The Stages Of Denial

There are several stages of denial when you are working on your recovery. So what are those stages? Good question, listen and find out. 

Transcript

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Time again for Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard Podcast. I am Dr. Jacques Debruckert, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard, The Addiction Recovery Podcast. to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for it is intended for entertainment and informational purposes but not considered help if you actually need real help and you're in need of help please seek that out if you're in dire need of help you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them but don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help it's not it's just a podcast it's for entertainment and information only so let's keep it in that light all right have a good time learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional Trying to figure out if you are in a stage of denial is kind of hard when you're in recovery. And sometimes the stages of denial are hard to define too. So I'd like to try to help you with that and identify what I believe are some of the stages of denial when it comes to recovery as an addict. And I believe that there are three of them. And I designate them based on length of time that you've been working on recovery. Now, as a preface, let's understand that what I'm talking about are the stages based on my clinical work with clients, not with you sitting in the rooms. So if you're an AA or NA or one of the A's, their designation of timeline is always based on usage. So if you've used anything, then they consider that a reset of the clock and you got to go back, start over again. And so you could be, you know, seven months into recovery and you went out and you drank twice in a day and they would and they would say, oh, well, you've you relapsed. So you've got to start over again. So now we're going to start back at zero on your day and you pick up your 24 hour chip. I don't I don't go that direction. I go a different way with it because I don't consider a relapse relapse. A single day of drinking or a drink or maybe a couple of days. I consider relapse something that goes on for weeks. So when I'm resetting the clock, it's because the person has actually relapsed and they've gone back out for a more significant amount of time. And I know my AA... colleagues, supporting colleagues would say that you should go with the full reset, no matter how much you've used. But I just personally, I just see it a different way. As a clinician, that's kind of experimenting and you've gone back out. So just as a preface, let's just start with that, that I'm not considering a relapse, something that's under three days. That's where I go with it. Okay, so to go back to the stages of denial. The stages of denial, that's an idea that you have, are you or are you not an addict? And I've had discussions with clients over the years about what is that? What does that mean? Am I an addict? So the term addict is not a clinical term. Addiction is not a clinical term. Substance use disorder is the term that we currently use in the clinical world to designate whether somebody is taking drugs or alcohol and they're using them inappropriately. And the old method was you had substance use disorder, you had dependence or abuse. And We still differentiate that, but now everything is lumped into one category of substance use disorder, and then you designate by chemical, and then what are they currently using? Have they stopped using? Were they physically dependent on it, or were they abusing it, and at what level? So we kind of differentiated it a little bit clinically, just for you who are not clinicians so you understand. But the idea of dependence versus abuse is, is really still there. So previously, it was you were an addict and you had dependence or you had abuse, and now it's just kind of like a spectrum, more of a spectrum. I think the language you use clinically is to designate more of a spectrum of this disorder. So in recovery, what I have found is that people will come to me and they are either pre-recovery or Or post, meaning they haven't begun the process yet and they're coming into my office and they're high or drunk at times. Or they've already started the process and they are looking for further support. Maybe they went to rehab, got out, and now they're talking to a therapist, me. So one of those two. But they come in and these times that seem to be the ones that are relevant in recovery seem to be the divided by three months process. So if it's divisible by three, and by that meaning three, six, nine, twelve. The third month, I don't seem to have much going on with most of my clients at month three. They're just struggling. But six, nine, and twelve. Those are like really significant time periods for people in recovery. And there are very definite things that seem to be patterns of behavior that are demonstrated by my clients that I treat at 6, 9, and 12 months. And it's so predictable. It's almost like clockwork. Three months, not so much. They're all over the place. A lot of that is because they haven't had enough time for a neurological treatment. repair to occur with their drug abuse, depending on the drug of choice. So there's still a little non-clinical term. They're still a little wacky. They're still out there. They're out there in the stratosphere to some degree. And they just are just trying to hang on, go day to day. So I'm going to just eliminate three months. So let's just focus on 6, 9, and 12. And I'd like to talk about what those time periods are and what and speak to what I have experienced as a clinician at the six, nine, and 12-month mark. So strictly from a treatment side, not a recovery side. My experience with my recovery perhaps was a little different than other people. It could have been the same as other people. So I just want to talk about as a clinician what I see and what people