TRANSCRIPT ROY NELSON ADDICTION: WHY THE PROBLEM IS NEVER THE PROBLEM INTRODUCTION Addiction is a huge problem in our culture. Everyone seems to be addicted to something. People are addicted to the internet, television, alcohol, sex, shopping, gambling, food, dieting, exercise, gossiping, drama, and drugs to name a few. Most people seem to have something that they rely on when life gets too stressful and they need relief. There s usually something you turn to when you feel overwhelmed, worried, sad, or even angry.
But the sad thing is that turning to these things over and over can create addictions, and these addictions cause more suffering than the stress they are trying to alleviate. No one wants to feel stress. It s well, stressful. It doesn t feel good. Your chest is tight, your breathing is shorter and faster, and you sometimes want to jump out of your own skin. But when you use an addictive behavior to cope with stress you aren t really dealing with the stressful emotion. You re in denial of it. You re covering it up. You re simply numbing yourself to it. Underlying this is the belief that you can t cope with whatever it is that you re going through. That you can t bear the emotional weight of whatever stressors you re having to deal with. It s almost like you lack trust in your capacity to get through the dark times and come out on the other side. But when you use addictive behaviors and habits to cope with stress you cause more problems. Your relationships, work, passions, dreams, desires they all evaporate and become unimportant next to getting your next fix. Whether your next fix is a drink or a Snickers, you don t think about your wellbeing and about what will actually make you feel better at the end of the day. Instead you just think about what will stop the emotion, what will stop the stress in its tracks, right now. BUT these addictions aren t the actual problems. These addictions are the symptoms of something underneath that is dying to get out. If you had a broken leg it would probably hurt a lot. But what if you just treated that broken leg with some pain relievers? Your leg still wouldn t heal you d still be in pain after the treatment completed. This is the problem with addiction treatment. We are treating the symptom and not the underlying problem. We need to get to the broken pieces that need to be sewn back together before the pain that the addiction masks will resolve itself. And so often the problem underlying the addiction is spiritual. But when you heal spiritually, you transform. When you go all the way down to your core and you heal your soul your spirit then the rest takes care of itself. My guest this week, Roy Nelson, used to be morbidly obese and addicted to many things. But he realized as he worked through his addictions that the addiction weren t the actual problem. There were underlying causes. Bigger reasons he made the choices he made. Roy dug down deep to examine the issues that were at the core of his addictions and has dedicated his life to helping others achieve the same freedom that he found. He created the Nelson Method, an internationally recognized healing process that helps people stop their addictions in their tracks, even when nothing else has helped.
INTERVIEW So Roy, your story is absolutely amazing. I was reading your book, Love Notes from Hell. I read your story maybe five times just because it was so compelling. Can you share the Reader s Digest version of it with us? I guess a short version, I almost died at birth and then it kind of went downhill from there. That is a short version. Actually, I was born into a really tough place and I wasn t very tough. I got mean later, I got tough later but boy, I was a very ill equipped for the life I was born into. I was very sensitive, fearful little kid, alcoholism and violence and poverty and all the good things that go together to make a really scary, tough life for everybody, not just me but that was the way it was. I was always looking for some relief from the very beginning. First thing we find is fantasy. It s always the first addiction we find and then of course I found my penis and it was on and then food of course. Before I was even one year old, I was hooked on sugar. I was looking for something sweet, something good. That was, and of course, it moved on and food of course was always a primary, a big one for me. Even though I wasn t fat as a little kid but later in my, as I grew up a little bit, I was and then, alcohol, I m having cigarettes when I was about 12. Before I was 23, I was a father of four. It was always in over my head, always. I get out of the army when I was 24 and then I started, then it was about making money because I had a lot of responsibility and so I soon found something I could do that made, that paid me pretty well. It was buying houses and toys and cars and all of that. By the time I was 28, I was making rounds at psychiatrists for panic attacks and primarily phobias from being enclosed in airplane. I almost suffocated at birth. I mentioned that I almost died but I actually did. My best hope was that there was no God and that s what I bet on for a long time was that but often in my out here in the insanity, I thought, how comforting it would be if only I could believe in
God but I was way too smart. I was way too smart to believe in God. Ultimately, I came to a place where I was going to die if I didn t find a different way because there s no medical solution, there s no psychiatric or psychological solution, there s no intellectual solution, there s no physical solution. So I was driven to spiritual solution. Spiritual solution. That s amazing. I think one of the first times I heard you speak, it was the first time I heard you speak, you said, the problem is never the problem. That hit me. I felt like you were talking to me like a punch to the gut. What do you mean by that because I know how I understood it and I think probably we all relate to that in very different way. What do you mean when you say the problem is never the problem? Mostly everybody is treating symptoms and that is, mostly where you go, they re treating symptoms even though sometimes they call it something else but in reality, the belief is that the addiction is the problem and of course in that sense it s literally hopeless. Because Einstein said, the consciousness that created the problem can t solve the problem. What it really is a severe thinking disorder that has manifested as a severe living disorder which is manifested as an eating disorder or a drinking disorder or sexual disorder, whatever it is. It s never just one. It s always more than a person believes. In my experience, what I m about is helping people address their living disorder, teaching them a new way of living that would lead them to a new way of thinking which will lead them to not need excess food or anything else that would be harmful to them. When you say disordered living, what is an example of that? What does that look like for most of us out there? For me, a lot of people would have given anything for the life I had, but it was killing me. The thing is because; you can t go by how it looks. It looked like it was working.
