Q&A – How do recovery principles change the way I parent?

Narrator: This is Pathway to Recovery, an SA Lifeline Foundation podcast featuring hosts Tara McCausland, who is the SA Lifeline Executive Director, and Justin B., a sex addict living in long-term recovery. We have conversations with experts and individuals who understand the pathway to healing from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma because we believe that recovering individuals leads to the healing of families.

Tara McCausland: Welcome to the Pathway to Recovery Podcast. I'm your host, Tara McCausland, and I have here with me my co-host, Justin B.

Justin B.: Hey Tara, I'm happy to be here.

Tara McCausland: It's been a minute, actually. We haven't recorded for a little while.

Justin B.: But it's good to get to be back together and have this conversation. I'm excited about it.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. So first things first, I know that everyone else is probably feeling the mayhem and chaos of of summer. It's fun, but also for me, schedules go out the door and we're just doing the best we can around here.

Justin B.: Uh, me too. Me too.

Tara McCausland: So we, we're going to take a break in July, but I hope for you listeners that if you haven't listened to all 54 episodes of Pathway to Recovery, I hope that you'll go back and listen to any missed episodes. I think you'll find value there. And we, we hope that this podcast will continue to be a boon to your personal recovery. I know sometimes it's hard to sit down and read something, but just to even listen to 15 minutes of something can sometimes give us some encouragement.

So on another note, before we get into our Q&A, we're so excited to announce that registration is live for our SA Lifeline conference. This fully virtual event will take place September 26th through the 28th. And over these 3 days, we'll focus on healing from unwanted sexual behavior. Betrayal trauma, and focus on healing couples and families. Why fully virtual? Well, to bring the best education from top quality experts directly to you, wherever you are in the world, in an affordable and interactive format.

So you'll hear from 15 qualified presenters throughout the 3-day event. You can participate on our community board, ask questions before and during live Q&As. Download worksheets, fill out surveys, and more. And I'm excited about a recovery panel with members of SAEL 12-step that we'll get to hear from each day. And what's really cool, and I promise I'm almost done, I'm excited about this really special feature called a live roundtable Q&A with our breakout speakers. And there you'll be able to, in a small group setting of up to 8 people, ask your hard questions of these breakout speakers.

So Early Bird Prices will run through July and we hope you'll come to salifeline.org, learn more, and we hope to see you in September.

Justin B.: Oh, that sounds like a great format, Tara. I look forward to it and I will, I will be there.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. Yes, you will. 'Cause you're going to be on a panel. So without further ado, we wanted to address as we're coming off of Father's Day, how do recovery principles change the way I parent? And we felt like this would be something that would be of interest to, to you as our listeners, but also recognizing that as an organization, yes, we want to recover individuals, but our ultimate goal is to heal families. And so we wanted to just touch on that a bit today.

So Justin, how would you say recovery principles have changed the way you parent? If you could compare and contrast. Justin pre-recovery and Justin post-recovery.

Justin B.: Yeah, I think there's a huge difference. Now, I'm not, definitely not perfect in this over the years of working in recovery, but I definitely see a change. I look back at the first, it was about 12 to 13 years of my wife and I being parents when I was in active addiction and really doing nothing too well. I was doing everything that I thought I could do to control my addiction. But I couldn't control it. So what did I do?

I tried to control the things that I thought I could control. And I was a tyrant parent that was trying to control my children who were young, but I wanted them to be the perfect robotic angel children and did everything I could to control that and manipulate it honestly, and tried not to allow for any sort of imperfection. So yeah, it was really, really hard. And I thought, I thought we were doing a great job because our kids were, were well-behaved.

They went to bed at 7 o'clock every night. And, you know, all of these things that, that I thought, hey, this is what a good parent is all about. And as I look back at things now, I realize just how our first kids were the crusty pancakes. You know, they were, they were burnt on the outsides and mushy on the insides because We were not great parents and didn't apply recovery principles into our parenting skills. Any thoughts or feedback on that, Tara?

Tara McCausland: Yeah. Well, I would say you don't have to be an addict to be a controlling parent. Yeah. Yeah. Because I could see definitely in myself that the desire to control, especially when I had young children, was, was very, very high. And I still have to really keep myself in check and ask myself, am I, am I trying to control or am I, am I teaching and allowing for choice and consequences to unfold often naturally? Right. Right.

