Ever wondered about the hidden dangers lurking in the everyday substances we consume? I sat down with David Kerwin, a recovered addict and a life coach with over 40 years of sobriety from drugs and alcohol, who recently decided to conquer his final frontier: sugar and flour addiction. With a wealth of personal and professional insight, David unravels the complex relationship between our minds, our bodies, and the substances we often take for granted.
In our insightful conversation, we venture into the fascinating world of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic model that David employs to great success. David paints an intimate portrait of the IFS, which features three distinct parts: exiles, managers, and firefighters. The journey into our internal world does not stop there; we delve into eight characteristics of self, including calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, connectedness, and choice.
But the stakes are more than theoretical. We also grapple with the reality of food addiction, a frequently overlooked yet potent form of addiction. Our conversation uncovers the critical role that honesty, vulnerability, and a robust recovery foundation play in overcoming these unseen battles. We also examine the unique power of IFS in managing not just substances like alcohol, drugs, caffeine, and nicotine, but also sugar and flour. So, sit back and join us for a transformative journey into the depths of addiction, recovery, and the promise of a healthier, more connected life.
Florence's courses & coaching programs can be found at:
www.FlorenceChristophers.com
Connect with Florence on:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE
Ever wondered about the hidden dangers lurking in the everyday substances we consume? I sat down with David Kerwin, a recovered addict and a life coach with over 40 years of sobriety from drugs and alcohol, who recently decided to conquer his final frontier: sugar and flour addiction. With a wealth of personal and professional insight, David unravels the complex relationship between our minds, our bodies, and the substances we often take for granted.
In our insightful conversation, we venture into the fascinating world of Internal Family Systems (IFS), a therapeutic model that David employs to great success. David paints an intimate portrait of the IFS, which features three distinct parts: exiles, managers, and firefighters. The journey into our internal world does not stop there; we delve into eight characteristics of self, including calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, connectedness, and choice.
But the stakes are more than theoretical. We also grapple with the reality of food addiction, a frequently overlooked yet potent form of addiction. Our conversation uncovers the critical role that honesty, vulnerability, and a robust recovery foundation play in overcoming these unseen battles. We also examine the unique power of IFS in managing not just substances like alcohol, drugs, caffeine, and nicotine, but also sugar and flour. So, sit back and join us for a transformative journey into the depths of addiction, recovery, and the promise of a healthier, more connected life.
Florence's courses & coaching programs can be found at:
www.FlorenceChristophers.com
Connect with Florence on:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | YOUTUBE
Welcome to the Kicks Sugar Coach podcast. Join me each week as I interview experts who will share the science of sugar, sugar addiction and different approaches to recovery. We hope to empower you with the information and inspiration, insights and strategies you need to break up with sugar and fall in love with healthy, whole foods so you can prevent and reverse chronic disease, lose weight, boost your mood and energy. Feel free to go to my website for details on my coaching programs and to access free resources KicksSugarCoachcom. Hello everybody and welcome to an interview with David Kerwin.
Speaker 1:David Kerwin was originally a nurse and a supervisor and then he actually became an addiction and mental health counselor and has been doing that for decades. If I'm not mistaken, he is also an IFS level three certified therapist and he is trained in another modality of therapy called advanced intimacy. From the inside out, he is sober, clean and sober from drugs and alcohol for over 40 years and currently he's retired. But he does have a boutique, if that's the word coaching practice. He's a recovery and life coach and you can't find him online. There's no website because this guy gets all of his clients from referrals and he's known as the guy in the drug and alcohol and the addiction recovery space as the guy that takes the hard cases, the ones that are really, really struggling, and so he's earned himself an amazing reputation Somebody really knows, really understands addiction recovery and uses compassion and IFS and his own experiences with recovery in his coaching practice.
Speaker 1:But here's the really cool thing David 13 weeks ago well, probably before that the 13 weeks ago decided that he was now going to become abstinent from sugar and flour. And he's now 13 weeks in and he's here to share his insights. As an addiction counselor and a man who's already got 40 years of sobriety from drugs and alcohol, what is like to kick what he considers his last addiction. Welcome, david.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much for having me, Florence. It's a real privilege to be here today.
Speaker 1:Well, you tell us a bit more about yourself. Is there anything any other highlights that? Maybe I missed that you'd like to share?
