#108 – Ask the Expert

Dr. Louise Stanger

2019 Interventionist of the Year, Dr. Louise Stanger joins Ashley Loeb Blassingame to discuss all things interventions. Dr. Louise shares some insightful tips to help families navigate challenges in recovery.

Dr. Louise Stanger focuses on strength-based solutions and invitational change. As the 2019 Interventionist of the year, she is not only an Ivy League Award winner but also an educated social worker, author, internationally renowned clinician, and speaker on mental health, addiction, process disorders, and chronic pain. She has performed thousands of family interventions throughout the United States and abroad. 

In addition to her years of experience, Dr. Louise is a published author whose work covers a range of topics including mental health, substance abuse, and well-being, the opioid epidemic, marijuana and other drugs, parenting, high wealth clients, finding happiness, spirituality, failure to launch, chronic pain and pain management, family and many more. Her latest book, Addiction in the Family: Helping Families Navigate Challenges, Emotions, and Recovery (2020) is a #1 bestseller on Amazon. 

Dr. Louise lives in Marina Del Rey with her husband John and their doodles, Teddy and CoCo. Together, they have 7 grandchildren ranging from kindergarten to a senior in college. In her free time Dr. Louise loves having overnights with grandchildren swimming, soul cycling, and traveling.

Episode Resources

• Dr. Louise’s Books Addiction in the Family, Learn to Thrive, Falling Up: A Memoir of Renewal, Aging & Addiction: The Silver Tsunami, The Definitive Guide to Addiction Intervention: A Collective Strategy | allaboutinterventions.com/books/

Connect with Dr. Louise Stanger

• All About Interventions Website | allaboutinterventions.com
• Instagram | @drlouisestanger

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Episode Transcript

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Coming up on this episode of The Courage To Change …

Dr. Louise Stanger:

You can’t just say, “Daddy’s gone away. Mommy’s gone away, and, Sally, your brother’s gone away.” Say, “He has a disease,” again, whether it’s alcoholism or a brain disease, “And this is what it is,” because the kids are really walking around with a knapsack of stones on their back. Letting them know, again, that they didn’t cause this, they can’t cure it and making sure that, while someone’s in treatment, that they have access to FaceTime or other things. It’s not a punishment.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hello beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage To Change, a recovery podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host, woo! Today on our episode of Ask The Expert, we have Dr. Louise Stanger. Dr. Louise focuses on strength-based solutions and invitational change. As the 2019 interventionist of the year, she is not only an Ivy League award winner, but also an educated social worker, author, internationally renowned clinician and speaker on mental health, addiction, process disorders and chronic pain.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

She has performed thousands of family interventions throughout the United States and abroad. In addition to her years of experience, Dr. Louise is a published author whose work covers a range of topics including mental health, substance abuse and wellbeing, the opioid epidemic, marijuana and other drugs, parenting, high-wealth clients, finding happiness, spirituality, failure to launch, chronic pain and pain management, family and many more. Her latest book, Addiction in the Family: Helping Families Navigate Challenges, Emotions and Recovery is a number one bestseller on Amazon. Dr. Louise lives in Marina del Rey with her husband John and their doodles Teddy and Coco. Together, they have seven grandchildren ranging from kindergarten to a senior in college. In her free time, Dr. Louise loves having overnights with the grandchildren, swimming, SoulCycling and traveling, woo-woo!

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Dr. Louise, oh, this was so fun. I have a small career history of being an interventionist, and it was one of my favorite experiences and favorite jobs/positions that I have ever had. I look back very fondly on those times. Unfortunately, with young children and my life, I do not have time to fly all over and do interventions the way that I did, but, man, it was such a rewarding experience, truly, truly working with families. Dr. Louise has worked with thousands. She’s an expert, and it was really incredible to hear her experience and her advice. I even got an assignment from Dr. Louise at the end, which I plan on doing. So, without further ado, I hope you enjoy Ask The Expert. I hope you go to her website all about interventions, watch her videos, read her books. It is so, so worth it to learn about addiction, learn about addiction in the family and learn how the pros are showing up for their clients. Without further ado, I give you Dr. Louise Stanger. All right, episode 108, let’s do this.

Christiana:

You’re listening to The Courage To Change, a recovery podcast. We are a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma and other life changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I’m so excited to meet you, Ashley. Thank you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Thank you … so excited to have you here. Interventions are one of my favorite topics, so this is just … I’m really, really excited. Dr. Louise, welcome to the program. So, the first thing we do on this episode is we talk about … It’s usually worst haircut or worst … We have some sort of … It’s morphing, okay, this picture, but I have a picture of you. I don’t know about worst, but it looks adorable, and you’re in a bunny costume.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Oh, yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, I would start off with: tell me about this picture. It will go up with the episode. This is our little icebreaker for you.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Okay, great.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, I have this picture of you in the bunny costume. What is going on? How old are you here and what is going on in your life at this time?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, I really think, at that point, I was about seven years old or eight and definitely had gone down the rabbit hole. That’s a picture from Ms. Robin’s dancing school. I could have sent you a picture of me being a washer woman [crosstalk 00:05:36] but the truth of the matter was that was an incredibly sad time. My father, Sidney Sam [Wallack 00:05:44] had died by suicide, and he had … Not til many years later did I learn that he followed in his mother and father’s footsteps.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, wow.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Everybody in my family held secrets, and I wasn’t even told about how he died until I was on a playground and some little snotty redheaded freckle face girl named Ruthyann skipped over to me and said, “I know how your daddy died.” I knew how he died. I could have told you he was Superman and had been taken out by kryptonite. But really, my word was shattered. My mother, in retrospect, her world was shattered. She wrapped her arms, I guess, in alcohol and, subsequently, not too soon after, a new gentleman to ease her pain and everything. So, the bunny did go down the rabbit hole so to speak, but it also signifies dancing with resiliency.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that. I love that. Well, thank you for sharing that. The dying by suicide, I find that it’s very interesting what stories that the children get told. There’s often a lot of tiptoeing around the topic, that, even in that when people recall their stories of their childhood, losing a parent to suicide, the way that it came out is so important. We’ll get into this, but, as an expert at this stage of your life, what do you see as the most successful way to tell a child that their parent … how their parent has died if it was self-inflicted.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I think, when you talk about suicide, it is a brain disease, and that’s pretty well established. So, you can say that, “Your loved one died by suicide, but I want you to know that this is a brain disease, and I also want you to know that there was nothing in the world that you could do to prevent it. You didn’t cause it. You can’t cure it. You couldn’t change it.” Because, then the world is just knees, so to speak, you have magical thinking. You think, “If only I had done this …” Adults do that all the time with death, but I think it’s really important for a child to know that there’s nothing they could do because, oftentimes, you go back in your memory bank and you say, “Maybe I didn’t do this right, or maybe I didn’t do that right.” But, I think having an honest discussion … And, it depends on the age of the child, too. If you’re explaining death to a three-year-old, for example, I’ll take a piece of my hair, or, you take a piece of your hair. Pull it out. Pull it out. Ow.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Ow.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Ouch, ah, that hurt, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, that’s just no more. That’s really because they don’t have concept of date or time. I was seven or eight. I understood that he wasn’t coming back, but I wasn’t told that. I wasn’t even allowed to go to the funeral.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, wow.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

