Think Differently. Solve the Impossible.

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About the Host

Daniel Stih is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. Through engineering, environmental investigations, and interdisciplinary research, he explores how people define problems, interpret evidence, and make decisions under uncertainty. Learn more in Why I Think This Way.

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Show Notes

Counseling Services
Individual, Marriage, and Substance Abuse Counseling Services
Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and Gonzales, LA.
Website: https://www.ihaveavoice.com
Phone: (225) 290-7252

Relationship Transition - Go from Hurting to Healing to Healthy Relationships
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@IHaveAVoice1212

A Roadmap to the Soul: A Practical Guide to Love, Compassion & Inner Peace
Purchase here:
https://www.ihaveavoice.com/book/  or an e-copy: https://www.amazon.com/Roadmap-Soul-Practical-Guide-Compassion-ebook/dp/B01MTFLG3H

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deanhollykem/

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Transcript

My guests today are Dr. Dean Sunseri and Holly Kem Sunseri.

They're co-authors of the book A Roadmap to the Soul, A Practical Guide to Love, Compassion, and Inner Peace.

They've been married since 1991.

They guide individuals, couples, and families to heal from trauma and self-destructive patterns and to discover a more meaningful life and purpose.

Dr. Dean Sunseri is a licensed counselor and life coach with a doctorate in practical ministry, a master's in theology, and a master's in mental health counseling.

Holly Kem Sunseri has 30 years of experience.

She overcame drug addiction in her early 20s.

That, she says, fueled her passion for helping others.

She works to inspire people to break free from limiting patterns and embrace a life of purpose.

Welcome to my show, Dr. Dean and Holly Kem.

Hi, good to be here.

So you guys do a lot of different things.

Oh, let me start with, I was impressed by your background, like how you guys, you seem like the happiest couple.

Like you're actually living proof of whatever you practice, what you preach.

Tell me your backstory, how you met and then how you came to each on your own.

You're studying these counseling on each of your own, your professional counselors, and you came together and you have your own thing.

Tell me the whole story.

Well, good counselors always start by going to counseling and being worked on.

So even though we came from very different backgrounds, we were on the same journey.

I would say that when we met, we both were pretty significantly broken in different ways.

But very passionate about wanting to heal and wanting to learn how to be in healthy relationships, life-giving relationships.

We've been married since 91.

So what is that, 35 years?

So something's working.

That's right.

And I still like her.

Yes.

We do like each other and we're in love more than we used to be.

Would you say that?

Yes.

And so we live what we teach, because I think that's weird if you don't.

For myself, it's like I can't teach you something I don't do.

And I'm sure there's ways that you can do that.

The word like is really important.

I remember when I was dating, someone told me, and I wasn't sure about the girl, but do you like her?

I had to think for a moment, what's that mean?

Like her?

Of course I like her, but you know what I mean.

Yeah.

Because I mean, there's, you know, you want to share your life with someone, right?

So it's like, what am I sharing?

Yeah.

So what's your secret to finding and building and maintaining a healthy romantic relationship?

Is knowing yourself first, and really knowing who you are, and really loving yourself, all the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Because what you're asking is for somebody to love you, all of you, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But if you can't, I mean, what are you asking?

You're asking them to fix you.

And we're not people to be fixed, we're people to be loved.

So be yourself.

You totally got to be yourself.

But you got to know yourself, because a lot of people don't even know who they are, and they start to play out their issues without understanding their own wounds and their own self-destructive thoughts or behaviors, and how does that all interplay?

So when you know how to love yourself, then whatever your spouse is doing or whoever you're with, it's like learning how to love them because you've learned to love yourself.

I like to use an athletic analogy.

If you have doubles tennis players, if they work both really hard on doing well at their craft, they're going to be a really good team.

If one doesn't work hard and is lazy and so forth, they're not going to get good results.

I think the secret sauce in any relationship is that if you get two individuals that are really committed to their own process and growth, then it really makes the relationship easy.

And I think really the struggles that we have haven't been within the relationship, they've been what we've had to deal outside the relationship.

Do you think part of the problem back to knowing yourself is a lot of people, they get in a relationship, they get married, they have kids before they know themselves, meaning now I got to have a job, I got to go to work, I got to put on a shirt and tie, I have to do this.

And that's the part of them that they're engaged with their partner day to day.

But the backside of them has this dream they always wanted to follow.

I want to be the actor.

I'm just making this up by the way.

Yeah, sure.

I have something else I want to do, my dream.

That's who I really want to be.

Is that kind of what you're referring to by know yourself first?

Like, okay, who do you want to be first?

Then we can have kids be in a relationship.

Well, it's a little deeper than that.

Because what I want to be sometimes gets confused in what I want to do.

So it's like, who do, it's like, who am I really?

Where did I come from?

And what were the things that were experiences that either were traumatic or that were glorious?

So it's like, when I have trauma, when I have things that have caused me much pain in my life, but I've survived them, let's say.

Sometimes we survive them like Dean, where they look really good and they're socially acceptable, and sometimes you survive them like I did and become socially unacceptable.

But I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic, and I've been sober for 41 years, a convicted felon at 19.

So I didn't socially survive them acceptably, right?

I survived it, but it was with a lot of self-destruction.

So through that process of learning how to live, and what are these things that have marked me?

But how do I not repeat those, and how do I really look inside and say, I'm not what happened to me?

So all of a sudden, I start to heal and love myself through those ugly things, where I become freer.

To be who I want to be is more kind, more vulnerable, more connected, more alive.

And quit thinking about what you think about me, and quit trying to be whatever y'all think I should be.

But be truthful to how I really am.

And when we can do that, then we're sharing, we're connecting on that deep level.

So love yourself first, be okay with who you are.

Don't try to hide your flaws.

And then most importantly, be authentic.

Let your partner see your flaws, know your flaws, know your history.

You got it, you just translated it all.

I'm painting a picture in my head, like I'm you and I had this addiction problem, whatever.

And then I think you said something where you're in trouble with the law maybe, and some of it sounds interesting, actually, as long as it ended up good.

