Valiant Living Podcast
Welcome to the Valiant Living Podcast where we educate, encourage, and empower you towards a life of peace and freedom.
Valiant Living has been restoring lives and families since 2017 by providing multiple levels of care for men and their families. Fully accredited by The Joint Commission, Valiant Living has earned a national reputation as a premier treatment program, offering IOP, PHP, and recovery housing programs for men ages 26 and older. Founder and CEO MIchael Dinneen is a nationally recognized therapeutic expert, speaker, and thought leader in the behavioral health field.
On this podcast you’ll hear from the Valiant team as well as stories of alumni who are living in recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling to overcome addiction or trauma, please call us at (720)-756-7941 or email admissions@valiantliving.com We’d love to have a conversation with you!
Valiant Living Podcast
Anxiety & The Lies We Tell Ourselves w/ Peter Boland (CMO at Valiant Living)
What if your recovery from career struggles could unlock a transformative journey towards mental well-being? Join us as we share Peter's incredible ascent from uncertain career beginnings to becoming Valiant Living's Chief Marketing Officer. Peter opens up about how career counseling at Valiant not only guided him professionally but also set him on a path to becoming a leader at Valiant Living. His story underscores the importance of hands-on experience and compassionate human interaction in both career and personal development.
Navigating the mental health field while preserving one's own mental wellness is no small feat. We delve into the double-edged sword of finding recovery benefits in such work, balanced against the looming risk of burnout. Listen to poignant anecdotes, including Peter's own transformative experience stemming from a bad acid trip at a Grateful Dead concert, which led him to profound personal growth. We emphasize the critical role of setting boundaries, practicing vulnerability, and learning from life-changing events.
From battling panic attacks to overcoming phobias, this episode offers a treasure trove of practical coping mechanisms. Discover the profound impact of childhood trauma on adult relationships and life choices through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. Peter's journey of embracing his internal parts and integrating them into a cohesive whole provides invaluable insights into achieving mental harmony and a fulfilling life. Don't miss this heartfelt exploration of healing, self-discovery, and the power of resilience.
Well, hey, everyone. Welcome to the Valiant Living podcast, where we educate, encourage and empower you towards a life of peace and freedom. I'm your host, Drew Powell, and I'm a grateful alumni of the Valiant Living program. Valiant Living offers hope and transformational change to men and their families struggling with addiction and mental health challenges. So on this podcast you'll hear from the Valiant team, as well as stories of alumni who are living in recovery. If you or someone you love is struggling to overcome addiction or trauma, please call us at 720-756-7941. Or you can email admissions at valiantlivingcom. We'd love to have a conversation with you, but for now, let's dive into today's episode.
Speaker 2:We'd love to have a conversation with you, but for now let's dive into today's episode Peter thanks, man, thanks for doing this.
Speaker 1:I give Peter a hard time. The truth is, I've been after Peter to share his story since we've started doing podcasts and in his great humility, he's been deferring, but I finally got him to share with us tonight.
Speaker 3:That was a cancellation but I finally got him to share with us tonight.
Speaker 1:That was a cancellation yeah, last minute cancellation. Tell us a little bit about we're going to get into some stuff about anxiety and kind of the lies we tell ourselves, and you've done a lot of work around that stuff. But I want to know first about just kind of how you got into this role here at Valiant.
Speaker 3:Here at Valiant. Yeah, so one of the main reasons I came to Valiant was because of the career development track and the focus on that. And so you know, I did a lot of while I was here. I did a lot of work. I was really completely adrift in my career. I wasn't working. I said I was, I was doing a real estate deal here or there just to tell myself I was doing something. But it was really that I needed to figure that piece out. I needed to figure out that purpose in my life. I was living along with my dog. I was 50 years old, never married, no kids. I was 50 years old, never married, no kids, and so it was like, all right, I got to. You know, what I've been doing has never filled. You know, filled my cup, so to speak, and so that's kind of.
Speaker 3:You know how I wound up at Vineland as a client and then you know when the you know, after I did all the testing and stuff like that, we had a full-on like career counselor here at the time, lori Odenauer, amazing woman, long-term recovery, nationally known, and she had all these different assessments and stuff she would do and values and card sorts and stuff and I'd be on the floor with like 80 playing cards with different values on them, rearranging them and stuff like this. And so when the tea leaves were read, it was, well, you should go back to school and become a therapist. And I was like, well, that sounds great, but that wasn't in the financial plan and I was fortunate enough to not have to pay for school the first time and deal with student loans and stuff. And so I was like, well, let me just get into this field and see if I like it. And so I kind of kicked around for about a year or so after I left Valiant. And then, you know, I got back in touch with Deneen and, you know, and I'd kind of been looking for what they call business development role, which is sales, a sales role in this field. You know, sales has a little bit of a nasty taste to it when you're talking about mental health, right. And so Deneen, you know, said, look, I don't. You know I don't have the seat on the bus you're looking for. Why don't you just get on the bus Right? And I was like done, I'm like done.
