66. Alexis Haines on Teenage Addiction, Childhood Trauma, and Taking Radical Accountability Over Your Healing

Jun 18

TRIGGER WARNING for sexual assault + abuse, substance use, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.

Alexis Haines—my podcast mom—is finally on She Persisted! This episode can only be described as WOW. From teenage heroin addict, twice convicted felon, and a member of the Bling Ring to addiction center owner, an amazing mom, doula, podcast host, and more Alexis is the living proof that sobriety, recovery, and healing are possible! So take a seat, grab a snack and get ready to be amazingly inspired!

Alexis' Instagram: www.instagram.com/itsalexishaines/

Alexis' Website: www.recoveringfromreality.com/

Alexis' Podcast: www.recoveringfromreality.com/podcast

Alexis' Course (Life Reset Course): www.recoveringfromreality.com/liferesetcourse

Alexis' Book: www.recoveringfromreality.com/book

Alexis and I Cover The Following Topics…

+ Alexis' story of teenage heroin addiction, prison, recovery, and where she's at now

+ The importance of unconditional love and family healing in teenage treatment

+ Checking into your reality and sitting with the discomfort that it brings rather than avoiding

+ The ACE score and how your resilience impacts your experience of traumas

+ What are 'little t traumas' and how these impact your life, relationship, and behaviors

+ so much more!

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ 2k giveaway on Instagram (open through June 22nd)

+ Life Reset Course

+ Lost Connections by Johann Hari

+ Recovering From Reality (Alexis' Podcast)

+ ACE score

+ Resilience score

+ My episode on Recovering From Reality

Episode Sponsors

🤍This week's episode is brought to you by Sadie's Socials! For GIF creation, website design, podcast production, social media management, and more services head to shepersistedpodcast.com/workwithme!

🍓This week's episode is brought to you by Sakara. Sakara is a nutrition company that focuses on overall wellness, starting with what you eat. Use code XOSADIE at checkout for 20% your first order!

🛋This week's episode is sponsored by Teen Counseling. Teen Counseling is an online therapy program with over 14,000 licensed therapists in their network offering support with depression, anxiety, relationships, trauma, and more via text, talk, and video counseling. Head to teencounseling.com/shepersisted to find a therapist today!

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

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a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental mispellings!

sadie: Welcome to she persisted. I'm your host Sadie Sutton. Every Friday, I post interviews about mental health dialectical behavioral therapy and teenage life. These episodes break down my mental health journey, teach skills to help you cope with life and showcase testimonials from individuals, including teens, just like you.

Whether you've struggled yourself or just want to improve your mental fitness. This podcast is your inspiration to live a life you love and keep persisting This week on she persisted.

alexis: I used to always want to check out of my reality. Like I would do whatever it took to check out and to not be present in my life. And. Now I want to check into it. Like, I, I really like being in my life, even when it's really messy and unpredictable and challenging, there's all these opportunities for growth.

sadie: Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I've been wanting to do this for now almost a year, so, so exciting that we're finally doing this.

alexis: I am so happy to be here, anything for my Sadie.

sadie: So diving right in, let's hear you, your story, your journey, how it all started, all the craziness going back.

I don't even know how many years, but But hearing your, your growth and your journey and that complete 180, that happened.

alexis: So I'm about to turn 30, which is like

30. Huge 30 feels like monumental, especially for someone like me, who, who, when I was in my active addiction, didn't necessarily think I would live past like 24, 25. So to be here is a really remarkable thing. And I'm, and I, as much as I'm like 30, I've also like, okay, this is a good place to be in. But yeah, I, I I got sober when I was 19, so it's been a decade of recovery and not just recovery from drugs and alcohol, but from life, you know, that's, I guess that was kind of my, my biggest takeaway as I approached my 10 years, is that like, it's not.

Just about recovering from substances substances. Really aren't the problem. The problem is like our own personal pain and our collective suffering. I think if COVID really illuminated anything, if this last presidency eliminated anything, it was that the collective is really suffering. So I grew up in a really dysfunctional household.

My dad was a pretty aggressive alcoholic. He was physically violent towards me. My mom was just kind of free-spirited pot smoking hippie, but like in the turn of, you know, snap, a finger, she could rip you apart. And my parents separated when I was a toddler and. So I never really had a new Cuellar family and.

