There Is No Such Thing As Drug and Alcohol Treatment For Adolescents, with Robert Schwebel and Lynn Smith
Host: Brenda Zane, brenda@hopestreamcommunity.org
Instagram: @hopestreamcommunity
Guest: Lynn Smith, Elements Wilderness and Robert Schwebel, The Seven Challenges
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About this episode:
When Dr. Robert Schwebel was approached by a local treatment agency about developing a drug program for adolescents, he was not interested. He decided to meet with the agency about the proposal, but also to share hard truths that he thought would encourage them to find someone else: Don't promise drug free kids overnight. Help them learn to make good decisions rather than telling them what to do. Incorporate life counseling. Rather than rejecting him, the program agreed to Robert’s suggestions and hired him.
Episode resources:
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Robert: 0:01
People use drugs in response to the circumstances of their lives. And when they use drugs, it affects the circumstances of their lives. They go together hand in hand. You can't, you can't separate them. You're really doing life counseling when you work with young people. people or any, actually any age group that has issues with, with drug use. There are reasons people use drugs and if we're not dealing with the reasons, if we're just telling people you need a quid and that's all there is to it, we're, we're really living them out in the cold.
Brenda: 0:42
You're listening to HopeStream. If you're parenting a young person who misuses substances, is in a treatment program or finding their way to recovery, you're in the right place. This is your private space to learn from experts. And gain encouragement and support from me, Brenda Zane, your host and follow mom to a child who struggled. This podcast is just one of the resources we offer for parents. So after the episode, head over to our website at hopestreamcommunity. org. I'm so glad you're here. Take a deep breath, exhale, and know that you have found your people. And now let's get into today's show. Hello. I am glad to be back today. I had the great pleasure of sitting down with two incredible humans for today's show. It's one of the very cool benefits of hosting a podcast. I get to talk with people that normally aren't accessible on a day to day basis. So I wanted to get an inside look at the seven challenges. Because it is a model that was designed specifically to be used with adolescents to help empower them to do the things they want in life. It moves away from putting excessive blame on the individual. And it's a stark contrast to traditional approaches to working with adolescents with drug problems that typically, as you know, produce high dropout rates and less than ideal outcomes. The tendency in adolescent treatment programs is to get the young people to immediately say, I will quit forever, which often leads to either increased defiance or increased dishonesty with the young person telling the adult what they want to hear. It also leads to failure among certain youth. Who follow adult directives to quit, but then relapse because they don't have a solid foundation for success. It's not a surprise that most young people don't engage in drug treatment of their own free will. Most are dragged by their saggy genes, and that's because they're in the early stages of change. The seven Challenges program starts where the young person is. Which is usually resistant and reluctant to change, not where adults wish they might be or where sometimes young people will pretend to be. Ready and willing and prepared to succeed with immediate abstinence. So instead of demanding a commitment to immediate and indefinite abstinence, the seven challenges program places a special emphasis on creating a climate of mutual respect where young people can talk openly and honestly about themselves and about their substance use treatment programs that use the seven challenges, engage their clients in actively thinking about their use of alcohol and other drugs. And how it is impacting their lives. It's a model and message that's often important for minority groups who are struggling to overcome negative social forces in which they're operating. And for this important conversation, I tapped into the source himself, Robert Schwebel, the creator of the seven challenges, as well as Lynn Smith, family therapist and parent guide at Elements Wilderness, where they've used this model with youth in their care for many years. I can't wait for you to hear about this very powerful and impactful model. So listen in to this episode with Robert Schwebel, creator of the seven challenges and Lynn Smith with Elements Wilderness. Enjoy. Robert and Lynn, how fun is this three of us on the phone having a conversation about stuff that we're all passionate about. So I so appreciate you both hopping on the phone with me. Really giving some insight to parents that they wouldn't typically get. That's what I love about doing this podcast is like, when is a parent in the middle of who knows Nebraska going to get to sit down with the two of you? So that's what we're doing today. So welcome.
