Q&A - How do boundaries & bottom lines help break the cycle of addiction?
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Introduction and Announcements
Tara: Hey, a couple of things before we get started with this Q&A, just wanted to let you know that our Women's Workshop is coming right up April 19th and 20th in Mapleton, Utah. It's nearly full. So if you're interested in joining us go to salifeline.org; under events, you'll see a link there.
But we're really excited. It will be a great weekend [00:01:00] with therapist presentations, yoga and breathwork sessions, time in nature and time connecting with like-minded women who are working to heal from the effects of betrayal trauma. So we hope to see you there; again, that's April 19th and 20th in Mapleton, Utah. And we do have an opportunity for women to apply for a scholarship if you're interested in that.
And the second announcement - we now have the 2023 SA Lifeline Conference available for you to view, now accessible through our new digital recovery library on salifeline.org and we're really excited about this because we now have a central place where you can go and access all of our previous SA Lifeline Conference presentations. This is the first time we've ever made this available. It’s a one stop shop for all those presentations from top experts in the field, like Barbara Steffens, Jay Stringer, Donald Hilton, Anna Lemke.
And so we'd invite you to go check that out at [00:02:00] salifeline.org, click on the “Donate” button, and you can learn more about how you can donate to SA Lifeline and get access to this new digital recovery library. So thanks for being here with us. Now onto the show.
Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery Podcast
Tara: Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery podcast. I'm your host, Tara McCausland. And hey, good to see you, Justin.
Justin: Welcome. It's good to be here, Tara. It's good to see you again.
Tara: Yeah. Hey, and just for our listeners, just so you know, I'm coming to you from the St. George, Utah area and Justin's in the Spokane, Washington area.
So we do this over Zoom. We interview all of our guests via Zoom. So if you ever wondered how we do this, we're not in a fancy studio, we’re just over Zoom in our home offices.
Justin: It's very nice and comfortable. It may not be like the professional setting, but you know what? It works. It's great.
Tara: Yes, it does.
Understanding Boundaries and Bottom Lines
Tara: Well, today we have a Q& A for you. And we've been discussing boundaries and bottom lines for safety this month. And I don't know that we can talk [00:03:00] enough about this concept, Justin. I know from speaking with a lot of betrayed partners, this is one of the most challenging principles to understand and then apply. Is it like that on the addiction side too?
Justin: Absolutely. In fact, I think everybody, and I can't speak necessarily for everybody else, I'll just speak for myself, but I don't even know what boundaries are. If I am in the slightest bit disturbed, if I'm feeling resentment, anger, fear, whatever, boundaries disappear.
And so it's really important to have something set up and an escape plan made, work out that phone muscle, so when something happens, I pick up the phone really quick and talk to somebody else and let it go. Because once I start that cycle, a boundary disappears really quick. And I don't even recognize that I passed it until it's already been passed.
And, and I think that it might be fairly similar on the betrayed side too. That if I'm triggered, those boundaries, unless I've really got [00:04:00] something set up, may be really hard to hold and maintain.
Tara: Yeah. So we've already interviewed Dr. Sherry Kepfer on the concept of boundaries, establishing boundaries for safety, especially for the betrayed partner.
And we had a great Q and A with Stephen and Rhyll Crowshaw. Yeah, and one other thing, I also had a great conversation with Jan and Karen here recently on boundaries. That was a fantastic conversation in which I learned a lot from the betrayed side, from a couple of different perspectives. So this is going to be kind of a final commentary again on this concept, and we'd like to emphasize a couple of points.
So we would invite you to go back and listen to those interviews if you haven't already. Great stuff there. But a few points that we wanted to emphasize. And the first is that boundaries and bottom lines - and I like how you talked about when we get into the cycle of addiction, and there is a cycle of addiction, or when we get into that spinning into our trauma, [00:05:00] unless there's a plan in place, everything's going, all hell breaks loose, right?
Justin: Absolutely. And that's a great way to put it, too.
Tara: An important part of boundaries and bottom lines for safety is we must make this plan prior to the event, right? So we make these plans when we're in a humble, accountable and honest place on both sides.
Justin: Yeah, I think it would be really hard to set and create a boundary or a bottom line if I was either spiraling in negative emotion or sitting in shame.
Those would be two really hard times to make a boundary that I could buy into or to accept a boundary being made at that point, that wasn't already set.
Tara: Right. And actually, this relates, but I read a really great quote from a fellow who talked about how when, for instance, when our children are in high emotion mode, that's not the time to teach the principal.
That's not the time to teach. He [00:06:00] said it has to be when that lizard brain has calmed down enough, when our system has calmed down enough that we can actually process the information and make reasonable decisions. So I think that the first point is that we want to emphasize that boundaries and bottom lines, while the plan will never be perfect, we must make the plan in a moment of some peace and that might look like people doing this separate and apart from one another if we're dealing with a marriage that's on fire.
