30: Quit Making Unnecessary Sacrifices with Aaron Huey
“Everybody in the family has to make changes, and this is how we help parents make those changes.” –Aaron Huey
Whoever said that they sacrificed this and that because they didn’t have a choice is seriously disturbed. They often forget one thing and that will be reminded by our guest, Aaron Huey, the owner of Fire Mountain Residential Program for Young Adults. Working with kids and kids camps lead to this interesting story of Fire Mountain. The unique idea here is a dual diagnosis facility residential treatment for teens not just to get them out of crisis but also to build their confidence and become their best self. As a troubled teenager, Aaron have experimented on various forms of addiction but was able to get through with a lot of self-reflection and guess what! He is turning 22 years now in recovery. Let him share with you some of those reflections.
Nothing is impossible; nothing is hopeless until we start believing it to be. So, here is another recovery solution that you might be interested in. But there’s much more to it. There are a lot going on within a teenagers’ mind that we don’t know about which needs to be addressed, and immediately at that. Just how we know if the kid is in crisis and how parents should deal with it to avoid unnecessary sacrifices and recover from this draining situation while helping their child to heal is all in today’s menu. So, stay tuned in as Aaron Huey walks you through the often overlooked part of recovery: You!
Highlights:
02:36 Aaron in the Ups and Downs
10:15 Warning Signs!
19:51 How to Reroute the Reaction-to-Response System
30:06 Say the Magic Word: Sorry
40:15 Unnecessary Sacrifices
This week’s episode was sponsored by
You- Yes, ‘you’ hold the key to recovery and to not lose that key you need two things. Learn about it while @aaronhuey joins our host @TFRSolution in this unique discussion. #Youyourselfandyou#notthebadguy Share on X
Connect With Aaron
Website: https://www.firemountainprograms.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/firemountainprograms.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondriskandback/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSf6yJL4yAjgwsP-u8LYt0A/
Twitter: https://www.twitte.com/aaronhuey/
Quotes:
06:57 “Everybody in the family has to make changes, and this is how we help parents make those changes.” – Aaron Huey
12:01 “…if the isolation piece is getting concerning, those red alerts are not false. It’s always a cry for help- all of it is a cry for help.” – Aaron Huey
15:23 “And if a child is threatening their own life, because it’s a tactic to manipulate their environment … what parents forget is that part of our job when our kids become teenagers, is we have to teach kids how the world works.” – Aaron Huey
17:55 “There will be a time and a place for the emotional reaction but right now is time to respond. And reactions and responses are different things.” – Aaron Huey
22:41 “And as a parent, we’re not qualified to deal with this when it’s our own kid. So don’t expect to know what to do.” – Aaron Huey
28:31 “There’s no currency in emotional intelligence anymore, until you start to develop it. And then you realize it’s the most currency, you need to deal with pretty much any situation.” – Aaron Huey
33:44 “The number one rule for parents, as soon as your child is in that place of crisis, is: ‘you take care of yourself’… If you don’t take care of yourself, everything else that you’re trying to take care of, is suffering your worst, not excelling from your best.” – Aaron Huey
35:51 “Nurture your adult relationships … because this kid has taken a lot of energy away from that relationship and there’s resentment going on. And that resentment is either conscious or unconscious. But it’s there.” – Aaron Huey
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions
MILESTONE RANCH AD
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. 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.
JEFF: Well, hello everyone. This is Jeff Jones on the Podcast Families Navigating Addiction and Recovery. And today, I am here with a very special guest, a friend, a guy I’ve known for quite some time in a number of different contexts and this is Aaron Huey. He is the owner of Fire Mountain Residential Program for young adults up in Estes Park. I’ve been there. I’ve actually helped out there a little bit. I’ll ask him to talk about that. He’s also up to some very interesting stuff with his family program. I’ve seen his family program a couple of times. Incredibly. Unique. I haven’t seen anything like it and from what he told me just real quick, I’m taking it on the road. So welcome Aaron.
AARON: Thank you Jeff. It’s great to be back in satelliting you. We have known each other a long time. You did great. We loved having you working with us while you were up here. And yeah, thanks so much for just being a fire mountain fan helping our kids up here.
JEFF: Yeah, I got your back.
AARON: I got your back. That’s the bear tribe. That’s right. I got your back.
JEFF: That’s the bear tribe, yeah. So Aaron, if you could start a little bit and just talk about who you are, little bit about yourself so people kind of get a flavor of you.
