Where You're Going

John Liddle

Welcome into the Where You’re Going Podcast. I’m your host and hopefully your friend as well, John Liddle. Thank you so much for being here. And you’ve heard me say it before, say it with me now. We believe at the Where You’re Going Podcast, it is not about where you’ve been. It’s not even about where you are right now. It is about where you’re going and who you are becoming and we’re going to talk a lot about that today. Thank you so much to everybody whos is subscribing to the show, whether it be on YouTube, make sure you subscribe and also activate that little bell so you get an email every single time we put out a show. You can also subscribe and get an email whenever we put out a show as well on our website, whereyourgoingpod.com. And you can do the very same thing wherever you get your podcasts as well. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the whole deal and we’ve gotten some great feedback on the show. Thank you so much to everybody that’s reviewed the show. I want to read one of those to you. This one’s from Breanna: “Such an inspiring podcast. John does a great job of sounding like that best friend who is giving great life advice. Love how he stresses hope and a bright future for all of us.” Thank you so much, Breanna. It is an honor to bring those to you, so please keep the reviews coming. Not for me, I promise, but just so other people find the show rate and review it today and make sure you’re tuned in every single week. This week we’re going to get real. And I do want to, right off the bat, before we get into the interview, give you a trigger warning for some child sexual abuse. And we do not get graphic or very specific in this, but there are a couple of references that happened to our guest, so if that’s a trigger for you, we totally understand. But I do want to let you know it’s as respectful as you can be and there are no graphic details in this, but this is an important story. It’s a story of trauma. It’s a story of addiction as an adult and it’s a story of healing. And you can only imagine how that hits my heart. It’s my pleasure to bring on my new friend, Dr. Mark McNear, a licensed psychotherapist, 30 years of experience and now he is changing even more lives through his memoir, Finding My Words: A Ruthless Commitment to Healing Gently after Trauma. Thank you so much for the time, Dr. McNear. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Mark McNear

Thanks, John. I appreciate being on.

John Liddle

I think it’s just a remarkable story and we will certainly get into it. But one of the first things that strikes me is you’re a psychotherapist. You are helping people heal along the way while at the same time…I don’t want to spoil it for everybody, but you start with it right off the bat in your book…your life is falling apart in your early 50s to the point that through your addiction you can’t even work anymore. What was that like trying to help people at the same time feeling like you couldn’t help yourself?

Dr. Mark McNear

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that I talk about this some in the book but I got to the point where I really couldn’t function anymore and I was sleeping half the day and the rest of the day that I was watching TV and just kind of zoning out. I had done fairly well before then, but I think that what had happened. And I talk about this a little bit in the book. That idea that my dad had passed away in July of 2014 and then by March of 2015 I was in really bad shape and the addictions had really caught up with me and so by then I just wasn’t functioning and so by then I really wasn’t seeing patients.

John Liddle

For so many years of your adult life, 35 years of your adult life, something like that. You say you’re running away from your past, right? And you’re trying to outrun this addiction and this abuse that has happened and this trauma and you’re even trying to run away from God in that sense and eventually it all catches up. And I can certainly relate. I know there are a lot of people that can relate to that as well. We can outrun those things and kind of put them on the back burner only for so long before they really start deeply impacting our lives. How do you try to help people see that, admit to it before it’s so debilitating?

Dr. Mark McNear

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, John, it’s hard for people to see because they’re so used to it. I talk in the book about my life getting smaller and smaller. Addictions cause my life to get smaller and smaller and so I try to work with people and try to get them to explore what they would want in their lives if they didn’t struggle with the addictions that they are struggling with. And so I think that I go about it and looking at how their life could be better without the addictions but it’s hard because denial comes in and I talk in the book about the addict is the last one to realize they have a problem.

John Liddle

Absolutely. And it is so true and until things hit the fan and for you it was not being able to provide for your family and the mood swings as you mentioned, sleeping half the day, not being able to work until you absolutely hit rock bottom, you couldn’t admit it. And even then you went into rehab thinking that this rehab situation where you were addicted to prescription medication and obviously you had other issues, the depression, everything kind of compiling but you went into that thinking, all right, it’s a process. It’s four weeks. I’m in. I do my time. I’m out, I’m back to work. But how long did it take for you to realize it was so much more than that and the work to be done was so much deeper?

