In this final episode together, Bob shares more about how he works to be observant rather than living in the chaos of absorbing other’s feelings.
He is clear about the need for support that doing this family recovery work alone won’t be sustainable.
Hear more from Bob about his quote,
“I forgot I was his dad. I thought I was Higher Power”.
Enjoy the tools and quotes Bob shares, and then take action for your recovery!
Find your recovery community, or reach by reaching out to me at
https://embracefamilyrecovery.com/work-with-margaret/
See full transcript of the episode below.
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 final episode in the series with Bob. We talk about the journey of recovery and how it is about progress, and a willingness to be vulnerable on the journey. Let’s get back to Bob!
The Embrace Family Recovery Podcast
Margaret: Well, and I think that’s a really important piece too Bob that you share the two steps forward, one step back. A lot of people have the illusion that their loved one will get into treatment and it’s going to be this uphill trajectory. We’re going to move through and put him in treatment for 30 days 40 days 100 days and then they’re going to do great. The other piece I think that family members struggle with along that, is their own journey. I seem to be doing well and then all of a sudden, I’m completely frozen in fear again like something’s triggered me and I’m a mess. Oh my gosh what am I gonna do? And I go back to instantly fix, control, manage. So, I appreciate you saying that it’s been a two steps forward one step back, three steps forward one step back. Those are important things for people to know.
Bob: I love that line right it’s the famous one progress that perfection and I think one of the character flaws of many of us on either side of this disease suffer from, I know it’s been true in my life, is perfectionism. Demanding perfection out of myself and then projecting that and the people in my life that I love. And for me, uh embracing the truth of progress not perfection and to learn to be compassionate with my own shortcomings, failings, screw ups time and time again. And rather than rather than you know berating myself, being accepting and understanding, not excusing it, always trying to you know to show up healthier. But to realize part of the human condition is, I’m not perfect and I never will be, and to love myself with that, in that reality, not this you know unattainable illusion of perfection, is absolutely huge.
Margaret: And self-defeating. Cause we’re never going to attain. It so we never really feel good about ourselves at some core level we feel like a screw up.
Bob: Yeah
Margaret: The other piece I think you speak to is, I don’t know for you, but I can kind of guess. For me the people I’m drawn to are the real people who put their truth out there their vulnerability. I am inspired by them I am drawn to them I’m not drawn to the perfect people or the ones who show that illusion. I want to be more authentic, so I look for authenticity in other people.
Bob: I think Benee Brown was kind of the first one out with a lot of this I think, and when I look at her work and her writing around the gifts of imperfection and the other work she’s done around vulnerability and you know showing up more authentically. I think it’s some of the most important work in the last 100 years in terms of her really articulating the clear way, exactly what you’re saying there, that actually what connects us to each other is our pain, and our brokenness, and our vulnerability. not our strength, and our achievements. and our “perfection” that isn’t there anyway. So, I 100% agree with you that you know the way to connect and to really be a contributing member to this society that we live in is to show up openly and vulnerably and authentically. I love that saying too, when it comes to our work you know with families, you know that whole wounded healer model really resonates with me that, you know I’m not some you know geek, recovery guy. But I’m a dad and I’m a broken guy that’s getting healthier and that’s on a journey to wholeness and that my pain and the suffering that I’ve gone through is a big piece of who I am today.
Margaret: I agree, I agree. And I think that that’s very much the people who came before me who took me under their wing 20 years ago at my early days at Hazelden Betty Ford. They were people who walked and talked and lived their recovery out loud and gave me permission to do the same and showed me how. And I think that’s one of the reasons it’s so magical to get into the rooms of 12 step meetings, as hard as it is to walk over that threshold. If we can find our way into a zoom meeting with other fellows or if we can find our way to a building, we will find our mirrors. We will find people who show us parts of us we can’t recognize, understand, or make sense of. and that’s because they’re willing to be real and vulnerable.
Bob: And they’ll accept us and love us.
Margaret: And I think Kathy’s reaction to the meeting is not uncommon I’ve heard that for many people, so you go there and you listen to people tell their stuff, but you don’t ask questions, and you don’t give crosstalk and so forth. and that is how meetings are designed to go. it’s not a therapeutic meeting in the sense of a therapist lead and interactive and feedback it is very much I will share what I’m doing what I’m working on how it’s working for me and then you can hear that and then after the meeting, in the fellowship, in the phone calls, in the sponsorship is where we get the traction to then put what we learn into action. and I think people miss that cause they don’t make that effort around the meeting to get the help. Would you agree?
