39: Six Steps for Spiritual Healing in the Family with Dr. Michael McGee
“Recovery is a practice of love.” -Dr. Michael McGee
Indeed! The one thing that love can change is everything. That is true as well in recovery. Without it, the only change that can happen is from bad to worse. In your journey, have you ever felt that things aren’t working out? Maybe our guest, Dr. Michael McGee can help. Growing up in a wounded family with an alcoholic father, an addicted brother and an abusive mother, Dr. Michael McGee felt broken and unloved. To get the love he earnestly desired, he became addicted to achievements, only to find that renouncing his ability to love under this pretence is a dark bottomless pit. His road to recovery brought him to where he is now- the Chief Medical Officer of The Haven, an addictions treatment facility based in California. With over 30 years of serving in the addiction field, he has already done researches that can help in spirituality and recovery. He is also an author and a geriatric, medical and general adult psychiatrist. And today, he’s going expand the definition of addiction and recovery in terms of integrating spirituality into modern medical treatment.
Addiction is a disease of habit, gratification and relief- the opposite of love. So in order to maintain our capacity to love and show unconditional kindness we must understand that being behind the eight ball doesn’t give us a pass to treat recovery as a hopeless endeavour. This is why, Dr McGee’s core principles for family members with a loved one at any stage of addiction or recovery can be a turnaround. Learn more about his six core principles to help get your loved ones sober. As he spills the beans of recovery, do not be surprised by how simple things like keeping yourself safe and maintaining vitality can affect your loved ones. On top of that, know how to properly reinforce a desired behaviour by knowing when to give rewards and when to take them away. Surely, you don’t want to shield your loved one from the consequences of their actions as that can thwart any progress you have made. So remember that whatever you do, a combination of hope and a therapeutic dose of pain is a transformative force for healing. Discover why holding them accountable can help them to behave at a level of functioning which they are capable. But of course, when our loved one does not respond favourably to our efforts, it can be a total bummer. Dr. McGee can give us advice in that area too. Also included in our table today: how healers can heal themselves. Don’t miss these and other valuable gems inside today’s episode.
Highlights:
04:12 50 Cents
09:50 Addiction and How It Consumes the Capacity to Love
19:40 An Advice for Healers
20:59 Six Core Principles to Help Loved Ones Get Sober
31:00 Destigmatizing the Neutral Language of Codependency
Resources:
The Joy of Recovery- A Guide to Healing from Addiction by Dr. Michael McGee
Beyond Addiction- How Science and Kindness Help People Change by Jeffrey Foote
Join this warm conversation on #loveheals #sixstepstorecovery with our host, @TFRSolution and @dr_michaelmcgee. Share on X
Connect With Michael
Website: https://drmichaelmcgee.com/
Email: info@wellmind.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drmichaelmcgee
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dr_michaelmcgee
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wellmind-with-dr.-michael-mcgee/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLvCRXwmCvE5BhzP6erZuXg
Telephone: 805-459-8232
Fax: 877-399-5883
Quotes:
08:27 “My work is really focused around recovery as the practice of love. And really, my work with patients is to help them to learn to love themselves and learn to love others, and to love life.” -Dr. Michael McGee
09:05 “We need to see beyond our pain, and learn to cultivate an experience of reverence for ourselves and others. Then go out into the world and then practice enhancing our lives and the lives of others, and engaging in a practice of love.” -Dr. Michael McGee
09:55 “Part of how I see addiction is, it’s a… shift in connection, like a connection from human relationship, or human interaction to some kind of substance or behavior. And the connection to that becomes greater than connection to a deeper part of oneself for our connection to another human being.” -Jeff Jones
10:59 “And relationships become manipulative and inauthentic, and fear and power-based rather than love-based. It really is true that addiction destroys the love in a family if it’s not managed and healed.” -Dr. Michael McGee
16:04 “This was just life eating on life, which we all do. I mean, each of us have consumed life today to keep ourselves alive.” -Dr. Michael McGee
17:39 “Addiction makes them a stranger because the loved one that they have is no longer the loved one that’s in front of them.” -Jeff Jones
19:40 “But I think that it’s also important in this work, that we not only read the books but that we also engage as healers in our own spiritual growth.” -Dr. Michael McGee
21:59 “You have to be healthy and vital if you’re going to help a loved one with addiction. So that means taking good care of yourself and protecting yourself from harm.” -Dr. Michael McGee
23:13 “I tell people: ‘Do not end a relationship unless you must do so for your own health and well-being’.” -Dr. Michael McGee
