Families In Recovery - Healing For The Whole Family With Sherry Gaugler-Stewart
Understanding the family system in recovery helps everyone engage in the process of joyful recovery and our roles in recovery. Today, we explore how families can find support and build resilience on their path to recovery. Join Fr. Jim Swarthout as he talks with Sherry Gaugler-Stewart, the Director of Family and Spiritual Recovery for The Retreat. They discuss the power of understanding addiction and how it empowers families to support their loved ones. The Retreat’s family program provides resources and guidance for families on this journey. This episode equips us with tools for managing emotions, highlights the value of support groups, and ultimately offers a message of hope: healing is possible.
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Families In Recovery - Healing For The Whole Family With Sherry Gaugler-Stewart
Introduction
Welcome everyone to our show presented by The Retreat in Wayzata, Minnesota. We're talking with Sherry Gaugler-Stewart. Sherry is our Director of Family and Spiritual Recovery for The Retreat. Thank you, Sherry, for being here.
Thanks for having me.
Sherry’s Experience With The Retreat
It's a delight. Sherry, could you start with a conversation? How did you happen to find The Retreat? How did you begin your experience with The Retreat here in Minnesota?
I first found my way here when The Retreat was out in Minnetrista. Further away from here is a smaller facility and they would have visiting day on Sunday. I would come out on Sunday and share my story as a family member affected by alcoholism and addiction. I remember hearing them say that they would move away from that space to a new one, and I wasn't very happy about it because the second you walked onto that property there, you could feel the energy. You could feel it in the people who were there and were participating in the programming that The Retreat had.
I got a little itchy about all of that. The first time I drove here to Wayzata, I got here on the campus and thought, “Okay.” You can feel like the energy of The Retreat came with us when we moved here. At that time, when I first came to the campus in Wayzata, it was because once The Retreat moved here, they were starting a family program. I was tapped to be part of the advisory committee to help develop our family program. I have been involved with the family program since that time back in 2005. It's been years that I've been a part of all of this.
We put together the family program. I started out as a volunteer and was hired shortly thereafter by the person overseeing the program. I was the first part-time staff member for the family program and became a full-time staff member later on. When that person retired, I got to become the director of the family program. I feel grateful to spend my time watching families get support, watching them get a better understanding, and watching the shift that takes place when they realize that they have some tools and resources for them.
The other part of why I love working at The Retreat is that it is the place where my husband found his recovery. He struggled for a very long time. He was in and out of multiple facilities. He doubled a little bit in AA. He had heard that if he wanted to get sober, he should go to AA. There's so much more to that sentence. Go to AA, hang out with other people who are living in recovery, find a sponsor to help you implement these 12 steps in your life, and start doing the work of those 12 steps. There's so much more than showing up at the meeting.
He felt like he was doing something wrong because he would go to the meetings and, of course, not stay sober because he was showing up and then leaving. When he shares about The Retreat, he always talks about how they taught him how to live his life differently. The things that our retreat guests are asked to do, get up in the morning, meditate, make their bed, all of those things that I think at first feel silly why are we doing all of these things, that's still part of his life. In December 2024, he celebrated his 19th year of recovery.
Understanding Addiction and Family Dynamics
Thank you for sharing that story. Tears come to our eyes hearing that story. I know mine did. Thank you so very much. You put me back a little bit hearing that story because it becomes a part of the whole family. It is affecting the whole family. We were at a meeting. Could you share a little bit about this story that she said when she gets up in the morning? She also expressed a little bit about addiction and how she was, as a family member, being held hostage.
The speaker that we heard, I love that she said was how frustrated her sister would get watching her active disease with alcoholism and addiction. She had that realization that her sister was as powerless over alcohol as she was. I think that that's the thing that we don't understand as families. When you watch somebody you love struggle with this, you feel like it's your job to help them get this figured out, help them get it worked out.
