One Last Hit | A Sobriety and Addiction Recovery Podcast

What's happening, ladies and gentlemen,

my name is Austin and welcome to episode

eleven of the one last hit podcast.

And we have a very special edition today.

Barb, whose last name I can't pronounce,

is joining us today.

She is she's very interesting.

So she is is an expert in complex

trauma, PTSD recovery.

She also is the creator of something

called the Ascendance Method,

which I am

Excited to hear about Barb.

Thanks for joining me.

And please say your full name for everyone

that's listening.

So my name is Barb Vartso-Smith,

and I'm happy to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Is it Vartso?

Vartso, yeah.

Yeah.

Give me a year.

Maybe I would get that.

All right.

So this is lovely.

And Barb, how did we connect?

Did you reach out to me through Sobriety

Talk?

Was that how we got connected?

I think it was.

Yeah.

You nicely added my podcast on your list,

and yeah, that is how we connected.

Yeah, that's wonderful.

And so I'm curious, how,

how do you get into, like,

what was your, what was your roadmap?

What was your path that led you to

this, this sort of work?

What it led to me,

it was my own childhood trauma and, um,

my

was about that in the end I become

very ill.

I was in seventeen diagnosed with chronic

fatigue syndrome and bedridden.

And then I find the Sylvain method of

mind control and get out of it.

And I had a lot of things happening

in childhood,

but actually

When I start looking back,

it's not about just about what happened to

me as growing in child of dissidents.

My mom had accident and spent a lot

of time in hospital and then she was

quite disabled.

But also looking around what's happened

around me.

And actually,

when I was in the high school,

I lost to my classmates to addiction.

So even

when I didn't realize it in that time

um it was one of the motivation for

me to start looking why people actually

choosing these options as coping because I

never saw it as the that problem itself

but it's a coping mechanism for what's

happening in their life and I volunteered

in um

center for you know helping people detox

in this time which many people don't know

even that i did i kind of hide

it slightly uh because uh yeah people kind

of looked very badly on on you know

people like shut shut people away don't

want to hear that people like this

existing uh but being

with people in that state of detox make

me even like more, I would say,

compassionate to find the way for

everybody, not just for them,

but for people with the pain,

for people with struggling works in

relationships, you know, the way out.

So I will start learning everything which

I could for myself,

but also what would work for others and

start helping people alongside my day job.

and that's uh india and i turn it

to my it's my passion and now i'm

doing it um that is awesome what a

journey i love that i love that and

so wow i love great journey and so

i'm curious

not to be too on the nose with

it, but you know,

a lot of addiction stories I hear have

multiple phases of trauma.

And I think there's the obvious conclusion

that people come to,

which is we don't want to feel it.

So we suppress it with drugs and alcohol.

But,

but what has been your experience with

trauma recovery specifically for the

recovery, you know,

the sobriety community for the people

recovering from drug and alcohol

addiction?

Yeah.

So, yeah,

it's that kind of obvious reason.

But actually,

it's one of the trauma responses.

We have the four trauma responses, fight,

flight, freeze, and fawn.

And actually...

The way of the drug addiction,

drugs are more like flight response

because it's more creating that feeling of

high or like feeling that we're getting

out of that.

Alcohol is more about the freeze because

alcohol is depressing.

So it's actually really like numbing.

I just don't want to...

I don't want to feel it.

And so for me, all this addiction,

it's just unhealthy coping mechanism.

It's our mind just trying to survive.

And what I see,

my motto is that people are not broken.

People just adapted to survive.

sometimes they didn't find healthier way

because they didn't see example they

didn't wasn't taught how else to cope with

that and to be told we still have

very um white um for example drinking

problem in society at all because it's

normalized we have advertisement for

alcohol it's

It's in movies,

it's about going with the friends after

work for pint, you know.

And so we actually teaching people this is

how you're supposed to relax,

this is how you're supposed to relieve

your emotions,

that we're not teaching them the healthy

way to cope.

And working often with the young adults in

their recovery from drugs when their

parents say like, you know,

can you please help them?

And the most common thing is that where

they got it was actually home.

They didn't have to go anywhere.

The alcohol was available home.

They saw their parents drinking.

So they start doing it also.

And then they maybe move to the drugs

because their parents didn't fulfill their

emotional needs.

So they just go with the flow of

what is available.

