Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Elisa Hallerman on How to Find Meaning through Soul Work EP 224

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

A former attorney and top Hollywood agent, Dr. Elisa Hallerman, pivoted her career to create the first recovery agency devoted to assisting addicts to recover from their addictions. She joins me to discuss her new book, Soulbriety: A Plan to Heal Your Trauma, Overcome Addiction, and Reconnect with Your Soul. Soulbriety is out now and available wherever books are sold. Get yours here: https://amzn.to/3P14wMI (Amazon Link) What I Discuss with Dr. Elisa Hallerman About Her New Book Soulbriety In this episode of Passion Struck, Dr. Elisa Hallerman and I discuss how reconnecting with your soul can change your life. Elisa discusses her personal journey through addiction and trauma and learns that soul work is a framework that can help you change your life and has helped many others to changer theirs.  The episode is filled with tips and advice on overcoming trauma and addiction and reaching your goals. If you're interested in learning more about soul work, this episode is for you! Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/dr-elisa-hallerman-reconnect-with-your-soul/  Brought to you by POM Wonderful, Shopify, and Omaha Steaks. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/PKuVi4w-hQg  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Did you hear my interview with Robin Sharma, one of the top personal mastery and leadership coaches in the world and a multiple-time number-one New York Times best-selling author? Catch up with episode 209: Robin Sharma on Why Changing the World Starts by Changing Ourselves ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Gear: https://www.zazzle.com/store/passion_sruck_podcast Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/ 

Coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. There's a saying that says we don't have complexes. Our complexes have us. And so the material, the depth of material that lies in our unconscious, in both our personal unconscious and in our collective unconscious, is waiting to be sourced so that we're making what's unknown known. Instead of waiting for that to drive us and then we're unfamiliar with why we're doing

something all of a sudden or why these symptoms are rising. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.

If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews, the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 224 of PassionStruck.

Recently ranked as one of the top 40 most inspirational podcasts, 2022. And thank you to each one of you who comes back weekly to listen and learn, and to live better, be better, and impact the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you would just like to introduce this to a friend or family member. We now have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into topics to give any new listener a great way to get acquainted to everything we do here on the show.

You can find them either on Spotify or on passionstruck.com slash starter packs. In case you missed my episodes from last week, they included one with Dr. Joshua Green, who's a Harvard professor, and we discuss the psychology of effective giving. I also had on Dr. Marianne Lewis and Wendy Smith, and we discuss both and thinking and the psychology of paradoxes. Please go and check both those episodes out. I also wanted to say thank you so much for your ratings and reviews. They go such a long way in helping us increase the popularity of this podcast, but more importantly,

grow the passion star community. And I know both we and our guests also love to see the comments that you have for each of the episodes. Today's interview with Dr. Elisa Hellerman is a first-hand account of Elisa's life and her personal journey of how she healed her trauma, overcame her addiction, and reconnected to her soul. It will provide the audience with addiction tools, necessary to find healing in your souls as well. Dr. Halerman takes her heart-breaking story and inserts words of wisdom and tips to achieve overall sobriety, not just from addiction, but in how to unlock an intentional life. Alisa speaks of her days working as one of the top talent agents, representing superstars.

Days were her drugs of choice took over, and days in her recovery as she came to terms with her trauma as well as her sobriety. She also speaks of the days after when she found her soul's purpose, which is to help others in recovery. Dr. Alicia Hallerman was once a partner at WME, a top talent agent, representing the likes of Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Ben Stiller. She now runs the world's first recovery agency, dedicated to helping addicts recover from their addictions by not just getting sober, but by addressing

their inner trauma and finding true soul-centered wellness. She left Hollywood and got her PhD in somatic death psychology, which is the study of bringing unconscious psychological material into the light of awareness through meditation, dream work, the study of images and archetype, Hellermann uses what she calls a sobriety approach, which she has turned into the book sobriety, which launches today. In it, she describes a plan to heal your trauma, overcome addiction, and reconnect with your soul. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey

to creating intentional life now. Let that journey begin. and your journey to creating intentional life brand new book So Riety. Thank you. Thank you. It's a big day. Well, I know just how much effort it takes to put into one of these books and it probably was several years of your life in the makings. Yes, it's been a long journey, but now hopefully just get to enjoy it and let the book speak for itself and hope that people love it and share it with other people that are in their lives. Well, you've gotten some great endorsements

from people like Jamie Lee Curtis and Gabby Bernstein to name just a couple. So I think you're on the right track. Hi, I hope so. I hope so. Yeah, some close friends of mine. Well, like you, I had a successful career for many years and I found out it really wasn't my true calling. I was burnt out facing many addictions myself, probably one of the biggest ones was being a workaholic. And I think also letting my ego

get in the best of me at times. Can you tell me your path because you went from being an attorney to somehow getting into the business of representing celebrities and then becoming one of the top agents in that business? How did that transpire? agents in that business. How did that transpire? So I was living in New York City after college, and that's where I went to law school, and I was living with my boyfriend at the time, and got a job at a small law firm which enabled me to really go to court every day. I was practicing need to really go to court every day. I was practicing real estate and also personal injury law.

