Episode 120

hey everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of Finding Peaks Yours Truly Chris Burns founder and CEO here at Peaks recovery so grateful to have the journey inward team we got Jory da as well as trip in the house today I’ve had the Blessed opportunity of spending the whole days with these individuals they are most certainly in alignment with who and what we are at Peaks recovery centers and that is engaged in the healing process for the individuals that we get to serve as well as their family systems and I’ve done a deep dive with you guys today and I have to say it’s it’s just warmed my heart to be able to sit with people that are walking with folks into community in the name of healing I think that’s special I think it uh bucks the status quo in our industry and most certainly in alignment with one of our core values which is to disrupt the industry through quality of care so thanks for coming in thanks for being here today we really appreciate your time and I’m going to start out with one of my famous questions on this show and I’ll ask each and every one of you why do you do what you do maybe start a trip well thanks Chris I think uh you know if you look at why I do what I do you got to go back to Childhood um grew up in an fluent Community um my grandfather was alcoholic um and he ended up dying of alcoholism when I was 12 but in the meantime time I was very involved in his life um and and really kind of whether I took it on or whether it was told to me I felt it was my responsibility and uh I developed alcohol as myself uh had some uh struggles with with uh codependency mental illness uh got sober 20 years ago uh continued to do the work um and with kind of who I was maybe a coach savior I ended up uh you know really helping quite a few people throughout the recovery process often at the detriment to myself um and so um ended up getting into the treatment space coaching families about three and a half years ago um got into some other avenues of healing as well ended up uh um you know kind of coming back to our heart and soul of helping families and really uh I think where our sweet spot is is when uh individuals go into some type of a healing whether that’s uh deep therapy whether that’s uh treatment or any of the new alties that are out there today um we have the capacity to kind of walk alongside that individual and then also within their families and help with the reconciliation and so I look at us as you know almost a a post treatment if you will um way for us to kind of come together and help the family heal um whereas you know they’re kind of in the bubble of treatment centers and one of the things that I saw and and from losing a lot of people right losing a lot of people to death losing a lot of people to Suicide um and then also seeing that repeatable pattern you know I I can speak uh for Peaks and I know you want to heal the individual right and you have an amazing family program you have an amazing staff that’s a finite timeline so you set somebody up and you tee them up we know that when the when the individual and I know this for my own TR my own trauma treatment experience is that when you get back out into the real world there’s a lot of very ch challenging adjustments so that’s really where we pick up the ball and help families heal um we also work in coordination with uh treatment centers like yourselves while the individual is in treatment I kind of help the family as an extra support in the background so yeah that’s that’s awesome and there’s so many gaps in that too especially post treatment we’ve talked about before the show it’s one of the things that kind of hurts my my my heart a little bit in this mental health thing is like I see people authentically moving through a 45 day or a 30-day process within our facility and I see their families pick them up and I worry that they maybe don’t have a robust enough after care plan that supports not just the individual but the family system as well and obviously that’s what you guys do at Journey Inward and da maybe tell me a little bit about um what kind of get your passion going about this because that’s something I’ve noticed since I’ve had the chance to sit down with you is you’re most certainly passionate about this opportunity oh I’m very passionate and um the reason why I got into it or why I do it still is the stigma associated with me Mental Health and recovery and um also just educating the family on the process because I’ve seen it time and time again where someone goes a treatment and they go back to the environment they’re used to and it nothing changes and it it goes back to where it was before and having a a child and that’s been through treatment there wasn’t a lot that was affordable to the family as far as education and what do we do next and I myself have been to treatment and like after 30 days it was just like okay good luck new 90 and 90 and they called me like once a year that’s that’s all I got and um that you know there wasn’t enough and yeah just take the stigma out of it let’s talk about it and um bring it more in the open and acceptable it shouldn’t be shameful yeah I love that you know when you’re wise to to destigmatize this thing I think we’re on the right track and it’s a lot of times what we’ve talked about too is it’s just the way in which we communicate the verbiage we use it’s a simple shift in a a small Direction so thank you for that really appreciate it how about you Jory so um my family was exposed to treatment um sort of when I was in my latter teens and it was kind of via my brother or a family member and just the way that that was constructed very very beneficially in our world was immediately was you do not have um an identified patient problem you have a family problem and it this is back in the 80s and we were all like what the heck does that mean and so we we as a family had to walk the walk and I had kind of worked in and around family systems for a long time and group dynamics and skill building communication skills and I just knew the value of how the environment affects the individual and how you know proper soil can really Elevate growth in everybody getting