18: Healing addiction and the role of your family – Cody Wooten interview Jeff Jones
“I really see where addiction in the family can create an opportunity for transformation for everyone” -Jeff Jones
Tables have been turned and Jeff is being put under the spotlight for this episode. Cody Wooten will be interviewing and Jeff Jones will be the one answering the questions.
Just a bit of a background about our interviewer: Cody Wooten has his own podcast called “Emerge leadership connection” and it is centered around leadership ideas and concepts to unlock legendary leadership. Jeff is connecting with Cody in line with the similarity of their mission; what Jeff is doing in addiction Cody is doing in business and leadership.
Jeff has always been curious about families, addiction and trauma. As a therapist by trade, he has made it his mission in some way to understand and guide people through these circumstances. Jeff talks to Cody about his own journey with his own demons, how addiction can affect the whole family unit and the ways that can help them heal together.
Jeff also discusses the significance of his upcoming book entitled “It’s not your fault: Recognizing the family solution to addiction disruption” and how it can truly guide, not just the addicted party, but the whole family itself towards healing.
Highlights:
07:25 What’s up with Jeff Jones?
14:09 What does addiction really mean?
33:45 And there is the Spotlight Diagram…
51:10 The labels are now identified
62:00 Jeff’s own story
73:18 The roles people play in the life of an addict
79:19 Jeff talks about his book “It’s not your fault: Recognizing the family solution to addiction disruption”
Tweets:
Now tables have been turned and we are putting our very own @TFRSolution Jeff Jones in the spotlight. Listen to Cody Wooten breakdown what’s the real score about addiction and how Jeff Jones can help you.
Connect With Jeff
Website: http://thefamilyrecoverysolution.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tfrsolution
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefamilyrecoverysolution/
Connect With Cody
Personal Website: http://www.lococoyote.enterprises/
Podcast site: https://www.emergeleadership.club/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codywootencoyote/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/codywootencoyote/
Email: coyote.codyd@gmail.com
Quotes:
13:09 “Family members need to change their expectations, you have more ability to change your expectations than your loved one does… addiction is addiction” -Jeff Jones
15:30 “The 3 main stakeholders of addiction, are individuals, families, and communities, and that’s kinda the trajectory of impact” -Jeff Jones
18:35 “When recovery is a family process the healing is going to spread further, last longer, have a bigger impact” -Jeff Jones
27:05 “Change takes time” -Cody Wooten
39:55 “…a leadership failure in your family if you recognize that there is a problem and you don’t want to confront it, it’s a leadership failure” -Cody Wooten
55:58 “They haven’t learned enough how they interact with others to really do what’s in their hearts, so they accidentally hurt the people around them” -Cody Wooten, speaking about why in addiction people can get hurt
57:17 “The problem with the traditional idea is that they expect the person with the problem to do all of the changing by themselves…if you expect someone else to change, then you need to also expect that there is something you need to change” -Cody Wooten
59:27 “I really see where addiction in the family can create an opportunity for transformation for everyone”-Jeff Jones
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions
JEFF: I’m honored to have Milestones Ranch Malibu sponsor this episode of this podcast. Milestones Ranch is a small 12 bed premier dual diagnosis residential facility that believes that addiction problems in a family do not happen in a vacuum. Everyone has taken on impact and everyone deserves healing from the ramifications of addiction. I’ve experienced milestones myself. I’ve been there feet on the ground, firsthand, and over time of working with this team, I’ve seen the benefit of a group of dedicated professionals supporting families’ long term positive outcomes, what they call The Milestones Method. I have the utmost respect for their team and their collaborative model of health. So, check out their website at www.milestonesranch.com.
Hello, this is Jeff from The Families Navigating Addiction and Recovery Podcast, I’m the host. And so, this episode is going to be a little bit different and it’s different in a number of different ways. And one is I am the one who is being interviewed here where normally I’m interviewing someone else here. Cody Wooten is interviewing me. And so this is a pretty in depth conversation oftentimes if podcast goes an hour, it’s a long time. This is about an hour and 45 minutes, so he’s very inquisitive guy. He’s very passionate about what he’s doing. What he’s doing is around leadership and he has his own podcast called Emerge Leadership Connection. And so, he is really connecting his listeners with ideas and concepts to help unlock what he calls Legendary Leadership, so you can emerge and become who you were meant to be.
So you might ask like, why would I be connecting with someone like Cody who has this emerge leadership connection podcast? Well, largely what we’re doing, we have a very similar mission. And we’re like what he’s doing in business, I’m doing in the addiction recovery space and focusing on families. For families really to be able to come together to be united and strengthen their own leadership, their own ability to lead in their own families, which I think is a really big deal because so often times the individual who’s in addiction when they get into recovery and they’d be, you know, able to be there for a while and stay clean and sober. They ended up leading the family into a whole change process and I’ve seen that a number of times over.
And so what I’m doing with the family recovery solution, the deep community and this podcast really is starting to plant seeds along a specific pathway for family members to go from the defensive coping that I grew up with as a child and is kind of the normal structure that’s created in families too. Going to, getting past one’s defensive coping mechanisms and moving on to a place of thriving in one’s own life individually and actually changing the structure in the family to increase protective factors at bare minimum. But one thing I can say, Cody Wooten, I think on the podcast, he goes by Cody Dakota. So his website is emergeleadership.club and so it’s Cody Wooten who is interviewing me here.
CODY: All right. How you doing today, Jeff?
JEFF: Oh my gosh. Well, I’m a little bit scrambled because I just got an end from a wonderful walk, but all in all I am doing really well. I feel incredibly blessed in my life. Be able to walk out my door and, you know, just in a lot of beauty. So, yeah.
CODY: Definitely. You’re in Colorado, right?
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah. And I live in this cohousing community. We have about 40 acres and I can just go outside and walk along the ditch and we have open space on three sides.
CODY: That is absolutely amazing. I was born and raised in Colorado, so the beauty that is in Colorado is absolutely phenomenal. It’s one of the things I miss being away from Colorado.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah. I’m sure.
CODY: And 40 acres, that is gigantic.
JEFF: I know. Yeah. We have 42 houses, so on about 40 acres we have a farm and a community building and a woodshop and etc. etc. Yeah. So, I am very blessed in my life to have the environment, the container that I do.
CODY: That’s awesome. And then just before we started recording, you told me that someone in your family had some pretty awesome news.
JEFF: Yeah. So my sister’s youngest daughter just had a baby today. It’s like, so yeah, I am, I got this text from my sister with a photograph of her. And it’s just cute, cute, cute, very inquisitive eyes, you know. And so yeah, I’m jazzed.
CODY: That’s awesome. Babies are, they’re such a blessing. They’re so, I personally find them to be a blessing and so adorable and just, it’s amazing.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah.
CODY: Awesome. So we met at the New Media Summit and you are working on what I think is some really amazing stuff and that’s why we’re having this conversation right now, so I’ll leave it to you. Tell me and everyone listening what it is you’re working on.
JEFF: Oh my gosh! Well that’s a very broad open ended question there. [laughs]
CODY: [laughs] The person who knows it best is you and so I don’t want to take that away from you.
JEFF: Yeah, thank you. Thanks.
CODY: You’re welcome.
JEFF: I have been a therapist, I got my master’s degree back in 2006. and I really wanted to focus on something that I saw there was a need that I was passionate about that really meant something to me. And I as a therapist, you can be a generalist and there’s a lot of things out there where there’s a need, but I looked at my own family and families with an addiction. So, I have a story like that that I’ve always been curious about. And so I learned more about families. I learned more about addiction and I learned more about trauma. So those three are kind of like a core triad for me. And I, after seeing individuals in my private practice who were in some role in the family with addiction, I learned some invitational intervention models. So there’s a couple different summer, invitational summer, more surprise kind of thing. And the invitational ones were more, I was more in alignment with some of the surprise ones. There’s, I know they’ve saved people’s lives, but on the other side of it is there’s quite a bit of trauma that can happen.
