The Zac Clark Show - Teen Addiction, Mental Health & Healing Families: Mike Giresi, Chief Clinical Officer, Family First

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Mike Giresi was an All-American high school football player with a bright future, until crippling anxiety and panic attacks after graduation led him to alcohol. What began as self-medication spiraled into heroin addiction, multiple overdoses, and rehab.In this episode, Mike shares his journey through the darkest chapters of addiction and his hard-fought recovery. His transformation became a calling: helping others heal. He began working with adults facing trauma and PTSD before focusing on adolescents, even traveling to India to study yoga and meditation to integrate mind-body approaches into his work.Today, Mike is a Florida Certified Addiction Counselor, Internationally Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor, Certified Trauma Professional, and NARM® Practitioner. As Chief Clinical Officer at Family First Adolescent Services in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, he leads with the belief that “the entire family is our client,” addressing the deeper wounds that drive destructive behaviors.A national speaker and educator on trauma, addiction, and adolescent mental health, Mike is an expert in helping teens and their families recover and find lasting healing.  Connect with Zachttps://www.instagram.com/zwclark/https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-c-746b96254/https://www.tiktok.com/@zacwclarkhttps://www.strava.com/athletes/55697553https://twitter.com/zacwclarkIf you or anyone you know is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact Release Recovery:[phone]releaserecovery.com@releaserecovery

All right, what's up, everybody? I am Zach. Wow, I'm Zach. We are back here at the Zach Clark Show, a little late night for me last night. But I am here with my friend and colleague, Mike Durecci, who is the chief clinical officer at Family First. And what's the new? Yeah, Roots Renewal Ranch. Roots.

So you're doing boys and girls. Yeah. Boys and Floyd. Florida, girls in Texas. It's pretty incredible. I'm pumped for this conversation. Mike is someone I've gotten to know a little bit better recently. He does a lot of work in trauma and a lot of work in teens. So that's what we're going to kind of jump into. But before we do that, Mike, what's up, man? You've been in New York for a few days. How you feel? Good. We did this whole Northeast tour thing. And I'm a little tired, but I'm excited to be here with you. I go, do you? I go back and

So we both work in behavioral health care. We've both been doing it a long time. We both know a shitload of people. Yes. So you set out these trips where you're seeing 100 people in three days and it's go, go, go. I mean, it's exhausting. It's totally exhausting. Yeah, I'm the worst with names too.

I'm constantly offending people that I've already met and, you know, saying hi to for the first time. But it's actually not the first time and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I mean, I think we're both at the point now. We were talking before. I'm 41. I think you're 34.

Yeah. So like we're not, you know, young bucks trying to cut our teeth anymore. We do know some people. And I think we can forgive ourselves a little bit if we forget meeting someone. That's a good reminder. So the hook on this episode, again, is going to be a lot of talk about trauma, a lot of talk about teens and the relationship between parents and their kids. Mike's been doing this work for a very long time. he's got thousands and thousands of hours of case studies and we're going to get into that

but before we do mike we've walked this path together as many of us do yeah when uh you're sober right so yeah yeah 12 years on uh october 5th amazing yeah it's so good incredible that's so good and did you ever think when you were i know a little bit of the uh of your story As you can see, Mike is a very strong human. He was a good football player, right? I mean, like, that was your... I was overrated, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Mike's a high achiever.

So you went... Give me the quick football story, because that was a part of your story, right? I mean, that was... Yeah, yeah. It really consumed my life in my teenage years. It probably provided, like, the necessary structure and discipline

that I needed to not go off the rails like I did after. football ended in college. But I excelled in high school, ended up playing in the high school All-American game, my senior year, alongside like all these really cool guys that, you know, did like amazing things. Like our backup quarterback for the All-American game was Gino Smith. The way. Just played Monday night. It's unbelievable to watch him. It's so cool to see how much success he's had. The, um, keeping in touch with some of those guys over the years has been been cool. Even helping some of those guys and get into recovery. It's been really cool.

And then signing out of high school, I signed my National Letter of Intent to Play at Villanova. Lasted like maybe a week and a half in summer training camp. At Villanova. You showed up there, yeah. And completely blew out of it. I was having panic attacks. I'd never had panic attacks before. There was a bunch of stuff going on in my family at the time. And I just had no ability to cope with it outside of the resources that I had at home where everybody knew me and I knew everybody and I could go to certain places and receive the resources that I really needed. You were kind of a local legend, right? I mean, I assumed, yeah, you were playing at a high level. You'd go to Villanova.

You're for the first time of your life on your own. I was, you know, I grew up in Westerville, Ohio. Where the hell is Westerville, Ohio? Exactly. the you know go buck eyes but uh yeah i i called my mom you know and i said uh i i can't do this i went home i uh i was miserable i sat out the first semester of college uh watching all of my buddies play on ESPN and all of that kind of stuff uh that year villanova won the national championship for 1-A, which I was so excited for them for Coach Talley and all the guys.

But, you know, the demoralization and the depression and the self-hatred. And it was just, it compounded. I was at that time I was drinking a ton, just sitting in my basement, isolating all my friends, even outside of football, we're all off at school and they were doing their thing. I was back in Westerville and, you know. Do you remember, like, so you're just backtracking, like double-clicking on that a little bit. You're in your basement drinking. Like, when you were growing up in Westerville, Ohio, at what age do you have your first drink?

Or at what age you kind of start to dabble? I, this is probably the, should have been my first sign of alcoholism. The, I did everything in extremes. So my first drink was a, uh, And the football guys on the high school team brought me upstairs at a party. My neighbor, this girl that was like my sister, handed me off to them and said, take care of him, make sure he doesn't get into trouble. And they immediately brought me upstairs and did a beer bong.

Yeah, famous last words. Yeah. And then the first time smoking weed was very shortly after I was like a freshman in high school. And that was a gravity bong. So I got ripped. I thought I was the couch kind of a thing. Yeah, yeah. And I dabbled.

