What does a brain-first approach to recovery mean?
In June 2023, I spoke with David Kenney and Susan Kenney of Emergo Academy, which trains and certifies recovery coaches. Their method, which they call Actualized Recovery, starts with the brain and the body before it turns to thoughts and habits.
This is an archive episode, recorded when the show covered addiction and recovery broadly. We talked about how the brain learns, how a stuck pattern can be broken, and why they would rather help someone plan a life than plan for a relapse.
How did two educators end up teaching recovery coaches?
At 1:16, Susan explained that their background is in education. They kept meeting bright young people whose lives were spiraling and decided to do something about it.
From 1:49, David described their starting hypothesis that learning problems, substance use, and mental health struggles all connect back to the brain. In 2011 they opened their own live-in program, and they closed it during the pandemic. So, at 3:11, David said they asked what they loved most, and the answer was teaching.
How does the brain learn something new?
At 5:36, David explained Hebbian theory, the idea that the more a neuron fires, the stronger it wires. In his view, rewiring comes from doing rather than thinking. His example was brushing your teeth with your other hand. It feels clumsy at first. Yet, with deliberate practice, the brain builds the skill quickly.
At 8:56, I compared it to practicing an arpeggio on the piano, then asked what deliberate practice could help someone who has to check the front door again and again.
What helped a young man with a severe fear of germs?
At 9:55, Susan said that obsessive symptoms can grow out of chemical, physical, or emotional trauma, so the work is to go upstream and help the brain process what happened.
From 11:16, David told the story of a young man who could not touch a door handle or share washed utensils. Over several weeks in their program, his fear eased. Late in his stay, he rode along on a trip to the dump and pitched in. Months later, they received pictures of him riding rides at Disneyland.
Interestingly, Susan said at 16:15 that the change showed in small moments. Near the end, someone drank from his water bottle by mistake, and he only shrugged.
How do you break a pattern without forcing it?
At 13:37, David said the first step is to find where the pattern starts and change it gently. A person who taps before walking through a doorway might try walking with their hands in their pockets. Nobody is forced, he said.
He gave a second example about smoking. A person who always smoked with morning coffee on the porch was asked what would happen with the coffee somewhere they never smoke. Of course, the answer was that they would not smoke there, and in David’s account that change of setting begins to rewire the cue. Susan added that none of this involves shame or a lack of willpower.
What are the five principles of their method?
From 23:46, the two of them walked through their five principles. Physiology comes first, because in Susan’s words physiology drives psychology. Psychology follows, drawn from positive psychology and from Viktor Frankl’s idea that between a stimulus and a response there is a gap where a person can choose.
Spirit, as David described it, is who a person is and what gives life meaning. Connections they compared to the roots of a tree, which give it stability when something goes wrong. Last on the list is a brain-healthy lifestyle: food, nutrition, and drink, or what a person puts in their body.
Where does talk therapy fit?
At 27:21, I compared the brain to a computer reprogrammed through action. Susan agreed at 27:59 and called the mind the software. They use cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. However, they learned early that the brain has to be in balance first, and then people change quickly.
At 30:16, David mentioned psychologists who now begin a first session by asking what the person ate for breakfast. A brain running on energy drinks and pastries, he said, is on fire.
Is there a quick fix for the nervous system?
At 32:55, I brought up devices and implants that stimulate the vagus nerve. In their view, approaches that force the brain from the outside do not produce lasting change.
Susan offered a comparison at 34:27. A surgeon can repair a heart, but without a different lifestyle the problems come back. Still, the person has to take responsibility for the change.
Why aim for a full life instead of bracing for a relapse?
At 38:43, Susan said they do not write a relapse plan. Instead, they help a person design the life they want. David added at 39:24 that words shape the brain, so planning for failure tells someone new in recovery to expect it.
Unfortunately, slips still happen. At 40:32, David said that when someone drinks over a weekend, the answer on Monday is welcome back, what did you learn, and what comes next. I agreed at 41:36 that early warning signs can often be caught.
At 43:33, David challenged me to order at a restaurant by naming only what I did not want. In fact, people do better aiming at what they want.
Who are David Kenney and Susan Kenney?
David Kenney and Susan Kenney run Emergo Academy, which offers an eight-week recovery coach certification and a longer master’s program. They are the authors of Actualized Recovery. When we spoke, David was writing about neuroplasticity in his PhD studies. Their website is emergoacademy.com.
What can listeners take away from this conversation?
The Kenneys see a person who struggles as someone whose brain is out of balance, not someone with a weak will. Their message is that a stuck pattern can change through small, deliberate actions, and that recovery works best when it aims at a life a person wants.
How do I approach this today?
My thinking has kept developing since this conversation was recorded. Today my practice is built on one idea that runs through all of it: when the body has adapted to a substance, the safest way off is usually gradual, with the smallest steps the person’s nervous system can tolerate. Physical dependence is not addiction.
