Did you guys know that right now we're in the middle of an addiction epidemic? That means substance abuse is affecting all of us, it might be in your family, but even if it's not in your family, it's got to be someone that you know, friends, acquaintances.
Today's guest is Lisa Smith. And she's a pioneer in parallel recovery. It's basically a whole new way of helping your loved ones with substance abuse disorder.
I start out the episode in a rather unconventional way. I start by actually reading and quoting her TED talk. The way this story starts is her kicking her own teenage son out of her house she didn't know if he would even survive. At that moment, everything changed for her. Listen in you guys, because she gives us a lot of tools on how to help. Those in our life who are struggling with substance abuse. It's really different from what we've known in the past, which is to kick people out of our houses, to not answer the phone, to isolate them.
That actually makes it worse. Yes, we do need to have boundaries. She talks about that too. How can we help people with substance abuse? And still maintain our sanity and maintain our boundaries. If you want to help somebody, but you feel like you just don't know how to deal with substance abuse, this is a must listen here.
She is Lisa Smith.
It was a cold February in Colorado when my son left the house wearing flip flops and a t- shirt. As the door closed behind him, a haunting reality set in, he might not survive. At the time he had been through 12 treatment attempts at recovery.
He was living in our home and his active substance use was worse than ever. I was desperate and had resorted to things like tracking his phone, monitoring bank accounts and driving around all hours of the night, believing that I could save him. None of these things worked, and my home had become a war zone.
I turned around and asked myself a really hard question. Was I okay with the last thing he saw, felt, and heard from me? The answer to that question was no. And in that moment, my world went from black and white to color. As I realized that my role in this story had to change.
3 million Americans fall under the diagnostic criteria for substance use disorder. All of these people. Are loved by someone.
Hey, Lisa, how are you doing today? Great. Thank you so much lisa is the founder of Reclaim and Recover Family Recovery Services, a comprehensive support organization for families on the journey of loving someone struggling with substance use and mental health challenges.
She's developed Parallel recovery to empower families to become and actionable part of the solution to substance disorder. Parallel recovery includes the family as a part of the recovery process and uses connection as the foundation for relationships needed to support addiction recovery. Lisa is a certified family recovery coach and a master's level teacher who made a shift in career after her son struggled with substance use disorder.
Her primary goal is to support families to honor both themselves and their loved ones. And their loved ones with compassion and connection and to empower families with the tools of sustainability needed to support their loved one and invite change. Lisa Smith.
Before I ever heard your TED talk, like I had a confession actually, I met someone on a plane who talked about you and then I found you and I was like, so intrigued that I kept digging and finding all this incredible information about you. And I thought this woman is literally changing the face of addiction.
Thank you for that intro. That was amazing. Thank you also for Leaving space for this conversation. It's a conversation that a lot of people are afraid of. It's triggering for a lot of people it's super, super important. So thank you. Yeah, I know. And I just want to acknowledge your bravery in a million different ways. When you're living in a household with someone with addiction it's even just as a family member, you're in survival mode.
It's really hard to even step beyond survival mode. And you not only survived, but you thrived and you were determined to figure it out. Like, how are we going to get through this as a family and how can we help Noah to recover? Tell us more about that journey. It's true.
And I use the word war zone. You read my TEDx. And when I say that word, sometimes in spaces I have families that come up to me and say, oh my gosh, that describes my house that describes my home. And that's what it felt like. It was, there were four of us living in a house, very much not communicating, at least not healthfully.
It was a war zone. There was. Damage being done to each other on a regular basis because we just didn't know how to love each other. We didn't know how to come to a place of understanding with each other. And we were not surviving. We were hardly surviving. And I'll frequently, I say, addiction was getting a two for one in my household.
It was probably getting a four for one but I can only speak for myself. There had to come a point where I said, I am sinking underwater and my son's already under and if we're going to make it, one of us has to be above. So I'm going to have to do that work when things really started to change for me and ultimately it changed for my relationship and for my son as well.