23:31 “Love is not a feeling. Love is deeper than feeling. Love is an attitude… Love is an attitude of unconditional commitment to the well-being of another person.” -Dr. Michael McGee
29:26 “Just as nobody recovers alone, nobody heals a family alone.” -Dr. Michael McGee
28:58 “Another really important thing is to realize that there’s nothing to be ashamed of when somebody suffers from addiction.” -Dr. Michael McGee
35:47 “…patience, and persistence, and hope are really, really important. But at the same time, people need to engage in surrendered action… to act with love, to do the loving thing for yourself and others.” -Dr. Michael McGee
36:06 “Really let go the outcome. We are autonomous beings, and you can’t force somebody to change, you can’t force somebody to heal.” -Dr. Michael McGee
37:39 “We’re not loving other people with any kind of idea that somehow we can control them, make them do the right thing.” -Dr. Michael McGee
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions
This episode of Families Navigating Addiction and Recovery is sponsored by The Family Recovery Solution where we recognize that families are the biggest stakeholder in this addiction crisis and we see that families can be a stronger part of the solution in their own family, in their communities, and in our world. We know that addiction in the family is not the fault of the family. We know that family engagement increases the potential of change happening sooner and positive outcomes lasting longer, as well as navigating healing connections in the family now and well into the future. So we’ve created an online platform for families to safely navigate this journey at their pace. Check out www.thefamilyrecoverysolution.com
JEFF: Welcome, this is Jeff Jones on the Podcast Families Navigating Addiction and Recovery. Today, my guest is Dr. Michael McGee and I am just meeting him for the first time. Oh my gosh! Some of the conversation and the points of overlap are wonderful. So Dr. McGee, he’s an addiction psychiatrist. He has been in the addiction world for 30 plus years and he is the chief medical officer at the Haven. He has done quite a bit of research around spirituality and recovery, which I want to ask him about. He is also a book author, which hopefully in this conversation he will tell us more about. So welcome Michael.
MICHAEL: It’s great to be here. Thank you for having me.
JEFF: Yeah, you’re welcome. And so if we could start out if you could introduce yourself and let the people who are listening to this, which is mainly family members, if you could introduce yourself so they would really get an idea as to who you are.
MICHAEL: Sure – sure. Absolutely. So I’ve been doing addiction psychiatry as you mentioned for about 30 years. I live in the Central Coast of California near San Luis Obispo. And I work as the chief medical officer at the Haven, which is a psychiatric treatment facility that specializes in the treatment of addictions. I’ve written a book called the Joy of Recovery, which really captures my 30 years of clinical experience in treating addictions and learning through long experience and an understanding of the recovery literature, what really works for people in recovery. And my book, the Joy of Recovery is really focused on providing a guide for healing and recovery for people that I call it sort of the new 12 step approach. But what it is, is based on 12 touchstones of recovery that really span the areas of recovery that I think are most important for people to master as they recover from addiction and realize joy in their lives, which is really the whole point of recovery in the first place.
JEFF: Great. Great. And can you talk a little bit about, you know, maybe what led you into the addiction interest?
MICHAEL: Sure, sure. I can tell you a little bit about myself and my past history. I grew up in a family with a father who suffered from alcoholism and a brother who also has suffered from addiction. And they’re both in recovery I can happy to say. And I in my own way grew up in, what I would say a wounded family. And I liked the idea of thinking of a family as a wounded entity. Both my parents had really, really, really hard childhoods, very traumatic childhoods. And I think so many people just like my parents go into having families wounded and out of their wounding, tend to perpetuate that wound in this, not because of any malintent really, but because of a lack of a capacity to love and to safely and effectively love. And then that gets passed on from generation to generation.
So, I suffered the trauma of some abuse, physical abuse, and significant neglect at the hands of a mother who wasn’t really capable of really fully loving me. And as a result of that, I entered my adulthood if feeling unwhole and broken and unlovable myself. When I was about six years old, I remember I came home from school and I think I was depressed. I’ve gotten an A in math and my mom showed me a rare moment of recognition and gave me 50 cents for getting that A in Math. And I can still remember that day like suddenly lighting up like: “Oh my god! I just got my mom’s attention and I got some approval from her.” And I quickly, it’s like that moment changed my life and my whole life agenda then came to getting A’s or just succeeding if you will or achieving in order to get my mother’s love.
