Mr Sony Perlman - What Went Wrong Understanding and Healing Our Struggling Youth

okay so for the little over 20 years I'm doing this I'm doing this work working with teens and been a parent now for 19 years and I've learned a great lesson I think from all that experience and that is I'm still not sure if I'm ready to have any children so that's I just I was talking to my wife and we had a special moment alone and we wasted it by discussing our kids which always ruins a good moment and and I said you know I'm speaking next week at this at this parenting thing and and all I want to say to them is that being a parent is amazing I mean like it's fun amazing it's a meet like the stuff that parents do is amazing so a lot of people in this field are you know they're making it difficult on parents so you got to do this right you got do that right but I I said I just want to tell everybody about what I think a parent them I was like just tell them and so I just want to start by saying every one of you is amazing you're amazing for doing all the carpools you're amazing for taking that extra job to pay the tuitions you're amazing for every single time you've loved your kids and they didn't love you back every single thing a parent does is amazing and too many parents are spending time blaming themselves and I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of parents and they're all incredible people who want to love their kids and take care of their kids so I just wanted to start that way by letting everybody know that I think you need to pat yourself on the back a little bit once in a while give yourself a round of applause because because there's a play I love and in the play there's a line that says to love another person is to see the face of God and and there's a lot of truth to that you know we love is a godly idea but I really think the line is not right I think to to be a parent is to see the face of God to understand to love someone unconditionally only a parent could understand that and I don't think any other relationship that exists could understand that idea so yasha Khoa for being parents and doing the best and being amazing that's first of all okay so with that I work most of my work is in our place and specifically with addiction if you if you don't know what our place is come over to me afterwards I'll tell you all about it I'm assuming most you do know at our places so one of the benefits of my job is that is that people come over and ask me so what is it what's the problem here what is it because they're a DD o DD is it parents too strict on religion is it is it is it do they have depression anxiety do they I and and abuse and neglect molestation I mean they always have everybody who comes to me and ask me these questions karna says these are the things that are happening with my kids and what is it is this is this the reason why it's happening and the answer is yes that's why it's happening every one of these kids that we're dealing with has gone through something very very difficult in their life I've worked and I worked with hundreds maybe thousands of addicts at this point and I have never met an addict who had a you know like perfect childhood where they were like yeah it was alright and I don't know why I'm an addict they may say that to you in the beginning but if you get to know them a little better and they get to express themselves a little more they'll tell you that there was some horrific things that happened in their childhood so the answer is yes this is what you know when you go through really difficult challenges you you could end up this way but I don't think it's really the right question to ask and I don't think it's I don't think it's really I'm even though the answer is yes it's giving you such a small piece of the puzzle it doesn't really give you the answer and I even I was walking in the hall outside people were saying oh that would be great if you could actually explain to us why this happened you're like you know it's like the Unicorn like really could you explain it so I I just explained it it's because they went through difficulties but we all know that's not true and the reason we know and and a parent once came to me I was working with his son and his son was addicted and the parent was furious like fuming and he said he said I understand I went through much harder challenges than my kid did my life was terrible I might get out of typical life he had some things go wrong but yes I mean I'm doing all right no I challenge is it's hard but I'm doing fine so why can't he just get his act together and get out there and do it and whatever happened with that father I'm not go into that but this guy he's asking the right question that's the real question the real question isn't why it's happening to the kids it's why do we have so many people in this world who have gone through all the same exact challenges they've been molested they've they have a DD o DD whatever you could you know whatever ADHD you could come up with any name or any initial you want they have all of it and they're all right they're doing fine so the real question is why are those people doing fine and why are the kids who are struggling who are getting kicked out of school dropping out of school doing drugs acting inappropriately in general or not joining society the way they should why what's the difference because even though the answer is they struggled there's everybody struggled I'm looking around this room I could guarantee that so many people in this room have struggled some of the things I've even said and much much more and you're in this room and you're at a conference working on yourselves probably have homes and cars and families and and you've made it you've done all right how is it possible that you've made it and some of these people have not and that's really I think the question that has to be asked and I think the reason we need to ask that question is because if we could figure out their magic pill the reason they're making it we can figure out possibly a way that we could have these kids or young adults or wherever they are if we didn't catch it as a kid a young adult adults try to give them that medicine and have them get better so that's really the question we're starting with is how do these people get and the word in therapy and psychology is resilience how are you able to go through difficulties and find resilience and this has been the work that I've been doing for as long as I as long as I'm doing the work I am out there trying to give these guys resilience I don't want to make it easier for them I don't want their challenges to get easier they're not going to get easier as a matter of fact when you get off let's say get off the drugs for example it's gonna get harder for a while if you I don't want them to stop having challenges I want them to be able to deal with their challenges like all of us in the world so we get to find out what's the problem and that's what