“Recovery meant getting honest with myself about my contentment and quality of life. I had to realize I was settling for less than my full potential.”

In this episode:

• Honesty with yourself – and how that evolves with greater self awareness
• Excuses and lies of omission
• Using lies to hide and cover up addictions, imperfections, mistakes and flaws
• Dishonesty and perfectionism
• Advocating for yourself as a part of honesty
• Recognizing the physical reaction that happens when you are dishonest
• How ego applies to honesty
• Understanding – and getting honest about – underlying subconscious beliefs
• The freedom that comes with living an open and honest life

“I always believed it was okay, as long as I didn’t get caught.”

Let’s connect!

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Transcript:

Julie: All right. So welcome to episode 83 of Through the Glass Recovery podcast. I am really looking forward to this conversation.

 We have all newcomers to our podcast tonight, which doesn’t happen very often anymore. So we love fresh blood and we have a squirmy topic on top of all of it. So I think it should be a great conversation.

 Yeah. So I’m going to go ahead and let Kenny start us off with an introduction. 

Kenny: I was hoping someone else would start off so that I can kind of know how I’m going to do it. I was going to jump off their back, but I’ll start. So yeah, I’m Kenny Hill. I run a private practice in Sacramento called Recovery Hill.

 And my private practice focuses on substance abuse and trauma. And I would say the bigger thing, like there’s a, that’s the theme now, if you’re working in the addiction world is you’re combining trauma along with the addiction work. So I would say what I do primarily, if I had to kind of narrow it down is I try to help people do things that they otherwise thought was impossible.

 And I help build resiliency within a client over a prolonged period of time so that they can sustain sobriety, not just get abstinent, but have this sustainable sobriety. So that’s what I do professionally. I also have a podcast called the Patina to Podcast.

 That’s just getting rolling. And again, the underlying theme within that podcast is resiliency. So I talk to guests of all different types. I try to make it guests that are very relatable. That’s just the common man and woman that you would find at the grocery store or something like that. And so, but yeah, the underlying theme is resiliency. And we just kind of follow the guest origin story and follow that path and pick up on areas where they chose to make decisions that benefited them that otherwise they wish they could avoid, but otherwise did because they knew it would be good for them. So that’s, yeah, that’s the Patina podcast. I’ve been sober for 17 years and yeah, I can keep, there’s a whole list of things I could keep talking about, but I guess that’ll probably be in the show notes.

Julie: Yeah, for sure. I definitely send us your bio, send us the link to your podcast, all of that stuff. And for our listeners, you guys know you can go check the show notes and find out more about all of these people and make sure you check out all of their projects in the recovery community. But yeah, Kenny, it’s great to have you. Super excited to get to chat with you tonight. And next we’re going to go with Adam.

Adam: All right. Hey everybody. My name’s Adam Head. I’m really only on Twitter right now, or I guess X at the Adam Head. I am not a recovery professional or recovery coach or anything like that. I’m actually a safety consultant. So anything pertaining to OSHA and risk loss management mitigation, particularly in construction and industrial sectors is kind of my forte. 

I’ve been sober just over five years. I would say I’ve been what I consider effortlessly sober for about two and a half of those when I kind of got on the recovery train and was really looking at the underlying reasons for why I was running away from myself with drinking and alcohol. So I guess my big philosophy is to look at principles over methods and I tend to guide my content with that as the direction I like to go. So yeah, that’s pretty much it for me. 

Steve: I’ve been following you for a while and I love your content on X and I love the way you think and how you try and open that box and try and discover a little bit more about yourself and throw it out into the world and let everyone see what their or to see where you could see what their opinion is and their thoughts are on the same thing. It’s just a neat discussion to be a part of and watch. 

Steve: Great. Thank you. It was nice having you on. 

Julie: Yeah, really good to have you here. And last but not least is Emily.

Emily: Hi. So I have about 10 years. I just celebrated 10 years in December. Sober, clean and sober, whatever you want to call it. And it’s been the best 10 years of my life. You know, it took me a while to get here and I had to take every drink I took in order to find my way.

 So I am in a 12-step recovery program and that’s just the way that worked for me. And I also, sorry, I have a frog in my throat of all for all days. I also, I’m part of a real estate brokerage and we created a recovery community within that brokerage for real estate agents because we are a very substance heavy industry. Everything’s a happy hour, you know, every networking event and every, you know, all the stuff that goes on and it’s a high stress job. And so we see a lot of that. So we created this community where like 700 strong just within our brokerage.