Dr. Mark McNear

I think it took me about four weeks in rehab to realize. And I talk about in the book how memories of the trauma came back to me. And so the addiction and I talk about this in the book the addiction was a problem, but the addiction was not the problem. The problem was the trauma that I was running away from, all of the pain from my childhood that I was running away from. So it was about four weeks into rehab feeling just like, lost and feeling empty, but yet also the medication was going out of my system. And as the medication went out of my system, the memories from my childhood, the physical abuse, the sexual abuse, the verbal abuse, the emotional abuse all came back really vividly. And that was one of the things that the medication did for me, is it kept that away from me, so to speak.

John Liddle

And I’ve gotten into kind of briefly my addiction history over the course of this show. And I don’t want to make it about me at all, but it’s just my experience that I echo exactly what you said. That is the trauma. It is our past and really our inability to cope with the past, the things that have happened to us that come out in these addictions. But I will say this. When my addiction first reared its ugly head very early in my marriage. This was like back in 2006 or something like that. And I don’t know if I just wasn’t going to the right person or what it was more about: “Okay, go to Celebrate Recovery and figure out how to stop doing this thing,” instead of really getting to the root of the trauma. But three years ago, when I really started to work on the trauma, that is when the real lasting change, I feel like occurred. How long have we and you as a psychotherapist known truly that trauma is the root of basically all addiction?

Dr. Mark McNear

I think that in the 1990s, a lot of the studies started going in that direction. I think about Dr. Gabor Maté. He talks about “Don’t ask why the addiction, ask what the pain is.” And so there’s been a lot of studies now with trauma, and that has really helped. The research has shown that people who struggle with addictions, whether it be substance addictions or process addictions, either way, that they have a history of trauma and that the addictions serve as a way for them to self soothe the pain, that it doesn’t work, but it’s what people use to self soothe the pain from the trauma.

John Liddle

And as I even have friends at this point in my life that are dealing with different addictions. I’m no psychotherapist, but I’m like, “All right, what else is going on here, bud?” You’ve got to get to the root of it. It’s like digging up a root, right? You got to get to the bottom of it. And I think one of the things that really just struck me is just how much shame was involved in personally, the inability to think back. You even promised God, “I’m never going to look at what happened in my past!” You felt this personal shame where you felt like you couldn’t even bring it up. How do you help people that are experiencing that shame?

Dr. Mark McNear

Yeah, I think that for me, I can tell you, first of all, what happened with me is that I was able to get around a lot of really safe people, and I talk about that in the book. And those safe people were able to move toward my story, not move away from, but move toward my story and allow me to share it as I was ready to share it. And so I do the same thing now in working with people, there’s no pressure that they have to share so much in the session. They share as they’re ready to share. And it’s really a process. It’s not a procedure where somebody comes in and gets it done. It’s a process that I have seen unfold in my own life. I talk about it, as you know, in chapters four, five and six. Just the abuse that I had and a lot of the things that I talk about there, I couldn’t have talked about five, six years ago, and now I’m able to talk about it with a certain amount of ease. And so it was a matter of going back to the title of the book, “Finding My Words.” It was a matter of me being able to find my words and then speak my words and then finally embrace them and to use them as a vehicle to help others. And I’m especially passionate for people in the church to be able to hear that, because I know in my own life it has helped me so much. And so I really feel passionate that other believers can use the same things that I had in my life, safe people, with the Lord by their side to go through and to talk about things that were just unmanageable for me to talk about alone.

John Liddle

This is a topic that I wanted to get into at some point during the show. I didn’t know when I was going to be able to. So thank you for opening the door. The church and a true belief in God, and a true belief that God can heal all wounds, that relationship with God. But then the necessity of the psychotherapy, of the sessions, of the counseling, of the community as well. How do you think that the church and therapy can work better as we continue to move through and help people with pain, with abuse, with addictions?