And it just wasn't as glamorous as I thought it was going to be. Shloping around the city, going all the five burrows. It's a lot of work. And while I love getting the legal education, practicing law just was not lighting me up. So I didn't really know what to do about that, but I knew that I wasn't in the right job and I knew I wasn't in the right relationship and I pretty much knew I wasn't in the right city anymore.

None of these things were really lighting me up or agreeing with me. So my sister, who I talk about, was graduating from college at the time and her roommate at the last minute bailed on her. They were moving to LA and she called me and said, why don't you just come with me? She knew where I was and how unhappy I was. So I just said yes. and it was just I knew in my gut that I wasn't 100% sure, but I trusted the DD knew also what was best for me in a way that we have that ability with sisters sometimes. And so we got our moving stuff and we went across the country and moved to Los Angeles and I had no idea what I wanted to do.

This was pre-internet. So the world of age and seeing and the entertainment business was not something that I knew anything about other than watching a television show on TV, but other than that, no concept. And so I just started working at a cocktail bar, initially what I got out here. And through that, started meeting people that said, oh, you should go work in an agency. You should go work in an agency. And I was like, what's that?

And do you know anyone and who should I meet with? And then just started taking some informational meetings and met with two different agents at ICM at the time. And they both said, listen, we love your energy and we like the fact that you have a legal background and we both like to hire you, you pick. And one of them worked in motion pictures and one of them worked in television. And I was much more of a TV junkie back then so I decided to go with him and Pretty much back in the 90s when you walked into an agency and it's pretty much the same now It's very vibrant. It's loud. It's young. All the assistants are sitting out in the middle of the entire space and the agents are along

the periphery in their offices. And there's just an energy about it. And immediately I just felt at home and also that I wouldn't be wasting my legal degree, but that I could actually use it and hopefully move forward maybe quicker than I would have if I didn't have it. Okay, and you represented some really huge stars. People like Owen Wilson and Benzvon, I think Ben Stiller. Are they as funny in real life as they are on the screen? Yes, they very much. Yes, I would say you're always destined to get a great laugh on call.

Obviously, there's the serious nature of it. And you really become that voice of reason in that person's life and someone that they can share their own hopes and dreams with and create a space that's vulnerable and accepting for them. So it's not all jokes but they are each one of them specifically are incredibly funny. Yes, I have never officially met any of them. I have brushed into Owen Wilson one time at the most ironic of places church. I used to live in Austin, Texas and we would go to this church every single week my family and I and this

Guy start showing up with his family a couple rows in front of us and at the time he was extremely skinny maybe because he was filming a movie where he was sick and I kept. What's that? Permanent midnight? No, it was Matthew McConaughey. Oh, but over time, yeah, but no, but over time, Matthew would come every single week. He'd always sit in the exact same spot and we got to know him and his family. He would bring different people.

So sometimes it was Sandra Bullock and one time it was Owen, one time it was Owen's brother, et cetera. And sometimes I got to meet him. Sometimes I didn't get to meet the people. But to feed me a completely different appreciation from Athena. I'm sure many actors are the same way because you get these reputations and then you meet the real person who couldn't have been more authentic and real and wanting to be around people and just be a normal dude on a Sunday. So it was a great experience. But anyway, they are just people too at the end of the day.

Yes. Well, I wanted to ask, so you have this amazing career going. What caused you to leave it all and to make this major career turn and then founding the world's first recovery agency devoted to helping addicts? So it's not like I think for anyone wake up one day and go, I'm done, I'm going to go do this and you know exactly what it is that you want to do. It happens much slower than that and we don't always recognize the whispers from soul I like to say as they're happening. But once I've gotten sober in 2002, 20 years ago, that's when I started to really pay attention to my career and really

become much more creative in the way that I wanted to work and represent the clients that I had. And we really all grew up together in a lot of ways. And then what started to happen for me is I was getting healthier in a lot of ways. And when I had about five years clean, started to feel this disconnect inside started to feel like I wasn't being true to maybe who I was anymore that while I loved what I was doing in a lot of ways and I loved working with the people that I was working with both the agents and my clients, that there was something missing for me that hadn't been there before. And I started to feel like my entire job was creating success and happiness and dreams come true for other people. And I had lost sight of what it was that I wanted to do. And my light started

going out a little bit, my internal light that I speak of started to fade. And I thought, okay, scary, but I've heard this happen to other people before. I've heard people in recovery talk about the fact that you're not just going to go on to live this big beautiful life, but you have to continue to do your own inner work. But that concept of your own inner work was really far into me. I didn't understand how to get into my inner work or where the gateway was for that. And so I didn't really know what to do next.

I started to read a lot of books. And when I started to listen to these whispers, I started to have guides appear in the form of books and when I started to listen to these whispers I started to have guides appear in the form of books or other people that had done something different. I heard someone come to the agency to speak and a very successful man and he said and this resonated with me at the time he said that you can have many different successes in your life, that if you look at success as a form of achievement, that you can switch. And I think I was going along with this idea of, oh, this is my career.