Yeah. I mean that pivotal moment where you asked yourself, like it's freezing outside in Colorado. It's winter. He's in a t shirt and flip flops. This potentially could be the last time I see him. And I'm glad that you were able to go there and be real with it. And then ask yourself what. What do I want?
What do I want him to know? What? And that literally I think is the birth of this whole thing that you are doing now. Yeah. Really, it gets even more vulnerable in that moment, I had to ask myself really. Yeah. If my son does not make it, will he leave this earth knowing that he broke his mother? This is the thing that's so fascinating. One of the things I've heard you say is that there was a huge focus on your son with all his addiction. And one day you thought to yourself, there's basically no support for the families, it's very minimal and it's not very helpful.. You realized that there needs to be support for the families too. And that ironically, by supporting the families, the substance user is able to get better. It shares the burden of change. It disperses it, right? It's not one person who is broken. It's a system who is hurting. If all of those people in the system become supported, not just to take care of themselves, there are organizations that have been around for many years that have given the message to families that they have to step out of this dysfunction and start taking care of themselves.
That's good. But what has not been offered is how do I step back into this relationship? When you're a family member or a close friend I would argue that we need to start expanding family to include community, because that's, I agree, start seeing impactful changes, but, just exponentially impactful changes.
But when families are offered. Space to reflect on who they became in the disorder and who they want to be, who were they before? And maybe that person isn't who we want to go back to, but who do we want to be in this relationship moving forward and offer the tools to engage differently? That's when the impact happens with the person who is struggling.
When they just step out, that person now has The light shined on them as the problem and the burden of change becomes on them only. When the family starts learning, the system starts learning how to re-engage differently and support differently and love differently. That person gets to disperse the pain because everyone's feeling it.
It's just showing up in different ways. Their way is substance use. My way was door slamming. Somebody else's way might be Isolation, all the things, right? Anger management, all kinds of stuff that are also dysfunctional and not healthy. When the family system can learn how to re engage differently, the whole system goes to treatment.
It applies to all of us, because again even if it's not your nuclear family, it could be an aunt and uncle cousin. It could be like a very close friend who you mentioned is like family.
When addiction became a part of your family, you also changed as a person. Tell us about who you were during that period then as you learn this parallel recovery process, and who you are today. I was a door slammer. That's not who I wanted to be, but that's who I was showing up as. I slammed some big doors and slammed them hard, slammed things down on counters. In reflection, that was all. Cry to be heard. I didn't know how to ask for someone to listen to me. Wow. And I feel so out of control that I learned really quickly that when I was slamming the doors, everyone stopped for a second. The chaos stopped for a second. I got attention for a second. To be honest with you, that became my drug that became my dopamine hit that became There's my power right there. Everyone gets quiet and looks up then I had the misbelief that I was in control because I didn't have the tools.
To actually regain control. That door slamming can be over-exercising, undertaking care of yourself, not exercising, overeating, under-eating dysfunctional relationships, online scrolling, isolation, all sorts of things that become substitutes for what you are actually needing. In that time period, what I needed was relationships and conversation to start being had, and I didn't know how to do it.
So I slammed the door and everyone stopped. One thing that happened that was the start to, how do I get out of that pattern? Our family was going through this exercise . Everyone in the household had to take on another person and describe that person. My husband drew my card and he said, my name is Lisa and I like things just and then he went on to describe me perfectly because he knows me very well. And I was super triggered by that first sentence that he said. And. I couldn't let go of it. Ultimately, what I ended up discovering was I was completely controlling everybody, everything in my household. The glasses had to be a certain way in certain direction if you vacuumed, it had to go, the lines had to go a certain way. This is where this person sat and this is where that person sat. It was just so micromanaging. With control over every little piece of my family's life that nobody enjoyed being in that space. When ultimately what I ended up discovering about myself, when I dug in deeper was that I have a personal value of inclusivity , to me, what that means is I want my people to all feel safe in my space
and cared for in my circle, whether that's in my house and when they're with me. And I was actually exuding the exact opposite in my door slamming in my control and my manipulation. But I didn't know how to ask and show up in a way that brought people into that inclusivity because I was broken.