AARON: Sure. So my name is Aaron Huey. I am an addict in recovery. I’m 22 years into recovery. I’m pretty happy to say that 22 year mark is coming right up here in just a few months, very excited about that birthday. I used for 14 years. My drug of choice was marijuana, LSD and alcohol. And then when I stopped doing those, it became toxic relationships with women and when I got over that I started having food issues. And it was about around the food issues time that I was like: “Oh! The problems me.” And actually started to deal with the real issue, which was myself. Never having been around my biological father, being bullied as a kid, and of course the fallout from many years of drug abuse. I was also sexually assaulted when I was 18 years old and really, really struggled with a lot of that stuff. Through that self reflection, and beginning to work with kids in kids camps, and I ran a martial arts school, from that came running teen rites of passage programs. And from that I started having parents contact me and saying: “Can my kid just come live with you?” And that was very flattering and it was wonderful. And after saying yes.
JEFF: You actually did that?
AARON: We did. My wife and I said: “Sure. We’ll take on a kid for a temporary time.” And, you know, I’ll take them to meetings and we’ll go to the gym, and they’ll work with me at the martial arts school. We’ll get them in online school. We’re just going to help this family out a little bit. I’ve been coaching the kid. He had been to some of my rite of passage programs and a mom told her sister who told a friend and that friend called us and said: “Can my kid come too?” And my wife and I kind of looked at each other and said: “Let’s see what happens if we say yes.” And within week Jeff, we had six boys and four on a waiting list. We had six boys living in our house with us and four waiting list.
JEFF: Oh my god.
AARON: Yeah, that’d begin 10 years ago, that’s the things of the residential program, which I have now. Which is now an 18 bed, 42 acre facility in this park Colorado. I have a beautiful facility. We work insurance. We take kids from the age of 12-17 years old. We work not just with addiction but also with screen addiction, video game addiction, self harm-cutting, that’s one of our specialties, working with kids who self harm. We are a mental health program. We are a holistic program, which for those of you who think that means woo woo. It doesn’t. It means we don’t just treat the mind, we treat the entire body where we are really focused on gut health and making sure that supplements, as well as doctor prescribed medications if necessary are employed in an intelligent way. And so we’re a mental health. We’re a dual diagnosis facility.
Our minimum stay for a kid is four months. The average day is about five and a half. And then recently about a year ago, started my podcast Beyond Risk and Back to reach families. And I’m happy to say it’s looking to start into some TV work next year. Our parents’ weekend, which you talked about, which I know we can talk about more, which we do full or families whose kids are in our programs. We’ve had such huge impact and success with it that like you said, taking it on the road, turning it into webinars and public parent weekend offerings just to really help families deal teens who are struggling. How to create an environment at home, so homes not a struggle. Everybody in the family has to make changes and this is how we help parents make those changes. So we have a lot of exciting things here for 2019.
JEFF: Yeah, I mean when I first heard you talk about that, and this was probably a couple of weeks ago when we saw one another, and you know, for someone to really put time and energy and focus into taking a program on the road that emphasizes that addiction is not just an individual problem with an individual solution, that it’s a much larger thing. That’s not the norm. So I commend you.
AARON: Thanks Jeff. And one of the other things that has become a big part, you know, we’re 10 years. This is our 10 year anniversary.
JEFF: Right.
AARON: And the piece that we really want to move into is we’ve started a facility that’s essentially the pound of cure. Pounds of cure are expensive. Treatment is expensive. Families who are listening to this, who have had kids in treatment or have a kid in treatment who are thinking about treatment. It’s expensive. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and financially expensive. And doing the podcast and taking this parenting weekend and these parenting webinars on the road and really boosting it out there on Facebook, I want to be the ounce of prevention too. Jeff, years in my job is not just been about helping kids who are struggle, but about keeping kids away from this level of struggle, early interventions. And if through my podcast, through your podcast, through a Webinar, I can keep a family from having to go into residential program. That’s our job.
JEFF: That’s a win.
AARON: Yeah. That’s a win. So, that’s the other reason why we’re doing this, we want to help at every level.
JEFF: Right. Right. Right. So your hope then is that families would come to this, are to be able to access this before there was “a big problem or a big emergency”.
AARON: Right. And maybe there’s problems, maybe there’s bad problems, maybe the kid has been to the hospital with a suicide attempt. They got a whole anxiety and they’ve decided that smoking pot helps them with their anxiety. And the parents were like, what do I do with this? We can help. That’s what the webinar, that’s what the seminar is for. Here’s what you do. Here’s the changes you need to make in the household so that the kid suddenly has an environment that they can bounce around safely on the inside. These kids are really struggling with this. [inaudible] all the reasons why marijuana is going to save the world or whatever people are saying and then on top of that anxiety, the social media pressure and stress. It’s a different world and parents need help navigating it with their kids.
JEFF: And so you’ve mentioned some that I’ve been able to pick out, but just from the standpoint of like warning signs that parents may see like warning signs that parents would see that would, that they could connect with, Oh, this thing that Aaron’s doing, this might be helpful. Can you talk a little bit about some warning signs?
