EP 1:29 Permission to Heal: Overcoming Resistance in Addiction Recovery with Matthew

This goes back to that all-or-nothing thinking that we talked about earlier, that better is better. More is— more is more. We don't have to go from, as you say, not using at all— or sorry, using every day to not using.

Welcome to the Aftermath Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Dallas Bragg, a former crystal meth addict, now sobriety coach. Join me on my mission to increase awareness around the epidemic of crystal meth among the gay male population and create a repository of Resources for current and past addicts, as well as and especially for their loved ones. This is The Aftermath. Trigger warning: this podcast will contain discussions pertaining to drug and alcohol misuse. If you feel triggered to use or relapse, please call SAMHSA's National Hotline at 1-800-662-HELP. Also, if you are new in your sobriety journey, And you feel like you could be triggered by discussions around drug, alcohol, and sex misuse, please do not listen to this podcast. All right, now on with the show. All right, welcome back to this week's episode of The Aftermath. I am very, very pleased and filled with anticipation for this conversation with my buddy Matthew, who is over in the UK or somewhere around there traveling around. And, um, Today we're going to talk about a lot of stuff. I don't even want to say what we're talking about yet because we're going to see where the conversation goes, but I guarantee you that you are going to get a lot out of it. So Matthew, how are you doing today? What's your wellness check-in?

Um, hello everyone. Yeah, I'm very, very, very pleased to be here. Um, I love a bit of spontaneity, going with the flow, and On the back of that, I think, you know, we bring a lot in with us. And so today I'm bringing in trying to pack before a couple trips energy. I'm bringing in excitement to get on this conversation. I'm bringing in finally enjoying this heat that we had after days and days of torrential rain, but also here in my nice top up here, but my shorts down there because I'm like, oh, it's so warm. It's a real mixed bag.

Yeah, great. Well, I'm bringing to you very hot and humid, hot, sweaty, dripping energy from North Carolina today. It has been— we've had a heat wave and it's very humid. Can't even breathe. But I want you to take a minute to introduce yourself to the audience, please.

Sure. So yes, my name is Matthew. I use he/him pronouns and I am Canadian. I've been living in the UK for just over 6 years. And during that time, I, you know, I have gone from a few different jobs. I was working in hospitality to the civil service, working for the government of Quebec. And now I'm a coach. I work with individuals and organizations around change. It's what I've really been boiling it down to is like, what is it? What is it? But all of this is all around change and the things that make change so difficult, whether that's addiction that we're struggling with or a change of job or a change in dynamic of a relationship. It's that, that unease of the unknown can be really scary. And especially if we're having trouble with ourselves, you know, there's something around— people talk about all the time of needing to take care of yourself and filling your own cup before you fill others and all this, all these kind of slogans and clichés that people have, but they're so true. You know, we need to be taking care. And very often, the last thing that we do is we consider ourselves because We're thinking about this job we need to do or more money we need to be making or posting these pictures to get some attention from someone, whatever it is. So I, uh, yeah, I'm a coach first and foremost around change, and I also work in the addiction space around chemsex. Um, that's of course how you and I met, um, working for the same charity. And so that has been really fascinating to get into that. Part of humanity, because I think a lot of times people say, oh, I want to do— I want to level up into my career, or— and but they're so afraid of their own humanity and what it means. So going into the addiction space, it's all human, which is, you know, so scary, so volatile sometimes, but so rewarding and one of the best gifts that we can give ourselves, I think.

I love that. Scared of their own humanity. That's interesting. What, as far as change goes, you're, you're a coach for change. It's interesting to me how that the listeners here, the people that I work with, they've known an existence for a while. You know, they've, they've identified with, I'm an addict and this is my life, right? And people on the outside, and especially those who haven't experienced addiction, can, from the outside, will say, why don't you want to change? Why don't you want to be better? Why don't you want to be sober and happy? But to an addict, sometimes you're in this existence and that's where you're comfortable. And you don't know what you don't know. And you don't know what change means. Change is scary. And yes, it makes sense that you may want to want to be sober, but living a sober life is a complete death to who you are. And it's scary. What would you say to that?

Say amen. You know, this stuff, the change is terrifying. And that's why I've finally settled very recently on this is how I present myself because what, why wouldn't you want to have, why wouldn't you want to be in shape? Why wouldn't you want to have a better job? Why wouldn't you want this? It's not about wanting something. It's that it's terrifying to have to change. It's terrifying to leave what you know, even if you're not happy with the consequences of it, to have to walk into that unknown. We're not designed to wanna do that. Just from an animalistic point of view, there's something in, in the familiar, even if it's uncomfortable, that feels safer. And that, you know, that cliché of the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. I mean, the fact that things could get worse sometimes is, is enough to keep us from hoping things will get better. And there are many reasons why kind of neurologically it's hard to make change, why societally it's hard to make change. I mean, if we're talking about addiction, It's not as it's not exactly as if society opens, opens their arms to us and says that you're struggling. Let me help you. Let me hold you. So, I mean, it's, it's so much more than just not wanting it enough.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. That is very true. And I was thinking about too is giving yourself permission to be scared, right? And being able to admit that, but also coming to a place of, I think, understanding what to do next. You know, what is the process, I think, of changing and morphing from one identity to the other?