You know, I drank socially in high school and smoked some weed. And towards the end, with injuries and stuff like that, I started dabbling in pills and opiates and stuff like that. That's what ended up being my real jam was opiates. Yeah. I ended up when I, so my second semester of college, I transferred to Miami of Ohio. and joined the team there and then got all the way through two a days got hurt hurt my lower back I could barely walk at times that's a good I mean that's a good

program right Ben Roth I mean like that's a good program yeah yeah they won they won the Mac that year you you had it so you were like you you would show up places and then did you leave did you stay on the team so the like the week before we were going to go game one we were going to travel down and play the gators at the the swamp. And I turned in my jersey. I wanted to get drunk. I wanted to stop feeling what I was feeling, both physical pain. And I just, I had no, you know, in my family and culturally in Westerville and then otherwise, we never talked about like feelings or emotions or, I had no self-understanding everything was on the surface the had no depth of uh you know relating to the

world or or or myself the and i was just i was just miserable and i didn't really know it consciously i just knew that i didn't feel good and that drinking and doing drugs was going to make me feel good did you this is interesting because i just got back from uh i was down at lSU and one of the things I always say to the college age kid is you know you you have permission to be curious about who you are what you want to do who you want to be because I think a lot of people like for me for example like I knew my dad liked baseball I knew he wanted me to play baseball I fell out of love with baseball you know at some point like I didn't actually want to keep doing it but I did and so I say that because do you and then as like from a career standpoint I kind of did

the thing that my dad suggested I do, and had I not gotten sober, I think I would have just kept following what I thought other people wanted me to be. So did you love football, or were you just good at it? I definitely fell out of love with it. Yeah. You know, I very much relate to what you just said. I, there's this, I did this one therapy session a number of years ago, and, uh, I was talking about, I love how you mixed in the career stuff with it, because it's so, it's, there's such a parallel process where I was basically talking about how much pressure I was putting on myself at work and how, how I was, you know, I kept saying yes when I really wanted to say no. I, I just kept putting things on my plate. And I was just talking about how

I want to stop doing this to myself, but I didn't know how. It felt like automatic almost. And my therapist brought up this story, and he said, I'm reminded of a story that you told me one time where your dad, my dad, when we were paying baseball growing up, he used to stand at the fence right behind home plate and have his hands up on the fence and look us right in the eye as we were pitching. And my older brother was a way better baseball player than I ever was. and the but he what he talked about my therapist what he brought up was uh he was like you remember telling me this i said yeah and he said i was just putting myself in your shoes as like an 11 year old little boy as you're walking up to the mound and how much pressure you would have to put on yourself to be able to throw a ball better than an 11 year old could throw a bit of a baseball because every pitch what if it was a good pitch it was a triumphant you know yeah uh sign from

dad if it wasn't it was disappointment or even aggression and uh he said in order to be you know to get what you needed from your dad you needed to put all this pressure on yourself immediately it just starts sobbing yeah and he said he did the whole therapist thing right he said i noticed there's emotions coming up for you or whatever and I said yeah you know no shit what uh he said do you have a sense for what the emotion is I said this feels really big I feel incredibly sad this feels like a ton of grief almost he said how is it to let yourself feel some of that grief and I said uh this feels gross I started like going like this feels gross I don't want to feel this and he said something I'll never forget from the rest of my life he said I imagine this

does feel gross I think it's going to be important for you to remember that you're not the one that made this gross again just sobbing sobbing and you know those experiences both in therapy the experiences that I had in early recovery of being introduced to a way of life that's not just centered around me but rooted in helping others the is like this uh path that both is it's incredibly cool right like that we get to as we learn more about ourselves and like reconnect with these different things that we split off from and disconnected from the as we start saying no when we really when we really mean it's the hardest I mean that that's what jarred me dude when you were I mean look you get to know someone you think there's some similarities

it's why you start to like each other like you know as friends and but you're talking about this idea of not being able to say no and it's I always talk with my therapist about this contract I have with the world because I feel like I've been saved you know like I should have died I was a heroin addict I had this contract with the world where I have to say yes to everything God forbid I say no because that means I'm like not honoring this life that I've been given or whatever it is or this relationship with my

parents who saved my life or however you want to talk about it you know it's crazy yeah I so relate the and what's funny is like the a mentor of mine used to say this all the time you can tear down a house with the same tools you built it with that the so much of what I've learned in recovery and so much of what I've learned to kind of move forward in life. Sometimes those same things, like my desire to be helpful, the feeling compelled to be of service to other people, those same things that bring me so much freedom and gratitude can be twisted ever so slightly and be the exact things that leave me to self-sabotage and self-judgment and self-criticism and being just overworked and exhausted. And then I'm not a service to anyone

or myself or anything in between. Well, I think, yeah, I mean, I think for me, you talk about your dad. I mean, my dad. I love my dad. You and me both. Yeah. So it's hard. Yeah. To say like a lot of, and I'm like getting a little misty right now. Like my, I just didn't want to let him down. Yeah. So as I moved through life, I took on this. Then I didn't want to, anyone down. Yeah. And so in management and leadership, that becomes impossible because you're not, you're always going to let someone down. Yeah. Well, especially when, you know, I love the topic of leadership as like another kind of portal into self-discovery and awareness because so much of what I've experienced with leadership is that the people aren't

experiencing you for you that they're experiencing you through their own projections of how they relate to authority and leadership and all of that and to field it goes in one of two directions it's either in this kind of like thing that might feel really good yeah around in psychotherapy or psychology we call it from an object relations perspective we call it becoming the rewarding object that they tell you how great you are and how wonderful you've been to them and how impactful you know the speech that you did on stage was and that stuff can feel really really good but the the trick is that the way that they're relating to you has absolutely not they don't know who you are and the so everything that they're saying is being filtered through their own projections how to not take those on

