To hospitalization because of alcohol poisoning during my freshman year in college that was nothing that was just the tip of an iceberg because like I said everyone’s like oh no big deal I’ve been hospitalizes before it’s fine yeah your school insurance will take care of that so you just keep going on because
If if your circle around you if your Echo chamber doesn’t question it you don’t question it right so fast move forward the final straw that broke camel’s back so to speak uh was because Of hey everybody and welcome to the SOA fall podcast I have a guest with me today I would like to welcome benoir Kim hi benoir morning how are you doing good I um so well I have been a guest on benoir podcast and that will be out at
Some point and we just had a really really good conversation and I was like I I want to know more about you um you are probably one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met and and you give a different perspective of sobriety so let
Me tell you just a little bit well tell people a little B bit about yourself you you’re a veteran you’re now a psychotherapist you’re a podcaster what else do people need to know about you I’m a son I’m engaged to my fiance I’m an older brother I’m a deacon at my
Church every Sunday because I do feel like gratitude is probably a good basket or alism of basket is probably where we could spend more effort and that also helps us staying sober and I think it’s important to tell the difference between being productive in meaningful activities versus filling your life with
Meaningless distractions so those are the main identities I like to wear day today so you’ve packed a lot in and you look like you’re like 23 lot in my early 30s early 30s tell us can you tell us because you have a very interesting guess I want to
Say orange in story how you grew up was it Tri you described yourself as being tricultural can can you tell us a little bit about that so the technical terms is third culture kids so my name is French so I was born in Paris but then my mom
Gave up my right to EU and French citizenship without my consent because as you know in friends Birthright doesn’t necessitate a citizenship like the United States does so I had to live in Paris until 18 to have a shot at citizenship but my mom ultimately chose
To she wanted me to pay homage to my national ity or my ethnicity of Korean and she wanted me to go to the Army to uh trim my rough edges off her words so she gave that up without asking me but of course that led me to hear and
There’s no regrets but yeah it’s it’s it’s a lot I went through a lot and I feel like I was born in Paris and then I moved around with my parents I lived in Korea which is my nity for about a year and then I migrated to California and
United States for boarding high school so I lived in the United States by myself with my younger sister with all my parents I will see them or single parents because I grew up with a single mom I will see her once a year and then I spend my higher education in the east
Coast in United States and that leads me to here where I’m early 30s sitting across room okay so there’s quite a few things I want to unpack there as a mother I cannot get my head head around about seeing my kids once a year that’s just I
Can’t even contemplate that um you went into the Army in Korea is it is it um mandatory service there so that’s the funny part so Korean army just like Israeli Army it is compulsory so you do have to go mandated training for two years it’s absolutely brutal but it’s
Not the actual training that’s brutal it’s The Hazing culture wow so a lot of people don’t know about Korea because especially with the rise of K-pop KD drama K food which is amazing but there’s a lot of this deep seated patriotical framework just like Japan and Korea where the woman suffrage is
Not really a thing sure it is on paper but not really universal suffrage is not really a thing on the paper it is but not really in practicality so my mom knew I would be ill prepared for The Hazing culture of Korean because I’m very westernized and I’m a th culture
Kid because like for example every language has two layers one layer is the respectful tone that’s the the respectful adage you use right in terms of referring to Elders or people who are older than you and that older could be a two months age Gap or a year and you
Have to pour drink with two hands you have to turn away when you drink alcohol and it’s very respectful right which is great but a lot of people use that as a leverage to really Haze you saying that you need to do X Y and Z because I’m
Older how dare you talk to me that way how dare you talk back how dare you think for yourself so because of my deep seated westernized education my mom knew that I would get destroyed just emotionally physically because it is very abusive in Korean army culture a
Lot more hush hush than even United States Army is so for that reason I chose not to go but then through Stars regrets or otherwise I I enrolled in the American United States Army eight years ago and I completed my six years and I officially got out as an army reservist
About two and a half years wow so obviously you look Korean but you are culturally very different it how is it for you being in Korea yeah so I lived in Korea for such a short time for only a year and when I was younger and
Of course the experiences I call back in retrospect is not representative of the actual experiences where it would be if I was adults like for example I didn’t really experienced a drinking binge drinking culture of Korea because I was underage when I lived there so when I do
Visit it’s very different but I like to extrapolate into the United States as well where I spend most of my life here because like I’m America is so big on racial identities right we’re very big on labeling culture and just like the recent affirmative action happen in
Supreme Court I do think there’s a differences between the origins of a policy to really up uphold certain marginalized communities then through iterations of time policies need to change to adapt the change of circumstances and the change of diversity change of ethnicities which United States doesn’t do that because