CODY: Yeah. So just to make sure we’re clear and everyone listening is clear. We’re talking about interventions for people with strong addiction going on. So sometimes it’s an invitation to come into those meetings and sometimes it’s a surprise. That’s like the ones you see on TV where everyone’s already sitting in a circle and they walk into the room thinking it’s going to be something else and then all of a sudden everyone’s telling them about what the problems that are happening that are based around that addiction. That’s kind of more the surprise model, right?
JEFF: Yeah. And there’s, you know, letters are written and the old style is, you know, the interventionists would encourage people to write letters that essentially used the relationship as leverage to get that person to go into treatment. And it was a one shot deal, so if it didn’t work, the encouragement was to stay true to everything you put in that letter, that wedge essentially some message like, you know, if you don’t go to treatment you’re never welcome in my house again. You will never see your nieces again because like I do not want my children seeing you period. So here’s the deal, that or go to treatment. I mean, that kind of letter.
CODY: Yeah, it’s kind of do it or else. And that’s, especially with someone who’s facing addiction. And you obviously have a lot more experience in this area than me, but I feel like that is a very harsh place to put someone because of the way addictions work it’s very under the rug kind of thing. It happens under, it’s almost like a back process in your brain when you’re facing in an addiction. And to put it on such a black or white situation seems very harsh and would, to me seem very difficult for the person that has to face that.
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: Because from the people I’ve known with addictions and, you know, addictions in my own life, sometimes it’s hard to say like this is going to end simply because so vehemently is in the back of your mind even if you don’t want it to be there. Like sometimes it is a presence, you’re literally trying to push away and it keeps coming back unexpectedly. So it seems that way.
JEFF: Yeah, absolutely! Yeah. Well, the old style is confrontation, you know.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: And that’s the old method. And there’s a lot of people that still like that’s what they got clean and sober with and so that’s what they believe is going to be most helpful for someone else. And, you know, for some people that works, you know, at some stage and sometimes that doesn’t work and when it doesn’t work, I mean, I’ve heard of people committing suicide when it doesn’t work.
CODY: Yeah. I could imagine just like if it’s a complete cut off, right? Human beings in general, we’re very social creatures.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: And when you have relationships with your family that are very close and important to you and all of a sudden those are completely cut off.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: Especially if it’s something you feel like you don’t really have power over, I could imagine just the deep depression you’re going to go into. And when you go into those stages that deep depression, it’s hard to think of what could be good some day.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the brain is impaired and it’s like the thinking is distorted and so the person with the addiction, like what I tried to do myself and what I try to share with people is like family members need to change their expectations. Like you have more ability to change your expectations than your loved one does because addiction is addiction. And it’s like that process is looking for food, fuel and it loves chaos.
CODY: Yeah. No, definitely. Like anyone with a coffee addiction, right? Or just caffeine addiction in general can tell you how badly you will need your caffeine when it hits that specific point of the day where you get your caffeine and the kind of person you turn into when you don’t have it. And obviously you’re dealing with a lot harsher addictions than that, but like that, Imagine putting that kind of an addiction with something that does a lot more damage and I mean, it’s terrifying situation to be around.
JEFF: Yeah. So there’s a number of like, you know, complicated pieces here. One Is when we use the word addiction, what does that really mean? You know, and so like the majority of national organizations out there have a definition. You can google them. There’s, you know, four or five different organizations. The majority of them in there, the language is, you know, this is a chronic relapsing brain disease kind of thing. So, the focus is on an individual or one individual’s brain. And like fix the brain and then the problem should go away kind of thing. And there’s more to it than that and we all know that. And so I have started using language addiction disruption.
CODY: Okay.
JEFF: And to me, what that means is it acknowledges, yes, there’s an individual at the epicenter of the disruption, but there’s also impact all around, you know, and let’s acknowledge that impact too, because if we just, you know, fix the individual at the center and, you know, the hope is that everything else will be fine and good to go. So the three main stakeholders of addiction are individuals, families, and communities and that’s kind of the trajectory of impact. Obviously, the individual has the most impact on the family than the community and our healing methods are very similar. Start with the individual and ideally when they get clean and sober, when they get fixed, when they get in recovery, whatever the right language is there, then the family will be better, will be healed, the community will be healed. And it’s like that’s a nice thought. That’s idealistic.
And so what I’ve done is flipped the trajectory around to compliment the individual focus, but also include, like community on the front end of an online community for families that when families come in there, they learn new skills. They’ve learned to look through a new lens. They learned to see the situation differently. And they can start to implement some of the skills into their own family. So the community has an impact on the structure of the family and when that starts to happen then the individual will feel that. So, it’s kind of a both and approach.
CODY: Definitely. Personally, I love that idea because, like we were saying earlier, people are very much attached to communities. Like we’re very social creatures and so being parts of communities is just a part of what we seek. And having a community there that not only wants to actually help you, right, which is important on its own, but becomes equipped with the right tools to help you.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: And something that sometimes feels like it’s completely out of your control. Right? Because there are people who face addiction who feel like I have no control over this, and –
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: – getting that outside help from the people that matter most to them, I see that being extremely powerful.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that’s what I’m trying to do is to focus on, you know, the people around the epicenter and to collaborate with people who are focused on, you know, their services are mainly for the individual. So, there’s change with the individual and there’s change with the structure of the family and that’s optimal and that’s like the research and we know that. And, you know, the history of family therapy kind of states that when recovery is a family process, the healing is going to spread further, last longer, have a bigger impact kind of thing. So that’s, and it’s also pretty obvious and straightforward.
Some of the biggest obstacles here that I see are, you know, in our history, when I say our, I mean the history of our culture and the history of addiction. There are a lot of mixed messages. There’s a lot of black and white thinking. There’s a lot of harshness. There is a lot of labeling of people, and so there’s a lot of stigma. And I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that family’s were actually blamed as part of the problem or the problem. So families aren’t making this up that like I always kind of frame it from a standpoint of, you know, one of the biggest problems that I see is that families don’t reach out early enough. And they try to do things themselves and they don’t reach out until it’s like really dangerous or threatening or they’re just so close to just cutting him. Like we’ll do this last thing and then we’ll cut them off kind of thing.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: And I have really tried to create a space, this online space that where people can come in there confidentially to where they can work through some of the stigma and shame stuff. So, this is not a Facebook group. This is like they get a user name and password and they can sign up with an alias. And that, like I have two community chats a week on top of all kinds of other things. But when they come into a community chat, their name comes up and they can use a name like Minnie Mouse or something like that. And actually they can communicate with one another and there’s all kinds of incremental steps to build trust with people. So one is, you know, like I said, they can use an alias like Minnie Mouse. Another is they can just listen to like, so the Wednesday night with, yeah, the Wednesday night chat is recorded, so they can just listen to the recording, would be a first level.
The next is they can come into the chat. The next they can come in and type in a question. The next day that they can turn on the microphone and ask a question. The next is they can turn on their webcam and be seen and have a conversation. So, there’s a lot of like self driven, self selecting incremental processes for people to take themself. You know.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So, they’re learning trust building. They’re learning boundaries. They’re learning communication skills. And sometimes conflict resolution skills just by being a member of the community and all of those skills are things that they can implement into their own family.