We all have our interesting backstories.

But sharing them and not trying to hide stuff, because you're afraid.

Exactly, because it's not like it's going away.

I mean, it's part of your, it's like, I have to learn to love myself in all that ugliness and forgive myself, right?

But I can't expect you to love me in that if I can't.

But so day to day, having say you're together now and you're, you each know who each other is and you're, you know each other's real story.

There's always difficulties communicating, like a lot of people don't really just know how to talk.

They do.

How do you coach people who have difficulty communicating?

Well, I think that in general, if they were having difficulty in communicating, I'd first try to find out where they are on the scale between passive and the opposite side of that is aggressive, and in the middle would be assertive.

So if someone offends us, we typically will respond passively by not saying anything, or we might respond aggressively by violating the person back.

But certainly the middle is the ideal is to be assertive, is to be direct, honest, and caring in my response.

So the first thing I do is to try to identify where the person would arrow towards.

So obviously the person that arrows consistently towards passivity needs to learn to have a voice, and the person that consistently arrows towards aggressiveness needs to learn to pull it back some, and learn to communicate directly, honestly, but with care and not anger or...

Can you give me an example each?

I'm definitely the passive one.

I'll be like, you know, I don't want to get into an argument, or I just don't...

I'm not going to win this one again.

You know, just do what the...

I even had one girl I dated say, Daniel, why don't you just do what I say?

Every other person, every other guy that I know, you know, couple that I know, you my friends, their partners just do what they say.

How come you just don't do what I say?

The man, you know, following the woman of the...

Anyhow, how do you, if you're more passive, can you tell me a little story or an example of a...

Example of speaking up, like how do you do it?

If someone was stepping on your foot, how would you handle that?

And they were hurting you, right?

Passive would be, I hope they get off my foot, but I don't want to create much tension, but it's really hurting my foot.

And they need to get off, right?

But if a person steps on my foot and I'm in a relationship with them once, and then does it twice, and three times, and I don't say that, you know, on the 45th time, I might blow up and go crazy.

And why are you stepping on my foot?

Well, I didn't know I was stepping on your foot, in a sense that if you don't have a voice, you can't, you begin to accumulate resentment, right?

It starts to build up.

So always look at communication from the perspective of the foundation of any ethic, in my view, is to love God, to love neighbor, and to love self.

Now, in interactions and communication, there needs to be a balance between loving the neighbor and loving self, or treating the other person with dignity and respect, while demanding myself to be treated with dignity and respect.

So if I'm passive, I may be treating the other person with dignity and respect, but I'm not treating myself with dignity and respect.

So I'm missing the commandment.

I'm missing, I'm losing out.

And it ends up not only hurting me, it hurts the other person.

Because in communication, the reason why it's so important is that we teach people how to treat us.

If Holly Kem drops me off at work and says she'll pick me up at five o'clock and she shows up at 6.30, and I kiss her on the cheek and say, great, great to see you, honey.

I just taught her a horrible lesson, right?

She could be an hour and a half late, it's not a big deal.

Now she could do that with you and you could say, where you been?

You're an hour and a half late.

All right, mental note with Daniel, I can't be an hour and a half late.

But you could still kiss her on the cheek and then go, by the way, it's been really cold and my fingers are frostbitten.

Where you been?

Right, right.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So you need to have a voice or I train her that it's okay to do something that's unacceptable.

If you would say nothing at all.

If we say nothing at all.

Yeah.

Right.

So the other extreme would be I would go out with the sledgehammer and I break all the windows, right?

So and who's paying for the windows?

Me, right?

So that's the aggressive side.

You have the passive side.

Let's say, no, you got to shoot for assertive.

And so the question becomes, if I'm assertive, I'm direct, honest, and loving, am I creating tension?

Probably so.

Probably.

I didn't quite follow you that way.

Great intention.

If someone's stepping on my foot and I tell them to get off my foot because it's really hurting, I'm creating an awkward moment.

That's why oftentimes we would err towards passive, is that we want to avoid awkward moments at all costs.

Sure.

But in a relationship, in the Song of Solomon, it says it's the small foxes that spoil the vine.

It's the little things that are not being dealt with consistently, which will destroy the relationship.

So if I'm not assertive and I'm continually passive, I'm actually contributing to the destruction of a relationship with someone that I love.

So I need to be willing to say, even if it's awkward, I'm going to be direct, I'm going to be honest, I'm going to be caring in my communication because I cannot afford to not have a voice and let that begin to destroy.

So with the foot, what would you, how would you say it?

You'd like to step on foot.

It's really painful.

It's I've got a blister there you didn't know about, which is probably what you don't know this.

That's why it hurts more than you know.

How do you say it though in a not angry way, not a aggressive way?

Just like you're saying, you're on my foot, it's really hurting, I need you to get off.

I need you to get off right.

The other thing too is that what I had to learn to do was that, I am in a relationship with somebody that I believe that I chose that, can you hear me?

Okay.

That I believe that I chose that would not hurt me on purpose.

He's not sitting up at night thinking, oh, how can I get her?

If that is true, then for me, what I'll say is, I know you did not try to hurt me on purpose.

However, you're stepping on my foot and it's very hurtful.

Then he knows that I know he didn't do it on purpose.

So it's a lot easier for him to go, well, I'm so sorry.

You got to take it from a frame of mind that your partner, your best friend is not trying to hurt you.

Right.

And start with that, okay, this is my friend, my partner, which should make it easier.

Just say it then, but not in an aggressive way.

Right.

See, the quality of a relationship is directly dependent on how they handle hurt and anger.

If you handle hurt and anger really well, you're going to have a great relationship.

Right.

So back to the person smashing the windows, what comes to mind is, what if she or he picking me up was late because they had a flat tire, needed a stranger to fix the tire, was horrid experience, and the first thing I do is smash the windows, not helpful either.

Exactly.

Because you miss the point of saying, honey, why were you so late?

Yeah.

But it's hard to say that in a non-aggressive way because maybe she was just having her nails done and talking and chatting with her best friend and, oh, Dan, I can just wait.