And as you keep moving forward, you're just going to climb up and up and get there and get there. And that's what you keep striving for no matter what. And that just wasn't the truth of it anymore for me. And I had to really reconcile with the fact that maybe leaving to do something else wasn't a failure, but was actually me now setting an intention to go and achieve something else. No, I love it because when I talk about passion struck, it's really this combination of having grit, but also grit doesn't take you anywhere unless you're intentional about where you're applying it. But I also say being passion struck is a constant thing you have to strive for. It's not an end destination because we're constantly evolving as we live our lives.

But it really has a lot of the same undertones that we're going to talk about today with finding your soul or finding yourself actualized self and that constant journey of trying to get there so that you're trying to better yourself and service of others rather than I think at a lower state being in service of yourself, so to speak. Yes, like we're completely. Well, I have had, as I told you before,

a lot of scientists and psychologists et cetera on this podcast, but you got your doctorate in depth psychology, and I actually had to Google what that is because I was unaware of it, and this may be a new term for other listeners as well. Can you tell us about what it is and how you study the science if I have it right

of unconsciousness? It's interesting because I didn't know what depth the psychology was either when I went to go study it and it's D-E-P-T-H just because sometimes people get it wrong or they hear it differently. So basically, when I had gone back to school at night when I was agency, because I really wanted to learn more about addiction and I really wanted to be of service to other women. And I also really wanted to go to medical school, but that seemed a little insurmountable in my 40s

since I was not good at math or science, specifically, which is why I went to law school in the first place. So finding my way to UCLA and then learning more about neuroscience and learning more about trauma and somatic studies of the body really opened me up to I think I want more school. And so I started looking into more traditional ways of becoming a therapist. And every time I would look at the syllabus I would think this is going to be tough for me.

These things are not jumping off the page that I wanna learn. Nor did I see myself being a therapist. I found, I knew that I wanted to start a business. I knew that there was an empty space in the field where no one was managing people's health and wellness, specifically in substance abuse, behavioral addiction, mental illness, and trauma. That as an attorney, people could come to me and say, we need help with the law or as an agent, people would come and say, we need help with their career.

And so I wanted to create a place where people could come and say, hey, what now? What is this and what's out there and what's available? And so basically that led me to Pacifica Graduate Institute because I had read a book by James Helman called the Souls Code and it really resonated with me. And I found out that he was the founder of what we call archetypal psychology. And depth psychology is a tradition in psychology that is oriented around the belief in the unconscious. Young in psychology would fall under that as well. So Carl Young believed that our unconscious was made up of both the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. And James Hillman took that a little bit further.

And Thomas Moore, who was another author who wrote, Care of the Soul and Dark Knight of the Soul, which I also found really resonated with me, had also studied depth psychology. So I had this concept and sought it out. When I went for the orientation and they were speaking about the different classes and what it meant, I honestly don't think I still understood what depth psychology was until I was a second year. It's just such a big concept and it requires a deeper

listening than we ever have before. It's really about going inward, but there was something about the imaginal and using our imagination and our creativity and personifying these parts of ourselves that all spoke to the creativity that I loved in being agent and storytelling. And the archives of Joseph Campbell are also at Pacifica Graduate Institute. And the mythology and storytelling there, all of these things really coincided with a lot of creativity that I had coming out of the entertainment business and things that I

wanted to learn about. And so I chose that orientation of depth psychology, specifically with a track about trauma and somatic studies, which included a lot of neuroscience. So for me, I hit the jackpot, but even then it was just about following that heart-centered place of, how does this feel in my body when I hear someone talking about it? And it felt like I want to learn more. I'm really interested in this where the others just felt like something I would be going and doing more of the same. And just to get some sort of degree, which is not what I wanted to be doing anymore. Yeah, Joseph Campbell is one of my favorite authors and I had originally. Joseph Campbell is one of my favorite authors and I had originally

read his book probably 15, 16 years ago and had put it away and touched it. And I read it again earlier this year and boy, there's just so much in there about mythology and storytelling and so many of the things that we believe in today. I want to jump to this rabbit hole a little bit further of talking about subconscious and unconscious versus conscious thought. And as I told you before, I wrote a book, it's currently being shopped to publishers right now, so hopefully fate will align.

But in it, I have a chapter where I discuss subconscious versus conscious, meaning a lot of us spend our whole lives in the subconscious. And I liking it to a game of pinball where you've got all this noise and distraction and could be addictions, could be everything that are around you. And so many of us are letting the game of pinball play us. But when we're conscious about it, and we start learning how to take that noise away, how to put our focus where it needs to be,

you go from the subconscious state to this conscious state. And I had a guest on the show that I think he would like, John Dupont, and I'm not sure if you've ever heard of him, but his book is called The Unwavering Power of Focus. And he was a Hindu monk for about 10 years. And now he's a Hindu priest, but he really talks about it's this focus. It's this getting inside your soul and being deliberate about what you do that really matters.

But where I'm going with this is I interviewed Dr. Benjamin Hardy earlier this week and he is this great new book out called Future Self. And this whole topic of unconscious and subconscious and conscious came up with him as well. How do you think that the way we unconsciously view our future selves influences our present self? And then how do we move from this unconscious to a more conscious self?

