“Fun, fun with problems, and then just problems.” Timothy Harrington joins us from NuLife Virtual. He is an addiction recovery coach, Renoventionist®, and family recovery support specialist. They are a human-centered, social, and mobile healing app to support addiction treatment centers, and individual practitioners in delivering increased access to care, improved health, continuing care and increased revenue. Enjoy.
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 (illuminatebilling.com). 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): fun fun with problems and then just problems timothy harrington joins us from new life virtual he is an addiction recovery coach renoventionist and family recovery support specialist they are a human centered social and mobile healing app to support addiction treatment centers and individual practitioners in delivering increased access to care improved health continuing care and increased revenue 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 the illuminate recovery podcast is brought to you by illuminate billing advocates make billing and collections simple with leader in substance abuse and mental health billing services verification and analysis of benefits pre-authorizations utilization management accurate claim submission and management denial and appeal management and industry leading reporting improve your practice's cash flow and your ability to help your clients with eliminate billing advocates today is a super fantastic day besides the fact that the sun is shining i get to spend some time with timothy harrington timothy is the chief marketing officer at new life virtual out of uh los angeles in 2020 held great promise for tim and his vision for personal and professional growth what he did not of course know and anticipate was covid or meeting jd mintz founder of new life virtual where he became vp of marketing and business development for a human centered social and mobile healing app to support addiction treatment centers and individual practitioners in developing increased access to care improve health and continuing care and increased revenue timothy thanks for taking some time out of your schedule to be with us today absolutely shelley thank you so much um it's kind of fun timothy and i have been talking a little bit before we started the the broadcast and um and i've been getting to know him and i'm super fascinated so super excited to hear your story maybe you know just for our listeners give us a little bit of background of how you ended up in the world of you know substance abuse yeah absolutely and and again thank you for inviting me to be on with you um we talked a little bit about podcasts and i had done one too and how much we learned from these things so i'm i'm excited for that always um you know i um i had a tumultuous love affair that was i had so i was set up to like end up having a relationship with um with alcohol for sure because it was part of our rituals in our family it was everywhere was it was just what it was it was just generational i'm sure right how those things work and so i remember very clearly when i was a little kid um being all dressed up for a christmas party right and i'm like i don't even know how old and i'm a little guy right and everybody is these giants and they're wearing tuxedos and beautiful sparkly dresses and there's clink clinking and laughing and smoking and it seems really wonderful you know and and i'm just looking around and just soaking it all in and observing it and somebody sets down one of these clinky drinks that seems that everybody seems to be enjoying so i'm like hey i'm gonna try that like why wouldn't i you know i'm modeling right i'm like that's what they're doing that's what i'll do so i remember having the looking at the drink i didn't know what it said i don't think i could read at that time maybe or didn't really understand it but it was a yellow glass with a couple of see-through holes around it and then on on the glass itself was printed booze my grandparents had a sense of humor and everybody most of my family is the sense of humor a lot of sarcasm but anyway i took a drink of it and i was like oh that's taste i like the taste of that you know and so then you know just fast forward and get blasted or anything or end up throwing up in the woods or or in the flower beds or whatever like i've heard a thousand meetings i've been to but um you know it's important because the context is super important for me as i sit in the armchair right now and look back at my life you know that's where you get all the lessons while it's happening i just i'm experiencing it and i remember later on in my life uh inheriting those glasses and drinking out of them as a person who had this relationship i call it a love affair with vodka it was my favorite and and cocaine as a chaser and you know and and it took me where it took me and it was it became unmanageable it was fun fun with problems and then just problems is kind of the progression of it and why it's important is because the susceptibility was always there was like it was modeled to me that smoking and drinking was just a part of what we did as a family and then also emotionally it was a it was a it was a lubricant and it was a it was a coping mechanism and and and i was wondering you know why is this our revelry and why do we have this writ these rituals and it's very clear that we had generational trauma as i started to get into the causes and conditions and not just the behavior and symptoms and it's really important to me as a professional and even as a person who's delivering new life virtual as you described and this idea of of