Siblinghood of Recovery
Siblinghood of Recovery
Episode 52 - Interview with Jackie Werboff: NARM Therapist on the Neuro Affective Relational Model and the Journey of Recovery
To have Jackie Werboff on this Podcast is nothing short of an incredible honor. Jackie directly contributed to my own Recovery through an offering space to begin understanding, in the most compassionate of ways, how my own childhood development was impacting the Family System I sought to build. I hope you enjoy this conversation that includes the NeuroAffective Relational Model(NARM) model of Therapy, attunement between parent and child, substance use as self-medication for unmet emotional needs in teens, the value of the 12 Step Program, and more. We explore options to help the Family system through therapy, learning, and relational-model engagement, all of which contribute to becoming healthier humans and healthier parents for our kids. As with each instance of engagement with Jackie, we end with hope.
1:15 - 2:55 - Dr. Larry Heller, What is NARM?
3:55 - Developmental verses Shock Trauma
5:45 - Mis-attunement
6:30 - Attuning at the parental level
10:15 - The impossibility of being constantly emotionally attuned
11:35 - Self medication specific to substance misuse
12:30 - Unmet needs and emotional pain
12:45 - Strategies: read about the Core Surviving Strategies here
14:10 - The power of words
16:15 - Shame and the impact on Recovery
17:00 - The challenge of behavior in substance misuse and how NARM can help navigate this challenge
19:00 - How Recovery can re-set a Family
19:50 - Addiction is a Family System challenge
20:50 - The dead-end of blame
21:55 - Apologizing as a Parent and the value that offers our Children
23:10 - Accountability
24:20 - The 12 Steps and Recovery
27:00 - NARM Therapy and listening
27:35 - Curiosity and NARM
28:00 - Breaking down the power dynamics in the therapeutic relationship
30:45 - Self regulation and the importance of having a caregiver self-regulate
33:35 - Nervous System Therapeutic approaches (Somatic and Polyvagal)
33:45 - Dr. Stephen Porges
33:50 - The Polyvagal Institute, About Deb
34:30 - Jackie's Contact info at Wide Awake Counseling
35:35 - The Journey
Thank you for listening and please visit www.siblinghoodofrecovery.com for free resources, links to organizations, groups and individuals who can offer help in the Journey of Recovery towards healing from substance use disorders. If you like this Podcast, please leave a rating on wherever you're listening. It will help to get the word out.
If there is one message I can leave you with, the best you can offer your loved one battling addiction is love and a healthier you.
Walk gently, my friend.
My name is Angie Reno and I'm a mom on a recovery journey from family dysfunction, addiction and perhaps all that simply comes with the human condition. I'm not a licensed therapist, although I will always encourage seeking out professional help. I know therapy has changed my life for the better. There are many of us on this path towards recovery, so let's walk gently. Welcome to Siblinghood of Recovery, jackie Wurbauf. Welcome to Siblinghood of Recovery. It's so good to have you here. Thank you, angie. It's great to be here with you.
Speaker 1:It's been a long journey. As a matter of fact, in the warm-up we were talking about how many years have gone by, and it's shocking. It's so quick. How many days did you fly? One of the reasons I met you is when my son went to his first rehab and I'm going to get approval before I say their name, but one of the first recommendations was to read a book on Narm by Dr Heller. Then that led me to you. I feel that Narm is an integral part of my recovery. I also know that it is an integral part of my son's recovery, and you are a Narm expert. I would love it if you broke it down for the listener. What is Narm and what is a Narm practice?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Just to welcome in some of my own humility.