AARON: Yeah. Thanks for asking that because 100% we can talk about this stuff all day, but without providing that step one, step two, step three or those really tangible evidence to base warning signs. Parents are still really struggling. So, here’s what I want to say about drugs, alcohol, video games, cell phones, pornography, anything that your kid might be “experimenting with”, because it’s hard to know where the line of, is he experimenting or is he just in full on dependency? So parents, if your child is lying, stealing, sneaking or cheating or breaking the law to do that thing that you don’t want them to do, there’s a problem. That’s what I want to say is when parents say: “I don’t know if this video game thing, if they’re addicted to it. I say: “Do they lie to you about it? Do they steal? Do they sneak? Are they breaking household rules? Are they breaking public policies?” If they are, there’s a problem. So, that’s a basic one I want to say. Anxiety and depression, these things have really hammered parents sideways. You and I Jeff are from a generation where A, we were told to pull up by our bootstraps and B…
We just did not have the level of anxiety and depression that the kids now they have. There’s a lot of factors in play, but what I want to tell parents is the moment we’re starting to miss school, the moment we are not attending family events because the anxiety or the depression is too big, and that could be dinner, that could be a family reunion, that could be a birthday party, someone else’s siblings. If the isolation piece is getting concerning, those red alerts are not false. Never ever take it as, oh, they’re just crying for help. It’s always a cry for help. All of it’s a cry for help.
JEFF: Yeah – yeah.
AARON: What I want to say about suicidal ideation or threats. If a child says: “I just want to kill myself.” You take every single one of them seriously.
JEFF: Yeah.
AARON: Because I work with parents who’ve lost their children to suicide. It’s not something you get over.
JEFF: Right.
AARON: Right? And so, when a child says: “I want to hurt myself or others”. They’re saying that because they feel that’s the only way they can cope or deal with what’s going on. There’s a problem. And whether they’re just making a threat, whether they’re just venting or whether they have actual intent, this is a serious conversation where the parent has to drop all emotional reaction and say: “Do you have a plan? Have you been thinking about it enough that you know how you would do this?” And if the child says: “Mom, I’m just really stressed out.” Then you can take a little bit of a relax breath, but that doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook. And if the child has a plan, they need to go to the hospital. It’s that simple. We need to bring it down that if a child says: “No, I’m just really upset. I’m just venting. I’m just talking about it.” We can say as parents: “Really scares me that you hurting yourself is a way that you’re thinking you might be able to deal with this. I’m terrified of this.” And so we got to have a real honest conversation and do.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah.
AARON: Those are my warning sign conversation right there.
JEFF: Yeah, great. Thank you so much. I really liked the way you laid that out from, you know, lying, cheating, stealing, breaking rules, household rules or rules in our society or culture. And then like the mental health kind of stuff of well-being and anxiety or depression and then suicidal ideation or, you know, getting the message that their child wants to hurt themselves or to hurt someone else. And then, you know, what I heard you talk about is like, do they have a plan? And if anything, if parents get any kind of message that there’s a plan, it’s like, plan equals hospital. That’s kind of what I got. Did I got that right?
AARON: Without a doubt. And listen, if you say to your kid, if your kid says: “Oh, I hate my life. I just want to kill myself.” And you say: “Are you serious?” And they go: “I don’t know what else to do.” It’s time to call an ambulance. Parents really, you know, we start to rationalize. We start to find ways why our big reaction is probably not a good idea. Well, if I call an ambulance and the kid gets angry and the ambulance people restrain him, the kid’s going to be really mad, it’ll be worse. That’s not true. If a child is threatening their own life because they are serious, there’s a problem. And if a child is threatening their own life because it’s a tactic to manipulate their environment, there’s a problem. And what parents forget is that part of our job when our kids become teenagers is we have to teach kids how the world works. And we do that by preparing them for what the world’s gonna do or say when a child acts a certain way. And we still protect, like we’ve got to stop protecting and start preparing.
So the way I say to parents is, what would the manager of Taco bell do? If kids back there and you say: “Hey, I need you to clean out the fryer later.” And the kid goes: “This sucks, I want to kill myself.” What’s the manager of Taco bell going to do? Well, if I was the manager of Taco Bell and someone says: “If you make me clean the fryer later, I’ll run away and kill myself and you’ll never see me again. And then you’ll be sorry.” I’d call the cops because that’s a person out of control.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah.
AARON: If they threatened me with violence and I’m the Taco bell manager, I’m calling the cops. If the kids laying on the floor in the fetal position and say: “I hate my life. I just want to die.” And this is the floor of Taco bell, I’m calling an ambulance. Parents forget this because we’re scared.