Interesting.

And I'm curious,

in the people that you currently work with

in this particular space,

so I have some experience in therapy,

in rehab,

where they actually brought me back into,

kind of close your eyes and we're going

to imagine you're back in this one

traumatic event that's going on.

And it was almost a coaching of a

reframing of the event and then bringing

me back out of it, right?

Almost like feeling the emotions and

letting them pass through me.

And I'm wondering,

I'm very curious as to the process that

you maybe could shine some light on here.

Yeah.

So I do something similar,

because we actually all functioning the

same way, you know,

our brain and body working.

So when we actually have trauma,

it's not what happened to us,

but how we reacted to it.

So if we

happened is that exactly we started

emotions but that one traumatic even in

the end which could seems as the cause

of it is usually not the last it's

not usually the root cause it's just the

last drop which uh cups start overflowing

and we cannot handle it anymore it's

starting as we piling it up inside since

the childhood yeah

So it is about that,

that when we are children,

we are taught to suppress our emotions.

And it started with the dummy,

as I saying,

it's in the first moment when we giving

children, what's actual name is pacifier.

And I've been telling them, don't feel,

don't say what, how you feel,

don't express it.

And we teaching them that they supposed to

all hold it in.

So yeah, when we,

go to hypnotic state or deep meditation.

That doesn't really matter how we name it.

It's all same.

We can reach that emotionally stored and

we can let them go out.

Then we start immediately feel lighter and

we don't need to hold them in.

And also we can reach all these patterns.

We set up for our behavior,

all these beliefs about I am not good

enough.

I'm not strong enough.

And for example, in yoga,

issue with the sobriety is a big part,

for example, veterans,

for which quite often the issue is a

moral injury, you know,

that there is that feeling of failure,

a feeling of like,

I supposed to save somebody,

I supposed to be strong and I'm not.

So it's,

we can reframe it.

We can realize you did what you could.

It wasn't really your fault.

And actually get back to that state of

feeling yourself and feeling like, okay,

I can be here and now and I

can cope.

Interesting.

And I'm curious for, you know,

and this wasn't my experience with trauma,

but I know that there's a lot of

people on this earth who experienced

trauma at the hands of somebody else,

right?

So they were never at fault.

They were the victim in that sense.

But I know in the recovery context,

being a victim or seeing yourself as a

victim is generally a very large hindrance

to getting better.

And I'm curious,

how do you work with people who have

had really horrific things happen to them,

but they need to move past it?

I was telling them that trauma is not

fair.

It will never become fair that it

happened.

It's not supposed to happen.

But

You can choose to live in the victimhood

and give up the rest of your life

for this pain you're living in.

Or you can choose the best revenge,

which is to live your life fully and

not let it affect you.

Because you survive,

you should celebrate that you survived it.

you can move forward from it.

So for some people I even recommending and

we also something organized almost like a

homecoming from battlefield.

Like you survive it,

like refrain it from them that you are

not victim, you are warrior.

You like went through all that and you

are still here.

And actually that is the kind of thing

which I call the paradox of trauma,

which is that

more we showing our kind of trauma

responses, more we almost like struggle.

We have the nightmares or flashbacks and

stuff like that.

That's actually meaning that our mind

desperately trying to solve it.

It's actually a sign of the strength of

the mind.

It's not weakness.

It's the mind trying to find how to

get it out.

So it's just about redirection.

It's about the change the tools.

And yeah, you deserve it, but trauma...

is not excuse trauma explanation so it's

still our responsibility as adults to be

responsible for our emotions and for our

behavior and if we don't we're just

passing on the trauma because to be told

even if you don't want to hear it

the reality is that most of time those

who were those who hurt us they were

hurt also they acted out from their trauma

responses

Because controlling outbursts of anger,

coldness, or too much pressure,

they're actually also all signs of trauma.

It's just different type of coping with

it.

It's not excuse.

It's just explanation.

And then we can realize that,

you know what,

let's stop playing the blame game and take

the responsibility for my life.

So I will not pass it on my

children and people around me.

Interesting.

And as you're talking,

what I'm hearing is I didn't cause it,

it's not my fault,

but I am responsible for recovering from

it once we identify it.

And I'm curious,

I know the rates of recovery for people

that are addicted, getting sober,

they're dismal.