Speaker 3:So I started out as a housing tech and, you know, doing the piss cups and doing the Costco runs and picking people up and you know stuff like that, and talking to guys at the house and having those you know those hard conversations that you know that happen, you know, at Foxfield right, when people are just like they're exhausted at the end of the day from deep therapy and groups and stuff, and it's like things come to a head and so then I just kind of, you know, moved, you know moved through things from there, as you know, as the need presented.
Speaker 3:So then there was a need for a case manager, so I became a case manager and then our former admissions director, mike Campbell, was, you know, needed help in admissions, and so he mentored me and brought me into admissions and business development role. And then you know, there was, you know there was some you know staff changes and stuff last summer. And so then, you know, so then I took over the chief marketing officer role, which I love because it gives me a hand in a lot of different things.
Speaker 1:I was about to say because you're over business development, marketing both for Detox and for here, so it's quite a bit that you're leading. I'm curious how your roles in housing and some of the other things case management shapes of how you do your job and business development, yeah, or does it at all?
Speaker 3:It totally does, it totally influences it, because it goes from like it takes me out of just like that business role of like looking at you know KPIs and metrics and you know dollar amounts and stuff like that and brings that human element back into it. You know where it's like, hey, this is someone's life that we've been entrusted with and you know everybody's got like that first week or two. That's really hard and really dicey, and so it helps me keep perspective on that when I'm talking, you know when I'm having the fifth conversation of the day with a traumatized wife who doesn't know where to turn and is crying and sobbing, and it keeps the humanity alive in me, right when it's not just like, hey, I'm sitting in a call center and then on a 50-person admissions team at some big program and, just like you know, I'm trying to knock down calls.
Speaker 1:Well, I've heard you on some of those admissions calls and maybe some of the guys in this room have been on those where it's a I mean it really is front lines of I mean it's not therapy, of course, but there's a lot of things that you've learned that's coming up in those conversations because you know, like you said, they're, sometimes the lowest moment of their life is when they're talking to you, calling you on the phone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's true, and so you know I tell a lot of guys on that first call look, you know, for what it's worth. You know I've been there and then when they open up and they talk to me, I always follow it up with, you know, an expression of gratitude and saying you've been really vulnerable and talking to a stranger on the other end of the phone and I'm going to do the same for you and I'm going to tell you a little bit, you know, just for a second, about you know me and where I've been. Let you know that I've been right, where you are, and that's why you know, that's why I chose to do this work.
Speaker 1:How do you manage working in this field and caring for your own mental health, Because you're in it all day long. You're working in all the time. What are the challenges there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's definitely a double-edged sword. It's a huge part of my recovery program like working here, but then it's also it can be a real threat to my recovery as well. And people told me that when I got into this field they're like, look, you know, this field can really turn, you know, turn people out or really tap into some, you know, some of your deep issues and really put a stress on the system. And and so I was always I was always kind of really mindful of that and I was like really all in, I was like give me more work, give me more work, give me more work. And then finally, like I started feeling it come on and I was like, oh shit, I've stepped a little too close to the edge.
Speaker 3:And I got to step back and I remember I was standing in my buddy's kitchen about a month or two after I'd started the job and his wife he'd put his ex-wife through treatment three times and wound up having to divorce her and was raising three kids on his own and he's an interventional pediatric cardiologist, so for a living he puts very small things into very small hearts newborns, et cetera. And he said to me he said, look, you got to be careful with this work that you're doing. He said the nurses on my team some of them get way too close to the families. They exchange cell phone numbers. They're talking to them late at night. He said I have to keep a boundary because I won't be able to continue doing this work if I get too attached and he loses, I think, somewhere around like 30 or 40 kids a year in his job, and so that gave me a lot of perspective on being open and being vulnerable but also putting up some barriers or at least letting things pass through me. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, really grateful for the work that you're doing. And Valiant, I think, is, from a business side, the healthiest place it's been in probably ever. And I know when I was here I was like I heard about the third floor. I never went up there. It was like what's going on on the third floor? I didn't know it exists, but you guys are doing fantastic work and getting you know guys in the program, but also just the health of the program and all that has to do to your leadership. Um, but I want to dig into your story a little bit, cause I know and I don't actually know this part of your story, but you said that there's two really specific things that happen in your life that kind of shaped who you are and what got you here. So I would just be, I'd love to hear that. I'd love to hear what are those things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's uh, it goes back a little way. So it's um, it's. It's going to sound cliche, but it started with a bad acid trip at a grateful dead concert. Um and um, that was a um. That was a big left turn in my life. It was the day before my 22nd birthday. I was home in Chicago from college for spring break. It's spring break, senior year and I was a daily pot smoker and kind of a regular college drinker. Um, and occasional, you know, occasionally I'd, you know, take some acid or do some mushrooms or something Um, but I was always kind of, I was always kind of an anxious kid. Um and um.
