The Stories We Tell – 2026 SAL 12-Step Conference Keynote w/ Josh Walpole

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 Tara McCausland. I'm so pleased that you're here. I'm excited today to share with you another keynote address from the April SAL 12-Step Conference. And this comes from 12-stepper and therapist Josh Walpole, and he'll be talking about the stories we tell. He shares some personal experience dealing with sexual addiction, his story of recovery, and how that led him into becoming a therapist himself. Beyond him sharing a bit of his own story, he'll talk about the hero's journey and how we can find a way forward to healing and recovery.

Now, before we jump into that, of course, a couple of announcements. First, I'm excited about our upcoming SA Lifeline Women's Workshop, which will be held September 18th and 19th in Mapleton, Utah. Registration will be live in July, but I wanted to just have you save the date. And this is for women working in recovery from betrayal. Come connect, learn, and heal with other women who are working their own recovery. Hear from qualified therapists, engage in helpful discussions and other holistic activities that will engage your mind, your body, and your spirit to help you on your healing journey.

Put it on your calendar, September 18th and 19th. Mapleton, Utah. Also, we are looking for motivated individuals who want to share the hope of recovery. We invite you to apply to become an SA Lifeline Ambassador to help share the good news that there is a pathway to recovery from sexual addiction and betrayal trauma. You can go to the show notes and find a link there to apply. Now, thanks again for being here today and enjoy this keynote presentation from our 12-step conference.

Josh Walpole: I'm excited to be here. As Lyman said, I'm a therapist, but I'm also a 12-stepper. So I'm bouncing back and forth between some 12-step shares and some therapist ideas and techniques and help. One thing that I really love about the conference and getting together is in addiction, in betrayal, we are hurt by other people. Yeah. And we're hurt by ourselves. But ultimately, we heal with other people. So we need to be with other people to be able to heal.

And so I'm grateful for these types of opportunities. I'm grateful for the rooms of recovery to have that healing process. And I'm glad they didn't put my face up for very long. So we get to skip this part. So I am a therapist at Circles of Grace, been there for 7 years. I specialize in sexual addiction, betrayal trauma, And OCD. I seem to have a lot of clients have OCD-type tendencies. One thing I want to talk about my clinic really quickly, and then also this ties into my story to some degree as well.

Those that have been in the recovery circles for a while, maybe you're more familiar with the name LifeStar. So Circles of Grace was formerly LifeStar, and LifeStar has been around for 30 years. They were forefront in addiction and prioritizing in sexual addiction and betrayal trauma. And this is something that they've specialized in for quite a while. About 5 years ago, one of the co-founders decided to retire. So the other co-founder bought him out. And when he bought him out, he changed the name from LifeStar to Circles of Grace.

We still do the same stuff. We just had a little bit of a name change. And with that name change, we adopted the buffalo as our mascot. And our mantra is facing the storms of trauma together. So I want to talk a little bit about the buffalo or the bison and kind of why we adopted that and why our mantra is facing the storms of trauma together. So in the Great Plains, in the wild, When a storm comes into the plains, the buffaloes typically run and charge into the storm.

And they do this for a couple reasons. One is they're more resourced to charge into the storm, meaning they're more front-loaded, their mass is in the front. And so they can run into the storm and they can kind of take it more head-on. Where cows and horses, They're more backloaded in their hindquarters, so they usually turn away from the storm or run away from the storm as a way to kind of protect themselves and shield themselves.

But the storm lasts longer if they're running away from the storm or shielding themselves from it, where the storm is shorter duration with the buffalo when they run into it. The other reason why buffaloes run into the storm is they're in a herd together. And so running into a storm together with their herd makes it a little bit easier. They're not in isolation. They're not by themselves. So maybe you've heard gurus or motivational speakers talk about be the buffalo or face the storm.

That's kind of the concept or the idea. And so at Circles of Grace, one of the things that we try to do is help to resource our clients, help them to have the tools, And strategies that they need to be able to be front-loaded so that they can face their storms of trauma, addiction, betrayal, and that they can they can face those storms. So what what I would like to focus on today is stories. Kind of the idea or the concept of stories and storytelling.

This is something we definitely do a lot in twelve steps. Member shares our stories, right? There are certain things or elements about stories that draw us in, that make it exciting or make us want to listen to a story or hear a story. So depending on the types of books that you read, or maybe movies that you watch, and music that you listen to, the story is something that kind of draws you in. There's something about the story that You're looking for.

And it could be connecting, it could be something that you're related to, it could be a sad story. Maybe you're in a sad mood and you need something to kind of just help you emote a little bit more, kind of with some sadness. But we gravitate towards certain stories for certain reasons. And so my goal today is to, to tell a bunch of different stories and see how kind of they relate to you and your recovery.

