Learn A New Way of Viewing Addiction

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Dr. Julie Hayden:
Hi everyone. My name is Dr. Julie Hayden, and I am a licensed psychologist. And I recently presented at the Family Conference 2020. My topic during this conference was a new way of viewing addictions. We had some technology problems, so I’m going to rerecord it for you right now today so you have that content available. It’ll be the same content, same PowerPoint, but I may even add a little bit extra because the half hour we had at the Family Conference was not enough to gather everything I wanted to share. So I might expand it a little bit. In this video, I have a little bit of a wild card around me with possible children showing up, but that’s okay. We will take advantage of the content for having it available to you.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So at the Family Conference 2020, we had an introduction on myself. I’ll just give a brief explanation of who I am. I am a licensed psychologist, and I also have worked with addictions for a little over 15 years. Currently, I’m the Clinical Director at Genesis Recovery of Male Residential Treatment Facility, as well as being the Clinical Director at Rhombus Counseling and the Chief Academic Officer at Rhombus University. If you have not looked at Rhombus University yet, please do at rhombusuniversity.com. Take a look at our Masters of Counseling Psychology degree, leading to licensure in California, training therapists, biblically-based Christian therapists that are good at what they do.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So let’s dive in. I’m going to go ahead and share my screen. And that will take over the rest of the presentation as monitoring our PowerPoint, keep me on track as we do the presentation here. So as the title suggests, I am hoping to have you view addictions a little bit differently by the time we get done. So let’s go ahead and dive in. And what we’re going to do is start off with some old ways of viewing addiction. Now I will clarify actually, some of these reasons for addiction or ways of viewing addictions, I don’t necessarily think are incorrect. I think some of these are absolutely true. What I want you to do is see a bigger picture, more of a story that unfolds working with those who have addictions. And one thing I’ve seen that I’ll get to eventually is because addictions has complexity to it, mostly because people are complex that you can’t just take one of these models or one of these ways of viewing it and be effective. So I want to expand the view of addictions a little bit.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So in the first thought of addictions, you might think drugs and alcohol. And obviously, that’s a big part of addictions is those substances that we become addicted to, alcohol, as well though as maybe some other types of addictions. The disease model that’s a very common kind of view of addiction and it can be seen in many different areas. For example, you might see it with AANA the disease model once an addict, always an addict. If you’re an alcoholic, no matter how much treatment you have, if you took a drink tomorrow that you probably would be back at it because it’s a disease, it’s something that can grow and get worse, as well as you can monitor it and have ways treating it that improve your life.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So that’s the disease model. Within that, you also have changes even in [inaudible 00:03:32] with workforce, if a person is an alcoholic and they need to take time off work for treatment, that their job is protected, because it’s seen as a medical problem, it’s seen as a disease. You also see this in medically-based models of treatment. So if it is a disease, it should be treated with medication. And we have a lot of different medically assisted treatment for addiction and medication that a person might take away symptoms, medication that could cause negative reactions if they took that drug, medications that just help them feel a little bit better while they go through the process of getting clean and sober. So the disease model encompasses a lot.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
We also have this concept of rock bottom. So this would be, you wouldn’t jump in and help somebody preemptively. If they haven’t hit their rock bottom, there’s no point in helping them, they don’t really want it. They’re not ready for treatment, but if everything falls apart, they’ve lost everything, they see there’s no other options, that rock bottom is a great place to have somebody ready for recovery. That’s a common view out there in addictions.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
We might see lack of faith and sin going together from a Christian worldview, maybe some other faiths that have similar views of sin. But the idea is that maybe a person sin is creating this problem and they need to get right with God, or maybe they lack faith, they need to pray more and have more faith and God would heal them and take away this burden of addictions. That’s a view that is out there.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