A person who took a medication exactly as prescribed and now cannot stop it safely needs a plan, not a label. Where a medication can make the process gentler, I use it. Patients direct their own care, and a good plan includes the risks, the alternatives, an exit plan from day one, and the right to change course.
For alcohol dependence I use the Sinclair Method. The person takes naltrexone about an hour before drinking, and over time the drinking itself becomes less rewarding, so the urge fades gradually instead of being fought every day. It does not require stopping on day one, and it does not rely on willpower or meetings.
Like a slow taper, it lets the brain change at its own pace. For many people that makes it a more humane path than a sudden stop, which can also be medically dangerous for someone whose body depends on alcohol.
Call 911 or go to an emergency department if there is a seizure, confusion or hallucinations, or thoughts of self-harm. For thoughts of suicide or any mental health crisis, you can also call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
This page is educational. It is not medical advice, and listening to the episode or reading this page does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.
Full transcript
A note from Dr. Leeds: my guests speak from their own experience and expertise, and the terminology they use is their own. Whatever the topic, this show holds to one distinction: physical dependence on a prescribed medication is not addiction. This transcript is educational content, not medical advice, and nothing here creates a doctor-patient relationship.
Read the full transcript (47 minutes)
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:00] David and Susan Kenney, welcome from Emergo Academy. Welcome to the podcast.
Susan Kenney [00:05] Thanks. Thanks, Dr. Leeds. It’s great to be here.
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Yeah, so I’m really excited to hear about the program that you have. I was looking at the website. And yeah, please just tell me all about it. Tell me what’s going on with Emergo Academy.
David Kenney [00:20] Well, Emergo Academy is a coaching, training, and certification and education company and endeavor for us. But we specialize in helping people with becoming recovery coaches. And so what we offer is an international certification in recovery coaching. And we’ve got accreditations both in the U.S., in the world of addiction, in the U.K., about our coaching training program. We have been affiliated with the university so our academic or our teaching part of our program has been vetted quite heavily and it’s very very solid and so it’s an international certification of recovery coaching and the real story I guess the back story to this is how we got here wasn’t actually by design as much as we all like to think we’re smart people it was more if you had to go
Susan Kenney [01:16] But there’s no way we ever would have said this is where we’d be landing right now so we saw a need to be able to help at that time teens and young adults that were struggling and our background is education based and we just saw really really great kids that were struggling in life and maybe making some bad choices and we saw their lives spiraling out of control. And we looked at each other and said, we got to fix this. We don’t know how we’re going to fix this, but we have to fix it.
David Kenney [01:49] But we had, we had a hypothesis and this kind of leans into your world is what if we could change a brain or help a brain because learning challenges, addiction issues, and then mental health issues, we all knew somehow connected with a brain. And then we stumbled into Dr. Amen’s work. And the first book we ever saw was change your brain, change your life and then that like the puzzle pieces just instantly started to fall together because that was our first exposure right 2009 or so eight or eight or nine that was our first exposure to this thing called neuroplasticity which I’ve been writing about now in my PhD and studying about and we’ve been so we’ve created a brain first approach to recovery or to lasting recovery and there’s a hope there’s an integrative part but actualized recovery is the methodology it’s called actualized recovery that’s our book and what we’ve now taken is that methodology and we’re teaching that to coaches to be able to impact people in the world and help more people than we’ve ever been able to do before and
Susan Kenney [02:55] It’s not theoretical we started our own live-in recovery program in 2011 and we still work with clients privately so everything that we hypothesized we put into action and lo and behold it all works everything tied together
David Kenney [03:11] That’s in the last I don’t know 12 years over 2 000 clients and families which we learned very quickly the families have got involved yeah and part of it was coaching and we have we have trained over 200 people to be professional coaches were in recovery with a specialization psychologists masters of psychology social workers educators and just coaches and so we’ve created this little team and then we then the pandemic hit which caused us to close our recovery program and well actually we could have stayed open but business-wise we couldn’t meet the criteria that was being placed on us restrictions being placed on us so we closed the program from a business point of view and looked at each other on what do we do what do we do that’s really well what’s next and what do we do that’s really well and what do we do that we love we love teaching and I love helping other people and we love helping people in crisis because I don’t believe anybody’s bad I don’t believe this we’ll get into this in a minute I don’t believe this is a will power character defect thing and so then we went why don’t we teach more people so our goal Dr. Leeds, maybe you can help us with this, with your podcast. But our goal here is to train a thousand coaches, turn them into actualized recovery coach warriors, we’re calling them, and help them business-wise get a thousand clients. Then we’ve impacted over a million people. Oh, by the way, we want to do it in three years.
Susan Kenney [04:41] Oh, wow. Well, that’s… And it’s doable when you break it down.
