either guilt and shame, driven, overdoing or frustrated nondoing, or a pattern of going back and forth between the two. Either way, people generally accumulate heavy imbalances in these parts of their biofield and these energy centers and because everything is connected, we can’t ignore the third chakra or the solar plexus when it comes to substance use.
Eileen’s Book Tuning the Human Biofield
‘I’m going to read a little excerpt from Eileen’s book tuning the human biofield because I think there is a very important aspect here and maybe, particularly for men but not always, but the right side of the third chakra relates to the father and one’s relationship with father and also to the emotion of anger and the liver stores and metabolizes anger. So many people who have had or still have a difficult relationship with their fathers, whether they’re a stepfather adopted father, or grandfather have a tendency to repress the difficult feelings associated with this by engaging in the consumption of what Eileen calls liver, pacifiers, such as sugar, excessive amounts of carbs, alcohol, chocolate, and dense dairy products, such as ice cream or cheese. And obviously, in small amounts, these substances are fine, but in excess, they have the effect of dampening or even eliminating our experience of anger, the angry drunk she calls it would be an exception to this. Eileen had discovered that there seemed to have been more father issues with clients than mother issues, and a lot of the fathers had been alcoholics or rageaholics or workaholics, emotionally unavailable in prison, or just not around or otherwise present to their child’s needs, and she adds the fundamental things that people seem to need from their fathers. acknowledgment, approval, and affection are rarely if ever received and this seems to give rise to some real problems for people now she’s not talking about she’s talking about people seeking help and dealing with issues not necessarily the population at large.
But in the absence of the reflection of our own inner brilliance that a healthy relationship with one’s father can provide. Many people end up unconsciously seeking to get these needs met as they go through their lives engaging in guilt-driven overdoing, experiencing feelings of low self-worth seeking approval, and routinely putting others’ needs ahead of their own. She adds that in Chinese medicine, the liver is seen as the general in the army, that is the body is responsible for overseeing all operations and pays attention to digestion, respiration, circulation, subtle energy flow, elimination, the immune function, and probably more also in Chinese medicine. It is said that the liver opens to the eyes and we say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. It is also the organ of discernment, it decides what in the self needs to be recycled, and what is to be disposed of. In her book, she also speaks of a term she coined purple washing, describing the tendency people have to gloss over, repress or deny uncomfortable emotions, usually by spiritualizing the situation or by being nice about it, and that’s an air quote. I’m going to read an excerpt from her book, where she describes what emotion is, and she says it’s an electoral chemical event in any emotion that is repressed or denied is repression and denial of one’s life force.
Neurologist Candace Pert has shown that different emotions have different chemical compositions. And when we experience any of these emotions, their vibrational and chemical counterparts are generated and circulate in our body. When any emotion goes unexpressed or unrecognized the body does not digest or recycle it, it stores it or as part says, emotions are buried alive, and never die, emotions always find a way of expressing themselves. What this means is that the energy of our emotions is always trying to be heard and expressed in some way, like anything buried alive might, if we don’t recognize them for what they are and find healthy ways to express them, they will find a way to express themselves anyway, in sickness or disease, tumultuous life situations, or eventual mental or emotional breakdowns, and quote, and I speak a lot to this in Grief Recovery.
We talk a lot about this we call them stirpes, short-term energy relieving behaviors, and we speak to the energy of the feelings that we hold in and repress and bury Grief Recovery is all about giving those emotions and those feelings of voice and biofield tuning is really addressing the event itself in an energetic level. And so I really feel like biofield tuning along with Grief Recovery, man, it’s transformational. And it has been transformational for me. Biofield tuning has helped me to understand the energy that is really stored in my own field when you see someone or you’re around someone, and you just feel like they give you a vibe like you just get maybe icky vibes from that person, your energy field, your biofield is kind of bumping up against if your antenna is sharp, and you’re tuned in to your antenna, you will pick up on what that person’s energy is trying to tell your energy, it’s your energy field, reading their energy field, we just don’t pay attention to that our antennas up but it’s discombobulated. And it’s got this film of yucky stuff on it. Because we are so disconnected and disassociated from our own bodies. We’re not even in our own bodies, because we’re so overwhelmed with emotion. And we’re using coping skills that are harmful, such as alcohol or other substances, and behaviors that only lead to more shame and guilt and all those in more emotions that just really exasperate and repeat the cycle. This is why it’s so difficult to get out of these patterns of behavior of addiction because the cycle just repeats itself over and over and over until you address the emotion itself. Read it, get it from the root and pull it out. That’s the only way the only way is it out is through just like the buffalo in a store.
A Lot of Things Can Be An Addiction
You can gambling shopping, again, refers back to the STERBS (short-term energy relieving behaviors) and I’m gonna link to the show notes in that episode where I talk about that but you can also have an addiction to doing this is probably more like me in different phases of my life where I’m overworking over busyness, which can be an addiction and it looks good. Right from the outside. It looks really good. You’re getting things done. You’re impressing people, and you’re keeping up with them but it’s I’m also handy because you don’t even need any substance, right? You don’t have to have wine or chocolate in the house, there’s no end to the ways that you can go off the rails with busyness I’m particularly prone to like I have a busy mind, I have a very busy mind. And I like the stimulation of the mind. And so it’s not a challenge for me to like, stop and pause. I meditate every morning and can really have swathes of inner peace, like noticeable feelings of inner peace within me, but my energy comes in bursts as well. But for someone who is doing in constantly doing it in order to not address their emotion, not to feel what they’re avoiding to feel that’s addiction. And when you’re so busy doing for everyone else, you’re not doing the things that matter, you’re not going to get your art or your music or your poetry is written your walks in nature, or even launched with your friends in liens, another book, Electric Body Electric House, she talks a lot about this, if you’re avoiding doing things that you enjoy, because you’re busy, because you’re busy doing other things you’re busy doing for everybody else, you get into this martyr, drudgery. She calls it the drone of must get everything done. And we don’t ask for help. And she calls this the doing virus and it has this isolating effect that makes it difficult for us to connect, and receive and especially in grief.
Actually, that’s one of the myths of grief is to keep busy. That’s so unhelpful when if you know someone grieving, don’t tell them to keep busy, that is not helpful. That is not doing them any favors. This ties into exactly what I’m talking about. It’s that propensity to keep busy in order to avoid the strong emotion that doesn’t serve someone from moving forward in their lives. Some people use alcohol, some people use food, but a lot of people in our culture use motion. We keep going so that our emotions never have a chance to settle. She goes on to say as long as you’re listening to the voice in your head and manically trying to make your way through the bottomless to-do lists. You don’t have to listen to the sound of your own pain. She adds a hyperactive mental body overrides the emotional body. This is a huge part of why people spin out in their heads. Many bodyworkers have noted a correlation between the right hip and the left shoulder the right hip imbalances of overthinking and overdoing are often the counterpoint to the issues of the left side of the heart chakra, which is where we hold unprocessed sadness, loss, and grief. She goes on to say when you start to quiet the mind and slow the busyness down, the feelings you’ve been avoiding will come up. And that’s a good thing. Because those emotions are stuck energy that’s creating resistance and drag in your field, your mind, and your life. It can be uncomfortable, and it does take a little time to settle back to neutral. But as you move through your own emotional backlog, you liberate a huge amount of your own potential you free up energy to be expressed in creative and fun and pleasurable ways you start to return to the juiciness and magic and depth of the moment that you are you were missing out on when you had the right side of your field all scrunched up in a bunch and quote, I absolutely love that because it really does truly speak to everything that we talk about. I talk about when it comes to Grief Recovery when it comes to our emotions and the energy that we contain within us that is stuck. That’s not going anywhere. It’s not being utilized. It’s stagnant.
When I Saw My Own Potential
And when I talk about my personal story about when I had finally addressed my grief when I addressed my emotional body and I addressed it and released it and that energy started to flow man I saw the potential I saw my own potential. I speak about that a lot at you see opportunity where you instead of lab you see your own potential where you would before say I can’t do that I don’t want to do that that resistance would come up so much resistance and I can spot my own resistance a mile away right now. In fact, my next newsletter is all about resistance because I’ve been resisting something. And that’s a video and I’m hoping to I mean I have a challenge right now to change that to show up on video more but we have to address our emotional bodies. And this is the thing if this message today gives you anything I hope it gives you hope itself that once you look at yourself as an electrical being there is nothing you cannot do or accomplish in your life. If you address your emotional body and the electrical stagnancy the stuck energy that is in your field and within your body because when we untangle that and clear up that dissonance it’s an amazing feeling.
My friend, I’ve personally experienced it I’m seeing my clients experiencing it. I’ve had to do a lot of I’ve done a lot of sessions with biofield tuning, incorporating Reiki and biofield tuning. As I’ve been learning and growing in this new modality I’m bringing to my clients and they’ve all loved it. They appreciate it so much because I don’t think I’ve had a client yet that hasn’t said they haven’t had more energy than I was actually using, there’s a new fork that I have that Eileen just recently came out with.
The 144 hertz
It’s the 144 hertz and its kind of like our belt sander of tuning forks, it gets to the nitty-gritty, and it digs deep. It’s the emotional grinder, and I was using it on my husband, which it should not be used if you’ve only had, shouldn’t be used on your first session. And it wasn’t but she calls it also the spring cleaning tuning fork and I kid you not the next morning after I used it the night before and my husband the next morning, the very next morning, I got out of bed at eight o’clock in the morning, I am not sitting on the couch, enjoying a cup of coffee and watching CBS Sunday Morning like I normally would. That’s been my routine for years. Like that’s my time I am cleaning, I put on some hip hop music and 90s Hip Hop 80s music and I started cleaning and I clean for the next seven hours straight and I’m talking deep cleaning, I scrub down like the kitchen cupboards, I went to town on deep cleaning my house, that has never happened, especially on a Sunday morning.
So it really truly is the spring cleaning fork. And I’m not the only person that’s reported that after using this fork, she said that herself. And actually, I was like halfway around my kitchen cupboards, scrubbing them down. And I thought I think she mentioned that this is the spring cleaning fork. And I actually had to go look for that where she said that. And she had shared that actually in our Facebook group, because I thought it was in the fork description, but it’s not she had shared it in the Facebook group. And I thought well, I’ll be darned. So this is amazing work, this energy work that is available to you. If you are struggling today, I encourage you to find a biofield tuning practitioner near you or reach out to me and we can set something up. But I’ve seen such fantastic results with this modality and I have no doubts, it will help you no doubts, you know, a lot of people are not ready for the really, really deep emotional stuff that comes with Grief Recovery. And I get that but with biofield tuning. It’s almost like this baby step. It’s just a baby step. And when you’re ready to really dig deep, then you can go into Grief Recovery. So I’m really excited to bring biofield tuning as another tool in my toolbox to my clients, whether it be addiction or trauma or just needing a reset to our adrenals because that’s actually something I can do as well.
P.S It’s there’s something called an adrenal rhythm reset, which is all about your adrenals because in our society today in our Western culture, it’s always like doo doo doo doo doo right and our adrenals get burned out and fried, which affects our thyroid, which no surprise thyroid medication is the number one prescribed medication in the United States today. Why is that? Because we are burning out we have so many things coming into our biofields, our systems from external influence, social media, the news, and so many toxins that are coming at us every single day in the homes in which we live neighborhoods or the environments. it’s really fascinating work again, checkout islands book, I’m going to put both books I’m going to put the links in the show notes and check out biofield tuning and reach out to me through my website.
If you want to hop on a session when I finally get it up, I can let you know. And check out episode 101 with Drew because we both talk about how our grief in childhood really did lead us down a path of using alcohol to cope. So whether it’s alcohol or shopping, or it’s food for you. I think this episode will be helpful and I hope this one was so please hold on to hope. Hold on to hope it’s there. And your actions today will determine what your future looks like. So I encourage you to take action today just a small action read her book checkout biofield tuning do something today to learn more about your energy field learn more about your emotional energy body and what your emotions are trying to tell you there is an alert system. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you found this helpful. And if you did, please share it subscribe, or leave a review. And remember when you unleash your heart you unleash your life much love.
Addiction, Educational, Grief Tips, Mental Health, Mind/Body Wellness, Resources |
Addiction can happen to anyone, at any time, and at any age. Even the most loving families often have members who are struggling and who turn to substances to help them to get through the day. Addiction is not a weakness, and it’s not something that you can wish away. If you are struggling with a substance use disorder, I imagine it’s all you can think about. If you have a family member who is dealing with this kind of pressure and stress, the best thing that you can do is learn how you can help them. Helping them through their addiction is the only way to get through it together, and that’s why you need to learn what to do next.
In addition to taking some steps to get your loved one into a treatment facility such as a place like Delphi Health Group, it’s important as a family member to have an understanding of addiction and how to continue to take care of your health while you are supporting them. Just because you’re not the one dealing with the addiction, doesn’t mean that you’re not dealing with the consequences.
Let’s take a look at 10 tips that can help you support someone struggling with substance use disorder.
- Read as much as you can. As somebody watching from a distance, it can make you feel very helpless to see somebody struggling so much and not be able to do anything about it. The thing is, you can do something, and that something is to educate yourself. Read as much as you can and learn as much as possible about addiction and what it means for your family member. You cannot experience addiction for them, but you can understand as best you can what they are dealing with, how they are feeling, and what they could be looking into for the future.
- Connect with your friends. It’s not easy to live with or support somebody who has an addiction to a substance, which means that as much as you want to be the support system, you need a support system yourself. Speak to your friends and see who you can get to help you with this situation so that you can at least feel like you have someone to lean on. Connecting with peers can very much be a lifeline for you. There are also support groups available, in some areas, for the families who care for someone struggling with substance use.
- Encourage family therapy. The problem with addiction is that the addiction itself is selfish. Your family member who is suffering is not selfish – I will just say that – but the addiction is inherently selfish because it pulls that person into it without guilt or consequence. Your family member wants to care for themselves but they cannot. Your family member wants to care more for you and their other family members. However, they can’t. Addiction is something that takes a lot of strength from a person, so encouraging family therapy is a good idea. You cannot shame somebody out of addiction, but you can find support for your family while you are going through it together. Also finding a treatment facility that not only addresses the addiction but any past trauma that may have led to addiction, like at Inner Voyage Recovery Center in Atalanta, GA.
- Do the little things. Well, they’re not little things. While you can’t pull somebody from an addiction, you can make sure their basic needs are met. Do they have clean clothing? Are they bathing and grooming themselves? Do they need access to food or shelter?
- Manage your personal expectations. When someone struggling with substance use disorder enters treatment, the whole family goes on this recovery journey. There is a sense of palpable hope that runs through the group, but you need to manage your expectations. Just because somebody enters into rehabilitation services, doesn’t mean they are going to be instantly better. This is going to take time. You need to be willing to see the whole thing through from rehab and beyond.
- Do things that make you happy. Your whole life cannot be about somebody else’s addiction. You have to be responsible for your own joy, and your own bliss. This means that every time you have somebody in your family who is recovering from addiction, you’re going to have to move the spotlight off of them occasionally and put it back onto yourself. While you are busy caring for another person, you have to remember to care for yourself.
- Make sure you exercise. Getting out of the house, getting out of a space with somebody who is addicted to a substance, and going out into nature can make a big difference to how you feel; it’s a benefit to your mental health and well-being. It is not easy to be one-to-one with somebody who cannot help but want their addiction and their substance. Get outside and breathe some fresh air; you need the break.
- Make sure that you’re getting sleep. If you want to help somebody in your family who is dealing with addiction, you have to help yourself first and foremost. It is not selfish to put yourself first, and that means making sure that you are sleeping. It may be helpful to work with a therapist who can help you emotionally cope with the circumstances at hand, to make sure that you are able to get as much sleep as you need to feel better within yourself.
- Attend therapy for yourself. Family and group therapies are not your only option. You can take yourself to a private therapist and talk to them about the struggle that you are having being a caregiver to somebody who is addicted to a substance. If you want to help someone struggling with a substance use disorder in your family, you have to ensure that you are well supported so that you are in the right frame of mind to do that. Addiction is not easy, and this is not something you should ever have to deal with by yourself. If you are getting somebody you love the help they need, you need to ensure you are receiving help, too. Imagine how much better the relationship could be if you both re-enter the relationship having addressed your “stuff” individually.