Policies change are slow and so for me I came here and I realized wait I’m a global citizen right I represent three and a half cultures right French Korean Chinese and American yeah and but they’re trying to put me in a box of this conformed identity of you’re an
Asian because of your racial markers because of your skin pigmentations and that’s it we own not even Korean Asian yeah as if within Asia there’s not 65 different countries right that there’s all these different dialects and languages and social cultural different implications so that was an interesting
Route where I felt like if I didn’t conform to this title waves of like cultural assimilation as an Asian passing looking person then I’ll be the outsider like I’ll be I felt rejected by my own people like Asians thought I was too American or too Americanized or too
Western and then westerners thought I was too Asian so I deal with this racial cultural navigations for quite a while until obviously you get old you do a lot of introspections not drinking helped a lot because they gave us a gave me a lot of time to really think for myself and
Not really be swindled by the influences or the like the opinions of what is considered as popular that’s I mean there’s so much that’s fascinating about you but that is it’s a fascinating perspective and and how we do put people in these big blobs and think they all
Think the same and they are the same and uh um so you you didn’t end up going into the army in Korea because it probably that did as a mother I probably wouldn’t wanted you to go but it was something that that sounds like it almost felt like an obligation that this
Is a ride of passage for Korean young men and if I’m not going to do it there then I need to do it in in my adopted country how was your experience in the military so just for a quick preface like I said my opinions are my own and
Some people may disagree but I do feel like a lot of Koreans like native Koreans do not feel like the Korean armies R of Passage because there’s not necessarily yeah there’s not necessarily honor embedded in that because it’s more like this is just something you have to do right it’s quite there’s no
Meaningful Connections imbued in this commitment it’s just you do it or you’re an outcast and because to a point it’s so punitive so for example I’m a naturalized American citizenship right so I’m an American citizen why so when I go to Korea which I’m going in two
Months in Japan doing a two weeks trip with my fiance say I’m not going to get arrested at the airport but if you’re a green card holder in the US you go back to the airport in Korea and you skipped your army training you’ll get detained wow you can’t even come back you’re
Detained and you’re shipped to the military on that spot for two years wow it’s extremely punitive and it’s very serious and a lot of people who skipped they can’t go back until age 38 that’s when the legal requirements for the Army expires so all that to say if it’s truly
R of Passage and honorable country wouldn’t have them feel the need to really make this s punitive to force people to go but segue to your question is the I mean time flies right and I I like to tell people I don’t really do too many honorable things in the
Military yes I joined military boot camp and I saw a lot experienced a lot but I think my personality has always been very compatible with the military lifestyle I’m a morning Riser right I wake up at 4:30 to begin with so in terms of the fiscality of the army or
The disciplines didn’t really shape me up or it wasn’t as formative formative what was formative though was the people that I saw is I realized so many people in in the United States are so small-minded not as a choice but as a byproduct of their circumstances so about 50% of military
Enrol Le are about 18 years old you can be 17 and apply to the Army and a lot of these 18 these are kids they’re cognitively self-developing they have no world out views all they they’re just operating based on their idiosyncrasies of what their parents said communities
The pastors the government the news so and often that’s that’s their way out of poverty and their way there’s not really a whole lot of choices and it there’s a lot of benefits to being in the American Military yeah they’re children it’s horrifying exactly right yeah so they
Never seen like such an amount of money they never trial different cultures they never really traveled and a lot of their towns are 10,000 people that’s it they they can see who they know in their Walmart or Supermarket almost every day that’s how small they are as a reference
La is about 3.6 million people so I experienced a lot of like racism I guess and a lot of ignorances and a lot of discriminations from my white peers but then through that I actually gains a lot of empathy I realize oh there is a fundamental difference between willful
Ignorance and just ignorance because of lack of exposure and I was actually able to befriend a lot of these 18-year-olds who would say these like racial slur and say a lot of things they just don’t they don’t really know what they mean they just say it because they’ve heard people
Say it online and I was able to talk to them just like podcast having immersive and non-judgmental conversations and one of them is actually one of my closest friends and he’ll be probably invited to my wedding and he’s from a small town so I think that really taught me the human
Nature and how like nuanced and complex we are and we’re just trying our best dayto day truly but of course like outside may not perceive it that that is a fascinating insight and and very compassionate as well because I’ve never experienced racism I’ve experienced sexism my entire life but I’ve never
Experienced racism and I can’t imagine what that must be how old were you when you signed up I went to the I was shipped to the military boot camp at ag20 okay when did you like the drinking culture when did drinking like how did you drink at that age I think my drink
In is a good I guess mainstream data I think it’s quite representative of most Americans I think well most is 51 a lot of Americans where I drank late because I brought up in a Christian household right a little bit more conservative and my mom tried to be responsible right