You might hear a codependency a lot when talking about addictions or enabling. So you have codependency where, whether it’s the addict or the family or whoever, they’re so dependent on the other person that they can’t survive without that person. If they treat them well, they have a good day. If they treat them bad, it’s a terrible day. Everything’s externalized and dependent on another person. And then you see enabling where family come in and rescue and try to help. The person with an addiction might drag it all out, but it feels right at the moment to jump in and help and protect the person stuck in a lifestyle addiction.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
When thinking of addictions, you might think homeless, you might think abusive, maybe if they had received abuse in their past or they’re abusive towards others, a lot of aggression or violence, you might think that all or nothing. So within addictions, actually, this is something that you see. So even in personality, a little bit, it’s all or nothing. So they might be a 100% within their addiction when they get out, a 100% into something else. And you see that kind of extreme paradigm shifts that they go through, pendulum swing. You might think of those with addictions as being dangerous, expensive. It could be that you see the expense on society, or even family members recognize that how much it’s cost them, whether they are losing money because they’re being stolen from or the addict can’t take care of themselves. So they’re paying for apartments or other life expenses, or they’re paying for treatments. And the person’s rotating through various treatment facilities and it’s just expensive. So there’s a number of ways that this can be true.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
We also a lot of times think of addiction as those who are selfish, that they, if they really love their family, they would stop it. If they really loved me, they would stop this behavior or this addictive pattern. So, and we do see this broadly in addictions, that it does tend to be all focused on the person with the addiction. So these are all views out there.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Now, a lot of times, the views of philosophies, how we understand addictions will tell us how we’re going to treat or what models we’re going to use. For example, if you have a treatment facility that believes in the disease model, they want to approach it with medication, they might strictly use medication to treat addiction. If you have a faith-based program that views it as sin and a relationship with God, you might have a treatment facility that is very focused on helping a person get right with God. And that’s their focus.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So one really important concept to understand is that most treatment modalities for addictions do not work most of the time. And I’ll explain what I mean by that. If you have this box, let’s say AA. AA has worked for a lot of people. It’s very true. There’s a huge number of people that has not, and even I’ll get resistant. Some people will yell and complain that, I hate AA, it triggers me, I can’t hear people’s stories, it’s so negative. And then you have those that just love AA. And it has really been what is the most effective tool for them to get out of addiction. But if you took just AA and tried to make it work for every type of person, every type of addiction, it just would not work for many. Same thing if we took medication. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, it can absolutely work, but if you only have that as an option, and then you try to fit everybody into your box of medication, you would have a hard time.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So that’s what I want you to get big picture at the beginning is that we’re going to dive in and look at some insights. Insight number one, addiction is complex and interventions need to be multifaceted and individualized. And we’ll understand that individualized a little more as we dive further into this. But if you create a box of how you’re going to help somebody with their addiction and it’s limited, like we have seen sometimes in our past, it just will not work for many. And so what we want to do is have lots of ways we’re going to approach addiction. And we’ll talk about that as we go, because people are complex and addiction is complex.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So I’m going to dive in a little bit further to unfold addiction and it’ll get us to our next insight. But here’s some of the reasons why a cookie-cutter approach actually does not work very well. This particular study called the ACE Study, ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, it looked at how past childhood trauma affects health. That was the purpose of the study. It was through Kaiser. And they figured there’d be health consequences. Actually, they did find that to be true, but they found a lot more. So what they found is those Adverse Childhood Experiences, what we could call trauma in childhood had a huge impact in risk factors later as an adult for a number of things, including risk for addiction, other things like risk for domestic violence, risk for not being able to get a job, just a number of things. And we’ll look at why in just a moment.