and make them about you is really difficult on the good feeling end. When people make you into the rejecting object, that's also really difficult to not take ownership for me telling you that I can't do something or me confronting you about something or holding you accountable for something isn't me judging or criticizing or rejecting you. It's me treating you as an adult and holding you. to a certain standard that you agreed to the but when people take that and what they do with it is they tell themselves that you hate them that you don't like you know they blame you and you can't control i i can't control that narrative yeah which is which is the fear yeah not taking responsibility

for what they do with what you say is one of the biggest not taking responsibility for what they do with what you said. I mean, that's, that's it right. I mean, for me, that's the Mount Everest of leadership. That's the Mount Everest of living. I couldn't agree more. The mentor of mine, Larry Heller, I did a consultation with him one time. And I was working with some really challenging dynamics in this family. And I was, I was concerned about how to navigate some of the, the confrontation that I was anticipating was going to happen in a particular therapy session. And I was really nervous about it and all this stuff. And he said, I'll never forget, he said, uh, this is going to sound weird to you, Mike, but you're going to need to find a place

inside of yourself that doesn't give a shit what they do with what you say. And at the moment, I was like, yeah, no, that sounds weird. That doesn't make any sense to me at all. What do you mean? And he goes, because from that place, you can actually care because it's no longer about you. Wow. Dude, this is this. That alone makes, I mean, people listen. I mean, I, you know, that's a rap. You know, like, that's a rap. I mean, that's it. That's the jeep. That's the juice. That's the juice. And I always get jealous of people that I see. And, and like you, you were talking about, I never know what's going on, but, you know, between the sheets. I never know what's going on at home for someone. But I get jealous of these people that I feel like, like I used to always get jealous at my friends,

buddies growing up that could go out and sleep around I could never do it like I'm way too sensitive I get way too attached I couldn't like having sex with two girls in the same months as a college kid even was like you know mind bending for me but I had friends I could go out and like Monday through Friday five different girls and not and I'd be like what what is that you're not like but they got to a place where they're just like they were probably communicating well or they weren't but like I would have to assume like maybe they were communicating well maybe they were like saying like hey that this is just what this is and it allowed them to kind of not get attached i don't know that makes sense but it makes perfect sense to me i remember waking up at 30

and realizing that i had in in personal romantic relationships i had absolutely no idea what i liked and what i didn't like and the as that awareness kind of came to me i was like okay why the hell don't i know this. And what I discovered was that I was so concerned and focused every single time and every single relationship on whether or not they liked me. Yeah. That I had never even taken a moment to consider whether I like them. And ended up in all these different relationships that I didn't want to be in solely because I was so petrified of being rejected or so petrify. I was so, I needed this validation for them to like me, for me to feel okay. Oh.

So I want, I mean, you're already sounding smart. I want to make you sound really smart because your work is, is a testament to some of your lived experience, some of our shared experience. Just real quick, just to blitz through it so I can give the listeners a good understanding of who you are because I, I love the story, you know. So you go to Villanova, you go to Ohio, you turn your jersey in, you're 20 years. So you get sober 22, you're 20 then. The next two years is just insanity.

Insanity. Yeah. Yeah. I joined a fraternity. Oh, you turned in the jersey, but you stayed on campus. Stayed on campus, joined a fraternity, party all day, all night. You know, it was 40 guys in 40 rooms. We were, it was pure madness.

Yeah. And, you know, I say that. And there are guys that totally did it successfully, went to class, like, had, like, had like, you know, graduated, like, went forward in life. I totally didn't. Yeah. The, I got super hooked on to opiates. The, you know, spiraled out of control, went home, summer going into junior, I think it's

like, 2010, 2011? Yeah, 2010, 21. So the OxyContin thing was like kind of phasing out, right? Like the heyday of OxyContin was like, 08 or not. Oh, I remember when they did the mandate for. actually the tracking system yeah the and all the pill mill stuff uh i was paying for people to go down and like doctor shop in florida and come back up and you're at oh yeah i was deep and the you know very quickly once that stuff dried up the got into heroin do you remember the first time like

do you remember how you found out about heroin yeah i remember it vividly yeah tell me because I learned about heroin in rehab. My dope dealer, I went to him for pills, and he literally just said, hey, man, I'm out, but I have this stuff. And it was in a tin foil wrapping, and he opened it up.

Not even the wax bag. No, tinfoil wrapping, opened it up, and said, actually, it's a ton cheaper. I can give you this much, which is equal to this. And without a second thought, I did it. And at the time, I was snorting it and smoking it. And then that led me to my first rehab. That's when my mom sent me down to Florida to stay with my dad.

My dad very quickly assessed what was going on. With his hands on the fence, watching every pitch. Very, very quickly called me on my stuff. And that's when I went into treatment for the first time. And, you know, at the time, I could concede to the idea that, like, socially doing heroin is not cool. Right. That, like, that's not something I should probably be engaging in. But to be, consider myself an addict or an alcoholic that just wasn't a thing.

But the same thing that you were talking about earlier, just kind of like figuring out what everybody wants from me and just doing that to stay safe, not doing any of it authentically. that's really what early recovery that first time was. I ended up going to sober living afterwards, stayed there for six months. After treatment, got out, got my apartment. This is in Florida. This is all in South Florida. And went out on a date.

She ordered a glass of wine. So I ordered a glass of wine without even a second thought. And nothing happened. Finish the night. It was great. woke up the next morning, I was working at a gym, the went to work. Within the week, I was crying in the middle of the night

on my way to the dope pole that I had driven past on my way to work every day because I needed to get high. That whole story is ridiculous, but ended up copping drugs. Within a week of that innocent glass of wine. Within a week. And that's the thing that I think people,

I mean, we could have a whole episode about this, but the whole, like, the obsession, the allergy, the disease model. I mean, all of these things, we spend so much time talking about them. But for me, I know, this is why I'm careful whether they're cooking with alcohol, because I know if that part of my brain gets activated, for me, it's not the glass of wine that I want. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, that part got hammered. for me through this experience. I'm so grateful for that experience now, right? Because without a shadow of a doubt, I know that that's where this leads.