present in my office with at six, nine, and 12. So let's start with six. So you're six months in. And you've done the hard work, you're doing what you need to do to get into work on your recovery, whether it's meetings or you're working on an AA meeting, NA meeting, or maybe it's a SMART recovery, some other type of meeting, structured peer interaction. mutual aid society type thing, non-clinical. That's part of it. You've done your readings. You know, you're really kind of getting into it, right? And you get to that six-month point. Typically around that time, you have probably been working with, if you're in the rooms, you've been working with a sponsor who's been walking you through recovery. If you're not in the rooms, you're probably reading or watching videos, listening to podcasts, things like that. Doing something, right? It's serious work. It's not just you abstaining. So I want to make sure there's that designation and differentiation too, because it's not just about abstinence. It's about actually working a program. So let's just make the assumption that you have been working a program. And as part of that program, you get to six months. You probably with your sponsor, if you're working with one, you've come to the conclusion that you are an alcoholic or a drug addict. There's no question. Like you just, okay, I get it. And that's why you're now in the rooms. That's why you're doing the step work. That's why you're reading this book. That's why you're listening to this podcast. In your brain, your brain has said, yeah, you've lost control somehow. So at six months, you've had to do a lot of reflective work. And so people have gone through all of the step four steps. work, the, the fearless searching moral inventory of your character defects, that kind of thing. Maybe they haven't gone so far as to, uh, you know, trying to mend those fences, try to make amends. Maybe they didn't get that far, but they, they've been at it for a while and six months, you know, it can be a long time. I mean, I suppose if you got arrested and you were sitting in jail for six months, that would be a pretty lengthy sentence. That's a you know, a full season of time, if you will. You know, that's all summer and spring. That kind of thing. It's been a long time. So you're working at it for a long time and you get it. You understand that you're an addict. You've been saying it for six months. You've been working on it for six months. And I'm good. That's kind of where they go. Like, I'm good. I get it. And I don't need this anymore. And they exit. Sometimes it coincides with working with a sponsor and that may be the time that you have to do that step four work where you have to look into your own soul and that dark chasm of your reality of the person that you are and you don't want to do it. Maybe you have done that and you just have a hard time accepting it and you don't want to continue with that. So you're out. Or you got a bad case of the I got it's. I got this. I got that. I don't need this. It's kind of like somebody's got bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and they've been on medication for a while and now they're stable. They don't need that medication anymore. Look, I'm fine. And they stop taking it. And that to me is the analogous parallel there to what you experience in recovery. It's like I've been doing this for a while. I don't need anything more. So you're out. And you go back out and almost always you go back out and start using again. And that's what happens with people quite frequently who do drop out at six months. They go back out and they start drinking a drink or hanging around with their friends. Or maybe they just smoke a little bit of pot. Or maybe they'll just take a little pop of heroin. Just do some skin popping. That's six months. Bad case of arrogance. I got this. The problem is that you also really weren't taking recovery seriously because you didn't fully accept the fact that you're an addict. And that's what starts gnawing away at your brain at six months is, I'm not so sure that I really am an addict. And you're looking around at the people in the rooms and people that you know, people that you don't know, and you're like, yeah, I'm not as bad as that guy. I'm not as bad as that woman. I'm not as bad as this person. See, I got it together. See, I've been stopped for six months and I'm fine. I can, you know, I don't, why am I listening to these people in this room? You know, all kinds of crazy stuff goes through your head. And so you're out. You just, you just quit going to meetings. You quit working with a sponsor. Maybe you quit your therapist. Or in some cases, I've also found that that's when the line begins. And you start telling, spinning yarns about what you're, doing in your recovery with your therapist who you're supposed to be honest with and you start saying that you're doing all this stuff and you've stopped and the only reason you're still going to therapy is because your significant other sees the charge coming through that shows that you're in therapy and you can't drop that but you drop the other stuff and come on be honest you don't go to the meetings but you leave the house and you go do other things And that's the big lie. And that's the arrogance. So there are many ways that the six month mark can be demonstrated. But first and foremost, it is, I don't need this. I just, I I'm fine. Assuming that you make it through six months and you don't do that, you don't stray away from everything and indulge back into your debauchery of your addiction and you make it to nine months. You're fine from six to nine, seven, eight. You keep going through the process. You're kind of still there. You're getting it. Nine months, what I typically see is that is when the idea of the harm reduction starts kicking in. And maybe people around you are saying, come on, man, it's been nine months. You're good. You're good now. You can do this. You can go back to quote unquote normal. You can have a drink. You can just smoke a little