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Here’s some of the Adverse Childhood Experiences that they were looking for. And they did find actually high percentages. So one would be abuse. And that would be verbal, physical, emotional, sexual abuse, neglect, or dysfunctions in the household, such as, as the kid is growing up, we’re talking about childhood, parents fighting, domestic violence, substance abuse in the home, mental illness or suicide attempts, so many adults in the home, or somebody going to jail or prison when the kid is young. These types of experiences really had an impact in higher risk later for addictions and a number of other life difficulties as an adult.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Well, even though we found this was interesting, we didn’t necessarily understand why until we got in further understanding how the brain works and being able to run brain scans. So I want you to see this pyramid. This is kind of the idea, and then we’ll even take it further. Those Adverse Childhood Experiences actually change brain development in kids. So those early years are so important. It’s like a hard wiring of the brain that everything else is built on and interpreted by. So if some of these experiences are too early on, they absolutely changed the brain development of the kid and they put them at higher risk.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So here’s how it goes that disrupted neural development will change aspects in social, emotional and cognitive areas. It might impair them to less social skills, difficulty regulating emotions, possibly cognitive problems in their thinking and processing, and maybe even school. Here’s problems we would see in their childhood still resulting from the brain trauma, the trauma to their brain. Then you have adoption of health risk behaviors, which you might even see as earlier as teen years, even 11, 12, 13, 14, you’ll see maybe already addictions coming in, but otherwise, other types of just health risk behaviors that they’re having builds into their life, eventually disease, disabilities, mental health difficulties, addictions, all of that, social difficulties, and early death.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
This is our pyramid, this is what we’re seeing due to some of these Adverse Childhood Experiences. So understanding that is important, and it’ll tie in a little bit of how want you to see addiction a little bit differently in a person’s story. So here’s some lasting impacts, even more lasting impacts that we can identify due to childhood trauma. And remember how you define trauma, the number one on that ACE Study was verbal abuse. And that actually did negatively impact all that we’re talking about verbal abuse. And number two tied for a parent being an alcoholic and parents getting divorced.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Now I will say in working with addictions for however long I have, the number one factor I can identify that’s a theme amongst all the guys I work with is how their story goes and it’s whatever they’re sharing about their childhood, then they say, and then my parents got a divorce. That was a game changer for almost every person I’ve worked with with addictions, the parents got a divorce. Now we’re going to look at why that impacts a kid so much because it’s actually less about the event and more about what they believed about themselves due to that event. So we’re going to look at that, but a divorce is top of the list right there with the parent being an alcoholic that people do experience in childhood and it does change their brain development and they do have consequences as an adult. Very interesting.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So we can find depression, anxiety, suicide, PTSD, unwanted pregnancies, HIV, infectious diseases, health consequences, such as cancer, diabetes, we can see drug and alcohol abuse and struggles in education or income later on. They would have decreased opportunities compared to those that didn’t have childhood adverse experiences. So very interesting.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So it brings us to our next insight. And then we’ll unfold this more. I want you to think of addiction not as a problem in society to be fixed, but rather a person. As you understand how addiction ends up over here with maybe a 45 year old man addicted to alcohol meth, they didn’t just pop out of nowhere and there they are, there’s a whole story, a whole road that brought them there and it’s a complex road and it started at childhood a good portion of the time. Not always, sometimes there’s just a real solid childhood there. And then a person in teen years gets into experimenting and off they go. There’s many factors that involve whether a person’s going to experiment and then just come back normal or experiment and be off on a long road of addiction. And we might have the time to talk about that.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