healthy and how toxic environment can really put that all down and no one can do their best and that’s just been a Mainstay of my existence forever and so uh I even when I was a photographer for 25 years as a portrait photographer everything in my the way I would engage clients was about accessing who they wanted to be genuinely not who they wanted to be per se in front of the camera but who were they really so that others could see them and being seen loved and understood as I had mentioned earlier to you in conversations is just that it it’s for me it’s the most important thing through my own addiction and my own recovery it’s just the most valuable thing in my world and and I frankly I want to share that I love that you know and that’s I mean 1985 talking about environments and forming Behavior or anything like what yeah that’s wild I mean that’s really really cool and I I think a lot of people go well you know that’s a kind of a dangerous and a privileged view I’m like it’s a much more hopeful view yeah you know and we have an opportunity within that view to repair and I love what you guys talk about with the family systems I’m mentioned something earlier and I’ll see kind of what you guys think about it but it’s been my experience that when the family gets into their recovery alongside their loved one or their person it it it’s not if it’s when it will be successful yeah has that been your guys’ experience have you’ve been able to walk with some of these families and gr yeah I think for us it’s if you look at kind of what I said earlier it’s uh um it’s very much so so when somebody comes out and uh and they get in the in the same environment without any healing MH uh they just kind of crumble you know and it may happen quickly or it may happen over time but it’s if we can get in there and start Shifting the language and allowing as Jory mentioned for everybody to be seen valued um and loved in that situation it just makes a whole different scenario because there’s new language and new abilities for people to understand each other and um you know again there’s uh there’s wonderful programs out there um that people can go and get support um but it doesn’t they don’t work for everybody they might have worked for me yeah right um but for some reason they don’t work for everybody so for them to have somebody to kind of help coach them and guide them on the on the post treatment um and then again integrate with the family and and just getting the family to start holding some boundaries and and understanding you know kind of their part in it um you know it’s not uh that really anybody in the family is wrong they didn’t necessarily cause it create it um and they can’t cure it yeah by themselves it’s like the same family system that has an identified patient um you know the same Minds that kind of created that can’t fix it without somebody on the outside and that goes for uh da of my family and and getting the help we needed you know we we’re in the business we saw it and we still didn’t know what to do with it you know and that’s that’s that’s kind of a crazy thing when you think about it cuz uh we felt you know hopeless and we’re like we know what to do but we can’t do it and then you have somebody else come in beside you and they say Hey you can do it and you’re like oh I can do it that’s right yeah it’s a special process yeah so that and plus being you know having our own process coming out of treatment what did we need what do we see what did the people that we went through treatment you know what happened with their lives what did they struggle with there’s deaths you know people didn’t make it um there’s quite a few divorces there’s fractured families um and that goes true if anybody does any type of a spiritual you know if you go quit drinking and join a recovery program chances of divorce go way Skyrocket so it’s like anytime you’re you’re really kind of tapping your soul um it’s going to cause outward reverberations and that’s where we come in to kind of help smooth those over yeah I love that you guys you guys simply coined it earlier was like we just get into family systems and talk yeah I mean it seems so simple but it’s a very complex process you know but we just we just get in there and let’s let’s talk to each other yeah that’s really simple and yet profound at the same time what’s what’s well what do you want right I mean you just want to be talk yeah yeah you don’t want to be no one wants to be told what to do you know and so it’s like we just try to work with everybody and find out who’s coming from where and get everybody in alignment to some degree well I think a lot of times families you know try to kind of fix from the you know kind of in their own little kind of container and there’s lot often times some image management and uh and so the pressure builds up and then you know you kind of end up with a lot of Shame yeah and so having somebody come in there and kind of say hey this isn’t so bad and this is you know what jory’s trying to say this is what Chris is trying to say and you guys are actually trying to say the same thing and you know you just start it’s really it is deeper level conversations but there’s an art to it for sure yeah you guys said something earlier and I want to get kind of get back to it especially for the viewers it just kind of had my shoulders perk up and caught my attention but you said you go into families and we form a family mission statement talk to me about that well I think um so one of the things uh when when a family kind of comes together I mean one of the one of the exercises we do is kind of a values planning exercise right so who are you what what’s important to you um and that often times gives me the ability to now see you and say oh these things are important to you and again A lot of times we’re going for the same thing but it’s different language and and different understanding and that’s really cool when you start you know really getting to know each other in the group and then we do kind of a a a process where we look at the family’s values together and kind like a 30,000 foot view 30,000 foot View and then they literally get to pick the the kind