- Be their advocate. There is so much misinformation that surrounds addiction, and for some people, addiction is a weakness – somebody didn’t have the willpower to stay away from an escape. Addiction is chemical, and it’s not a weakness. If you want to help somebody in your family with their addiction, you must do what you can to advocate for them at all times. And, advocate for yourself within the relationship, too. Working with a therapist yourself can assist you in doing so without shaming the loved one who is struggling.
P.S. Do you need additional support or resources? Check out my recently added Mental Health Resources page!
Addiction, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Mental Health, Podcast |
Dru Jaeger + Victoria | The Grief + Alcohol Club
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
This week’s episode is a collaboration with my friend, Dru Jaeger, co-founder of Club Soda and author of How to Be a Mindful Drinker: Cut Down, Take a Break, or Quit.
Dru woke up one morning a happy child with two parents and went to bed that night without a mother. She died suddenly and unexpectedly of a massive brain hemorrhage. Within six months, his father would relocate their family to another country.
Like many of us, Dru learned that you suppress it, distract yourself, keep yourself busy, and pretend that the trauma did not happen to you when it comes to grief.
Dru shares how his grief changed and manifested over the years. Also, how only in the last several years has he found peace within where he’s learned to live with himself (and his grief) well.
Enjoy this week’s episode as we both share how parent loss in childhood shaped our adult lives, particularly our relationships with alcohol, and learn if alcohol has become a way for you to cope with your grief. And, to be clear, if you think this episode isn’t for you, you don’t have to be a daily drinker for alcohol to be a “problem-solving band-aid” in your life.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT:
NEED HELP?
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
- Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor
If you or anyone you know is struggling with grief, free resources are available HERE.
Are you enjoying the podcast? Check out my bi-weekly newsletter, The Unleashed Letters.
💛 Would you like to Learn Your Energy Type? Free Quiz ➡️ HERE! ⬅️
SUPPORT THE SHOW:
CONNECT WITH VICTORIA:
Victoria Volk 0:00
Hi this is Victoria of theunleashedheart.com and you’re listening to grieving voices, a podcast for hurting hearts who desire to be heard. Or anyone who wants to learn how to better support loved ones experiencing loss. As a 30 plus year griever in Advanced Grief Recovery Methods Specialist, I know how badly the conversation around grief needs to change. Through this podcast, I aim to educate grievers and non grievers like spread hope and inspire compassion towards those hurting. Lastly, by providing my heart with yours. In this platform, grievers had the opportunity to share their wisdom and stories of loss and resiliency. How about we talk about grief, like we talked about the weather. Let’s get started. Hey, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you’re listening from. I’m your host, Victoria Volk, and this is another episode of grieving voices. And I’m thrilled to share this episode because it only happened because I had an idea. And I followed through with the inspired idea by sending an email and reaching out. And this episode is collaboration with Dru from joinclubsoda.com Dru’s professional background is as a writer and researcher. And along the way, he is trained as a facilitator, coach, NLP practitioner and mindfulness teacher, day to day and club soda Dru designs and delivers courses and workshops to help people cut down, take a break from alcohol or stop drinking for good. He also writes regularly about alcohol and mindful drinking, and hosts the club soda podcast, do now drinks rarely. And as a passionate advocate for a world in which people drink more mindfully and live well. Club Soda is a community for people who want to either give up alcohol or drinking, cut back, or just really changed their relationship with alcohol. It’s a very supportive community. And I was thrilled when I got a yes to do this. And we recorded and it was an amazing recording. I hope you enjoy it. And we do plan to do this again. So if there is something about this episode that you would like us to dig deeper into as in terms of grief and alcohol and the topics that come up during the conversation, please reach out either to dru@joinclubssoda or myself at [email protected]. And we’ll make it happen. Because I think we are both enthusiastically excited about, I don’t know, enthusiastically excited, I think we’re both really excited to have this conversation, and more importantly, to share it and to share what we both have learned over the years about alcohol and our relationship to it because it really truly is indeed a relationship. And so enjoy this episode. And if it helps you, please share it with someone else who may be struggling with their relationship with alcohol. Or leave a review for Dru and myself on both of our podcasts because it is on their podcast as well. And I will put the link in the show notes if you would like to leave a review. Thank you so much for listening and enjoy.
Dru Jaeger 3:37
We thought it’d be good for myself and Victoria to share a bit about our own experiences of alcohol and grief and how those two stories have been woven together through our lives. And then I’ve got some questions for Victoria, which will be gonna be I hopeful, super useful for people listening to the club soda podcast, and then you’ve got some questions for me. So that’s where we go. And I guess for me, I guess one of the things that I was reflecting on as I came to preparing for this, is that when I was drinking and my most heavily through my 30s I don’t think I would ever have reflected that that was in any way connected to my experiences of childhood loss. But looking back at it now that is such an unavoidable conclusion. But I wonder how it ever is that I could have imagined I was doing anything else is such a glaring thing for me now. recognizing all of these ways in which I wanted to transcend my experience escape the emotional pressure that I felt inside me feeling this sense of disconnection of not belonging, all of these different things which are going on when I was drinking and taking a lot of drugs, which I partied really hard in my 30s A lot of what was going on then. I wouldn’t couldn’t have articulated it that way, but it really was about My experience of childhood loss my mum died when I was nine years old, she died very suddenly, I, she died of a massive brain hemorrhage. And I literally woke up one morning as a nine year old, and have a mother and went to bed that night and didn’t. And, you know, it utterly pulled my life apart, not just in the experience of grief, and that gaping void in my life that suddenly opened up. But actually in all the consequences of what happened. As a result of that, within the course of about six months, my family had relocated, I’d lost contact with my childhood friends, I was living in a different country. And so many of the messages that I heard as a nine year old, this is almost 40 years ago, but so many messages that I heard as a nine year old, were, you just have to kind of grin and bear it and get through the next few days. And it’s all going to be fine. And I was taught very much a model of dealing with grief, which is that you suppress it, you put it away somewhere else, you might occasionally be upset, but you distract yourself, you keep yourself busy. And you throw yourself into this new exciting life that you have. And we pretend that this traumatic experience that you’ve been through, is not something which happened to you at all. And I, you know, I can only have the life that I have, you know, I can’t, one of the things that I want to talk to you about is this urge that I have to fix my grief. But of course, I can’t go back, you know, I can’t change the experiences that I had as a nine year old, I can learn to live better with them. And I can learn to be compassionate and forgiving as far as I’m able to the other people who were implicated in that story. I tell you a little story about how that’s come up recently, but But you know, I can I can, I can do the work now to live as well as I can. But one of the things which I am really very aware of now in my in my approaching life forces, but I will say that quite yet. No, really, I’m 48, late 40s is that this story of loss is always going to be with me. I, you know, there isn’t a moment in my life that’s going to come where I will ever put this behind me where it will ever stop being an issue. And I guess if I were thinking about the loss that I carry, it’s not like that raw, confused, terrible, painful experience that I went through as a nine year old. It’s very different now. But it doesn’t go away, you know, my life has grown and expanded around it, you know, I’m able to contextualize it, I’m able to see the effect that grief has had on me and continues to have on me, but it never goes away. It’s like this
Dru Jaeger 8:20
Thing that I carry with me all of the time. And sometimes, you know, we have this conversation on the on the on our podcast, just before Christmas coming up to Christmas, inevitably, I will cry every Christmas at some point. Because I miss my mom. You know, I have been doing that every year for the past decades, I will continue to do that until I’m in my 70s Hopefully eight years, you know, however long I live, that experience will always be with me. There are there are moments still when grief surprises me when it comes out of nowhere when I find myself crying for no particular reason and a very obvious reason. And it all gets mixed up together. So you know, I I feel like I’m somebody who is now almost 40 years on finally learning at some level to live with myself and this experience that I had, and all of the impacts of it. And yet one of the ways in which I tried to effectively deal with this experience and all of the things that flowed from it in my 30s was that I threw myself into living life as hard as I could, you know if there was an experience of life that I could get, I was going to throw myself at it. I want it to consume all of the alcohol and take all of the drugs and become a person other than myself and I tried really hard and I had you know I had actually had an amazing time. I’m not gonna deny that I do had, I had I had an extraordinary period of my life, I made some great friends, I lost some friends, I, you know, it was a it was a transformative experience for me. But in the end, it ended up doing more damage than I was able to sustain. And, you know, my abiding memory by the time I got to my early 40s, my abiding memory of my 40th birthday is not the amazing party that I put together and all of the people from different parts of my life that came to celebrate with me, it was being on my own, late at night, hugging a toilet, and formatting because that’s where my drinking had led me to. And I didn’t know how else to be with and celebrate with all of these people who were important to me apart from getting out of my face on alcohol. So yeah, and so over the past, I guess, decade, I’ve been in this journey of a learning to live well with myself and learning to live with my mental health and all of the impacts of grief and that have had, and trauma that I continue to carry. But recognizing alcohol and drugs on solving these problems for me, I’ve tried, I tried, you know, I tried escaping into religion in my 20s, I tried escaping into alcohol and drugs in my 30s These solutions are going to in the end cause me more damage than they are going to solve for me. And I need to find better ways to live. And so for me, that’s meant that I’ve really kind of over the past few years pretty fundamentally reshaped my relationship with alcohol. I do drink, but vanishingly rarely. And now my relationship with alcohol is actually thinking does this drink and value to life, as opposed to what problem is this drink going to solve for me. And that has been such a fundamental shift that I’m, I’m basically alcohol free by default, most of the time. But that’s been really important, because actually, it’s given me space, and build some emotional resilience. And it’s let me learn to approach the difficult feelings that I carry around in a more respectful way. I guess I’m not, you know, pouring fuel on them. I’m listening to that sadness. And I’m listening to that loss. And I’m, hopefully in a better relationship with my nine year old self, and his experiences of pain than I have been ever in my life. So far. That’s really where I am on this whole journey of alcohol and grief. How are you?
Victoria Volk 12:47
Wow, I thank you so much for sharing that I saw me writing as you were speaking not to. I was really, truly listening. But there are so many things that I want to circle back to. And I will. In a nutshell, my experience was my dad died when I was eight. But he was sick for two years, almost 16 months, but he was given two to three months to live. But he lived for almost 16 months. But he was gone much of that time because he was doctoring, and it was like three hours away to the VA hospital. And so I was bounced around from house to house between age of six and eight until he passed away. And it really, you know, that year that passed away, it was really traumatic, not just losing my father, but also my sister who was like a second mom to me, join the Air Force. She graduated from high school two months later, and she was gone. So I lost her. And when my dad passed away, eventually we lost. I lost relationship with all of his family. So I not only lost my dad, but I lost an entire family. I grew up in a very, I mean, it was just my brother, my mom and myself, and then she remarried about two years later. And it wasn’t a healthy relationship. And so I was surrounded by arguing and, and alcohol was very much a part of our home. And that led me to, you know, and my brother was five years older than me, so I kind of grew up by myself and a lot of ways because he was doing his own thing. He was a teenager. And by the time I was while in high school, I really I drank and I went to parties and things but it wasn’t I almost knew like right from wrong like I had still this sense of I don’t you know I didn’t want to
Victoria Volk 14:52
I had it was like a consciously was choosing to not go down this path that I saw other people in my life going down due to other reasons and other circumstances in their life, by the time I was 21, I, on my 21st birthday, I hadn’t even been to a bar didn’t even go to a bar. And it wasn’t until a friend, she’s like, you’ve never been to a bar. And I said no. And but a lot of loss happened in the meantime, too. I ended up joining the military. And when I was gone at my training, my mom sold her house, she got a divorce. And so when I came back from my training, my childhood home was essentially not my home anymore, I had nowhere to go, but to this new city where I knew no one, and to live with my mom. And so that was a huge transition, partially why I hadn’t been to a bar, because I didn’t know anybody. But that one ask. And starting to go to the bar is what really set me up for a downward spiral. And I knew every drink special every night of the week, and my license was nearly suspended. I had so many fender benders and speeding tickets, I should have been fired from my job. I can’t believe they didn’t fire me, they probably saw that I was kind of a train wreck. And I had been taught to but no one was holding me accountable or responsible. And I certainly wasn’t doing that for myself. But by the grace of God, they didn’t. But maybe that would have snapped me out of my mess sooner, I don’t know. But I ended up getting myself in a lot of not a lot of but several dangerous situations, being a female, and going to bars and, you know, meeting people that I didn’t know. And it was really a really transformative time for me, and not a good way. And it’s what really changed was that I ended up toxic relationship that kind of set me on a downward spiral until my husband came into the picture. And we had been friends for seven years before we even started dating. But he just I don’t know, he was like the knight in shining armor, I suppose. And that’s really what turned my life around in the in that in that timeframe. And so, my drinking Eska escapade, although it was a good year and a half, I really made up for lost time during that time. But alcohol didn’t just go away. And it didn’t really creep in again, until I became a parent. Until I had three kids in four years. My husband was gone a lot. He commuted for his job. And so he’d be gone, sometimes a week at a time. And I was raising these kids and isolated because we had moved and I didn’t really have any friends. And then I started to meet people on things. And it was through alcohol, how I met people. And that’s how bonds kind of formed. And so that’s when alcohol became this social, a way for me to come out of myself, because I didn’t feel comfortable with myself in my own skin. And so to feel like I would fit in or to feel like I was fun. I thought I needed to drink. And so that’s really, and I found myself just like you in front of the toilet many times, my kids becoming teenagers and seeing their mom and and feeling the shame and the guilt around that.
Victoria Volk 18:43
We know what kind of example was I setting for my kids. And I don’t believe that you have to be a daily drinker to have a problem with alcohol. If alcohol is causing you to become someone you’re not because you’re not comfortable with who you are. Or you’re drinking to avoid feeling a certain way or to avoid addressing certain emotions, then it’s a problem. Whether it’s binge drinking on the weekends, or binge drinking on a Wednesday night and a Tuesday night or whatever it is, or you’re having four drinks every single day. If it’s a problem, it’s not going to look the same for everybody, I don’t believe and so I had a bender one night and I woke up the next day feeling like I always did like crap. And I would I would get sick every time it didn’t matter what I drank or how much I just would get sick. And I’d be a pile of crap for a day or two and useless to my family and to myself and and finally I just woke up that next day and there was a conversation I’d had or someone had shared something with me they were kind of going through the own thing with alcohol On this shirt, you know, why do I need this? And that one question she posed, I asked myself, and I didn’t have a good answer. Why do I need? Why do I think I need this? And that day, I decided I’m done and done, cold turkey. And I applied what I knew in Grief Recovery, what I learned the tools, and I applied that to my relationship with alcohol. And it really helped me sustain my sobriety for 638 days, I think it was, until a weekend with friends, I consciously decided I was going to share in a toast. And I did drink that weekend. And then I felt like it was something that I had control of, like, I decided this, it’s not that I alcohol decided this for me, like, I didn’t feel like I had to do it. But boy, for two, it took about two weeks. And then it really hit me like, What did I do? What did I do? There I go again, you know, and then the guilt and the shame. And my kids Oh, I thought you quit drinking? And people would say I thought you quit drinking? And? And to answer that question. You know, it was really, it still really takes me aback. And I don’t know how to answer it. Sometimes, but ever since then it’s really become this. It really is about self discovery. Like every time I drink or every time I go into a situation where there’s going to be drinking, I’m having this dialogue in my head. If people could see my, my thought bubbles above my head, as I’m contemplating like, my relationship with alcohol and, for example, met with someone not that long ago and a family member and you know, just in my daughter, was there my youngest. And she’s like, well, let me buy you a birthday drink. It was my birthday. And I’m like, Yeah, I suppose. And I thought, I’m going to have a pop. And then I said, Well, are you going to have something? And she said, Yeah, I’ll get my, my usual or whatever. And she doesn’t drink that often. But and then I get up to the counter, and I’m ordering. And I’m like, I even told her a pop. I said what kind of pop in and then I changed my mind. But this dialogue is continuing in my head, like, Should I do it? Should I not do it? Like, what does this say about me? What does this say about you know, like, it was like, ridiculous like that I was torturing myself in this way. And I just thought, you know what, she’s buying me a birthday drink, it’s my birthday. I can drink, have a drink with my family member, and the world isn’t going to collapse around me, I am not a lesser person because of it. But I am consciously choosing to make this decision right now in this moment to share in a drink with my family member. And I’m gonna let that be okay.