Dr. Mark McNear

The good news is I think it’s happening in a lot of churches. I think we have a long way to go, but I think it’s happening. And I think just being trauma informed to realize that we have bodies, we carry this pain around us, in our bodies. I talk about in the book and I wanted to be really open with this. It wasn’t a story of me going to rehab me working through these stories, some of these horrific stories that I talk about in the book and then suddenly the last three chapters of the book, everything’s fine. I talk about and I wanted to be real, to know as a believer in Jesus Christ, I struggle with depression, I struggle with anxiety, I’m working on all of these things, but I struggle with them. I struggle with flashbacks of the abuse that I had, especially the sexual abuse that I had. And I wanted to put it out there to give other people permission. And I think that is one of the things that we need to do in church is to realize that we need to give people permission to have problems. I think it was Sheila Walsh that said “It’s okay not to be okay. That’s why Jesus came.” And so it’s not like we come to know Christ and all of our problems go away. And in this process, I think as I’ve progressed in my healing, I see so many more problems that I have than I even realized. And it’s okay. It says in Philippians, chapter one and verse six, “Be confident of this very thing that he God, who has begun a good work in us, he will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus.” He is working on us daily to conform us to the image of his Son. And I’m real quick to say, John, I’ve had a lot of wounding and I limp. And it’s okay that I limp. And I’m very clear with people, whether it’s people that I’m working with in psychotherapy or whether it’s in the church that I’m in, that I struggle. I struggle with my emotions. I don’t struggle as much as I did five years ago. I don’t even struggle as much as I did three years ago, but I still struggle. And I think I’ll struggle until the day that I see Jesus face to face. So I think that that message needs to get out.

John Liddle

Oh, I totally agree, and I want to honor you for taking those steps. And I’m so glad that you have the forum and that you’ve decided to write this book. Not to say I have it all together and here’s where I wanted to go next. You’re not saying in this book, I’ve got it all together, and here are the five steps that you need to take to get it all together as well. This is a book, this is a memoir where you simply present your story. As tough as it is to read, as tough as it is to put ourselves in the body of little Mark as a kid and say, my goodness, this is so difficult. And as you say in the book several times, healing takes time, but you’re not coming at it from somebody who’s got it, who feels like they’ve got it all together. You simply present your story and say, there’s simply hope in exploring, in trying, in starting to look at your trauma.

Dr. Mark McNear

Yeah. And I think that one of the things that I talk about in the book is an incident that happened when I was about four years old. My dad had forced me to eat carrots, and I’m sitting at the dinner table, and so I end up vomiting as a result of being forced eat carrots. And my dad becomes irate and picks me up and throws me in the garbage. He says “Stay there! You’re a piece of garbage! That’s where you belong!” Fast forward. And this is one of the things that I talk about in the book that I want people to hear, is the past is not the past when it comes up in the present. And so fast forward, I’m four years old, and that happens. Fast forward to 28 years old. I’m with my wife. We’re at a wedding, and I’m sitting there, and they serve steak and they serve potatoes, and they serve carrots. And so without even thinking, John, I stab into one of the carrots and I take a bite of it, and then I just begin to gag. And it came right back to me what happened when I was four years old. And so that’s so true with trauma. The past is not the past when it shows up in the present and it does so much of the time.

John Liddle

And so many of us don’t realize and it may not be carrots, it may be something totally different. So many of us don’t realize my reaction to this situation or why I isolate. I know that’s something that you talked about in the book, the only safe place, if it even was safe, was in your room. And I felt the same way growing up. I felt like, I’ve got to get away. I’ve got to isolate. The reason that we do things like that today as adults is because it was a coping mechanism when we were kids, or it was a trigger response to something that happened when we were kids. I’m guessing a lot of people just don’t realize that, right?

Dr. Mark McNear

And I talk about in the book that Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, all of these different ways to handle trauma. And another example that’s not in the book that I’ll give. You know, my wife and I get married and we get our first house with electric garage doors. And so Debbie goes to work and she comes home and I notice when the garage door goes up, my heart starts to pound and I get really uptight. And this is as an adult, well, looking back as a child, when my dad would get home from wherever he was, whether it was work or somewhere else, where he was out and the garage door went up, my body would stiffen and I would begin to get really anxious. So that part of the brain doesn’t differentiate between today and what happened years ago. And we see that a lot with war veterans. The same thing that happens when July 4 comes around and the fireworks are going and they are triggered so much by the noises that they hear.

John Liddle

Absolutely. And you’ve talked about how just the triggers can happen and also the coping mechanisms. I thought this was so interesting when I saw it in the book, is that you would joke in a way about the pain. Like that was a way, a deflection, if you will. I don’t know if it was like joking about your situation in life growing up or what. I’ve joked against myself a lot about my weight or about just being ugly. I think more than anything, a lot of times those jokes, that self-deprecation, or trying to make light of something is a compensation as well.