digital care and where the where the world is going especially in behavioral health and other areas of healthcare is that we don't have a lot of context in terms of this space in terms of why people use we really focus on sort of dealing with the behavior and symptoms and so when i was a kid i always described this story when i speak in meetings of alcoholics anonymous which i'm a member is i talk about a very another very strong memory is when my parents got separated of course i don't understand what's going on but what i do know is my dad doesn't live there anymore and my mom tells me he's going to come pick me up so i'm standing at the screen door right my face pressed against the screen and i remember this day particularly was there was rain and you could hear cars coming down my street because the tires making that sound that tires make when they go over the wet pavement and i'm thinking everyone is my dad right and everyone just goes by right and every time it goes by i feel this punch in my gut right because i love my dad and it just and i'm standing there and i don't realize how much time has come but apparently quite a bit i'm not going anywhere right and because i want my dad and so this is a is a major shift in my life because the way that kids process these kinds of events is they don't say hey what's wrong with my dad they say hey what's wrong with me right so my whole orientation of the world my relationship with it is shifted because i'm being rejected or neglected or abandoned by this person that i absolutely know without a shadow of a doubt need in my life right and love and and so fast forward through all of that context and everything that happened how that affected every relationship that i ever had including the guy at the 7-eleven who was checking me out and not giving me what i want or asking me for an id for this whatever and i like i have this angst in me all the time in terms of that relationship and that what i call like the original wound uh and later on i had more wounds you know i had more things happen to me because that's just life right and and i'm not processing it and everybody else has their challenges processing it right and so we're all just doing the best we can and so it gets to the point where i become mobile homeless as i develop this relationship with i call it mobile homeless because it's a high bottom i still have a car it's like that's that's tall cotton when you're when you're dealing with these kinds of uh challenges um i still have a car i don't have much money and i don't have a plan at least not a good one but what i do know is that the common thread through this whole part of my life from that sort of original wound was was wanting to manage and wanting to be loved and wanting to not feel pain or at least that kind of pain um really any kind of pain because it's all connected and as we develop and as we evolve we we figure out how to deal with those different challenges around relationships and around pain and things like that and that just happened to be my path and every bit of it matters in a good way right when you're in it it's just like when is this going to end and i want to get off this right now and i just want it to stop and i i want to figure out what's what's the secret handshake to all this like like you know where is the secret room where everybody's doing awesome you know what i mean like it's kind of my orientation because i feel like i've been left out rejected and neglected and abandoned and i'm just out here and this is my lot and that's very painful and so through a series of events that's really too long to get into but a lot of coincidences and a lot of people who loved me and cared for me angels along the way many many many angels and i became um open to them as i got into more pain into more into more uh sort of despair right it sort of opens you up a little bit and so i i took a chance on this one offering and and i and i went to this meeting um and i had a conversion experience where i felt something that i hadn't felt for a long time which is basically sort of unconditional love we'll call it right and so that broke me open just enough okay it wasn't fully open i'm not gonna just let it all hang out right so just a little bit broken up but just enough for something to get in there that started to work right and we'll call it the heart space right and it started to do a little magic in there and i'm not it's not perceptible at that point because i'm still very guarded i'm still not trusting fully i'm still unsure i'm still uncertain and i'm still hurt and and i'm afraid you might turn on me and hurt me like other people have in my life and so i just decided to stay because i didn't really have other options honestly and this was just good enough at that moment to sort of keep me interested let's say right and met some incredible people with great senses of humor that reminded me of what was comforting about being in my family and they didn't really seem to want anything from me right it was just an exchange of ideas or stories and all of that stuff and heck man that's very entertaining i was doing that when i was drinking so there wasn't a lot of difference in terms of that i just wasn't partaking in and vodka and cocaine at that time so i actually remembered those conversations at a much higher level and so started to as i as i got into recovery or as i like to call it discovery i started discovering more and more about myself and other people and and that just kept progressing and i ended up in the behavioral health care care space because somebody said you should work in treatment um and i came from restaurants i didn't