Victoria Volk 23:10
And it’s just this continuous evolve of in conversation and dialogue with yourself to, to because I don’t want to go back to that to what that was right. And I’ve been in situations since you know, where I’m going out with friends and things and, and I have my limit now. Like, this is my limit. And I keep track I like you know, save the tabs, and I’m keeping track and I don’t want to lose my sense of agency. Because when I lose my sense of agency, it’s not me anymore. It’s not me anymore. And I want to be okay with me. And I want to show the world me, not who I am when I have five, six or seven. And I’m embarrassing myself and they’re getting a good laugh. Or I’m obnoxious or I’m funny, I get really funny, but sometimes stupid funny. You know, it’s it really is we become a different character. And I think we just need to get really comfortable with the character of of who we are. First and foremost. And so that’s been quite the journey for me. Yeah, that’s been kind of my experience with alcohol.
Dru Jaeger 24:31
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing. Likewise, I’ve scribbled some things down, which I wanted to come back to. One of the things which struck me and it’s something which I’ve reflected on is how your how the experience of childhood loss isn’t just about the loss of that individual, but about all of the subsequent consequent loss of family and that feeling of family that He comes along with it. And some of that being, you know, natural change a sibling going away to college or going away to start a job somewhere else. But you know, life continues to change. But that, when that’s all framed from a childhood experience of I’ve, I’ve, I’ve lost something and I can’t control this, you do end up with a feeling that your family is falling apart around you. And then that sense of isolation that comes from that I’m the only person in this experience. But the thing that struck me so much about your experience of, of drinking and meeting people, my experience in my early 30s, of going out in London, and partying was this was all about rebuilding a sense of connection and wanting to feel a sense of belonging. And I really wrestled with the extent to when I continue to think about this, the extent to which my experience of childhood loss makes me different. I feel like I’m an outsider, you know, I looked in envy, people in their 40s Complaining about both of their parents. I’m like, I wish I had two parents to complain about only have one, drink is lovely. But you know, I, I feel different, I continue to hold that, that sense of feeling different, feeling isolated, feeling outside. And actually then, yeah, drinking became a way to create community and a sense of belonging around myself. And I, you know, even in this conversation, I’m beginning to see how much that has driven from this kind of core sense of isolation that I carried from my experience as a nine year old.
Victoria Volk 26:41
Now, what happens though, and I even wrote this down is that alcohol is then also very isolating. It is because within ourselves, right within ourselves, like we isolate, it’s, it becomes this block to intimacy. Because you can’t become have intimate conversations, and you can’t have deep content. I mean, you could, but they’re not going to be rich, and and you’re not going to remember them. Right? It becomes this block to enter intimacy. So it’s a false sense of community, I think, in a lot of ways.
Dru Jaeger 27:15
Yeah. I mean, I do say this to people, you know, when you think about alcohols, physiological effects on you, you know, the rush of warmth to your face, the feeling of looseness in your body, perhaps you kind of lean in more to others, you know, you get a bit louder, you get a bit, one of these kinds of things. Actually, our experience of drinking feels quite a lot like love, it’s hardly surprising that it gets wrapped up in the way that we create relationships, because many of the feelings that it gives us are exactly the feelings of intimacy that we want with others. But you’re absolutely right. You know, certainly, you know, that experience of hugging the toilet late at night, or even late earlier in the evening. You know, I noticed this now, when I’m out with people, and I’m not drinking, and they are, I begin to notice two or three drinks in, but conversations keep going around in circles. And I’m like, Tell me Tell me again, you told me like literally half an hour ago, but it’s still important to you. So I’ll listen once again. But you know, that kind of sense of I like my social connection is closing in on itself, and I am getting stuck. And I lose my sense of empathy. For others. I don’t, I’m not present for other people. I’m not really hearing them. I’m not building this conversation in a good way. I’m just repeating these little patterns over and over again to myself until I pass out. How is that building a sense of belonging? I mean, I thought that it was but you know, experience 10 years on, I see that it really doesn’t work that way.
Victoria Volk 28:47
Well, and again, it just highlights for people listening to. So when you meet someone in a bar, and you’re both intoxicated, and you think you’ve fallen in love. That’s why, you know, when the alcohol isn’t in the equation, oh, it’s really different than like different people. Right? Like it’s a different situation and different experience, because that level there is it’s a false sense of intimacy.
Dru Jaeger 29:14
Yeah. How do you find it now? If you are in social settings, and you are not drinking alcohol, how do you find the business of making connection and getting that sense of belonging with others.
Victoria Volk 29:27
I miss the connection. I miss it. I miss, you know, I still have fun, I can dance the night away and I don’t have to drink and that’s been many times but I find that there isn’t this sense of, of true connection, right of like you said, it’s like these looping conversations and and yeah, it doesn’t move. It doesn’t progress relationship forward. So if that’s the only time you’re with those people You know, it really is, again, false intimacy, in friendships and marriage if alcohol is a huge part of your marriage, you know, it’s Yeah, I have a bottle of wine in my fridge, I bought a bottle wine for New Year’s. And to for HUD, my husband and I to share and I’ve poured half a glass, the bottle is still in there. That’s how I know that I’ve transformed my relationship with alcohol because that thing would have been gone that night.
Dru Jaeger 30:38
Yeah, my my mid 30s Drinking self would be in utter wonder, the fact that somebody can keep an eye local bottle of wine in their house overnight. How and why would you do that? That seems the only
Victoria Volk 30:56
It’s possible. And what we were talking about before and I wanted to, this is what I want to circle back to is I want to ask you, and I want to get back to your story, too. But what are your thoughts on this all or nothing approach to being in a, you know, addiction recovery, like recovering in addiction and alcohol? And I don’t want to minimize or dismiss that people truly do lose their lives due to alcoholism. But yeah, what can you share? For my listeners, and yours, too, I suppose you know, your thoughts on that, because it’s come to my attention recently. And just really, I feel like it’s doing a disservice to a lot of people.
Dru Jaeger 31:39
Yeah, I suppose where I’d want to start is by being clear about a few things. One is, addiction is real. It is possible to find yourself in a compulsive out of control relationship with a substance which becomes all consuming to the point that you don’t know how to do anything else. Apart from Pursue your relationship with that substance. That’s a real phenomenon. It is also, however, a really complex phenomenon. It has my logical components, it’s got social components, it’s got psychological components, it’s a whole mixture of different things. It’s not one thing, and removing the substance doesn’t solve the problem. You know, if you are the kind of person who is has a compulsive relationship towards alcohol, it’s just happened for alcohol got in the way, when you were bringing all of those life challenges to the world. And alcohol helps solve some of those for you in a way which has got really messy and difficult and complicated. You found alcohol, another person might have found cocaine, or meth, or compulsive shopping, or dangerous compulsive sex or losing themselves in Facebook for days on end, or intensive gaming, there are all sorts of behaviors that we adopt as ways of soothing ourselves as well as a way to think better about themselves. For some of us, we’ve ended up wrestling with alcohol. Now, it’s important to say that alcohol has some properties, which means that we can become physically dependent on alcohol, alcohol withdrawal symptoms are unpleasant, at best, actively dangerous at worst. Alcohol is the only substance that can kill us. As we withdraw from it, you know, many other substances are deeply unpleasant to withdrawal from alcohol withdrawal can be fatal. If we experience fear, alcohol withdrawal symptoms. It’s really important that people don’t stop drinking suddenly, without medical support, if they think they may be dependent on alcohol physically dependent. So it’s got these two components. We’ve got this all this psychological stuff with all this physical stuff. And it is complicated. One of the other things that we know, though, and we know this from the research, is that the story that we’ve heard, that once you’re in that relationship with alcohol, the only thing that you can safely do is to stop forever. What we actually know is that that isn’t true. It’s a really it is a solution. For some people, I need to be completely clear about that there will be some people, particularly if you have a history of severe mental ill health. If you have been significantly physically dependent on alcohol, and have needed support to stop, it’s probably safest that you just don’t drink. You can build a very happy life that doesn’t center on alcohol at all, where you just push it out of the picture, but that’s not going to be true for everyone. There are very few long term studies about what happens to people’s drinking habits over time. But the one which I think is really interesting in this regard, it’s called the Birmingham untreated heavy drinkers. As project, it’s a bit of research that was conducted in the UK in the early 2000s, where basically, a group of 500 people who were drinking very heavily were followed for a decade untreated, with no intervention, just to see what happened. At the end of those 10 years, they had kept in touch with about 250 people. And they found something really interesting. So about 70% of those people were still drinking at dangerous and damaging levels. That should be unsurprising, right? People who are wrestling with alcohol, a decade on are still going to be in that same position. 10% of people had found their ways, just through their own effort to being completely alcohol free, they had decided that life beyond alcohol was going to work for them, and they’d stopped drinking completely 20% of those people were drinking within safe limits 20%, they were twice as likely to find a way to moderation than they were to complete abstinence. And the reality is that that is if that’s true, just through the natural progression of our relationship with alcohol, it puts puts paid to a couple of myths. One is that alcoholism is progressive, that it only gets worse, we know that that’s not true for 30% of that group, they found a way a decade on to find a relationship where alcohol was only marginally present or wasn’t present at all. It didn’t necessarily get worse. But it also gets paid to the idea that abstinence is the only answer 20% of those people have found a way to moderate consumption of alcohol with no intervention and no support at all. That’s where they ended up. So I think that’s a really, I think that’s really hopeful for people actually, because one of the things I know from my work with individuals is that people can become overwhelmed by two things. One is the idea that I can never drink. And the idea is that I can never drink again, at all forever, the forever thing and the not at all things can be really scary for people. Now, it might be that that is the right thing for you, and you should push towards that. But it also might not be the right thing for you. I’m a real believer in helping people find a relationship with alcohol, that works for them. Not what anyone else says is the right thing to do. You know, so if your relationship with alcohol looks like having an occasional celebratory toast, because a member of your family wants to buy you a drink and include you in that moment. And you can do that from a place of conscious intention. And that isn’t going to then lead into a spiral and continuing to drink. I think, go for it. You know, you may have had a troubled relationship with this substance in the past, but your past doesn’t have to define your future. You know, that’s as much as we know, from the world of grief as anything else, you know, I have these experiences that lead me to this moment, I can begin to make conscious decisions about how my life plays out from this point. So yeah, does that answer the question? Now? I can go on on this subject for literally hours, so probably best to cut me off.
Victoria Volk 38:10
No, I know, I it was perfect. I absolutely love that. And, you know, I think to what I guess what I’m wondering too is, or what I want to share too is how the grief evolved for both of us. Right? And how we, because I think childhood grief, obviously, as a child, and you experienced grief or trauma because I was also molested after my father passed away. It wasn’t just that one grief experience. And then, you know, your life becomes a train wreck later, it’s you, I’m assuming to you had many grief experiences along the way, because grief is cumulative. And it’s cumulatively negative and just what you were saying how so many of us resort to these behaviors to feel better. We call them in Grief Recovery to call them disturbs short term energy relieving behaviors. So whether it is shopping or gambling or, or alcohol. We find ourselves trying to replace something within us with that thing, so that we can feel better. Yeah, and I know what’s true for me is you can look back, right because I’m I’m in my early 40s It’s I’m 35 years out from my loss, but it you can look back and see how that grief evolves with you over through the years and over time. It’s it is something that you take with you. It’s not something you just put in a shoe box and put it on the shelf and forget about it. You can try you can try. And so my question for you is what what was that like to unpack all of that grief in that moment of awareness that you had what when was that and what what led to that Out of all this is my grief that’s really at the heart of all of this.
Dru Jaeger 40:05
I don’t think that has been one moment. I think it’s been an evolving conversation with myself. I remember, I was reflecting on this earlier, I remember this moment when I was around 18 years old, and I suddenly realized that I had been alive for longer. Without my mom that I had been with my mom, that was a moment for me. You know, there was a moment when I became the age that she was when she died. There was an age when my son turned nine years old. You know, these big kind of transitional life moments, I’m living through one of those right now. Actually, my, my dad, who’s in his late 70s, is downsizing from big house into a one bedroom apartment. Just really good for him. It’s exactly what he needs. new lease of life, you know, big house has gone out of control. But one of the things that’s come up through that is, I came across in helping him clear out, I came across a couple of drawers of my mom’s belongings, things that she’d held on to I found my weight record, from my first year of life. Whether health visitor wrote down, I was a big baby, write down how big I was, you know, her jewelry box, her little collection of clay figurines, even her wedding dress and veil, these belongings left behind. And I had this conversation with my dad. And I asked him about these things, you know, we had a conversation, and I said to him, you put these away because you didn’t know what to do with them. Did anyone know? I didn’t know. But I didn’t want to throw them away. And you know, so now, that’s an active problem that I have now inherited, you know, the, there are these belongings, there are these things which belong to my mom, which are, you know, tangible connections with her life. And now, what do I do with them? You know, how do I how do I honor these keepsakes? How do I you know, it feels like, you know, bits of a shipwreck washing up on the shore of my life. And now my job is what do I make of this, you know, I don’t want it to drift back into the sea and be forgotten, I want to make something of, of these things which have come to me, one of the things which has come to me is actually all of the letters of condolence that my dad received in the wake of my mom’s death. And that feels like the most extraordinary gift because I’m in a kind of a historical way, I’ve now got all of this third party evidence of the kind of person that my mom was, you know, one of the things which I’ve really felt, as this sense of loss through my life, is that when my mom died, I was nine years old, she was a bigger person who gave me hugs and was talking to me and cooked dinner. But she wasn’t a human being yet. So I don’t have any connection with my mom as I would with another adult, I don’t know who she was, you know, I don’t know what she was interested in, or the kinds of things that motivated her or what her personality was like, or all of these kinds of things. And now I’ve got this treasure trove of third party witness of who she was the impact that she had on people and that feels like an extraordinary gift. And then I got other things, what do I do with a wedding dress? You know, I see what I do with a wedding dresses. Now I look at it, I go, my mother was tiny. You know, I in my head, of course, nine year old self, she was an enormous human being. And her shoulder width is less than two thirds of mine, you know, she was a small person, it’s given me this whole new perspective on areas. So as a human so it’s not. It’s there’s not been one moment it’s been it’s an ongoing thing. You know, and, and this business of bringing my mom’s possessions from my dad’s house has been really hard. I’ve cried a lot about this whole situation over the past few months. It’s really difficult, but I’ve also then got to have conversations with my sister to say, look at these things, which I’ve found. What are we going to do now? You know, and that’s been a really good thing, as well
Victoria Volk 44:46
As an open up a dialogue between your father and yourself.
Dru Jaeger 44:50
It has in a way I think it’s I it has in a way you know, he’s never we’re never going to be able to have that conversation, you know, the conversation that I would long to have. I’ve tried, you know, I’ve tried it, it’s never going to happen. But actually, being able to acknowledge this is our shared experience. These are things that you’ve been holding, because you didn’t know what to do with them. And now I can do my best for care for those things. I can talk to you about what I’m doing with these things, you know, that that’s something you know, and I that’s so far, you know, it seems like such a small thing. But it’s such a massive step on from where we have been in our lives of not being able to have that dialogue at all, I’m actually really, I’m actually really grateful for just that little bit of conversation that we’re able to have.
Victoria Volk 45:49
Well, and I imagine too, that your relationship with alcohol has been transformed. And it is what it is today, because had you still been in that in that phase of your life of using alcohol being this big part? You wouldn’t have the same feelings about these things. You may not even want to look at them.