I mean, the process of going from one thing to another is quite complex. And I think that one thing that is a big hindrance to people in making change is often try to do so many things at once, especially if we've been neglecting our wellbeing and neglecting these really challenging behaviors for a long time. And we get to situations where things have to change, whether we hit rock bottom in quotations, or, you know, we've lost a house, we've lost relationships, we've lost our health, has deteriorated. And so We can get to these points very often where it's like everything has to happen now, and it feels huge, it feels scary, it feels as though there's no safety in anything that we ever knew, except if we're talking about addiction here, the drugs that we always know will be there, that will give us those comforts that we use them for. And we don't take very often, a lot of people don't take this proactive stance when it comes to change. So doing these minor things at once, we love this all-or-nothing thinking, black and white thinking.

Mm-hmm.

And we don't give ourselves the grace or the kindness to go, what does a tiny shift here look like? What is 5 degrees more? What does 10 degrees different look like? And then I mean, just from a kind of self-care point of view, that makes things easier. It makes things more accessible. It makes it easier to handle the fear because 5% fear, 10% fear, maybe I can do that, but 100, that feels awful. Of course I want to run away.

Mm-hmm.

And it also allows us to be more successful in the change itself because we have a clearer idea of the cause and effect. So if we're trying to change 30 different things at once from 0 to 100, How could we possibly feel safe? Because we don't really know why what's happening. Like, this has changed and I'm happy about it, but is it because I did this or because I did this? And we get to these moments where everything is so fear-based because emotions are so high. The stakes are so high that the idea of failure is horrifying. Whereas failure is such a gift. If we're, if we're in a space where we can, where we can see it that way. And, you know, anything meaningful in life is not easy. Anything that we have ever done, that I've ever done, that is really worth something to me was not easy. And I failed a lot of times. And I've, I've gotten a lot better at making peace with that failure. Still not great. Still things I need to work on. It's that constant self-care, that constant kind of challenging old thought patterns. But making peace with the fact that why would I naturally know how to do this? Why would I naturally get this perfect the first time? So this kind of the shifting between the old self and the new self to, in a very long-winded way, loop back to what the question was. There are technical changes for sure. I need to, my behaviors need to be different. My circumstances need to be different, but there are also The changes in how we need to see ourselves and how we need to relate to ourselves and the kinds of things that we say, that we say to ourselves during that process.

Yeah. Yes. Thank you. This, I feel that in the recovery industry, we have created this atmosphere of black and white thinking. Right? You're either sober or you're an active user. You're one or the other. Because, you know, when you do fail, quote unquote fail, have a relapse, all of a sudden you're pushed back into, okay, now I'm a user. When, you know, but you can be this and that. And I think that if we could make that switch in the process of becoming abstinent, if that's what we want, Then it alleviates so much of that guilt. And like you're saying, just stop thinking about this black or white. And that's how we— I mean, that's what we do as addicts anyway, for the most part, right? Um, and you mentioned the thoughts that we're saying during this process. So I get a lot of people who are relapsing. They're in the last stage, right? They may be relapsing every 2 or 3 months. And this happens especially with older gay men who come to me who are relapsing. And that is this— these thoughts that we're saying to ourselves, these intrusive thoughts like, I'm so embarrassed, I'm, I'm an idiot, I'm weak, I can't do this, you know, and it's so stupid, you know. And I see it even in the conversations they're having one-on-one about anything else. Maybe it's about their job, maybe it's about their relationships. You know, I'm so dumb about that, or I'm just so stupid. I can't, I don't sound right. You know, there's, it permeates into the rest of their conversation about themselves. Um, do you have any advice, um, from your standpoint in terms of, um, you know, how do we, how do we recover? How do we take those thoughts captive and change them around for the better? Hmm.

Yeah, I think it's such a challenging, so challenging and yet so common, as you say. And, um, I mean, first I'll just say that it's, how helpful is that? You know, the change itself is so scary and requires so much cognitive and emotional energy to be sitting, to be sat there judging ourselves and with that self-flagellation, that's not— how much is that really going to help you get to where you want to go? Just from a logical, just from a completely rational point of view. But let's, let's be realistic. Emotions are incredibly powerful and we were at where we're at. So to answer the question, I think what comes up for me is when I was— I was really struggling. There was this one point in my life where I just woke up and I, I remember it really vividly, actually. I was lying on the balcony during COVID I was lying on the balcony looking up at the sky, tears in my eyes running down my face. And I just thought, how did my life get to this? And why is not important, but I think that's a moment that probably a lot of your listeners will be able to relate to at least once, you know, maybe, maybe more times.