want to go back there it was a little bit too hectic and chaotic for me and so i said oh okay all right never really thought about doing that i had been to treatment didn't think about working in it got into the treatment business as a program tech driving people around waking them up all that sort of stuff you know the administrative part of treatment inpatient and found it very interesting as from that perspective of working there started to ask some questions uh got very curious about treatment and and then ended up becoming what they call a recovery uh companion right so i went from working in treatment to like going home with people who are transitioning out of treatment and living with them 24 hours a day right so i liken that to being like an embedded journalist in like a war zone because people leave treatment and they go back and this will get to this point of what renovation you mentioned renovation is where you go back and there's a saying in recovery that says it's hard to be a new person in an old place okay so the old place is is the family system because they haven't gotten nearly as much attention as you have in treatment um and so there's sort of still a shack while you're sort of this new like you know you've got a new glass of paint on you know a new coat of paint right put on some pounds you've got your color back in your skin and it's different and the family is like they're just kind of still hobbling along because that's the way treatment is it's 90 to the person in treatment 10 of the juice goes to the home and that's just not right right so so i'm in this system right and i'm seeing all the dysfunction i'm seeing people get triggered back and forth and pretty soon before you know it all the work that was done in treatment has sort of been undone because we go right back to those old things we talked about those rituals those you know those those those things were used to right and we just easily fall back into them and so i'm like wow this is like this is tough we need to up our game in terms of family and so just to cut out a lot in the middle there is that after i did this recovered companion work and sort of was on the fast track of like what is what do we really need to do to raise our game in this space to really help people not go back to an old place but something that is more compatible that has much more skill to deal with somebody in those challenging relationships between mother brother sister lover whoever you're going back to that system and so i started to get into i got trained as a family recovery coach and so i was really interested in how to help those families and so i really went head first into that for 12 years i coached families and at a very intense level i called it all in and so they had i was available to them 24 hours a day seven days a week because you know when it's happening in real time we need to engage rather than waiting for a session where you're just sort of recounting what happened and you're not you don't have the opportunity to you know get in there and mix it up um and so that's what i was doing for the last 12 years before i ended up doing this new life thing but it taught me a lot about treatment and this is what's really important about my personal journey as it overlaps professionally is that for a long time there's been lots of opportunity for us in this space to to innovate and evolve but we've been resistant we've been sort of complacent and we talked about that earlier as personal recovery that's really not going to get us anywhere if we remain complacent or stagnant we're probably going to slide back or at the very least not move forward and i feel like as i've worked in this field for 19 years that we've kind of gotten complacent and a little bit stagnant and so that's what gets me up every day still is this opportunity for innovation right super excited every day of like you know what if we did this and we sort of moved just a little bit right because i i know we like big big shifts but oftentimes we get overwhelmed so how do we just take little bitty steps right like i did with the family like here's a handhold and here's a foothold and let's get comfortable there before we go to the next phase because otherwise people get overwhelmed and they'll they'll sort of quit or they'll draw draw back a little bit from overwhelm and so how can we as individuals and as enterprises or facilities who are delivering services take these little micro steps that move us towards getting better at increasing our access to treatment for people because of the 23 million people that need treatment they don't all need inpatient obviously right and they're available to virtual that's what covent has proven to us and so we've got these we've got these structural changes these cultural changes and all these things that are sort of building this perfect storm for treatment to sort of expand and innovate right so we can meet people where they are so they get the opportunity to expand and innovate themselves while we deliver services you know from a distance recovering in place um because people are down for that now on the continuum virtual first or continuing out of treatment and so what we're doing is we're creating this new paradigm of this new dynamic to sort of fulfill the promise that we've sort of always had in the space of addiction treatment and that is aftercare continuing care staying connected outcomes tracking outcomes so that we get better at treatment delivery so that we know that what we're delivering is really working for the people we're treating and all those things and so that goes to that meeting in 2020 with jd when he told me a