 to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. Each week, we record the podcast during a Facebook live broadcast in which Doc Snipes presents information and tools to help you start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos, handouts and workbooks to help you apply what we talk about. After each podcast, the accompanying video, text, and worksheets will be published from members on docsknipes.com. Additionally, each week we have a members-only educational group followed by a question-and-answer session with Doc Snipes to help you apply the tools to yourself and start living happier faster. The Doc Snipes podcast will be providing listeners and members the same tools and information Dr. Snipes gives her clients. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery. Today, we're going to be talking about common issues and interventions, and I know that's kind of a garbage title, but basically, when I meet with people in the first couple of sessions, a lot of times there are some really common themes and common threads and common issues, which, hence the name of the presentation, that we can start to address that can help people start feeling better right away. Now, what we're talking about today, again, is not going to make someone feel better completely, and they're fixed and everything's wonderful. But what we're looking at is taking steps toward feeling better and starting to identify some of the feelings and some of the reasons that people are feeling unhappy or unhealthy. So in the first section, we're going to talk about what are co-occurring disorders, because we hear the term a lot. Sometimes they're called dual disorders, but what are they? And then we'll talk about the chicken and egg dilemma, which came first, which do we treat first? We're going to move on to the importance of awareness and mindfulness, because I find that a lot of people are on autopilot, and you can't address something unless you know what that something is. So you've got to check yourself off of autopilot and figure out exactly what is needed to correct the course. And then we're going to move on to developing self-esteem in this segment. So what are co-occurring disorders? Basically, I define it as any physical or mental health disorder that occurs at the same time as an addiction. So in this particular presentation, we're talking about things that happen in concert with an addiction. And remember, addictions can be behavioral, they can be chemical. We're talking about anything from smoking to drinking to pornography addiction. There's a wide range in there, but we know that addictive behaviors, when they're used to the point of addiction, do cause brain changes and do cause significant impairment in multiple areas of a person's life, which often causes depression and anxiety in and of itself. So I'm getting to the chicken egg, but anyway, these things that occur at the same time as the addiction cause what we call clinically significant impairment on their own. It causes depression, it causes anxiety, it causes guilt, it causes all kinds of distress. It's not because the person was distressed or anxious or whatever ahead of time necessarily, but the brain changes that happen as a result of addictive behaviors can cause unhappiness and unpleasant results. It creates a hurdle in the recovery process because when somebody is depressed or anxious or and I'm just going to use the garbage term unhappy right now because whatever it is for you. That means getting from point A where you're at right now to being happy, not only do you need to address the addiction and we'll call that the main path, but when there's a mental health issue or some sort of other unhappiness in there, it's like a block in the road. The bridge is out. So you've got to detour around. You're still going the same towards the same end, but you may not be able to go that straight path that maybe somebody else took. So what we're looking at is how do we detour? How do we handle these road construction areas on our journey toward happiness? And the next question is, okay, so if somebody has depression or anxiety or unhappiness and an addiction, which do we address first? Do we start addressing all the mood stuff and the mental health stuff because then they won't need the addiction? Not necessarily. Because remember, the addiction actually caused changes in the brain. So yes, we need to address this because if you have somebody who is unhappy enough, they're going to want to make that unhappiness stop. Nobody wants to be miserable 24 seven 365. So we need to start to address that. And we all but we also need to address the addiction because as long as they're using those behaviors, they're going to maintain the brain changes that occur with addiction, which support anxiety, depression and anger. So we need to help the person cut back on or stop the addictive behaviors. And we need to help the person start making steps towards feeling empowered and happy. And that sounds really overwhelming at the beginning when somebody comes in and they're like, my life is a mess. So we want to step back and say, All right, what does putting your life back in order look like? And let's figure out how to take the first step. Let's not look down here at total recovery. You know, we know you want to get there. But what's the first step you need to take? Let's focus on the here and now. So one of the things