Robert: 5:04
Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Brenda: 5:08
Why don't we just start out you know, we don't need a complete history because we don't have that much time and you all have incredible backgrounds, but just maybe Robert, you could start and give us a quick one on one on how did you get to be doing what you're doing today? What was the path for you to decide you really wanted to
Robert: 5:29
Well, it started out really quite coincidentally when I was a graduate student way, way back. I I had a mentor who wrote a book called game, Claude Steiner, his name is, and he wrote a book called games, alcoholics play. And I was working with him and he started sending me referrals and I got fascinated by it. In the 1980s, I became the director of a publicly funded agency that worked with drug issues. It was a drug treatment program. In 1989, I wrote a book for parents, a drug prevention book called Saying No Is Not Enough. Which I thought was the end of an era of working with adolescents who fascinated me But I was thought I was going into more general private practice But I was approached by a treatment center in Tucson and they asked me to develop a drug treatment program for adolescents
Brenda: 6:24
Okay, Lynn, what about you? How did you end up doing what you're doing?
Lynn: 6:28
Well, much like Robert probably my where I am today is more by coincidence than by planning or design I have always been interested in being in the outdoors. I've always interested in personal development and I, you know, found myself working in a wilderness therapy program as I was doing my undergraduate degree and I worked in wilderness therapy programs through my graduate degree. And you know, one of the things that I noticed as I was working. In Wilderness Therapy as a, as a field guide, I was you know, on the boots on the ground field guide is that, you know, a very, very large percentage of the clients that we were working with had substance abuse, substance use issues that, that I felt like we weren't necessarily fully addressing. I mean, this is 30 years ago, 20, 25 years ago. I thought we were doing a lot of great work with helping young people. get motivated, gain more insight be able to understand, you know, the issues that were challenging their lives. But I don't think we were always talking and addressing the substance use issues. And so I ended up in a As part of my undergraduate degree in a substance abuse counseling program to learn more about that. And, you know, I've always been interested in that and, and then as I became a therapist I kind of always made that part of my, Practice. And I actually saw Robert speak. My former employer, the former program I worked at, he probably doesn't remember this, hired him to come out and speak about the seven challenges and teach us about the seven challenges. And it just really resonated with me about this would be a way that we could incorporate what we were doing in the wilderness. And, and really help our field guides and clients be able to create helpful discussions about substance use. So, when we started Elements, it was one of the things that I just wanted to bring in. The seven challenges wasn't for, It's not for the client, it's for our staff so they know how to create helpful dialogue, helpful conversations, helpful interventions to help our clients understand and make thoughtful decisions about their substance use.
Robert: 9:02
I was smiling because I didn't know that's how we met. I remember since then, but I didn't remember back then. Yeah.
Brenda: 9:11
It's, it always is fun to go way back and kind of figure out where all those connections happened. And you know, I know you land because you were my son's therapist and you know, he had pretty severe substance use issues when he was with you. And so I, I'm always just curious about because I think as a parent, you just feel so tongue tied when you're trying to talk about This issue with your kids. And so I, I remember the seven challenges, but not, I don't remember enough about it to to do it justice. So I would love to have you, Robert, since you are the creator of this, just talk about kind of, why did you feel that this was necessary? Like what was missing? How did this come to be? And then maybe you can just give us a snippet of what the seven challenges are.
