Beyond Coping: Rethinking Mental Health, Healing, and Recovery

Are we truly healing, or are we just managing symptoms? In this insightful episode of the Waismann Method Podcast, hosts Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II, Dwight Hurst, CMHC, and David Livingston, LMFT, explore the difference between coping with mental health challenges and achieving deeper emotional healing in recovery.

• Why do some people feel like they’re making progress, while others feel stuck in ongoing treatment?
• How can identifying and addressing repressed emotions like anger and frustration lead to relief and healing?
• When are coping skills necessary, and when is it time to focus on resolving deeper emotional pain?
• How does the way we process emotions impact mental health, addiction recovery, and overall well-being?
• What can individuals do to move beyond survival mode and experience true emotional progress?

This episode unpacks how emotions influence mental health and recovery and explores the ways we can move past symptom management toward meaningful healing. If you’ve ever wondered why certain struggles persist despite therapy or coping strategies, this discussion will offer valuable insights.

This episode offers an eye-opening look at what it takes to move beyond coping and experience real emotional progress.

Episode Summary

1. Coping vs. Healing: While coping strategies help manage immediate distress, deeper healing happens when underlying emotional patterns are recognized and addressed.
2. The Role of Repressed Emotions: Suppressed anger, frustration, and sadness can resurface as anxiety, panic, or unhealthy coping mechanisms. Learning to process these emotions directly can create lasting relief.
3. Balancing Coping and Resolution: Coping skills are useful, but true healing requires understanding and working through past experiences rather than just managing symptoms.
4. Therapy as an Active Process: Effective therapy goes beyond symptom relief—it encourages emotional exploration and helps people break free from patterns that keep them stuck.
5. A Path to Lasting Well-Being: Mental health and addiction recovery are not just about endless symptom management—they involve finding the right tools to navigate emotions, process experiences, and move forward with clarity and strength.

Transcript:

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: Hi, everybody, and welcome back to a podcast to answer your questions on addiction recovery and mental health, by Waismann Method treatment center and rapid detox. I’m Dwight Hurst, I’m a clinical mental health counselor and also co-host for the program. Joined today at long last. It’s been a little while since we’ve been able to get together by Clare Waismann, who’s a registered addiction specialist in substance use disorder certified counselor. She’s the founder of the Waismann Method Opioid Detoxification Specialists and Domus Retreat and Aftercare. Um, as always, also joined by David Livingston, who’s a licensed marriage and family therapist, our psychotherapist and mental health expert, and a leading expert in the areas of addiction and psychology, trauma treatment and just recovery of all kinds. Clare. David, great to see you guys.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: Great. Great to see you. It’s been a while.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Yeah, it’s been a lot going on.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: Oh, man. Yes. For those who are out there. Yes, we’re we’re, um. Of course, all the stuff going on in California and the fires and everything like that. Thank goodness everyone is safe. And and we are able to be, to be back together and doing that. So. Yeah. And how’s the at Waismann Method, with the detox and everything able to be up and running and everything? Yeah.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: Everybody’s there. We are in Orange County, so we operate in Orange County. So it’s 45 miles south of Los Angeles.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: And that worked.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: Uh, we’re able to keep on going.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: It’s an interesting thing. I mean, even during Covid, when we talked about during a lot of those kinds of things operating, uh, you know, health care and everything is ongoing throughout. And, uh, you know, it’s it’s always good to know mental health treatment and addiction recovery treatment and all the programming things. It just doesn’t stop the need for it doesn’t doesn’t stop either. And so it’s good to know that you guys are there doing that.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: Adjusting to the new reality right? Every day we adjust to the new reality.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: That is yeah. Yeah. It’s that there was always that there’s always lots going on. Um, well as far as our show is we always like to be driven by questions and the answering of questions. We got a really interesting one to focus on today that I’m really excited to talk about. So today we’re looking at a question that has to do with coping versus actual healing. So the question is are we just managing mental health instead of treating it? And this is a very I think we’re going to find, you know, very thought-provoking and also very important question to be asking because there are definitely a lot of times, you know, where we are just managing or in survival mode or something. And I think it is important to remember that that is not the same thing as healing. Um, so let’s let’s kick that off. What are some, some thoughts about this?

