Kurt Lebeck Recovery Capital RCADE Tools

Building Recovery Capital Through Strengths

Building Recovery Capital Through StrengthsAdd Your Heading Text Here

In a recent episode of Reduce The Stigma, Whitney interviewed Kurt Lebeck, a recovery scientist and PhD candidate, who delved into the concept of recovery capital as a cornerstone of his work in behavioral health. Kurt’s journey from achieving recovery to becoming a leader in recovery-oriented program development is rooted in his belief that recovery capital—comprising internal, external, and social resources—is not just an outcome but a process. Through his innovative RCADE Tools, Kurt empowers individuals and peer support workers to identify and leverage their strengths, enhancing their recovery journey.

Kurt’s focus extends to empowering marginalized communities by building coalitions across diverse groups. His work in New Mexico, a state known for its rich cultural diversity, has reinforced his belief in the critical role of community in recovery. Kurt emphasizes that recovery is attainable for everyone, even without traditional treatment methods, by recognizing and utilizing personal strengths. His approach offers a fresh perspective on recovery, centering on empowerment and the unique pathways each individual can take.

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

About Our Guest:

Over the last several years, Kurt has worked with several of New Mexico’s behavioral health programs, enhancing recovery from substance use and co-occurring disorders. Through innovative tools and programs, he has bolstered the capabilities of peer support workers (PSWs) and community support workers (CSWs). Kurt’s experience, including roles as a consumer, PSW, NIAAA predoctoral fellow, and clinical social worker, underpin his approach to supporting clients across the continuum of care — from withdrawal management to sustained recovery to reduced harm.

Central to his strategy is the concept of recovery capital, which encompasses the resources individuals can draw upon to initiate and sustain recovery. Kurt’s methods aim to accelerate recovery and reduce harm by explicitly educating consumers on recovery capital — enabling individuals to lead fulfilling lives in recovery. He has developed a recovery capital assessment tool and a coaching method, empowering PSWs and CSWs to empower their clients to harness their strengths and navigate their recovery journey effectively.

Kurt extends his expertise beyond New Mexico, offering nationwide consultancy and research services to behavioral health organizations. His current initiatives include developing a low-threshold buprenorphine program and conducting mixed-methods research for projects like the SXSW MHTTC. His work spans various domains, including program design and implementation, feasibility studies, and quality improvement.

His research interests focus on recovery science, harm reduction, organizational health, program R&D, and implementation science.

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Transcript

Whitney (00:50)

Hello and welcome to Recovery Conversations. Today I’m talking with Kurt Lebeck, a substance use and co -occurring disorders recovery scientist specializing in recovery -oriented program development and implementation. Kurt draws on his own and others’ lived experiences of recovery, resilience, and flourishing, including managing chronic pain, to improve behavioral health programs and policies. He incorporates organizational, social, and individual change theories to enhance the responsiveness of treatment providers and behavioral health systems to the needs of those in their care. Kurt is the president of the New Mexico Society for Addiction Medicine, a chapter of ASAM. He teaches social policy at the Smith College School for Social Work in Massachusetts and is entering his third year as a PhD candidate in National Institutes of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Training Fellow at Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management in Massachusetts. Wow, Kurt, you have a lot going on, and I am honored that you took time out of your busy schedule to join me today.

 

Kurt (02:00)

Well, thank you very much for having me. I’m looking forward to

 

Whitney (02:04)

I am as well. We’ve actually been connected on LinkedIn for a bit and I’ve been able to follow your work, but this is the first time we’re getting to talk and I’m excited because I saw that you are really moving and working a lot in the recovery capital space. And I’d like to ask you, know, let’s hear how you came to where you are today. You know, you’ve gone through numerous schooling programs, you’re doing a lot, but where did it begin?

 

Kurt (02:32)

Yeah, thank you. And it’s really, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Yeah. So as many of these stories do, this begins in my own mental health and addiction struggles, which really began in probably my late teens, but didn’t become, I would say really problematic until my late twenties and thirties. And the reason I go ahead and locate the beginning of this odyssey there is because I didn’t study behavioral health or psychology or medicine or anything of its kind when I was a teenager. And in my early 20s, I studied fine art. And my hope was to become an artist and make beautiful things. And in order to sort of sustain myself in college, I worked in the trades. worked, I learned a lot growing up. My family. My uncle has a farm in Illinois and my dad is an engineer and had a shop in New Mexico. So I learned a lot of trades growing up, everything from electrician to carpenter to everything else. And I was able to sort of parlay that into work as a college student. And so my 20s were very busy, but I was building things, fancy things, if you will. I was, my specialty was metal fabrication and fine art metal fabrication and architectural metal fabrication. And the reason this matters is because the trades are pretty notorious for being great places to get injured, which would happen to me later. But also they’re great places to hang out with other folks working in the trades and there’s a lot of drinking and hanging out and we had a lot of fun. And again, I would say, I would describe my 20s as, you it wasn’t problematic substance use or problematic mental health at that point. It was what I would call like developmentally normal, at least now with the education that I have subsequently gotten, developmentally normal kind of drinking and behavior. And then in my early 30s, I would get into a couple of accidents. Work -related accidents, just the sort of hazards of the trades. One of which caused a really pretty serious damage to my right leg. It severed my Achilles tendon. It was really quite gruesome. Yeah, and so it got stitched back together. I have most of the functioning there. And then I also would strain my back and need to have surgery on my lower back. And so those kinds of events really sort of catapulted me from, I would say, regular developmentally appropriate use to chaotic and hazardous use, where I was using substances really to blunt pain and to manage some very difficult other social consequences that were arising. And so the origin of this sort of odyssey I’ve been on for the last eight years really begins almost 20 years ago in that sense because I get injured and then, you I develop a pretty severe addiction, you know, to alcohol, opioids, benzos and a number of other things, you know, all the while trying to sort of manage a small business that I was running in New York City where we were building, again, still really amazing things for people. You know, I had some really incredible clients. I worked for Paul McCartney, one of the Beatles, built a staircase. Yeah, so if you’re ever at his house and you see his stair, you can say, know exactly. Yeah, so I’d worked for these really famous, famous people. He’s just one of them. And it was a really the so the demands on that that level, the quality that goes into that are really high. You can’t really mess around. And with

 

Whitney (06:29)

Wow. all the time, yeah.

 

Kurt (06:53)

My injuries and this need to basically try to just stay right, just to stay even keeled, I was using more and more and it was becoming more more problematic. my ability to maintain the business and sustain myself and my family, we’re slipping. And so one of the things that would happen is in the sort of deluge, if you will, of all of these problems. You know, as a small business person, I was paying for my own health insurance, right, and that of my families, and paying at that point, you know, for very good quality coverage. And, you know, I’m going to these experts and I’m feeling, you know, downright suicidal, frankly, because I was so stressed out by my inability to perform at the level that was expected of me and so stressed out about money that I just didn’t know what to do. And so one of the thoughts that occurred to me as I think it does many people who are in that situation is it might just be easier if I checked out. And so that would be one of my several hospital admissions. And then…I would, and I was always voluntary. I always went in on my own, recognizing that I was having this, you know, these really pretty significant problems and I was managing to keep my health insurance. So, scraping by, but you know, putting huge amounts of money on my Amex business card, you know, that kind of thing. And ultimately what would happen is that I would go to these, I would get inpatient status, you know, and be in a psychiatric stabilization unit you know, a week or 10 days. And then I get discharged into the community with, you know, a psychiatrist and a bunch of prescriptions. And maybe somebody would say, hey, you should go check out an AA meeting, or maybe you should do some IOP intensive outpatient program. And so I do, I did a lot of those things and I took the prescriptions and I tried to do everything that was sort of prescribed to me by what I now know is the medical model of disease care. And I think it was, I know these doctors and social workers and others were really trying to do their best with the resources they had. And I had to, like I said, I was paying for this, I don’t remember if it was platinum or gold or something, but this really good quality insurance. So I had like access to the best care in New York City, which is not too shabby for most people. But when it came to addiction care and to pain management, you know, I was caught up in that sort of middle stage of the opioid crisis when they were really starting to crack down on things like Oxycontin and the prescribing of it. But they didn’t see a problem with prescribing me a bunch of fentanyl patches to maintain myself. They didn’t see a problem prescribing me a lot of benzodiazepines and so on at the time. And now, of course, we know that that is contraindicated. So yeah, that’s sort of where I get a lot of my energy for this work. Yeah, it’s the origin.

 

Whitney (10:21)

That there’s so much there. And I appreciate you mentioning the trades. That is a subset of our, you know, workforce that, like you said, there is a high risk of injury and not every person in a trades position has that high quality healthcare such as you had, which can mean then that either they can’t afford to address it or they maybe don’t have the ability to take time off to rest because of how their employment arrangement is. And so that can lead to becoming dependent on different medications and maybe obtaining alternative ways just to be able to get to work, to do the job that causes you pain, that you need then the medication and that horrible vicious cycle. So thank you for mentioning your experience in that world. I don’t think it gets as much notice as perhaps it should.

 

Kurt (11:23)

Yeah, I agree. I would like to think a very generous employer, all of my full -time employees had healthcare, but it was extraordinarily expensive. And I know they didn’t take advantage of it because as a sort of small business, I wasn’t in position to pay them for time off at that point. I only had a handful or a dozen employees. I did work with as many as like 40 at one point, but you know, a lot of those were subcontractors and different kinds of contractors. Um, so I never had to meet that threshold that you have to, where you give everybody the same, uh, insurance, um, or the same benefits. But I did give them that and, and they didn’t take advantage of it. And many of them would probably mostly because you afford to take time off, especially in a city, I mean, anywhere, but in a city like New York, where the cost of living is increasingly high relative to the average income of a blue collar or a tradesperson, you just can’t stop working, unless you have paid time off. And that was not something that I could afford to provide at the time.

 

Whitney (12:46)

Great, absolutely. it’s almost, it’s a good segue then into recovery capital because employment and those types of resources can be a part of someone’s recovery capital. So can we start with what is your definition of recovery capital, not the official one?

 

Kurt (13:07)

Mm. Well, that’s a little trickier. I know that it’s the official one. But I think the work that I’ve been doing has really made me appreciate how much recovery capital is both sort of an object or an endpoint or an outcome. But what I’m most interested in is recovery capital accrual, which is how we build recovery capital. And so in that sense, as a sort of operational definition, I think of it less as an outcome and more as a process. So for me, it is the process of developing resources, internal, external resources, social resources, my own resources, and also being aware of and getting connected to the resources in the community. And so those are all, you know, it’s sort of flipping and…and playing a little bit of semantics there, but it’s really about how can we accelerate the acquisition of those resources. And a lot of this work, just in my experience, sort of shows this as well, isn’t something that somebody can do for you. It’s something you have to learn how to do on your own. And one of the things that I think I take a lot of inspiration from is a guy by name of Paulo Freire, whose name I can never pronounce correctly, but he was a Brazilian activist and most of his work was in Brazil. And he kind of coined this term called, Portuguese it’s contienchão, but in our sense, I think it might be like critical consciousness. And it’s this idea that we become aware through literacy, through learning of relative position and what is going on in the world around us. And the injustices there also. And then because of that awareness, we’re able to act on it. So I think of the process of recovery capital accrual as really trying to light the spark and helping folks recognize that they have a part to play in this, that there are a lot of systemic reasons that they are in this position that they’re in specifically when we’re talking about addiction, nobody wakes up and chooses, right? We always hear that. But what happens is we often wake up in, whether it’s the trades or in some other industry or some other part of the world where we don’t have a choice. Like the only opportunity for us is like, I’m gonna get well by taking some medication, legal or illegal, who cares? Like I need to have one.

 

Whitney (15:56)

I have to.

 

Kurt (15:58)

Otherwise I am not gonna be able to do my job or whatever. And so I think, you know, it matters a lot that people start to recognize that these, the environment in which they’re in, which can be a resource, but can also be a negative kind of recovery capital. So I think about recovery capital really is that kind of process of how do we become aware of it in our environments? What it is, is less important as much as it matters that I start to mobilize it and recognize my own strengths to do

 

Whitney (16:33)

So I hear a lot of, or what I’m taking is really the need for that internal reflection and identification. Is that kind of accurate?

 

Kurt (16:44)

Yeah, think I definitely am inspired. So yeah, I went on to study clinical social work. And so there’s a lot of at Smith College, which is very psychodynamically oriented. So we think a lot about drives and we think a lot about insight and we think a lot about what motivates people within their family system and so on. But I think part of it is that it isn’t just like the insight, because I don’t want to confuse that with like, some people have better insight than other. It’s really an opportunity to sort of be able to assess the conditions in which you’re in and think of it as, and to learn the skill of discernment, right? It’s not just about, you know, this is good for me. It’s like, why is this, you have to balance your resources. Like certain things are gonna give you more advantage than others, right? Certain strengths that I have are gonna give me a better chance at sustaining my recovery than your strengths, right? Your strengths are unique to you. And so I think a lot of this is about trying to help folks recognize what their sort of unique strength matrix is and say, wow, that’s really cool. Like I have all this stuff.

 

Whitney (17:54)

Right.

 

Kurt (18:09)

And I can take this stuff and I can figure out how to use it to get housing, right? Get transportation. Maybe it’s to move to a better neighborhood, something along those lines. But whatever it is, it’s about recognizing that, you know, those, the consequences, getting housing, proper nutrition, everything else, that outcome, which is a kind of recovery capital, doesn’t happen.

 

Whitney (18:15)

Yeah.

 

Kurt (18:36)

Because you started out with the same amount of recovery capital, right? Like we have to figure out how to build it. So

 

Whitney (18:40)

Right. Yes. And I imagine what I mean, putting together is we all have recovery capital within us just innately because we all have different strengths. And it reminds me of a group that we would run when I had a program in a jail, which was like resource sharing and the, knowledge base of individuals who have been through this different systems and who have mental health needs and substance use needs, their awareness of where to go for what was phenomenal. It was way better than anything I could have found on Google. And then, you know, it was the inside tips and the resourcefulness that they had and the ability to say, yes, that may not work, but if you approach it this way. And I think, you know, that strengths based approach not only is going to just get the ball rolling, but also builds up that sense of self -worth for individuals who’ve often been told that they’re not worth anything.

 

Kurt (19:46)

Yeah, yeah, I couldn’t say it better myself. And one of the things that happens particularly, and this is why I focus most of my work on peers, I like to educate social workers. That’s a fun job. And I, you know, I believe that they’re definitely part of the solution. But most of my work so far, the last four years or so has been with peer support workers and community health workers. And the reason is, is that if we can facilitate opportunities for peers, to sit with other people experiencing those problems and have those conversations, they immediately start building recovery capital, right? Because they’re identifying explicitly the resources in their community that the social worker or the medical provider have no idea, right? And one of the things that we know is that the social determinants of health…which we can think of recovery capital was really the sort of antidote, if you will, to negative social determinants. Yeah, it’s an awesome way to think about it because the social determinants really drive a lot of what makes use chaotic, dangerous, hazardous, et cetera, right? Somebody who has relatively good access to a clean supply has a much better chance of survival than somebody who doesn’t. And that’s determined, right, politically. So thinking about that, getting all those people into the room and having them sort of hash that out, even if their objective isn’t sobriety or being clean or whatever, whatever their objective is, they’re gonna start hearing about these resources. And so they’re gonna start taking better care of themselves simply by knowing what’s available to them. And again, we know that that kind of health behavior drives outcomes more so than does the engagement with the medical prescriber or the social worker. Because it’s in their life all the time, right? Like they meet with the, when I was training to be a therapist, I’d see people maybe once a week at the most, right? I don’t know how many hours there are a week, but it’s not very much. Whereas if you are sort of, if you’re embedded in a community of other people who are thinking about all of these other resources,

 

Whitney (21:47)

Yes.

 

Kurt (22:07)

You’re embedded in that 24 seven and you’re certainly conscious of it whenever you’re not sleeping. And so that is a lot more time to be working on yourself and the opportunities you could have than you ever could have even in an intensive outpatient program, nine, 12 hours a week or even 20 hours a

 

Whitney (22:29)

Right. Well, and it’s the applying it in the daily life, you know, that’s the part that a lot of times treatment misses is, yeah, we’ve sat here, we’ve processed, we’ve, you know, challenged negative cognitions and things like that. What are we doing for the 23 hours a day that they’re not in group or in a session? And so being able to say, here’s what you can tap into, that’s gonna, in my opinion, be the difference maker and really empower that person to be able to say, okay, I know what it takes. I know where I can go. And then being able to do it. Whereas, you know, maybe we just say, here’s a list of resources. Well, that can even be overwhelming to have to search through a list. And so like, we’ve got to look at this different approach. And it sounds like that’s what you’re doing. You’re in let’s talk about the peers that you’re working with. Are you training them Building recovery capital?

 

Kurt (23:28)

Yeah. So what I’ve done is I’ve so for the last four years, I’ve been working in New Mexico. I started about seven years ago, like I said, as a peer. And then I shifted and went back to school. And then about four years ago, when I graduated with my MSW, I needed I needed a gig. And I was fortunate enough to be pretty deep in the recovery community in Albuquerque in New Mexico, I had been, what do they call it? I’d been leading groups of outreach folks for one of the anonymous organizations and going out to really far flung parts of the state. And so I met literally hundreds of people in early recovery and various stages of recovery. And through one of those chance meetings, I got introduced to somebody who was working in the state and they were really interested in building up peer supports. And so they gave me a job as an evaluator of a program. And so I started evaluating this program and it wasn’t one of my own creation, but I started evaluating it and observing what was going really well and what wasn’t. And one of the things that I took away was that like peers really want to do this work and they don’t have a lot of tools to do there’s this sort of expectation that, you have lived experience, you know what you’re doing. And, you know, after a 40 hour, not even 40 hour training, you’re somehow now able to command a group and, you know, run a group and, and be an effective person. And I think that to an extent, that’s definitely true. Like we didn’t need the certification process or any of these other things to make peer support a legitimate, valuable part of the process. But I think when we start thinking about the problem of efficiency and the reality that 95 % of the people in the country don’t even recognize that they have a substance use problem yet do or likely do, at least according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Health, that is a huge gap between what we can do and what, know, right now we’re doing, right? And also given the fact that 70 or 80 % of people don’t actually ever even make it to treatment or an AA meeting or an NA meeting. So we need some way to get into the community and get deep into that and build that recovery infrastructure more quickly than I would say the current organic system of AA meetings and NA meetings and so on. Part of that is the professionalization of the peer support worker. So I know that there are sort of pros and cons to that, and I’m here for that discussion maybe another time. But my point being is like, I want to see peers be able to engage folks effectively using their lived experience. I think this is key. If a peer finds themselves in any scenario in which they’re not able to use their lived experience, they should quit not being a peer support worker. But what I’m doing is I’m helping them. So I created this thing, which is called the RCADE Tools. And that’s Recovery Capital Assessment, Development, and Engagement Tools. And I thought it was cute to call it Arcade because it sounds like the game. And I was all very much inspired by a thing I did, as I mentioned earlier, at MIT, which was this how to innovate and commercialize.

 

Whitney (27:04)

Yeah.

 

Kurt (27:16)

Products to help with the substance use crisis. And so during that, I kind of came up with this name and I was like, yeah, that would be a much, that’s a much clever, more clever name. And I figured I could actually turn it into an app and so on. But anyway, in the meeting, what it is, is it is an assessment. And I look, I have, I teach peers how to deliver this assessment. And right now it’s got 48 statements. And they, on the personal capital side,

 

Whitney (27:29)

Yeah.

