#113: Why Is Courage Required For Recover?

00:00Why is courage required for recovery? Welcome to the Real Talk Recovery podcast with the therapy brothers. We're brothers. We're therapists and we know recovery. Bring your stories, your questions, your successes is with real Recovery.00:32Good question, Brandon. Before we jump into that today, it's just me and you again. I'm going to read a quick review that we've got. We love you guys'reviews. It says from 625 Jasper. I've enjoyed BAE and it continues here.00:47I appreciate two perspectives and the varied explanations. I've challenged my beliefs more than once. I've had to pause after a statement that really hits home and reflect on why it has an impact. Having callers and topics from the betrayed side of the situation has helped me understand and then grow in empathy. Thank you for your work. Thank you. That's very nice. Yeah. Nice review. Appreciate you guys getting on and sharing this way. I like to hear someone pausing and really thinking through what we say.01:19That's awesome. We hope to be helpful in some way, even if it's just to provoke thought. Yeah. If we're just doing that, that's awesome. Yeah. Well, Tyler, how have you been? Really good, man. Just kind of still in the thick of the New Year's resolutions, so to speak. Trying to keep things going that way. I don't know if you guys know this about Tyler, but middle of January winter, you can find him with his two fake hips on top of a mountain wearing a pair of shorts.01:53That's what he does all winter. I had a glorious day yesterday. Speaking of that, I went up about a foot and a half of snow. I hiked up about 2 miles to the top of a mountain and just sat there. And I know this is going to pretty much everything I like. I sat there and looked for animals, about 100 deer and a couple of elk and shot my pistol. And it was just beautiful, man. And I was in shorts. By the way, you're weird.02:24If we're going to talk about weird, we need to talk about the cleanse. You're just finishing up. Oh, my gosh, let's not get into that. But you just sound like a redneck. Like, hey, I can throw my short tongue, go up the mountain, shoot my pistol, and look for some elk. For some reason, that embodies freedom to me. Yeah, no, I'm just kidding. It does sound amazing. I mean, the nature. I love it.02:50I actually wish I was there with you. Yeah, I'd love to have you there, man. There's something about nature that really does connect me to God, and it just helps to clear my mind. And we sit in our office all day Brown and like, hearing stories of such depth and pain and struggle. And you can't help but get buried by that sometimes. And I never found a better release than nature to be able to discharge all of that that I pick up in my office from week to week.03:19Yeah. That's why I spend my time there. Yeah. I'm glad you said that. It's kind of us therapists know that place of a shout out to all therapists out there who hold people's pain and empathize all day long. Your healers and your heroes. It takes a lot of self care. It takes a lot of release. Nature is a great way.03:49It's my favorite way. I also love water, like flowing water. Taking showers or sitting in a hot tub or something like that helps me release it. But you got to take care of yourself if you're going to help others all day long up there shooting a pistol, they get a little crazy, but. Well, Brad, let's talk about our topic today. Does that sound good? This is one of my favorite topics.04:19Just so important. Something that I think we both know is that in order for somebody to really heal, it requires a shift. It requires a shift in the way that shift happens is through experience. So it's not just in your head.04:47You can read a lot of self help books, you can listen to a lot of podcasts, you can get fully educated about everything and not much will change. But in order to really change and experience that shift, you have to experience something. In order to experience something, you have to what, Tyler? Well, you have to go step into it and through it. That's part of what you've got to do is experience it.05:25Let's talk about our topic today. The question is the question is on courage and how courage is necessary in the recovery process, both from betrayal, trauma, and from sexual addiction. It's on both sides of it. And I wanted to just start, Brandon, by kind of sharing a couple of the traditional definitions of courage, and then we can have a talk a little bit about how that plays out in real life and real recovery.05:50So here's the two definitions. The ability to do something that frightens one or strength in the face of pain or grief. Wow. I love that. I love putting the two of those together. When you think about the whole process of recovery, we all know that there's a whole bunch of fear, there's a whole bunch of pain, and there's a whole bunch of grief that's tied up in this process that we call recovery.06:27Right. I think the greatest fear, Tyler, is the fear of abandonment or rejection. That's the root of shame. And with that fear, think about it both from sex addiction and betrayal. Sex addiction really does a great job at isolating somebody, giving them a false sense of connection and soothing things when they don't feel like they're lovable.07:05Basically, that's what sex addiction will do, and that's the trap of sex addiction. In so many ways, the trade side of things is