JEFF: Right.
AARON: We’re terrified. And that part is what we really help parents with, in the Webinar. Why? How do you get out of that scared, terrified and actually get back to solid parenting.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. And then so, can you, I mean from my own intervention stuff, I know some, but I’m kind of in the role of asking questions here to you. So in the event that the child is taken to the hospital or the ambulance comes or something like that, can you talk a little bit about like some sequential steps that might happen there towards safety?
AARON: That’s a really good question. In fact, I’m working with inpatient hospital to do a four part series talking about this very thing because when your child is taken to the emergency room, it’s terrifying. It’s scary. You’re upset, you’re angry, you’re tired of this situation. This is the third time it’s happened. And you’re just like: “What? Is this real?” Or it’s the first time it’s happened and you’re like: “Oh my god! I didn’t know that we were this far, my child was dealing with.” And so the first thing we got to say to parents is there will be a time and a place for the emotional reaction, but right now is time to respond. And reactions and responses are different things. Reactions are what actors do. They react to their environment. They react to other. And everything is in a state of reaction. Whereas a response is us taking a series of steps that we may have pre planned and that’s why these types of podcasts are important.
JEFF: Yeah.
AARON: If your child gets taken to the hospital by ambulance, first of all, they’re safe because the ambulance drivers they have, worst case scenario, restraints and chemical restraints. Best case scenario that the child’s in the back of the ambulance and these trained paramedics and EMT are talking to them, keep them talking, keep, you know, someone’s sitting in the back with them. They’re talking in a gentle voice and they get to the hospital and there’ll be wheeled into a room immediately. And nurses will check, they’ll take blood pressure, they’ll do this type of stuff and it’s some point a social worker’s going to come in. And I’m going to pause there because parents often think that they need to go in the ambulance with the child or they need to follow immediately. What you need to do when your child is driven away in the ambulance is take a breath and you need to just breathe for a second.
Make sure if you’ve got other kids that there’s going to be a babysitter taking care of them and tell people what’s going on: “Oh, our son, you know, is feeling really suicidal. So I called an ambulance and I’m going to go to the hospital.” Everybody’s going to go: “Oh my god! Are you okay?” And you can say: “No, I’m not. But I’m really gonna try to keep it together right now and breathe. So can you watch my other kids or can you come over and let the dog out?” You take a minute to make sure you are going to return to an environment that is going to be okay.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah. So, I want to jump in there and I know you just took a pause in this sequence so I want to come back to the sequence, but when you were talking about reactions and responses, I mean that’s such a wonderful distinction. Like when I hear something like that, I think about the activation in the nervous system and what’s happening in the brain. And with reactions, our nervous system is activated to the point of our blood flow is not going to the Cortex, the blood flows going to the limbic, the emotional part of the brain. And it’s just like, you know, we get to survival eventually were just what you said there. You know, take a pause, take a breath, like calm yourself down. The blood flow goes to the Cortex and we can use the best part of our thinking to kind of look at the whole picture and start to figure something out.
AARON: You know you’re dead on, because in our parent weekends and apparent webinars we teach here is literally how your brain, the A, B, C, D and E when you are in the limbic brain. Right? Because you said it, literally the blood flow to the front part, the neocortex stops and it goes right to survival.
JEFF: Yeah.
AARON: And so you’re going to respond like you’re in survival mode and we never make the best decisions in survival mode. We make one decisions. Stay alive. Stay alive.
JEFF: Yeah.
AARON: But in the prefrontal Cortex we say, okay, don’t have to chase the ambulance down the street. I need to make sure that so and so’s going to get a ride home from school. I need to make sure I get the lights off and lock the door. Make sure the dog gets let out one more time. I got to call my partner, and make sure they know what’s going on so that we can support each other. What I’m doing in this moment is really taking care of myself first. I’m also tending to my adult relationships. “Hey Jeff, my daughter’s on the way to the hospital. I’m just wondering if you could come over and check on the dog later on. I have a feeling I’m going to be there about eight hours.” And listen parents, if your child goes in on a mental health hold, they’re going to be at the hospital for at least eight hours. Social workers are not always readily available. Sometimes they’re called in, sometimes they’re on another case, but your child is going to be watched. And while your child’s at the hospital, let’s say parents, you finally do make it to the hospital. You drove slow. You drove safe. You’re listening to music. You’re focusing on your breathing. You’re not going nuts and hyperventilating and wonder what’s going to happen next.