He's not as important as this time with my friend.

Exactly.

But what you just said is really important because she says, oh, I was just having my nails done.

I was with Susie.

Well, I need you here.

I'm happy you were with Susie and I'm happy you had a great day.

However, what you just said to me was that what I needed was not important.

And I don't believe that you really believe that.

And then that person has a moment of, oh, Lord, you're right.

There's like an opening and a middle and a closing part to what you just said.

It starts with something friendly, assuming you're on my side.

And then it's the meat of it, which takes some guts to really say how I feel.

And then it's closing with, what was the closing part again?

I don't think this is what you meant or am I making this up?

Is this what happened or something like that?

There's an interesting thing.

Now, there's this concept of grace and truth.

Of course, my background is theology, and there was an interesting passage that was talking about Jesus.

It said that he was full of grace and full of truth.

But what I discovered was that those two characteristics in communication are very important and the order is very important.

So what I mean by that is grace is to have an unconditional acceptance of where a person is at that moment.

So if a person came up to me and spit in my face and I treated them with dignity back, you might say, wow, you handled that really gracefully, right?

So grace is actually to embrace someone where they are at the moment.

But the second part is truth is speaking my truth.

So in the example of the hard driving late, it was like, honey, grace would be, you know how important you are to me and how much I love you.

Yes, yes.

So I'm embracing her with grace.

And then I'm saying, you're an hour and a half late and it's not okay.

All right.

You just helped me, Dean, with I could memorize that opening.

The same one every time, which then I get her attention because she knows I'm about to say something that I don't really want to say.

It's difficult for me to communicate.

So honey, what was it?

Honey, I know how much you love me.

Yeah.

Well, the interesting thing though, in communication, sometimes it get the order flipped.

Yeah.

It will lead with truth and then give you grace if you agree with me.

But when we lead with truth, it often causes more problems than it solves.

For example, she runs late and I say something like, you're always running late, you're so inconsiderate, and you don't care about me.

That may be absolutely true that she always runs late or oftentimes runs late.

But by leading with truth, it's causing more problems than it solves because she's going to come back with, well, you were late for dinner last week, and well, what about our wedding night?

You were way late for our wedding night.

So the order is real important.

You lead with grace and then you speak truth.

Now, if you lead with grace and you don't speak truth, then you begin to enable bad behavior.

Yeah.

Okay, lead with, give me an example of that, lead with.

So it would be, honey, you know how much I love you and it's great to see you, and she picked me up an hour and a half late.

So if I just lead with grace but I don't speak the truth, then I'm enabling her unacceptable behavior.

Yeah.

So it doesn't matter.

I can pick him up whenever I want.

What I'm saying is that in healthy communication, you need to lead with grace and you need to speak the truth as you see it.

Right after you lead with the grace.

Yeah.

Yes.

Because grace opens up the door to be heard, and then the truth, you speak the truth.

Yep.

Sometimes people just speak the truth and they have no grace, and it causes lots of problems, even though you're talking about the truth.

So, some holiday season.

Yeah.

And we're all having to go over to our families, and relatives come over, and Thanksgiving, Christmas.

What are, how can we frame this for listeners outside the context of romantic relationship, like maybe now it's not honey, I know you're not honey, it's dad, or it's uncle or cousin.

And we have to think about a new opening each time, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, you start with who did you vote for, for the presidential election?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I'm just kidding.

You put a sign, be nice to Lee, like we have a new world.

No politics and religion.

Well, maybe it's like, I know we disagree on the president, but you're stepping on my toes or something like that.

Right.

I know you disagree.

I know we disagree on who needed to be president.

However, we're both Americans, and we both care about our country.

We just see it in a different way, so it's okay.

I always tell people in that situation is that, especially in this last election, whoever won, the other side was going to be very frightened, because the belief systems were so different.

So you're dealing with people with a lot of fear in that situation, and when you're dealing with a lot of fear, beliefs and fear that are grounded, then people can come out fighting.

So that's why we don't do it, because especially in this last one, there's just so much fear around what's going to happen to them personally or their family or whatever.

So they come out fighting, or they just don't want to be with you.

Because the fear.

With the politics, I always remember to myself, I do this for myself, I don't really speak it so much as I think it.

We're talking about how to remember your partner loves you, you're about to speak to, I always remember, Daniel, don't let the news and the president win.

Your family is more important than the argument.

Don't have an argument with them just because you love your family.

What's most important?

Keeping the peace in your family or arguing about, being right about who's president or a politician?

Exactly.

That's a great belief to hold onto because that's a truth, right?

And it's like in that truth, let's just say someone started unfortunately in the family about all that.

When you would speak that truth because it has so much grace and love in it, it could stop the whole conversation.

When I respect other people's opinions too, I say, right, I respect you.

However, the philosophy I've chosen is that my family is more important than who we voted for.

No, that's a good opener to memorize too.

I respect your belief about this.

Yeah.

Here's what I think.

Right.

This is what I've chosen to.

And keep your voice down to be passionate about it.

Right.

Because all of a sudden, what you're saying is that you're more important to me than whoever's the president.

Because they're not-

That's another good one.

Yeah.

By the way, you are more important to me than who is president, but I voted for the other guy.

And you're wrong or whatever.

Yeah.

And now tell me why you voted for the other guy.

Because I'm just curious.

Because you're more important than both of them.

Well, and I think too is like when you start to just kind of look at for the holidays, what happens is, unfortunately, people remember us in some of our worst moments, right?

And so the fear is, is that that part of you is going to show up to the dinner.

So the triggers, I mean, who triggers us the most is our family, right?

So it's in that moment of how do I leave my triggers at the door, or at least keep them underneath my coat, you know, and not allow them to come out and walking around like a wounded child.

Why do you suppose that it is our family?

Because I noticed this in what appears to be the best families.

One time I was ringing the doorbell in the neighborhood during the holiday, going over to say hello, and I could, and they seem like the perfect family, and then I could hear the anger and the screaming.

I'm like, yeah, whoa, they're not so perfect.