JEFF: Right.
MICHAEL: And that became my addiction, just sort of an addiction to achievement as a way of feeling, lovable through achievement. So my recovery has been about really a renouncing that way of being in the world instead of living to achieve, instead of living to love, instead of living to be special, really living to be useful to others. And so that really captures the essence of my own addiction and my recovery. I got into addiction recovery work out of my residency training. Being a typical overachiever, I went to Stanford for my undergraduate and medical school and then went to Harvard for my residency training. And then went out and started working in a dual diagnosis program where I learned about addiction treatment. And I saw the miracle of the 12 step approach in which is really fascinated with the only place I saw in medicine where spirituality was integrated in with modern medical treatment and that became a theme for the rest of my life was the integration of spirituality into medical care. And really developing a bio, psychosocial spiritual approach towards recovery, which is really what I’ve been working on developing. And I speak a lot about that in my book and right about that, yeah. So that’s sort of the summary of me.
JEFF: Great. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate your framing addiction from the standpoint of addiction to overachieving. And so oftentimes, you know, addiction is limited to drinking or drug use and sometimes things like gambling or food or something like that. It’s refreshing for me to hear in your introduction that you’ve expanded that definition. And it sounds like you have taken that seriously in your life and in your recovery and made some huge changes.
MICHAEL: I really learned, and my work is really focused around recovery is the practice of love. And really my work with patients is to help them to learn to love themselves and learn to love others and to love life. And the spiritual aspect of this is to wake up to the truth that this moment is sacred and that we are all sacred beyond measure and this life is measurably sacred. And the woundedness and the trauma that we’ve experienced, the damages our spirituality and that sense of our lovability and the sacredness of life is a lie and that what we need to do is see beyond our pain and learn to cultivate and experience of reverence for ourselves and others and then go out into the world and then practice enhancing our lives and the lives of others and engaging in a practice of love. I think that approach to recovery is by far the most powerful and the most effective and the most concise way that I can understand healing addiction and I think that goes for a family system as well. It really is through a practice of loving engagement with members of our family who suffer from an addiction that we really heal ourselves and our family at the same time.
JEFF: Yeah. Wow, that’s beautiful. So I mean, part of how I see addiction is it’s, this may not be the right language, but there’s a shift in connection, like a connection from human relationship or human interaction to some kind of substance or behavior and the connection to that becomes greater than connection to a deeper part of oneself or our connection to another human being.
MICHAEL: Yes, that’s right. We lose our connection to each other out of love and instead basically get entangled in it. These drive reward system that neurobiologically is driving us towards either gratification or relief, that is not a love agenda. That is an addiction agenda. And when everything gets cast within sort of the value hierarchy of the addiction, then love gets cast aside and relationships become manipulative and inauthentic and fear and power based rather than love based. It really is true that addiction destroys the love in a family if it’s not managed and healed.
JEFF: Yeah. So from the standpoint of the family, I really appreciate your comment there that addiction destroys the love in the family. There are some trends or themes that I’ve seen over the last couple of years specifically more and more and that is like specifically with teenagers and when families have some financial resources, oftentimes the teens will go from one program to another program, then they get education and oftentimes it’s professionals who launched them it seems like. I’ve always kind of wondered like, well, so where does the connection, like reconnecting, where does that happen? Or when does that happen? Or is it kind of like, is there an idealism that, you know, once Johnny gets clean and sober. He’s been clean and sober and graduated from high school and in college and doing well, that then automatically the whatever relational wreckage or damage happened in the family is automatically healed and it’s not. I know it’s not, but I often wonder like how does that get healed? What are the possibilities?
So I mean, what I know of is that sometimes healing happens, you know, and it is amazing. And there’s family therapy, I mean that is a modality that we have had for quite some time. There’s quite a bit of research there, but I’ve also seen some families where, you know, like someone has a new understanding and they want to connect in a different way with their family members and that can like initiate new behavior, new connections. But so it’s just like in the addiction treatment stuff, I haven’t really, I’ve seen this gap. And what’s your perspective of that?