And so when I consider parenting without recovery principles, and these aren't all just found in, you know, in 12-step, but if I'm not parenting in a recovery-based way, I tend to be more controlling. Again, I'm more fear-based and fear for their future and how things are going to turn out for them. Maybe even if we're more specific, like we're living in, in a pornographic world, that's the wallpaper of our lives, right? Like, how is this going to impact my children moving forward?

Or shame can also like come up to the surface, shame around if my children aren't behaving, uh, or acting the ways that I want them to, or even shame personally, like, oh, I'm a bad parent because they're not performing the way I want them to. Right. Or even on the flip side, pride, like, oh, my kids are doing so well. Look at their awesome grades and they're just these amazing athletes. And what's wrong with the rest of y'all that you don't have, you know?

Justin B.: Let me get on my high horse and tell you how to be a better parent, just like I am. Yeah.

Tara McCausland: Right. So that's where I don't want to be. And the recovery principles I know turned me to Uh, a mental space of surrender, recognizing that I don't have control, that my children are ultimately in God's hands. And can I trust God enough to place my children and their lives in his hands? Opposite also of fear is like this faith and a hope and optimism for a brighter future for them. And that we have, I mean, it's not going to be perfect.

It's going to be messy, but it can still be wonderful, a wonderful life for my children and for myself, regardless of outcomes. And finally, the opposite of pride, of course, is humility. Am I humble enough to be learning through this process? Am I willing to apologize when I am wrong? And I often am in the space of parenting and make amends. So anyway, any other thoughts for you as I considered some of those things?

Justin B.: Yeah. As you go through that, some of the recovery principles, and I'm even going to go a little bit different than the recovery principles here. I'm going to go right into the of the steps. I mean, over the last couple of months, we've been covering the first few steps of recovery in our podcast. Step 1, I admit that I'm powerless over my children, that my life has become unmanageable. I, like I mentioned, I parented in such a controlling manner because my life was unmanageable in so other, so many other places.

But if you look behind closed doors, I was trying to manage my family, And I'm just going to go right to my son, who was the one that I really tried to control because I wanted to be, I wanted him to be okay so that I was okay. I wanted him to be an all-star, a left-handed relief pitcher so that I could feel okay about things. And I manipulated things and did things in such a way that, that really contributed to the unmanageability, even though I thought I was controlling things.

Yeah. The next step is came to believe that a power greater than me could restore me, could restore my family to sanity. And that's where that trust comes in. Can God do better? Is God's plan better than my plan? Hmm. Yes. And can God help my child reach that plan better than I can? Yes. Now I can be supportive. I can encourage, I can invite, I can love. But I can't control. It's not in the books.

And step 3, made a decision to turn my kids, my family, over to the care of God. Those first 3 steps are just so powerful and can be adapted into so many different things, especially parenting.

Tara McCausland: Really powerful. And I love how you just brought the steps in and made that so clear and succinct for us. Being a mom has been one of the hardest things I've ever done in my, my time thus far. And I hear it only gets a little bit harder as you have adult children and they start having adult problems.

Justin B.: They're different problems.

Tara McCausland: Yeah, different problems. Yep. And to be able to really practice those principles, as you had suggested in those first, first 3 steps, and we can interchange, you know, the vocabulary when we need a reminder. Do I trust this process with the steps and trust God with my children? Again, it's so incredibly liberating. The opposite of that is feeling distressed and worried and anxious about our kids and how things are going to turn out for them. I see that all of the time.

And so I do think that one of the great gifts of recovery is just this this freeing, right, of the weight of feeling like I have to make sure my child succeeds. And if they haven't, I have failed miserably. So I wanted to look at the SAL book really quickly. Yeah. There are a couple of really great shares in the SAL book around healing families that I wanted to share. So one betrayed partner said, the biggest way the 12 steps and recovery principles have affected my parenting Is by providing me with personal serenity.

During the first few years of being a parent, I was not emotionally well. I was trying to be all the good things as I juggled newborns and toddlers. Boy, can I relate to that. But no matter how hard I tried, I just wasn't enough. I felt like a bad mom and a bad person for not being able to figure it out. And of course, the negative feedback due to my husband's sex addiction only deepened my feelings of personal failure.

She goes on to say, as I worked the steps, however, something changed. I learned how to let go of the shame and anger. I learned how to give my unmanageable life to God, and I learned how to healthily interact with my defects. For a time, my husband's addiction worsened, yet my own serenity increased. I'm so grateful for the steps in recovery. Just thought that was really powerful. Even though her husband's behavior wasn't changing a lot, as she was working the steps, she was finding more serenity.

within herself. And of course that was trickling down to her relationship with her kids. Is there anything you wanted to share from the SAO book, Justin?

