“The family dynamic is going to change forever.” Eric Rodgers joins us to talk about being a caretaker from an early age, deciding to be a “helper,” and working with adolescents. This includes managing and prepping the family dynamic for change, understanding individual identity, and having a planned recovery and discharge plan. Enjoy.
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The Illuminate Recovery Podcast is about Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Addiction Recovery. Shining light on ways to cope, manage, and inspire. Beyond the self care we discuss, you may need the help of a licensed professional. Curt Neider and Shelley Mangum are a part of Illuminate Billing Advocates. They are committed to helping better the industry and adding value to the lives of listeners by sharing tools, insights, and success stories of those who are working on their mental health.
Transcript (no grammar): the family dynamic is going to change forever eric rogers joins us to talk about being a caretaker from an early age deciding to be a helper and working with adolescents this includes managing and prepping the family dynamic for change understanding individual identity and having a planned recovery and discharge plan enjoy welcome to the illuminate recovery podcast we shed light on mental health issues mental illness and addiction recovery ways to cope manage and inspire beyond self-care we will discuss you may need the help of a licensed professional my name is kurt neider i'm a husband father entrepreneur a handyman and a student of life i avoid conflict i deflect with humor and i'm fascinated by the human experience and i'm shelley mangum i am a clinical mental health counselor and my favorite role of all times is grandma i am a seeker of truth and i feel like life should be approached with tremendous curiosity i ask the dumb questions i fill in the gaps hey everyone we are so excited today we have eric rogers with us and eric is coming from the great state of georgia today he is um willing to be on the podcast and share some of his experiences he's currently working with adolescents out there and um and has a fabulous story eric thanks for being on the show thank you i'm glad to be here yeah and like i said i work with adolescents and i will tell you i enjoy it a lot it's an interesting population to work with and i'm happy to share what i'm here on the podcast with you fantastic we're super excited to have you hey maybe give us start let's start with maybe a little bit of background tell us a little bit about where you come from and and maybe tie that into how you got where you are now sure not a problem i grew up in a small town millageville georgia and which was uh originally the capital of georgia before atlanta interesting fact about where i come from i grew up you know with both my parents at home but i grew up with a father who was handicapped at a young age for me so i learned early on to be a caretaker and be very independent and learn how to survive you know in the world by being the one who takes charge you know and i had my mom there but she worked you know most of the day and so often times you know i learned to cook you know five or six years old i was cooking on the stuff you know so that was sort of my my upbringing and i brought that into what i do in therapy and initially when i came to the field of wanting to be a helper i started off in coping and i went to australia and i lived in australia for a year to study under dr anthony grant over there because he had developed coaching psychology was the first evidence-based approach to coaching that he established and when i learned about the theories of counseling that's when i said oh my gosh i want to explore counseling and see what this is because initially i didn't have an interest in it you know one day on a quote unquote the positive side of what we do on mental health but once i actually got introduced to counseling phil it just blossomed and i grew in that field and i brought my experience with me and working with adolescents you know one of the things i sort of understand from many of them is depending on the background they come from a lot of people have this independent nature and i also learned to develop as a kid growing up and being able to relate to that being able to help them you know push through their struggles by understanding half of them are kept ignorant at a young age you know take their brothers and sisters and their stories were resonates with me and that's what i do what i do with them these days that's incredible um and i love that you can relate because i think adolescence adolescents are smart right these teenagers are smart and they know like they have these huge bs meters and they know when you know when you're coming straight with them and you're being honest and um and authentic and when you're not so it sounds like you you know like you really can relate and connect with them yes i do and i understand what it's like to have the pressure to perform you know especially you know a lot of times with them with addictions it is that a pressure to perform because parents are now questioning you right they're asking you if you're doing something in the adolescent eyes that makes them less than or makes them appear to not be living up to what their parents expectations are and it's pressure to perform that i really am able to connect with them on and you're talking about um i hear you talk about some of the pressures and some of the challenges that adolescents have right now parents are one what would you say if you had to summarize the things that really um that adolescents are struggling with now that you're seeing and if you've seen it shift what do what are those things what would you identify those as yeah i think one again is uh you know working with the parents and struggling with that the other one though i think the way we develop an identity as an adolescent has shifted greatly uh from when i was growing up and versus the world experience now so when i was growing up my identity was really isolated to the space i was in within my family and the school i went to now with social media and everything that's going on your identity development is now more of a global thing right it's this with the whole communities with the whole state and so developing this unique sense of identity is a lot more difficult for adolescents because it's not isolated the other one i think that they're struggling with is i think in a world where we have more and more