 

Kurt (27:43)

There are statements like people at work, where I volunteer, go to school, or spend most of my time, support my recovery. Oh, that’s a social capital example. And then you rate that one to six. And there’s 48 of those statements in individual, social, and community capital. And then you basically get a score. And this is a lot like a lot of the other instruments out there. But what I’m interested in is less about scoring it, I love the idea of collecting the data and I think that’s down the road for me and my team. But for now, what it’s about is the peers that I work with get a score and then they can engage in some very quick coaching and say, what of these things matters to you most? Why? And then we take the sort of why, that’s really one of the things as we know in psychotherapy training. The most important thing to get folks to like motivate to change is like they have to have a reason of their own. And if they don’t, know, sometimes, you know, the nudge from the judge is great, but usually what happens is even with that, they realize, you know, I need, I need to do this for me. Otherwise it’s not gonna really happen. And so I don’t mean to say it’s great. By the way, that’s how it came out. Yeah, I don’t want more carceral solutions. I want fewer, but I think I want to acknowledge that sometimes many, I shouldn’t say sometimes, many people have found their way into recovery through those carceral systems and they are the lucky ones because some have not found that way and have found the other way or the other side of that, which can be really tragic. But we take the score and then we work with the client and say,

 

Whitney (29:06)

I know. Right? Right.

 

Kurt (29:34)

So what’s most important to you here and which of these strengths, the things that you gave a six or a five or even a four or two, do you think you can use to help you like achieve that goal? And then we coach them on how to do that. And we use a lot of motivational interviewing, at least when there’s some ambivalence, but just some straight up coaching techniques like encouragement and enthusiasm and bring your own lived experience into that. I always tell the peers, I tell them my story, I make sure that they understand where I’m coming at, this from and why. And then I do this assessment using my own story sort of as background to make it live a little, right? We can take these assessments and I think there’s value in all of that. But I think when somebody gives you an assessment and then coaches you a little bit and not what to say, because these are all strengths, these are all things. We don’t have it. It’s not like you get penalized, right? But what we’re saying is like, if you have some of these strengths, if you have enough energy, and this is a bark 10 question, which is the brief assessment of recovery capital, I took 10 of those out of that as well, just so that there would be some fidelity to that measure. But if I have enough energy to complete the task I set for myself, right? Like that’s a strength. And some people don’t recognize it as something that they have, but that they can use to get

 

up every day and take care of some of the smaller steps to getting towards their bigger goal. And so that’s what that’s really about. It’s just thinking about how do we get some motivation.

 

Whitney (31:16)

I was thinking about the MI readiness scale whenever you were talking about that and just the ability to help the person apply what they already have to different situations. I’m a very visual thinker and I’m imagining a person who has this like ring of keys, right? And they think that that key, that strength only fits the one, But what you’re doing is being able to say that key can also open this lock and this lock and this lock. And I think that’s just amazing because people, we always look at what we’re not good at. We focus on our weaknesses and we don’t always realize that some of our strengths can be applied in different ways. And I think that’s phenomenal because those are lifelong skills then that the person will

 

Kurt (32:12)

Thank you for that. think that’s a great analogy, the keys, because it’s true. I call it the recovery capital building program where I’m doing this in New Mexico. But the idea is that by being explicit about this, by saying, look, this is your recovery capital, this is your stuff, this is you, and we’re going to call it what it is and we’re going to name it, we empower because all of a sudden they realize, I’m not empowering them. They’re empowering themselves through their own sort of recognition. And so that’s kind of what I mean by the critical consciousness. They become aware of how these pieces can play out in their life. And then they start to recognize by, because we take the individual social and community levels and separate them and make that very explicit, they recognize that these individual strengths that they might have an affect the community resources that they can access. And they also can then recognize that it goes the other way, that the community level resources that they might have access to can affect how they build social capital, right? Because if you don’t have the opportunity to go to certain kinds of meetings and build a network, a recovery network that’s appropriate for you. So for example, people who for whatever reason don’t like AA or NA, for example,  If they can’t find an alternative that still serves that social piece and helps them build that social capital, their chances are diminished. One of the things that I’m also really interested in has become my parallel path is thinking about why it is that recovery generally has become whiter in the last five or 10 years preliminary data out when I look at the NISDA, the National Survey of Drug Use and Health that shows it becoming a little bit whiter over time. And the question is, like, and there’s more people going into recovery, but what it’s also showing, at least if we take this sort of preliminary result seriously, is it’s showing that more black and brown folks are leaving recovery as a portion. And so I think about that a lot because I think is happening is that I think some of these environments are not ideal, right? Or folks who have been minoritized at different levels, whatever that level is, and that they’re less and less inclined to participate in these spaces. And so what I’m doing with the arcade tools is I’m really saying that’s all well and good. know, AA might work for some folks, whatever that is, great, but if that doesn’t work for you, what does? We gotta find you something that works for you because what we know is that most of the benefit of 12 -step programs is the participation, the active social participation in the community itself. So without those kinds of active participation opportunities, folks, really, it is a disadvantage.

 

Whitney (35:04)

Great. Yeah, absolutely. The community has to be one where they feel safe. And if it’s a community that is not reflective of who they are, if they are the only Black or Brown person in the room, then there’s all of the intersectionality coming to play as well. And so we need to ensure that those opportunities are there for each person to feel safe and with people who they can truly connect with. So it’s great to hear that you’re looking at that.

 

Kurt (36:02)

Yeah, no, if I may, I’m glad you brought up the word intersectionality because one of my professors here at Brandeis is Anita Hill. And you can’t do better than that, right? she and I, or at the class I took with her last term, I really got steeped in critical race theory and thinking about intersectionality and thinking about coalition building. And one of the things

 

Whitney (36:05)

Please. Great.

 

Kurt (36:31)

I’ve realized is that recovery for folks who don’t necessarily fit into one of the mainstream. So if you accept the sort of premise as I do that there are a lot of unique pathways, maybe as many as there are people, but there are also some rivers in which many people might take a unique path, but there’s a stream, if you will, that a lot of folks are basically able to sort of flow along. So if I take that perspective and think about how do we build those streams, it’s really kind of like coalition building and political activism. And what that looks like is people with different diverse identities and characteristics or intersections of identity coming together, maybe not necessarily with people that look exactly like them or are the same as sexual orientation, but maybe share other facets of that identity other intersections and building a coalition so that they can have the same kinds of opportunities that some of these mainstream, literally mainstream provide, right? And so I like to think about this sort of arcade tools as a means of trying to help facilitate that. And part of the things, one of the great benefits of working in New Mexico for this has been that it’s a very culturally diverse

 

Whitney (37:41)

Yeah.

 

Kurt (37:59)

Ethnically diverse state. You know, there are folks who are coming from the Pueblos, from the reservations, there are folks coming from little towns and cities that have been around longer than those here in New England. I’m in New England right now. But that is a kind of historical arc and relationships that is pretty rare in this world today. But in New Mexico, we find all these folks coming together in recovery. And it is possible to sort of build these coalitions along diverse lines if we name it and we get explicit about it. we aren’t to, what’s the word? guess we don’t treat, I guess if we have to accept that idea that there are these pathways, multiple pathways and that many of them have a lot to offer us.

 

Whitney (39:02)

Yeah. Wow. I’m excited to hear how Arcade continues to grow. am a big fan of peer support, of course. mean, Reduce the Stigmas is sponsored by Strait of Care, which is all about peers. And I think that one of the components we haven’t yet touched on is that not only are you building the recovery capital of the client or patient, you’re also building the recovery capital of the peer. It even makes me think like the ability to look at the data because that’s what you’re having. You’re having data as an output from the assessments and then apply that, analyze it and apply it. That is an amazing skill for peers if they ever decide to pursue a different career. like, so they’re right there, you’re building it like everyone who comes into contact with it is growing.

 

Kurt (39:54)

Yeah, yeah, I’m glad you said that because I think one of the things that not only rebuilding their skill set to provide, you know, increasing their facility with MI and everything else, but we are giving them the disability to coach people around goals or sort of facilitating it. But moreover, they are giving me something, which is to say, like of the 48 statements that I’ve got, like I said, 10 are from the bark 10. But the other 38 were derived almost exclusively by people’s lived experience. Granted, some of mine, of course, but also by many of the folks I’ve worked with in Santa Fe and now Gallup, New Mexico and Albuquerque, New Mexico, but also in Boston, Massachusetts and where else? San Diego, California. I have all these friends all around the country who are peers, peer supporters. And so we have all these statements coming from, and I may have edited them or have fine tuned them and so on, but none of this, this whole thing isn’t just me saying, I have an idea. It’s really trying to draw out from the peer support workers and the community health workers that I’ve been working with, whether it’s in the rooms or these professionals at these treatment organizations or whatever, and have them tell me what’s worked for them. And so I think the assessment, looks very different than a lot of the other assessments. It’s a lot. There are some peculiar, like, peculiarly specific things. You know, like, for example, like going back to the New Mexico context, but one of the individual strengths is I feel connected to my ancestors, culture, religion, or higher power, right? And so instead of saying, you have to have a higher power. When people are early recovery, the higher power concept can be a little confusing. And instead of saying that, I’m saying like, no, your ancestor, what about your ancestors? You know, that’s an opportunity there. There are many people, you know, that I know from different diverse backgrounds who think about their ancestors more so than they think about a God or even a religion.

 

Whitney (42:14)

Right, right.

 

Kurt (42:15)

And so being able to sort of say, this is another way to be in communication with a spiritual, something bigger than yourself is, and it’s just fine. It’s just as good. I think it’s really important. And I wouldn’t have gotten that, you know, had I not been listening carefully to the peer support experience.

 

Whitney (42:37)

That’s the cultural considerations that need to be present in everything because we can’t apply one religion or mindset or what have you. So that’s wonderful to hear that it’s approached that way. And it just sounds like you’re really building the tool from the voices for the people who’s speaking for it. And that’s really amazing and typically, you know, the way that these innovations occur. So it’s wonderful to hear, you know, of course you have lived experience, you’re also utilizing the lived experience people have shared with you. And I hope more innovations in our space continue to do so.

 

Kurt (43:21)

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, and I am using also traditional academic research tools with this. My corn box alpha was 0 .88. I know these things, so I have all these other resources that I’m bringing to this as well. And that’s been a really great experience. But yeah, I wouldn’t be anywhere without those voices. This is what happened.

 

Whitney (43:46)

So exciting to just learn about. And as we’re getting ready to wrap up, I want to ask you one of, ask you the question I ask everyone. If people walk away from listening to our discussion and can only take one thing with them, what would you like it to

 

Kurt (44:05)

I think that we touched on this, but I think the idea that you can achieve recovery or remission or whatever you want to call it without treatment or without going to an AA meeting or an NA meeting or any of the other hundreds of fellowships is possible. But it’s a lot easier if you know what your strengths are and you start to use them. And so I guess the one thing would Like you have strengths, all of us do. I’ve never met anybody who’s filled out one of these forms and we’ve got a few hundred of them now who just, you know, really didn’t have a single thing. And one of the things I tell folks is that maybe somebody only has a few, but that’s a start. You know, being alive is a start. Sometimes you’re starting much further behind than somebody else. That happens. That’s unfortunate, but you have those strengths and you can do it.

 

Whitney (45:03)

Yeah. I love it. And I just think about, you anyone who uses affirmations, that’s, you know, strengths that are identified can then become affirmations. And it just it’s feeding the person, building their self -confidence, their self -worth, their, you know, ability to believe in something better for them moving forward. And it’s amazing. Thank you for coming on and sharing this and helping people just continue to see that they have a lot already within them. So anyone who would like to connect with you, how can they do that? What’s the best way to reach

 

Kurt (45:49)

Email’s good. letters K and D at Arcade tools. And that’s spelled R C A D E tools .com. that’s the easiest, but, yeah, I’m out there on the internet. You LinkedIn friend or whatever.

 

Whitney (46:01)

All Yeah, well, we’ll make sure that we put all your details in the show notes so that people can connect with you. Peers, specialists who are out there listening, this is a way to build your skill set to serve the people that you’re working with. So keep that in mind as well. So and anyone who really is looking to build up the recovery capital of their clients, patients, maybe Arcade is the fit for you. Yeah, do a little pitch there for you.

 

Kurt (46:33)

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, actually add one last thing, which is, you know, I have found I can sometimes find grants to pay for the training and things like that. And so sometimes those are especially if, you know, not dealing with a lot of resources, there are resources coming online now for this kind of thing. Sometimes it takes a while to get to them, but they’re out there and I’d be happy

 

Whitney (46:47)

Wonderful.

 

Kurt (47:02)

Try to pursue that with anybody who’s looking.

 

Whitney (47:05)

Great, great. Wonderful. Well everyone, share this with anyone you know who may need to realize that they already have a strength within them or someone who’s working with individuals and would be interested in building up recovery capital. Really just spread the message because the more we get our stories out there, the more we’re going to beat stigma. Leave us some comments, tell us what you think. Be sure to like and share, subscribe, and just thank you for listening.

Building Recovery Capital Through StrengthsAdd Your Heading Text Here In a recent episode of Reduce The Stigma, Whitney interviewed Kurt Lebeck, a recovery scientist and PhD candidate, who delved into the concept of recovery capital as a cornerstone of his work in behavioral health. Kurt’s journey from achieving recovery to becoming a leader in recovery-oriented […]

Continue reading "Building Recovery Capital Through Strengths"
Robert Cooper Zero Hour Life Center a Recovery Community Organization

Building a Strong Recovery Community

Insights from Rob Cooper's Journey

In a recent episode of the Reduce The Stigma podcast, Rob Cooper, CEO of Zero Hour Life Center, shared invaluable insights into the transformative power of a strong recovery community. Rob’s journey from incarceration to becoming a leader in the recovery space is a compelling example of how community support can be a cornerstone for lasting change. He discussed how his organization, Zero Hour Life Center, plays a vital role in bridging the gap between professional treatment and long-term recovery, offering a safety net for those reentering society and seeking to rebuild their lives.

Rob highlighted the significance of collaboration within the recovery community, emphasizing that no one can succeed alone. His story underscores the importance of community connections and the mutual support that enables individuals to overcome challenges and thrive in recovery. By sharing his experiences and the mission of Zero Hour Life Center, Rob illustrated how a dedicated recovery community can not only help individuals on their path to recovery but also create a ripple effect of positive change throughout society.

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

About Our Guest:

Robert is a military veteran. He honorably served ten years in the United States Marine Corps. From 2008 through 2015, Robert worked various positions, including management in the food service and restaurant business. In 2016, Robert went through a very difficult time personally. He realized that he not only needed but also wanted to change his life for the better. Knowing he could not achieve recovery on his own, he sought help from his family. Robert knew he had to rebuild his relationship with God first. As he worked through this process, he realized that there are others who like him, needed help, support, and guidance without judgement. From this, Zero Hour Life Center was born.

​Robert is a CCAR Authorized Recovery Coach

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Transcript

Whitney (00:02)

Welcome to Reduce the Stigma, the podcast that raises the voices of individuals with lived experience, as well as the organizations and people who support them. Reduce the Stigma is brought to you by Straight Up Care, the comprehensive telehealth platform for peer support services. Straight Up Care, where recovery is powered by lived experience. A special thanks to our sponsor, Syndicate 12, an online recovery community and social media platform. Visit syndicate12 .com. Together, recovery is possible.

 

Today, I had the pleasure of talking with Rob Cooper, CEO of Zero Hour Life Center, a recovery community organization in Florida. And while we talked about a lot of different things, one thing’s held true throughout, the focus on community. Rob’s approach to supporting others is truly rooted in community connections and collaboration. And he reminds us that each of us can have a profound impact in the recovery journey of others. So let’s just make sure that that impact is positive.

 

Be sure to like, subscribe, and share. It really does help us grow and reach more people with our stories. Let’s get started.

 

Whitney (01:16)

Rob, thank you for joining me today. I’m excited to talk to

 

Rob Cooper (01:19)

Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be

 

Whitney (01:21)

Yes, Dr. Mo introduced us and set this up so that we could talk and really share awareness of what you’re doing at Zero Hour Life Center. As I understand that this is a mission very close to you and I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about who you are and what led you to create Zero Hour.

 

Rob Cooper (01:45)

So I’m currently the CEO for Zero Life Center, which is a recovery community organization down in Florida. And we’re on the West Coast of Florida. And I found this when I was in jail. So I was in jail for, I moved from North Carolina, met my wife and I moved down here. She was from Florida. So I moved down here with her.

 

I went down here to escape of the stuff I was doing in North Carolina and I wanted a fresh start and I took old behaviors into a new environment. so Florida said, no, we ain’t playing with that. and they set me down for seven months, but while I was in there, it was very, it was, it was good for me. And people are like, jail good for you. Yes, it was good for me because

 

jail made me the who I am right now. And. But I always knew I always come from I came from a structure of family, I came from, you know, both parents, I came from, you know, joining the military, so I had extra structure from my time in the Marine Corps. So but I. I came down here and Florida said, no, we’re not we’re not tolerating that. And they sent me down for seven months. And when I got in there.

 

people was asking me like, what are you doing here? You don’t look like you belong here. And so this young kid came, he was in there for loitering and trespassing and he was a homeless kid and he clung to me and I kept helping him navigate things on the outside. And he finally got his release date and that day he was getting released, he said, look man, he said, thank you for helping me.

 

I think I got it and I said, okay, congratulations, you know, and I hope to see you on outside and he said, look man, he said, do me a favor. said, promise me that you’ll start something on the outside with people like us. And at the time I didn’t know the fate of my charge. So I was like, yeah, whatever. He’s like, no, no, no. He said, because you get us. And I said, okay. And I went to sleep that night

 

I had a dream that I was in this place and I was trying to help all these people and they kept coming in the door. I woke up that next morning and I just had this burning desire to start helping people. And so I ran to the phone when the phone got on, called my girlfriend at the time, which is my wife, said, hey, I want to start something. And she has the background in, she has an MBA. She has all that background in, in starting stuff and all that. so,

 

she took it and ran with it. She had a Facebook page started and everything. And when I got released in, she said, Hey, you want to start this thing? You want to continue? And I was like, sure. And so we just hit the ground running. And so that was in 2017 and we really didn’t hit our peak into 2020 because before 2020, know, 2020 was COVID.

 

Whitney (05:08)

Right?

 

Rob Cooper (05:09)

And before that we were using all our technology because we didn’t have a building. We were starting out and people used to frown upon me and say, hey, you don’t have a building. And so when 2020 happened, we were already doing things remotely before remote came. And yeah, I was heavy game, so it didn’t hurt us. It just it launched us. And so and then from 2020 to now, it’s just been a peak and we’re just been, you know, serving the people.

 

Whitney (05:22)

Right, so you were ahead of the game.

 

Right?

 

Rob Cooper (05:37)

treating people like they want to be treated, growing rapidly. And I had people tell me, said, man, you’re doing things within, you did stuff within seven years that some people don’t do in 15 or 20 years. And in lifetime, and I can’t take credit for that. I think my higher power got in my understanding that believed in me and picked me to do this. And I don’t take it for granted. I don’t.

 

Whitney (05:49)

or a lifetime.

 

Yeah. Wow. That is incredible. So you’re incarcerated and you had an impact on someone there. And you don’t normally hear about someone kind of stimulating that idea in that situation. imagining someone who’s getting released himself, like headed out. Probably in most cases, people are very focused on

 

man, I can’t wait to get out of here. I can’t wait to get that first burger, this, that, the other. And he took it because you had such an impact on him. He stopped and said, man, like you can’t, you gotta do something with this gift you have. Wow. And then you did. That’s amazing. And so, you know, when you returned to the community then, and I know you said like your girlfriend now wife was

 

Rob Cooper (06:32)

No,

 

Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Whitney (06:57)

helping you out, get things started. What role did that play on your return to the community, having this new calling?

 

Rob Cooper (07:05)

It really, you know, the pieces of the puzzle started to happen because my first job coming out of jail was working at a golf course, which was a perfect thing for me because it was peaceful. It was out in Mother Nature. And if people don’t understand, taking a walk out in Mother Nature, you could do some best thinking, you can do some best strategizing. And so that was the first job.