This is really what I m about is helping people feel safe and so they could see things about themselves, about their lives and about the people and the circumstances in their life that they previously would be too afraid, too prideful and too willful to see. Usually with people coming to me, usually the addictions, they fall away within the first or second visit. Then they can see more about what s the underlying causes, every addiction has three components always. What are those three components? As long as every addiction is number one it s a painkiller, number two, it s a form of escape, number three it s a form of punishment. Punishment. As long as I have the pain, the psychic pain, the broken heart, if you will, as long as I have that pain inside, I was going to require painkillers. That s what addictions are, pain killers. As long as I had the fear, I was going to require escape. As long as I had the guilt and the shame and the remorse, I was going to require punishment. One time I was with a coast guard officer who said it s like trying to hold a dozen beach balls underwater. You know you can t unless you deflate them. What do people who are watching at home, what can they do to start looking at those root causes, to start looking at why they need the pain killers and where the fear is coming from and what they feel guilt and maybe shame and need punishment over? Where do they start?
They have to slow down because we re all running. Those are dirty words. You know that don t you? Slow down. People like us, we re always running from ourselves. Not you, I m just saying me and a whole bunch of other folks I know. Ultimately, I had to slow down and let Roy catch me. Conventional wisdoms say look, I m running as fast as I can run. If I ever let it catch me, it would kill me but the truth be known, it s like the bully chasing you home to school. If ever once he catches you and you turn around bust him in the mouth, he ll never chase you again. That s the same way with the fear. As long as you face it down, it dissipates. It will go away. What we re really afraid of is, we re living in fairly civilized place here, we re not really, what we re really afraid of is feelings, you see. We have feelings that were stoked in us at a very early age, many of us who have had eating disorders, have had early childhood sexual experiences that we weren t emotionally equipped to handle. Often times it was the very people who were telling us that our sexuality was bad that were actually stoking those feelings in us. We felt good, felt bad is just a complete turmoil inside because it feels good to feel bad, it feels bad to feel good or whatever. Ultimately, the feelings are just feelings. You might at three, it may have been too much but at 33, it s not too much. It may seem like it s too much but you won t die from feeling. You can easily die and people routinely die from trying to avoid their feelings but you won t die from feeling. There s always little things that are constantly in our minds that I do feel like we feel a lot of guilt and a lot of shame for because we re supposed to be perfect. We re supposed to have this all figured out and if we don t then that s a problem. I thought I was the worst person in the world. I thought literally, I thought I was the absolute worst person that ever lived and I had no idea. It s just my experience is that there s nothing that can t be overcome. It doesn t matter what a person has done or what you had, frankly, I ve held as
much guilt over things I ve thought or felt as I have over thing I ve actually done or said. Because I m a very, very sensitive person. I m going to say I m very sensitive. Let s talk about that for a second because I m also very sensitive. I can see something especially when it comes to animals or kids, I feel like I can see something or hear something or read about something and for days, weeks, months it stays with me. Absolutely. Addicts in general are very sensitive People who have eating disorders usually started at a lot earlier age than other addicts. In fact many drug and alcohol addicts started using drugs and alcohol to try to overcome an eating disorder but even so, people with eating disorder started at much younger age. I hit bottom, I was 32 years old. I was 275 pounds. I was a father, a husband, a homeowner, a veteran, a businessman but I had the emotional development of an infant. I had to literally grow up from infancy and it wasn t easy. You mentioned earlier that you wish you could have believed in God? You ve also said, you found a spiritual solution. What is that spiritual solution and does it require believing in God? That s an interesting point. My experience is for the sake of busting my pride and my ego, I had to become willing to be whatever it was required of me to be. In other words, I didn t have the luxury of saying, I ll do anything but that or I do anything but that. I had to, I rolled out of my bed, if you could imagine a big, old, 275-pound baby rolling out of his bed onto his knees crying out to God that he didn t believe in asking for some help, asking for some forgiveness, that s what it was like for me. I often thought how comforting it would be if only I could believe in God but I knew no way I could believe. My experience with this whole process has been about this unlearning really, this defragging. The whole problem is in the subconscious mind. You know, the soul, the heart, the psyche, whatever you like to call it but that s the master computer. That s where everything is stored. Unlearning,