 And it’s amazing. It’s what I like to call like non-denominational, like you don’t need to be in a 12-step program. Some people do yoga, some people do, you know, other meditations, some people do other different types of, you know, we have a guy that he’s on our board and he climbs mountains. That’s his thing. So that’s how he stays sober. And it’s like, whatever it takes, man, whatever works for you, you know? So, yeah, so I’ve been an agent for about seven and a half years now, been sober for 10.

 So you can see that one had to happen before the other could happen. And my hashtag is real estate recovery and rescue dogs. So my big dream is to, at some point, you know, earn enough money to fund or bankroll or find investors to help me grow a sober living community that is also a dog rescue that’s intertwined where I picture like this cottage colony, you know, and there’s sober people living in the cottages and they’re, you know, they’re maybe a little further in their journey than just straight out of detox or whatever. And they work at the rescue and they have to foster in their cottage and whatever, you know, I just have all these ideas. So, yeah, so that’s a little bit about me. And I live on beautiful Cape Cod and I love it here. And I get a lot of, a lot of solace and peace just, you know, walking on the beach or even just sitting down there when it’s too cold. It’s like, when I think about my higher power, all I have to do is like, look at the ocean, you know, obviously I’m not the most powerful thing in the world. So that’s enough.

 Julie: Really cool. Thank you. Well, it’s great to have you.

 I love that we have voices coming from all different areas and different versions of recovery. I think that’s my favorite thing about this podcast is, you know, whatever works for you is awesome. And I think every voice on every story needs to be heard. So really happy to have all three of you with us tonight. 

So for our topic, show of hands, how many of us were great liars when we were in active addiction? Yeah. Okay. So that’s all of us, since this is an audio only podcast. Yeah. So dishonesty tends to go hand in hand with drinking to excess and dishonesty usually comes with a lot of guilt, regret, denial, and avoidance. For most of us, getting sober meant that we also had to get honest. So what does that look like for you? What have you had to get honest about and how did it affect your life and your recovery?

Steve: The floor is yours. 

Emily: Do we just jump in here? 

Julie: Go for it.

Steve: Whoever wants to go first and then we just let it fly. 

Emily: All right. I’ll start if nobody else wants to. For me, I’ve been thinking about it since I saw the topic and a lot of my dishonesty was with myself. As I was working steps, I remember reading, where was I? Dishonest, fearful, self-seeking, afraid, whatever. And being like, I wasn’t dishonest.

I was always honest and that in and of itself was dishonest. So I didn’t do a lot of ripping people off in what I think of as the expected way, but I did things. I stole from employers.

I worked at a CD place once or a record store when I was young and man, that was a fun place to get new music from. And then I had the money to spend on what I wanted to spend it on if I did that. So little ways like that.

 I was really dishonest by not showing up and not telling people why I wasn’t showing up. I would make up excuses for why I couldn’t go to things, not because I started drinking in the morning and couldn’t drive by two in the afternoon. I wouldn’t tell them that.

 There would always be some other reason. So I just wasn’t there. I was not present.

 I wasn’t participating in my own life or in the lives of people I loved. I was a big hider. I would just try to hide everything I was doing all the time.

 And anybody tried to call me on it or it was like, oh, not talking to them anymore. And so they’d be like, what did I do? But I just didn’t. Oh, if you’re onto me, then you can’t be part of my life.

 Yeah. So there was a lot of stuff like that. There was a lot of creative math in one situation that I was in and I’d borrow and I would put it back. But it wasn’t supposed to be what was happening. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I’d borrow from it. And then I had till the end of the month, you know, to make it up. And it got real scary sometimes when that money just wasn’t there. And it was like, what am I going to do? And then, yeah. So I fudged more than I outright pickpocketed someone. You know what I mean? So it certainly would have gotten there. It was towards the end.

 It was really bad. And I would play these games of like, where am I going to pull money out of today? Do I have anything that still has tags on it or isn’t out of the package? Do I have money in the couch or an old purse I threw in the closet? Is there any change in the bottom? And when you get to that point and you’ve already raided all those spots and there’s no more coming, it’s like that’s when you get to the point of, well, how am I going to get what I need or what I want, you know? And, you know, there were times like, so for a long time, I had lived downstairs from my parents. They had a basement apartment that I rented for way below fair market.