story of bringing technology and merging and this is before sheltering in place when he told me the story and i was like that makes a lot of sense at a high level and you've been working on this since 2017 and i see the work you put into this and i see where it's going i'm in because i want to help renovate or do a renovation on the on the uh on the field so that we can get better so that we can upgrade so that we can um meet patients where they are and then take them the full journey because we can stay in touch with them using technology and leveraging that constant contact because people have these in their hands all the time these things aren't going anywhere like i always say like people come into treatment and they come in hot like inpatient and they come in with the phone in their hand it may be cracked it maybe whatever but they hang on to it because this is a lifeline it is absolutely a lifeline so we want to leverage that in a good way so that once somebody comes in and then leaves treatment that we can stay connected with them at a high level and continue to deliver and monitor and and keep that close relationship going because the longer we are connected the better the outcomes are going to be and so that's what i look like as a person who has their own journey through like not being connected over time at a high level with my treatment center it was basically like go to meetings and don't drink and i had a lot more issues than that i had a lot of ground cover and i had a lot of things to deal with and i think really to that point is that what i believe about what we do in this space is that we don't save people's lives what we do is we if we really at a high level hold the space for them to respect their individual process we can shorten their addiction and treatment careers that's what i really think is the opportunity right because i know there's this idea of like you know being of service and saving lives yes in a way but not in an egoic way but in a way that says i'm meeting you where you are and then i'm going to be there with you i'm not going to just treat you and then leave right and say good luck i'm going to stay with you because we need that continual connection because we have to intervene because it's not a straight line right you and i know that it's not like it's like you know it's up and down and so we need that high level of connection and connectivity to continually to intervene so we don't have that high occurrence reoccurrence of relapsing right certainly to the point where all four wheels have to come off again we can intervene earlier that saves costs right all kinds of capital gets saved and so the excitement behind this is that we can intervene or we can renovate or do a renovation if you will on this process so that we can increase access right we can lower costs we can improve outcomes right and we can just we can have this new paradigm experience that is going to sustain treatment centers because we have this whole new offering that we can do that is going to contribute to our bottom line and then also contribute to the to the patient's bottom line in terms of outcomes and so that's that win-win balance that i've been looking for since i've been in this field for 19 years where there's an equanimity right it's not treatment-centered it's patient-centered because we're paying attention to the patient for the long-term for the client so that we can make sure they stay on track so they don't have to repeat rinse and repeat more costs and that's the opportunity every day for me too as an individual i mean take this right down to you and me that's my opportunity as an individual is to do that same sort of process stay close to you stay connected to you be reminded that the journey is not a straight line be reminded that i need behavioral nudges because life i'm not perfect and life happens to us and so this whole idea of recovery being for life is super important this 30 60 90 day paradigm is nonsense we need continual flow if you come into my treatment center you and i are in this together for life that's the way i look at it well it has to be that way timothy i'm just i'm taken with what you're describing because it's almost like this system we've always known what where the breakdowns are we've always seen you know you send them home and then they it it just deteriorates right we've seen it and here you are with this you know with this program that says i know that you're going to not want to talk to me when you go home and get back into this culture that that's you know that supported this behavior in the past so we're going to go with you so you can figure out how to navigate that i love what you're sharing because it's so powerful and it's and it's what we know we already know it you've just put it into play it's like air traffic control can you imagine if if we didn't have that in place in terms of flying around and how we take off and land and the coordination of care this idea of coordination of care and this idea of of ease of use through different levels you know right now it's very clunky right it's the handoffs are clunky you know these there's these gaps you talk about you know that that people fall through for one reason or the other and we're just trying to we're trying to up our level of game in terms of care coordination or air traffic control so we don't crash into each other so that we're so that it's smooth so that takeoffs and landings right because because it's kind of like that in the space you know you've got while someone's taken off someone else is landing right and how do we coordinate this care and how do we do this at a level that is