As the years go on,

lots of people relapse.

What would you say the rates of recovery

are for complex trauma and PTSD?

It's about that.

If you stop just managing the symptoms,

but if you actually start recovery,

then you can recover fully and you'll

never come back.

So that's my different approach to the

trauma recovery.

Because many things are about managing.

And I, for example, you know, in AA,

it's about like I am alcoholic.

just saying that I am,

it's kind of keeping you in it.

If you if you just changing that one

sentence, and you start saying,

I used to be,

that's completely different sentence for

your mind.

Because then you're saying I'm not that

anymore.

I, I use that tool as the coping,

but now I'm not using it.

So so mindset wrapping is a completely

different way.

So

I created the ascendance method from the

result of working with a wide range of

different modalities and finding things

which are really working for full

recovery.

So this means that people don't have that

need to go back to these unhealthy coping

mechanisms.

and the base of it that we are

all born with the five pillars of self

it's calling five functional parts of mind

and if they are in balance and in

place and walking together as opposed to

we don't need it so there is not

struggling with temptation because there

is just that need is just disappear for

it and they are inner strength self-love

intuition wisdom and purpose

And our inner strength is the kind of

thing which bounding it together.

And it is one of which we affecting

most in the childhood is that feeling of

boundaries,

that feeling of that inner safety is that

energy,

which protecting us and it's inside

outside.

It's our voice to say no to saying

it's our, uh, say to yes to things,

which we want.

It's our moving power.

But it's our protective emotion.

It's our anger.

It's our frustration.

It's our disgust.

And all these things which are protecting

us.

And children naturally have it.

But we tell them to suppress it.

We tell them, like, you know,

you don't have the right to decide.

Don't be angry.

Hold it all in.

So we misplace it.

And then we don't listen to our self-love,

which will tell us, do not do that.

Do not drink.

Do not take alcohol.

It's not good for you.

But in the moment when we put it

back...

which we can quite quickly,

then self-love,

we start listening to it and we don't

have these choices.

So when I'm working with people and I

even get to touch them a year,

two years later, I would say like, no,

I don't have any cravings or anything

because my life is completely different.

I just, I don't need it.

I'm free to be myself.

Hmm.

Interesting.

And so let's say,

and I'm just playing a hypothetical here

cause I'm curious about it.

If you've got, you know,

one thing that we do see a lot

in twelve step recovery is,

is switching addictions.

We put down, you know,

let's say the alcohol and we pick up

food or we put down the alcohol and

we pick up gambling or whatever, right?

Pick your poison.

Do you find that,

do you ever find that to be the

case as well with,

with people with tough trauma?

Oh yeah, because until you solve

You know,

those who came to the AA because of

alcohol, they are traumatized.

There is some trauma behind that.

They don't start drinking because they

want to, because they're enjoying it,

you know.

It's to be, you know, excuse really,

is it?

So until they resolve why using it,

that coping mechanism, why they need numb,

why they need to suppress that emotions,

they will choose another way to suppress

emotions, yeah?

So it's why the switching happens.

So it's why solution,

it's dealing with that why,

dealing with that what has really

happened.

And it's possible to change when we start

recognizing what really happened to us.

And you mentioned, for example,

that you don't have experience of big

trauma.

But people underestimating what everything

trauma is for children.

child is totally dependent on their

parents and everything which happen when

the needs are not fulfilled it's actually

death threat yeah for child being hungry

is the death threat for child being left

alone and be afraid is death threat you

know so there start to be enormous amount

of fear which starts tucking in

And anger, which is linked to it,

because anger coming every time protect us

and we stuck it in.

So there is about eighty percent of

population have the childhood trauma.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that they

have abusive parents or they have like

violence or poverty.

It can be that their parents were ill

as in my case, my parents was loving,

but my needs wasn't fulfilled because my

mom spent months in hospital and father

trying his best to take care of three

children and going to work.

It's about that start recognizing how we

really start reacting,

what everything happened to us and what we

start creating from that for ourselves

without blaming others.

And even high achievers are often

traumatized.

The workaholism is the big sign of trauma.

We have a lot of people who are

going for alcohol and they look that they

are successful.

They have families, they have jobs,

and yet they would, you know,

start drinking or using the drugs secretly

because they're not coping,

which I call fake resilience.