We were, you were really dysfunctional. I had a lot of sexual abuse that was going on in my home that lasted from four to seven, picked back up again at the hands of babysitters and my dad's girlfriend. And eventually when I was 17 I would be raped and And I kept it all a secret. I just kept it all a secret because, well, really, if I'm being honest, because of the programming that I received from society, which basically said that, you know, I was not pure, not clean, not worthy, not lovable because I was.

Damaged and messy and out of control. Right. It's interesting because my mom and I talk a lot about this in the life reset course, as you know, like the, the different ego states that we turn to as a result of Our experience, life experience. And for me, for that big first chunk of my life, I'd say zero to maybe 11.

I was really an adaptive child. Like I've I just was a people pleaser. I was the adult. Right. I grew up really fast. I tried to make everyone happy, keep the peace. Despite the fact that like I was on a regular basis, dealing with chaos, I became that adaptive child. And I'm sure many of your listeners will understand this switch that happened.

When eventually we say enough and when we say enough and we've had that much trauma and no support, most of the time we don't go, oh, I'm going to go to therapy. I'm going to get help, but I'm going to get better, which would be moving into our adult. Right. Especially because we're so young, but for me at 11, I was just like, screw this.

And I became. The rebellious child. Yeah. The rebellious child in me, she came out and she wound like she was just guns, ablazing. Like anti-authority, don't tell me what to do. Started using drugs. Started getting boyfriends started partying, started getting really out of, out of control and quotes because it's so funny that like anyone.

The comparison to like in control would be, you know, like my parents were not in control of me and it's like, my parents were out of control too.

sadie: Controlling your emotions, your

alexis: yeah, absolutely. So the shift took place and I I started exploring with substances and not with just substances, but with food and escaping through like media back then we didn't have phones like we do today, but I was trying to like be in another universe anywhere, but with me.

Right. And that's, what's so interesting is like, before. Before the drugs, there was clearly a problem. And most people don't don't look at it that way. They go, oh, the drugs and the problem, right? Like your life got really bad because you were on drugs and it's like, no, my life was really. Bad. And then I found drugs, which was a temporary solution to my pain, and then that pain kept growing.

And so I needed more and more drugs. And then eventually my behaviors became out of control because my desire to stay high was far more important to me than anything else. So by the time I was 16, I would become an opiate addict by the time I was just shy of 18, I would become a full blown heroin addict by the time that I was 19, I would get sober.

So that's kind of just shows you how fast the progression of my Using just was really quick. And there was a number of factors in that obviously having more access, you know, we ended up getting the TV show when I was 17, started filming when I was 19. And with an increase in funds, all of a sudden it was like party city, right?

Like, and use drugs as much as I wanted or needed to. And you know, also by the time that I was 19, I was also twice convicted felon. So I would end up going to jail the first time for burglary. Getting sober in jail. Right? Kicking cold Turkey, horrible experience, obviously very painful. And then after I kicked in jail, I kind of had that like a Pitney moment that a lot of people talk about, which is like, okay, you're a mask.

You know, drugs are bad. You should probably not do drugs anymore. It goes back to this whole thing of like, it's not the drugs though, not the drugs, it's the pain. And so when that 18 year old or I was nine, yeah. I just turned 19, 19. I turned 19 four days before I went and did serve my sentence four days after I turned 19.

And yeah, literally four days after. Which is now weird, cause that's my daughter's birthday. Bizarre that, that worked out that way. But anyway, so when jail and got out, the pain was too bad, went right back to drugs, using escalated to the point where I couldn't show up to probation anymore. I was spending every waking hour, like panhandling and trying to find money for drugs.

And then all of a sudden before I knew it, it had gotten so bad that the cops were after me. You know, my probation officer was like looking for me and it was just a mess and I ended up. Going back to jail, kicking all over again. And by the grace of God, you know, I ended up getting sentenced to a year in treatment instead of three to six years in prison, which is what I was facing.

And now my treatment experience is very different from your treatment experience. Although I will say that there are similarities, you know, and as someone who's like a treatment provider today, I strive to make the experience that our clients have very different. So the whole idea of like behavioral health and behavioral modification. It's just so ass backwards, because like, as if my usage was a matter of a behavior, if it was a behavior, then the amount of times I wanted to stop, the amount of willpower I had would have worked.