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Um, alright. I’ll, I’ll dive in. Why not? Um, so I mean, it’s a it is an interesting, topic to me, because the difference between managing something and actually healing it is, um, well, they overlap and they can be they can be separate, but there’s a lot of overlapping. So in thinking about this question, I was thinking I was I was just thinking about myself. And sometimes what is most personal tends to be also what is most universal. In fact, I would say that’s usually the case. So um, so here’s a, here’s a couple examples. So I sit a lot I’m a therapist, I sit I talk to people all day long. So I know for myself when I start to feel anxious, usually what I need is to go exercise. That will usually resolve my anxiety. So whatever, because it’s an imbalance, if you will. Okay, I’ve been sitting for too long, my body needs to move and so once I start to do that, my anxiety goes down. I feel good again. So I’ve learned that about myself. So that is a that is an ongoing process that keeps me healthy, that I’ve learned over many, many years. And you know, so I do it and it resolves, but I have to do it again and again, so I have to manage it.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: It’s an ongoing process, right? Because, you know if things get out of balance and so you have to manage it, but it also resolves it. So and the the other thing I would say is that, um, in terms of treatment is, is that we, um, we don’t choose who we are. We discover who we are. So I discovered that when I go exercise and I’m anxious, okay, that will resolve it most of the time. Okay. And we and we do know that about anxiety for most people by the way. Okay. So so not always though. I remember one time I was, um, uh, I was in the car with my son. He was, uh, we were we were running errands. We were picking up some things. He was leaving the next day, and he looked at me. He said, dad, you seem really anxious. And I thought, thought about it. I hadn’t noticed it myself. I was like, you know what I kind of am? And I realized in that moment, just by him asking me, oh, he’s leaving.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: I felt very sad that he was leaving, and I could actually feel the sadness that was causing me anxiety. And so because I could feel that and it resolved it because the sadness came to the, you know, we had a tender moment and then the anxiety moved into what it was meant to be. So you might say, this is so, so when you talk about treatment, you talk about a learning process in which people begin to know themselves in such a way that they know how to resolve these things that repeat in multiple ways consistently. So, you know, really a treatment is about figuring out who you are and what keeps you healthy, and then also being able to sort of deal with, you know, look, if I had a bias against feeling sad, I might not have been able to get there and I might not have been able to sort of go, oh, I’m just sad. I’m going to miss you. Right? And have like that whole no big deal, but move back into a fluid state. So I think these the things that happen that is both curative and is also ongoing management.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: I hear you. I think it’s an extremely valuable point on the, on that, um, short-term feeling or on that, you know, daily feeling where I see a lot of people questioning is therapy in a whole, um, you know, like, I’ve been in therapy for eight years. Not me. I’m saying people say I’ve been in therapy for eight years, ten years, 15 years, and I don’t feel I’m getting better. You know, I just go to therapy, um, and learn to cope with whatever feelings I have that day. But, uh, they don’t feel they are healing. Um, they don’t feel, um, they know they kind of learn to almost resist their emotions, um, or work through them. I think coping is an extremely important, um, thing to learn, but I think in some instances, healing and being able to diagnose the root issue in focusing on healing while helping the patient, coping with the present moment, it’s important. So I see a lot of frustrations in the patients we talk to, because they just feel that they are in this eternal treatment. Mental health treatment. And they never get the relief, you know? They never feel “Wow… I overcame” or even sometimes I think, a new perspective of viewing your life and, you know, your past and things that happened to you being able to see with new eyes. I think our memory can get very selective, very damaged through the years. So it’s it’s a number of different factors that I think frustrate so many patients for because, again, they never feel they have healed. They just feel that they are coping with those, um, kind of unwanted, unwanted or uncomfortable feelings. And they keep on going for treatment and therapy, but there’s never an end to it.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: You are bring up I think an interesting designation between the sea we’ve got. On the one hand, the idea of coping, coping with oftentimes is when we’re focused on skills, strategies, kind of the try this sort of thing. The take two of these and call me in the morning maybe I don’t know what it just basically coping and surviving each day. And then we’re talking about in like that therapeutic deeper processing to where maybe we’re feeling an actual shift in a way of like I’m emotionally processing in a different way, or I have processed through something to where it doesn’t actively bother me as much. And I mean, what I’m picking up, so far as we’re talking is it’s more an issue of focus and balance, I think, than it is either or. Right. Because if I go and I get some kind of treatment and they don’t teach me how to cope, I’m not even probably avoiding relapse or anything. You know, I’m, I’m going through each day and each day is going to potentially take me down and make me, you know, regress and be self-destructive. On the other hand, if I’m only learning a set of skills and this is where,and we have to know which programs are meant to do what things right. But if I’m only learning a sense of skills or doing homework assignments or something like that, and that’s all I’m doing. Am I going to experience that more deeper healing and processing at some point? So where do I find you know, what is the difference between those two? Might be one thing to say. And then how do we balance them?