Ouch. You've hurt me. I want to control you, to love me. I'm afraid that you might not. And so I want to Hover. I want to make sure that this doesn't happen to me again or I'm going to get way too nice and give up my boundaries because I want you to love me.07:34But it's acting in that fear. And on both sides of the coin, healing requires those two definitions of courage. Exactly. That's exactly what it is, the ability to actually confront those things instead of run from those things or try to avoid those things. And I think that in recovery work, I tell this to my clients after they've joined whatever group they've joined or they've come to therapy for a while.08:07I say most people come to therapy wanting to just get their pain to stop, and they come to get tools to get their pain to stop. And that's the one half of recovery. But the other half of recovery is learning to develop the skills to lean into and through the pain that comes through not just what they're coming for in therapy, but for life in general. It's learning to embrace the pain as part of the process of life.08:34So give some examples, Tyler, as we're talking about this in the recovery process, maybe some examples of people in different parts of that process. What does it mean to step into the pain and to practice courage? Okay. Yeah. So the very beginning of recovery to be the people who show up to your first night of group therapy totally afraid that you might know somebody there, that somebody's going to just show their face.09:04That is a massive amount of courage to step into that because there's potential risk. And this is the thing about courage is you can't have courage without real risk of pain. That's one example. Another one would be further into the process. When you're looking at, Tyler, before you move on, Tyler, before you move on, explain to me how that's healing. Right. Okay. Well, when we look at so when I show up, I show up and I'm embarrassed that I could be seen. How is that healing?09:35Well, when we look at shame, being at the driver's seat of really shame is the core of where recovery breaks down. And shame loves secrecy and hiding. And so some of the very things that sort of help to become resilient to shame or kill shame include perspective taking, and they include connection. In fact, Brene Brown, in her writings that we all know about shame. Her definition of courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.10:05And so when you show up and you come to, like, your first night of group and you start telling your story, you start connecting with people, you start letting people see you. It's extremely scary and risky because our biggest fear is it will be rejected or judged. And at the same time, it's the most powerful healing thing that we can do. For ourselves, because when it's met with a place of empathy and understanding, and someone else can say, Me too, or thanks for sharing or, oh, wow, I feel so much safer being here now because you've shared your story.10:35It fractures that shame base belief that really I'm going to get rejected. There's something about it where if I'm feeling embarrassed and shameful and I'm secretive about my life, whatever side of the coin I'm on, so I'm running from the truth of it. I'm hiding it.11:05And it's crazy that if I turn around and I step right into it and I say, Guys, here I am in this sex addiction recovery group because my spouse cheated on me or I cheated on my spouse, here am I, and here's my face, here's my name, here am I. And Yikes, this sucks. And this is hard. And someone else says, I feel exactly like you do.11:30All of a sudden in that moment, it's like, oh, my gosh, I'm not alone in this struggle and in this pain, I feel connection. And now that I feel connection, like I'm feeling a little bit of love. And I thought the very opposite thing was going to happen, that if somebody saw me as a sex addict or whatever, they think I was a pervert or what, like, there's people there that feel me, that understand where I'm at.12:01And so it starts to totally attack the shame that's driving the problem. But, Tyler, people will run for years for their whole life and let this shame torment them before they practice courage. They will be eaten alive by the fear of what could be instead of stepping into what is and seeing that life goes on afterwards.12:30I'll tell you a quick story on this just personal story. I just barely started my private practice. I was probably three or four years into recovery myself. And I was doing these groups for betrayal, trauma, and sex addiction. And I remember coming home from work one day, and my wife was just asking how work went and things. And she said, hey, Tyler, do you ever tell your clients your groups about our story or about what you've been through yourself?13:02And I'd come out of this graduate school where you're like, you're not supposed to be self disclosing and you're not supposed to do certain things that way. And I said, no, I don't tell them anything. And my wife looked at me and she said, Why not? She said, that's the best gift you could offer them, Tyler, is to let them see your own vulnerability. And I sat on that for a couple of days, and I thought, well, maybe my wife is right here. So I went back in next week.13:31The very first group that I had was a women's betrayal trauma group. And I said, hey, guys, this group is going to be a little bit different, but I'm