Speaker 2:I am a Narm therapist the word expert I noticed some of my own strategies show up when I hear you say expert, because I start to put pressure on myself and I'm noticing that I appreciate the faith you have in my knowledge and also just to be with your listeners. Just to be really clear, I'm a Narm therapist. That means that I have had both. Well, I've had the level two training, which means that's their level training for licensed mental health counselors or those entering the field who might still be in school or might be earning their licensure hours. Then I've also had level three training, which is their master's level training. Right now I'm working toward the post-training requirements for the master level certification. All of that said, I definitely I just always so much more to learn too. Let me just share a little bit about Narm, and I can share about my journey through Narm as well. I know it's been so helpful for you, angie, and for your son and for so many other families working on recovery or even just working on healing their own stuff.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah. So Narm stands for the neuroactive relational model. It was created by Dr Lawrence Heller. It is a really deep therapeutic model that really brings in so much of a nervous system approach and education which I think for me as a therapist made a huge difference just in terms of learning about something that answered a lot of questions that I really had about trauma and about treating trauma in the first place. It answered a ton of questions I didn't even know I had yet too. One of the main things I think that sets Narm apart from many other trauma-informed modalities is that it's specifically created for developmental trauma, opposed to shock trauma.
Speaker 2:Developmental trauma can be a lot different to treat. It can also be a lot different to recognize. For many of us, things that lead to developmental trauma are things that we would commonly actually write off as just the way it was, yes, or just something that kids deal with. Things that can cause developmental trauma can even be parents doing the very best that they could. It's really easy to miss. I think a lot of times it's actually a lack of something. Another tough thing to catch for ourselves and even for our clients is like when something wasn't there, you know.
Speaker 2:A lot of times we really don't even realize what we needed, that we never got when it was never there to know we needed in the first place. So Norm really Not normally speaks to all of that and really speaks to how to treat the chronic, ongoing kind of just every day there's what life felt like for a kid, or for a period of time in a kid's life. Or here's what life has felt like for an adult all throughout their life Just a sort of like chronic experience of either emotional misattunement or disconnection from Self and from others. It can also be difficulty feeling like they can trust those around themselves. It can be brought up in an environment that doesn't support their own independence or autonomy, yeah, and, and it often leads to feeling like there has to be this performative peace to life as well.
Speaker 1:I want to Go back to the misattunement. Do you know for the average listener? Yeah, let's, yeah, expand on that a little bit please.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. The term misattunement Not actually the norm training was the first time I even heard the term and it kind of sort of blew my mind a little bit. So, starting just with attunement, so emotional attunement is that sense of feeling gotten by the people around us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, heard.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, heard, seen, understood. It doesn't mean that the people around us are having the same feelings we're having, we don't necessarily mean that, but it means that the people around us, whether that's our parents or our caregivers or our friends and can attune, can kind of where we're at in our own emotional feeling and so just kind of really framing this Again through developmental trauma. What can often happen is that parents or caregivers are raising children without enough resources or support or have never had the opportunity to do their own work often, and so their ability to emotionally attune to their children can be really interrupted or really interfered with by their own stuff, by their own stress by their own trauma or the structure of the norm I find in the recovery rooms that a lot of moms talk about, for example, adhd, you know, and constantly dealing with the, the system of education that their child is in and how that structure isn't supporting that child right.
Speaker 1:And then and then the stressor on the mom Like my heart rate increases a little bit because you can tell that that situation for the mom it's gonna be challenging and that mom won't be able to take away the kid stressors. So when we so let's talk about Doing that own work on the mom side, how? Or the parent side. So you have misattunement like. How do you even know that there's Misattunement going on in the family?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess they go to you, yeah, and, and really I mean just to really normalize this, like, myself included, I had no idea that I experienced emotional misattunement as a kid until I started to like even learn that that was a thing, right, I mean, this is we often just like have awareness of, like you know, these are things that we often have no idea about until we start to do some of our own work or hear about some of these things. How does one know if they've experienced emotional misattunement or it?
Speaker 1:was like how do you recognize that it's actually happening?
Speaker 2:You know, and I say that in my kid, my kid actually needs something.
Speaker 1:I will pause. I'll pause here real quick. Go with you and yeah.
Speaker 2:I have to do?