Interesting.

But why do you suppose that is?

The reason why we get triggered with families is because they're the ones that install the triggers.

What do you mean?

In the sense that, you say, well, they push, I always get my buttons pushed when I'm with family.

Well, they're the ones that install the buttons.

That's where we learned it from.

That's where they got entrenched.

Because we grew up with them.

Yeah.

We got wounded there.

Yeah.

So that's why there's a greater sense of-

It keeps on not.

A lot of times we get wounded and it's not intentional.

Your dad's a workaholic because he's a doctor and he wants to help people and it's so wonderful and the community loves him.

But he's never home and he missed all my games because he was operating on your sister, that he saved her life and you're so happy, but I never saw my dad.

Those wounds was unintentional, but they're still my wounds.

It's like a lot of our wounds are unintentional for my family, but they're still our wounds.

So that leads us into you have a topic, you talk about how to deal with trauma, which should be a wound, that's a wound, trauma.

Yeah.

How do you deal with trauma?

That's a big thing in a lot of people.

It's a buzzword right now.

It's a buzzword.

Yeah.

It's a real word.

Well, the problem is not the what happens, it's what we do with after what happens.

The traumatic experience is not the problem.

The problem is that experience gets internalized and we carry it.

So what's the opposite of internalizing is externalizing.

That's really the way you work through trauma is that you need to externalize it in a safe context, and that's how we begin to heal.

That may be telling the story, it may be expressing it through art, it may be expressing it through writing, it may be sharing it with another.

But there's something about externalizing it with our voice, experiences that we've had that facilitates sewing up the wounds.

There's a big difference between if I have a cut on my arm and it's oozing blood, it's very different than one that's been scabbed over, had experienced a lot, it's just sort of sensitive, right?

How do we get to where it's scabbed over and it's just sensitive, is by caring for it.

How do we care for it?

By giving it a voice, by externalizing it.

So a lot of the work that we do is actually being able to help people that have experienced very difficult events, or how to debrief those in a way that they begin to let go.

So that's the difference between our Vietnam vets and our World War II vets, right?

World War II vets were honored.

They came back.

They experienced the horrors of war, just like the Vietnam vets did, but they were able to readjust back into society because of the honor that was given.

And really, there was a better debriefing and so forth.

For our Vietnam vets, no, it wasn't.

There was dishonor, then debrief, and that's why we have maybe like 70% of our homeless or Vietnam vets.

Why?

Because they're still living in the trauma, still living in the jungles in a sense, but it's the streets.

And so the difference isn't war.

They both experienced war.

One had a very different experience in terms of debriefing it than the other.

So, I was going to ask you, Dean, what a common example of trauma is.

Do you want to use that as an example?

The Vietnam War or being a veteran in general?

What's a common trauma?

Well, with trauma, it's, okay, any sexual abuse.

That's big.

Yeah, that's a big one.

A war could be one, PTSD, you know, the memories of what you had to do to survive.

Alcoholism, your own or living with someone that suffers from alcoholism, any addictions, the trauma of a divorce.

You don't want one.

You didn't get married to get a divorce.

It's very traumatic because you don't know what you did or you do know what you, you're the one that caused the big riff, you know?

Sudden deaths can be a problem.

Sudden deaths.

What's the most, what's a common one?

Divorce or a death?

I want to pick one because I want you to walk me through what you would do.

Oh, sure.

Got you.

Yeah, pick one.

It doesn't matter.

What's a common one you see people with?

They don't tell you on the street.

People hold this stuff secret.

Yeah, they do.

They hold it close to their heart because the people that, I mean, when you've been hurt and the people in your life don't know how to help you love that wound, that trauma, then you hold it deep to your heart.

So then if the people that love me didn't know how to help me or they caused it on purpose or not, then I don't know how to express it because I don't want more damage.

The safest people you thought you could trust.

It didn't work.

So now you don't.

Now you don't trust.

Seems like that's probably a reason for some depression because no one can help me because the best people couldn't.

What's a common one?

What's the?

Oh, take the divorce.

That's a very common one today.

So you got a divorce.

Yeah, go ahead, Dean.

Yeah, with your kids half of the time.

So the first thing, if a couple comes in for marriage counseling and we work with them and it doesn't work out and they end up getting a divorce, and they want to deal with working through or healing from the divorce, then the first thing is that we would have them begin to identify, what are the personal losses that you've experienced?

Divorce has so many losses on so many different levels.

So there's financial losses, there's relationship losses with children, there's losses within laws, there's losses with mutual friends.

Finances.

There's finances, there's just so many different losses.

And so we would have them at least start talking about, what are some of the losses that they're experiencing and validating that.

Then we would also teach them the grief process.

There's a healing process that we all go through.

Just like if you cut your arm, your body automatically starts healing that cut.

Emotionally, we have the same thing.

When we have a deep emotional wound, we start going through a process that's a natural process of healing, that has to do with denial and anger and bargaining and sadness and acceptance and all those intertwined.

I would teach the individual what's the normal process of healing and how to work with it and not against it.

A lot of it would just be loving on the individual as they're walking through that process, and that promotes healing.

Because when a person experiences a traumatic event, if they stay stuck in the trauma, then they begin to see the world through that trauma.

If I got divorced and the woman betrayed me, and I really hadn't had a chance to heal from that, then I start seeing women as those that will betray me.

And that becomes a lens that I begin to see them through that is destructive to me and to them.

But if I walk through the process of healing and acknowledge the betrayal and do the healing work from that woman, then I don't carry that lens with the people, the new relationships that I might have in the future.

So, in other words, another way of looking at trauma is that I need to learn to close the door on that traumatic experience so that I can open up the door for new experiences.

But if I never close the door, then it's hard to open up a door.

If I never close the door on that past marriage, then it's going to be hard to open up a door in a new relationship because it's still open, the old one's still open.

You're always like, yeah, go ahead.

I was just going to say, if the old one's still open, then you attract the same thing.

Okay.

See, that becomes the scary part is that we'll have people that have been married two, three, four times.