MICHAEL: Sure. Well, I think the time to love is now. And if you were to imagine that a family member was suffering from diabetes or cancer, and let’s say that they were in denial around their illness and they were refusing treatment and they were being hostile towards people that were trying to help them, you would have compassion for them and you would maintain an open heart. The nature of addiction is that it takes an extra step, a spiritual step to have an open loving heart towards somebody with an addiction, because the person who is caught up in the addiction is by NIF a definition, a profoundly unloving person. I’m reminded of a recently, there’s a scam going on with criminals who are impersonating DEA agents. And this criminal called me and said that he was from the DEA and that my license to practice was being revoked and that there was a warrant out for my arrest because they had discovered that I was exporting drugs to Mexico.
JEFF: Oh my gosh!
MICHAEL: And it was just an extortion scam. They were trying to get me to pay a $500,000 fine. And fortunately, my wife Linda was there and saying, hang up, hang up. And which I did and called the DEA and found out about the scam. But, you know, my initial reaction to this criminal was this person was trying to destroy me financially and for their own gain. In my immediate emotional reaction was one of, you know, animosity and intense anger, if you will to this somebody who would try and harm me in that way. And it really took an extra spiritual step for me to sort of say, you know, I don’t know this person’s background. I don’t know their genetic makeup. I don’t know what kind of childhood, what kind of parents they had, what kind of culture they were raised in. And when I reflected on it, I realized that this sort of predatory antisocial behavior on this person’s part was just the best that they knew how to survive and that they lacked the capacity to experience, if you will, love for other people and that this was just life feeding on life, which we all do. I mean, both of us have both consume life today to keep ourselves alive and this is just a process.
And I felt a sense of profound compassion for this criminal who had tried to prey upon me. And I share that story because I think that when we have a family member who’s caught in the web of addiction, we need to realize that the addiction is taken away their capacity to love and that they are just trying to survive in the best way that they know how, which will include exploiting us and manipulating us in line to us in order to get what they need to feed their addiction. This is a disease. And when you see it that way, and when you don’t take it personally and realize that this person has the disease and their capacity to love, then you can have profound compassion and that’s where the connections start. You need to set limits. You need to protect yourself. You need to go through a bunch of principles, which I call CRAFT based principles to help a loved one healing from addiction, but it starts with love and compassion for the person who’s suffering from addiction.
JEFF: Yeah – yeah. Oh my gosh! Wow! I’m really struck with the intensity of your story because I definitely get the relationship with family members. I mean, they know this person. It isn’t like they’re a stranger. However, addiction makes them a stranger because the loved one that they have is no longer the loved one that’s in front of them, you know.
MICHAEL: Brilliantly [inaudible]
JEFF: Addiction has come in and kind of, you know, put their hooks into that person and impaired their brain and their thinking. One of the things that I try to remember myself and I say a lot of families is let’s try to separate the personhood of your loved one from the addiction. And there are things that we can say to the person and there are other separate things that we can say to addiction and that has helped me. But wow, Michael, I’m really impressed. Your ability to, it sounds like pretty quickly to have this situation happened to you where someone is trying to harm you and initially have normal human reactions, like getting angry and wanting to protect yourself. But then, you know, once you see a larger picture, it’s like when you’re starting to be curious about things that you don’t know. Like what this person, like the stress that they’re under or, you know, what they bring to the table as far as the makeup inside of them or their childhood or something like that. So yeah, I can tell that you have done an immense amount of spiritual work yourself to be able to do that relatively quickly.
MICHAEL: Well, that’s kind of you to say. I certainly have a long, long way to go, but I think what’s so important in this work that we don’t only read the books, but that we also engage as healers in our own spiritual growth. I really think that we can only bring patients as far as we’ve come ourselves. And it really is the authenticity of our lived experience that I think is the most healing. It’s important to understand the literature and to understand evidence-based ways of helping people, though the technical aspects are really important. But our treatment of protest to be a combination of evidence-based combined with experience based. And so it’s so important in our work, for example, with family members that we really attend to our own spirituality, to our own health, to our own well-being, to really maintain our capacity to love because it really is maintaining that capacity to love that opens the door and sets the stage for healing of the person who’s fallen into the trap of addiction.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah. Wow. So, can you talk a little bit more so family members might have a better sense of what evidence-based means? And I really liked the way you’ve framed evidence-based and combining that with an experience based.
MICHAEL: Right. Well, let’s talk a little bit about the core principles of how to help a loved one gets sober.
JEFF: Sure. Okay.