Justin: Yeah, it could. I was about ready to jump in and say, man, sometimes with kids, it's hard to even find that moment of peace. And in a marriage that's on fire, it would be hard to find that moment of peace where both parties could come together calmly. Maybe in those cases, it would be vital to have qualified therapy to help in that process when things are really out of control.
The Role of Sponsors in Setting Boundaries
Tara: And also sponsors can really help in this process. [00:07:00] A good sponsor should not tell us what our bottom lines and boundaries ought to be. Like Stephen and Rhyll Crowshaw said, bottom lines need to be self made.
If they're made by other people, that can just be another reason for them to resent. And we know that resentment is one of the things that fuels addictive behavior. But sponsors can be a sounding board and help us, hopefully, connect us to the God of our understanding who can be our primary partner in helping us understand how to set bottom lines and boundaries that are not based upon fear, manipulation or control. Any thoughts about that?
Justin: Yeah, I do. It's really important to have somebody else in that process. Yes, I need to be the one that sets the idea in place of, “Hey, this is a boundary. This is a bottom line,” but I can have a sponsor sit there and say, “Hey, you're missing a couple of blind spots here. Have you thought of this? Have you considered that? What do you think about this idea? Do you think that's something you should consider in this process?” And [00:08:00] it's really important to have somebody who walks the walk and talks the talk help out in that process.
Tara: I think it should be fairly clear if you've listened to the other interviews why boundaries and bottom lines for safety are so helpful.
Interrupting the Addictive Cycle with Boundaries
Tara: But I think just right out the gate, one of the reasons why boundaries and bottom lines are so critical is because they interrupt the addictive cycle. And Justin and I were talking about that briefly before we jumped on here. If you look up “addictive cycle”, it will pull up a variety of things, but one that I found was, again, it's a cycle, so there's no starting point.
But you could start with an emotional trigger, then obsession, then moving into craving, there's that brain itch for the addict. And then ritualizing, getting ready to act out. And then finally the using, the acting out behavior. And then that moves us into a [00:09:00] state of guilt and shame, and then the cycle just continues. And so how do you see bottom lines and boundaries helping to interrupt this cycle, Justin?
Justin: Yeah, it's super important to be able to step back and watch myself during the day because those emotional triggers happen. Life happens. Triggers happen. I am not going to experience very many days in my life when there's not going to be a trigger, whether it be a lust trigger, whether it be anger, a fear, resentment, whatever it may be.
And one of the things that I really go to in this process, one of the boundaries, and I've never looked at it this way until right now is in step 10 in recovery. Here's what step 10 looks like. I'm going to read a paragraph out of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not a full paragraph, I’m going to read a half a paragraph. This is from page 84.
It reads, “Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear,” and I add in, and lust. Because I'm a lust [00:10:00] addict. So, that's what I need to do. I need to keep my eyes open, not in a fearful way, but just be aware. Hey, is selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, fear, lust happening?
The next line is, “When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them.” So there's the first boundary/bottom line. When I feel resentment, I need to hit my knees, either figuratively or literally, and ask God to remove them. That's not it though.
The next step is, we discuss them with someone immediately. And that's making a call. Using that phone muscle. Pick up the phone, make a call, shoot a text message, leave a voice message for somebody saying, “Hey, I'm feeling some resentment because this happened at work.” Or whatever it may be, and be specific about it. And then, if I've harmed anyone in this process, I make amends quickly. And then I resolutely turn my thoughts to someone I can help.
Love and tolerance of others is my code. And that's basically a great way to have a boundary, a bottom line. Hey, if I'm feeling this, I do this, this, this, and this before [00:11:00] it turns into the obsession, the craving, the ritualization, the acting out. I've got to nip it in the bud at the very beginning, or it's really dangerous for me.
Tara: If there is a starting point, it is that emotional trigger and you're right. We're all going to experience these at any time of the day. We can't live a trigger free life. We've discussed that, right?
The bottom line and the boundary will help us deal with the emotions that we will feel throughout the day and when that plan is already in place, and then we have a sponsor. It can be really hard initially to start making those phone calls, to reach out. But getting out of isolation, getting out of our own head, that's really critical on both sides for someone dealing with an addiction or someone dealing with trauma. We've got to connect.
And so I really liked how you just kind of laid that out. In fact, lay that out one more time for our listeners. So if we feel the emotional trigger, what would that plan look like?
Justin: Yeah, and I think [00:12:00] this goes along with something that Rhyll talks about often. I feel the emotional trigger. I hit my knees and I'm specific. I say, “God my co worker just said this, or just walked by wearing that, and I was triggered,” whatever it may be. I tell God, “This is what happened specifically.” I pick up the phone, and this is one of the things for newcomers, everybody says when they come in, “It's hard for me to make a phone call.”