I was hurting. So you have literally become a different person. Wow. And I'm really proud of myself. And that is, again, that's the, Am I okay? With the last thing that my son saw, felt, and heard. Am I okay that the last thing he saw was me slamming a door, or rolling my eyes, or turning my back on him? Am I okay that the last thing I said was, we aren't those people?
Am I okay with the last thing that I did being, Walking away from him. Okay. With those things, that is not inclusivity to me. I needed to learn how to be and show up the person I was saying I was. This is so good because I just, the word the term popped in my head, cancel culture.
And what I was thinking about was, let's just say it's not your immediate family. Let's just say it's your uncle and he's an alcoholic and our current society, literally we are told, Oh yeah, just cancel him. Like just, he's not invited in my life anymore. Like he's out. I'm going to fricking block him. I'm never going to talk to him again.
Et cetera, et cetera. Now if, sometimes, yes, that does have to happen if they're getting really verbally abusive or physically abusive and all these things, that's all a different thing. I love everything that you're saying, because it even applies to people outside the nuclear family, that person that you love, who's an addict, who you feel like you are just. Feeling so helpless on how to help them maybe there's another way other than just canceling them. There is another way. The problem is it takes effort on the person who has a higher level of consciousness. So that would be you.
If your uncle is struggling with alcoholism, shows up to family events and starts bad mouthing everybody Is that okay? No. if you can start to learn how to engage and understand differently and set parameters, maybe that uncle needs to not come to family events that everybody knows he's not going to show up his best self for, but somebody could meet him for coffee.
Someone can meet him for coffee. Beautifully said. I love that. Because, and maybe that's just the rest of the family. They don't have the bandwidth for it anymore, but you're still like, is there any tiny thing that I can do? Yes. Maybe I can just meet him for 20 minutes for coffee.
Exactly. And I believe that nobody actually wants to suck at life. They just really don't. They just don't know how not to based on what's going on in their world, the pain that they're carrying The disorders that they may be experiencing mental health and or substance use. If somebody can meet them where they're at, which isn't their best self today, but can you meet them where they're at with some parameters?
It might not be an hour. It might have to be 15 minutes because that person can't make it an hour. Without starting the abusive language, or it might be, I can only text this person right now because it's gotten so bad, but I can text, we just can't communicate because both of us get going and it's not, it doesn't end well.
So what can you do and how can you learn how to engage? Everybody needs connection. Johan Hari has said and has made famous the phrase, the opposite of addiction is connection. Wow. Can you say that again? Because that is incredible. Yes. So Johan Hari has made the statement and it started to change things way back in 2015, where he said the opposite of addiction is not sobriety.
The opposite of addiction is connection. Wow. Inviting somebody out of the pain that they're experiencing to be able to have the connection that they're desperate for. Desperately desiring, but they don't know how to ask for it. Just like I didn't know how to ask when I was slamming the doors. Somebody else doesn't know how to ask when they're showing up with dysregulated substances and saying really mean and nasty things to people that they actually love.
I hear you, Lisa, man, wow. So To me, you needed to be heard. You needed more connection. Were you in a space of hiding it from other people, as in being embarrassed about it? Yes. Because that's not who we were, right?
We weren't those people. But those are people. You felt isolated because you were embarrassed that your son had an addiction issue, but obviously at some point, because here we are today, you've done a TEDx talk, you're finishing up your first book. You have all these amazing support. Programs that you offer.
So we're, you're in a totally different place now, but tell us a little bit more about overcoming the embarrassment behind it and, what happened when you started sharing with people what was going on? I think the first step is, just, owning it myself, like recognizing that nothing is going to get better until I face reality. The radical acceptance of you can wish that this didn't look this way all you want, but it does look this way.
And until you face that reality, nothing can change. So that would probably have been my step one. Second step is to ask for help. I would say that there wasn't a whole lot of it. At least not. A whole lot that resonated with me. There were a lot of people that had opinions and even very well meaning professionals.