Speaker 3:You know, I've heard it. I've heard it described as the um, uh, a duck in a still pond right. A lot of people tell me wow, you seem so calm all the time. No, like, everything looks good on the surface but underneath, you know, the feet are going like this all the time. And so I'm at, I'm on my way, I'm on the, I'm on the aisle with my friends, we're on our way to this Grateful Dead concert. And this was my. You know, these were my people, this was my scene. You know I'd been countless shows at this point.
Speaker 3:And, um, and somebody is like, hey, we're all going to drop you know drop acid. I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe this is going to be my last time, right, like it was. Just I was getting a little too old for it, you know, a little little little tired of it. And uh, um, it wound up being the quintessential bad acid trip, um, that you know, maybe you've seen portrayed and seen portrayed in movies and Hollywood. God help you if you ever went through one yourself. But this train came out of the station and it was a nightmare for the next basically 12 hours and I couldn't function. My friends had to help me into the concert, they had to basically coddle me the whole concert. I was sitting in a chair like shaking the whole time, and so it was really bad.
Speaker 3:And so, you know, acid trips, you know, last a while, so you know, usually 10 or 12 hours. And so the next morning I woke up and it was my 22nd birthday and I was feeling a little weird still. I was, you know, I was like definitely still coming down out of it. But then fast forward about a week or so later, I'm back, I'm back at school, I'm on campus and, um, I see one of my buddies and I tell him about what happened at the show and he's like, wow, that sounds awful. He's like, hey, let's go. You know, let's go, let's go pull a couple of bong hits and you know, and chill out, right.
Speaker 3:So we go and I, I smoke weed and um and boom, uh, switch flips and I'm tripping again and um back into the same, back into the same thing, and if you can imagine like that feeling that you get when you look in the rear view mirror and you see the rollers, it's that it times 10. And I was like holy shit, what is happening? So I go to my girlfriend's house, I go home, I go to bed, I wake up the next morning and it's still going full bore and it wound up lasting about 90 days or so 90?
Speaker 1:9-0? I know.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So every day I would wake up and before I'd open my eyes I would pray to God that it would be over, and unfortunately it wasn't. And so I didn't. You know, I didn't know what to do, so I had to. You know, this is pre-internet, this is, you know, information is not readily available right there's the library, there's the phone book. Not readily available right there's the library, there's the phone book. So I find a counselor on campus and I tell him about what's going on and he says well, again, this is 93.
Speaker 3:We had a pretty big ROTC program at my college, so a lot of guys had gotten shipped off the desert storm and had come back and for the first time in my life I heard the words post-traumatic stress disorder and I said you know what is that? He said you had a traumatic experience. He said this is. I'm like, is this what you mean? Like shell shock from Vietnam? He's like, yeah, that's exactly what this is probably. And so I said how do I make it end? Because every second of every day I was just barely hanging on. It was just chaos in my head all the time. I couldn't control my thoughts at all, I couldn't control my emotions, it was just swinging all the time, but it was this constant terror every second of every day.
Speaker 3:And so he came up with this kind of theory that, well, this was probably triggered by the marijuana and technically, it could last as long as the marijuana is in your system and every dope smoker ever has to take a piss. Test knows about 30 days to clear yourself out. And so I'm thinking, okay, all I got to do is get through the next 30 days. And I just got to white knuckle it. Get through the next 30 days. And I just got to white knuckle it. Um, and you know, no one really ever offered me um medication or anything like that at that time. So I was just like, all right, I just got to do this. And I'm like, and I'm asking the guy, what else should I do? He goes, well, cut out everything else, right. So I stopped cold, alcohol, weed, cigarettes, caffeine, everything, um, and I just I white knuckled it for a couple weeks and it started to get a little bit better and a little bit better.
Speaker 3:But one day I was sitting. I was sitting in my house and you know, all my friends are, you know, weed smokers and and everybody's sitting around smoking a joint or a pipe and I pass the pipe from one person to the other and I catch a whiff of it and boom, it's like right back to level 11 again and I go running out the back door of my house and so now I'm starting that kicked me off with starting to develop this paranoia and this phobia, and every time I smell marijuana the switch again takes me to that next level. So I just gutted it out for like three months. It was probably sometime, you know, late summer, when it finally kind of started to subside. I started to quote unquote feel normal again. But I learned coping mechanisms and I learned how to deal with this crippling anxiety. I didn't know that the word for it yet was panic. I didn't know that until about four years later, when I'd stayed sober, I wouldn't touch alcohol, I wouldn't touch anything that I thought was going to change my state of mind because I thought it would induce another acid flashback.
Speaker 3:And so about four years later, I'm living basically a generally normal life and I'm standing at work, one day I'm running a bicycle shop in Chicago and all of a sudden the switch gets flipped and I am in terror again and I don't know what to do. And so I was talking to my sister. She and I actually were living together, we were roommates together and I said look, after a couple of days I'm like I can't hide this from you. I need to tell you something happened to me. And I started explaining to her what I'm feeling like. And she's like wait, I know what's going on with you. I said no, you don't, because I never told anybody in my family about what happened in college. Really, I hadn't told anybody except my girlfriend at the time and a couple of close friends. And so she's like OK, tell me your story, so I tell her story. She goes. She's like okay, tell me your story, so I tell her, I tell her story. She goes okay, that's great, she goes. But what you're having? You're having a panic attack. And I said what's a panic attack? She said it's exactly what you're talking about. I said but this is like stuck, it's on. She's like yeah, something out, there's something else there.