Dr. Mark Leeds [04:46] Yeah, that’s a great goal. And I’m curious about the, you know, changing the brain and, you know, the idea of neuroplasticity because plasticity, you know, these days, everybody is looking for a way to fix their brain, change their brain. A lot of people are interested in the new explosion of psychedelics and ketamine therapy. They’re like, you know, let me go into one of these clinics and get an infusion. And my brain, you know, they talk about brain growth. You know, the, what do they call them? The dendrites of the neurons start growing and connecting with other neurons and communicating better. And, you know, but it’s kind of a scary thing. Like, you know, if someone said like, oh, go to a ketamine clinic and your brain will grow and develop and improve. I’m like, well, I don’t know. I’m like a little scared of that. You know,
David Kenney [05:36] I’d like to see the studies. My studies don’t show that. My studies actually show that’s not how neuroplasticity develops. Neuroplasticity works based on Hebb’s law or Hebbian theory, which is the more a neuron fires, the stronger it wires. The only way to make a neuron fire isn’t through thought and isn’t through chemistry. It is through an action. And so if you think about brushing your teeth, you can’t use a chemical or an outside in approach, which is a tablet or hallucinogenic. You can’t bring in through chemistry and outside in approach to create neuroplasticity and neuroplasticity is the mother of all things with our brain and that begins to help our brain rewire but you think about brushing your teeth the only way if I’m a right hand dominant so are you right or left hand dominant doc left-handed okay so tonight try your right hand you’re assuming we have the same kind of hands, they work the same, dexterity is the same. Why can’t I use a toothbrush the same way? Like that doesn’t make any sense, except until you look at neuroplasticity. The brain has not been wired to do that fine motor skill, but you can rewire it in a very short period of time to work with your right hand as well as you do with your left hand. But you can’t do that by talking to a therapist. You can’t do that by taking a tablet. You actually have to do something. So we use a lot of experiential therapy to help the brain rewire.
Susan Kenney [07:08] Dr. Leeds, you hit on a great topic that I’m really passionate about. We’ve always said, if something works, we’re all in. If we find that it is actually beneficial for the brain, we’re not arrogant, we would absolutely consider it. In our work with people over the last 12 years, working intimately with people, What we found is marijuana, psychedelics, any of those drugs that force the brain into change have long-term effects that are not healthy for the brain. And they lead to other complications and the brain relies on them and begins to shut down in other places. So that’s been our experience. That is definitely what Dave’s talking about. When you force the brain to do something. So even take it to the extreme of ECT. There’s ECT treatments now for the brain, and you are shocking the brain from the outside and hoping that you’re going to create change. We’ve worked with people with ECT. And I’ll tell you, the people that came to us had changed, but it wasn’t the change that they were promised. So the best way to help a brain and a person is to look at more holistic ways of saying, okay, if the brain isn’t functioning properly, how can I support this brain in order to bring it back into function and balance? And there’s so many holistic things. And the longer that you do them, the healthier, the happier, and the more settled the person becomes and they get their life back.
Dr. Mark Leeds [08:56] Yeah that makes sense so what you’re saying make to me makes sense in some ways like I was thinking I haven’t practiced piano for years and if I tried to play an arpeggio I’m gonna mess it up but if I sit there and practice you know my hand’s gonna get better and better and better at it same thing with brushing my teeth with my right hand you know I think maybe after a couple times or a week if I’m really deliberate in my practice I can probably get better now now what about say I’ve got some ocd symptoms and I have to check my front door factors of 12 you know I don’t feel comfortable I check it three times if I check four or five I got to go up to six now I’m I have this whole routine and like almost pulling the door off the you know the hinge and like sometimes take a picture of the doorknob of me twisting and I’m like okay I have proof that I checked it and like crazy stuff like that or some people do with the oven or stove. What kind of deliberate practice could I possibly do to get past that?
Susan Kenney [09:55] First of all, everybody’s an individual. So everybody that would have symptoms like OCD symptoms may have a different wiring in the brain to end up having to check things over and over again, right? Like we can have patterns in the brain that aren’t being, they don’t continue. So it doesn’t finish that thought process. You can actually have physical things in the brain, like you’ve had concussion or you’ve had illness. So there’s different types of traumas and they are chemical traumas. So things can happen within us chemically. We can have physical traumas like an illness or we can have a concussion or an accident, something like that. And we can have emotional traumas. Any of those can lead to symptoms one of them being OCD so work backwards and go upstream and okay how can we help this brain process whatever that trauma was and how can we get it to come back into balance and then the symptoms that you have at the back end are no longer prevalent
Dr. Mark Leeds [11:08] Oh okay so yeah so likely if I if I have those symptoms there’s likely some trauma in the past that hasn’t been released