 

The maintenance director, which I’m still me and I’m still talking, whatever the maintenance director really, believed in what my passion was. And he was pulling it out of me. He’ll come up to me and ask, hey, what about this this organization you’re starting? And he would and I would pitch it to him. And and then I moved up at the golf course where I stopped doing the maintenance and then I was a spring tech.

 

I had a lot of time out there spraying weeds in and really, really focusing on really getting this organization going because like I said, it was, you know, I did Marine Corps and running a nonprofit is probably one the hardest things you can ever do. And it’s not for the faint at heart. It’s, you know, because it’s, you have something.

 

and you believe in it, now you gotta get other people to believe in it. You gotta get the community to believe in it. And so right now, you know, with our success right now, what we do is we go back and help younger nonprofits, for -profits, anybody that wanna start a business, we support them and getting them to be sustainable because I remember those days, it was lonely. We asked for help. No one would help us.

 

We had to go, I remember we had to go to Barnes and Nobles and get a book of how to start a nonprofit. And we did that. And we vowed to ourselves that if we ever become successful or get to a point of success, that we’re going to turn around and help others. And we have been doing that. And so, you know, it was just the steps. And I look back at it, you know, and could I write this story? No, because

 

My passion was I was going to be I was going to open a restaurant because I did food service while I was in Marine Corps. When I got in Marine Corps, I continued food service, working in different restaurants. So I thought that was my passion. was my that was my in career. Just, you know, open a restaurant and help people in that way. But my God had a heart. My higher power had a different plan for me. And so and so here we are now. Here we are now.

 

Whitney (09:54)

Yeah. And, and you already said like, you’ve just been taking off and the amount of things you’re doing, I mean, hearing about, I imagine it’s not like a formal program, or at least you’re not advertising it as a formal program, how you help other businesses and nonprofits. The programs that you do have on your website, there’s a lot you’re helping teens, you’re helping mothers, you’re helping individuals returning to the community. Like you are covering.

 

so many different populations. And I’m curious, know, with all of that going on, where are you seeing that there’s still a significant need? You know, you have these programs addressing things, but what’s standing out as, okay, we still gotta take this on next?

 

Rob Cooper (10:44)

Well, it’s funny you said that every morning we do morning huddles with our staff. And today’s question was what innovative things we can do to better serve our population. And one of my guys, my IT guy said, look, I want us to effect, I want us to perfect what we do now before we move on to newer projects.

 

Whitney (11:11)

Right, yes, yes.

 

Rob Cooper (11:12)

And so right now for us, you know, is that it just happened that way. Like I said, and if I can go back 2017 and only thing I want to do is help people. And that was my request. I said, I just want to help people. Everything else started to come because I started to do this first program called SoarWorks. And that helps people that’s facing homelessness.

 

or at risk of homelessness to apply for social security benefits. Because I was going around and I was talking about recovery and people still were stigmatizing me because I was an African American guy going around talking about recovery. didn’t fit the mold. And then they were comparing me to NAA or one of the other fellowships. And I was talking about recovery community organization and they didn’t know the language.

 

the lingua at the time. so when that, you know, now that program that got me into the rooms and really got me to sit at the table, it was launching. And so, and I felt that we were only seen for that. And I said, okay, we got to build up our recovery support services. Then when COVID happened, that really helped us get the recovery support services. So back to your question, where I see us right now is

 

You know, we are touching a lot of different populations. You know, what I really, really want us to strive to be is just, you know, that community organizations that make our community better, really. And that’s what I’m honing on is to build in a stronger recovery community in all our communities and really giving people a chance to grow in the community and be productive members of society.

 

And, you know, and if anything else come our way, we have a lot of opportunities. I have people who ask me to do this and do that. Now I pick and choose what capacity I want to grow this thing, because it’s not all about territory. It’s not all about growing this thing to be massive or whatever. Now, we did have a big goal. I’m going to tell you right now, our big goal is to be in all 50 states. Really.

 

Whitney (13:40)

Yeah.

 

Rob Cooper (13:41)

And do I still think we can? Yes, I think we can. Will it happen? You never know.

 

Whitney (13:50)

Right? Exactly. mean, it speaks to even the roots of the movement is that it came about not because it was planned, but because it needed to happen. And services like yours are needed everywhere. So there’s opportunity for sure. And you use the term recovery community and that is a term that’s used a lot. There’s really no one definition.

 

I’m curious, what do you see as central components to having a recovery community for someone to be successful, like you said?

 

Rob Cooper (14:30)

You know, it’s first of all, has to you have to get support from your community. You have to have support for your community. They have to understand how to accept someone that’s balanced, balanced substance use and how to accept someone that’s in early recovery or further in their recovery, long term recovery. OK, how we looked at it by our employers. Are you recovery family employers? All right. With law enforcement.

 

You know, do you have diversion programs set up in your in your police departments or your shared departments that will divert someone to get help instead of punishing them? And then two is, you know, is is have to advocate on legislation to better serve the people in recovery to give them a better life. And so three pillars for us is education, empower and advocate.

 

It’s the best. That’s the three pillars I stand on. And, you know, it’s working with our politicians, working with local state federal because I look at this. I look at this, this this epidemic that we have. And I sit back and I look at it and I say, it’s been around since the eighteen hundreds. OK, is it going anywhere? I don’t think so. But we could do better.

 

We can do better. We’re pushing, we put money behind it. But, you know, on the opposite side of it, on the opposite side of it, once someone becomes well and get into recovery, it’s still a battle for them to be able to live a life in recovery. Right now, you know, we are, we are forcing people to be unhoused because rent sky high. Landlords want three times the income.

 

Whitney (16:18)

Yes, yeah.

 

Rob Cooper (16:28)

Okay, we’re moving up. So now Florida minimum wage is going to go up to $15 an hour. It should have been $15 an hour about 10 years ago. And so $15 still will not help people to be successful and live a comfortable life. So for us at the Recovery Community Organization is we have to work with our participants, our consumers, or our peers and say, look, you

 

Whitney (16:40)

Okay.

 

Rob Cooper (16:57)

How are you budgeting? Okay. How are you planning for when life happens? Do you have $500 saved in your savings account? Or are you just still in recovery with some old behaviors that you had in substance use? And so, so that’s where I really do think that the recovery community organizations can be so important is, you know, breaking up from your four walls at your recovery center.

 

and get involved in your community. Get involved, get involved, you know, because I say this a lot is that I have these broad shoulders and there’s a lot of people standing on my shoulders to do the next right thing. And by me in these rooms, I got everybody else that can get a chance to get into these rooms. And I’m just ordinary Joe. I’m just ordinary guy. So.

 

But, you know, advocating, advocating for what is

 

Whitney (17:57)

Yeah. Now the whole setting people up for success. I want to come back to that because I know your mission and I’m going to read it. You know it, but I’m going to read it for everyone. Zero Hour Life Center is a not -for -profit recovery community organization that provides support and services that help to bridge the gap between professional treatment and long -term recovery from substance use and homelessness.

 

is such a crucial component. We focus and we jump, we’ve spent time on prevention and then we say, hey, you have a substance in you, let’s get it out of you. Let’s get you to stop using that substance or whatever the model says. And we focus on that formal treatment. Then we just kind of let drop off. And there’s that bridge to long -term recovery. Why is it

 

Rob Cooper (18:48)

Hmm.

 

Whitney (18:55)

You may not know this, but why are we not paying more attention to that? tell me about how you’ve seen people getting behind bridging

 

Rob Cooper (19:04)

Well, it’s this is what I think. This is what I think. And I’ve been around some successful people. OK. We’re in a crisis. All right. We’re in a crisis all around homelessness, mental health, substance use. We’re in a crisis. OK. There’s people that are out there taking successful people get rich in the crisis. OK. So how we bridge the gap.

 

All right. Prime example, I had a gentleman had to have somebody called me on Sunday and they said, Hey, my significant other just got out of the apartment corrections. They gave him a sleeping bag and said, go.

 

Whitney (19:47)

Are you kidding?

 

Rob Cooper (19:48)

Come on now. All right. And so if we didn’t have the relationships and we didn’t bridge the gaps, we didn’t build those relationships that we have as at the recovery community organization, I couldn’t reach out to SoberLiv and the Oxford houses and say, hey, you know, can you help this gentleman? Okay. That’s what I mean. Bridging the gaps is, you know, it’s not one side at all. I can’t do it all. I got to have my octopus, my octopus.

 

Whitney (20:10)

Great.

 

Rob Cooper (20:18)

tentacles out there where I Okay, you need transportation. I may have a relationship with someone that deal transportation you need housing I need to have a relationship with a landlord that can work with us and It’s not for me always take and take and take in it’s a dual relationship. Okay. Hey, what can I do for you? Okay, I’m gonna make sure miss landlord. Mr. Landlord that your tenants are successful in your homes

 

So you’re not spending more money evicting these people and you’re making some money. Everyone wanna make money. And so, know, I don’t wanna be in a community just taking. I don’t wanna do that. I want people to have the same opportunities I have. And I say this a lot and I don’t care what you see on the big bucks, cable news stations about…

 

the United States of America, we still live in a country where you can get a second, third, fourth chance at this thing, but you need somebody to help you. so when I mean bridging that gap, yes, there’s a big gap for people getting on treatment, getting out of jails. I love what the federal prison do. Before you get released from federal prison, they can put you in a halfway house. You’re gonna spend some time right there and get acclimated back to the community.

 

Whitney (21:35)

Mm -hmm. Right.

 

That makes sense.

 

Rob Cooper (21:41)

state, county, they don’t do that. They just, okay, you gotta go. Treatment facilities, when your time, your insurance run out, or if you’re at your 30, 60, or 90, or however long, you gotta go. And even if you don’t have something lined up on the next part or the next stop, you gotta go because, and I understand the business. I gotta fill that bed. I gotta get somebody else in there. I understand that. So.

 

Whitney (21:44)

Ugh.

 

Right, right. I’m not responsible for you anymore.

 

Rob Cooper (22:11)

Right, right. And so that windows of opportunity with someone getting out of jail, prison or treatment is that those first 15 minutes, first 30 minutes are crucial because they can go to the wrong place, get the wrong people and they’re right back into the mess that they were trying to get free from. So do we get it right all the time? No, there’s some people that, you

 

barks to me bridges out there and you can beg and you can plead and they’re like, no. And you know, the hardest ones that really, I have a hard time trying to help someone that’s on probation because you got to transfer probations and all that. And so if some probation officers are lenient, say yes, we’ll transfer the probation, but some just, you know, no. so bridging that gap is, is, is really important because somebody bridged the gap for me.

 

Whitney (23:04)

Great.

 

Yeah. The community component, how you talk about these give and take relationships, I think I hadn’t heard of it in that way because normally we think about trying to deliver it all, right? A lot of programs want to try and say, okay, we’re going to have this wing that’s going to be about providing food and you know, but that’s not sustainable and that’s not leveraging resources in the community.

 

Rob Cooper (23:32)

You’re right. No.

 

Whitney (23:37)

By building these relationships that you have, you’re building up the community and people want to help. They may not realize it right away or realize the population that they want to help, but when they get the opportunity and it’s successful in helping, it feels good. And then that’s where you break down stigma. When you have that landlord who’s willing to give someone a chance and that person knocks it out success wise, that busts

 

way more than any, you know, billboard can.

 

Rob Cooper (24:11)

Mm -hmm. Yeah You know it It burns me up where people think they can do it all okay You cannot you cannot do this. You cannot do it all is because the need is so great It is so great. It is you know and so if we’re not sitting at the table with somebody different from us and I You know we

 

people that work in this field and people that deal with mental health and substance use or whatever, we are one of the, some of the most territorial people I ever met. Seriously, I’m gonna be honest with you. We are some of the most territory people that we ever met. And so, and, but we have to, we have to sit around, sit in front of someone that is not doing what we’re doing and build those relationships because you never know when you’re need that person. Problem example.

 

Whitney (24:50)

Really? Okay.

 

Rob Cooper (25:10)

I was getting my tow, I had my last truck I had, something happened, the batteries were going dead. I called a tow truck driver, I was at the gas station. And the tow truck driver really helped me out. He said, look, you know, I’m just gonna charge the battery and get started. So you won’t have to pay me to tow it. I said, cool. So I got his card, me and him talked a little bit. And really I appreciate it. them. About a day later, one of our clients, one of our consumers said,

 

Whitney (25:25)

You’re nice.

 

Rob Cooper (25:40)

I need to get my, I need to get a car towed so I can get it over to the salvage shop so I can get, make a little bit of money. This going to go towards my deposit for rent. If I didn’t meet that tow truck driver the day before, you know, and I called him up, Hey man, Hey, you remember me from yesterday? I remember you. was cordial. I respected him. And I said, Hey, I need your help. And boom, he helped her. And so now I’m putting that tool in my tool belt.

 

If someone else need their car towed or whatever, I have that. So it’s really, really important in the recovery community that you have to build a relationships. I say the key word and recovery community organization is community. It is. I just don’t get it. So.

 

Whitney (26:24)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. I mean, I’m sorry, go ahead. I have seen it, you know, I’m in the space, I’ve been in the space for, I don’t know, 10, 12 years now, and it is, it’s almost, it is territorial. think that’s a good way to put it. It’s very much a, my services are better. I think part of it is because of how little

 

Rob Cooper (26:33)

Down the quay.

 

Whitney (26:54)

reimbursement there is so it’s like I want to be able to keep my doors open but and I don’t understand it like you’re saying it’s community but also the problem is so big we’re not gonna go out of business no one’s gonna lose and that’s I wish I wish all of us went out of business that we weren’t needed that would be amazing it’s unfortunately not gonna happen so why are we being this way why are we pitting

 

Rob Cooper (27:15)

Me too. Yeah.

 

Whitney (27:23)

resources against one another. we see the reason you are being successful in changing lives the way you are is because you don’t have that ego first approach. You are saying we can all work together to do this. And that just causes so many the ripple effect from that. You know, the small businesses that then benefit the lives, the next generation of lives. It is all through that collaboration approach.

 

Rob Cooper (27:54)

Yeah, yeah. It’s because two is that

 

I can speak for myself, you know, when this thing started to go, okay, when this thing started to really peak, I did get a little bit of, I did have an ego and egos, having the egos, you’re not well, you’re not healthy. There’s something spiritual going on with you and it’s going to bleed off and everything that is attached to you. And if you don’t believe it, trust me, it will. Okay. And I had people bring me back down to earth.

 

Okay. And because when you haven’t had this level of success, it’s scary, it’s frightening. It will make you walk around as if your stuff don’t stink. And then the people that’s coming to you, they don’t care what you drive. They don’t care what your budget is. They don’t care how many staff you’ve got there. They just won’t help.

 

They won’t help. They don’t care if you black, green, purple, LGBTQ plus. They don’t care. They won’t help. And so, but before I got all the success, I didn’t feel worthy to have it. I didn’t feel worthy because of that. The people that we were serving, I felt that, man, they’re not getting this. So why I’m getting this. And so it took a lot of really, really.

 

getting around some good people. It took us a lot of therapy. I mean, it took a lot of therapy sitting down and talking to people. And now on this next chapter of my life, you know, is that it’s about legacy. It’s about legacy and not just Robert Cooper. It’s that every person that we serve that gets onto better. And

 

They have kids or whatever or people attached to them. That’s legacy. That’s legacy. If they’re living the life that were destined for them, that’s all I’m asking for. And I had to come back down to earth to understand that. And when you become humble and you really put people before you and then you start receiving the fruits of your labor. And so, you know, I was telling my staff this morning, I said,

 

I, when I see a person panhandling or flying a sign in the middle of the medium, I look at that person and I tell myself that could have been you. That could have been you. Your addiction could have took you that way. You could have been there. And I’m not disconnected from that person just because I got titled, just because I drive a fancy truck, all this crazy, this got degrees and all that. And I still have the ear to, to the people that still out there surviving.

 

And I’m not going to lose that. I’m not going to lose that. so but, you know, it is anything that got money attached to it. Yes, we become competitors and and and and it drives me crazy. But only thing I can control is me and I control what zero life center do and and just, you know, really, really make sure that.

 

We are following our mission. We are making sure that we are taking care of these folks and really, you know, making our communities better.

 

Whitney (31:30)

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you’re extremely successful in doing that. I imagine the impact of your work, and I’m not talking like data necessarily, I’m talking about impacted lives. I imagine just the hope that you are delivering. And it just sounds amazing. And I know we talked about so many different things. You have so much going on.

 

And I applaud you and admire you for saying, okay, we’re gonna like stay the course. We’re gonna keep, we’re gonna do what we do and do it really, really well. And as the future continues to unfold, I imagine, you know, that you will see those accomplishments of different visions and goals. But also, I’m looking forward to the people who start their own.

 

you know, organization and say, it’s because of Rob. I imagine there may already be people doing that because you’re very humble and just really demonstrating that people, know, any individual can do this, but it takes that community. And so you are facilitating it by saying, I’m going to share my knowledge, which doesn’t always

 

Rob Cooper (32:49)

Yeah. And you know, it doesn’t make me, it doesn’t put a feather in my cap to sit there and hold all this stuff inside of me. Then when I’m dead and gone, it’s only in the graveyard and nobody else can get it. But it’s, you know, it’s, live in a society now that I grew up with people help people. I grew up in neighborhoods where the neighbors helped each other. And

 

Whitney (33:00)

Yeah.

 

Rob Cooper (33:18)

And I was raised that way is to I could hear my dad telling me, you know you respect them and I’m gonna use a stigmatizing language but you respect the bum on the street because that bum did not do anything to you and I still hold on to that and I respect everybody I respect people that you know, I just it’s just me because I Never know when I’m gonna need that person That person could be dirty today

 

And two years from that person being the suit and I only recognize them and they can say, hey, I remembered you, you passed me at Walmart and you didn’t say nothing to me. But now you’re standing in of me because I have a key to opportunity that you want. And so I, you know, I really take that in the heart is that people can change. People can change. And so my goal is really, and you know, right, you put the head, you put the hammer on the nail is

 

Whitney (34:07)

Yes.

 

Rob Cooper (34:14)

I do want people to become entrepreneurs. I do want people to become entrepreneurs. I do want people to start something. I do want people to, you know, have their own. And because when you become an entrepreneur, OK, is that you’re starting something and depending on how your funding comes from, you don’t have to tell your story of your past so much.

 

instead of going for a job and you take the background and now you got to tell that same story that you’ve been trying to dishing yourself from. And then is you can turn around and help people. And people don’t understand about recovery community organizations is recovery community organizations is a place where you give, you are a second chance employer. Okay. You’re a second chance employer and you overlook those things that people.

 

and the secular or other businesses may say, no, you can’t come here. And so, you know, but sometimes you get tied up with different funding or whatever that you’re receiving. So but the origin of Recovery Community Organization, that’s what it was about. That’s what it was about is that anybody can start a Recovery Community Organization. I can have a body

 

Whitney (35:24)

Right, Yep.

 

Rob Cooper (35:38)

If I hired nothing but people in recovery, we’d close the body shop down from 12 to one and we do a meeting. And, you know, I’m promoting recovery. I’m helping my staff. I’m hiring people in recovery and we’re making the community better. That’s the whole thing about it. And it drives me up the wall that people take this thing that’s so good and twist it and fold it and stop. Stop.

 

You are hurting the forefathers, people that shoulders that I’m standing on having this opportunity that said, look, you know, the William whites, the Phil Valentine’s, you know, all those pioneers in this recovery movement, I’m staying on their shoulders. I’m staying on their shoulders. and it’d be, I would be selfish to try to twist this thing and fit this thing to fit Rob.

 

And that’s wrong. That’s wrong. So I get passionate about this thing. I really do. get passionate about it because, you know, it is saving a lot of people’s lives and we got a great thing going on.

 

Whitney (36:41)

I do.