Because there is responsible drinking like some European countries are and they’re irresponsible drinking like American is right so for me I didn’t really drink much until I went to college so you can imagine the Floodgate broke loose and all all hell and I was like oh this is freedom this is amazing
Let’s just get inated so it was that I joined the Greek life right and wow I’ve never I don’t really understood what all call poisoning was I mean medically until Greek life until drinking like oh man this vivot experience I remember was I like we were hazed so much as part of
The Greek life where I was hospitalized twice in a week because of alcohol poisoning and my liver damage and because of that I missed my midterms I failed because I missed my midterms I was able to rescue one because I sent an email to my professor making up a lie
Right but that’s the thing about drinking is you’re forced to make a lot of lies to cover up lies to cover up your tracks and I like to think I like to abide by like my own moral compass I like to like know that I have integrities but that’s the power of
Alcohol but yeah my drinking life up till that point and even until military because it got worse was just spend drinking drink because that’s what everyone does and I also liked the taste of alcohol like beer so that was two horrible combinations because if I if you enjoy drinking the social
Implications is a social lubricant but you also enjoy the flavor of that point of no return one this is a shocking number um how many kids college kids die every year of alcohol related causes every year this will you need to be sitting down if you’re listening it’s
1800 which when I read that I couldn’t even believe it 1,800 families are going to lose a child this year from some kind of alcohol related event there was one I remember a few years ago I read about where a girl in Minnesota she uh was get
Trying to get back to sorority and she’s so drunk she passed out on outside and froze to death it it’s a really really really shocking number and the Greek life the Greek system is a big part of that um yeah it’s it’s just terrible and
Then I imagine the Army is a pretty hard drinking culture right and even into the Greek life where I didn’t know that number 1800 that is 1800 if you visualize that people that’s a lot of people that’s a lot of people and and we know it’s College binge drinking because
Their um their peer group that’s the same age that don’t go to college that number is much much lower so it’s it’s the college cultural yeah it it’s really as a parent it’s Terri Ying yeah it really is yeah I’m I’m very big on system thinking because my background as
A former policy maker before I became a psychotherapist and I think a lot of people only look at the explicits on the surface what I mean by that is for example you talked about sexism like patriarchies deserves women that’s blatantly obvious that’s explicit but the implicit is a lot of men also get
Discouraged by a patri artical framework that oh real men don’t talk about feelings real men this false bravado this is what a man should be like men talk like this that’s the implicit right and I think with drinking the implicit of col’s drinking culture is the normalization yes the normalization of
Abnormal drinking right and like on Halloween or drinking like St Patrick’s days or these like very abnormally large drinking days out of the abnormally drinking weeks or months you will literally see woman like girls in vulnerable clothing and guys passed out on the streets and nobody bets an ey
Because they’re like oh they’re just drunk that’s it it’s a passing thought but if you were sober everyone would be compassionate they’re like oh are you okay should we do something about this is this safe it’s kind of cold out in the east coast none of those thoughts
The only fleeting thought is oh they had a good time they’re too drunk and you keep going to your next bar that’s the implicit yeah the way we normalize what is something I mean my experiences were horrific I I li was lying in the gutter
At 15 years old outside a pub with a someone in my own vomit with someone throwing a bucket water over me and that was just laughed off by everybody that’s that’s horrific we used to live in um Champagne Illinois there’s a big big uh research University there University of
Illinois and they um uh their their spring break always falls around St Patrick’s Day and the the bars in the college kind of Campus were upset about that because that was a big Revenue day so they created unofficial St Patrick’s Day which happened a week like just just
When finals and just before the kids went off on there at Spring break and it is a monstrous event now and all of the local like the big schools in Indianapolis in Chicago like it’s like a massive massive event let me tell you how to be invisible walk around college
Campus during unofficial being over 40 and nobody like nobody can but every other year a kid dies every other year there’s a and they talk about doing something blah it’s it’s almost out I mean it’s not in anyone’s control anymore it’s all of the local Midwestern universities know it if you’re if you’re
Within two or three hours you’ve probably got a friend who goes there and you can you know sleep on their floor and it’s just a massive party and they have these really tall highrises and um what seems to happen is every other year kid just falls out of
One of them I mean it’s yeah it’s but we just carry on like to go even darker um since it’s it’s early in the morning the West Coast so why not is like that the implicit normalization goes societally too right yes where drinking or death by drinking is not considered as a Public
Health crisis or concerns about America and that’s if you look at the stat like statistically death by drinking is categorically on the same level as Public Health crisis and death is end all be all but I think death by drinking just like suicide is extremely sad and
Suicide is a lot more nuan and a lot more complicated but similarly alcohol death is also addictions right and addiction is complex it’s very nuanced it’s not just a moral issue it’s not just a willpower it’s not just because you’re lazy you don’t care about your
Life that’s not it those are some of the reasons but it’s a lot more complex is I think drinking or death by drinking can be prevented and we need to increase awareness but when the government that is backed by so many lobbyists and so many big budgets interest are promoting