Speaker 2:No, I think you covered it very well. I'm very happily married. My lovely wife and I will be celebrating 47 years of marriage this late summer. I have four grown children and seven beautiful grandchildren, and they complete our life, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Got it awesome and where do you practice that I don't need the city of, maybe just the state, or where are you out of?
Speaker 2:I'm out of Springfield, illinois, which is the capital city in Illinois. It's our community of approximately 160,000. So it's a, it's a what I call. It's a large bedroom community is how I describe Springfield.
Speaker 1:Got it, got it Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I'm wondering. I'd like to just get right into the sugar flower flower thing and then maybe we can circle back around and see how you're drawing your experience and expertise and mental health and addiction recovery to your current addiction recovery work. How did for years and years? Was your addiction to sugar and flower under the radar, or did you know about it? You weren't ready? Or tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Well, very early in my recovery I'd say about three years in I was noticing a lot of mood, the oscillation that really concerned me, has a, has a healthcare professional and has a person in recovery. And so I gave up sugar oh my God, probably 35 years ago, for probably about two years. And then I tell, I tell people I basically succumb to it. It really when I was off sugar way back then it really helped my mood and thinking to stabilize dramatically. But those were the days where I really was not aware of the impact, emotionally and psychologically, as well as physiologically, of sugar and processed processed food. I mean, you probably know very well that a lot of brain research has only come into its own fruition, as I describe it, in the last 10 years or so. I mean, what we've learned about the brain in the last 10 to 15 years is amazing to me and has really opened a lot of doors for not only substance addiction but for process addictions as well.
Speaker 1:So 25 years ago you were. You were. You were claiming silver from drugs and alcohol. Your mental health was struggling, your moods were all over. You gave up sugar for two years, you felt better and then slowly it just kind of crept back in. What inspired you to go and break up a sugar and flower again?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest thing for me was my weight. My weight had gotten to the point of weighing the most I ever had. I was chronically tired. I had no energy for the grandchildren and I, you know I had to, as an old saying, that I was sick and tired of being tired. And so I I shopped around, investigated several different modalities and then I chose one which I knew going into. It was sugar free, no, no simple carbs and no processed flour. So I knew it was going to be what I call a stretch for myself. But I also knew, with my background, with internal family system, I was probably better equipped to deal with what I was going to experience than I ever had been before.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and do you think it? Do you honestly believe that you have an addiction, that your sugar flower, or that your relationship to sugar and flour is similar to your one with drugs and alcohol?
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely it was. It was very addictive. You know, for example, the first week I was into what I call the food plan and the life plan I had, I had physical symptoms of backing away from the simple carbohydrates and sugar. I had a headache, I was irritable, I was restless, and I attribute that all to the the body detoxifying itself physically from those, from those substances. Right, and I think the other thing that I noticed, florence, was that if I ever thought about or tried to back away from any of those substances, just the thought of it put my system emotionally in it, what I call a tailspin.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes. And it must be amazing to you this, this successful 40 years of sobriety, addictions counselor, and to have this final lingering addiction just sort of simmering for all these years under the surface, kind of evading your attention.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was, it was. It was very eye opening for me. You know, I knew I knew I had a problem with the carbs as well as the sugar, but I had a part of me, florence, that was real indignant. It was almost like we've given up so much, why should we have to give up one more thing? And so I had to spend some time with that part and really help it to see that we were not giving up anything, that basically, what we were doing we were, we were giving ourselves a life that we hadn't been able to live previously. And it wasn't a, it wasn't an overnight discussion. I mean, it took a while to do some convincing, but the part really did come around, so to speak, and began to see how much better the system I was feeling, and also started to notice the weight that we were dropping and also the increased energy. And probably one of the most positive things Not so much emotional emotionality, as I like to call it, Right, right, just more, more emotionally stable and resilient.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and these are just after 13 weeks of back to back whole abstinence, right of eating only whole foods. And have there been any other benefits that you've noticed from just becoming a whole food man?
Speaker 2:I think the other thing is my sleeve has gotten much more stable. I was one of these. If I had to get up in the middle of the night, as most men my age do, to go to the bathroom, I would make a side trip to the kitchen, and it was always. It was always carbs and or sugar that called me to the kitchen. And since I have gotten into this life and food plan, I don't have to take any side trips to the kitchen at night, and so that has been a major aha moment for me as well.
