Susan:
Welcome everyone. I'm Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, and today I have the pleasure of having Kate Duffy from Tipping Point Recovery joining me. I know there are people out in the Bright Line Eating® ecosphere that can't wait to hear this interview. Kate, welcome to the podcast.
Kate:
Thank you, Susan.
Susan:
Welcome to the weekly vlog. Kate, did you want to start off by sharing with anyone anything about your Bright Line Eating experience? How did you even find out about Bright Line Eating? Or do you want to not go there, and we'll just talk about your work?
Kate:
No, it's a great place to start. I got sober from alcohol in 2013 and didn't know what was happening, but I was smoking cigarettes. So, that was the next thing I wanted to get rid of. And what happened when I quit cigarettes five years sober to my body with sugar felt like a cocaine addiction. And I remember thinking, okay, I quit. I didn't get sober to be diabetic. My dad locked a leg to diabetes. I just had this vision of myself and I was like, I didn't get sober to have this happen. So, I remember Googling, where can I go? Because the only way I let go of alcohol in the end was to go into a detox. I was looking for where to go. I was going to check in somewhere for sugar. I lived alone, found your book, did a 14-day challenge, emptied my house, and I prepared emotionally and psychologically for a bit actually. And that looked like loving myself while I ate what I ate, falling in love with myself while I did it anyway. And then, I just prepared and I did it and I lost 40 pounds, and I have been sugar and flower free since that date.
Susan:
Wow.
Kate:
Which is April 20th, 2019.
Susan:
Wow, Kate. I'm so glad I asked. What a lovely story. And there's a sentence in there that really struck me. "My dad lost a leg to diabetes." I mean, I just want people to let that settle in, to watch one of your loved ones lose a leg. It's intense what sugar does to people. Yeah. Oh, my goodness.
Kate:
To me, it has the same power over me as alcohol. They're equal and I've not looked back. Bright Lifer™. Three and four, lines three and four creep up, and I work that. I'm like, okay, new layer. I'm back for it, but I haven't touched the rest of the stuff.
Susan:
Good for you. Good for you. Impressive. Okay. H did you get to do the work you do, which is around the families of people with addiction. How did you come to that work? Was it before or after you got sober yourself in 2013?
Kate:
No, it was after I got sober. And quite honestly, I resisted starting a business in this field. I got sober in 2013 and what happened to me and my family was shocking and confusing and very scary.
Susan:
What do you mean?
Kate:
Oh, because who I became. I was lying, minimizing, justifying. I was - oh, in the disease.
Susan:
What happened to your family when you were a raging addict - using?
Kate:
Yes.
Susan:
Yeah.
Kate:
I didn't understand it. I knew nothing about addiction at the time and my family didn't either. So, I was caught in this loop of using and denying it and people were believing me. I was driving unsafe with myself and others in the car. I mean, it was really bad. And they were caught in fear and confusion and anger and hurt. And so, those two loops weren't making wellness. Fast forward, I started when I got sober the last time. I instantly needed to work in the field. So, I took a job doing overdose intervention in the emergency room just as a peer recovery coach, meeting peers in the ER after the police had brought them into the ER post nonfatal overdose. And it was in those two years in that job, that my entrepreneurial, my intuition, my entrepreneurial skills were showing me things. I really was seeing, I didn't have a dream like you did, but I was seeing visions of these paths that were compartmentalized. So, a person comes in the ER, they have a nonfatal overdose, their family's not notified. The ER is trying to help them engage in treatment. They're minimizing and justifying and rationalizing and going in the parking lot and using again. And the whole system was kind of co-signing that, in my opinion. I stood in the hall of the ER and I was like, "Is this really what's happening?" Because in my opinion, once I learned that I had a lying, manipulating, my symptoms were lying, manipulating, justifying, I was like, "Then why are you asking me what I want only? And why are you not informing my family that what they're doing is actually complicit to the problem?" But I'm three years sober, not feeling equipped, but witnessing. Truly. Visions of paths kept coming forward to me. And these paths of people tirelessly working to help people get sober and stay sober, I have these gaping holes in between where there's no link to family, there's no link to care providers, there's no continuity of care. It's all up to the person who has a brain that's making them not do the thing. So, the condition prevents us from doing the things. You know this.