Yeah.

And A book that came— I came across for some reason is When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön.

Yeah.

She's an American Buddhist nun. And it really was profound to me. You know, I'm not, not a particularly religious person, or I'm not a religious person, but the— those teachings really resonated with me. And one thing that she offered was Just this idea of noticing. Because I think when we talk about change or self-help or any of this, we become, we can become so fascist. We can become so absolutely like militant in, you need to stop doing that. Yeah. It's unhelpful to call ourselves failures and idiots and whatever. But if then we use that as ammunition to further degrade ourselves by being, oh, and now you're judging yourself. You're not really helping yourself out, are you, stupid? It's just like this layer of self-deprecation. And so what she says is just to, just to notice it, just to let it, as soon as it comes into your level of consciousness, that you just say thinking, just a very simple word, just thinking, or maybe judging, if that's what the thing we're trying to notice. And then you don't have to do anything with it. Just notice it and call it out. And because for me, I was the type of person— sometimes I have kind of waves of it, but I might have an argument with someone who bumps into me on the street for like 20 minutes after we split ways. You know, we just continue that thing in our head and it turns into this.

And yes. Yep.

That's—

I do that in the shower a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. Running up the water bill. There. So our mind, you know, it's an incredible machine, but as much as it works for us, sometimes it can work against us. So when it gets onto these and it gets into this rhythm sometimes, and rather than really try to force it out of that or rip it out of that, it's, it's just to, to notice it. And as you start to notice it, it will become easier and easier to Um, let it be something that— what am I trying to say? So, so basically the more we notice it, the more we'll notice it. So, and the reason that that's important is because so often we don't even realize that we're saying these things. We don't, we're not really in control of our cognitive experience. So we might have these things and you're like, oh my God, how long have I been in the shower? Or that I'm, I'm, I'm already home. And this started, you know, back when I left work.

And yeah.

So bringing it into conscious awareness, then we can go, oh, thinking, I'm doing that thing. And usually I don't choose to continue it. It might start up again, but I don't, but I, I have a moment where it stops. And so just by noticing and continuing to notice whenever I do, it allows me to take it from this autopilot subconscious narrative to the forefront of my brain where eventually it becomes less and less frequent. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm hearing, notice it, observe, is becoming— and we talk about that a lot on this podcast— is becoming an observer, you know. And when you become an observer of your thoughts, you're detaching from them, and you, you aren't your thoughts anymore, right? So when you are saying to yourself— and I don't know how you, you You can butt in or we can discuss, but like, if you're saying to yourself, I am a failure and I can't believe I'm doing this. If you can somehow detach from that and observe yourself thinking them, but not embody them and not identify with them, then you really begin to be able to manage that better so that you, you can separate yourself. Like me, underneath all of this, I'm not a failure. Now, I might be thinking I am, and here's why, but becoming an observer and noticing it is just something about that that alleviates that identification with it, and you're not feeling it and identifying with it later on. And so you don't, you begin to see, you don't see the world through the lens of I'm a failure. You see the world through the lens of sometimes I have thoughts that I'm a failure. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm.

That's abs— I mean, that's absolutely it because we have to remember that we are a product of our existence and, and sometimes the generations before us are always the generations before us. You know, how many of your thoughts are truly your thoughts?

Mm-hmm.

We carry, you know, decades, if not centuries, of things passed down. And we can't, we can't properly say it because our, you know, my, my grandmother will have passed things down to my mother who passed things down to me. That I believe are mine, but I exist as a social creature that accepts the belief of my tribe. And sometimes those are helpful and sometimes those aren't helpful.

Yeah.

So I am an animal with cognitive capacity. Sometimes my thoughts are helpful and sometimes they're hurtful. So if I just accept, as you say, that I'm an animal that has the ability to think, sometimes I think good things, sometimes I think harmful or hurtful or sad. or happy things, but it doesn't change the fact that I just am me. And as just being an animal or a human, if animal feels triggering for you in some way, just being a person, it does— it doesn't change just because you think something nasty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This and the idea of Once you start thinking about and observing these thoughts from a distance, you do also begin to understand where they came from. So for instance, I had a client who, through some work, through some meditation, understood why he had such— one of the reasons why he had such body dysmorphia. And this body dysmorphia was causing him to want to use crystal meth because crystal meth would make him lose weight. You know, Not to mention all the other perks of, of using— of chemsex. But he remembered— this memory came up of his mom forcing his jeans on him and making a comment about how he was too fat for all his clothes.

Mm-hmm.

