1Welcome back to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast!
Today, I thrilled to introduce you to Brenda — a courageous woman who shares her inspiring journey of recovery from codependency, work addiction, and alcoholism. Growing up in a home impacted by addiction and mental illness, Brenda turned to overachievement to manage the chaos.
Through intensive therapy, support groups like CODA, Al-Anon, and Workaholics Anonymous, and the transformative power of writing — showcased in her book Stepping Into Trust: A Poetic Journey of Recovery
Brenda found her path to healing. Tune in for her powerful story of resilience, self-discovery, and hope.
Bumper 00:01
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast, a place for real conversations with people who love someone with the disease of addiction.
Now here is your host, Margaret Swift Thompson.
Intro: Welcome back to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to a friend Brenda. She’s a remarkable individual who shares her journey of recovery from codependency, work addiction, and alcoholism.
Growing up in a household impacted by the disease of addiction and mental illness Brenda’s experiences shaped her identity and set her on a path of over achievement to cope with the chaos. Brenda is also a gifted poet and introduces us to her book ‘A Poetic Journey of Recovery.’
Please meet Brenda.
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast.
Margaret 01:26
All right, well, welcome everybody to the podcast. I’m so excited today to introduce you to Brenda. I will let Brenda share her introduction. But Brenda is a fellow traveler I’ve had the privilege to work with in different places but also be a part of a recovery community that we both have recently ventured into, which has been amazing. So, Brenda, welcome, glad you’re here today.
Brenda 01:50
Thank you, Margaret, it’s great to be here.
Margaret 01:53
I’m so excited for people to get to know your story and also hear some of your beautiful work that you’ve done in your poetry. And what I would ask first is, how do you introduce yourself, and who might be a qualifier that started you on your recovery journey? If it was you, it was you, but if it was someone else, who would that be?
Brenda 02:11
Sure. So, I typically introduce myself when I’m speaking, hi. I’m Brenda. I’m a recovering codependent. I’m also in long term recovery, I recently celebrated 10 years freedom from alcohol. I come from a family who is affected by substance abuse, and my father specifically struggled with alcoholism and mental illness for pretty much most of his life, certainly when I knew him, it was all his life. So, I consider myself a double winner. I also struggle with, I’m a sugar addict working on recovery there, and I’m also, I also consider myself a work addict or a workaholic. So recovery is a part of my story there as well, s I got a lot going on.
Margaret 02:55
And that makes you a great guest, because you can speak to different audience members who may relate to different perspectives. So, if you’re willing, let’s go back to the piece that intrigues me about talking about adult children, because I don’t think that’s a subject, we talk a lot about in
Brenda: Yeah.
Margaret: we do in recovery worlds, but people don’t understand necessarily the impact. So, what do you remember as a child, when was your if you can your first age of noticing something was wrong, even if you didn’t know what, what was that like?
Brenda 03:29
Wow, that’s a really good question. I do struggle with limited memories of my childhood, very common for folks that have gone through traumatic experiences. I have been diagnosed with complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, so developmental trauma stuff, so again, very common.
I have small snippets of memory from my early childhood. I remember images of my father lying on the couch, being very gosh, almost catatonic, in many situations. He did not he did not do much. He didn’t get out of the house. He had some real hermit like behaviors, and so the couch was his, and so I have images of him on the couch. I have images of me hiding behind a bookshelf. I have images of my bedroom, but, you know, just very limited images. I have wonderful images of being at my grandparents’ house, who I was very grateful to have a part of my life, and they lived a couple blocks away, so they were huge, huge part of my life. So, I have a lot more good memories of them.
Margaret 04:57
I really appreciate you saying that. Brenda because one of the things I’ve done with many family members when they’re in that role of grandparent and they feel so helpless at times of what to do, what not to do, when their child, who’s the adult in the situation, has this disease. And one of the things that I’ve always said to grandparents is your consistent engagement with that grandchild shows them a stability, a consistency, a reliability, a safe place to fall. It sounds like that’s some of what they offered you.
Brenda 05:32
Yes. Oh yes. And I remember doing some treatment, and you know, in treatment, we certainly focus on the more of the, you know, the challenges and the problem, because we want to get at that right for healing. And I remember talking about that, just kind of like how I explained to you that we were, you know, talking about my childhood, and, you know, certainly difficult, very difficult. I think about it now, and I go, wow, you know, but back then it was normal. It was from day one,
Margaret 06:04
right? You knew no different, unless you were at your grandparents’ house,
Brenda 06:09
Yeah, or my brothers. I had my brothers. I had two older brothers who were more like fathers to me, I would say, than my own father, who I loved my father. I loved him. He just wasn’t in that role as that stereotypical role of being a father, and my mother, you know, was his care giver provider, so that put her in a very difficult position. And you know, as an adult now raising children, I can’t even imagine how difficult that was for her,
Margaret: Sure.