Susan:
I do. I'm writing about this in my new book. So, I'm writing a book called Addiction And...The Wild Ride and Upside of a Dopamine Dominant Brain. And it's a memoir, it's about my life, but I give these little vignettes of the crazy wild, stupid shit that I've done. Then I write a science explanation of what was that about? And I just finished writing the section on intervention and denial. And I learned through the research that I did to write the science section of this, that as the addict continues to use, there's this part of the brain called the insula, which is part of the reward center of the brain that loses the ability for effective self-referential thought. So, it's called addiction agnosa. Sorry, I've only seen it written, I don't know how to pronounce this word, agnosagnosia, or something like that. But it's the same condition where someone who's had a stroke or has Alzheimer's doesn't know the deficit they have. So, if you have a parent who has advancing Alzheimer's?
Kate:
I know the word you're talking about. 100%.
Susan:
You're like, "Mom, you don't remember." She's like, "I remember fine. I remember fine." "No, mom, you don't remember. That is actually your son, and you don't remember." "No, that can't be my son." And they can't see that they don't know. They can't see that they don't remember.
Kate:
That's what happened to me when I was using. Yeah.
Susan:
That's what happens
Kate:
To us when we -
Susan:
That's what happens. And so, it's not that we're belligerent or it's not a character flaw. We actually cannot see ourselves. We look inside and we see nothing related to the damage we're causing or how we're off the rails and we go, "No, no, no, I'm fine. I'm good." And that's actually what denial is. We don't have the capacity to see it.
Kate:
Whereas up until knowing this, we think denial is a character flaw. It's a moral issue. Now here's what I'm going to tell you. We know this intellectually now, and what you just described to the world doesn't know yet, but even if the families that come in that say, "Oh, I know it's a brain disease, but he just keeps doing it." And I'm like, "Those two things can't be true." And so, what I was noticing, and I love that the science is now backing this up, you can see why I love being a Bright Lifer and following you because it's just complementing what I'm saying. But here I am in the ER, three years sober, and people are discharging, using in the parking lot and we're losing them and their family has no idea. And I'm like, "But I heard my brain's hijacked." So, it's kind of like yelling at a person losing their hearing. Why aren't you listening to me and Alzheimer's? My mom has dementia and we're seeing that same thing. So, all I did during those two years was I started to engage people in the ER because I'm good at engaging people. And that's a whole other 20-minute conversation as to what I'm doing to do that. And they would say, "Can you talk to my family?" Which is very rare. Once I did, I said, "Sure, but can I tell them the truth?" And they'd say, "What's that?" Well, that we lie and we justify and we minimize. Well, yeah, because if they don't know the truth, I'm not going to make it. So, I started gathering families in a conference room once a week. And what I noticed over those two years, simply by sharing, no, he's not a manipulative jerk. This is why, and here's what I did. That's what I kept saying, but here's what I did. Because families have this image of their loved one as being the only one that is doing this because they're so operating out of how crushed they are and how scared they are. What I believe, Susan, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, families' neural pathways are changing also. And so, I do these educational workshops and people are like, yes, yes, this makes sense. And then when they hang up that call, they go right back to the same action because we need repetition, a lot of repetition. And you need to be in a new environment. The same person in the same environment will do the same stuff. Because we keep calling the people to say, can you believe you did it again? And so, in those two years, this conference room was growing, and people were getting sober at a really high rate. And an insurance company actually approached me to come in and do a presentation. Why were we getting so many people sober? And I remember thinking, the entrepreneur part of me was like, they're missing something here that people are going in treatment, they're cycling out, they're going home to an unwell system. Something has to change in the system and in all the systems, in my opinion. Long story short, I formed Tipping Point not having any idea how I was going to get this out to the world in 2017 and scared to, quite honestly, scared to, who am I to say this? And who am I to say that family can be the catalyst for change? And then I just dove into becoming an interventionist, getting certified as a recovery coach, creating an online platform where families come and get well. And the result is higher outcomes for addicted people because we just keep repeating. It's not on purpose. Their brain's stuck. Yours is too. So, it's a really simple framework. But you know what this is, is it's a treatment program for the family system. Families, they don't want to go to treatment. Let's all be honest. We don't want to go to treatment. We want them to get better. So, when we find people that understand, "Ah! That makes sense. I have to stop enabling." But by the way, you don't just stop enabling just like you don't just stop eating sugar, you don't just stop drinking. You need to learn what your patterns are, what your, so we get into attachment style. We get into very similar. IFS is a big part of our program. We're treating one person at a time in the family system to start creating change. It can happen as quickly as, show me the text message they sent you and I'm going to give you a new reply and I want you to reply to the one part of them, the tiny half percent that is their wellness, not their sickness. So, I'm teaching families. What I love most about the program is you don't have to wait a year to get better to start to create change. It starts immediately. As soon as you're willing to say what you want to unlearn, the role that you're taking with your addicted loved one that you want to fire yourself from, whether it's the family case manager or the banker or the driver or the case manager and firing yourself from that role, people love that, but then within five minutes they're doing it again. So, family disease is an entire path in its own and I had no idea. I just wanted to educate the world that we're all kind of part of the problem unless we're working on ourselves. And so in addition to this long-term intensive outpatient is really what it is. It's private pay. It's not an intensive outpatient with insurance yet, but that's where we're headed to document the outcomes of the efficacy of this because it's crazy high. What we're doing is we're getting everyone well around the sickness and that looks different.