Robert: 10:00
It's interesting because we're talking about coincidence here once, once again, when I wrote saying no, it's not enough. I think I mentioned this already. I thought I was going to go to a more general practice and I was approached by a local treatment agency here in Tucson, where, where I live. And they asked if I would develop a drug program for adolescents. And my initial reaction was no. You know, that I'd listen to these advertisements on television and everyone, this is like 1990, and everyone's saying, if your kid's using drugs, send them to us. And these residential treatment centers, which were really cash cows back then, I felt it was kind of creating a panic. So with, with parents, just this tremendous alarm at the first sign of drug use, send them here to a residential treatment center was really overkill. And my first reaction was, I didn't want to do that. My wife reminded me that we just had a baby and maybe you ought to at least talk with them. You did so much pro bono work all those years, at least talk it over with them. So, I went in and I said things that I didn't think were likely to land me the, the job. I said, first of all, you can't promise drug free kids overnight. That's just totally unrealistic. I said, second, you, you know, working with adolescents is completely different than working with adults. You know, most of them At least a lot of them don't yet have firm addiction problems. They haven't, their use hasn't reached the level of addiction. Of course, some of them have. But you've got to work in developmentally appropriate ways. You have to, we have to be helping kids learn to think and make decisions rather than telling them what to do. And the third thing I said that I didn't think would be likely to land me the job, since they asked me to develop a drug treatment center, I said, you know, there's really no such thing as drug treatment. If you get right down to it, people use drugs in response to the circumstances of their lives. And when they use drugs, it affects the circumstances of their lives. So, you know, what I'm saying is, they go together hand in hand. You can't, you can't separate them. You're really doing life counseling when you work with young people, or any, actually any age group that has issues with, with drug use. So, you know, that there are reasons people use drugs and if we're not dealing with the reasons, if we're just telling people you need a quid and, and and that's all there is to it, we're, we're really living them out in the cold. I laid out that ground, groundwork and they said, okay. And I didn't realize the power of having written a book that they would then want me. So I looked around the country and basically all I found, this was 1990. was watered down 12 step programs. That, that was largely what was out there. And there, there was there was no talk at that time of co occurring issues, of, of the problems that go along with drug problems, that, that help create drug problems. So I had kind of put my foot in the door. in my mouth and said, this is what a program ought to look like. And I went and I thought I could pull one off the shelf and there was none. So it was at that point where I started writing this program with no, by the way, grandiose goals that Lynn you'd one day be sitting in an audience where I'm talking about and people begin to hear about it would catch on. It was really for this local. Treatment center here in Tucson. So that, that's how I ended up starting it. And I had a, I wanted to figure out a way to do a program that supports adolescence development. That is, recognizes that you can't just make kids quit using drugs and you can't expect it to happen overnight in a, just because someone's in treatment. And that we have to work in ways that. Support young people to learn, to make their own wise decisions rather than trying to make them do the things that we might wish they would do as parents or as professional counselors.
Brenda: 14:15
Right. So despite your effort to not get the job, you did get the job and then you created this. So what just, and I know you don't, we don't have time to go into a lot of detail in each of the seven challenges, but just to give. people a quick glance at what those are. Could you just run through what the seven challenges are?
Robert: 14:35
Sure. I mean, it basically starts out the first challenge is we've got to create an atmosphere of safety because if, if, if clients can't feel like, or young people can't feel they can talk about what's on their mind, we're not going to get the truth. And by the way, I think that's widely forgotten. And a lot of times nowadays in treatment people come in and they ask what's going on with your life and your drug use and they expect immediately people to bare their souls. And I think that's not very wise, that the first thing you have to do is step back and form the relationship. Then you basically have to help, well, then you have to help them understand you're not going to judge them, you're not going to control them. That's all part of the process. First challenge to set the, set the climate to, to, to make, to help young people feel that it's safe to talk what's really, about what's really going on in their lives. And one of the things that helps them talk, and this applies both in our work in counseling, but for the parents who are listening, is if you want, if you're interested in your young people talking about the harm from drugs, it really helps to start with what amounts to our second challenge, which is, what do you like about drugs? I mean, it's surprising, but that really opens up young people they expect us to just be judging them and saying everything's wrong, they're all bad. I mean, we have to be smart enough as professionals or as parents to recognize that when people are using drugs, They're seeking benefits. They want the relaxation. They want the excitement. They want they, they want to maybe chill their anger. They want to maybe be able to fall asleep at night. There are all kinds of reasons that people are using drugs. So that's, so our second challenge is that, and that begins to open kids up to talk about the third challenge, which is the harm. Basically, what we're helping young people do is weigh the benefit. Versus the harm from their drug use in a calm, relaxed way, where they're not being judged, where we can validate, I understand that's what you like about drugs. And cautiously without promoting defensiveness, without trying to make them change, get them in a relaxed way to talk about their own concerns about drugs. The fourth challenge, and this will be very interesting to parents I think, the fourth challenge is, We ask young people, what is your responsibility and what is the responsibility of others for your problems? And that's really important because one of the things we want to do, and we want to help people feel comfortable enough to talk about the harm from drugs, we want to try to remove the shame and excessive self blame. And that works both ways. We have the same thing with parents. Everybody's different. I'm totally to blame. The parents feel they're totally to blame. The kids feel they're totally to blame. And on top of that, there's a world that has this huge impact on, on people, so there's so many factors that work to help, that kind of work together to end up with people beginning to have problems with, with drugs, you know, that Maybe they never learned to manage their anger, or maybe they're living in poverty, or maybe no one's ever held them accountable. They've always been given everything they want. The effort with Challenge 4 is to help young people have sort of balanced sense of responsibility, so that they're not feeling shame, so that they can talk freely and say, Yes, I do have this problem. So that's 4.