That, I think, was always a wrong move that you can’t be afraid. Again, when I work with families today, I always give them no-fault insurance, so to speak, that they did the best they could do with the resources they can. Maybe now, they can learn to do something different. But, you can imagine, with sudden death, the shock, etc., etc.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. You are a world renowned interventionist and have been recognized by many reputable bodies and spoken and done interventions for many, many years now, which is why we wanted to talk to you about interventions on this episode of Ask The Expert. Interventions, for me, if I could go off and do something and travel, money, all the things that go into life would be no object, that’s what I would do. I was trained in the ARISE model interventionist under Dr. Judith Landau, and I had a short period of time where I did lots of interventions, and it was a beautiful experience.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No one understands that when I tell them that. “How could that be a beautiful experience?” It was. It was so amazing. It’s such a thrill, particularly using the invitational, which I know that you do. It’s a paradigm shift. One thing that I want to get you talking about is the invitational versus the Johnson model. The Johnson model is the one most people know. I believe they use it on the TV show, which is where everybody invites you to some event that is not happening. You show up and it’s your intervention. Everybody’s in a circle, which is very different from the one that you and I were trained in. So, I want to start there with: tell me about the model that you use that has been so successful for you in your career.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, first I’m going to correct you. There is no model. I’ve held over $5M of NIH and NIAAA grants, and, to have a model, you need evidence-based research. The only person I know that’s really done that … and, I love Judith. It’s not just really Judith … is Miller and Rollnick who were motivational interviewing. You have to understand that I was a professor for many years, so-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, yes, give it to me straight [crosstalk 00:11:29]

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I do believe it’s a process, and I believe there’s many different processes that you end up using yourself. So, I learned interventions, actually, from someone that nobody seems to remember or recognize. When I was asked to develop the first graduate seminar in substance abuse at San Diego State and NFTs for everybody, I lived in San Diego. Betty Ford was just starting, and, along the way, people would come through San Diego. Into my classroom one day came a gentleman as short as I am. He was tall and stately, and his name was Dr. Frank Picard. He had been best friends with a guy named Dr. Vern Johnson, who is the granddaddy of intervention, I’ll Quit Tomorrow.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Well, Dr. Picard wrote a book and it was called Family Intervention. Gosh, when he spoke, my heart stopped. I love excitement. I love adventure. I’m an adult child of an alcoholic. I worked in the ER. I’m great with sudden death, grief and loss. When he spoke, it was a little bit different than Vern. I said, “I can do that.” And so, he mentored me. The first things we did was we learned surprise. That was very uncomfortable for me because I don’t like surprises, and I also didn’t like the idea that you’d go and be a lone ranger or go by yourself. I think that is foolhardy and not a good process.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, along the way, I said I would only team with someone else and I would invite people to change. So, the textbook talks about collective intervention strategies, which means it’s collective in that it’s a group. It’s a strategy because you’re using a variety of different modalities etc., etc, and you’re inviting people to change. Now, you can invite people to change in a court step. You can invite people to change lately that will ask three of them. They’ve been in hospital and you can do that. But, you put together a team.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I love Judith and so I have, I mean, then, I guess, a [RI 00:13:47] certify. I’ve done intervention trainings. I do not teach intervention except on a graduate level. I’m just a little bit … I don’t know. I think it should be done in graduate school and I’ll leave it like that. But, I have developed my own. I use a research methodology called portraiture, which was developed by Sarah Lords Lightfoot. She’s the only endowed share at Harvard that, when she dies, it will revert back. The way I learned about her qualitative research was, when I did my dissertation, I did something I was really passionate about, not something I was already famous about, which was the alcohol and other drugs prevention.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I interviewed women and men who were widowed at a young age because I had once been a third-generation widow. Portraiture is just a way in which, with words, you interview everybody and you end up with a portrait. So, my team and I interview everybody individually. I never put you in a team beforehand. It’s very different than what you see on TV, which is staged. I’m in a textbook that says interventions are opposing viewpoints. Interventions aren’t made for TV, but, God bless them. They made it very, very popular.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

But, it is an art. I’m not interested in just showing up and helping someone get to a behavioral healthcare center. I’m not related to any behavioral healthcare center, so I always have an independent … I have [inaudible 00:15:18] three different. But, what we’re interested in now is building scaffolding, care management and changing the whole system however you define family. Family can mean naval family or it can be the board of directors, the business manager for the celebrity.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, I think I’m grateful to all the people that teach and that have written books. But, in the end, I believe that you have to use yourself. It’s really good to have a clinical background, a lot of high acuity. I do high acuity mental health, substance use, chronic pain and process disorders, so, not eating disorders or anorexia, not anorexia. But, I mean, it requires a lot of skill, a lot of patience, and you really need to know what you’re doing. Plus, you really want to be able to follow someone inside of a center because you’re not a drop-off service. And then, you really want to think about, six months out, what kind of scaffolding can you create?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Absolutely, absolutely. It was amazing to me, and I’ll have you share your experience. I’m sure you experienced this as well. First, my background, I come from being someone who went to a lot of treatment centers, who had various intervention type things, transports, you name it. And so, what was interesting to me, learning about the invitational intervention versus the surprise one, which I think is, again, what most people listening probably are familiar with … the invitational one where we would invite … So, I’m sitting in a class learning about: you invite this person to their intervention, and I laughed. I laughed.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I raised my hand and I said, “Look, I have a clinical background. I have a personal background. I’ve been to every level of care that exists. There is no effing way I would ever show up to my own whatever.” I had such a hard time believing that it’s possible like, “No one would do that. No one would show up.” I was adamant that this was ridiculous. And then, I went out and I did it and I used the tools and the methodology and also the art, the personal arc that we all have around, “We’re all going to be discussing this whether you’re here or not,” and all the things. Every single one, Dr. Louise, every single one, they showed up. I couldn’t believe. Even myself, I was sitting there going, “There’s no way.” They did, and it was a really interesting paradigm shift for me about how to think about the addict and the alcoholic even as one. I wasn’t giving them that dignity even as one, even being myself.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Yeah, and let me challenge you one more time.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes, please.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