CODY: Definitely. And what I love about it, right, is, and this is a big leadership role, you are at one level, right? And whoever’s joining the groups at a different level and instead of trying to get them from [inaudible] you give them the platform to be able to be comfortable, you come to their level wherever they’re comfortable at, so that they have the ability to get up to where you are, which is what is what you want at the end anyways.
JEFF: Right. Exactly. And, you know, the community membership is like, it’s 50 bucks a month. So, and you know, people pay for three months at a time, so it’s pretty reasonably priced. And so for $50 that would be, what? Like, eight hours of potentially chat time where they could ask questions, where they could learn some things. Like, I’m on my time.
CODY: Yeah. No, and that’s, I mean, that’s gigantic, I mean, the way I see it is if you’re going to see like someone who’s a “guru”, and try and get their time in this area so that you can have a better impact in your home that’s going to be $1000, Right? And so to be able to get those resources, get those tools at $50 a month which have the potential to completely change the entire circumstances of what’s going on in your home life.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: That’s pennies on what the value of what you’re getting.
JEFF: Yeah. And so once they have a username and password and once they go into the community, like the community has 30 some videos in there, 30 some mp3’s and a bunch of, you know, pdfs and blog section with length to family specific information. But once they go in there and look at things, you know, they can share the username and password with other people in their family and say: hey, login with this user name and password and do this and this and see this video. And then once you see that video, I want to talk with you about that thanksgiving dinner that we had with our family.” And it’s like, oh my god, this video, like put a whole new spin on what was happening there. So yeah, it’s like planting seeds to get more and more of the family members to start to look through a new lens.
And when that happens more people start thinking differently. They are starting to consider, you know, potentially something new and you know, because addiction in the family it’s everybody is, has an impact. And part of that in impact is like a stress if not trauma. And so the body contracts, and when the body contracts so does the thinking gets very rigid and very black and white. And so, I’m talking about family members doing that, you know.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So it’s, change is a process. It isn’t like I’m going to go to a weekend workshop and make tons of change and like I go to a lot of weekend workshops and like there’s a lot of good family programs out there, treatment centers. There are some treatment centers who have some really good family programs. I really want to say that because I know that’s true, but even if that family program is like, you know, four days or a week or something like that, then they need to take that information home and start to practice it. And I know for myself when I go to a workshop and I come home and I have all kinds of, you know, inspiration and excitement to make change and then a month later, it’s like, what have I really been able to implement?
CODY: Exactly, yeah. That’s a huge challenge. Not only in the world of addiction, but in the world of just personal development. Any sort of development is people expect that change is going to happen overnight. Right? Like if you’re in the development world, you expect I go to a weekend workshop, I’m going to be a master communicator by the end of it, right? I expect that I’m going to be able to code like the best people at Google [inaudible] in a weekend workshop. I expect that I’m going to be able to solve this addiction problem within my family. And it doesn’t work like that because change takes time. Our mindset up these connections are hard to break. If you look at one of my favorite books is The ONE Thing which tackles how do you create new habits, right? And according to the research they did, it takes an average of 66 days, I believe is what they say, to form a new habit. And, you know, some take a little longer, some take a little less. And in addiction is something that’s really hard to break. So we’re talking like, if you’re lucky, 90 days of continuous effort towards changing it and that’s assuming you’re doing it every single day. If you’re not doing it every single day, I mean, this could be a six month process plus easily.
JEFF: You know, one of the biggest kind of faulty thinking or thinking errors that I see families making is they just assume like, well I can send Johnny to this treatment center for 60 days or 90 days and then when he comes back we can go back to normal. You know, the reality is that is not the case. They can’t go back to normal, you know. They need to create a new normal.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So that’s largely what I’m trying to do in a very gentle and also structural kind of way is to give families a pathway and some clarity and a container for them to see a lot of different things, to learn a lot of different things, and understand what’s the pathway that they want to follow. You know, so in the community, like that’s the purpose of the community as I see it for them to come in, learn a lot of things. The collective nervous system of the family dropped down. When that happens, they have more blood flow to the cortex, the part of the brain where they can make the best decisions, where they can look around, understand the context and have a better understanding. If I do this, then the implication, the way it unfolds we’ll be like this and if I do, et cetera, et cetera. But what ends up happening is families make decisions when the majority of blood flow is going to the limbic or the emotional brain and they’re, you know, really anxious and it’s a situation where their loved one is about close to death or something. And it’s like, well, you know, if you sign this check for $20,000, we can take that problem off your hands. Or I mean, I’m being a little facetious. That kind of process happens sometimes in the addiction recovery space.
CODY: Yeah, and I mean, if you look at it from a marketing perspective, it’s a genius marketing tactic, but it doesn’t actually help the people who are the most in need. You know? I mean, people are willing to pay lots of money to help with what they’re most challenged with, but if it doesn’t actually help them that’s where the real problem comes in. And you were talking earlier about how people expect to send someone off somewhere for 60 to 90 days and then they come back and suddenly magical. And it relates to two different concepts in my mind. One is the concept of you never go through the same river twice because every time you go through the river, one, the river has changed. And two your a different person. And so you send the person there and they come back, but there are completely new person. Like you said, they haven’t developed a new them. And so they’re still working on the process of that.
And then two, the environment is such a powerful thing. Right? So you can send someone into that very powerful environment that is literally designed so they cannot be around that addiction and they can become cured of that addiction as long as it’s not there anywhere near them. And then they come back to the old environment and all of a sudden that addiction is right there again, and its downfall right there. And families need to realize that which is where the power of this community comes in, is you can have these resources that show you, hey, they just came out of this environment where they have literally no access to it. You have to figure out with them how do you make sure that enticement doesn’t come back into their life?
JEFF: Yup. Yup. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, when I spoke with you before I think I mentioned this, what I’ve tried to do is to create a visual diagram that explains for families the invisible pattern that naturally happens through no fault of any family member. You know, people go into survival roles. And so, you know, what I call the spotlight diagram. Is it okay if I just talk about it for a few minute?
CODY: Yeah. Definitely. Please, please talk about it. Because if it’s going to help people –
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: – that is what we need to do.
JEFF: Sure.
CODY: My personal view of the world is, we each are leaders in our own hemispheres, right? We have a responsibility to help people with what we have the power to influence with? And this is your area of influence and there are people right now who need to hear this message. There are people who themselves are facing addictions and have families that aren’t as powerful as they could be. There are people who know family members who are going through addictions that needed to hear this.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: There are people who may be a boss, you know, you may be a corporate boss and you have someone in your corporation, right? On your team who’s going in addiction and you can help them through this. So people need to know this information.
JEFF: Sure, yeah. Well, thanks. So –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – what I’ve done is, and I’ve learned, I’m standing on the shoulders of a lot of my mentors in addiction world, so I just want to say that then what I’m going to describe this kind of a combination of three of them.
CODY: I love a person who is humble about who they are and where they come from. Thank you for doing that.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah. So, when I talked to families, what I asked them to do is to get a piece of paper and a pen and in the middle of the paper to draw a circle, you know, maybe the size of their fist and then from that circle add draw lines, add like 1:00, 3:00 and 5:00. Then at the end of those lines, put smaller circles like the size of a dime or something. And then over at about 7:00, put a circle about the size of a quarter, snuggled up to that big circle in the middle. And then over at about 10:00, you know, maybe two inches out, put a circle that’s about the size of a dime or quarter or nickel, doesn’t matter, but just out there with no line.
CODY: Yeah. So, you’ve got one central circle. You’ve got a couple of circles that are a little bit out in connected. There’s one that’s right next to it, very connected. And you have another circle that’s way out that’s not connected at all.
JEFF: Bingo. Bingo.