Because you're still thinking about it.

Well, they're still in this same cycle.

They're still sucking.

The redhead is going to do it this time.

The brunette, the blonde, whoever.

But they keep attracting the same person that they keep re-traumatizing themselves.

They haven't given up hope that they want this healthy, loving marriage, but they don't close the door.

How do they close the door?

You write these things, you talk about these things, you draw these things.

For us, I mean, we have a book, A Roadmap to the Soul.

We have a course that we do to bring people through the process, because everybody just wants to go from, oh, this was the problem, and this is the la la, the movie, the la la.

And it's like, no, okay, there's a whole middle part.

To make a movie, there's a whole middle part.

You have a vision, and then you have the movie, and you have 10 years in between, right?

It's a lot of pieces that you have to do.

Well, in healing, it's learning to love it, and really learning to, okay, if I get divorced and my husband betrayed me, all of a sudden, the belief system is that I'm not good enough, that I'm not a great sex partner, that I'm not pretty enough, that I'm not thin enough, that I'm not friendly enough, I'm not fun.

All of those messages, he may have never said that, but because of what he did, that is the message.

So I've got that now as part of my trauma, right?

So then the other part of me is like, well, I'm going to get skinny, I'm going to get beautiful, and I'm going to get a better man than him.

Well, what better man am I getting?

I don't know.

I'm just reacting to the pain.

Well, that doesn't work versus, yeah, that's what this part of me wants to do, right?

But what do I need to do as a healthy person?

Right?

I need to eat right.

I need to realize that all those things are not true about me.

I am loving, I am good.

I do feel betrayed, but am I betrayable?

Am I somebody that can just be abandoned and walk away?

No, I've got three kids.

He's got to show up next week.

You know what I'm saying?

He's not really abandoning me.

It's just he wasn't able to make it work for whatever reason.

Or does it help to reframe it?

Like when you say, I'm not beautiful enough, but I made that up and it could be just he's insecure.

Or his buddies told him that he needed to cheat on his wife to be a man.

Another reason I'm not aware of and to reframe it a perspective.

That's right.

So there will be a part of me that will believe certain things.

There'll be a part of me that wants to react to things.

But then what about me?

The truth is that I am beautiful and that I am lovable.

Could I improve?

Yes.

I'll make a list and I'll start working on how I can improve to make sure that I am bringing my best.

Like when I'm been divorced.

So in that, it was like, okay, where was I not a good wife?

Where was I not a good partner?

Where was I not a good friend?

Where did I want to hide from the truth of this sedative life that I was living in?

What is it that I want to bring to the table?

So as I started to work through that, because my therapist said the first time, well, at least he's got all of this stuff, which my husband did.

It's like, so the next one could be work.

That doesn't sound helpful, like she's talking.

Yeah, I'm like, next one's worse.

I'll kill myself if the next one's worse than this one.

So I said, well, what do we have to do?

She says, well, you have to work on yourself.

I said, well, let's get to work, okay?

So I stayed with him for two years and things didn't get better, so I chose to leave.

But in that process, it was consistently, and I'm still, 41 years later, I'm still working on myself to be the best I can be to bring to the table.

So there is something there that I'm bringing that is worthy of the love from you, and what is it that I can give you?

Like a lot of people forget that part.

It's like, yeah, what can you give me?

But what can I give?

And I need to know that.

It almost sounds, though, like, as if you did have some belief that it was you that responsible for the divorce, like he was better than you.

Well, what it was, was I didn't love myself and neither did he, and we were both addicts.

And so what we would do was just sedate our pain.

We would sedate the pain we weren't aware of, and we would sedate the pain that we were in.

So, you know, life is a party, but, you know, life as a party can bring us to prison.

You know, which, reading your bio and really digging in deep, so I try to research who I'm going to have on my show, just so I know what to talk to them about.

I haven't had anyone on my show yet as a therapist or expert that helps people with addiction and alcohol abuse.

And it seems like it was a factor in your previous marriage, and it's a factor in everybody's life in general.

Yes.

What can we tell listeners who are in that kind of situation, who need help, haven't got help, besides something cliche, how do you work with them?

How do you help people like that?

Yeah, well, I was a board certified substance abuse counselor for a long time.

And I'm a recovering drug addict and alcoholic.

In addiction, one of the things that happens to us is we lose everything, you know, and in alcoholism, which is the same things, the ism of it all is that the damage if I'm living with, say, a father that has high functioning alcoholism, there's this emotional sedation that's happening.

So there's something missing.

And then what happens is in our lives, we have the missing as well.

If we become the sedator or marry the sedator, both.

So you're saying, I'm painting myself a picture.

So the alcoholism is numbing this, my mom or dad's emotional connection with people in me.

Yeah.

So I'm inheriting that I'm modeling, emulating kind of like I watch a movie and I want to be John Wayne.

So I start talking like a tough guy.

I inadvertently without knowing it, start to emulate how I emotionally connect with people, just like my alcoholic parent.

Exactly.

Okay.

Then that would lead me to drink because they did, and I think that's the right thing to do.

Plus, I need to because it fits the behavior.

Yeah.

Well, you have people that are born with the gene, where your body does not metabolize it correctly.

Then you have people that you can abuse alcohol long enough that you can cross the line and become alcoholic, where your body is allergic to it.

Then there's certain drugs that are addictive.

It doesn't matter who uses it, like opiates and cocaine and fentanyl and sugar and nicotine.

That's addictive no matter who you are.

You have different levels.

However, the thing is, when you're dealing with an active addiction, yourself or someone else's, that has to be dealt with first.

Then you can get to, that has to be stopped, right?

You have to stop sedating, which takes a lot of work.

It's not for the weak and faint.

But one of the way to quit smoking is you quit smoking.

The way to get thinner is you quit eating or change your diet.

That's right.

But the thing is, is that you quit it, but it talks to you.

So it becomes the solution for life.

But it's really, and the problem with when you're an addict or an alcoholic, you're not afraid of death.

That's not going to work.

So because you're afraid of life.

You don't know how to live.