The truth is no one knows what’s going to happen next. And that’s what’s terrifying. And as a parent, we’re not qualified to deal with this when it’s our own kid. So don’t expect to know what to do. Just breathe and listen to your breathing and listen to a song that reminds you that you’re going to be okay. And get to the hospital and parked the car safely and lock it and go inside and let the hospital know whose kid is yours and they’ll take you back. And this is where it gets important, because your kid’s going to be there for a while and you don’t have to sit in the room the entire time because your kid is in a room with professionals who have dealt with this, probably once a day since they’ve been working at the hospital. They are skilled at this. Your kid’s going to be fed. Your kids going to probably be administered an IV potentially, depending on how things are going. You’ll talk to a doctor. You’ll talk to the nurses. And they’re going to tell you that they’re going to call in a social worker. During this time you can step outside. You can make some phone calls. You can go for a little walk around the hospital. You can come back and check on your kid, but you don’t have to sit in there the entire time and wonder what’s taking place. But when you do talk to your kid, talk to them like they’re a baby. And this is what I mean, talk to them in a voice like this and say: “Hey, I know things are really rough right now. I love you and it’s going to be okay. And I know it doesn’t feel that way.” And your kid might go back into that space. “You don’t know so and so broke up with me. My life is over.” “No it’s not. You have a lot to live for. You should volunteer at the humane society.” Like that’s the wrong way to go. That’s reaction. But when a kid says: “I have nothing to live for.” Say: “I know it feels that way right now.” Because what I just did is validated the child.
JEFF: Right.
AARON: And that’s how they feel. And if we argue with how they feel, they’re going to fight back. So just validate, things are going to change. The social worker is going to come in and the social worker’s going to ask a lot of pertinent questions. They will come back with either I’m going to put your kid, I’m going to have your kid admitted to an adolescent psych unit, or your kid’s doing okay, they’re out of danger and we’re going to send them home. So those are the two things that are going to happen at this point. They’re going to go to a psych unit, which will be a 3-10 day program. And it’s not designed to solve the big problems. It’s an acute program that’s designed to get them out of danger, to get them some basic counseling, to get them watched by nurses and doctors a lot. So the [inaudible] level of need and B, what your insurance is going to do, and that’s a horrible thing to hear as a parent whose child is in crisis, but that’s just the truth. It’s what the money is going to be able to be available for that hospital. We also inform how long the child stays there.
JEFF: Right.
AARON: At the end of that 3-10 days, depending on what the doctors and nurses and therapists think, there will be a discharge plan. There will be behavior contracts and safety plans or they may recommend that your child go to intensive outpatient, which is an after school type program. A partial hospitalization, which is an all day day program, so at night they’re home.
JEFF: Right.
AARON: Or they might recommend residential program, which is like what I do. And we get a lot of kids from hospitals who are just in enough crisis that they’re afraid that if they go home they’re just going to come back to the hospital, so they need to do residential care. But that’s between you, the therapist, the insurance and the doctors.
JEFF: Sure. And can you talk a little bit about the line there specifically with age, if it’s like it would really be optimal to go to inpatient treatment and, you know, this partial hospitalization may be okay or like talk a little about the lines and the ages.
AARON: Well, I don’t think I can that much. I don’t think I have that kind of information. And this again is why I’m setting up the podcast with a place called Clear View.
JEFF: Right. Oh, excellent.
AARON: Yeah, because they’re really the professionals. I’m the person that when the therapist or the discharge planner at those places says: “We don’t think this kid should go home for a while. We think we need deep intervention.” Then they call a place like us and we give the family a tour and we talk with the kid and we let the kids see either in person tour or over video tour of the facilities, so they realize it’s very homey environment that it feels nice. The food’s younger, there’s extra. So, you know, things like that. But it really is going to depend on your child’s state of being for them to say: “Hey, we’re going to do intensive out patient. –
JEFF: Yeah,
AARON: – three hours a day for three days a week for six weeks,” or something like that.
JEFF: Yeah. And Aaron, I really liked what you were saying before with the, you know, kind of acknowledging where they’re at, validating their feelings as opposed to coming back with some kind of comment of, oh, you should be doing this or you should have done that or something like that. But just all of the reassurance to help kind of create a container of, you know, I’m here for you, like the bear tribe. I got your back here.
AARON: Right. You know what’s so important about this Jeff? And I think this is something that, well let’s just be honest, like there’s no currency in emotional intelligence anymore until you start to develop it and then you realize it’s the most currency you need to deal with pretty much any situation. What’s hard for parents to understand, because they may not be trained in psychological, or environmental, or neurological crisis, that it takes a long time for the brain to come back online. So just because they’re quiet and sitting in a hospital bed and have an IV in their arm and are watching TV and just eat in a hospital meal on a tray and all the nurses or you know, being so sweet and gentle and kind, that doesn’t mean it’s a good time to start talking about anything. Because the truth is that you could talk about boiled broccoli and it’s not going to land. People take a long time to come out of crisis mode, sometimes days. So this is when you’re at the hospital with your kid, that’s not the time to have a deep conversation. That’s why I say baby talk to him. Not goo goo ga ga. I’m saying like: “How you doing now?” “Stop talking to me, mom.” “I’m just checking in. Okay.”