efficient for the people who are in this space because i know workloads are real in treatment right they're real and they're tough we know about burnout we know about compassion fatigue we know about all of these things right we know about how the old model turns people in and out of this this this field right there's a big churn there's a burnout and there's a churn and so we need to develop efficiencies because people who come into this business come in for the right reasons don't they yep 100 committed to helping people right and and so we need to give them the tools that allow them to stay longer and really get to the point which is which is managing care care coordination relationship and connection and right now there's a lot of friction and a lot of noise involved in that right yeah and we need to work on those efficiencies so that the person who is paying with their time and their capital and their resources gets the attention necessary on the long for the long haul right not just in these episodic things that we have these episodes of care right these 30 60 90 days these inpatients these outpatients we need to be able to in any way possible make sure that we coordinate that care for life right that's why we say new life for life because it is that journey and we we we owe it to ourselves to figure out how to coordinate care at a high level to make sure that we give people the best chance of success well the other thing that i hear you talking about is something that i've been you know asking people about is can can your job in recovery be your recovery and on some level no you've got to do more but what you're talking about is you need that connection we need we all need that connection the same as the next person and when you go out and help this person and connect with them you also receive connection from that and there is there's healing in that right and so it's not just social healing that's what you're talking about that's really important because and i'll tell you why social healing is so important and we need to talk about it more at a high level uh because we have a shortage of credentialed professionals we have a shortage of psychologists psychotherapists counselors huge we don't have enough people to do the work for the people who are needing it and if you know what kova did need went up but but the supply went down right because not everybody pivoted right so you had all these people saying i need help and you had supply going down so right we have this and so what is the lesson of that the lesson of that is that we need to keep going forward by embracing digital care virtual care whatever you want to call it this idea of remote patient monitoring or this idea of remote recovery remote treatment we need to really respect that as a new paradigm as a new adjunct to a brick and mortar we call it click and mortar now so we can we can join these two things we we merge technology with the bricks in the mortar so that we again can can create this best chance of success scenario and the idea of social healing is the idea of who contains us when we can't get all the time that professional therapy or we can't afford it anymore this may be how do we involve paraprofessionals and the social healing aspect at a high level which means how do we keep people engaged right that's our job at new life virtual is to figure out once we have people on a platform a digital platform is what are they looking for what would make them more likely to stay engaged right and that's the social part so we have the social media style piece on the platform where you can in a very safe environment a hipaa compliant secure private environment talk about what's going on with you inspire others exchange ideas that's peer-to-peer that's pure to professional and that's also professional to professional because that connection as far as social healing is important for the reasons we talked about which is burnout and this idea of like i'm just exhausted i don't have one more hour to give you know what i mean i know exactly what you mean but yeah it takes a tremendous amount of energy to sit with somebody and really resonate with them and be with them it takes a lot of energy and i don't think people understand that as much i have um yeah and so i have a question and this is something that i think other people will be asking too is we just talked about how important connection is right and and that that connection that belonging that support i imagine it in a virtual setting and i heard a lot of people go i i can't do this anymore i can't do the virtual thing anymore like i'm going crazy i got to see people that in a virtual setting there's those that you've got to address that piece of that real human connection you know touch to touch and face to face real live whereas virtual is powerful i'm not saying it's not but i think there has to be another aspect and i bet you have an answer for that 100 i mean there's no doubt we're social creatures and this idea of like where we've come so far you and i i mean this isn't new like this is e-commerce you and i have been involved in e-commerce since 2000 right since since people were telling jeff bezos that nobody's going to buy books online when i could just go to the bookstore right so this is that convergent moment and if you look at the if you look at the pattern right everybody was like oh my god what about bookstores bookstores are still here in fact amazon invests in bookstores okay so the idea of this hybrid model or this this equanimity this balance of in-person and digital is 100 where it's going right you've just seen this exponential moment in time this exponential