Drinking as a culture as a society how can we fight this implicit and explicit influences it’s very hard that’s why we talked about during our show if you don’t drink you are the crazy one in the group every single person will scrutinize you for Veronica why not just
One drink it’s your wedding come on just one drink wow you you Chang you don’t care about me just one drink it’s my wedding one drink yeah yeah yeah yeah you owe me this yeah yeah like why why would you make me feel guilty for trying
To do the difficult things of trying to maintain my sober state of mind but if you tell them if you don’t smoke cigarettes don’t smoke cannabis things like crack cocaine amazing yeah good oh amazing good for you wow proud of you amazing but as soon as alcohol comes up
You feel like you’re the crazy one you’re the one that kills fun and bu kill and all especially when you get sober fairly Young I was 27 how old were you when you stopped drinking I just passed my three years and four months so
Yeah 26 27 yeah so we uh that age and and for me that was uh back in 23 years ago and being British because the British drinking culture is just we’re just a nation of Alcoholics I’ll say it we are it’s it’s horrifically abusive drinking is normalized at every level
Doesn’t matter what age you are or um class you are or background you are or ethnicity it it it just it’s out of control and people just look to me like I had two heads um can you how bad did it get benoir like where did your
Drinking take you and then tell us about how you got sober o how much time do we have it got wor so the two hospitalization because of alcohol poisoning during my freshman year in college that was nothing that was just the tip of an iceberg because like I
Said everyone’s like oh no big deal I’ve been hospit before it’s fine yeah your school insurance will take care of that so you just keep going on because if if your circle around you if your Echo chamber doesn’t question it you don’t question it right so fast move forward
The final straw that broke camel’s back so to speak was because of my increased conflict with my J fiance during my romantic relationship that I really quit but it’s the story itself is not that crazy so I’ll share something that’s that’s really really crazy for me
Thinking back was two years prior to me quitting I moved to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh at the time for my job and I went out for the first time Philadelphia is one of the 10 major cities it’s got about 1.3 million population and you hear about stories in Philadelphia so
Philadelphia is known as the city of crit that’s a city where Kevin Hart Will Smith and a lot of these prolific people came out and the street life is quite pronounced there and it’s it’s very critty as a City it’s gone through a lot and it’s the oldest city in the United
States you hear about the stories about oh don’t leave your friends when you drink in Philadelphia it’s not a small City like Pittsburgh it’s not a college town it’s dangerous but this is another thing implicit things about American culture and news is when you hear about death all the time you get very
Desensitized to death so when you hear about stabbing when you hear about shooting in Philadelphia you’re just like oh cognitively you’re registering but in terms of your heart I call it the brain heart knowledge Gap you’re not really registering you’re like oh just a news it’s just a number far distance so
I’m the type of person I’m too social for my friends when I drink I’m already extremely extroverted but when I drink I get even more extroverted so I’ll get bored of my friends and I’ll leave them and make new friends while I’m drinking and I used to be a social smoker that’s
Another thing about alcohol it doesn’t stop there there’s so many far-reaching implications based on the drinking itself like I said the lies like I said smoking a lot cigarettes like chain smoke I will not smoke when I’m sober but I’ll smoke five six cigarettes in a
Row when I drink every single night and I’ll feel horrible I’ll lose my voice the next day right physically I would just feel horrible because I like to work on and all that so first night out I was in Woodies it’s one of the very popular gay neighborhood nightclub in
Philadelphia downtown so I told myself I’m in downtown I’m safe not the case in major cities downtown is not safe they’re not synonymous I ditch my friends as usual I found myself way out to smoke a cigarette from strangers and I had to use the bathroom whatever
Reason because I was blacked out I went to the alleyway at this new club I’ve never been in my life away from my friends and away from the comfort of a bathroom inside the club and I I was jumped I got jumped uh this person saw me clearly black blacked out peeing on
The wall and I had a nice belt on nice outfit nice shoes um obiously wallet and a phone and he only thing I remember is he’s asking me give me your stuff but this is another thing about blacking out is the the false the diluted like audacity that you have I felt audacious
Enough to question him what are you gonna do about it right because I’m in my early 20s the ego right the male ego and the guy had a knife and I asked him what are you gonna do about it and the lot and then I woke up in the ER with a
Scar I have a scar right here from the I still suffer from um short-term trauma I never recover a memory from that weekend fully and but I woke up like the naive me is like oh I probably just drank too much that’s a crazy part where I just drank too much became so
Patternization phone no shoes the guy took my shoes too my nice Lo so I had nothing on me but funnily my this is my I guess my Asian conditioning comes up I’m so Frugal that my my initial instinct is my insurance does not cover ambulance fee because of the broken
American healthc care system and it’s $5,000 five Grands for ambulance so I thought I’m not going to get robbed almost getting killed and paying 5K for ambulance fee so I ditched I left the hospital that morning as a John do because on my Hospital bracelet it said