That just frankly, didn't have the bandwidth or the, I really don't think a lot of the professionals had. A perspective of how hard it is to tell a mother to step back from this. It just really does not sit well with families and there's a reason why they keep coming back. Just with all these unhealthy patterns, because what's being offered doesn't resonate.
They need tools that are different from what is being offered. I asked for help. I was able to find some spaces where I could talk safely and see that I wasn't the only person that was dealing with this. And that, this wasn't about how you looked or the image that you portrayed, or, if you went to college or didn't go to college or, what your.
Persona or your image was, this was just about pain that needed to be addressed and it was coming out and substance use. And so that was next. And then ultimately it was my own surrender and just saying, I have got to change this. If I have any hope of him getting okay. And I will tell you, Kristina, a whole lot of people walked away.
Really? Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. People thought they could catch it. I don't think they really thought that, but it seemed like it was like, oh, I don't want to catch that. And, my circle got smaller before it got bigger. So I had to be super, super careful. Who I let in and I talk about putting people in buckets, right?
There're unsafe people that, of course, I were the sandwich board for. I do what I do. I speak all the time. I'm writing a book. I have a TEDx. I help families publicly. There is no secret in my story, but there are people. Who is not safe for me to share that story with personally, they can hear it on a podcast.
They can read it in a book, but for me to be vulnerable and have that conversation, they are not safe people. And I need you to understand that. Then there's a bucket of people who maybe have a different level of safety and understand that we experience these challenges, but who are not privy to. Harder details.
I love that. And then I have a very small bucket of people who do, who are very, For those really raw for me to actually get the support that I need it's a small handful of people, but not everybody is capable or willing to show up in those various ways.
And how beautifully said, like no judgment to people like and I like the whole concept of even the therapists and the helpers, the professionals that you worked with. I love the way you described it, which was that a lot of them didn't have the bandwidth to pay attention. To help you and that's okay.
You figured it out. You know how to help people now, by your own experience. And you took what was one of probably the hardest situations you could ever have in life. Probably the hardest situation as a parent, other than losing your child to death. You learn from it and now you're paying it forward. Unbelievable. It is. It is. Like your strength is incredible. I wanna co circle back around to when you were door slamming. You mentioned something about how it was a dopamine hit. Tell us more about that. What do you mean by that?
Yeah. I make light of it because not everybody's door slammer and it is funny to picture, but it was not funny to experience. The reality is when that happens, when you're screaming, when you're yelling, when you're going silent, when you're slamming doors, when you're doing all of the dysregulated, when I'm, when I was searching his phone, tracking his phone to like, basically get the answers that I already had all of those things in our brains create a dopamine.
Add like we get a dopamine release in our brain and intellectually we can say, but I hated that. But the chemical that's being released provides relief. So is that why I've always been puzzled why some people seem addicted to drama? Yes. A hundred percent. That's exactly what it is. So you've got to be able to separate.
Sort of your intellectual side with your primal emotional side. Intellectually we like, Oh, but I hate that. I wish they'd stop doing that. I just, if I don't like to behave that way yet, emotionally, it's a soother. Yeah, we do get that chemical reaction in our own brain. So does it kill you? Not immediately, but it's the same thing as drugs.
Wow. Wow. And by the way, it will kill you eventually because cortisol that raised level of cortisol over a period of time, we do know creates havoc inside of our bodies. For sure. I've heard you talk about a rat experiment. With plain water and water that has drugs in it, and it was so incredibly powerful.
I want you to share that story it's a real experiment. It's called. Rat Park. Okay. Yeah. And so the, I'm not going to probably get all of the details because there was subsequent experiments afterwards, but initially the experiment was you had rats in a cage that They had nothing. No play things. No friends. They had no fun. They had no experience in their cage and they were offered water or water with heroin in it. And those rats would choose water with heroin in it over and over. And. The experiment goes on to show that when rats are given things to do other rats to play with to communicate with to engage with romantically and things in their cage they had, they had fun. They had a life like toys to play with and stuff like that. Yeah. They actually, when given the option, they didn't choose the water with heroin in it. They removed themselves from it. It even goes beyond, and I don't know if I'm going to get this exactly right. To subsequent experiments that built on that initial rat park experiment, which by the way, I'm going to go back to.