 

Yeah, and I think it’s easy, know, the attention, the funding for anything related to addiction, primarily opioids, is more than it has ever been combined really, which means that there are gonna be some players who come in and just see the business opportunity. And while business drives innovation, competition drives innovation, and that’s wonderful, we have to remember their lives at stake. And so we can’t,

 

the purpose, that second chance, overwhelmingly accepting and conducive environment for someone to be successful, not to be perfect, because we’re all gonna mess up, to be able to just rebuild that life, rebuild the life they want in a place that understands what the challenges will be and is gonna say, hey,

 

Rob Cooper (37:31)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

 

Whitney (37:44)

I get it, I’m here, I understand, and what can I do? I can shut this shop down for an hour so we can have a meeting. Is that gonna really hurt productivity? No, it’ll probably boost it because your employers are gonna feel supported and they’re gonna feel loyal to you and appreciative so they’re gonna work harder. All we have to do is just say, let me just think about what could help this person. And it comes back tenfold.

 

Rob Cooper (37:54)

No. Right.

 

Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Mm -hmm.

 

Whitney (38:12)

Yeah, wow. Well, I feel like we have touched on so much and could easily keep going. I love your passion and I am honored to, you know, pick your brain in a conversation for a bit. I know that you have your own shows, so you have Fired for Recover. gosh, I’m blanking on the name. I have it right here. Okay.

 

Rob Cooper (38:37)

We used to do fire for recovery. Now what we’re working on now is we have a podcast called from stroke of the strength. And what I want to do with that is that I want to show people and I want to show an audience of people that went through the struggle. Now they’re on a strength mode. I call this this is I’m in my strength mode, you know, and, and to maintain my strength, have to keep working at this.

 

Whitney (38:45)

that’s all right.

 

Rob Cooper (39:07)

And so I want to highlight people that went through the struggle, talk about that for a little bit and really show an audience of people that really turn their life around and doing great things within their community, organizations or whatever. And so we’ve been probably about 10 episodes in this thing and been one of those things that I wanted to do. I always was vocal, you know, if you ever follow going on our YouTube channels and

 

You see from back 2017, I look at that, I was young, had no grade and I was timid and like a deer in the headlights. And so I love putting a message out there. Do I want to be a motivational speaker? I don’t know. I don’t have no clue. But it’s all about touching one person, letting people see that, you know, you can go through things, but you can turn your life around and you can do great.

 

things. We need you. There’s a place in this United States of America where you can be great. So that’s really what that podcast is really trying to hit on.

 

Whitney (40:16)

Wonderful. How exciting. Anything else that you’d like to share for anyone listening to be aware of that’s coming out from Zero Hour?

 

Rob Cooper (40:26)

Our newest project like I said, we’re working on a respite house. We about to have that open next month It’s gonna be I used I call it and I’m taking a phrase from a colleague of mine that opened a respite house And he called his the catcher’s mitt. So it’s just you know, we want to catch those folks that overdose and come out of hospital they don’t have to go back to harm’s way they can come over to the rest of the house while we work to get them on to the next stop

 

It determines what they want to do. We’re not forcing anybody to do anything. They come over here, they can get a warm bed, they can get food, they can get introduced to recovery because when we do recovery meetings and stuff over here, they can stay up to 14 days. They don’t have to stay up to 14 days, but we just want to catch them and start working with them because it’s not a streamlined process of treatment. It’s not a one, you know,

 

I saw that if we say, hey, I can’t get you in treatment today, please come back tomorrow. Sometimes they don’t come back. And so if we have them here, that gives us enough time to work with them. if your community don’t have a respite house, get one. It’s that in between, it’s that before treatment, not sober living. It’s just to get them there, just to have more time to work with them.

 

Whitney (41:51)

Yeah, that’s wonderful and so needed. It makes me think that we talk about people falling through the cracks and you are filling the crack so that we don’t lose them. So that’s great. And my final question for you would be, and we talked again, we talked about so much, so it’s hard to probably narrow it down, but if people can only take one thing away from our conversation.

 

Rob Cooper (42:00)

Mm

 

Whitney (42:19)

and maybe it’s something we didn’t even really get to touch on, what would you like them to walk away with?

 

Rob Cooper (42:25)

You know, we said a lot of stuff today, you know, and best believe I’m not perfect. Okay, I’m not perfect. And yes, you see the success, but it takes a lot to keep the success. It takes a lot working on myself. And I just want to be honest with people, you know, being a businessman, I’m a businessman, you know, running a nonprofit is about business. You got to know your business, but you’ve got to make sure

 

You build a culture at your nonprofit. Your employees feel important. They feel needed. And then the people that you serve. Would carry your message. They would carry your message in it. If you’re out there struggling and you are at that verge, you stumble upon this podcast and you’re at that you at that cliff, you know, there’s people like me out there. I’m not the only one. There’s people like me out there that cares that really, really.

 

want you to be successful and I did not get here by myself, you know, and I want to leave this analogy with you. If you find a turtle on top of a goal post or a pole, it did not get there by himself. Something, somebody helped that turtle get on top of that goal post. Okay. You cannot do life by yourself. I don’t know why we as society think that we can do it by ourselves. We can’t, we cannot do this by ourselves. I still got people in my life that helps me.

 

I still got, I looked at this and this is my last thing I’m gonna say. We idolize all these movie stars and famous rappers and pop artists. Taylor Swift got a whole entourage of people with her that keeps her grounded, keeps her successful, keeps her going because that’s what we need and for us normal people that don’t have that type of success, we try to do this by ourselves. And you

 

You cannot, you cannot do it. So take that. You know, that’s why when you get the treatment, they rep people around you. You get a therapist, you get, you know, all these stuff. And then once you leave, you got to have those people beside you that walk between this recovery journey with you. And there’s no timetable on your healing. You can hear for 30, 40, 50, 60 years until they put you in the ground. There’s no timetable on healing. And if you understand that.

 

Whitney (44:23)

Wow, yeah.

 

Rob Cooper (44:52)

he would be successful. And I’m a firm believer in that. And you know, they’re to be the naysayers, they’re going to be the haters, they’re going to be people out there that tell you that you can’t do this. I had people tell me that is not going to be successful. Yeah, I cried. I blocked that out. But you know, it’s that young man that I wish I could find. And I would shake his hand. And I was hugging him and say thank you. Because he pulled something out of me that was in me.

 

And it took one person to pull this out of me. So just yeah, so that’s what I would leave with people. And you are successful. You are

 

Whitney (45:26)

Yeah.

 

Wonderful. so powerful. I can’t thank you enough Rob for taking time. I know you have a lot going on and I’m just so appreciative of the opportunity to talk to you Yeah

 

Rob Cooper (45:41)

Thank you for having me and really I appreciate you.

 

Whitney (45:45)

Well, everybody share this. Like Rob said, we can’t do it alone. Why are we trying? There’s somebody that you can be there to help out. Send this along to them. Maybe it’s what they need to hear. Check out Zero Hour Life Center as well as Struggle to Strength, Struggle to Success. Struggle to Strength. And just, you know, follow what Rob’s up to because clearly he’s making a difference and we all can too.

 

Rob Cooper (46:05)

Struck or destroyed?

 

Whitney (46:14)

So thank you, please like, share, and subscribe.

 

Rob Cooper (46:18)

Thank you.




Insights from Rob Cooper’s Journey In a recent episode of the Reduce The Stigma podcast, Rob Cooper, CEO of Zero Hour Life Center, shared invaluable insights into the transformative power of a strong recovery community. Rob’s journey from incarceration to becoming a leader in the recovery space is a compelling example of how community support […]

Continue reading "Building a Strong Recovery Community"
Dark blue background with "#Togetherwecan" in white text. Under the text is a faint white line outlining heads and shoulders starting on the left and creating the silhouettes to the right side. A total of 8 different silhouettes. Under those it has a logo and white text "International Overdose Awareness Day." then there is a straight white line. On the other side of the white line is a white signature and a smaller vertical white line. On the right of that line is white text "Pennington Institute"

Overdose Awareness Week: Together, We Can

Overdose Awareness Week: Breaking the Stigma to Save Lives

As we observe Overdose Awareness Week, culminating in International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31st, we are reminded of this year’s powerful theme: “Together, We Can.” This message is not just a call to action; it’s a recognition that the overdose crisis is a collective challenge, one that demands a united response from all corners of society. Stigma surrounding drug use and overdose doesn’t just harm those struggling with addiction; it perpetuates the very crisis we aim to overcome. But together, we can break the cycle of stigma, save lives, and foster a culture of compassion and support.

Understanding the Stigma

Stigma is a mark of disgrace imposed on individuals or groups, often based on misconceptions, fears, or prejudices. In the context of substance use, stigma manifests in many forms: from derogatory language and judgmental attitudes to discriminatory policies and practices in healthcare, law enforcement, and social services. People who use drugs or have a substance use disorder are often labeled as “junkies” or “addicts,” stripped of their humanity, and reduced to a single aspect of their identity.

This dehumanization fosters a culture of shame and silence, where individuals are less likely to seek help for their substance use disorder (SUD) or related health issues. The fear of being judged, rejected, or criminalized drives people further into isolation, away from the very resources and support systems that could save their lives.

The Perpetuation of Overdoses

Stigma doesn’t just exist in a vacuum—it actively contributes to the ongoing overdose crisis. Here’s how:

  1. Barriers to Treatment: Stigma creates significant barriers to accessing treatment and support. Many people avoid seeking help due to fear of judgment or discrimination, either from healthcare providers or within their own communities. This reluctance can delay critical interventions and increase the risk of overdose.
  2. Underreporting and Misrepresentation: The stigma associated with drug use often leads to underreporting of overdoses, skewing the data and undermining efforts to address the crisis effectively. It also results in misrepresentation of the issue, focusing on individual “failures” rather than systemic problems that contribute to the rise in overdose deaths.
  3. Criminalization and Punitive Measures: Policies rooted in stigma often prioritize punishment over rehabilitation. The criminalization of drug use exacerbates the cycle of addiction, pushing people into more dangerous circumstances, such as using drugs in secrecy or resorting to unregulated substances, both of which increase the likelihood of overdose.
  4. Misinformation and Myths: Stigma perpetuates myths about substance use and addiction, such as the false belief that addiction is a choice or a moral failing. This misinformation contributes to inadequate responses from society and institutions, further marginalizing those in need of help.
  5. Isolation and Social Disconnection: Stigma drives individuals into isolation, cutting them off from their support networks. People who use drugs often face judgment not only from society but also from their families and friends, leading to strained relationships and a loss of social support. This isolation exacerbates feelings of hopelessness and despair, which can increase the likelihood of substance use as a coping mechanism and elevate the risk of overdose. When people feel disconnected and alone, they are less likely to seek help, share their struggles, or access life-saving resources.

Together, We Can: The Path Forward

This year’s theme, “Together, We Can,” underscores the importance of collective action in overcoming the overdose crisis. Breaking the cycle of stigma requires a united effort to shift the narrative around substance use and overdose. We must:

  • Promote Compassionate Language: Words matter. By choosing language that respects the dignity of individuals, such as “person with a substance use disorder” instead of “addict,” we can begin to dismantle the harmful stereotypes that fuel stigma. Using person-first language emphasizes the humanity of the person and elicits empathy rather than judgment.
  • Advocate for Harm Reduction: Harm reduction approaches, such as naloxone distribution, supervised consumption sites, and needle exchange programs, are proven strategies to reduce overdose deaths. These initiatives often face opposition due to stigma, but they are critical in saving lives and connecting people to treatment.
  • Support Policy Change: We need policies that prioritize public health over punishment, ensuring that people with substance use disorders have access to the care and support they need. This includes expanding access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT), decriminalizing drug possession, and providing comprehensive mental health services.
  • Educate and Raise Awareness: Education is key to breaking down stigma. By raising awareness about the realities of addiction and the factors that contribute to overdose, we can challenge harmful narratives and foster a more supportive environment for those affected.

Conclusion

Overdose Awareness Week, culminating in International Overdose Awareness Day, is a time to remember those we’ve lost, support those still struggling, and commit to action. Stigma is a barrier that we can and must overcome. Together, we can save lives and build a society where everyone has the opportunity to recover, thrive, and be treated with the dignity they deserve.

Let’s use this week to not only raise awareness but to also renew our dedication to ending the stigma that perpetuates the overdose crisis. Together, we can make a difference.

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Overdose Awareness Week: Breaking the Stigma to Save Lives As we observe Overdose Awareness Week, culminating in International Overdose Awareness Day on August 31st, we are reminded of this year’s powerful theme: “Together, We Can.” This message is not just a call to action; it’s a recognition that the overdose crisis is a collective challenge, […]

Continue reading "Overdose Awareness Week: Together, We Can"
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Transforming Recovery in Rural Areas

Crystl McCall - The Power of Peer Support and Holistic Healing

Crystl McCall, a peer specialist and Reiki healer from rural Iowa, shares her unique approach to recovery and healing. Crystl discusses her journey of overcoming substance use and the challenges of being a full-time caregiver to her son, who has undergone two heart transplants and suffers from dementia at just 18 years old. Despite the scarcity of resources in her rural community, Crystl has harnessed her experiences to develop a holistic practice that blends Reiki, hypnosis, and peer support.

Crystl’s story highlights the importance of accessible rural health services and the transformative role of peer support in recovery. By combining alternative healing practices with lived experience, she provides a much-needed resource for those in underserved areas. This episode sheds light on the power of holistic approaches in rural health and emphasizes that no one should have to navigate recovery alone.

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

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Transcript

Whitney Menarcheck (00:00.716)

Welcome to Reduce the Stigma. Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Crystl McCall, a peer specialist and Reiki healer in Iowa. Crystl shares her experience achieving recovery from substance use as well as being the caregiver to a special needs child. Crystl has taken her different experiences in life and transformed them into a passion for serving and helping others. I’m excited for you all to take a listen and hear about

 

what it’s been like for Crystl in a rural area where services really are not readily available. But first, a special thank you to our sponsor, CINICA 12, an online recovery community and social media platform. Visit CINICA12 .com. Together, recovery is possible. And as always, you can find these episodes on reducethestigma .com, where we are ensuring that you have access to all the wonderful stories that are out there reducing stigma.

 

So let’s get started. All right, well, Crystl, I’m so excited to talk to you today. Thank you for joining me. I am curious, just let’s get started. Tell me a little bit about who you are. 

 

Crystal McCall 

Thank you for having me. Well, I’m a mom. I’m a mom of five kids and I am a caregiver, full -time caregiver. I have a special needs son who’s had two heart transplants and

 

three strokes and he’s 18 and has dementia. So that takes up a big part of my life. But I’m also a healer. I do hypnosis and Reiki and subtle energy healing and I really, really love anything natural. herbal tinctures, hiking.

 

anything that is just that just brings that naturalness out. wonderful. 

 

Whitney Menarcheck

Now, Reiki, I’m not very familiar. I have a little bit of an understanding. know that I believe it has something to do with energies, a person’s energy, cleansing energies.  Can you help us understand what exactly that is and the benefits? 

Crystl McCall

Yeah. So when I first heard about Reiki, a lot of people either say Reiki, Reiki, subtle energy movement. I kind of just, that’s kind of like an umbrella term for me, myself, because I like to kind of go with who I’m working with on whether it’s, you know, Reiki or subtle energy, because it really depends on the person. But you have different energy centers in your body.

 

And what I had learned through my son, it was actually offered in the hospital. And so when I came home, I was like, my gosh, I had to learn this. I’ve known this all my life, you know? And so basically you have these energy centers in your body and I just help facilitate the movement through. So I’ll take my hands and I’ll gently lay them either on you or over you. And, you know, I’ll start up at the crown chakra and I will just move that energy down.

 

Sometimes I fluff it. Sometimes I’ll make weird sounds. It’s just whatever the energy tells me. have a little bit of clairvoyance in me as well. I use a lot of those natural gifts with helping people. And what I’ve seen in my career with Reiki or energy movement is that it helps people release blockages. you know, there’s a book called The Body Keeps the Score and I can’t remember the… 

 

Whitney Menarcheck 

Vessel van der Kolk.

 

Crystal McCall

Yes, yes. That was a really, really big eye opener for me because our bodies do keep the score and I have suffered through a lot of trauma and I don’t want to, you know, be like, the pity party or anything like that. I feel like when I started to release that trauma and become more myself in my own skin and be honest with myself about

 

my pain and my trauma and my addiction that I would be I would heal and I did. I did heal and the weight just started falling off and with my son, same thing. It was just really healing for us. And so I really promote that and I promote that with with my clients, obviously. Yeah. 

 

Whitney Menarcheck (04:49.582)

Now we started with Reiki, Reiki, I’m going to keep questioning how to say it. I apologize. And it’s funny because, you know, it wasn’t the purpose of having you on today. Today we were to talk about peer work because you are a peer specialist. And I think that this is just such a wonderful combining of your skill set.

 

So you have this Reiki practice and now you are also starting to do peer support. Have you thought about that integration? 

 

Crystal McCall

Yes, we’re actually working on that right now. Right now, my business is Om Hypnosis and Reiki. And for me, I picked Om because at that time I was starting to go through my healing process and I was actually, that’s when I just got sober from alcohol. So it’s been about

 

it’ll be six years on Halloween night would be the last time I drank alcohol. when I started to get, I call it healthy or healed, like when I start healing or recovering, all of those modalities really just became natural to me. I started doing hypnosis and learning how to

 

right. Hypnosis scripts. And I actually lost a whole bunch of weight with using hypnosis. And, so I want to integrate. And so we’re talking about maybe changing that home hypnosis and right. B2 recover all of the G and so it can kind of umbrella all of it. And cause I don’t like to work outside of my lane, you know, I don’t want to do that. And so

 

I think what it’s going to entail is a lot of other coaches coming in and also mental health coaches. My husband also has gone through addiction with me and we got sober together and he is a paramedic and he is going through mental health coaching training so we can kind of collaborate all of it together. 

 

Whitney Menarcheck (07:07.914)

Yes, I love the name. That is so neat and I And what a great approach because, you know, being a peer is so, it’s all about that lived experience. And so, you know, certainly it’s not push whatever worked for you onto others. However, it’s being able to bring different opportunities and potential tools to people. And that’s what you’re doing. You’re saying this was tremendous for my healing. You’ve already got.

 

gotten the training and done that and now you’re bringing in the pure component. So how to do it in that way rather than just like the random, you know, a person who comes to you who maybe you don’t have that shared lived experience. Well, now you’re going to have them integrated and what a holistic approach that’s going to be and just incredible. So you mentioned that you’re in recovery from alcohol. Congratulations on the upcoming six years.

 

And you also mentioned that you’re a caregiver. Your loved one has also been in addiction, been through an addiction. So are all of these experiences of yours, things that you tend to offer peer support for or what areas are you interested in? 

 

Crystal McCall

Yeah, well, I actually, my biggest addiction was actually methamphetamine. So I grew up in a

 

Small rural area and I still live in a very rural area. And so, you know, like most rural areas, we don’t have the tools or the, outlets to be able to have the information to stay sober. And a lot of times they’re just, it’s looked at as okay. So I grew up and it was like, you did drugs. Yep. So did we, you know, or, we drank alcohol, we all drink alcohol, you know, we all drink alcohol at church and at.

 

festivities, you know, and so it was just a thing and mine really started with abuse and anxiety and an eating disorder. If I had meth, I didn’t have to eat. I had the energy to do the things and the responsibilities that were expected of me. It wasn’t a, it wasn’t a, it was a weird type of addiction. It really just started with an eating disorder and some really trauma that I never addressed. And so going forward, I, I’ve been 10 years clean from from meth. And in between that there were years and years spaced out as well. But this has been my longest that I’ve been recovered. And I take great pride in that. 

 

Whitney Menarcheck

As you should. 