So I was stealing from them in a way, you know? They could have gotten better money for that. And I was taking that spot of somebody because I couldn’t get my shit together. Oh, yeah, we can swear. I should not get- Yeah, no problem. Yeah. So just all those little ways that it really, when you look at it, it’s like I was stealing and I was dishonest.

 And, you know, I stole from relationships that I wasn’t honest about, things I did or, you know, people that, again, that I just never spoke to again because I did something shady and I was so ashamed that they would find out. And so I just distanced myself, you know, and just didn’t respond to the wedding invitation or didn’t, you know, just those kinds of things, like never RSVP’d when I look at it now and I’m like, she probably wanted to know, like either way, like why are they not RSVPing, you know? And it’s like, I can’t really tell you why, but there’s a reason I’m not coming, you know? Yeah. So that was a lot of it for me.

I know as the other guys share, things are going to pop up in my brain because that’s how it works. 

Julie: That’s why we do it this way. It makes everybody think.

 Totally. I’m in the last year diagnosed with ADHD. Finally, I understand like what is wrong with me. I mean, not wrong, but like why my brain works like this. So my working memory issues make a lot more sense. I thought I was coming down with Alzheimer’s at 47, you know what I mean? Like, so yeah, things will pop up and stuff. So I’ll let someone else talk and hopefully it’s okay to just be like, oh, oh. 

Julie: Yeah. That’s what we do here for sure.

 Steve: Yep. It is. That’s what we’re all about. Round table discussion.

Kenny: Thanks. So yeah, I think, so within the intro, there’s like a focus of lying within the addiction and our time in addiction. I was a liar far before my addiction, as a kid and that kind of stuff.

 I think a lot of it was about identity, wanting to be impressive to other people, that kind of stuff. So there was always little lies here and there. I can’t remember necessarily having huge lies off the top of my head, but the lies got bigger as addiction came, right? So I remember, so I’m a combat veteran with PTSD and I was already an alcoholic before I went in the military.

 I went into the military at 18 and I was already drinking a fifth a night at that point, right? So I was already alcoholic before joining. In fact, my first detox was basic training. Yeah. My first detox, And my second detox was Afghanistan. So that wasn’t fun either. But yeah.

So I only say that to say when I got out of the military and they gave me 15 grand of medical, with my medical discharge and all of that chopped up real nicely and went into my nose very easily and very quickly. When my behavior began to slip and began to become very odd and I began to become extremely thin and all these sorts of things, whenever there was a side look toward me or whenever I felt like there was judgment toward me, I had this great card that I can pull. I’m a combat veteran with PTSD.

 How dare you question me? And that was just a big lie. I was blaming my behaviors and how my life was going on this combat PTSD card. And I knew full well I was using that, but also there’s a part of me that wanted that to be true.

 So it was hard for me to decipher between the difference of I’m obviously lying, but also I’m a victim and here’s the reason why. And so it was hard to decipher that for me. Yeah.

 think like, let’s see. I don’t know. I have several things that I wanted to say, but like, I don’t know. Are we going to talk about like now that we’re sober or do I need to wait for that part of the discussion? 

Steve: Whenever you want to go. Yeah. There’s no rule there.

 Julie: We like no rules. That’s our favorite. 

 Kenny: So I think now with sobriety, it’s something where the consequence of dishonesty is so overwhelming with this internal voice that used to only sound like an internal critic, but now sounds more like an internal accountability partner most of the time. And so when there is now, if it’s small, like even say like with my kids, okay. So, oh, you lost your tooth.

Awesome, buddy. Well, the tooth fairy is going to come tonight, right? Santa’s coming this year. All that sort of stuff. So there’s like little things there where like with the kid that’s four, not a big issue, but the kid that’s nine, we had to have a conversation this year, right? Because my internal accountability source was like, dude, like the older he gets, the more disappointed he’s going to get. The more you’re going to rock his role and potentially rock a future faith system for him if you continue to lie to him about this. So that was a hard conversation we had to have.

And so there’s little things now, I think, and all of it’s ego-driven, right? So like if a client texts me and then I don’t text them back immediately because I do something like, I wish texts would have it to where you could mark it as unread. So it still shows up as bold or whatever, but it doesn’t. So I’ll read the text and then I’ll be like, okay, I can’t respond right now.