First of all, I love what you’re saying because I think that, really, everybody has that fear. “No one’s going to come. They’re not going to show up. They’re going to run away. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sometimes, you do end up with a surprise because someone forgot it, but we always tell people in the beginning, “Look.” You can say to your loved one, “Look, we have a family problem and we’re going to find a family solution.” So, it’s upfront from the get-go that there’s something going on, that you’re not just hiding behind their back and jumping through and saying, “Guess what, here I am.”

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Although, that has happened to me even in the best laid plans there. No, I share your excitement with what happens. The other thing, what I was going to say is, when I talk to families, I say that people experience a substance use and mental health anxiety depression chronic pain. I never ever label anyone an alcoholic or an addict because, for me, those are … That’s an easy way to get that imaginary distance between this person and that. I make that really clear in my latest book because those are beautiful, beautiful self-definitions that one uses in a support group, that you get a choice to use.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

But, far be it from me to say that just like I wouldn’t call you, “Oh, hi, anxiety, hi, depression.” I self-label myself. I’m an adult child of an alcoholic. Therefore, the grace of God goes me. I’m sure I have isms. It just doesn’t have to be alcohol or other drugs. I think that’s a message to give to your listenership because it’s really important. We’re not there to judge or blame. Yes, people experience terrible things they do, awful, no good. Really, they rob, they cheat, they steal. You wouldn’t call an interventionist unless you’re at your wit’s end.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that. I even did it to myself, which was the ultimate thing, the degradation of all of those things. There were two other things about doing interventions. One, the other thing was I spent all my time with the family. It was cake getting the person into treat by the time you get everything else. But, I mean 90% of the time is with the family. It was a family intervention. That person, I could read the situation. I said, “Look, you just tell them this, this and this, and, by virtue of what’s going on, they will agree because these are the things that are going on.” “No, no, no, they won’t.” It was like all the family. I could not believe it. And then, the other thing, the last thing … Again, I’ll shut up and I want you to talk all about it, is the people who call me and they ask me to tell them how to do the intervention on their own family member. That’s …

Dr. Louise Stanger:

First of all, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I think, in my first book, which is a memoir called Falling Up, I have a chapter Nothing Changes Til Something Changes, and 97% of all the work is done upfront with whatever that group is. When you’re doing that, thought, and you’re inviting people to be interviewed, you’re also always looking for that outlier, that person that they say can’t be in part of the group. But, that’s the person that ultimately is sometimes key to making a change. Oftentimes, I do have people that call up and say, “I read your book or I’ve heard about you.”

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Because I was a professor, I have endless amounts of free information on my website. I just believe in that. But, [inaudible 00:22:12] can you coach me to do this? We want to do it.” You know, you can never … If you say that’s what you want to do, I’m happy to work with you on a coaching relationship. This is what I can do/not do.” Note, sometimes, they could be successful. I remember a family, a really lovely family and they had Kaiser insurance. I won’t work with Kaiser Insurance if my life depended on it because Kaiser doesn’t take any interventions.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I said that upfront. I said, “But, you know, you can figure it. We can do this. We can do that. We can do that,” and it worked.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Or, I’ve coached families that have ended up with loved ones having never met them in person. I really depends on … in and the person’s been in treatment for over two years. So, I think you have to go with … You have to do that old thing, start with your client is and let them navigate. If I’m doing in-person interventions, I always have another team member with me, and that other team member, I never call. I don’t like … First, they’re equal to me. They’re equal. There’s no such thing as a first or second chair. I never understood that concept because I believe my teammates are equally as talented as me. Each one of us brings something different. Somebody’s going to like somebody. I can always be the clinical [inaudible 00:23:35] That I have in all situations. Usually, I always team with someone who is in recovery.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah, I like that and I love your experience around coaching because that’s been something that I wasn’t a big fan of helping with because my experience was that if you need a plumber, you hire a plumber. If you need a specialist, you hire that specialist. But, you’re right. Everybody works with … That doesn’t mean you give up and all sorts of scenarios and creating those relationships, so that’s great. The other piece, you talked about this in the beginning as it related to the photo, the rabbit hole, which is: I found it very interesting how people tried to exclude children from the process who were being subjected to the consequences of their loved one’s addiction, even seven, eight, nine, 10, who absolutely understood that something was wrong that’s upsetting, and they were forced to include them in the home life and the outcomes and the negativity, but they didn’t want to include them in this transition in this honest, authentic conversation. I felt that it was a really interesting thing to see from a clinical study perspective, “Wow, we’re willing to have this happen without conversation because it makes us uncomfortable to talk about it even though we’re doing something about it,” and I wanted to know … Tell me about your experience with that.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I think your comments are great. So, with every family I work with, I do this family map, which, I need 18 pieces of [inaudible 00:25:28] so I know who the children are. I’ve had children as young as five be in the intervention. I encourage … where you run into a little bit of hiccups is if you’re talking about a divorced couple, you need both parental consents. But, I always make sure, I try to make sure. I’m good friends with Jerry Mill, who probably is the most forerunner for children, trying to get people to go to the children’s program at Betty Ford, letting them know, giving them the language. “What do I say? What do I do?”