David Kenney [11:16] So I’ll give you a story that a young man russian immigrant young man parents brought him to us yeah he was what you might call a germaphobe but to an extreme life debilitating level like not wanting to touch door handles not wanting to share forks and utensils even though they’ve been washed like he wanted his own put aside and only he got to use it. So that’s a very debilitating thing. Forget about going out to a grocery store and pushing a cart. That’d be impossible. And so working with us in our program in the brain first approach and using some experiential therapies as well, we began to help his brain reset. And the issue there too was trauma related. And he had a trauma when he was when he was born it was a newborn trauma if I recall right he had a he had a birth trauma I think it was the cord that was wrapped around blue face lack of oxygen and the brain went into this parasympathetic dominant state this that the high response and we have some technology which is non-invasive technology out of scottsdale arizona and it’s created by brain state technologies that allow us to see approximately how old somebody is when they had a trauma and we can see this because the brain develops at certain ages life and over time the month that he was with us I don’t remember he’s four or five weeks with us and over time he began to not be as paralyzed by germs and one of the days I actually took him to the dump like yeah so not
Susan Kenney [12:55] Not intentionally but what we did was a very experience of programs so when people came to us during the day there was normal things right you do your dishes you make your beds you provide for the whole group right the community so dave I just just texted me and the group the coaches and said pavel and I are headed to the dump and my eyes went exactly oh my gosh but if you look at so the parent we took pictures a lot to send back to families that you can only imagine the parents of this young man getting a picture of him at the dump right it was just beyond but any expectation
David Kenney [13:37] None of this is forced this was later late in the program right and he had he had overcome so much it even forgot I even left my memory that this was a challenge for this young man and it ended up being a beautiful experience this was not forced he didn’t have to get out of the car he didn’t have to touch anything he said come on and help me out and he started helping out and pitching in like that was the that was the miracle of this and then let’s fast forward after our program I don’t know six months later a handful of months later we got a picture where was he Disneyland and he was in Disneyland for the weekend or the week riding rides yeah doing everything we’re getting pictures of him on the on the log jam going down yeah and that’s the gift that you get to give people when you come from a brain first approach, right, is fundamentally is beginning to release that for him, that parasympathetic dominant brain pattern, that state of fear, and emotionally frozen and scared. By the way, a lot of cutters we see with that as well. And there’s lots more people, but that’s one story of helping people with OCD. And my last, my last thought of that to Dr. Leeds, is you’ve got to break the pattern. That’s the first thing you have to do. And gently, first of all, do you want to, do you want to, we’ve had people with a lot of ticks and things and got to go in and out of the doorway six times. Okay, what part do you want to, do you want to keep doing this? No, I don’t want to do this, but I have to. Okay, what part of that, where’s the, where does the pattern start? What happens at the beginning of the pattern? Well, I tap myself. Okay, what would happen of you walk with your hands in your pockets well I’d want to tap myself okay but what would happen well I don’t know neither do I let’s try that and so it’s not a forced thing you have to have you have to have somebody committed to wanting to change not somebody being forced to that we’ve never subscribed to that but you have to change the pattern and this goes for smokers we’ve had this before where people don’t want to smoke and they say, but Dave, you know, I always have a smoke in the morning with my coffee, but I’m, and I’m not giving up my coffee. Well, what happens? I’d get my coffee. I go out on my deck. I go out on my porch. I have my smoke. Okay. What would happen if you got your coffee went into your bathroom? Well, I won’t smoke because I never smoke in the house. Okay. Okay. So here’s how to begin to rewire this trigger. This pattern is to avoid the deck in the morning with your coffee and go to the bathroom with your coffee. What do you think? Oh, it helps.
Susan Kenney [16:15] So Dave mentioned in the beginning to Dr. Leeds, when you approach anything like this, any struggles people are having, having, there’s no shame. You’re not looking at it from a lack of willpower. And you look at this young man who had a debilitating case of what was diagnosed OCD. And you look at the root cause, right? Look at what happened. We have trauma in the brain and nervous system that hasn’t been released. It’s still in the brain and it’s getting worse, right? It actually over time gets worse because the brain is trying to release it, except that people’s worlds get smaller, but there’s no shame when you look at it going, okay, the organ itself isn’t functioning properly. Once we get the flexibility and the balance to that beautiful brain, we can release this urge that you have to do all of these things. And even one of the things that happened in the end was we had water bottles for everybody. Somebody picked up his water bottle accidentally and drank it. And in the beginning, he would have absolutely flipped out at the end he shrugged and said whatever right massive how freeing is that for this young man’s life
Dr. Mark Leeds [17:38] Yeah yeah it sounds incredible and yeah I know going to disneyland is probably scarier than the dump for a germaphobe
David Kenney [17:49] Yeah well he was he was having a great time and the family just you know were in tears because
Susan Kenney [17:56] The family was locked down under this too he had another sister the parents couldn’t go anywhere the family couldn’t travel anywhere and all of a sudden the whole family has freedom
Dr. Mark Leeds [18:06] Well now now a lot of the work you do is with is with addiction and I saw on your website I saw some you know some big organizations There was ASAM, which is a major organization that credentials doctors to become board certified in addiction medicine. I think there was another one right under that, and I can’t think of the name.
