The Illuminate Recovery Podcast is about Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Addiction Recovery. 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.
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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 the self-care we will discuss you may need the help of a licensed professional my name is curt 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 we absolutely nailed it perfect we're going to be good at this podcast thing i think it'll be fun and the thing that i love is like you said i don't i don't like to be in front of a camera trying to see if i can sound good on my own a conversation is so much more natural and so much it flows so much better yes it feels a little more normal i've always joked in life that uh i'm a hammer and nails guy not that smart but uh i do like to ask questions and i like to learn so this is gonna be a fun experience i've listened to a lot of podcasts over the years and it'll be fun to it'll be fun to kind of have a place where we can ask those questions we can dig in and try to help you know find some answers for ourselves and for other people and it's going to be nice it's going to be nice for me to have someone along the way to straighten me out [Laughter] i think it goes both ways we found that in our business already haven't we so we we uh just so the listeners know we we run illuminate billing we do medical billing we help mental health professionals residential treatment centers substance abuse providers with their medical billing and that's kind of been the way that it has gone so far right i i ask a lot of questions and talk really fast and and you already know all of the answers so constantly playing catch up with you right well i don't know i don't know i think you bring a lot to the table um you know something that i've really loved about working with illuminate over the last you know seven years or so is is is the passion to really help people that are in recovery to help people get insurance benefits right because they've got to be able to pay for it and they come to treatment not knowing if their insurance is going to pay or not and we can take a lot of that guess work out so you know we we spent a lot of time um doing the authorizations that's something that i do and and we have a whole team of people that do that now and really fighting for those clients rights and pushing back to the insurance companies to make sure that that clients have that peace of mind to know that their treatment is going to be covered and that that's not one of the stressors as they go through that process which i think is a little bit of a confusing thing about the addiction recovery world you've got some free solutions out there right you've got the anonymous groups you've got some other you know kind of community oriented groups and then you have professional care and i think i think you know this professional care or therapy or rehab kind of has a history of being a rich man's game a little bit right like this hasn't always been a covered benefit that's kind of a new thing yep i don't know that even all of our listeners would necessarily know that that's something that is kind of interesting i didn't realize that for a long time this has historically been a cash business but because of affordable care this kind of treatment is generally covered by most commercial insurance companies does that sound right well yeah and interestingly enough as states continue to expand with medicaid medicaid is also in many states providing a lot of substance abuse and mental health care as well which has really been huge it has an up and a downside to it is that you know some of these states that have been expanded for a long time with medicaid they'll have facilities that have two or three hundred clients within them and then i question you know what level of healing really gets done there and treatment really gets done there but then you also have this whole population of people that have been excluded you know with obamacare and with the expansion of of insurances the marketplace that you have this whole group of people that have insurance now that can get treatment and then with the medicaid expansion you have you know it just circles it makes a much bigger circle and brings a whole lot more people in to get that treatment you know with the goal i think that over time if everybody has access to treatment that societally we will be better off and things will improve significantly yeah certainly certainly the professional health is somewhere that can't be short cut right and and i think that's the one of the things that i think will be really fun for us to dig into on this podcast is you know in medicine there's a lot of debate right about treatment and what works right you've got kind of i'm thinking in one example you know this you know the md doctor versus the do you know who's kind of a homeopathic oriented doctor and then a chiropractor right and they and they don't necessarily all agree on how to fix every problem but they all bring some good to the table and and i feel like the mental health world is not immune to that some are some are kind of pro medicine assisted treatment some are you know anti that and you need to get off the substance as fast as possible and i think i think that's going to be one that's intriguing for me you know to dig into yeah it's interesting too is that you know behavioral health as an as an industry or a practice is it's fairly new if you want to compare it to the practice of medicine and and other things like that behavioral health you know within the last 50 60 years has really started to started to develop and come into its own profession and so there's still a lot of gray areas when it comes to getting insurance payment for sure but what's the best treatment and research to show what's best practice in those kinds of treatment programs and so they're still i mean i love that everybody you know kind of has an experience and they can share what helped them to heal and then you can kind of try and incorporate that in and