we want to ask is when we're talking about addiction, you know, for some people, they are not going to stop completely. They're not going to quit using and then never use again and never relapse. And, you know, I'm not asking for perfection right now. What I want is progress. So what are your triggers for use? Why do you pick up? Why is it that you smoke a cigarette? Why is it that you're masturbating six times a day? Why is it that you're using heroin? What is going on that makes you go, I need relief? What have you done in the past that has helped you not use? So whenever those situations have come up, and you've gone, Oh, I really want to use. And you've chosen not to or you've been able to not to what was different. Maybe your kids were there and you're like, I'm not using in front of my kids. Okay, well, that's one thing we know that we want to create an environment that's not conducive to use. What else have you done? And brainstorm, start coming up with ideas. And maybe you eventually used maybe something happened and you said, Oh, I really want to use. But I don't want to use. I don't want to go back down that path. And maybe you only made it for an hour or two hours before the urges took over. Okay, but what did you do for that hour or two hours? Let's build off of that. It helped you stay clean. It helped you not use for two hours. It can probably help you not use for 20 hours. Let's just start increasing the time that you've got. What can you do to help yourself stay clean and not use now? And sometimes, you know, there's obviously ways to deal with stress. But there are also things like not going past your dealer's house, or you know, not having internet at the house, if porn or one of those things tends to be a problem for you. Identify what you can do to create an environment that's not conducive to using. If you have an eating disorder, you know, if you tend to binge eat, not having foods that are high sugar, high fat, high reward foods, if you will, easily accessible, that's one way. So think about what you can do in your environment. So basically, if I have somebody come in with an addiction, the first questions I'm going to ask them when we're when we're talking is, I want you to start thinking about what triggers your use, what you've done in the past to either not use or to delay the time until you ended up using. And what can you do to help yourself help yourself stay clean now? Write all those down on paper, bring them back next week or our next session and we'll talk about them. But that gets people thinking about what their strengths are, and what their issues are that they may have to deal with. Again, I said, we're not fixing everything in this presentation, but we're starting to develop some power because knowledge is power. Once people know that they've done it before, they can continue to do it. The same thing for any of these mental or physical health issues. Now, I talked earlier about the fact that there are brain changes that happen as a result of addiction. That is true. But some of these brain changes also make make people more sensitive to pain, and can cause some physical changes that cause pain, hepatitis C, for example. So we want to talk about what mental health or physical health issues do you have that contribute to your use? You know, if you're in chronic pain, maybe that's one thing you wake up in the morning and you're like, this just hurts too bad. And that starts your use for that day. And there are a lot of mood issues that go along with it. But again, we're starting at the beginning. So identify what are some mental health and physical issues that make you want to use that prompt you? What can you do that helps make those things less distressing? So you know, let's stick with chronic pain. Maybe you have chronic migraines, and you wake up in the morning, and you've got one of those chronic migraines, and your mood just kind of goes into the toilet. You feel helpless, you feel hopeless. What have you done in the past that has helped you feel a little bit more empowered or made that migraine less distressing? And I'm not going to say it doesn't hurt. Oh my gosh, they can be agonizing. But there's a difference between feeling agony, and feeling agony, and anger that you're feeling agony and guilt that you can't do stuff and, you know, compounding it with all these other negative emotions. So what have you done to sort of accept that? All right, I heard this is going to suck today, and kind of moved on to make it a little less distressing and not fought with those feelings. What can you do in order to start increasing those? This is not going to fix it, like I said, but it can help you start feeling like you're a little bit more in control of your reactions and your feelings. So most people in early recovery are on autopilot. They don't know what makes them want to use. What they know is they feel the urge to use. Okay. So what we need to do is disengage that autopilot. This is like having a GPS in your car that gets you halfway down the Golden Gate Bridge and tells you to take a left. You're like, um, yeah, that's not working for me right now. So we want to say what is it that's triggering me right now? Because there are general things, you know, anger, anxiety, depression, I can't address those. Because that's too vague. I don't know what makes you angry. I don't know what makes you anxious or depressed. So