change agent called covet 19 has shown us in a very quick way what would have taken many more years to evolve in terms of that balance so we're very lucky about that because we are going to pay attention to the notion of in-person and virtual we need both because the the in person a model cannot support longitudinal care it's too expensive this is the reason why digital care the investment is crazy because the real hard costs are going to go down and that's important because by doing that we're inviting more people to the party and this is about inclusivity and the more we pay attention to cost control the more we open the funnel for more people to come in and access care and what we're going to see and this is one of the trends i think is really important for people to understand is because we have a shortage of these parents these professionals credential professionals like yourself clinicians and psychotherapists and whoever has gone to work you know gone to school and and put their life's blood into this are going to be augmented and supported by health coaches this is the next phase of who's going to come in this is that gap that's going to be filled because we must have it because if we don't then we're not going to really get behind cost containment and you're going to see and you've already seen if you know this is that coaches are being reimbursed now at a higher level than they ever have been to address the the equanimity issue the equality issue in terms of delivery of services there is a cut off point for people who can afford or can't afford therapy okay so if we can augment this through these now we're creating this hub and spoke that gives people the best chance of success we've got people who need to deliver trauma therapy we need that okay we need to do that then then once that is expended right we're going to need more support so now we have recovery coaches or we have health coaches or whatever we need so we fill these gaps right and to keep the costs down we're going to have to deliver those digitally right because we're not going to be able to afford it not everyone is going to be able to afford it we want everybody to come to the party because as you know more and more people need services but supply is going down so that's why digital is being invested because we need to be able to address what we can address purely in the in the brick and mortar and so what i love about this idea of virtual is that we talk about it that way right we need to be culturally appropriate in terms of how we're going to engage in merging technology with brick and mortar because it's going to make the difference ultimately in outcomes so now we can do home visits hey how about that right and that if i could just mention something really quickly one of the things that gave me chills about what happened during covet in terms of what therapists like yourself discovered about how the relationship went to another level because of virtual is people never saw where people lived and so one one therapist was saying i'd never been to a dairy farm before but my client took me to the barn and showed me what she did when she wasn't in therapy i got to meet her sister i got to meet her dog i got to see where she lived and that made a big difference in terms of the therapeutic alliance and that gives me chills i literally have chills because although it's not perfect it does add value right when you can do that when you can say this is where i live this is my house this is my view this is my mother brother sister lover this is my dog this is my you know my my lizard or whatever this is me right this is where i live this is my environment and again culturally we will adapt in terms of this hybrid model we will adapt and it will pay off it's just we're kind of in that awkward stage right we're a little clunky because there's that resistance there's that in person is better the sort of now we're in the the extremes we're working our way to this balance in the middle where it's like yes and yes both and not either or yeah couldn't agree more and and we've been in you know technology has been a huge part of our life like you said everybody carries that phone i think this is a question i that i thought of you know in the wee hours of the morning as i'm waking up and like do homeless people have their cell phones like and i would imagine a good share of them have their cell phones like that's a necessity right yes they do and i'll tell you um what's interesting about what's happened with covet also is that it is exponentially moving forward the need to address things like smartphone usage where somebody who is necessarily homeless but keeping them in again a process of containment where you couldn't otherwise do it because it's just face to face people miss a point you talk about no shows no shows have gone down because it's because of the convenience transportation issues working schedules all those things which are typically you know just deal breakers for a lot of people in terms of consuming services and so at a high level congress and policy is going to start to address some of these inequities involved in the healthcare market digital is going to do their part we're going to do our part as we develop a feedback loop whereby we take some of our profits and put it into a non-profit not our nonprofit but somebody else who's doing work around providing people with the proper technology actually teaching healthcare technology literacy okay this is going to be huge we're actually that's me that's one of the things we're thinking about getting involved in because there's a huge gap and then also lobbying for companies like