Brené Brown. She is the shame expert, the vulnerability expert. And when she gave her TED Talk, her first TED Talk, it was June 2010, she talked about how she was going to be introduced at a speaking event. And the person that was going to introduce her said that they were going to introduce her as a storyteller. And she got really offended by this because she's an academic and Didn't want to be known as a storyteller, but in her TED Talk she said she got to thinking about it and she said, "Well, I do collect research and I share the research," and so maybe data is just our stories are just data with a soul.

And so it's that soul of the story that kind of draws us in or sticks with us or makes us want to know more, hear more about it, or like if we see a great movie, we want to go tell. our friends and family about it so they can see it and we can talk about it. So I think it's only fair that I share a little bit about my story as a 12-stepper and why or what led me to the rooms of recovery.

Growing up, had some issues with pornography, masturbation, my teenage years that lasted into my 20s. And then I met somebody and we decided to get married. And the story I told myself is, if I get married, then that'll cure my addiction and it'll go away. And so that's not true, if you don't know that already. But so we got married and my addiction continued, and it was a short-lived marriage because I wasn't quite ready to change and she wasn't ready to deal with it.

Years go by, and I did some therapy, I did some work, I felt like I was in a better place. I met my current wife, Bree, and we were set up by a mutual friend. And when she introduced us, she said that, hey, Josh is a sex addict. So just so you know, you can go on a date with him, but don't get serious. The only problem with that, I was, I was in a good place with my honesty.

And so I was being super honest with her. And it was really refreshing to me to be so honest. And it was really refreshing to her to be so honest. And so we fell in love. And I promised her that I was not going to hurt her like I did my ex-wife. And so we got married and life went on. We had kids, we bought a house, and then things got a little bit hard, a little bit stressful.

And instead of staying honest and communicating with her, I slowly went back into my addiction. Wow. And I broke that promise that I made to her. And I did not want to let her know about that. So I decided that I was just going to keep this to myself and hopefully it would just phase out and go away. We probably all had some of those same thoughts. However, my wife knew something was up. We ended up going to therapy.

We actually went to LifeStar. Okay. She didn't feel like the sexual addiction was going on, but she thought there was the money issue going on. So we went there to get some help and some therapy. And while we were there doing some therapy, one day I went to this Costco gas station to get some gas. I was taking a break from work. I got gas and pulled into the parking lot and parked. This was June 18th, 2014.

Okay. While I was sitting in the parking lot, I was on my phone scrolling, engaging in addictive behavior, looking for inappropriate relationships. And a car pulled up next to me. And I looked, and that car looked a lot like my wife's car. This Costco is 25 minutes away from our house. And so there was no reason for her to come to this Costco to get gas. So I checked to see who was driving it, and it was my wife with our 2 kids in the car.

And I got out of the car to say hi, and she said, what are you doing here? And I said, I am taking a break from work. And she says, why are you on your phone? And I said, I was relaxing. And she said, let me see your phone. And I said, no, and got back in the car and took off to work. Obviously, we both knew I was lying. And then my phone blew up with text messages and calls saying that I needed a disclosure.

What are you doing? Are you acting out again? Are you lying to me? And so we did a disclosure that week. She took a couple days to decide what she wanted to do. She didn't want to stay. A lot of people told her not to stay. The only person that told her to stay was God. And so she decided to listen to God. And so God believed that there was still something there. And so she stayed.

The house we lived in though, she said that the house is a house of lies. And so we need to sell the house and move somewhere else and start over. And so that's what we did. So June 18th, 2014 is kind of when our world turned upside down, when my wife found out I broke the promise to her. The next day, June 19th, 2014, is my sobriety date. A few years into recovery, I felt inspired to go back to school to become a therapist.

And so I did go back to school to become a therapist, and I ended up getting a job at LifeStar. And a couple, a couple months ago, we decided to move our clinic. We moved our building. And so we moved just kind of down the road from where we were. The ironic thing is, this is where— this is about where I was parked. And looking at where I was parked, that is my office. And so looking from my office, that is the view that I have from my office that I get to see every day.

So there's miracles in recovery, right? Kind of like Brandon said, you know, if you told the younger self that all these things would have happened, there's no way you would believe it. If you would have told me at any point in my life that I would be a therapist at LifeStar in my world that got blown up would be over— my new office would be overlooking this parking lot where everything blew up, there's no way I would have believed it.

But just know that recovery is real and it's possible. And look for these loving notes from God. I can only imagine when we moved in this office, God probably had a smile on his face knowing that this was going to be my new place. So with stories, there's tall tales, right? People that catch fish, the fish gets bigger every time they tell the story. There's— we can tell sometimes when people are lying in stories or when people are telling the truth.