Right. Cause like being hooked on drugs, isn't it. Isn't a matter of willpower, like when we are like that desperate and that broken, I mean, like my addiction was so dry, I'm going to spare everybody, all the details, but it was the most demoralizing and inhumane and just awful, I mean, like awful experience.

And so you know, when I. Wanting to get sober the countless times they did it. Wasn't a matter of willpower, right. Because I had the will, like I had the desire, I just could not get sober. And so what's interesting about my experience in treatment is that it wasn't the therapy that kept me sober. At all.

I mean, therapy's great. Does it for a very long time have been back on and off throughout the last 10 years of my sobriety, but what really kept me going was community with finding people who felt the same way that I did that had been through the same things that I had, people who like, it became very clear to me that like, oh, I am not.

Like my parents are crazy. This world is crazy. And that's why I think I love Johann Hari's work so much, right. His book lost connections, created a profound shift and in my life, because it just so clearly lays out the ways in which society. Impacts us in such a profound way. Our interpersonal relationships and just the way that we are operating, it's just no longer sustainable.

So then, you know, and of course, like we have to take personal responsibility. I'm not negating the thoughts. Like no one stuck a needle in my arm. Right. Like, I there's like a balance here. Right. But it's like, we've spent so much time focusing on one end of the day. Effective, which is that like, it's the addict's fault.

They don't have any power. Even with disease model. I don't necessarily agree with, we're not diseased. I mean, that helped us and got us farther. And maybe made society's view of us a little bit more humane, gave us some humanity back when it came to The, the suffering that people are going through, but yeah, there's definitely this balance there.

So the community really is what kept me sober. It kept me going and And of course there's been work, right? The work happened like God, universe, spirituality, whatever you want to call it. Like, we will always be presented opportunities in our life to heal from our trauma. And over the last 10 years I spent most of that time working through all of those limiting beliefs and all of that pain and all of the suffering.

And that's really what like relieved. The obsession for me from some substances. Now I, when I was in my early years of sobriety, I was like, how am I never going to have a glass of wine for the rest of my life? I was 19. Right? Like, I couldn't possibly imagine how that would be the case. And now it's just, it's not even like a thought that crosses my mind.

How I came up with the, the title of the podcast of my podcast, recovering from reality with Evan, it was like, I used to always want to check out of my reality. Like I would do whatever it took to check out and to not be present in my life. And. Now I want to check into it. Like, I, I really like being in my life, even when it's really messy and unpredictable and challenging, there's all these opportunities for growth.

And when that perspective shifts for you and you learn how to be okay with sitting in the discomfort of your life. That pain and that suffering and those challenges begin to mold you and shape you and you begin to grow and evolve. And so recovering from reality was really born out of that. And and I think that that was that's, that's really where like I live and operate out of today.

It's like this, these are all opportunities for growth. And I really like being here, you know, like in the fullness of life. That's like a very condensed version of my story.

sadie: Yeah. I want to dive into the idea that it wasn't the drug, so it wasn't these different behaviors, because I think that's something that gets.

A lot of focus, especially in teen treatment and teen presentations, it's really getting rid of whether it's drug, you self-harming suicidality. The goal is not to heal those underlying feelings. The goal is to get rid of the behaviors. And so I love you perspective on how these are just it's, it's how the pain is presenting itself.

And I really want to hear your perspective on that and how we can shift that, that in the treatment world.

alexis: Yeah. I mean, that's really what it is. It's like the, the negative, and I'm putting negative in quotes because it's not really a negative behavior. We have to change that too, because drugs saved my life.

Right. Like they actually ended up saving my life because I probably would have taken my life. Had I not had drugs because of the amount of pain that I was in. Okay. So that's the first. If drugs or self harm or whatever it might be is a solution, a temporary solution. But is it behavior that is harming the person and the family unit, then we have to go.

Oh, okay. So. Mrs causing pain for this person, but it's also their solution. So how do we fix this? Okay. So we have to look at that underlying cause of the pain and we have to be willing to go in and heal that. But here's the other thing was Sadie. It's like. Each person's pain is their own. Everyone has the right to heal it when they're ready to.