of values that they want and then we start working on a mission statement on hey where do you guys want to go what’s important to you and it just sort of helps everybody in the family like have some context to who we are and you know I might disagree with one of those uh values on on that makes it in the Family Mission statement and you guys you know outvote me 3 to one you know that’s life right um we’re not all going to get what we want but I mean that’s that’s actually kind of a RAR yeah and and and and you know and especially in today’s political you know there’s so much generational value shifting there’s so many um you know things to argue about politically and as a wealth manager for 25 years I really saw that Fray on families more and more and more control manipulation money vengefulness well I’m gonna go over this way and do this because you don’t you know you you look at me this way and the reality is like you know families are like a a an organism right we grow over time and like we’re so connected so to be able to kind of see who we are and then come back together and create a mission to me that is just magic I mean it really is cool it’s really a cool process that’s a lot of fun for sure I you know to to look at some of those opportunities is a family system and then to just think for a moment that really well connected families um don’t know each other yeah right wow how does that happen within family systems where you know we have we have Primal people you know child adult relationships which we’ve learned through research is the most important relationship but then we find ourselves unat tuning and disconnecting why do you think that happens because it almost feels like it’s synonymous with kind of the American dream you guys yeah I think well we I think there’s the individual MH and then there’s the the the group MH and we have to have both we have to have our individual individuality we also have to have attachment in our lives yeah no man is an island you hear that all the time you but but you it’s a dance between the two and the and the way that we try to work with it is just figure out who wants to dance What dance so that most people aren’t stepping on one another’s toes sometimes it’s going to be a beautiful you know choreography but as long as we can start with the foundation of let’s stop stepping on one another’s toes then we can get moving and coordinated I love that it’s team playing really it we don’t need to all be on the ball we can just spread out and play our positions yeah you can be independent yet part of the team I love that because the only the only overarching theme for that is like yeah we love each other MH and so like let’s let’s get let’s get this right yeah what do each one of you do as far as your roles on the team well I think we’re all kind of we’re all coaches okay so um my background is kind of in spiritual training uh as well as recovery and then behavioral Finance um as a financial adviser um I was trained as a certified U divorced financial analyst so I’ve always kind of run into kind of the conflict right um that’s kind of growing up in an alcoholic family for generations and um and also being a little bit feisty you know um with that so um you know my role is kind of a lot of times Legacy planning you know getting uh fathers to say hey this is what you’re doing and this is what you want to accomplish but a lot of coaching um a lot of education for all of us um DA has I’m a a certified peer and family specialist sweet yeah yeah and um also I’m a yoga instructor more trauma focused and also I I’m very very well known and or just health the nutrition just how that affects the brain gut connection and also just lived in experience like sexual abuse from younger age just trauma dealing with my own personal trauma and you know family members that have are you know substance abuse also depression and um other mental illnesses and just and and also a cancer survivor too so I bre cancer yeah wow yeah good for you so you’re what’s called cancer free I am cancer free not in remission cancer free I got to tell a story so so when da um when when she was going through her kind of uh trauma around uh sexual abuse um it was during the Epstein kind of time frame and um and so the reverberations of our home was like what’s going on and what ended up uh you know so she ended up doing a trauma treatment for that um really um found strength with inside of her and then just through Facebook she went out and reached out and became a support to women all over the country and you know the the stories of these women’s lives weren’t usually good it was in alcoholic marriages they were alcoholic divorced you know just really traumatized from this so um I think when you look at Jory da and myself like you know the stuff that happens to us for whatever reason we’re Seekers we’re we’re uh enthusiastic about helping other people maybe as I said there’s a a good and a bad to that um and I think we’ve we’ve kind of figured out the healthy side is take care of yourself do your own work um so you can help other people truly um but that’s kind of what we do we take our experiences I’m also a certified uh Fe peer family specialist um We’ve ran uh treatment programs uh Family Programs um and then I do life coaching just with a lot of different uh treatment centers for their individuals so cool that yeah that’s really unique too and I love the you said something too da about um traum informed yoga MH how does that work cuz we have a really really big mindfulness based component here PE because we have a movement team that ambulates people gets them up and out of the chair sound sound healing Reiki yoga uh you saw Dan today boxing all that stuff so talk to me a little bit about that mindfulness based opportunity it’s more of a a varied more gentle yoga and a lot more on your breath and a lot of meditation and going internal but it’s also on the cues that you’re not using cues that are more that could be triggering kind of thing so it’s a lot more in the language but it’s more of a gentle type you know relaxing healing yoga yeah cuz i’ imagine maybe for people who have experienced any sort of you