David Kenney [18:29] So there’s NAADAC, which is the National Association of Addiction Professionals. NAADAC has looked at our program and has approved us as an education provider or education approved. I guess that’s what it is. And so individuals who need CEs for their professional credentialing can go through our program and get CEs. You don’t always have to, but that’s an assurance of the legitimacy of that. We’re actually speaking at the NAADAC National Conference in October in Denver, Colorado. So we’ve applied and been accepted as a competitive process there. We’ve got ASAM, the American Society of Addiction Medicine. And I’ve been a long-term member of that. I was a member of the Canadian one too. We’ve got ACT Online, the Association of Training Organizations. They’re out of the UK and they’ve looked at us as a coach training program. So they looked at us non-recovery addictions wise. You know, how are we with our coaching training? We looked at ICF for coaching and steered away from that Just because recovery coaching is, I feel we need more flexibility than what ICF kind of affords in our education and teaching.
Susan Kenney [19:49] But our coaches can use the hours to go towards ICF certification if they want it.
David Kenney [19:53] And then the other thing is Susan and I are both trained and we’re invited by Dr. Amen himself, Daniel Amen. When we met him in Vancouver, he heard about our program and instantly said, you got to be an affiliate of us. So we’re one of the few affiliates here in Canada that work with the Amen method and the Amen methodologies. That’s part of our learning and education. So those are those are that’s part of our education and learning journey.
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:21] Well, it seems like with addiction treatment, you know, Canadians are way ahead of Americans and, you know, in the US of addiction treatment. I mean, you guys have somebody, I mean, I don’t know if you would even agree with some of the stuff going there. I mean, there’s the supervised consumption sites and, you know, they’re giving people drugs so they don’t have to get dangerous drugs from drug dealers. And there’s also another guy who’s been on my podcast. He works with the three principles, a spiritual movement, which I think started in Canada, which is kind of like an alternative to the 12 steps. But yeah, I mean, and yeah, so many great things come out of Canada. Actually, some of my favorite music and musicians are from there also. So and
David Kenney [21:08] We have good hockey players, too. So my thought on that is for a short period of time, do what you need to do to help with somebody who’s in an extreme case. Do whatever it needs to be to keep people, keep people alive and stabilize. And so whatever medication may need to be, then do it, do it. We need to do as a society. But ultimately, the drug sites are still delivering a poison and still keeping people hooked. So we truly believe and wish we were just in Vancouver a week ago, nine days ago at a beautiful Persian wedding, a first ever Persian wedding. Crazy fun. A lot of dancing and great music with a good friend of ours or good friends of ours. But we had to drive through east hastings in vancouver it is shocking maybe maybe well if it’s not the worst it’s one of the worst you know five six block areas in north america and it is and the issue there isn’t that people are struggling the issue is how society and governments have turned their back on people and given up and harm reduction and harm reduction is not what we said this what’s harm reduction right
Susan Kenney [22:23] When you drive through this area there’s so much harm like even even driving in a car I don’t feel safe and I know that there’s crime that’s been elevated there’s blocks and blocks of stores that have had to close so let’s put who is at harm as a society
David Kenney [22:42] Die there every day so first let’s create a program where we handle people in crisis and let’s get them stabilized. Whatever, by whatever means we were into that. That’s like somebody after a car accident. Let’s get them stabilized and let’s handle with the pain. Let’s deal with the pain. Like, let’s take the same methodology in medicine and apply it here. Here’s why. If addictions is related to the brain, and here’s the problem with addictions, you cannot get one single definition in the world. That’s a futile effort. To try and get that but the two general thoughts are it’s a brain disease or it’s a brain disorder so let’s debate disease or disorder the commonality or the two main thoughts it’s not spiritual it is brain related the brain craves it the brain chooses it the brain creates the action the brain gets relief
Susan Kenney [23:37] And it’s a physiological craving right you are physically which means that it’s driven in the body. So we have to look there first.
David Kenney [23:46] So actualized recovery is the brain first approach to lasting recovery. But there are five integrative, we call them principles or foundations, because it’s not brain only. So physiological, so the brain and the body.
Susan Kenney [24:02] And physiology drives psychology. And that’s important to understand is that we’ve got to look at the physical body first, and it’s an integrated physical solution. So it’s brain, but it’s also everything else that’s happening in the body. We have to look at the body first.
David Kenney [24:19] The second principle is psychology. And we lean into more of a positive psychology, more of Maslow’s teachings. Looking at strengths.
Susan Kenney [24:30] What are people great at? What are they unique at? And how do we build on that?
David Kenney [24:35] Viktor Frankl’s teachings, which talks about there’s a stimulus and there’s a response and in between the two there’s a gap that gap might be really small it might be a nanosec but there’s a gap so and that means I’m not powerless and 12-step programs say I’m powerless if you use science and if you follow science they’re saying and viktor frankl taught us this out of in one of his great books man’s search for meaning but there’s a stimulus and there’s a response and there’s a gap and in that gap is our freedom is our power to choose how we respond to any stimulus we humans like to give that away and say it’s not our fault and blame something else because then I’m not accountable in whatever that is why I’m speeding why I’m late for work I’m overweight why I’m overweight why I drink so much oh you yell at me it’s too stressful we like to do that to justify an action the other the other one is spirit spirit is important who I am how I smile
Susan Kenney [25:39] Yeah this is this is that part of yourself is undefinable and so unique and it’s why we have if you have more than one child you understand that each child has a different spirit
David Kenney [25:51] Yeah and finding a meaning like you have a meaning you have a great meaning well your work every day as a doctor brings meaning to you and others and that’s also a spiritual connection. And then the fourth one is connections. We like to talk about connections are not family. The connections around you are like the roots of a tree. And that supports us and helps us grow.