The, that spiraled, you know, it's like all the things that the, that that first treatment experience gave to me were all like these planted seeds that I didn't believe in what they were saying about me. And then it all came true. And the, the, the, it spiraled way, way, way out of control. I ended up shooting dope. I went on a run that was probably six to nine months. Dude, this is my story, man.

I went to treatment the first time, and then my next run was six to nine months. And my second run was the first time I did heroin, but it started with like I woke up and I had this idea that I was going to drink, and I did, and then I was at the street corner buying dope six hours later. Yeah, man.

I'm getting a phone call. you're good Grace you want to grab it selling it thank you thank you Grace Grace is in the house thank you Grace the yeah I mean

when in looking back you know I entered my I got Baker Acted which down in Florida is involuntary hospitalization because I was beyond suicidal tried to overdose multiple times in one day

the slashes on my neck on my wrist. I was 130 pounds soaking wet. It was pure darkness, completely broken. And the, I was shipped up to a program from there that was not like my first program. The, the, the first program was nice and Bougy. Yeah, yeah. The second program was a bit tougher. There was 150 guys, 140 of which were all prison reentry court-ordered diversion type program. And I was there like, you know, on my insurance and private pay for a few months. And it was, it was tough. And where was it? It was in, it was in Florida. It was just north of Ocala. And, and, and, it was just north of Ocala. And the, I was really motivated to get out of the treatment center every day and go to the noon meeting that they would bring us to in town, happy joyous and free, my home group.

And I'll never forget it. I walked out of the treatment van, you know, shaking, broken, miserable. And this woman came up to me and gave me a hug and said, welcome home. and yeah I'm getting a little emotional just talking about it and I fell in love with 12-step recovery there were all these guys that were all laughing outside that you know had these like really cool lives they were married they had businesses they and what and I learned about that sometimes in meetings but most of the time outside of the meetings but in the meetings they were telling my story over and over and over again about how they were just

you know there was a guy who used to talk about being sufficiently horrified by his alcoholism and that just hit me so deeply yeah the uh these guys knew what i had experienced and yet they were laughing and they had these cool lives and i really wanted to know how they got there and they took me under their wing and they were kind to me when i didn't think i deserved it and uh changed my life. I fell in love with being of service to other people, like they were of service to me. That's unbelievable. And that's, that's what launched. You know, there's this guy, William James, who right, right, wrote the varieties of religious experiences and had a big impact on Alcoholics Anonymous. And he has this line in varieties of religious experiences. He studied

spiritual awakenings around the world, that was his life's work. And he said, all of them look completely unique. He said, except for the fact that every single one of them that he ever came in contact with shared two commonalities. The first commonality being devastation, alcoholic bottom, near-death experience, trauma, so on and so forth. And then the second, commonality is once having had this awakening, the inability to contain it, meaning I have to tell people about this. It's not a choice, you know, in the 12th step, there's a promise about carrying the message to other alcoholics. It's not a, for those of us who have had this experience of awakening spiritually to what this all is really about, my experience is that it's not so much

a choice as much as I'm compelled. I have to tell you about this. And that, you know, that kind of energy that I experienced in early recovery really propelled me in the direction of I really wanted to get, you know, my first job in the field was as a tech at a treatment center. And then all these like really good people came around me to like help me understand what this was. They introduced me to trauma work, which I'm deeply passionate about. I think it's, I think trauma works probably the sneakiest form of getting somebody into spirituality that I mean, yeah, I want to double click on that. I want to zoom in on your career and what you're doing now. The thing that's coming up for me is, as I mentioned, we just spent some time visiting some colleges and we were doing that

with Emmett Smith. And we were with a bunch of, yeah, it was awesome, dude. This guy's, he's just, he's the best and we were in a room full of what they called student leaders so it was basically the heads of all the fraternities like they're just trying like you know like they're just trying to wrangle their brothers i know those guys yeah you know you probably were one of those guys and and they asked him about leadership and emitt said like the number one leadership quality is love is like if you're able to love people you are then giving them an opportunity um to see something that you're You're basically telling them, like, I see something in you that you don't even see in yourself yet. That's beautiful. And that's what like those early treatment jobs and those early people in recovery, I feel like that's what they do for us. Yeah. Like, I was convinced I was unlovable.

That girl gives you the hug getting out of that van. It's like, holy shit. I felt something for the first time in a long time. And then these guys that kind of, you know, in our early careers, believe in us, it's huge. so you start working the field you're a tech um let's let's go to today because you've had i mean you've been doing this work for i guess a decade is that yeah 10 years uh you're the chief clinical officer at family first family first treats teens uh 13 to 18 they now do women and men it's an amazing program i've seen unbelievable outcomes uh we've hired some people from family first

like i have nothing but glorious things to say about it i want to start with Parris Hilton. Yeah. So Paris Hilton, I mean, this must have been, what, five years ago now, or is it 10 years ago? Yeah, a handful of years ago. She shared her experience of being thrown into a myriad of different teen treatment experiences that were just unbelievably abusive. And so on the heels of that, thank you, Paris for speaking up.

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about, because, because, a lot of our listeners are parents, a lot of our listeners come here for, for hope, for guidance on what to do with their kids, why does what you do work and why does what you do feel ethical to you and the team and go against kind of some of the issues at Paris experienced? I think contextually it's important to name that the, the, the, there are really, really good teen treatment providers that have always been around and yet the prevailing approach for a way too long about how to treat teens was essentially to dominate them into a state of behavioral compliance with

environmental standards the one of the biggest difficulties of that is that it works you absolutely can strip a kid of all of their dignity and dominate them into doing and saying exactly what you want them to do and say. Now, the heartbreaking part, right, is for any of us that this should be obvious. This should have been obvious for a long time is that while on the surface of things, it might look better because they're doing and saying what you want them to do and say. Underneath the surface, all of the seething rage and heartbreak that was causing all of the issues in their lives in the first place get reinforced. And as all of that

compliance is just shoving all of that stuff down, as soon as these kids would get out of their treatment experiences and go home or to the next spot, it couldn't help be acted out onto the environment or back at themselves through self-harm and suicide and addiction. And these are the stories that we're hearing. And I think it's really, really important that we, as an industry, listen to the people that are telling their subjective experience of how inhumane and undignified their treatment experience was. The Family First was founded with the principal idea that we were going to be the complete

opposite of all of that, that we were going to provide. a compassionate, humane, and dignified experience for kids. And some of that goes into the realm of there is no system of rewards and consequences with kids. I'm not concerned so much with them doing or saying what I want them to do or say. I want to know what they authentically want to do and what they authentically want to say. And the moment I come with some kind of goal or agenda or solution environmentally about what I think they should be doing, immediately it triggers this compliance defiance dilemma where they're just going to be responding to me about in complying to look good or defying to somehow gain some kind of false independence from the environment.