Speaker 1:I'll just tell him to text me and and then, like he's standing there and I'm like how do I? How do I ignore him, I'm not listening to, so hold on. Well, you're more than welcome to step away to no, I'll just say if he needs anything, he probably wants me to start some wash. Do you need anything? Okay, come on, jackie, real quick. No, come on, she knows, she knows it all about you and dick. Yeah, you can come on, come on real quick.
Speaker 1:You gotta lower your leg he just got back from football here here. Okay, so you need to apply this, all right, oh, I love it.
Speaker 2:Down low all over okay. Okay.
Speaker 1:That's my right Okay.
Speaker 2:Thank you mom.
Speaker 1:All right, can you shut the door for me please? All right, we're gonna edit that.
Speaker 2:That was great. I loved it. That's actually a really nice example of emotional attunement. Honestly, is it okay.
Speaker 1:Great, he just got back.
Speaker 2:We could really use that. Actually, we actually could.
Speaker 1:Oh man, okay so, and I did recognize. It's funny because I recognize at that moment, if I don't address this, I'm missing his need. It's so convoluted, right, exactly.
Speaker 2:I know, okay, jackie, so yeah. So, in terms of emotional misattunement, you know, first of all, it's impossible to constantly be attuned, just to like name, that it's absolutely impossible, and I think many parents perhaps put a lot of pressure on themselves to always feel attuned to their kids' needs or to always be emotionally connected to their kids, and that's just impossible. There's no possible way we could ever be constantly meeting all of our kids' needs all the time, no matter their age, whether they're infants or their toddlers or their kids or their teenagers or their adults, like there's no way we could ever be meeting all of the needs of any being at any given moment.
Speaker 1:I think that would be risking enmeshment right. Absolutely, it would get close to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it absolutely would, and it would just be unrealistic. Because it would just be unrealistic even for infants where, like we really do need to be meeting you know they can't meet their own needs yet we still aren't going to meet all of our needs all the time there's no possible way, because what we'd be doing is we'd be completely disregarding our own needs if we did that, which you know, parents have to a little bit, but you know.
Speaker 2:But parents also need to acknowledge that they themselves have emotional needs that are important and that matter.
Speaker 1:And then there's the danger that comes with that of risking our own health. It degrades and they need us to be healthy. Granted difference, okay, so, because I think this will help somebody who's listening. Now, right, how do I recognize, in the midst of this chaos, that's going on? Right, we've got substance use happening and a lot of us, as we get into recovery, understand that that's self-medication. Yep, that's right. That's right. So walk a parent, a new parent, new to this journey? Yep, how do you see it?
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. So I mean a trauma-informed approach, certainly a norming approach, but even just from the perspective, just a trauma-informed perspective on substance misuse, is that it is needing an unmet need. It is a way to meet a need that's not getting met otherwise, and a lot of times I think quite especially in my experience working in the field the unmet I mean we could add more nuance to this. You know personal situations, but in general, the unmet need for teens who are turning to substances is that it's relieving some kind of emotional pain. Yeah, yeah, it's numbing some kind of emotional suffering that they're experiencing.
Speaker 2:I know that's really general, but there's a reason why they're engaging in this norm. We'd call it strategy. They're engaging in this type of strategy for a reason, and strategies are actually extremely useful at first, and then what happens is we begin to outgrow our strategies at some point where they start to really get in the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then we go to the next level of identifying how, as a parent, we can, you know, because, to tell a kid that that's not going to help them, but to walk them through, like, how are you going to get to letting them see the end results? You know, especially with a young mind, it's hard for us to think, you know, going back to like your 15, you don't even know what next year is going to look like.
Speaker 2:No, no, and teenagers, you know, adolescents, they don't have the well, first of all, yeah, they're working with a still developing brain, very much still developing brain, and they don't have the gift of perspective the way that you know, like adults, those of us who have had more experience in life, we have the the gift of being able to have perspective like we have lots of. We have lots more experiences than a 15 year old has yet to have, and so it is very difficult for a 15 year old to consider it might feel different at another time. That's actually so difficult for a 15 year old to consider.