MICHAEL: Those are really important. It’s really the combination of science and kindness. The first principle is to show people unconditional compassion. This is probably the most difficult thing is unconditional kindness and compassion. Even if somebody is exploiting you or attempting to harm you, you obviously want to protect yourself. So actually, that would be the first principle is to get safe and stay safe and protect yourself and maintain your own vitality that’s really, really critical. When you have an addicted family member, your family system, which is in crisis, it’s kind of like when the plane is starting to go down and the oxygen masks drop from the ceiling, you need to put on your own mask before you can help somebody else. You’re no good if you’re no good. You have to be healthy and vital if you’re going to help a loved one with an addiction. So that means taking good care of yourself and protecting yourself from harm. Really not letting somebody who’s suffering from addiction harm you.
I think that we have to go into the world with both a shield and a candle of love. We really need that shield to protect ourselves and we really need to attend to our own health and well-being so that we can be there to help our loved ones. So that would be the first principle is to protect and maintain your own vitality so that you have the capacity to love and help another person. The second principle is to deeply understand the addiction and to understand that this is a brain disorder. It’s a disease of habit. It is organized around the principle of gratification and relief rather than the principle of love and that everything that the person is doing is driven towards experiencing gratification or relief and that they have lost their will to some degree. There’s been impairment in their control. And when you understand that and you don’t take the disease personally then you have the capacity to be unconditionally kind. And I tell people do not end a relationship unless you must do so for your own health and well-being. But if you love a person, if you truly love them, if you truly have a commitment to them and their well-being beyond, and I talked about people about love is not a feeling. Love is deeper than a feeling. Love is an attitude.
If your child gets mad and yells at you and throws their meal across the room and kicks and screams, you’re not going to kick them out the door and tell them to get another parent. You’re going to love them and take care of them and get them cleaned up. And you may discipline them, but you make sure that they get off to school and that they have a safe place to come home to when they come home that night. Love is an attitude of unconditional commitment to the well-being of another person. If you have that attitude towards a loved one who suffers from addiction, treat them with respect and kindness in all your communications. And if you’re angry and you’re not capable of doing that, or if you’re afraid, get yourself safe and get yourself settled and get yourself calm. Get yourself regulated and get yourself into a loving attitude so that you can then maintain a positive engagement and loving communication with your loved one. So the second principle is unconditional, loving communication and connection.
JEFF: Beautiful.
MICHAEL: Thank you. Thank you. The third principle is to heavily reward recovery behavior. If somebody is behaving in a healthy way, you want them to really experience the positive rewards of that. So if somebody comes home sober, you know, make sure that they have a wonderful evening with you. The fourth principle is that is to remove the rewards if they’re engaging in negative addiction behavior. So if somebody comes home drunk, for example, you might say: “Look, I’m sorry you came home drunk. You know, I love you, but I can’t spend time with you when you’re drunk. There’s some food in the fridge get yourself whatever you want. I’m going to go into the other room and read a book.”
JEFF: That’s the CRAFT kind of approach. That’s beautiful.
MICHAEL: Yes. Exactly. Remove the positive rewards for negative behavior. It’s not the same as punishment. I don’t think punishment works.
JEFF: Yeah.
MICHAEL: And harming other people is not loving. So, I don’t believe in punishment, but I do believe in taking away positive rewards in the context of negative behavior. And then the last principle is to not shield people, well there are two more principals. One is a CRAFT principal and the other is one that I’ve added to that. The next principle is that you don’t want to shield people from the natural negative consequences of their disease or their behavior. I feel like the recipe for change, for transformation, for healing from addiction is a healthy combination of hope combined with pain. People in families underestimate the sacred value of pain as a transformative force for growth and healing. And so if somebody, you know, drives and they get arrested for a DUI and they go to jail, you know, don’t bail them out.
JEFF: Yeah.
MICHAEL: Let them experience the consequences of what they did. Let them experience a therapeutic dose of pain. But then if you combine that with love and support and kindness, then you’re providing the hope that goes along with the pain.
JEFF: Yeah. I’m interrupting. But I just love the fact that it’s like not doing black and white thinking, right and wrong. It’s like both hands. Hope and pain.
MICHAEL: Right.
JEFF: A healthy dose.