defragging the master computer has been what it s been about for me. That s what I m about in the work I do is helping people feel safe enough to delve into the faulty beliefs, faulty philosophy, faulty data that caused them to create the life. It might be just right for somebody else but it s not right for them. It s not a good or bad thing. It s just a matter of if it works. Do you believe that we truly have everything we need inside of us that that s where that truth resides? Yeah. I m not giving anybody anything they don t already have. I m just having them access that which is deep within them. Literally excavating, clearing away the debris that s blocking them from the sweet spirit deep within which is really the only thing that could heal them. Yeah. There s a great quote by Ram Dass. He said, I m not telling you anything you don t know. I just say it a little better. It s that same kind of thing. We often hear about people hitting rock bottom, just rock bottom. And that s what creates the change in them. I feel like with what you re saying with the darkness and the light, it s that same sort of scenario if you will. It has to be so dark before we realize that we need the light. Do you think that in order to fully overcome your addiction, no matter what it is, with sex, drugs, alcohol that you do have to hit that rock bottom before you can see the light or is it something that we all find our sweet spot and maybe we don t have to go to that super dark place? You know, there s Wayne Dyer who says, There s a bottom below the bottom you know. Very true. I want to go back to something you said earlier about us talking about having the truth inside of you. What s the first step in excavating? You talked about digging deeper like really uncovering those truths?
Some people try to do it in therapy. My experience is it didn t go deep enough for me. Some people try it with their twelve-step programs. It s different for everybody. Personally, for me, I had to go deep and go really, really deep because and frankly, I didn t relate to having an addiction. But the guilt, when the guilt set in, there was nothing that would make it better, nothing I could do that would make it go away until I tried prayer. It s tapping into that something bigger for help and we don t like to ask for help. We think we ve got this. We think we can do it but you re right. It s looking into something bigger and just having that to lean on, the help when we just can t do it anymore on our own. The truth be known, what it really is for the benefit of someone who may be listening who is as obstinate as I was, what we re really talking about is your higher self, that essence of you is that spirit. That s what we re looking to tap into. So Roy, the name of the show is, What You re Really Hungry For, and I ask every guest this question. I cannot wait to hear your answer but what are you really hungry for? Being all I can be, and helping other people be all they can be. Beautifully said. You know I adore you and I think you re such a beautiful light in this world. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for showing up and for being you and for putting your message out into the world through your great books and your teachings and your website. It s truly amazing. Thank you for sharing yourself, all of you, with our audience today. I appreciate
you so, so deeply. I appreciate you too. It s been a real pleasure. Thank you. THIS WEEK S MenYOU This week is all about how almost everyone has some kind of addiction. And how the addiction is never the real problem, there s always something underlying it! So I invite you to choose one of Roy s tips that he discussed during our show and start implementing it in your life TODAY. What ONE thing can you do to start letting go of your addictions and start discovering what the real problem is right in this moment? Don t wait another day or even another hour. Start to take back your life right now. As always, the conversation continues at cynthiapasquella.com. Head on over and leave a comment below this video telling me the one thing YOU will do to start letting go of your addictions today. And, while you re there, make sure you download today s free Menyou to track your progress! You will find inspirational quotes from today s show and a daily checklist to keep you on track. It s located right below this video at cynthiapasquella.com. Did you like this video? If you did, please subscribe and I would be so grateful if you would share this video with your friends. And if you want to hear more from me including stuff I only talk about in email, then come on over to cynthiapasquella.com and sign up for my email newsletter so YOU can be a part of this beautiful community of women who are discovering what they re really hungry for.