Holistic Recovery

Podcast Interview with Carol the Coach  (aired September 21, 2020)
The Model of Holistic Recovery™

Transcript:

Carol Juergensen Sheets
(Sex Help with Carol The Coach)
...and get ready for a fascinating show because holistic recovery, actually embraces recovery by looking at it from all different perspectives. So Patrick, welcome to Sex Help with Carol the Coach, how are you?

Patrick Hentsch
Thank you. I'm very well thank you and yourself?

Carol Juergensen Sheets
I am also doing well. We are airing at a different time than when we're going to be playing this, our audience is going to hear this on October 19 and, you know, I saw what you were offering our listeners, in regards to emotional maturity and I was so excited about it because that's what I think recovery is really all about. Once the triggers are calm, then it's about developing into the highest level human being we can so can you tell us a little bit about emotional maturity and how did you get on this road of figuring all this out.

Patrick Hentsch
Absolutely, yes so this is really the fruit of my own journey so I myself am a recovering addict. And my journey was long and arduous, I won't lie, and I went through many institutions, so I sometimes jokingly say that my education and rehab was as expensive but much more valuable than my Ivy League education. And that's really what led me to become a counselor.

Carol Juergensen Sheets
You're a counselor that, my goodness you're like an engineer or an architect I mean you've really created a lot of interest in your life haven't you?

Patrick Hentsch
Yes. And that's right, my background is in architecture, graphic design and I think I've blended that, it's not something I left behind completely once I got into recovery. And it kind of shows up in my work as you may have seen because a lot of my conceptualizations and models end up being diagrams, graphic, and in a sense, architectural, structural. So, I think it certainly informs the way I approach counseling as well, and recovery.

Carol Juergensen Sheets
Yeah. So, if you would, you have a website that talks about all the different ways one can increase their emotional maturity. So would you share with our listening audience a little bit about that journey, specifically.

Patrick Hentsch
Sure, yes you're absolutely right. You know, I think recovery sometimes gets shortchanged and I really want to stress that in the early stages, even though so much focus goes into addressing the addiction, which usually begins with addressing all the negative consequences, the powerlessness the unmanageable behaviors, and so forth, and a lot of effort goes into how do we stop this, how do we abstain from these behaviors, but the truth is recovery is so much more. And as you said it really is, in the end, about achieving our human potential that I believe we all have.
And so from that perspective, I think we can look at addiction as a huge obstacle or barrier that separates us from our own potential, so the emotional maturity piece, I think, has to do with... well, first I think—this may be oversimplification—but I think we can fairly say that addiction exists in the first place because experiencing being alive is in fact very difficult, very overwhelming.

I think we can look at addiction as a huge obstacle or barrier that separates us from our own potential...

Addiction exists in the first place because experiencing being alive is in fact very overwhelming...

We come into life ill-equipped with how to experience our own emotions as anything other than inconvenient intrusions...

There are so many other ways that we humans know how to numb or avoid emotions and that we routinely engage in...

We can't just selectively shut down certain emotions and not others...

As comforting as it may be to avoid certain emotions, we start to notice that we don't feel very alive...

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