Susan Kenney [26:18] So if you imagine a tree that has no roots, when something happens, there’s no stability to it. So we need deep connections. And like, you know, friends that you can call on and have a good conversation with when things are going wrong. That’s that’s the connections that we need, right, to feel safe.
David Kenney [26:40] The last principle, keep well, they’re all key principles is lifestyle, specifically a brain healthy lifestyle. Make choices, food, nutrition, drink, what I am putting in my body, what I’m not putting in my body that help my brain optimize and perform on its best because the brain drives behavior. It’s not it’s not our people it’s our brain our psychology and neuroscience agree with not a lot but this they agree on brain drives my behavior my behavior is defined by my choices and my actions whether I’m a smoker whether I’m a drinker where they go for a run those are driven by the brain so let’s live a brain healthy lifestyle
Dr. Mark Leeds [27:21] Yeah yeah it makes sense And it almost sounds like, you know, that, you know, like the brain’s a computer and you’re reprogramming it through specific actions. And each one’s a little bit different. So you have to figure out how are we going to program this one? You know, like we’ve got to figure this one out now. And, you know, say each person has a different computer. And like and, you know, you don’t you don’t program a computer by by holding another, you know, holding a book up to it or whatever. I mean, you know, like here’s a keyboard. You got to sit down and type on the keyboard and program it. It takes action. And
Susan Kenney [27:59] You’ve hit on it. It is the most sophisticated hardware. The brain itself, I don’t think we’ll ever understand the intricacies, but it is physiological and it connects then to the mind. So if you think of the mind as the software, we absolutely have to get the brain functioning at its very best. So we practice CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, but what we learned very early on is first you have to have the brain healthy and in balance. Then you can do cognitive behavior therapy and people change very, very quickly.
David Kenney [28:38] So I know you know what CBT is, but CBT for everybody listening or watching is a thought drives a feeling. The feeling drives an action. And so the idea behind that is let’s change if you want to change the action first you got to change the thought here’s the missing link to that in our in our studies in our in our work the missing link is if somebody’s stuck in a parasympathetic dominant state the young man we talked about right in a parasympathetic dominant state his thoughts are ones one of fear right and so okay you’re teaching him to challenge the thought but as soon as he challenges that and says no it’s that’s a false thought it’s just a thought it’s not real the next thought is going to probably be a negative thought right and so working working at the level of thought without helping his brain get relief actually is kind of a it’s kind of a child you’re trying to row upstream it’s not going to help until you begin to help the brain release and reset and he can view the world differently so he’s getting different thoughts which create different feelings which means I’m excited to go to disney and the action is he gets to go to disneyland
Susan Kenney [29:51] And the same for people in fight or flight you have somebody that is in a responsive fight or flight it’s like the gas pedal there’s a brick on the gas pedal and they’re just go go go let’s go yeah and they’re aggressive and they want to take it on so before you do any sort of behavioral therapy, you’ve got to bring balance and relaxation to that very overactive pattern.
David Kenney [30:16] Well, I know some psychologists who are now doing some amazing work, but the first question they’re asking their new clients is, what did you eat for breakfast? What did you have for lunch? Because if you’ve had two Red Bulls, a couple danishes, and a coffee as you walked in the door, their brain is on fire and the ability to get them to stop and be calm and thoughtful becomes impaired not impossible it’s certainly impaired versus eating a brain healthy diet
Dr. Mark Leeds [30:49] Yeah yeah that makes sense well well so yeah I would imagine a lot of therapists don’t ask that question
Susan Kenney [31:00] Yeah I don’t think there’s a there’s a an emerging neuroscience approach to therapy and we’ve certainly seen a change so when we started in our first program 2011 we went into the bookstore there was very little on brain two or three right it wasn’t we were way ahead and people thought we were lunatics for looking at the brain first and now the brain is the new black right it’s everybody wants to learn more about the brain so we have this we would just feel like we got a head start for whatever reason we had this idea in 2008 and we’ve just had more ability to research it and our I don’t think there’s another program that was ever like ours we haven’t come across another one in north america for sure that was working on brain first and the efficacy of that when people understand it when therapists understand that it revolutionizes things so we’re not the only ones now we’ve got friends but it just makes sense right like you said in the beginning people don’t wake up in the morning and want to fail and that was our premise in the beginning right no no children no adults wake up and say man, I really want to screw up today. I really want to, you know, fail that test, or I really want to drink a drink that I don’t want to drink. So that’s, let’s throw that out because nobody, nobody does. So what is it? What creates that outcome for people that absolutely want to do better in their life? And you look at what drives behavior, it is the brain. So we’ve got to start there.