 So then I’ll, okay, I’m going to respond later. And I completely forget. And then by the time I respond later, or even if this is even more embarrassing, if the client’s like, hey, by the way, I still asked you a question. Are you going to respond? Then I have this natural inclination to say something like, hey, sorry, buddy. I meant to push send, but I didn’t push send, which is a total lie. It’s a total lie. I just forgot to get back to you. And so there’s this natural inclination to try to hide the fact that I was not attuned to them and their text in the moment. I was too busy for them and I didn’t get back to them. But then when I respond with what I’m embarrassed to say, which is like, hey, I completely forgot, my bad. There’s never shame. There’s never like, how dare you? We’re done. You’re fired as my therapist. There’s not anything like that done. 

But my internal, there’s this internal part in there that’s like, okay, they’re going to hand it to you. You’re going to be in big trouble now for lying. And so there’s some of that too. But yeah, I think there’s, I wanted to say, how am I going to say this? I think sometimes there’s these internal battles where I have to check whether it’s ego or whether it’s worth it. Because part of it’s like, if I am not honest now, then there’s a part of myself that- When am I going to be for it later? No, no, no. Well, yes, that too. But there’s a part of it where it’s like this internal advocate, you need to advocate for yourself.

And I’ve done enough of not advocating for myself to where I feel shame afterwards. I feel awful. I feel mad at myself.

Other people get the brunt of it because I’m mad at myself for not advocating and being honest in a situation. So there’s that. But then there’s this careful balance of like, maybe I just need to shut up and not continue this argument with my wife because I need to get my point across because my ego is hurt or something.

It seems like that would be an obvious marker in your brain where you’re like, okay, on one end, it’s not about ego or it is about ego with your wife. So just shut up. On the other end, it’s about advocacy for yourself. But the lines are kind of blurred for me a little bit. And it’s hard to tell the difference sometimes. And I can get myself into trouble with that.

But yeah, I had lots of other thoughts, but I’m going to shut up for right now. 

Adam: Well, while you were the last part there, I kept thinking that one of the recurring themes that I especially in the early stages of my sobriety was, does this make me right or does this give me what I want? And when I got down to, this goes with the honest part and dishonesty, but when I finally was able to clarify my own values and what I wanted my life to look like, then I could guide my decisions with, is this my ego saying I want this because I want to be right? Or is this my self saying, I want this because this is what I want. And if that decision is guiding me towards what I want versus this need to be right, I tried to go with the one giving me what I want.

 And that kept me out of a lot of trouble in the beginning. That was just kind of my guiding mantra with everything. And then every now and then I find myself in a really sweet spot where what I want is also what is right. And when that happens, the day is just like perfect. 

Steve: Right? So one of those days you’re just like, man, everything is perfect. That’s like when I call that my head and my heart aligned.

 Adam: Yeah, exactly. 

Steve: Right. So it’s like head, heart, mouth. Right. And so if the head and if my head and my heart are in alignment, everything that comes out of my mouth is going to do the right thing. It’s going to guide me the right way and exactly what you said, right? With what I want. And it’s going to be full of honesty because that’s right. And if I go with what my head wants, this is how I did the same thing that you’re talking about. If I go with what my head is telling me, that’s going with what I want instead of what’s right.

 You know what I mean? And if I go with my heart, my heart goes with what’s right. So when they both align, it’s like that’s that magical day. That’s that magical moment.Completely easy decisions.

Julie:  I think like the longer you’re in recovery, the more often that happens, right? Like I don’t think I ever lived my life where my head and my heart were aligned, not on any kind of regular basis for most of my life. I didn’t really start drinking heavily until I was like 30.

 But even before that, that’s not how I lived. I never even had any awareness of that. I know now, if I’m dishonest, I can feel it physically in my body.

 My heart starts racing and I get all tense and I’ll start sweating. And a lot of times it’s not even that I’m lying. It’s just I don’t want somebody to find out about something.

I think Emily kind of touched on that. I wasn’t so much an outward liar, but I was really careful to hide and cover up everything that might really point to who I really was. Interesting.

 Adam: Lies of omission. Yeah. One of the things I was going to say, what I had to get most honest with myself about it, I should say where I was probably most dishonest in my life, was what I was telling myself about my quality and my contentment with my life where I was.