Speaker 1:Oh, my gosh, and I was telling you just before the camera was rolling, that for those of us that have been walking this sugar flower free path sugar flowers, sweeteners and alcohol free path and the true you know the definition of abstinence, the most robust gold standard definition of abstinence I think we're like so excited for you because you're already like miraculous transformations in your mood, your energy, your sleep. Your drop 26 pounds, your your transforming. And it's just the beginning. And I was telling David that we should have him back in six months or a year so that we can show everybody what it's like, even a year down the road, the stunning transformation that can happen in body and mind and spirit, really. So tell me a little bit about what tools you're going to pull that you use to break up with alcohol and drugs and you've been teaching your clients to do you know, with their addictions that you're now applying to your addiction recovery from sugar.
Speaker 2:Well, I very much take on the philosophy of addiction that Gabor Matei takes on, and basically what he talks about is that most, if not all, addiction is caused from some kind of pervasive loss and or trauma that a person has experienced, and that person uses either substances and or processes to help soothe themselves emotionally, psychologically, physically and, most importantly, spiritually.
Speaker 2:And so for me, I got. I got sober following a 21 day standard treatment stay in a hospital almost 40 years ago and basically what was pretty much thrust upon most of us in those days was 12 step programs, and I think 12 step programs have really saved a lot of people. But for me, I was approximately 10 years into my recovery when I started dealing with major depression symptoms, and I had probably dealt with those on and off early in my recovery and finally hit what I call another low point in my life, and that low point was post traumatic stress disorder that I had repressed for all of my life. And when that came roaring back into my life, that's when I was introduced to Dr Richard Schwartz's internal family system program, and so I use a lot of internal family system tools as well as 12 step programs to work with not only the clients that I'm privileged to serve, but also use those tools with myself.
Speaker 1:Let's go into a bit more detail about that. So how specifically do you use it and do you encourage other people or invite other people to use IFS to recover from addictions?
Speaker 2:Probably 85 to 90% of the clients that I work with in my coaching practice I introduced to internal family system because I have that much confidence in it being the best intervention and treatment for the underlying trauma and underlying issues that have caused them to relapse and have kept them from stabilizing their life.
Speaker 1:Yes. So, david, I'm loving that you're saying this, because I always feel really, really cheeky. I mean my perspective on IFS and addictions. The world is keto crazy and IFS gaga right, and they're awesome. They're awesome, but to me, in my experiences as someone who's been walking the path of addiction for recovery for 30 years and I coach in this space and I'm trained and constantly educating myself I use IFS after I've learned how to say that deep, definitive, clear and decisive no, right. And so many of my clients that are coming from IFS they want to dialogue with the part that wants to drink, or each. I'm like great, after you said no.
Speaker 2:Does that?
Speaker 1:resonate with you Sounds to me like you're like that too that IFS is very helpful. You got to get sugar free and then you got to stay sugar free and then you got to thrive sugar free. And they're totally different stages and require different tools, and it sounds to me like you use IFS at stage two, which is how to stay sugar free. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:That's pretty accurate. Yes, it is. Yeah, I still believe in what a lot of people call an abstinence model. Yeah, and I very much encourage my clients that I work with to strongly consider abstinence because if not, the system is in turmoil. But I also believe that we have to meet people where they're at and for those people that are relapsed prone, I think they can learn from their relapses and I use them to what I call illustrate or reinforce what is going on within their system itself.
Speaker 1:I love it, so it makes sense to me. So how about you tell us a little bit about IFS, like so that people who maybe are kind of just vaguely understand what IFS is?
Speaker 2:That I'd be glad to. Internal family system was founded by Richard Dick Schwartz almost 30 years ago, and Dick was a family therapist in Chicago and he was working with a very difficult population of adolescents and young people, young women, who had eating disorders. And what he began to notice in his frustration in dealing with this population was that when a lot of these people came in they talked about a part of me wants to be abstinence, another part of me wants to binge and another part of me wants to use food in ways that I know I shouldn't be using them. And so he started going with what I call the flow and exploring their parts, and basically what he came up with was three distinct parts.
Speaker 2:The first part is what we call exiles, florence, and these are very young parts that carry what I call the pain. They carry the loss, the trauma, the hurt, the indifference, whatever is causing the internal wound. And unfortunately they are called exiles because they literally have been exiled from our consciousness or our subconscious mind with these wounds and have never had a chance to unburden them or offload them. And then there's another part of the system that is called managers, and these managers work very hard to protect the exiles. They do not want what I call the family secrets or the pain, the loss or the hurt to be talked about, because one of the rules of dysfunctional or unhealthy families is no talk. We don't talk about things like that, okay, and in fact the message is often given don't ever share this information, don't talk about that because it's not a problem, it's not something that our family does. So they're very covert and over limitations placed on these exiles, these children.