The opposite of addiction is connection. That's 100 percent what that experiment told us that when rats are, even though we don't like to admit this, they're very much like our own human DNA makeup. So we can learn a lot from rat experience experiments, but when those rats were connected, were in a community, had positive things to fill their time. They chose drugs less. It's not just the addictive nature of the drugs. It's more than that. Subsequent experiments showed rats were offered. A sliding box opener if they chose the drug water and it would open and have nothing next to it, nothing behind it. If they chose the regular water, it would have a friend. They chose the water because of their friend. Yep. They would get the drugs. They would get high from the other one, but what they wanted more was the friend because the door would open and their friend would be there, get that connection and they would get that connection.
And so the power of connection is so important, which brings me back to the family piece, the community piece, right? The connection piece. If somebody goes to a treatment center, they go, if they're, If they're lucky, they go for three months. Most people, if honestly insurance, maybe we'll cover 30 days a lot of times less, and then they might see a therapist once a week, or they might go to an outpatient program.
That's less programming, but guess who's in their life every single day. Their connections, their family, their community, their friends. So what would happen if we trained those people to engage differently with that person who has had struggles to continue to invite that connection while creating boundaries?
Cause if someone's showing up dysregulated, that's just not, that doesn't work. It's hard to have connection that way, but if you can supersede that dysregulation with. Reminding them that what they want is that connection and being able to show up, not door slamming, but safe, they're going to show up to that water so that the door raises and their friends on the other side.
Everybody wants to be loved. At the very beginning of the episode, we talk about how your son left his home. He was not living with you for a period of time yet I have heard you say that you were still in connection with him.
So tell us a little bit about that era. Yeah. So if I had been being coached by me, we would not have probably had to get to the place that we got, but I didn't have help. So things had gotten so bad that our home was a war zone. It was abusive in many different directions. It was not healthy.
Ultimately, we had to set a parameter, a boundary with my son that he could not be in our home any longer. It was not safe for us. And we could not love him. I will tell you when he left our home, we saw him and spoke to him regularly, if not daily. He was out of our home for four to five months.
That's a long time. . It was a rough four to five months. It got very bad for him. And unfortunately, that had to happen. Every single time we engaged with him, there was an invitation to be loved differently. Oh, I love this so much.
So every time you communicated with him, there was an invitation for love. Yeah. And I can tell you that when he was in our house, there was very little love. Being invited. Wow. . And you know what really is so beautiful about all this is to hear you say, had I known what I know now and what I teach that didn't need to happen because current cultural society right now, the common misperception is that.
If a loved one has substance abuse disorder they have to hit rock bottom, they have to live on the streets, you're saying doesn't have to be that way. No, and this is really powerful. I want people to hear this because this is not spoken enough.
Since 2018 substance use disorder. Changed from being substance use disorder or nothing to pre addiction, mild, moderate, severe. It went from, if we're going to put this in terms of cancer stage for cancer or nothing, you either have. Terminal cancer, or you don't have cancer to, we see something that's a little suspicious.
We're seeing some behaviors. We're seeing some cells in your body change, and we're, we want to watch those and have some conversations about lifestyle shifts. Yeah, what could happen if we started talking about substance use becoming a problem before it was a problem. It doesn't have to get to living on the streets and losing everything in your life to be helped.
This was a beautiful thing that happened. One of my kids goes to a university and I'm on what I refer to as the crazy parent page on Facebook, so there's a lot of mesh parenting going on in that group, but something came up recently and I just thought, oh, man, this is it right here. Somebody had posted anonymously. That their daughter noticed that they're drinking looked different from their friends. They had come to their parents and said I'm concerned because I drink, which is expected of college aged students, whether legal or not. And what I notice is my friends stop and I don't.