JEFF: Yeah, and the other thing is like eye contact and, you know, holding their hands, or their shoulder, or I mean, the physical contact. There’s a lot more than just words that can be done to help kind of create a container to lower the nervous system in the environment.
AARON: One of the most powerful things, and I actually just had this experience with one of our boys last night. It was time to do group and he went into a really defiant space. And I very calmly in that tone of voice said I understand that you’re really frustrated with the process, but I don’t think right now is the best time to protest. Let’s find a more productive time. And he stood up and he said don’t talk to me. And walked out of the room. And later I went up to his room and he was coming out and you could just feel the tension. I say: “Hey, I really want to repair this. Are you in a space to have a little bit more of a conversation because I want to apologize and make some things right.” And the words I want to apologize and make things right was the thing that said, oh, he’s not going to attack me. In fact, he’s got my back here. And we sat down and we had this amazing conversation, where five minutes before he was going to a place, that’s the very reason he ended up at my facility. And when we’re sitting in a hospital room with our kid and we lightly touched their arm and say: “I’m really sorry we’ve ended up in this situation. I’m going to do my part to make it right. I’m going to get some help. “
JEFF: Yeah.
AARON: Like the kid is like: “Ahh… It’s not just me. I’m not broken.” And maybe your kid might go into reaction. “Yeah, you needed to change. You can’t talk to me.” “I’m seeing in this moment that how I’ve done things has gotten us here.” And parents don’t want to do that. They would say: “I had been a good parent. I love my kid. I provide. I try and I try and they’ve got this depression.” That’s not the point of this conversation. The point of this conversation is to help pull your child out of crisis so they don’t kill themselves so that they stop using drugs so they don’t cut and run away. That’s why we go to this place, because we’re trying to create an environment of communication and connection. That’s our currency. But the moment we say: “Well, what you need to do is stop acting like this.” We’re broke. We’re done. We’re gone.
JEFF: Yeah. Yeah – yeah. So this is, I mean, I’m really appreciating this conversation because we’ve spent a fair amount of time here getting real specific with warning signs and then a sequence of process and the majority of it has been focused on the danger, the problem. And then we’ve also been talking about the container and how parents can respond and what parents can do. And then I want to move into a little bit of this program that you’re taking on the road for families. And can you talk a little bit about like what’s some of the content that’s going to be in there that families could kind of go, oh wow, I might be able to relate to that.
AARON: You know, I’ll give you, and certainly as soon as I start saying it, you’ll remember it because it’s, you know, we preach it like a daily at the facility. Whether your child’s in a residential program like mine or seeing an amazing therapist like Jeff or working with, you know, in an intensive outpatient program or as an inpatient hospital. The number one rule for parents, as soon as your child is in that place of crisis, whether they’re home, in a facility, in a hospital, is you take care of yourself. And this seems to be the number one sacrificial lamb for parents whose teens are at risk, is that the team becomes the center of the household. Everything revolves around that child. Everything revolves around the child’s attitude. Everybody’s walking on egg shells, the siblings, the parents. Everybody is just focused on this child who’s no longer the child, they’re the patient. And there’s a term parents need to look up. There’s two terms actually. One is identified patient and the other is caretakers burden. Because those two things go hand in hand. The moment one of our kid starts acting in such a way that we’re scared, we lose sleep, we don’t eat very well, we’re stressed. Well, everything I just said, we lose sleep, we don’t eat very well, we’re stressed. Those three things right there can alter your brain chemistry in such a way that you are going to start making really crappy decisions as a parent.
JEFF: Right.
AARON: You will not be your best. So, that selfcare piece, when your child’s in a hospital in a day treatment program or something, that is the best time to start going to yoga again. That is the best time to take a break in the middle of your day and go swimming. That is the best time to start your exercise program in the living room in front of a youtube video, which there’s thousands of sit and breathe and we’re going to play some Enya and you’re just going to count your breath. Self care. Self care, because if you don’t take care of yourself, everything else that you’re trying to take care of is suffering your worst, not excelling from your best. The second thing is that you start to nurture your adult relationships. If you’re married or if you’re in a long term relationship, your parenting partner, you need to attend to that because this kid has taken a lot of energy away from that relationship. And there’s resentment going on, and resentment folks is either conscious or unconscious, but it’s there and you need to realize that when our children start to make withdrawals from our emotional bank accounts without our permission, then we start to get drained. Our currency gets drained. Our energetic currency. They’re taking it and they’re taking it and we’re complaining to our brother or our sister, and they’re telling mom and mom is going to great aunt and pretty soon everybody’s focused on your kid. And, oh my lord, parents who know what I’m talking about, they go to some family event and everybody’s got the psychic whisper about, be careful of little Jane or little Johnny because they’re fragile and the child picks up on this.