That one comment has, has shrouded the way he has seen himself since then. And, and he, and he didn't know it, but even in the, even when he was thinking about food, sometimes he could hear his mom back of his mind saying that. Um, but he may not have ever, he would have just been driven by that if he hadn't stopped to, again, notice and observe and ask, where is this coming from? So I just wanted to point that out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's a, it's a, I don't wanna say a wonderful story. It's a, it's a, but it's quite an indicative story of, you know, we have our brains at, at the base want to seek out pleasure and avoid pain. And it pays attention to things that our, our consciousness forgets sometimes because it, it takes the information in, but it doesn't, we don't always go, oh, that really reminds me of this thing. We can't hold all that information in the front of our brain. Our brain likes to Automate a lot of things, so it will hold it somewhere. And when it notices that there is something similar, it will trigger a response. It might you might not consciously know why that is, but it will trigger a response in you. And so, yeah, it can be really important to do some of this reflective work and go there and and work through that. And these breakthroughs are super important. But what I like about the The noticing, the thinking, or the just the labeling what it is that's going on in our brain is that this work is so exhausting. Constantly being in therapy or constantly working through frameworks or constantly trying to manage our triggers and cravings is so tiring. And it can feel like this is taking up my whole life, you know, the, the addiction was taking up my whole life. And now this recovery thing feels like I have no nothing else going on or no joy or no whatever.

Hmm.

But just noticing what you're thinking and not having to do anything with it, it feels easier. You know, it just goes, I go, oh, I'm doing that thing.

Okay.

That's all. I can continue now. You know, I can continue with this, enjoying the, the birdsong or the wind on my face.

Yeah.

Or, you know, if you're doing mindfulness activities, you can then just leave it behind and go to that. And it might pull you back in because the brain is powerful. It likes to do its thing. But just interrupting that for a moment and choosing to do different, it gives that interruption in the brain circuitry to say, when these things happen, I'm going to start to act differently, which then will snow slowly, but it will snowball over time. Because yeah, it's great to have an insight like that. That's super important. But now I've got this gift of clarity on why that might be. But now I gotta do something with it. And I'm, and I'm already tired and stretched thin, stretched thin. And so giving us, giving ourselves a tool that we can use that is helpful, but not so emotionally and cognitively burdensome, it can also be useful.

I really love this. And I think I'm guilty of maybe pushing people Too hard sometimes to figure out where it came from instead of just noticing it and then letting it fade away. So I'm glad that you're saying this because I'm connecting some dots here now on why some people subconsciously they know that what they're feeling and what they're thinking is probably a product of something that happened in their childhood, but they're so tired from. and overwhelmed from just being sober that they're like, I, I can't deal with that right now. I don't have the capacity to take that in. And, and, and, and if they are feeling that, it's probably going to overload their nervous system. It probably will shock them. So I really love this thought, and I hope you're— if you're listening, underscore this too— is just, is give yourself a break and just notice the thought and let it fade away. And enter— and, and just like Matthew said, an interruption to the brain. And that is doing a lot more. It's having much more impact than what you may think it is. And if you're not ready to face where that thought came from, then listen to your body and follow that urge to let it go. So thank you for that. Yeah, you're welcome. Thinking it— so the other part of especially early sobriety is the emotions. that we're dealing with. Um, just overwhelmed. And we've talked about this on the show a lot in terms of how long it takes your brain to heal after using crystal meth, to trust the way that you're feeling emotionally, right? Because it's a, it's a fucking roller coaster.

Yeah.

And studies show it's 12 to 24 months before your brain is actually Firing again on all cylinders, and the dopamine receptor—you're making your own dopamine, and the receptors are black, blah blah blah. But what do you suggest in terms of handling emotions, helping that either expressing them or not, and just you know regulating your nervous system?

Yeah, that's a nice simple question. I think that this is when I work with my chemsex clients. I think this is a huge thing because some. Sometimes if people are using weekly, people may still be on their comedown in a session, or they're just not—they're not back to themselves, if you like, when we come to work. And I think there is this element of our emotions are important, but not the most important thing. And I saw—I cannot unfortunately, for the life of me, I cannot remember who I saw this—but it was this thing on Instagram, and it said our emotions. are like children. And if we're driving in a car with them, we don't want the kids behind the steering wheel because they'll run us off the track and kill us.

Mm-hmm.