i don't think there's any one tool or approach that's more effective than the other and as the research shows it's really about connection and creating a rapport and feeling like you belong somewhere is probably has as much or more therapeutic value than anything else so it will be very interesting to watch the behavioral health industry continue to mature and um and really become a stronghold and helping people you mentioned the social aspect it's awesome how there's there there's a social part of you know recovery but that that plays into our our mental health and also our emotional health so i think that's one of the things that we've seen over the last you know 10 to 20 years is this rise of public awareness of emotional intelligence right that's a total buzzword right now and so some of these skills you know are necessary for recovery but are really just valuable for any any human being period yeah i think it's interesting too as i've as i've been around people in recovery you know some family members some you know that have come to me for treatment the thing that i find really interesting is their journey is not a whole lot different than my journey and the challenge is at the very core am i worthy enough am i good enough um you know am i you know kind of like we were talking about earlier am i an imposter am i just posing am i faking this um and some of those core issues are the same for all of us it just manifests in different ways i mean i think it's really important to kind of um put us all on the same playing ground nobody's superior to another um you know based on the challenges that they have um so yeah excellent point yeah and then there's a spectrum there right because you know that that kind of ranges from insecurity right which i think all humans feel on you know some level or another and then as that deepens you know can turn into a little bit of an imposter syndrome right which is a challenge for me when it comes to a podcast right i'm not the licensed professional like you are i'm just the guy who asks lots of dumb questions so um you know am i the right guy to be on here and you know to me the answer is yes i'm willing to do it right and that and that isn't my gut reaction my gut reaction is there's somebody else who's better qualified but the one thing that i think is going to matter and pushes me forward is am i willing to be the one who does it and that's enough right that's enough of the answer and so that that's going to help me push through that imposter syndrome so so you go from you know insecurity to something maybe a little bit deeper and maybe those are the same thing but that extends into you know anxiety or deeper stress right depression some of those other things that are not just an emotional you know short-term weakness right those are things that can be dealt with with positive thoughts but also can be much deeper right and need really professional help and maybe medical help oh absolutely absolutely and and it's interesting you know that's that's some of the questions that that are in my mind is you know that i want to address and also ask you know as we continue to have guests on the podcast and and talk to just a myriad of different people at different places in life and and cultures and all of that is to find out what really what is the consensus about when do you need additional help when do you need to go seek treatment from a professional and and what kind of things can you do on your own and and i will say that none of us i don't believe anybody can do it alone i think that's one of the myths that's kind of perpetrated by trauma and abuse and um and society is that you know the only person i can really trust is myself and people have proven to me you know maybe my primary caregivers or maybe my peers or people have proven to me that i can't trust them and that they're going to turn on me and that they will hurt me and so i can only depend on myself and that's one of the biggest fallacies is that you know maybe those weren't the right people that you could depend on but there's got to be a group or people a support network that you can learn to depend on and understand i might not be able to depend on this person to tell me the truth every time but i can depend on them to show up when i just need someone to listen and i might not be able to depend on this person to show up every time but when i do get a hold of them man they really have some great wisdom for me right and start to learn what relationships healthy relationships look like and how to navigate some of that as an adult as opposed to that wounded child you know who carries some of the trauma i'm looking forward to some of the guests that we've coming on here i think it's going to be fun to talk to some professionals right find out some of the things that are actually working for them and their practices and in their facilities and with their patients i think it's going to be super fun to get some success stories here are some of the things that are happening in individuals lives that work for them because i don't i don't think that that's always exactly the same criteria i think we're all doing similar things but not necessarily the same thing so that's exciting it'll be fun to get some people on here yeah and there's nothing i love more than a success story right somebody getting on here and talking about how they went through the trenches how they you know failed and came back at it and they tried again and again and now they're feeling and finding some success and some recovery right i mean illuminating recovery is all about helping us understand our own journey and when you can hear those success stories to me that's one of the coolest things ever i mean nothing gives me warm fuzzies more than a an amazing story amazing stories and some really smart tools which reminds me i heard a uh a little presentation that you gave a while back to a group and you talk about some tools in there you talk about some fear you talk about hope you talk about forgiveness print you talk about johari's window in it which is a which is cool one so i