Dru Jaeger 46:10
No, no, absolutely, I wouldn’t have the capacity to do it. I mean, for me, what what absolutely prompted my reflection that I needed to do something about my relationship with substances is that I had an experience at the end of my 30s of significant mental ill health. And in my recovery from that, I suddenly began to realize the extent to which alcohol and drugs didn’t help me, didn’t help me live well didn’t help me live with the complexity of my mental ill health I live with. I think you might politely say a wider range of emotional experience is typical. And, yeah, alcohol and alcohol and drugs, absolutely. Don’t help me be in good relationship with myself and with other people. And when I drink and take drugs, I can act in ways which are actively damaging to myself and to others. And I don’t want to perpetuate that. I want to, I want to learn to be okay with being me, even in those moments when I’m not okay. And so yeah, absolutely. You know, I’ve had long periods of not drinking at all. I do you drink very occasionally. But literally months can go by drinking is not part of my everyday experience at all it is I’ve become, you know, the you know, the grandmother who has a glass of sherry at Christmas, I’ve become her that’s that’s my drinking style. Now, you know, it’s high days and holidays. Anyway, ways which enhance life and add value and meaning to specific situations, not because I love what you said about, it’s not, when it’s not you that makes the choice, but alcohol that makes a choice for you. And that is very much my experience of drinking. Now, it is always me that makes the choice, you know, and it’s always about drinking slowly enough, so I can appreciate and savor this situation not plowing on to the next drink, because I haven’t given myself time to feel the effects of the drink that I’ve already drunk. So now it’s very occasional, you know, my my story that I tell, you know that the moment where I chose to have a drink was actually my son’s 21st birthday. I went to the pub with my son and my brother. And I definitely always said I had two alcohol free drinks. My first round I bought, I bought myself something alcohol free, my brother bought me an alcohol free beer. And then my son on his 21st birthday, offered to buy me a drink. And I had a pint of Chandi. And you know, I had a tiny amount of alcohol. And I got a little bit giggly because I got zero tolerance for alcohol these days. So what happens when he stopped drinking, and we had a really lovely evening and it added value. And it’s something that I, I really treasure that memory, hell, it was really special and special. For me, it was special for him to be able to share that with me, and it made that situation better. And I am not going to feel the made to feel guilty about that. It was a good thing that happened. And I think, particularly for those of us who have a moderate relationship with alcohol. In fact, somebody challenged me about this a little while ago I was I was wrestling with a particular situation in which I drunk and I told them the whole story and they said to me, so what you’re telling me is you had a very clear intention about how you were going to be in a particular situation. You made some decisions and plans in advance about what your alcohol consumption was going to look like. You stuck to that you revise those plans as you were going along. You looked after yourself. You came out on under experience the following morning, having an added value to that situation waking up without a hangover. What on earth do you have to feel guilty about? Yeah, you’re absolutely right. This is a situation these are not stories about things which have gone wrong. These are stories about things which have gone right. And we should celebrate them.
Victoria Volk 50:11
I love that reframe. I love that I just I love how you said, I love that. Yeah, I’m not going to forget that truly, you know, because what can happen is when people say something to you, when they believe that, you know, you, you committed to not drinking and you weren’t going to quit, or you were going to quit cold turkey or whatever it’s been however many days or months or weeks, whatever. And then you have a drink. It’s like, Oh, I thought You thought you quit? And then you feel that guilt or that shame within you. Right? And so I think if it’s just exactly what you said, there is no guilt or shame if it’s coming from a conscious awareness and intention.
Dru Jaeger 50:47
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Can I ask you some grief related questions? Because at least you know, for people listening to this on the club side podcast, as you know, some basics around grief that I think would be really helpful for people to hear, you know, I’ve talked about my own experience, I’m almost 40 years on from the death of my mom. And realizing grief doesn’t get fixed. You know, it’s not I can’t go back in time and make these things which happened to me not have happened, I have to live with the consequences of that loss long term. And I wonder what practical tips and suggestions if you got either for somebody in a situation like mine, when you’re coming into a fresh awareness of loss earlier in life, or if you are in the midst of experiencing grief right now? How can people care for themselves through this?
Victoria Volk 51:45
Well, you bring up a good point in what you said earlier, you have an urge to fix your grief. And my I would challenge that and say was it to fix your grief or to fix yourself? Because often when we feel like we are out of control in our grief, or once we have an awareness, first of all, I think you have to have an awareness that the really deep rooted issue is your grief or trauma from especially in childhood because Childhood Adulthood is childhood reenactments. So if we had, would have developed a relationship, like let me backpedal. If you’ve had grief or trauma as a child, and it was never communicated to you, and it wasn’t emulated for you what healthy grieving was, you will create your own method, you will create your own stories. And you’ll those stories and those patterns and those ways to cope with what you’re feeling. Become your beliefs about how to process or not process your grief. And so we carry those lessons, whether they’re self created, because we’re children, we’re imaginary, right? We have wonderful imaginations, those will follow us into adulthood will will rely on what we know. And what we know. And what we learn often are those things that you said, keep busy and to grieve alone. Don’t talk about your feelings, because it upsets me, right? You know, if you would have talked about your mother around your father, would he have gotten upset well, then you learn why don’t want to upset dads, I’m just not going to talk about it. Because when I do, it makes him sad. And I don’t want to make him sad. And so as children, we just That’s how, why so many children appear to be okay. That’s why so many people say children are resilient, because they see these children and they outwardly, especially if they are the type of child who became like myself a wallflower, who didn’t speak unless spoken to who was very shy, who’s very much in their own head. And that’s just how I’m wired. I’m more in my head. Or you can be a child that really is just craving love and attention and you act out or you, you know, are an angry child. And so you act out. It can look like many different things in children grief. So I think it is first addressing that grief is the issue. And then surrounding yourself with people who are not where you’re at. Because you’re not going to move forward, you’re not going to see that there’s hope. You’re not going to feel like you’re progressing. If you’re surrounding yourself with people who are stuck in their own misery. Neil they say misery loves company. Surround yourself with people who are going to who are proponents of growth who are moving along and in their own personal development and who’ve maybe experienced similar losses as you doesn’t have to be But can bring a different perspective of, of loss from their experience, because I think too, and sharing stories with each other, we learned so much. And it’s a lot of why the reason why I started my podcast, I wanted people to have an understanding that grief just isn’t about death. And the reason why it feels like a shipwreck, and you’re feeling all these feelings is because it was the loss of hopes, dreams and expectations. For many years, you didn’t have your mom, it’s things that you wish would have been different, better or more. And so that’s grief. That’s just this reminder of what you didn’t have. And so it’s we kind of feel crazy. As we’re going through all of this as children into adulthood, and it makes you feel grief, just it’s you feel like you’re on a different planet. And especially as children, I think you’ve that’s where you kind of feel different, right? Because I didn’t know anybody who was going through what I was going through, and nobody knew what to say or do. So they did nothing. And so it’s also that indifference that again, I created my own stories. I pees in the ground, he’s, he’s dead. There’s nothing else. Nobody talked to me and said, You know what, you can still talk to him, you can still keep this relationship going in a healthy way and have it feel that connection. It was like, Nope, he’s gone. That’s it.
Dru Jaeger 56:33
Yeah and so powerful that you say that because my experience was, it wasn’t until I was 31 years old. And a very good friend supported me to go to the public records office to see my mother’s death certificate. It wasn’t until I was 31 years old, that I let go of the idea that she was coming back. I mean, I look back at that. And I’m just, yeah, I’m just in wonder that I held on to that hope for as long as I did, I just wasn’t reconciled to a very fundamental fact of death for so long. But what you say about, you know, people not knowing what to do, and doing nothing. I absolutely lived through that, you know, that making up my own stories about what had happened. And I’m gonna make sense of this experience the best way that I can. One of the other things which I reflect on as well as I had experienced couple of years ago, when my father was really unwell, he was admitted to hospital quite suddenly. And I found myself in the car park sitting in my sitting in my van outside, how will end with tears, because I didn’t have another way of expressing my fear of loss. And my fear of grief, it was just it was I was reenacting my nine year old self. And that, you know, actually came as a massive shock to me to go, okay, there is this fundamental core here, of this grief that I’m carrying around that I need to be in better relationship with, I need to understand better I need to find different ways to confront the reality and my fear of death. And do that in ways which helped me live life well, rather than being in retreat from it all the time.
Victoria Volk 58:36
Yeah. I think too, like just looking at, you know, looking when we’re thinking about, like, the practical things of dealing with grief, I think it’s looking at your behaviors, and asking yourself to that question, like, Am I doing this to avoid? Am I doing this to distract myself? Am I doing this? Because, you know, whether it’s keeping busy or replacing the loss, that’s another myth of grief is you know, so often, as children, we’re often taught, you know, if you lose a pet, that’s okay, we’ll go get another one. And you do you get another pet and never really addressing the loss of the first pet. That’s generally speaking, the first loss that many children experience and that’s an opportunity for parents to really show and emulate what it’s how to grieve and that it’s okay to not be okay. You know, you don’t have to mask and say you’re I’m fine you know, that’s so many people say that I’m fine. How are you? I’m fine. And in Grief Recovery, say fine as feelings inside not expressed. And so like you just said you didn’t know how to express it. You didn’t have the tools to know what to do with all of that. And it can be so overwhelming. It just feels so overwhelming. And so like you said to have compassion With yourself to know that it’s not going to happen overnight to be patient with yourself. My personal personal development journey started in 2014. And it was five years of me trying to fix myself. Because I felt so screwed up. And there was nothing wrong with me, there was nothing that it needed to be fixed with me, I was just, I, all of that grief was just coming to the forefront, and I didn’t know what to do with it. You know, we’re taught how to acquire things and people, but we’re not taught what to do when we lose them.
Dru Jaeger 1:00:34
Yeah, Yeah, it’s so interesting to say about that, you know, that spending time trying to fix yourself. And then realizing this is really much more about self acceptance. I mean, to be completely clear in the context of alcohol or changing a relationship with a substance, there are things to learn, you know, learning how to say no learning how to stop learning how to socialize without alcohol, learning how to be in relationship with others. Without alcohol, there are real practical skills to learn. But those skills are not the same as addressing what is the core reasons which are driving me to using alcohol as a way of solving the solving these problems in the first place. There will be a moment and most people will experience this when you’re changing your relationship with alcohol or another substance, where it suddenly gets a lot worse, all of a sudden, because you’re suddenly confronted by some of the reasons that you were drinking in the first place. And being brave at that moment, reaching out for support, beginning to talk about these are the things which have hurt me, this is the pain that I’m carrying, this is the challenge that I’m facing, I would have used alcohol to mask this or numbers or try and make it go away. But I want to find other ways of coping other ways of living? Well, I think as a really, there are these moments of realization where you go, I have to find a different way of being in the world, which doesn’t revolve around a substance which shuts everything up, but actually is about listening to myself and all of my experience and honoring.
Victoria Volk 1:02:07
Yeah, and finding those people that you resonate with that will be in with you through to the end, right? Because you’re gonna lose people along the way. And that’s more grief, right? You’re gonna lose people, and that’s more grief. So you really do need support in that way and being and have the discernment of, it’s not just going to be anybody, like not just anybody can. Because what happens is too, like in relationship, we all bring our stuff to the relationship. And so it’s having that discernment of, you know, maybe surrounding yourself with people who are a little further along than you. They don’t have to be at the end game. But just a little bit further than you.
Dru Jaeger 1:02:52
Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of the reasons that the club soda community exists to be frank is that, you know, creating that space for people to make connections with other people who are going through the process of change, just like they are. And you know, it’s your right doesn’t need to be somebody. In fact, in some ways, somebody who’s 10 years on and has got everything sorted out, is such an unattainable ideal of a person that you may feel no connection with them at all, somebody who’s three or four steps ahead of you who can go, don’t trip over that route in the path, you know, don’t trip over that crack in the pavement, because they’ve just missed it themselves. That person can have real value to your journey of change. I wonder whether we can kind of shift into a last little bit of conversation, which is to talk about how people can connect with us if they want to do that. If they want to carry on these conversations either about grief or about alcohol. Why don’t you go first, Victoria, tell us about where people can connect with you.
Victoria Volk 1:03:53
Yeah, my website has all the links to all the things theunleashedheart.com. My podcast link is on there grieving voices, it’s everywhere podcasts are available. And I have a program called do grief differently. And it’s 12 weeks, working one on one with me and we deep dive into I mean, we didn’t even get into values and how people dishonor their values. And like there’s so so much we could talk about Oh, so much. We could talk for two more hours, I’m sure but because I have a lot to say on the topic of grief. But But yeah, there’s I free resources on there as well. So energy quiz. I’m a Reiki Master. So I also offer Reiki and kind of dabble in several different things, but all in the sphere of grief and energy healing, so
Dru Jaeger 1:04:42
fabulous. From my perspective, joinclubsoda.com is the starting point entry point into Class loader world. We’ve got advice on choosing alcohol free drinks. We’re all about helping you create and sustain change. So we’ve got two in depth programs that can help one called How to Drink mindfully and one called how to stop drinking, they come with lessons that you can work through your own pace. But really importantly, they come with a supportive community of people who are going through the process alongside you, I run weekly face to face workshops. So we talk about all sorts of different things. And then we’re about creating connections. So we’ve got a big Facebook group, we’ve a little telegram group around our courses, we run real world events, festivals, other ways to meet other people who are shifting and changing their relationship with alcohol, whether they are taking a break or cutting down or stopping completely. We are all in this together. That’s a really important thing for us that we don’t do black and white thinking about alcohol. If you are interested in changing a relationship with alcohol, even drinking one drink less, then there is space for you in the club soda community. So yeah, join Club Soda calm, is where all the good stuff happens. Love it. Thank you so much for this conversation, I have learned so much I have so many notes to go and reflect on and so many things to think about, but really, really so insightful and useful. And thank you for sharing your story. So honestly, and for the work that you do, in supporting people to live well with the grief that they carry. It matters so much. I really appreciate it.
Victoria Volk 1:06:16
Likewise, Dru, I think what you’re doing for just the example of it’s not all or nothing for everybody in that there’s a space for people who just want to bring some more mindfulness to their relationship with alcohol and it is it is a relationship. So thank you for the work that you’re doing to
Dru Jaeger 1:06:34
Mutual love first. Shares thanks so much.
Victoria Volk 1:06:39
Thank you, from my heart to yours. Thank you for listening. If you liked this episode, please share it because sharing is caring. And until next time, give and share compassion by being hurt with yours. And if you’re hurting know that what you’re feeling is normal and natural. Much love my friend.
Addiction, Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, LGBTQ+, Mental Health, Suicide |
Jordan Brodie | Growing Up Gay, CODA & With Addiction
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Jordan grew up knowing he was different. And, it was in that knowing where he could be himself with his loving, supportive father.
However, in the outside world, he navigated the harsh reality of mean kids. Aside from his sexuality, growing up as a child of a deaf adult (CODA) also felt like a dirty little secret.
What happened, as Jordan grew, is years of trying to deal with being put in a special class for kids with high intelligence, and in middle school, he found himself drinking and starting to experiment with drugs. This was on top of the medication he had been put on and was on since the age of 8, and was later able to get off for “diagnosed” ADHD and anxiety, which, by the way, he’s no longer taking.
The years that followed were challenging and would lead Jordan to follow his childhood friend to Hollywood, who also would later die of an accidental drug overdose, who was the one who took Jordan to his first meeting to get addiction support. Thankful for that start in sobriety, Jordan has been sober for four years, but not without a lot of inner work and therapy.
On top of the grief Jordan shares in this episode, one week following our recording, his older brother, who is deaf and who had also been struggling with addiction, died of a fentanyl overdose. Jordan will be coming back on the podcast to record a follow-up. In the meantime, as you listen to Jordan’s many stories of loss, attempt to put yourself in his shoes.
RESOURCES:
CONNECT WITH JORDAN: INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | TWITTER
Victoria Volk 00:00
Welcome to grieving voices. Today my guest is Jordan Brodie. He is a performing artist, an LGBTQIA advocate, self proclaimed digital marketing Queen, and sober in recovery from drugs and alcohol. For years actually just you recently had an anniversary on January 13. Congratulations, huge congratulations on that. And thank you so much for being here.
Jordan Brodie 00:29
Thank you. I took digital marketing Queen out of my bio, I just, I didn’t I didn’t want to put too much emphasis on that.
Victoria Volk 00:40
Okay, okay. Well, you are no longer the digital marketing queen, its official.
Jordan Brodie 00:47
I just don’t want to draw attention to that. Anyway, so but it’s okay. Like, I’m cool, like happy with.
Victoria Volk 01:00
Alright.
Jordan Brodie 01:01
Thank you.
Victoria Volk 01:03
Yes, thank you for being here. So, tell us a little bit about yourself. How, how, maybe your why for wanting to be on the podcast today.