If we put them in the trunk, they might die or they might get injured. What we want to do is put them in the back seat because we need to pay attention to them, and they may very well inform where we go. But they can't be deciding everything. And the reason that I bring this up is because there is something in knowing the facts of if I'm on a comedown, my, my brain's really struggling and it's going to be harder. I'm going to feel bad. And if we talk about long-term recovery, that there is, there is a process and there's a timeframe along that. There is something in noticing and knowing that. That can be helpful just because it's like, I know that what I'm feeling right now is a consequence of my actions, but it's not necessarily indicative that anything's wrong, that I'm in danger, that I am failing. It's just that I've done things that have put me in a scenario where now I have to deal with this. And so there's almost kind of similarly to the thinking, there is another side to it where you can go, I'm just, I'm feeling Right now, I'm feeling this anxiety. I'm feeling this terror. I'm feeling this dread. But also, that doesn't— similarly to the narrative of, um, I, I'm stupid or I'm bad or whatever it was we just talked about. There's also something in the, the feeling of like, I'm having, I'm having a lot of anxiety right now. Just feeling, noticing that because We, we can't let, and I say this very hypocritically, by the way, we can't, we can't let our feelings be this constant indicator of how successful or unsuccessful we're being.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes I'll have a really, really, really good day and then the next day will feel really, really crappy. But if I really think about it, What's that different between yesterday and today? Not a whole lot. So if it's my brain chemistry and I just recognize that, it's not that, oh wow, I feel great now because I'm just, I just know that it's my hormones. No, it's, I still feel what I feel, but there is this, as you said earlier, this detachment from it meaning so much. You know, we, if we think about Our emotions as waves that grow and grow and grow and grow.

Mm-hmm.

And sometimes they feel like they're just constantly growing forever and ever. But we know that that's not true. We know that they will either break on the beach or they will start to come back down and maybe never even get to the beach. If we spend all this extra energy and time trying to fight the current or trying to go somewhere else, we exhaust ourselves. We feel even more desperate because it's futile. And very often we retrigger that trauma of thinking, overthinking it and overtrying, trying to give it too much meaning that it triggers more stress response and it exhausts us. So there's something in the, again, letting the emotions be what they are and then letting that, that go because just like the good feelings go, the bad feelings will go as well.

Yeah, I love that. I, I want to repeat too, or underscore what you're saying about this as well, in terms of how we're feeling isn't— isn't— does not dictate how successful we're being in our sobriety. And what I see happening sometimes is people feeling the pressure to always be happy. You know, and to always, always be high vibe. And the very fact of the matter is you can't be that way every day. And in fact, that's the joy of life is feeling the ups and the downs and the contrast. And you appreciate the, you appreciate the ups more when you have the downs, right? But the point here is what you're saying too, is to still observe, to notice the emotions.

Yeah.

Don't attach to them. Don't follow them. But notice, okay, this is how I'm feeling today. And be okay with that. Let yourself feel it and observe how it feels. Think about how is it showing up in your body today? Because that helps you connect more with your body, which is another topic. We're coming out of addiction. We are very disconnected with our bodies.

Mm-hmm.

We've put them through hell in a chemsex addiction. And we really don't know. We're detached not only from, from our energetic body but our physical body. Um, but anyway, I think that's a good point. And something else that I wanted to highlight is, again, you don't have to— you don't have to feel better. Um, you just have to feel better is what I kind of say. And so that just means don't make yourself feel better, but feel it better.

Yeah, well, I mean, If we look at triggers and cravings, some of the, some of the biggest reasons that we might use is because we're trying to avoid what it is that we're currently feeling. We, we get out of practice of feeling those icky bits. And I honestly believe this is not just an addiction issue. This is a societal issue.

Yeah.

People are so unprepared to feel their ugly moments, their Their scared moments, especially as we get older. And it feels like I should have— I should be able to control things more, which is, of course, is not true. But with the curation of social media and with this kind of entitlement that we see sometimes, that people should never have to go without or go with less than what exactly they want, that culturally, this is a challenge, let alone when we get into addiction. And it's— and there, it might be led by a lot of trauma that it's really hard to sit with and make Maybe I don't have the resources to get the specialized help I need to handle that or, or whatever, whatever it is. But there, there is this, you know, you're not broken because you don't want to feel bad. You're hardwired that way, but that's not reality.

Yeah.

It's not our right. Yeah. It's, it's not our right to never feel challenged.

It's not our right to never feel challenged. Yes, listen to that, people. To guys, that that's some good stuff. That's some great stuff. Along these lines is speaking of change is developing a relationship with yourself and this idea of loving yourself. So. You know, we hear a lot that we can't— the, the deep— we can only go as deep in a relationship with someone else as we have a relationship with ourselves. We can only love someone else as much as we love ourselves, and those kinds of things. And, and like you mentioned before, there's a lot of clichés, there's a lot of stuff that's thrown around, you know, like, um, everybody's heard RuPaul probably say, you know, how are you going to love yourself if you can't— how the hell are you going to love yourself if you can't love somebody else? Whatever it is that, that he says. Um, What does that mean in a practical sense to you in terms of an addict who is disconnected from themselves? Maybe they've never really known because of the layers of trauma, shame, addiction. They've never really known themselves. What is— what was your maybe process of creating a relationship with yourself and what advice would you give us?

Well, first thing, what was my process? It's a constant process.

Right.

