Episode 17: The Matrimony of AA + Therapy

Episode Summary

This week I’m getting personal about the marriage of AA and therapy, and how both have shaped my sobriety, my relationships, and the way I run my business. I share how therapy led me to recognize my drinking problem, what I’ve learned from working the steps, and why sharing a problem can make it feel less overwhelming. We also talk about honesty, feedback, making amends, and taking what I learn back into the world. AA is the path that has worked for me, and I hope this conversation reminds you that support is available in many forms.

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julianleaver.com | @julianleaver

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Full Episode Transcript

Today we are going to actually focus a little bit on the matrimony part, but not the matrimony that you would think we're going to talk about. Today. We're going to talk about the matrimony of AA and therapy and how that has really helped me in my business get extreme clarity and have a good understanding of how to serve you as my clients and serve you as my vendor partners and serve you as my team. Frankly, I know my team is listening. So this is also for you today because the journey to in sobriety, we talked about it here a lot.

I know we've touched on it a little bit. We've it's, it's not really the elephant in the room anymore because we ripped that Band-Aid off. I feel like on day one because I'm pretty open about this and Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not about being anonymous yourself. It's about being anonymous for other people who are in it, right? It's not my job to tell you someone else who is in AA. But it's totally fine for me to talk about the principles of AA and how they apply to my life and how they apply to my business and how they apply to my relationship and how they apply to running a team because they're cool and they're universal.

And the coolest thing I think about being in AA is that everybody is so different. Everybody comes from every different walk of life, every different ethnicity, every different sexuality, every different socio economic group. Like it is truly a melting pot cross section of the world. And that's amazing. There are not that many rooms that I know of that you can walk into and be inspired by someone who the only thing that you have in common is a that's pretty sick. And so I would be foolish to throw those tools away and not talk about them here with you. And why is this a marriage?

It's a marriage because the therapy really led me to AA. I had made a string of horrible decisions, which is really truly another podcast, not even this one in some relationships. And I couldn't figure out why I couldn't make it work. I couldn't figure out where the wires were being crossed or why I was still making these poor decisions about who I wanted to be with and what I was trying to accomplish in that. And so I went to therapy. And it was really after this horrible trip that I had been on, which is another story also for another time, that I had basically had to boot a boyfriend off of this trip.

It was so bad. And then a huge blow up with my sister, which it was so fucked up, frankly, that shouldn't have happened and was completely my responsibility. And she was a champion and had been in some therapy and really mirrored back to me at that moment some serious boundaries. And I thought, oh, that's oh, those are some boundaries there. Like how do I get that? That's what I want? And that led me into AA that that led me into therapy, not to AA ultimately to AA so led me into therapy. And so then I went to therapy to work on the stuff from my childhood, right.

And we get into that in another episode, like we'll deal with all that at another time, But all of it needed to be worked through this trauma from my childhood as an adult, not so much as a child. I had worked through it as a child, but never really as an adult. So I thought, OK, I'm going to go, I'm going to work through this stuff. It's going to get some clarity. But the problem was that in working through the trauma every single week, it made me want to drink more. It's the honest truth to deal with all the emotions that were coming up and the trauma and you have to like work through it, right?

So this is horrible. And so it's like months and months of this of this cycle. Like, how do you break the cycle? This is horrible. Like you go to therapy on Monday and then you drink your way through the week and then you have to go to therapy again on Monday and clean up the wreckage from the last week and not even really deal with the stuff that was like fucked up that needed to be dealt with. So finally enough was enough. And in AA, we say you're sick and tired of being sick and tired. And so I went in and I told my therapist I think I have a problem with drinking.

And she said, I think you do. What do you want to do about that? And I said, I know exactly what to do. I'm going to do this. And so I found myself in AA. And luckily for me, I haven't had to have a drink since, which coincidentally is also ten years ago. So the founding of Julian Leaver Events in May 18th, 2020 or 2016 and then my sobriety June 1st, 2016. And so I've been in therapy with the same therapist and I've been in AA this entire time, this 10 years of this business. And so it's all grown together.

I've grown, the business has grown, my relationship with a higher power has grown all at the same time. It's really been like this, almost a rocket ship launching me into the future. And it's just allowed for me to have a lot of clarity in terms of showing up for you in the best way that I know how, and learning lessons in the most sober way possible. And being able to accept those lessons and internalize them and really work to make myself better for me first, for my husband 2nd, and ultimately for you. And that's a hugely powerful thing. And I think the coolest thing about AA is that it's pretty simple, right?