think uh i think we ought to share that with our listeners what do you think well you know other than the imposter syndrome piece that i feel every time you know i think about me presenting which i love the information like that's what makes it so exciting is i'm so much more involved in the information and sharing what i've learned and how it's impacted my life that i can kind of get past that piece but i think you're right i think there is a lot of super great tools and thought processes i love getting people to think outside the box and think outside of their their comfort zone and definitely i think this does that well let's get to it i want to talk i'm not going to talk about the office stuff because that's boring i'm going to talk about what i like and what i you know what's exciting and with the topic like can healing be accelerated through forgiveness that's kind of a hot topic and it can be fairly controversial so don't leave until we get to the end because you know my hope is that i'll change your mindset about what that looks like and change your perceptions okay um let's see if i can do it the right way so we talked about chris gave a little bit about who i am um one of the as i've i've been i'm a therapist i'm a clinical mental health counselor i've had private practice i've worked at uvu teaching in the behavioral health department there which was just i love that stuff i'm passionate about it women with trauma issues is something that when i was doing individual counseling my private practice that's what i focused on and it's it's a huge honor to do that kind of work i love it and and um and i i love adventures and i love seeking truth so hopefully we'll find some truth um our individual truth here tonight truth is always truth will always be truth regardless of lack of understanding disbelief or ignorance and i think this quote is a great segue into a little story i want to tell you there was um and maybe you've heard this there's six blind men who lived in indostance and um they're blind and they had never experienced an elephant before and they had heard that an elephant was coming to town and so wanting to know what the elephant was like they all took off to go meet the elephant and as you notice they all experienced a different part of the elephant and in that experience you know one of the other guys at the back would say you know this this looks it's like a rope this elephant is like a rope and the guy in the front would say dude you're crazy it's like a spear it's nothing like a rope and so you can imagine and i like to think about this story i often remind myself of this story when i'm in a situation where i don't always appreciate what somebody's sharing with me and i remind myself that i might not have the whole picture and so if we can kind of open our minds to the idea that maybe we don't have the whole picture not only tonight but in life it helps us to learn from other people that are different than us i have a few goals and all safety is always important as a therapist safety is always important i'm going to share some ideas with you and i'm going to ask you as we talk about things to focus on your emotions and because usually the other thing people focus on is their stories that they tell themselves right and when i focus on the stories i tell myself i end up spinning in my head so if you focus on your emotions you own those those are yours and you can do something with them and then let's just be seekers of truth let's figure out you know what's true for us so i want to talk about first what forgiveness is not and there's you know a lot of misconceptions of what forgiveness is but what it is not what i'm not talking about it is as being as being approval of something that's happened um excusing it justifying it pardoning it reconcil reconciliation you know a lot of people say i need to forgive i need to forgive someone what's your name can i pick on you zach i need to forgive zach for what he did right the forgiveness i'm talking about has nothing to do with zach right it's not about turning a blind's eye you know and ignoring it or forgetting it i hear people talking i think religiously people say a lot of times forgive and forget i don't think that's possible i do not think it's possible to forget something that's going on or a wound or a something that happened right it's impossible to forget that and because of the way we know the body stores information um tina talked a little bit about the way the brain functions i don't think it's possible to forget so we can wipe that one out that is not what forgiveness is it's not pretending and minimizing it's certainly not about trust and it's not about reunification the forgiveness i'm talking about has nothing to do with that the forgiveness i'm talking about i think has to happen first before you can consider anything else okay so forgiveness a little bit of forgiveness defined of what i am talking about and i love the serenity prayer they've said that you know any aaa meeting that i've ever attended they've had the serenity prayer there and and i never can get it right but i love the meaning of it god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change the courage to change the things i can and the wisdom to know the difference there are things that are within our realm of of influence and there are things that are outside our realm of influence and we've got to be able to figure out what those are or we end up spinning a lot and wasting some time so i'm talking about being able to surrender some of the things that aren't ours that i think is forgiveness i'm talking about being able to let go of the emotions that come with wounds and hurts okay i'm talking about being able to break the chains that keep us bound to our to our offenders i'm going to call them offenders because there's all sorts of different kinds of ways that we that we get hurt um and it's also about setting clear and safe boundaries i would never in a hundred years and if if you ever hear me say something that sounds like like this is what i said i'm not ever saying it i would never