Brenda: So, when I was in this treatment experience, I, you know, we were talking about the difficulties, and we were going through this, this session, and you know, it was like, Well, I had grandparents. So, I had grandparents. And it was like, Thank God. Thank God,
Margaret: Right.
Brenda: I value that role. I am a grandparent now, and so I want to be that for my grandkids. I want to be there, sure if I can, you know, and when I can well, and
Margaret 07:12
you certainly can with your recovery, a lot better than you could if you weren’t in recovery, right?
Brenda 07:16
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Margaret 07:19
When you look back at how your formative years were spent with mental health issues, addiction issues, how did that impact you? You mentioned trauma and trauma response. How do you think it affected you in the way you navigated the world? You know, when you lived in that home and you went outside of the home, not to grandma and grandpas, but to school, to be social, to different things, and as you move through life, how did that impact you? What do you identify as, as being the role you took on or impacts of that illness in the family?
Brenda 07:52
Yeah, I became the overachiever outside of the family. I became the top A student, third in my class of 300 people. You know, school was my place to excel from an academic perspective, fortunately, I did have, you know, some intelligence so I could do that. I struggled more in relationships, more with friends, really, not especially in certain years of my life, like eighth grade, middle school was horrible, horrible, horrible time for me. I didn’t feel like I had a place. I felt very left, out, isolated. Kind of felt like the scapegoat, if you will, even though I was continuing to keep my grades up and all of that, relationships were, were, were struggle for me in certain times in my life, not always, but in certain times of my life.
Let’s see what else I mean, I could read a part of my book, and I don’t know if this is a good time for that, but there’s a part of my book calling called ‘Finding Identity.’ And finding identity was a huge part of my recovery process, huge. So, I didn’t know who I was. I felt like I knew who other people thought I should be. I knew that I didn’t want to get be stuck like my mother in this very codependent type of relationship. She didn’t, you know, no divorce there. She stayed loyal to my dad, you know, he was very ill, and I can see that now, and how that impacted me.
Margaret 09:48
Is it one of those things, Brenda, that when you’re living in it, as you say, you’re surviving it, you’re doing what you’re doing, you don’t really realize the impact until you get further down your journey of life and start seeing you. Signs that aren’t working,
Brenda: Yeah,
Margaret: behaviors that aren’t working, relationships that aren’t working. And that’s when you start evaluating it, is that how it goes or when?
Brenda 10:13
Yeah, for sure. You know the work became an obsession. It became a focus. It became a I know who I am when I’m at work, but who am I as a mother? Who am I, you know, I didn’t struggle so much with being a you know, early on in my relationship with my husband, you know, but once we had kids and started running into some of those just your basic challenges of being a parent and balancing work life in and, you know, falling into that mother role and my children happened, all three happened to be adopted. So that’s a whole other, you know thing, yeah, a challenge to our international adoptions. So, you know, I definitely had this energy to to strive and to succeed. I also had had this more of a people pleasing chameleon kind of approach. I knew how to act, when to act, but it was coming from a place of having a mask on, if you will. Yeah, so that, you know, really fits well with you know, when I identify myself as a recovering codependent, because Codependence, Anonymous really helps me, and that program really helps me to stay true to who I am. That’s why I really like it.
Margaret 11:41
When you started noticing things or challenges, did you find your way into 12 step recovery, therapy? Like, what was that journey like to start healing from the wounds of your childhood and this family disease?
Brenda 11:55
Yeah, I found myself working a lot, a lot, a lot, long hours in the office. I was, at that time, a finance person, CPA, working at a nonprofit, large nonprofit, and we had some difficulties in the department. I was the manager, middle management is tough, I’ll tell you, that’s a role that one wish on anyone. I’m retired now so I can talk smart. But you know, we were struggling with some things, and of course, I thought I could fix it. And so, I felt like it was my role, my job, and I took my job very seriously, and I just kept working. And when I wasn’t at work, working, I was thinking about it at home.
And so, my mind was going all the time, 24/7, I mean, I couldn’t sleep. You know, I had two little kids, no three, three at the time, but I’ve had multiple burnouts. The last one, though, the last major burnout was, you know, okay, I need to seek therapy here. I need to do something different. And I think the family issues with kids. The kids were, you know, hitting closer to that middle school age, my daughters, two daughters, and so I felt like I couldn’t manage it all. And so, I sought out a therapist, and that was 20 years ago.