Speaker 1:It is. And then what I learned from you in our sessions was the power of the word, like even how you acknowledged your reaction to the word expert, right, yeah, yeah. That is a phenomenal ability to take in the power of that word at that moment. Recognize it. It's a layman's term for me, so it doesn't build up right. So that's right. Talk to me, how do you coach somebody to understand that power of that, the words to themselves?
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. So the language we would use as a norm, the language I use as my clients and with myself too, is how, how are you relating to this or how am I relating to this experience? And so you know, I've got, I've got a lot of practice. So the word you know, you said the word expert and immediately I was able to notice that I was relating to it with by putting pressure on myself.
Speaker 2:And that comes from lots of practice of of checking in and and my own therapy too, with with norm therapists around how I'm relating to things. But yeah, it's about like, how are you experiencing this? What is this like for you? Because that's a very personal experience. Someone else, anyone else, might be introduced as an expert and feel quite at home with that word, depending on what they're an expert at. In fact, many of us, the pressure begins to build when we're acknowledged for something that we might be doing well or might be doing at all.
Speaker 1:And the pressure building is also, I guess, a window into the developmental part of that person's self. You know there's, I guess, self-reflection, or their opinion of self. You know how they see themselves.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, and it's such a nuanced experience, like it's so complex, in terms of how a person, how a teenager or a child, develops their, who they take themselves to be, their self-reflection.
Speaker 1:So in recovery, a big part of recovery is the mitigation of shame. It's a horrific cycle really, because there's so many you know opportunities to fail and then instead you have to shift that perspective to the little advancements. Right, that's why I love Kraft and I mentioned that briefly. But Cordelia Kraus and Moms for All Pass of Recovery also introduced me to the concept of Kraft and I think it aligns with NARM, because we don't focus on the failures, we focus on the very little, small movements forward. And in your training can you speak to that versus other interventionist type of or hardcore boundary setting and the differences?
Speaker 2:For sure, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:I mean it's hard not to make it behavioral in the substance abuse world because, on the surface, the most damaging part of substance abuse is the behavior.
Speaker 2:It's the behavior of, or the action of, using substances or using alcohol, including alcohol, of course and so it's really hard not to make it behavioral, and to a certain extent, I think it's gonna have to be when someone needs to stop using a substance or when a substance is really harming somebody. But NARM really encourages us to not make it behavioral, because when it's behavioral and I know that term might seem a little strange when what we're focusing on is someone's external action or behaviors or some kind of measurable thing, whether they've used that day or not, whether you, how long sober they are, things like that there's a relationship between behavior and pressure. This comes all the way back to developmental trauma in terms of what type of expectations or pressures or, you know, use the word failures earlier what types of failures or how failures were acknowledged, or how failures, how different experiences were, sort of, yeah, acknowledged by the parents of these kids, or by the parents of the parents too, because you know, it all comes from somewhere as well.
Speaker 1:And that's. I use the word failure because it's so powerful and I don't like it. Yeah, you know, that's the standard. I think that's the standard emotion for a lot of parents when they're in this whole process. They get introduced to finally saying, okay, we've got to get help, we've got to get our child into treatment, and there's this sense that it all went wrong. And where did you know?
Speaker 1:looking back and I'm not the only recovery mom that said this, believe me is it became an opportunity. It became such a wonderful, beautiful opportunity for resetting the family. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Yes, yeah, it's been.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, that's a really important point and I'd be happy to speak to that, please as well. Yeah, for sure, you know so I, several years, I worked in an inpatient treatment center for men, so for adult men, 18 and up and the treatment center had a huge focus on including the family, and that made such a difference. You know the clients we had whose families were more involved. You know, whether by choice or or because they simply could be, those clients had such a different experience in treatment and recovery and sobriety, because addiction is not just one person.
