Purposeful Remembering

When you are working on recovery you will need to go through memories of all the stuff you did. How do you do that without weaponizing those memories to attack yourself. By using purposeful remembering. 

Transcript

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Time again for Doc Jacques, your addiction lifeguard podcast. I am Dr. Jacques DeBruyckert, 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. Thank you for watching. 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 so the truth is what it is and that's what we believe At least that's what we tell ourselves. And in our recovery, we're supposed to be speaking our truth. And I hear that term being thrown around all the time. Speak your truth. And I don't even know what that means. Really? Your truth. It's not the real truth. It's your truth. But the truth is something that will either bring us down or it'll bring us relief. So in the biblical, scriptural context, I'm going to paraphrase and take out of context something. If you understand the truth, the truth will set you free. What truth? Your truth or the real truth? The truth that you want to believe and the one that you keep hanging on to that has led you down this horrible path of destruction? Or the real truth about what's really going on and what happened in your life? The idea of purposeful remembering is what I wanted to bring to your attention with this episode of Doc Shock, Your Addiction Lifeguard. Purposeful remembering. When we go through recovery, we have to engage in something that is painful, the naked truth, the real truth. And the purpose of that is to cleanse ourselves of the misguided belief that nobody understands or the lack of boundary that we feel that we have with the world around us. In other words, we want to have people accept us, but we're not willing to be truthful or honest about ourselves or what we're doing or how we lived. And more specifically, the difficulty in understanding that people can accept us when we have flaws. I sometimes will tell people that there was a point in my life where I was homeless. And they look at me and they can't imagine that that's the truth. And it's because I don't live like that. My truth is that I was that at a younger age. I was homeless. But bringing myself out of that is also my truth. So if the truth is that... you lived a life that you're embarrassed about or you're upset about, you're ashamed of, whether it's homelessness or poverty, prostitution, drug addiction, violence. Maybe you went to jail. You served time. You went to prison. Whatever that truth is and the thing is that you've lived it, it doesn't mean that it has to then dictate everything as you live your life moving forward. It means that it will inform how you live your life. It shouldn't dictate how it lives your life. And so the truth is the thing that you need to embrace. So purposeful remembering is the effort that you are putting forward to remember reality as it really is, not what you would have wanted it to be. There are things that that doesn't apply to. Okay. Um, Distortion of thinking or upset about something that happened that was traumatic. And by traumatic, I mean like really traumatic, like your mom or your dad tried to kill you. They molested you. They caused you tremendous, tremendous harm. That's a different thing because the truth is very painful. And that one is one where you must be guided through it by a professional in a way that will help protect you from the realities of of that that trauma that damage and that's something that i'm going to take as a separate thing that's not purposeful remembering as i'm going to talk about it that's purposeful remembering for a different episode so i'm talking about just the things that you did that you're ashamed of and leave it at that so for this conversation it's one of purposeful remembering about the things that you've done that you are ashamed of or embarrassed about. And we would like to run away from those things, how we lived or what we did or who we were with or how we spent our time, what we did to ourselves in the wake of the destruction of addiction. And that destruction can be tremendous. So we got married to the wrong person. We got involved with the wrong guy. We got involved with the wrong woman. We spent all our money. We lied to people. We stole things. We manipulated people and relationships, those around us. Things that we thought we would never do, perhaps. And I don't know, unless you're a sociopath, there's really not a purpose in those things other than just to feed our addiction. And it's really interesting how as we move our way through our lives, season of addiction we usually don't start out that way it's something that becomes something that we are and we slowly grow into that thing that's the case for me and i'm sure it's the case for you you didn't start out being a liar and a manipulator it's something that you adapted around as survival technique to get through the day so you could be high or drunk or whatever you were And it slowly erodes our moral compass and who we think we are. We start to do things that we never thought we would do. And it becomes something that's shameful to us. So we would like to forget that. We would like to think that that didn't happen. And then you