You don't have to be connected.

So when things are good, you sedate.

When things are bad, you sedate.

When things are normal, you sedate.

So you have to learn how not to sedate.

Then you have to start working on, what are the things behind all of that, that I'm sedating?

How do you do that?

What are they?

Well, it's going to be the old wounds from life, and then it's going to be the stuff that you created from sedation.

Because I mean, you sedate long enough in a relationship, that person is not happy with you anymore.

They don't really like you because the person that, let's say we're in a marriage, he married me, but who ended up showing up to the table was not who he married, was this drunk that's sedating.

I may look good, I may smell good, I may f*** good, but I ain't really good because I am not there.

I'm not connected.

So how do you decide to-

Right, go ahead.

Dean, jump in.

How do you work with people who have the addiction problem and realize as she's saying, that I have a problem?

Right.

Yeah.

It's really comes down to an issue of emotional management.

How will I manage my emotions?

Will I manage it through sedation or will I manage it through giving in a voice in a healthy way and learning to manage it in a healthy way that doesn't create, that creates life instead of death?

So there's a part of me, if I'm struggling with addiction, that says, if I'm upset, I'm in pain or I'm feeling emotionally stirred up, to use alcohol to sedate that.

Then there's the true self, who I really am, that says, when I'm in pain, I need to give voice to that with a person that loves me and deal with it in a healthy way.

So it's really an emotional management deal.

Once you put the cork in the bottle, then I still need to learn how to manage my emotions in a healthy way, or I'll find another sedating behavior.

That's why with addictions, the most common solution for an addiction is another addiction, because I continue to use sedating behaviors to deal with my emotional life.

So emotional intelligence is so important with that.

In terms of family members that are dealing with it, it brings us back to the beginning of our conversation, is I need to learn to be assertive with them.

I need to be graceful, and I need to tell the truth.

And so, you know, I did interventions for years, and probably have done maybe close to a hundred interventions.

And so, so what do I do?

How do you do an intervention?

An intervention for people who aren't familiar with it, Dean is right, is when situations so bad, your family just shows up at your doorstep and says, we're taking you to the treatment center.

You have no choice.

Somebody suffering with an addiction and that they're out of control, and the family and friends decide that they're going to have a sit down conversation with them.

First, before they take you.

Okay, it's a sit down conversation, but you feel like you're attacked because suddenly there's more than one person, there's a group of people around you, and they're forcing you to sit and talk about it, right?

Yeah, yeah, but how do you intervene?

You intervene by bathing them with love and telling them the truth.

Yes.

You know, so what happened?

When you flip the car and you're intoxicated and you're almost killed, I felt scared that I would lose you because I love you.

So, so what I do is I have the individuals write letters that start with, you know, I'm here because I love you.

And then to name a few experiences and I love you, I care about you, and I want you to get some help.

And so you'd be specific about incidences and how it made you feel.

So when, when you didn't show up for this event, that was real important to me, I felt upset and angry.

When you, when you have them read this, like it's notes for their speech, they're given a speech during it.

So they don't have to think off the top of their head and get sucked into the-

Right.

They get so emotionally worked up that if they don't have the letter, it's a speech.

Then they get off.

So I have them read it.

I'll have them read it to me first and I'll tweak it to where it's, it's done right, correctly.

But you bathe the person in love and you speak the truth.

And those are the two things is going back to grace and truth.

Those are the things that open up the window for a person to hear.

And if you've ever dealt with somebody that's been struggling with an addiction, you know how frustrating it is that it's like we're having the same conversations over and over.

Well, I want to teach you how to have a conversation that will actually get through.

And that will...

So I'm picturing myself as the person with the addiction now, or the alcohol problem, and my family's around me.

I'm not gonna be so easy to push over.

I'm a Taurus too.

I'm stubborn.

And I've probably heard this before from them.

How do you get back to us helping the person who has the addiction to help them?

Well, one of the things is that if you have an addiction or you're alcoholic, you already know it.

So, you know, you already...

Yeah, you already know.

Yeah.

So, you know, you may deny it, you know, in front of people and all that, but you're already suffering, you already know you're suffering, and you don't have a way out.

You've tried, you've said to yourself, I'm only going to drink two drinks, I'm only going to drink three.

And you probably will only drink two or three, but internally, you hear this voice saying, I want another one, I want another one, I want to get out of here.

When you phrase it that way, I'm almost like, what took you guys so long to intervene?

Like I was waiting for you to go like, what took so long?

Exactly, Daniel.

I need help.

I have no idea what to do.

And I'm going to fight you.

So just be prepared.

I had, I did one time I did an intervention.

It was actually on a priest.

And priesthood could be a pretty lonely life, Catholic priesthood by themselves, drink a lot and this and that.

So we had this group that were going to intervene on this guy.

And he was, when he was coming back from church at a certain time.

And when he walked in the room, back in the rectory, I was there and I greeted him.

And we had a group of people that were going to intervene.

And when he walked in, he said, what's this, an intervention?

I said, yeah, it sure is.

And he actually went to treatment that day, and he's been sober ever since.

And so, you know, he's been able to help so many people.

But he knew it.

What I'm saying is he came back and he's like, what's this, an intervention?

So, and then what's the actual intervention process?

It's clearly to make, you know, cut you off from your addiction.

And then it's a lot of actually, you use the word emotional intelligence.

It's learning to communicate with people better, so you don't have to numb yourself down.

Well, the intervention has to do with talking to the very truth of who you are.

Say that you struggle with an addiction, and we would talk to you and not the addiction.

Yes.

The addiction has its own thought processes.

But if I said, Daniel, I know that you didn't want to experience two divorces and be fired by four jobs, and that you wanted to be close to your children.

And that you value people, and that you value relationships.

I'm talking to the truth of who you are.

And oftentimes, when you speak to that part, it wakes you up out of the addiction.

Because there's different voices we have on the inside.

That's what we talk about in our book is that there's a part of me that loves drinking.

There's a part of me that knows that drinking is destroying my life.

And so which part am I going to talk to?