Justin B.: Yeah, I do want to make a real quick comment. I mean, you said the same thing, but I want to, I want to express it from, from my perspective also. As I practice these principles in all that I do, which is a Step 12 principle there, I experience serenity even in the face of calamity, in apparent calamity, not real calamity, apparent calamity. I'm able to face that with serenity as I give it to God and trust God, which is, well, it's the whole reason for the 12 steps of recovery.

I'm learning more and more each day that the reason for these 12 steps isn't so that I stop acting out. It's so that I connect with God and trust God to do with me that which I can't do for myself. But yeah, the very next page from, from this book, this is on page 250. This is a member share from a recovering addict. And I'm going to read this and then I'm going to apply some of my own experience to this.

What a difference recovery and sobriety makes. My children love who I am becoming. Christmas of 2016 was the first time they had seen me sober for any length of time. At that time, they were 26 and 23. The difference in me, really all of us, was phenomenal. They have commented on how much calmer, how much more present, how much more responsive and less reactive I am. I'm not perfect, but I am progressing. And then I want to jump down to the bottom paragraph of this share from here.

As I sponsor young men today, I am so proud and envious of them for working on sobriety and recovering when their families are still young. What an incredible gift this will turn out to be to themselves and to their families, as well as to their God. It will have a priceless payback for them all. You know, just like what this member says, I'm not perfect. But I am progressing. I love the phrase here. I'm much more responsive and less reactive as I live in the principles of recovery.

I remember several times as a younger father, when something happened that was outside of my control, how quick the response, the reaction was in anger, in fear, in embarrassment and shame. Oh, I can't believe that my daughter just said that. Oh, I'm just, you know, reacting in shame rather than now when, you know, some, one of my kids or somebody says something that seems to be embarrassing or does something that seems to be embarrassing. I can laugh, not at them, sometimes at them, but I can laugh and love and accept that, you know what?

They are learning and growing just like me. And I can feel the same way about other people's kids too. I remember many times thinking, why can't they control their kids? And being so judgmental of others. Well, it's because they, like me, are struggling with whatever it is they're struggling with. And those kids are learning and growing just like my kids are. And that practicing acceptance, practicing love and patience and understanding. has made all the difference in the world, in my own parenting and also in my own— I don't have young kids anymore, but in my, in my own example to other children.

So I just see that these principles help a ton in all of these aspects.

Tara McCausland: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. And I can say, as the daughter of an addict, I think that has really been one of the great miracles that I've been able to witness is that transformation in my own father and a level of serenity in my mother that she didn't have as a, as a younger mom. I am so grateful as the daughter of a recovering addict and recovering betrayed spouse, and now as a mother seeking to incorporate these principles we find here in recovery, in 12-step.

And I hope also for our listeners, as we close up It's a hard job. Being a parent is a hard job. And when you are struggling with and navigating through betrayal trauma and sexual addiction, I mean, that adds another layer of difficulty, but be patient with yourself, practice self-compassion. It is my experience we'll be able to move forward with more optimism, more faith, more trust, and the ability to surrender and feel true joy in our relationships with our children.

Justin B.: One of the really cool things about recovery and even parenting in recovery, living in recovery, is that I have others that I can go to and say, man, my child just did this today and I am about ready to lose it. Have you ever dealt with something like that? How have you successfully dealt with that? Yes, I have God, but I also have a tribe of people that I can turn to. I don't have to do it alone.

Mm-hmm. So yeah, that's something that recovery has done also for me.

Tara McCausland: Thanks. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Justin, for your insights, your comments, and thank you to our listeners for being here. We celebrate this week, 20,000 downloads of Pathway to Recovery. Thanks for helping us get there. So we'll keep on going and enjoy the rest of your summer and we'll be back in August.

Narrator: Thanks for joining us. We invite you to subscribe to this podcast so that you don't miss new episodes. And while you're at it, will you please leave us a 5-star rating and review to help us Spread the good news that healing from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma is possible. We invite individuals who are struggling to join our virtual or in-person trauma-sensitive 12-step meetings. Meeting times and locations can be found at sal12step.org. You can find quality education at salifeline.org, and we hope that you will follow us on Instagram and Facebook.

SA Lifeline is a 501 nonprofit. We are a 501 nonprofit organization, and we welcome donations. SA Lifeline. Come heal with us.