Dr. Louise Stanger:

You can’t just say, “Daddy’s gone away. Mommy’s gone away, and, Sally, your brother’s gone away.” Say, “He has a disease,” again, whether it’s alcoholism or a brain disease, “And this is what it is,” because the kids are really walking around with a knapsack of stones on their back. Letting them know, again, that they didn’t cause this, they can’t cure it and making sure that, while someone’s in treatment, that they have access to FaceTime or other things. It’s not a punishment.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, you have to be really careful with treatment planning and placement. Where is someone going to go? What is their access? What is their availability for that? I guess what we try to do is solution-focused family recovery coaching, and that’s because I’m very solution-focused. I think, in these days, they talk about ACT, but that’s just fancy MI and ACT, TMI. It’s really like, “What can we do to help this family change and become there, and what can we be honest? Does that mean we encourage the family to speak to the school psychologist there in school to let them know?”

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Because, one out of every three families has an alcohol or drug problem, and millions of people are suffering from anxiety and depression right now, so there should be no secret, but it has to be age-specific. You have to acknowledge and you have to really … You can do it through play. You can do it through sand, but you have to really acknowledge that they didn’t cause anything. The parataxic distortions that take place as a young one is really awful. And then, if you pretend everything’s okay, it sets the stage for later trauma because they’re walking around and they know something’s really wrong, but everybody’s saying [inaudible 00:28:00] it’s like Disneyland, [crosstalk 00:28:03]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, the incongruency is the trauma.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Yes.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. So, so for the listeners, some of the most common calls … I get a lot of parent calls who have children who were similar to my situation who want feedback. Could you walk me through some vignettes, so to speak, some cases? We could make up a couple cases of young adults over 18.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

You’re so funny. I just wrote … That’s my blog this week.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, it is?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Yeah, psychosis and drug. I do weekly blogs and everything. I don’t know that you subscribe, but let’s do it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Well, I will now.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

The same thing with the book that I just wrote, Addiction in the Family. It’s really like people call you when their heart is breaking. Tell me about Johnny. Well, Johnny is 16 years old. He’s locked himself in his room. He’s smoking marijuana six to seven times a day. How is he getting it? Oh, I bought it for him. He also has some Xanax with him. In this day and age, because of Zoom, he was a straight A student. But, all of a sudden, he is no longer interested in school. He’s argumentative. He’s erratic and he might end up what we call 51/50 [crosstalk 00:29:31]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, 72-hour cycles.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Well, or a 14 day hold because of the sativa, the 97% cannabis that’s using.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Got it.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I think I might get three phone calls or more like that a week. If I’m getting it, so are my colleagues about young people imploding, not being able to launch and turning out to be like these roaring lions, pretty angry, really challenging. That’s one type of call I get. Then, I also get calls about executives whether it’s a male or a female. They could be in their 50s. They could be in their 60s, 40s, but, somehow, life has just taken them back whether that’s … Some of those might have had chronic pain. They started out with some sort of chronic pain. Chronic pain could be fibromyalgia. It could be migraines. It could be a broken shoulder or anything. But, they had an opportunity for opioids and their opioids have gone wild. They’re also mixing with alcohol. When you look back, they have some childhood types of trauma and they’re not thriving, but they’re really grouchy, very, very grouchy. Again, it’s that sort of similar scenario where they’re not thriving.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Oftentimes, you might have parents whose, when they asked you, they want you to intervene on one and you end up saying, “No, I can’t do that til you go get help,” which I’ve done. So, just because someone calls you up for an intervention, I guess, you really have to start where they are. I remember one family, delightful family, a gentleman called me, very successful family. He wanted an intervention done on his wife. She had chronic pain. She had migraines. She had a lot of grief and loss. Her one son had overdosed, but they sort of kept it a secret. They didn’t want to tell anybody. She sort of hid in her room. But, he too had some other issues. He was a regular pot smoker. He hadn’t grieved at all. I said, “I don’t think I can really get … We can’t really get her to go to treatment until you go for an evaluation.” So, we actually switched the scenario around. He went for an evaluation and we did that.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

And so, people will call you up, but, I guess, the most basic tenant is people do not call someone like me up unless their hearts are hurting, unless they beg, borrow, steal. They might call you up because someone told them, “Oh, call her,” and it might be a large family like a family foundation, and the head of the family has just gone off the deep end. Or, it could be for an older adult. It could be a daughter calling up saying, “I’m never going to talk to my mother again? Why am I never going to talk to my mother again? Because she put the two-year-old in the golf cart when she was drunk and she flipped the golf cart and she broke the little girl’s thing.”

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Or, you may have someone who comes from a different culture and is really very bright, very successful, but she modulated her trauma with alcohol and other drugs and actually was in a car accident and the jaws of life had to remove her children. So, sometimes cases come with legal issues already. Straight mental health, you have to fetter out after a while. I had a client that I worked with the family for over four months and tried to join up with her delusion and was able to do that. So, I don’t think there’s, anymore, the easy run-of-the-mill person that calls you up and says, “Hey, my family needs an intervention. I have an alcohol.” It’s very rare. There are multiple drugs. There’s multiple issues. You really need to take a look at family history. And then, you need to understand the cultural backgrounds of the person, what their financial competencies are because there’s different ways of doing things, and then give them those three bests and set them up for success and create that scaffolding. I hope that’s enough examples for you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I love that you talk about the scaffolding. One thing that I say just generally when talking about addiction is what I’ve seen, that people spend … If they have a budget, what they do is they find the fancy 30-day treatment center because it’s a lot of money. Therefore, it’s going to cure them and what have you. They take this budget and they take 90% of that budget and they put it into the 30-day treatment center because they think that that’s the way to go and there’s no or very little money left over for aftercare or the longterm thing. I always say it’s like buying a Bentley and not getting an oil change.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I love that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