The part that loves drinking?

And no, I'm going to talk to the part that knows that drinking is destroying your life.

And so when I say, Daniel, you deserve better than what you have right now.

I know who you really are.

I know you're a good man.

I know that you respect people.

And I start talking to who you really are.

That awakens you out of the slumber of the addiction.

And so that's the really the art in intervening is that, no, you don't talk to the the addict part of them.

You talk to who they really are.

And you remind them who they really are.

And then as they get reminded, they always begin to cry.

Always begin to cry.

This is part of your therapy or counseling when you work with people like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Because, you know, the goal is if, you know, teaching people how to do that with their children and the people that they love, and really learning to do it with yourself, you know, like really, like, always, and for us is always looking.

I mean, one of the things about the process that we use is I'm dyslexic.

And so, you know, it's my gift.

I see in pictures.

So when someone would come to me and they would be speaking, they'd say, you know, if you really knew me, you wouldn't like me.

You know, there's a part of me that thinks awful things.

I don't even know if I really have a true self.

And, you know, internally, I'm thinking, I see you, you know?

And then I'm like, well, I see the part that you're talking about.

I see the wounds in you.

But I could, I would separate them in three people, like it's three different people.

And so what the goal was always to show them who they really were, what I was seeing, and paint that picture of them, and then paint the picture of the wound, how it was very different, and how it saw the world in a different way, and then paint the part of them that's the darkness, and the way they have coped that doesn't work, why they're there, they want to change that, and help them separate those three parts.

And by doing that, then as I would speak to their true self, it was like they started to come out and be like, yeah.

And when they could see that there's parts of me, but those parts are not who I really am, it's just what happened to me or how I reacted to the world, to protect myself from not being hurt again, that I don't really need that anymore, I need to take care of it and not give it away, and ask you to take care of it or your spouse, you know what I'm saying?

But then if I take care of it...

When I get in that mode, I'm like, what's time to let this go?

I'm like, I'm still processing trauma.

You're getting older, man.

When are you going to start living?

Seriously, you got to let go of that because you're wasting time.

Yeah.

Well, a practical example would be, I remember early in our marriage, part of me wants to be close to my wife, part of me scared to be smothered, and part of me keeps distant.

So I'm giving off three different messages.

I want to be close to you, but I'm scared to be smothered, so stay away, but I want to be close to you.

Now, I need to understand what part of me is what, and how to manage that.

So I remember inviting Holly Kem.

Well, she was working two jobs, and I was like, you're working too much.

Our relationship is going to work.

We need to spend more time together.

So one Friday, she came home.

She said, honey, I took all day, the rest of the day off today, all day tomorrow, all day Sunday, we get to spend the entire weekend together.

So a part of me said, oh my God, you're going to be smothered the entire weekend.

And another part said, tell her you got a golf game on Saturday, so you can have space.

And I was excited to be able to spend the whole weekend with my wife.

Now, can you imagine if these two got my voice, I'm asking her to take time off and then I'm lying to her, so I don't have to be smothered.

I mean, it doesn't make any sense.

But we all can relate to that in the sense that we all have different aspects of ourselves based on our experiences.

How did you pick the best or the right or decide to go with the part?

Well, if I communicated that and said, look, honey, I'm excited, you want to spend a weekend together.

A part of me is a little nervous about being smothered, and another part actually wanted to lie to you.

That's perfect, Dean.

You're just telling the truth.

You're actually letting the other person who is your partner, your best friend, you're letting them help you solve this problem for you.

You got to trust them to solve it, because maybe she would go, well, you know what?

I know you like to play golf.

What if on Sunday you played half a day of golf on our three day, maybe?

Right.

I might solve it for you because she realizes you're being honest and truthful and you need help.

Exactly.

But oftentimes, we don't acknowledge the truth that I have these divided belief systems inside of me.

And so what we do is we help people separate and understand that and learn how to manage it to where they win and the other two don't win.

Right.

So you have actually courses, I think, on your website in addition to your office where people can come make an appointment, right?

Yeah.

We have an online course called Transform You, and it's a four-month course.

It's a deep dive into a process of healing and separating all the things that we're talking about.

It's actually an integration of our book, but at such a deep level.

And it's for the overall general theme of what we're speaking of.

It's not just if you're divorced, you have an addiction, it's basically how to love yourself and communicate better with everybody.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

If you have something, it works on that.

But we have a girl in right now, she's from California, she's young, in her 20s, and she grew up in the Christian world.

So she's really good, but she doesn't like to be vulnerable.

So she protects herself by being more shy.

But she wants to be more real.

Be just trusting and being vulnerable.

When you mentioned religious background, I'm still trying to process what I want to say, but there's thought in my head.

I'm fascinated by how, Dean, you studied ministry, right?

You have a doctorate in ministry, and you say the word God, so you know religion.

At first, when I read that about you, I'm like, I don't know if I want him.

I don't want to talk about religion because it's a hot topic and I don't want to get drugged into that, but yet somehow you're managing to hold that space because that's your belief, but also consular people, it's working for you.

Yeah.

Everybody has their own belief, right?

And so I think like in anything, wherever a person is needs to be honored.

And also there's not a part of me that says that you have to believe like I do.

I see.

So, but I mean, I come from a spiritual bias from the sense that I think we're actually made to be in relationship with God, and that we're incomplete until that's found.

That's sort of a bias that I have.

But in terms of dictating and what that needs to look like for you, I'm always very respectful of that.

Just as I would want you to be respectful of my own journey.

But to see where you are and what can, if you're at the 10-yard line, what can we do to help bring you to the 15-

or the 20-yard line?

That's what we do.

It's not an indoctrination, it's just a healthy respect and honoring.

Yeah, I totally get that from you.

That's what I'm saying.

I don't feel like you are really mentioning religion too much at all.

And yet most people would, most or a lot of, you know, cons, you know, a lot of people that want to push their religion on you.

Right.

Well, and a lot of people that, you know, religion is supposed to bring you to a spiritual journey and a spiritual awakening.

It's not the destination, but a lot of people think it's the destination.