So what makes people lie? Why do we lie when we know that it's not going to do us any favors? In that parking lot with my wife, Why did I lie to her? We both knew that I was up to something, so why did I lie? So there's different reasons why we maybe justify or rationalize why we lie. One of the reasons is to gain advantage, that we may manipulate, or we try to manage an outcome so it's kind of more in our favor.

We want to avoid punishment. That is definitely something that I was doing in that moment, is I was trying to avoid punishment, at least in that moment, even though I basically knew it was just delaying that punishment, but we're trying to save face. It's to maintain or enhance our self-image. I was trying to maintain that image that, of that promise that I told her that I was not going to hurt her like I did my ex-wife.

And that moment, everything kind of came crashing down. And so I lied to try to maintain that. The other reason is we try to protect ourselves or protect others, because we may say that they can't handle the truth, or I can't handle the truth. So I'm going to lie or minimize or justify. So it's not as bad. And ultimately, the lies always come out, right? We're always found out. So it's not really ultimately a benefit to us.

So the antidote to lying, I would say, is acceptance. So what we need to do is be able to accept the truth. It doesn't mean that we are okay with it or that we're fine by it, but we just need to accept reality. We just need to accept what it is. And when we know what it actually is, then we can deal with it. That's one of the reasons why we talk about doing a disclosure, is in order for the spouse to be able to choose what they're going to do, if they're going to stay or not, they have to have all the information so they can make that choice.

So there has to be this acceptance of reality. So I would argue that that's the antidote to lying. The opposite of lying is honesty, right? And so that's one of the key components of recovery. Is to be able to be honest. Anna Lembke, in her book Dopamine Nation, she has a whole chapter dedicated to honesty, and it's called Radical Honesty. And she says telling the truth is essential not just to recovery from addiction, but for all of us trying to live a more balanced life.

And so we talk about being congruent, we talk about our actions matching our words, A big part of that is we tell the truth, and then we follow through with the truth so that we're being honest, our actions are matching our words. And then Anna Lembke talks about 4 key reasons why we want to tell the truth. Number 1, telling the truth helps promote awareness. And I would argue 2 key tools in recovery is awareness And intention. So we have to be aware of the reality, and then we have to be intentional about what are we going to do about it.

Carl Jung—he talks about how we need to bring the unconscious conscious, and when we do, then we can deal with the truth of the matter, and then we can handle it. So awareness and intention are two key tools in recovery. The second thing she talks about is that it fosters. Intimate human connections. And so the couple breakout rooms that I went to, just the instant brotherhood or camaraderie that you could feel in the room with a group of men, just by hearing some of their comments or hearing some of their stories, that just— we immediately relate to each other because we know what we've gone through.

We see each other and it just Instantly brings us together. So there's that connection. And then a truthful autobiography helps to hold us accountable, which is key because a lot of times we just stay in denial and we don't really own up to our issue. And so being accountable is key. And then she says truth-telling is contagious and it can help prevent us from further addictions. So a couple stories to kind of talk about, some, some epic ones.

You guys are probably all familiar with these movies or these franchises, and they kind of all share something in common, which is this hero's journey or this origin story. And it's something that kind of draws us in, or it's one of the reasons why these are kind of epic tales and we kind of all know about them, right? So in this hero's journey, there's these 11 steps that we take. And I kind of want to correlate these with recovery and kind of what recovery looks like.

So the first one is a call to adventure. And so it can be a literal call to adventure, or it could just be we're dissatisfied with where things are, or we, we feel like things need to be different or they need to be better. I don't like where I'm at. I'm tired of living this double life. And so sometimes that can be the call to adventure. And then there's a refusal to the call. Maybe we're a little bit hesitant on taking that next step.

We don't know what it looks like or what it's going to take. Or maybe we've tried it so many times before and it hasn't worked out very well that we just don't want to do it. So there's a hesitation. And then there's a meeting of the mentor. And so meeting with a mentor can be a lot of different things or a lot of different people. It could be a faith leader, it could be a family member, it could be a sponsor, it could be a therapist, but just meeting somebody that is there cheerleading us, so to speak, that has our back, that knows that we can be in a better place and that healing and recovery is worth it.

And then step four is crossing over the threshold. So we go from this known world into the unknown world. And so stepping over the threshold may be going to therapy for your first time, or going back to therapy after a long time. Maybe it's walking into the rooms of a twelve-step program, or maybe it's scheduling an appointment with. faith leader. But it's these scary steps that we take that we don't really know what the outcome is.

And so we step into this unknown world. And so Star Wars, Luke Skywalker met Obi-Wan Kenobi, and then Yoda kind of became his mentor, kind of helped him with the cross the threshold. Frodo met Gandalf, And then crossing the threshold was basically them leaving the Shire. And at one point in the movie, they stopped and said, this is the farthest that we've ever been outside of the Shire. And then Harry Potter met Dumbledore as his mentor, helping him cross the threshold.