Jordan Brodie 01:13
Why? Well, we just recently had a memorial for one of my best friends who passed away from an accidental overdose. And this friend was very close to me. I’m 29 years old now. And I’ve known him since the sixth grade. So that is quite some time, like 20 years. 2020, something like that, right? A lot of years. And when he helped me move to Hollywood, he moved to Hollywood before I did, and I followed him out here. A year later. He’s an actor and I’m a performer and we both grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico together. And he moved out here and then he let me stay on his couch showed me around introduced me to some people. And one of the friends he made while he was out here while we were out here because we both I stayed since I meant that he needed to walk back and forth from Albuquerque. He met Katie Tanaka’s and he would always tell me about Coco. He called her Coco. And he said I was basically the male version of Coco. He was like, you have to meet my friend Katie. She’s so much like you. You’re like the man. She’s like the male version of you like and I was like, okay, like, Who is this girl? And I felt then he was like, he played me one of her songs. Her spoken poetry song. I almost lost my heart in Monaco. I don’t know if you’ve heard it. It’s it’s the best song y’all need to go look up. Katie Tanaka’s left my heart in Monaco on YouTube right now. Pause. Anyway, so. So you’ve and it’s a fabulous Argh. And it’s so it is me it’s and move. It was funny because he saw a version of me that I didn’t see in myself, which is, I’d happens a lot, especially because I was in my addiction for most of my life, up until the last four years that I got sober. I was not fully self aware of like who I was. And a lot of my friends would see me in a different way than I saw myself. And when he passed away, it was actually the night before the memorial last Sunday. I I, the night before the memorial, the family had asked me to put together the memorial. So, I’ve been organizing, inviting people for the friends on zoom. And then the night before I was kind of it was starting to hit me that the memorial was the next day. And I was starting to get sad, and I made a playlist. My friend and I would speak through music, we shared songs a lot. And that’s how we communicated was through music a lot of the times we I know like 100 songs that I learned from my friend and and then, so I was listening to a playlist that I made with songs that we shared, and then I remembered Katy song. I was like, I need to listen to that song. And I was like, wait a minute, this and I forgot that he was her friend. I was like they were friends. I need to let her know about his memorial. So, I found her on Facebook, on Instagram and I messaged her and told her and she joined us for the memorial the next day and she told me about you and your podcast and and the thing about the reason why I wanted to have this conversation is that my friend’s death brought up a lot of anger and resentment and me towards Hollywood and the entertainment industry and the music industry. And there’s a lot of massage money in the music industry. Meaning, like, in the straight roads, where there’s and they don’t talk about it, you know, the me to movement just happened with Harvey Weinstein and all these other people. And in fact, my friend, when I told you I stayed on his couch for a few weeks, he was renting a room from this guy, I want to say his name, but this guy got just got me two, three years ago. So, what I’m trying to say is a lot of people that my friend fell into, we’re shady knee tattooers If you like it, the massage me of the straight world of the masculine man dominating the feminine and dominating the industry. it rubs off on to the gay world. It’s like it passes down. And then and then it’s also a lot of times invisible, like you’ve heard about that guy who was basically put together the Backstreet Boys, he had all those charges for molestation and stuff. There’s just a lot of that going on behind the scenes, and a lot of people that move to Hollywood, and they fall for the casting couch, the idea that you need to sleep with someone to get ahead in your career, and they and then people with power in the industry, abusing their power and not denying it just to get laid. Because the truth is, it doesn’t work sleeping up to the top doesn’t work. And I’ve know some from some pretty famous people like coaches that that’s Bs and I was always really upset with my friend for being so naive and letting all these people take advantage of him because I knew it wasn’t the correct way I knew the correct way was to focus on the talent that’s what my heart and my intuition told me. And my family taught me not to do that. And and I had my own experiences in college where I kind of got burnt out and screwed over by some guys and I learned pretty quickly that you couldn’t really trust people and and and so that’s why I want to do this is because it made me really upset about the entertainment industry. I I had to let Katie know he passed but I also had to let that old roommate I told you about and like at least five other people that I know that I love because they were scumbags. They were so sleazy. Yeah, they were in the entertainment industry. But they were taking advantage of my friend. They were taking advantage of other people, they tried to take advantage of me. They felt like because I was young and cute. I still am young and cute. But I was a lot cuter than and a lot of people like people tend to underestimate me especially because Paris Hilton is one of my idols, okay, I love the idea of putting on this presence of being light and fun and aloof and stupid and kind of, like out of it. Because I love that type of humor. And I, I don’t want people to take to get uncomfortable with me like being way smarter than them because that’s usually I’m a lot smarter than most people. And I don’t just say that to brag or anything. It’s taken me a long time to get here. But I grew up in special ed classes for really smart kids and like, and I tested like at a really high IQ level when I was like in elementary school and I always made me uncomfortable like that. So I learned to pretend to be stupid. When I was with people, and not in class. It’s how I kind of like would like talk to people and relate with them. So What I’m saying is that these like, man would try to, like do that to me, like what they were doing to chase. And we were the same age. And I would, I would not say anything, but I wanted to like, I would just get silent and leave, you know, or just, but I wanted to stand up for him, I wanted to stand up and put these guys in their place, because I knew if they were doing it to my friend, they were doing it to other people. And it like hurts my heart, because my friend that I’m telling you about, I loved him, like a lot more than a friend, I had a huge crush on him, like, and he was beautiful. And I knew him since sixth grade. And he was kind of like my high school crush, and he had trauma and I wasn’t his type. He only really like older guys. But I had a total like, I had feelings for him and, and he was a good guy, and he loved God and he had a good heart. The thing is, I don’t want to like, make him seem like he’s like a complete victim in the situation because it takes to to play like, he made the active choices to be doing the things he was doing. And he was getting from these people in the same way that they were getting from him. So they were both using each other, you know what I’m saying? So it’s not saying it’s okay, what these guys are doing, but it wasn’t okay, what my friend was doing either. He was being manipulative. And anyway, so. So that’s why I want to do this is, and I love my friends so much, and I miss him. And if anyone out there and struggling with addiction, or alcoholism or drug addiction, just know that there’s someone out there that loves you a lot. And you may not know it right now because you’re in your disease and you’re in your head and you’re in the darkness. But there’s someone out there if you pass away, they will be heartbroken. Ever. I strongly believe everyone has at least one person, even the most isolated people and I myself to have just got four years sober on Wednesday. And my friend that I’m talking to y’all about he took me to my first meetings before I even knew I had a problem. So that’s why I’m doing this took me so answer that.
Victoria Volk 12:38
No, that’s okay. So, I do want to circle back to something you said about growing up and how you felt like how you couldn’t even really be yourself like you were out of integrity with yourself. Like you couldn’t feel like you could own your smarts. You couldn’t feel like you could. I mean, I don’t want to put words in your mouth. But do you feel like living out of integrity with who you felt you were but couldn’t live out? Do you feel like that’s subconsciously set forth like a pattern of behavior and things that kind of ultimately lead to your own addiction?
Jordan Brodie 13:19
Definitely. And it’s funny, you’re focusing in on that I never really thought about that incongruent and how creating that in my brain at a young age would cause that I’ve thought about one being a gay a gay man that’s another reason why I want to do this is my friend was gay and I think in the gay community especially like on top our right and feeling weird for being smart there was the my dad marrying my stepmother going from the hood like because I see myself as kind of like a HUD kid even though like they got married when I was a like I my soul My spirit is very like casual and fun and more go with the flow it’s not so I don’t know I like I don’t like like fully I’ll Of course I love having things being associated with with wealth and that sort of stuff. However, I still like being associated with just hustlers with people who don’t have much and have to make ends meet and so it was traumatizing. What I’m saying is one trauma was the being really smart trauma thing that was like confusing for me. And then the other was the was the moving from the hood to like, basically Beverly Hills overnight when I was eight that Was traumatizing for me because most of my friends didn’t have a lot of stuff, a lot of things they had small. My bedroom was bigger than most of my friends houses in high school, and elementary school and middle school and I felt guilty about that I felt extremely guilty. I felt weird. I never talked about it and never asked my parents about it. I never talked to anyone about it, actually, this you’re the second person I’ve talked about this with. And it is actually really healing to talk about it. So that was one trauma. And then on top of that, being gay and feminine. My dad is the opposite of me. Like I told you, he’s in the military. He was a basketball coach, really masculine. I’m so grateful to have such an amazing father. He supported my femininities for my whole life. He’s always loved it about me, he thinks it’s cool. Like when I was eight years old, I wanted to start dancing and he went it was just him and me and my brother and he allowed me to dance, and I was always dancing, and he let me do that. So, I was feminine. And I don’t think I think the separation the beating myself up and the on inauthenticity and the the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde like hiding stuff from the world and putting on this character started when I started going to public school, and middle and in middle school after my dad married my stepmother, we moved to the other part of town. And we went to this public school and the kids are really mean to me, they bullied me and up until that point, I was never self conscious. I was my stepmothers always told me you were really confident when you’re a little like I was really confident, really flamboyant, not afraid to show my feelings, not afraid to talk. I was fearless. That’s what she told me. And then I started going to elementary, middle school, and people were making fun of me and I didn’t know why. Like, I was always hanging out with girls. I think I I think when we’re little we, when we’re truly little and innocent. I didn’t really see my sex or my gender. I didn’t really see it yet fully. I always felt like a girl. And I always vibe with the girls. Like I always played Barbies, I wanted to play Barbies, I wanted to play that. This clapping game. I wanted to do all the girls. That’s like what I did. And then when I went to this middle school, that’s when I started realizing it was different. I was different than the other boys. They started making fun of me. I think they were jealous because I was friends with all the girls that they wanted to date or whatever. But I wasn’t, we were just friends like, and they started bullying me. And do I’ve done a lot of therapy, the last four years in my sobriety, I did a year of EMDR, it really helped. And I’ve done a lot of therapy, to come to realize that. That was when the separation started. That’s when I started feeling weird and ashamed about certain things and not wanting to share everything with everyone. Because if I gave people too much information about me, they were throwing my face and they would use it and they would make fun of me. And the thing is, I was different I had my biological mother was Dev, I’m gay like after that happened, I started realizing they’re making fun of me for being a feminine man, a feminine boy for dancing and all this stuff. God forbid they find out my mother’s disabled. I didn’t want it because they made fun of disabled kids, they would make fun of people. It was mean these kids are some mean, so I didn’t. I didn’t ever talk about my mother being deaf. She was like my secret. I didn’t even let my friends now and and then you know, and then I went to and then I was put in that class for smart kids and, and then I was separated from everyone in middle school, I was put in this class called to x when everyone’s going around and their periods they can leave. I had one class and it was for smart kids with behavioral problems. Because I would fight with everyone. It was hard. I had a really hard childhood, and it was very difficult. I felt very isolated and alone. That’s why he was so close to my heart and helped me in some of the darkest times of my life. Like when I was really in my addiction, and I like basically I was trying to kill myself with my addiction without knowing it. And he would scream at me and yell at me and let me know how love die was and, and like, took me to my first meetings and yeah, so that’s why this I’ve never lost anyone that’s close to me. I wasn’t this close to my grandpa, he wasn’t that close to me, and my aunt Julie passed from drug addiction from alcohol addiction four years ago, and then my uncle Brian, three years ago, so it runs in my family addiction, that addiction oftentimes runs in the family. Yeah.
Victoria Volk 20:47
So how old were you when you started drinking? You started with alcohol?
Jordan Brodie 20:51
Yeah, when I was like, 14, I started drinking. I was middle school like seventh grade. One of my friends from that class I told you about the 2x class. He was from Detroit. And so he had already been drinking for like two or three years, and we were in seventh grade. And I also was on a lot of prescription medications. I’m not on any anymore. When my dad married my stepmother. They saw that I was damaged, like this damaged little kid and my stepmother started sending me to therapists and psychiatrists, and they were all doing all kinds of experiments on me with different medications. And I was on a shitload of drugs. When I was little, like, I don’t like, and this is to each their own. I think everyone should find a doctor and make smart decisions. But I think I was mis diagnosed, I see my, my ADHD, my mood swings, my anger, my my other things on my addiction were caused from pain. So, it was like, from pain and confusion about my mother being deaf. And her, she would neglect me unintentionally. Because of it. Just because she couldn’t hear me like when, when I was a baby, when you’re in your developmental stages, those first few years, you’re crying to your that’s how you communicate is through crying. You’re saying, I want food. I want cheese. Like you’re crying for the things you want. My mother couldn’t hear me. So, she unintentionally when neglect me, I’d be like crying for like 30 minutes, and she wouldn’t bring food. It’s a common thing for they’re called kotas children of deaf adults. And I’ve learned that we have a name. It’s a really, really common thing for coders to have feelings of not being heard. Being a it’s a lot of coders will experience difficulty and in obtaining their needs and desires and communicating what they want and like in relationships and being assertive with what they want. They don’t. And it comes from that from being an infant. It’s really common. And I’ve learned that recently and I have more in a from a therapeutic standpoint, I have more work to do on that, because that’s only a newfound thing. But my point is that, that that it’s what was the question?
Victoria Volk 23:46
Well, I just want to circle back and just really, because what I hear you saying and everything that you’ve said, your life experience so far to me, like I can sum it up in one word, grief. I mean, it was grief from an early chat from early on.
Jordan Brodie 24:05
Oh, yeah, that’s what I was telling you. Because you asked when I started drinking. Yeah. And so I was in a lot of pain that being neglected unintentionally. As a little baby. I was in pain, and I was confused. And then my dad divorced my step, my mom, and my mom was angry. I think she has borderline to be honest with you personality disorder. She can’t take a boundary like if you tell her no on something, she starts screaming at you. On top of that she’s deaf, you know what I mean? So it’s like really hard, and she calls the cops incessantly. She doesn’t know the purpose of the cops. She sees them as like mediators. So anytime she would get in a small argument with my father. She would call the cops and tell them he was attacking her, and all this stuff and I I experienced it recently. That’s why we don’t talk. I got into argument with her because she was breaking one of my boundaries. And I stood up for myself. And she started getting denying it, and I got mad. And she called it and I was just yelling, and she called the cops and told them I was attacking her. So like, she will lie. She told them, I was trying to kill myself, she told us she will lie to the cops and say whatever she wants to them. And then they come, she sees them as a mediator. If she did, it’s just it’s insanity. But yeah, um, so there was a lot of trauma at a younger age. And I believe the reason why I couldn’t sit still, when I was little, the reason why it was hard for me to focus on adults, and take them seriously and respect authority was at all of the things that I struggled with. It’s not because of my genetic makeup, it’s not because of eight, it wasn’t genetic. For me, it was from trauma. Because and, and I’ve and, and I have the proof, like I have the receipts that it was because the last four years of my sobriety, I’ve spent hours and hours of therapy and EMDR. And if I were to just coldly walk into a psychology or psychiatry office today, since I’ve done all this work, they would not they would not diagnosed me with bipolar or ADHD or any of that, because I’ve worked on my symptoms, like I’ve worked, I’ve done a lot of work. And I have more work to do. And so anyway, but when you’re little you don’t know this, I didn’t they don’t teach you about emotional health in school, they don’t teach you about the things we really need to be learning. And, and they just the psychologists, they just didn’t look at my pain. They didn’t look at my trauma, they ask questions. They just gave me drugs to deal with the symptoms, who it makes me so mad that they are prescribing eight-year-olds, amphetamines, they are giving eight year olds meth. Like it makes me so mad. And that was me. I have been on net, like a form of meth since I was eight years old. And that’s why like, that’s what Adderall is. That’s what Ritalin is and that’s why when my stepmother when my doctors were trying to give it to my little brother I I told them not to but she didn’t listen and it’s just it makes me so mad. Because I feel like I have some like holes in my head and stuff now like it’s like hard for me to my brain is healing thank God for neuroplasticity, it’ll heal, but, but I really wish the doctors would have tried to stoop to my level and just see me as a creature that’s been damaged that’s been wounded and, and tried to understand me, at a younger age, instead of tried to just sedate me or change me. Because I didn’t need to be changed. I just needed to be hurt. That’s all I needed. And and I’m thankful that I have this realization today and that I’m on a better path. And I have a story now that can help a lot of people and, and, and my friend’s death ignited this passion in me to start really sharing it because I’ve always had the passion to share it. But I’ve been hitting the grind. Since he passed and just getting organized. I’m hiring people. I’m hiring an assistant to help me today or tomorrow we start training her and I’m getting my stuff together. But yeah, so I started on amphetamines when I was eight like prescribed prescription drugs. And then when I was 14, friend from Detroit, was taking shots in the kitchen when I was staying with him one night and I was like, ooh, what are you doing? And he was like, I’m not gonna tell you to do it. I was and then I took that as a challenge and started taking shots of Bacardi and, and then I wanted to do it every weekend after that, and I wasn’t the type of alcoholic or addict that drink every day. And I think that’s the misconception for alcoholics and addicts is that you don’t have to drink every day from 10am to two to be an alcoholic or an addict. I was an alcoholic or addict because I use drugs and alcohol as sober lubricant and I wanted to do it every weekend. It was my escape. It allowed me to feel like I could be myself. Because of myself, who I am now sober is who I was when I was blacked out drunk. Because I’ve worked so hard on breaking down the trauma and getting rid of that. Because I is someone that is super social is super talkative is the life of the party sober. That’s who I am. And that’s who my friend that passed was. And I needed drugs and alcohol to feel like that, because of all the trauma in my brain, it would shut off my brain, and I could finally just be present with people and, and I didn’t know it. I just loved it. I, I thought it was so fun. And I did it every weekend and partied, I did a lot of drugs. My friend, one of my boyfriend’s was a coke dealer and like, I just had a lot of fun. Like, it was, like, fun for me. So, and then my aunt and my uncle, the ones that passed, they were the alcoholics like I didn’t have a problem. And then my friend, he was the addict, right? He was on. He was on meth. I was on prescription math, but it wasn’t like, you know, like, so I didn’t think I had a problem because I wasn’t the one my aunt Julie. She was one of the most fabulous people I know. And she would drink every day from 10 to two for the last 10 years of her life. She drank herself to death. She had all the money in the world. She could have done anything she wanted. And she drank at her house from 10 to two she died loaded with jaundice. She had a brain aneurysm. It was really bad and really sad. And I tried everything to get her out of the house, but she just wouldn’t. in the mail go Brian as well. He died from like, from brain from liver failure, I think. And my point is they were the alcoholic acts. They were the ones that drank all day, all night. Not me. I just would go out every night and drink in the clubs in my underwear, trying to get guys to buy me things. That’s what I did. I didn’t have a problem. That’s just being resourceful. And it took me a lot It took me until I hit rock bottom. getting arrested after chase had been taking me to meetings, getting arrested in West Hollywood for blacking out and doing some embarrassing things. And it took me to be court ordered to go to like some support meetings before I could really realize that I was an alcoholic and that’s the misconception about alcoholics and addicts is that some people don’t drink like all day long. It doesn’t mean you’re there’s some addicts that are the weekend warriors. It’s the point is that when I start drinking and if anyone can relate to this, I recommend them get like how is it that when I started drinking I I couldn’t stop like I would drink a whole bottle of vodka or like a whole and it was all about just getting Blitz out of my mind and escaping and just like basically not being here not being present. And because blacking out turns off the blood to your brain. And I just like that’s that’s an alcoholic to it. You don’t have to be an everyday drinker to be an addict or an everyday user to be an addict. You can some alcoholics and addicts’ news recreationally and it’s just about like, does your life become unmanageable. When you drink or use there are normies that like, can have a glass of wine at night, and then their life doesn’t spiral out of control. My life was never in control. Like, I couldn’t control it. I never could, I cannot stop I had no self control. I was in so much pain, emotionally. And I didn’t even know it. And I was using drugs, alcohol and sex to try and numb the pain. That’s what it was. And now when I want to do something stupid, I have to journal and figure out what is my fear? What am I in pain about like, what is this and I’ve been digging through the pain the last few years and it’s been really hard. Getting sober is not easy. It’s very hard. It was really difficult. I had to change everything about my lifestyle. I had to get really, really pour beef to figure out how to work How to make a living. It was really hard and I’m still struggling, I’m still on my way up.