with me. It's okay. And maybe they'll even help guide you into the usage again. Now, these are the same people a lot of times who were upset about the fact that you were using in the first place. And that's the irony of it. They wanted you to get to a point where you would stop becoming the crazy person and going from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde with your magic potion that you take and turn into a lunatic. These are the people that wanted you to do that. And now, nine months in, they're talking to you about, you can have just one. They converted from abstinence to harm reduction. I am not a believer in harm reduction. It does not work. I have never had a client successfully use harm reduction to deal with their addiction. I know that my view of the world is skewed by simply the people that come into my office, which is a segment of the population, a representation of a segment of the population. It is not the population. So there may be those people who can engage in harm reduction, and they're okay. I'm not going to dispute that. They are not the ones that have come to me for help. But in the 22 years of practice, I have never seen it. So at nine months, those people will get into your ear and say, come on, you can do it. They might even actually participate in it. They might encourage it. They might give you permission. You might seek permission to use in their presence. And then you do. And again, I have not had an experience with anybody I've treated who has been successful in with either being able to control it long-term after going back into it under the harm reduction model, long-term meaning two or three years, and re-engage in usage. I've never had them successfully do that. They always end up becoming horribly addicted, and usually it's worse than it was in the first place. They go at it much harder. Or... They go out in nine months and they use and they come to the realization that it's not pleasant. Like this really was bad. And that's an interesting turn of events because if you thought it was great, you stop for nine months, you've lost your taste for it. It's horrible. And those people who do that, they go out and they use and they come back in and they report what has happened. It is almost always the same description. They are disgusted by the taste or the experience. They don't like the loss of control. It brings back a flood of traumatic memories for them with their previous usage and how nightmarish it was. There's been enough time. Nine months is enough time for you to get a different perspective. And then when you re-engage... If you don't go all in, because you just were kind of marking time to get to nine months, but if you actually were working your program at nine months, it just feels horrible. And I hear that quite regularly. So they use, they might drink or, you know... smoke or whatever they're doing snorting something taking some pills or combinations of those but they they they report back that it's just not a good experience and they're confused and maybe they're sitting on the fence about harm reduction and they're like yeah but this person said that i could do that and it's interesting because when you conduct experiments you're supposed to do the experiment to see what the outcome is not try to mold the experiment to have an outcome that you want to support your hypothesis. That's flawed research. That's biased research. You just, you have a hypothesis and it's an idea. You conduct the experiment and then you just evaluate the outcome. You don't say, oh, see, I was right. It's like this. It's the outcome is this. It's just this. And my hypothesis was wrong. That's why we have a term for it in research. It's called a null hypothesis. It's the opposite of what your hypothesis was prior to the experiment. So they go back out. They use a little bit. And they go, this really felt bad. I didn't like this. But surely I must be able to do a little bit. I don't understand why that didn't work. And they refuse to accept the outcome of the experiment. And maybe they try again. A couple days later, a week later, or a month later, whatever. And then they have the same outcome. It's a very negative outcome. And they have this bad experience with that. So now it's, can you accept the fact that you're actually not able to do things that you deemed normal, like a quote-unquote normal person? You're not normal. You have addiction. You have substance use disorder. You have an addict brain. And having an addict brain means that you actually are doing things differently than other people. And so that's where you're at at nine months is struggling with the idea that, man, I'm not normal. I really am not normal. Or I'm a different normal. My normal is mine, just like the other person that's in the room with me here that's working on recovery versus the person who's sitting at a bar who can have a drink. And it starts to sink in, the reality of where you are. And at nine months, there's less people escaping from recovery if they get the support that they need in that process. I have had escapees at nine months because they didn't avail themselves to enough support. They were just kind of muscling through their recovery and they got to nine months. And then when it was time to begin that questioning, which many addicts do, they didn't have a voice to walk through that process and help them understand that, no, it's not okay. No, you're not gonna be able to drink or you're not gonna be able to smoke or you're not gonna, whatever. And that voice that's not there at nine months is the one that's critical for you. And so if you're working on recovery, you have to engage in that relationship to make sure that somebody's there that can talk to you about it and talk sense to you, so to speak. So now you've made it to nine months. And then nine months, let's say that you have accepted. You've gone through that. You went through the process and you did the experiment or you didn't, either one. But if you did, then you got through it. And