Bob: I agree. I think you’re spot on and I think some people probably give up too early to you know I think the standard wisdom is right go to five there’s five or six meetings before you make a decision on it, and that was helpful information for me. because another of my many flaws is I can be a bit judgmental. And you know walking into a meeting I don’t really like that guy, is he ever going to shut up? And uh you know personalities that I don’t really connect with. I think initially my judgy self. And I have found oftentimes that those are some of the people over time that I’ve grown to love and respect the most.
Margaret: Well, I think, my language is that when you walk in that meeting as a family member your monkey is going crazy doesn’t want you in the room and if you want to understand and empathize on any level with your addicted loved one. You think about what their disease is saying to them as they walk into a meeting. This is so dry. OK this is my life in recovery no excitement whatsoever. Oh yeah sure that person’s really got it going on, look at them you know. It’s that disease within us that doesn’t want us in those rooms, for anything. And as a family member is that, what I call the monkey chatter that diseases impact on us as family members, it doesn’t want us in those rooms. It doesn’t want us not isolated, because when we’re alone we’re at its mercy.
Bob: This might sound a little out there, but I think you know a big piece of recovery is discerning. Like discerning the right thing to say or not say discerning the right action to take or not take. I think that’s a discernment process it’s really checking in with ourselves asking you know what’s driving me here. Is it fear? Is it love? Is it control? is it surrender? I mean, I spend a lot of time thinking about that. Like discernment, and I think I think you’re hitting on something I think a great and easy discernment is that, if my mind is telling me to separate myself and the isolate, and to move away from people, that’s I think a pretty good sign that that’s a voice I probably don’t want to listen to. But that voice that’s saying give it a try, give it another try hang in there think the best of,
Margaret: Look for similarities.
Bob: Yes. That’s a voice I want to listen to and that takes discernment. I think and really checking in with ourselves and, you know kind of moving from a reactionary stance to more of an observer and kind of really looking at what’s going on within us. And sometimes we need help. Which is the great piece of a sponsor where that you know objective set of eyes by you know if I’m willing to open up my life and then get some feedback can be helpful to, To help me uncover may because in the beginning, I don’t know about you but in my early recovery I was a basket case, I mean, my thinking was so messed up and I think I was in such a panicked state. My prefrontal cortex just wasn’t helping me out a lot so, you know, connecting to a sponsor and somebody who was further along in their recovery it was really helpful for me to get through that the discernment peace with help. Cause I really wasn’t in a position to do it myself.
Margaret: I think the piece of that that I can relate to and my craziness in the beginning was I had spent so much time trying to, to use your word discern what I was thinking and where it was coming from or what it meant I was almost paralyzed by it. And so, for me the huge tool that benefited me greatly was having a mentor, a sponsor, a few of them in my life who I would be straight with even though I was scared to be straight and authentic with people, and they would give me loving direct, feedback. And challenge some of my own staying in here trying to figure it out for myself, because I was in there with this monkey or the disease’s impact of me and I didn’t know what was what. When I hear you describe it? I hear the voice of the disease and the voice of your higher power and how do you get to a place where you can lean into the higher power voice, rather than that instinct response that’s so familiar of going to that disease voice. And I don’t think we can do that alone.
Bob: I agree I needed a lot of help; I still do.
Margaret: Yeah, oh I agree fear hits me something with someone I love happens and it is all over. The first thing I have to do is run to the people I know, back to the basics, to give me some support because my monkey brain will be on overdrive, I will be in fear response and reactivity and immediately go to fix, manage, control.
Bob: I heard it said recently with a therapist that I really like he said a lot of maturity. and he talks a lot about you know kind of operating in my functional adult is moving from absorbing to observing. And you know, when you’re living with someone in active addiction it’s easy to absorb their mood uh, you know, the chaos. It’s really easy to just absorb all that. And I think what recovery does for us on the family side if we’re going to meeting, If we have support, if we’re taking time to exercise, for prayer meditation getting our mental health and emotional health in order, get it. We learn to observe what’s going on rather than just absorbing it. And then as we observe it, then we can more in adult way, healthy adult way choose a response. As opposed to your point being more reactionary, so I really like that. You know I’ll check in with myself. Are you absorbing right now or are you observing? And I can tell you know.