MICHAEL: Exactly. And the last principle I mentioned is to hold people to the expectations and hold them accountable to behaving, to taking responsibility for managing their illness and for behaving and acting at the level of functioning to which they’re capable. I think that’s very, very loving to do. Accountability isn’t under-recognized love practice and holding people accountable for caring for themselves, and for loving themselves, and forgetting the treatment they need, and for supporting themselves, and functioning in a decent loving way in the world is so critical to helping people recover. So, you know, there are many, many different love practices. I do think that recovery is the practice of love and helping somebody heal from addiction. It is also the practice of love as well.
JEFF: Wow. Wow. I really like those six principles that you put out there and you framed them from the standpoint of the family. And I’m wondering like are those principles also principles that are in your book for the individual in recovery?
MICHAEL: Yes. I have a chapter in my book on for families in terms of helping a loved one with an addiction. So in the Joy of Recovery people can look, learn more about the book at the JoyofRecovery.com or go to Amazon. There is a free version, a Kindle version, which is free. So if people are without resources, they can really learn about how to help a loved one with this book for free.
JEFF: Oh, great. Wow. Wow. So in the conversation that we’re having here, and I’m realizing, you know, that I could talk and talk and talk with you. I’m appreciating that. But from the conversation that we’ve had, is there like something that you haven’t said that stands out for you right now as a critical piece that you would like people to take away?
MICHAEL: Sure. Well, I guess the other thing is just as nobody recovers alone, nobody heals a family alone. And so it’s really important to get help. I mean, I think that if somebody is in a crisis of addicting, I think that they really should be seeking out services from somebody like yourself that the family recovery solution and getting help. This is very, very difficult work and it does not work that people can do alone. So getting help and then reducing shame and stigma, I think is another really important thing is to realize that there’s nothing to be ashamed of when somebody suffers from an addiction.
JEFF: Yeah.
MICHAEL: That’s so important to be humble, to reach out, to get help, to get connected and to get the support and guidance of others is so critical.
JEFF: So Michael, before we turn the recording on, it’s like you mentioned this thing about language and labeling and codependency and how that word is just, well, I mean like how I think of it is that is like really, really problematic. Because I’ve worked in treatment centers before where, and I did the group for the family program and it’s like, oh yeah, just kind of teach them something about codependency and it’s like: “Oh my gosh, I couldn’t do that.”
MICHAEL: Oh that’s so good that you had the instinct to not go that direction.
JEFF: It’s just that I have watched, like if I use that word in a group, I just watch the body language of families and, you know, it’s like that’s in our culture though. And it’s like, so there’s this stigma and I mean very well-meaning therapists and professionals use that language. And I really believe they had the best of intent, but it’s not helpful. And so in our conversation when you mentioned that, I’m so on board with that and I really like to support, de-stigmatizing neutral language and seeing, like acknowledging that family members are trying to do their best in an untenable situation.
MICHAEL: Thank you. Yes, exactly.
JEFF: I love what you were saying like that I had no one can do this alone.
MICHAEL: No.
JEFF: No family can do this alone. But then in the culture, we have this stigmatizing language where families, you know, for very good reasons because this residual still exists. Families don’t want to reach out because that just doesn’t feel true to them that they’re being codependent when they’re trying to do everything they can to keep their family members alive. You know? So
MICHAEL: It’s a dumb old trauma. It’s really heartbreaking. But people are in crisis, their suffering, their lives are falling apart. People they deeply love are behaving very destructively and they’re seeing their life crumble before their eyes and they go into treatment and then they’re labeled as codependent.
JEFF: Right.
MICHAEL: It’s sort of like retraumatization. It’s like a double trauma. We need to understand that people are in crisis and that we are wired to love. We are wired to make attachments. We are wired to devote ourselves to each other and to have a commitment to somebody who suffers from addiction and a commitment to wanting to help them is not pathological. It’s actually noble to what helps somebody.
JEFF: To get help get them out of the crisis.
MICHAEL: Right. Right.
JEFF: You know, and family members are in crisis. And when family members are in crisis, it’s a normal human response that the body has. The nervous system activates to a point of overwhelm and like there’s less blood that flows to the part of the brain that can make the best decision. You know all this stuff better than I do.
MICHAEL: Yes. Limbic hijacking, they call that.
JEFF: Okay. So and that’s what happens to family members and it’s like they’re trying to do their best and they’re in a crisis situation trying to make really crucial, important decisions at a time when their internal functioning is not working really well.
MICHAEL: Well put. Exactly.