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Well, I yes. So I remember when I, after I’d been licensed and I’ve been working, I took, I did some long period of training at a psychoanalytic institute. And there was a class, I think it was a six-month class. And the title of the class was Cure. Okay. So basically it went through all of these conditions. And I’m And I’m going to give an example of one. So one of them was. Panic disorder. Okay. So a lot of people and a lot of people who struggle with addiction also suffer from different periods of panic disorder. The cause of panic disorder is anger around dependency needs. So what that means is that people unconsciously and automatically repress their anger because it puts them in conflict with the people they depend on. Meaning, I don’t want to get angry with the people I depend on, because I fear it will affect my dependency on them. Meaning things will get worse rather than better. Okay, that’s the core conflict in it. So to treat it, all you have to do is get people to feel the anger. If the anger doesn’t get repressed, it doesn’t come up later on when they’re relaxed as a flood of heightened experience that causes, you know, a panic disorder.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Because if you think about what anger is, it’s intensity. So if you repress enough of it and it comes up as one big ball at one time, you get tachycardia. You get all the symptoms that happen during a panic attack. Okay. If you get people to feel the anger when it’s happening, it doesn’t become a symptom. It doesn’t change the fact that they’re upset about something going on in their dependency. I’ve seen this happen. I sent someone to see a psychiatrist once, and they wanted they needed some medicine for panic disorder. Ironically, the psychiatrist said, “Oh, look, no, you’ve got a history of addiction. I’m not going to give you some of the medicine that actually helps treat panic disorder”. Okay. The person had a panic attack after they left the office. Again, they’re angry at the psychiatrist. They can’t get angry at the psychiatrist because the psychiatrist is the person they depend on. Right. So you see that conflict. They have a panic attack. There’s usually a history of where they grew up in a way in which that feeling was disallowed. So there’s a history to it. So you start to unearth this. And the treatment is simple. You get them to feel the anger. Then it no longer ends up as a panic attack.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Now they have to then navigate how to talk to their psychiatrist, or then use that to go find a different psychiatrist. Because it turns out when someone has medication, they actually have far less panic attacks because they’re not in conflict. They have something they can rely on. And then the panic disorder actually goes down. Okay. So you can see how this gets complicated. But frankly, it’s my job to clarify how this works. Like the class I took on Cure helped people understand because all of a sudden they go, okay, and I’ll show this to him over and over again. And by the way, they never believe me at first. They say, no, I’m not angry. I’m not this. I’m like, yeah, I know you’re not. That’s the problem. Right. So once they start to feel it, that’s all they have to do. Because then it doesn’t get repressed. It doesn’t come out as a symptom. so that’s an example of something that’s curative for, for um, a symptom like panic disorder, which is, which is a profound thing that people suffer from. And by the way, can increase the tendency for people to move to a substance like an opioid or something to help treat it.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: But then again, is my question to you, David, are you curing the panic attacks or are you managing it with medication?

David B. Livingston, LMFT: No, no.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: What is triggering the panic attacks? Where is the root? Is they’re a therapy that, you know, will concentrate again while managing the panic attacks with medications, coping skills or whatever is there. You know, the importance of finding what’s triggering. Uh, how can we change that so it doesn’t occur in the future and doesn’t need to be constantly managed, not by medication nor endless therapy?

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Okay. I probably didn’t explain that. So I’m going to tell you exactly how you cure it. So you get the purse. So you say, how did you feel when your psychiatrist said, I’m not going to give you anything because you’ve got a history of addiction? Say, “Oh, I feel fine, I got it.” So forth. Okay. No, what they actually felt is they were furious. They felt let down, but they couldn’t feel it because of their history. So if you get the person to feel the anger that they don’t have to, they don’t have to act badly or do something that is going to be destructive to them or anyone else. They just have to feel it. The feeling of the anger and helping them with that is curative of panic disorder. Okay, because it doesn’t get repressed. It’s the repression of it that causes a later symptom. So that is curative. And once they begin to feel that, and once they can talk about and, and not automatically and unconsciously repress the anger before they’ve even felt it. So my job is to illuminate that. Help them to get them to feel it. Discover all of the tendencies and the history that has added to the negation of feeling that. And once they can do that, it solves the panic disorder. They’re going to be frustrated, they’re going to be upset, but they will have less of a tendency to have that symptom occur. So that is that is that clear?