I absolutely think that, of course, there are ways that families can support their loved ones but I also think that having a better understanding of this disease and having support for yourself in this journey is so very imperative. In fact, there's so much research that shows that that's the thing that families can do to be helpful. I know, at least for me, as a family member struggling with this disease, I spent all of my time and energy focused on what was going on over there and not realizing I needed to focus on what was going on with me.
Families In Recovery: When you watch somebody you love struggle, you feel like it's your job to help them get this figured out. Having a better understanding of their disease is crucial, and having support for yourself in this journey is as well.
Can you expand on that a little bit more? You said it so distinctly and understanding but some people may not understand that whole piece because we are to fix our family members. If somebody's sick, a child is sick, or a member of the family, the first thing we do is go take care of them. Could you share a little bit about not being always able to take care of people?
I think that what happens with those of us who are dealing with this disease is that we end up developing some coping mechanisms that aren't so helpful. We do the best we can at the time. I thought my job was to break through to my husband so that he could see that he had a problem. Sometimes, my approach was very kind because I loved my husband, but then I would get frustrated that those approaches were not helpful. They weren't changing anything. I would then switch over to the other side and I would show up not kindly at all because I would get frustrated and angry.
I would say awful things to the person I loved and then felt awful because I wasn't showing up as the person I wanted to be. I wasn't living in integrity with myself and all of that. This vicious cycle of reaction continued to happen. I know that for me myself, then I lost track of me because I was so focused on what was going on with him. I think part of what's helpful in family recovery is that when we help families understand what they're up against, then if we go back to that idea of powerlessness, we help them to admit, “I don't have control over the fact that my loved one has the disease.”
That's the proof in the pudding. That's what's happening over there. I can't change that because God knows I've tried. If I can admit that truth, then I get to start focusing in another direction, which is, what do I have power over? I don't even have power over those initial reactions because we're humans and we're still going to have those reactions. In the process of family recovery, what happens is this opportunity to gain more and more tools to navigate those reactions. We then get to start choosing responses. We get to take time and make a decision about how we're going to show up. That's where things start to shift and change.
In the process of family recovery, what happens is this opportunity to gain more and more tools to navigate those reactions, so we get to start choosing responses.
What type of information is in your family program that you help people understand how to do that?
We have a rhythm and a flow that happens with our family program. We always start focusing on the problem because we know that not all family members understand the variety of layers within this disease. The first thing that we start talking about and we've got a family program happening. The thing we'll talk about is how families are affected by this disease. I bet if I called one of those family members while they were driving, they could tell me some ways that they're affected.
What we find is that there are often symptoms that are very similar on both sides of this disease where we can see those things very clearly in what's happening with this person that we love, but family members don't always see them within themselves because their focus has been in another direction. First and foremost, we start by looking at how families are affected and what normal symptoms and reactions happen from that. We spend an entire morning talking about what we are talking about when we say this is a disease. We use that terminology.
Families have a different context for what disease means. Is it like cancer? Is it like diabetes? We want them to know this is what this looks like in a person. Here's how it impacts their body. Here’s how it impacts their mind. There are a couple of things that I love about that session. One is that it starts to connect the dots because there are these behaviors that are affiliated with alcoholism or addiction that families don't know that that's what's been going on. They think it's more personality traits. They get to learn what is what.
In that session, that's usually when I watched their compassion start to come up because nobody would choose this way of life for themselves. That's part of the process where we're looking at the problem and then we have a session. It’s Claudia Black's work so it's all about what are the relationship dynamics that happen in relationships when there's alcoholism and addiction. Don't talk, don't feel, don't trust. We first set the stage with, “Here's what you've been dealing with,” and some of that I'm sure you know, and there are other pieces that you're nodding your head at, but it looks like you're hearing this for the first time.
They start to gain that information. We shift into the part of the program that I like to call, “Now what? That's all helpful information, but it doesn't change anything.” The first shift in that process is we have a session that's all based on those things that when my loved one says them to me, I get frightened, and I get triggered. When I'm frightened and triggered, what is that normal reaction? There's that, but then we go through those things that you can do, like I said earlier, to shift from reaction to response.