Um so he said my name but he spelled it wrong so they never found me since and this is the joke where I tell people it’s the one time where uh microaggressions racially served me because so my name is Ben Wang but to Americans they hear as Ben Wong and
Because I’m Asian they assumes my last name is Wong so I think when I was half conscious when they’re trying to put my name down they put my name spelled there wrong so it wasn’t my name at all but but that the crazy story I want to
Really highlight is not the fact that I I got jumped almost got stabbed I went to the police precinct I filed the police report to a detective and detective looked me in the eyes Veronica and asked me did you bleed and I said yes I have head trauma my head hit the
Curb from the impact he’s like no no no did you get sted I said no because for whatever God reason he didn’t stab me thank the Lord seriously he didn’t stab me he just knocked me out and he says don’t bother 10 to 15 people get stabbed
Every night in our Precinct and if you didn’t get stabbed your police report would not even make it to the top so just be grateful that you survived and whatever you did that got you that place stop doing that but here’s the alcohol I went on and drank the next weekend yeah
God so many stories about like that where you’re just lucky to be alive like I have stories like that where sliding doors right you know could it who knows yeah and and and people are people and lives are ended like that just stupid pointless stupid
Yeah how how did you get sober yeah I I just like I feel like alcohol is like playing Russian roulette of Fate right you could get by a few times in my case many times that’s that’s just one of the worst stories but that’s not the only
Story right um but for me so the big reason I call it divine intervention Antion that I was able to get sober was because of my current fiance and this is where I felt like I’ve been filled with so much guilt and shame because of drinking that’s what I don’t realize is
Especially with someone like me with a cultivated heighten self-awareness like daily meditation practices things like that I do have a lot of awareness but like when your actions don’t rise up to your level of awareness they actually becomes dissonance right it becomes like internal in congruences and at least for
Me makes me feel very guilty and it’s like Dr bran Brown’s research guilt over time becomes Shame Shame is identity based and identity based is scary because it takes time to decondition and unprogram so for me like leading up to my like soberful Mo movement uh moment I
Realized that I became so shameful of my drinking identity because I never that’s a lie I’ve had plenty of good times when I drink that’s why you keep drinking right because drinking serves a purpose in your life for me it kept me at Bay from my inner reality and my inner
Landscape what I was really running away from but all that to say I realized When You’re Sober with your increased awareness you can slow it down you know metaphorically you see the train departing the train station you’re like o this is not looking good in terms of verbal conflict or quarrels or arguments
With your partner I was never physically violent never but I’ll be verbally aggressive and verbally violent like I would be I’ll cuss a lot I’m very articulate so I know what to say at the right time in a certain manner to really hurt my fiance very deeply because
That’s the trust issues right you reveal a part of yourself to the other person through trust but because of that the other person used as a levers to hurt you back so that was me extremely unhealthy but when I would drink I will see the train departing and I’ll
Literally tell myself while the house is going to burn down hopefully I can rescue it the next day because I knew there was nothing in that moment will be able to cognitively allow me to detach or disengage from my Fury my rage at that moment because of
Alcohol as instigated but if I were sober I could say hey Becky let’s take a five minutes let me walk this off let me go to the next room and we’ll come back and we’ll re-engage right and so that happened one night it was really bad it
Was right before we’re about to move to Los Angeles from Philadelphia because she’s in medicine she’s a physician so it was for her match outcome and this was one month after we signed or at leas in LA in Philadelphia and one week until we’re about to fly out to move and I did
My career transitions aligned with her so think about this we just signed our lease a month ago a week out we’re about to ship everything fly across the country for new chapters of real life and she broke up with me because of this extremely volatile fight like I was
Extremely angry because of something that happened the Gory details I’m I’m I’m open to sure it’s not very relevant yeah uh but what is relevant is she’d had enough she’s had enough and she told me that Ben I do not deserve this I do not deserve this level of verbal
Violence from you I do not deserve this level of disrespect from you and we’ve been dating for two and a half years by then right and the intention has always been there it was life on commitment and she said I iterate the scenarios over time and I know you love drinking I know
Drinking is a part of you and I get it you’re the life of the party you have a lot of friends I get it it’s your personality I don’t blame you for that but I should not be on the recipient of your anger as the outcome of drinking
And for the first time Veronica I I puked I didn’t understood what heart sick was I never understood my heart felt like someone was squeezing my heart from inside out I couldn’t breathe I had a like a pseudo panic attack I went to the bathroom and vomited I was on my
Knees I’m a six foot male I’m about 185 pounds I I think I was on my knees once when I was a kid when my mom was disciplining me so that as said I was never on my knees and his don’t I begged her I was like Becky please I’m sorry
Take it back she’s like I’m sorry this is it and I was like holy crap what am I doing with my life and in that moment I told Becky you may not take me back and I’m not doing this just for you but for you and for us I’m willing to quit
Drinking for good and this was Saturday um the week prior and then by the time we left for La within a week she took me back and she really understood my vulnerability and that’s Point she told me that you’re very good at being vulnerable because you have a podcast I