So I believe that both the contents of our unconscious and our consciousness are equally as important. But you hit on something before when you said, there's a saying that says, we don't have complexes, our complexes have us. And so the material, the depth of material that lies in our unconscious, in both our personal unconscious and in our collective unconscious, is waiting to be sourced so that we're making what's unknown known. Instead of waiting for that to drive us and then we're unfamiliar with why we're doing something all of a sudden, or why these symptoms are rising.

Addiction, as well as a disease, is also, if you look at it from a sole perspective, a crisis of meaning. And it is a symptom of something else. It is us seeking something outside of ourselves to make ourselves feel better for whatever reason. And so if we're looking at addiction as the symptom of something else, we have to look to what's underneath. And in order to do that, the root doing soul centered work, which essentially is non pathologizing, but making what is unknown known. And there are ways to go about that, that are not, that are deliberate. More so than just having it haphazardly come up.

Oh my God, I just remembered this dream I had or this, this, something synchronicity happened. And now I'm thinking about X, Y, and Z. But through whether it's specific stream work or art or creativity or storytelling or personification, there are different ways that we can tap in and make what's unknown known. And for me, that was a missing link in my own personal growth. It was a way of connecting the dots, if you will. And while it's hard to grasp a concept of Yenconches

and this imaginal space that Henry Corbin is a French philosopher who coined the term the imaginal space that Henry Corbin is a French philosopher who coined the term the imaginal because he felt that using the word imagination to describe these personal contents that we have in our unconscious, they're not real, they're real, and they're not imaginary, and they're not fairytale light, and he wanted them to exist in a world that was named for that. And so that's where the word, the Emanginal came from. And in our personal unconscious is where our own complexes lie,

where we have these felt sense of something going on, and in our collective unconscious, we have these felt sense of something going on, and in our collective unconscious, we're more of the archetypes live, where we can connect the dots and all resonate with, oh, I see the villain, I see the hero, I see the mother archetype, and that's what connects us all. And so to be able to use these personal myths, if you will, in order to figure out how we're feeling why we're feeling this way and continue to be curious and in our words,

intentional about getting to what Soul is asking, that's the way to do it. James Hillman in Sol's code talks about his Ed Gorn theory, which is essentially that no one needs to tell the Ed Gorn how to grow into a great big oak tree, that it is already has the blueprint of what needs to happen, and that Sol is much the same way, that intuitively and inside we know. It's just about following that lead, trusting it, listening to it in a deeper way than we've ever listened before. Yeah, I think you said that beautifully. Thank you.

And I wholeheartedly agree with everything that you just said. And as I was doing research on you, I always like to try to find past interviews that guests have made because it just helps me get a little better sense of what they're all about. But today is I was searching for an episode to listen to. I stumbled across what I thought was going to be you being interviewed and it turns out that it was an episode with Gabby Bernstein, but it was a solo episode. And as

I'm listening to it and she recorded it about a year ago, her birthday must be at the beginning in November. And in it, she mentions you by name and the profound impact not only that your friendship has had on her life but in helping her cope with anxiety which she's been public about. Can you tell me how you two met and how you formed this just overwhelmingly powerful relationship. Yes, it's funny because Gabby and I just did a podcast and we talked about it and we talked about it as well. So about 12 years ago, I think we figured out it was, she had written her first book called, how to add more ink to your life. And it was right at the time where I was starting to feel like I needed to do something else.

And I was going through my own studies of reading and meeting people and a mutual friend of ours called and said, hey, my friend, Gabi wrote a book. She's hosting a retreat in Costa Rica do you want to come. And I said yes, just yes. So on the plane down to Costa Rica, our friend said to me, did you read the book? And I said no, I don't even have it. She said, well, this is what the whole retreat is about. So she gave me the book and I read it on the plane.

Well, this is what the whole retreats about. So she gave me the book and I read it on the plane. And I thought, all right, I think I'm going to love this girl, but Jury's out, we'll see. And the minute we met, there was an instant chemistry of solcissorness. And initially, she was the teacher. And as I went back to school, and as we stayed friends longer,

and she would stay at my house in LA whenever she would come out here and started to have her own underlying anxiety, we would talk about it, and I would talk about what I was learning in school, and I would talk about trauma. And I think the success and the depth of my friendship with Gabby lies in the fact that we are equally both teachers and students with one another at the same time. And that we're constantly growing maybe not always at the same rate and maybe we don't always agree

on where we are, which happens because we're still intense with our beliefs, but we're always willing to look at what the other person is learning because we've taught each other so much in the last 12 years. Yeah, she really is an inspirational person. And I just think about the millions of lives that she has touched and changed for the better. So you've got an amazing friend there. Well, I want to now dive into the main event that all the listeners are here for. And that is to discuss your book. I have one lead in question before that, though.