start getting into recovery and people say, well, why are you so upset? Why are you so angry? Why are you so depressed? Why are you so anxious? And it's like, well... it's just kind of how I am. No, that's a lie. You know that. It's not how you are. It's how you became and what you did that got you there. So the idea of you in recovery trying to be purposeful and you're remembering, you don't want to remember these things, so it serves no purpose, you think. But in actuality, remembering things that are tough to remember is very important. But the purpose of that memory remembering is what's important. So the purpose of it is to help you get into recovery, help you heal, help you be able to forgive yourself for the things that you did. And so the purpose is key. If the purpose is to shame yourself or to be embarrassed, to weaponize those memories, then that really is the wrong purpose. So I want to be clear when we describe the point of like that fearless searching moral inventory of your character defect step four that is purposeful remembering you are going through the catalog of the awfulness of your life and that that is a point that you have to remember those things but man oh man it serves a purpose and the purpose is to heal to get to a point where you can forgive yourself for those things so honesty Radical honesty about yourself. That has a purpose. You weaponizing it and using it as a club to beat yourself with, that serves a very different purpose and perhaps one that you shouldn't be using that memory for. So purposeful remembering when it comes to recovery is the ability to go through and remember those points, those actions, those words, those deeds that you did that are embarrassing to you and you're ashamed of, to rid yourself of that shame. Forgiveness is the act of letting go of the anger that you feel about the thing, right? That you are, that you attach to it. So, or as I said in the previous podcast, forgiveness is not attaching the debt to the act or the deed. So you're removing the debt, the debt being anger. So when you are experiencing purposeful remembering, you are bathing yourself in reality. You're bathing yourself in what you actually did. And I'm saying bathing specifically because it's like a cleansing, right? We do that in the 12-step process. For those of you who don't engage in the 12-step process, we do that in step four and we do it with another person. You do step four with another person present. They are bearing witness to you going through this. They're guiding you through it. That's your sponsor. You're sitting down. We even have a step four workbook, and you actually use that workbook, and you go through all those character defects, man. And there's a lot of them. There's a page that's landscaped, and it's four columns wide. And it has both the character defect word descriptor as well as next to it the positive attribute word descriptor that would be next to the opposite of that. So liar is honest, right? So that kind of thing. So it's opposites. But it's four columns long. And it's a lot of single-spaced words of just awful. But you're doing that. You're understanding... what your character defects are by going through and purposely bringing that stuff up because purposeful remembering is a cleansing. It's an expression of reality that is meant to bring out those things, the honesty that you can then use in step five when you say it out loud to God, yourself, and another person. or God, another person in yourself or yourself and God, another person, whatever. And you're saying it and you're letting someone bear witness here in the natural here on earth to listen to you. And the belief in Christianity is that that person is acting as a representative of God to bear witness to these truths. But in, in reality, what you're doing is you're saying it to yourself. You're being honest. So again, it's more of that purposeful remembering. So those two steps are really, I think, vital to recovery because we don't want to know that we are a liar, we're a cheater, we're a manipulator, we're deceptive, we're cruel, we're mean, we're angry, we're bitter, we say insulting things, whatever the negativity is that you've got in you. So we don't really want to engage in that. in our lives openly and honestly. So purposeful remembering is the act of being able to engage in that experience of understanding those things that are wrong with us in a gentle, non-threatening, non-weaponized way. And that purpose is to help us recover. If you are also, it's funny, when you are remembering things that are positive, The idea that it is positive, that's very purposeful. And people will sit around in groups and they'll do it and they'll say, you know, they'll reminisce about things and, hey, you remember the time we went to the cabin up in the mountains and how beautiful it was? And everybody's sitting around going, yeah. Remember when we had that campfire that night and we all sat around? You know, it's like that's very purposeful remembering. It's easy to do that because it's very positive. It's very hard. To say, hey, you remember the time that I blacked out and acted like a complete jerk at your wedding and I threw the punch bowl on the floor? Nobody wants to remember that stuff. So we tend to not talk about it. But I can tell you, as