verizon and at t and these other people who are the access points for digital consumption to give rebates or tokens or whatever they can to people who are consuming services like through talkspace or some digital platform where they get a discount on their phone bill because they're engaging in that process that makes sense i like that i like that a lot to motivate them right to engage in the very thing that they need the most exactly and giving them the technology that allows them to do that at a high level because we're talking about connectivity rates we're talking about throttling we're talking about i don't have any more minutes on my phone you know all of these things right and the reason why people like and companies like walmart at a high level in amazon are getting involved in this because they're going to drive the costs down they're just going to and if you have a walmart in your town you can go and consume mental health services i mean that's just it you go into your walmart where you get your milk and you can do that and that's and that's cool i mean i i think because what we're going to do is we're going to start because people are going to it's going to you know grow in that sense in terms of access that hopefully is going to drive down stigma because stigma is one of my biggest things and i told you earlier you know um that we went on a 25 city tour um and uh across the country in a bus talking about mental health and addiction related stigma because it's the number one barrier to access to care personal stigma social stigma and family stigma are the number one barriers for people to actually reach out and say help me and so that's a big part of what technology can do it completely can erase the stigma i can consume services with you and nobody has to know i don't have to be i don't have to have an addict identity or even a recovery identity i can just be me and so that's a really cool part that needs to be discussed too at a high level about what digital can do and virtual can do for people talk about that just for a minute more you had this tour around the country for a year um in a converted bust who who went and and really talk about kind of the touch points of what happened during that tour yeah so it was my wife and i my two teenage daughters and a dog in 250 square feet and i couldn't recommend it more uh to for a lot of reasons it teaches you how much you really need in terms of material things physical things because we had 250 square feet um but and it also teaches you at a higher level how to get along with people what needs to be talked because i called it the excuse me pardon me tour because we were always getting around each other on the bus because it's smoking but those were moments those were touch points where i took advantage and i hugged everybody all the time like i would just be like hug you know and just keep moving on because in a house of you know 2 000 square feet people are blown out right you don't have the opportunity unless you're intentional and during covet i was i was sort of like on a bus just a bigger one but i would go around and check in with people and give them hugs because i had kind of already been doing that but once things changed and opened up we have spread apart even more right in california we're like open it's like it's weird still to even say that but but culturally systemically we are different in a very big way very quickly right so it reminds you of how important the intentionality is of connection and that's really thematic between you and me we've talked a lot about this before we got on here and then since so i i'm going to kind of sum it up here because i've been talking a lot but what i want to say sort of in closing is that connection is the currency of wellness and however you do that is important whether you're doing it virtually or whether you're doing it in person we need to keep that at the apex healthy emotional connection is the currency of wellness and if we focus on that more things will sort of fall in place right the details will get worked out but if we focus on connection i'm connected to you i see you i witness you i honor you i'm here for you you don't scare me i'm not going anywhere i'm gonna hold space no matter what don't you worry you get to go through your process but i'm gonna be here okay just know that okay whether that's we start that in person and then we go to virtual they still need that connection they still need to know that somebody's not leaving them abandoning them and saying now you're on your own okay so that's really the promise we're trying to fulfill by joining those two paradigms brick and mortar and virtual and so that's the that's the opportunity and now we get to start to innovate both personally and professionally to sort of make that start to come true so that we can start to see the effects of that going forward it's incredible and i i mean everything you've talked about is spot on i mean it's it's best practice right it's the things like we talked about we've known it for a long time you know the family dynamics and and just like you talked about as a little boy sitting at that door listening to the cars come by as you're waiting for your dad to come and he never comes it's so vivid in your mind right that that trauma that wound is vivid and it wasn't the only one it compacted right it got added on top of one after another after another most people that was their life they had no idea that that was trauma that's all they knew and so what you're talking about is a way for people to finally identify what's underneath right those core pieces to finally be able to show up and live authentically