Margaret 13:42
And would you call your burnouts bottoms of sorts? Like, those were, like, wake up calls of I need to do something. And it took a lot to get that attention from you.
Brenda 13:52
Yes, I would call it a bottom of sort. Yes. I mean, the bottoms kept getting lower, though I think, oh, I hit this bottom, you know, okay, I’m gonna do something different here. And I found myself getting right back into it, the work piece. And, you know, me being the researcher type and the overachiever, I’ll call myself. I needed to understand what was going on this work addiction thing was, I mean, people think of work addiction as rock stars, you know, like we’re just crushing it right, especially in the upper Midwest. I think maybe a little bit more like that. I don’t know for sure about that, but like, you know, when I remember going to a workaholics Anonymous meeting and going, what the heck you know, this is, this is this is so counter cultural, like, I’m trying to not be this, producer. I’m trying not to be this, you know, breadwinner, person, that’s, you know, helping my family with money. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t I was losing my, I was losing my mind, so it just went that way.
Margaret 15:04
One of the things that I hear from loved ones of someone with the disease of addiction is work feels like my place of competency when the rest of my world is falling apart.
Brenda: Mm, hmm, yes.
Margaret: And it sounds like that felt true to you, even as a student, as a child, like when everything else was uncertain or difficult or painful or scary or whichever adjective, at home, you felt safe at school. Maybe it wasn’t competency till you realize you could excel in it, and then got a lot of positive attention for it, but it naturally led to work being that place of competence. And it sounds like as you evolved on your story, Brenda, you were no longer getting whatever it was giving you. It was more of a hurting, damaging experience than a this is good enough. This makes me feel good enough experience.
Brenda 15:57
Yes, yes, and that’s where I can relate it to the substance, substance use, or gambling, or any of the behavioral process addictions. Is it? It works until it doesn’t
Margaret: Right.
Brenda: And so, what were the consequences? You know, it was like I’m staying late at work, when I’d get home at eight o’clock and wait until my children were in bed because I had nothing left to give them. My husband seemed to be able to take it on and cover and he didn’t give me a hard time. Frankly, I have to tell you, he enabled that behavior because he you know, he thought it was what I needed to do, and that, it looks very different for someone with a work addiction versus someone with, you know, they’re sitting at the bar drinking and, you know,
Margaret: Right
Brenda: spouse at homes going, what the heck? Right? You know.
Margaret 16:55
The consequences look different. Well, it’s interesting. Let’s dissect that a little bit so the work thing looks like accomplishment, making money, thriving, striving. So, it’s acceptable, even if the partners at home depleted and wishing you were more engaged. It feels different than someone like you, say, sitting at the bar where there is no, quote, benefit to the family that you’re doing that it’s interesting. It’s interesting. It’s interesting. I’ve never really thought about Brenda, but that’s a very good point. There’s certain behavioral addictions that don’t have the outrageous consequences at first that you would see in other illnesses.
Brenda 17:32
Yeah? And I would say at first, right? It’s a slow killer.
Margaret: Yeah,
Brenda: it is so I think people, you know, I people can die of heart attacks. It’s not going to say, Oh, they were a work addict, right? You know, the stress.
Bumper 17:50
This podcast is made possible by listeners like you.
As some of you might remember I had the pleasure of bringing together former colleagues of mine to create and implement a family recovery program based out in the community.
That is being continued in Amery Wisconsin by the Spiritual Program Retreat. I am thrilled to share that the weekend of May 2nd through 4th the Spiritual Program Retreat in Amery WI at Camp Wapogasset, what a beautiful location for a retreat, will be hosting their Family Program Retreat with a very special guest speaker, Bob Bernu. I will be there as a support role; however this will be once again a fabulous place for anyone impacted by the family disease of addiction to get greater insight into the family disease and the benefits and resources forr family recovery. I will attach the link to this wonderful family program retreat in my show notes.
You’re listening to the Embrace Family Recovery Podcast. Can you relate to what you’re hearing? Never miss a show by hitting the subscribe button. Now, back to the show.
Brenda 19:09
Yeah, so I think it’s a slow it’s a slow fall.
Margaret: Yeah,
Brenda: it’s a slow fall. And then when it you know, when I fell, I fell hard and and that was the Okay, here we go. And then I started coping. Well, I was coping with alcohol, but I started really coping with the
Margaret 19:30
So I’m curious, the work started to show the work addiction showed its consequences. You had a pullback of some sort there, and then the alcohol increased.