the strategy of that for them unconsciously most often is that if they can just continue complying or defying the environment they never have to take a look at what's authentic for them what they authentically think and feel and what they want and what they desire and what they believe why does that happen that way well from a developmental trauma perspective is they learned at some point in their lives that to be connected to themselves to be connected to what it is that they most authentically think feel believe and want you know desire for their lives was way too threatening and so what they learned to do was to shut down and disconnect from what's most authentic and that were the substances and the acting out and then all of the adaptations that

they make the ones that you and i've already actually named which is instead of connecting staying with what it is that I most want for myself, I disconnect from that and I adapt by figuring out what everybody wants from me. And I do that so that I can stay safe and be good. Those strategies, as long as they remain

intact, all of the skills and all of the things that we want to help and teach and guide them through, they're never going to work. Because all of those strategies are rooted in shame and guilt and self-

criticism and self-hatred the you know a kid coming in who doesn't believe that they deserve to authentically express themselves and move towards what because of how they were parented or because of how they were you know what coaches like it's i guess it could be a variety of different it's really really complex it obviously has to do with with caregiving with parents but it's even larger than that right it has to do with the fact that you know know, we're growing up, these kids are growing up in a culture and in communities that are more disconnected than ever. Right. The, the, this kind of trickle down effect of the, how parents just do not get the necessary support and resources to meet the billions of different needs that

their kids have all day long. The, so how, all of that environmental failure from a cultural perspective that trickles down into communities, that trickles down into households, that impacts parents, and then kids end up being the receptacles of all of this environmental failure. And the main concept of complex developmental trauma is that young kids can't understand that they can be a good kid in a bad situation. therefore what ends up happening is that the because to experience your environment the only thing that's in charge of your survival as failing you is way too threatening so what do they do

to protect themselves against that threat they make that failure about themselves if i'm bad the environment in which my life depends on can be good that tends not to be like a one-off event, but rather the air that kids are breathing day after day, week after week, month after month. In an early childhood development, it gets wired in their brain and their nervous system and goes to the root of who they think they are. This is why, you know, when clients come in to our programs and our offices, they don't say things like, you know, Zach, I recognize that I have this pattern, right? Of, you know, kind of every time I feel angry, I start to judge myself for being angry and tell myself that I'm too much and that I don't, you know,

this is, you know, anger is not welcome here and I'm not allowed to feel angry. No, what do they say? They say, me? Oh, no, no, no, I'm not angry. I'm not an angry person. Right. There's no such thing as not an angry person. What this person is telling me is that at a certain point in their life, they learned that to be connected to their anger was too costly.

And so they learned to shut down and disconnect from their healthy anger in favor of adapting to what was available to them in their environment rather than what they actually ended up in that seat because of things they were doing that displayed itself as anger to the world. I mean, they were probably acting out, right? They were probably or shutting down to a place where they just, because we see that too, right? Like we see the team. We see the kids that just go mute, say nothing. Yeah. parents and they'll just headphones on, head down. I don't even know you, are you my mom?

I don't, you know, kind of thing. From my perspective, all acting out behavior comes first from acting in on themselves. There's no kid that's raging externally that isn't absolutely eviscerating themselves internally beforehand. And as adults, I mean, I get it. So. Well, going back a little bit to what you were asking about, like, how do you, how do you set up a humane, dignified treatment program?

How does it start? Because here's the thing. And I want to get there. But we get calls here. And for, for years, like, we would do the family meeting and try to help the adolescent, you know, client or patient get to treatment and I did some of these and I was actually I feel like pretty good and it was a lot based on my own personal experience and kind of trying to be the opposite of the for lack of a better word the goon right like the guy who's coming in in the

middle of the night however there and we've kind of moved away from that because we've grown so much and we just like we know what we know we do what we do um there's a call we get though or that you get or that your friends get that do this work that are out in the field that is the 14 year old kid that is clearly a harm to himself

if there is not a significant intervention he might die or she might die now I don't I don't know where the line gets like drawn in terms of like when you go in and grab that kid and say you need to be in a program

or if that is just too traumatic that you never do that, I guess I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that, if that makes sense. There's a long way of asking. Like, if a kid is in danger, do you take measures that are going to seem a little bit more aggressive to get them into a program? Yeah.