going to tell you my story. And I told them my story. And on the way home, I was shaking. I was too scared of us, and I scared to death. And I called my wife and I said, hey, Rihanna, I think I might have just ruined my career. I think my practice might be done. We might be over. I was, like, almost in tears, just, like, shaking.14:02And she kind of listened to me, and she said, well, Tyler, we believe really strongly in these principles. And I came back the next week after that, and I was nervous. I was afraid that there might not be anybody sitting in my groups. Nobody there. The entire group was there. It was full. And we had a little discussion, and there were two of the people in there that were really mad at me. They felt like I should have been more upfront in the first place. And then the other seven or eight people in the group said that was the best group we've had.14:34Like, I feel so much better working with you now, having been through it, you guys knowing that you understand this, you feel so much more real to me. I feel like I can trust you more. After that group, I walked out going, that's it. That's it. That's what was needed. It was to me to be authentic in the work that I'm doing, to be real with people and to practice the principles that I teach of shame resiliency.15:04And since then, I've done other things. I've put my story out on YouTube and I've gotten a few comments in the negative, but by and large, it's usually positive because people go, oh, thanks for saying that. I feel the same way. Oh, man, I've been through the same things. It's actually a connecting thing, even though it sifts through some people that don't want to connect with you, if that makes sense.15:34I want to talk about the two women that were angry at you for a second, because I think when we talk about courage and how healing it is and how important it is, I think it's easy to focus on if you practice courage, it's justrainbows and unicorns and you're going to get better and life is wonderful. And I actually believe that to an extent.15:57I think if you practice courage, only good can come of it. However, there's a reason why it's vulnerability in action very much can go. Your biggest fears could come true. Like, for example, let's say you're working recovery and you haven't had boundaries with your partner ever. And you're afraid.16:27Well, if I have boundaries with them, and let's say I don't have sex when I don't want to. And my fear is that they'll go act out. If I don't, well, okay, let's say you have that boundary, you don't have sex and your partner goes and acts out. Was that a healing thing? Was that a good thing to do? Your biggest fear came true, right? Well, it depends on the story you tell yourself around those fears, right.16:57If you're still taking responsibility for your partner's actions, then it's going to feel like you were somehow responsible in some way for their poor choices. But what I would say to that is that you're actually one step closer to a happier, more authentic life. Even in that pain, then you are still trying to control and run around and pretend like that's not going to happen, right? Yeah.17:24So what you're saying is even though the outcome was not what I wanted, courage still propelled me further into recovery despite it ending up the way that it did. That's what I'm hearing you say. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that I don't know anyone, out of all the years and work that we've done, anyone who gets himself into a solid place of recovery, that does it without stepping more fully into their true authenticity of who they are, meaning they got to stop.17:58So you've never met anyone who plays it safe? Tons of people play it safe. But I didn't say they're in deep recovery. That's what I was going to say. You've never met anybody who plays it safe who actually gets themselves to recovery? No. Yeah, exactly. I see people get a form of it there. They go through the motions of it all, but they do it without their heart. I don't believe that any of us can live a happy, fulfilled life unless we're living truly from an authentic place of who we are with our hearts.18:34That's why we call it a whole hearted recovery. Okay, Tyler, all these big words like authentic place with your heart's, whole hearted recovery, that's wonderful. But what in the hell are you talking about? All right. Yeah, you're right, Brad. My wife always says, Tyler, stop the therapist speak like nobody understands what you're trying to say.19:05Let's bring this back down here. Yeah. Every one of us. I believe this, although I believe most people don't see it in themselves yet. Every one of us is a unique, perfect recipe that God has created to do some good in this world based off of our personalities, our genetics, and our experiences. And many of our experiences are actually extremely painful.19:34Many of our experiences actually teach us the messages of shame and fear and doubt. And I would submit to you, Brandon, that in my experience, personally, in my experience with my clients, some of the most painful experiences that we have offer the most potential benefit to other people if we will allow ourselves to own those things in our lives, learn from them, grow from them, not hide from them, not run from them, make some sense of them.20:08And then we can turn around and be an impact for good in the world with other people. And when we don't