CODY: Awesome. So what’s going on with that whole process there?
JEFF: Yeah. So the circle in the center is what I call the spotlight diagram and that’s the focus. Like the family will focus on whatever the biggest problem is. And, I mean, sometimes it can be a positive focus, like, you know, someone in the family, they get all A’s that really brilliant, whatever they take a lot of the attention but, you know, people don’t call me when it’s a positive focus, so –
CODY: [laughing]
JEFF: [laughing] but I want to knowledge that’s there too.
CODY: Yeah. So, this diagram isn’t designed just for addictions but you use it within the context of addiction to show the point.
JEFF: Right. So underlying here is some theory from family therapist called Murray Bowen. And some of his long held research, essentially about anxiety in the family. And so when there’s anxiety, when there’s tension in the family, and in this context I’m using addiction, there will be different roles that come out. And the roles are roles, they’re not people. People can go into a role, they can stay very fixated in that role or they can move from one role to the next role, to the next role kind of thing. The roles are strategies, so they’re trying to either deal with the problem outside of them, you know, cope with it or fix it or they’re dealing with the impact way it feels inside of them or they’re trying to stay connected as a family. Or they’re just trying to compensate for this thing we call addiction. So these roles are natural things that happen.
So the reason why I’m framing it that way is I really want people who are listening to this to know that people who go into these roles are like, this isn’t a pathological or a bad thing per se. It’s a bad thing when someone does the same thing over and over again and they don’t really see the larger patterns. So, like talking about these roles over there at 1:00, the line, the circle at the end of it, the person in that role, often times they’re doing similar behaviors. And so, if the person in the middle, the big circle in the middle, if they’re drinking alcohol at successive, lot of problematic consequences, the person at 1:00, they may be drinking alcohol with them, but when they drink alcohol they don’t have the same kind of problematic consequences.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: And if we dropped down to 3:00, the person in that role, the line is for communication. They want to stay connected, but there’s like hash marks through that line. And what that means is they don’t want to talk about the problem. They don’t want to talk about the outcome.
CODY: They see it, but they don’t want to actually confront it. They’d rather avoid the conflict. Face the conflict.
JEFF: Yup. Exactly. And then dropped down –
CODY: Well, and that right there is a huge fault in leadership in general, right? There’s a lot of people who have leadership roles in the world who don’t want to confront any problems. They want things to be hunky dory and just pretend like the problems don’t exist, but as a leader you can’t approach to the world like that.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: Right? Because then those problems either just remain and continue to cause tension or more often than that, they just continued to get worse until, you know, until everything completely breaks down. And so that is, in my opinion, a huge leadership fault that we have.
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: And within the context of addiction that may not be leader like a boss per se, but like that can be the leader of a parent or a very close sibling, right? Because we have leadership positions within our families.
JEFF: Absolutely.
CODY: And that right there is a leadership failure within your family. If you recognize that there’s a problem and you don’t want to confront it, it’s a leadership failure.
JEFF: Yeah. Well, so this like spotlight diagram thing that I’m explaining. I grew up in a family just like this. And my mom –
CODY: Most of us did.
JEFF: Yeah. And so like this avoiding role here, I know this one, and I’m not talking about just academically or intellectually or something like that.
CODY: Yeah. You live that one.
JEFF: Oh my gosh. Yeah. And so like the avoiding thing, I’m an expert [laughs] with avoiding. Like that’s my history quite frankly. But then dropping down to like 5:00, that line that’s coming out there, if we were to draw an arrow at the end of the line, an arrow towards the big circle, the person in that role is a 180 degrees from that role at 3:00 that is avoiding. And so they want to talk about the problem and the way they do it is very sharp. It’s very direct. It’s very confrontational. Potentially blaming the volume of voices go up, heart rates go up, you know, it goes back and forth that ends in argument.
CODY: Yeah. And that’s a huge one especially because there are people who are just strong headed. There’s a book I’m reading, it’s called Verbal Judo. And there are people who are just, who just approached the world like that, right? They’re hard cases and that can create more problems for them than, you know, solutions.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: The author of the book, he’s talking about how he was a cop, right. And one of his first night on the job alone, right? He approached the vehicle and was telling people, you know, you need to do this. And the people were like, no, right, well what are you going to do? And so he ended up arresting them thinking he was going to be heralded as a great cop. And his boss told him the next day, no, you’re doing this wrong. Right?
JEFF: Yeah. Oh, wow!
CODY: And he – yeah. Because –
JEFF: What a great learning opportunity.
CODY: Well, exactly. Right? Because so many times you think just if I just attack it, everything’s good now, but it sometimes it creates more problems than it solves.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: And within the context of addiction, it could be even worse. Right? That kind of attack leads to just complete back and forth banter’s and then could lead to the person with the addiction diving further into the addiction.
JEFF: Well, that happens a lot.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: That really, I mean, that’s not just theory. That happens a lot.
CODY: Yeah, exactly.
JEFF: So, you know, these roles that I’m describing, like once I go through it and talk about the overall pattern, it’s like no to that there’s a way out of every one of these roles, you know. And so there’s some basic things I can say that a way out, but the more powerful thing is that once people see these roles and they understand how they relate the roles relate to one another and how they relate to the roles, then they can start to see their own behavior through a whole new lens and they can start to make new choices themselves and they have more capacity to make new choices than the person whose brain is impaired who has the addiction or who was at the epicenter of addiction disruption kind of thing.
CODY: Yeah, definitely. The famous quote out there, “be the change you want to see”, right? If you want someone else to change, be the first one to change.
JEFF: Right. Right. Yep. And I love that quote and I try to practice that myself. You know, sometimes I do better than other times.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: I’ll put it that way.
CODY: We’re still human, right? There’s no such thing as perfection, unfortunately, as wonderful as it would be to be perfect and be like, I’m going to change and it’s done now, like I’m perfect.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: As nice as that would be, it just doesn’t happen like that.
JEFF: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, the next role that I can talk about here in this spotlight diagram is the role that was over at about 7:00, from that big circle in the middle and just kind of snuggled up to the big circle.
CODY: Right next to it. Nice and cozy.
JEFF: Nice and cozy. And the person in that role, like they have a majority focus on that person in the center, in the spotlight and they’re doing everything they can to fix the problem, help the person, and so that is their strategy to fix the problem is that they just are out there being very proactive doing, doing, doing. And a lot of times they’re doing stuff that the person in the center could do themselves. So it doesn’t allow them to be responsible for one thing. And the other is some of their doing sometimes it doesn’t allow the person in the center to feel the weight or consequences of their own behavior.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So that strategy and so like from a labeling standpoint, if you notice, I’ve been talking about these roles largely without a label. I’ve been talking about them behaviorally, you know.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: But that role, we all know what that role is labeled as, that is the person who is enabling, you know.
CODY: The Enabler.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah. Caretaker, enabler, or whatever. And there’s a lot of, you know, there’s a lot of good information out there about enabling, but anyhow, the person in that role is central to the whole dynamic. And actually the triangle of the person at 5:00, 7:00 and in the middle, like if you draw a triangle there, that is the peeper. That is where the majority of actions and things change really, really quickly and so I may think I’m in one role and I’m interacting with someone else, but they see me in totally opposite role. And so the example is, for instance, the boy scout and the elderly woman at a stoplight and then it turns green and the boy scout looks over at the elderly woman. And puts his arm around her and his hand under her arm with the cane to help her across the street. And the elderly woman kind of looks over. She’s startled and she’s surprised. And she gets the cane and she starts hitting him.