It's pretty simple. You have to go to the meetings, you have to work with a sponsor, and you have to work the steps, right? There's 12 steps. If you're interested in it, we'll put a link in the show notes so that you can go and find out some more information about AA and the amazing things that it does. But what's really cool in the brief, I'll give you like a just a quick brief overview of it, because what's great about it is that it gets you to shrink your ego and be the best that you can be to show up in every situation as best as you can.

And if you don't show up as best as you can, it gives you tools as a human to rectify your poor behavior, frankly. So you get right with the program and then you go through this process of working through your resentments. You write them all down, right? And you write everything down about your life. The first one is always the hardest one because it's clearly like the first time that you've looked at any event and you like dive really deep into yourself. And you dive like deep into your past of who have you hurt and why have you hurt them and why are you angry at them or what resentments do you have?

And unpacking all of that, right? And then with the coolest thing is that you do is you share it with someone else. You share it with someone that you trust who's a sponsor, member of the clergy, a best friend, someone who understands and will be willing to have a conversation with you without judgement. Zero judgment doesn't matter what happened, it's the past. You have to clean the wreckage up of the past. And in doing that, you share a problem and then it gets cut in half. And that's what I love about being on a team is that by sharing a problem, by coming to a team meeting, by sharing a problem with a colleague, by sharing a problem with a vendor partner, by even sharing a problem with a client, Hey, we're trying to work through this.

What do you think? We don't have sometimes, always the perfect solution because sometimes we encounter a problem that we've never encountered before. So there has to be a conversation about it. But in sharing that problem, you cut that problem in half. It becomes a lot less overwhelming. You share it with the other person, they're now carrying half the burden. You share with the whole team. Now you've divided the problem by 4. It's amazing. You can use these principles every aspect of your life, you literally just divide and conquer. And so that's I think also why, like we've talked here a lot about all the different people that I have utilized in my business to help me do different things.

I'm just sharing the problems, right? And by sharing them with this person, this person, the problem becomes a lot less monumental to overcome. And so then you share those initial problems from the past, right? And then what's cool is that then it gives you a mechanism to to look at the problems that come up every day and let go of them and look at like your deeper character defects or like the way that you always do things again and again, right? Like we get into patterns, people get into patterns and Julian Leaver Events gets into patterns, right? And that's why we do the feedback form in breaking the pattern, in asking for the feedback and in putting it in a loop instead of just a linear track, you allow yourself to break the pattern and shift.

And that's how you grow. You're like breaking. It's just like going to the gym, right? Like you're breaking the muscles, you're breaking the muscles. They're getting bigger, they're getting bigger, they're getting bigger. And you're able to move in the right direction or achieve the results that you want because you've been willing to be honest and also accept the honesty. That's huge. And then I've been able to accept that honesty from you, from Francisco, from my team, from my mother, and take that into therapy and hash it around. You take it over there. And that's where the marriage for me has been so integral is you take this information that you learn about yourself and you're like, oh, wow, I need to unpack that further.

That's a piece of luggage I didn't even know I was carrying around. And it's 200 pounds. We got to get rid of that, or at least we got to get it down to 70 so it can get on the plane. And that's when you take it to therapy and that's how you marry these two things. You break yourself down a little bit, then you take it over here, you mess around with it, and then you take it back into the world and you try it out again. And you do that again and again and again and again on repeat. And then you get really honest with the people that maybe you hurt in the past.

You go to them and you say, not so much an apology of I'm so sorry that I did this. It's more I did this and I am really sorry for whatever that caused for you. What can I do to rectify that? What can I do? It's about action. AA, they always say it's a program of action moving forward, taking action. What's the next thing? Push it a little bit further. How can I better myself today? And then you carry the message to whoever might still be in that trap out there somewhere. So if you're in that trap out there somewhere, just know today, you don't have to have another drink and there are people out there that can help.

AA is not the only way to do this. It is just the way that I have found that works for me. And so I'm so thankful for that. I'm thankful for that marriage. I'm thankful for a therapist who's been with me for over 10 years and who's known this whole journey and who helps me show up and be better for myself and for everyone else every single day. So thanks for getting a little deep with me today, friends, but I really appreciate you being here and I'm always here to listen and to help in any way I can.

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