queuing into yourself and figuring out what is it that triggers these feelings in you is what I mean by taking it off autopilot. And sometimes you're not going to have a good answer. And that's okay. But sometimes you are going to have a good answer and you can figure out what to deal with that. The powerlessness to change the situation often prompts a disconnection emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. So back before you were under so much distress, you probably tried to change the situation or figured out what was going on, and it didn't work. So you disconnected, you're just like screw it. I've got to ignore it because I can't fix it. And being powerless is making me feel even more frustrated. Part of the definition of addiction is experiencing difficulties in multiple areas of life as a result of use, which often results in guilt, resentment, depression, grief, and negative self image. So addiction itself can cause a bunch of negative emotions and feelings and thoughts and all that kind of stuff. But there are also other things that cause negative emotions, feelings and thoughts. So we got to figure out what's going on. Ultimately, I want you to remember that life is about survival. And at a certain point, people go, I can't take this pain anymore. I don't have the skills to make it stop. Or I don't have the tools to make it stop whatever those tools are. And that is sometimes what we see when people end up in a situation where they've gotten addiction. And you know, there are whole other videos on that. But what I want you to start becoming aware of is what are your triggers? And what triggers your unhappiness? So get mindful. Stop. And I call this anchored mindfulness. I've talked about it before. At breakfast, lunch and dinner, it's easy because we almost always eat those or try to eat those. During those right before those meals, ask yourself, how do I feel right now? That's a pretty simple question. Think how do I feel emotionally? And how do I feel physically? I mean, we don't have to get down into the weeds with this. What do I need to do? And this is where people stop short. They say, How do I feel? Okay, you know, acknowledged. The next step is what do I need to do to meet my needs? To meet my thought needs feelings, urges and behaviors that are keeping me unhappy? What do I need to do to deal with those right now? You know, maybe I can't fix those. Maybe I can't change the situation. So maybe I need to step back. What is it that I need to do to help me meet my needs to not be unhappy? And what do I need to do to meet my needs? To help me start changing the thoughts, feelings, urges and behaviors that I have the power to change? You know, I have the power to choose whether or not I stay angry and continue to argue with somebody or choose to step back. I have a lot of choices. But again, you have to be off autopilot to start seeing your choices. I don't know if maybe you're like me, maybe not. When I have the GPS on, I'm kind of oblivious. I just wait for her to tell me, you know, in 200 feet, turn right. And you know, I can't find my way out of a paper bag anyway. So that's not great. But when I'm on autopilot, I'm not looking for alternative routes. I'm not looking for, you know, upcoming stuff. I'm expecting the GPS is going to tell me. And so I'm not prepared for it. So we want to turn off the GPS, turn off the autopilot and say, let's become aware of where the roadblocks are and how we can detour. So one way we can do this is I call it the purposeful action continuum. On one side, there are thoughts, feelings, urges and behaviors that keep me unhappy. These are things I do like arguing, staying up late, using yelling at people, you know, whatever it is that you do when you feel unhappy, your knee jerk reaction, fighting poking the bear, whatever it is. Make a list of those feelings, behaviors, thoughts, urges, what are you afraid of? What are you running from? What are you fighting? What are you feeling guilty about? Yeah, that can take a while and probably more than eight. On the other side, there are thoughts, feelings, urges and behaviors that will help me start changing to be happy. And you've got to figure out what happiness looks like for you. But when you're looking at what you normally do, your knee jerk reaction, your autopilot reaction, you can look at it and go, Well, that isn't really a good use of my energy. If I want to be able to be attentive to my family and sleep well, and you know, whatever all this other stuff is over here. So I need to start identifying things that I'm going to do to prevent me from getting sucked in to negative behavior patterns. Another way you can look at it, you can create the same, you know, pro con list, whatever you want to say, the unhappy versus the happy, you can have me right now, my thoughts, feelings, urges and behaviors that are keeping me unhappy. And then maybe you can't imagine what you would do to be happy. So create or find somebody that you think is happy and say, Okay, what do they do? If I wanted to be like them, if I wanted to be happy and carefree like them, what do they do? Sometimes it's a little bit easier to try to mimic or model someone else use a mentor. And you know, the other way you could look at it is filling out opposites, unhappy behaviors, or behaviors that keep you unhappy and behaviors that keep people happy, and just be more general. Why, why