you get to the point where you're now 10 and 11 months and now month 12 comes in. And what's really interesting is the transformation that occurs at month 12 for me is quite fascinating because when I start working with somebody from day zero or before they've even started the process of recovery, I tell them initially, you know what, your 12th month is really important. And I, as a therapist, I like to be at my 12 month, uh, One year, the one year chip celebration ceremonies, for example, I like to go to them and I ask my clients repeatedly through the treatment process. Will you please tell me when that occurs? Because I would like to be there. It's an awesome thing to see. But that's just my experience with treating. But anyway, the person who is working on their recovery at 12 months, you come to the realization that you just went through an entire year of things and all the holidays, the season changes, the relationships, all the stuff that was a garbage in your life that you destroyed. You've probably ended up really cleaning up a bunch of it. You know, the divorce happened or the separation happened or the bad, business environment that you were in that changed the toxic environment that you were in with the people who were just your get high buddies you went through rehab you went through all the self-reflection and the insight of trying to understand yourself you went through all that right and you're at month 12. and what you realize is that you just had this tremendous battle with something that actually was real and it was life-threatening And you really have overcome a whole bunch of things. And you realize how much more work you have to do. And that's the key point. Realizing how much more you have to do. So at 12 months, I rarely get people that exit at 12 months and say, I'm done. I'm fully baked. I'm fully done. I don't need any more help. 12 months, I don't hear a lot of that. What I hear is, wow, man, this... I realize how little I actually know. I mean, I've been doing this for 12 months and I really don't know all that much. I've got a lot to learn, which is interesting because that means that the one thing that has left that person at that point is their number one enemy given tool. The enemy hands you a tool and it's arrogance. And you've probably put that arrogance down. You've been humbled. You've been brought down. to a point where you really fully understand yourself. There's probably been a lot of loss. There usually is. And you've come to that point where you have accepted those losses. Part of it is you realize how monstrous this enemy is. When Rocky was fighting Apollo Creed in the movie Rocky, Apollo Creed was a monster. Well, Rocky just kept his head down and started working like crazy, and he really didn't think he was going to win. He wasn't sure, but he was going to give it his best shot. And so I kind of look at addiction the same way. Addiction is this really incredible enemy that wants to kill you, beat you down. And if you just keep your head down and you start working, and you're starting from nothing, and you have nothing, and you are the underdog in that case, just like Rocky was. Being Rocky Balboa, can be an advantage and a disadvantage the enemy doesn't know what it's up against when you keep your head down you work extra hard and you go at it like i am going to win i don't know how but i'm going to but you do have to have that that that person uh next to you in your corner that's helping you so at 12 months you realize how little you actually know you realize how much you just overcame you have enough time where you can look back reflect back and realize how far you actually had to get to claw your way to where you are today and so at 12 months you realize just what you've done and maybe you have a little bit of peace about what you did to other people or to yourself And then you realize you've got really about another six months or a year of some rock-solid work that you have to do. But you're better equipped to do it. And that's the part of this message that I want to make sure you understand is the hope and the understanding of that progressive improvement is there for you. So at 12 months, you've fought a big fight, but you have a lot to learn still and a lot of clearing up. And that's when people... On 12 months and one day, I see a lot more of like these longer term goals and ambitions people start to focus on rather than the short term, just 24 hours, get me through this day. And so when you are at 12 months in a day, 12 months in a week, 12 months in a month, 12 months plus six months, you've begun that work. And that's when it really starts to feel better. You're starting to really get your life back together. You're getting your life back, so to speak. And so keep up that work. But at 12 months, you also then accept and take on the idea that you have been successful at fighting this. Now, clinically, we don't consider long-term recovery. We look at long-term recovery rather being five years. A year can seem like long-term recovery, but it's not. And that's the funny thing. You do realize that after a year. When you're working on it before that, the pre-one-year mark, you think six months is a long time, but it's not. So you've got to keep up the good fight so you can get to that point of recovery. Well, that is this episode of Doc Shock, Your Addiction Lifeguard. I hope you got something out of this. I know I enjoy doing these things, and I know that there are people that are getting something out of it. They're learning. I want you to learn, right? So keep working on it. If you do need help, go get the help. Don't save your addiction by ending your life or destroying it. That's crazy. Go and get the help. Check into a rehab. Go find a therapist. Go into the rooms. Don't be afraid. Be fearless. be fearless and strong and ask questions. You can reach me on my website, ballspringmindbody.com. I am Doc Jacques, your addiction lifeguard. And as always, until the next episode, this is Doc Jacques saying, see ya.