instigate anybody ever going into an unsafe situation or going back to get abused over and over again that is not what forgiveness is that is that is not what we're talking about and it's about healing the heart our hearts right our individual hearts forgiveness is freedom for me at the very end of a process of forgiving it's freedom um and i love this i'll read the one quote as at the top forgiveness is unlocking the door and setting someone free and realizing that you were the prisoner i think that that kind of gives a little bit better perspective of what forgiveness is it has nothing to do with zach for instance in this case and i'm going to pick on zach a couple times if he's okay with that okay so i want to talk about a couple ideas really quick to kind of prep you or give you some things to think about as we go to the to the big point at the end and perception is a big piece of of how we experience things and it's going to be a big piece of how we how we experience forgiveness i put the jihadis the jihadi square up here how many of you are familiar with the jahari square you've seen it before and it's just simply i put it here because it represented some parts of of perception to me in all of our lives right there's things that we know about ourselves for instance you know about me and i know about me right and then there's things that that i know about me that you don't know about me there's things that you know about me that i don't know about myself that's a little concerning and there's things that i don't know about me and you don't know about me right so that's the jihari square in a nutshell other things that that affect the way we perceive our world and the people around us is projections and the best way i can think of to describe projections is to tell you a story one day when my kids were young and they were they all came home from school and i just happened to have met them in the hallway that particular day and and it was interesting because they were all chatting and talking to me and telling me about their day and and it just seemed a little unusual because they were all doing and they were all talking at the same time and it was really cool just it was just fun to be part of that well the very next day coincidentally they all came in the door again the very same way and i i happened to meet him in the hallway the same way only my experience was very different they're chatting and going at it and i am angry and i'm upset and i want them to be quiet and i want it to go away and i don't want to have anything to do with them and i thought that was a really i mean it just hit me in such a way that i'm like they didn't do anything different that was not about them and i was projecting what was going on about them and i had the because it was such a profound experience i had the i don't know what it was but but i i was able to and you'll see my hand go back here because this is how i think about it is i and i put up their metacognition you guys know what metacognition is metacognition is the ability to be aware of what's going on inside of you to be kind of the observer of what's going on inside your own body to be able to think about what your thoughts are to observe what your emotions are from an observational kind of a perspective okay so metacognition so i practice some metacognition stuff and i don't even know if i knew what it was back then but i started to look at these two situations and recognize what was different about the second day why did i feel so much different about that day than the first and recognize that there was something that happened that morning that totally triggered me and i was upset about it and i was bringing that into my relationships i didn't know that and had i not had the ability to go back and look at that i would have never known projection if you don't think projection affects everything in our lives it does so being able to be aware of it's important emotions i mentioned it before and i'm just going to jump over a little bit and we'll come to it closer later that emotions are ours we can own those they're ours my emotions are zach's emotions are his but my emotions are mine and i can own those and and we talked about this you know getting stuck in the story so and then the other piece is curiosity curiosity always always helps us well i would think i'll say always often can help us to process things so for instance with the situation with my kids coming in and being angry in order to be able to look at that from an objective point of view i had to not be judging myself i had to not be harsh with myself i had to be kind right i was curious about what was going on for me what was happening there what was this about so curiosity can help us look at things in a much more open way and and lower some of the emotions and the triggers that we have and then i want to talk about hope for just a minute um when i was in when i was going to school and then even when i was teaching at uvu human development was one of the topics that i studied and that i taught and eric erickson had developed this theory about human development and it was a little different than everybody else's theory and i liked it because it of the way i i conceptualized things and so it helped me to conceptualize each step of development and if you'll just notice that very first step of development ages zero to one the conflict so erickson felt that every every stage of development had a conflict and at age zero to one the conflict was trust or mistrust so as you can imagine whether a child can trust their caregivers will impact how they develop in that stage and if you also can imagine how they develop in the first stage is gonna is gonna affect how they develop through the rest of the stages right so there's several different reasons why someone might struggle in developing um through that trust mistrust um it could be that parents you know that parents have not learned good parenting skill and that maybe they they are you know they're scary to their children and at the same time you know when you fall down and scratch your knee