CODY: [laughing] Real quick funny story. My great grandmother was just, she was an amazing woman. Just the toughest lady that I have ever known, right? She was in her late 80’s. She was supposed to be walking with a cane. She refused a cane because she wasn’t going to deal with that. She’s too strong for that. She’s supposed to like have a very laid back, relaxed life. She refused to do that. She would go out and do, it was called doug bowling where you have a smaller bowling ball because she couldn’t really hold big ones, but that wasn’t going to stop her from being active. Right? They’ll go bowling. That was just the kind of person she was. And I remember she had a story, I heard the story, she was walking one of the days with one of my great uncles, one of her sons, right?
They were out walking and they’re crossing the street and she falls over. Right? And so my great uncle, he’s trying to be the nice one and help her up. Right? Because he’s trying to be a genuinely nice guy. Right? And a good son. Right? Which is what most of us think that would be. And she refused to be helped up.
JEFF: Yeah. Wow.
CODY: She would not let him help her up. What was even more funny. Right? Is she still on the ground having a hard time getting up? Right. But she won’t let him help. And there are people looking around who are looking at him like he’s a terrible person because he’s not helping her up.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah. So –
CODY: But- [laughs]
JEFF: Yeah. I mean, your story I think fits with the same little story I was telling and, you know, one of the pieces that’s underneath here in this triangle, which is called like the Karpman Triangle or Drama Triangle or the empowerment dynamic is kind of a way out of the triangle, but generally, you know, people in roles are imagining the thoughts and feelings of people in other roles and they’re assuming that what they’re imagining is accurate and they’re taking action based on the assumption. And so, that is a problem.
CODY: A huge problem.
JEFF: It’s a huge problem. Like the boy scout didn’t ask the elderly woman: “Wow, it looks like you could use some help. Can I help you? I would really like to help you.” And then she would be able to say: “No, I don’t need the help.” You know, but so the, you know, really checking, like communication is really important here, but in families with addiction, things happen really, really quickly and –
CODY: Yeah. And emotions are running high.
JEFF: Oh my gosh! Emotions are running way high and nervous systems are activated. And just that taking a breath and really checking in and asking like can I help you across the street? Or like when your eyes went down, were you angry with me, you know. Some kind of basic question to kind of break the spell of this like really quick boom, boom, boom, kind of imagining someone else’s role because those roles are like the big circle in the middle is kind of from a labeling standpoint is the victim.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: The identified patient, you know, that kind of thing. And then the role with the arrow there is the persecutor, the blamer. And the role that snuggled up there is like the caretaker or the savior and –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So, it’s like I can feel like I’m in the savior role but I can be interpreted from someone else as if I’m in the persecutor role. Like –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – like the boy scout.
CODY: Exactly. And that’s what happened with my great grandmother. She fell and she felt that her son trying to help her up, was saying that she was weak.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: He was simply just trying to be a good son and help her get back up because she fell over.
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: Right? And so the perception becomes reality whether we like it or not.
JEFF: Yup. Perception becomes, that’s exactly true. So, you know, us being able to slow it down and, you know, people who are family members who don’t have the impaired brain or the addictive brain kind of thing, they have a much better possibility and potential to be able to interrupt the pattern.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: And then this last role over at 10:00 that’s sitting out there by itself with no line is, you know, someone who has been in some of the other roles or all the other roles. And they tried and tried and tried and then nothing has worked. Nothing has changed. They’re frustrated or irritated over it. And often times those people have to move away from the family. And for them to heal from a family like this is they need to go into this role and distance themselves and have a boundary.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So when I’m talking with families and I briefly described this, I’m like: “Hey, does any of this sound familiar?” And they’re like, hitting their forehead and going, oh my goodness.
CODY: Me.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. And then I say, okay. So with traditional thinking, how would we want to fix this problem? Like let’s just look at this visual diagram that I call the Spotlight Diagram, how do we fix this? And so I’m sitting there with the family and we’re just brainstorming and I can really get a sense of what the dynamic is in the family just by how people react. But oftentimes people will say, if they hired me for intervention, they’ll say: “Well Jeff, that’s why you’re here. We just want you to get Johnny and get him to a treatment center over here and then he’ll be good to go and this will all be fixed.” And I’m going: “Hey, well that’s great. And, you know, it’s great that we have some good treatment centers around. And actually there is a problem, and that is Johnny is going to go there for 30, 60, 90, 120 days, whatever.”
But then when he comes back into the family and I point back to this visual diagram that I just talked about and like where does he go? Where does he fit? Oh my goodness, there’s a vacancy here in the middle. It’s like, it would be very easy for him to slide back into that role and that is what we call Relapsed. And if Johnny learned some things and he really wants to practice them. He’s going to go into that role off at like 10:00. Draw strong boundary between him and the family. Oftentimes when the family doesn’t see this visual diagram, they’re going to take it really personal and go: “Oh my god, Johnny. Everything that we’ve done for you and you’re pushing us away and we’re trying to help you.” But they don’t see that this structure, this spotlight diagram is toxic to Johnny.
CODY: Yeah. It’s very toxic. And what makes it worse, right, is what I find is that so many people deep down have really good hearts and they don’t really know how to express what they’re trying to do and so they perceive that they do, but they haven’t learned enough about how they interact with others to really do what is in their hearts. And so they accidentally hurt the people around them. Right? And a lot of times it’s not a physical pain. It’s not like they’re going around punching people, but there’s the emotional pains. There’s the psychological pains, the spiritual pains that go behind that. Right?
JEFF: Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is exactly what’s happening is there’s so much kind of behind it, like the unhealed family trauma kind of thing. And often times they just want Johnny to get fixed up and then they think everything is going to be fine. What I’ve seen is if Johnny can go into that role at 10:00, draw strong boundary and still stay connected with the family with that boundary, Johnny can lead the family into a change process. And –
CODY: Yeah. It’s possible. It’s very difficult though.
JEFF: Right. I mean, I’ve seen that happen more than I have seen the family change when Johnny changes.
CODY: Yeah. Well, and the problem with the traditional idea is that they expect the person with the problem to do all of the changing by themselves. And I truly believe this. I believe we’re all interdependent. Right? And so if you expect someone else to change, then you need to also expect that there’s something that you need to change. And so if you’re a family, right? And you expect this person to change, you need to expect yourself to change as well.
JEFF: Right. Right – right. You know, a guy that I know from years ago, a very good family therapist, one of those things that he told me with couples is that in every couple relationship interaction equals to 10. And I’m going, huh, well that’s interesting. Say more. What does that mean? And so it’s like, well, so one person, their contribution to the relationship could be a seven and the other person, like they can’t help but be a three.
CODY: Interesting.
JEFF: And so it goes back to what you were saying before is that we all need to change, so it isn’t just like the person who is this seven and like, whatever that means, they can’t drop down to five unless the person at three kind of steps up a little bit to come to five as well.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So, it is like what you were saying, the inner dependence, like we work together on this and like what I’m doing with families really is giving the whole family an opportunity to see a larger picture, have insights and take action on those insights and really create conditions for everyone in family to start making new changes. And like I really see where addiction in the family creates an opportunity for transformation for everyone.
CODY: Yeah. Oh definitely. 100% agree with that. And I was just thinking of another concept which comes from John Maxwell because you’re talking about different levels, right? So, one of the concepts that John Maxwell has with leadership is that we all have a leadership level, right? And so, like if it’s a scale of one to 10, right? Everyone’s striving to be a 10, no one ever gets to be a 10, but we’re all striving, right? And so you can develop yourself to become a better leader. Right? Now what happens, right, is that if there is someone who is a couple levels ahead of you, right? The person who’s a follower typically is so become so ostracized from how high they’ve gotten, right? This other person has gotten that they actually removed themselves from being led by that person because they can’t handle that change. Right? And so you have these relationships, right? Where you have people who one’s a seven and one’s a three in the relationship, right?