It doesn’t make it … You wouldn’t do it. Why would you put all that money in and not maintain it? It’s not going to work, right?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I love that. That was just great. I think I’m going to borrow that, buying a Bentley and not giving it an oil change. No, even my paperwork is 90 days because we know, evidence-based, it takes 90 days to change a behavior. So, I want to be with that family or that group of people that long. But, the thing is that, when you look at it, it’s really easy. For your listenership, just think about the age someone started using. Say you’re 35, you started using at 15. Well, that’s half your life, so you know that it’s going to take more than 30 days to get well.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, when we think about it, I try to project out six months. When you’re working with families, if you go a year more, they get a little nervous. But, you know in your heart that is … so, when you’re think about … There is an art to treatment planning and placement. Someone could call me up or I could get a referral, but it’s not the right place. Or, the family says, “I found XYZ Treatment Center.” I go, “Well, I am not even familiar with XY Treatment Center. If we work together, certainly, we can take a look at that. Let me vet it, but let’s see what the best is based on like a retrospective biopsychosocial plus what your pocketbook can do.” Look, you can spend $300,000 a month at Kusnacht in Switzerland. You can also go to the Salvation Army in San Diego and have something. There’s all kinds in between.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yep, and it’s really, when you’re looking at budget, it’s just so important. As I’m sure you would appreciate, it’s so important to look at it as a longterm plan. Again, any other chronic disease, if it’s chemotherapy, if someone has diabetes, if you’re doing dialysis, you’re not planning on a short period of time. This is cleaning the blood of the brain, essentially. It has to be done over and over and over again over a relatively long period of time, and that’s hard to swallow when you’re the family member and you just want it … like, “Let’s get this show on the road. Let’s get back.”

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I think it’s, “Just get it fixed.” I think you have to do things in small increments and, again, start where the family is. Families don’t like to know that they’re doing therapy. They really like when you say solution-focused coaching. Then, really understand where they’re coming from. If you don’t join up with the family, I don’t think you can join up with the person. Sometimes, it’s really good that the identified love one that I call it doesn’t come home. It’s not a good place for them. Does it do more harm than good? Giving everybody that rest break to detach, because families have unconsciously aligned, so there’s some payoff unconsciously, gratification of keeping the status quo. So, what you’re doing in inviting someone to change is you’re breaking that status quo. The person you’re sending to a behavioral healthcare center is lucky because they get-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Totally.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

In terms of treatment. So, it’s our obligation, our ethical responsibility to help send these people and teach them in a psychoeducational and then refer out if they need other types of auxiliary help. Because, if you don’t change what’s over here, this person cannot come really back in there without them … It’s like going back home. You’re a little kid and you went away to school. Then, you came back home and everybody started treating you the same way you were even though you had just graduated college or something, or you got married and you weren’t that little kid.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.

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Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, it’s an experience I had. My sister … I created a very traumatic environment in my home for my family, very, very traumatic: overdoses, violence, all sorts of disappearances, the whole thing. When I went away to treatment, my family was left and my sister who’s two years younger than I am, she and I used together quite significantly: methamphetamine in grade school and things like that, quite significantly. I always have felt this. She and I have since talked about it, but I’ve always felt this guilt because I went away and I got all this help because I was so acute. She was just not as acute in comparison, but it was only in comparison. It wasn’t in comparison to the people down the street. Compared to the people down the street, she needed help too, right? But, when you have this person that’s just a complete and utter hurricane, everything else looks like a passing storm.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

It’s okay.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, and so, I left my family with all this trauma, and I went away and got help. I do see that. I do see that the person that’s getting help, the identified loved one often gets better and everyone else is left trying to pick up the pieces and not knowing why they feel this way and being damaged.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Well, I’m not going to let you take all the responsibility for creating all the trauma. I will let you take responsibility for creating havoc because, when you’re at disease, you do things that are just outlandish, horrible. You lie. You cheat. You steal. You yell. You scream. You carry on. But, that’s when you’re in the disease. Everybody has a part to play in the system, so, somebody else does it. I guess, as a clinician interventionist, my job is not just to get you help, but for your sister, and that’s really what a good clinician interventionist will do, is say, “Hey, let’s take a look at Suzie. Let’s take a look at Johnny. They need to get help. They need to have connection because their role …”

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I remember a family; I have to change everything. It was a 16-year-old boy. The family’s history was father … They sort of looked like a Norman Rockwell painting, but they weren’t. Each one of the mom had a … Her father was a vet, had post-traumatic stress. Her mother had mental illness. Her husband really ran away from home and didn’t really have any social supports like Tony Robbins a lot or coaching a lot. And then, they had a daughter that was a freshman in college who was sort of out there with mental health and substance use. And then, of course, the hurricane, hurricane using your words, was a young man who was about 16 smashing in windows, kicking in windshields, but it was the marijuana and the pot and everything that was there. But, if you’re really good, then you’ve got to take care of high acuity first, okay?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Absolutely.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

But then, second was making sure, especially the daughter, that she got help, and then that the family got some individual or separate counseling that they’re willing to do. It takes a lot of work to change a village. But again, that young man was responsible for the kind of havoc he did. But, there was a lot … I guess my moral to you is there’s always havoc in a family that you might have responded to that you didn’t react to that you might have acted out about or whatever. But, you can’t be that. You didn’t cause all of it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Fair, fair, fair. You’re right and I should … That’s my narrative therapy practice, is really working on the narrative that I have, as well.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Yeah, to rewrite your story.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

To rewrite my story.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So you realize the best possible self and know that other people had a part. Yes, you could make amends for your part. And, certainly, this podcast is amazing. Who you are today is amazing, and giving an opportunity just to say those things.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Thank you, yeah, you’re right, totally right. I love … Being in a growth mindset allows you to absorb new information in a way that makes it not scary or harmful. When I live in a place of not able to absorb … Everyone’s a threat. All the new information is a threat to that current belief system, so it’s less anxiety provoking to be just like, “Oh yeah, I’m still growing. I’m still growing. It’s okay to still be growing.” During this COVID period, I know what I’ve seen. It’s a lot of people on the edge tipping over, a lot of mental illness. But, the acuity stuff, what is the stuff that you’re seeing that you think is really related to the pandemic, lockdown, COVID, specifically, as opposed to just the incremental increase on something that was already really bad?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, I wrote, a couple weeks ago, three blogs. One was on decision fatigue. We make about 35,000 decisions per day. In COVID, we actually made less, but they were more stressful because we didn’t know where to go, what to do. Who could we see? Could we go to the grocery store? You wore a mask, so it produced even more anxiety. The other thing we’re seeing right now is reentry anxiety. “Okay, I get to come and see you, but, should I go to that baseball game? I want to work from home,” just really fear. I’ve had people call me and their five-year-old or their four-year-old was afraid to go to preschool because they’d been home and, “What is this COVID thing?” COVID, it, we’ve been living in a collective trauma bubble like chronic pain. You can’t see it. You can’t hear it. You can touch it. You can certainly see the effects of it.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Then, the third thing I’m seeing I sleep disturbance, which I could even say that I’ve had in terms of not being able to sleep well and just trying to figure out: how do we really navigate this world? It was, suddenly, all of a sudden, the world shut down. On March 13th, I had been presenting, which is the last live conference I did. It was in Washington, and it was providence medical center. My ego was pretty big. I was talking about chronic pain, trauma, mental health. It was all docs, all docs. We were getting ready to leave and they started talking about the plane. I go, “What do I care about a plane?” I cared about being on a play home so I could fly out the next week to where I was doing a staff training that I was really excited about. I was very …