do that, we are not only depriving ourselves of the life that we were designed for of a deep sense of satisfaction, happiness, and knowing who we are in God's eyes. We're also depriving the people around us of the potential growth that we could offer them if we were to stay, if we were to be just completely real with them. Right.20:38I think what I'm kind of hearing you say is if we can get ourselves to a state of honesty and kind of living our life in the light and letting other people see who we really are and allowing ourselves to really know who we really are through connection to God and things like that, that's when all of a sudden these words that you say the authenticity and the whole heartedness, it just naturally happens.21:12You live that way. And when you live that way, you can easily create love. Something tries to break that down and tear it down and uses fear to do so. If there's fear, fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of being not good enough, all these fears that come up, then there's manipulation, there's lies, there's isolation and disconnection.21:45And so then that happens. And things like addictions come in and soothe the pain and numb it out so you don't have to deal with it because you're just in it. And they medicate that pain. You can stay stuck there for a long, long time until the consequences build up and the suffering is too much. Then you're really tasked with the choice of trying to numb it out, trying to stay stuck in the fear versus turning and facing and stepping into the light.22:21And I think when we talk about courage is the thing that steps you into the light, and there's no way around it. Like we were saying earlier, you can't beat the system. And it's amazing to me, Tyler, I love when I see people go from a state of fear to a state of peace and they walk through that courage. That's tumultuous.22:51Yes, it's hard. There's a lot of learning, there's a lot of growth. But, man, there's a ton of relief and freedom. When they realize I can over and over and over again be an honest person, I can over and over and over again face my fears and I'm going to be okay. And usually at the core of that is if my wife rejects me, if my friends reject me, that'll hurt. That's hard. But I know God loves me.23:22I know that now. And the way that I know that is I've been through all this stuff. And since I know that now, then it's easy to live in this state of authenticity. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. When we do our foundations group, when we started, I always started off somewhere in the very beginning by saying recovery is this kind of a thing where there's going to be pain either way.23:50You're either going to choose the pain of continuing down the path that you've been on and reap the current consequences that you're currently reaping and probably more or you're going to have to face the pain of going into some of the places that are not very fun to go into. And you're going to have to learn about yourself. You're going to have to learn to love yourself. You're going to have to learn to forgive yourself and other people. You're going to have to learn to live a different way. All of that is going to be painful. A lot of it's going to be extremely scary.24:18And the reward on the other side is that you will grow in confidence in understanding who you are. You'll have deeper levels of peace, and you're going to be able to kind of live in that what I call the whole hearted life, which is what we all want. Right. But we have to accept that pain is going to be part of the process, and then we have to choose to lean into the pain that might yield a better result for us than the current one that we're doing.24:50But if you do that, it opens you up for things like honesty and intimacy and connection. You get to experience those things because you're willing to feel the pain and face the pain and deal with the rejection or whatever it is. Now you have an opportunity to experience those things because you're willing to experience the other side of it. Right. Help deconstruct this one for me.25:20Tyler, this is a personal story. So I got this feeling that, hey, you need to write a book. And so I followed through. I was consistent. I actually put pen to paper, and I wrote a bunch. I don't know how many pages. I got a lot done. And so then I thought, okay, I've written this book. This is amazing.25:49And so I sent it out to a few people, and I started getting feedback, and the feedback was kind of like, yeah, that was good, but not really. And I could tell it kind of sucked. The book wasn't very good. I go back and I read the book, and I'm like, yeah, if I were reading this book chapter to chapter, I wouldn't like it.26:21I wouldn't want to keep reading it. Ouch. I felt kind of like, man, I just gave my whole heart here to this thing. I spent a lot of time, a lot of energy, and it took a little bit of vulnerability to send it out to people like, hey, read this book. Tell me what you think. And then the feedback that I got. One guy gave me a book on how to write books better. What an awesome friend.26:53Yeah, he truly is. Help me understand. Was this good? I want you to tell me before that, I want you to tell me and everyone else listening. Like, what was your emotional process when you were getting that feedback? Honestly, I have some resiliency to triggering into shame through failure.27:25I failed