Speaker 2:It's true, addiction is a whole family issue.
Speaker 1:It affects the entire family system.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it affects the entire family system. There's no way that it can't. There's actually no way that it can't. And so when substance use is treated just as though it's this one person issue or this one person thing to work on or this one person's experience, it's missing. It's missing a much bigger piece, missing like the systemic piece of it. And so parents often feel like failures when their children are struggling with addiction or with substance use. I think that's a really common reaction to have enter in shame, right? I mean, how can you know the role and power of shame around having a kid who's struggling with anything, especially something like this, that has such a stigma around it and that can often you know it can be tempting to really wanna please blame.
Speaker 2:The trouble with blame is that, yeah, blame often is such a dead end because all of our stuff comes from somewhere and you know, if we were to blame the parents, then we'd probably have to also then blame their parents, and then we'd also have to blame their parents' parents, and I mean really, it's kind of a dead end. It doesn't actually really help anything anyway, it doesn't yeah.
Speaker 2:The blame doesn't solve anything. Yeah, and so, like you said, it can be a really big opportunity. It can be oftentimes a family's very first opportunity to do any kind of deeper work or deeper reflection on themselves, on each other, on the dynamics between everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that goes into intergenerational trauma, which is so deep, but it's a. For me, it was an opportunity again to stop certain cycles of what's considered Appropriate or acceptable in a family system and change it, and I know I apologize when I do something wrong now to my children if I feel that I've overstepped you know even on small things, because I think it's important for them to hear hey, I'm sorry about that, that wasn't my intention, but it's really important.
Speaker 2:And can I say something about? Why is it so important? Yes, it's really important for kids to get an opportunity to hear their parents acknowledge their own mistakes. That is super important. Parents who are parents who attempt to look whether it's perfect or like they're not making any mistakes or like I believe the intention is good. But when kids grow up seeing their parents never, you know, like stumble or never have a challenge or never admit that like hey, I was wrong here. Kids have a pretty hard time learning that. That's okay, I mean, they do not show them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let me ask you from your perspective now, because this ties into the word, the wordsmithing right what is the difference between apologizing and the often heard, whether it's in movies or whatever. Don't make the same mistakes. I did, Hmm.
Speaker 2:I would hope that apologizing also comes with some kind of accountability.
Speaker 1:That would be my hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in terms of acknowledging not just I'm sorry when a parent because none of us are perfect and none of us are even supposed to be, and yet a lot of us do pressure ourselves to be that way. But if a parent makes a mistake, whether they are late picking their kid up, or forgot to pick their kid up, or something that they got wrong, or maybe they emotionally mistattuned to their kid and they have the opportunity to do that, you know an apology is a little bit lacking what they're sorry about or what they're sorry for, whereas accountability could allow the parent to acknowledge like, hey, I'm sorry for this behavior that I had, which it seems like caused this feeling for you, and so you know, when that accountability is identified, it can be the parents naming their the thing that they got you know that they didn't get right and maybe even attuning to their kid's feeling, perhaps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so too, and so accountability could be really nice. And then, you know, in the 12 step world, accountability always comes with the question of like, how can I make this right? And so even asking, even allowing ourselves to ask our kids or whoever I know, I hurt you in this way. What do you need here? What do you need from me?
Speaker 1:I'm glad you brought up the 12 steps. I was listening to another podcast at how so many recovery people that is the staple, that's the pillar. It's not necessarily required though Everybody's different right, I know. For me it helps, even if I return to it a year later. I return to you know step one. It helps me get grounded again on the constant development towards you know, at the very least being aware, just being aware, right? So in your practice, do you refer to 12 steps, encourage your recovery patients to go to 12 steps? How do you handle that part of the recovery?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So I have seen the 12 steps be so important for people struggling with things over or with their own emotional work, because there's 12 step groups for things other than alcohol and drugs. There's 12 step groups for people who have grown up with emotionally immature parents or people who struggle with codependency. Yeah, I mean, I definitely tend to encourage someone to at least check it out, at least explore it. It might not be right for everyone. I do absolutely identify with that, because I don't think there's just one right way for everyone. I don't believe so.