And what happens is this person who’s a seven is so high and mighty, right? Compared to this three that this person who’s a three ends up pulling themselves out of the relationship because they feel so inadequate compared to the other person. Now, when you compare it to what we’re talking about, right? You have a bunch of people in a family, right? Who are probably at like a level three or four level, right? And then they expect the person with the addiction to raise themselves up to a seven. Right? But then that person got so far away from them that they feel like they’re ostracized now. That’s basically what’s happening.
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: And the other challenges, it’s usually difficult to have that much of a raise in leadership. Right? Is it possible? Yes. But it’s really, really difficult to raise your leadership in a short amount of time, especially that much to this new expectation.
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: But when everyone comes together, right? You want this person to get to a seven? Well, what if we all became fives and sixes with that person? Right? And then everyone becomes better as a whole unit.
JEFF: Right. Right. Yeah. That’s an interesting concept. And I know specifically, you know, with the family that I grew up in, like what I experienced was the trickle down of addiction from my grandfathers, my mother’s trauma and her defensive coping mechanisms. To me, growing up in a family like the spotlight diagram that I talked about and me using my own defensive coping mechanisms and you know, not really thinking they were defensive coping mechanisms, but that was how I did life and it really was contracted. It really made it much more difficult if not impossible for me to live my full potential kind of thing.
CODY: Yeah. Definitely.
JEFF: And like, it took me a long time to really realize that because when I did and I saw how much I was being impacted by what I’m calling a defensive coping mechanisms and not living to my full potential kind of thing. And how like the addiction in my family, like sure, I have my history wIth drugs and alcohol. I never went to a treatment center. I’m not in AA. I’m not in what I would call recovery or maybe natural recovery or something. But –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – like my passion with this is once I saw, you know, the level of impact on myself with, like for me, I got more love and attention showered upon me by my grandfather than anybody in my whole life. And like my, that was a wonderful experience. What that was is, you know, what psycho babble terms we’d call intergenerational transmission of me being the carrier of the grief and pain from the whole family. Me being the most vulnerable to how do I deal with all that pain and it’s not mine. And oh my gosh, look there’s, you know, we have these wonderful things to numb pain all around us, you know, drugs and alcohol at the top of the list.
And, you know, when I really saw like the impact on myself and in a pretty like minor addiction situation and I thought to myself, oh my god, there’s like huge amounts of impact of families. And what if there was a way that was inexpensive that was empowering and that built community and allowed people to actually use things like connecting on a human level as a way to support and encourage them to, you know, whatever their own next step is, whatever their transformation is. Like, what would happen with families because there’s like one in three families in the country that have been impacted by the depths of addiction. That was a statistic that I read not long ago on facing addiction.org and I mean, one in three families. And I’m thinking to myself, oh my god, that’s like the family members. Like, if I got the impact I got and I was aware of how like that limited my potential to thrive. Like wow, what if all these people kind of could see a larger picture and be like just inspired a little bit to start making changes like our world needs that.
CODY: Yeah. No, it’s true. And I believe in the concept that things can be passed down generationally. If you look at the Bible, it’s like the quote generational curse, right? If you read Napoleon Hill’s, one of my favorite books by him, it’s called Outwitting The Devil. It’s, oh, what does he call it? Generational, I can’t think of what it’s called right now. I’ll get back to it.
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: Basically, we put ourselves into these cycles over and over and over again. And it’s passed down from generation to generation generation.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: So, you would think like anybody can get out generational habit force. That’s what he calls it. So, basically it’s transferred this habit, right? Is transferred from one generation to the next generation, to the next generation and we all basically keep ourselves at the same level or pull each other down to a worse level, right? Because it’s habit force. It’s like a whirlpool, right? And so it goes around and around and can eventually stink all the way till it’s complete destruction. Right? And it’s hard to pull yourself out of the habit force as you get closer to the center. And this happens in our lives, right? We have people who with a grandparent who had a grandparent who had a grandparent who had an addiction and that addiction passed from one generation to the next generation, to the next generation. And it’s a lot of times it’s not even intentional, right?
JEFF: Right.
CODY: It’s just because they’re trying to do something that they don’t know any other way. Just like an example, Robert Downey Jr, right? His father did a lot of drugs and alcohol and started Robert Downey Jr into drugs and alcohol at a very young age. He was under 10 years old when he started drugs and alcohol.
JEFF: Oh, wow!
CODY: Because his father wanted a way to connect with him and that was the only way he saw it as a way to connect with him. It’s horrifying to think about, right? But this is reality. This is the world we live in.
JEFF: Yup.
CODY: And, you know, his dad wasn’t trying to, you know, damage Robert Downey Jr for a large part of his life, but that’s what drugs and alcohol can do to people.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: He has the good intention of wanting to connect with his son. And he just didn’t see a way other than through this medium and it gets passed down from one generation to the next generation, to the next generation until someone decides to break out of that generational curse. It also reminds me of a movie I just saw. Awesome movie. It’s called THUG is the acronym, and it’s The Hate You Give, which is based off of a song from Tupac, right? Tupac still lives. No, I’m just kidding. But basically the acronym that Tupac said is that the hate, THUG life is the acronym, and it’s the hate you give little infants, F’s everyone. Right? And that’s the generational curse. That’s the I pass hate to youa you pass that hate to your children.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: That hate gets passed to the next generation.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: Now in this movie, right? You had one generation, right? It’s their school children, right? So they’re in high school. The main character is a girl who’s in high school. Her father, right? Was living in the ghetto of [inaudible] basically. And he and his wife basically pulled their family out of that community. Right? To begin trying to break that generational curse. They didn’t want their kids to grow up in that lifestyle. Right? They didn’t completely break away from it because usually this “generational curse” takes time to overcome. Right? But they pulled them far enough out and you see how thIs concept plays out throughout the entire movie. How kids are dying in the streets over this generational habit for us that’s happening. Right?
JEFF: Right.
CODY: And this happens in our lives too. You experienced it in your life that this is an addiction that’s being passed down and we aren’t even aware it’s being passed down until something outside of us shows it to us.
JEFF: Right. Yeah. So like the spotlight diagram that I described.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: That, like some variation of that spotlight diagram gets passed down from generation to generation to generation. And that’s kinda like when my grandfather was showering all this love and attention on me, that’s kind of what he was doing. He was putting me in the spotlight and what I was aware of is, one I had never felt that much attention, especially from, you know, someone with a big, huge booming voice. I mean, at seven, eight, nine years old, I didn’t know he was an alcoholic, I just knew he was my grandfather, and he loved me. And he really, really showed it and it’s felt like unbelievably awesome. The other side of it was I knew that my sister and my three female cousins, we’re not getting that attention. And I thought that attention was about me personally. And I really wanted it to be about me personally, you know, and it wasn’t. It was about my gender, you know. So it came with some gender shame.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: And so like this spotlight gets passed down from generation to generation, some variation of it. And when we go into these roles, we learn these roles really well. And if we don’t learn new skill sets, we go out and has an adult create relationships just like this spotlight diagram kind of thing because that’s what we interpret as, that’s familiar we know that and on some level that there’s a meaning around love and caring and concern and that’s how we feel, seen and loved.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So it’s, I mean, yeah, there’s just a whole lot to it. And you know, what I’m offering here with families is quite out of the box. I mean, just today I met with a guy at the treatment center who I’ve known for a number of years, who loves what I’m doing. And he’s also a little apprehensive like, I would like to have something like that for our treatment center with our logo in it, with our people doing it and I’m going great, you know, but he’s just like, well, what I’m doing is not therapy. It’s coaching.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: So it is kind of a bridge between families being in isolation to families being connected with resources and services.