But in a general sense, there’s often a story that unfolds that leads a person right where they’re at. And that’s what I want you to see is that this is a person with a story, not just an addict, not just the problem in our society to be fixed. And that will help us come better prepared to help them. So I want you to take a look at some of the patterns in the background of addictions. So when you work with somebody with addictions, these are common things that you’ll see in their story, parental divorce we talked about, lack of stability in childhood, emotional pain.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So you’ve got to remember, I don’t know how many times, whatever the case is in their childhood that led them to the day, they have emotional pain, they feel unwanted, they feel unloved, they feel angry, they feel betrayed, some of these really strong emotions, but they’re kids and they have no idea what to do with it. The day comes when they drink or they use marijuana most commonly, and it fixes their problem immediately. And there they go off on a road that eventually leads to devastation and destruction and they lose everything. But for that time, it works, they had terrible, uncomfortable feelings inside and something took it away. And so it’s important to remember because that’s how we’re going to reverse engineer how to help people.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So emotional pain is common, lack of coping skills. Maybe they want to belong and they just don’t know how, they lack social skills, they lack just skills to deal with sadness, skills to deal with anger. They have no idea what to do about it. They shove it down and it becomes a problem later. So just lack of coping skills. A lot of times in those that have addictions, there’s a family history, and it’s not genetic. Of course, it can be, there could be genetic aspects to it, for sure, but also that’s learned behavior that’s watching how other people dealt with their problems and you copy it. So a lot of times parents have their own drug and alcohol issues that are passed on generation to generation. A lot of times there’s neglect in the childhood of those with addictions. They might not feel like they belong. There might be cultural aspects of sometimes there’s cultural aspects to actual abuse. So it’s culturally appropriate to abuse children. And yet, there’s devastating consequences, but sometimes it’s just culturally appropriate to drink at a very young age, but that sets into play difficulties in adulthood.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
This is an interesting one and very important. A lot of times there’s either no or a difficult relationship with the dad. I think we forget sometimes in our society how important the dad role is. It is how we get our identity as a man and a woman from our dad. So if a dad is not involved in a kid’s life, it does have devastating consequences, not that it has to, there’s definitely ways we can mitigate this, but that is a common pattern you’ll see in those that have addictions.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Abuse in the past, that is a common pattern. And I work a lot with adults. So sometimes when they’re sharing about their abuse in childhood, it is the first time they ever told someone. So that’s interesting as well too, is it is abuse that can have a huge impact on addictions later, but also to hold that, to interpret it a certain way, have a belief about yourself for sometimes 20, 30, 40 years, and then to realize that experience that dictated your life, you believed incorrect things about it, you believed it was your fault, and it was not, you believed you were cursed and you are not, you believed you’re a rotten person and you are not.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So if there’s one simple thing you can do sometimes with addictions that help is go find the lies and change it to truth. And so that’s a powerful thing. Of course, that may take years, but it’s easy to say, it’s difficult for that person to walk that road with you. Also, you have family patterns. Family patterns in addictions family patterns and other areas that lead kids or young people to start on the road of addictions. So these are all patterns that you might find in the background of those with addictions.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Okay. Now, remember I said, it’s not always the event that made the impact, it’s how a person interprets the event, the message they carry with them. And you also remember, I talked a little bit about brain development. So ages zero to six, every single thing the kid experiences is kept in the brain as important, every single thing, physical sensations, this is what we’re talking about are our sensations. What they see, what they taste, what they hear, what they smell, what they feel, touch, all of these experiences ages zero to six, it’s all kept. And around age six, there’s a pruning process, what was there often stays, what was there rarely is pruned away. And you have the hard wiring of the brain that everything else is built on and interpreted by.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So I want you to see some of the powerful messages. On the left-hand side, you’ll see messages that you hope the kid gets. On the right, some really common lies that kids believe that later on in adulthood is still impacting their life. Ages zero to one, it’s a timeframe where if you have a poopy diaper, your parent changes it, if you’re crying, they give you a hug, if you’re hungry, they feed you. If that all happens, you get the message, I can trust my parent and the world. If not, you might believe I can trust no one, life and people will always hurt me, okay?