Speaker 1:Can I add some to that, David?
Speaker 2:Almost certainly.
Speaker 1:You know, I kind of think of the managers as well in my own system, as the ones that don't want me to get vulnerable, because they just never know when it's unsafe to be vulnerable with my tender spots, with my feelings, right, and so I almost feel like they protect my exiles because they're like we just never know who's gonna shut us down or criticize us or mock us or take advantage of us or hurt us again.
Speaker 2:Exactly right, florence. These managers have very good intentions. You know, a lot of people look at managers and catalog them as bad and wrong oh, they're too perfectionistic, they're too controlling, they're too rigid. Or oh, they're retraumatizing the exiles, when in fact, if you spend time with a manager and get to know manager parts, basically they have the best of intentions to protect these exiles. And then there's another group called firefighters and these firefighters kick in when the managers or when they, the firefighters, think the managers can't hold the truth, the hurt, the pain, in check any longer.
Speaker 2:And firefighters the easiest way to think of them is to think of process addictions or substance addictions. And in Western society, probably the biggest process addiction is work addiction, but I think it's been surpassed by our addiction to electronics, our addiction to phones, our addiction to apps, ipads and computers and how much time we communicate on those devices and how much time we get lost in those devices. And so ultimately, what we want is we want people to have a true sense of what Dick calls self. Okay, and there's basically eight characteristics of self and I'll go over those real briefly and basically the qualities of self are calmness, curiosity, clarity, compassion, confidence, creativity, connectedness.
Speaker 2:And then recently, c Sykes, who is a senior trainer with internal family systems, has come up with another C, and that is choice.
Speaker 2:And so, basically, we want to have a sense of what we're doing and so, basically, we know that we're in self and not blended with one of these parts, be it an exile, a manager or a firefighter, or not hijacked when we have most of these Cs present Because if you're realistic about it, florence, nobody can be in self all the time.
Speaker 2:Okay, that would be almost impossible. But we use the Cs, the eight Cs or now the ninth C, has really been a map or a checklist for how much self is a person in. And so the whole goal of internal family system is to get to know your internal family and to unburden the exiles without totally rejecting the different parts. How many times will we hear a person say I wish I didn't have that way of thinking, I wish I didn't behave in that manner, I wish I had never taken on these qualities? So internal family system basically says all parts are welcome. Having them welcome does not mean that we're not going to work with them and it certainly doesn't mean that we're going to totally accept them, but it does create a path. It does create a map in how we're going to deal with them.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, can I add to that?
Speaker 2:Well, certainly.
Speaker 1:Okay, I was just thinking I'll just share how I think of IFS for me. I mean, this is just Dick's words, just in my own way, is it when I think about my own physical family and my immediate family and some of the extended family, right, and I, when I I was long, I always had the sense that there was such a thing, as I had a best friend named Suzanne, had a wonderful family and every time I was over at her house everything felt very orderly and the kids were running around having fun. Because the kids were having kids. They were not, were being kids. They could play, and when kids can play like that, you know that the parents are present, they're holding down the fort, things are peaceful and everyone's getting their needs met and they're still ordered that the parents can call kids to come sit down at dinner time and when that with kids would call and there's lots of siblings and neighborhood, it was like I could feel the orderliness and the peace and the structure that the parents were on the job and my whole system, my whole system, and I feel safe here and I never wanted to leave her house and I had a number of other friends like that and I always knew there was a difference.
Speaker 1:There was a difference between how I felt at their houses and mine, where there was much more chaos, more trauma, more pain, more fighting right, more dysfunction and good people.
Speaker 1:And so when I think about the self, it's like one of those parents that I saw as a child, that I could see were so grounded and stable and all right, everybody okay, what happened here? And they listened to everybody and everyone felt heard and they all look up at the adult because they know they can trust the adult. The adult is fair, it will solve problems, it will make peace, it will have a solution. And so I kind of think about when I've got all these parts. My favorite part of IFS for me is that when I start to think about all these different parts and tune into the subtleties of different perspectives, I'm tuning into different needs that in the past I was so quick to say I can't take care of that, I haven't got time for that right now. And no good parent says that to a child is come forward to say mom or dad, right, you're like, okay, I hear you, because they've got the bandwidth right, they've got the bandwidth.