Speaker 3:But it turned out that she had started having panic attacks, went to the emergency room, you know, one night, thinking she's having a heart attack. And when they were, you know the residents checking her in. They're like, they're like doing her test. They're like wait, what do you do? She's like I'm a third year law student. They're like, oh, we have like six of you guys in here every day having these panic attacks. It's all of you and the third year med students, right? And so I said, okay, what do I do? How do I deal with this?
Speaker 3:She being the type A first child she had sought out when she started having this problem, she sought out the expert in the field and wound up going on the Oprah show to talk about panic disorder. She gets me paired up with this therapist who did individual but then also did a group. Now, next thing, I know I'm in this group with people with like severe phobias. Like you know, can't drive on the expressway, can't get in an elevator, uh, that kind of thing. And it didn't get better fast.
Speaker 3:But what happened over the course of like the next few months was I started developing all these like kind of severe phobias, um, and it was all around something that would something that would make me start tripping again, because I created this story in my head that I I had gotten dosed or something right.
Speaker 3:That's must be why this happened. I had inadvertently gotten dosed or intentionally gotten dosed and so I developed all this OCD and phobias about and I basically didn't leave my house for a few months. So I'm living on the 20th floor of this high rise in downtown Chicago and I'm basically a shut-in, because if I touch the railing going down the stairs to the L, I'm thinking I'm going to get dosed. Because if I touch the railing going down the stairs to the L, I'm thinking I'm going to get dosed. And I put this narrative in my head that if I ate some food, some takeout food, that it would take 30 to 45 minutes for the acid to kick in. So I would eat a couple bites and then I would sit there on the edge and wait and wait and wait and then I'd be like, okay, it's not happening. So that was my life for um. For a while I was so paranoid that something was going to trigger it again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly so I just I just lived in, I just lived in constant fear of that. And then the other you know the, the story started developing my head and you know about around all this and um, and then one day I was sitting there and I I had trouble breathing. I was like, and I'm just sitting on the couch and I'm like, and I had been diagnosed with asthma when I was 13, I had to quit playing football, um, because of it. Um, and so I'm like I'm having an asthma attack. And so I go and I like find my inhaler, which I never really carried and I'm taking my inhaler and this is not going away now either. Um, and so I go to my asthma doctor, who was kind of my primary care physician since I was like 13. And um, and I go to, I go there and they're running all these tests and they're putting me on all these steroids and all these you know, like asthma medication and stuff.
Speaker 3:And for the next year and a half I was basically crippled. I couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without hitting on my inhaler. I couldn't ride a bicycle I'm working in a bike store. I'm engaged to a girl who I met, who was a customer at the bike store. This goes on for about a year and a half and I'm on. Usually when you go on steroids like prednisone, you're on them for like a week or two, maybe a month. I was on it for a year and a half and they were really ravaging my body.
Speaker 3:But I just had this story in my head that, like this is asthma and I don't know what's going on and they can't figure it out. And I'm there you know this is a medical team at Northwestern University, one of the best hospitals in the country. And so finally one day, you know, my doctor's like all right, look, we got to, we got to take a look at some other things here, and it was never explained. Maybe they didn't know it back then. But you know there's a lot of correlation, maybe causation, between asthma, allergies, immune system stuff and trauma asthma, allergies, immune system stuff and trauma. And so my doctor says, hey, I want you to go see the pulmonologist on the pulmonology department in the next floor down. So I go down there and they put me on the treadmill, they put me in one of those masks with all the tubes coming out of it and the treadmill starts going and it starts lifting up. And starts lifting up.
Speaker 3:And keep in mind, the last year and a half I've been literally crippled. My life has been debilitated by this asthma and, you know, maxing out on my inhalers, maxing out on my steroids. And so this guy runs all these tests on me and he sits me down and he says, okay, so it could be one of three things, it could be this rare pulmonary thing. He's like that's, you know, little chance of that Could be this. And he says or it could be asthma. And he looks me in the eyes and he says but frankly, I don't think you have asthma. And just like that, the story that I created in my head got evaporated Really and I walked out of his office, I took the L home, I pulled my bike out of the garage Tires are flat, it's covered in dust I filled the tires up and I went for a bike ride for the first time in a year and a half and it was over. And it was that— you convinced yourself that you had asthma.