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Ages two to three, you start gaining personal control and independence, you’re your own body separate from your parents. Earlier ages, you just think you’re your mom. So as you get to these ages, you’re separating, you want to do it by yourself and you have a little bit more independence. If that’s not allowed, you may feel shame and doubt about yourself and everything you do.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Ages four to five, you want to have power over your environment, you want to have a sense of purpose, you want to be able to build and create and explore. And if that happens, great. If not, you may have the message, why try, I’ll never succeed. And then ages six to 11, you hope to have a sense of accomplishment, mastery, maybe in sports, maybe in school, maybe in art, whatever it is, you find something you’re good at you can do really well and you feel that sense of accomplishment. If not, you may get the sense that I’m a failure and I’ll never amount to anything.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
I’ll add in here just the idea of the divorce. So it’s not the divorce in and of itself I think that is really hard on kids, as you could imagine, but I don’t know how many times I’ve said, this is the phrase I use often for trauma, for those childhood events that really did impact a person, I say, was there anything negative you believed about yourself walking away from that event? And almost always with divorce especially, they say, it was my fault, I was fighting, I wanted to go to McDonald’s and my dad didn’t want to and the next day, he left. That has nothing to do with anything, but they believe it’s their fault or that something was wrong with them and that’s why their parent left or that’s why their parents got divorced, that they were troublemaker and hard and always fighting. And so that’s why. So that lie actually dictates the road that they go on. And many, many times they feel like something’s bad about them. And so they act out at school like a bad kid because they’re taking on that identity.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So that’s just a really powerful pattern seen in those with addictions, not every case, but because the pattern is worth mentioning as we look at addictions from a person’s story, the road they walked all the way to get them to here. And I have compassion many times in the stories that I hear thinking, I don’t know how you wouldn’t end up here with the story that they just gave, a lot of difficulties that bring people to where they’re at with addiction.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
I also want you to expand your thought on not seeing addictions just as drugs and alcohol, because remember addictions are complex and it is anything that separates you from the people you love and it actually has a compound effect. And we’ll look at that. It separates you from the people you love and staying separate will actually increase the addictive properties and dig you in deeper to your addictions.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So here’s some examples of things that could be addictions, drugs, alcohol, food, social media, smart device, sports, pornography, drama, or some type of chaos. Okay. People are addicted to drama and chaos, gambling, news, exercise, sex, ministry, or work. You can be addicted to helping people at church, you can be addicted to your work. It’s an interesting thing that sometimes those with addictions, like substance abuse addictions, when they get clean, they end up just siphoning off that addictive property to something else. So you got to be careful with that too, they don’t turn around and become a workaholic, even though you’re clean and sober. And so it separates you from the people you love.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
But I also want you to come to the next final insight, the opposite of addiction is not recovery, it’s connection. Now we talked a lot about how the brain is wired, especially because we can see how much childhood difficulty changes brain development and puts a person at risk for addiction. So is there hope? That’s what we’re looking for today, right? Is there hope? Can we do something about it? And of course, yes, we can. The number one thing that a person could do or have that would repair brain damage.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
And so what we’re talking about is a kid that went through trauma, the kid that did not later on in adult life, if you look at their brain scans, that will be different, the hard wiring is different. So because of that, is there anything that can reverse engineer that? Is there anything that could heal the change in brain hard wiring? And the answer is yes. And we do not know necessarily why. Scientifically, we have some ideas, but we can’t fully understand it. And yet, I think it fits absolutely with a biblical model, but the thing that can heal is healthy relationships. Healthy relationships seem to re-hardwire the brain to look more like a healthy brain of somebody that did not have trauma. It re-hardwires it. It’s fascinating.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So I want you to just take a moment to consider that. Healthy relationships repair unhealthy brain wiring, healthy relationships give hope for a better life, healthy relationships give purpose and meaning to life. This is important because they’ll have those, they get clean and sober. If they don’t have any relationships, they don’t usually make it. At some point, they wake up after being successful at their job and staying clean and sober, and they think what’s the point? It’s not enough, but relationships can dig in deep to a person’s sense of worthwhile living. Very important.