Had a podcast by then I talk about stories all the time but she said there is a difference between being vulnerable while telling those stories versus telling a vulnerable stories because telling vulnerable stories does not necessarily I mean you’re being vulnerable in the moment but being vulnerable while telling a story that’s
A different hits a different strength for her and she agreed because she understood the commitment of me quitting drinking and I quit the day after that and never had had a s sense that that’s really powerful and good on her that she loved herself enough to say enough and
That was the best thing that happened to you what what did you do did you go to any programs or therapy or what helped you so I did not get to the programming and this is where even as I share the stories I saw in the back of my mind
Because I’m a therapist I think about oh if Bena can do this um through just some Divine interventions and through a partner account ility buddy maybe I could do this without help that’s not the case because everyone is different right like yes I have a highly addicted
Personality like after I quit drinking I smoked Vape like eat cigarettes like crazy I still drink diet coke like I drink like three Diet Cokes a day right so I still need that F so to speak just like a lot of uh recovering addicts a
Lot of gum right we chew a lot of gum we we put a lot of things like to help with cations for Cravings uh so I didn’t join any any AAS or 12 step programs I did have some therapeutic help though um so I did have some help professionally that
Really acted as like a mirror right and even as a therapist I always like to like spend my first initial intake or the first assessment sessions like contextualizing what therapy means to me since it’s different for everyone and I work with a lot of male um like male
Clients and patients but even to me I remember what the therapist told me because what therapist told me was like Hey Ben Wang I’m not here to fix your or change change only comes from within people can try to uphold you support you accept you unconditionally and show up
For you but change has to come from within otherwise it’s not sustainable and it’s like the idea where I think all of us need an opportunity to pause just hit a pause button and review the archives and the patterns of our behaviors and who we are like are you
Happy about the way you’re showing up at work are you happy about the way you’re showing up at your home to your kids to your husband husband to your wife and if you’re not proud and happy about your version day to-day can we examine what’s going on are there any root causes
Contributing behaviors and every time we did this exercise I call it Behavior Gap analysis analyzing the gap between your behaviors in your words mine was alcohol or substances it just kept coming up so she told me what are you running away from like what’s the worst thing could
Happen if you didn’t numb your feelings and just let the feelings sit there and just let it brew a little bit I was stunt I never thought about that because I’m very I’ve always been introspective but I think all my a lot of my like racing thoughts and a lot of my like
Intrusive thinking I thought that was me actively thinking for myself but I wasn’t I was being like enslaved and owned by my thoughts most most of us are unless you have practices and that’s a fact our brains are about three million years old three million years old you
Could be the most aware 75 year old you don’t stand a chance against 3 million that just evolutionally Prime Springs so through that I realized wow yeah what am I scared of oh I don’t like who I am when I’m sober and when I’m by myself that’s why I’m always with people that’s
Why I’m always with the life of the party that’s why I’m always filling out my days with my work but also three to four social events every week and once I stopped and let go of alcohol I had so much more time and I had more time to
Process what I’ve been running away from from my throughout my 20 thank you for saying how helpful therapy has been for you how have you found the experience of being in therapy and being a therapist I I was a psychotherapist I don’t practice as one anymore but I
Deeply loved it I I remember um I went on a retreat once and there was this Catholic priest who ex Catholic priest who was a therapist and he said there’s many kinds of people in the world some are boring some are ignorant you know some I don’t like but when anyone opens
Up their inner world to me I’m infinitely fascinated and I was like and that’s I just did it it’s always been that way I did a retreat last week with some women and once you create conditions to allow people to show what’s really inside of them some
Kind of magic occurs I’m wondering what your experience of therapy is being a therapist and being in therapy I would have loved to met the ex priest turn therapist that is quite he really he was really really interesting I really like amazing yeah he probably has a Halo
Above him he’s glowing from the wisdom but I do want to preface by saying that of course I’m we both are advocates for mental health coaching therapy or otherwise it’s just one of many e for Change and change happens it can happen through different Vehicles so to speak
Just like reading a book can be therapeutic but the difference is when you’re sitting across a life human being who’s looking at you for this intimate one hour when you say something to that person as a promise or as accountability measure that thing hits you differently
Than just reading a book written by a dead person or a person you would never meet it’s powerful the Insight but the accountability measure is not the same and just having a personto person interaction is it’s a dying art right iners conversations are dying because of
The rise of social proof era the rise of death of attentions death of nuances so I do strongly recommend in person help seeking whether it’s coaching or therapy wise for that reason but to answer your question Veronica I don’t really believe in too many universal truth in life I