families where both parents are working very few parents are now at home with the adolescents adolescents spend a lot of time alone they don't have that support or someone to sort of guide them as much as they did in the past right i think for a lot of them they are making their their learning in life on their own sometimes the parents have an opportunity to step in and buy some guidance but one of the problems is parents are busy and because they're so busy they have they don't have the time to teach and to have those deep meaningful conversations that you would expect parents and the adolescent to have that's huge that's huge and yeah because um social media at least was when i grew up and when you grew up was non-existent matter of fact computers were non-existent back in that day right there was no cell phones there was none of that and so that transition um is is very fascinating and we don't i think we really don't understand how that affects these kids growing up today but i love that you talked about that and also the family dynamic um you know more and more it's requiring two people two you know two members if you have a mom and a dad right or however your family structure is it's taking everybody in that family to work in order to you know just pay the bills and just keep a roof over their head and food in their mouths and so some of the the priorities shift a little bit and some of the time shifts a little bit so that's really hard um i'm wondering how do you when you're working with these adolescents what kind of engagement do you do with the families because obviously that that family unit is impacts the way that they see the world exactly working with the family is essential right if you can't have a good treatment program if you're not working with the family if you don't have a family engaged in their own treatment you don't have them in support groups you don't educate them about addictions and you don't get them involved in the treatment early on the chances of successful recovery for the adolescents are very slim so for us you know one of the things i really believe in when we're working with the families is helping them understand first when they come to treatment with their adolescent they think it's a change for the adolescent and really helping them understand hey every way that in every way that you have lived your life when this adolescent come home it changes for you too right recovery is a lifestyle change but when it's an adolescent it's a lifestyle change for the whole family it is a family disease in a sense that's the way i present it to them that you all have to change and that's hard because you know you have families that necessarily don't have alcohol problems but alcohol consumption is part of the culture of the family maybe at the big family dinners they sit around sit around and drink wine now they're looking at oh so you're telling me i have to give this up he's telling me like that's how we bond as a family and now how they have families some people say things like well does he have that problem he is the addict why do i have to live the life as a recovering addict when i'm not and that part is very difficult for a family and i think sometimes that's what treatment programs miss but helping that family understand just what it takes to help the adolescent on the road to recovery because it's much bigger than just treating the adolescent you can't you can't treat an adolescent or anybody for that matter put them back into the same environment they were in and expect that they're going to thrive in that environment that expects them to behave and engage in the same ways they did before they went to recovery right exactly and i think that is the part that adolescent doesn't understand and the family doesn't understand if that family dynamic is going to change forever yeah in good ways in good ways but in the beginning it feels like punishment to the parents it feels like the punishment adolescent right and everyone is like i'm fighting and then at a time when an adolescent is fighting for identity here we are pushing on them an identity change right at the moment where they're even struggling to figure out what that is a lifestyle change but changing up energy wow that's incredible so okay now my curiosity wants me to kind of go back into the story that you shared a little bit of here you know you got a dad who's disabled early on in your life if i understood that correctly and this whole dynamic in your family and and then this curiosity to want to do coaching and get into counseling talk about that a little bit about how what you just talked about applied in your own life um well like the story of of doing your own work right of doing your own counseling maybe or learning to to be a coach how did that change the dynamic in your family and you know your personal life yeah so you know having a bed that was uh you know disabled at a young age really gave me a different family dynamic right i had um i think there were things that i experienced that people didn't realize i experienced for instance you know every other kid can simply say i want to go spend the night somewhere right i had to plan that out in advance right i had to make sure my mom would be able to be there to care for him and help him as much as he need because you know my father transitioned to being handicapped when i was like three or four right i have very few memories of him walking there on a cane and so he you know my whole childhood was him learning to be independent on his own so i couldn't go out and just hang out like everybody else right the other part is though learning to be a caregiver at an early age also had a huge effect on me as an adult right now because i was a caregiver as a young age i value freedom and sometimes i wonder if i value it too much right because i've already had that feeling of taking care of someone right i don't have kids now i like working with the adolescents that i work with but you know that's not the freedom is important to me now uh the other thing that it taught me though was it was really inspiring at the same time as a struggling relationship struggling uh childhood in a sense but it taught me a lot and one of the things that taught me is really what people can overcome in their resilience right so to give it an example i couldn't play another kid right i struggled for many years to learn how to swim and i had all these individual lessons and then one day i mean we're on vacation and i'm sitting in the pool and i'm