My experience is that, and for good reason in many cases, when parents call us and ask us these questions, more often than not, what's happening is that they're petrified of their kids. And they don't want to rupture the relationship that they have with their kids, even more than it already has been ruptured. They're afraid of, on the more kind of subtle and they might even just be afraid of confronting their kids. They might be really afraid of calling out what's happening because on some level they blame themselves. The question is, how can you, again, in a

compassionate, dignified and humane way, how can you set up to address things openly with your kid that doesn't involve completely stripping away all of their agency and their ability to actually understand and buy into what's happening. Now, when there's incredible, like, immediate threats to physical safety, this is where it gets challenging. The, you know, having to call the authorities, get the cops to the house, having to in Florida, Baker Act, your son or your daughter, to the hospital, that these are really, really extreme measures that shouldn't be, that the decision shouldn't be made lightly. Those things can be incredibly traumatic. But the measuring stick for me is if what we can reasonably anticipate, and this has to be in collaboration with a trained

professional, we can say that what's about to happen is going to lead to something far more traumatic than the trauma of involuntarily hospitalizing them. It's the hardest decision. It's the hardest decision ever. That's the measuring stick. And I say it needs to be done in collaboration with a trained professional because trained professionals are able to discern whether this is an emotional threat or whether this is a physical threat so much more clearly than a parent who is just doing the best that they

can to navigate a situation that feels impossible. The reason I ask, Mike, is because we have, so at release, we, you know, we basically start treating folks at 18. Yeah. So if they leave your care, you know, they're now into our care. So we'll get 25, 26, 29 year old, 35. year old and they are still 15 years later hung up on my parents decided to wake me up in the middle of the night and rip me out of my bed and send me to a wilderness program and because of that

I hate them and I will never forgive them and I'm only here because I don't have any other options and so when I hear that and I hear Paris Hilton but I also know that there are situations where it's the only option yeah i mean the the again that kind of an extreme option i think what would i have a problem with more than anything like i want to know i want to know how as an industry we heal and we treat our kids better i think it has to do with listening to their experiences and understanding where we've fallen short, the taking responsibility for what we can and trying to do things differently.

And one of the things that I think we need to recognize is that there are way too many kids that that was the first recommendation. It wasn't to go to therapy. It wasn't to sit down and have a talk as a family with guided support. It was, oh, you're afraid of your kid and what he's doing. you need to hire these people to snatch them in the middle of the night and send them to the woods.

That, in my opinion, is grossly negligent and absolutely unacceptable. If you haven't attempted to have a conversation with your kid about what's going on and your first move is to do that, my experience is that that's not coming from parents. Parents are just being guided, or I should say misguided by professionals that are making recommendations to do that. Well, that's a big problem in our field, too, is a lot of these folks. And I have to be honest about my experience is I was six months over when I started working in behavioral health care. So I probably made a lot of mistakes early on. Of course.

I now feel like I am qualified to handle really any level of call and know what I know and know what I don't know, more importantly. but there's a lot of young men and women that get into this work and they clock a couple years and they sponsor someone or they help a friend get into treatment and then all of a sudden they say, I can do this. And they start doing this work and they end up doing more hard than good. Yeah, I mean there was a cookie cutter kind of set of recommendations for years.

And again, if you go on all of the posts, online and you read the articles and you hear the stories that they're riddled with these kinds of things is that it was the cookie cutter recommendation was to get a transport team to take a kid out to a wilderness program. There's very little to no contact with the kid and their family during the treatment process. The only communication that they're having is with the parents. There might be a family week or weekend. towards the end of treatment, which the kid is then incentivized to try and look like they're doing good, which makes it look like the program actually was effective, even though they're just

complying to get out of there and get back to safety. There wasn't actually anything meaningful in terms of a shift of how they relate to themselves or the world. And then because it looked like the treatment experience was effective, they trust the people that were recommending it in the first place, and then the people recommending it in the first place, then recommend them to go to a long-term extended therapeutic boarding school. And then that therapeutic boarding school ends up being a place where all of that seething rage and heartbreak gets projected out onto the environment or back at themselves. And historically speaking, how people related to that was oh

whose fault is that the kid he needs to go back to wilderness and then back through and kids weren't going home for years right and they were displaced I've met them I've met them you and me both horror stories and you and so like

the whistle was blown when some of these people grew up yeah like they kind of looked back at their life and like that was fucked up like that was crazy yeah and I think like gets confusing for people, and one of the things that gets confusing for people is that that doesn't mean that there weren't meaningful experiences. It doesn't mean that there weren't transformative experiences. That doesn't mean that there weren't people who really greatly

benefited from those street. No, of course. No, I mean, look, I always say like, you know, when a family calls me, I say, look, you can get well, you can get sober with $2 and a big book by going to A.A. That's right. You can get sober by going to CrossFit. You can get well by becoming a marathon runner. Like there's a lot of different ways to do this. And so some of these, you know, in your face kind of, yes, therapeutic, you know, behavior

mod programs have had some successful results. I mean, every program I would hope if they've done anything has had some successes. but I want to pivot to family first and to the work you guys are doing and how that is being guided by kind of the trauma background you have because I think there's a lot of things that we're talking about today.

One is like our own shared experience, too, is how we need to treat our kids better. Yeah. You know, and a lot of times what I'm hearing you say is that as parents, like our behaviors are being, I'm not a parent, but behaviors are being,

fueled by fear. You're just terrified, which is okay. You need to hear that. And three, that there's options available like Family First that take a little bit of a different approach and I think work with the whole family system. Yeah, it's critical. From my perspective, the treatment with an adolescent doesn't exist without treatment with the entire family system. Backtracking just a moment to speaking to the parent dynamic. There was an old Buddhist mindfulness teacher that I loved. You went hard on the Buddhism for a minute, didn't you? I did.

I was a little aggressive. I went to India. I did the whole thing. We love that. Yeah, we love that. Full throttle. Yeah. His name was Ticknacht Han.

And I heard him speak one time. And I share this as often as I possibly can with, parents all around that come to me for support, that come to family first, is he said, the greatest gift you can give to your children is your own happiness. And he said, the reason is because they'll take responsibility for it. Now, my little add-on to the end of that is that the equal and opposite is also true. They'll take responsibility for your anxiety, your depression, your workaholism, your alcoholism, your marital issues, they'll take responsibility for all of it because they have to. They don't get to say, you know, this just isn't working out

for me anymore. I'm going to go get my needs met somewhere else. The only option that they have is to adapt to what's available to them rather than what it is that they need. So from my perspective, the greatest thing you could ever do for your kids is to identify and remove all of the obstacles in the way of your own happiness, your own fulfillment, your own, you know, heart's desire, so to speak, that as you start to do that progressively more and more, your kids don't have to adapt to you in their environment in the same way. There's more capacity to be in relationship and in an authentic way. And you're able to model for them the fact that taking care of yourself is the

greatest kind of thing that they can do to express their love for you. And that's, I give this example all the time. I remember we, you know, we had a program director leave and we'd get another job. And so I took over our family program for a little bit, which we basically, we meet every Wednesday night. It's a support. I took over a family support group. And I showed up for like three or four weeks.