Our, our relationship to, our relationship to self is lifelong. It's the most important relationship that we have because it's the only one we can't escape. You know, I can, I cannot call my homophobic aunt, or I cannot call my whomever, but I can't not call myself when I wake up in the morning. And just as you say, just like any other relationship, we, we need to build that, especially if we've had traumatic experiences. So yeah, what does loving myself look like? Well, how would, how would you love somebody else, or what's your idea of loving someone else? So it might be fun, you know, it might be kindness, it might be care, but it might also be work, and it might be boundaries. Because, you know, loving ourselves doesn't mean we give ourselves a blank check to do whatever we want whenever we want. Sometimes we have to be really firm with ourselves, especially if we're getting out of addictive behaviors to say, yeah, this is, this is my reality. This is how my life has been, and I want things to be different now. And I know it's going to be a challenge. I know that I'm probably going to get it wrong sometimes, but that's going to be okay because I'm human. Maybe the events themselves won't be okay, but the fact that I struggled and I messed something up, that's okay because nobody's perfect. This idea of We need to do anything perfectly is again a farce. It does not exist because it's so subjective, and it also strips down the complexity of life. You know, there are so many factors that go into anything that we do: how rested we are, how hungry we are, how how what our relationship to self has been in the past, what our relationship with intimate partners have, has been in the past. So as we look at that relationship with ourself, there might be things that we need to relearn. There might be things that we need to hold ourselves accountable for. You know, within, within the chemsex space, there is a lot of really questionable behavior, right? Because when people get, when people get high, they're, they're not thinking in the same way they would when they're not. And sometimes they do. bad things. You know, if we think about consent, or if we think about some of the extortion that happens within the space, you know, really the darker sides of the chemsex world, arguably not great things. But yeah, and it's not about saying, well, I'm gonna be kind to myself, so I don't have to worry about that. No, it's like, ultimately, whether we're high or not, we are responsible for our actions. But when I'm When I'm looking at that, those things, and I say, okay, so I did that and I, I have shame around that, but what is that shame gonna do? Like, how is it informing me if I don't change my behavior? If I just keep doing the same thing, but I, I feel really bad about it. Oh no. Like, I, I, I, it's, it's like, um, it's like when you are with someone, either romantically or a friend or a colleague, And they always say one thing, but do something else. That's not love, right? That's not care. That's not kindness. So when we're building love with ourself, it needs to be, we need to be consistent. And when we aren't consistent, we need to take care of that wound.

Hmm.

And it's not, you know, we don't, we don't, again, we don't tear ourselves down. We don't ridicule ourselves for it, but we say, okay, so this is what was going on. The behavior that I said I wanted to do, I didn't do. And let's look at that so I can be more consistent with you, Matthew, in the future, because this is what you said that you want. It starts to build up the confidence so that you can believe yourself, believe in yourself that you are capable of change. But it's also a real act of self-love to say, even though I want to get high right now, I know that that's not What's going to serve me long-term. And I have my tools to work through my triggers and my cravings. And when I know that when I get to the other side of this crest, like of this wave, I'm really going to love myself because I showed myself love right now when it was hard. So it's like any relationship, it requires investment, it requires time, it requires consistent upkeep.

I love this, all of this. It's really making me think about— I, I don't like making the podcast about me, but, but I'm going to. But it's really making me think about, in, in my own relationship with— I have with myself, I'm now looking back at romantic relationships and friendships And looking at patterns that I display in those, and comparing and contrasting to how I'm treating myself. And it's very—it's it's it parallels, it correlates. And what you're saying is making sense to me. And that's a good place to start. You know, for you know, you want to know where to start. People people text me a lot, and you know, where do I start? Is look back at the relationships, or look at the relationship and analyze kind of what your behaviors are there and how you. perceive them and how you act there, and then take that to how you're treating yourself. That's pretty mind-blowing to me.

There, I think there are 2 really interesting things that come up for me when I'm thinking something really interesting that I'm sure your listeners would love to hear.

Yes, let's hear it.

I love, I love when we buy our own stuff too much, you know. No, but I think, I think one thing that you said that I really love is the Look for how you are with other people. I think if we are tearing people down, I think it's really interesting to notice how are we talking about ourselves.

Yeah.

You know, if, if ever, if no one else can do good enough, if no one else dresses in the right way, or no one else is successful enough, or they, they sound stupid or whatever, it's interesting to, when we turn the mirror on ourselves, to observe how do we talk about ourselves? How do we describe ourselves? How do we interact with our own existence. So that is something that's really important. But I think the other thing, I don't know if it's the same or different, but there is this idea of sometimes if I look on with— sometimes if I look at friendships, I'll go, I'm there for that person. I will pick up the phone when they make mistakes. I am absolutely ready to support them, not let them off the hook necessarily. It's their journey for them to let themselves off the hook or not. But I'll hear that. I'm not going to validate or invalidate their experience, but I'm gonna really be there with them. And then when it comes to a challenge that I'm having personally, maybe I don't do any of that. Maybe all that kindness that I show my friend is nowhere to be found. So, so that's kind of, yeah, I think that's the other side of the coin where it's, it's how are you talking about other people? But also what, what things are you giving to others that you're not giving to yourself? Yeah.