Dr. Mark Leeds [32:55] Yeah. Yeah. When you mentioned fight or flight and the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system, a lot of people these days are talking about the vagus nerve and there’s different devices and therapies and techniques that can somehow access the vagus nerve. And I think at Stanford, they’re actually like wiring into it directly, which I don’t think anybody wants to do. They’re actually doing surgery and implanting electrodes and dialing up electric current to the vagus nerve to try to treat depression
Susan Kenney [33:24] Which is that outside in approach again
David Kenney [33:26] Yeah yeah there’s a lot of technology you can buy online too that claims a lot of things here’s our here’s our learning if it’s an outside in approach if it stimulates the brain if it forces the brain into a certain pattern if it uses magnets I would run away from it because your brain unique to you so and neurofeedback for example which has been used a lot but in our experience we’ve had a lot of people come saying it wasn’t lasting neurofeedback takes brains to an average so your brain and the three of us we all have different brain patterns and different abilities and different optimizations I don’t want to take you dr leeds to a place of average in your temporal lobe or in your frontal lobe I want to optimize that and your brain’s really smart at being able to do that so technologies that force the brain and tablets and chemicals that force the brain are not healthy for the brain so
Susan Kenney [34:27] Here’s what’s great you’re talking about science and the and the more people begin to understand the vagus nerve is important yeah but if you look at the five principles that we’ve employed changes happen over time and it’s like you can you can also fix somebody’s heart, but if they don’t adopt a lifestyle that is different than they had before, then they’re going to have heart problems again. So this is starting at, okay, we need to build a program that is specific and unique for that person that changes how the brain is functioning over time, but they have to be responsible for those changes. This isn’t a quick fix. This isn’t you go in and get your vagus nerve stimulated and all of a sudden everything’s going to be okay you’ve got to be responsible for that change yeah
David Kenney [35:21] So dr leeds if I could jump in just this is the book that we’re writing actualized recovery it’ll be out it’ll be out this summer it’s available early or early purchases and it says actualized recovery it’s not about 12 steps recovery is a brain thing and it explains why we’re directly saying that and actualize recovery in the five principles and the brain first approach how it’s effective but that’s the methodology you asked me the first question about emergo academy here’s the here’s what I get so excited about and we’ve got a master class coming up on the 21st of june and we have them throughout the year but this is the opportunity for coaches or anybody who wants to help people whether that’s with trauma or trauma awareness trauma recovery addiction soft addictions heart addictions those repetitive broken those cycles that we continually kind of self-destruct ourselves in our lives
Susan Kenney [36:21] If you’ve got self-destructive patterns you’ve got trauma that has not been able to process through the body therefore the root of addiction comes from this trauma
David Kenney [36:33] And that’s that’s the exciting part is we coach our coaches and teach them that we’ve got an eight weeks eight week certification course and then we’ve got an 11 month master’s program and people in the master’s program then become you know kind of part of our staff and our group and everybody gets to be one of our actualized recovery warrior coaches. So that’s the exciting part is to take this knowledge. And it is proven and shown to be highly effective and go out and make an impact in the world. And most coaches today, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, most life coaches today, the number that I’ve studied and found is around 70% of life coaches today do not make an income. Why do you want to become a life coach? By the way, we both originally were life coaches many years ago. Why do you want to be a life coach is to create change well recovery coaching creates phenomenal change and you get to make some money doing it
Susan Kenney [37:33] Here’s here’s the reality you’re a medical doctor the medical system is overloaded everywhere we need to have people that are specialized in recovery to be able to support people in the medical system. And that’s what a recovery coach does. It’s that person who is specialized and has learned about trauma and learned to help lead and guide people from the crisis back to making good life choices. And that’s the brain approach to doing it. So it’s a necessary, we need recovery coaches right now. The world needs recovery coaches. More than ever. Because it’s so critical. We have, if you look at every population in the last few years, there’s a lot of suffering that’s going on, a lot of increase in substance use. And we need to help that. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Leeds [38:34] Yeah. And people who are in recovery that have overcome active addiction, a lot of them want to give back. They want to find a way that they can help other people.
Susan Kenney [38:43] This is a way to turn your pain into your passion. And in a way that you become part of something that actually provides people with hope. There’s a lot of recovery things that are hopeless, right? They build in a relapse plan at the end. We don’t build a relapse plan. We build a life plan. We that’s the lifestyle of being brain first and taking care of your brain makes it so much easier for everything else in your life to change. So we, what we do is filled with hope.
