Archways' Threads

Narrator 00:02
Welcome to Archways' Threads, a show focusing on the threads of family and recovery support services that help make up the tapestry of life in recovery. Join us as we share stories from peers and participants in the field and practice of peer recovery support and family support and strengthening. And now your host, Archways' CEO Michelle Lennon.

Michelle Lennon 00:28
Hi. this is Michelle Lennon, host of the Archways' Threads podcast, and we are continuing our conversation with Cara LaPlante, peer recovery coach, wellness coordinator, and collegiate recovery founder of Panther Peers, actually, and we are happy to have her as we continue the conversation about identity-based goals.

Michelle Lennon 00:28
Yeah, so in working with participants, there's some things we can do to help drive identity change. And I know that you did a whole training for the community of practice for the whole state of New Hampshire for peer recovery support on building a personal mission statement. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Cara LaPlante 01:05
Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of different tools and strategies that we can use to support participants. As a recovery coach, I--it's really important that we try this and do this for ourselves before trying to engage participants in these kind of activities. Like we said before, we're role models, we're mentors, but also you can't lead--you cannot lead where you will not go. Right? To do this, it can be, like, uncomfortable, it can be, it can be challenging. It can kind of throw--it's a start to a change, and change is uncomfortable. So, I think it's important, for us coaches, we experience that first before we start to do this with participants, but the work is really cool, the actual tools and strategies, and what we can do. A personal mission statement--if we look at, like, businesses and organizations, they all have a mission statement. It's not a task statement, but it's--you use the term strategic direction. Right? It's the mission of our life. It's a statement declaring where we want to be headed. What is our mission in this journey? Really cool. That's one of my favorite experiential learning things. And then there's other activities like a dream board or a vision board, which is a visualization of where we're trying to go and what we want to do, the--doing things like the belief audit, and considering our mission, vision, and values, kind of like a business, or an organization, you know. They're headed on a growth path, most probably. They have somewhere they'd like to go. And I think we can look at ourselves in that similar way. And then these goals, like we talked about, the smart goals can be like the initial spark to this identity change. So we're not going to get rid of them, but they can start to build those small wins for us, so we can build that intrinsic motivation, and then head into that deeper work of our mission statement, our value statement, our vision, our values, creating a vision board. And when we talk about a vision board and a dream board and a mission statement, like, it doesn't have to be fancy. It's really just a more tangible way to look at this.

Michelle Lennon 03:40
Now, if somebody wanted to create their own personal mission statement, they could probably just search that on ChatGPT or YouTube, or something like that if they've never written one.

Cara LaPlante 03:50
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 03:53
Yeah. Do you have a mission statement?

Cara LaPlante 03:55
I do have a mission statement. The--unfortunately, I can't remember it off the top of my head, but the jist, the first sentence is, "I want to be--I am a part of something that makes the world better."

Michelle Lennon 04:10
Mm.

Cara LaPlante 04:10
That's where most of my choices come from. "Am I making the world better?"

Michelle Lennon 04:14
Yeah, mine starts with, "I am a fit and healthy leader."

Cara LaPlante 04:18
Mm hm.

Michelle Lennon 04:18
"Leading my organization, my family, and my children into a better place." Yeah.

Cara LaPlante 04:22
Beautiful.

Michelle Lennon 04:23
Yeah. Yeah, and it's so--when we start looking at identity change for people, I mean, one of the first questions I think we ask is, "How do you see yourself?" That's a tough one for a lot of people.

Cara LaPlante 04:37
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 04:37
Yeah, especially in early recovery. It's one of the reasons why I think this work is much better suited for people that are like six months out, because now they're getting a picture of, you know, what life looks like in recovery. The--sometimes it can be painful, you know. People talk about the wreckage of their past sometimes, but can usually see the hope for the future. And sometimes it takes a long time for people to get there. I know my husband is three years in recovery from opiate, and it was, like, a lot of cycling with opiates, because of multiple surgeries and stuff that he had gone through. And every time you go through surgery he'd be back on the opiates, get into trouble with them, and you know, the last time he just had excellent support around him, because he learned from some of those prior experiences. And he's somebody that's always wanted solid recovery--struggled with awful pain, suicidal levels of pain, for a long time due to an accident. He fell 40 feet off a roof and survived it, and then it's been 10 years of trying to get the pain minimized enough that he could live with it, coping in a healthy way with it. But when you think about the future, he said it was always hard for him to see beyond today, because things were difficult. So now three years out, now we're talking about a real future together, you know. And it's actually fun to think about where we want to go, what we want to do, what vacations we want to plan, what we want to do with our house, like, things that we didn't really have the time to think about in early recovery. So, for everybody, they're going to go at their own pace with this stuff, but that is a question we can ask. How do they see themselves now, and where are they growing towards? You know, where are they growing? Where do they want to go? Like, if this is where you are, this is the gap, this is where you want to be. Where is that place you want to be? And for me, like, fit and healthy leader, what's in the gap? Well, right now, it's, like, I've gotten off track with my diet and my exercise. So, what do I need? I need to get back with a coach. And to me, there's no shame in that, because I see myself as worth the investment.