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: It’s clear. The anger is the sign your body is sending you that something needs attention.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: Mhm. It’s. And one of the thing that struck me, there is a lot of times when we’re balancing this out coping would be how coping might often involve moving away from the anger or regulating my response. Um, whereas the therapeutic healing process is actually going to mean facing it head on, not avoiding it. So if I’m coping, skills might be necessary, like when I’m at my job so that I don’t lash out, if I if I’m having emotional regulation issues, I might need to use coping skills at work so that I don’t, you know, I’m being triggered and I’m going through all this. I don’t want to lose my job and freak out or something, or or rage quit. Uh, but then when I’m in therapy, that’s a time to not avoid the feeling. That’s the time to hit it head on. And hopefully overall going through that, then the panic anxiety will go down to where I don’t need the coping skills while I’m at work because I’m not as triggered. Did I do that right, David?

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Yeah. Look, look.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Well, I would say one of the things we have got more wrong than anything else, okay, is that we have we treat anger as a negative emotion. I mean, when I hear that, I think, okay, well, that’s the worst thing we could possibly do for people and our culture. It’s great for my business. It’s terrible for addiction. Okay. It’s right. Because. Because the goal isn’t to walk around angry all the time. By the way, that isn’t the goal. The goal is to take all of the intensity, okay? All the intensity, all of that life force that creates passion, laughter, joy, um, and the aliveness in people and sublimate it into all kinds of things. Okay. That is the goal of it. It isn’t. It isn’t to walk around angry, but you should have it in the background, because anger is also one of the most discerning, um, um, emotions we have. I like this, I don’t like that this is good for me. This isn’t good for me. And one of the things that happens with addiction is people don’t know how to use that, that feeling protectively. They tend to use it to throw in the towel, which is part of what happens with relapse. Instead of saying no, no, no, no, get that the hell out of here. It’s more like, you know what? What the heck? Okay. And if you think of the difference between those two, it’s a world of difference. So helping people configure this part of themselves better tends to be a movement towards what’s curative. Is that clear?

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: Yes.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: It’s clear to me. It’s almost like society in a way, from, you know, physiological conditions. You know, we usually look into the symptoms to understand, you know, the condition. And in some way, anger is something that it’s it’s almost denied as a symptom, you know? Um, it’s almost prohibited as a as a kid, as a teenager, as a symptom. So it’s hard to diagnose the issue because people are bottling up, you know, and bottling up and just living in that.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: So much of what we interpret as healthy is based off of things we learn at young ages. And a lot of things we learn at young ages are based off of a need for some type of societal management. If you think about school, for example, you know, you learn to kind of shut up and do what you’re told, right? That’s a value that’s a very valuable citizen as a young person is if you have those two skills. And unfortunately, we don’t always then come along and say, actually, that’s just a group management technique we really want you to be in touch with yourself emotionally and be able to express yourself. And here’s the cases where politeness is not as important as healthy self-expression and all that. We don’t we don’t learn that sometimes. And so that’s where I think we label an emotion as unhealthy instead of a choice that we make while experiencing that emotion. So, you know, if I do something either self-destructive or lash out at other people, we say, “Oh, I just got angry.” Actually, what we probably should say is something more along the lines of I reacted to my feeling of anger by lashing out at someone else and I, and instead of utilizing the energy that came from my anger to go to that person and maybe have a constructive conversation with them and say, hey, I’m angry with you. We need to talk about this. That takes longer to say. Then I got angry, right? But I feel like that’s kind of what we’re talking about is finding the healthy expression of an of an emotion or the healthy internalized like maybe goal or what the need that’s there. Instead of saying I should never be angry. It’s that how can I deal with anger in a way that is healthy?