Wow. That's a kudos to her for noticing that and talking to her parents about it. And so the parents were actually asking on the page what are some resources, right? That my daughter can engage in, which the school happens to actually have a lot of resources, but why would we wait until somebody has dropped out of school and is doing all sorts of really scary things.
Why wouldn't we start the conversation with. I'm really noticing that the way I am using substances doesn't look like the way my friends are. And I think I might need to talk to somebody about that because it's concerning me. But if we don't start addressing pre addiction, mild, moderate, severe. We just think of someone with alcoholism, having lost their job and their family and living under a bridge, somebody with drug addiction using IV heroin or methamphetamines or overdosing on fentanyl.
There's a whole spectrum of disordered use that is discussed and addressed. And this is where I think, especially the family comes in. They're the whole If they have the tools to, how do I actually ask these questions? How do I not be afraid of somebody coming to me and saying, I'm concerned about this and rather than going you're not even supposed to be drinking it.
You're not even 21 rather, which would be a totally normal response for a parent to have but rather than that, being able to say, wow, thank you for sharing that with us. What do you think you need? To help support this, would you be open to having a conversation with your doctor or a therapist or somebody else who has some experience in this and professional experience?
I love that so incredibly much. As a mom, I'm sure that there was a whole side of you that felt like, where, did I cause this? where did this come from? I wanted to just share with you and my listeners that I'm reading a book right now that is really reframed Gen Z.
For me and it's a book called The Anxious Generation, How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Mental illness is often the start of what causes our young people to self medicate then develop an addiction. This book, by the way, is by Jonathan Haidt. I'll put it in the show notes. He talks about the decline of play based childhood. The great rewiring, the rise of phone based childhood.
He talks about how, the minute smartphones came out, everything changed. And Gen Z. Has been the guinea pigs of this giant experiment that has not turned out well for them at all. Basically this change with the smartphone caused four fundamental harms.
Number one, social deprivation. That totally ties into everything that you are talking about with if. Our kids or the addict doesn't matter what age the uncle or whoever. They often the reverse happens the minute you are an addict. Everybody runs the other way. So social deprivation. Okay, so the four fundamental harms of that have happened because of cell phones is social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and then addiction. The book isn't all negative because at the end I haven't gotten to it, but it does talk about collective action for healthier childhood. We're already starting to see some of these things. I don't even pay attention to the news unless I'm willing to try to be a part of the change.
I did recently read about how there's some high school somewhere where they are banning cell phones and he said he recommends in the book that cell phones be banned in high schools. Banned. Actually in all schools. From the time you start kindergarten, no cell phones in school hours whatsoever.
I think within 10 years that will happen. But in the meantime, we have a whole generation in their teens and twenties don't quote me on this, but I believe 126%, the level of mental illness and addiction in Gen Z has gone up 126 percent since 2010.
I'm bringing all of this up Lisa, because I think As a parent, like if you have a child with addiction, there's going to be this tendency to think, what did I do wrong? It's my fault. So shame is, it's rough. It is what will prevent you from getting help.
It's what will prevent you from letting go of the belief that you have control over this. It's what will prevent you from loving whoever this person is in your life better. And it's a daily battle. I can't say that. I've completely addressed it. But
the reality is, if we cannot let go. Of something that we can't change, there's not 1 parent who. Gets 10 years in 20 years in 30 years in and goes, I Oh, yeah, I did everything exactly as I wanted.
If you don't put down the weight that you did something wrong to cause this, you will never get to a place. Of being able to experience what is today and making a change for the future. You'll just always live there in this space of. I cause this, I did something wrong. I got a divorce. Trauma, and all of those things are true. I'll share that we had a very major life event and in my household where we were a part of a wildfire and we had a complete loss.
Our whole neighborhood actually was a complete loss. And that happened at a very impactful age for my son. He also. Has a profound learning disability that made school a place that didn't feel very loving to him from first grade on. I'm not really sure how I could have changed either one of those events that were very impactful.