Cara LaPlante 06:56
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 06:56
And that's the thing. Like, it depends on what your beliefs are, right, around this stuff, and I believe I'm worth the investment. I believe that I need that accountability, you know. I think I am--I know myself well enough to know that I don't want to disappoint a coach that's investing her time into me, so I'm much more likely to hold myself accountable to those tasks of smart goals with a coach working with me. Yeah, so then we talked about behavior change and the three layers of behavior change. You want to talk a little bit about that?

Cara LaPlante 07:32
Yeah, absolutely. So behavior change is really building the evidence of these transforming identities. Right? So, when we look at changing behaviors, we have outcomes, changing the results; the process, changing daily actions or habits. That makes me think of, like, you reaching your step goal, you adding farro to your diet. Right? And then we have identity, changing our beliefs. So we're changing the results that we're looking for, we're changing those daily actions and habits that create those results, and building evidence to a transforming identity.

Michelle Lennon 08:16
But we want to be careful, right, not to shortchange the process, because just because you run a 5k race, it doesn't make you a runner if you just do it once. It's really about that consistency, and I think about this, even in rebuilding relationships in recovery, that words don't mean much sometimes, especially to family members. Bending the truth has been a coping mechanism for somebody. It's really the consistent actions that rebuilds trust. And for ourselves, it's really no different. Like, we need to be consistent with our own actions, with our goals, so we trust ourselves and get to that place where we believe that our identity is real, that we get there. So, ultimately, when we think about identity, how we see ourselves is rooted in all of our beliefs, our values, our self-perception, and really that changes how we see ourselves if all those other things change. And it's all going to shape our self-concept.

Cara LaPlante 09:18
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 09:19
How we see ourselves.

Cara LaPlante 09:20
I think it's really the foundation of us as human beings.

Michelle Lennon 09:25
Yeah. Yeah, and then I think about identity. Right? When somebody identifies as an addict, or alcoholic for that matter, really they're saying something different than that, because that can be a very limiting identity, you know, depending on what kind of stigma, shame, blame, perception of choice. All of that stuff kind of flows with those identities, and often there's a bigger picture to it than that, like someone who managed pain with opiates and got into chaotic use. That's a little bit different than just saying I'm an addict. Or I'm a person who medicated social anxiety. It's different.

Cara LaPlante 10:08
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 10:08
Or, and I think alcohol, that is a big place where we see people have used it to manage social anxiety and then get caught up in addiction, and it's been really, really impactful in a negative way on their lives. Or there's a pattern in my life of managing stress with food, so I don't ever call myself that. I mean, I see it, but I try to stay away from anything that I perceive as stigmatizing, like, and again, I would--Brian Pickowicz had told me, and he's like, you can appreciate your body for what it's done. And then I think, yeah, I mean, my two kids, man, they're, like, the joy of my life, like, they're my greatest accomplishments, when I think about it, and that caused me to stop telling myself I look like Jabba the Hutt, because I used to say that, honestly. Shame myself and get away from that, and instead of thinking about, like, the miracle that, like, the human body is, and appreciating, like, what my body's done for me. And so, when we work with our participants, it's also, like, recognizing what have limiting identities done to them.

Cara LaPlante 10:54
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 10:54
And how they perceive themselves, too.

Cara LaPlante 10:58
And on the flip side of that too, what was that drug, or what was alcohol, like, what was that doing for you, right?

Michelle Lennon 11:31
Right. Right.

Cara LaPlante 11:31
And you could recognize how it was serving you at that time.

Michelle Lennon 11:35
Yeah.

Cara LaPlante 11:35
And also recognize that it doesn't have to serve you like that anymore.

Michelle Lennon 11:39
Right. Right. And that's, I think, another important question to ask, because if somebody doesn't have other coping skills, then what's going to fill that need, because I think--somebody once said to me, "When you build a life that you don't want to lose, you're much less likely to go back."

Cara LaPlante 12:03
Wow.

Michelle Lennon 12:04
Yeah.