Speaker 2:But I do encourage yeah, I do encourage folks, especially if they've never had any experience with that type of community, that type of support. I do encourage that they give it a try, give it a shot. I mean, I think the steps themselves can be so helpful and the community connection piece of being in a meeting, being in a room, huge, and often such a so lacking, often so lacking in terms of emotional needs how many of us are lacking community and connection.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you know, as a parent especially, you see all the social media pictures, pictures, perfect pictures. To walk into a room of individuals, it's almost like exhaling, you know. It's like, oh okay, I can, I can, I can be heard, you know, and tying back to the same part of the world, and I think that's a great thing to do, and I think that's a great thing to do, and I think that's a great thing to do. The listening skills is off the charts, and then you realize how many people in the other part of the world are not. You know, I love that part of Norm and but it's not just listening to the words, it's listening to the tonality. Yeah, yeah, how is that? I mean, how do you guys do that?
Speaker 2:I agree in terms of kind of what I picked up on in my own experience with Narm and in the training I've attended. There is a much different relationship to listening. My interpretation of that is in Narm we are taught to be curious.
Speaker 2:We are taught to take off the expert hat.
Speaker 2:Actually, we are taught to not believe that we have all the answers for our clients because there's no way we could know, there's no way we could have all the answers for our clients, one that completely takes away our client's experience of being agents of their own life, and two, that puts a ton of pressure on the therapist to have all the answers which there's no way we possibly could.
Speaker 2:So Narm is like hey, let's just be curious about the client's experience, let's just be really curious about how they're relating to themselves, how they're relating to these experiences in their lives, what they most want for themselves. Gosh, that's a whole other thing I had never before in my work in the mental health field, in any other therapeutic modalities I'd learned until Narm I'd never before been introduced to the idea that we can just ask our clients what they want. There's always been this pressure of you should know. You as the therapist, you as a health professional, ought to know what this client needs and like, oh boy, talk about emotionalness, atonement, I could never know what someone else needs Client, family member, child I could never know. They have to tell me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's almost like you're a coach. I think in the 2000s we kind of overused that word a little bit. Right, I'm not a tech life coach, but when you take somebody on that journey of their self-discovery, you know, there were a couple moments where I didn't know what I was wanting until I started talking through it. I love that approach, the curiosity. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:It's fantastic. It is from a therapist perspective. It's fantastic because it allows us to take so much pressure off of ourselves in these situations. You know that we aren't entering into a therapeutic relationship feeling like we have to have all the answers, because that's I mean. That sets up a power dynamic from the start, and I don't believe that that's correct in a therapeutic relationship. 100%.
Speaker 1:Because you want to teach the individual. Well, there's self-regulation. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Not self-soothing, but telling a person what they think or how they should feel. It's not helping them develop the skills to get towards. Hey, I'm thinking this. I'm feeling this.
Speaker 2:Telling someone what they should be feeling or thinking, whether it's a parent or caregiver communicating with a child, or a therapist communicating with a client, I don't know how that could ever be helpful in telling them. Because this is the bind as soon as we tell someone how they should be feeling, we're simultaneously basically telling them that, whatever they feel, that isn't. That is wrong. You know, that's the unspoken message there. It is that there's something about them that's incorrect or wrong, which just isn't true.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about self-regulation.
Speaker 2:So well so self-regulation is something that, as humans, it's connected to the nervous system. It's connected to nervous system development and humans come into this world with very, very undeveloped nervous system. Babies can't self-regulate. I mean, babies don't have fully formed nervous systems. They actually need co-regulation. What that means is they need a caregiver who and many of us never get this which enter developmental trauma, but babies need a caregiver who can self-regulate so that co-regulation can occur. So a baby learns how to regulate in relationship with someone else and their nervous system who knows how to regulate or can regulate. It doesn't mean that for some of the time we're always regulated. That's also realistic. But humans learn self-regulation in relationship with someone through the process of co-regulation and that's a long process for a young human. You know that's the process of grown up, I believe.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is, and there and thus begets the relational aspect of it. Yes, the relational model yes, and then that co-regulation, and then the family dynamics and then how to build that positive connection.