Speaker 1:They've got the bandwidth for all of that right, and so it's such an amazing journey to be able to get in touch with this. That's how I think of myself. Is that these real life experiences of parents who truly had the bandwidth for life for their kids to be parents?
Speaker 2:I think that's an excellent way of looking at it. We hear so much today about self-compassion. We hear so much about the need to be mindful and present, and I think the other thing that we hear more and more about in healthy relationships is the capability and capacity to be honest, open and vulnerable with our intimate relationships. Not everybody do we want to be vulnerable with. I mean, we have to have some common sense as well as some safety about that. But being mindful and present or, to use your word, to have the bandwidth to be present, is really what I think a lot of people on their journeys are seeking today.
Speaker 1:Yes, and this is where for me, david, I think I'm a little bit on the edge of the question. But I think the other thing that I think is really important and I think that's a lot of the mainstream perspective on this is that it really drives me crazy how many people in the trauma recovery space will say things like you know, I won't call out this book, I love this book and I love this man and his work is brilliant. But I see so many trauma therapists that are still hooked on sugar and they're like oh well, don't worry about it, it's soothing and you're on. The addiction spectrum is constantly dysregulating the nervous system and it's so much harder to find a self that has the bandwidth to do the deeper levels of recovery work, the stage two and stage three recovery work. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:I agree with you totally. I mean, if you look at the neuroscience, especially the brain research that has been done, and you look at a person with an addictive personality or who has trauma in their background, we know their nervous system is highly dysregulated and what I call overstimulated. I mean even when they practice meditation or when they're able to quiet themselves, they probably have more sympathetic and more autonomic stimulation running in the background I call it background noise than the average human being does. And so then when you add what I call destabilizing factors and I consider sugar, processed grains and simple carbohydrates to fuel that background noise then they have that vacillation, they have the emotional roller coaster ride, and so you can work with them, but you really haven't helped them to get to the point of looking at the entirety.
Speaker 2:It's almost like putting a band-aid on a hemorrhaging wound, so to speak. You can continue to reinforce that band-aid, but until you look at what's causing the hemorrhage or the emotional roller coaster, then people are not going to have nearly as much of a chance as they need to have, or they're not going to have that opportunity. It's like if you look at early addiction history I mean the two substances of choice for a recovering person were as coffee, caffeine and nicotine I mean, they were highly accepted and it wasn't until what the mid-70s, that or, I'm sorry, the mid-80s that we said you know, we really need to get a handle on caffeine and we really need to get a handle on nicotine in the treatment world and that had a very dramatic impact on clients, especially ones that needed medical detoxification from their substances of choice.
Speaker 1:Yes, and now we're trying to bring sugar into that mix. Right, and it's slower the whole food addiction sugar, flour, sweeteners, alcohol. I mean alcohol is obviously for people walking the path of alcohol recovery, but yeah, it's been kind of this invisible background addiction that people still kind of trivialize. Oh well, don't worry about it, you know that's not a big deal. No, it's a big hairy deal. We can't get a stabilization in phase two and phase three without first doing the triage right, getting the band-aid on the wound as you speak, and I don't think people take that seriously enough in the addiction recovery world. Yeah, it's coming, it's coming.
Speaker 2:Now it'll get there. I mean, in fact, there was an individual, and I cannot recall his name, but he had a treatment program out in the state of I believe it was Washington, that was caffeine free, nicotine free, sugar free, processed grain free and he took on all patients because he said this is the only way you're going to have a solid foundation for your recovery program. And that was in the 80s and everybody thought, oh my gosh, that's too extreme. But you're never going to get to some underlying issues if you don't peel back the garlic and I don't even use the term onion, because an onion is too simple, but a garlic, if you're a gardener and think about it, has different bull bets. So we have trauma, we have nutrition, we have exercise, we have sleep and then we have all the other components physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual that we need to take a look at. We can't pick and choose, or I don't think we can pick and choose.
Speaker 1:Agreed, agreed, agreed. Yes, there is a lot of. What I'm seeing in the IFS space around sugar and food addiction is that I'm hearing the message that you can use IFS to heal, soothe the system, regulate, become self led, and then maybe you can moderate sugar, or then maybe it might be easier to let go of sugar, or then maybe you can become like a normal eater. And I think, oh my God, maybe that's true for some people if they're not on the addiction spectrum.