Cara LaPlante 12:06
That's really incredible.

Michelle Lennon 12:07
Yeah.

Cara LaPlante 12:08
And also recognizing how scary it is too. And I think that's the power of peer support. Bringing it back to why this is so important when we're coaching folks is that, like, you don't have to build these coping skills alone, and you don't do it all at once, either.

Michelle Lennon 12:22
Right.

Cara LaPlante 12:22
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 12:24
So when we think about upgrading an identity, I mentioned, like, affirmations never really did it for me, because I always felt like they're just lies. So thinking about how many people that are first entering services, their identity has been something that maybe they're not proud of or how they feel about themselves--it doesn't always happen that way, but often when people are coming to us voluntarily, that's because they have a problem that they want addressed, and so they're coming in with purpose for that. And so, thinking about how we could refer to people as something more than their diagnosis then becomes important. And we talk about person-first language, we talk about being person-centered, but upgrading identity can begin with that, because most everybody outside the walls of peer support--and even within the walls of peer support--still refer to people as addicts and alcoholics. Right? When we can talk about being a person first, a person that's working to be in recovery, or working to be a fit and healthy person or a reliable parent, working to be a faithful member of their body or a dependable employee, a good partner. Because we've seen where one partner has had issues with their addiction health, and the other partner is kind of like holding everything up, and that partner that's affected wanting to really be a good partner. We've seen that a number of times. Or I had one person saying, "I just want to be a person whose insides matches my outside, so I'm not lying all the time." You know, I thought, "That's a--that's a worthy goal." And that's based on identity. It's not about setting a goal of, "I'm only going to lie six times today." You know what I mean? It's identity-based, so all of that really supports creating the new self concept, and what we need to remember is that new beliefs can be programmed, and it's done by repetition. And so the more somebody is changing their behavior on a consistent basis, the more they're going to align with that new identity, and it's a process. I mean, we have to remember that too. If you go by the work of the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery (CCAR) or Kathleen O'Connell's book, Bruised By Life's Wounds, and other great writers on different issues of traumatic backgrounds, the work of recovery can last more than 10 years. Talking about, like, the action phase, because we like to talk about the action phase lasting one or two years, but for many people it's a lot longer journey than that, and we see, like, different changes come. Like, five years out, the depth of misery and joy can be super profound. And we've got to remember that about our friends in recovery. It's another reason why I wish people would stay connected.

Cara LaPlante 15:33
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 15:33
Because we talk about addiction being a chronic disease, but we don't treat it like one. If you watch the movie Anonymous People, like, you hear the testimony of somebody who had breast cancer, and says, "Yeah. Everything was free--all the peer support, all the encouragement, all the meetings, all the support groups. Everything was free, and the checkups were so consistent." With recovery, it's like, "Hey! 30-day program, here's your graduation certificate. God bless you on the way out the door." My thing would be, let's get those annual checkups to just check in with each other. "How are you doing?" Or when major life events happen, because that's the other thing. It's like, there's something about a return to use that happens still, even though statistically we know that recurrence rates drop, that people face things that are really hard, and that can happen. But yeah, we need to remember that it is a process for people.

Cara LaPlante 16:36
Yeah, and I think this is such a strength of peer support, because making any change in our life is going--is a process, and it's going to be a long time. But as coaches, we're knowledgeable on the stages of recovery, and integrating that into this long process of changing identity as well, we can point out things to have your antennas out for like certain experiences you may run into, right, and start almost, like, safety planning around that, which again is those actions that are reinforcing that positive identity, that new behaviors.

Michelle Lennon 17:17
Yeah and, you know, one of the things with identity-based goals, too, is we tend to align our behaviors with the identity that we experience. So that's important to think about too, because when goals are identity-based, our whole outlook changes. It's like the parent who says, "I'm becoming a great parent," who's taking a Parent Ed class versus the parent that says, "I took the Parent Ed class to keep child protective services off my back and have checked that box." You know, there's a difference in how they absorb the information, how they apply it in their lives. Or "I'm becoming solid in my recovery" versus "I didn't use this week, so I could pass the UA and not get kicked out of a program." Like, it's a different mindset that that shifts. Or, "I'm becoming a fit and healthy leader," versus "I lost 20 pounds." I lost 20 pounds, I'm still down 20 pounds, actually, from when I started with the fitness project, but I feel the creep up already. I actually had lost 30 originally--yeah, yeah, 30 pounds, so I know. So my identity tells me that that's not okay, that I have to do these things to get back on track, versus just saying, "Whatever."