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Well.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Right. And even better, it’s just to be a fluid state of aliveness. It’s just it’s just something that’s helping us recognize things we like or dislike. Things that are good for us aren’t good for us. You know, I had, we had, uh, you know, Italian food three times in a row. No, let’s go eat something else. Right. It doesn’t have to be some massive thing. Um, you know, and the other thing. And just to even drive this point home a little further, um, I think it’s a big shadow side of therapists. I think one of the reasons that people don’t get better as therapists like to be compassionate and empathetic, all of which is good. But frankly, the most compassionate and empathetic thing you can do is help people get better and help resolve the problems that are not getting resolved. They will. They will feel ten times more helped. And it’s the most empathetic thing we can do. But if you avoid the aggressive drive, if you avoid their frustration and anger, you will have incomplete treatments forever.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: And I think that’s really the goal of where we started with this whole conversation is, you know when people call and they’ve been in therapy, you know, for endless years and they just feel they, you know, that they’re walking the bridge. They’re walking the bridge. But they never get to their destination. You know, so they feel frustrated. They feel angry. And, you know, eventually, they start numbing themselves or finding other ways to cope with whatever feelings that are frustrating them. But I think David touched the point is, especially in therapy, it’s being able to talk about those things that are uncomfortable and helping people, you know, look at it, see it and work to get through it.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: It used to be that there was this expectation of just sort of talking through, talking through, talking through. And in some cases, I feel like the modern therapy techniques have gone more into real emotion-based. And I think this is also where you see more somatic techniques that involve some kind of like whether it’s body movement or EMDR or some of those kinds of things, internal family systems. A lot of these are I’m just bringing up these kind of modern trauma techniques. One of the things that sets them a little bit apart from old school talk-talk therapy is that they have more to do with centering in on the emotions, like what you’re saying. If it’s like, let’s see, can we access that anger? If we think about it enough, can we not just talk about what made me angry? Can I experience that anger now? Can I get there? And can I start to feel it and feel like where does it feel? And people will do things like, how does that feel physically right now? When you’re angry, put yourself in that mindset. Where does it come from? What do you need right now? Instead of just talking about something? As a list of things that happened last week and maybe more, more emotionally trying to have an experience in the session rather than just talking about it.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: 100%.One of the most helpful things I do is that I will ask direct questions. How did you feel you were in the middle last session. You were in the middle of telling me some things that were important and so forth, and I ended the session and, you know, and how what was that like? Oh, it was fine, I get it. We have a certain amount of time. No, they didn’t like it. They didn’t like it that I did it. They probably frustrated with me that I did. It is the other side of it. And so, you know and you evoke this experience. And here’s what happens. Here’s the other side of it is it’s the brilliant thing. Is that one they trust you more. The two, they they’re willing to bring more of who they are because what’s what’s entangled in their frustration and anger are the things they care about most. And so when they feel like they can have that experience with you directly, it just opens. It opens things up far more broadly and far and more deeply. And then they also feel like, okay, you’re not afraid. I can actually have these experiences with you. And I have all kinds of ways that I do this. It’s probably the thing that I make the biggest effort not to jump over, because if you do that, the therapy tends not to get better. And by the way, this is probably kind of apropos to where we started, in my experience, what leaves things most unresolved. Resolved.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: And I think again, we keep talking about anger, anger, anger that is a, you know, kind of tainted, uh, term in society. Anger often, um, you know, comes from pain, right? From, uh, unresolved wounds. Right. So if you could, uh, you know, find that wound and start healing it, you won’t need that anger to protect it.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Well, that’s well said, that it’s the door that once you open that up, there’s so much more in it, because the things that upset us or the things we care about, the things that are most true to who we are as, as people. And, you know, there isn’t all of that energy and all that intensity there for no reason. It’s there because it matters to us. And so as you get into things that matter to people, you start to start to also get to know who they are at a more profoundly and and so that’s the doorway.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: Where they feel accepted too. Yes, they’ve been accepted.