struggling to swim and my dad is sitting on the edge in his wheelchair and the next thing i know i see him rolling a little closer to the edge rolling a little closer and he just jumps out of the air into the pool and i've never seen him swim and he swims and laps the whole pool without the lap use of his leg and he grabs them to the side and he grabbed my hand and said hey i'm gonna teach you how to swim and we're gonna swim together and that was an incredible moment for me to swim with my dad who i didn't even think it was possible for him to swim and that's something that really inspired me right that's something that i take with him i work with the clients because those situations seem hopeless but i know when working with them they have a chance because if my dad can jump in the pool without using legs and teach me how to swim right i feel like there's a way for people to be resilient and overcome even those big issues that we wow that's an incredible story i mean i i and i'm sitting here thinking man what was your dad thinking is was he afraid to get in that water did he know he could do that because that would have taken a lot of courage on his part i think it did right because he had never gotten in the pool before he sat out there many years with me but i think it was this moment he felt like okay everyone has a pride to teach him let me step in and help myself right yeah let me show him how to swim because i don't have any legs and you know i can't use my legs and if if i can do it without using my legs then he's going to have that confidence that he can do this correct and it helped me alleviate the fear right i was scared to go underwater scared i was gonna drown scared i didn't have the skills but hey if you can do it with just two arms i had two arms and two legs i knew it and i could wow what an incredible story and so talk a little bit more as you as you progressed as you got older right and you were starting you went to australia to train as a coach is that a life coach is that what you're talking about yeah sort of i i don't really like the term land coach right because the way we think of life coaching in the sense that we think of the two week courses with not really a whole lot of training into it right so part of going to australia was that i did understand the danger of coaching that it you really have to have the same skills as a therapist to really do it effectively uh and that's part of me why i went to australia to learn but while there and i learned a lot about resilience happiness and overcoming uh you know adversity however the problem was when i spoke with therapists when i started coming back and really considering therapy at the point of neutrality right it's like once i reach the baseline of being that i'm not necessarily dysfunctional but i don't necessarily have to be highly thoughtful either right i started neutral point and then there's discharge what i love about what i've done and what i incorporated into the therapy and i even transferring clients over protein is that helping you understand that mental health continues to regret no health but not just the unhealthy part of it right mental health but also that resilience that perseverance that grit that flow all of that is meaningful and it's the barriers to make sure they don't experience mental health issues like in the future right but importantly mental health treatment doesn't build you up with the the quality leading me as a bumper to metal to metal issue we only preach the death in this and then retain the neutral so that's what i love about coaching and that was really what drew me to it and that's what i do a little bit different with my counseling practice really working on both ends and that's natural and that's an important piece that you just brought up eric is is the fact that you know even in in substance abuse or mental health treatment we we can only go so far insurance really is what insurance will only pay for so much and once you get i kind of like the way you said you get to this kind of neutral place where you're functional you know you don't have severe you know you have this great severity of symptoms and then okay you can go back out and live your life but they still don't have the the capacity or the skills that they really need like you said to be resilient and to be able to address those mental health and or substance abuse triggers cravings that they're going to have in the future right that's all part of their body and part of their makeup and they're going to come across relationships and people that are just going to trigger them and how are they supposed to manage that outside of treatment right and and what's that gap in between and so tell me how you kind of how you look at that and how you solve some of those those gaps one is so i'm working on both ends of the spectrum so one is you know clients can come to me whether they have insurance or not right so we can you can start off with insurance and then you may transition a client to pay so that you can work on issue that helps them to continue to grow one of the things that we do that if you transition to coaching even if it's not with me part of my discharge plan is i'm going to find you a highly qualified coach that can support you as you transition so even whether it's in recovery you need someone who can support you when you face those new challenges right and help you continue that learning process i think too often you know when we discharge let's say from a residential facility right we set them up with a therapist who's going to discharge them in their traffic right and but no one is setting them up with a peer support specialist or a coach that's very rare on the discharge plan and i like the fact that we do that right so i wanted to help on the other side the other side is what we call the flourishing so we helping them you know they may have learned how to cope with the addiction and learn how to you know say no to the refusal trainings right but what happened when that moment let's say they fall in love right and love is great that new lover now wants to start drinking oh what are you eating drugs are they prepared for that to have they know to love again you know are they prepared for that moment where and we all know recovery is right you always get in that one moment where you had a situation you weren't prepared for and you don't have one to really turn around and process and develop those skills for that moment we that's part of what coaching can do and coach engage