 

Crystal McCall

And the thing was, is it for me, I didn’t get the opportunity to go to a recovery center or have a group because that’s not, I’m in rural Iowa. They don’t offer that really here. It’s not, it’s just not here yet. And so for me to be able to use these experiences and say, hey, this is needed. This is important for us to have a community because I was a caregiver and if,

 

if somebody looked at me badly, was like, you know, that could end everything for me. And it was, it was, it was a balancing act is what I want to call it. And so now I can look at it and be like, you know what, really, all I really had to do was acknowledge the trauma and the fact that I’m also in anticipated grief all the time with my son.

 

So I do a lot of work with a lot of people with, who have things like that, like caregivers burnout. I’m also a firefighter and my dad was a cop. So I see a lot of the different burnouts and the different addictions from different levels. And it’s not just people who are either, who have those stigmas of mental health, homeless, it’s other.

 

other areas too that have the same addictions and something that I’m really passionate about is that vicarious trauma and I think that that might have a hand in our addictions and so with our company we really want to promote because in our area we don’t have people that come into the hospital when somebody has, know, they’re, excuse my language, losing their shit.

 

You know, but they don’t have somebody that comes in and is that coach or that peer specialist and that says, Hey, you know, what’s going on? You know, let’s talk, let’s see where you might need some help. Maybe they don’t need to go through all that stuff. Maybe they just needed somebody to listen and get them the resources that they needed. It’s absolutely. And I appreciate you talking about the fact that your experience did not include a rehab and inpatient.

 

intensive outpatient because that’s, we lose a lot of people because we feel like we have to, the only way is through formal treatment. and that dismisses, you know, the decades of effectiveness of 12 steps for those it works for. But also there are people who like you find what is needed in their own way. And it’s the awareness sometimes of.

 

Okay, let me acknowledge this. Let me, I can do Reiki cleansing and that will help, know, and so when, and I hope this message reaches those people who feel like, my loved one will never go to treatment. So therefore they’ll never be better. That’s not true. People can recover even if they don’t engage in a formal treatment. I know a lot of people actually because of the stigma and the shame that goes

 

that people think, I’m going to look a certain way if I get treatment, but it’s not true. You can have a past and then take that past and level it up. You can be like, you know what? I went through this and now I can help somebody because I got through it. Right. You know, right. They can get through it too. There’s many different pathways, you know, and that’s what I like to promote because I myself, I have epilepsy. I’ve had it all my life. and

 

I was highly against medical cannabis for most of my life, even cannabis period, just because I grew up with that around me. And it was not something that I saw positive, which really defeated the purpose of my other drug use. But I now I use medical cannabis for my seizures because the other prescription meds, they make me sick and they make me forget things I can’t function and my doctor prescribed that. And so I promote healthy, natural options. also promote, you know, doctors using, you know, other pathways such as medicines to help people as well. I don’t judge. you know, even if they’re currently still just curious about recovery, I’m open. Right. Now,

 

Whitney Menarcheck

You mentioned a term, vicarious trauma. Can you explain in your words? I don’t need a dictionary definition in your words. For those who don’t know, what is vicarious trauma? Well, vicarious trauma is living trauma through somebody else’s experiences. 

 

Crystal McCall

So, like I said, my son, he’s on palliative care, and he’s strong and amazing, and he’s starting his own business, but I have seen his heart out of his chest. I have seen him dying. I have seen all of these things and that was the, I took that trauma as well by seeing it or hearing his pain or being, my husband being a paramedic, he lives that vicarious trauma all the time because he goes to different calls.

 

We, as recovery coaches or peer support specialists, we all have vicarious trauma. Everybody does, especially like, because of COVID. Yes, we all do.

 

Whitney Menarcheck

Absolutely. And I don’t think we’ve had anyone mentioned vicarious trauma on the show before. it’s something that really is, I mean, that’s a big part of burnout is just being exposed to so much pain and having to endure that. And we can feel it.

 

Whitney Menarcheck (16:18.516)

almost like a dismissal of our own experiences, but it didn’t happen to me. So why should I be this upset? Well, that’s not true. We have to stop judging our feelings and our experiences and just say, wow, even hearing about that is so upsetting to me. I need to tend to myself with this. 

 

Crystal McCall

Yeah. And self care. just, really promote self care. Like, you know,

 

I’m a dork, I like natural modalities. like tapping, you know, I always, always refer out always, usually for mental health. And usually I refer out for EMDR, just because I think that’s a really natural, great modality that helps everybody. But I think, you know, that vicarious trauma, it gets you.

 

And it was hard for me to see my son so sick. And so I wanted to not feel anything. And so it was easier for me to self -medicate than it was for me to go find a therapist that actually worked for me. I was going to tell you, so at the end of my

 

on drug use, I tried to commit suicide and I almost succeeded had not a friend come over for no reason just to come and see how I was doing and she found me and that was a moment that I woke up and I was like.

 

There you are, you know, yeah, I felt like for so long, I wasn’t living in my true self because I was hiding all of that addiction and all of that trauma. And I just want people to know when they find their community and they can live freely for who they are in their addiction and out of their addiction. And that’s winning. That’s really what. Yes. how powerful and.



Whitney Menarcehck

Hearing all of this, you mentioned that you believe like the roots of your substance use was not only just the exposure and the acceptance, also the trauma. And then with, you know, what you’ve been through as a caregiver, as a parent of a medically fragile child, I imagine that not only is that traumatizing and then the,

 

for you, the vicarious trauma as well as truly traumatizing to have a child in that position. There’s also the fact that in my experience, least parents tend to push away all of their needs and they are so invested in their children in general, especially when there are these medical complexities that it then just keeps building and building and building and becomes to a point

 

where the parent is in such a state of distress and need and, you know, and was that something that you experienced or that you’ve, you know, seen others with medically complex children experience?

 

Crystal McCall

I’ve seen a lot of others with medically complex children suffer from addiction and mental health issues.

 

A lot of the families it’s hard and the thing is is they don’t have the tools either because they’re just not being given out and a lot of the parents also are self self -cooping, know trying to China or self -medicating and you know It was when I started to take care of myself and see that I When I found my right therapist is when

 

I really started to heal and when I really started to look at my addiction and dissect it and dissect my trauma and then, you know, just look at, you know, my parenting, look at who I am as a person. What are my, what are my morals? What are my beliefs? You know, I didn’t know those things because I, I wasn’t all there before, you know, and now I finally kind of feel like I’m getting a second chance of life. Like, you know, I’m getting to help and be of service. Yes.

 

So I it helps me cope as well with my grief because it’s a way of coping. My family makes fun of me all the time because I have like little OCD things that I do. have to, for my mind, I have to have things organized and they are always like, mom’s got OCD. And I’m like, no, it’s just a healthy coping tool. And it is.

 

those are, those are other things I promote, you know, it’s, it’s hard when you don’t know what tomorrow might bring, but everybody lives that way. It’s not just me, you know, everybody has trauma, even if it’s like my son being sick and my watching my other children have to navigate that as well. And yeah,

 

that could be the same as somebody else having trauma where maybe they just got a divorce or maybe they just lost their job or, you know, they’re just depressed or they don’t feel themselves. Everybody experiences trauma the same way, just different experiences, you know? Yes, it’s all pain and our world being just rocked. The world as we knew it changing. Yeah. Yeah. And

 

Whitney Menarcheck

I agree. You can see I’m getting all excited. I’m like, yes, I agree. Because we have, you know, for so long, we dismissed experiences and then had the term trauma for those really big things that no one could deny was hard. As we continue to be more cognizant of the pain that events actually are instead of pretending, no, I’m fine, pull up, pick myself up and

 

You know, by the bootstraps, you know, that’s when we’re seeing we have all been through immense pain because we, know, that’s unfortunately a part of life. What I think that can be different is how easy is it to escape the reality of it? You know, when, yes, I don’t know what tomorrow brings. However, it’s a lot more.

 

easy for me to live in my naivete of it’ll be just another day. Whereas when you have a loved one with a chronic illness or something like that, then you, it’s not as easy to say, not gonna happen. It’s much more, you know, pressing and in your face in a way. and so you have to acknowledge it in a timely way that others kind of don’t have to.

 

Crystal McCall

And it’s also, think, I think I have to acknowledge as well to like you, somebody might have an addictive personality, but they’re then they can also be an addict. like I found that I have an addictive personality with unresolved trauma and that was causing my addictions. Whereas there’s also the other type where they are addicted. they’re addicted to that certain particular substance.

 

You know, like if maybe alcohol and it even gets down to the point where let’s say you’re drinking mouthwash, something like that. That’s, you know, that’s an addiction. But then I think there’s, there’s, I personally think there’s two different kinds. I think finding which kind that is will also decide how you can help somebody and what they need. Right. 

 

Whitney Menarcehck

absolutely. And just so many different things that you’re taking into consideration when you approach someone. 

You certainly don’t have a cookie cutter approach, it sounds. And that’s wonderful because we have too many things in the world that are tried at one size fits all. Now, we’ve covered a lot of different things and I’m trying to just like, as we move towards wrapping up here,

 

Whitney Menarcheck (25:11.286)

I want to make sure that we really get to reflect, you know, your style, your personality. What is it like for someone when they are, you know, say, I’m going to come work with you, whether it’s for peer services or for Reiki or what have you. 

 

Crystal McCall

Okay. well, usually I, so I have an office out of my house in my basement and, it is filled with all things natural and.

 

spiritual and I always have, you know, incense going. Usually I have, you relaxing music playing in the back and I just like to make people feel really relaxed. I also have a massage chair for people to sit in if they want to. And when they come in, I just go over and we just talk and we get to know each other. And depending upon what service I’m offering or they’re coming for.

 

as far as Reiki, I would, you know, lay them down on my table and we would get started and then I would meet with them after and tell them, you know, what I. You know, my recommendations and then same with hypnosis, those kind of take a little bit longer because I also do past life. Hypnosis, which is quantum healing that takes 5 hours. So, usually that takes a lot of work up before. So people have to write things out before they come.

 

So that is a process as far as recovery. I invite them down and we just sit and we talk and I ask them what they need and, you know, sometimes it could be the smallest thing as. You know, I need help insurance or, you know, things just aren’t really going right at my job. You know, is they need somebody else to chime in, you know, or do they need more services? And then, you know, I would say, okay, well, hey.

 

Let’s kind of go through this little chart and we’re going to we’re going to see where you’re at here. know, we kind of make it fun. And I also give out breathing tips and we do breathing together and, you know, just I just try to make it really comfortable for them. 

 

Whitney Menarcheck (27:34.316)

Sounds like a very supportive space and very thoughtful of what you’ve put into it. So, that’s exciting. And I know where I assume hypnosis and Reiki is only in person. Peer services though, will you be offering those online? Yes, yes, through Straight Up Care. So yes, I’ll be offering those online as well, Yeah, and I think, I mean, that’s part of the beauty of the technology is reaching the rural population. So hopefully you’ll be able to connect with those people who otherwise wouldn’t have access.

 

cause there are a lot of people who are still in these deserts, service deserts. and so hopefully they can find their way to you, through, you know, using technology. would be. 

 

Crystal McCall

That would be great. And this, you know, even in the syndicate 12, like there’s so much, you know, that we can offer. And I think it’s just like, this is a new uncharted territory and.

 

I also think that this might help bring recoveries a sense of. Placement, I think. Yeah, and I think that’s really what everybody wants is placement a place where they are needed. And I think that this is a good place for recoverees.

 

Whitney Menarcheck

I love that. The recoveries. I like that word. You’re just coming up with some really great terminology. So yes, absolutely. Because we don’t want to belong, right? let’s make more. I’m sorry. Go ahead. 

 

Crystal McCall

I know that syndicate 12 and then the straight up here. Like I saw when this all started, you know, Dr. Mo, I actually went to school with her and

 

So she was the one who actually kind of brought it to my attention and she’s kind of changed my life. so like straight up care and syndicate like, yeah, hands down, I think it’s gonna be the best. 

 

Whitney Menarcheck (29:50.902)

Well, thank you. We are just so happy to have you part of the family, the straight up care family and just everything that you’re offering. I’m excited for people to hear about you. We will link to things for your website and things like that.

 

As we wrap up, I do have my final questions for you. The first really honing in on stigma, and this can be any type of stigma, but could you share an experience where you did endure some stigma and what you would like people to know about it? Oof, that’s a hard one. I think stigma is everywhere for everything.

 

Crystal McCall

Gosh, that’s hard. I’ve endured stigma a lot with mental health and with depression and anxiety, people think if you have addiction or if you have mental health issues that you’re never gonna heal, you’re never gonna really, you’re always gonna have that on you. And I’m living proof that that’s not true. And anybody can get out of that spot.

 

You know, and I just think with stigma It just closely goes with karma for me, you know, like I’m like If it doesn’t fit for everybody It’s gonna affect you later on down the road. So just don’t do it kind of thing. So for me stigma I don’t even know. Like, it’s so hard. It’s so hard because there’s so many stigmas for so many things. yes, I just want people to really, really know that what other people think of them doesn’t matter. It’s what they think of themselves. and just, just don’t, don’t listen to that negative voice that is telling you’re no good because we all are winners in this world and we’re all here to support everybody, not just some people.

 

That’s, that’s decadent. 

 

Whitney Menarcheck 

Yeah. And it’s funny, you kind of started to go right into my next question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. this is where I ask you to speak to the person listening, who’s going through something tough, going through a hard time. What would you like them to hear? 

 

Crystal McCall

You’re not alone. You are not alone. Everybody has stuff.

 

We all have stuff. And if you don’t want to heal alone, would you think somebody else would want to heal alone? So we just need to open that talk up. Not alone. Open the talk up. 

 

Whitney Menarcheck

That’s exactly it. Right. That’s the whole point of the podcast is sharing stories because when we share, we’re tackling.

 

stigma, we’re raising awareness. And it shows that there are people out there just like you, just like me, just like the person next to us. Right. And so you, you aren’t alone. Crystl, I have just really enjoyed getting to know you better and hear your story and everything that you’re going to be able to offer to our listeners and the clients that find their way to you.

 

so I just want to thank you one more time for joining me today. 

 

Crystl McCall 

This was awesome. I’m so excited. Thank you. Yes. my pleasure. 



Whitney Menarcheck

And for all of you listening, I’m sure you took something really valuable away today and sharing stories like crystals can really be impactful. So please subscribe and share these with others. We continue to reduce your stigma when we’re talking about the things that no one wants to talk about.

 

Whitney Menarcheck (33:38.091)

So get these messages out there. Let’s raise up voices of individuals with lived experience. Thank you all so much for listening.



Crystl McCall – The Power of Peer Support and Holistic Healing Crystl McCall, a peer specialist and Reiki healer from rural Iowa, shares her unique approach to recovery and healing. Crystl discusses her journey of overcoming substance use and the challenges of being a full-time caregiver to her son, who has undergone two heart transplants […]

Continue reading "Transforming Recovery in Rural Areas"
culture recovery mental health identity reduce the stigma unfiltered real talk

Understanding Culture and Its Impact on Mental Health and Recovery

Exploring the Intersection of Cultural Identity, Mental Health, and Recovery with Diverse Perspectives

In this episode of Reduce the Stigma – Unfiltered, our guests share their personal experiences and insights on how cultural identity impacts mental health and recovery. Dr. Mo and Whitney we explore the complex and sensitive subject of culture and identity with Rob Cooper, Founder & CEO of Zero Hour Life Center and Tom DeCoteau Jr., a peer specialist from South Dakota. Our guests discuss the significance of cultural heritage, the challenges of overcoming biases, and the importance of fostering unity and understanding between different cultural groups. The conversation highlights the healing power of reconnecting with cultural practices and the role of community and belonging in the recovery process.

The discussion also delves into practical ways to engage with cultural diversity respectfully, such as approaching cultural events with humility, giving back to communities, and stepping out of our comfort zones to explore different perspectives. Our guests stress the need for creating safe, inclusive spaces where people feel understood and accepted. By embracing our cultures and learning from one another, we can foster a more compassionate and connected world.

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Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

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Transcript

Whitney (00:00)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Reduce the Stigma Unfiltered. This is our once a month live stream show where we take on topics that most people shy away from. The goal is to have these honest and vulnerable conversations so that we can continue getting stories out there, getting truths out there, and really reducing stigma around

So many things. We know that there’s a lot of division, a lot of distance between people because of misunderstandings. And this is an opportunity for us to address those.

So today I am joined with Dr. Mo, my co -hosts, as well as Rob and Tom. I will let them all introduce themselves, but I’m so excited for today. This is our second live stream and we’re gonna talk about all things culture. So let me just go ahead and start. Dr. Mo, do you mind introducing yourself and then we’ll move on to our guests.

Dr. Mo (00:57)
Absolutely. I’m Dr. Mo and I’m the CEO of Straight Up Care and I’m so happy to be here with all you guys.

Rob Cooper (01:08)
Cooper CEO for Zero Hour Life Center, which is a recovery community organization out of Florida.

Tom DeCoteau jr (01:19)
Dakota. I’m from Sistence, South Dakota and hopefully I’ll get to be CEO soon too.

Dr. Mo (01:27)
Hahaha!

Whitney (01:27)
You can be CEO of Tom. There you go. Right. So thank you all for being here. Like I said, we’re going to talk about all things culture. And I want to start by just throwing this out there. What is culture? Because everyone has a different idea of it. We could go to you know, deck dictionary definition, but I don’t want that. In your words, what is culture?

Rob Cooper (01:29)
There you go.

Dr. Mo (01:30)
Love

I’m not going first. No way.

Tom DeCoteau jr (02:01)
Hahaha

Rob Cooper (02:02)
Well, you know, it’s culture to me is belonging to something, you know, belong to something. And, you know, me being African American, you know, we have a lot of culture. So I do things different from a lot of people because that’s how I’ve raised. So and it’s not a bad thing. It’s just, you know, that’s how my my neighborhood, my

my, where I was born at, that’s how, and then, you know, so belonging to something and really adapting to what you were keen to, what you are, what you know, you

Whitney (02:48)
Thank you. What about you Tom? What’s culture in your words?

Tom DeCoteau jr (02:53)
I’m a Dakota from Sistine. kind of have a culture, I always thought it was like a way of life for us. Like we don’t practice it, we don’t. It’s just something that we live every day. We’re taught by our elders.

I was just a way of life that I live. I’m a cultural director, I could be a cultural counselor, but it’s just what I learned and what I was taught, can pass on to someone else. It’s kind of like what Rob said, belonging to something.

Dr. Mo (03:31)
Yeah, I love that. So that’s kind of where I was going to go too. think like my culture doesn’t look.

or feel as deep in some areas and in some it is, right? So I belong to a few different cultures that make me who I am. And a lot of them look like my spiritual culture or I spent a majority of my life playing roller derby and I feel really tied to that culture and what roller skating looks like and being part of a team. And so I still kind of bring some of those parts with me, right? And then like, you know, my family piece that comes together too. What does my family look like and what does that culture look like as well? And whether I adhere to all that or not is a totally

different story, but it’s part of what makes me me.

Whitney (04:12)
You know, we were joking before we even came on because here we have Dr. Mo and I who are two white cisgender women. And we were saying, you know, culture just doesn’t drive us this, you know, and we were wanting to be respectful of that. Whereas also I had a friend right before you were saying, well, what are you talking about? Culture is everywhere. And I think that’s, you know, an overlooked part because I think in a way, and this is kind of diving right into let’s have the unfiltered conversation.

In a way, those of us who don’t feel a strong sense of culture are able to do so out of that privilege, right? Unfortunately, African Americans have faced a lot of discrimination. So have Native Americans and other cultures as well. And so sometimes it’s almost like the presence and the identity with a culture is almost a survival skill, but in also a way of, you know,

Dr. Mo (04:46)
Thank you.

Whitney (05:09)
connecting to people who have been through a damaging negative experience.