live true to the values they determine and whether that's on the street or whether that's you know in a fourth four thousand square foot home whatever that looks like they get to choose and we need to give them dignity and support in doing it right like wow there's not one way you gave me chills no you just gave me chills because ultimately you know my experience was that my and i and i mentioned it briefly before we got on to the broadcast was you know my parents in my family like most are organized around the behavior and symptoms and they want to control those stop those and manage those and meanwhile behind that i i was just coaching somebody the other day and i said this is what it looks like so this is the behavior and symptoms and and i'm the patient or i'm the son or the or the father and look at me you can't see me right you get glimpses of me but you're not looking at me this is the friction and that's behavior and symptoms and if we just organize around that we're missing everything we're missing the conversation like you just mentioned not what's wrong with you but what happened to you tell me your story right let's show up and what you can't see what the listeners can't see is timothy has got his hands in front of his face i can't see him but we're trying to talk to him and trying to communicate with him and he can't see us and hear us because there's too much noise going on for him and we're not listening to his story we're not trying to meet him where he is right and so i love that i love that imagery yeah and everybody was just like stop what you're doing stop what you're doing and i was like and i couldn't articulate it because i'm dealing with my own shame right so i'm fighting through the shame so that's my friction over here right that's my that's the stuff that's in the way right and that's what we're trying to mitigate right as a professional i want to mitigate what's ever in the way from where you know that's blocking me from where i am to achieving what you just said that feeling of dignity and respect and being seen and respected for what i went through the truth of what i went through the pain like what happened to you tell me your story like because it's absolutely critical to you to act to transform you you and again the shame we need to work on the shame there's another big key word you and i need to work on right we got to work on the shame we got to figure out whose shame that is and give it back to them because that's a big blocker for us right we've got these big blocks we've got these big big big rocks that we're trying to move around and we need help and we need a longitudinal help and so that's the best practices like you said i love those i love that phrase what is the best practice what is the best chance of success for any one person to get from where they are to some sort of resolution of those painful parts of their lives that shame that that trauma that original wound and and that's what that's the joy and the privilege of my life is to be able to sort of be in that space to figure out how we can make it easier for people to do that yeah and what what i will say timothy is you sharing your story was connection right is its connection and it's it's you've told your story i'm sure a bazillion times and and and that's kind of the industry but but it's healing not only for you but for me as well right because i can do my work when other people are doing their work and and so it's exactly what you said it's when you can hold a space for somebody without judgment with just love and compassion and and i love that currency of connection right it's all about the connection we do not have to save anybody matter of fact we cannot our job is to simply show up and and there's nothing more powerful than that so i love your words today i love the the concept that you've shared um i imagine there's going to be a lot of people want to connect with you and and talk with you and and maybe even you know get into treatment um how do they connect with you and how do they get a hold of you yeah i would just go to uh newlifevirtual.com there's plenty of opportunity on there to connect through phone numbers and emails and and you know calls to action learn more you know like typical websites but there's plenty of opportunity on the website to do that um and you can go to the about us and discover what our team we're a team of people of humans this is a human-centered company this isn't a technology center company by any means because we know we can't we can't get there from from there if we if we're if we're technology center we got to be human-centered and that's really important in terms of just the whole thing we've been talking about we've been in treatment center care for too long we need to move that paradigm to human-centered human healthcare consumer-centered right because then we can listen to their stories just like you and i talked about and we can start to move forward yeah and we can go with them on the journey right everybody needs somebody to go with them on the journey and and know that they are going to be there like you said no matter how bad it gets and how angry you get and how scary you might be i'm still going to show up and you can do what you need to do but i'm still there right i'm still going to show up stand right here right because those abandonment abandonment and attachment is so huge with connection so i love i love it timothy i love that you're willing to come with us today and share and i want to be able to connect with you in the future too and just you know let's do it i would love to show you absolutely so thank you thank you so much AllWatched