Margaret: I also think what you speak to is, because I like visuals, I think when we’re living in the crisis and the insanity of active addiction around us all the time, we’re literally hanging over the cliff edge ready to dive in and grab the person from falling. And with recovery we start to pull back from that cliff edge. And you think about it, I hate heights so for me it’s a very, very, very real example. Is you think about what it feels like to be on that edge, versus when you step back a foot, and then two feet, and then 10 feet right? The hard part is leaving the person which I think speaks so much to the spiritual component of recovery if I’m not hanging on to them even though I know on some level I’m not the one who can make this better. Who in the heck am I going to give them to?
Did you get to a point after assigning the coach to realizing that your son’s integrity and authenticity in his recovery depended on him creating his support system?
Bob: Yes, but it, it had to hit me in the eyes before I really woke up. You know I there’s a gentleman by the name of LB, I guess I’ll call him that was my supervisor out at Hazelden back when my son was in his second treatment setting. And I had shared with him how frustrated I was and kind of just felt like my son’s ATM machine at that time and all I was kind of doing was enabling him financially, more than anything. While he was you know deep in his addiction, active addiction. and this man looked at me and he asked me how old my son was, he is 22 and he basically said to me “Well when are you gonna start treating him like he’s 22 instead of like he’s 12”.
And he said back to me he can do it! He can do it! He’s got it! Let him do it! He literally, it was so powerful Margaret. It was probably one of the top two or three most powerful things anyone has ever said to me in my life and it was so the truth of it was so undeniable that the next day I went to my son during visiting and basically asked his forgiveness for not respecting him really as a man, for treating him as a little boy, for trying to run his life, and to apologize for that and let him know that I was going to try and change. And that was the beginning of it for us I think. My son actually told me probably you know he’s been in recovery now for eight years and he told me probably six years ago. He said add I don’t know if I’d be sober today if you had you and I hadn’t had that talk that day in treatment so
Margaret: Wow like if I could just stop it there and give that that whole last bit to every family member I know who is so, so resistant for lack of a better word, to acknowledge that their behavior is infinitizing their child, rather than supporting them to find their path. It is not out of any malintent. It is out of love and fear. But you shared just then I felt like the ATM machine. Who gave him the passcode who gave him the code to get the ATM machine opening up and passing out money? You did.
Bob: Yep
Margaret: He didn’t learn it by himself.
And so, it’s that whole concept of let him do it. Which I think comes back to we don’t because we’re so terrified of the outcome. So we think that if we stay in the game, when we make it happen then we’ll be OK but we won’t.
Bob: Yeah, I think I get I got confused. I forgot I was his dad, I thought I was higher power.
Margaret: Ooof, drop the mic their Bob.
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Margaret: I think that’s a very, very good experiential way to look at it when we start growing in our recovery. Am I being the spouse? Am I being a mere human who’s on the ride of chaos with them or am I in my fear and worry jumping into a role that I am not qualified to do. And do I want the responsibility right? One of the things that is really hard to watch as a family member say to me and you’ve heard this too. I won’t let them be on the street. I won’t let them die on the street.
Now as a parent myself Oh my gosh I hear that and I can’t even imagine living with it. and one of the questions I will always put forth is so somehow it would be better if they died in your basement than on the street is the premise for that decision. because if nothing changes nothing changes, and their disease will take them.
And it’s incomprehensible either way to imagine losing our child. but it’s that weird delusion of somehow, it’s different if I let them have their consequences versus keeping them at home and caring for them. When really keeping them home and caring for them in quotes is caring for the disease not them.
Bob: No one could say it better than you just did.
Margaret: Painful truth of this illness manipulates us. And no, I don’t want that to be the story for anybody. Right. I want everyone who has this disease to find their recovery and I want everyone in in the family aspect of it to find their recovery. But I’m not God either, neither are you. So, all we can do is share our experience, strength, and hope and our tools and hope that somebody will pick one of them to try. And give it a fair chance. Cause how many years have we been doing the dance with a disease like this before we get into recovery?
How did your children other than David cope during it I heard you say you tried to get him to family I heard you encouraged Al-Anon but do you remember any impact? Cause we hear from parents quite a bit that you know I’m or we observe with parents quite a bit that they’re so consumed with the one with the illness that the others sort of get left in the in the background.