Brenda: 18:06
That's a huge one. The shame part of it is so huge.
Robert: 18:10
Who wants to admit problems if you feel shame to yourself? It's hard to own up to it, but it helps to put it in context, to begin to see where it all came from. The fifth challenge is we thought about where we were headed and where we wanted to go. And that's because, you know, in adolescence, you're thinking about the future. That's what you're supposed to be doing. You're preparing for adulthood. So if you keep doing what you're doing, where are you headed? We ask young people. And, where would you like to go? If young people are using drugs, and they feel like there's no future, if there's not something more important than immediate pleasure, or immediate relief from pain, It'd be hard for them to change. What really ends up motivating people to want to change is they see that, well, drugs may feel good right now, they may help me fall asleep at night, they may, Give me a lot of fun and excitement, but if I keep doing what I'm doing, it's not going to lead to what I want to get out of life. And to the extent we can inspire young people, or adults of course, when they're in counseling, to see something more important, that's what ultimately gives them the power to stand up to these enormous urges that they may have to use drugs. So, looking to the future is really an important part of helping people.
Brenda: 19:47
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Lynn: 21:20
Well, I, I think absolutely they can and, and Many of the clients that we work with have have lost sight of that for for various reasons, right? Because of the challenges they're facing in their life, you know, because of the substance use, and it's absolutely helpful and essential to start helping young people start to look at who do I want to be? Where do I want to go? I mean, that is the developmental one of the developmental tasks of a Of an adolescent and a young adult is to start to do that. So you're, you're just helping young people engage in what is appropriately developmentally right to start to look at that. And I absolutely agree with Robert that. Yeah. Why would you stop? Smoking weed and having fun and doing what, what feels good. If, if you can't see that there's something worthwhile out there, something, and then many of the clients that we work with, it's, you know, because of the co occurring issues, right? It's, it's hard to see that. So it's, it's a great way. to help build some motivation other than what I think traditional drug treatment, especially traditional drug treatment 10 years ago was focusing on the harm and the consequences and you're in trouble, right? That, that, those aren't great motivators, but if you can get someone to see, Hey, I want to go to college someday, or yeah, I want to be, I don't know, a carpenter, right? Like, and I don't, yeah, I probably can't do that if I'm high all day or I want to snowboard all the time. Right. I want to do whatever. Like it's hard to, that's my own stuff, right? Like it's hard to do that if you're, if you're using drugs, right. Or I do want to have a family someday. So it's really a great. I actually love challenge five quite a bit, and I think it's one of the more help challenge to I really love, which Robert talked about, like looking at. Well, why do you like it? Right? Why is it important to you where you can start to look at? Well, yeah, what are what are the other co occurring issues? There's probably a good reason why this person is using. And if we can give people start to identify, well, why wouldn't I use right? Like, other than mom and dad are mad, right? Or I'm in trouble at school. Those those usually aren't That greater reasons to stop for a lot of people,
Brenda: 23:47
right? And when you ask those questions about what is it doing for you, that gives you clues about what's potentially lacking, I would imagine just in, in through their answers of kind of finding out. Okay. Well, if you're having a really hard time sleeping, why is that? Right? Like there, there's like a little breadcrumb that that can tell you other areas to look into. So I think that's really valuable. And that's something that parents can do too.