David Kenney [39:24] I want to jump on that about the relapse plan. So NLP, Neuro Linguistic, sorry, programming, NLP teaches us in the world the power of our words. And our words can actually rewire our hardware, our neurological hardware. And if we say to somebody who’s on a diet, let’s let’s create the plan for when you come off the diet right then then don’t start because the diet’s never going to work you got your cheat day built in you know and so to say to somebody who is new in recovery well let’s pre create your relapse prevention program you’re telling them right away it’s already that it’s hopeless this is just this you’re going to blow this up right now I want to state that may happen SMART Recovery by the way is very good at this in comparison to a couple other groups that I won’t name but SMART Recovery which I’m certified in as well didn’t even mention that
Dr. Mark Leeds [40:27] But I think that’s the one I saw on the website smart recovery
David Kenney [40:29] Smart recovery yeah yeah
Dr. Mark Leeds [40:31] Sorry yeah
David Kenney [40:32] They do some great things but if you slip up for a weekend and start to drink and come back monday you don’t go to day zero again as though everything’s blown up with the shame about it going okay welcome back glad you’re here what can we do moving forward and what did you learn and really it’s about focusing on lifestyle and we have seen over and over and over before somebody uses there are signs long before they use that led them that were like red flags, yellow flags, red flags. They weren’t going to work. They weren’t getting up. They left the routine. They stopped working out. They changed how they’re eating. They’re changing their friends. They’re starting to hang out with the bar friends again, but they’re drinking water at the bar. Well, that’s, there are, there are typically signs way before somebody starts to use that are lifestyle oriented, that if you with working with a coach you can catch those you’ll alleviate that trip and fall
Dr. Mark Leeds [41:36] Yeah well that’s that’s true that yeah definitely there’s early signs you know that a person could catch that you know that they’re going down the wrong path
David Kenney [41:46] Typically there always are I if you if you play it back because one of our first questions when we hear when we get that call and we have had that call is okay what are you drinking it’s the first question what are you drinking how much water are you drinking I’m drinking red bulls again well because that changes the brain right and it’s starting to over excite the brain and so and this isn’t hard this is just this is a decision and mindset which we love as well this is a mindset about not what you don’t want in life our teaching on this is what do you want in life and
Susan Kenney [42:26] We everybody that we worked with I personally can’t stand the word sober if you look at the definition of sober and I can’t imagine that anybody wants to define themselves as that it’s boring it’s dull it’s lifeless. But what we look at, and this is the psychology that we practice is this positive psychology is creating what you want. Well, I don’t want sober. I want exciting. I want adventure. I want love. I want relationships. I want, you know, to travel, whatever that is. So in, And in crafting this life as an actualized recovery coach, that’s what we help people with is what do you really want? Because it’s like a GPS. You have to put in what you want in order to achieve it. And now you’ve got the map. So when life happens, because life is going to happen, you know how to get back on that map again. You know how to you still know where you want to go.
David Kenney [43:33] Dr. Leeds, I offer you a challenge. The next time you go to a restaurant, I want you to look at the menu. I want you to figure out everything you don’t want. And I want to tell your server everything you don’t want. That’s it. Stop there. Yeah. Because you’re not going to get what you want. And the servers will be totally frustrated. Yeah. And when we look at what we don’t get, so if I’m on a diet and I, and I focus on, I don’t get pizza. I don’t get ice cream. I don’t get it. I feel this huge weight and it will win over time right versus if I focus on what I do get I have a wedding coming up I’m going to look amazing the summer is coming up my grandchildren and I want to be able to play with them if I focus on what I do want that the this new eating diet lifestyle which I prefer the word lifestyle not diet but that new way of eating becomes so easy and
Susan Kenney [44:28] Dave what you’re talking about is we look at most people in most programs approach the problem. So they’re looking at the symptom and they’re creating a short-term plan for looking at the symptom. What we want to look at is I want to take people to their best well-being, to the opportunity to have autonomy and make decisions that really fit with a value system. And then we want longevity. What everybody wants is vibrant longevity. So when you’re looking at any type of recovery and recovery can be addiction, but it can be grief related. It can be physiological. You’re recovering from having cancer treatments, whatever it is. What you really want is somebody who’s going to guide you through that process and that unlocks your personal extraordinary. So this isn’t about focusing on what we’re deficient in and looking at the problem. We have to rise above that. And emergo is a Latin phrase or a Latin word for rising above. And that’s what works long-term is helping people create what their extraordinary is, unlocking all of the power that they have within by looking at those five principles.
Dr. Mark Leeds [45:58] Wow, that’s incredible. Dave and Susan Kenney of emergoacademy.com, thank you for joining me today. This has really been eye-opening. I think a lot of people, You know, obviously people who are doing well in the recovery and they want to get back to the community, they can benefit by learning how they can be coaches. And also doctors that don’t know what to do with their patients with addictions because they’re overwhelmed with way too many patients. They have somewhere to look now. And I like your approach and I like how, you know, you’re not just another coach. You’re very credentialed. Your program is proven. It’s based on science. It’s been looked at by by some very established and respected organizations that we all respect in the community, like ASAM and the other ones you had mentioned. It sounds like a great program. And I think anyone listening to this should reach out and look at your website and reach out to you. So thank you. Thank you.
David Kenney [47:03] Dr. Leeds, it’s a pleasure to meet with you. And we really value your work in sharing this work, the world and your podcast. I’ve been listening to it. It’s there’s some deep learning in there. So I thank you for the opportunity to visit with you today.
Susan Kenney [47:18] Great work in helping have those conversations that are helping people make better choices. Thank you.