Rob Cooper (05:16)
You get on something right there Whitney, I was sitting and thinking where I’m at right now. I’m in one of my counties because we’re working on a new project and this county that I’m in is 2 % African American and 98 % white. And this is where Zero Life Center started from in this county. And I can remember going around in this community and trying to talk

our organization and talk about recovery and talk about and I used to have my COO with me and she was white and they always looked at her like she was in charge of me and but what was my shelter shot was I went to the Walmart here and I walked to the Walmart and I was the only African American person in the Walmart and it scared me because I came from the military were so diverse

I was in the Marine Corps and yeah, there’s a difference. There’s more white than African American in the Marine Corps. But when you travel around, you see different things. But when I moved down here to Florida, I was like, okay, I’m thinking Orlando, Miami, Tampa. And I got to this county and it was a shelter shop for me. But what helped me was,

when I started to help people, I started to help people and I started to help a lot of the homeless folks that battle with substance use and they didn’t see my color. And I can remember our first couple of years, we had no African -American clients. it really helped me to say, they don’t really care about how you look, you know, and

I knew there were some houses I went into that I was the only black person ever went in their house. But I was but I was giving them a service. I was helping them. And so, you know, but it was it was really it was really a shock to me. And I was scared and I was nervous and I was like, I can’t do this. And I serve a lot of rural counties. I serve probably one of my other counties

You know, right in Marion County, Ocala is more diverse than all my other counties. But, you know, I, I don’t see it. I, know, I don’t see the race or whatever. I just know that when people come for help, they don’t care how you look. They don’t care what you drive. They don’t care. You know, if you got one eye, they’d say you’re, you can help me and you know, help me.

Whitney (08:02)
Yeah. And that’s a really great, you know, across everything because there is a lot of division, right? There’s a lot of animosity, unfortunately, in our world, in our country. And when it comes down to help to those basic needs to being able to survive, I would hope that, you know, differences doesn’t matter who you’re going to be willing to accept help from. I’m sure there are some people who will turn that away, but I think that’s, you know, kind of gets to the,

core of we are all just humans and we are all going to feel pain. And it’s if we take away everything else at who we are at our core, the differences aren’t there. But how we live our lives can be different. Right. So I’d love to hear about, you know, the cultural impact on your sense of self, on how you have progressed through the world.

And Tom, we haven’t heard from you. I’m curious. You I remember from our interview, you talked about culture as part of, you you coming into your recovery. Can you speak a little bit about

Tom DeCoteau jr (09:12)
culture. don’t our people been through a lot from the boarding school era and even before that about different battles that went on and different massacres and but before that our people can’t see my hand they talk with my hand so yeah and but we were very we loved each other we took care of each other we were you know

Whitney (09:30)
cultural thing, right? Yes, me too.

Tom DeCoteau jr (09:41)
We were one with Mother Nature. That’s where that saying comes, it takes the whole village. So if I went out to battle and I didn’t come back or went off hunting and I didn’t make it back, someone would take care of my family.

So we had a lot of respect and honor. We really felt love since we were born. We had different ceremonies. We wrapped blankets around our babies and our buffalo robes. And so they felt love right away, comfort, safety. So when they took the babies and children away from, and took them to the boarding schools, we didn’t have that no more. So we weren’t taught those beautiful things anymore. From the boarding schools, we got abuse, shame.

Don’t speak your language. Savage, cut your hair. They took that from us. So those things start being passed

So, what some of us older ones now I can say, I’m gonna be 50 next week. The elder, kidding. I made it. I’m just happy. Happy I made it to 50. But I realized in that, just because we went through these things as children, we’re still connected to our ancestors and we still have that love in us. We just gotta kind of peel it away and heal.

Dr. Mo (10:46)
Yay!

Tom DeCoteau jr (11:08)
So now what I teach my relatives I work with is, make I love yourself first. A lot of the elders used to teach, say, no, Tom, respect everybody, love your culture, love your language. But I didn’t really know what love was. I wasn’t really shown that. So I had to learn to love myself and take care of myself so I can help people. So now, if I do that now, some of my older kids seen me.

in addiction and still not in recovery. My first 10 years, I didn’t really dig into loving myself yet or healing. So they didn’t learn what love was either, but now I’m teaching them. So if I started doing it, my kids started doing it, my grandkids started doing it, and seven generations, they don’t have to learn it again. So that’s what I try to teach people. All this stuff happened to us, but it’s up to us to change

with the help of Dr. Mo’s and other relatives. So that’s how the culture is kind of adapting now. We’ve through so much where we still understand what love is and honor, but we have to kind of

peel off the onion, there’s layers of onion to get to it because it’s still in there. Just kind of asleep, they said.

Dr. Mo (12:40)
That’s beautiful.

So as someone, like I said, who isn’t really connected to culture, I think like I’m in Hawaii and this is my second summer here. And so I really have check it upon myself to try to explore the culture, what it looks like. And I think.

You know, I see a lot of ties to the Native American population to being, you know, surrounded with that in South Dakota as well. And I think the beauty comes from being somebody who’s who’s maybe not involved with either one of these cultures, but gets to see it from afar. And I’m not going to lie that sometimes I’m a little jealous. I’m like, I wish I had ties like that. Right. Especially in this beautiful island where I’m like, it’d be really neat if I knew what the hell was going on with these ceremonies and stuff. But just to be able to experience them and have my daughter walk along that with me to see the different

that are here and how to like tie her back to the earth and show her you know the beauty of mother nature and how the Hawaiian population just really lives aloha and I think although I am not Hawaiian I have a little piece of that in my soul right I carry aloha with me for sure even though I don’t you know carry that blood but it is just it’s so beautiful to be able to experience different cultures and I think as I’ve traveled the world and anytime that I’m in a place where I’m the only person from the United States or there’s not many of us

I don’t speak the language. It really takes me down to and reminds me how small I am and I think that’s good I think it’s nice to have a nice ego wipe like that every now and then I think it’s good to know that our language is not the only language that’s spoke right like English is not the biggest language there is right and we forget that if we stay in our little town and our little space and I did that right and so to have this like Expansive place where it’s not my language. It’s not my food. It’s not I don’t look like anyone like it’s so good for you,

And it just helps me like love everyone just a little bit more, right? Because we are all different and I love to learn like what what makes people tick anyways, but then like if I can learn also what’s your cultural piece because that’s a huge part of the core of who people are.

Whitney (14:44)
Rob, think you may be muted.

Rob Cooper (14:50)
Can you hear me now? So I have a little secret. I have some Native American in me too. So I do. really, on my father’s side, my father’s mother, my grandmother was full -blooded, Shinnokah Indian from Long Island. And so I have a small percentage that’s, can’t you see my cheeks and all that? The cheekbones, yeah. And you know, I would love to learn more about that culture.

Tom DeCoteau jr (14:56)
Mmm.

Hahaha

Rob Cooper (15:18)
I know the African American, I’m still learning that, but I would love to learn more about that. And I say that for a reason because we have this, if we do an ancestry, we have a lot of stuff in our lineage. so, you know, and that was America. America was the melting pot. You know, everybody came to America, the Irish, know, everybody came here. you know, and what for today is,

There’s some bad apples out there. There’s some people out there that want to separate us. And, you know, I see it in, I see it in mental health. see it in, in, in, in human services, whatever we, you know, the people are trying to separate and, you know, and we have to be the change agents and say, no, you know, and I’m so glad that my parents did not raise me like that.

We didn’t see no color. We didn’t see anything, you know? And so when I grew up, it was like, you know, I had white friends. I had Mexican friends. I had all types of friends, you know? so, you know, and it helped me and it helped me because, you know, I have a son that’s biracial and, you know, and I fear for him when that day come that he got to choose, you know, where you, which

Who do you wanna be with? And so, but I talk to them. I let them know. I really talk with them, that transparency and let them know that, you know, to just be true to yourself. And if you wanna hang with this group of people, you wanna hang with this group of people, just be who you are.

Dr. Mo (17:07)
You know, I told the same thing to my daughter.

I have a biracial grandson and I told her please make sure that you allow him a space to understand both cultures because I do see that when people have their culture ripped away from them or they don’t experience it or have never been You know privy to what it looks like that it does impact them whether whether they know it or not I I see it from from my level right when we get people connected back to their culture their spirituality whatever it is that you know really makes them tick and so I wanted to make sure that she you know recognize that from from the

with him, you know, to be able to expose him to everything that makes him him.

Whitney (17:48)
Well, and you know, it’s interesting. So I’m hearing two different things. There’s one, the embrace, identify with the culture, and also let’s not have a cultural identity separating us. So how do we create a space where we have the embracing of culture and the bridging

different experiences, different perspectives, you know. How do we start addressing this so that, you know, there’s, can self -educate, right, but what else could we be doing? What else could, in the mental health space, in the substance use space, in the, just in general, what is needed right now, or what can we all be doing a little bit differently?

Dr. Mo (18:30)
you

And from my view, or what I’m trying to do is beat biases out of people every turn I can, right? If you’ve ever had a class with me, you know you have a biases assignment.

Tom DeCoteau jr (18:49)
Okay.

Dr. Mo (18:50)
because I will wiggle it into every flippin’ class that I teach because I think it’s so important. If you are going to be in contact with other humans and you want to help them, you cannot be blind to your biases. And just like I’ll say on everything I’ve ever talked about, you know, it’s okay to have messed up thoughts come in. It’s just you can’t act on them. You literally can’t, right? But if you don’t know that those thoughts are a little off, you know, kilter or wrong, one might say, then how are you supposed to be able to do best

by people, right? If you’ve had experiences that have molded you and you have, P .S. everyone has, it’s okay, right? But you can’t act on those things if it was an isolated event, right? And I say that all to say, like, I also tell people you still got to follow your gut, right? Don’t override that bugger. But you can override some of that stuff that just doesn’t make sense to you anymore. Maybe you were raised in a home where racial slurs were thrown out, right? And now you, maybe that comes into your brain, but it never comes out of your mouth, right? You have the

to be able to unlearn shit and re -put thoughts into your head. And I think if we keep hammering that into people, we would be better off. I think every time I go to a powwow, I think it’s the most beautiful thing. I just, it blows my mind that people are racist, really. Like I can’t, I can’t understand it. And I think like one of the most awesome experiences I’ve had was, I was at a powwow in Sioux Falls and they did like an all people dance, right? And it was like the most fun that my daughter and I had just like, I didn’t know what I was doing. I probably looked like an egghead.

I had so much fun for like that song to be able to like be part of that. So I think I would also say like, put yourself in places where you can experience the culture like that, you know, because it was really rewarding for me to be able to be a small part of that ceremony on that day. So that’s my two cents.

Rob Cooper (20:40)
I like that and I was we all got biases, know, we all got biases. But what I usually how I feel that people can, you

Go and explore other people’s culture. Knowledge is key. If I stay in my little bubble and I watch my little news station, I just, know, and I go to work the same way, I come home the same way and it’s not my yard, I’m gonna be divided, you know? And so I’m one of these people that I love to…

I’m like a detective. just love to learn. So, but when it comes to substance use, and if I see it in the recovery movement, I always throw it back to the person and I say, when you was out there using, if I had the drug that you were using, you would sit down and use with me no matter what. And we’ll share the same instrument too. So now you’re in recovery.

Dr. Mo (21:43)
ha ha ha ha ha ha

Tom DeCoteau jr (21:45)
Yeah.

Rob Cooper (21:51)
And now you’re saying, I can’t sit beside that person because, you know, this, that, now your true feelings are coming out. But, you know, recovery is about community and everybody’s welcome, no matter what you look like, how you did it, you know? And so, but when I do go back to that analogy and I say, you know, when you were a slave to that drug, you probably would say, I never in my life would be around anybody that looked different from me. Yes, you would. When you were out

And it really opened their eyes like, so what’s the difference now? You just not putting the drugs in your system. and bringing it back down to their level and letting them see that. then I thought, and then I just really, you know, hone in on that and say, look, you know, how can you, how can you talk community and you don’t like the way I look or you don’t, know, so, but.

Yeah, just using that analogy with someone.

Dr. Mo (22:51)
I’m gonna steal that one, just saying.

Rob Cooper (22:53)
I’m a patent.

Tom DeCoteau jr (22:56)
and just keep on doing what we’re doing. This is helping, Bridget. And also respect, respect everybody and don’t think my culture is better than your culture. And just start with this. Even if there’s just four of us starting this right now, it’s gonna grow. People are gonna see how good it is and how happy we are and how we’re helping people. So they’re gonna wanna heal themselves and come join us.

Rob Cooper (23:00)
Yeah.

Tom DeCoteau jr (23:25)
And also from my experiences, when outside your culture, they come in and try to tell you how to do it. This is what you gotta do to help your people. And that kinda, don’t do that. You don’t know.

It kind of hurts. Well, for a native person it hurts because of all the oppression and colonization. So that just sticks in our head. Just respect us. I respect Rob, I respect Dr. Mo, I respect Whitney. The way you guys help people is going to be different from the way I help people. We just got to work together and put our strengths together and help people in that way. I’ll take my strength. Kind of like the Avengers, the ring thing.

Dr. Mo (24:15)
we should get some of those.

Tom DeCoteau jr (24:16)
Yeah, put them all together. Put them all together and we’re stronger, yeah.

Dr. Mo (24:21)
That’s right, you’re so

Whitney (24:25)
And it’s interesting because I don’t know if people really know how to go about exposing themselves to different cultures or different experiences. I remember in graduate school and actually in undergraduate as well, I had two classes on culture and both of them required that the students go.

to a place where they’re not in the majority. So for one, I went to an African -American church, and for another, I went to a Jewish temple. I grew up Catholic, right? But I also felt like I was invading a very sacred space. And how to do that in a respectful way so that I can learn while also not, you know,

going into a recovery meeting or something like that, I would never want to take away from the sanctity of those spaces or whenever, you you just really need to be with people who understand the experience. Any tips on how to engage in cultural diversity while also respecting the fact that sometimes that space needs to be sacred.

We’re gonna solve the world’s problems tonight, you know?

Tom DeCoteau jr (25:51)
Just ask. Just ask if you’re going to come to one of our ceremonies or one of our gatherings and just find an elder, give them some tobacco, say, okay, if I come, I’m just here. I’m here for a class. I’m to learn a culture and a fifth year culture because you guys are awesome. know, you can kind of invite this, explain, ask like that. It’s kind of scary, but because they might say, no, go on.

Dr. Mo (26:12)
Ha

Hahaha

Tom DeCoteau jr (26:21)
But that’s a respectful way to do something.

Whitney (26:26)
Yeah. And then you both now mentioned recovery and I’m curious how your cultural experiences, you know, or your different identities have impacted your recovery journey and what we need to be mindful of for individuals, whether it’s mental health, substance use, anything. Because I

there can be different expectations based off of communities, based off of cultures, different stigmas even that are, you know, within different cultures. So can you speak a little bit about how your communities and cultures played in to your recovery journey?

Rob Cooper (27:12)
I would have got help a long time ago if I wasn’t, if it wasn’t installed in me what happened here, stay here. And, you know, in my community, in the African -American community, we didn’t go to the doctor unless it was serious or we forced to go because…

I’ll be honest with you and I don’t speak for all African American people, but I’m just saying this that we felt less than we’ve seen the power differential because the doctors is white, the nurses white. So we’re not I’m not going, you know, and then in our culture, too, it’s a lot of, you know, use some herbs and all these remedies and stuff like that. So but, know, like I.

I can remember when I was having my addiction and I was like, man, I need to get help. But I was not picking that phone up. I was not calling because I didn’t want the stigma and the shame of people finding out that I was using, you know. But and you know, even in recovery, I still felt kind of like, you know, doing the work that I do. And it took one girl, one woman. And this was like two years ago on a brochure of my picture in there.

She was an African -American lady. so she was sitting in my lobby and I came down and spoke to her and she said, wow, you’re the guy on the brochure. I said, yeah. She said, you know what? She said, your brochure landed in my hand and I was at my lowest point and I saw you that looked like me and I saw your picture and I said, I can, if, he can do it, I can do it. And so that just, that, really made me like, wow, you know,

and so what I do now is, you know, when I’m with people of color or someone that I know come from a, a race that, you know, stigmatized getting help or whatever, I really empowered them. And I tell them it’s cool. You know, I got non -therapist. I got this, I got that, you know, I, you know, and, and, and I advocate for that. I advocate for that. And, you

And I let them know that, you know, seeking help and getting help is not the enemy. It’s there to help you. so, but come from my culture and you know, I go back home a lot to South Carolina and I go to my hometown and I see that it’s still the same way when I grew up there. And, you know, people are just dying and still doing the same thing and

You know, and then I was looking up how many recovery meeting was there and there was none. And I was like, it blew my mind. I’m like, you know, because it’s more African -American there. And so. But yeah, I just, you know, I’m very vocal. I recover out loud. I, you know, I’m a very I’m an advocate for mental for therapy. I’m an advocate for your mental health. And if I mess

It ain’t the end of the world, you know? And I show that, I let people know that we all human. So, you know.

Whitney (30:44)
Absolutely.

Tom DeCoteau jr (30:47)
and the same as Rob, same story as Rob. I grew up with the culture, the trauma is, and having some cultural leaders that still drank and went to culture. So us young guys seen that, and we’re already alcoholics at a young age, so we said, we’re gonna do this, instead of doing the right thing. And we were older, I was talking to some of them, and we were like, we knew better then, but we just chose to drink.

party because they did. But I’m with Rob, like therapy really helped me. Because we were, I love my, I love home. I love the reservation here. You we’re loving people, but there’s a lot of, from the boarding school area where it’s hush hush. That’s what it was like years ago. I’m old now, so years ago, you know. Don’t say nothing if this happened, but now.

people are more open and healing and fighting for each other and helping each other. If something bad happens, if an abuse happens, and they’re able to use their voice now, finding their voice again. Where our voices were kind of closed from the boarding schools. Shame, guilt, not being proud of who I am. Even through my first 10 years of sobriety,

I was sober, I was helping people go to ceremonies, but I still had a lot of character defects. I still lied, and still… people pleasing. I wasn’t in control of who I was because I let other people control me because that’s how much shame I had in myself. So right now I’m an advocate for my relatives too as an abode of therapy because we have anxieties, depressions, have bipolar.

We have all these things that it’s still the negative voices are loud, you know, the people that we call them crabs in the bucket. You’re trying to get out to play back in. They’re loud. And they know that with their loud voice, they can keep everybody that’s walking good, quiet and low. So we got to find their voice again and be loud. We can’t let as we say, the darkness overcome us. We talk to my brothers a lot and we talk about the fire. If my fire is bright and there’s three of us, it’s brighter. The darkness can’t get us. So if the whole community is bright, nothing should be able to get us because we’re together. So that’s where we got to get at. Don’t let nobody make our fire dim.

So that’s what I’m learning at 50 years old now, is to be proud of who I

Dr. Mo (33:50)
Love that.

Whitney (33:52)
As you were saying that both of you really it resonated with me that a lot of the norms of a culture are past obviously passed down. However, there’s also the fact that as a result of oppression of needing to survive, then there are things that become ingrained in the culture like silencing, pushing, like ignoring pain, not asking for

Well, if those messages could get ingrained at some point, we can then un -ingrain them, like Mo was saying before when talking about our own, being aware of ourselves. And it’s through letting your fire shine bright, and being out there and being open, being on a brochure that somebody sees. We can work then towards a culture of asking for help, of tending to your well -being.

of connecting with people rather than trying to distance. it’s just, this, like you said, Tom, this is a start down that path. And so it just really is resonating with me how we have the ability to make it so that the next generation or generations to come have a different culture.

I’m gonna take a question from one of our audience members now, and this one is to Rob from Roger. Roger asks, what is the biggest culture shock now in the black community?

Rob, you’re muted again.

Dr. Mo (35:41)
maybe your mic isn’t working.

Rob Cooper (35:44)
Can you hear me? Okay. The big culture shock in the white community, in the black community? man, it’s really, that’s a good question, Roger. That’s a good question. I think now is,

Whitney (35:49)
And yes.