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: There’s a certain level of vulnerability and honesty that we’re talking about to being able to say that if I, uh, it strikes me that, David, what you just mentioned, if my therapist has to say, hey, we’re sorry. We’re done. We got to go. I do understand it. And I do know we have a certain amount of time, and I don’t really hold it against them, but you notice I’m doing this like I’m tapping up here on my head. Listen, I know all that, but I don’t always feel that if I’m. If I’m hitting here, you know, on my chest here by my heart, my gut reaction is like, fine. I feel a feeling about it. And I think that the healthy connection or the acknowledgment rather of that emotional base reaction. You know, let’s say it is something like that and it’s not going to be a big problem. It’s just going to be a thing that happens. Something kind of pissed me off, but in my head I knew that’s not really reasonable. I’m not, you know, it’s not a correct logical statement, but it is a feeling and I know it and I accept it and I move on with my day, and that’s great.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: But if I don’t acknowledge it or I’m in denial about it, and I think this is key for addiction is a lot of times when you’re starting out with some kind of addiction treatment, we might say to someone, you know, what is your drug use do for you and say, nothing screws up my life. It’s terrible. It’s awful. It gets me into trouble. That’s great. That’s all up here, though. That’s what we know, that. But that’s not what I feel when I use drugs, because I wouldn’t use them if that’s how I really felt, if that makes sense. Um, does this make sense? Like kind of trying to acknowledge that I might know that something is either bad for me, or I might know the evolved healthy behavior I should be doing, and I might really believe it. And it might even be correct. But I have to acknowledge that there’s a part of me that’s like, no, I had needs and I was satisfying them. And they’re still important.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Yes. That’s right, that’s right. And the amount of times that I have had patients tell me that, that they have been told that if they’re angry, especially younger patients. I don’t especially younger patients who have said, you know, whatever treatment I’m at or something they’ve said have seen it as a the fact that, um, it means that I’m not ready to leave treatment, that I’m not getting better. Okay. Remember what what drives compulsivity in human beings, okay, primarily is frustration and perceived helplessness. So when I end the session, okay, the person goes into frustration and perceived helplessness, okay. Because, well, we have a specific amount of time and I’m interrupting them and to some degree in the middle of what they want to continue. Now, if the next time I say, how did you feel about it? They’re like, oh, I know we had a certain amount of time, right? Right. And I say, yeah, but you drove all the way here. You’re right in the middle of something. I’m taking your money afterwards, and, and that’s the only feeling you had. It’ll come out and they’ll say, well, no, actually, it does bug me. I don’t like it. It’s hard. Okay. Now there is, there is you were out of perceived helplessness because there’s somebody who’s going to hear it. And then on top of it, you tolerate the frustration. You tolerate the tensions with them. Right. Okay. So there’s a way forward here. And so, you know, So many people feel trapped, you know? I mean, I guess that’s what we’re really trying to talk about in a, in a general way today is how do you not feel stuck. You know, so really it’s it’s my job to, you know, and for you too, to make sure that you there is a way forward, right, that you can help the person see the way forward depending on what it is.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: Yeah. Well, I think that, uh, when we’re when we are looking at, uh, what people are bringing into it, especially going through the, you know, go through the detox procedure, you’ve now stripped away what was the coping mechanism? I think that’s why people tend to fall into in the early days of that of trying to be healthy and going through this treatment, trying to be sober. Um, they fall back on coping because they’re. And that’s the risk is that long term we don’t want to just replace, you know, a completely unhealthy method of coping like drug abuse with a slightly healthier or maybe even a lot healthier method of coping. Um, unless we then are also stabilizing those things. Right? Because then, um, because then we are at a more healthy, stable place. It sounds like is is the overall long-term objective.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: But I think, Dwight, now you are, um, talking about, you know, a subject that we have talked about numerous times. So especially when you’re talking about our treatment, what we do is, uh, reverse opioid dependence, uh, help your nervous system starts regulating, um, you know, where it can start working in a natural way, where, you know, your endorphin levels, dopamine levels where your sleep, nutrition, your whole health starts finding a new baseline and stabilizing. But it has nothing really to do with, you know, your past experience, trauma. Some people have, you know, major depression due to a chemical imbalance, all those things. But again, all those things cannot be properly assessed or dealt with until detoxification and opioid dependence are reversed. So it’s it’s it’s two different things. And um, it’s very important for patients, uh, to understand that, that this is the beginning of a healing process. So first we heal the body, help the nervous system, you know, start working naturally. And now we have to heal the mind. And that can include a number of different things. Like David said, sometimes he needs the help of a psychiatrist to deal with the physiological side of the symptoms the patient is feeling in order to, uh, effectively help him emotionally. Um, so again, getting them to cope through the symptoms in order to achieve the goal, you know, to get to the destination that is healing where you’re not living with the pain of your past. Doesn’t mean that life is going to be comfortable forever. You’re truly just, you know, healing the past so you can go forward.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: Absolutely.