They're just trying to fake it,

that they are okay,

but they're just trying to hold it in.

But it keeps going out.

It keeps going out.

So they're just trying more and more to

numb it.

But I think the key thing is that

when we keep numbing,

We're numbing everything.

We're not numbing just these unpleasant

emotions.

We're numbing also this joy and love and

anxiety and motivation.

So then it takes us a lot of

energy to keep going because we're not

getting this reward of, you know,

I love to do that.

I am excited that I did something.

You know,

there's a real feeling of satisfaction.

Wow.

Very interesting.

I know in, in twelfth step recovery,

we don't, you know,

trauma specifically is not addressed.

There are ways in which we kind of

get at it, but are you,

are you familiar with the twelfth step

recovery process?

I am.

I am familiar with that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Uh,

but I sent it on the step four,

uh,

when you're supposed to kind of going back

through your life.

Um, if you are really, really, really,

really honest, uh,

he would actually get to it.

But I think that not everybody taking it

seriously enough or not understand really

how deep they need to go.

Yeah, well,

that's really where I was going is I

think it kind of takes somebody that is,

you know,

educated on what trauma looks like to

drive towards that event.

And of course, we as sponsors, you know,

we're just other alcoholics.

Like, we don't know.

We've got our own shit going on.

And so, you know, so this is interesting.

And I, you know,

I've been one that has always been in,

you know,

classically trained therapy alongside my

sobriety.

not to no small part that my wife

is a therapist and has always encouraged

me to do that because I'm a little

sometimes.

But but I am curious, you know,

in your view,

what would you what would you say?

What would you prescribe, let's say,

for alcoholics and addicts going through

the twelve step process to have in

conjunction with that twelve step process?

Yeah.

So I would

Oh, they can come to me.

That's the one thing.

But also they can come to probably a

lot of people who are working with

hypnotherapy and regression or rapid

transformation therapy or quantum healing

or body coding.

It's kind of a lot of things which

have different names and doing very

similar things.

Because it's really hard to reach these

things on the conscious level.

On the conscious level,

we still have that filter, I would say,

which is saying, like,

I would be ashamed to admit it.

I would, you know,

I don't want anybody to know that,

how I felt.

Or really,

we suppress them so much that we cannot

really describe them.

Like,

I will ask people on conscious level,

how did you feel when your,

I don't know, brother died?

And they would say, like,

Oh yeah,

I will set and stuff like that.

On subconscious level,

that person will outburst in that emotions

and that emotion will finally go out.

Yeah.

So.

Any therapy which actually helping to

really go to the root cause,

going switch off all that limitation of

being awake, I would say,

and going deep dive because that's the

quickest, that's working like magic.

And it's working in the way that first

of all,

we are able to release that emotions from

body in that state.

So we don't have to deal with them

anymore.

We are able to find

What we start belief and all these inner

beliefs, I'm not good enough.

I am not lovable.

I am not worthy or I'm failure.

All these things we start creating in

childhood.

And we can change them to, I'm awesome.

I'm strong.

I can do it, you know,

because those are the things which we do

actually believe.

And for those who,

for those who believe in God and doesn't

necessarily has to be,

but true is that all these things,

which we believe this, I'm a failure.

I'm not strong enough.

I'm not managing.

They are all lies.

And,

Even in Ten Commandments,

we have do not lie.

But the main thing is to stop lying

yourself because they are not true because

we are born to be good enough.

We are lovable by principle because we are

human.

We are all worthy because we have all

purpose in life and we are all valuable.

in society, for some people,

even in small things,

and we all have what to live for,

but we need to be willing to actually

face our demons,

be brave enough to look on what happened

to us and admit that as the small

child you were afraid and that's okay

because you were a small child and that's

maybe turned to that that in something

happened when you are adult triggers you

off even more or you tried your best

and you keep going and keep going and

then you have the burnout and you're just

falling apart so um

If we start looking inside of us, really,

it's much quicker and permanent change.

I find this so interesting as you're

explaining this because, you know, I mean,

obviously, you know, we know now, right,

the subconscious mind and the body are

fairly synonymous and that trauma lives in

the body, right?

The stuck energy lives in the body.

And I loved when you were saying you've

got to turn the mind off, right?

The defense mechanism,

the gate that prevents you from getting at

what's really going on.

And I'm very curious,

what is quantum healing?