And the typical listener here has heard me talk about this a lot, but I think we're facing these epidemics are globally of loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness. And I had a great interview earlier this week with Dr. Chris Palmer. And in his book, Brian Energy, he's a psychiatrist at Harvard, he brought up that mental disorders of all types are skyrocketing, and the one that is skyrocketing, the most is depression. And obviously, if you've got these mental disorders, a lot of the ways that people cope with them

is through addictions. But in your research and in what you're finding, are you seeing the same trend happening? Yeah, so that's really why I ultimately decided to write the book. The concept of solidarity came during my dissertation writing, where my dissertation question was,

can doing soul-centered work lead to long-term recovery from addiction? And going through all the participants, it was a resounding yes, but the caveat was they didn't have the language around soul. So they didn't know that they were intentionally doing soul work. And therefore I couldn't teach it either. And so that's where the concept of soul writing, creating the language around it, came to be. When we all went on lockdown, the influx of calls and the people needing help and just

the uptick of the severity of the depression and the suicidal ideation and clients that were so young and so many people's lives changing on the dime and people being forced to sit still and really have to listen to those whispers that were now screaming at them. Do you like your job? Are you happy in your marriage? Do you really want to do this anymore? Are you happy living where you are? And all of these different big questions that we were able to just keep moving through in our ordinary life,

now we were forced to listen to. And if you didn't have the tools to start to uncover and discover what that was, then yeah, you were sitting in a lot of depression and a lot of despair, and it was a really lonely place and scary place to be. So I realized I could only help so many people, and it wasn't going to be enough. I really wanted to get the message of sobriety and that feeling of community out there to way more people. And that's when I started to feel called to write the book. I didn't set out to write it for any other reason

and as writing a book is incredibly arduous and very lonely process and very hard. So you really have to have something to say and also be intentional about what you are giving to the readers that you're not writing for yourself. I have 100 pages that didn't make it into the book that I probably just wrote for myself that needed to get out on the page, but they ultimately weren't going to serve the reader of this specific book. This is the Passion Stark podcast with our guest Dr. Elisa Hallerman. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Shopify. Hear that little chit-chin? That's the satisfying sound of another sale on Shopify. The all-in-one commerce platform trusted by millions of entrepreneurs to create their online store.

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Sign up for a free trial at Shopify.com slash passion struck all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash passion struck to start selling online today. Shopify.com slash passion struck. Thank you so much for listening to the show. I love hearing from all of you. And I love the fact that you all have been great

to our sponsors because they're the ones that keep the show going as well. You can check out all the sponsors at passionstruck.com slash deals. You'll find all the codes and URLs, all those things are there. So please consider supporting those who support this show. Now back to my conversation with Dr. Elisa Hallerman. Well, you can always use them for blog posts and other things in the future. But I know what you mean.

And I think my manuscript is 90,000 words, but there's probably another 30 or 40,000 that just great pieces of wisdom, but just didn't fit within the confines of this book. Well, I love that you had Jamie Lucurtis do your forward. And I interviewed Daniel Pink earlier this year and his latest book, which is a great book, is on the power of regrets. And in her forward, Jamie Lee Curtis discusses her own regrets, which I thought one was pretty vulnerable of her to do so. And you think of someone like that and her putting it out there is really saying something. But I thought it was a really interesting lead into your book. What is your biggest regret

and how has it impacted how you are today? Definitely on a broad scope, my biggest regret is not having found this practice earlier. But in retrospect at the same time, everything that's happened to me has made up who I am today. And so there couldn't have been these building blocks leading to where I am, had it not been for the dark nights, the traumas, the soul loss along the way. But of course, if I was going to regret anything, it really is that I didn't listen to that whisper. I was too scared to think that, A, I could answer it, B, that I could answer it, or work with it on my own, that I needed someone else, whether that was a boss or a man or some other figure to come in and help me and steer me along that I didn't have the confidence to believe that everything I needed to know was inside of me and there wasn't absolutely anybody else that was going to be able to do a better job of living my life in me. And that took a while.

It definitely took a while for me to come to and I wish I would have figured that out earlier. Yeah, you're giving me goosebumps because I felt this inner voice myself Telling me that what I was doing in life wasn't what I was intended to do and I kept ignoring it and the more I ignored it the more different aspects of my life Started to fall apart in different ways Yeah, and then once I have leaned into it and as it's not easy to lean into, it's one of these things that as you lean into it, you start, I think, uncovering layers and more layers of the onion of your inner self. And you start discovering more and more, but it's something I wish, and I regret that I didn't do it 10 years ago because I look back and think how many different

elements of my life would be so much different now and what would have changed and what wouldn't have changed had I done it. Thank you for bringing that up. I'm going to try to give the listener a little bit about where you were in life before you made this change. You start the book out talking about relief. And in it, you talk about this experience that you had and I'm jumping to like page 110 or 115 here, but you are supposed to go to the Oscars that night before trying on a Vera Wing dress, I think it was. And you said to yourself, the last thing I'm going to do today is drink or do anything. I want to be present for tomorrow when it happens.

And I think a lot of people can relate to what happens next. A friend comes over and they say, hey, how about we just have one glass of wine. And you put down your guard and you say, oh, this is just going to be one glass. And then the night starts to unfold. And now you've had multiple glasses of wine. And then other substances get involved. And the next thing you know, you arrive home the next day at 5.30. And I think what you related at that moment is what I think a lot of people have probably

felt. And that is you're cursing yourself out for why you did it. You're second guessing yourself, you're wanting to punch yourself for doing it. Why when we go through things like that is it so hard for us to change directions when as you yourself went through, I'm sure after that incident, that wasn't the one thing that changed it. It probably puts like this inner voice

in the back of your head that, I need to start making changes, but oftentimes we ignore them. What do you think that is? Well, I think it's a couple of reasons. More and more during that time, that was towards the end. I think it was about a year before I actually got sober. And I started to have more of those moments where I was missing things

or not showing up for things that were important to me, that I was upset about in the light of day or in my quote unquote right mind when I was clear, but I couldn't help myself. I didn't realize that I was suffering from alcoholism or addiction. I thought I had this inability to live a quote unquote normal life, that I was so messed up from X, Y, and Z that I was not able to do this thing called life like everybody else.