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Healthy relationships reflect the image of God. In the Family Conference, that keynote address, Dr. Ray talked about man, woman, offspring. That idea of family and relationships in general is how we’re built. It’s built into who we are as humans, and it reflects the image of God. He is in relationship with himself. You hear when he’s talking about creation, let us make man in our image. So there’s the trinity and that component to God that is relationship, as well as him wanting a relationship with us, humans.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Healthy relationships repair unhealthy attachment styles. So this is something we can’t dive into too deeply, but if you came from no dad or a strained relationship with your parents, if you don’t do something to heal, that can have an effect on your kids without you trying, you could try with all your might to be a great parent. There’s some difficulty between you and your kids if you don’t properly heal from your parent and you. So that’s what we’re talking about here. And that’s something a little bit more complicated and has to do with the brain if you ever wanted to get more information on it.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Healthy relationships are based in truth. If you think of unhealthy relationships, they’re drama, they’re lies, they’re passive, aggressive communication, they’re secret, everything about them is not just upfront and clear and truthful. So healthy relationships are very powerful because you are walking and living in truth in that healthy relationship. Sin has broken our connection with God and Christ can repair this relationship. And working at a faith-based program, it has been undoubtedly the most amazing part of treatment is to watch if God gets a hold of somebody. And that relationship, healing a relationship with a person and God, if God has his work done on the person, it’s hard to compare to that. It’s powerful. And obviously, we’ve seen God change many lives in powerful ways.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Community and family give a powerful sense of belonging and support for those who through very difficult situations, if somebody ends up in a crisis house with no resources and maybe even a psychotic break versus those that can manage well, even through difficulty, oftentimes, it’s when they do or don’t have a support system. If there’s support around people, if they’re connected in with people that care about them, that can protect them no matter what life brings in a very powerful way. So to increase the ability for somebody to do well longterm and recovery, support system and healthy relationships is a key component.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Okay. So we’ve looked at how addictions are complex because people are complex and there’s a whole story there. It connects biology and genetics, as well as environment and history, as well as spirituality, our relationship with God. So many things come together to have a person in front of you that’s struggling with addictions. Now this goes for anything, but absolutely important with addictions. It’s not nature versus nurture, which ones are more powerful, our genetics or how we were raised? These both are absolutely together a 100% of the time. There’s never a time your biology is without your environment or your environment without your biology. Same thing goes with your spiritual walk. There’s no time your spiritual self, your soul, your spirit is separate from your physical body. Here on earth, they impact each other, all of these things are reciprocal.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
You can change your brain development by a behavior, these affect each other. And they’re very complex and interwoven. So because of that, I want you to remember, we have to address all of the areas. If we’re going to approach treatment or helping somebody get out of addictions, it’s going to have to be in all of the areas. And so this may be in wherever they go for help, but relationships, as well as a little bit of all the areas, their biology, considering it, possibly medications, maybe not, AANA 12 step recovery that has been shown to be very effective. Also, are they going to church? Do they have a personal relationship with God? You’ve got a good goals through and you’re going to want to bring all of it together. Very individualized to that person’s story if you’re going to have any sense of hope for them to have long-term recovery. That’s more for those that are maybe even walking with the person to recovery.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
For family members, one of the biggest takeaways is connection. They need you. That does not mean you don’t put up boundaries. There’s one thing I always tell family members, never protect a person from natural consequence. In addictions, this is probably the most important thing I’ll say today, in addictions, it’s rare that a person will get help if the negatives don’t outweigh the positives, there’s a reason they’re getting high, there’s a reason they drink, it’s fantastic for them, it’s meeting a need. So if the negatives to terrible things that come, what it’s costing them does not become heavier and more than the positives, they will not seek help. So if you protect them from life’s natural consequences, you just delay the whole process. If you give them a place to stay, if you give them money, if you talk the lawyer into getting them off the charges, whatever you do to jump in and rescue and protect, that actually just stretches this whole thing out because they won’t feel it. And then they won’t feel that the negatives actually start outweighing the positives of why they’re using.