Dr. Louise Stanger:

And, that plane was the first plane to bring people into the United States from China. It was Providence Medical Center. I remember coming back and it was going to be March 13th. I was going to go to LA. I was going to do this. “Ah, no!” People started screaming at me, “You can’t go anywhere. You’re too old. You have to stay home. You can’t go to a grocery store. Do you have toilet paper? Do you have everything?” Our world just really stopped and people didn’t know what to say, know what to do. I had more vinegar in my house cleaning things.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love you. Oh, that’s good.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I remember, and then, you really were frightened [crosstalk 00:49:21] like they take away. Just reentry anxiety, what does that mean? How do we do it? All of a sudden, treatment centers are starting to market again. I went to a conference in Florida and that was exciting, not to be on a Zoom. I didn’t know people were so tall or that they’re short or whatever. But, I did do interventions all throughout, and always following COVID protocols. I’ve been vaccinated since January 29th, was my second vaccine. But, the world was on stop. And, when you have little kids saying they’re prayers at night, which my grandchildren … “Please make this COVID go away and please protect everybody.” You see how it permeated.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

The tipping points, I think, were being on Zoom school. Who ever … I was a professor. Come on. Who ever thought that you should teach a five-year-old, six-year-old or seven-year-old how to go to school on Zoom? That’s unfair, uncruel. And then, gap years, how do you go … you didn’t get … just for teens, all of a sudden, connection. What is the opposite of isolation and what is the key to recovery? It’s connection. You hear about increased suicide amongst young adults, increased purchases over the internet of all kinds of drugs and everything and identity confusion, gender confusion. Nobody knew what the right thing to do was. I think that was the hardest thing. No people understood what in the world you’re supposed to do. And so, everybody was scared.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

A lot of fear. I have four-year-old twin boys and, yeah, they were three when the world shut down. I was locked in a house with three-year-old twin boys. Let me just tell you I was-

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Oh my God, I have fraternal twin boys that are grandchildren that are five, so I like-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, you know.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I know. Your poor empathy, my good. I’d lose my mind.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes, you know exactly what it was like, but they were three, so that was even more chaotic. It broke my heart. We would get out of the car to go pick something up at Target or whatever it was and they’d remind me, “Mommy, your mask.” At this point, they really only remember a COVID world. Going to the park and asking me about cooties and begging for … It was hard enough as the adult, and, as a parent, you want to keep the world … People say … Oh, I forgot what the term is, but people say, “Don’t show them any trauma before five, six, seven or something,” no bad news right, you know, no bad news before that time. And, of course, the whole thing was just trying to explain to kids who knew there was something going on but didn’t have the maturity to absorb it, and then also yelling at my parents. My mother was trying to fly and I said, “You have got …” we all freaked out. I was like, “You need to call mom,” just yelling.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I know. I got that [crosstalk 00:52:56] I understand that. I was very … But, I think it’s just … I love what you just said. They’re COVID natives. We’re COVID immigrants and they’re natives to all the racism that happened this year or all the explosion of … There were just double whammies this year, but they’re natives to that. The other thing is school shootings. They’re native to school shootings. They’re native to violence. If you take a look, who wants to look at the news? I personally don’t want to look at the news because it is so … Yeah, it’s tough, especially for little ones.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, it is. It’s a scary … I think it was always scary. I always think to myself, “Well, you know, the Cold War people …” There’s always been something, right? But, in my talk, this job, I get to talk to a lot of really cool, interesting-

Dr. Louise Stanger:

How wonderful!

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, it’s such an exciting thing for me. No, this is really profoundly different than many of the things that we’ve been through. In our field, there’s two things that I don’t think are talked about enough. One is: why are so many people attracted to children causing sexual abuse as … You and I work with a ton of, whether it’s just exposure or whatever, children who are sexually abused at a young age, which causes trauma. It is so prevalent, and I wonder, why aren’t people talking about the … We’re talking about treating it, but we’re not talking about preventing. And, we’re not talking about: why are so many people attracted to prepubescent children and prevention? It goes kind of hand-in-hand. What should we as parents … My husband and I are both in recovery, both alcoholics. We have two fraternal twin little boys. I already see the stuff.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I can tell you that I can see that in my grandchildren, too.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, I see it. My husband and I, there are moments where we just look at each other like, “What do we do now?” So, the prevention question, I guess, really applies to both. But, one is: why aren’t we talking about so many people attracted to young children?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Well, I think that that’s really one of those taboo things like porn. How do we talk about porn? There’s been an increase in porn sites. I’m not … At The Meadows, Stefanie Carnes is probably the number one. She’s really, really fabulous. I’m supposed to be teaching a course for her come fall on process addictions in the family. There’s always been this sort of, “Shh, don’t talk. Don’t share.” And yet, when you look at, “This is your body. You get to choose who touches it, and, if someone touches you, we need to let them know.” We all know that, in colleges, if we go up a little higher, sexual assault has always been a big thing.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I just noticed, in one of the schools I just taught at or was an administrator at … the Change org just came out with a petition against sexual assault because that’s always been there. But then, when you go back and you take a look at family accords and issues, is there anything that happened? There’s a lot of shame and embarrassment about touching because, somehow or other, it’s your fault. I think it’s the same psychological undercurrent that comes, “If only I did something different, then this wouldn’t happen.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Are you talking about the shame from the perpetrator, the victim or the parent?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