And I think that it's really, I have a really hard time with people forcing that on other people, I think

sadie: have lint and the team treatment industry, because there's that lack of consent to entering that journey. You're just kind of thrown into.

alexis: Yeah. And I think we, as a society need to ask ourselves this, why is this person's behavior addiction, whatever it might be bothering us so much.

Is it because I'm afraid for people to think that I have a challenging kid. Is it because our family looks different? Is it because it's triggering? I met stuff and myself and my own psyche, is it because I know that I've played a part in this, right? And it's like, When we start focusing more on ourselves and not so much on that other person.

And we started having empathy for that other person, that person will begin to heal just through that. Right? Like some of the most profound work that I've, you know, had the honor of participating in with others when facilitating care for somebody who. Using substances or self-harming or whatever it might be is, is really working with the family to heal themselves first and then dropping all of the shame and all of the shaming.

Right. And presenting our case, I guess. Cause that's what we're trying to do. Right. We're trying to present this case and hope that this person.

And so when we do so from a place of unconditional gloves with no manipulation, no shaming and no judgment, usually that person who's hurting begins to feel safe enough to open up and to recognize that they're unconditionally loved and there is no greater and more. Powerful motivator than feeling unconditionally loved.

Most of these kids don't feel unconditionally evolved. The love is very much so conditional. You use drugs, you know, we're going to shame you. I feel a little less loved, you know what I mean? It's just like you self-harm, you have sex, your gay, your, whatever it might be. We love you a little bit less. Right.

And you know, unconditional love is, is so powerful. It is, you know, like I need you where you're at. You don't have to change from me. I'm concerned about you, just because I love you so much. And I am so sorry that I ever tried to make you change or to be any different. And I'm so sorry for any parts that I've played in harming you.

In your life. And like, I want to talk about this and I want to have these conversations and I want to take responsibility for my part. And I want to be a part of your life no matter what, whether you choose to stop using drugs or not. And I know for some parents that are like, this is radical, that they can use drugs.

You know, I know. I mean like the goal, if the goal though, is to get this person off track, Interventions and behavioral health treatment is not going to be the golden ticket. I can guarantee you that. And what happens, especially at these places. Now we're seeing that they get put on so many drugs. They end up walking out on like 15 different meds and those medicines fuck your brain up for the rest of its life.

Right. It's like, and then they end up with me right at 35. But they started at 16, they started at 16 and then they're in the revolving door of toxic treatment centers. And you're out, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And they're 35 and they're addicted to meth and heroin.

And you're like, why, how did we get here? It's like, because, because we've never dealt with like the root right. And like, and that's the thing too, is like thankfully, like I stayed close enough to my new family that I was making. And. You know, have been in recovery enough to be able to start setting boundaries with my family and they started to get better. Right. But for many, the families never get better. They do this like bullshit therapy.

Right. Which is so not productive because nobody's no, one's really doing the work. No, one's really doing the work. We were still pointing fingers as if the person. Who is expressing the pain in the family unit, who is, you know, some people call them the black sheep, right? Some people would identify them as the identified patient or the problem child or whatever it might be.

And we're not looking at like the dysfunction and the rest of the family unit. And so these people that sober or they get better at these facilities and then they go home. And the work is not sustained.

sadie: And then you immediately relapsed because you're right back in the toxic environment. I

alexis: mean, and why would you not, because they're now triggering there.

They're now triggering not only your personal pain again, but. The belief systems that we have about who we are and our worthiness and our security and our safety and all of those things too. So it's like, well, the only thing that is constantly reliable in my life is self-harm is this eating disorder is the drug addiction is escaping what these relationships is.

Sex is, whatever that behavior is. And so it becomes really challenging to stay sober because we were usually going back to the same environment that we were trying to escape from in the first place.

sadie: Yeah. So if you are truly healing, the root of the problem, not this presentation of drug addiction, self harm, toxic relationships, is that.

Truly finding unconditional love for yourself. Is it rewiring belief systems? Is it building your family of choice? What does that mean to truly heal your, your root pain?

alexis: Well, oh God, all of it.

The belief that like, there was nothing wrong with you in the first place. Nothing wrong with you in the first place. And I'm all about it. Like, you know, I'm all about shadow work and underlying beliefs and EMDR and trauma therapy and emotional freedom technique tapping. Love all of those things. But I guess like for me, it is just constantly reminding myself that like I am okay.