Yes it is. It is. It's hard for everybody. It's not an easy thing. I have to exercise that muscle because that phone, this little cell phone right here that weighs less than a pound, weighs 500 pounds when the crap hits the fan, to speak it bluntly, you know. But if I exercise that muscle it becomes easier.
So I pick up the phone, I call my sponsor, I call somebody else in recovery, I call my friend, my neighbor that is a confidant, and I can just say, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know what's going on here, what I'm feeling.” And that way [00:13:00] it's not a secret anymore, and it loses power.
In that process, then, if I've caused harm to anybody, I need to make amends quickly, whether that's verbally or in action. It's better in action to make amends. And then I turn my thoughts resolutely to being of service to someone else, whether it's the person that I'm triggered by or whether it's to anybody else. Turn my thoughts so it's off of me and I'm no longer looking down at myself and saying “I'm so angry,” and me, me, me, me, me. “They made me feel this way.” It becomes, okay, how can I be of service? And that's the process. .
Tara: And that's partly the surrender process. And we did briefly talk about that in a Q and A in December, but we're going to go over that again, moving forward, because guess what?
We're actually changing the recovery puzzle. And we decided that we needed to add the piece, the action piece of surrender to the recovery puzzle. So look out for that in the coming months. We're excited about that.
The Importance of Commitment in Setting Boundaries
Tara: And that's the piece that I wanted to suggest in this conversation, [00:14:00] because this is supposed to be a shorter Q& A, is this concept of commitment. As human beings, change is hard. It just is. We all know that. That's why most of our new year's resolutions go out the door, you know, within a week because change is hard and it's especially hard when we're dealing with addiction. There's a reason why people can't shake addiction simply by sheer willpower or even with a coach, because it has changed the brain.
And so the boundaries and bottom lines, again, they're so powerful because they interrupt the cycle. But I think that we ought to be hopeful that as we step into a lifestyle of setting boundaries and bottom lines, we understand that our brain is very good at healing itself. And that it will learn over time that this is how we now deal with life.
And as we exercise the [00:15:00] commitment muscle, I used to be a life coach and I would talk to people about exercising our commitment muscles. If we never exercise them, of course, they're going to get weak and we won't have the ability to follow through. Every effort that we make to be committed to these boundaries and bottom lines will improve our ability to move forward in a positive way.
So do you have any thoughts about that? Any words of encouragement for someone that's trying to get onto this path of setting boundaries and bottom lines, but feels discouraged or overwhelmed by it?
Justin: You know, there was an image that came to my mind that I've never thought of before. I, as an addict, have hardwired my brain through decades of acting out to where when this happens the flow of chemicals goes this way no matter what. It's just going to happen because that groove is so deep in there that flow is going to happen that way. And a boundary is setting up a dam.
It's building a dam. And you know what? First, it's probably just going to be a few shovelfuls of dirt in [00:16:00] there and when that flow of water hits it, it might build up for a second and then it's going to blow through. I need to keep putting dirt in. It's not just, “Hey, today I'm going to put one shovel of dirt.”
No, it's, “Today I'm going to keep shoveling the whole day. And then once it gets to a point, I'm going to pour concrete on it. I'm going to reinforce it with rebar. I'm going to build a secondary dam so that when that hits, it goes in a different direction. And in that process, I'm building other tributaries of healthy reactions.
Hey, instead of going down this path of acting out, I'm going to make a phone call. I'm going to serve someone. Or I'm going to take a walk. You know, whatever it may be. Something that's healthy rather than whatever it is. Eventually that dam will be strong enough, not that it will never break, but it will be strong enough to where it's not the automatic pressure point. The automatic pressure point goes somewhere else that is hopefully a little bit less damaging. Does that answer that question? It was just an idea and a [00:17:00] visual that came to my mind when you were talking.
Tara: Yeah, I think that works really nicely. Just be committed to the process and recognize that as we're building that dam, it will take time. But if we are committed to the time and the process and we have the willing heart, the humble, honest, willing heart to keep moving in that direction, I believe that we'll see the fruits of our labors, which are greater confidence in ourselves because we know we can say we'll do something and follow through. We'll see the fruit of building trust again in our relationships, in our marriage with our children. And, we'll see that living a life of recovery is possible.
Conclusion and Encouragement
Tara: So there is our final encouragement and commentary on boundaries and bottom lines. I'm sure we'll come back to this again and again. But this is so important and we just want you to know it's worth every effort. So keep moving forward in your recovery. Don't get discouraged. There is hope, there's healing ahead.
Justin: There is. [00:18:00] Thank you, Tara.
Tara: Thank you for being here with us today, listeners. We'll catch you next time. [00:19:00]