Think Universal thread lines are few and far in between but there are some that I’ve identified along the way through my life and I think therapy for me as a psychotherapist on the other side as a helper seeing patients and clients in my sessions it revealed to me because I’ve
Worked with quite a wide- ranging amount of populations right I worked at USC University of Southern California Counseling Center last year so I saw undergraduate students all the way to PhD so ranging name currently I see forensic clients core mandated clients for substance use and severe mental
Illnesses so it’s very dear to my heart addiction if anything since I since we talked addiction has even become more pronounced in my professional career so I I’m naming these two very different demographics because one is highly educated doctorate undergrad graduate students at USC one of the best schools
In America and the other part currently is people with severe substance use co-occuring morbidities with severe mental illness like schizophrenia major depression things like that but the universal threat line I’ve seen for working with these population for a few years is that they are all very human
And all of them are trying their best dayto day especially as recovering addicts I think the battles become harder because I think sometimes when we get busy a week flies resp bonds I don’t even know when we did our interview maybe a couple months ago right so part
Of it kind of feels like a month ago part of it kind of feels like six months ago it’s loose but for recovering addicts my current patients man every day is hard every waking moment the craving hits right you’re thinking about will I be happy again I hear that the
Most will I ever be as happy as I when I used to drink or use mat or use some of other substances and same for my college kids that I used to do sessions with same thing I had a few people sober or not right people who are struggling or
Not they’re like will I ever be happy again for whatever reasons and whatever their struggle they share and whatever things they want to celebrate it comes down to do you feel loved do you have meaningful Connections in your life are you partaking in purposeful and meaningful activities dayto day right
And these are the universal threat lines and of course that theme get manifested through staying sober through working through your soci sh anxiety or working through depressions so the symptoms look different but I think the root cause is the same and that’s something I I didn’t
Really expect I just thought I’m here as my calling I’m here to help people but I’m sure you could relate a lot of times I’m actually learning more for my clients and patients about just life because I I’m seated in a more privileged Empower positions because of
My background and sure I’ve gone through some crazy experiences which helps a lot but I’m just saying that man what a blessing that I get to witness because that’s what therapy do and coaches right we bear witnesses to people’s pain and by them revealing a part of who they are
I like to say I’m also sharing a piece of Who I Am with them and through this dance um the changes do happen but yeah I it’s pretty profound for me where I just see the universality of human nature I think in a therapy container what’s it what’s inside of us when we
See when it’s revealed what’s inside of us you know because my own journey I would rather have died didn’t show you what was inside of me because I just thought it was disgusting and would probably definitely confirm that I wasn’t good enough worthy of being loved
I i i viciously guarded what was inside of me and I see that a lot in my clients you know and it’s the only way none of us I I had a private practice when I was a psychotherapist in Cambridge in England and I had a lot of uh uh postdoc
And doctoral clients and it was really you know I didn’t I went to a really shitty University in London and um my husband went to Cambridge he did his PhD there and uh it was really interesting to me because every single one of them thought there’d been some accident and
They’d been let in by some glitch and they were about to be found out every single one of them the impostor syndrome was rampant I thought I was really fascinated and the same when I’ve had I you know a client group you know I’ve had a lot of well-known clients there
Very successful people same thing some some accident that they ended up in the situation they’re not good enough it’s going to get found out any day now it’s it’s really interesting what’s inside of people uh we are very similar you know inside I think much more similar than we
Think and I think that’s even more actually I’m a fan of unilab the British social media account and they still talk about Cambridge students thinking it was an accidental admission even now in 2023 so reminds me of Bon Jovi’s lyric the more things change the more things stay the same
I think we forget that right but just to add a few things where I love brain science we talked about it right during our podcast I just love a brain science but like this is a very simple concept that you know of course neuropaths super simple me cognitive concept what that
Simply means is a pathway in your brain neural Pathways but it’s a very important idea because just like in know let’s say in a forest if there’s a built-in pathways already carved in for you and you have and the alternative is you have to bike down this treacherous
Path get hit by roses right different obstacles 99.9% of us will choose a carved out path there is a 0 one% like to seek discomfort might go to the uh like want to be a Pioneer but I’m saying that because it’s the same concept for our brains but once again it’s explicit
Versus the implicit the explicit is okay do more that’s good for you that’s going to become neurop pathways over time because that makes the habit forming easier and easier so that’s the obvious that’s explicit to People Like Us who understand the concept behind it the implicit is by you choosing not to open
Up by you choosing to not express how you’re truly feeling by you choosing not to do X Y and Z by confronting your emotions through drinking you’re also directly creating opposite neuropathies so when you’re recondition like for myself when I recondition not drinking and actually talk about these things I