Dr. Mark McNear

Yeah. I think it protects us from the real sadness that we’re feeling deep down inside. And so it’s a maladaptive way, but it’s a way of coping with the pain that we’ve had in our lives. And I did that for years with different things. I would always poke fun at myself for different things, and I think that it was just a way to cope with how uncomfortable I felt in my own skin.

John Liddle

It is so interesting. Another thing I wrote down while I was reading your book last night is you were talking a lot about how especially your father and also there was a specific teacher as well in your book that had some very mean things to say about you as well when comparing you to your sister and how smart she was, basically. And how stupid you were, which is not true, obviously, but that’s basically what she was saying. And I thought about it. Why do I personally have an inner critic? We don’t probably come out of the womb, Mark, thinking that we’re bad in some way or “Man, I’m not a very good bottle feeder, I’m not a very good walker.” We don’t come out of the womb thinking we’re poor at these things. We pick it up along the way. That’s why we have an inner critic.

Dr. Mark McNear

Yeah. Whether it be parents or whether it be other adults around us or in the case of my 6th grade teacher saying negative things about me. We internalize those voices and then we use them and start talking to ourself in that know, and we walk through life like that if we don’t realize it.

John Liddle

Absolutely. We’re visiting with an incredible Dr. Mark McNear. And just what makes him incredible is the way he has followed God’s, leading even to write the book. For so long…for most of your life, more than 90% of your life, you wanted all this stuff to remain hidden. If you would have been buried with those memories, that’s what you would have chosen, except your just life got to a point where you couldn’t do that. How did you finally get from that to putting it all on paper?

Dr. Mark McNear

I think that I talk in the book about calling a psychiatrist, my psychiatrist, and I asked her in March of 2015 for refills. And it became very clear to her very apparent quickly that I was abusing the medication. And so she was very quick to say to me, you need to go to rehab. And so I realized at that point that I wasn’t getting any more refills I needed to do so, you know, that day I waited for my wife, it was a hard day. I waited for my wife Debbie to get home from school. And I explained to her that I had talked to the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist had recommended that I go to rehab. And Debbie was so supportive and so grace filled and just, I’m really, really glad that you’re going to get help. And then after that, I contacted my daughter Emily, and she was just wonderful with it and she said, “I’m so proud of you.” And I can remember just like choking up and being like, “Wow, they’re being supportive of me.” And I had no idea, John. It’s been a wonderful journey, been a hard journey, and I talk about that in the book, but it’s been a really worthwhile journey. My life is so much different now. It’s not perfect, as I’ve alluded to. I struggle with emotional things and struggle with flashbacks and symptoms from complex PTSD. But my wife talks about this all the time, that she saw that the Lord brought me step by step by step. It wasn’t all at once. And sometimes people look at it and they’re like, “Heal me, Lord. That’s it. I want to be healed.” I would have never dreamt that I could have even gotten through some of the things that I’ve gotten through, the pain that I’ve gotten through. But it really helped to have supportive family members. It’s really helpful to have really good counselors. I mentioned one of them in the book, Harry Flanagan. I started sharing with him a little bit of the traumas that I had. So he suggested to me to write down the traumas or type them up on a Word document. And that was really hard to do, and that’s the basis of chapters four, five and six. But he was really gentle and he was trained in trauma and trauma informed. And so he let me go at my own pace and allowed me to talk about some of the things in each session, but never rushed me. And so you really need people that have gone before you and they’ve been able to do this. Also friends. I’ve had phenomenal friends that have walked with me who really understand the journey. And I would share with them little by little things that I was learning about my childhood. And they stayed in the room. They didn’t leave. They stayed there and cared about me and really showed a lot of sensitivity and empathy. I talk about that idea that they moved forward, they didn’t move back. I didn’t feel like I was being rejected, even with their body language, but they were there for me. A lot of counseling. Now I’m doing a lot of internal family systems work, but just hours and hours of counseling to be able to process the trauma that I had. And the addictions are not the problem now. It is really the trauma and the symptomology still from the trauma or the aftermath of the trauma that I struggle with at times.

John Liddle

And it’s totally understandable, but there is hope and you can see movement. And what I want people to pay attention to is that it’s okay that it takes time. It is okay that it takes time. And that is for the patient and that is for the loved ones around them as well, right? We can’t rush our loved one as they’re going through this healing journey. This healing journey is their own.