Brenda 19:43
Yeah. So, I think work is a stimulant. I think, you know, its cortisol, it’s adrenaline, it’s right. So, I had a natural stimulant, stimuli, behavioral stimulant going on. I was using alcohol. Um, to balance, right? And that, yeah, and so that was that was working for a while. So, I’d come home, I’d have something to drink, you know, settle down, because I couldn’t get work out of my head. It was an obsession. It was an obsession. So that can work for a while. And I know people do it. I mean, I know people that do it. I mean, I’m like, well, there’s people that do that all the time. What’s the problem? But, you know, I have the genetic, I have the genetic predisposition to alcoholism because of my father, going back to, you know, I’m a child of an alcoholic. It’s in my family. It’s in my genes. So predisposed to that risk factor. I started going down that road, and it got to the point where this isn’t, you know, and I had enough. I had some knowledge about, you know, I have a little bit more knowledge, maybe, than the average person about addiction. And so, I sort of could see how I was getting attached to that substance, maybe before it got really bad. I mean, it didn’t get, like, really, really bad. I mean, there’s, you know, I still had my house and my family and, you know, so I’m kind of got a multiple addictive person. I have addictive personality. My therapist, one of my therapists, of the 20 years in therapy, said, Brenda, you have an addictive personality. That’s no doubt about that. I’m like, Yup.
Margaret 21:34
So cross addiction is very possible and very real for you. Would you call that some of the
Brenda: Yeah.
Margaret: Okay, I’m curious. You said something very intriguing to me. You said, I have more knowledge than the average person about addiction. Do you think that you used your academics and your brains to try and understand it from a theory and clinical perspective before you faced it in yourself?
Brenda 21:57
Yeah. Oh, for sure, for sure. There’s my safety, you know, like, I turn to because that’s been a safety net for me. I turn to finding out knowledge. I’m a, you know, one of these researcher people like, okay, if I don’t trust something, I’m gonna go look it up for myself. And very much one of those people that, you know, kind of an armchair. What do you want to call that? So,
Margaret: Expert,
Brenda: Expert, you know.
Margaret 22:32
So, you took it quite far. Because you actually, if it’s okay to say, got into the field of working with people with this disease. So, you really leaned into that academic. And I identify with that. I think that that’s one of the things that led me to my bottom was I had to go and look good and train in this before I ever got honest or could face it in myself.
Brenda 22:54
Oh, for sure, I was, you know, I mean, I was seeing patients. I was clinic, you know, I’m a. I am a master’s level addiction counselor trained at a very reputable organization, and I was in training. I was seeing patients, and I was going, oh, my goodness, I need to be here, not across. I need to be across the
Yeah,
across the table from this person. Not, you know, I don’t know how to say that, but I
Margaret 23:27
No, I absolutely relate to that, and I think that that is a very my experience, painful place to be, of fraudulence, self-loathing, wearing a mask, trying to appear that I have my stuff together when I’m feeling like I’m about this close to falling apart, it’s a hard place to be.
Brenda 23:47
Yeah, it is. It is. And I really wanted to succeed in being a counselor. My heart was there, and I wanted to get out of the role I was in, which was more Finance and Administration, but I think I needed to, perhaps, and I throw this out as a maybe more of a question, but I think, I think I needed to, I think it was part of my own healing. You know, that I was trying to heal myself, and then I did not enter the field when I graduated, thank God. I think because I wasn’t, I wasn’t ready emotionally, I might have been ready academically, I might have been ready in that way, but frankly, emotionally and for my own healing. So, I think my higher power had my back.
Margaret 24:41
Yeah. I give you a lot of credit for that, because I believe that as a person who also sought anywhere to feel good enough and to be accepted and that external validation, I didn’t even pause. I jumped right in both feet, even though my i. Insides were like screaming at, what are you doing? I just got out of myself more and more. So, I’m so impressed that you had the wherewithal, or your higher power helped you have the wherewithal to not dive into the work after the training.
Brenda 25:15
Sure. And I had a fallback, I mean, and frankly, my fallback was what I was doing, which, you know, in the industry we’re in, I made a way more money doing what I was doing than what I would have been doing as a counselor, and I couldn’t, in my head, justify it, plus seeing, you know, this emotional thing going on with me. It works out.