And then there's tests that we go through. There's friends that we make. We make friends in the rooms of recovery. Maybe we make some enemies or some old enemies come up, but there's these battles that we have to fight. Ultimately, we approach a challenge or challenges. There may be several that we have to kind of go through or battle through. Then there's this big ordeal that we have to endure. And again, that can be many types of things.

It can be going to couples counseling together, and maybe it doesn't go so well. It could be doing a separation or doing a disclosure. Some of these hard things that have been terrifying that we'd rather take to the grave or things that we never wanted to reveal or share, especially with our spouse, because we are so terrified of what could happen. And then we come to the reward. And so the reward can be your 1-month sobriety chip, it can be your 1-year sobriety chip, It could be moving back into the bedroom with your wife.

So the reward can look like a lot of different things. And then we come back, the road back, which leads to a resurrection, which is a death and a birth, where we, our old self dies, our addict self dies, and hopefully we become a new creature. And we respond and react to things differently. And then we return with the elixir. And so again, the elixir could be an actual physical object. In some of the movies it is, or it could just be wisdom and knowledge and just being changed, being a person that has gone through the miracle of recovery.

And there's an interesting scene in The Lord of the Rings. When the hobbits get back to the Shire, there's four of them, and Mary and Pippin are sitting there. They're in a pub drinking together. Then Mary and Pippin seem fine, like it's no big deal. They feel like just being back in the Shire is normal for them. Sam sees a girl that he he liked before, and she's still around and available, and he wants to get married to this girl.

But Sam, I'm sorry, Frodo. He doesn't feel like he fits in anymore. He doesn't feel like he belongs. He feels like because of what he went through, maybe the Shire isn't the best place for him. And so he decides that maybe he's not going to stay there. And I would argue that happens with some of us too, is as we go through these ordeals, and as we return with the elixir, our circumstances change, and we may have to make some decisions on what that looks like.

With me and my wife, it was This was a house of lies, and we need to move to a different place to have a fresh start. So this is kind of the hero's journey or our recovery journey. However, in, in many years of my marriage, I don't feel like I was the hero. I felt like I was these guys. And so what do all these guys have in common? They're all villains in their story, right? Yeah.

And so I felt like a villain more than I felt like a hero or a good guy in my story for, for a lot of time. However, there's something else that these guys all have in common. And it's not just that they were a villain, but they also have a redemption story as well, right? Mm-hmm. So for each of them, the redemption story Looks a little different. And just indulge me a little bit because I'd like to just share each of their redemption stories.

So Darth Vader, bad guy for a long time. But when his son was— when his son Luke was being killed by the Emperor, Darth Vader decided to save his life. And that was his kind of pivot point. That was his redemption story. Scrooge was visited by 3 ghosts. And then woke up. And one of my favorite parts in A Christmas Carol is Scrooge, when he wakes up after being visited by the ghost, he says to himself, maybe that didn't happen.

And then he said something to the effect of, who cares? I don't know if it happened or not. I don't know if it was real or not. But I'm a changed man because of it. And so I'm going to live that way, whether it was real or not. And so he changed his life. The Grinch, he felt like an outcast. He didn't like the people of Whoville. So he stole all their Christmas and then realized that actually didn't change anything.

The people of Whoville were still connected and happy and the presents weren't everything. And so Dr. Seuss says his heart grew 3 sizes that day, right? And he came back to town. And he was accepted and included, and he ended up cutting the roast beast, as we know in the story. And then Jean Valjean, he's from Les Misérables. He's a protagonist in Les Misérables where he was stuck in prison for stealing a loaf of bread.

When he got out, he had papers where he was known as a criminal and couldn't get a job anywhere, so he ended up stealing some silver. From a priest, and the priest ended up saying, "Take this silver. I've bought your soul from God, and now go out and do do God's work. Do better." And so he changed his life around and did that. And then Kylo Ren. So I apologize; it's a little Star Wars heavy. I wasn't going to put Kylo Ren in, but when I was talking about my presentation with my wife, she wanted Kylo Ren, and I didn't want to take out Darth Vader, so I decided to leave them both in.

But one of the reasons she likes Kylo Ren is, number one, she says, I'm old, and so Darth Vader appeals to the old person in me. And Kylo Ren might appeal to some of those younger people here. Also, she likes the romance of the story. Ultimately, kind of what saved Kylo Ren was Rey, right? The goodness of Rey and Kylo turning from the dark side to the Force because of Rey. And in a lot of ways, I feel that's very similar to my story is God believed in me and my wife believed in me before I believed in me.