Like I am not a problem, you know, like that my fear, because fear is something that still comes up for me, not as frequently as it used to not even close, but it's still rears its ugly head when it wants to. Right. And sometimes out of that fear, I can be hyperreactive. And so I have to remind myself like this isn't real.

You're okay. You know, nothing is going on here. Right. But I think, I think everyone's journey is unique. So I started in a like fundamental, I w I joined the Pacific group, which is so hardcore.

And I felt a really strong spiritual calling to leave. Like I was like, this is not the place for me. I don't necessarily agree with everything that they're saying here. And I found myself Leaving meanings feeling worse off than I did when I got there, which is, that's not a good thing. Right. And I tried to stick it out for a long time.

And then my sponsor who had 24 years of sobriety left, and then I left shortly thereafter and then I dove into years of trauma therapy on and off. And I even did transcranial magnetic stimulation for my depression. I thought hypnotist and spiritual healers, and I've done like everything underneath the sun.

And I don't know exactly what created that like final shift, but. It was just this moment that I had in meditation and I am an avid meditator. And I will say that I think everyone needs to be meditating every single day. But I had this, this shift where I just felt profoundly connected to all that is, and in that moment, it was like this deep knowingness that everything's okay.

Thank you all is okay. It's okay.

sadie: All of these presentations of people trying to heal that pain is just to hear that they're okay. It's okay. And it'll be okay. Like that was what everything was. And you, you found that and you found it in yourself, which is just so. I don't want to say crazy, cause that's not the right word, but amazing.

alexis: Yeah. Like we're always looking, I guess what I feel is that a lot of the times when worth seeking through meditation or not through meditation, through. Sorry. A lot of times when we're speaking through therapy, I'm not shitting against therapy. Again, like antis therapy through AA, through a sponsor through whatever it may be.

We are looking to others to fix it still just the same way we are looking for drugs or alcohol or whatever it might be to fix that. And the gift of meditation is realizing that like, you're the guru, you're the healer, you're the healed you can heal. Like, you're it, you're it literally. And I found this, you know, through, through, I mean, a plethora of books.

Just nonstop reading. But through, yeah, through like reading and exploring my mind through journaling through all of that. And so today, even in the work that I do, I always remind people like I'm not here to be your. Spiritual guru that you turn to for like every question that you have, I'm simply here to like, aluminate that in you because you have that you know, I don't cling on to every word that I say, and it's interesting.

Cause like I'll make a messed up on social media or whatever it might be. And I go see, this is it. This is why I always say, do not put me on a pedestal. Did not, you know, cause I am human. I am not here to like be anything else. So yeah, it really, it was a moment for me. And then I it never sends life has just gotten a lot, a lot easier.

sadie: Yeah. So I have two different follow-up directions. I want to go. I first want to go a score, the amount of

alexis: pain

sadie: as a kid. I just want to, I want to dive into that of how. So far the impacts of that go. So talk to me, I've heard you say this so many times that according to your ACE score, you shouldn't be alive right now.

Like this emotional gain is not insignificant. It's not discomfort that you feel. And then look for these outlets. Like there are profound impacts of feeling that much chaos as a kid. Talk to me about that.

alexis: The ACE score carries with you. Like, I feel so fortunate that I got sober when I did, because I had the next seven years before my brain was fully developed to heal without using substances. But a lot of people don't have that. Yeah. So the adverse childhood experiences study changed the way that I looked at recovery.

And you can check this out by going to ACEs too high and doing the Tufts for yourself. But yeah, the CDC and Kaiser Permanente put together this really comprehensive data that looks at not just addiction, but obesity and a number of other chronic. Chronic conditions that their patients were dealing with and they decided that they were going to put together the list of 10 negative experiences, early childhood traumas that you can experience.

And then they would collect all of the data. And they live look at the increases of different health outcomes based off of how much trauma you experienced as a trauma as a child. And what's so interesting about this is it's not just the things that you would think of like addiction like suicide mental health impacts.

It was at cancer at diabetes. All of the big killers in the, in the world. And so yeah, my scores a nine out of 10, they say anything over four is like way too high. And I am really lucky to be alive today because it increases my chance of suicide. By some, you know, hundreds of whatever it is, but what's so interesting about the ACEs score, so, okay.