what's the first thing a child wants to do jump up and run to mom or dad right but if mom or dad is scary to them or is hurting them then they hit this conflict right it's like wait i want to i want to get nurtured but it's scary to get nurtured so there's conflict that's not the only reason it happens let's say a child is premature and is in the hospital for a long period of time and they experience that as traumatic or maybe they have to go in for heart surgery and they're away from mom and dad or they don't have that close connection that can also interrupt some of these pieces so you can see there's a wide continuum of this development of trust mistrust and and ericsson believe that you also create as you develop through these you you acquire these virtues and i'm going to call them virtues or characteristics and the first one is hope and so here's the good news about hope then if if you take this idea and if you accept that erickson's theory has some truth to it then hope is a developmental characteristic and if hope is a developmental characteristic then we can all go back and focus on hope and gain some of that virtue or that characteristic of hope right and i'll tell you and some of the things that i do is at work is i read through clinical you know histories of people and i call the insurance company and i tell them so that they can get authorization and i can't tell you how many times i read through one of those assessments that says i feel hopeless there's no point for me to be here right so this is why i bring this up it's a big deal and the reason why we can develop hope in any of those other virtues is because of the plasticity of the mind our mind can change it's always changing it will change from the day we die zach you want to help me with a demonstration for just a minute you good with that you want to come up here for a sec yay zach yeah yes please sit down so okay zach i need you to be kind of you know block it out because you're going to be the bad guy for a minute you're going to be the offender right and if you don't take anything else away from this from this presentation please see if you can capture this concept that i want to show you okay so give me some an idea of something that so zach and i let's say zach and i have a platonic relationship of some sort and zach you know we've been cohorts or whatever and and zach has violated my trust in some way you guys want to come up with a reason or a way that he's violated my trust he ate your peanuts holy crud you ate my peanuts well that's a huge violation matter of fact i feel betrayed because you did that and because i feel betrayed i have all sorts of energy and emotion around what you've done and i don't i can't trust you anymore zach i i want to hurt you i want to hurt you back and do the same thing to you that you did to me and eat those peanuts i um i don't i don't want to you know you're frustrating to me and and i have a lot of emotion about what you did and i think you should apologize and i think you should fix it and i think that it's all your fault that i'm having these emotions can you guys see where all my energy is going some good peanuts right they were way good peanuts the piece i want you to see is that in this scenario all of my energy is going to zach all of my power is going to zach i'm putting it all in his basket right um how many you guys are familiar with brene brown who knows how she defines blame how is blame defined in research a way to discharge pain and discomfort i just gave zach subconsciously most of the time all of my pain and discomfort right because i don't want it it hurts it's painful and i gave it to zach now here's the funny thing when you give away your pain and discomfort you give away your ability to do anything with it because you just gave it to zach you're expecting zach to fix it i expected zach to fix it only that can't fix it and so i'm stuck in this place of not being able to move so my suggestion is that instead of instead of blaming notice that we have that tendency to want to do that to discharge that pain and discomfort and we're going to own it i recently read a book called extreme ownership so i'm not telling you to own what zach did to me right i'm not to own what the other person did but own your emotions own your feelings own your experience and for me it's extreme ownership because i can't tell you how many times i want to give it away i want to give it away it hurts it's painful but own it and when you own it you now have the freedom to do something with it and i could talk and talk all night long because this is pretty passionate topic i wanted to tie it into the 12 steps because i think they're phenomenal i mean it's not the only way to do healing but it's phenomenal and i just happen to come across this little simple summary that somebody had done of the 12 steps and what the 12 steps were to them and i just thought it was so interesting that they were exactly well not exactly but match so closely to some of the concept that i just talked about today so i think in talking about concepts of forgiveness in this scenario that these are really concepts of healing and our journey our human journey in life to healing and growth and connection hope is there faith and courage and integrity and willingness humility discipline and action are all super valuable things and i would say that courage is right in there with willingness um or i mean i'm sorry i was going to say curiosity which is one of the pieces and and all of those and so there's it's an interesting piece um it's been an honor to be here and it's been a privilege to be part of this community event i think we should definitely have more of them super valuable any questions or thoughts you work can with believe it listen if you want to know why i'm there come and ask me because i was just back here thinking like i trust you [Laughter] like thank you thank you thanks for your insight there shelly thanks for joining us today be sure to tune back in and join us on our journey through shedding light on mental health mental illness and addiction recovery