 Because I knew that I was capable of so much more and that I had kind of been settling for a really long time for the easy wins and the easy, oh, this will work for right now. All the way down to the fact that I had to come to grips with that from my marriage and my divorce and all the blaming that went on with the reason for the divorce between it being her fault, then it was my fault, and it was all my fault to finally understanding that it was a relationship that just wasn’t working. That was fuel for the way you were feeling, I was feeling, and being dishonest with myself about how I was feeling, and then being dishonest with others by not letting anyone know how I was feeling.

 That was the biggest hurdle for me to overcome. Once I finally did, I shouldn’t say I finally did, with probably anybody except my parents, I am completely open with feelings. I don’t know what it is. I still haven’t figured out what this block is that I have with them specifically. I’ve got theories and stuff, but with just about anybody else, I can be completely 100% honest. With them, it’s like, how are you doing today? I’m good.

 It’s probably the guilt and putting them through everything that I did with trying to get sober. I don’t even want to touch the subject, but you might be thinking that I might be having a hard time. I don’t even want to put that on you. Anyway, that’s one of the internal things. 

Emily: For me too, I was always terrified of getting caught since I was really little. I wasn’t beaten or anything, but if anyone, if I just, I don’t know, and that went into my drinking too, like getting caught with the worst thing.

 Adam: I’m glad you said that because it took me a couple years of working with a CBT therapist for her to finally pull this out of me. We were doing, what did she call it? She called it a thinking report. Basically, we were discussing the last time I had drank. She finally asked the questions either in the right sequence or use the right wording or something about trying to get down to the belief behind the behavior. When we finally got to this one question and she said, wait, say that again. I said, well, I was drinking because I knew that I couldn’t get caught.

She goes, now, let’s look at that sentence. She goes, all these, we talked about it, but basically I had this belief that it’s okay as long as I don’t get caught. Perfect. Apparently, this is very common with everybody, regardless of whether you drink or not, but yes, I had the exact same thing. I was so like, we’re going to develop this because I was not dishonest up until I started drinking. The lying bin was more about self-preservation.

 Yeah. My dad used to have this saying and he meant well by it. I’m sure it’s something that he heard growing up too, but it was, it only takes one ah shit to wipe out a thousand attaboys. Somebody can tell you a thousand times, you’ve done a great job and you mess up one time and guess what? All those great jobs are gone. 

Julie: That’s how you create a perfectionist out of your child. I feel like my dad never said exactly that, but I feel that deeply because that was my belief that I grew up with.

 Adam: Exactly. It never dawned on me because I mean, I heard that all the time growing up and it was never in the context of me failing. It was just something that was said.

 I guess as six, seven, eight, nine-year-old me internalized that and then it helped fuel this feeling of as long as I don’t get caught, it’s okay. When I really had no idea that I had created this belief, but once I figured that out, that’s why I said, well, I said after one’s recovery earlier, that’s what I meant. As soon as I figured that out, I was like, well, I’ll be damned.

Steve:  Julie, you said about the feeling of lying now when you sweat and it gets uncomfortable. It hurts.It’s like almost heart-wrenching, right? Especially when you know it’s coming out of your mouth and you’re like, God, what am I doing right now? And still follow through with it. The interesting part was, is when you talked about that, I understand that feeling. I got the same feeling when I started telling the truth. So lying was absolutely comfortable, right? It became my social norm. That’s how I protected myself. That’s how I stopped myself from getting caught.

That’s how I operated. I had a couple of different lives that I was managing, and inside of those lives that I was managing, I made sure that those people never saw those people. So the lies would maintain themselves. Lying became absolutely comfortable. I didn’t sweat at all when I lied because that was my truth. When I went to start telling the truth, I felt that exact same way. I sweated. I was nervous as hell. It was scary as all get out.

It was painful. It was as painful as lying is now. When you said that, I was like, I remember telling the truth and it feeling that same way.

Emily: It’s such a good indicator of the transformation, right? I think that’s really interesting. It reminded me of just being, I don’t know, eight years old and visiting my Nana and breaking her toilet seat because I was standing up on the toilet in her senior living home, going through her stuff, snooping. I’m like, what’d she get up here? It was like a rinky-dink and it cracked.

 I come out and somebody else goes in and they were like, what happened? I was like, I don’t know. Did you break it? No. What does it mean? Is there anybody really going to be mad at me for that? No. They wouldn’t know how it broke. I wouldn’t even tell them the whole truth of like, I was snooping. It’s like at eight years old, my instant reaction was just deny, deny, deny. If you don’t admit it, you can’t get in trouble. 