So they're like, okay, so we have this data now, like we know that early childhood trauma impacts you substantially. They looked at the first seven years, the first 14 years in the first 18 years. Right. And, and we know this, but then the question becomes like, well, All of the people experience, right? Like some people score a six on the test, which is considered high and they don't end up hurting themselves.

And so they go, okay. So what is the thing that is changing this, this variability and it's resilience. And so they have a followup test that you can do to check your resiliency. So it turns out that I am even, I don't feel like I'm a resilient person. I am a very resilient person. And so they looked at these other factors, right.

Things that were like, did he have access to therapy? Did he have a school teacher that you felt safe with? You know, they go through these questions and they measure your resilience. And so for me, even though like, yeah, my mental health and all of that has been affected and even in sobriety, you know, I've gone through periods of great depression and sobriety.

So we look at the resilience and it offsets that age. Which is so interesting because it's like and here's another perfect example of why like drugs and then themselves aren't inherently addictive. Most 14 year olds get their wisdom, teeth pulled and don't end up becoming heroin addicts.

I got my wisdom. People tried the drugs and was like, oh yeah, baby, this. And then I was like fully addicted to the drugs. Right. And it's like, the difference is the trauma and the pain. Yeah. That makes sense.

sadie: Yes. Yes. So. We talk big traumas, big T traumas. There's also little T traumas. So the amount of pain that you experienced was huge, it was overwhelming.

It took over every part of your life. And I think one of the amazing parts of your Philosophies might be the right word, is that even without checking these ACE score boxes, individuals can feel a lot of pain and invalidation and feeling misunderstood from little T traumas. What are those? And yeah, just kind of talking about how this question is going a little bit, all

alexis: over the place.

No, I get where you're going. I get where you're going. So it's interesting because. The ACE score does look at what I call big T traumas, divorce, sexual abuse. Parent goes to prison. Parents are alcoholic. They look at these like big things. And so and then I have these like little T traumas. You know, let's just say someone's had four little P traumas.

I would equate that to like one big T trauma. Like, and I'm not like a scientist, so I can't measure these things. But what I'm saying is this, that like the, the parents that has an N healthy relationship with their inner child who hasn't healed their inner child. Expressing their bullshit onto their kids traumatic, right?

Yeah. The thing, it's the things that we don't a car accident where everybody walked away fine, but your parents didn't have enough emotional regulation themselves that instead of being able to be there for you and explain that everything's okay. They just shut you down and told you. Right. It is these like micro sometimes macro aggressions that we have towards each other.

And if living like in this society, that is so toxic, I think it's, it's harder for the older generations to understand this because they didn't grow up. Like, I'll just say for me as a millennial, So I grew up in a time where I witnessed and saw the twin towers falling at school and then proceeded to hear constantly about this war that we were starting.

To see, play out in the middle east a time where, like we were starting to have lots of mass shootings at school, and we were having drills a time where we had a huge depression. Right. A world where social media was booming. And now I was being constantly bombarded with content about race and the suffering of people, of color and of women and of.

Children right before my eyes, which is something that like, we never saw that before, and that's awful, but it's like, we're starting to go through this like awake period right now. We have all this like content and we're consuming this content. And a lot of the times the content is very intense. And then also not to mention like the, like, Targeting of young women, boys too, but as young women about their looks and pop culture and all of this stuff, right?

So like you have so much influence going on and so much collective trauma on top of individual trauma. And it's like, it makes sense to me why people are using drugs. You know, it makes sense to me why, like all of the moms are drinking by 3:00 PM and popping Xanax. Like that makes sense to me. I mean, not to mention the fact that a lot of us don't have nuclear families anymore or raising children on our own.

The trauma of, of losing, of having to become a two income household, I think was cheap. Huge for people. Huge. Right. We're in the rat race, we're in a literal rat race. We're racing to the finish line, which is just dying. And I think for a lot of people, that's a miserable existence. And I think you're saying your generation saying, ah, we're not, we're not, they're like these we're watching on Tik TOK unfold, this like anticapitalist gen Z re revolution happening and I'm like all I'm like, yeah. Why do we have a 40 hour work week? Yeah. Why don't we have health care maternity leave. Childcare it's like access to college, like people who are saying like enough, we're finally at the point where we're like this isn't, this isn't working anymore.