And that was powerful. That was life-changing for me. And then the last one is Saul, who became Paul. He was destroying the name of the church. He was a pretty bad guy. And then an angel came down and slapped him upside the face a little bit and said, knock it off, and changed his name to Paul. And he went on to be a great missionary and writing some great books in the New Testament. So again, depending on where you view each of these individuals, they're either a villain in their story or they're a hero.

And so regardless of where you're at, if you feel like you're The villain, just know that your story is not over. It can still change. If you get nothing else from what I have to say today, know that recovery is not a fairy tale. It is real and it is possible. And I just invite you to believe in that, that you can have a redemption story as well. One of the things that shifts us from being the villain to the hero is these pivot moments or these, these moments that change us.

And so I just want to share 2 of these kind of pivot moments. So the prodigal son in Luke 15:14, the prodigal son wasted away his inheritance through riotous living, it says. And in Luke 15:14, it says he began to want. And so to me, that sounds like He was starting to hit his rock bottom. And so rock bottom can look different for a lot of people. The way I define rock bottom is it's when you decide to stop digging.

I've seen people that have lost everything. Some people consider rock bottom as losing everything, but I've seen that and they've still continued in their riotous living. So rock bottom is ultimately making a choice to say, I'm going to stop living this way. And then a couple verses later in Luke 15:17, it says, and when he came to himself. And I think that's the key phrase is he came to himself. So he was, he was living amongst the swine eating corn husks, and he came to himself and thought, this is terrible.

I don't want to live like this anymore. I'm going to go back home to my dad who's probably going to be mad at me and won't accept me. But at least I can be a servant. And that's got to be a better life than what I'm living now. So that coming to himself was his pivot point. And then in the White Book, under the section, What is a Sexaholic and What is Sexual Sobriety? It reads, until we have been driven to the point of despair, until we really wanted to stop but could not, we did not give ourselves to this program of recovery.

A is for those who know they have no other option but to stop, and their own enlightened self-interest must tell them this. So again, it's that piece of coming to themselves. They have to be the ones to realize there has to be something better, and I'm going to give it a shot. And part of that is the pain of continuing in the life of addiction or the pain of living the double life. Actually becomes greater than the pain of exploring recovery.

And so I have seen people that have come into the rooms of recovery and come into my office as a therapist who have maybe been forced there by a spouse or maybe court ordered. And they can get some help, things can happen, things can change for them. But it doesn't really change until they have this moment of where they come to themselves and said, I'm going to do this for me because I want it, because I need it.

And so that's, that's that key marker. And so unfortunately, we can't push somebody into recovery. We can help guide them, but kind of like the tale of we can only lead a horse to water, we have to allow them to drink, right? So just a couple of stories on the founders of the 12 steps, the Alcoholics Anonymous books. So these are books that the sex addicts use. Yeah. Alcoholics Anonymous book, the Sexaholics Anonymous book, and then the SAL book.

In each of these books, typically the first thing that we read is a story, the story of the author of the book, right? So we look at Bill W.'s story, and he talks about how he had an old college friend coming over for a visit. And he was excited to see him. They were planning on having drinks together. But in the book, Bill W. talks about when he opened the door, Eddie Thatcher, who was coming over, he said that there was a different look in his eye.

And I think something about his skin glowing. But just, he looked different, like he knew that there was a change in him. So he invited him in to eat, offered him a drink a couple times. Eby refused to drink a couple times. And Bill W. is like, dude, like, what's going on? Like, this is what we do. And there was a highlight from the book that I want to point out. He said, I've got religion. That's what's happened to me.

That's how I've changed. So I found, I found God, I found spirituality. And that's why I don't drink anymore. And so I think Bill W. was a little bit upset by it. But he was also curious. And that's what got Bill W. kind of interested in. What does he mean he got religion? What does that look like? How does getting religion stop you from drinking? And so with that curiosity, it helped Bill W. to stop drinking.

Later, when he was in Akron, Ohio on a trip, he was having an urge to drink. So he went to an Oxford meeting to try to get some help and ended up meeting Dr. Bob. And they ended up chatting, and then the rest is kind of history with 12 steps, right? In Roy K.'s story, who wrote the White Book, he has his personal story in the beginning, and then he finishes it at the end. And at the end of the book, it's kind of interesting.

He talks about how he had a lengthy period of sobriety. He said, "I was I was sober." But then he makes a comment, and it's it's in all capital letters. He says it was still impossible to live with that woman, talking about his wife. And so the idea that he had is if I get sober, then things will be better. My marriage will be better. Things will be happier. And so what he realized is sobriety was kind of just the the beginning.