Dr. Mark McNear

Yeah. It took me 55 years to get where I was with addictions and things. And then for me to expect that it would all be erased within a couple of years is ridiculous. I remember, and I talk about this in the book, that I had a really fine psychiatrist, Dr. Joe Garbley, and he had shared with me in one of our first visits how much time it was going to take. And that was a relief to me to know that it was going to take time and that I didn’t need to rush that. God’s not in a hurry in healing us. He takes his time and He is gentle and He is kind, He’s loving, He is graceful and He is merciful to us. And so I’m always telling him “We need to go faster!” He doesn’t seem to listen to me with that. But I think that just realizing that it’s really a sacred work of going through this healing process and to just stop at different times and just to appreciate where you are on the journey.

John Liddle

Absolutely. Where you’re going is so much better than where you’ve been. Absolutely. I just love that promise. I just believe that and also want to call forward again people around those that need help. Because you talk about community a bunch of times in your book, but the quote on page 111 is “We get hurt in relationships. The only place to get healed is in relationships as well.” And that was very impactful to me too, to read that.

Dr. Mark McNear

Dr. Ted Roberts from Pure Desire Ministries wrote that. And I think that there’s not a truer statement and I think know for those in listening to this that might be struggling with addictions or that their life is a mess right now, I would say just find one person. Just one person and start to tell them a little bit. I think that just even having one person that believes in you and has been through that. I’ve talked about the fact, John, that I sat in NA meetings and I never talked. I wasn’t willing to talk, but I listened and it was so helpful for me just to hear other people’s stories and to hear the hope that they climbed out of it. And so that’s what I wanted to do with the book, is to say: You know what? Here’s this guy that really fell…was addicted heavily…who really hit rock bottom. But by the grace of God, he got back up and he started going slowly and he took his time. But that he’s really happy that he did. Because life is pretty good now, and it’s nowhere near what it looked like ten years ago or 15 years ago. My marriage has been restored. My relationship with my daughter and my son in law is wonderful. I can’t tell you how many friends that I have that I can talk to about these things now. Just so important. I have a church that really, really love. I have a pastor, Kirk Rupprecht. Some days I sit and I am so grateful just for the work that God has done in me. There’s other days that I’m struggling, but I try to build gratitude in every day, I really do because it’s really helpful. With a story like mine, a messy story like mine.

John Liddle

Absolutely. Gratitude is absolutely huge. And so if we’re going to pick out three things out of this is: 1) It takes time 2) You need safe people and then 3) (if you’re on the other end of it, if you’re trying to help somebody) just that ministry of presence, to be with them, to lean in, as you said, and not be scared, not back off, but to lean into them and be with them.

Dr. Mark McNear

Yeah, I think it’s two Corinthians chapter one and verses three through five. I believe that. Talks about God came alongside us in our struggles so that we could do that for other people. And that’s really my ministry now, to come alongside other people that have struggled like I have or have know trauma and to be able to shake my head and to be able to give them assurance that there is hope on the other side.

John Liddle

Dr. Mark McNear is our guest, and his book is “Finding My Words: a Ruthless Commitment to Healing Gently After Trauma.” And where can we find the book, Dr. McNear?

Dr. Mark McNear

It is on Amazon.

John Liddle

Okay, fantastic. And it is well worth it. I was able to take in the book just last night, and I’m looking forward to getting in there as well and doing some of the answering of the questions, not just in my head this time, but actually writing it down because it is such valuable work that we can do right alongside a guy that wants to walk with us. Right.

Dr. Mark McNear

Absolutely.

John Liddle

Well, thank you so much for your time today. We have been blessed by it and continued blessings in your work and your recovery.

Dr. Mark McNear

Thank you, John.

John Liddle

Wow. What an incredible story. My new friend, Dr. Mark McNear, I cannot thank him enough for coming on the show. And we packed a lot into just the last 30 minutes, certainly something you’ve got to share with those you love. And again. His book “Finding My Words: a Ruthless Commitment to Healing Gently After Trauma.” And I hope I emphasize this enough, this is not a book that is over your head. This is not a book where Dr. McNear’s got it all together and the rest of us are just fighting for scraps. No, he is right in the middle of it. He knows that healing takes a long, long time and he heals us with his story. This is in the trenches. And this is so valuable and helps us know those of us that have been through trauma, we are not alone Thank you so much for listening or watching the show today. Cannot thank you enough. Make sure to rate and review and subscribe and be back with us next week because it’s not about where we’ve been, it’s not about where we are right now. It’s about where we’re going and who we’re becoming. We’ll talk to you next week!