Robert: 24:14
Brenda, that's tremendously insightful. I mean, that's what part of what challenge two is about. What do you like about drugs? It relaxes me. I Well, then the question is, what is making you tense? It allows me to fall asleep at night. Well, that's insomnia. What's, what's causing it? What's on your mind? It allows me to not blow up in anger. I get in trouble when I blow up in anger. What's making you so angry? And what anger skills can we help teach you to manage your anger? It's absolutely the window to the co occurring problems. And that's our point of view, that it's not all about drugs. It's part about drugs, and it's part about life.
Brenda: 24:52
Absolutely. And, and what I see with the parents in our community is once they latch onto that concept, it removes so much blame and shame and anger, and it starts to make sense to them. Like, Oh yeah, I guess if I. Was not able to sleep or I never fit in with my friends. And then this one thing instantly fixed all of that. That makes sense. Like, and I see the light in their eye. Like I, and maybe you see this too in the folks that you work with. It's like, Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Like. He's been anxious since he came out of the womb, like this would make sense. So I think it's a beautiful tool for parents to use. Also, if they're trying to kind of move their kids toward accepting some help, to start those dialogues earlier.
Robert: 25:47
And by the way, you know, you watch, I know not a lot of people watch television anymore. It's mainly streaming, but if you do watch television, All these advertisements about drugs, you know, there's a drug solution to everything. So let's, let's, let's, you know, get even broader here. It's not just parents can see that, they can also see that we live in this whole culture that's encouraging people to make uncomfortable feelings go away. Difficulty sleeping go away. Take one of these pills and everything will be better. What a surprise we have young people using drugs when that's the culture. It's a drug oriented culture.
Brenda: 26:27
You know, I think as parents, we try to set up this like friction free life for our kids. And we try to smooth everything out and we try to give them everything they can have and the best school and the best sports and the, you know, whatever. And then they're inevitably going to bump up against friction in this world. And then we haven't really prepared them. to deal with it, because we've tried to just make everything so smooth.
Robert: 26:56
Parenting, in a sense, is about giving up control. You know, when you have a baby, you make all the decisions. And by the time your baby is more or less 18 years old, they're expected to be in control of their own life. And little by little, we need to give them more responsibility and expect more control. Them to behave in more responsible ways, give them more freedom and expect more responsible behavior and kind of watch it as we go along. We can't, we can't do everything to them and expect everything to be fine at the end. You know, do every fix everything, fix every problem, bail them out of all their difficult situations and expect that they have the skills to handle those situations.
Brenda: 27:39
Yeah. It's a, it's a tricky balance for sure. What is Step six.
Robert: 27:46
Challenge six is to make thoughtful decisions both about our drug use and our lives.
Lynn: 27:52
What I love about this model is Nobody's saying it's a problem, right? Like it's challenge six where the client gets to decide, yeah, how much of a, is it a problem? What am I going to do about it? What am I going to do about my life? And so it's, it's minimizing, right? I don't think it's hard to completely get away from if someone's in a treatment program, like elements or, you know, parents are enrolling their child in an IOP somewhere, or it's hard to. Kind of get away from that idea completely that people see it as a problem, but you're as much as possible allowing the client to decide, yeah, how much of a problem is this and what am I going to do about it? And what am I going to do about my other issues in my life? And hopefully by that point, they've been able to identify. How this all fits together. The other thing is we're not going into it thinking you're addicted, right? Or this, you have to stop or, and what I love about it, how it fits in at elements is we're working with clients who have a pretty wide spectrum of substance use, right? And so for some of our clients, maybe it is more, Appropriate for, for them to take on more abstinence. Right. And for some, maybe not. Right. And so, but we're, we're trying to stay out of the business of deciding that for, for our clients and the families we work with.
Brenda: 29:24
I'm so glad you said that. Yeah.