Rob Cooper (36:07)
I think now is, you know, law enforcement dealing with law enforcement, you know, still feeling that when a cop or law or police officer behind you and you’re scared because you don’t know what’s going to happen when you get pulled over. I still feel I really think that is, you know, big issue in African American community.

And then two is, know, I was talking about this the other day and I was well about a couple of weeks ago. It was only since the 1960s that desegregation was over, you know, and sometimes we think about that was a long time. That’s almost 50, 60 years. The Civil Rights Act was only 60 years ago that it came into law, you know. And

And there was a lot of states that did not honor that into the 80s. So, you know, and we yes, technology and yeah, we in 2024, but there still is some places that I as an African American person do not feel safe going to. I went out to in prime example, I went out to see the solar eclipse and we went to Arkansas.

me and my wife and her brothers and we had a, you know, we was out there and one place we were gonna look at and we were gonna stay, my brother -in -law said, I don’t think we need to go there. Cause look, no, you have a problem there. And I said, really? you know, going places where we’re still not accepted and there’s still some places in America like that.

It drives me crazy that it’s 2024 and we still like that. And what it is, and Dr. Mo said it, is that some of those old beliefs will always rise to the surface no matter who you are, what you do. You could be a firefighter, you could be president of the United States. Whatever you was taught is always gonna rise to the surface.

That’s why with me is that I’m always trying to learn different cultures. I really am. I’m really trying to learn and trying to educate myself. And when I do have a bias, because you know, I am human, I try to correct that. I try to correct that and I say, okay, that’s not nice. You know, how would you feel if someone said about your son or how you feel if someone said about your wife, you know? And so,

I hope I I give you a long answer, Roger. But you know, that’s why I really think that’s happening right now in the African American community.

Whitney (39:13)
Thank you.

I’m sorry. I’m just processing because

It shouldn’t be the way that it is. And we know that there’s a lot of danger for people in different situations. And if I can add a little bit just from my own thoughts as you were saying that it was the importance that we all recognize that when we interact with someone, they may be coming into the interaction with you from

a past experience. You know, I, I previously identified, I’m a white cisgender woman. There have been plenty of white cisgender women who have contributed to horrible things that have happened to people of color. And so whenever I interact with someone, I have to recognize what I may represent and not to take things personally then and to recognize and to know what I may represent so that I can

be mindful and I can make a safe space and not necessarily take it personally because there’s just so much that has occurred. And I think that’s where a lot of the hostility comes is people take things personally when it’s not necessarily about you. Let’s all recognize though that we can be a representation of a negative experience.

Dr. Mo (40:56)
Good play.

Whitney (41:02)
I’m looking to see if we have any other questions. know this is a very, you know, this is an important topic. This is an emotionally charged topic. So we’re not as fast moving as we usually are because this isn’t something to rush through. So as we continue to, you know, touch on these things, I just want to thank you all again for engaging in this conversation and ask, you

Let’s go a little bit into the positivity of where our cultures and communities can play a role. And how do they contribute to our wellbeing? Because I think that’s something that we haven’t yet touched on. What are the things that we can pull from communities and cultures to help us be our best selves?

Dr. Mo (41:55)
So I think I’m gonna answer your previous question to this as well. I know my screen is behind, is my voice okay still?

Tom DeCoteau jr (41:58)
Ahem.

Dr. Mo (42:04)
So you were asking like, do we experience cultures and still be respectful? And so kind of, you know, as I’ve been on the island, I definitely did not want to ever.

step on anyone’s toes or do anything that was disrespectful. And so I very much spent last year just kind of like, OK, here’s where I know that I fit in. I know the driving style, which no offense, people in Oahu, it’s terrible and not a little. Anyways, beyond that, I wanted to make sure that I was respectful about how to do like little things like how to drive. What does the what does it look like to drive in this culture? What does it look like for me to go to the beach? Are there beaches where people don’t want me? And there are. And I asked people that because

wanted to make sure there wasn’t being disrespectful in any ways. And then I also found people that were really attached to their culture and asked them, what experiences do you think would be important for me to have? Which ones am I allowed to experience? And which ones, you know, would you rather I just stay away from? Because I want to have all the experiences I can, and I want my child to be able to experience this beautiful culture, but I don’t want to be disrespectful in any way. And I also know that any time I go somewhere, no matter where it is in the world, I want to try and be able to give

So when we went to Thailand, we made sure to send books and toys to kids over there. When I went to Puerto Rico, I helped try and write some grants. When I come to Hawaii, I try and figure out what can I do? Can I do some trainings? Can I do things? Can I help with your own house population? What can I do to give back why I’m here? And not only does that, you know, allow me to meet a lot of really awesome people, but it also shows people that I’m not just trying to take away. I’m not trying to take away from your culture. I’m not trying to take away from your little slice of heaven, but I am trying to give back here and have these experiences.

with you. And that is really what, you know, kind of extends out all the branch to people and lets them know that I want to be part of the beauty that exists. And I think I watch people heal, especially in South Dakota. I watch them heal when they reconnect to their culture. And I see that in the Native American population a lot. And I’m grateful that I get to experience it. And that is just one way that I realize how positive culture can be in people’s lives. And I see it here, too. I see their experiences with, you know, being connected

their family, their gigantic, gigantic families and how they hang out on the beach and they just enjoy each other’s company and food and how much part of, you know, of their culture food is and how sharing food is, you know, healing and it’s love and being part of that is such a positive experience when everybody else is, you

they’re just showing love too. So I think culture is such a positive aspect when the culture is positive, right? We can have cultures like when I was using drugs, that drug culture was not quite as positive, right? So being around that drug culture, I picked up some habits that, you know, maybe I wasn’t too proud of, but, and it looks different. And as a reminder, it’s hard to get out of those spaces too. So if you’re dealing with somebody who’s in the drug culture, it’s difficult. It’s difficult to leave that space. It’s your culture. You think those are your friends. have

They help you get the medicine that you feel like you need. There’s a lot that comes into play with that type of culture too.

Rob Cooper (45:17)
Yeah, you hit you hit something right there. I’ll sit and listen to that is, you know, where their division. Then we are being selfish. We are being we only thinking about ourselves. And I feel now in this society now we’re we’re we’re becoming a selfish generation. It’s all about me, me, me, me. How can I? And, know, we don’t think about our fellow man or woman out there. And, you know, and then I justify it where I can say

You know, well, my office, I have a Latino that sit beside me. have an African -American that sit beside me. And but I don’t feel that way. But, know, deep down, those those bad roots are starting to stick up and I’m seeing it more and I’m seeing it more. And I’m like, you know, why? Why? Because the inverse, the everybody’s going after the same result is to have a successful life.

And you know, it doesn’t matter. The money’s green. The quarter’s still silver. It ain’t changing. And so, but I feel that people are scared now. They are scared. They are scared of, they’re just scared. And so when they’re scared, they become more selfish. And I think about a time about four years ago,

five years ago, four, no, four years ago, when everything was happening in the news and all this stuff, George Floyd or whatever, and I was scared. I was terrified. And I came home and I went home and I went to my mom and I said, I said, it’s wild out there. I said, look, I said, will it ever go back

when you were growing up in the 50s and the 60s, she said, son, no. She said, the difference is now you can buy the house, you can get the car, you can do this, you can do that, you can own a business, you can do that. And I thought about that and I said, you are correct. Today I can be a business owner, today I can walk on the car lot and get that. But there are some people out there that still living in the 50s and the 60s.

and they don’t want to embrace different cultures and they don’t want to open their eyes and how could you be so dumb and just walk around in your bubble and doesn’t see the world is changing around you? you know, so, and all of us on here, and like I said, are change agents. It starts with us. And you know, this DEI, whatever, you come to my organization, it’s diverse. I have diverse in my organization. I have a person that’s LGBTQ plus.

I have white, I have black, I have women, I I got them all. I have them all because I want people to feel included when they come to my organization. I want them to feel safe. I want them to see that, okay, we as different cultures can come together and work as a cohesive group. And so, you

But I really feel that we are becoming too selfish. Me, me, me, me, and it’s all about

Tom DeCoteau jr (48:49)
With our culture, it was taken away from us. We weren’t able to practice our culture until 1978 without going to jail. So we’re trying to reconnect. But I’ve seen language, they took our language away, but it’s still inside of us. So we hear it more and more, hear the songs more and more, it wakes something

lost it. You still hear me? Yeah, I just keeps, or wakes something up. And I’ve seen the brightness come out of it, of people.

Whitney (49:21)
Yep, we

Tom DeCoteau jr (49:33)
We’ve been through a lot, so I always advocate for therapy. Because I grew up around the culture, but it didn’t keep me sober. It didn’t get me to love myself. I had to find out how to do that. Because in our language, I asked the elders, how do I say I love myself? They told me how to say it, but then they said, you can’t say that. And it’s like, call it iha -data, like bragging.

They said, Dakotas don’t say stuff like that. But because we didn’t have to, there’s not a word in our language for love because it was a verb. So we showed it. We didn’t have to say, love you because we showed it all the time. So I told them that I didn’t know what it is. Nobody really showed me what really love was for me to love myself. So told them I got to love myself in order to understand it. Even if it’s for a little bit, then

then I don’t have to say I love myself, but I still do. I look in the mirror every day, Tom, I love you. Because I got to do that sometime because I don’t love myself. So then I can start showing my kids and start helping the people I work to understand what love is. It starts with you.

So that’s where the positivity of the culture comes in. Where we feel a sense of pride. Like we’re not supposed to be prideful people either, we don’t know what, we don’t like ourselves from drinking and being childhood traumas. Like I still don’t like myself very much some days and I got to do that hard work in the morning to smudge off and pray and tell myself, know, you are a good person, Tom.

You do deserve good things Tom. You do deserve to good friends like Dr. Moe, Tom, and now Rob. I do deserve those things. Whereas growing up I didn’t think I deserved anything. And whereas a long time ago we didn’t have to say, Tom, you deserve good things. We just lived. It was just normal to be happy and to love.

to take care of each other. So, everything that I do, I use the culture in it, know. Red road approach, talking circles, and swat lodges, language, because it’s going to plant the seeds, like the ripple effect. So, a rock in there is going to ripple effect.

It’s just a part of us and respect each other. Because not everyone that is a Dakota here on the res does the language, does practices of culture. They think it’s not their way anymore. So we respect that. They gotta respect us. It’s not like, here, you’re Dakota, you do the culture, you do the culture, it’s gonna save you. It’s

wants to learn it and some people don’t know they want to learn it until they start hearing the language and the signs and it wakes something up in them so that’s where the positivity comes from our culture

Whitney (52:52)
Wow. This has been such a touching conversation. Like I’m just, I’m honored to have been part of it. And we’re coming to the end of the live stream and I’m going to make sure that we get to wrap up effectively. I’ve really heard the message of the learning mindset being open.

open to others, open to maybe our own culture that we haven’t yet tapped into. And maybe that’s something that we can all kind of look at. But also then to be loud. I wrote, was writing down notes, be loud, demonstrate, be a model. Not forcing it on anyone, but saying, hey, I apologize, my dog is digging next to me.

but being able to be the person someone looks at and says, that’s who I want to be like. So I’d like to go around Rob and Tom, Dr. Mo, we know how to get in touch with you, but Rob and Tom, how can someone connect with you after today’s show?

Rob Cooper (54:11)
Can you hear me? Okay. You can reach me at www .zerohourlifecenter .org. That’s our organization. Or you always can find me on my Facebook, social media, all those platforms or on LinkedIn. You know, you can reach out to me that way. But I would, you know, this was an honor. know, I don’t take this lightly.

Is a privilege. I’m glad you asked me to be on here I want to continue the dialogue. This is needed in a time that we are because I feel that the I feel that the vision is in everything now it’s just it’s just and so we we really really have to Have these dialogues and have these tough conversations and nobody want to have the tough conversation nobody want to have the tough conversation

You know, we’ve got to stop going to eat the other culture food and not want to go and sit down with them. You know, I love my Chinese food. I go in there and I talk to everybody that’s that’s back there. Hey, how you doing? You know, and, you know, stop taking, stop taking and give me that little doctor. Most say give something. And sometimes it’s just a conversation, learning about that other culture and asking those questions. And you’re not going to feel dumb.

when you ask a question that you don’t know. So, it takes everybody. It takes everybody to be a change agent. And so, but yeah, that’s how you can follow me. Thank

Tom DeCoteau jr (55:51)
I’m a peer specialist once I finish up my app. Whenever I get home, whenever I make it back to Sioux Falls. And also, a couple of my relatives are, they’re my little sisters now. We’re starting, we chose Aniwaste, kind of like our own LLC.

Appropriate the culture and recovery and all that stuff. It’s on Facebook. We chose on the watch day I’ll send it to Whitney how to spell it and and maybe I will be a CEO next time we thought nice I do deserve it

Rob Cooper (56:29)
Yes.

Whitney (56:29)
like that. Yes, all the contact, all contact information will be available on reduce the stigma .com for this episode and our guests. have one final question to wrap up with everybody. We’re going to go a little rapid fire and that is what books, podcasts or resources would you recommend for anyone to learn more about, you know, what we’ve been discussing today?

Dr. Mo (56:32)
you

Whitney (56:57)
Let you all think about it for a moment. I’ll share mine. I highly recommend the book, The New Jim Crow, I believe is what it’s called. I’m blanking on, but it really was very informative about the war on drugs and the impact it’s had on people of color. So that is my recommendation.

Rob Cooper (57:20)
I just say, you know, I just say, just listen to a podcast, you know, Google, you know, or go on your go on your apps or whatever, and just put another podcast that you don’t normally listen to and get outside of that bubble and, and do that, you know, and because I do it, I’m very, very, I’m intrigued by different things. So

I listen to different things that I normally listen to. So that’s a way to do it

Tom DeCoteau jr (57:56)
There’s all kinds of books that talk about boarding schools and talk about looking into the history before now, looking into the beautiful, how beautiful we were before the boarding schools came and also different podcasts. Also listen to all my Facebook lives.

Rob Cooper (58:17)
Hehehehe

Dr. Mo (58:22)
I love that. I think as far as honestly, I’m going to take it a little bit different, but I say, we don’t read about trauma. Read about trauma and the way it impacts people and how that impacts their culture. think you can learn a lot out as well. So even just like.

Whitney (58:22)
and

Tom DeCoteau jr (58:34)
Yeah.

Dr. Mo (58:38)
what your own traumas look like when we’re talking about biases, but also like, are the interventions, right? Like, what does it look like to be able to move forward from that too? And just better understand yourself and where you come from. And I think then you can better impact other people that you come across too. Keep that mind open. And if you need some growth mindset, there’s always Adam Grant with his growth mindset book, I think is pretty great.

Whitney (59:03)
I’ll drop a couple other recommendations real quick. Code Switch is a really wonderful podcast. I highly recommend. And one that you may not see the direct tie from, but I think it’s really great, is Ear Hustle. Rob, Tom, and Dr. Mo, if you want to share any resources, please send them to me and we will get them up on reducethestigma .com so everybody can check them out. Thank you all for joining us.

those listening, those who’ve shared comments, and of course, Rob, Tom, Dr. Mo. This was a really wonderful conversation and hopefully just one of many. And we’re gonna just work together to make these conversations more common.

Dr. Mo (59:52)
Absolutely. Thanks, Brittany.

Whitney (59:52)
So thank you all and have a good evening everybody.

Rob Cooper (59:53)
Thank

Tom DeCoteau jr (59:54)
Thank you.

 

Exploring the Intersection of Cultural Identity, Mental Health, and Recovery with Diverse Perspectives In this episode of Reduce the Stigma – Unfiltered, our guests share their personal experiences and insights on how cultural identity impacts mental health and recovery. Dr. Mo and Whitney we explore the complex and sensitive subject of culture and identity with […]

Continue reading "Understanding Culture and Its Impact on Mental Health and Recovery"
Podcast promotional image for Reduce the Stigma featuring Courtney Hays. The image includes a smiling woman with glasses and long, light brown hair with purple highlights, and a tattoo on her shoulder. The background is black with text in the top left corner reading: 'I have an open mind and an open heart. I'm full of empathy and love. I care about you.' The top right corner shows the Reduce the Stigma podcast logo, and the bottom right corner states 'providing peer support via Straight Up Care.' The name 'Courtney Hays' is written at the bottom in blue letters. Courtney discusses borderline personality disorder, bullying, mental health, peer support, and more.

The Rabbit Hole of Identity, Mental Health & Support

Finding Light at the End of the Rabbit Hole: A Conversation with Courtney Hays

Picture of Courtney Hays, a smiling woman with glasses and long, light brown/blonde hair with purple/pink highlights. She has a tattoo on her shoulder and is wearing a sleeveless black top."
A motivational quote on a gradient pink and blue background with small star icons. The quote reads: 'There is light at the end of the rabbit hole. There is someone holding out his hand at the top of the rabbit hole and it is me.' The quote is attributed to Courtney Hays, Peer Support Specialist, and the bottom right corner has the URL straightupcare.com.

Mental health advocate and Medi-Cal peer support specialist Courtney Hays discuss her experiences with mental health challenges, identity, and the power of peer support on this episode of Reduce The Stigma, hosted by Whitney Menarcheck. From overcoming bullying and the challenges of borderline personality disorder to navigating infertility and alopecia, Courtney’s resilience is evident. Her transformative experience with DBT led her to become a peer supporter, offering hope and understanding to others facing similar struggles. By sharing her story, Courtney aims to break down stigma and encourage open conversations about mental health.

Click here for the episode’s full transcript.

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Transcript

Whitney (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Reduce the Stigma, the podcast that raises the voices of individuals with lived experience, as well as the organizations and people who support them. Reduce the Stigma is brought to you by Straight Up Care, the comprehensive telehealth platform for peer support services. Straight Up Care, where recovery is powered by lived experience. In this episode, we’re going down the rabbit hole in a really great way and touching on topics like identity, emotion regulation, and the drive to help others. Today’s episode is sponsored by Syndicate 12, an online recovery community and social media platform. Visit syndicate12 .com. Together, recovery is possible. Be sure to like, subscribe, and share. It really does help us grow and reach more with these incredible stories. Let’s get started.

 

Whitney (01:58)

Hello and welcome to Reduce the Stigma, the podcast that raises the voices of individuals with lived experience, as well as the organizations and people who are supporting them. Reduce the Stigma is brought to all of you by Straight Up Care, the comprehensive telehealth platform for peer support services. Straight Up Care, where recovery is powered by lived experience. Today’s episode is sponsored by Syndicate 12, an online recovery community and social media platform, visit syndicate12 .com. Together, recovery is possible. With me today, we have Courtney Hayes, a peer support specialist in California. Welcome Courtney.

 

Courtney Hays (02:39)

Hi Whitney, thank you for having me today.

 

Whitney (02:42)

Thank you for taking the time to join me. We recently connected because you have joined the Straight Up Care family and I’ve already gotten to get a sense of how amazing of a spirit you have. So today we get to share that with everyone.

 

Courtney Hays (02:58)

I’m super excited. I’m excited to become part of the family and I’m excited to share my story and what I believe peer support is all about.

 

Whitney (03:11)

Wonderful. Well, I’d like to start with your story if you can just tell us a little bit about who Courtney is.