CODY: Yeah, definitely. And from my studying the development world, there’s really kind of like five different areas of development. You have your coaches. You have lIke your therapist or your counselors or your healers, whatever you want to call them. You have your teachers. You have your mentors. You have like your consultants, right? And they each play a different role as really positive. Right? And so if you want to live like a full experiential social life, I think all of those roles in your life, right?
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: And so, you know, the person you were talking to, he plays the therapist’s role, the counselor role that, that healer role. Right? But you’re playing a different role for the same group of people. You’re playing the coaching role, which is extremely powerful. I believe that coaching is one of the most powerful forces in the world. Yeah,
JEFF: I mean, I’m a therapist by trade and as a therapist what I’ve seen so much is that just that, you know, putting that modality as the only tool onto families that have so much going on, that’s just not enough. And it kind of creates an expectation for families or individuals in therapy to that it should be enough, and it’s like I’m a big proponent of families having multiple support systems, you know.
CODY: Definitely.
JEFF: Kind of like the roles you just described, so –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – you know –
CODY: they’re all really powerful. You should have all of them. Right? I mean, even just like trying to connect it with the world of addiction, right? Your, you know, your therapist is going to be that counselors, therapist, healer role. If you send someone to an addiction treatment center for 30, 60, 90 days, that’s your consultant right there, someone who’s brought in to fix something, right? You have resources that help people learn new things, that’s your teacher role. You have mentors, right? You’re gonna meet people along this path who’ve been through this journey before and can give you their wisdom, that’s your core role. And there’s this role that’s really not being brought to people’s attention in which is the coaching role and it’s a space that you were feeling.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I don’t know where all this is going to go. I do know that, well, I think I was telling you before we turned the recording on that I’m writing a book that I start.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: The editing process, monday actually, and you know, I realized I had to write a book because it’s so, you know, what I’m doing is so out of the box that even me sitting down with someone like I did today for an hour or so and having some coffee and talking about what I’m doing, it’s like difficult for them to be able to place it.
CODY: Yeah. It’s because it’s such a complex role within a complex system –
JEFF: Right.
CODY: – that people haven’t really looked at. Right? Within area that’s already extremely complex. I mean, when you’re talking about human psychology, human addictions, these are already really complex things you’re dealing with between the physical addictions of it, the emotional addictions that go along with it, the emotions that go flying outside of that. Right? And just everything else that happens in life generally –
JEFF: Right.
CODY: – this is a really tough area to be within period. And you’re in an area that’s pretty much unexplored from what I’ve seen and it’s not easy to get through that. I mean, we’ve been talking for an hour and a half almost. I know there’s still so much more to this problem, to the solution, right? That we still need to get into.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. And so largely what I’m trying to do specifically is address this from the standpoint of thinking, you know, because the way that we have been thinking about this problem, we have this solution which is, you know, kind of what I talked about with families that they try to fix it themselves until they can’t and then hire an interventionist and send someone to treatment and they get therapy and that is the solution kind of thing. But, you know, we have one way of thinking about it and our statistics with addiction are, they’re not getting better. I mean, it’s like every four minutes someone dies from an alcohol related cause or an overdose. That’s a lot of people every day. I mean like the equivalent of a jumbo jet going down every day and –
CODY: And it’s not just people dying, but it’s potential that those people had to change the world is gone now because of something that can be overcome.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like what I’m trying to do is to expand our thinking and kind of like both end thinking, of course we need the narrow thinking that focuses on the individual with the problem. And we need them to get help and everything like that. But it’s like we also need to look at the larger situation. And so the book I’m writing, which is called, It’s not your fault. And then the subtitle is Recognizing the family solution to addiction disruption. And so, I use the river as a metaphor to kind of talk about the family journey in this process. And there’s a chapter that I have called Lessons from the river. And it’s about what’s called the parable of the river story and it’s essentially a village by a river. And one day someone in the village, they looked into the river and they saw a baby floating down the river.
And so they swam out there and they saved the baby, brought him back to shore. And as soon as they got to shore, someone else said: “Oh my gosh! There’s another baby out there.” And so like that same kind of thing keeps happening and they get more people in the village and they coordinate efforts and people are swimming out there. And some people are on the shore taking care of them and feeding them and everything and there’s just more and more babies. And finally someone says: “I think we should put together a team.” And some people walk up the river and see, like who’s throwing all these babies in here. And someone’s like: “No, we need everybody here to, like we don’t have time for that.” So it’s an example of a classic, very old problem of where do we put the energy that we have and you know, I’m advocating for both hands solutIon, you know.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: For some people to walk up the river and see what’s going on there, what’s contributing to all of those babies being in the river and then people still, you know, catching the babies that are coming down kind of thing. So, that’s –
CODY: Yeah. Because both roles play really important piece to the entire puzzle, right? And this kind of situation play out in business too, right? You have problems continue to happen and you put the bandaids on those problems, but it’s not solving the actual problem and so you need somebody, right? You either need to bring someone else in or you need to to put someone on the job to figure out how do we actually solve the problem itself. Right? The problem isn’t that the babies in the river, it’s that there’s somewhere else where the babies are going into the river.
JEFF: Right.
CODY: If we can figure out and stop the baby’s going into the river, then we won’t have to save the babies here every single time. Or at the very least we could slow it down so we can handle this like with sanity.
JEFF: Right. Yeah. Yeah – yeah, exactly. So it’s like my, what I’m doing here is like emphasis on family because I really see where family can be. They have the capacity to make changes where that role can be stronger in solutions.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: And that role being families historically has been marginalized –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – and blamed as part of the problem. And so, you know, initially, Cody is so funny, I mean, initially I just created this three phase process and I kind of tacked it on the end of my doing interventions. And it was cool. I mean, I think a lot of people got a lot out of it. At least they said that, but then when I wrapped this user friendly community around it and made it very low cost and it’s like three different membership levels and this community is kind of like a place for the whole family to come in and start to learn new information, connect with like minded people. It’s like that it allows people to self determination to use their own energy to start to make change. Change that like they guide, so oftentimes what happens is family members, they don’t want to make any change because, hey, this is about Johnny and addiction is a brain disease. And just pick your brain and everything’s good on our side of the street here. You know, it’s you that needs fixing. And – Y
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – and I get there’s a lot of stigma and shame historically, that reinforces that message. And I know family members deep down, they know there’s more going on than that, you know, and for them to be able to safely start to explore that at their pace, like, hey, thIs opens up a lot of potential and quite frankly, I don’t know. I don’t really know where it’s all going, but it’s –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – exciting. Spawn.
CODY: Well, and that’s what you’re facing is the challenge of a pioneer, right? There’s some unknown area that no one’s been to and we have no idea what’s out there. We know there’s something that we haven’t discovered what it is until we decided to be the people to charge out into the great unknown and make it into something.
JEFF: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I realize I can’t do this myself. Like my role is more of inspiring others kind of thing. And I didn’t really realize that it was going to be my role, you know, but like the more I get into this, the bigger it gets and the more it requires me to grow. The more it requires me to grow into what you were talking about before, like a leadership role, but to be able –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – to do that in some kind of way where I can create a container and a space that’s safe enough and has a structure and boundaries for people to come in, for them to be able to make their own change. It isn’t about me kind of having the silver bullet and saying, I know what’s right for you and I know what’s right for you. And I mean –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – like I can say stuff and I can make guesses and sometimes it’s helpful and sometimes it’s not, but –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – what I found is that it’s really less helpful for me to tell people what to do. It’s kinda like give a man a fish or teach a man to fish –
CODY: Yeah, exactly.