a lot. I could list a bunch of other things. I remember missing the wide open layup shot for a rivalry basketball game, and I blew up for my team. I failed a lot in my life. I could go down the list. So I kind of did what you're doing now? I mean, you're laughing at me, and I laughed at myself. And it was like, yeah, but I also chewed it up a little bit in that I took that book that he gave me and I read it.27:59I started to notice patterns in my writing that were really not good. Some things that I do and little intricate things that really broke down and didn't help me with concepts and things like that. So I learned a ton from it. And I'm actually writing another book right now. And the way I'm writing it is very different than that first book that I wrote. So I'm grateful for that.28:29And it's turned into a really awesome thing for me. Were you grateful for it when your best friends were barely honest enough with you to be like, yeah, it's kind of okay. I think I was there was a part of me that was let down of like, look, how much time I've spent. Have I wasted my time? What have I done here? There was some let down.28:57I wouldn't go as far as sadness, but it was like, oh, man, I got some work to do. But coming back to the courage conversation, Tyler, I guess my questionis, when things fail like that, in a way, I could take it as rejection, right? They're saying they don't like my book or whatever. How is that? Good? Okay, good.29:24So actually, I believe it could either be healthy or unhealthy, depending on how you basically respond to it. It's either going to be unhealthy in the sense that you're going to be like, well, I tried, and even my friends thought it was dumb. So I suck. So I'm going to shrink away and I'm never going to try again, and I'm just not a writer anymore, and I just don't do that. And now you're going to isolate, pull away, insulate. You're going to go into shame. That's not going to be healthy. But the healthy side of that is what we believe. Brandon.29:54Both of us believe this very strongly about growth and change. That when you pair a very strong emotionally emotional experience with some form of learning, you're much more likely to actually have what we call second order learning, which is lasting learning instead of just something that you get in your head. So if you go and have this kind of actually pretty emotionally painful experience, but you see it as the opportunity for learning and growth.30:26Now that thing is going to actually push you further because you're going to make more commitment to learning. You're going to read that book you're going to start seeing your patterns. You're going to get back in, you're going to start writing more books, and you guess what, you're probably going to send those books out to your friends again and they're going to come back with more like there's this other book to read, too, that might happen for a little while. And that whole process will be painful. And you're going to see that pain as the kind of pain that you get when you go lift weights at the gym instead of the kind of pain that says you suck.30:59The only way you cannot grow any faster than going through what you're going through when it comes to becoming a writer. Right. Because you could go read all the books in the world without that painful emotion, and it wouldn't sync in the same way that it's sinking in now. Right. And that's why it took courage. And courage comes with vulnerability to be able to have that emotionally corrective experience to go with the cognitive learning.31:29Yeah. I think about people we work with who have hidden things from their spouse over and over and over again, and they've gotten really sophisticated and really good at doing so. And when they finally say enough is enough and they start working their recovery and they say, I'm going to start to be an honest person, and they open up and they talk about things that they normally wouldn't and their spouse freaks out.32:01That right there is huge growth. It's huge movement forward into recovery for them, even though it seems like, man, I got honest and all my greatest fears came true. Okay. But at least you're not stuck still in that same shamestorm place that you've been forever.32:27You're giving yourself a chance to get out of that and your spouse is in pain and these things are happening. Yes, it's true. But you are actually starting to build trust again. Instead of destroy it. You're actually starting to make connection possible again. Instead of destroy it, you're building trust. You're building confidence in yourself again. And unfortunately, in that case, theone that you're sharing right now, you're also offering your partner an opportunity to add a different pattern of connection.32:59And maybe your partner didn't quite pick that up because it brought out their pain. But in some ways, what you did by being honest is you gave them a chance to hear it, and now they get a chance to learn themselves, how to hold it. It's a gift in a lot of ways. And you're not saying go hurt your partner intentionally, but what you are saying is when you show up as an honest, courageous partner, you actually give your partner an opportunity for growth, too.33:30And that's true on both sides of the coin in any relationship. Yes, exactly. I could go on and on about courage, Tyler. I think we could take this to the little intricacies of being honest in a