you re-engages you with activities you enjoy i'm gonna have a mission in life i'm gonna make sure they have a purpose for what they're doing in life we're gonna make sure they learn how to you know experience hard times but not think about it in the same way that they would have when they're depressed or an act of addiction you want to develop that skill the better and more skilled they become at that the less likely they are to relap but unfortunately and not to say that you know 12-step programs are not helpful in the sense that they do or in a you have a sponsor right but these are not people trained to develop specific skills that are leads towards happiness and growth and the analogy for me um is your physical health if you've got symptoms if you've got an illness right just like with mental illness you got to get to the hospital you need you need a provider who is trained to take care of you but like you said if you don't have symptoms if you're a neutrality you don't go to the hospital to get more healthy you go to the gym right and you need somebody who understands nutrition and muscles and your physical makeup and all that kind of stuff in order to get you know in order to make progress and and this is the exact same way and those crowds are good in the let's meet at the park and walk around the outside right that's a great social group to get together and have community and create activities but they're not necessarily certified professionals they're not nutritionists they're not those they're not that crowd who's going to really help you be able to understand and digest what you need to get to the next level i think it's awesome that you're breaking that down and clarifying the difference right that flourish part i love that you know and even things like should you know one of the things i talk about sometimes should a career coach or career counselor be part of a discharge plan right should that actually be part think about it if you're in recovery part of what you have to do to get back out in the workforce and you haven't been set up with a career coach that's very difficult for some of them they haven't learned how to interview a lot of them don't know how to write a resume yeah or they spent many years out of the workforce are we really setting them up for success at that point yeah that's the kind of stuff i think uh really helps them on that flourishing side and some of those tools are tools that they didn't have and those things tend to help you end up in an addiction circumstance anyways right if you're if you're failing to be successful in life period you know that that tends to add you know suffering and anguish and emotional you know struggle that tends to you know support addiction i think it's super interesting that you work with adolescents and that that combination of working with them and the family right because you talked about independence and identity and when i remember when we had our first daughter walking out of the hospital and like kind of being shocked there was no test nobody no we didn't have to get for permission from anybody it there certainly was no manual right so like not only does this person come into the world and have to figure themselves out without a manual like each of us is doing but parents are no different we have to figure it out and so that makeup of an adolescent who even if their parents don't drink or do drugs right we're still all kind of struggling through you know the muck of making it through life anyways and so it could be that it's shame right it could be that the parents are you know overeaters or they're religious zealots or like you you name it right there's there's plenty of kinds of addiction that aren't substance abuse and they might not even have any of those it just might not have the tools to be really you know helpful healthy strong parents and then taking that kid who's trying to figure out who they are in that dynamic picks up an addiction even if they get the help they need going back to that dynamic is just such a mess right so that that that part's super interesting to me um i would be curious as to how responsive families are to that right i would it seems like there would be a lot of that just fix them and send them back type mentality unfortunately uh and it's not that the family the parents don't want to be involved they have a reason to believe that so sometimes it is well i have three kids two turned out okay only one didn't so it cannot be me right because i have a proven track record right and so and part of that is helping parents you know get out of this sort of linear way of feeling parenting right they think if i do a and b that it's going to automatically equal c that a kid is going to be successful and having them understand the complexity right understand the individual differences between all the kids they have so what may have worked for the other two does not work for the child at hand right and even helping them recognize sometimes those more acceptable issues than the other kids that they have accepted that they realize then okay maybe the parenting wasn't as as great as i thought it was because even though this kid is not necessarily on drugs or addiction having an addiction they're perfectionists right and they're over achievers in a sense and really driven by that to the point if they get one failure they have to go and support the kid and get in therapy but they don't look at that as being the same as now i have a kid who's having an addiction to drugs right and so sometimes you just have to help them draw those connections the the other part for the parents that is interesting with the pushback is let's say if the child comes in and they get some type of mental health disorder along with addiction families are parents are relieved right they're like oh my god thank you it's not me he has something right or she has something and so helping them draw that connection part of this um the education for families is helping them understand you know you have an adolescent who already has just being adolescent you don't have fully developed brains right then you add drugs to the mix which is going to slow that and delay that development even more and yet we're expecting them to make great decisions and it's just not going to happen and what parents do they say well i almost like these safe to fail experiments in a sense i saw he was having some trouble or she was having some troubles i wanted them to fail and experience it on their own and learn from their