So if we’re not tending to our adult relationships, if we’re not setting boundaries with family members saying: “Hey, it’s okay if we talk about this, but please don’t talk about the kid like they’re broken. They’re struggling. My child is not suicidal. They’re dealing with suicidality. My child is not ADHD. My child is dealing with ADHD. My child is not an addict. My child is dealing with addiction issues.” This is how we start to nurture the adult relationships. If we’re in a partnership and coparenting, we go on walks, we’d go out to a movie, we take a break. Yeah, I know the house might be burnt down by the time you get home, but that’s not an excuse not to take care of yourself. Now, when you’ve done self care and taking care of your adult relationships, now you can take care of your child in crisis. I know it feels complete ass backwards to taking care of a kid in crisis. This doesn’t mean if there’s life and limb on the line that you don’t call 911 first. But when I told you at the beginning of the call when your child’s in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, they’re safe. Take a breath, take care of yourself. Self care can be a yoga class. Self care can also be five seconds of conscious breathing. Both of those are self care. Self care can be you and your parenting partner going out for a walk and talking about anything but the children.
JEFF: [chuckles] Anything but.
AARON: Anything but. And it can also be, would you just hold my hand for a second and look me in the eye and breathe cause I’m about to lose it. And they do. And you’ve just tended to your relationship in five seconds. So when parents tell me they can’t, it tells me that they can’t because they’re in crisis too.
JEFF: Right, right – right. Beautiful. Yeah, I like the way you kind of emphasize the self care piece and gave numerous examples. And so oftentimes, you know, I don’t know the science on this, but it seems like so often times when the human body gets activated into crisis, it is one of the hardest times to shift their attention away from that crisis. To just do that. Like hold my hand, look into my eyes for five seconds and let’s breathe together kind of, it’s like so hard to shift and go there even for five seconds. And I’m not really sure exactly why that is, but I really appreciate the reminders, the specifics that you put out there with.
AARON: We’ve actually already discussed why it is. And I know because you and I as treatment providers, we get lost in, you know, what’s the evidence behind it? What’s the evidence behind it? Jeff, you read the newspaper, you’re online and stuff. You know this guy here in Colorado, the jogger who was attacked by the mountain lion and actually strangled the mountain lion, while the mountain lion was trying to kill him. If you read about that story.
JEFF: No, I did not.
AARON: Okay. So a guy in Fort Collins or Loveland, and this happened about a half a month ago, so just, like two weeks ago. He’s jogging and hears a noise behind him, says all the hairs on his back of his neck stood up and he turned around and was attacked by a mountain lion. And this mountain lion was about five, six months old, so not a full grown adult. A mountain lion that age would attack a human, not realizing that humans fight back and were actually the top of the food chain, but this mountain lion attack him. And the mountain lion lashed onto his arm and scratch, you know, and that’s where the mountain lions mouth, but remember, mountain lion has 20 more weapons. That’s five claws per paw. And that mountain lion went at this guy, and the guy’s rolling on the ground and trying to stand up and hitting him with rocks and hitting them with sticks. And finally, while the mountain lion was latched on to his arm, the entire time, pressed his foot against the mountain lions throat and ended up suffocating it. And the mountain lion died. The guy then walked, ran the other mile, got a ride to the hospital. Now let’s say that that an entire experience is exactly what we’re talking about when dealing with a kid in crisis.
A kid is using drugs, a child who’s cutting themselves, a child who loses control of anger, punches a hole in the wall and then runs away for two more days. The reason why the guy didn’t try to get his arm out of the mountain lions mouth is because he was in survival mode. The guy who was literally sacrificing his right arm so that he could survive the experience. That’s why parents don’t stop for a second and say: “Just hold my hands and look me in the eye and let’s breathe for a second, just so we can know we’re both real in this moment.” And that’s because that takes three frontal cortex thinking this guy was in fight, flight, freeze, faint, fornicate, and feed. Those are the six things that are what the survival limbic system does. Fight, flight, freeze, faint, fornicate, and feed. In that moment he went into pure fight mode and he said, forget the arm.
JEFF: Right. Yeah.
AARON: Parents, you can’t forget the arm. You can’t sacrifice your arm because you might have other kids. You’ve got a mortgage to pay. You’ve got an entire life going on. You don’t get to sacrifice the arm parents do constantly. They sacrifice more than the arm. They sacrifice their health, they sacrifice their marriage, their relationships. They sacrifice other children because they are terrified that this one child is going to die or hurt somebody else, lose their future, destroy the family, and so they sacrifice everything. And sacrifice is not service. Service means you have a choice. Sacrifice means you don’t.