Cara LaPlante 18:03
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 18:18
Whatever.

Cara LaPlante 18:21
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 18:24
Yeah, so it really matters, because how we identify ourselves influences our behavior, and our focus shifts from the outcome to focus on the answer to a question, "Who do I want to become?" So I don't want to become the person that is pre-diabetic again, and I don't want to become the person that, whose joints are aching all the time again. And so as that person that wants to be the fit and healthy leader, where do I land on the choices in front of me? So I've got to get back on track with not eating the Pop Tarts that Tanya leaves around the Center.

Cara LaPlante 19:16
A vendor brought us a box of Goody Goody donuts last week.

Michelle Lennon 19:22
Oh?

Cara LaPlante 19:23
Yeah, you were lucky you weren't in the office for that one.

Michelle Lennon 19:25
Yeah, probably. Yep. Yeah, and you know, when we get to a place where somebody has identified the identity they're after, there's things that we can ask them. Right?

Cara LaPlante 19:39
Yeah, absolutely. If I was that person, what would I do? I think it is so powerful, and it's really important to, like, really sit with this and, like, let it marinate, because it's hard and it's uncomfortable, and it's a new, it's a really new experience for folks, especially folks who are working on their addiction health. But what this is doing--reflecting on if I was that person, what would I do?--is building that intrinsic motivation. And that's the motivation that's stable, is because it's coming from us and our power, not from outside sources, and we're in control of it. So even if you don't hit the outcome or you hit a little bump in the road and it's taking longer, you're still moving forward. You're still on that path. You're still considering your choices and how it aligns with who you are on the inside.

Michelle Lennon 20:36
Yeah, and I think it's cool because it's not about the date. It's not about hitting the date, you know. Obviously, I mean, women are known for, like, going on binge diets when they're getting married or things like that. But when we're talking about a lifetime of change, you know, after that lifestyle change for, like, the long haul, those long-term behavior changes when we're internally motivated, the process means more than the day-to-day outcome.

Cara LaPlante 21:05
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 21:06
So like, for me, I'm, like, not after any date. I don't have anything, like, coming up that--you know, I want to slim down for summer or anything like that. For me, it's about wellness. It's about my core values, right, of being a good parent, there for my kids when they want me there, being available to them for help. It's about being a good role model at work. It's about being comfortable in my own body, being able to do yard work without dying, as I've gotten older. And the truth is, too, that you get the life you focus on, not the one you have. And Tony Robbins talks about that, that when you focus on everything that's negative in your life, that's the life you experience. When you focus on just the positive, obviously life is not all sunshine and rainbows, as they say, and we go through things, but resilience--when I think about the bouncing back from life's tough times, a lot of it has to do with mindset. And so when we think about the life that we want, like you were saying, how that becomes like that internal motivation, it really starts with having a compelling vision of where you want to go and programming your mind with that compelling vision, so that when things get tough, you don't chuck in everything that you've learned so far. And a compelling vision will bring the transformation that you seek. It is really that internal motivation to move towards something new, you know, and like I said, the fit and healthy leader, that was new for me, I would say about two years ago when all of these health conditions started hitting me. And then it was like, creating that compelling vision took some work, because I didn't really know what that would look like, and that's where, you know, my coaches really helped me. And I think about this, that like, when our participants lack motivation, that you might want to start there, and really, like you said, spend some time thinking about this, so that they can get a clear and compelling vision down of where they want life to be, where they want it to go. Because I mean, some of our participants have bought their own homes, like I said. They've gotten married. They've gotten their kids back. They've gone back to college. Like, a number of people who never thought they would ever go to college, we were able to put them through some smaller, like, certificate programs to show them that they could do it. And again it's like that repetitive action just builds that belief, and so when we think about this, the intent is to move from the short-term goal achievement to really get that compelling vision in front of them, which is going to create the lasting change, because they're constantly in motion going through the process of reaching towards that compelling vision.

Cara LaPlante 21:52
Absolutely. This makes me think, "I can't--" The amount of participants I've had that, you know, "I'm just lost. I'm just lost. I don't even know what to do."

Cara LaPlante 22:12
And I think that's like a perfect door opening to start talking about this kind of work.

Michelle Lennon 24:14
Yeah.

Michelle Lennon 24:23
Yeah.

Cara LaPlante 24:23
Yeah.

Narrator 24:23
Thank you for listening to Archways' Threads. If there is a topic you'd like to see us cover, email us at podcast@archwaysnh.org or call us at 603-960-2128. Visit our website at archwaysnh.org to learn more about the Archways Family of Recovery and Family Resource Centers.