You know, the religion.

I can't stand on that.

I'm kind of with you, but I'm, yeah.

Yeah.

Like the religion is, yeah, like you need to be this or this or this or this.

Like you got to be in one of these boxes.

Right, right, right.

Religion is supposed to bring you to the spiritual awakening, the spiritual connection, right?

And so if you get stuck in one of these boxes, well, you might not get.

This is what you should do.

This is how you should look.

That's the way I see it.

You should say, you should read.

Yeah, right.

I have a very simple way of looking at it, is the three most important relationships is our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves, and our relationship with our neighbor.

Anything that enhances those three relationships in a positive way is good.

Anything that destroys any one of those relationships is evil or bad or unhealthy.

We just use a different language.

So, if I'm working on improving my relationship and love of myself, it's going to affect the other two relationships.

If I'm restoring my relationship with other people that I've been estranged from, it's going to affect the other two relationships.

If I work on my relationship with God and grow in that area, it's going to affect the relationship with self and others.

So, the approach would be, what do we need to do to enhance any one of those three relationships, and knowing that that's going to have a reciprocal positive effect on the other two.

And that's what I say.

Like you'll be happier if you get one nailed, and then you'll be even happier if you go get the other one down, and then really, really, really happy if you get the third one down.

Yeah.

But they all affect each other is my point.

If I'm, if I'm abusing myself with drugs or alcohol and hurting my relationship with myself, I'm probably hurting my relationship with those around me, and I'm probably becoming spiritually bankrupt.

Yeah.

Well, you're not doing what the, your God puts you on the earth to do, your purpose or your path, because you're numbing yourself and you're wasting time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they're all interconnected.

So one last thing.

You say, you have a saying on your website or some place I found about you guys.

Your greatest wound can be your greatest treasure.

Yes.

That sounds wonderful, but tell me about it because it sounds, how do you make that happen?

I think our purpose often is connected to our greatest wounds and our greatest secrets.

So for example, you take Holly Kem, for example.

One of her greatest wounds and greatest secrets was her addiction.

But she courageously faced it head on.

She went through the process of healing and working with that.

Now it's become one of our greatest treasures because she's helped hundreds, if not thousands of people work through their addictions and work through the fallout from that.

So in that sense, here was this secret part of her life that almost put her in prison, that she was so ashamed of, has been transformed into becoming a great treasure to where she gives life to so many people.

So I think we're all, all of us are called to have our secrets and our greatest wounds to go through that gauntlet of healing and restoration so that it go from something that takes life to something that gives life when it comes out the other end.

So Dean, would you say like the, there's a lot of people trying to find their purpose in life.

Yeah.

What your purpose is, is find the thing you were hiding the most, feel the worst about yourself trying to bury, hide, not let anyone know, and shine on that, like be authentic about that, that would be your purpose.

That would be part of it for sure.

For sure.

It's not one of the biggest things.

You definitely have to bring it forward a little bit.

Yeah, you have to bring it to the light.

You got to bring it to the light.

It has to be spiritually redeemed, or if we're talking about it psychologically, it needs to be healed.

The trauma, yeah.

Yeah, it has to be healed.

But when that happens, I mean, you take some of the greatest work being done by Vietnam vets today with other Vietnam vets, so the ones that have done the healing process themselves, and are offering that to others.

With addiction, with whatever hurts off.

Some of the people that are very effective in helping people work through sexual abuse have been people that have gone through the gauntlet of dealing with it themselves, and now it's become something that gives life.

So on my channel, I like to focus, my thing is focused on solutions, not talk about all the problems.

It almost seems like what we're talking about is your purpose could be what's the biggest problem in your life, but like you said, Dean, you can't just be a vet who comes back and tells other vets to get, well, you have to have gotten yourself over your trauma.

Yeah.

And really, honestly, be over your trauma, not to say you are.

And then your purpose is to share that solution with other people who have the problem.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Nice, nice.

Yeah.

So your guy's book is A Roadmap to the Soul, A Practical Guide to Love, Compassion, and Inner Peace.

Their website is ihaveavoice.com.

That's an easy one.

I have a voice.com.

ihaveavoice.com.

Details will be in the show notes.

Is there anything we haven't talked about you feel you really want to add listeners should know?

You are a great listener, Daniel.

Yes, you are.

Yeah.

You really do a beautiful job in listening and reflecting back what you're hearing.

That's a real gift.

I'm sure your podcast is really popular because of that.

That's my thing.

If you read my bio, who is like, I've been all over the map.

I'm an aerospace engineer.

I worked as an engineer.

I'm a songwriter.

I've been to Nashville.

I've got songs.

I've mountain climbed 30 miles and I've been climbed.

Always looking for my purpose.

Thanks for sharing that with me, Dean, because I'm like, who are you?

Really, my gift I feel is doing what you just said.

Here I am, showing up and doing this.

Well, that's one of the best aspects of communication is to be able to translate something that you're hearing and making sure that you're seeing what the other person is saying, and then you put it into words, into a picture.

Which is interesting, you say you're an engineer and an artist.

That's a nice combination.

That's an awesome combination because you're using both sides of the brain, and so you're translating with words, but you're painting pictures at the same time.

That's a great thing for people to hear and see because that's a skill that we all need.

We all need that skill.

And like what I do is I always give people an eraser if I don't say what you're, if I'm not translating what you said to me, and then they can erase it and fix it.

So then I can repaint the picture, right?

So you do a fantastic job doing that.

It's beautiful.

Yeah.

Key thing, one of my tips for myself is to remember how to do this is, is when you say some, I'll go, so let me repeat this back, and tell me if I got this right or wrong or right or fix it for me.

Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

Thanks so much for being on my show.

Thank you.

Thank you.

This is wonderful because getting, my thing is people are worth it.

I want them to know to invest in yourself, because when you invest in yourself, you leave seven generations of wealth behind, because then you're teaching what you know.

It's good work you're doing.

Keep it up and blessings.

Blessings to you.

Blessings to you.

Take care.

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you, Danny.