Victoria Volk 35:07
Not to mention the friendships that change, I’m sure in the process of that, too, because like, I like how you said and I, I think it’s a really important point to bring up in grief recovery, we call them serves the short-term energy relieving behaviors, the things that you mentioned, to help you to feel better, because like to put a bandaid on the pain. I’m sober now a year. No, it was a no November it was a year, I was a weekend warrior to you like I could. And because people didn’t see me as an alcoholic. They didn’t think I had an issue. You’ve even now still people closest to me. You weren’t an alcoholic? Yeah. And it’s like, do you realize a bottle of wine is like four glasses. Yeah, I knew that because I would drink the whole bottle. You know, I wouldn’t stop at just one. You know, I would be making supper, grilling outside making supper for my kids drinking a beer. I’d have to by the time we ate, and I was buzzing, you know, you don’t. I like how you mentioned that. Because it is important if it if you have to do it, to feel better about who you are. And to feel more comfortable in your own skin. For me it was social situations. really brought up anxiety for me. I just I felt like I had to drink in order to relax into the fun. So thank you for bringing that up. Because I think addiction or whatever it is that we are using to numb ourselves or to feel better. If you are not functional the next day, you have a problem.
Jordan Brodie 37:01
Yeah. Yeah. 100% and, and that’s the thing. Another part of it is you mentioned that you would drink the whole bottle and you couldn’t stop or and to escape and I was doing the same thing. So, I didn’t think I was an alcoholic or an addict. And, and then and then so and there’s the element of addicts and alcoholics and with my friend that passed they call it Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, right? It’s like the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was the the doc and it’s kind of funny because my last name My surname is Brody from Scotland and there’s actually a Brodie castle in Scotland. And if you look this up, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the person who wrote the fable Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It’s the way he wrote it. It’s a fantasy story based on reality on on a real person. And the real person is a long lost relative of mine. It’s a it was a Brody. He was related to that Brody that Hasbro and so Dr. Jekyll and that’s the fable of Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde because he couldn’t write about the person is that Dr. Jekyll is like the doctor that’s all nice and good and whatever and distinguished in society. And he had a dark side Dr. Hyde, who would like rob people at night. End on story comes from and they talk a lot about it and sobriety and recovery world Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde. This story comes from a comes from a Duke Brody like if you look him up, it’s Brody something his last name was Brody and he was like a Duke or something in high society back in the day. And he was really he owned a locksmith company. That’s how he made his money and his wealth. And so all the aristocrats in that area of Scotland, he would do their locks, he would fix their houses, or their castle has their estates and do their locks. And so, he had all the keys to all of these wealthy people’s places. And then the Hyde Park came because the scandal was that he would go in and Rob everyone at night. And that’s what that story comes from. And so, a lot of alcoholics and addicts, even unknowingly, we have we hide how much we drink, like, because and we don’t intentionally do it. It’s not like you drink a whole bottle of wine and you announce to the whole party. I just drink a whole bottle of wine. No, you just drink a whole bottle of wine, and you keep drinking and then you don’t talk about it. You know So there’s like, we don’t disclose it. So, people don’t know how much we’re doing it. And that’s what happened to me. When I started going to meetings and talking about my problems. My parents were like, you’re not an alcoholic, you’re not an addict, like, why are you going to those meetings like, you don’t have a problem with it, because they always thought my problem was mental health. And that’s the problem with psychology and some forms of that type of medicine. And say, put the emphasis on the diagnosis. And that, and then taking medications becomes the solution. In my parents had the solution for me, my whole life was my medicine. They were like, they didn’t know enough about therapy and psychology to know that I could have done EMDR, I could have done all these therapies to work on the pain to work on my brain and reprogram my mind. They didn’t know about that. Because the doctors told them my solution was medications. So they thought they had it solved. Like, oh, here’s the problem. Here’s your solution. They thought that my solution was medications. So when I told them, I was getting sober and stuff, they didn’t know I had a problem, one because they didn’t see how much I was drinking. And two, they, they thought that my solution, my whole life was get on my meds. And since I wasn’t on meds at the time, they were like, that’s why you’re having problems if you’re not on your medication. So now I’m not on any medicine, and I’m fine. Like I’m able to live and function well in society. And it’s all because of the meetings I’ve been going to. Did you hit a really, really good point is that it and it and that’s the thing, you know that you had a problem. And you knew, and you were able to be honest with it. It doesn’t matter what other people think about us, it only matters what we think about ourselves and what our own problems were. And the thing with my friend, and a lot of the people that pass is, since I was so in my Z’s I got I was in my Mr. Hyde with them, I got to meet their Mr. Hyde’s and their dark sides. And so that’s why I knew it, but to their family, and a lot of their friends and other people they didn’t know like, we were all living like these double lies. And that’s another big thing that comes with it. And so that’s another reason why I think it’s important, we don’t use his name, too, because a lot of people didn’t even know all this stuff that I’m telling you about. It’s really sad.
Victoria Volk 42:47
Well, the thing is, I we don’t talk about our shame. We don’t talk about the things that are shameful to us that we are carrying, right. And so, and we don’t, we aren’t encouraged to talk about the things that are painful for us either. So that’s where, just like you said, you were able to talk about it probably for the first time.
Jordan Brodie 43:10
I would like to hear more from you. You said that it sounds like my whole summary of my childhood in life has been grief. And I would like to hear more from you of like, what your definition of grief is, and what are some ways to approach it? I this is definitely helpful. Like it’s been helpful talking to about this. And I’ve read the book called the grief recovery handbook. And it talks about making a timeline of memories, good and bad. Reading that to someone writing a letter of thoughts that are not like, fully processed. Yeah. undelivered communications, reading the letter to someone. I are those just what do you think about those tools? And maybe you could tell me more about grief because I didn’t see my childhood or the neglect from my mother, or my parents divorce, and that kind of stuff as grief because I think a lot of times people think grief to be just when someone dies. But the grief recovery handbook. I remember reading it and it talked about divorces caused grief. Any of you experienced any sort of loss, and I and I didn’t realize that and I don’t know where the loss is, in my situation with my mother being death. And that’s what’s been hard for me to wrap my head around that.
Victoria Volk 44:49
Well, it’s a loss of connection. You can’t connect with her in a way that you see maybe that you see other children connecting with their moms, because we learn by what we see. Right? And so There comes a time where you kind of probably looked at other relationships and was like, my relationship isn’t like that. But you, as humans, we know what we need. Right? And so, when we’re not getting that, we know that too. And that’s great. It’s anything we wish that would have been different, better or more. It’s a loss of hopes, dreams and expectations,
Jordan Brodie 45:23
Anything we wish that could have been different, better or more. That’s the definition of grief.
Victoria Volk 45:31
In the grief recovery Handbook, it’s in there. Yep, loss of hopes, dreams and expectations, anything we wish that would have been different, better or more.
Jordan Brodie 45:39
That is interesting, because that means everyone’s experienced grief.
Victoria Volk 45:45
Everybody, everybody.
Jordan Brodie 45:48
When you’re not, when you’re not being responded to, or you have an expectation, and it’s not being delivered the way you expect, or, wow, that just and we’re not talking about this, and people aren’t aware of it. It’s not. If it’s such a common thing, that experience that we experienced on a regular basis. Why aren’t we talking about it?
Victoria Volk 46:13
Jordan, that is exactly why I started this podcast. Thank you for bringing that point up, because that’s exactly why I started this podcast and that’s why it’s called grieving voices.
Jordan Brodie 46:25
Well, I love this. I’m so about bears.
Victoria Volk 46:31
There’s one question I want to ask you, I want to make sure we get to because we’re about running out of time. But I want to ask, because we we’ve heard your story. Thank you for sharing all that you shared, you highlighted so many different ways that children grieve. And interestingly, I used to work as a I don’t want to say I don’t even know what the job title was actually. But I would actually take the phone calls for people who want let’s say, you wanted to call your mom and you use the TTY. I would be on the other end. I was I was the operator. So, I would actually type what you would say, and read what the deaf person is writing.
Jordan Brodie 47:17
Beautiful job, you have no idea how many conversations I’ve had to have with my mother over those services. And people don’t recognize it’s such a marginalized community. They’re like, this is another universe. It’s like, and the problems they experience are similar to those in the LGBTQ community. It’s feeling marginalized, it’s feeling without a voice. It’s it’s the same type of feelings of inequality. And I really think we need to bring affirmative action back because they’re like, there’s I don’t know if you’ve heard of the whole breaking code silence like Paris Hilton’s. new thing, she has just recently come out about some abuse that happened to her at a border school, boarding school in high school, she was always too afraid to talk about it. And she’s finally someone pulled it out of her and her last documentary, and she’s finally talking about it. And so it started this whole thing, where they’re, they’re basically they are investigating all these schools in the United States that have been hurting people. And the reason I mentioned this is because like, my, the deaf community is a very vulnerable community. And they are being taken advantage of all the time. And I have a little so it’s genetic. My little brother is deaf, too. And he was he’s been molested in school. That’s another part of my grief is we were really, really close. He was basically like a little kid to me. Like my, he looked at me like a father, basically. And when I found out he had been molested, and these schools, I was like, thank God, I wasn’t in Montana, like I would have found those people. Like, I just was so mad. And so her and so sad. And I talked to my grandma about this recently. And she said in the 80s, when the Kennedys were president, and like, when they were really popular that Kennedys, one of their sisters started this movement for affirmative action and actually made some laws that required big companies to hire at least one or two disabled persons, on staff and they upped the budget for the dis schools for people with disabilities. And stay put a lot of support for that community and because the problem is and parents, I was listening to a podcast last night with Kate Hudson and and Oliver Hudson, they were interviewed. It’s called so sibling revelry. And it’s really good. And it was, it’s siblings, interviewing other siblings. So, they were interviewing Parris and her sister, Nicole, or Nikki, and I was listening to this late last night, and Paris was talking about, about this, a lot of these schools hire under an under qualified people that because of the lack of funding, because of the low budgets, they’re hiring people that aren’t qualified. And that’s what my grandmother told me. One solution that can be done for these people is if affirmative action comes back, and we’ve raised the budgets for private for public schools for the deaf, there, they would filter out they would have better hiring programs, and they could hire better people. And because people are being molested, like every year at these schools, and that’s just adding more trauma, more grief, more problems to our society, might I pray every day for my little brother, like I’m so worried about him that he’s gonna just turn out and like, become crazy or something because of all this stuff he’s been through.
Victoria Volk 51:26
That’s just it. That’s I mean, if you’ve read, I know, you said, you read the grief recovery handbook. And we’re all Grievers. And we all have life experience. And, you know, one person’s trauma is going to be different from someone else’s, and it doesn’t have to be like big t trauma, it can be something little like for you, you know, at first, you know, just not being able to feel like you could own who you were a smart kid, you know, just, I mean, that’s something that seems so insignificant to probably adults and other people.
Jordan Brodie 52:02
it’s your right, to like yeah, to know who you are. And to be able to. Just like all I’ve ever wanted is to be in a room and like you said your you would get anxiety. And that’s probably the reason why you drink is to be imagine just being in that room or to be able to go into any room and not have to be hyper focused on your breath or hyper focused on your thoughts are hyper focused on how you’re moving or hyper focus on how you’re, you’re speaking or, like just hyper focused, it would be so nice to be able to walk into any room anywhere we go and like, you know, the whole George Floyd movement, just be able to breathe, and just be able to, like, be one with that room. But our traumas caused us to get in our head and separate and and that’s all I’ve ever wanted was to just feel like I could be myself in a crowd of anyone and bullying caused me to feel separated. And part of my journey in recovery is getting back to that how do I calm my brain? How do I calm my nerves? How do I allow myself to feel like I can be anyone I want to be. And that’s part of the reason why, as an artist, I have a small fan base, we’re really tiny, like a little cat and I’m like a little candle and I just, they are basically the ones that that see me exactly how I am and I feel like I don’t have to put on a show for them. And I haven’t performed for them yet. They’re all on the internet. And hopefully after COVID I’ll be able to do some shows for them. But it’s Kim Petrus talks about it too, like she feels like she’s created this heaven where she can go on the stage and fans that are like her show up to her shows. And she can go up on stage and just be as weird as she wants to and whatever outfit she wants to singing during whatever she wants to. And it’s empowering for her like It’s like she created her own group therapy and her performance.
Victoria Volk 54:24
And I think to it comes down to self love and I think it’s this radical self love that we find in ourselves and give to ourselves when we do the work on ourselves. Exactly. I think that’s what you’re finding too. That’s what I found. This has been so good.
Jordan Brodie 54:44
Thank you. Yeah, this has been super helpful. When so when this is are you posting a video to or is it just the audio?
Victoria Volk 54:55
For now, it’s just the audio, the podcast. I do keep the I do have the have eventually possibly I want to get these on YouTube or closed captioning or community. And I’m just not there yet because it requires editing of the video as well as audio so not that, I’m a one woman show. Right there. Yeah.
Jordan Brodie 55:22
Have you heard of fiverr.com? I did. Yeah. We could probably find some editors on there to collaborate with that wouldn’t charge a killing you know?