I mean, the post Reagan world, especially, and your audience might not understand this, but one day they will. That shift where we really became focused on. This hyper individualistic society, where we idolize the individual over caring about the collective and it is killing us, killing us. And I think a lot of people feel that because, and we do, and I'll tell you why, because when we used to operate and live in tribes,

we would feel everything and certain people, most of the tribe, especially with like, Feel when there was danger coming way before the danger came, we have more than these, you know, basic senses that everyone talks about. We know, we know that that we're suffering. We just turn it off because we don't want to deal with that.

And we

sadie: can't feel we're in sensory overload to be a wall feeling.

alexis: Yeah. And that's why they want you on the social media app all the time is because it doesn't create space for questioning what's happening out there

or what's happening in here inside of us.

Yeah.

sadie: And, and it makes sense, especially what you're saying about having the individual over the collective, going back to your own journey with sobriety, when you leaned into, into that community and found that rather than just being isolated in your own experience, that was that shift. That was what changed things.

So it's, it's all connected. It's the same patterns. Over and over and over again, that are leading to these feelings of suffering and pain, where people become overwhelmed and, and lean on all these different ways to cope with that and survive through what they're feeling.

alexis: It's

sadie: crazy. So wrapping up, I'm doing this new thing where I get people's like top three favorite mental health things that they're doing recently. So what are your three things? Whether it's like a TV show that you just love or being outside of something like that, what are your top three at

the

alexis: moment?

All of them forever. Meditate, meditate, meditate. So meditation is huge. Yeah. Being in nature. And I know it sounds so cliche, but once the last time that you stuck your feet in the dirt or in the sand or in the grass, it just makes you feel so good being in nature, barefoot sunshine. And it's that time of year now where we get to enjoy the beautiful sunshine.

It is so regenerative and restoring. Can't say enough. Good things. And then, and I know this is going to sound so gross. I mean, I can't do the TV thing once you have the spiritual awakening, it's like, I can't watch Housewives anymore. Like I can't. I don't know what it is. It's like I have to be so selective about the type of content that I consume, because I just have no desire to consume that type of content.

But a show that I really do. Love right now and always, but then I've been watching lately is the office. I think it's the comfort show. So good. You can watch it. Watch it again. What, again, it doesn't matter about the whole series on iTunes. The beginning of the pandemics, like 200. Love that show. So I would definitely say that like, you know, staring into my husband's eyes for like 30 seconds and connecting and holding my children and hugging them.

I mean, all of these things, connecting to nature, connecting to other humans and connecting to our inner and higher self. So important.

sadie: It's living. It's all of these things that you forget to experience when you're consumed by your suffering, because you're just surviving through the moment. But when you get out of that and you can really just be present, which is something that's so hard when you're suffering, there's all these beautiful moments and it's, and it's why people love life, which was something I didn't understand for so long.

I was like, why do people enjoy this? This is terrible. We're just going through the motions, but it's when you get out. Place of pain. There's so much to

alexis: appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. And I think too, like living in this very like toxic male dominated, patriarchal society, like when you choose like, no, like I'm going to take care of myself and I don't care to be in this, like, like I was saying this rat race anymore, because it just.

Thanks for like, just being in a world that is constantly pushing you to do, do, do, do, do all the time. We got to have the space to be,

sadie: We forget to do that. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I am so glad we got to do this, and I'm so happy that we finally got to sit down. It's crazy that I was on your podcast before you came on mine, but I wanted to make sure my editing and production, all of that was top notch.

So I'm so glad that, that you came and joined.

alexis: Thanks for having me. Where

sadie: can people find you? Where can they consume your content? All of that.

alexis: Yeah. So you can follow me on Instagram at it's Alexis Hanes. I have a course, an online course called the life reset course, which is. An incredible space. He can visit my website, recovering from reality.com and check out the life reset course.

And I have my own podcast, which is also titled with hovering from reality. I have a book on Amazon right now, also titled recovering from reality. If you want to take a deeper look into my world. And the podcast is on hiatus right now, indefinitely. But if you know when to come back in the fall but there's like over 120 episodes, there's like over 120 episodes of content.

sadie: Yeah. Then if you join my free set course, you get to see me taking notes every week. So get to come hang out.

alexis: Yes. If you join my preset course, you get to be on my calls and see Sadie's beautiful face everyone.

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