He needed more than just sobriety. And so then he started to do. Amends. He started to make amends. And that's when things shifted. That's when he stepped into recovery. And that's when he got the marriage that he was looking for, that he was hoping for. And a quote from his story is he says, years in pain, that's what it took for us. And unfortunately, I think that's true for most of us is it takes years, at least takes some time.

And it takes pain, unfortunately. Part of the problem with addictive behavior is we're running from pain or numbing out from pain. And so ultimately, we need to stop and face our pain. We need to deal with it, and we need to actually start to feel it, and we need to process it in healthy ways. One of the things I say to my addicts a lot is how you do pain is how you do recovery, because recovery is painful, and we have to step into that.

There's a concept of addiction is hard and recovery is hard, and choose your hard, because they're both going to be tough. And then in the SAL book, Stephen and Real share their story. Stephen about sexual addiction and Real about her betrayal trauma. And then A quote that they each said that I like out of the, the SAO book is Stephen says, I am responsible for my own recovery. And so he talks about how he came forward 3 different times.

And on the 3rd time, he kind of had a, he had a little bit of a wrestle with God of, do I believe in God? And the answer was yes. And it sounds like that was his pivot point of saying, then I want to do this and this is possible. And I can. That was kind of Steven's pivot point there. And then Real, who I can only imagine 3 different disclosures is pretty tough. And all trust and safety was gone.

And so the only person that she could turn to or rely on was God. And that's where she found her peace. And that's where she found her serenity is going to God. So the stories of the 12 steps, if we broke it down into simple terms, looks like this. Steps 1, 2, and 3 are enlightenment, where we're kind of exploring, we're trying to understand ourselves better, we're trying to understand our connection with God. I think it's interesting that step 1 is about doing the step 1 inventory.

where we're revealing all of our deepest, darkest secrets, the things that we didn't want to tell, the things that we were ashamed of, the things that we were going to take to the grave. It's, um, had to have been inspired to be able to do that first, because as we talk about honesty, that accountability piece, the accepting it as it is so that we can deal with it, um, it's a great first step so that we can actually own all of our baggage, because so often we want to ignore it or excuse it away or minimize it or dismiss it or pretend it didn't happen.

And so stopping and reflecting on all that is critical. If you've ever read the book The Shame That Binds You by John Bradshaw, one of the things that he talked about is he was an alcoholic and he went to an AA meeting and he said he was doing his first step inventory and he revealed all of his worst stuff. And then everybody gave him their phone number and he said it was the darndest thing, right? Because as addicts, we say, if anybody ever knows about this, they are going to turn me away or they're going to run away from me or they're going to leave me.

And what we find in the rooms of recovery is more empathy and love and connection. Steps 4 to 9 are the action steps. Where we dive into kind of facing our own issues, where we dive into our character defects, where we dive into our resentment and fear, and then where we make amends. The Steps 8 and 9 amends was probably one of the hardest ones for me, but it was also the most rewarding to be able to go back and right some wrongs that I've done, even though I felt in some degrees that I've been wronged and I need things to be right, but working my own recovery was healing and beneficial for me.

And then steps 10 and 12, I would argue these are steps that we do every day for the rest of our life. I mean, ideally, we work all 12 steps, but 10, 11, and 12 are critical. 10 is, you know, when we're wrong, properly admit it. 10 or 11, we continue our conscious contact with God through prayer and meditation. And then 12 is having had a spiritual awakening, we deliver this message to others and live these principles in all our affairs. And so if we, if we break those down into those phases, I think it can help just kind of tell that story of 12 steps.

So here is kind of a therapeutic journey of recovery. So I want to talk about each one of these briefly. We don't necessarily have to do all of these, and I'll talk about this. Yeah. But the idea, the people that I see that have the most success do some type of individual therapy, and then they do some type of group therapy and/or 12-step. There's a benefit in doing some therapeutic work because we probably all have stuff in our past that we need to deal with.

We have our own wounds or traumas that need to be dealt with. And then going to group and having some common humanity And being there with other people can be helpful. One of the things I love about group is having people that are further down the path than me to give me hope, and then other people that are in a tough spot that helps remind me of why I'm working my recovery, because sometimes I can delude myself that it's not that big of a deal or that I'm in an okay place.

And so having that helps. Doing a therapeutic full disclosure is critical, kind of like it was talked about this morning from Amanda, is there's a difference between a disclosure at 3 AM or a disclosure that's trickled down day after day after day versus an actual therapeutic disclosure where we're a little bit more regulated and we're in a safer environment. So even if you've done a disclosure, if it hasn't been a therapeutic disclosure, I would invite you to do a therapeutic disclosure.