JEFF: – kind of thing.
CODY: And right now you’re describing the difference between a teacher and a coach. Right?
JEFF: Right. Yup.
CODY: The teacher gives information, right? But the coach actually helps you become the fisherman.
JEFF: Yep.
CODY: Right? And that’s a huge differentiation, right? You need someone to teach you the basics. I mean, that’s extremely important. Don’t get me wrong. Teachers play a huge role in making other people successful, but there’s a point where you can’t teach people anymore. They have to actually go out and live it. Right? And that’s where the coach comes in to help you figure out how do you actually live it.
JEFF: Right. Yeah. The experience that I have in the addiction recovery space, what I’ve seen is there’s a lot of addiction professionals out there that are really good at getting people into treatment and really good at getting family some initial help, but there’s not a lot of follow up and long term health kind of thing. So, oftentimes families, and it’s like the title of the book, It’s not their fault, but in the families end up doing the same thing, creating the same container, so the same thIng happens over and over and over. And they end up using the same strategies, like the strategies and the spotlight diagram or the, you know, continuing to swim out and save babies kind of thing, which that’s an important thing. I don’t want to minimize that, but that –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – that by itself, like we’re going to run out of energy, you know.
CODY: Or room in the village, right? [laughs]
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. I mean eventually there will be impact in the community. And I think right now the way addiction is going, I think there’s a fair amount of impact in communities and –
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: – specifically like with the opioid addiction. I mean, a lot of people get a very slippery slope into that just like being prescribed opioids after a dental surgery or something like that. And then the opioids hit their body and the impact to them like our bodies are wired differently and so the way an opioid impacts one person is gonna be very different than another person. And so for people who have a lot of trauma for instance, or not a lot of love than connection as a child, you know, that’s painful. And like when they take a painkiller, painkiller being like a Percocet, you know, or Oxycodone or Vicodin or any number of those things or Heroin. It’s like, it addresses physical pain, but it also addresses emotional pain. And, you know, when it takes that away, it’s like, I remember years ago hearing from a woman saying like, the first time I ever did heroin, it felt like a soft, warm hug I never got in my life.
CODY: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s the danger of addiction, right?
JEFF: Oh my God!
CODY: There it provide something that people are looking for, but it’s not the real thing, right?
JEFF: Right.
CODY: It’s just a facade.
JEFF: Right. But you know, what am I going to do? Just say no to that soft, warm hug?
CODY: Not if you’re the person who’s never had a soft warm hug before.
JEFF: Right. Right. So, I mean, this is no small deal that we’re like this opioid crisis and, you know, the stuff with alcohol hasn’t gone away. Just that the opioid crisis has overshadowed it. And as you know, Cody, thank you very much for letting me go on and on and I could go on for –
CODY: Oh, yeah.
JEFF: – quite a while.
CODY: I could go on too, because this is information is so powerful. It is so needed in our world right now because right now we’re going through some very terrible things as a society, right? And it doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re in, right?
JEFF: Right.
CODY: Right now, we need people to stand up as leaders to tackle these large challenges. And just like you’re saying, there’s an addiction problem, well, there’s a leadership problem in the world too. There are not enough people who are taking leadership positions on matters that are extremely important and this is a matter that’s extremely important. And we need leaders to stand up to face it and you’re one of those people. So thank you for being a leader here.
JEFF: Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that. I feel like I’m a thought leader and I know that I am. I mean, sometimes it feels that way and sometimes it doesn’t. I think the more time goes by, there will be less time when it doesn’t, but I really want to put a shout out to this guy who just wrote this book called American Fix. And it’s about the opioid crisis, you know, fixing the opioid crisis. The author’s name is Ryan Hampton. And, you know, he tells the story in there about him being a heroin addict. Like once he got out of that, he was very outspoken man and like the anonymity of AA kind of thing. He did not like that and he spoke out. And I mean, there’s a lot more people speaking out now than there was like seven or eight years ago, but he spoke out. And actually, he was involved with facing addiction.org, like 45 million people are following that, it’s like a very big national organization.
Ryan Hampton is now in politics. And politics, like there’s people politically making decisions about addiction that don’t really know –
CODY: Anything about it.
JEFF: – anything about it. So, Ryan is out there. So like, I mean, my hat is off to this man. And like, we need more people who like know what their passion is and they’re willing to go out there to make change in the world. Like you’re saying leader.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: I mean, I’m kind of focused on just this addiction world and some of the craziness in it.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: And you broadened it to the leadership in general.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: You know, which I love, but I know in the addiction world there’s like a lot of the leadership it comes from, you know, people that own treatment centers and like leadership comes with, you know, people who have money oftentImes.
CODY: Yeah.
JEFF: And, you know, someone like Ryan Hampton who has gone into politics to really, you know, educate people about what addiction is like and the policies that we need to set up. You know, it’s like there’s a lot of really good things happening in the addiction world. I do want to put that message out there.
CODY: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And any movement takes more than one leader. Right? And like Martin Luther King Jr, right? He did not act alone. He did not go on a podium, say words, and then everything just changed automatically. Right? Like that’s how people think it happened but it’s not. He had thousands of people who were there to support him, who were there working with him, who were doing other things within the world to make that change happen. Right?
JEFF: And they were leaders as well.
CODY: Exactly. Yeah. All of these people are leaders in different ways. Like this is one of the big problems we think of leaders is like, you need one leader and they lead us to everything. Like, no, that’s wrong. We’re interdependent. We need leaders in different facets. Right?
JEFF: Right.
CODY: And the more leaders we have in different facets, the more change we can actually bring about. So, it’s not going to take one leader to change addiction problems, right? It’s going to take a handful of leaders. It’s going to take Ryan Hampton to make political changes. It’s going to take Jeff Jones to make a mental change within the world of addiction to help in a different facet that people aren’t looking at. And it’s going to take more leaders to really create the change.
JEFF: Yup. Yup. Exactly. I’m on that page and I have so much enjoyed this conversation. Thank you very much. And you know, I have a lot to say. I have a lot that I want to contribute. I think over time more and more of that is going to be happening.
CODY: Definitely. Yeah. And I would love to have another conversation with you in the future because everywhere this conversation went is one, amazing. Two extremely powerful. Three is there to help people with real challenges that are happening in the world right now that we need more leaders in, you know?
JEFF: Right. Right.
CODY: I don’t know who the next leader is going to be. Right? But there needs to be more leaders and I’m looking forward to hearing from those leaders. And I’m looking forward to hearing more from you too. So you’ve got a book coming out. It’s –
JEFF: Yeah.
CODY: – the title is, It’s not your fault: Recognizing the family solution to addiction disruption. Jeff, where else can people find you?
JEFF: Yes. The website is thefamilyrecoverysolution.com. On that website people can sign up for the deep community. It’s $150 for three months, two community chats every week. And also on the website is something that says, you know, make an appointment or let’s chat or something like that. And so if someone has questions, I can offer a little conversation. The other thing is that in an individual families can go through a three phase process together. Families can live all over the place, anywhere there’s an internet connection and they can start a process together. The other is just like individual coaching for someone who they feel more comfortable with individual coaching as opposed to the community thing. So.
CODY: Definitely. Yeah. And if you are going through addiction right now. If you know someone in your family going through addiction right now. If you know a coworker going through addiction or has someone who’s going through addiction within their family, reach out to Jeff. Do it as quickly as you can because what he’s providing here is exceptionally powerful. And it has the ability to dramatically change lives. If you are having a hard time reaching out to him, reach out to me and I’ll connect you to him.
JEFF: Thank you.