Speaker 3:It was that moment when I realized if I could make myself sick through the power of my mind, then I can make myself heal through the same power. Wow. And so that was that kind of led me down on a journey of, of exploring, you know, pushing my boundaries, changing the narrative, changing the lies. Boundaries, changing the narrative, changing the lies, the stories that I was telling myself, and, you know, start to help me heal from this traumatic event that I had had in my life. And you know, one of the things is going to sound ridiculous, but one of the things that I decided to do. I was like I'm going to conquer every fear that I have in my life because I was just overwhelmed. I was living in my own self-created prison of fear of all these things I was afraid of, and one of them was I still had this phobia of alcohol and certainly the smell of pot, but in my mind I couldn't even eat an entree at a restaurant that was cooked in white wine or something, because it was going to make me start tripping out again. Restaurant that was like cooked in white wine or something, because it was going to make me start tripping out again. And so I decide I'm going to do immersion therapy for alcohol. Yeah, that was my brilliant idea.
Speaker 3:Eight years later, eight years later. So I sat down with a buddy one night with a Sam Adams beer sitting in front of me and I took a sip and I white knuckled it, waiting to start tripping out again, and I didn't. And then a couple of days later I had a couple more sips and then so I actually started drinking again, like socially. But because of what I'd gone through, my system kind of had this built-in breaking system where I couldn't drink too much really and I couldn't really get, I couldn't, my brain just wouldn't go to that much of a relaxed state because that was a danger zone that I would kind of slip back into that. What, what I know now is, since I've been working with it's called cannabis or cannabis induced psychosis or hallucinogen induced induced psychosis.
Speaker 3:So it was 30 years later until I learned actually what you know what the word for that was that you know that that happened to me, but it kind of started me back on. You know what the word for that was, that you know that that happened to me, but it kind of started me back on. You know, I started drinking again, but, you know, not too much. You know it was like always, you know, kind of casual. I always had a, always had a handle on it, but but that was kind of you know kind of how. Then I lived for like the next you know 15 or 20 years or so and just kind of doing that and doing some therapy here or there. As things would get weird in my life, diagnosed with anxiety, depression, panic disorder, I would not take any medication, anything that I thought was going to change my state of mind, like a Xanax or even an antidepressant was like can't do it can't do it.
Speaker 1:Is that part of the paranoia?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a huge part of the paranoia. So I learned coping mechanisms and yoga literally saved my life back in those asthma days and I had a DVD and I would just do the same yoga video every single day and it was part of my routine but it helped me. It was breathing right, which is what I was doing. I was literally holding my breath. I kind of forgot how to breathe and so I had to retrain myself how to breathe and yoga was a huge, huge part of that comeback process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I want to open it up and let these guys ask some questions too, because I know just hearing that story I'm like my mind's going so many different directions. I didn't know any of that. I'm just curious where you're sitting today and I know you well enough to know that, like anxiety management, like you take very, you're very serious about your mental health, especially, like you said earlier, working in this field. I know for me, when I came to Valiant, I would have argued with you that I had anxiety. I would have said, no way, I've dealt with some depression, but I'm just future focused, high urgency, I'm a leader. I've named all these things. And then I went through the tests, the assessments. They're like, dude, you're off the charts with anxiety. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:And I actually didn't start having panic attacks until after I left Valiant because I was just so good at powering through and not feeling the feelings that then it was like when I got home and I was actually feeling stuff, then I was like I went to the hospital. I was one of those guys that I thought was having a heart attack. The doctor was like drink some water, big guy, go home, you're fine, that type of thing I was like. No, I feel like, but it was the same type of thing anxiety attacks. So for those of us that deal with anxiety ongoing and that's something that we've learned here is that you don't ever really kill it, you just kind of learn how to manage it. You learn how to live with it. What are some real practical, just coping skills? What do you do now to keep yourself from going back into that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean, the biggest thing I do is exercise and I'm not, you know, super, you know, consistent as much as I'd like to be. But you know, and that's even just from a physiological standpoint, with asthma, that's what they tell, like the best medicine for asthma is exercise. But I mean, I haven't used an inhaler now for, you know, 15, more than 15 or 20 years, but exercise helped me with my anxiety. It helps kind of, you know, burn off some of that stress. It helps me get in, my, get in, you know, in a mind state, um, that's helpful, but it's also, it's also a breathing thing for me too, right, it's a cathartic breathing process. So that's, I mean, that's number one I do.
Speaker 3:I do a daily um, um, I do do a daily meditation and that involves a lot of breath, work and stuff. And if I'm feeling really agitated, I'll do like box breathing, where you, you know you breathe in for four, you hold for, breathe out for, hold for, and kind of play around with that a little bit. If I'm really like, if I'm really activated, yeah, but every, you know every day, and I noticed, like, if it's a few days go by where I don't do, I don't do my, you know my meditation breath work it's. You know it's a practice like anything else, is like getting in shape. You know, the first time you go and do yoga, fuck, that's awkward Right.
Speaker 4:You know.
Speaker 3:And then next thing you know, you know day 30, you're like well. I'm actually kind of craving this now Right, kind of craving this now right. And it's the same thing for me with the meditation is that I feel like I feel the you know, the thoughts start to spin out a little bit more when I haven't done it for a few days. So yeah, that's a big, big thing.