The 2 main benefits of a therapeutic disclosure is, one, an addict is only as sick as their secrets. And so getting rid of all your secrets through a disclosure is key. And then giving all the information to the spouse so that they can decide what they want to do, having the full information. A controlled separation. So this is something that doesn't have to happen depending on the disclosure, how disruptive it is, or how intense it may be, or lack of safety.

Maybe there has to be a little bit of a controlled separation. And the idea is that you take time apart from each other so we can kind of regulate our nervous system so that we can get into a better place to kind of come back together. And then do some couples counseling to heal. And a controlled disclosure, again, may or may not need to happen. That was one thing that me and my wife did is when we moved into a new house, we did a 5-month in-house separation so we could just kind of distance ourselves from each other.

And that gave us a lot of time to just work on our own recovery, and then we could reintegrate coming back together. And then with couples therapy, again, the drying out period or sex fast. Sorry, guys. Men usually hate me for saying this, but it can be beneficial. One of the reasons is with drug or alcohol addiction, we just stopped going to the bar, we stopped going to our drug dealer. But with lust or sex addiction, if we're still engaging in sex with our spouse, Maybe we— and if we don't know the difference between healthy sex and unhealthy sex, sometimes we need to take a little bit of time to figure that out and kind of reclaim our virtue through this drying out period.

And again, this has to be done systematically with a therapist so that there aren't any resentments or hard feelings or acting out isn't happening again. And again, that's optional, but In the White Book, it talks about that. And the idea is that sex is indeed optional. Because again, sometimes we feel like, as addicts, we're going to die without sex. So the idea is, we're actually not going to die without sex. And so giving that a try can be beneficial to the relationship.

And then reintegration. Reintegration is, it's kind of like, we close all the blinds and we fumigate our house because we have a bug problem. Yeah. We kind of are doing that with our souls in recovery. And then maybe we're like, okay, I'm going to open the doors and open the shades again and kind of let some light in. And maybe we kind of do that in recovery as we kind of reintegrate. Because a lot of times in the trauma, in the addiction, maybe we just kind of— our world becomes smaller, right?

Maybe we don't feel like we can relate to people. And we kind of, as we're fumigating our own home, maybe become a little bit smaller, we shrink. Yeah. And reintegration is saying, okay, I'm going to go back out there and kind of risk. And if we end up getting divorced, maybe the marriage doesn't work, reintegrating as a divorcee, because that can be difficult in some ways as well. So those are kind of the standard operating procedures that I typically suggest in the recovery process.

So to go through this kind of quickly, there's 3 parts of the brain. Or 3 main functions of the brain. The brain is ultimately to keep us alive. So there's a survival part of our brain, which is the back of our brain. It's the reptilian brain or caveman brain, and it's scanning for danger. And so it's there to keep us safe. Then when it— when we get triggered or activated, that is the fight, flight, or freeze, or appease, or fawn, or collapse.

And then the mid part of our brain is our emotional brain, where it's scanning for comfort or discomfort. So to some degree where you guys are sitting, you're probably a little bit in your emotional part of your brain, realizing what's comfortable, what's uncomfortable, kind of where you want to sit. And then it's responsible for expressing our feelings. And then our thinking brain is our prefrontal cortex, which is ideally where we want to spend the majority of our time, because when we're there, we're more creative, we're more intentional, we're less impulsive, we're more forward-thinking.

And so ideally, that's where we would like to spend the majority of our time. The other thing that kind of ties along with this is the nervous system. So based on whatever nervous system state we're in, we're going to tell ourselves a certain story. If I'm in fight or flight, everything's dangerous and I have to fight or run away. If I'm in dorsal vagal, which is the shutdown, collapse, freeze, everything's too much, everything is overwhelming, I can't handle anything.

So we're going to react based on where we're at in our nervous system. And so noticing regulation and dysregulation, noticing connection and disconnection. This polyvagal system is something that we, we talk a lot about in Circles of Grace and kind of noticing kind of how we, we shift. And so some ideas of how to help regulate with that or get into a better place. So the vagus nerve is this nerve that goes down our neck and goes into all of our organs.

And so, when we did that little head turn in the beginning, and then the deep breath, that activates our vagus nerve and helps us to calm down and put us into a more grounding sensation. And there's 4 Rs that we talk about with the nervous system: recognize, respect, regulate, and restory. So, the recognize is the awareness piece that I'm aware, Of where I'm at. And then I need to respect where I'm at because it's the autonomic nervous system.

So we automatically go there. And so I just need to accept that, hey, this is where I'm at and my body's there because it's trying to protect me. And that's okay. And then if I can do those first 2 pretty well, then I can regulate in a healthy way. I can be intentional about how I regulate. I would argue if we don't do the first 2, Then our regulation is problematic. It's going to be maladaptive. We're going to do— we're going to go into our acting out behavior or control type behavior.