And so I was messy and inconsistent and manipulative and dishonest a lot of the time. And I didn't know why. So that was for starters. And that just leads to a lot of shame and a lot of feeling bad about yourself and creating a narrative that, well, this is all there is. And really feeling stuck. What I then learned when I found out that I actually was suffering from alcoholism addiction

was that the way my brain was operating was any time I put a substance into my body, whether it was wine or drug, that it immediately went into the reptilian part of my brain, took over because this was something that I had learned, would give me a reward, would give me instant pleasure. And so I lost the ability to use my thinking part of my brain. That was no longer coming online once I had put the alcohol in. So once I had that one drink, even though I had the best of intentions to go home and leave and get a good night's sleep and all of that, that I no longer was online in that way. So, I couldn't go off my memory of a remember when you did this last week and this happened.

I couldn't go off of I promised myself I would do this. I was completely driven by this old part of my brain that was saying that I needed this next drink or line or whatever it was, like I needed air or water. And it made it impossible for me to stop, which is why abstinence is usually called for once you have this kind of an addiction. That being said, there was that moment of clarity a year later when I had enough of those mornings and enough of that disappointment and enough of that feeling bad about myself,

and enough of that feeling bad about myself, that when something happened that really triggered my PTSD for many years before, I felt this literal unwinding of myself as I was trying to catch my breath and trying to stay centered and felt myself falling into this hole. And I heard this really loud voice inside of me say, if your friend does not make it, you will go on to get worse and you will die.

You will not be able to sustain this trauma, the sadness. And I had no coping skills. And then I heard another voice really quickly, which pretty much emanated this other voice that I heard pretty quickly after, which felt like it was coming from also from inside. As I sat on the floor looking at my nephew that said, no, you are not allowed to get worse. You're only allowed

to get better. You need to show up for him. And that gave me enough confidence or courage rather to call my therapist and say, what do I do? What should I do? Is there another way? And should I go to one of those meetings? That's what I said. And he said, yeah, do you know anyone that you can ask to go with? And I said, yes, I know this one lady. And he said, ask her before you see me next time and go. And that's where it started. Yeah, and for someone who may be listening and maybe these voices are coming in their heads as well, and they're in denial about it, what are some of the tail-tell signs that you have an addiction problem? And that could be an addiction to drugs and alcohol or it could be to sex or it could

be to work or it could be anything. How do you know? First of all, it's creating unmanageability in your life, which for me, it clearly was. I was no longer able to do my job as well. I was no longer close to my family or my closest friends. I was isolating. I was spending more and more time alone.

This hearty aspect of it was no longer social. It was a one woman show. And so it was very isolating. It was like my whole life was like looking through a straw. It was that narrow and not small. The other thing is I needed more and more of it to have the same desired effect. You build a tolerance and you find yourself drinking a lot more or taking more then it's all downhill trying to get back to that sweet spot from then on and Then what were your symptoms like the next day? What are you having with withdrawal symptoms? Are you sick from the lack of alcohol or substances that you're putting in your body? And I think those three things that that isolation, that unmanageability, that real disconnect to yourself, building up a tolerance,

and noticing withdrawal symptoms, are very tell-tell signs that something might be more serious than just the average over use or bad night out. Yeah, and you alluded to this a few moments ago, but you actually start out the introduction of your book, talking about relief. And there was a paragraph in there that I actually shared with a friend of a Pusar recovering addict. And I asked them, did you ever feel the same way? And I'm just going to put it out there for the audience,

but in it you said you were imagining being held underwater, not knowing if you would come up for air, and the panic you felt from the fear that surrounded you. Then you feel this relief as you take in a line of coke that leaves you feeling superhuman. And my friend said, yes, that's exactly how I used to feel because I just wasn't happy with myself. And I felt like for people to want me or desire to be around me that I needed these substances. And I start here along with your previous

story because the book is really your personal journey from going from being an addict to finding joy and passion being sober. And you also tell other stories, but I think as I read the book, the whole purpose I found was to relate your personal journey so that others through your own story could learn themselves how they can find the joy and passion of being sober as well. Yes, exactly. Doing soul work, soul speaks in story, in metaphor, in imagery. So there was no other way to explain these bigger concepts and take someone on a soul journey. I don't really talk about the steps of the soul journey until the end of the book because