know sexual assault or anything like that you go into Community um hypervigilant right I mean you’re scanning the room it’s is this safe and so I love kind of a a method behind the madness with respect to yoga is like this is a very informed and very intentional process for people that need it to be that way yes exactly yeah that makes a lot of sense because it’s like yeah do yoga it’s like ah don’t know if that’s safe yeah it’s I used to make I mean some guys in in 12 sub groups like we used to make fun of people they say like hey you going to the meeting they’ like no I’m going to yoga and we kind of course and it’s like you know 20 years in the program I’m like yoga is absolutely everybody better damn do yoga if you want any type of mental health you better do yoga body mind wow this thing really works yeah I learned more about myself doing um doing the the training the training yeah oh my God it was so my wife just went through it’s intense like it’s huge and spiritual it’s like I thought I was just going to learn poses and it’s like I learned more about myself than I ever did like at any type of treatment or recovery and it was really internal I found myself going to those graduations and saying to those people like you all should be Inc I don’t know if I was the only person in but like you all should be incredibly proud of yourselves like this is this is heavy lift and in like four or five weeks yep you know very intense it’s very intense yeah she had a similar experience so I I appreciate you sharing that yeah I I grew up quite dyslexic and my access point through that was I was able to read a book cover to cover on an outdoor experience and then I got into a lot of outdoor work and trip leading and uh working with kids through at risk um or at risk you through prevention through education and a lot of integration with nature so it with skill building communications you know just uh prevention so we’re not going to tell you not to get pregnant but if you do these are some things to do and so my whole background was in group dynamics so generally speaking what I do with the group is I’m working with internal family systems now as well I like to figure out what’s going on in your head and then how you can convey that or or bounce that off what’s going on in the group I I look at an entire group holistically and how can each piece fit to the best of its ability I love that yeah and it’s a very sounds like very intentional process the way that you go into that individually with each person within that system and do you guys find that it’s always families that are supporting individuals no it can be any group you guys mention group any relationship any including the relationship with yourself yeah right yeah and a lot of the work that Don and I do is couples work on reconciliation and then kind of building a sacred Union and again this is like coming out of treatment it’s like the best time to do it uh you know I use the anal ology earlier um when we sit down with couples I like to explain and you know it’s like they’re driving to the airport and they think they’re going to Hawaii and then the the guy has a ticket to Tallahassee and the woman has a ticket to uh Spokan and so it’s like you know that’s kind of what we feel like when you sit down with a couple right it’s like they they they literally are kind of moving in different directions so to get them to kind of focus a on themselves but also focus on that there is actually something called a union here and again like life is life life is challenging when you have a big disruption such as a treatment such as you know a death of a parent I mean there’s a lot of these different things birth of children um etc etc they can really change the course for one individual and then the other individual is sort of like what the hell is going on and I think a lot of times it’s like that’s why we have such massive amounts of divorce is because we don’t tend to the kind of relational kind of spiritual nature as we as we can or could as the world has gotten you know busier and busier and more hectic and more demanding I really like that that was something that really struck a chord with me um when we were chatting earlier is you brought up kind of the the relapse rate or excuse me not the relapse rate but the divorce rate when people get out of tree and it’s astonishing I saw that left right back front center and I I was telling Jory before we came in here you know I was on top of Long’s Peak my wife knows this I was on top of Long’s Peak in 2016 and you know I’m eight years sober at the time and I’m thinking yep I’m gonna get a divorce I’m pretty sure the grass is greener on the other side and none of her trauma or my trauma will get in the way and we’ll have this really fluid and functional relationship and if I would have made that decision on that day I think similar to probably your experience as well I probably have made the biggest mistake in my life yeah because today through a lot of hard work recovery mental health aligning going to intensives relationship counseling individual counseling all of these things we are now both seen valued and H in relationship and that’s the Special Sauce totally yeah and I love that you guys do that too for folks that are coming out of treatment not just family all family system stuff but also relational yes um I really love that and I love the way you guys refer to it as a union because that’s that’s what I refer to my relationship today when it’s healthy and in recovery right we are not as different as we think we are and we try to get people to work with that and be like how are we similar and what ways can we show that we’re similar M because we all have the same needs and wants all of us it’s just what are we prioritizing at the time yeah yeah I was really um fearful like when trip for he got sober seven years before me and he was going to all these meetings and groups and I’m like where where does that lead me and also I was very closed off and I was have I had a very hard time showing sharing what was actually going on inside of me and um that created a huge divide too because it like he was doing all this spiritual and