Victoria Volk 55:33
Yeah
Jordan Brodie 55:34
Cool. Yeah. Let me know when you are when when will you post this because I will be sharing this for sure.
Victoria Volk 55:43
I will let you know. But before we go, I want people to know where can they reach you if they want to want to reach out to you? Where can they find you?
Jordan Brodie 55:51
Well, on Instagram, tik tok, Snapchat, Facebook, my most of my I have a few different handles, but it’s jbrodie Music on Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter. And then on Tick Tock and Snapchat, it’s brodiejmusic. It’s the opposite, just because the other one was taken. But I also just recently, and I don’t know if you’re on clubhouse, or if you’ve heard of it. I just recently joined clubhouse. And it’s jbrody music on clubhouse. And what it is, I, when I get, I have a few people in line. But when I get a few more invite codes, I’m sending you an invite code, because it’s invite only right now because they’re in beta testing. But a lot of podcasters are on there. A lot of entrepreneurs, it’s a new social media platform based on voice. So, people create these rooms of topic, interests. And I created last night I was up late last night because I was creating different rooms. I’d love to get you on there. And we could start like a weekly grief room. And it’s really cool because when you start following people, you just invite people and it’s like interact. It’s almost like it’s like a conference on your phone. And I’ve been listening to some really like famous people. I’ve been having conversations. I had a conversation with dead mouse the other day. It’s a really famous DJ with Perez Hilton. I had a conversation with Richie squirrel yesterday. He’s, he’s Lady Gaga is choreographer, like just all these people are on there right now. And they’re having these conversations. And it’s really cool. Like, I highly recommend that you can find me on there too.
Victoria Volk 57:48
I’ve heard about that through a podcasting group, but I haven’t checked it out yet.
Jordan Brodie 57:53
And maybe we could all start a group on there sometime.
Victoria Volk 57:58
I’ll have to check it out. Thank you so much for being here, Jordan. I’ve really appreciated what you’ve shared and what we’ve all talked about sharing your story. So, thank you so much. It’s been wonderful
Jordan Brodie 58:10
Thank you.
Victoria Volk 59:25
And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
Addiction, Grief Stories, Grieving Voices Guest, Grieving Voices Podcast, Sexual Trauma |
Brianne Davis | Secrets, Sex & Love Addiction
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Actress, Podcaster, and Author, Brianne Davis shares, for the first time, about the loss of who she once was.
Brianne has come to terms, with the help of therapy and the 12-step program for sex and love addiction, to understand the depths and impact of being sexually abused as a child. And, how that experience, along with early exposure to what she believed love was impacted her well into adulthood.
She would find herself choosing a profession where she could blend into the roles of another person within a script, which was fitting since she was struggling in her own skin.
Follow along Brianne’s journey of awareness to wholeness as went through a 9-month men detox, and later as she wrote her book, Secret Life of a Hollywood Sex & Love Addict: A Novel.
Today, Brianne shares her full and complete heart that no longer looks to the outside world for validation and comfort, through supporting others who wish to share their secrets on her podcast, Secret Life.
Connect with Brianne: Website | Instagram
Resources:
Victoria Volk 00:56
Welcome to grieving voices. Today my guest is Brianne Davis and we are going to be talking about all things addiction. Yeah, not sexy like grief, like we were talking about before we have done but definitely topics that are worthy of discussion. So, thank you so much for being here to share your story.
Brianne Davis 01:22
Oh, thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be on with you today.
Victoria Volk 01:26
You come from Hollywood? So, let’s start there. What brings you to grieving voices to share your story?
Brianne Davis 01:33
Well, when I heard about your podcast, you know, being from Hollywood, it’s all like, you know, fantasy, like everything’s pretty and filtered and sexy and exciting. And then to come and talk about the grief. And I’ve had a lot of grief in my life. And I’ve had a lot of amazing things happen in my life. But the one thing I’ve grieved the most with, specially with my addiction and Hollywood being a sex and love addict, the last 11 years of recovery is the loss and the grief of my old self of my past life. And I haven’t really talked about that. That process of losing who you used to be and becoming a new person with anybody ever before. So that’s why I wanted to come on and speak with you today.
Victoria Volk 02:30
So how would you say that you identified yourself as all those years before versus today?
Brianne Davis 02:37
I think the easiest way to explain it if you don’t understand addiction as I was a shell of a person, that I was never fully home, I think I lost myself very young, at the age of six. When I had molestation and a trauma, I think a part of me disconnected from myself. And then when I hit about 12 years old, it was the first time I cheated on a boyfriend, and like kissed another guy and my entire body, like disconnected from myself. And I almost remember like floating outside of myself and going Oh, that is the best high in the world. It’s the secret. It’s like exciting. And that is what I think the final cut from my core self. So from 12 until 27 I was an active sex and love addict. And I was always playing a role. I was always looking for outside things to fix me and my addiction mainly was people.
Victoria Volk 03:51
Because you didn’t understand how to give yourself the love that you needed, right? I don’t want to put words in your mouth but,
Brianne Davis 03:58
Yeah,
Victoria Volk 03:59
I don’t want to put words in your mouth but,
Brianne Davis 04:01
No, that’s beautifully said. I mean, I think that’s what people don’t understand about this addiction or any addiction really underneath. You know the drugs, the alcohol, the shopping, the eating, the gambling, the sex, whatever it is whatever ism you decide to use, and I believe everyone has a little ism where they don’t want to feel their feelings. But it’s the same thing. It’s fear of abandonment, fear of intimacy, fear of not being enough, no self worth, like low self esteem, no self love. And I didn’t realize now 11 years later in my recovery, that this is the first time in my life that I truly love myself where I can look in the mirror and love who’s looking back at me. But I have to tell you until probably a decade when I got my 10 years, I still miss the old me like there was parts I still miss
Victoria Volk 05:00
I’m gonna say a phrase to you and I want to, I want to get a feeling for I want to see how you feel about it. Trauma is what happens and grief is what’s left.
Brianne Davis 05:09
Totally, totally. I mean, when trauma happens to you, a part of you is taken away. And you are constantly mourning what was taken away from you, without your consent or without, we have no control over this life. And we want to believe that we do and unfortunately, when you realize you have no control, or you’re trying to get it, you’re always reaching for something to control. And that leaves grief because, you know, that is what’s left.
Victoria Volk 05:42
So, what has been the most helpful to you in finding the awareness of where all of that stemming from where the addiction stemmed from?
Brianne Davis 05:53
Well, like it took a really long time, and I’ll just give a little backstory of my process of getting into the program. And going through that because I didn’t know 11 years ago, I just felt, and I say this a lot I just felt like I was broken. And that I didn’t have that gene that could fully be intimate or fully connect to another human being I just thought I was like I was just missing I never wanted to get married I never wanted to have kids. I just kind of wanted to be this Enigma like you never knew what you’re gonna get. And that to me was so enticing and that’s what I really missed that like Miss mystery of myself of the fake self. I like to call it the attic self and the real self so the attic self, there’s this mystery, there’s this untouchable, you can never cry, I have secrets, you can never quite know me. And when I got into the program, I there’s these 40 questions if you think you’re, you know, struggling with addiction, or especially sex and love addiction, you can go online, and there’s these self diagnose question questionnaire and slot and you can fill it out. And I got my number was out of control. It was 38 out of 40. And I walked into the rooms on a Wednesday night and deep in the valley of Los Angeles. And I was with probably like 30 to 40 other people completely different from me. And I was listening to them. And I just started crying. And I didn’t cry because I was sad, I cried because for the first time in my life, I wasn’t broken. And I wasn’t alone in my struggles. And that was the really process of me digging deep and seeing why I did the things I did. And this took eight, nine years of therapy going twice a week. On top of working the steps, the 12 steps which took me almost 10 years, nine years to complete. And really digging my therapist used to tell me you have to dig through this shit, like internally to get to your gold. So whenever I was crying or going through withdrawal, I just kept telling myself you’re digging through this shit to get to your gold. So that process of looking back at the trauma because I didn’t remember the molestation. I’m looking back at you know, not having the tools to see what a healthy relationship is looking back at all the masks I put on to be another person to to be a false me and then putting my career which I become another person looking at like, why did I pick this career, there’s so much rejection. There’s so much abandonment, you’re used pretty much what you look like on the outside your product. And my therapist told me you pick the worst career for your addiction. And so the first year of my sobriety, I didn’t work, I couldn’t walk into a room and be a person when I wasn’t even a person. And I had to go through nine months of terrible withdraw crawling on the floor crying, the grief of shedding that false skin I was wearing my entire life. And that was the worst pain I can I don’t wish it on anyone. And when I got through with it at nine months, I literally woke up nine months and it lifted like this with pain lifted this grief. And I had this one moment before that happened where I sat in my bed and tears were falling down my face and my mouth was open. And it was like a snake of grief was coming up and I couldn’t close my mouth. I was like just bawling. And I looked at the clock and 45 minutes had passed when I finally stopped crying. So after that grieving process and shedding the skin, then I had to learn how to function and this new person and now I have so much peace and serenity, and I don’t look outside of myself to fill me anymore.
Victoria Volk 10:06
So, it does fill you up nowadays.
Brianne Davis 10:10
Well, I mean, doing this being on people’s podcast, having my podcast secret life telling, letting other people tell their secrets, every time I do an interview, the connection between me and another person and being transparent and vulnerable and authentic and not having any secrets has given me so much joy that I I was such if you knew me before I was such a selfish egotistical seeking, it was all about me and what you could do for me, and now being of service and at about other people, especially when they come on my show. That that just literally, I just it’s the best feeling in the whole world. And then my son, of course, I’m I’m married, I’m married to the same man I was with before the program, we’ve just celebrated 16 years together. But he doesn’t fill me here’s what the amazing thing is, he doesn’t fill me he doesn’t give me my self worth. He complements me, we’re partners, he brings out the best in me, he raises me up. And I say this a lot. And some people get angry. And I’ve gotten some messages, especially from husbands. But I say if my husband left me today, I would be okay. I’d be sad, devastated. I would, you know, losing someone you love is devastating. But he doesn’t complete me.
Victoria Volk 11:34
There is so much in that, that I resonate with and relate to. I was molested to as a child, my life kind of, you know, I went stopped relationships and sex and grief recovery. We call them sturms, the short-term energy relieving behaviors and I resorted to alcohol and all these things. And I’m one-year sober last November and so gradually, yes. Congratulations to you as well. I feel like there’s so much similarity stories and here’s the thing, like, you don’t have to be in Hollywood, you can be in rural America, you can everybody puts their pants on the same way.
Brianne Davis 12:16
Yep, we all die. We all die in the ground. We’re all the same. We’re, you know, I agree.
Victoria Volk 12:23
Yeah. And we experience life in its ups and downs. And, you know, the sorrow and the joy. And one thing you said that I want to come back to also is that I tell my husband, and I love that you said that. And I almost knew what you were going to say because I’ve said the same thing to my husband. It’s like, I don’t need you. But I want you. Yeah, that’s the difference. Yeah. So, I love that you brought that up. And, and I feel like if there’s people out there that feel like they need ask yourself, why do you need whatever it is? Why do you need alcohol? Why do you need a relationship or a man or a female in your life, or you know, whatever it is. So, thank you for bringing that up.
Brianne Davis 13:12
Yeah, because you don’t need anybody. Once you start filling yourself with your own love. Like you honestly, this is the work that no one can take away from me. Any job I get person that comes in my life, you know, money, all of that can be stripped away. But I still have this core thing that I will go to the grave with an eye, it’s mine and no one else’s. And that is something I never had before. You know, if you gave me a job, it was everything. If a man was in my life, it was everything. If I got like, nice clothes, it was everything our car, you know, and it’s just this is something you can do for yourself. That’s just for you.
Victoria Volk 14:00
I almost think of it like you’re Mr. Rogers. Except Mr. Rogers, you know, he changed a sweater. It’s like you just put on a different sweater when you’re looking at the outside world to like, Well, what do I want to be today? Or who do I want to be today? And who’s around me? And who’s going to influence which jacket I put on? You know?
Brianne Davis 14:20
Yeah, that makes sense.
Victoria Volk 14:22
So yeah, it’s finding yourself who you were before everything happened?
Brianne Davis 14:28
Yeah.
Victoria Volk 14:29
And that’s the thing with addiction to Would you agree that it’s when people are struggling with addiction, it’s no one really asks, well, what happened to you?
Brianne Davis 14:41
Because I feel like if you do the work, you get to that but most of the time an addict acting out doesn’t even know why they’re doing the things you do. So, the first thing is you have to strip it away. Like for me This is just if you’re listening out there, this is just my experience, you can take it or leave it, throw it out, take it with a grain of salt. But for me, like I had to strip everything away, I got rid of all my guy friends, I wouldn’t talk text or email any man whatsoever. If a waiter walked up to me, I would not make eye contact because I realized I was raping their energy. Even just a stranger, even just a guy, friend, I would use them in some way to get fulfilled, even if nothing romantic was happening. So I really just took away all male attention, everything you could think of and just stripped it down and said, like, I can do that if I do this, I only have to do it once. And then you bring it back in your life after you look at the why after you dig deep and see, why is this pattern keep playing out in my life? Why do I keep doing the same thing over and over again with different people? But the first thing you have to do is get rid of your ism, or you’re never going to figure it out, you’re never going to fully grieve, you’re never going to go through that withdrawal. And I did an interview the other day, where this doctor, I’m not gonna mention names. He was talking about a lot of addicts go and like run triathlons or take up, you know, like hiking or extreme mountain climbing something extreme because you have to when you take something away like an addiction, you have to put something in its place. So you don’t have to fully feel your withdraw. This is what he said. And I was thinking No, dude, you I didn’t argue with him. It wasn’t my show. But I was thinking like, No, you need to go through withdrawal, because you’re just substituting so you have everything, to then see the Y to then grieve the Y, and then get on the other side of it and rebuild yourself.
Victoria Volk 17:00
100% agree, because actually, that’s one of the myths of grief, replace the loss.
Brianne Davis 17:06
Right, you can’t.
Victoria Volk 17:08
Oh, yeah. There’s many, many, many, many, many therapists out there that are not versed in grief, like grief itself, in all the ways that we learn as children and how that influences our behavior as adults. So, let me ask you this, when you were a child, and I know you said you didn’t recall the molestation until much later as an adult, is that correct?
Brianne Davis 17:32
Yeah.
Victoria Volk 17:33
But as a child, how, how was grief was grief something and you said you had a lot of other loss. So how was grief talked about when you were a child? Or was it at all?
Brianne Davis 17:45
No, no, it wasn’t at all. And I talked about it. I have a book coming out. It’s called secret life of a Hollywood sex and love addict. And I really go into the moment I realized the molestation and I all I remember from it was like laying back in leaves. Like, I was fall time and I’m from Georgia, so a lot of leaves and all that. And I remember looking up at the sky, and like just seeing like the leaves fall. And that’s all I can remember from that moment. And when that came out of me, when I realized it was my therapist, I just it was like a guttural reaction. I it was like a beast was coming out of me letting it go. And doing that, I realized how much grief I was holding from my childhood that I never had words to go to. Another secret and I’ve come out with it recently is that I am dyslexic and I have ADHD. And I talked about this moment with my mother when I was four years old, trying to learn the alphabet and doing flashcards. And this, I was looking at her trying to help me and she was bawling her eyes out. And I never understood why I thought something like I was stupid and she was frustrated with me or she didn’t you know, like I don’t as a child if someone’s just crying and not explaining and not saying Mama’s just worried about you Mama’s wanting to help you and I don’t know how, you know, like putting words to it, talking about her grief with you know, the difficulty of helping a child learn which as I have a three year old now I understand it now and doing the work on it. But that was never talked about and that I carried that just until recently until I started writing the book because I my husband was like you need to write you need to write and I’m like, I’m not a writer. I’m dyslexic, like, I have I have ADHD, like I I switch words sometimes and He was like, come on, nope, you don’t have to tell anybody. And the book came out of me. The first draft came out in 45 days. And it was like, and I talked about that moment, and I and I really dig deep. And I realized my Well, my parents didn’t have a great marriage. They never talked about it, you know, they fought a lot. I’m not, they would say these things. And nobody ever talked about why or apologize for fighting in front. So, there was so much grief and loss in my family that nobody ever talked about. And I’ve been carrying it my whole life.