 

Courtney Hays (03:19)

Yeah, so the one thing I have always known I wanted to do with my life is to help people. As a peer specialist, I’m also a person who has used mental health services. I’ve always wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. So I was actually adopted at birth into a loving family, but I always felt a sense of loss and confusion about my identity. Struggling with intense emotions. I often felt abandoned, unworthy, misunderstood. And this internal struggle was a constant trend in my life, influencing my relationships and my self -perception. Growing up, I was relentlessly bullied from elementary school through junior high. Every day, I felt harsh words and exclusion, feeling like a constant outsider. My classmates’ cruelty left me feeling isolated and afraid to speak up. Whenever I gathered the courage to tell my parents about my experiences, they dismissed my feelings, basically telling me I was being overly emotional or too sensitive and that I needed to toughen up and just get over it. This invalidation deepened my sense of loneliness, making it seem like there was nowhere I could turn to for support. Those feelings intensified during my teenage years leading to turbulent relationships. It took years of compassionate friends and counselors for me to start healing and recognizing that my feelings were valid and that I deserved kindness and understanding. When I turned 21, I started experiencing alopecia and autoimmune disease where you lose your hair. My hair would fall out in patches and then it would grow back out only to fall back out again. This on again, off again battle with alopecia affected my self esteem deeply. Society places such a high value on physical appearance and losing my hair made me feel vulnerable and exposed. Over time I learned to embrace my appearance whether I had a full hair or not. It became a journey of self -acceptance and resilience. In my late 20s, I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, BPD. The diagnosis was both a relief and a challenge. It explained the intense emotions, fear of abandonment, and difficulties in maintaining stable relationships. That had plagued me for years. BPD made my life feel like a roller coaster. My emotions were powerful and unpredictable, making it feel difficult to hold down a job and it often felt a sense of emptiness and loneliness. The pain of my past and the fear of abandonment led me to push people away even though I desperately craved attention. As if these challenges weren’t enough, my husband and I decided to start a family after several months of trying with no success, we saw medical advice and were devastated as we faced difficulties conceiving. The news was crushing. The dream of having biological children was suddenly out of reach. And it felt like another piece of my identity was being stripped away. My journey through infertility was one of the darkest periods of my life. It tested my resilience and my mental health. Also brought a profound sense of grief and loss, triggered emotional and mental health challenges. I had to navigate through feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty. However, through this pain, I found new ways to envision my future and the potential to provide love and caring in different capacities. I decided to research a dialectical behavioral therapy program and I found one and I went through a three month long program. And it was the most transformative, amazing, influential Disneyland type experience ever is the best way I can explain it. It was just… For the first time in my life, I felt heard and understood and validated. And there was a reason for everything. Everything I did had a reason for it. Like it all made sense. It was like my aha moment of life. It was like I was 38 years old and I’m just like, like…

 

Whitney (07:34)

Yes.

 

Courtney Hays (07:59)

It was amazing and I wanted to be able to share that with people. So here I am today.

 

Whitney (08:05)

Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing that, for being so open with us. That is quite a story and I, my heart is going to the young Courtney that had to deal with bullying and just what you’ve gone through and the continuous weight on your identity. That’s what kept kind of sticking out to me was, It sounds like every time you started to figure yourself out or figure life out, something new came in to kind of challenge it and question it and put you through the wringer of who am I, what’s going on? That’s quite a tale. So thank you for sharing that.

 

Courtney Hays (08:55)

Yeah, it definitely felt like, as you can see, I love Alice in Wonderland. And so I’m constantly saying down my rabbit hole or trying to climb out of my rabbit hole. I resonate with it. I feel like we are currently living in a wonderland of emotions. That’s what this world is. And I just, it is. And I constantly I felt like I was at that last stretch of like final hope and it was just like the rabbit just pulled me back, you know, every time. And, you know, I

 

Whitney (09:32)

Yeah.

 

Courtney Hays (09:38)

I’m not going to lie, I had some really rough times. I was hospitalized. That was another really scary moment that I’ll never forget. It was an experience that I never wish on anybody, even my worst enemy. And I just, I want to be able to let others know that they’re heard and they’re alone, you know? And it doesn’t need to get there.

 

Whitney (09:57)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s such a powerful message. Certainly we’ve heard others share it. It doesn’t take away the power of hearing it though, because I think it’s one of those things where we can be told time and time again, we aren’t alone. In the darkest times though, it’s hard to believe it. And so the more messages we can get out there that you’re not alone, the better the chance that someone’s going to believe it and feel it. So hopefully everyone heard you when you said that. And, you know, I’ve never heard someone refer to treatment, any sort of treatment, as like Disneyland and the excitement and the joy that is on your face as you discuss that. Can we go back there? Because people can be reluctant to go to treatment and can be afraid of what it will entail and certainly every treatment experience is different. Can you share with us though what made it such a positive experience?

 

Courtney Hays (11:29)

It’s more or less like I try like I I like memes because I feel like I can relate to memes, you know, and it’s my way to spread humor about difficult subjects, you know, and so by doing it like this, I feel like, so I’m currently providing a free support group called Emotional Wonderland. And it is my second week hosting it this week, just as a peer, talking to other peers. And so I, the term Emotional Wonderland is because we are in a world of wonderland and everybody in Wonderland, that movie or that book or whichever version you understand or know of has so many different emotions and each emotion gets triggered by certain reaction. And that was what my first group was about. And so I’ve always resonated with Alice growing up because it was different than all the other Disney stories. It wasn’t about love. It was about her finding herself and her figuring it out herself. She did it all by herself and then she ended up wanting to go back to where she, you know, so I just, and I can relate to that. And especially with, you know, having borderline personality disorder, I have intense emotions. So I can resonate with every single character, you know, on some kind of level. Then all of those characters were in my life, you know, in one place or another. So.

 

Whitney (13:11)

Yeah.

 

Courtney Hays (13:16)

It helps me kind of make light of the situation, helps me resonate with something else that is more lighthearted, and it’s just easier for me to say I’m having a Queen of Hearts day where I just want to rip everyone’s head off, you know? Rather than being like Hannah –

 

Whitney (13:41)

I love it! Yeah!

 

Courtney Hays (13:44)

Or I am feeling really goofy and mad hotter like today, you know? I just, it helps kind of break the stigma, I guess you could say, of the depression part of mental challenges.

 

Whitney (13:57)

Yes.

 

Courtney Hays (14:03)

and emotions.

 

Whitney (14:03)

Yeah. I love the language you’ve developed to process and make sense of the world around us, right? Like, and to work on that, communicate it. And that is such a valuable coping skill, is to figure out what works for you to understand, communicate about it to yourself and to others. And I…I think it’s amazing and so creative and I hope other people really heard that part because everyone thinks differently. You know, you have like the tactile learners. I’m a very visual learner so I like imagery. That can be an extremely resourceful capability of ours to be able to say, this is how I’m going to process it. And I have to admit, I haven’t watched Alice in Wonderland in probably 30 years. I think I need to rewatch it because I never really processed that it was about someone seeking their identity. And now I’m never going to be able to forget you when I watch it.

 

Courtney Hays (15:05)

She yeah. Great! I like that. I’m okay with that. Actually a lot of people that know me know me because of Alice in Wonderland. They know me because of that and then Docsense because I’ve had a Docsense since I was 18. So, but so yeah. But Alice in Wonderland, basically everybody that knows me knows I like Alice in Wonderland. They…

 

Whitney (15:13)

you

 

Courtney Hays (15:32)

Have always gotten me a bunch of like all the randoms around my house or a bunch of Alice in Wonderland, Alice in Wonderland clock everything so Yeah, it has become a big theme in our house and you know it it helps me when I am Depressed it’s you know everybody has a go -to movie or go -to show it is definitely my go -to show because it’s like she points me back in the right direction almost you know because

 

Whitney (15:44)

Yeah. That’s great.

 

Courtney Hays (16:01)

She goes through so many obstacles and has to really just figure stuff out on her own and she has nobody else to point to and she tries to get help from everybody else and she even tells everybody else like I don’t even know who I am because I was a different person yesterday. I don’t know. You know, so she just goes through all these transformations and big small, you know, mad angry fun and curious

 

Whitney (16:03)

Yeah.

 

Courtney Hays (16:30)

And I just love her curious mind. She just keeps going. And I think that that’s why I was able to keep going is because I was curious. I wanted to know how much more of this I was going to need to take. And I have a planner and I have a doer. So it was like, okay, if it’s going to continue, I need to plan. Okay. Cause I need to, I need to get through this better than I’ve been getting through it. Cause it has

 

Whitney (16:41)

Hmm.

 

Courtney Hays (16:58)

Not fun and life should be fun. Life should not be so dreadful and frustrating all the time and you know finding a passion has helped me and realizing I’m not alone has helped me and having support groups and friends that understand me and that can I can relate to and that can relate to me and it doesn’t need to be the exact same story because everybody, let’s face it, doesn’t have the exact same story. Nobody knows exactly what you’re going through, you know, but

somebody can relate on their own level, you know, and knowing that you’re not alone is such a big part. And I believe everybody’s coming to, you know, as far as their their first step for me personally, I felt like that was my first step was that aha moment of There’s hope you know like it’s out there It’s real so know that like Yeah, it’s just it it feels good to be able to show other people that

 

Whitney (17:57)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, no wonder you had such joy on your face when you were talking about this recent, you know, experience of yours, because it truly sounds life changing. And now here you are beginning your experience as a peer, a peer specialist supporting others. You already have a group going. What led you, because I as I understand you, you’ve done other things in the past to help people. What led you to take this step to become a peer specialist?

 

Courtney Hays (18:57)

So I’ve always been in industries that have helped people. And I really got into recruiting. And when I started getting into recruiting, I realized I was helping people at a really crucial point in their life, right? Where they really needed a job. So I was able to provide that and to be able to be a part of that part and help them in time of struggle with something that I’m really good at. Be able to give back in that kind of way.

 

Whitney (19:14)

Yeah.

 

Courtney Hays (19:27)

Touched me and then with my alopecia i created a support group and that support group sparked another interest in me of being able to give back and that was about 10 years ago almost. And I went through a DBT program that just provided so much hope and so much validation and let me know that it was okay to be full of emotions and it was okay to cry every day on my way to work and it was okay to scream in a pillow every now and then and it was okay to you know let out these feelings but in a correct manner in the right way to the right person and I was taught coping skills and triggers, what my triggers were. And I learned so much about myself. I really feel like DBT should be taught in elementary school. And then again, as a refresher in college, like 100%. I feel like all of the real problems would go away. All of the real problems go away. Everybody just learned DBT skills. Period.

 

Whitney (20:36)

Yes. Yes, I agree. I agree so much.

 

Courtney Hays (20:49)

 cut it out if you need to, but honestly right now I swear like that’s well how I feel on this it sparked something in me and it’s funny because the father that I have felt so misunderstood from for 38 years was who pointed me to DBT because he’s actually seeking therapy for the first time of his 72 years himself.

 

Whitney (20:56)

Yeah. Wow. Good for him.

 

Courtney Hays (21:18)

So, yeah, so our relationship is changing and molding and baby steps, but I’m honestly, I, my biggest regret would be to not have had a relationship with him if he passes. And I’m so glad that I have been given this opportunity to be able to start over again with him because of all of the negativity I put in the world. I feel like it’s my little bit of

 

Whitney (21:24)

Yeah. Yeah. 

 

Courtney Hays (21:48)

Positivity I can put out in the atmosphere, you know?

 

Whitney (21:51)

Yeah, and not everyone is familiar with DBT. Would you, it’s for those of you who don’t know, it’s Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Do you mind just briefly, in your own words, what is DBT? I’m putting you on the spot I know.

 

Courtney Hays (22:07)

For me it was emotional emotion regulation skills Basically, it was learning my triggers learning how to Before how to? catch a panic attack or an anger episode or a BPD outburst Before it happens and being able to Take necessary steps to

 

Whitney (22:12)

Yes, yeah.

 

Courtney Hays (22:37)

Prevent the actual blow up to happen. Just trying to stay one step ahead of it, basically.

 

Whitney (22:46)

That’s a great explanation. And yes, it’s about, we know that emotions and behaviors are linked and it can be, you know, whenever we’re in an extremely heightened emotional state, it can be hard to make, you know, the best decisions for behaviors. And we can sometimes engage in behaviors that are very detrimental to us because we’re in that state. And so you’re right. It’s stopping it beforehand. It’s learning how to identify the emotions as they’re starting to grow, being able to implement those coping skills to stop it from getting to that place so that ultimately then those behaviors are not happening or good behaviors are happening in their place. And I agree. I think I’ve never gone through DBT therapy. I’ve been trained in it though. And I’ve had the same thought. We do not do well as a society modeling how to handle emotions, how to talk about emotions. And I agree. So I could go down a little rabbit hole with you on DBT. But for the sake of everyone listening, who’s like, I want to hear more about Courtney. And let’s go back to Courtney. So you have this desire, you’ve been doing different things to help people. You’ve found then peer support.

 

Courtney Hays (24:00)

So, bye.

 

Whitney (24:12)

How did you learn about it? What is peer support, as you would explain it?

 

Courtney Hays (24:18)

Providing support and your own lived experience and having empathy for others and just showing support and being a resource. That is one thing that I’m excited for as a past resume writer and admin coordinator and everything in the office. I have some phenomenal research skills, so I’m excited to be put to work and I’m excited to show some, you know, some support and just empathy because I feel like so many people are just brushed off from their emotions and I feel like were just told to push them down and then they come out and then we are known as the bad guy. I just want others to know that there is light at the end of the rabbit hole. There is someone holding out his hand at the top of the rabbit hole and it is me. I’m holding out my hand at the top of the rabbit hole, you know, just letting them know that I’m here, whatever it is that they need.

 

Whitney (25:26)

Yeah. Yeah. When you said that people are, I forget how you worded it, but essentially said people’s emotions are being dismissed, the term gaslighting came to mind and in many ways it’s wonderful because we have a term for it that people are now knowing. However, it’s also kind of becoming almost, I don’t wanna say a joke, but it’s starting to be used so colloquially that the impact is kind of losing recognition. It is extremely detrimental to a person when their emotions are denied and dismissed and they aren’t, you know, given the skills or modeled the skills for how to process those things. And as a peer, you know, certainly you’re not supposed to…conduct DBT or nor would you want to because that’s not why you become a peer. If you wanted to do that, you can become a counselor or a therapist. You can still though, you’re going to be able to model what you’ve learned and be able to say, hey, this thing worked for me. Have you ever thought about it? And maybe even more importantly, be able to know the value of sitting with someone as they feel their emotions. Yeah.

 

Courtney Hays (26:42)

It is, it’s a moment to be able to be like that connected to someone to feel that comfortable with someone and just let go and feel fully comfortable and vulnerable and You know, and I try to let them know that they’re not you know It’s okay. They’re not alone in feeling that way that we’ve all had




Courtney Hays (27:31)

At some point had our own way of a low point and felt that negativity and that crushed and that burnout and that frustration and that anger and that resentment. Whatever it is that you’re feeling, somebody out there, you’re not alone. You’re, you’re, you’re

 

Whitney (27:39)

Yeah. Yeah. You’re not.

 

Courtney Hays (27:58)

100 % heard, your feelings are validated. What helps me is figuring out what’s causing the emotion. And then I can help, I can start identifying my triggers. And then I can start helping myself with the skills that I need to prevent that from happening again. So it’s just like, you know, follow the rabbit, you know? It’s just, it all just, it was my aha moment, the DBT class. It’s just, I cannot express how transformative it was and how helpful and life -changing it was.

 

Whitney (28:46)

Yeah, I’m glad that you, I’m so happy for you that you had that experience. That’s wonderful. And, you know, we’re almost done with our discussion and I have a couple questions, but before I get to my final questions that I ask everyone, I just kind of want to revisit the aspects or experiences that you’re going to provide peer support for.It sounds like for mental health, depression, bipolar, not bipolar, I’m sorry, borderline personality disorder. Are you interested in providing support for any of those other lived experiences of yours?

 

Courtney Hays (29:29)

Yeah, so adoption, mental health challenges like borderline personality disorder or emotion regulation, anxiety, depression, infertility, alopecia, hair loss or identity, childhood trauma like bullying or I actually listened to your Grises episode on invisible diagnosis. I also have psoriatic arthritis myself so I also have lived experience with invisible diagnosis as well as well as this will diagnosis so a little bit of a little touch of Everything so I you know, I I Really just want to be open now, you know, I don’t want to be just specific whatever it is that

 

Whitney (30:04)

Yeah.

 

Courtney Hays (30:26)

Anybody needs to discuss or get off their chest or like to talk about or anything I’m open to. I have an open mind and an open heart and I’m full of empathy and love and I just care about you.

 

Whitney (30:50)

Thank you for sharing that peer support is rooted in mental health diagnoses, specific diagnoses, as well as substance use. And certainly very valid. I do not want to dismiss that. However, we’re missing out on being able to support people through life experiences that maybe don’t have a diagnosis attached to it. And peer support is valid for that too. I’m so glad you mentioned adoption. Alopecia, these are all life impacting events that can benefit from talking to someone who’s been through something similar, who may know, not that they’re gonna put their own experience on you, but may have an idea of what you are probably experiencing. And so I think that you’re getting out there, you’re helping us get out the message that peer support is for everyone, for every type of experience because we’re not meant to go it alone. And sometimes we don’t need the formal treatment or counseling. Sometimes we do need someone who’s not in our immediate circle. And that’s where Peer comes in. And there’s just so much opportunity there to receive amazing support. And that’s gonna lead us then to my next question for you,

which is about stigma. And we haven’t gotten to stigma really much today, but I want to ask about an experience that you have experienced of stigma. It can be a word, it can be something somebody did, but something that you’ve witnessed, experienced that you can share with us to help us all kind of break down stigma.

 

Courtney Hays (32:46)

I have a good one for you. So it is perfect for the what you’re asking for. So when I was first diagnosed with alopecia, the autoimmune disease where I lose my hair, I was in Walmart and I didn’t have my wig on. I didn’t have my beanie on. Super hot. It was like 107 degrees. It was in Walmart and this kid was like

 

Whitney (32:49)

I’m worried about it if it’s like, it’s like, is, bye, go ahead. Yeah.

 

Courtney Hays (33:16)

Two or three like bumped into me and the mother kind of pulled the child away from me like I was contagious. And it broke my heart. And then shortly after that someone came up to me and asked if I was in remission from chemo. And it was like, I’m healthy. I’m actually so healthy that my hair follicles attack themselves. So If I could say one thing about challenging stigma, I would say embrace your true self unapologetically, for it is in your unique journey and authentic expressions that we find our strength and inspire others.

 

Whitney (34:03)

That’s beautiful. And I mean, you’ve said so many great things that this may be really hard, but, because I think you’ve already said the message, but I’m going to ask you anyway, because it doesn’t hurt to hear it more than once. For the person out there listening or watching who’s in that place where they’re having a hard time, what would you like to say to them and please speak to them?

 

Courtney Hays (34:33)

I hear you, I care, air hug, if you’re not an air hug person, whatever it is you need, I’m here for you. You’re not alone in feeling what you’re feeling, your feelings are validated and if you need support, it’s out there in whatever form it may be. Google will be your best friend.

 

Whitney (35:02)

Yes, wonderful. And if you are in a place of need and you’re like, I want to talk to Courtney, you can connect with her through straight up care. We will have the link to schedule with her and get everything going in the show notes. So definitely know that when she says she’s there for you, she really means it. You can connect with her, talk to her. And so Courtney, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to join me for being so open and honest and inspiring me to go watch Alice in Wonderland again. Just thank you for being you.

 

Courtney Hays (35:38)

Thank you. Yeah, no, it has been a very rewarding experience. Thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciate you taking the time to interview me and thank you everybody for listening and I hope everybody has a very, very un -birthday.

 

Whitney (36:03)

Well, I think that’s how we end it then. heard what Courtney had to say. And on behalf of Straight Up Care, thank you for joining us. Like, share, subscribe. It helps us so much as we continue to get our messages out there and reduce stigma. Thank you for listening.





Finding Light at the End of the Rabbit Hole: A Conversation with Courtney Hays Mental health advocate and Medi-Cal peer support specialist Courtney Hays discuss her experiences with mental health challenges, identity, and the power of peer support on this episode of Reduce The Stigma, hosted by Whitney Menarcheck. From overcoming bullying and the challenges […]

Continue reading "The Rabbit Hole of Identity, Mental Health & Support"
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