a matter of fact, one of the things that we're so good at as addicts is we're so good at weaponizing those things. And what we do is they become weapons that we use against ourselves, and they start to erode our soul. They erode us as people. That's what the enemy wants you to do. It wants to destroy you from within. And so when we weaponize things and we create that environment where... We can use those things in ourselves and attack ourselves. We're doing the enemy's work for him, right? We're destroying our soul. And that's the weaponization of those things. So I guess that has a purpose, right? To destruction, self-destruction. It's not a good purpose, right? So purposeful remembering... to weaponize those memories and to destroy us will only contribute to your further destruction. How in the world are you supposed to engage in purposeful remembering when they are very negative things? It is very important that you do it in front of another person who cares about you. It is very important. I can't think of a thing that is even actually more important than that when you are going through your history. You must do it in front of another person who cares about you and is concerned for you. And perhaps, if it is not a sponsor, it definitely needs to be a skilled counselor, a therapist, somebody who can engage in that with you. And for addiction, I think that the... another piece that's very important to that is to be able to find a counselor or a therapist who can do that, but isn't just engaging in that kind of person centered back and forth where they listening to it and they go, Oh, so you're saying that you're a bad person. How does that make you feel? When I say that to you, you feel like crap. That's why you're saying it. That doesn't help. What you need is somebody who can listen to that and go, yes, that was bad. I agree with you. And how would you like to think of yourself now instead of, Because what we do when we weaponize is we don't see any freedom. There's no relief for that torture, that abuse that we heap upon ourselves. How do you change that? You change that by changing what it means to you and the importance that you give it. And so that's why when you are in that process of that purposeful remembering, the end point of that is to then let the anger go, right? You're going to let that poison out of yourself. I have done things that I am deeply ashamed of and I did them when I was drinking and I had to figure out what those things were in order to heal that. And then once I figured out what those things were, bringing that memory closer to me, like embracing it, then moving towards understanding that I've changed and understanding that is worthy of forgiveness. Now, me as a Christian, I have to lay that at his feet, right? So I'm asking for forgiveness the supernatural so that i can feel that if you are not a believer then what you have to do is you have to be able to lay it down put it down put the anger down and the best way to do that if you're a non-believer is to um do it in the presence of another person who is there with you and engaged with you empathetically connected you feel that connection And the words that I keep hearing in my head over and over and over again when I talk about those things is when Dan Siegel said that he heard from one of his clients, Dan Siegel is a psychologist, what he heard was he heard the person say, yeah, doing that and being in that made me feel felt. So I was feeling felt. And that's the key part of it is that empathetic connection with another person, at least, so that when you lay it down, you are feeling it because you're feeling felt. You're doing it in the presence of another person. It's difficult when you're just by yourself, you're isolated, and you've weaponized something for so long that you don't know how to stop weaponizing it. It is really, really difficult to make that change. When I see somebody who is coming to me, and this is true with people who are older addicts. They're in their 50s or 60s, sometimes 70s. Alcohol is usually the case with that, but sometimes I do get narcotics, crystal meth, cocaine, sometimes opiate drugs. But with the older crowd, it's usually alcohol or one of the other drugs. When I see them come to me, they have spent... 30 40 50 years sometimes 60 years doing this it starts at some point in their teenage years when they started to do things that were really problematic for them and they felt bad about it so they'll have if they're 50 years old they've had 40 years practicing this or 35 years that's a long time of repetitious thinking about shame and and embarrassment So when I ask them about their history, they will leave large chunks of that history out initially that are the things that they are upset or embarrassed about, ashamed of. They will leave it out. The longer I work with them, the more that comes out. And it's interesting because what they're doing is they're sensing my reaction to their bad behavior. And I'm trying to build that bridge over to them during that time so that they can sense and understand that I am not judgmental. I am not critical. They're so used to being judged, shamed, and stigmatized that they hesitate in that. So I sometimes will have to work with somebody for six months or a year before they really start to reveal