The shame from the victim.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Victim, got it.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

From the victim. The parent, are they looking the other way? Is that that they don’t see they don’t see? But then again, we know, in addiction, denial is a great masker, so, not being able to see … and then, the willingness to be able to actually share and investigate. I think it was in the ’80s or ’90s, there was a big rash. Everybody talked about incest. Everybody talked about they were … There was some idea that everybody was raped. Everybody had incest.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Oh, wow.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Everybody had sexual assault. That was in the literature, actually. Then, it sort of went down. But, I think that, as a public health harm reduction, parents need to join together just as they would to reduce risk for alcohol and other drugs in their communities. They can take a look and teach about, “How do I love my body? What does that mean? Who’s allowed to touch and what happens if someone …” because you’re the boss of your body.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We have a lot of books. I took my kids to the doctor the other day and the doctor asked me, can I do this exam? I said yes, and then he said, “Did you see how I asked Mommy if it was okay? We only let …” So, I see that changing and we certainly are reading books about it. But, what I don’t see people talking about, to me … Please, correct me if you think I’m focused on the wrong part. What I’m saying is there’s so many … one in three, one in four, one in eight. Those are the numbers of children who will be sexually abused. Why are there so many people attracted to children and we’re not trying to stop them whether that’s through …

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Which may be through more research around why they’re doing that. Why aren’t we trying to stop it before it starts by looking at the mentality of the people doing it and either offering them treatment or finding a way to thwart that. I feel like, in the work that we do, we see it so much. We deal with it. Every day, we deal with it. We talk about … I had child sexual abuse. Why are we not … I’m a Meadows alumni. I went to The Meadows, did my [crosstalk 00:59:24] went to Pia’s place after. But, we don’t … That’s one group of people that’s causing a lot of havoc that we’re not talking about. Why do you think that is?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

It’s not popular. I don’t have a good answer for you other than it’s really not popular. It doesn’t sell. It doesn’t sell. It’s not marketable. I can talk about #MeToo. I can talk about sexual assault. I can ring in some big names. It’s just, you know, I’ll be nice and controversial. How come only men … because I know women take advantage of men. We haven’t had anybody say, “Hey …” the Harvey Weinstein … for every Harvey Weinstein, there’s also a Shirley Weinstein, a woman that can do things. So, we have this still duality. But, I think a public health harm reduction … and, I think it’s got to start with young children.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I know, for example, for my grandchildren, they have this program. “You’re the boss of your body,” and then doing it that way and then making sure that those are through public health harm reduction. But, when you stop to think about what sells in the media, alcohol … look, even opioids don’t sell well in the media for God’s sakes. We still have an opioid crisis and a debt. Even though HBO just did this special on the Sackler family, we don’t really have, in the administration, a really good drug policy.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Or, we don’t really have … We have a differential treatment depending on how much you can afford. We don’t have even parent-based interventions. I guess I’m still reeling from the fact that we don’t give parenting courses. How many parenting courses did you have? You’re worried about that. I’m worried about … I didn’t know how to change a diaper. Did you? No, you learned through osmosis. And so, the things that are so important, we sort of dysregulate.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Interesting, okay.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I get more on a soap opera, “Yes, your issue is really important, but let’s … How do we begin to do a public health harm reduction in terms of you being the boss of your body and you living in an environment?” Because, you have to realize that those people that are doing it are incredibly wounded. So, were they beaten? Were they molested as a child? Then, they don’t know how to do … Are they … They have personality disorders. So, within everybody, I think there are wounds, and they’re looking to self-soothe in all the wrong ways … but, to empower people to be able to not have that happen.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, what I hear you saying is that, really, because that’s not popular, because people are not going to be interested in, “What is the mindset of the person perpetrating?” that we have to work with almost positive … We have to go to empowering the children and empowering the parents and go from that standpoint because we’re not-

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Yeah, I think you have to create a positive crisis because that’s what we do in interventions. We create a positive crisis, and then we come up with a solution. Again, I don’t know. There’s not any good research out there. There’s no big NIH NIAAA grant to do that, but there would be an NIH/NIAAA grant to reduce risk, okay? So, that’s the reason I’m thinking of it like that. And, in what way do we institute in schools and everywhere else ways in which we provide that and then also understand that, when you start talking about little kids, you’re talking about teaching teachers. Who knows what their backgrounds are and what their home lifes are? That’s not a negative … or the nurses or the doctors, you know?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, it’s comprehensive.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

It’s the whole public health harm reduction that probably starts in kindergarten or preschool.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, no, that makes sense. It’s funny. I hired a parenting coach because I couldn’t … We were having all these problems. My husband would look at me when the kids would melt down. I’d look at him and I thought, “Gosh, I don’t know what to do here.” He would say, “You’re the mom. Don’t you know what to do?” I don’t. I don’t know what to do and I can’t read enough books fast enough for each stage. I thought, “Okay, what do I do when I don’t know how to do something?” I hire an expert. I find someone who knows how to do it. It was weird how abnormal that was in that process of reaching out to someone.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

This is the most important job I will ever have. It is the most profound effect on another human being I will ever have and I’m guessing. I don’t do that with other things, so, applying that same rigor, that same value, showing up for my kids the way I show up for a test in grad school or other areas. Because, I do. I do prepare that way in other areas of my life, but I’ve been normalized … It’s been normalized, however, that it’s okay for us to just make it up or do what our parents did.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Or, you may be otherwise directed. I remember, as a young widow, I had three children and I also taught. I experienced the sudden death of my first husband, and, literally, I knew how to listen to not listen. So, I would come home from the university and everybody would want me. I could repeat what everybody said, but I really wasn’t present. There’s no amount of parenting coach that could have helped in that situation. It would have been nice to have … I mean, a therapist helped and everything, but I know I was non intention … in fact, I coined this term when I interviewed women who were widowed at a young … non-intentionally emotionally unavailable.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