Bob: Yeah, as I look at our family so five children, David was the 4th oldest so three older siblings who were all, when you know, the defecation really hit the oscillator, you know they were all in there you know mid 20s or late 20s. So, I think the fact that you know the wheels kind of fell off when they were a bit older is different as opposed if they had been like early teen, you know teenagers, if he had been the oldest or something like that. So, I think birth order had somewhat of an impact in our situation. I mean it was interesting I saw you know as I look at them, one got really angry and kind of just cut him off. Um uh another one became kind of his life line and would still get together with him, go to movie with him, hang out with him, very accepting and just kind of loving him in his situation. A third lived out of state and just kind of ignored the situation I would say. And I think the youngest was probably the one where she was young enough, that when things were going on, she did get ignored because she was just this perfect, perfect little girl right. And the feedback I’ve gotten from her that’s really broken my heart is, you know of course I made the mistake of thinking oh she doesn’t you know, we’re kind of protecting her from this, hiding it from her she doesn’t really understand really what’s going on here.
Oh, Bob you know I mean she was; she saw it all, she felt it all and the hard part for her and I’ve had to ask her forgiveness and make amends to her for this was not bringing her in and talking with her and asking her how she was doing and explaining things from to her and answering her questions. Trying to help alleviate some of her fear and anxiety over this. So, she felt very alone and kind of she was the lost child in many ways I think during that time and it’s painful to admit to that right.
Margaret: Again, though Bob one of the things I mean I’m a big fan of you and you know that. one of the things that inspires me about the work you do the way you live your recovery out loud professionally, personally. Is your willingness to make those amends, your willingness to have those hard conversations, your willingness to hear the difficulties your kids went through, and clean it up where you can.
Bob: Uh huh
Margaret: What you and your wife did with her was what most parents will do. Let them have their life, let them not be stressed by this. Like what we don’t realize until, I didn’t realize it until I started working in the field with family members. Because we work with 13 and up in a family program is when I would ask our young people who were in the groups, “so what age did you first realize something was going on?” and the groups would almost fall on the floor when they’d hear the answers. Cause these children had gut level awareness, intuitive feeling awareness at incredibly young ages, without the articulation or the vocabulary to know what was going on. They knew something was going on.
Bob: Back to the absorbing piece. I think that’s what young children do. That’s what I did with my family of origin trauma, I absorbed it all. The fear that was in the home, the anger, the instability um all of it. You know as a five, I could walk into my house as a five- and six-year-old little boy and I could I could feel the fear, I could feel the lack of peace. Just the ugliness in the home I was I could feel it and I was absorbing it. I didn’t realize I really was but and I think that’s really what happens is young people in absorbing all of the discord and the chaos and everything that is going on in active addiction. They may not be able to articulate it.
But unfortunately, the other thing we do when we’re that young as we come to conclusions that are really inaccurate, but they make sense to our brain. Like my brain went through as a little boy and I’m sure there’s young people today living with active addiction that probably do the same thing. My parents know how much this is hurting me, if they really loved me, they’d stop. But it never stopped. So, the conclusion was they didn’t love me, I was unlovable. And I can only imagine the little guy or gal living in active addiction with an adult caregiver saying my mom and dad have to know how much this is hurting me and how scared I am and how sad I am and yet they keep using. They must not love me. that’s the false conclusion that they don’t understand, unfortunately that their mommy or daddy would love to stop. They just can’t right now because the disease has taken control.
Margaret: Right the other big one is, it’s my fault.
Bob: Right
Margaret: If I was better if I did this if I wasn’t this and it’s so sad because in active addiction the loved one may be angry a lot or blamey or distant or not home or going AWOL. And all of those messages do say that, to that child. But that’s not what the person feels the person would, as you hear all the time die for my child, but not stop for my child?
Bob: Right.
Margaret: Speaks to the the disease as being all consuming and powerful. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s our child or our partner or loss of job or our health consequences, our mental health consequences if the disease has us, it has us, and all of those things come second.
Tremendous that your children, you know you said I’ve heard it from my son, the gratitude. I would imagine if I had your daughters on this call, they would also speak to the fact that they’re grateful for a father who has worked hard to be present and to heal his wounds, to be available to us. And then shows up and role models for us that we can have made mistakes, and cause pain unknowingly or knowingly, but can clean it up.