Speaker 1:But on the addiction spectrum. You could spend 10 years doing IFS and get beautiful, wonderful benefit from it, and still be digging around with sugar.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's exactly right. I mean, I tell people, the food and life plan that I'm on has so much social media site and a lot of people talk about their, their slip or their relapse to sugar, and I always put on there. Sugar to me is like alcohol. It's not the 10th cookie, it's not the fourth slice of cake, it's the first one that gets my brain thinking and craving as well as obsessing about having more sugar. And it's the same defenses that we have with any other kind of addiction. First of all, you have denial that it's even a problem. You have rationalization oh, one's not going to hurt me, or what's a couple going to do. You're going to have justification. And then You're full-blown back into the problem again.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. One of the other things that is a bit of a bugaboo for me is when people make a distinction between substance abuse and process addictions, or substance addiction and process addiction. They're both substance addictions. It's just whether or not the drug is coming in, is endogenously made or externally ingested. Process addiction is being drunk and high and blasted and zoned out and addicted to our own internal pharmaceutical chemicals, right, adrenaline, cortisol, things that spike dopamine. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Well, that's exactly what process addictions do. I mean, if you think about addiction, addiction is numbing, it is escaping, it is medicating. I call it medicating the soul. It depends on the individual you're talking about. What makes up their soul? I mean, everybody has a different definition. To me, it's all neurochemical. Yes, yes, you really have to look at it in that light, or I believe you need to look at it in that light.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes. Is there anything else you would like to say on the topic of sugar flower addiction? Addiction recovery?
Speaker 2:No, I can't think of anything. I think we've had a nice discussion today. I think what I really encourage people to do is to look at how honest they're being with themselves, how open they're being with themselves and how vulnerable they're willing to be to actually change their lives, because that's exactly what needs to happen. There's so much in the media and so much in our world about entitlement, and I deserve this, or I want that right now. You know, inner peace and inner health really starts with me. It's not about what my partner has said to me or how the world is against me or not fair. It really is. What tools am I using to deal with my world?
Speaker 1:Right, right. One last question. I haven't had a chance to ask someone with an IFS background and has expertise in this. In my experience, when I do up IFS work, sometimes, often, as I connect to the parts I swear I feel like an oxytocin flow, as there is the sense of connection and compassion and the kindness that flows within me, even though it's not going to be to anybody, it's just a part of a process. Is that been your experience and has anyone else talked about that in IFS?
Speaker 2:Well, that's been my experience. I mean, it's really to me it's a joy to get to know my system, it's a real privilege to have these tools and it's really necessary to get to know my internal system, because we all have inner critics, we all have what I call inner warriors, and we also have a lot of hurts, losses, and it's only by getting to know those and dealing with what I call their passions and their commitments that we're going to have the balance that we're all striving for, where we're all looking for.
Speaker 1:Okay, last question, because this comes up a lot for all of us, is the inner critic, especially if we slip or relapse or fall off our paths with wanting to be whole food men and whole food women, how do you deal with your inner critic?
Speaker 2:Well, I'd like to point out that each of us has seven different types of inner critic, and J Early has done a lot of work in this area and identifies the different types of critic. So a critic is not a critic is not a critic. They all have their jobs to do. They all came about for different reasons and we have to deal with those critics in a very respectful and unique way for each of them, because they're basically trying to protect the exiles and they're also trying to navigate us as we navigate the world.
Speaker 1:Do you know what those seven types of critics are?
Speaker 2:Not off the top of my head, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:No, worries, I'm not familiar with that. That's really interesting. I'll follow up on that. That intrigues me, david, welcome Welcome to this final frontier of addiction recovery for you. I'm really happy that you're 13 weeks in and that you joined us to share your wisdom, your heart, and I'd love to have you back in six months and everyone can follow up and see how you're doing.
Speaker 2:It'd be my pleasure. I really appreciate the opportunity, especially for what I consider a newbie in this journey the bet. I'm very passionate about it and very excited about it, without a doubt.
Speaker 1:So exciting, it's so exciting. A whole new life awaits you. Thanks everybody for tuning in today. Thanks for tuning in this week. If you would like more interviews, more information and more inspiration on how to break up with sugar, go to my YouTube channel Kicksugar Coach or my website KicksugarCoachcom. See you next week.