internal work and I was feeling left out and um and also strong willed like or I wasn’t able to become vulnerable either so and until that I was a until I was able to show show it with my emotions freely is when we the work really began yeah you bring up some really good points is like I see this often times in treatment whether it’s you know husband and wife whether the wife checks in and pretty quickly you’re forming a community unlike anything you’ve ever been a part of and so in 30 days you your whole life changes big time and you’re coming back and your like am I involved in this yeah do I get to be with people no it’s Clos Group AA you know it is what it could be really disconnecting initially can because the person coming home is a different person yeah that’s when the Divide happens and we we know that um again any type of shift is going to cause you know challenges with all your relationships even though it’s a good thing you come back you get sober you learned how to have empathy for other people through this really camaraderie type you know experience of treatment which um you know moves you really into such a better place but when you come back you know it’s either there’s two things that can happen number one is no one’s fixed when they get out right I mean yeah they might go to AA and start having a bunch of like real positive things that happen in your life but more than not they have challenges so the spouse or the parents are saying like hey I just paid you know x amount of dollars and you’re not fixed what the hell’s wrong and it’s because you were like doing great you know 48 hours ago but since you’ve been home for two days you’re like coming onlu m you know and you didn’t have a a substance to numb it to numb it and like your [ __ ] gone or behaviors behaviors you know codependency yeah and where the alcohol or the sub you know it’s it’s just a symptom like it does you know it’s not the actual drug that’s causing it it’s what’s underneath until you figure that out and address that you’re just going in circles so you know what I used to tell young people before we had resources like Journey inward I used to tell them they would come in and i’ say you know I would suggest you never go back back home because it never works out I don’t know why I can’t put a method into the madness but if you do go back home what you’re going to experience is even if your mom’s at the door hey honey right when you walk in it’s going to feel like you put a weighted blanket on yeah and then you’re going to go around and your experience is going to be weighted and why expose yourself to that and so that’s why I’ve always encouraged young people up until the last 5 years or so is like go find a place get some Independence get your community around you we often refer to it as a family of choice and then you will do your thing but definitely don’t go back into Mom and Dad’s home there’s an opportunity with the resources we have now for repair and reparation with kind of a both and situation with what you all do at Journey inward is you can get in there and prepare the family totally for the person getting out of treatment so they walk in and they feel like they put on a sheet instead of a weighted blanket we can deal with a sheet man I can dance in a sheet I can do all that stuff so yeah it’s kind of like I look at it as lowering the temperature you know people are very anxious like parents are anxious they they want their kid to be fixed I mean you as a CEO of a treatment center you know parents have said 100 times I want my kid fixed I mean that’s exactly what you know parents kind of come to us is like well I want my kids fixed and say okay well let’s let’s start looking at what’s going on and um you know again do it in a way where it’s not the canary and the coal mine and they’re they feel like they’re being called out I just you know I do believe deep down inside everybody wants this and I think no looking at myself even with my own son like the challenges that we were having for for you know went on for a decade you know when he was even younger and and kind of you know over time kind of learning more and more but you know looking back at that experience not really uh you know there’s a lot of image management there’s a lot of these different like I don’t really know how to fix you know and again we we our experience is kind of you know I’ve been working with or trying to help alcoholics or save alcoholics depending on how you look at it at different times uh for four generations right and um I think uh even DA’s alcoholism it’s you know when she drank for seven years after I quit which was that forced me even more into the outside world to help other people because I felt so hopeless in my own situation so I think that happens a lot when there’s addiction codependency you know it’s a it’s it could be a messy process yeah and just to point out clearly and I know the viewers can really relate to this but like hey man we just got each and every one of us get this thing living inside of us it’s called Shame yeah and and we’re all carrying it and it’s really heavy can we talk about it m you know so really love what you guys do I really appreciate you you all showing up today um the opportunity we’ve had to spend with you Peaks recovery and journey inward um has been an awesome experience today before we end you guys want to let the viewers know website how they can get a hold of you the easiest way to kind of do that yeah I would say go to our website it’s uh the journey inward. us so it’s the journey inward. us the journey inward. us beautiful okay my people that’s one thing that I will miss I’ll be like they said. and it’s not working awesome journey inward. us thank you all the journey inward the journey journey inward the journey h e Journey inward let’s go y us the journey inward. us awesome you guys well thank you so much for coming on the show thank you so much appreciate you very much for all of our viewers out there until next time you can find us on all of the places you get your podcast I’m going to list them all right now Instagram Facebook Facebook Spotify Apple music you name it until next time peace