JEFF: When you were like those six strategies that you put out there, like one of the first ones was to get yourself safe and I say it differently, but it’s like I say, try to like create an environment that helps the nervous system come back to calm. You know, you said something similar a different way, but it’s like, because when that happens, family members will naturally be in a better space to make good decisions for themselves. And so, wow. Yeah. So Michael, I kind of felt like we were bringing this conversation to an end and then I throw this topic out there. So any other points that you want to put out here before we bring this to an end. And I’m going to ask how people can connect with you or find out more about your information. But before I asked that, any other points that you want to leave here.
MICHAEL: Well, I think, I guess a few points is I think the hope that most people eventually do recover from addiction, and patience and persistence and hope is really, really important. But at the same time, people need to engage in surrendered action. And what I mean by that is to act with love, to do the loving thing for yourself and others, to engage in all those principles that I mentioned, but to really let go of the outcome. And that’s very, very difficult. We are autonomous beings and you can’t force somebody to change. You can’t force somebody to heal. And so there’s a very, very painful but necessary part of dealing with a loved one with an addiction, which is this idea of surrendered action. You really have to do your best and let go of a need, surrender the need for a certain outcome, knowing that this person may or may not choose recovery. It may or may not be capable of choosing recovery. And it can be very, very sad.
So if that’s the case, then there is a need for a grieving process that this was such a powerful illness, that it really was not something that the person had full control over. I have to deal with this personally every day in my work professionally, because I can’t change people and I can’t fix them. And there’s a sense of giving my all but also respecting the other person’s autonomy and really letting go. I can hope for somebody, but I have to let go of needing for somebody to heal. It’s just it’s beyond my control. And so family members, I think you had to have this combination of hope, and patience, and persistence, relentless persistence, but also this respecting the autonomy of the person that they are loving. We’re not loving other people with any kind of idea that somehow we can control them or make them do the right thing. So I think there’s a need to have this capacity sometimes to be able to grieve. That’s so important. The capacity –
JEFF: That’s the 2nd time that I’ve heard or the third time that I’ve heard you say the word grieve. And I’m so thankful that you brought that in here because grieving is very, very important. And there’s grieving that happens at many different stages. There’s grieving that happens when, you know, family members really get in touch with themselves and the loss of the relationship that they used to have with that person and what that was and what that meant. So yeah, and I love that you’re saying and acknowledging we cannot change another person.
MICHAEL: No, we cannot.
JEFF: But we can change ourself. We can like go into our own depth, you know, and our own spiritual process to have a better understanding of what’s going on in front of us or around us.
MICHAEL: Absolutely. Yeah. This is a deeply, profoundly spiritual word. It’s really about letting go of grasping for things being a certain way or pushing away painful things and basically picking a fight with the sacred or with God, whatever language you want to use. We need to practice an unconditional reverence and appreciation for this moment exactly as it is. And ironically, if you practice an unconditional reverence and appreciation for this moment exactly it is, then you set up the conditions for this moment evolving into something that will hopefully be better.
JEFF: Wow. Michael, this has just been a wonderful conversation. I thank you very much for meeting you and the exchange and sharing what you’ve shared on the podcast. And so if you could talk about how people can get your book, say the name of it again. I did hear you say the website but and anything else that you want to like resources you want to put out there.
MICHAEL: Oh sure. There’s a great book, which you may be aware of family members who are in crisis. Two books that I recommend. One is called Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change by Jeffrey Foote F-O-O-T-E and there are some other authors as well. And then there’s a shorter, a little bit easier book, but not as comprehensive called Get Your Loved Ones Sober by Robert Meyers and another author. Those two books are great resources. I think that people who are listening, if they’re struggling with a family in crisis, they really should reach out to you, Jeff, for your services. That’s so important. As far as myself, my book is called the Joy of Recovery. You can get it on Amazon. It’s free as a kindle version. My website is DrMichaelMcGee.com that’s D-R Michael M-C-G-E-E.com or you can go to the joyofrecovery.com. I have a number of resources that are on my website for people who are interested in recovery work. My email address that people are interested in reaching out to me is M as in Michael, D as in David, McGee at well mind, that’s like the happy brain. Well mind.com mdmcgee@wellmind.com And so people can feel free to reach out to me there too.
JEFF: Wow. Thank you very much, Michael. I appreciate it.
MICHAEL: Okay.