Speaker 1:Another follow-up question for me, and then I'll want to hear what you guys have to say or whatever. But you talked about the story or the lies that you tell yourself. I mean, I've never heard that before that powerful like you were making yourself ill by your thinking, thinking through addiction and the struggles that we have in addiction. Can you unpack that a little bit more and how do you see that show up specifically with addiction and addicts and how we can tend to kind of live in that, in that, in those lives really?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I think a lot of it is. You know, these labels that we give ourselves and I think for me, like both my brothers are long-term recovery. They're younger than me. We're, you know, literally best friends. You know one's 11 years in recovery, one's 10 years. They're eight years and 13 years younger than me respectively, and it's run in the family. But I used to go to meetings with them when they were first getting sober to be supportive of them.
Speaker 3:But there was always this thing in my head like I'd look around the room, like I'm not one of these people, right, and I've heard you talk about that, right, you know, I show up here and I just didn't want to identify, I didn't want that label. Yeah, right, and even though my drinking never really got to that point, it actually got pretty close towards the end where I was like, legit, I like having cravings which I'd never had before. But it was that kind of addiction. Hey, I'm an addict, right, and that's something that like, how is the world going to perceive me now? Because I'm a people pleaser. When I do all the assessments and stuff, it's like, yeah, you're this type, you're this personality profile, I'm a people pleaser. My number one schema is admiration and recognition thinking. When I first heard the phrase it's none of your business what someone else thinks of you, that was like earth shattering to me. I'm like I spent my whole life just worried about what people think of me. Yeah, right, and so you know. So then anxiety around addiction, I think, comes, you know, starts with that. At least it started that way for me. But you know, some of us are kind of pre-wired a little bit. You know, like I said earlier, I was always a little bit anxious as a kid, you know. It was never like a free wheel and hey, let's go egg this house and not have a care in the world. I was like let's, yeah, let's go egg this house, and then shit, and so that was, you know, that was something that kind of lended itself to me. You know, when it's.
Speaker 3:It's funny because when, when I first reached out for help, I was, uh, I was just a couple months shy of 50 years old I'm 53 now and I wasn't drinking, but my emotions had completely come unglued and um, and I finally realized I can't manage my own life and it was terrifying. So I called up my brother, drew, who you know, and we live in the same neighborhood and he had seven or eight years of recovery at that point and we went for a walk and I said I just broke down crying. I said I need help and he looked at me and he said I'd often wish that you had the gift of addiction. And I said the gift of addiction. He said if you had become an addict the way that I did, then you would have had to deal with your shit a long time ago and all the stuff that you haven't looked into and that blew my mind, as it turns out, you know. So I went into treatment.
Speaker 3:I went somewhere else, first for 30 days, and I went in for primary mental health, right, and but it wasn't until I got to Valiant, you know, several months after that, where I was sitting in the addiction interaction group, which was which was run by our former clinical director, stephen Spannoneau, an amazing clinician and I walked in that group and again, I'm here for primary mental health but I'm like, yeah, I'll go to the AA meetings and stuff like that, I'll get something out of it, right. But I walk into that first group and I thought to myself, well, I don't know what I'm going to get out of this group. Right, I'm not an addict. And at some point during that group I opened up my notebook and I wrote across the top of a clean page I am addicted to and by the end of that group the page was full and it was love and sex and women and food and sugar and drama and alcohol. I just because I had never quote unquote gone off the rails with any of those things in.
Speaker 3:Maybe you know what I viewed as like an addict sense. I never associated with myself as an addict until then, but I am and that's the honest truth. And knowing that about myself has been the most liberating thing. You know that I've gone through honestly myself has been the most liberating thing. You know that I've gone through honestly, yeah, because I've just gotten to know myself. You know a whole lot better and and all the, you know all the experiences that that I'd gone through, you know, helped. You know helped shape who I am. You know Carl Jung said you know, we're not what happened to us, we are what we choose to become.
Speaker 3:And you know, again, going back to these stories in our head, right, like you know, 1954, roger Bannister broke the four minute mile. Up until that point no one knew that it could be done. How long did that record last? 46 days. And then somebody broke it again. And then somebody broke it again and again within a few weeks.
Speaker 3:It was like it was a story, you know, people had told themselves can't be done, can't be done, right.