Also had to work on deconditioning and getting rid of the other neurop Pathways that were created accidentally or unintentionally so your work actually becomes double because part of you is carving out the new Pathways for the new habit forming of not drinking of opening up talking about what you feel scared to
Reveal but it’s like um like the Roosevelt one said right I think everything you fear is on the other side of Desire no everything you desire is on the other side of if you’re really move forward you’d be surprised by what’s on the other side so I think the work is
The double for us if you want to carve out new Pathways but once they’re built they’re also extremely solidified and the work gets easier and easier so tell us about what what the future holds for you you’re gonna when are you getting married May it’s what is
That seven eight months out oh that sounds crazy seeing that out loud where are you getting married uh Santa Barbara California oh beautiful beautiful local destinations hybrid since it’s about four hours from La gorgeous um that’s exciting and you’re tell us a little bit about your podcast so it’s
Called discover more so my mission statement on the podcast is I don’t want to make an extension of my Psychotherapy since I like to tell people I don’t I don’t like to work outside of my hours but because people oh you’re psychotherapist tell me about this
Things I was like uh no uh but so my podcast mission is I want to make this discover more synonymous with curiosity because I really feel like when we can uphold curiosity that’s our way of moving past fear judgments misunderstandings all these labeling cultures and horrible things in the
Society nowadays by being curious ask for more question but it’s a social science podcast I had the opportunity for it to top chart a few times which I’m very grateful for and it’s cater towards independent thinkers thinkers who like to think for themselves think about critical issues by critical think
Thinking who also believe in mental health is a thr line so it’s a show for independent thinkers with mental health is a th line we got our YouTube channel you can find it everywhere I know everyone of their mothers of a podcast now but I started this podcast four
Years ago and through four years it’s become from Passion project to a business now which I’m really excited about but I love it because as I said I think inperson immersive conversations are dying on it it really is people get busier people get more superficial not always their fault but it’s just a
Societal current we’re dealing with whether we like it or not so I really I really I take this very seriously like the two hours an hour and a half you and I we talked to Veronica a while ago and an hour we’re talking today and the other people I interact with literally
Across the world it’s it fulfills my basket of meaning tremendously and um it’s a honestly a deep privilege because I pitch I pitch myself I pinch myself all the time how did I get here as an early 30-year-old get to talk with Veronica an expert on sobriety and bunch
Of other people’s seriously like without podcast this would not have been possible not a chance so uh it’s one of the most meaningful things I do in my life these days you just packed so much into your life I mean it’s like you know college military getting sober becoming
A psychotherapist and you’re only 30 and now you’re about to embark on the adventure of marriage and I don’t know maybe having a family and let me tell you Parenthood is like I was 10 years sober when I had my first child and I thought I knew a lot I knew nothing it
Opens up it opens up you know there’s a great parenting gur Guru Dr shavali to I can never say her last name to Z um she uh says it’s not about the raising of the child it’s about the raising of the parent and the the job of parenting is
To actually work on your own and I thought I’d done that at 10 years sober and nope a whole bunch of stuff that I had to work on um who knows that may be in your future that may not but just you know marriage is different from dating
And living with someone it’s it is different it’s not just a piece of paper it is a more meaningful commitment so I wish you all the best for that next chapter hope to see some pictures on Instagram when that happens could I um share a quick quote the my favorite
Quote from Peter teal author of 021 the co-founder PayPal he said that when you reach the Pinnacle of your career you can do two things find God or have kids I already found God so I guess having kids is the only thing that’s left for me down the road I would but
And I would say that that’s that’s exclusive for men oh oh nuances that’s true yeah very true because women are under a clock that’s true biological clock yeah but but very interesting very interesting um where can people find you if they want to check out where your your
Podcast and your stuff uh discover more podcast uh discover more on Apple podcast Spotify wherever you tune in if you’re more of a visual person we do have a full-time editor and we do take cinemat cinematic effects seriously because that’s the culture we live in so we also have a YouTube channel called
This discover podcast and Veronica’s episode is coming out soon uh probably within the next month or so month and a half so stay tuned very excited we go much deeper into Veronica’s experiences and as as everyone knows Veronica is the expert on this topic so I’m very excited
To revisit our topics as well yeah and we’ll put all the links to all of that in our show notes when this episode goes up which I also have no idea when that’s but we’ll figure it out benoir it was really delightful the most attractive human quality for me is curiosity it’s
The most attractive human trait and uh it’s I don’t know I don’t know if I I just feel when you’re younger you are curious but you’re also so full of insecurity and checking all the boxes that it kind of gets lost um and yeah that’s why I really
Enjoyed being your guest anyway thank you so much benoir it was great to have you here um please check out the Discover more podcast and everything will be in the show notes and I will be back next week with another great episode of the so four podcast thanks so much everybody
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