Robert: 29:26
And it doesn't mean that we don't have opinions, right, Lynn? I mean, we have opinions. We recognize things. But our goal is to somehow get the young people thinking for themselves. Let them identify the problem. Get them to see that without saying the sorts of things like doing the finger pointing and the accusing and the labeling and the diagnosing and stuff. It simply gets them defensive. We need to learn as counselors and as parents to have relaxed discussions and to really hear the other person's point of view. And and, you know, if it's a free discussion and a back and forth discussion without pressure, it's like a hundred times more likely that young people will say, you know, now that I think about it, that is a problem. If we're trying to tell them and convince them, they're just going to push back. We know that. We see. We see all this they're either going to lie and say, I don't even do drugs, you don't know what's going on, or they're going to fight back and, and get defensive, you know, those, those sorts of reactions and, you know, fits in our political world today, it fits in our marriages, it fits in our relationships with our children. If we can just relax and listen to each other and create an atmosphere in which everybody can talk, people are more open and more willing to talk about things and we can learn from each other.
Brenda: 30:50
It's hard to wrap your head around because as a parent, you're so terrified, especially today with fentanyl. So if you're, if your child is using substances. There is a very high probability that they're going to get fentanyl. And so you, all you want to do is make this change as fast as possible. And so I think the default that parents go to is just like, we're shutting this down. You are grounded. We're taking away the car. We're taking away the phone. We're taking away the iPad because they're, they're just working out of fear. Which is understandable. And I think what's so, what you just said, Robert, about we need to be able to relax, which I know is almost impossible if you know your child's using substances, but find a way in your brain because that to be able to relax and have these conversations is the fastest way it, it seems counterintuitive. Cause it's like, I got to do all this talking and I got to ask you all these questions and I got to like use some psychology. Can I just like. This is not how this goes in my house, right? But what I try to get people to understand is I know it seems like a lot of work and it is work, but it is going to be the fastest path to getting through to your child.
Lynn: 32:15
In my current role at Elements, I'm parent coach, parent guide, and so much of what I'm working on with parents to be able to have these thoughtful conversations, right? We have to regulate, the adults have to be regulated. And that's where a lot of the work is for counselors and parents is, yes, I have to manage my own panic, right? I have to own that. I have to do my own work to be able to to be able to have those conversations, to be able to employ thoughtful boundaries, right? Because that boundaries, right? Thank you. For parenting, it still is a part of what we do, but if we're doing that when we're panicked and we're scared and we're letting that drive the conversations and drive the decisions, right? The chances are that they may not be helpful and they may actually be counterproductive. What I love about the seven challenges, it helps our new counselors learn how to have relationship, right? Like if you go in guns blazing and you're saying you have a problem and you need to stop, that's not a great way to build a relationship. But if you can. Take a deep breath and say, Hey, tell me about why you like this, right? Tell me what it does for you. It's, it's the foundational piece of building and if parents can do that, and I, and I understand it's really hard because you're, yeah, you, you, you're scared and it makes sense. That's really. Some of the decisions your Children are making are probably really dangerous, and it does require self care and doing the work to be able to regulate. It's the same work that we're asking our our Children to do as well. So. I
Robert: 33:58
mean, the thing about relationship is just keeping the contact. Talk about other things. If a young person is involved with drugs, heavily, it's already affecting some other things. Let that discussion lead to the drugs, rather than starting with the drugs. You know, you know, I notice what's going on in school with your grades, or you know, you seem kind of moody these days. What's going on? I wonder. You know, how are things going for you? I mean, the more we stay in touch, the more we have other sorts of discussions, the easier it is to have the hard discussions. And the more we can relax and be acceptant, instead of saying, you have an awful report card, you know, this is an outrage, this is all because of drugs. You know, if the grades are going down, you know, have a very supportive conversation. I noticed, you know, that you're How are you feeling? Well, I'd even start with how are things going in school? How are you feeling about school? What about your classes? How do you feel about the grades? Work your way over to the grades. And then what might be affecting the grades? I mean, any way we can maintain the closeness and the contact and the interest and the curiosity without judgment, without panic, I think it makes it easier for us, too, to think about it as what we're really trying to do is stay connected with things. Our children who we love, we want to stay connected.