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So it’s very important if you can remember, as a family member, I would suggest getting help, counselors, you can call Rhombus Counseling, get somebody to talk to to navigate this, because as a parent, or spouse, anybody, it is hard to take that approach when you worry about the safety of the person in the addiction. And yet it’s absolutely true, you will delay the process if you rescue. So all that to remind you that you want to come from as many angles as possible when you’re helping the person with addiction. And for family members, you want the connection with boundaries, I’m sorry, I can’t give you money for that, but I love you, I’m right here. When you’re ready to get help, I will support you. So you have ways in your language and everything else to always remind them you care about them, you love them, you’re right there, but you have this boundary.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So in a general sense, you want to know the person’s story. Remember, we hear from beginning all the way up to now a person unfolding their story. And this information helps us know how are we going to help? How are we going to heal? I’m usually catching lies and then helping them confront it and flip it into something more realistic, more accurate with truth.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Come to helping from as many angles as possible. Don’t get stuck on one method. I want this, this will work. Go find all of them. Adapt depending on the needs, care about the person. I’ll come back to relapse because that’s a good one. Acknowledge truth from the past would be, you help them see, hey, you believed you were broken, you believed you were worth nothing, you weren’t loved, but actually, the truth is you were. So that may be a counselor walking that road with them. Heal and break free from the past. That could be through the 12 steps, that could be through therapy. Correct lies and inaccurate thinking with truth, and connect in healthy relationships. Connect in healthy relationships is probably what most of you listening in can help with. Don’t leave them, connect, love them with healthy boundaries.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
Now want to address right before we leave, recognize the benefits of relapse. With this, it’s really important because many, many times when a person begins in treatment, they have lots of ideas that are probably not going to work. For example, well, I can drink, that’s never been a problem. I can smoke weed, it has never been a problem. I can do this, I can do that. I’ll just do it moderately, everything will be fine. And it’s probably not true. Those who have addictions tend to have addictions. And so let’s say they have never had alcohol problems before, if they can’t use a substance they’re addicted to, they may begin to have alcohol problems because basically big reason why if they’re trying to get something to make their feelings go away, if they want to have a button they push and they don’t have to feel anxiety or depression or their mind racing, if they’re using it like that, then if they don’t have what they’ve always used, they may use other things and they’ll become addicted to that just as fast, but they’ll never believe you.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So I don’t worry about convincing. I try, but I don’t worry about convincing a person what they can and can’t do on their life of recovery. I know whatever they don’t believe now, they’ll learn the hard way unfortunately through relapse. I’ll even tell them this, I’ll say you don’t have to believe me, if the day comes when you have relapse, come back in and we’ll start it again and I’ll teach you more. And I’ll tell them that. And the reason I say that is because I want them if they relapse to get back on track fast, not go out for two more years. So to recognize relapse is actually a normal process of recovery, but I always say this, and this is important, but you don’t know what you won’t be able to come back from. You could lose your family, you could die, you could go to prison, you could kill someone. These are real things that have happened to people that have come through treatment with me.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So in a relapse, you never know the consequences that you will not be able to come back from. At the same time, a relapse sometimes is the best tool to learn what you wouldn’t believe any other way. And so sometimes it’s very valuable for a person to relapse, realize how much the addiction has control over them. And then the second time, third time, fourth time, 10th time, maybe they’ll be ready and that’ll work. And so I would also not get discouraged. It is a long road. So it’s hard not to, but I have watched those who have struggled for so many years in so many treatment facilities finally get it and come out and be in recovery in a healthy way, connect with family members and do very well. So there’s absolutely hope.

Dr. Julie Hayden:
So I hope out of this presentation, you do have hope, you do have compassion for the stories, for people’s stories, get their story, because I bet you it’s there and it will break your heart, it’ll give you compassion so you can be with them on the long road that they’ve got to take to get to somewhere healthy and have the relationship, build connections that’s going to help those in addictions become able to get to the other side and stay in recovery, building those strong connections. So I want to thank you all for listening in. I hope this helps. I hope you have a different view of addiction.

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“A New Way of Viewing Addiction” by Dr. Julie Hayden