So, I own that because it wasn’t that you don’t love someone. It’s just your own brain was so fried that you could not really take that on, too. I could repeat everything anybody said. That was the easy part. It was: could I be present? You had to create some structures just like you’re creating solution. I had to come home. I had to be able to change my clothes. I had a mother’s helper that might have been 13 or 14 to play with them. Then, I could look at my mail. Then, I could come down and be present. But, that carried with me. I can be attentive and not be present.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When you said that, I related. But also, when you said that, I thought about how non-intentional emotional … not intentionally [crosstalk 01:06:50] emotionally present, right? Did I get that right?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

No, non-intentionally emotionally unavailable.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Unavailable.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

That gives you the option of thinking that you really love the person. You really care about them, and, in that moment, you’re not intentionally emotionally unavailable. What’s going on with you that you cannot be 100% present? What’s going on in your brain? What are you worried about? What’s going on with you?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

So, the first thought I had with that was: every parent on the planet on March 13th become unintentionally emotionally unavailable because we all got into … we must have … a collective lack of being present for our children because we couldn’t, because the TV had George Floyd being murdered. The TV had people dying and refrigerators of bodies in New York City. We became, as a society, unavailable for our children that year. That was the first thing. Whether you were before or not, that had to have happened for all of us. The effect of that, do you think that we will see … Are you concerned about the effects of what happened last year longterm, that there will be severe consequences?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I think there are going to be severe experiences that we’re going to have to navigate through. We don’t know yet what the effects are and we don’t know. I think, as far as I said decision fatigue or collective trauma, we’re waiting for another … Every day, they go, “Oh, there’s another strain. Oh, there might be a third vaccine.” So, everybody is … You live in an existential world as if the world were okay because, if you go the other way, you can’t function. But, everybody’s waiting to see.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When you deal with parents who have teenagers who are home experiencing the failure to launch, also, the aggression, the anger … because, it’s something I hear about a lot and they call you for help. They’ve lost control of the person living in their house. They still are technically responsible for them, but they are no longer in control of them. They’re using and the parents, everything they’ve tried, taken away, whatever it is, isn’t working anymore. What are some of the things that you talk about with those parents? Where do you start with them?

Dr. Louise Stanger:

You start with listening [crosstalk 01:09:35] and taking a look at what they’re doing and what they’re not doing, what their fears are and what their hopes are and going from there because they’re being held hostage and you got to find out … I do this family map because I’m wondering where … and give them wings. They’re bailer outers and everything, but what’s their biggest fear? What can we do to overcome that and what are they afraid of? What if they said … I teach five magic words: yes, no, oh, really and whatever. But, we know, yes, we’re going to have to do this and figure out what would be the strategies. Because, most of the time, they’ve been afraid to do anything. They’ve been hiding and held hostage in their own home.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I’m working with a couple families right now like that in a coaching relationship and thinking about, “Does someone need a higher level of care?” And, if so, being able to do that. But again, you’ve got to start where the family is and take a look. You might do old Minocqua. Is there a couple system, whatever their partner system? How’s that functioning? Who’s the parents. What does that look like? and, the triangle, the Karpman triangle, how’s it working the room and then siblings? So, who does that? Really, start from there and have everybody start making decisions together and everything, but try and explore what their greatest fear is and helping them … you know, courage, we repeat what we don’t repair. If it’s hysterical, it’s historical … having the courage to try something different.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, the courage, right, because the courage, it’s the courage to try something different because it’s painful and scary to try something different. Even if what you have is painful and scary, you still know what it is. For people who are interested in learning more about interventions, you’ve written a couple of books on this. What are the books that you have written? I know there’s a few of them.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Well, first of all, I just would invite you to go to my website. It’s really full of wonderful things, and I also have a YouTube channel with lots of videos on intervention, so you go to All About Interventions YouTube, or, I could it could be Dr. Louise Stanger YouTube. My website is www.allaboutinterventions.com. If you want to learn about me and my trajectory, you can check out my memoir, which is called Falling Up: a Memoir of Renewal. That’s available on Amazon, and it also talks a little bit about intervention. The actual textbook is available at bookstores everywhere, but I always send everybody to Amazon. It’s called The Definitive Guide to Addiction Intervention: A Collective Strategy.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

And then, the new book, I had a contract. I wrote it during COVID, and it’s really a guidebook that I wish I had had. I do not get receivables, but it has been number one several times since it’s been launched in November, and it’s called Addiction in the Family: Helping Families Navigate Challenges, Emotions and Recovery. It really covers mental health, too, but they didn’t want that in the title. Or, you could pick up the phone and call me at (619) 507-1699 because I pick up my own phone.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love that. That’s huge. Maybe people don’t know that that’s a big deal, but it is if … you know.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

It is. Someone said, “Oh, I thought you were an answering machine.” I go, “No.” But, the videos are really good. We sat down one day and, yeah, we sat down one day, one of my teammates and I. We made these videos and they’re really good.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah, I’m excited to check them out. I think that’s the videos … Making it accessible to people in a lot of different forms is really the key, podcasts, videos, you know, all the ways. Well, you’re amazing. I really, really appreciate your time and your expertise.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

[inaudible 01:14:13] so good to meet you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Likewise, likewise. I’m so grateful for your knowledge base and that you’re out there as a resource to people and offering people coaching and all the different ways that you give families hope that there’s change. That’s huge. You can’t see the way out when you’re in it. You just can’t, and so, I know how people saw me as a miracle worker. I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, jeez, how are we going to get through this.” They cannot see their way out and you have done that for hundreds of families. It’s just such a cool job and a wonderful career and life, so thank you.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Well, thank you and keep inspiring change. Keep doing what you’re doing because it’s obvious that you do it so well and I’m just honored to be a guest on your podcast and really excited to meet you. I guess you’re also going to have … and, learn how to celebrate yourself. I know you’ll wake up every morning and do a grateful list, but, tomorrow’s challenge from me to you is: wake up and list three things about how you celebrate yourself.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Okay, three things I celebrate. I like it.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Alrighty, well-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

All right.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I hope to get to see you one day in person.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yes.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

[crosstalk 01:15:33] that real hug.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I would love that. I’m 5’6″, so, there you go.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

I’m 5’1″, so I could [crosstalk 01:15:40] okay.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

There you go. Thank you so much.

Dr. Louise Stanger:

Thank you, bye-bye.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Bye.

Christiana:

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