Julie: That right there though, that’s what, I did that. I can feel that. I’m sure that I did all the same similar things where you just don’t want them to know so you deny it, right? That carries into such big things. To me, that goes back to the perfectionism, right? God forbid anybody know I made a mistake or that I screwed up or that I’m not perfect or that I have this flaw and that was my life. That’s all of the lies for the most part.

 We’re just trying to cover up all of the imperfections and nobody was going to hate me for some of the things that I did. It’s not that it was going to end my world or that I was going to lose friends or whatever, but just God forbid anybody know any of it. Then I turned into an alcoholic and I was hiding that on top of it because God forbid anybody know, right? That’s what it was for me.

It was all shame. I just didn’t want anybody to know I wasn’t perfect and that just added to it. Yeah, I feel that. I can imagine eight-year-old me doing the same exact thing.

Emily: I remember when I was between, I don’t know, 10, 11 and 13. I remember 13 because I moved. The biggest thing that I had to hide was who was the boy I actually liked. If anyone found out, I was going to die. I was convinced that I would just die on the spot if anyone really knew me or knew who I really liked.

 I’d made up imaginary boyfriends from the summer and stuff. It was just like, why even go that far with it? Why not just whatever, just say I don’t like anybody instead? No, oh, it’s this boy I met when I was camping in Maine. It just come up with a whole thing.

Those are the things I look back on and I’m like, that’s just weird. That behavior, but it was true. 

Adam: In trying to counter all of that dishonesty because that’s just one, your ego popping up to protect yourself.

 Two, what I’ve really been focusing on the last four or five months is embracing my humanity. It’s recovering from being the perfectionist. When you realize that, hey, you’re a human having a human experience, there’s going to be shit.

 When you embrace the fact that you’re going to have it, might as well run with it and love it. It’s hard to wrap my head around that concept 100% and live it in every moment, but I make an effort to and I see an exponential increase in the quality of my life and others around me, at least my perception of them. 

Steve: Story. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve either made a mistake at work and the mistake is going to cost some money. Instead of admitting the mistake or whatever that may be, or wanting to tell someone that something broke because I know they’re not going to, or it was my fault because I made that decision or whatever it was. Every time I did not want to tell the truth, I wanted to, yeah, I would take the time to try and build a story that made enough sense where I didn’t have to take the ownership of it.

 Not so much as throw other people under the bus, but it was okay if they got in a little bit of trouble along the way. I’m listening to everybody talk and that to me, I was built. I went right to shame, not guilt. I bypassed guilt and went right to shame. If I made the mistake, that should just be guilt. My self-worth, that’s all self-worth based.

 Everything’s in the tank. I bypassed guilt and I’m shame. I am bad now for making this mistake. I would completely do whatever I could to avoid the whole thing. The little white lies that stack up. 

Steve: Kenny, do you have anything? You’ve been quiet.

 Kenny: Yeah, I’ve just been taking in what everybody’s saying. I think I resonate with some of it. Some of it I don’t, but I think there’s things that I resonate in there.

 Even Steve, just the thing that you were just saying, where these lies stack up and then you’re connecting to that shame of this identity of, well, the shame is I am whatever this perceived sin is. This is what I am. Part of it is, since this is a discussion of honesty, is I am very tired. I’m hanging in there. I’m hanging in there right now. I had a really long training run today.

 Part of it is, I’m just kind of in this, which is not good for a podcast. I’m in this mode where I’m sitting in here and just resonating, but not a lot of feedback is coming back from me. There’s my honesty for you.

Julie: That’s totally allowed though. I love it. Now, can we talk a little bit about the feeling of freedom that comes with finally being honest? I started my recovery story, this round of sobriety, I started going to meetings on Zoom. Once I found them, I wanted to go to them all the time. I was going to three or four a week. I told my family that I found an online support group for people with anxiety, because that somehow was more acceptable. They didn’t know. Nobody knew I had a problem with drinking. I was like, sorry, here’s dinner. I threw it on the table and then I ran upstairs and got on my computer so I could talk to these people that actually understood me. It took like two months before I finally told my husband, so hey, here’s what these meetings are really about. I felt free.