JEFF: Right. Yeah. So sacrifice would be all of the attention on the crisis.
AARON: Right. You and I both know because we work with families of people in recovery Jeff, that when you sacrifice other members of the family to try to get that one family member help, how does that tend to work out? Like we know everybody. Everybody has to be treated. Everybody has to get help. Everybody needs support. This person who’s been living in crisis, this has been going on for awhile. Even if we didn’t know it, we all felt it and maybe we rationalize it, ignored it, press it down. This is why creating sibling programming and parent programming and stuff is necessary in treatment, everybody has suffered.
JEFF: Right. And there’s a huge amount of imbalance in relationships and potential resentments and very little ability to heal and repair.
AARON: You know what’s amazing, I’m listening to you say that and I remember something that I heard and just attributed to working with couples when they’re raising kids, because you and I know much of the anger, because the parents aren’t unified, right? Somebody has a different idea of how this should be handled than the other person. They can’t agree and they fight and they stopped talking to each other because all they do is bicker. And you know, one parent becomes the go to parent for the child in crisis and the other parent gets ostracized and then the child in crisis starts to triangulate the two. You know, it’s just spins out of control. But one thing for families to remember when everybody is trying to live, exists, experience freedom, be happy in a house where there’s somebody in crisis, nobody thinks they’re the bad guy.
Like, I remember a CIA agent saying that in an interview that she had been an agent for 20 years all over the world, under cover in some of the most devious and dastardly dark “terrorist organizations”. No one thinks they’re the bad guy. Everybody thinks they’re the good guy. So to try to ostracize a parenting partner because you disagree with something saying: “That’s not gonna work. You’re gonna make it worse.” They don’t think they’re the bad guy. And when they’re accused of being the bad guy, they’re going to react and become defensive versus respond and say: “Okay, well let’s talk through all options.”
JEFF: And everybody is oftentimes just trying to do the very best they can in an untenable situation.
AARON: Right. With what limited knowledge they have about the situation. And God forbid, and I’m not saying don’t do this, this is a warning to parents. You get onto Youtube or Google and you start to try to ask that question out there and get 12 different answers and you’re like: “Well none of that helps.” I’m saying go on to Google and Youtube, and you know, find a podcast like Jeff’s podcasts or my podcast and listen, but then discuss and do what is going to work for you because we can only do what occurs to us. And if only one thing occurs to you, shout at your kid and try to convince them that they don’t need to be like this. If that’s not working, do something else. And if that doesn’t work, do something else. And if that doesn’t work, do something else.
JEFF: Right.
AARON: There are ways to figure out other ways to do things very quickly is to hire someone like Jeff or to, you know, someone who has decades of experience working with families. That’s what this is about.
JEFF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So do you want to talk a little bit about your family program and how people can get ahold of you? Anything that you want to mention as we bring this to a close?
AARON: Sure. And thanks for this opportunity, Jeff. Like you said, we’ve not been around each other for a long time. We see each other at conferences and stuff. You’re down there in boulder, I’m up the hill from you. It’s just great to be in your gravitational pull brothers, so thank you very much. Folks, my podcast is Beyond Risk and Back. Beyondriskandback.com and you can go to that page and see all the shows have uploaded. I have a show with Jeff actually coming up here pretty soon that we did at the Winter Symposium. My facility is Fire Mountain Residential Treatment Center. The website is firemountainprograms.com. You can also find fire mountain residential treatment center on Facebook and all the podcasts are posted. There are videos and blogs. You can go to Youtube and put in Fire Mountain RTC and you’ll find about 90 videos of past parent weekends.
The launch of the parenting struggling teens webinar will be towards the end of April and there will be a big ad campaign going out. So you can join our mailing list at firemountainprograms.com and find out more there. If you happen to see the parenting struggling teens Webinar ads on Facebook, you can follow those links back and get more information. I don’t have this specific date yet, but I also know this will be the first, not the last. So, if you’re listening to this years later, there’s probably another Webinar to see. I am hosting our first live parent’s weekend in Denver in probably September is the date I’m shooting for. I’m working with the hotel right now to reserve it, but you can always contact me at Aaron Huey on Facebook, A-A-R-O-N H-U-E-Y. And my email addresses aaron@firemountainprograms.com million ways to find me out there.
JEFF: All right. And so all that information too, we’ll be in the show notes.
AARON: Yup.
JEFF: That will go with this podcast. So Aaron, thank you very much for your time, for this conversation. And yeah, I look forward to future communication.
AARON: Absolutely Jeff, thank you very much for having me on your show.