I don't want them clouded and missing things, looking for their own until they really get to the end. Because I want them to understand how they're engaging in other stories, whether they're minor, those of clients, and really being able to see yourself and recognizing, hey, oh, I see myself here, and I see myself here, or I see my loved one here, or whoever it is that you might be reading it for. And then towards the end, when I have really snuck in these concepts of teaching throughout storytelling, they're already within you and you have this language that you didn't have when you started. And then you're really able to look at the steps of a sole journey and figure out where you personally might be on that and then be able to dive into where that is for you and

what is going to come next. And you describe sobriety as a. And it's not as if each person necessarily takes the same steps because each person is unique if I have it right. But it's as you describe it as soul centered path of recovering from trauma. Because let's face it, that's the reason most people have addictions is because of trauma. And I'll tell you just a unique experience that I had earlier this year is someone who's a combat veteran and Outside of that has seen his fair share of trauma and different settings. I went on this Challenge where I did that David Goggins you do four miles every four hours for 48 hours. And there were about 60 different veterans there from every single branch, but all of them were former special forces. And it was

interesting because everyone there was battling with Prama issues. Everyone there was dealing with some level of addiction, but what just struck me is just how prevalent it is and how hard it is to get yourself unstuck. I know for me it took me doing cognitive processing therapy and then prolonged exposure therapy and then EMDR and other things, but ultimately it comes down to a choice that you don't want to hold onto that trauma and you want to take the steps to make it go away. Do you think that is an accurate way to look at it? Yes, but I wanna say all of those different methodologies of trauma work are essential and different strokes for different books.

I did a bunch of them myself as well. To me, sobriety is not something that you do to the extent that you don't do any of these other things. So, variety is the lifestyle and the container in which you can then begin to understand where you are on your journey. And during that, be able to sit in the discomfort. Learning to do soul work is very much about feeling the joy, but also learning to not be afraid of the dark. And when we're experiencing alchemize our pain into purpose and really find the wisdom that we need to learn while simultaneously working on our brain and working on releasing the trauma and the energy in our body through somatic experiencing or EMDR or what have you, but that we also can be comfortable and have a deep belief that we are going to be able to find some enlightenment on the other side. And that's the ultimate

challenge, right? That's the ultimate challenge of being able to learn something and then be able to share it with others. So, sobriety, the book is a love letter from my story to you, the readers, about hopefully me being able to give you some of the wisdom I learned from going on my own experience. Okay and maybe just one step further is what are the three tenants of sobriety? So the three tenants are really understanding the language of soul, having a belief in the unconscious, and also, like I said, really not being afraid of the darkness, really going into the dark night of the soul. Okay, and another person who I know you have worked with is Dr. Gabor Mati, who believes that addiction is not found in our

genes, but stems from our early childhood environment, as well as from, as we've been talking about, an emotional loss. Do you agree with that? I definitely agree with it. I don't think that's the case for everybody. Everybody did not have adverse childhood experiences that affected them later in life. It is true for a lot of people, but it is not the only truth. And I think that coming at anything when you're talking about addiction or trauma or anything that's rooted in soul which is our unique way of being in this world and what's happened to us. And trauma is subjective, two people can be in the same car accident and witness the exact same atrocities in front of them.

And one of them could leave and be able to walk away. And the other one might be experiencing severe trauma for years to come. And why that's the case lies in what's underneath that and what's gone on in their lives before that. And maybe some of that is early childhood trauma and maybe it's other things. I don't like to put these absolutes on anything. I have a company and we work with so many different people, all ages from 12 to 80, men and women and all sorts of different sexualities and genders and all of it.

And so it's just too, it's about allowing someone to find their own way in. What is going to resonate with them? I think explaining what trauma is essential so people feel like, oh, that's what's going on in my body. That's what's happening in my head. And really denystifying what it is essential. So the answer is yes, the Bormatte's a genius. And I love everything that he stands for and speaks to.

But I wouldn't just say it's one thing. Okay, and I'm gonna just, since we're on this topic of children and adolescents and childhood, if you're a parent who's listening to this, what are some early signs of addiction and adolescents? And I'll tell you, for my own kids, they're now 18 and 24, but one of the things I was most worried about was digital addiction. But what are some early signs, regardless, that parents could look out for?

So any sort of change in behaviors, mostly you would look first at school. If all of a sudden there's a drop off in grades or attendants or them changing friends or anything of that sort, you're going to want to look really closely at that. School is the biggest bottom, if you will, for adolescents. So it's important to look at that piece closely. And if they're isolating more than usual. And they seem a little bit more anxious or than they normally might. If they're eating habits have changed.

They've gained a lot of weight or lost a lot of weight. If they aren't sleeping regular hours, these are things that are to be looked at and be concerned about as well. And if you have a sense that something is going on, you're probably right and you should look into it. These days with the fentanyl crisis and THC being extremely potent and really having a negative effect on certainly people that are under 25 years old, whose brains aren't fully developed, that may have a pre-existing mental health disorder. You really can't wait for it to show up in a way that we could 10, 20 years ago, where

all of a sudden you're like, oh, it's so clear now. The bottom for most people is, unfortunately, death is a real possibility. The overdose rate has exponentially gone up over the last two years. And this is a time when fentanyl is sweeping across the country. And I was asked recently how many clients I have

that were addicted to fentanyl. And I said, not, and they're dead. They don't get to me. So this isn't a time that we can be tiptoeing around the nature of, is my child suffering or not my kid. We really have to have the conversation, open communication, and be really upfront about our concerns. Yeah, you hear so many horror stories of how many different things are now spiked with that. You're right. Most of the people who experience those don't live to talk about it. So it's a serious issue.