And every week, these families were so complimentary. Release is the best. I love my case manager. I love you guys. I'm like, I think we're good. I don't think we're this good. You know, like, so the one that I went home and I looked at it, and I just, I looked at the list of parents.

And I matched them up with, you know, the client or the patient. And sure enough, the parents that were showing up, their loved ones were having good experiences with us. It was an optional group. The parents that weren't showing up and weren't willing to dig in and do the work, their loved ones were not having good experiences. Same deal at Family First. It was probably the one key element to the success of just like the beginning of our program

when we were just working with a handful of kids and a handful of families. It was blatantly obvious. Oh my God, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, yeah. It was just a handful. of us. And, you know, we were doing the best that we could with what we knew, but we were making so many mistakes and the support of the families even from the beginning. We have families that

there's a group. I ran in this parent intensive a number of years ago. And there was a group of moms that really connected with each other during this intensive. And we talk a lot about survival patterns in this kind of trauma-focused treatment perspective. And so they started calling themselves survival moms. And there's this whole Facebook group that they created survival moms. And it started with like 20, 30 moms, and it blew up. Wow. Blew up.

And those same survival moms from years ago are still facilitating alumni support meetings for us over Zoom with having, touched thousands of parents over the years. I mean, it's just like the cool, the support from them like to, again, this like idea of like supporting somebody in awakening to themselves and the world and that they feel compelled to share their experience and how they got there. Well, there's so much humility in that. And I always say, you know, I'll talk to a mom and I'll say, hey, we have this great support group or I have this great free meeting that you can go to. No way. I'll pay $500 or $300.

to go to see a therapist for an hour, so I know that anything I say in that room is going to stay there, but there's a great amount of humility and humbleness, however you want to define it, in doing something like that, being a beacon of hope for other moms,

for other people going through it, and, you know, passing it on. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, you know, when it came to, again, I keep going back to the beginning of like setting all this up, we didn't exactly know,

how we just knew that we didn't want to be what you know so many of these kids had experienced and we and i love that you say by the way that there's there are other programs doing good work yeah that's not yeah of course yeah there's good therapists at you know some of the one of the greatest therapists i ever met was at the program that i went to that was very tough and you know not it was a, it was a DOC program. Yeah. The, the, so there's all these incredible people and then, you know, you mix in the fact that the treatment isn't therapy.

The therapy is a part of treatment. But, you know, like what you've created here with, at release, with the community and with the, the, the, the, the, all of the different positions, the hierarchies, the different, you know, needs specialists and case managers and techs. and counselor assistants and all of these different people that are just pouring into the client care on a daily basis, we hear it all the time that the most meaningful interaction that a kid had during their stay,

despite having this badass therapist and quadruple board certified Harvard trained psychiatrist and all that stuff, was the overnight tech that just like, sat there one night when they were having insomnia and they shared their experience with them and listened to them and that that was something that they'd never experienced before and that they carried with them and was like a little seed that planted that oh wow like i there are people out in the world that want nothing from me and just want to see me succeed i mean human beings are smart and kids are really smart if you bullshit a kid they're going to eat you a lot they will

sniff out your agenda for them before you even know what it is so my thought there is like okay it's two o'clock in the morning this guy if i'm a kid i know they're not making a great wage or here because their life circumstances are forcing them to work an overnight shift i might want to listen to what they have to say yeah because they're not there's no agenda here none there's no agenda so you you treat the whole family together how long is the program is I mean, like, it varies in length, obviously, like, depending on insurance. We love to have kids there for 90 days. And then you work really hard to get them into aftercare programs.

Exactly. You've sent us kids. I mean, like, we've had some amazing outcomes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the, my perspective is that the residential treatment is only as successful as the aftercare plan. The, if you, I mean, that's a great point because how many times do you treat someone

for 90 days, they, for whatever reason, have to go back home and then parents immediately undo the work that you guys just did. Yeah, it's pretty tragic when it happens. The, you know, sometimes it ends up being a thing, you know, we're fortunate in the sense that this is considered pretty early intervention on like a 14, 15 year old. But the, when they go home, the parents, the family didn't take recommendations and they see that it unfolded in the ways that we prepped them for and foreshadowed. And, you know, similar to me, right? When everybody was telling me this, this, this and this are going to happen

if you continue living this way. And I didn't believe them. And then I went out and did it and it all came true. It's like this thing of, you know, how can you recommend what you know is going to be best for this kid and this family and do it in a way that both is educational and in a way that doesn't shame the parents for making a decision that felt best to them in that moment. Because if they get the sense that I'm judging them for not taking the recommendation, the likelihood that they're going to seek us for support when things get bad again is pretty little. I learned that stuff from AA. You know, it's like 12-step recovery. taught me like, you know, I'm here for you when you need it. And, you know, come back whenever you,

whenever you want to, whenever this feels like the right thing, I'm going to give you, you know, guidance or advice or support when you ask for it, but I'm not going to be married to whether you take it or not. I mean, I've had, and I know you've had this experience. I have one recently, actually you know cases will come into my life i will do nothing but love them yeah they will still call me every name in the book because they're not done and i'll take it super personally and i'll say all i did was try to love that person yeah and then two years later they come crawling back like they're either making an amend like they're sober and they're like holy shit I was an asshole to you or they're still struggling and they say I'm ready now and that's really what validates this work