mistakes but then i'll say well then when did you ever process that with those failures with them well you know i didn't really have time to you know i just assumed he or she would learn because they had such a huge consequence and helping them understand no that consequence was huge to you that consequence may not have outweighed the value of whatever activity they was engaged in and you make an assumption that they learn we have underdeveloped brains right and so now what i tell parents when i'm working with them especially if they have younger kids coming through is hey you know you know i do crisis prevention training and one of the things we say is that we respond to any change in typical behavior and now tell our parents that hey the moment you know notice any change in your child's behavior you should be intervening you should be asking questions because the moment you wait till it becomes a problem the child at that point their chances of recovery are so diminished and so it is an uphill battle with parents but and i think sometimes in this field you almost look at it as the parents are not loving but you quickly realize they are they're doing the best they can they're actually doing what they think is right and they are actually giving it their all they just don't know how to adequately use their resources and they're basing a ton of that on the way they were raised right so they're like mirroring something else that was broken yeah so what is that when you bring in parents is that what does that look like for you you know both in your um facility or in your in your you know therapy is that is there a kind of a pre you know treatment questions of like hey are we all engaged is this something everybody can wrap their heads around are there are there group meetings are there interventions during treatment is there are there meetings afterwards what does that process look like sure so when parents come in the first thing we do is start educating them on addictions right and educating them on to start thinking about what changes they need to make right the other part we do is we set them up with support groups that they need to start attending while the kid is in treatment whether that's smart recovery for family and friends uh aladdin groups whatever that is they need to start attending that because they need to learn the other part though in the family piece so in a lot of facilities and it's interesting uh and some of them do it right but you work with them when they think of family sessions they think of family sessions with the family and the kid but in reality you should have family sessions with the family at the kid and family sessions just with the family right because we have to process just with the family get them to cope understand the reality understand their influence uh in the problem right and so and you have uh parents who come in and say hey you know when he said he had an interest in smoking or vaping i said well go ahead because that was safe and i said well if he can just try that maybe he won't use anything else so she won't use anything else right and not realizing well you helping them and teaching them a bad decision at a young age and even though you think it's safe now you got an underdeveloped brain that feels that effect of a drug they're going to go seeking other challenges now right you know and more likely to be influenced by peer pressure with that because they don't feel the risk from it uh that part of what the we do with the families that those official questions with the family that i do ask is what are you willing to do to enter your workout right and and i get them to tell me that distance and get them to really write that down because i'm gonna haul them to that right hold them accountable to it and then i challenge them on what that is right now the fact you hear some people some parents say well he's 18 in about six months so if i get this because they're quiet right but i help them understand hey no let's let's try to build this commitment further because you have to and sometimes working with parents is reconnecting them with the love they have for the kid they had that when they were five right because they love that five-year-old kid and the fortunate part is sometimes having to understand it's okay not to like your kid and still love them right [Music] and sometimes they struggle with that i hey i understand you have a kid who's addicted who's probably being unruly at home making you feel guilty for some of uh the rules you try to enforce i get it if you don't like them right now but let's reconnect to the love you do have for them because that's gonna support you through this treatment process that's powerful i am wonderful i'm curious about you talked about this we talked about this gap between you know leaving therapy and counseling and and really having someone to go with you in real life to help you you know manage some of those things that you're going to face and and as a coach you're able to go with them and do that you know far beyond therapy but what about the you know the 18 year old who doesn't have an income who maybe he doesn't have any money or she and and they need this help how are they going what services are available to you know to these adolescents that are transitioning to adulthood and really don't have the family support that that's going to help them with that what what's available to them when they don't have resources and that's a great question right because they are very limited out there and part of it is again you know doing the support groups a lot of times i tell them to go to a variety of support groups whether that's uh so like a dharma recovery right you do dharma recovery you get that spiritual aspect that meditation and mindfulness which is very helpful the other part i try to set them up is with community resources like for instance goodwill has a tremendous amount of career readiness programs and trainings to increase their learnings uh sometimes i may send them out to fdic training for learning how to bank a lot of them don't even know how to manage a checking account i think this you know at the very least if we can set them up with the resources to learn the basic skills they need to survive out there there's plenty of resources for that and those people within those resources somewhat become supporters right to teach them they can ask questions and that supports that further development that they need because if they can't afford a coach it is going to be very