Susan:
And one at a time, what does that mean? So, let's imagine that there's a 20-year-old who's in addiction, there's a mom, there's a dad, and there's two siblings. Tell me what the one at a time means.
Kate:
Well, the reason I say one at a time is most people that are listening to this are going to say, "Well, our whole family feels differently about it." Because what happens with addiction is it's like a stink bomb goes in the house and everyone kind of scatters. We have typically siblings are done, pissed, they're out. There's usually one of the parents is wanting to help and lean in and they're finding me. And then the other parent is like, "We're done. We've spent too much money. Stop looking at solutions. They just need to hit rock bottom." A narrative that I don't believe in. So, when I say it just can start with one person, it's typically because there's usually one person listening to this.
Susan:
There's one person left.
Kate:
Exactly. And I call that person the brave one. They know there's a better way. They know there's something else to do. And I say, "Don't worry about the rest of your family. You come in because when I teach you what I teach you, it's going to ripple off you and your husband's going to say, 'Can I listen into that call?' That's what happens and more will come to the table." For people that say, "I don't even have contact with my loved one," that doesn't even matter. Energetically, changing one person in the family system begins the change for the whole family. And it's very unique, sorry, very nuanced. I don't know what each person needs. I can't tell you right now. I can give you the ranges of things people change, but I need to meet with the people, which is why we created these group programs because we need to hear what's going on for you, for your loved one too. Because there are cases, many of them, where probably about a third of our families that find us need more service. They need an intervention. And you wrote about intervention and you're writing about it in your book. For me, intervention means we can't let some of these people just wait to find their way. They're not going to make it depending on the level of progression in the addiction. They need us to lift the bottom up. They need us to organize around them and change the conditions around them so they can say yes. And that's what our intervention team is expert at doing is getting people who say no all the time to actually want help. We manufacture willingness, which sounds pretty bold.
Susan:
Wow. I mean, magical, honestly.
Kate:
Can you see why I was scared to say that 10 years ago?
Susan:
Yeah. I mean, I've always said I can't manufacture willingness. People are like, how do you get people to work your program? I'm like, I shrug. I'm like, I don't know. I work with the ones who come willing because I don't know how to manufacture willingness.
Kate:
Okay. So, I want to just speak to that for a minute because what is very common when people hear this is they feel it's different. They resonate with me and what I'm saying and they want to come in. What I want people to understand is there's no magic pill. It is not a guarantee, but this is about finding the ways that you believe you're attached, that you believe you're energetically pulling a rope with someone and finding ways to drop the rope, finding ways, as you say, to come all the way in and sit all the way down in your own life with your own boundaries and your own wellness. The cool thing though is, as I said, you don't have to wait to start helping your loved one. But what's really common is people come in and they're like, so tell me the thing. What's the thing? And I say there is no "thing." There's no magic pill. There's no one thing to say, but come in and rest and take a few weeks. And when people are in here a few weeks, they're like, when are we going to get to the thing? And I'll just remind them it's not a thing. That takes a lot of repetition. And then you'll hear people say, I said something different in the text message and he responded in the way he never has. And there we go. And we start stacking. There're so many words we can use that are similar to Bright Lifing.
Susan:
It sounds very hands-on from you. This is not someone watches a bunch of videos and then goes off and does their thing or is it?
Kate:
Well, so every family shows up a little differently. We do have a book. We have a video series. Under $100, people can get into this. It depends on how regulated you are. I hear from people all the time that say, I read your book and I changed everything and everything changed. That can happen. I read your book and watched the trainings and I stopped after the second training because that's when a lot of people are like, whoa, I have to look at myself. They might take a year and then go back. So we're constantly reaching back out to people saying, you got the training, do you want to go back in and watch the rest of them? And we built the program for the percentage of people that need more community professional guidance. This community allows everyone to have -
Susan:
Or they just want it. Some people just want that one-on-one support like I would. I would just be like, no, Kate, you work with me directly. I just want to work with you.
Kate:
Yeah. So I say I can come in the back door of your house or I can come in the front door, right?
Susan:
Yeah.