Bob: Or they might just say it’s just not quite as big a pain in the butt as they used to be.
Margaret: Well, they might say that too. I think there was I think they would say they’re grateful that they have a father you know I look at father daughters in particular as I am a daughter of a father, and my dad is one of the strongest influences of my life and we’ve had our tumultuous times but we’ve also I’ve never feared my dad wasn’t there. But to see a dad be vulnerable, is very permission giving to children. It can be scary cause we want him to be all powerful, all strong all the time. But on the other side of it that vulnerability and that humanity is very permission giving to the children to then also be vulnerable and human and not have to be perfect or strong all the time. So, you have afforded your children that gift, which is pretty beautiful.
Bob: Thank you
Margaret: You’re welcome. well you didn’t make a joke about that one Bob.
So, is there anything that you would want to share that we have not touched on I love that you slipped in there and I’m glad you did that your son is in recovery now 7 years?
Bob: 8 years this Fall.
Margaret: Amazing and you also have been in recovery very long time. Is there anything that you would want to add thinking about the audience of people who may never have graced any kind of recovery this is their introduction to it or people who are out there in the midst of a relapse like anything you would offer.
Bob: Yeah, just that my heart really truly goes out to families that are still suffering with someone in active addiction. And that it’s a very difficult, difficult place but it is not a place without hope. And that my hope for you is that regardless of what your loved one may or may not be doing today, that you would choose to take care of yourself, and you’d find in Al-Anon meeting that you would call someone and begin the healing process for yourself. You know I love that line, I use it all the time that I was in a treatment room and the director of the center came in and looked at the men in a circle, many of whom were in their third or fourth treatments. And he looked at them and said men we know you know the words of recovery, but we want you to hear the music.
You know for us to realize both on the family side end in the addict side that it really does come down to that. That it begins by hearing the music of recovery and deciding those are the notes that I want to lead me the rest of my life. And until we hear that music and embrace it you know it’s a tough, it’s a tough path. So that’s our hope and our prayer for our loved ones is that they will hear the music of recovery and that we’ll hear it for our own life too and that you know, even if our loved one isn’t currently hearing it, we can hear it.
Margaret: Yeah, no thank you I think that’s true I don’t think I even thought there was music out there when I walked in the room, I was in so much despair I didn’t know how I was going to get by and the whole time wearing that mask of I’m just fine. (Laughter) Such a lie.
And interesting you bring up music for a very tangible example. I would play music when I would leave Hazelden as a student and drive across the bluff of the Saint Croix River into Wisconsin every night leaving work, and sob because it was the only place, I would let myself feel my feelings, was in that car alone. And I would sob, not a good thing to do. I don’t recommend driving and crying. However, that’s what I did and it was the only place and it was only if I put on certain songs, that allowed that to come out. And then to get into recovery and to hear that same music and be filled with gratitude vs torment, speaks to how we can get better.
Bob: Beautiful.
Margaret: So, thank you Bob.
Bob: Thank you!
Margaret: You are a gift to so many because unfortunately, and you know this better than any. A lot of mothers and wives find their way into the rooms and sadly the men don’t find them as easily. Um I hear through your message; you would absolutely encourage that to be different. You would want the men to find those rooms.
Bob: Absolutely, absolutely.
Margaret: And I’ve heard you also say that for you a Men’s group has been very profoundly helpful to you
Bob: Yes, so grateful for that piece, I’ve been in this Men’s group for about seven years and there’s some of the closest relationships I’ve ever had in my life, and they’re marked by the things that we’ve been talking about here. Showing up honestly, authentically, openly, vulnerably.
Margaret: So, find your place, right? Go out there, wherever that is. For us, our biases Al-Anon, 12 step recovery. We’re very transparent about that on this podcast. Though I have no delusion that there may be other paths for people, and I want that. Whatever it is to give us peace, some serenity, and some ability to stop clawing on the edge of that cliff is what I hope for people, and you’ve really shared that today. So, thank you Bob.
Outro: I get the chills when I hear Bob speak of the man saying you son is 22 and not 12, he can do it, let him do it. Bob’s story is filled with such hope, always followed with his own action of recovery. I hope you are inspired to take some new action in your recovery today.
I want to thank my guests 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!