But I also carry. Gosh did I pass that down? Did I pass this learning challenge down? Did I pass maybe a predisposition for mental health challenges or substance use disorder to my child? Subsequently, could I blame my partner, my spouse, his dad for those same things? That's where shame loves to live.
And when we allow those voices to be heard in our own head, by the way, we never say those things out loud. I don't know if you think about that, but when we allow those voices to be heard in our head, shame's like a Petri dish it just starts growing and it goes, Oh yeah.
And this is how you stunk at that. And you didn't even notice this and you ignored that and you should have known better. I can look back and think about 20 different things that I should have known. I should have responded differently. Now, looking back, I'm like, ah, aha moment. But in that time, I didn't have the life experience to know that those were big red flags.
And or the tools we don't know is you do at the time we didn't have the tools, yeah, I mentioned that, I'm in the process of writing a book and 1 of the stories that I'm pondering about discussing in the book is a very impactful moment when my son was in 1st grade, actually, several that culminated to a conversation in my head that said.
Run, pull him out of school and do this difference. And I think about why I did it. And it's because I didn't have I didn't have permission and I didn't have guidance. I didn't have somebody helping me. And when I fast forward to when he was struggling with things that were bigger than reading drugs and alcohol and mental health and suicidality and really struggling with his own self.
I also didn't have permission. To listen to myself, to listen to my gut and I didn't have guidance that said, you don't have to bushwhack this. There's a path. It might look a little different than what a lot of people are doing, but it is effective. And here's the way to do it. I didn't have that.
I had to go find it twice. I had to go find it. And that is why I do what I do today. You don't have to bushwhack. So going back to the idea of shame thrives in isolation. And when you show up and tell me too, this also is in my house. I also don't know how to do this.
Shame gets extinguished. Wow. That's something that I'm deeply working on. One of the missions of my podcast is empowering women and part of empowering women is. We have to learn how to give ourselves permission. So often we're looking outside of ourselves to get permission in life and there is usually a switch at some point in our lives as women and it generally happens when we're oldly, older, sadly, it happens when we're older that we finally give ourselves permission to trust ourselves to get help.
To get that guidance, that you're talking about and that you now offer. So I'd like to add to that. The other piece of this, that shame and that permission piece is that's making the assumption that there's all wrong and all okay. Yeah. There's this giant spectrum in between the worst thing and perfect.
If we're gonna be honest with you, that's where we all exist. I love it. Use myself again as an example, that we are not those people. I'm ashamed to say that it came outta my mouth more than one time. But I'm gonna say it 'cause I'm sure if other people haven't said it themselves they thought it in order to address that, I had to understand that my need for perfection.
This is getting deeper, but that comes from the family of origin that comes from, giving permission for us to forgive our parents for how we were parented and moving forward in a way that feels different and better and right for us. For our kids because every generation does the best they can with what they have.
We all pass down some stuff to our kids that they need to deal with. There's a whole lot of perfectionism. There's a right way to do this. There's a right way to be, there's just a right life. There's a right thing for it to look like. We have to let go of that in order to address, Shame, which is really tricky.
I love how you were talking about it. Things aren't black and white. That's such a great reminder. We're all at different places on the journey. It's totally okay. Wherever we're at, yeah. In that timeframe of 2010 that you were talking about, the iPhone became prevalent, that's when social media started to also become a thing. And that quest for perfectionism. I have several people, I'm sure everybody does that you're connected to on social media.
And I think to myself, wow, I don't think their kids have ever lost a game in their life. They've gotten every scholarship and got into every college and always had a date for every dance. And, they've gotten every job that they've ever applied for. Like all of those things, even though intellectually, we know that can't possibly be true, we absorb it.
We self judge and our little petri dish of shame. Just love it. It grows. And it's just yes, this is where we can exist. So we can beat ourselves up about this and not actually be able to solve the problems that are in front of us. We'll just instead be in self judgment and shame. Sit here. Wow.