What does it look like to pause? What does it look like to say to your loved one, “I'm feeling upset right now and I don't want to have this conversation because I know how that's going to go. Can we talk about this tomorrow? Who's that person that I can call to get some insight on what's going on with me? Can I pick up one of my Al-Anon books and read about how I'm feeling right now? Can I pray? Can I go for what?” What are those things that I can do to not let that reaction take over and give myself some space so that I can show up as who I want to be? I can figure out what my boundaries are and set them if that's appropriate in those moments in time.
One of the things that is always intriguing with having that session on Friday evening is they're still here for a couple of days. On Saturday, we hear family members report about how they started using those tools right away during visiting time with their loved ones. We hear the comments from their loved ones, too, like, “My mom went down to the family program and I was talking to her about something that usually upsets her, but she took a breath and listened. How does that happen?”
It happens when you know that is possible. It happens when you have support to help walk you through that. That's our Friday evening shift. Since The Retreat is step immersion, we walk through the first three steps in Al-Anon. We've got an incredibly strong recovery community here. We have volunteers who come in and they will share a little bit about their backstory. They'll talk about how they found their way into Al-Anon. They'll talk about how they started using steps 1, 2, or 3. They'll talk about how it's showing up in their lives now.
We give the group time to go deeper into that topic with some individual reflection time, and then we talk about it so that they can grapple with all of this. What I love watching each program is the shift that happens because we're going to have people showing up with their emotions and they're scared, confused, hurt and angry. On Sunday, they leave with hope. I think that hope comes from being surrounded by people. They're going to know by the end of the night that they're with their people. These are people who get it. They know it, too.
I think we all have those people in our lives who love us but don't get it and they give us less than helpful insight or advice. I think hope comes from being with your people but then also knowing that there's a different halfway forward, that there are things that they can do to help them feel more in integrity with their values, to not be so reactive, and that starts to shift and change things. It's a common law of physics. If you have two things in a relationship with each other and one of the things in the relationship starts to shift, the dynamic starts to shift.
Families In Recovery: Hope comes from being with your people. Knowing that there's a different pathway forward can start to shift and change things.
I think that families become very hyper-focused on getting that person over there in the dynamic to shift and end up pounding their heads against the walls, so scared because nothing's changing. In our process, we start looking, “If I cannot get that to change, how do I get what's going on with me to change in some way, shape, or form?” I think that feels scary because there's a lot of fear of the unknown. However, part of why we have the recovery community come in is because they were all scared, too.
They talk about, “Here's what I was fearful about. Here’s what I chose to do anyway because I was surrounded by people who were doing something similar, and here's the outcome.” If you want that outcome, too, you can try what we've tried. I always feel like there's nothing special about any of us here. We are people who, when we were in pain, we just happened to be in the right place at the right time and somebody laid some tools at our feet and we decided to pick them up.
It's a great analogy. Thank you.
I think that if we can do this, anybody else can do it too.
It's big-time scary, the fear of the unknown you used, not knowing what to expect. I would agree, those people are driving up here going, “What am I getting myself into?”
There's also the fact that we are dealing with a disease that is deadly.
They'll tell those stories, I would imagine.
Of course, because when you've watched your loved one come close to, and some people who have lost their person, it feels terrifying to consider a different approach because what happens if I do something different? I always feel like, as family members, we sit here in the chair of alcoholism and addiction, and we don't like it, but we feel like we know what to do here. Level-headed when there's a crisis, research well, delegate the plan, and figure out the next fifteen steps that we all need to take. It feels horrible, scary and controlling, but what happens if we stop doing what we’ve always done? The fear is does it get worse.
It will get worse.
That's a valid fear. There's this whole community of people who have found a way to do things a little differently.
People from out of the city here, do you find them coming here also, throughout the country at times?
When COVID started, we recreated our family program. All the same sessions, all the same information, but we started doing it virtually. We've had people from all over the world participate and change their time zones so that they're in the same time zone as us and can get some support that way.