The last thing I wanted to ask you is you say that your work is different from an interventionist or a case manager. Why do you say it relies in your world on having recovery managers? Like I was saying earlier, I felt there needed to be a place. I made it into an agency because that's the model that I worked at for 15 years and running the talent department and understanding the business behind the talent agency. It made sense to me that we should work with many different people, but we should all have very different skill sets where we really shine. And I wanted

it to not only be a place for crisis management where we could come and get someone into the hospital immediately if there was psychosis or suicidal ideation or get them into a detox facility or out of a really bad situation or jump into a legal issue right away. Any of those things, but then also have a place where we could do real full assessments, real soul-centered assessments, where we're looking not only at the individual, but the family system or the work system that's around them. And doing a deep dive into what is their story look like?

I'm not looking for what's happening right now. I wanna hear what's happening right now and everyone wants to start with this happen, this happen, but what happened before that? So I'm looking for the ruptures. I'm looking for the possible traumas. I'm looking for where things started to shift, where patterns started to occur. Because that way we're really looking at it from an integrative medicine perspective of what lies underneath the symptoms, which is right, everything that I discuss. So after we do that, and we gather information from clinicians or other doctors that are working with them or any sort of neuropsych testing, then we really examine everything,

and my team and I says, okay, here's what we're seeing. And then we go back to them with, well, here's what we are seeing, but how do you feel about this? And here's what's out there, because people don't know what they don't know. I didn't know that I was suffering from trauma

until I had 10 years clean. And no one really explained that to me. And even then you're searching for what are trauma therapists? What kind of modalities? Why is that different? I've been in talk therapy. And we're like, no, no, no, talk therapy doesn't work for this. So it's really about first educating the clients that we have.

And then being their advocates once we put the treatment teams together. And that is also working holistically with getting the right medical doctor. You talked about, we talked about offline metabolic psychiatry and neurology and all of these other things that are so important when you're healing a human. so important when you're healing a human, that you have to look at everything, that there's not just one way. And so we're really clear on doing all of that. It felt more than traditional case management. So that's why I called it recovery management because it was so much broader and having so much more depth. Yeah, well, thank you for sharing that. I interviewed a doctor Cynthia Leap, who's also on the West Coast a few weeks ago and she gave a great analogy that I think is saying the same thing that you just said. She's into functional medicine, but she said, the issue with Western medicine is that we treated

in protocols, and if you think about this as a tree, we're sitting here looking at all the leaves, instead of looking at the entire tree itself, and especially the biggest core parts of it. And so we take a particle approach when we should be taking a systems approach to medicine, which I think is similar to what you're saying. That is the way that I approach mental health in general.

Okay, so your book is going to be everywhere. The audience wants to buy at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, et cetera. It'll also be plastered all over my show notes. That is so cute. Please, please, please use my link if you can, because it goes to support the show. I just had to throw that in there.

But if they wanted to know all things, Alisa, where's the best place for them to go? So my website, if you want to learn more about RMA, is drhalerman.com. So drhallermann.com. And there's a lot of information also on Instagram, which is dralisahalerman. So drelisahalerman. on Instagram, which is DR Alisa Hallermann. So, DR ELISA Hallermann. Okay, I'll have to follow you. So, please.

I'll do that right after we're done. Well, Alisa, thank you so much for being on the show and a huge congratulations to you. As I started looking through the book reviews that you've already gotten, it was just five star after five star with a ton of great comments about how some of the early readers of this book have taken your work and it's helped them overcome addictions themselves. So a great

read for the audience. I just wanted to put that out there. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Alisa Hellerman. And I wanted to thank Alisa, Lauren Rosenthal, and Hashtag Books for giving us the honor of interviewing her. Links to all things Alisa will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the featured guests that we have on the show.

All proceeds go to supporting the show and making it free. Videos are on YouTube at John Armiles, and I also want to let you guests that we have on the show. All proceeds go to supporting the show and making it free. Videos are on YouTube at John Armiles, and I also want to let you know that we launched a new YouTube channel called PassionStruck Clips, where we will be showcasing short one to eight-minute long videos. Avertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com, slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.

I'm at John Aramiles, both on Twitter and Instagram, and you can also find me on LinkedIn. If you wanna know how I book amazing guests like Alisa, it's because of my network, they'll out there and build yours before you need it. You are about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast interview that I did with Dr. Michael Pishvan,

who is the director of gastrointestinal developmental therapeutics and clinical research programs for the John Hopkins Himal Cancer Center and an associate professor at the School of Medicine. And we will discuss all things pancreatic cancer. I think the most promise in the next three to five years for pancreas cancer specifically is going to be in biomarker directed therapy, meaning that there's a specific genetic or molecular alteration within the tumor that's been identified that leads to specific therapy. And there are multiple such biomarkers that can exist in pancreas cancers if we go looking

for them. A fee for this show is that you share it with those that you love or care about. If you know someone who is dealing with an addiction then please, please share this episode with them. The greatest compliment that you can get this show is when you share it with those that you care about. In the meantime, do your best to practice what you learn on this show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, live life-assioned strap.