Brenda: 35:21
Okay. So we talk about thoughtful decisions in challenge six and now
Robert: 35:29
challenge seven is, is simple challenge seven. We followed through on our decisions and we saw how they're working. I mean, I'm not literally saying it, but it's check them out because we all make decisions and some work out and some don't. As we all know. Human beings, that's the way things go, and we want to teach our young people, that's the way things go. So you may have made a decision, for example, to limit your drug use, and it hasn't worked out. Let's figure out what's going on, or you may have made a decision to quit using drugs. Let's figure out why that's not succeeding. Or you may have decided to and maybe it is working. Or you may have decided to to, to try to develop more friendships. How's, how's that going? It's reviewing our decisions and seeing how they're going. And being willing, if it's not working out, to do what we Hopefully all of us do in life. We look at what's going well and leave it alone and what's not going well or as well as we'd like it to be going, we try to figure out what, what the problem is. So you could go back and kind of review it. Well, I said I was going to quit using drugs, but you know, it's like I can't fall asleep at night. I keep using cause I can't fall asleep. So we'd say, let's go back and work on what's keeping you awake. Let's figure out what's causing this. And you go back and continue to work things through.
Brenda: 36:46
So is this a series? of challenges that have to be done in order? Good
Robert: 36:54
question. We're working on all of the challenges all the time, actually. The only thing that's linear is there, there are journals that young people write in, and in addition to the face to face conversations, young people write in journals and the counselors write back and they go back and forth between counselors and clients because young people and adults, we actually, we have an adult program too. They're willing to write things that they might not necessarily say face to face because there's no immediate audience and also when you're doing journaling, you get a chance to, you know, reflect when you're face to face. People kind of expect an immediate answer. When you do journals, you get a chance to think about it and reflect. So the journals are sequential. But in terms of what's going on, a young person might say, well, you know, I got high the other day and you know, which is challenge one, being honest and having a relationship where you can talk and challenge three is I think I'm in trouble with my probation officer and challenge two, I think I did it because I can't fall because I'm not falling asleep and you could even work in challenge four. Let's bring in the parents here. You know, my parents have been on my back because I'm doing so poorly in school and, you know, maybe I need to learn to talk with them in order to, you know, So you'd be working, that was a really good question. You're working on them all the time, you know, all of them all the time.
Brenda: 38:15
And Lynn, what do you see, because I'm sure some of the kids that you're working with at Elements have been to other programs, so this isn't their first rodeo, right? They've shown up at Elements, they've been somewhere else, and this approach might be drastically different than something that they've experienced before. What kind of response do you see from the young people that you guys work with? when they are offered these challenges and, and sort of a very different approach.
Lynn: 38:46
Every, every client in the work of is different. Every Everybody's had a different path, but I mean, I would say in general, probably especially 10 years ago that a lot of clients would say, so, so you're going to let me use, you know, you're going to, you're going to let me use, you know, and, and it, and it does, it creates an interesting discussion because we can start to say, well, we, we were never going to let you use or not, that's always going to be your decision. Right. And I think what that. Said, especially early on was to be that. Yeah, there was a lot of programs out there that had the expectation right from the beginning that you were gonna, you know, it was an abstinence based program and to get through the program, you had to say you were going to be sober and which, which I mean, I think Robert would agree. That's very backwards, right? We can't make decisions about anything in life, right? And this is the developmental part about this. We're teaching young people how to make thoughtful, helpful decisions about their life. And we would want someone to think about the decision and about what the cost, what the benefit, what's it really going to take. I've seen growth, right? I've seen growth in myself. I've seen growth in our industry where I think more programs now are better at. Building relationship, understanding that it's, it's, you can't make young person say, Hey, I'm going to be sober. That model doesn't necessarily work for a lot of clients and especially elements because we have a pretty broad, broad spectrum of, we don't always, we, you know, I would say there's Quite a few of our clients who aren't substance abuse primary, that's not the primary issue. It's usually on the periphery. And that's another reason why I really love the seven challenges and why we brought it in is because, yeah, we, it's, it's a model that's appropriate and works well with maybe clients who are very early on, who have just started experimenting. It's a great way to say, Hey, let's help you make this. Let's help you continue to make thoughtful decisions about this.