He was great. He was like, oh, I’m so glad you found something that’s helping you. It was like the first time I said out loud, I have an alcohol problem and these people are really helping me. Then from there, it was like this sense of freedom. I was like, oh my gosh, I want to start telling the truth about everything now. That’s when I started, like Adam was talking about the perfectionism and the flaws and all of that and just being human.

I started letting myself show up just as a human at that moment. The sense of freedom that comes with that is incredible. Even if you do have to stop and go back and show up and be honest and be like, hey, so actually I lied. Here’s what really happened or whatever. The freedom feels so much better that it’s so worth it. I just never gave honesty a chance for the first 39 years of my life, but yeah, it’s a great way to live.

 Kenny: Excellent. Yeah. That’s what I was kind of mentioning earlier.

 There’s consequences for lying. Then that stuff piles up over time. The relief that you get, like I was mentioning earlier, it’s almost like you almost feel like when someone is like, oh yeah, no big deal, you almost feel kind of like, why did I do that to myself for so long? Why did I put that pressure on myself for so long? I feel like the reaction should be bigger.

 I deserve a larger reaction for that. Even if it’s a positive reaction, like, wow, thank you so much for being honest. That’s incredible, Kenny. Wow, you’re such a good person. Or be mad at me, but make whatever the reaction is, make it big because what I’m feeling right now is big. I get that.

Steve: I love it. I love it. Match the reaction to the feeling. That’s like my inner child. 

Emily: Yeah. I was so good at being dishonest that I had a lot of friends tell me when I stopped drinking, which I didn’t tell anybody for three months because just in case I wanted to go back to it, I wanted to have a reaction. I was in the closet sober for three months. I had a lot of friends come up to me and be like, oh, I didn’t know you had a problem. Yeah, because I hid everything.

I was like, I would pre-drink, we’d go out, I’d try to drink like a respectable human being for the couple hours we were out, and I could always hold my liquor so I wasn’t falling down drunk while I was out. Then I’d go home and get the job finished until I passed out and ran out. 

Steve: That’s so true.

 Emily: It is. It’s so true. I’m like, yeah, because I didn’t do it in front of you. I’m not going to do that. Then I’d tee everybody off. They’d all be like, oh, my god, Emily has a problem. I had to be like, oh, no, we’re going to keep this on the DL so nobody knows. So much that my denial was, I had to really break through that really hard to finally admit that I was an alcoholic because I was like, no, I’m not that bad. I never got divorced or lost custody of my kids or crashed up a car or foreclosed in a house.

 Well, I never got married. I didn’t have kids. I never bought a house. It was like settling for what else? Of course, you know, I lived in my basement apartment by myself. But yeah, on the other side of that, man, the freedom is my pink cloud was about two, three years long because I was so elated to not be hiding and lying and doing all that anymore to actually just be able to be and be me and come to terms with who I was and get comfortable in my own skin. It’s been like I said, the best 10 years of my life.

 I mean, it’s just been incredible to me. And I grew up going to Ala-teen like that was mandatory in my house, but I wasn’t there for me. I was there because, you know, dad was an alcoholic or whatever. And I never really applied it to myself. So you can go to meetings all day, but if you don’t actually take the stuff you learn and apply it to your own life, it’s not really going to have the same effect. But yeah, so it’s been incredible.

The other thing that’s been really freeing for me is that every single day I turn, when you were talking about the alignment of the head and the heart and all that stuff, for me, it’s like God’s will. And my God, my higher powers, like I said, it’s more like the universe, the ocean, mother nature, like that sort of thing. The universe is big for me because all energy matter is energy, you know, just that whole kind of thing.

So when I say God, that’s kind of I mean, but when God’s will lines up and I take my will out of the picture, like everything goes great. And when I try to pull it back and I’m like, I want what I want and I’m going to make it happen and it just doesn’t work out. And I’m like, why doesn’t it work out? This stakes, you know, it’s funny. 

So the freedom of like not having to be the one driving the bus all the time and being able to just rely on the fact that the universe has my back and the law of attraction is real and that I don’t have to force things. That’s been like the best thing for me in my life. Absolutely.

Adam: I was going to say, you mentioned to be who you want to be or who you are. For me, probably the most freeing feeling was when I was honest with myself about my own beliefs. And I don’t mean just spiritual.