difficult for them but i do think if you can set them up with resources that helps them learn develop the skills they need those life skills those are plentiful in a lot of communities i like that well and these kids these kids don't know they have no idea that there's that there's adults out there and that there's programs and resources out there and so um you know i'm kind of a fan of dr daniel siegel um you know who really talks a lot about the adolescents that's kind of his specialty and and you know although they don't want to be told what to do um but they are willing to learn right they're really anxious to learn about life and so we can educate them and help them know what their their resources are and then we have to help them maybe help them choose but ultimately it's up to right and i think working with adolescents too is realizing part of that change process is not the immediate effect you have on them right now and realizing sometimes it's five years down the road and then all of a sudden it it clicked right they're like oh that what you taught me five years ago now makes and i would rather someone be prepared five years down the road and ready for change for us to not educate them and give them the resources even if they don't use it then to wait five years down the road and they don't even know what to call on right they don't even know to ask for help it's really about planning c's with adolescents sometimes you have great breakthroughs and you can get that immediate change that you'd love to have but make sure they have the knowledge even if they're not ready well that's pretty insightful too because i so often even even adults today are looking for the immediate change the immediate this the immediate that and and knowing that that our our interaction with an adolescent or with anybody it may not have an immediate impact but it does have an impact and so every touch point that someone has has an impact and if we can remember that and not have the expectation that there's going to be an immediate change um you know that's connection right that's that's hugely healing hugely healing so i like that so we're not giving up you know prematurely because there's no change we can't see the change right yeah there's not a reason to give up the skills and still be top right yeah absolutely i think the other piece sometimes they don't want to change because they're grieving right you know anybody if i'm telling you that you have to let go of your friends in a sense because you don't have sober friends you have to change and this is like 14 years old you can't really conceptualize that or even think about i gotta change my friend group at school because i'm with the cool kids that's part of my identity i fit in there right i'll tell you how to change that sometimes they need to at that time just to to cope with the idea of grieving that loss grieving the loss of you know being a normal kid and that part is hard and even for the families like i still uh have parents who struggle with the idea you saying i can't just take them to practice and drop them off anymore no you have to say but that's my free time that's when i go do this well we don't have to find other ways to incorporate that self-care because now you all can function for each other and it's a greeting focus for the whole family and i think as we get so caught up on them learning about the addiction that we didn't even take the time to deal with the emotions of the laws i love that insight that's a big piece too because you know we i don't think even in adult recovery that we really talk about those losses and grieving um because it's that's real that is real and it's part of how they've identified themselves this is who i am like you said it's not it's not just something i do it's who i am and you want me to give up who i am that they really don't have any concept around that someone involves your favorite uncle you know like i have to cut off my favorite uncle my best friend good insight excellent insight it's a powerful question though it's the same question for the child is for the family that you bring out that just that what what's the price you're willing to pay because somebody i think i i'd be shocked if it's very many people who really understand that going in without directly being asked right without that being spelled out of like hey this isn't just and i heard another podcast where where the guy talked about saying you know he went into a his first meeting and and they kind of asked him you know why he was there and he said well i just want to get better so that i can go drink socially with my friends and not have this problem you know like to just the understanding is just so not there and so what's awesome about what you're doing and it seems like it would be super rewarding is to be able to try to catch that problem early like we had a lady on this week who you know has a bunch of family members that have his sobriety in like their 60s and 70s right at the end of life where like with with your clients and those families you're helping these individuals who still have this whole life they still have a whole life span of their family unit ahead of them and to be able to enjoy that moving forward in a way that is just completely unfamiliar to them now seems like that's got to be rewarding it is the problem is sometimes it's a delayed reward right but when it happens it is the best feeling ever you know when you walk in a year later and you see that adolescents still engage and they finally got the skills is clicking it's like i'm starting to grasp it now i'm making these decisions it's hard and i do have my failures but man it's beautiful you know to see hope again uh for some of these adolescents because when they come in everything they speak about the family is all around you know hopelessness and to see that sort of reinvigorated that hope is amazing they seem like they're in good hands with you though i hope so that's all fast well thanks for taking time for us what's the for for families that are struggling for for individuals that are struggling what's the base what's the best way for them to get a hold of you so you can if you want to look at our facility at eagleoverlookrecovery.com you can look there and learn about the facility if you want to reach out to me my private practice uh website is peakdevelopment.com eric thanks so much it's been a pleasure to talk with you today and learn a little bit more about you and what you do and and what you're passionate about thank you