Kate:
But the group program, which is in between, people wanting the back door would be the video training, people wanting the front door would be one-on-one. And then the in-between is come to a group because who can hire an interventionist for their own family or how many people can? It's really expensive. And, although addiction's expensive. Another sidebar that I just want to say -
Susan:
Life-threateningly expensive.
Kate:
Well, that expensive, but we also encourage people to calculate, write down, what are you spending? Are you paying their rent? My parents were paying my rent because I told them I needed them to. So, when we added up all that they were spending, they could afford this program hands down because they'd stop enabling and they'd stop spending.
Susan:
Can I interrupt real quick because I just want to backtrack on something you said a little while ago that I heard you say, which is I don't believe in making them hit bottom first. And I'm wondering if that's the big difference between your program and Al-Anon, because of course there is an amazing 12-step program called Al-Anon that helps families of addicts. And I've definitely been to some Al-Anon meetings in my life for sure. I know a lot of people who swear by that program. Speak a little bit to the difference of your approach and the Al-Anon approach.
Kate:
Yeah. We have a lot of families that are in our program that are committed to Al-Anon. And I will say those families get better faster because they're working a program. This is professionally led. Al-Anon is not. Al-Anon is pure stories. Al-Anon's narrative is there's nothing you can do, let them hit rock bottom. And we're saying there are some people in today's day and age with the addictions that we have and the way the brain is presenting and complex behavioral health that that's not helpful for. And so, Al-Anon, I will never dis Al-Anon. There are a lot of people that say, I need something else. Here's just an example. I was driving drunk literally in the moment. My sister ran to an Al-Anon meeting and the ladies were knitting and saying, "Turn it over to God, dear." And she walked out. Now, are they wrong? No. But was there something she could have done in the moment? Yes. And in my opinion, she should have called the police. I now tell my family, if that ever happens again, don't protect me from police. Get me off the road because I'm unable, like you said, my brain's blocked. I actually will convince you that I'm fine to drive and I'm good at it. I don't want you listening to me. I want you making the road safe, making my car safe, making the people in my back seat safe. So, that's where it's nuanced. So, Al-Anon's a fantastic program for what it's designed to do. This is designed to do something different, which is professionally guide people to be a strategist in this while you're untangling yourself from it.
Susan:
So, probably a little bit more active. Al-Anon is really a program for the family member to kind of surrender their powerlessness over the using addict and focus on making themselves happy despite whatever the addict does or alcoholic does or doesn't do, whether they sober up or don't sober up, you can still be happy. That's Al-Anon's message is you can live a good life.
Kate:
We have families in our program that are here for maybe a couple of years and they'll say, "I've learned now that I can be happy despite what my loved one's doing." They now have better strategy to help their loved one and they know when what they're doing is actually contributing to the chaos. So, they work really well together. I wouldn't suggest someone don't come here if they're in Al-Anon. When I teach a family how to use strategy to get their loved one to the table, all the things I'm teaching them to do actually are supported in Al-Anon, which is you're not in charge of their recovery. You're not responsible for their recovery. You're not to blame for their problem. You want to get out of the way, but you don't want to get so far out of the way. That's what happens I think with a lot of these messages is we cut them off and we kick them out or we're so understanding that we become complicit. And I want you in the middle. I want you to be understanding about the brain. I want you to catch yourself and say, "Ah, I know it's a brain disorder, but I just caught myself getting mad anyway, so I have some work to do on that." Right?
Susan:
Yeah.
Kate:
Yeah. I can see your brain going.
Susan:
Yeah. No, I love it. I love it. I'm just thinking about the people in my life and.
Kate:
Oh, sure.
Susan:
I mean, we all have family members who do stuff that we don't. I was just thinking about my own family.
Kate:
Well, it's not just addiction. It's do stuff that we think is not a good idea.
Susan:
Yeah. And then just remembering their brain works differently. That's how their brain works.
Kate:
People will say after a couple of months in the program, people will come into one of the live meetings and say, "This works at work." It actually works with all people. It's basically codependency. It's self-reliance. It's personal responsibility. It's improving our communication. I mean, it's an upgrade. The door in is just because you have someone that's struggling. But that's the beauty of this is it's a bright line. Also as your freedom increases, your capacity increases, your self-love increases. Who would've thought?
Susan:
Yeah, so how do people reach out to you, Kate, if they want to learn more? What happens? I know if I had an active using person in my immediate life, I would be reaching out to you. How would that work?
Kate:
People typically can book a connection call, which is a link that goes right to our calendar, get a 30-minute session. We offer also a full consultation with an interventionist if somebody feels. So, there's really two sets of. And sometimes people do the 30-minute and then go on to the one-hour consultation. It's very custom. Again, I can talk - so it's a 30-minute call or a one-hour call.