Speaker 3:And then one person did it and it was like it was a story, you know, people had told themselves can't be done, can't be done, right. And then one person did it and it was like, hey, maybe I can do this. And so that's what I kind of, you know, latch onto now is like my default is always like I can't do that, I'm not strong enough, I'm not, I'm not. You know, fast enough, young enough, you know, whatever the case may be rich enough, you know, don't have enough time. But I keep just trying to push those boundaries in all different kind of parts of my life and stop that narrative that's in my head. That's been limiting me my whole life. So I finally feel like you know, at 50 years old I was like as free as I'd ever been in terms of possibilities. So I went from feeling like how am I going to get through this day and survive the remaining years of my life to. I only get this much time left now and I want to do everything I can with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I can relate to what you're saying. I mean, it's hitting home for me everything you're saying. I've got so many follow-up questions. I'll call you later We'll talk about it, but I don't want to be selfish. You guys, what's coming up for you?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm curious in terms of so like with your story. I started with that acid trip, you know, and you know a bunch of things happened in the preceding years and you kind of mentioned in college that you had like a girlfriend and then you had like a fiance, that you met at the bike shop and then, like you know, fast forward to the age of 50. You know you're with your dog doing like a real estate deal intermittently before you go to valiant. So like I'm just curious to hear specifically like how maybe mental health or addiction or whatever it was in your life that you know you were trying to work through which is why you ended up going to Valley. Like how did those things like hinder relationships and maybe not just romantically, but, you know, romantic and just like relationships in general?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's great question, harry, because that was, that was the other piece of the puzzle that I didn't really figure out until I got into treatment. So I had my traumatic experience from the acid trip and then it turns out that these things that had happened to me when I was a kid, like my earliest sexual experiences with other kids, but older kids it turns out that those were really impactful. And I didn't know this, you know. I didn't know this, you know, for a long time. And Dan Coach Dan actually, you know was the one who pointed out to me like all, addiction is an intimacy disorder and when I started, the family pieced it together. There were four amazing women in my life from after college who I got close to marrying.
Speaker 3:But I would go through this cycle of shame and guilt because I always felt like my journey is a life sentence, like being me is not fun. It's a roller coaster ride, and I wouldn't wish this ride on anyone, especially an amazing woman who loves me and deserves the best in life, and so I would sabotage every relationship that I was in, and so I started to be able to identify this cycle that I would go through. I started to be able to identify this cycle that I would go through. And that's how I found myself, you know, 50 years old, never married, no kids, when I was in high school, you know I didn't. You know you get asked hey, what do you want to do with your life? And I always answered the same way I don't know what I want to do for a career, but I know I want to be a dad. I know I want to be a dad and I was actually being kind of like, you know, courted by, you know, by the priesthood, because I went to, I was educated by the Jesuits of 16 years of Catholic education and I was seriously considering, you know, going down the line of the priesthood. But I really loved women and I wanted to be a dad and so I didn't.
Speaker 3:So there's this really kind of cruel irony that all these years later it never happened for me. But actually, and even in a fit of shame, before I came, before I went into treatment, a couple months before I went and got a vasectomy because I was just, I was just like you know I want to just close the door on this I was angry, my life hadn't worked out the way that it should have and I used to say, you know, I didn't get married because it just never happened for me. But really the truth is I never made it happen. I pushed a lot of women away, I hurt a lot of women along the way and some of my friends to this day still think, you know that I'm picky, or you know, and it's not that, it's that, it's that I wouldn't. I hated myself so much, I had so much self-loathing that I couldn't, I didn't want to put you know, a woman that would love me through that, through that pain of going through life with me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so once I got here, another program I was at for a month did some great work up there and they were like after 30 days I'm like I've got to get out of here, I've got to get back to my life. And my therapist there told me look, peter, with your compound trauma with the childhood stuff and then the college stuff, you know you need 60 to 90 days and I was like I don't have the time, I don't have the money. I got this right, you know. And then even at Valiant, you know, it was like it was like a good 40 days before, you know, I had shared like some of this stuff. That happened to me as a kid in the closed room with with a therapist, but I wasn't sharing it with my brothers in the program until one day I just woke up and it just had to come out right. It had been something I'd been carrying for so long and I was exhausted and we used to do a check-in every morning at the PHP house it was called Amherst House, and me and Sean in this house, eric who was just on the Zoom call and so we do a check-in for like a half an hour every morning before we'd come over to the center. And so one morning I just woke up and I was just like I got to get this out, and so I shared it during that check-in and it just all came out like bawling, crying and that was one of the most liberating things I'd ever done.
Speaker 3:I thought it was my cross to bear because I had been initiated into this kind of sexual activity by older kids, and then I became one of the initiators as I got older and so I had this cross to bear classic Catholic guilt, right. I didn't understand the difference between guilt and shame until I got here, the difference being guilt is I did something bad. Shame is I am bad, right, and that's how I always felt. I always thought there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with me. What is wrong with me?
Speaker 3:It's a question I asked myself a million times over the course of my life and then, finally, I learned that that wasn't the right question I was asking. I should have been asking myself what happened to me, you know, wow and um, and so that's that's how I got, you know, to where I am, and and so I've just, you know, just now, kind of started to dip my toe back into, you know, showing up in a relationship and you know, um, and being healthy about it, and working on codependency and love, addiction and abandonment issues and all that stuff that we know. These things happen to us as kids, right, um, and some of them were, you know, some. Some of us had things happen that were absolutely awful and, and you know, tragic. Others of us had things happen that were like I didn't really realize, like how important it was, how, how, how it impacted my development as a kid and as a person and being able to connect to other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm very excited to answer the question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very well, thanks, it's really good stuff, man.