I've never heard that before.

or body coding.

Like,

can you just talk about that for two

minutes?

Cause I'm very interested in what that is.

Yeah.

So, so yeah,

Body coding is that when we're going more

through the feeling on the body, yeah?

So everybody can do it by themselves.

You know,

if you close your eyes and count ten

to one and really start focus inside of

you and you will ask your body, like,

give me the sign where I store the

emotions and you will start feeling it.

You will start tingling.

You will start maybe pressure on the

chest.

You will start maybe clocked.

you know in your throat or you'll start

feeling nauseous and it's just body

telling you really like you know here here

you store it can you get it out

and that is very easy trick everybody can

do just imagine that you open little doors

and you let it go out and it

can sound simple but actually our mind

just want to

way out just try to give that order

i don't want to hold these emotions

anymore and mine will just release them

yeah and they will go out and you

start feeling like yeah i feel so good

so so that's for example body coding when

we say finding we can find also by

uh we can ask the body when it's

when it started body can answer like it

started when you were four and eight

twelve you know

whatever age and quantum healing is

exactly when we really going for that mind

and body connection.

And when we believe that we are not

alone,

that we are connected one to each other,

the common unconsciousness to some divine

power and

Our body can be healed when we heal

our mind.

And I did it on myself.

You know, my doctor said,

you have chronic fatigue syndrome and

that's under, it's not curable.

We don't, you know,

there is no way for it to do.

And to be told that's a diagnosis when

doctor doesn't know what is wrong with

you.

So they give you this diagnosis.

And,

and then I was able to switch that

pain in one day.

And that's when I went on Silva method,

which is really teaching it actually

already from nineteen forty.

It's not so novelty.

So quantum healing is about really that

when we change our mind,

we change our body.

And for example, Deepak Chopra,

prove it on cancer patients when he

started investigating why people

miraculously heal from the cancer without

medical treatment and realized that they

changed their life radically,

that they finally become themselves.

They finally started to live life as they

wanted.

So that is even in Boston,

his healing center,

when he walking people through that and

they can reverse their cancer.

So that's kind of like that other radical

side of it.

But

very important for people to understand is

that it's natural.

It's our normal way how we're coping.

It's normal how our mind functions.

It's not novelty.

We're more speaking about it,

more using it,

but it's not

really need to be afraid of it because

it's also what uh jesus said uh believe

and you will be healed because that's

exactly what we're doing it's what

ignatius of loyola teaching of spiritual

exercises in the fifth century which if

you will do you will get to the

same result so it's not actually new it's

just that now we more applying it and

understanding um

that it's really working and we're

understanding how it's working.

Wow.

So you probably know who Joe Dispenza is,

I would imagine, Barb.

So I've followed his work for a number

of years.

I've never been to any of his conferences.

Oh, man, I want to go.

They're very expensive.

But that's his whole jam, right?

Over a weekend,

he's going to take you into that.

And I found it really interesting when you

were talking about

the mind and the body communicating as

almost as separate entities because they

are,

but that the intelligence of the body will

respond back.

I found that to be amazing, amazing stuff.

Wow.

This is so interesting to me, Barb.

Thank you for really,

thank you for diving into that.

That was really, really cool.

And we're kind of getting to the top

of the half hour here.

I'm curious,

where can people get in contact with you?

Where can people reach you, Barbara,

if they want to explore this anymore?

Yeah, so easiest way is on my website,

which is the your-steps.co.uk.

And they can click the button,

take the step,

and have the free chat with me.

And I can help them to discover if

it's the way for them or where they

are on their journey.

and what will work for them.

Or reach me on the Facebook,

find me by the name.

But yeah, I'm happy to help people.

And I'm working with people.

Don't be scared that I'm in the UK.

I'm in Scotland,

beautiful countryside of Scotland.

But I'm working for people from all around

the world, including Australia,

New Zealand, Canada, USA, mainly.

So it's not a limitation.

Absolutely incredible.

I am so glad that you came and

joined me today.

Thank you so much for coming on.

It was an absolute pleasure chatting with

you and hang out afterwards.

If you don't mind after we get past

the outro,

I'd love to chat with you for a

sec.

All right, guys,

we're going to wrap it up.

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We appreciate you following along.

My name's Austin and we are going to

get out of here.

Take care.

Bye-bye.