When somebody gets an awareness about how that disease has affected them as a family member and they go back home from maybe here, do you help them connect to an Al-Anon meeting or community where they're at?
Absolutely.
The Retreat’s Family Program
How would you do that?
We have a variety of resources. First and foremost, we've got information on how we connect them to the Al-Anon World Service website. How do we show them how to search for certain meetings they might want to look for men's, women's, parents', and adult children's groups? We've got such a broad community out there that sometimes we know somebody in that community who can be helpful.
Is there anything else that would be imperative or important to know about?
One of the things I'm grateful for in our family program is that anybody can participate. There are some facilities where you can only participate in the family program if you have a loved one in the program. That's not who we are. We know that sometimes there are loved ones who are ready to find some support, even though their person isn't. There are some people who have a loved one at a different facility that doesn't have the bandwidth to offer anything for families. We welcome anyone because we want people to be able to get support if they need it.
They have a better, joyful living. Do they come and stay here?
If they're attending the residential program, they come and stay for a long weekend. We start on Thursday late in the day. We wrap up midday on Sunday. They come away. We've got a retreat center. It's nice, though. My head went to a retreat center that was this comfortable space. Our gathering room, where we do all of our sessions, feels like a big living room. We feed them all weekend so that we can take care of them and let them be here and absorb what's going on.
With the virtual program, it's the same schedule and same sessions that people are doing from their own homes, which can be helpful if somebody has young kids and cannot get away. There have been a couple of moms who have attended who were terminally ill and they wouldn't have been able to come away. I loved that they were able to be how they were and where they were at and still have a helpful experience to them.
How big is that? How many come together during the weekend?
In the residential program, we have eighteen beds. That's the maximum. With virtual, we limit it to twenty participants because we want to make sure that everybody's on the same screen. We don't want anybody to get lost.
Is there anything else that you think would be important to talk about?
One of the other things I get to do here is have one-on-one meetings with our retreat guests. I do sessions with our retreat guests about family recovery. I talk to them about what's going on with families where this disease is concerned. We also talk to them about how do you talk to your kids about all of this. I think the kids often get left behind in this mostly because there's a lot of shame, and we're afraid that if we talk to them, we're going to do harm, and they don't know what's going on. I can tell you kids know more than anybody gives them credit for.
If nobody is talking to them, they're making up stories about what's happening because they've only got limited context. When we think back to Claudia Black's unspoken rule of don't talk, if kids are feeling the tension of what's happening in the household, but nobody's talking to them about it, they assume it's because of them. These kids need to know that this isn't their fault. They need to know what we're dealing with. Their job is to be a kid. I think having these conversations with kids and including them in their process is important.
If kids pick up on tension at home, but no one talks to them, it can make them feel responsible. Having conversations with them reassures them it’s not their fault.
Thank you so much. It's about the family. Thank you very much. Is there anything else that I could tie it up with?
I'm grateful that this is where I get to spend my time and the work that I get to do because I didn't know. For a very long time, I didn't know that there was help for families and I definitely could have used some help personally much sooner than when I received it. The fact that I get to help people find that support when they're ready, how lucky am I to be able to spend my time doing this.
Closing
Thank you for offering people joy when, in fact, they didn’t they can find it. Thank you again so very much, Sherry, for your time here, for sharing your faith, joy, and insight to heal the family, the whole, and the soul in some way to make the family whole again as we're all affected, family members. Thank you so much, Sherry, the Director of Family and Spiritual Recovery for The Retreat. This is Serenity Sit Down, presented by The Retreat in Wayzata, Minnesota. If you or a loved one is struggling with addiction, there is hope and help here at The Retreat. If you are looking for more information, go to www.TheRetreat.org, or you're welcome to call us at (952) 476-0566.
Thanks for having the conversation.
It's great. It's an honor. Thank you, everyone, and you're welcome to come back again when we put together another episode. Have a good, happy and great day.
Important Links
Sherry Gaugler-Stewart - LinkedIn
