Welcome to the show!

This is Part 3 of a 4-part mini-series, and we’re speaking with Beverly Buncher who is a pioneer in family recovery.

If you haven’t listened to the previous 2 episodes (CNM 050: The Loving Path To Family Recovery and CNM 051: Practical Strategies For Communicating With Difficult People), you might want to do that first. We talk all about what Beverly calls “The Loving Path”, and discuss hands-on strategies for communicating effectively with a substance user or difficult person.

Today we’ll be talking about what Beverly considers the most important part of her philosophy, how to start implementing The BALM your life, how to make it difficult for your loved one to keep doing whatever bad behavior they’re doing, and more.

If you already want to know more about The BALM – if you’d like to read Beverly’s book, or learn more about her family recovery programs, I’ve set up a partnership with Beverly’s organization because I believe in what they do. So if you go to readytobalm.com and enter your contact info, I’ll have Beverly’s team contact you as soon as they can, and see how they can help.

Alright, let’s get to it. Here’s my last interview with Beverly Buncher!

Interview with Beverly Buncher on Implementing The BALM in Your Home

Brian: Hey, Beverly. Welcome back to the show. We’re glad to have you back.

Beverly: Oh, it’s great to be here, Brian. Thank you so much for letting people know about the BALM.

Brian: Yeah, it’s absolutely my pleasure. I know people are needing and wanting it and they’re going to love it. Since we’ve talked a couple of times already, we want to tie everything together for the audience.

Question: Let’s start by discussing real quick, what would you tell our listeners about how to start implementing the BALM in their own lives and families?

Beverly: Oh, that’s a great question. I think we get the answer right out of the name of the program; BALM: Be A Loving Mirror. The first thing that I’d invite family members to look at is this – how are you ‘being’? Are you ‘being’ in a state of upset and panic or are you being in a state of calm? This will determine whether you’re reacting to everything around you – which contributes to them (your loved one) getting worse – or responding appropriately in each moment so that you can be most helpful and contribute to recovery.

Here’s the interesting thing, we are not the cause of someone’s use disorder or dysfunction. We can’t control it, we can’t cure it, but we can contribute to it. It’s not that if things are getting worse, it’s because of us but rather, when things are getting worse, if we are responding in BALM-like ways that contribute to recovery, it’s possible for them (our loved ones) to get better.

There’s a very fine distinction there. This isn’t a cure-all. I would never promise that ‘if you do this, your loved will get recovery’. That would be a blatant lie.

Here are the facts; we’ve seen countless families where they practice the BALM and things get better and their loved one starts to see the possibility of recovery in a way they never did before. But we’ve seen situations where things get worse for a while. The families who continue to practice BALM don’t contribute to them getting even worse, but rather become a port in a storm for the loved one so that the loved one can start to see the possibility of a life in recovery.

Brian: Excellent, great explanation.

Questions: To that end, what would be some of the most important tactical tools in the BALM toolkit? We’ve discussed some strategies and tactics, but what are the most important things in this and how should they be used?

Beverly: Yeah. All of these are really explained in depth in the book but the key is to, as I said, get calm. How do you do that? We’ve talked about four-four-eight; breathing in to the count of four, holding it for the count of four, and breathing out to the count of eight. More families than I can count have said that when they started to become aware of their breath, they changed – they, the person doing it (being aware of the breath).

Starting to have awareness of your breath and starting to utilize that awareness to create a different way of relating to your breath can have a huge impact. It starts to bring peace back into the family.

You know what’s funny, Brian? I’ve had people come up to me and say, “Bev, I did that four-four-eight, it didn’t work.” Then as I talk to them more I’d say, “How did you do it?” “Well, my husband started screaming at me. I breathed into the count of four, I held it, I breathed out to the count of eight, and he kept screaming.” We’re not talking about changing him or her from breathing, we’re talking about creating a calm state of mind within yourself.

I have this one story that really hit me where I got some bad news from someone and it shook me to my core. I was driving, they were on the phone, and I started to shake. They were crying and talking and crying and talking and I immediately had my default four-four-eight; breathe in to the count of four, hold it for the count of four, breathe out to the count of eight. I did it over and over and over while listening until I was calm. I think it took four to eight times that time. But the thing is if I didn’t have a practice of calming my breath on a regular basis, that would not have been available to me in crisis.

The key is to create a practice of four-four-eight when you wake up in the morning, in the middle of the day, and before you go to sleep at night so that this becomes your default. You go to that while you’re in the middle of the crisis and you don’t become part of it. You have the foundation to become part of the solution.

Brian: Excellent. As you’re talking about that, it just occurred to me, I was invited to speak at The Overcoming Codependency Summit recently. It was a virtual summit that was held with a lot of speakers. I spoke about the Achilles Heel of Codependents, as I called it. Essentially, it is the inability to regulate emotions; emotion regulation. What you’re speaking to really, really correlates with the message I was trying to get across.

I’m a huge proponent of mindfulness and mindfulness meditation practice. Four-four-eight really seems like a good practice that’s a lot easier to think about and to practice than sitting for thirty to sixty minutes in a meditation. But it’s effective in just breaking that immediate reaction. It seems like what we’re after is to take a minute, focus, and react in a different way rather than what our panic mode reaction would have been.

Beverly: Yes, and Brian, I think I shared with you that I, too, am a big proponent of that. Mindfulness meditation is what changed everything for me, but it’s this four-four-eight that allowed me to help others to work regularly for that bit of a commitment; you’re right.

Brian: Excellent.

Beverly: Very powerful.

Brian: Yeah, that’s a really good point that just needs to be hammered home. Just to your point too, I’ve heard people say, “Well I’ve tried that and it hasn’t worked.” It might be a degree of, ‘How much did you try? How hard did you try? How many times did you try?’ We need to sometimes keep trying because sometimes it’s hard that we hit a wall and we think we’re at the end of our rope when we really have a lot more capacity to keep trying and practicing. Yes, I’m a hundred percent in favor of calming the mind. It’s a magical key to help short circuiting a lot of this, in my opinion too.

Question: Moving on, you touched on this just a minute ago but on this show, we often discuss the fact that a lot of people who have ‘codependent tendencies’ are often very focused on changing or helping someone else which you alluded to there, when in fact, it’s probably more useful in a lot of cases to focus on ourselves first. So I wonder, are there any more observations you have about that when it comes to the work that you do?

Beverly: Yes. This is really critical. People call us ‘Al-Anon on steroids’ or ‘Al-Anon plus.’ At first I wondered, “What were they talking about?” The more I asked people, the more they said, “Al-Anon helps me with my self-care but you help me deal with my self-care AND my relationship with my loved one in a very structured way.” We say that we’re a dual-focused program; ‘get your life back’ is really the tagline, get your life back and help your loved one get their life back.

Some people say, “You have to help yourself first.” We say, “Do them both at once.” But if you’re in such a state that you are completely unable to function, of course, you need to take care of yourself so that you can get to the functional point.

Many families, when they come in with a loved one who is in big trouble in one way or another can’t hear that. They can’t hear the self-care message. We have these twelve principles and we start with, “What will help the loved one?” First, understanding that you have crucial role to play in their recovery, then understanding how change happens in yourself and in them, then learning how to let go of the obsessive thinking without giving up on them and without giving into manipulation. I like that one because it’s a hybrid of both self-care and being there for the other. Finally, we say to fa