themselves because they feel safe now. And that's not unusual. That's how strong and potent that destructive memory is. and how much they want to keep it away from themselves. So you have to work with the person who is trained in that. When you're working with them, when you're coming to them for help, get the sense of whether or not it matters to them or they care or how they're receiving it. Also, strangely, even though I'm a therapist and my opinion about them should not matter, but it's a human connection. So they tend to then... start to gravitate towards my opinion of them and they seek that out so it's approving it's a it's an approving opinion yes you were you did these things yes you stole from your family yes you lied to them yes you you stole those drugs from the medicine cabinet yes you showed up drunk you went yeah that's okay it's okay and they look at me like what do you mean it's okay Well, it's okay that you're saying it. It's okay that you're saying it out loud. I am accepting of your behavior. You are not accepting of it in that you don't want to repeat it. I understand that. I get that. And perhaps that's the first time they've heard anybody say that in response to it because they have not revealed it. It's an odd experience in my office to have a client do that and then for them to feel that I'm accepting of their behavior and I'm accepting of them admitting it. I'm not condemning them. Why should I? One, I'm not in a position of judgment of the person, but more importantly, I know that they've been spending the last 30, 40, 50, 60 years doing it themselves. Why would I join in on that? What purpose does that serve? So the point of being able to experience your shame and You're upset and your anger, self-directed anger. How do you stop being that? How do you stop being ashamed? How do you stop being angry? Lay it down. So you can't change the fact that you had it happen. That's where the memory comes from, right? Until you get to where you're dead or maybe you've got Alzheimer's or something that's not allowing you to remember things. But you're not going to forget that. You're never gonna forget, but it's the forgiveness part. And I know I sound like a broken record and I keep saying it over and over and over again, but forgiveness is what we do, right? And the opposite of sobriety is peaceful. I'm sorry, the opposite of addiction is peaceful. It's not sobriety. Sobriety is, for me, it's like a destination point that you're aiming towards and it's an action step. as well as a belief. But when you feel like you're actually healed from your addiction, it's a sense of peace that comes over you. And so for me, what I'm trying to help people get to is they're working their sobriety to get to peaceful because addiction is all about chaos and destruction. You know that because you've been living it. So working towards the ability to be able to then become peaceful is what's so very, very important. And what I'd like to do is I'd like to see people work towards purposeful remembering, structured, healthy, purposeful remembering, because that will allow them to engage in healing. And that really is how you get peaceful. So learn to use purposeful remembering to Non-weaponized, non-accusatory, non-damaging remembering. And hopefully what you're doing is you're doing it gently with yourself and with someone present who can bear witness to it and that you are connected to empathetically. I would hope that it's a therapist that's guiding you through that because a skilled therapist can do that, especially one that is trained in trauma recovery. They can do that for you. So I would want you to go seek that person out. If it's not a therapist, it's somebody that you trust and has gone through that like a sponsor who has also gone through that process and will help you get to the place where you can start to engage in self-forgiveness therapy. for whatever it is you've done to yourself or to other people. So purposeful remembering is just that by its definition, purposeful. It has a purpose. And for this exercise, it is a positive purpose, not negative. Disengage from that negative experience of dredging up old memories so you can beat yourself up over those. And man, the freedom that you feel When you get to that point where you can actually do that and your ability to empathetically connect to other people who are struggling as well will serve you so much better in your recovery than weaponized attacking memories about your garbage. So engage in purposeful remembering and let the healing begin. Well, that's it for another episode of Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard. Hope you enjoyed this episode on purposeful remembering and healing in your recovery. If you are in need of help, please, you can reach out to me, Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard, through my website, wellspringmindbody.com. You can ask me questions, make an appointment, get an intervention, whatever it is you need. Or if you are not in the area and you're not able to do that, hey, go get some help. Go to a treatment center. Go to a counselor. Go do a detox. Do something. Because it's not worth ending your life to save your addiction. That's just crazy. Well, so go get the help. And until next time, this is Doc Jacques saying, see ya.