Yeah. Yes, yes. And this idea of having that conversation with yourself and rebuilding the trust— because like you said, if you were in a relationship with someone and you said, I'm not going to do this again, but you kept doing it— so if you tell yourself, I'm never using again, and then you keep relapsing, you know, you have lost trust in yourself. Um, and you're basically lying to yourself, right? Um, and so this, to me, it's a, it's a rebuilding of trust. And that goes back to what you were saying earlier about making small incremental goals in rebuilding the trust you have in yourself. So if I can set a small goal today, not I'm never using meth again, but let's back it up to I'm going to take a 5-minute walk today. Something doable, manageable, something that you can live up to. And then you promise yourself that and then you do it. You are slowly rebuilding a relationship with yourself that is trustful and that you follow through. You do what you say you're going to do. And then that also, in the same token, will reflect on the relationships that you have outwardly. Mm-hmm. If you start to follow through with yourself, you'll start to follow through with others too. You agree with that?

Absolutely. And I, and I think that this goes back to that all-or-nothing thinking that we talked about earlier, that better is better. More is more is more. We don't have to go from, as you say, not using at all, or sorry, using every day to not using at all. Yeah. How, and to take it out of the addiction space, like if I've never touched a piano, And my goal is to be a concert pianist tomorrow. How, how am I helping myself there?

Mm-hmm.

What is it? What are the steps that need to happen in between? And what is challenging but doable? You know, maybe first I need to get a piano. Maybe first I need to call a piano teacher. Maybe I need to get support for the change that I have, or maybe I just need to put in the hours and practice my scales and whatever. I think When things get so tough and we want to change, the emotion is telling it that we can't do this anymore. That's really important information. But we can't, you know, if we, if we go too far into the perfection of it and then struggle with executing these, these idealized goals that we were never going to be able to accomplish anyway. We can't help but betray ourselves because we set these goals that were impossible. Yeah. And then so through no fault of our own, we are not being consistent with what we say with ourselves. So we stop trusting our ability to do it, but we just didn't ever create a thing where we could have done it.

Yeah. I love that you said better is better. And if you're listening, think about that. You know, even if you did, if you, you did just come out of a relapse, you know, what was better about it? You know, did maybe it wasn't as long? Maybe you didn't use as much. Maybe you didn't go on a— I don't know, you could, you could come up with your own scenarios there. But how was it better than last time? How did you— what did you learn from it? What can you extract from it? Um, better is better. That's so simple.

Yeah, better is better. And our brain is naturally going to be negative. It's—

Yeah.

You don't need to, you don't need any help to figure out why everything was a disaster or a failure. But what's really easy to do is to let those insights slip by with going unnoticed. Don't let that gift of information slip through your fingers because you're just too busy calling yourself a bunch of names.

Yeah.

Let yourself mine that for Because I can't remember, I can't remember where I heard this from, but it was like, pain is tuition. And you're paying all that money. If you don't learn something from it, then you, you know, you've paid tuition to go to university and you never went to class. And I think that's—

Yeah.

I think that's so true because as you say, yeah, maybe my goal was to not use and I had a relapse, but what, what more clarity do I have on what got me there? Where did I let myself down? Like, where did I really have the relapse? Was it the first whatever, or was it when I put myself in a position where that thing could have happened? You know, if we, if we spend too much emotional and cognitive energy tearing ourselves down, we don't get to ask ourselves any of those questions that will actually be useful for the future.

That's right. That's right. And you miss out on clues, you know, like for instance, you don't think that the fight with your boss may have had anything to do with your relapse. And maybe it happened a week before the relapse, but there was something in that that triggered your thought process that started the landslide down to relapse, you know. And if you don't take the time to, like you say, don't get so mired up in the guilt and the shame, but mine it for gold, you know, really take a look at what has occurred. Let's backtrack all the way back and don't leave anything out. What, you know, if your mom said a condescending word to you or your child snapped back or something, there's something in there that's golden that's giving you a clue as to what is causing you to continue to relapse. And it may not be what you think it is. It may not, because downloading Grindr is a good sign that you're going to relapse for me. But what happened before that? You know, that's what— that's where my journaling came into play. Journaling helped me see what thought processes, what what was going on in my life that caused me to download Grinder. That was the that that was the gold for me. That was the real nugget that helped me understand myself and why I was trapped in that same cycle of relapse. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. We're going all around the world here.

I'm exhausted.