relationship and having boundaries to other things like have courage enough to go live your life dreams and adventures and purposes instead of working in that dead end job that pays the bills with the golden handcuffs, quit your job, start a freaking business like put things out there in life.34:07Go for it. Don't be stupid. But if there's something inside of you saying there's more, your purpose is more, then don't let fear hold you back saying, oh no, you better not. Because if that happens, you'll feel a void, you'll feel stuck, you'll feel discontentment, and it'll lead to all kinds of destruction in your life. Courage will be the thing to push you past that fear, to actually step into what God made you for.34:36If there's something in your life right now that you know you want to be doing differently, whether that is stepping outside of the work you're in or telling your kids and your wife you love them more often or whatever it is it is, I promise you this, that the fear will not get better. If you don't act on it and wait for five years, it will only become worse and it will pair itself with regret and resentment. And it'll likely look for sideways ways out which lead to things that numb you.35:07And so if you're feeling that right now, look at it with eyes of growth, look at it with eyes of opportunity and you might go get yourself obliterated and it's still going to be okay. You're going to be living and you're going to be learning. Go ahead. Oh, go ahead. You go. I tell my clients there's one recipe for healing and it's consistent. Acts of courage. That's it.35:36If you want to heal, just figure out ways to practice courage consistently. You do it again and again and again. I also say all the time if you do what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always gotten. So if you act in that fear over and over and over again, you're going to get what you've always gotten. But if you practice courage, you're not going to do what you've always done. Things are going to change. You feel consistent, you can't. It's going to change and it's going to get better.36:04Courage demands that it's something different or new because if you're doing something that you already do, you don't have to have courage to do it anymore. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah, it's pretty interesting. And that's how you get unstuck. Yeah, I 100% agree with you. You always make fun of me, Brennan, but I'm going to quote another poem today for you on this phone. Yeah, you got a poem. Dad would be proud. Dad, if you're listening, this one's for you. Okay.36:33Everybody's heard it before, but I think it goes into this idea of leaning intothe discomfort with things. It's like Brandon, you said, acts of courage consistently over time. That's why people do the Wim HOF method. That's why people go to the gym. That's why. Sometimes not always, but sometimes I go to Church on Sundays. Those little acts of discomfort are training you to lean into that process. And this poem, I think, really encapsulates. It's called Invictus.37:01And it says, out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole? I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul in the fellow clutch of circumstance? I have not winced or cried aloud. My head is bloodied beyond this place. Oh, I just butchered it. Brandon. Could I try it one more time? The way to have the courage to own that. You butchered it. Yeah, exactly.37:30Man, I love that. This is basically the equivalent right now, Brennan, of me, of you getting the feedback from your book, from your buddies, but I'm just doing it in front of a few thousand people right now. Yeah. Good job. Great. So I'm going to give it one more try here. Does that sound all right? You got one more try, then we're done.38:00Okay. This is it. Thanks, man. Out of the night that covers me black as the pit from pole to pole. I think whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul in the fell clutch of circumstance? I have not winced nor cried aloud under the bludgeonings of chance. My head is bloody but unbowed beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.38:31It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I'm the captain of my soul. And I think, Brandon, that speaks it, man, like, we can lean ourselves into that. We have our choice. We never lose our choice. And I love how he talks about the shadows and just about turning and facing the adversary.39:04It's about turning and dealing with the fear. Being courageous is not having fear. Being courageous is knowing that fear is there and sitting in it and stepping toward it. That's what real courage is when you're on the battlefield and you see that army across the way that's coming to kill you. It's not having that gut feeling of, like, terror. That's, oh, my gosh.39:34But it's having that gut feeling of terror and charging toward them. That's what courage is. So I love the poem, Tyler. That was excellent. Thank you. Right back to that definition we started with today Brown and strength in the face of pain or grief. That's it. Yes. So you guys go get into recovery by practicing courage. Thank you for listening today, you guys. We really appreciate you listening to us.40:03It means a lot to us, and we hope that this is helpful for you and your recovery. And please leave us a review if you can. If you haven't yet. We'd love to have one and have a wonderful day. Thanks guys.