Speaker 2:I have a question have you ever done any IFS work for yourself? Because that's what I'm doing right now and I'm slowly getting to the point where I'm feeling more and more free, more and more myself and less burdened by all these parts that are just really tearing me apart, kind of like I was a colic baby and I carried that anxiety until now. You know, I still carry that, and then depression shows up and tries to kick that in the butt and it's just like a roller coaster ride for me too. So I can totally relate. So, uh, yeah, uh, have you done any IFS work and has that impacted you in any way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been. It's been a huge part of me helping to understand who I am and those you know, those parts of me. Um, I kind of yeah, kind of found it on my own at Valiant there was a there was a book on the shelf. It wasn't written by Dick Schwartz, who invented IFS, but it was written by one of kind of his protégés and I kind of found that book and started reading it. We weren't really doing like so much IFS work here at that time, but I learned about, hey, there are these different parts that were created to help me get through these hard points in my life when either my needs weren't being met as a kid or when I'm having traumatic experiences, you know, and the managers and the firefighters and the exiles and I kept it helped me change that narrative of what's wrong with me and why am I like this to. Hey, this is just a part of me that's taking over. Hey, this is just a part of me that's taking over and what it's really helped me, you know, and I listened to a lot of podcasts on IFS and I've, you know, read Dick Schwartz's books and stuff and done some of that work in my own therapy with my, you know, with my own therapist and it's really helped me. You know, again, change that narrative from. You know, this isn't who I am, this is just a part of me, and I've been able to take those parts that were driving the car for a long time right and put them in the backseat and yeah, they still, you know, backseat, drive on me and chirp at me.
Speaker 3:You know, at times when I'm like getting stressed out and stuff, for the most point, you know, I'm more operating from my true self now and I just picture that you know that hub and spoke system right of IFS, like true self, and then all these different parts, right, and it's really helpful to me to not let my story start to develop, my narrative start to take over Like I'm always going to be this way, right, all those extremes. I'm never going to get better. I'm always going to be this way. You know, I can't be in a relationship because I'm going to go jump back to this. I can't have a stressful job because it's going to lead me to this, right, and so it's like, no, no, that's just. That's just that part of you that's trying to protect you from getting hurt and, and you know, give it, you know, let its voice be heard, but then also kind of put it in its place. That's good.
Speaker 4:Yeah, let's do one more.
Speaker 1:Thanks, hern, great question have those panic attacks subsided.
Speaker 3:You know what? Yeah, for the most part, and I used to get them. You know, I'd still get them, like when I get stressed, and I'd get them in the middle of the night and they call them, you know, nocturnal or night terrors, right, um and um. And you know when I was, when I was really going, you know, going in deep into therapy, they actually started getting worse and when I started that valiant they started getting worse because I was now opening that door, right, and I was tapping into that, that stuff that I avoided and avoided for so long. And so for the most part they've gone away again because of therapeutic work that I did around them. But occasionally I'll have one and I had one.
Speaker 3:I remember we went and did a hike up at St Mary's, glacier when I was a client. We didn't have the blue bus, we had a Suburban, and I remember coming back from a hike and all of a sudden, just like boom, panic attack. But it really helped me because I was able to like process it with the guys in the car right away and be like, hey, this is happening. But once, you know, once, once I dug into all that stuff and and and forgave myself and you know, did some, you know, did you know empty chair work and psychodrama and stuff, and talked to my younger self and wrote letters to my younger self and forgave myself. It basically all went away. Yeah, and now I can even like you know, even like the paranoia around, like the marijuana and stuff, like I can go to, you know, I can go to a concert and where there's weed all over the place and be okay with it.
Speaker 3:Now it still elevates me a little bit, but I can keep myself, you know, regulated.
Speaker 2:So, yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's been amazing, like there's all these tools right. It's been a long journey for me, you know, 28 years basically, of doing therapy off and on and finding coping mechanisms, but that's the amazing thing there's so many tools and we come into this world that we didn't even know this world existed right until we walk into treatment. And so it's great because I've got this whole. You know, I've got every club in my bag. Now, you know, I feel like that I need.
Speaker 1:Pete, it's really good stuff, man Thank you for sharing your story.
Speaker 1:Can we say thanks to Pete Well, we appreciate you listening to this episode of the Valiant Living Podcast and our hope is that it helped you feel educated, encouraged and even empowered on your journey towards peace and freedom. If we can serve you or your loved one in any way, we'd love to have a conversation with you. You can call 720-756-7941 or email admissions at valiantlivingcom. At Valiant Living, we treat the whole person so you not only survive, but you thrive in the life you deserve. And finally, if this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean a lot to us if you'd subscribe and even share it with your friends and family. You can also follow along with us on Instagram and Facebook by simply searching Valiant Living. Thanks again for listening and supporting the Valiant Living podcast. We'll see you next week.