 I just mean the beliefs that I held about myself and determining which ones were actually mine, which ones were given to me through parenting, which ones are given to me through society, figuring out the ones that actually aligned with my values and getting rid of the ones that I was just kind of paying lip service to and truly getting honest with myself that way has changed my life immensely. And I think that’s, to me, that’s what recovery is. We’re all trying to get to some version of that through some way of getting there.

So it’s like I said, principles over methods any day, but that sense of freedom has just been far above anything else. 

Steve: The most interesting part about that is those limiting beliefs. I’m just kind of going through this part of it right now, myself, realizing, waking up to what’s been handed to me, what I’ve taken from society and made mine.

 And all of those that aren’t mine that I’ve taken, that I’ve created, that I’ve allowed to be mine are the lie I decide to tell myself to protect myself from seeing the other side of it because I don’t know it exists. But inside of all of that, I’m just figuring out the freedom of letting that go. And I’ve done this a couple of times where I’ve like, oh my God, this isn’t even mine.

 I’m just holding onto this because it came from over there. It came from a parent. It came from work.It came from the TV. And to let go of that has been absolutely, absolutely freeing. I remember my first moment of freedom.

And that was when I started telling the truth instead of the lie. And I broke down in absolute tears because I heard other people tell the truth. And I was like, oh my God, I can actually say this stuff. Like the crazy that’s going on in my mind right now has an actual place, a safe place to land. Like I can, I don’t have to lie to you. Yeah, I don’t want to. You want to hear the truth? That’s recovery community though. Nobody wants to hear the truth. And then they’re like, no, dude, I really fucked up. 

And you’re like, I drank and drove and I did all the rest of this stuff. So did I. And me too. And all of the validation that came along with telling my truth began opening up this amazing door of recovery.

Julie: Yeah. So I just have to say really quick, you’re talking about limiting beliefs. And I think we were actually, before we hit record, we were talking a little bit about authenticity. And so, because I like to bring authenticity into every single episode. 

Steve: Here she goes again. 

Julie: I’m sorry. I can’t help it. It’s okay. 

Steve: I did it last episode. I was like, I’m going to pull the Julie card. 

Julie: It fits everything. Okay. So my recovery really started when I started reading the book Rewired by Erica Spiegelman. And I’ve talked about that here before, but there’s basically, I want to say 10 or 12 different areas of your life that you kind of start investigating. The first one is authenticity.

 And that’s like the foundation for all of recovery, right? Is knowing who you are, knowing what you really believe, being true to that. And then the second foundational piece of that, that book is honesty. And I kind of realized like once you put those two things together, you have authenticity is basically being honest with yourself.

 And then the honesty piece is being honest with the other people in your life. And if you have those two pieces, everything else is going to fall into place. Your relationships are going to improve. I don’t know, just all the different parts of life, they come together in a way that you can live with them and accept them and handle them. If you can just be honest with yourself and then be honest with other people. 

Emily: Authenticity is something that I always thought I was good at.

 But then when I got into this career, I went from being a caregiver who drank all the time, got sober, and then went and got my real estate license and started my own business. And I had this idea in my head of what I was supposed to look like, what I had to dress like, what I had to talk like, who was I going to be? And it was like I was playing a part and I felt like it didn’t fit right. Nevermind that most of the other agents drank all the time.

 And I was like, who do I even hang out with? What do I do? How do I learn this stuff? And I got all these business clothes that I thought I was supposed to wear. And now the last five years, that was the first couple of years of the business. And now it’s like, I just am who I am. I’m out on social media as far as being sober and whatever. I don’t care. If you don’t want to work with me, that’s fine. I have a lot of people in my recovery community that choose to work with me because of it. And I just put it all out there because it’s just who I am. And if you don’t like me, I don’t care anymore. I used to really care about that. And now it’s like, okay, well, that’s cool. So we don’t have to be friends. There’s billions of other people in the world. It’s totally fine. 

Steve: Here’s something honest. Not everyone is meant for us and we aren’t meant for everyone else either. Exactly. It’s just how it works.

 I’m going to wrap this up and I don’t have to say a whole heck of a lot because you guys were awesome on this episode. You guys covered so much ground. I love it.

 So long of the short of it, rely we tell is baggage that we’re going to hold and carry until essentially we correct it. And once we start getting honest, all we do is end up with the freedom at the end of that tunnel. Plain and simple. I want to say thank you, Kenny. Thank you, Adam. And thank you, Emily, for joining us on this episode today.

Julie: That was a great conversation.