Victoria Volk 20:35
We do, because it’s it’s a photographic emotional memory. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read trauma, the body keeps the score.
Brianne Davis 20:44
I have read bits and pieces of that. Yeah.
Victoria Volk 20:48
It’s a tough read. It’s hard to read.
Brianne Davis 20:49
Yeah
Victoria Volk 20:50
I haven’t gotten through it myself but,
Brianne Davis 20:52
oh my god, there’s so many of those books that you start to read. And they recommend, and you can literally get through a page of it. And then I want to like throw it against the wall.
Victoria Volk 21:01
It’s really difficult to read. First, thank you for sharing all of that. Is that a common and you’re not the first actress that I’ve heard that he was dyslexic and chose to be an actress? Is that something that is common and not really talked about? And that because with acting, you can kind of live? Right?
Brianne Davis 21:24
No, people think that you can bear you can know, any television. Any movies you do cannot live unless it’s specifically like a Judd Apatow movie. They allow adlib certain directors at it. But usually when things are greenlit like, especially television shows and comedies, it’s word for word you have to remember, literally, they’ll stop you and say you forgot they Ayane. So, when I started acting, I didn’t talk about being dyslexic. My team didn’t know I was dyslexic. So, I would get an audition and it would be the next day. And I’d be and it’s just so you guys know, an audition is like nine pages. It’s not just like one or two pages, it’s nine pages. And if you’re dyslexic like me, you usually have to memorize it, because acting like a person looking down at lines and looking back up. It’s really hard for me, so I like to memorize it. So I really, you know, it took a while but I got the muscle where I could pick it up quickly. And then you know, the next day, I’ll forget it. But not many actresses are an actor’s I know Tom Cruise’s. There’s not there’s just like a handful of us. But it’s still very embarrassing. I mean, if you look at my scripts, if there’s certain last names that aren’t normal last names, I have to have someone tell me how to say it. And then I phonetically write it a different way because my brain sees it differently. So on all my scripts and everything, everything is crossed out and, and spelled differently and stuff. And I used to be really embarrassed about it, especially if I’d go and work with a director and he would look at my sides and it looks like a child did it. But I’m to the point now where I’m like, I don’t care. As long as I do my job, then who really cares, but it took a long time to get there for me.
Victoria Volk 23:24
And how, where did the confidence come from within you to even pursue that then?
Brianne Davis 23:31
I came from a mother which she is like no holds bar, workaholic. She’s like almost fearless. She was the breadwinner of the house. So, the the mom I came from, if you can imagine she was like a New York City. ballbuster. And, you know, with all her flaws, one of the things she instilled in me is like determination. So, if someone told me no, I would like find a way to make it a yes. And I think that’s what I got from my mom the willingness to keep going against all odds.
Victoria Volk 24:13
It’s amazing, because look how it transformed your life. But how much? And how much of that though, does it? When you look back then is it does it feel like almost a double-edged sword because did Hollywood kind of perpetuate then this addiction as well?
Brianne Davis 24:32
Yeah, that’s a question I love. I mean, I came to Hollywood with the addiction already. I’m not going to say it. But I will say I think at a very young age, I watched a bunch of movies and things I was too young. My parents like to watch Shakespeare movies, things that were way out of my I shouldn’t watch like my first movie I remember seeing was Romeo and Juliet. And I saw Michael whites by It’s the 1976 or 67, there’s my dyslexia, I can’t remember what year it was filmed. But I saw Michael White’s butt out at like six years old. And I remember thinking, Oh my God, that’s a nice ass like that was my thought. And then the next moment, I remember his thinking, Oh, that’s what true love looks like you meet in two days, and you’re willing, both of you are willing to die for each other, like, somebody’s got to drink poison, somebody’s got to stab themselves for it to mean true love. So I connected true love with death, or someone’s willing to die. And then I SAS. And definitely Hollywood has amplified that. I mean, going and, and shooting shows like six or Lucifer are True Blood, especially if there’s a love scene. When you walk on set, you have to automatically assume the position that that’s my husband, that’s my boyfriend. That’s the person I’m interested in, in the script. And I’m not a method actor. But when I get on set, I transform into the person. And then as soon as they say, cut, I break out of it. And I think for me, doing that, I also wore that. That girl thing where it’s like, I’m one of the boys, I can hang with you guys and talk about inappropriate stuff. And I just let it roll off my back. And I’m a cool chick. And really, underneath, I’m a scared little girl that was taken advantage of as a young age, you know, grew into my looks at, you know, 11 older men started hitting on me, you know, I didn’t on this, this was just genetics, it doesn’t mean anything about me. But when you’re a young girl and going into Hollywood, and then you’re getting that attention, it definitely it can warp your sense of what is right and what is wrong, and what is appropriate. And what’s inappropriate. So, I feel like Hollywood amplified it. But here’s the good thing. I was never in the Hollywood scene, I didn’t go after a man that were rich and powerful, because I wanted to have the power and control, so I didn’t get sucked into the Hollywood world, which I’m really grateful for. But I definitely made a lot of damage in my wake. And I had to make a lot of amends and I’m still making living amends to people.
Victoria Volk 27:29
And I’m, I imagine that a lot of shame, period, a lot of shame.
Brianne Davis 27:34
Yeah, I mean, for a long time, but the beautiful thing about walking through that grief, walking through that pain is then the shame is lifted, because that that’s not who I actually am. That’s something I did and I’m not proud of and I take there’s something about taking ownership of it and say I did wrong. And I promise never to do that again. And actually, walking that path, the shame, like lifts, and I, I it’s not attached to me anymore.
Victoria Volk 28:06
I feel like too, I think shame is something that perpetuates addiction kind of keeps people in addiction.
Brianne Davis 28:14
It’s that shame cycle, man. It’s like a coat, like you said, you just do the action or the drink or whatever, then you put on the shame coat. And then you start all over again, it’s like round a round circle.
Victoria Volk 28:27
Like to how you said, when you’re when you were writing your book, the process of writing your book, it was very obviously it was very therapeutic for you. And a lot of stuff came up and I wrote a book to and that had the same experience. I had the exact same, like, stuff came up that stuff. And I think it’s the power and writing and the power of writing our story. And people can do this at home, you don’t have to write for the intention of writing a book or for anyone else to read. You can just write your story.
Brianne Davis 28:57
Yeah, I mean, journaling is the best thing ever. And I did that I had notebooks and notebooks and notebooks full of those journals. And then I just throw them away because I didn’t want to look at them ever again. But yeah, for writing. I didn’t even know I was writing the book. I took this writing course for a book, and I was doing it as a memoir and it just transformed in this other thing and became you know, a fiction or Roma club fiction. I named her Roxanne after the police song. You know, she’s like, She’s like a model of me. But the beautiful thing is I started having dreams of her experiences and like it took bits and pieces of other people I know, and I made this whole other person that walks her first year of recovery and a lot of my story I would say about 60% 70 60% is my story and the other is like fictional or someone else’s story. And all the characters names are changed. You’ll never know who they are. You’ll never know which stories matter. I know what’s not. But when I was writing chapter five, six and seven I don’t know for you, but those were torture It was about like the why the main character D her main character defects, the one that was like tormenting her all that stuff I don’t know if you wrote about that but every time I had to rewrite chapter five, six and seven I just wanted to throw it over against the wall and give up I was like, oh, it literally felt like this. You know, did that happen for you?
Victoria Volk 30:35
Mine’s more of a memoir.
Brianne Davis 30:37
Oh yeah.
Victoria Volk 30:38
Yeah, I’m more of a nonfiction person but I look forward actually what I would love to read your book.
Brianne Davis 30:44
Oh my god, I would love it. I can send it to you. It comes out February 12 on Amazon Barnes and Nobles everywhere, but mine was a memoir, but I just switched it I felt like I for one I won’t get sued. Because there’s famous people in it and I don’t want anybody to ever know who I’m talking about even though you can try to guess. But yeah, it’s I decided to it’s it’s like a memoir and a self help book because I realized my first year of recovery I had I created these other 10 rules to live by and Roxanne uses those 10 rules and explains Yeah, and I just found myself like when I was writing it I realized every book I read while going through that first year was so educational and it was almost like daunting every time I did step work or read like love attic from pa melody and all these sex addict books and I wanted to write a book where like a normie or someone that’s not an addict can read it be entertained but also get the lessons and understand an addict and a sex and love addict and their their mental addict mind that just you know is out of our control.
Victoria Volk 32:04
I actually have to tell you this to my our when our first daughter was born, I have three kids so no middle ones four and a girl. I wanted to name her Roxanne, my husband said absolutely not. Every time I’d say her name, I think of that fleece song.
Brianne Davis 32:21
Because I could not think of her name. I could not I was like; I don’t know who this character’s name is. And the song came on and I was like, oh higher power. Thank you for giving me her name. And I tried to get the the rights to like write the song lyrics to describe it. And of course, it’s too expensive. So, I just wrote in the book I was like, sorry, it’s too expensive for the lyrics but it’s about you know, being slutty and wearing that dress and prostituting yourself or something like that I write so yeah, I love that your husband’s like no.
Victoria Volk 32:57
And I picture too I don’t even know like in the video but is Roxanne or redhead? Because I picture when I hear Roxanne I think of redhead.
Brianne Davis 33:06
Oh, sorry, all the redheads out there. No, I don’t know I haven’t seen that video. I was just on the radio. So I didn’t see that. I haven’t seen the video in a long time. So, I can’t remember but
Victoria Volk 33:20
but the vision of Roxanne in your book is she described as a redhead?
Brianne Davis 33:23
No, here you want to see the book cover? I just got for
Victoria Volk 33:29
Oh, blonde. Okay, well, it’s fitting. Yeah.
Brianne Davis 33:33
But the thing is, she could be anybody. And that’s what I say. And I say, You know that I could. She could be your mom, your sister, your, your friend, your cousin? like this could be anybody. And yeah, I made her blonde, obviously. Because I’m blonde. But um, yeah, she could be anybody. I mean, honestly, these stories are so universal. I’ve had a lot of people read them and a lot of people in my program and they were like, yep, yep. So I’m really proud of it. And I hope people enjoy it. And I hope they see you know, like, there is a way out of our crazy ness. Even if you’re not a full blown sex and love addict, if you’re in a bad relationship, if you’re with an unavailable person, there is a way out You do not have to be in something that doesn’t make you a good person. And that’s what I say when people walk in the room. If your relationships your friends, your family, your partner, whoever. If people in your life bring drama, and don’t show up for you, then there’s a problem.
Victoria Volk 34:39
Yeah, our environment is a is a reflection of our internal environment and a mirror for us that probably there’s something we need to work on within ourselves. One more I have one more question. So, what has your grief taught you?
Brianne Davis 34:56
Okay, first thing and this took real long-time people, but grief can actually be your best friend. Grief can show you that there are some growing you need to do there some transformation that needs to be taken taken. There’s some loss that needs to be let go of. And I didn’t realize that when shedding my old skin and shedding my old persona, that, yes, I will miss that person. Yes, there was something titillating to life. What is that word? There’s something amazing. Yes, thank you about living that existence. But I had to walk through that grief. And doing that has brought me so much peace and serenity and able to process grief without holding it in how I used to, because holding in grief, and trauma and shame and secrets and all the other things. That’s what causes disease, that’s what causes, you know, you to make bad decisions. And if I didn’t allow myself to feel that pain and that loss, then I would have never learned that and I would be on my deathbed alone, you know, not truly intimate with anybody not truly connected to another soul, and most importantly, not truly connected to myself.
Victoria Volk 36:25
So let me ask you, then. So, your husband, so he came into the picture before you went through the program stuff? So first of all, how did that relationship come about? And then secondly, do you feel like the inner work that you have done? Is what helped? probably helped him grow alongside you? Like, did he start doing his own inner work and things too, because, you know, it’s like, there’s this paradox, right? When we start growing and evolving, sometimes either people that love us and care about us, either they’re gonna come along for the ride, or they’re not. And obviously, your husband did. So how did that? What was that like for you?
Brianne Davis 37:08
Well, the beautiful thing, and I have to say, my higher power God universe picked a man before that was already in a 12-step program. He has been in a he just celebrated 32 years of recovery. So, I picked somebody that understood what addiction was. And I think that’s the blessing of something bigger than me picking him. And I just remember, we had this moment where our mentor died. It was before I went into the program, our mentor died. And I thought I was over the cheating, the intrigue, the flirting when him and I started dating, and because he’s like, the best person I’ve ever met, I loved him as much as I could love somebody. And if we weren’t together, I’d want to be his friends, like I really cared about him. So, when our mentor died, I found myself two days later on location in another city, about to blow up our relationship completely bolt, blow it up. And I remember sitting in my hotel room going, I thought I was done with this, like, something is wrong with me, it can’t be every other guy. It can’t be that the butterflies go away, like something’s really wrong with me. And reaching out to the therapist doing the work, walking into sex and love Addicts Anonymous. And growing that first year of recovery, going through withdrawal for the nine months, starting my step work, turning it over finding a God, all of that my husband, and I didn’t have sex for a year. Oh, he was my boyfriend at the time. But we didn’t have sex for a year. And we both taught a conversation that sounded something like this. Like, if I have to get healthy and it breaks up our relationship, then that was that’s what has to get done. If we don’t work out, that’s what has to get done. And we were both willing to let go of each other, for me to get healthy. And in the process of finding myself grieving and him not being able because we live together him not being able to like comfort me if I’m crying, we had a rule. If I was crying, he could not come and talk to me or comfort me. I had to go through it myself. And I think us honoring those boundaries and understanding that this was bigger than him and I that he and he’d worked his program and I worked my program and luckily, we both grew but grew closer and it’s brought us so much. You know we celebrated our 16 years together our we got married on on our 10 year anniversary and it’s just been I’m just so grateful to have him as a partner.
Victoria Volk 39:58
It’s beautiful. I love that.
Brianne Davis 39:59
Thank you.
Victoria Volk 40:01
Congratulations for all of you go through what you grow through. What’s that quote? I don’t remember what it is. It’s something about how we grow through what? I cannot think of it. Oh my gosh, edit that out.
Brianne Davis 40:18
It’s okay. We can add it.
Victoria Volk 40:20
Yeah, no, I just, it’s a beautiful story of self sacrifice and for the higher good of both people. And I think that when you are confident and secure within yourself, were willing to set your ego aside.
Brianne Davis 40:41
Yeah, definitely.
Victoria Volk 40:44
Yeah. Is there anything else that you would like to share?
Brianne Davis 40:48
Yeah, I just want to say to anybody that’s listening. If you identified with anything I say, and you need help, please reach out to me, you can DM me? on Instagram, I try to answer everybody’s DMS it’s at the Brianne Davis, I can point you in the right direction, I can help you find meetings, that you do not have to do this alone. If you know you’re struggling with another addiction I or grieving a loss or suicide attempts. On my podcast, secret life, we talk about that a lot. There is help out there. And the first thing I always like to say is talk to somebody, talk to somebody you trust, you know, just say, I feel this way, I’m going through this pain because you are not alone. There’s so many people around the world feeling the exact same way. And I think that if we all band together and talk about it, then it takes the stigma away and we start healing and helping ourselves get through that pain, that trauma, that grief, that shame that secrets, whatever. So yeah, I just you know, get help at talk to a therapist, get to a program. There is so much help out there.
Victoria Volk 41:59
And be open to it be open to receiving I think that’s so hard too is when you feel like when you have self worth is issues, it’s really difficult to receive an ask, especially if you’ve been burned before, like you asked for help. And then it’s not the help. That was probably the right thing at the time. I think when when the teacher student is ready, the teacher appears totally agree grief recovery to its we as a society, we grew up learning to grieve alone. And the society does not know how to talk about grief. And, you know, be a heart with yours for people. So that’s why we grief alone.
Brianne Davis 42:36
Yeah, it’s probably too painful sometimes even for me, when you don’t know how to help someone that’s grieving. You then pull back and instead of opening up and leaning into like, I’m here, I don’t know how to help you. But I’m here if you need to talk if you need to be quiet, if you just need to cry, and I think just showing up that way can help so many others.
Victoria Volk 43:02
Absolutely. I think we’ll end on that.
Brianne Davis 43:03
Great.
Victoria Volk 43:04
Thank you so much for being here. I will put all of the things you mentioned in the show notes when you reach out to Brianne and her book and all of that. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.