Wow. I love the way you explained it. That's so good. Yeah, there's a really powerful story that my son shared years ago with me, and I actually expanded 1 of the group programs that I run to include, the topic of self compassion and
I'm pulling this back into shame. He said that every single time he had a recurrence of his substance use, he had met that moment of decision with judgment with shame. How could you do this to your family? How could you throw away everything you've worked for?
How could you disappoint all the people? Which, by the way, all of that is external. All of that is about other people's image of yourself. How could you're nothing, you're exactly what they said you were. You're nothing but an addict. In those moments of desire to use again, they don't last very long, like maybe 5 minutes.
They actually physically those cravings don't last. It's not just constant. It's a moment and you can work through it. In those moments, they would end and he would still have a relapse because that talk was in his head. That self judgment. He said that epiphany for him was when he started to meet those moments with compassion, as opposed to you're such a loser.
He would say, you know what? It makes sense that's what you want right now, because what you're experiencing is really hard. And that solves it for a minute, but it also creates a whole lot of other problems that you don't want to go back to but it does make sense. That you see that as a solution, that's compassion.
And I think for family members with the shame thing too, it makes sense that I was slamming the door cause I didn't know what to say. It makes sense that I was tracking a phone because I just believed that I could save him. It makes sense that I don't want to tell people because it's embarrassing.
What if they don't like me anymore? Or what if I am thought of as less than in my job? Because I can't get my own self together. It makes sense that I'm holding onto this shame, but self compassion would say it's also okay if you put it down. Because it makes sense. It makes sense that you're scared to say this out loud because this isn't something that most people are proud of.
It makes sense that you're Having a hard time right now, parenting your other children because frankly, you're empty. Wow. It makes sense that your marriage might be falling apart right now because the last thing you're engaging in is connection outside of dysregulation. Oh my gosh, Lisa. I feel like I could talk to you for hours.
It's just, we're gonna have to connect again because I have not heard people say the things that you are saying. I have not heard people addressing addiction In the way that you address it. And this is just the beginning of a major shift in how we deal with addiction.
That being said, I cannot wait for your book. To get out so hurry up and finish writing it Yeah, it's needed sorely in this world Please tell us more about how You can help us. What are the things that you're doing? Yeah. I really have this comprehensive Offering for people, I like for as many people to get the help that is offered as possible. If we're talking about a bottom up approach I have a ton of resources, everything from, what can you do if your loved 1 is 0 contemplation around changing and they're an active addiction and things are really scary.
Maybe you don't even know where they are. What are the things that you can get together and utilize with your time so that you can be helpful when they do come back around those would be just free resources through. I offer support groups that are very growth mindset driven support groups.
I have group programs that I run that are. Education and I have various, I have boundary programs. I have a parallel recovery program. I offer those in various times of the year. I do private coaching, so I work comprehensively with families to create their own parallel process of recovery.
That starts with reflection and values driven. Work. It does not start much to the dismay of a lot of people who contact me with help me. It starts with, let me help you so that you can help your person because. We haven't really figured out how to help your person 100 percent yet. What you can do is start being a piece of this puzzle.
That's private coaching with families and I work with the whole system, whether that's 1 person, a spouse, or 1 parent to a whole community of a family. I work with a group of people to do family focused interventions and case management too.
Help your loved one. I'd like to say that, we have helped families to get their person into treatment without an intervention. They actually needed to show up because the family really started making a big impactful change. If none of those feel right to you, I also do private intensives with families to really get the ball rolling so that they can then start to have all the tools to really hit the ground running and make a change tomorrow.
So where can we find you? Cause everyone's going to be like, where do I find Lisa Smith? My website is reclaimrecover.org. I'm also most active on Instagram @reclaim_recover.
Wow. Beautiful. This conversation has been nothing short of enlightening, incredible. I can't believe how much I learned. Lisa, you are a true light to the world. Thank you for taking all the brave steps that you've taken in your life to help not only your son, but the rest of the world. Thank you.
Thank you, Kristina, for allowing the conversation.