I know we are. Yeah, we've covered so much. And I just want you to, if you're listening, go back through and I'm going to put these takeaways in the notes too, because there's a lot of good takeaways. I've written them all down here. That's really going to help you. It's really going to help not only stop relapsing, but living a better life after You know, while you're in sobriety. So Matthew, what have I not touched on today? What have we not touched on that maybe that you wish we had of, or something that is in your toolbox that you want to share, if anything? Don't feel pressure, but sometimes I get everywhere and I don't get to what the meat, the nugget is, the meat. I don't mine it for gold.

I think we've covered quite a few things, and I think we could spend another 3 hours today and then 5 more podcasts. Going around this relationship to self, it's such a big topic, and it can feel really overwhelming. There are so many aspects. There's so many you know pieces of the puzzle that could maybe fit here, but fit like actually go and fit over there. I think the only other thing that I would want to add on today's chat is this thing around positivity. It's really important to be positive and yet so hard, so elusive. Some situations are so distressing. Some emotions and ways of thinking are so negative that the idea of being positive feels absolutely unattainable. But it goes back to this effort when we talk But building a relationship with ourself or rebuilding a relationship, it is effortful. And so when we think about positivity, it's not this kind of toxic idea of, I'm absolute garbage and I'm the worst thing that ever existed, to I'm the best thing that ever existed and I'm really amazing. No, that's not realistic and it's not helpful. What positivity looks like in real terms is instead of going and saying that I, I'm absolute garbage and things will never change, something more positive is I'm really struggling right now and I'm having a lot of thoughts that are judgmental about myself and I don't see the pathway forward, but I know that eventually something will click. I will be able to see it because in the past I've gotten through difficult things. It's not, it's not going from something that's really mean to something that's really nice. It's, it's going from something that is completely unuseful and destructive to something that's honest, but seeks out something different in the future.

Mm-hmm.

It's, it's going from, even if I can't see the pathway right now, I know I have capacity to find it. And maybe it's even, I don't feel as though I'll be able to find it, but I know that feelings change over time. You know, it's letting, it's giving space for you to think differently in the future, because the more that we think something or the more that we do something, the more likely it is to be ingrained because that's how the brain works, that repetition.

Mm-hmm.

And so as we start to kind of tip it in a different way, it forces our brain to think differently. It starts— it forces our brain to start to lay new— getting a bit technical here, but neural pathways so that our behavior and our thought patterns and our feelings will start to be different because it's, it's, it is different.

Hmm.

So if you feel that you're just sitting in negativity, try to find That 5 or 10%, that's more positive, but, but honest, you know, it's, it has to be authentic. It has to honor where you are. But, but also, how can we say that in a way that is more hopeful, that's more positive because we have all these things, you know, if our mom was calling us fat in the past, or we have all these abusive relationships in the past that we, we know we're carrying stuff with We know that some of these voices are not ours. And so creating that space where we go, I can't see it right now, but I know there's another way. That's so much more hope, so much more hopeful than things are shit and nothing's ever gonna change.

Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I agree with you. And I wanna point out to underscore part of that in, in the Most of, a lot of this is just being willing to see it differently, right? Is that you don't, you don't have to, this goes back to the incremental changes too, and the perfectionism and all of that we've talked about. You don't have to be the best positive person out there to begin with. Just come to it with an open mind and be, and say, I'm willing to see this differently. You know, I'm willing and open to see this in a different way. And even that is huge. It's more— I think it's so much more powerful and impactful than we think it is just by being willing.

Mm-hmm.

Because we expect things right now. You know, we want it to work right now. We want an immediate, like, download and back to change. You know, we want it fast. And immediate, but it's just, it's step by step. And the first step is just be open to it. So my little soapbox and add-on. Thank you. That's great. That's great. Okay. Well, I think, um, guys, that we have really come upon a subject here, relationship to self, that we should probably visit more. Um, and you'll probably see more of that, uh, out of of me and maybe even Matthew later too. So, um, this is, this is good, good, good, good, good. Uh, Matthew, thank you very much.

My pleasure.

For taking time. I know that you are super, super busy and a world traveler and doing— your hands are in all kinds of stuff. So I do appreciate you taking the time for me and the listeners. And I know that this podcast is going to help and heal And change someone who's listening. I know, I feel that deep in my heart. Um, and if you are changed by this podcast, if this podcast has helped you— not, not even this episode, but any episode— please do me a favor and rate and review the podcast. You're probably tired of me saying that. I'm tired of saying it, so just do it so I won't say it anymore. But we want to get the podcast in front of everyone who needs to hear it. And in order to do that in this life that we're in now, it revolves around the fucking algorithms. So you have to rate, review, share, like, all the stuff. Go to YouTube and comment on it. Do whatever you can. If you, if you wanna, um, if you don't want to do that, send me money to support the show. What are you— you have a choice here. Um, so thank you for listening, and, uh, we will see you all next Next week.