Brenda: 40:49
Well, it feels like a very respectful approach, meeting somebody where they are, letting them know that it's there. You know, they have agency over this and, and to just ask them to consider some things, right. It, it just feels very respectful. It's kind of the only word I could think of that comes to me. So Robert, I know we have to wrap up here in a minute, but how could you just compare or contrast this to. Cause I'm sure there's people listening who are like, but wait a minute, I don't understand. Is this in addition to, or is this in competition with, or like how, how do these two fit together or do they not at all?
Robert: 41:25
Well, they're very different, you know, from one thing, the 12 steps is, is a support group. You know, it's a peer support group. The seven challenges is a counseling. I mean, another message that I think is very different is the message of 12 Steps is, is that, you know, you have an addiction, you must admit you have an addiction as sort of a premise. And we say, we're not here to tell you, label you, tell you what your problem is. We certainly not going to call you an addict. And you, we're here to help you evaluate your, your problem and see how serious it is. We're not going to tell you you have this disease and you have to go to meetings for the rest of your life. We're going to work with you to figure out what the problem is and how we can address it together. We have no requirement for immediate abstinence. It's not a precondition. In fact, I think that's kind of sad when it's a precondition. In order to get in, you have to do something you might not be ready to do. So what does it come back when you hit rock bottom? That's pretty sad. I mean, we, we welcome people who have no interest in quitting when they come, have very little interest, have, have a lot of interest or, or want to. We want to be open to everybody and figure out where they're at and be able to respond to it. I mean, the other thing that I think is interesting is the 12 steps talks about making amends for all the harm you do. And if we're talking about adolescence, you know, the research about adolescence and treatment, like 40 to 80 percent, depending on the treatment facilities of the young people, have had trauma in their life. I mean, it's a little out of whack to say to them, you have to make amends for all the harm you do without, Helping them see some of how the situation has led to the creation of their problems. So, it, it's really very, very different. We do not label. We do not tell people how they must behave. We are counseling. We, in fact, our message is you are powerful. You can control your life. And in fact, Only you can take control of your drug use. I mean, the you are powerless message is kind of interesting. It gives people an excuse to say, well, it's a disease and it's, I can't do anything about it other than perhaps take a medication or turn to a higher power. I mean, our message is, If, if spirituality helps you, sure, involve that, but ultimately it's you who decides what you put in your body or don't put in your body, and you are capable of making decisions to change. It's not easy. It may be the hardest thing you ever did in your life if you're heavily addicted, it may be the hardest thing you ever do, but it can be done. And that's what we say to young people. We want to support you in building a satisfying and fulfilling lives. We're not here simply to tell you you have a problem and you can never use drugs again. We're here to help you figure out how to have a really meaningful and joyful and successful life. And you can do it is our message.
Brenda: 44:41
Well, thank you. So, so much. This was incredibly enlightening and I will make sure in the show notes that there's links to the seven challenges. And is there like a program finder or how do you find a program that is using the seven challenges?
Robert: 44:56
Our website, www dot seven challenges. It gives, it gives a phone number.
Brenda: 45:02
Okay, perfect. Can't thank you enough for. Really amazing work and information and thank you for helping all the young people that you have both of you
Robert: 45:12
Thank you for having us and it's a pleasure to talk with both of you. Thank you It's great to talk to both of you.
Brenda: 45:19
Okay, my friend. That's a wrap for today Don't forget to download the new ebook worried sick It's totally free and will shed so much light on positive tools and strategies You can use right now to start creating conditions for change in your home You and in your relationships. It's at HopeStreamCommunity. org forward slash worried. And as always, you can find any resources mentioned during today's show at brendazane. com forward slash podcast. That is where every episode is listed and you can search by keywords, episode number or the guest name. Plus we've created lay lists for you, which make it easier to find episodes grouped by topic. And those are at brendazane. com forward slash playlists. Please be extraordinarily good to yourself today. Take a deep breath. You have got this. You are not doing it alone and I will meet you right back here next week.