Speaker 2:So many of us, for whatever reason again, this isn't about blame but so many of us didn't experience, didn't learn how to self-regulate through the relationship of co-regulation with a regulated caregiver. So many of us never got that. So many of us never had regulated caregivers. And it's not like we should just know how to do that.
Speaker 2:You know, it's not like you should just be able to, like you know, figure it out. But that's a big piece of what Narm brings to a therapeutic relationship or to the therapeutic process is hopefully self-regulated therapist that can, in relationship with the client, help facilitate the process of learning to co-regulate.
Speaker 1:So there is hope. There is hope Even if you come from a toxic or dysfunctional family. You can work on it and learn how to do that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, there's so much hope. Oh, Angie, yes, there's so much hope. I mean, there are so many amazing things out there that you know. There's so much out there about how to help heal the nervous system. And there's so much hope out there, Absolutely.
Speaker 1:What are some of the resources? If somebody is listening now, what are some of the resources that you can think of? Hey, check out this.
Speaker 2:There are. There are many different nervous system informed approaches, perhaps more than we've ever had before, which is really great because the nervous system plays such a crucial role in in all of this. Some cool things to check out in terms of kind of working through one's own nervous system. Dysregulation, somatic experiencing could be something really good to check out, but that works on the nervous system.
Speaker 2:Anything within the realm of the polyvagal theory so that's the work of dr Steven Porridge's and Her name is Deb Dana. She's a therapist who's been really kind of taking his work to using using the polyvagal theory by dr Porridge's, bringing it more into. You know, she's got books. She's got a really cool polyvagal card desk that I use with a lot of clients. Yeah, and that's that's just to name a couple things. There's lots of stuff out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah okay. Thank you. I know that you're, I know that you're a mom, you've got a schedule and everything, so would you like to put out your contact information? How can somebody get in touch with you? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd be happy to. Yeah, so I'm a therapist in the state of Florida, so I see clients in person in St Augustine, florida, where little towns in South Jacksonville I also see clients. I can work with anyone in Florida virtually. The name of my practice is wide awake living and the name of my website is wide awake counseling, comm. That's a really great place to get in touch with me. Just to read, you know, read more about an arm and and about my approach in therapy and I've worked with lots of families. I've had such a good opportunity to, like I said before, I work in various settings where the family gets to play such a prominent role, and I've also had lots of opportunities to work with parents who have kids going through substance abuse treatment or some of their own challenges, and that is such powerful work as well.
Speaker 1:It is, it really is. Yeah, I tell you, you made a difference. You made a difference for me and I can't thank you enough. I really can't thank you. Well, it really is a pleasure. Yeah, it's and it's still a journey that's happening, right oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, there's no arriving. That's, that's another, that's another. Like I think, way we get tricked in our life, we have this idea I know I did that like, oh, someday We'll just like be done, and then we can just the journey continues, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I was like at the finish line.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there really isn't. There really isn't. All right, jackie, I'm gonna let you go. I can't thank you enough. It has been an absolute pleasure and I'll put all of your stuff on the podcast link and on my site too. Thank you so much, angie. To connect with me, visit siblinghood of recovery on Instagram or visit my website, wwwsiblinghoodovercoverycom. Although I'm not overly active on social media, I'll get back with you as soon as I can. On my site, I'm committed to providing free resources. You'll find links to information that point towards 12-stop meetings, craft based therapy programs and much more, but please know you're not walking this journey alone simply from being human. We're a community that is growing each and every day. Be well, and I'll talk to you soon. You, you, you.