Susan:
Right. Is there a difference other than the length of time?
Kate:
Well, one is a connection call to explore what's going on in your situation to see what program or if one of our programs helps. The consultation is meeting with our intervention team in addition to our team member, and it's a full one hour structured for a couple of family members typically for people who say, "I know I need an intervention." So, that's really for when you know you're ready.
Susan:
Okay. Yeah. Got it.
Kate:
And you can start with the connection call to see if that's what you need.
Susan:
Excellent.
Kate:
But typically, people want to talk to us. We do lead workshops as well on Zoom, which are two or three hour events where people can get a sense of the whole, how it works, hear from people that it's working for. So, that's another way that people learn about the framework.
Susan:
And you have a book. What's the name of your book?
Kate:
The book is called Dear Family: Why Your Loved One Won't Accept Help, But How to Help Them Anyway. And it's really a letter from the part of your loved one, which is in there, that does not want to do what they're doing to you. That's in everyone if they're breathing and alive. It's really what they wish they could say, but they can't. What they wish they knew, but they don't want to tell them when they're drinking. All the things I tell my family now, I would be so upset if I were to relapse and they'd know now how to not co-sign the disease.
Susan:
Yeah. Is your program only for family members of people who are using drugs or alcohol? Or what if someone has a gambling addiction or a bad food addiction?
Kate:
It is for everyone. We are starting - sex addiction. Yeah, we are starting to have. We had someone with a spending addiction. Her husband had a spending addiction and she was here. And we're working in our daily deliveries to use language that's more inclusive because it really can apply. The question would be, how is it impacting you and are you finding that you might be tangled up in that chaos of someone else's life? That's really probably the determining factor of if it would fit for you because it's all the same, as you know, the patterns. And it's basically learning how to pull yourself out of that chaos so that you respond differently, so that you take care of yourself differently. And the outcomes are people are left with this bandwidth to now face their consequences if we're not rescuing them or accommodating.
Susan:
Kate, if there's someone out there who's got a family member or a beloved friend who is embroiled in addiction, and let's imagine that person's listening right now, but they're not going to read your book, they're not going to reach out and do a consultation call, what one helpful piece of advice would you want to leave them with? What one thing could they be doing differently that might really make a difference?
Kate:
Pause. Pause. P-A-U-S-E, not animal pause. Pause before you take any new action, pause before you pick up the phone, pause before you answer the phone, but just create space between what you are feeling and doing, what you're wanting to do, because that knee-jerk reaction is usually what's not helpful. And so pause and get curious. What's mine to manage here? What's not mine to manage? That would be my best advice. It's free. Pause and breathe. A lot more deep breaths. We're operating from breathing from here up. Our brains are flooded. We're not helping anyone at all in that state. So, it is put your feet on the ground, take a breath, and don't take any action for a few minutes. Drop in and you can get a little more curious. Your action will be different.
Susan:
Oh, so good. Kate, thank you so much. We're going to put the links to your consultation calls and your calendar. So, down below, anyone can click to, if they want to talk with you or your team, if they want to schedule one of those calls, that'll be there. Thank you so much. And maybe if you want to give us the name of your book again, we'll put it down there as well. There's show notes for the podcast. There's links below if you're watching this on YouTube or you're watching this on the Bright Line Eating website or on Facebook or Instagram or all the places you could be watching this. Any last thoughts, Kate? You're so helpful and wonderful. Anything else you want to share?
Kate:
Yeah. The addiction is not about alcohol or drugs or gambling. The addiction is about an unmet need, a trauma. There's something underneath, and you likely have an addiction as well to try to save someone or to try to help in a certain way. We just want to separate the two so we can be more strategic, eyes wide open and take different action. But it's actually not the worst thing in the world to be struggling with this when you find you have a solution and a path to walk out. It can be actually one of the most beautiful things. You know this. It can be one of the most beautiful experiences. I have families say, "As weird as this sounds, if my daughter didn't overdose and I didn't start this program, or if my husband wasn't an alcoholic, I wouldn't have found this level of myself." So, it doesn't have to be the end of the world. You need to be holding hands with people that are walking this path, and it actually could be one of the best things that ever happened to you.
Susan:
I love that. It might be really, really hard to believe from where you're sitting now, but I really do believe that that's true. Whoever's out there listening, if you have a loved one embroiled in addiction, Kate Duffy. Thank you so much. Thank you for your life's work. Thank you for your beautiful tenure as a Bright Lifer and all that you're doing in the world. I appreciate you.
Kate:
Yeah. Thank you.
Susan:
All right everyone, that's the weekly vlog. I'll see you next week.