And then if we don't regulate in a healthy way, we don't restory, we continue the same story of our shame cycle or our addiction cycle. But the restory is saying that I'm not in danger. I'm okay. I'm safe. And so, that's the restory that we're looking for. And so, we can restory the nervous system, and we can actually restory events as well. When we were moving into the new building for the clinic, I took those pictures because I wanted to bring them home and show my wife.

And so, I was in the kitchen, and all my kids were there, and I showed that picture to my wife of the view from my office. And she started sobbing. And all my kids turned around and said, Dad, what did you do to Mom? And I said, I think those are happy tears. And then my wife's like, yeah. And so just the restory of that parking lot has been huge for us. And so we can restory our nervous system, we can restory events.

Orienting is kind of what we did in the beginning with turning our head and kind of just working on our vagus nerve. breathing, journaling, mindful meditation, and then this 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique are all ways to kind of just help with regulation and get into a good place. So I just invite you to own your own recovery story, own your journey. Again, if you're a villain, that's okay. You're a villain right now, doesn't mean you have to be tomorrow or next year.

We can switch, we can have a redemption story. And I just want to close with a couple stories that maybe you guys have heard some of these before, but I think they're really helpful and related, relatable. So this first one is called An Addict Fell into a Hole and Couldn't Get Out. And so it says a businessman went by and the addict called for help. The businessman threw him some money and told him to buy himself a ladder.

But the addict could not buy a ladder in this hole he was in. A doctor walked by and the addict said, help, I can't get out. And the doctor gave him some drugs and said, take this, it will relieve the pain. The addict said, thanks. But when the pills ran out, he was still in the hole. A well-known psychiatrist rode by and heard the addict's cries for help. He stopped and asked, how did you get there?

Were you born there? Did your parents put you there? Tell me about yourself. It will alleviate your sense of loneliness. So the addict talked with him for about an hour, then the psychiatrist had to leave, but he said he'd be back next week, and the addict thanked him, but he was still in the hole. So therapists are still good, but— Yeah. Um, a priest came by, and the addict called for help, and the priest gave him a Bible and said, I'll say a prayer for you.

He got down on his knees and prayed for the addict, and then he left. The addict was grateful. He reads the Bible, but he was still stuck in the hole. A recovering addict happened to be passing by. The addict cried out, hey, help! I'm stuck in this hole! Right away, the recovering addict jumped down into the hole. The addict said, what are you doing? We are both stuck here now. But the recovering addict said, calm down.

It's okay. I've been here before. I know how to get out. And so not to discredit the therapist or the faith leader or the businessman or the doctor, but we do need someone that's gone this path before to help get us out of this hole, right? That's the benefit of 12-step is being with other people that have gone this way. So this next story is an autobiography in 5 short chapters. And so as I read through this, I just want you to kind of think about your recovery journey and see what chapter you are in.

So chapter 1 is, I walk down the street, there's a deep hole in the sidewalk, I fall in, I am lost, I am helpless. It is not my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. Chapter 2, I walk down the same street, there's a deep hole in the sidewalk, I still don't see it, I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place. It isn't my fault. It still takes me a long time to get out.

Chapter 3. I walk down the same street. There's the deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It's a habit. It is my fault. I know where I am. I get out immediately. Chapter 4. I walk down the same street. There's the deep hole in the sidewalk, and I walk around it. Chapter 5, I walk down a different street. Right? So just noticing where are you at in these 5 chapters. And I would argue the hardest one is Chapter 5.

It's that walking into the unknown, that special world, right, of going down a different street. Can I be without my addiction? What does that look like? What does that feel like? And then last story here. I have to say something about 12 steps because I run the temporary sponsor list for SAL 12-step. And step 12 is super critical and key and is so beneficial. And if you're not sponsoring and you can, I invite you to. Some people are hesitant or scared of what it looks like or what it should be to be a sponsor.

I just ask you to try it, at least be a temporary sponsor. It'll benefit you and it'll benefit Others as well. And so this next quick story is just taking a look at what maybe just identifying what type of sponsor you are, kind of how you relate to people that have been through kind of a tough, tough situation. The story is called The Rabbit Listened. It's a kids' book. If you want to just YouTube it, it's a cool little kids' story, but it has a really good moral to the story.

The Rabbit Listened. If you want to just go home and Check that out yourself. And then, yeah, last thing again is just knowing that recovery is not a fairy tale. It's real. It's possible. You're not too far gone no matter where you are. This can turn into a redemption story. And I'm just grateful for 12 steps and for what it's meant for me in my life and then what it's meant for my clients. I know my clients who have the most success.

Are coming to therapy and then doing a 12-step group just because it's so beneficial. And so again, grateful for this conference and grateful for this opportunity. So thank you guys.

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