Margaret 25:42
Yeah, you know, our journeys usually do. I was blessed to meet with Karen Casey recently and have a wonderful conversation with her. And one of the things she’s very adamant about is that even though there are painful parts of our journey, our journey is exactly how it’s meant to be to give us what we need to grow and heal. Some of those are really painful lessons, but they’re part of this process. One of the things you share with Karen is your use of writing. You mentioned your book earlier. I happen to have a trusted copy because, you know, we want to promote the book. It is a beautiful book of and you title it ‘A Poetic Journey of Recovery.’ The art is beautiful. The words are beautiful and very heartfelt and vulnerable. When did you start using pen to paper on your journey of self-discovery, recovery, healing?
Brenda 26:41
Yeah, well, actually, about a year after I got sober.
Margaret: Really.
Brenda: And I went through, I’ll say, waves of recovery, first of all, I needed to get a handle on the work
Margaret: Okay. Thank and so I went to some treatment on that. I was seeing a therapist at the time too, but I went to more of an intensive treatment program.
Margaret 27:12
Can we touch on that? Because I don’t know people know that’s a possibility.
Brenda: Yeah. Where do you go for workaholism, for treatment? What is that look like, sure, sure.
Brenda 27:21
So, I went to a program for codependency. And there’s a program in Pennsylvania, five day program.
Margaret 27:30
I think we could mention it, because I’m a fan of it. I graduated through it too, and I think letting people know the actual resources that are out there. So, it was in the Chit Chat Program back in the day, the codependency program at Caron.
Brenda: Well, it was actually called Breakthrough.
Margaret: So, when you went, it was Breakthrough before I went a lot longer ago than you, it was not called Breakthrough. So, Breakthrough is an intensive program that identifies codependency, looks at codependency in a level that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anywhere else. It
Brenda 27:58
It was very it’s called in the intensive workshop. It is very intensive, and it really addressed some of the things that, like I mentioned, my memories from childhood.
Margaret: Wow,
Brenda: that drew out some of the dynamics from my childhood that I wouldn’t I don’t think I would have understood, yeah, without it, yeah, I don’t think I would have, because it, it’s such a well, it’s psycho psycho drama, I believe, is what. I don’t know if they use psychodrama when you were there, there’s a lot to it, and it’s like two counselors and 10 people were the groups and, and it was all group for, you know, the whole week. So, group, group therapy is very effective. And the way they have it structured, wow, wow, wow. So, I decided I needed to do some this would be me. I’m going to jump in with both feet.
Margaret: Sure
Brenda: I need to do get at this. I want to get at this. This is a, you know, I want to, want to fix that, um, so that, you know, I mean
Margaret: I relate!
Brenda: So, I went for it. And it was, yeah, it was what I needed that I got into more intensive therapy. I got into code, co dependence, anonymous, back then, and really learned way more about what was going on there and that Codependents Anonymous covers all sorts of issues. It’s, you know, the only desire, the only requirement for membership, is a desire for healthy and loving relationships.
Margaret 29:38
beautiful requirement,
Brenda: right?
Margaret: Who doesn’t want that,
Brenda: right?
Margaret: I’m curious. Brenda, how did you find CODA versus ACA, Al Anon, is there a way that that was introduced you? Was it as a result of going through breakthrough? Because, you know, you could have qualified for different meetings?
Brenda 29:55
Sure, it was introduced to me. I had not heard. Heard of it before,
Margaret: Right?
Brenda: That was one of the aftercare suggestions. I have done ACA a bit. I have attended Al-Anon quite a bit. And I also I talked about Workaholics Anonymous. I attended that for six months. I had to drive an hour to go to a meeting in the middle of the day in the metro to get to a Workaholics Anonymous meeting. So, you want has to be pretty motivated in order to do that. Because, so, you know, so I’m kind of a, what do you call it? I have a lot of want to, want to relate it to a dog, a mutt?
Margaret 30:44
Oh, okay, so you have exposure to different things that have influenced you and your recovery is a smorgasbord of different meetings and things that you find helpful to your recovery. Yes,
Brenda 30:58
Yes,,I have a mixture. I’m a mixture.
Margaret: Yeah, got it.
Outro: In our next episode Brenda dives even deeper into her path, revealing how she embraced vulnerability and found unexpected healing through poetry, recovery programs, and the power of self-discovery. Don’t miss out on this inspiring continuation of Brenda’s story next week.
Margaret 32:50
I want to thank my guest for their courage and vulnerability in sharing parts of their story.
Please find resources on my website, embracefamilyrecovery.com.
This is Margaret Swift Thompson, until next time, please take care of you.