David B. Livingston, LMFT: Well, I mean, kind of apropos to this topic and what you’re saying, Clare, I would say the thing that. And I’d never really even thought about it quite like this. Is that, um, really our treatment is, um, both the medical part of it. And then, um, what I do and what we do thereafter is, is built towards a cure. It isn’t built towards greater coping mechanisms. Okay. And I don’t want to overstate this because, you know, we all need coping mechanisms at times. But greater and more coping mechanisms is not the goal. The goal is to cure things, the things that can be cured, to make sure they get cured. Okay. Because, um, the thing about coping mechanisms is they’re all limited and they all give way eventually. Okay. None of them sort of… That’s why you want to resolve everything you can. Um, it’s just a better way to live it, partly because it just leaves more of you accessible, you know, uh, to, to do other things, but. Yeah. Our whole treatment is based on the notion of curing whatever can be cured and moving forward in that regard, rather than just creating further and further coping mechanisms. Some people aren’t ready for that. Many are.

Clare Waismann, M-RAS/SUDCC II: I think that’s a huge difference of what we do. You know, I think a lot of treatment centers there are truly just helping you survive. We want you to thrive. You know, um, we want you to go forward, um, be productive, healthy, happy. Although I think every treatment center in the world wants that, I think some of the protocols just truly keep you surviving and dealing.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: It’s it’s a tricky thing. I think you bring up a really good point, which is that that is hopefully right. The goal of any treatment program. I think that one of the things that’s very hard in this field is, we tend to be going back to what you had said, David. The professionals involved, we tend to have empathy and compassion and we’re very emotive. You know, we’re idealistic in our the way we do things. We tend to hang on to things that we think help. And sometimes we don’t stop to learn what helps helps. And you know that that goes all the way to individualism, individualization and listening to a patient and also learning and applying things that actually do seem to work observably with people, and not just the thing that I learned a long time ago that I thought sounded cool. And people tell me it doesn’t help them as much if that if that makes sense. And so that’s where it’s a great balance of being that compassionate person. But as you put it, David, part of compassion is learning how to actually heal and help someone. Right?

David B. Livingston, LMFT: It’s what I would want most. I mean, uh, if you know people to sort of answer the beginning, people don’t want to be in therapy or in treatment forever. You know they don’t want to. What they want to do is get better. They want to feel like things are getting resolved. And it’s the greatest gift in the maybe the most compassionate thing you can do is help them. You know, and at least be able to clearly articulate what’s possible and what isn’t and begin to understand that with them. So just even within that realm, it’s like I was talking about anxiety. Look, everybody who’s alive has some anxiety. Everybody. So it isn’t something that is that’s not just cured. As if as if you will never have any anxiety again. That’s unrealistic. That said, people have it. You know, there’s a big spectrum, but you can learn how to manage it. And you can also learn how to resolve the things within it that can be resolved. So, you know, they also go hand in hand, but becoming clear about that. It is a type of cure.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: Yeah. Well, it’s all well said. And these are things that, hopefully those of you that are out there, as we always like to remind, if this is something that you wonder, does this touch my life? The answer is yes, it does. Whether it’s something. We had a sorry something was coming back through on somewhere. Anyway, my voice was coming back at me. So I’m going to take another little run at that. Um, as I’d like to remind people whenever we talk about these things, uh, if you wonder, does this touch my life? And hopefully, you’re already aware that it does. Because if you yourself are not actively going through this right now, then you know someone who is and you may not know who they are or of them. But if you’re listening to this, chances are you are aware and you do know, uh, that these are things that are necessary and helpful. I hope that everybody out there will take the time to think about this, to share this, and to let people know that these resources are out there. We may all have struggles and we may suffer at times, but we don’t have to suffer alone and we don’t have to keep suffering.

Dwight Hurst, CMHC: That’s one of our main messages on the program here. And because of that, we definitely want to hear from you. Anybody who’s out there that is listening, you can reach out to us. You can go to opiates.com to learn more about the  Waismann Method approach and to contact us, you can contact us at info@opiates.com or #WaismannMethod on social media. Um this show is a production of the Waismann Method Opioid Treatment Specialists and Rapid Detox. The music for our intro is the song Medical by Clean Mind Sounds and with, uh, here with Clare Waismann and David Livingston. I just want to take a minute to thank everybody for listening and for being part of this. I want to remind everyone to keep asking questions, because when you ask questions, you’ll find answers. And whenever you find answers, you can find hope. So long everybody. Have a have a good time. We’ll be back with you again soon.piates.com to to call or contact us as well. We’re also very active on social media. We’re #WaismannMethod on all the big platforms. And we’re just we’re just grateful to be here with you. Remind everyone out there that you should keep asking questions. If you ask questions, you can find answers. And when you find answers, you can find hope. Thanks again everybody. Thank you.