do I say that? Because sometimes when we start personalizing it, we can get too far down into the weeds, or we might not be able to see the good stuff. Generally, we're pretty good at seeing all the bad stuff and the guilt and the blame and all that stuff. So if you start figuring out, you know, what does a happy person do? You might be able to figure out some things that you could tweak. I'm not saying overhaul. Let's just start with tweaking certain behaviors in order to start feeling happier. Deal with thoughts and feelings that prevent self awareness. And this is a big one, because we have autopilot on. And the reason it came on or the way it came on is different for everybody. Maybe you weren't ever taught to be in tune to yourself. That's okay. You know, it is what it is. But you need to deal with the thoughts and feelings that are preventing your self awareness such as I need to ignore my needs. You know, I have some needs right now, but you know, I've been a really crappy friend for the past six weeks, so I need to ignore what I need and try to make up for my mistakes and try to make up for being a crappy friend. Yeah, unfortunately, that usually ends up depleting your energy even more because if you're not whole, if you're not healthy, you're not going to be able to be available for anybody else. Fear sometimes prevents people from being aware. If I tune into what I think and I need, I might get overwhelmed and not be able to deal with it. And that is a very legitimate fear. What do you do about it? Well, talk with your therapist. If you think you're going to get overwhelmed about, you know, what you might discover that's keeping you angry or depressed. Find a support. If you don't, if you're not in counseling, you don't think you need therapy to deal with it, but you might not want to do it all by yourself. Maybe talk to your pastor, your religious leader or somebody who is available to help give you a hand should you start feeling like you're stuck in quicksand. Some people feel apathetic about becoming aware. You know, they're like, what's the point of becoming aware? I've been aware before I've tried to change things. It's failed. So why try again? And my argument with to that is every time you fail is a learning opportunity. It points out something to you that you missed you weren't aware of. Is it hard? Yes. It can it be unpleasant sometimes? Of course. However, is it worth it? And that's something that only you can decide. And there's a self hatred negative internal voice that may prevent you from becoming aware. And sometimes it comes from your childhood, you may have had a parent or a caregiver who was always telling you, you know what, I don't care how you feel, just shut up and suck it up. That voice plays over and over again, you don't feel like you're worthy. You don't feel like your feelings are valid or have any worth. So that keeps you from becoming aware. Because you every time you start to do it, you hear that voice in the back of your head. So you need to figure out how to deal with that. Sometimes it's a matter of telling that voice to shut up. Other times it's starting to learn to like yourself enough to feel like you deserve to be happy, which takes us to self esteem. When you feel powerless, you may have when you have low self esteem, a lot of times you feel powerless. You need to walk the middle path, identify what you do and don't have control over. Because self esteem is the difference between who we think we should be and who we think we are. So if we think we should be a whole bunch of stuff that we're not, and we don't feel like we have the power to become that, we can feel pretty trapped and desolate and useless and all kinds of negative words. So walking the middle path helps you identify the things you do have control over. And I encourage people to start learning from prior failures. Like I said, every time we stumble, it's a time to learn how to walk more, more effectively, and create a success mantra. Because you know, when we have self esteem, you may feel like there's nothing you can do and you may feel sad and depressed and unlovable. So quotes about success and failure. I'm going to go through them real quick, because I think they're important. Find one for you and you can Google it, you know, quotes about success and failure. Find one for you that's your success mantra. When you start fearing that you're going to fail. Tell this to yourself. So some of them failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be. And this is very, very true for people with depression and addictions. I've not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work. See, I like that one. You know, that's kind of puts a positive spin on it. Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. You know, you're going to fail a few times before you completely succeed. Now does that mean you have to fully relapse? No. But does it mean you're going to have some bad days and you're going to fall back into old behaviors and ways of thinking, even if for 10 minutes or an hour? Yeah. But that's a learning opportunity. So keep your enthusiasm. The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. Well, that's self explanatory. And success is the result of perfection, hard work and learning from failure, loyalty and persistence. So we want to hold ourselves to a high standard, work hard and learn from our failures, being persistent, knowing that we are going to make mistakes. So keep achieving and keep striving. So back on to that self esteem, we've got our success mantra, we're trying to feel more empowered. If you don't feel worthy of happiness, you're probably not going to stay motivated to reach out and achieve it. You know, sometimes people start feeling guilty for feeling happy, because they feel like they have hurt other people or you know, there's a whole bunch of reasons. But we need to figure out why is it that you deserve to be happy? And what are the benefits to you being happy? So we changed the dialogue. If you refuse to forgive yourself, you don't feel like you're deserving of happiness, you know, we may want to explore questions like what would it mean if you forgave yourself? What are you afraid will happen if you forgive yourself for whatever it was that you did? And you know, on a more esoteric level, what makes anyone deserving of happiness? I mean, this little girl over here in the corner, regardless of what she did, would you tell her you don't deserve to be happy? When we tell herself that, that's exactly what happens that little person inside herself goes, Okay, I don't deserve to be happy. So what makes someone deserving of happiness? You can think on that one all day long. Finally, change the dialogue. Are we unlovable? Or are we fallible? You know, do you have to be perfect to be lovable? And a lot of times we communicate that to people that if they're not perfect, they're not lovable. Well, in reality, we all make mistakes, we're fallible. So again, with those vague questions, what makes someone lovable? Is it useless or purposeless, or undirected? And some people feel like they're useless, they've got skills, but skills, they can't figure out how to apply. And, you know, I would challenge them because they do have skills of some sort. So we want to say, is it that you have no skills in your useless, or you just haven't found a use for your skills yet? So let's look at what skills, qualities and attributes you have. And this can be everything from compassion and being a good listener to being excellent with tools to I mean, there's a whole range of stuff. We don't want to negate our qualities. And then we want to figure out how can you use those skills, qualities and attributes that you have in order to help you feel happier, whatever that means that may mean getting a job that may mean helping other people, whatever it means to you. But identifying what you do have what you do have control over and what you bring to the table. Because most people with low self esteem sell themselves way short. And they hold themselves to this bar up here, you know, think pole vaulting, you know, people with low self esteem, put that pole vaulting bar up there at 10 feet, or 15 feet. And they go, if I can't make that, I shouldn't, you know, be pole vaulting at all, because I'm useless. But they put it at six feet for everybody else. And they go, all you need to do is cross six feet and you're golden. So why is it that you put the bar so far up so much higher for yourself than for other people? Why are they okay being at six feet? But in order for you to be okay, you've got to be at 10 feet. So understanding the concept of co occurring issues is important to recovery, because you've got to understand if you have an addictive behavior, that it is impacting your mood. It is impacting how you feel in your thought process. Likewise, you have to understand that your mood, and how you think impact, whether you want to use or not. So they kind of go hand in hand. Developing awareness will help you to start practicing the pause, which means stopping, taking a breath, letting the adrenaline go. So you can think a little bit more clearly and choosing behaviors that will help you achieve your goals. Remember that purposeful action continuum. You want to choose the behaviors that help you move toward your goals, not turn around and go back to where you came from. Improving self esteem and beginning to feel worthy of happiness is essential for recovery. It will help you stay motivated. If you like this, there are going to be two more segments. You can also subscribe to the podcast at docsknipes.com slash happy or join our Facebook group at docsknipes.com slash Facebook. Thanks for tuning in to happiness isn't brain surgery with Doc Snipes. Our mission is to make practical tools for living the happiest life of the thanks for tuning into happiness isn't brain surgery with Doc Snipes. Our mission is to make practical tools for living the happiest life, affordable and accessible to everyone. We record the podcast during a Facebook live broadcast each week. Join us free at docsknipes.com slash Facebook. Remember our website docsknipes.com has even more resources, members only videos, handouts and workbooks to help you apply what we talk about. New resources are added weekly. During the first half of 2017, we're offering introductory memberships lock in the introductory rate of $5 per month for the happiness basic membership, which includes all texts, videos and worksheets or $14.99 per month for the happiness plus membership, which includes everything from the basic membership plus access to the weekly members only educational groups and question and answer sessions with Doc Snipes designed to help you start living happier, faster. 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