I think and what you're talking about because we are so so used to living in crisis and these parents come to us and they are in crisis and it's really I don't know how you feel about this but I feel like my job to just be calm and confident. They're going to feel that more than hear what I'm saying. Yeah, and to validate, you know, I have a hard time sometimes in our field. I feel conflicted about it, right? Because there's so much hope and there's so much to be said for like the miracles that you and I've both seen. And there's also something to be said for not selling hope that,

you know, the, I feel conflicted sometimes around the idea that like, more often than not, the most supportive thing that we can do for families is to validate that this is very scary, that there is no right or wrong decision to make, that you could do this for your kid and absolutely nothing changes. And the, by being direct, by being straight, forward about all of those things it gives people the agency to kind of choose and the i think so many people are sensitive to the to uh some of the snake oil that kind of gets sold in places that uh you know it's important to inspire it's important to to show you know that there's a there's a another way and there's a path that's available to everybody and yet the when that

becomes a way of ignoring kind of the darker side of all of this. It reinforces so much of the shame that keeps people from seeking support in the first place. Yeah. The, you know, I was, something you said a moment ago reminded me of this kid I worked with a handful of years ago the uh i was i was so lost with working with him he was so angry and he hated me he just ripped me to shreds every time we talked and um the i remember this vividly one of the the sessions that we had he uh he's ripping me apart f you you don't know me i don't know you i don't know you I don't trust you. You could be just like everybody else that my parents have sent me off to to be fixed by.

And when I was working with him, I was, you know, trying to show him like, no, no, no, like I'm not like those people. I am trustworthy. I don't think that you're broken in all the ways that you've been told you're broken or that there's something wrong with you or, you know, anything like that. And as we're working together, and I'm trying to point out, like, that I never said anything about him feeling, being broken or I never said, you know, these were all, I was trying to do the therapy thing. Yeah. I was trying to show him the projections that he had and all this kind of stuff just pissed him off even more. He's, you know, stormed out of the room, completely tore my head off. And I was exhausted and defeated.

I'm sure he was exhausted and pissed off. And so I called a mentor of mine. and asked to have like an emergency consultation. And she goes, tell me what's going on. I told her about the kid. And a kid from Boca, really nice family, straight A student, incredibly successful in athletics, but was like on a tear, was sneaking out. stealing, smoking weed, drinking, breaking into cars, like, just, you know, knucklehead.

And so I'm telling her about him and I'm telling her about the interaction that we just had. And she goes, okay, let's do like a little role play. You be him and I'll be, I'll show you how I might work with him. And so I was like, he was a little intense, you know, you okay with that? And she was like, I can, I can handle it. So I let her have it, right? I started screaming at her. I said, F you, you don't know me.

You think I'm broken. I'm not broken. I don't trust you. You're just like everybody else that my parents have sent me off to be fixed by. And she's just kind of like empathically like kind of nodding her head a little as I'm talking. And I kind of ran out of steam at some point. And as I ran out of steam, she looks at. at me. And she goes, of course you don't trust me. Why would you trust me? Right. Double down.

And I, and I didn't know what to say in the role play, right? I kind of shuddered. And I was like, what do you mean? You know? And she goes, well, you're absolutely right. You don't know me at all. Like I could totally be just like all of the other people that your parents have sent you off to be fixed by. There's no reason you would think otherwise. Yeah. And as she's saying this, I started to feel really sad. Like tears started to well up in my eyes, just in the role play. And I was like, how did you do that? Like, what was that?

What did you just do? And she goes, the first thing I'm listening for when I'm working with somebody is I'm listening for what I can agree with, not what I can fix or solve or address or confront. And everything that he said, I was in complete alignment with. Yeah, he doesn't know me. He doesn't, there's no reason for him to, it would be weird if he trusted me right now. And it hit me like a ton of bricks, how I had fallen into this trap. And so I rushed back to the center, right?

Asked him if we could meet. And he reluctantly said yes. We go into my office and I just started the whole thing off by saying, hey man, I've been thinking a lot about you. I've been thinking a lot about our last session. and I just wanted to tell you that I was wrong. You're absolutely right. There's no reason for you to trust me. You don't know me at all.

You have every reason in the world to think that I'm just like everybody else that your parents have shipped you off to to get fixed by. And I'm sorry that I didn't say that in the first place. Lo and behold, what ends up happening? A tear starts running down his face. first tear I had seen in treatment with him thus far and I asked him, I said, I noticed that there's tears coming to your eyes. You know, what are you aware of? And he goes, I don't know, this feels

really weird. And I said, when you say, this feels weird, what's the this? And he goes, I don't know, I've just never had anybody talk to me the way that you just talked to me. And I said, when you say it feels weird, is it like weird good or weird bad? and he said a little bit of both. And we started talking about what felt good about it, which was that he actually felt validated for the first time in his life. And the bad part about it was that there was something really scary for him about being validated. That while he always wanted this, he always, it felt really vulnerable for people to actually see him and understand him.

While he was really angry that people didn't see or understand him, He set it up for people to not do that because that level of intimacy and connection felt really, really scary. So powerful, man. I think that's, I just think about my, yes, and that is always in this work, in this career. And when I talk, like, it's always about can you hear them? Yeah. Can you actually hear what they're saying? And can you make them feel like they're not alone?

I feel like that's a good place to end. we left a ton on the table, so we might have to go back for a round too. How do people, is it familyfirst.com? How do people find you, Mike? Because I think people are going to be really, is it? Yeah, yeah. You can go on www.famleyfirst.com. You can find a ton of free resources, articles that I've written,

podcasts, book recommendations. A quick shout out to a close colleague. of mine that asked me to write the forward to her new book. It's called the parallel process for all families, all parents that have a loved one, a teen or a young adult in treatment. The parallel process has been an amazing resource for 15 years for parents. And she asked me to write the forward to the newest edition. Amazing. It actually came out yesterday. True. That's awesome. And yeah, incredibly cool. I highly recommend you're a parent and you want support. to seek that that information on Instagram.

It's at michael.jurse and yeah. What a gift to have you here, man. You've helped so many people. We got a lot of work left to do, but I'm grateful we made this happen. I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for you too, man. I really appreciate that we've gotten to connect more deeply.

Yeah, it's been good. All right, that's it for today. Thank you.