that's what we're here to talk about it just say we saw these videos in the last the last week or so of unfortunately rabbi Goldstein down in San Diego and he is a you know Laura Kay's husband and you see them they just went through the most horrific thing just the worst thing and they came out of it like inspiring us singing wonderful things and I see that I'm like why everything I know about psychology is when something bad happens it crushes people why is this person not why aren't all those people in that whole story why aren't they crawling under the shul and hiding from the world and saying I give up how did they get the strength and that when I'm watching that it just it just it'll besides the fact that it's incredibly inspiring it's it's uh it's the answer I think and like we have to get down to the bottom of what it is that they're doing so okay so my Rebbe when I was uh a you know it's a straw and I stayed very close until recently robbed a price he just passed away about a week and a half ago and and I was thinking about his lessons that he's given me and and he had told me when I was younger that in life there are three steps to everything and the everything go through and the first step is that you have a situation something happens I take a situation someone says a mean thing to you which is a bad situation and then step three is you feel bad that's that's the how the steps go you have step one you feel you something bad happens step three you feel bad he said what happens in step two is your attitude is how you see the world how you see how you're supposed to deal with a bad situation I suppose deal with good situations how you deal in any situations that attitude in the middle is what defines how we deal with this world you know so if someone says something bad to you and you think oh I'm that's that's something of okay we'll get further into that I'm just saying so that was a lesson he said he said this lesson and when I was younger I had to be honest when I heard it from him I thought it's like a kind of like a cute moisture lesson very nice didn't take it that seriously it sounds like a nice idea but what happened was is as I kept working in this field being a parent being a husband I started realizing that this is not a cute idea this is the idea that answers all these questions and I'm gonna go a little further into it but it you know after all these years I've been living with this idea and doing the work with this idea and I would like to explain it a little further so so I heard rabbi Twersky Abraham torus can anybody in this field knows he's the Guru of addiction field not even only in the Jewish world and the non-jewish world he's written some in fabulous books when I did my addictions training 20 years ago in a totally secular University we were learning his books so this is someone I've always looked up to and he he I saw him at a conference and he was saying that he said I I wrote many many books many many articles many ideas I put into the world but really I I just telling the world hundred different ways to work on your self-esteem that's all I'm talking about and after he said that I started reading writing reading his books because that's really what he was that he was trying to say so I want to talk about self-esteem and we throw around words like self-esteem and it sounds like you know if you have a lot of self-esteem you bog IVA if you get low self-esteem you're not really and honourably just kind of slow Mazal but what is a self-esteem and I want to break it down for you because this is the beginning of the answer so I have to look in into this because it's a definition that I did not I didn't memorize this so this there's a man Nathaniel Brannan and he divides self-esteem as self-esteem is a disposition to experience oneself as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and being worthy of happiness so that's a lot of words and I have found especially when words are you know they're bigger words then hello how are you people start to glaze over and so I want to bring it down to words that I understand and the way I put it so a self esteem is very simply I speak to guys all the time and I tell them these these words and they get it self esteem is I am loved and I can do it that's what a self esteem is I am loved I am beloved I am I am deserving of love I am deserving of happiness I am allowed to be here basically and I can do it that but it's not and I can do it because I am loved I can't do it the way to visualize it and I do this a lot with guys to help visualize the self-esteem is you have an engine the engine is I can do it the engine could do anything and I am loved is the fuel that goes into the engine so if if you have a lot of I have loved and the engine strong you'll go strongly now some people have a lot of I have loved and not enough engine and some people have a lot of engine and not enough I have loved so what what we are okay so now here's the situation so how does so here you have a situation where what happens if you have a good self-esteem if a if a difficult situation happens and you have a good self-esteem so let's say someone comes over he makes funny that feels bad so you listen to the situation oh man he call me a name it's bad it makes me feel bad if you have a good self-esteem you feel good you like but it doesn't really change who I am I'm still a good person that doesn't really change me doesn't make me different oh I'll make it now it doesn't a self-esteem doesn't make things feel better you still feel sad something difficult like someone you love passes away it's gonna hurt it's gonna hurt really bad but if you have a strong strong self-esteem you believe that you are loved and as a reason for you to be here then you believe you could do it and you believe that no matter how difficult it gets no matter how much pressure the world puts on you you're gonna make it to the other side which gives you a sense of hope and you're able to generate that hope from the inside you don't need to go somewhere and grab something to give you that hope you don't have to go to your mommy you don't have to get a substance you don't need anything you say I could do this that's if you have a really good self-esteem now if you have a bad self-esteem on the other hand it's just the opposite something bad happens and you start feeling bad and then you think I am probably bad I it's interesting I I say these an addict if you meet an addict and you ask them a question the question is if you walk into a room and there are 20 people in the room and 19 of them are just singing your praises and saying how great you are and one guy in that room goes you're not so good how do you feel I have never met an addict who didn't honestly say to me I feel terrible I feel totally terrible and I can't even get out of it that is when you have an in terribly low self-esteem you do not know how to internally generate comfort and encouragement the comfort is coming from I am loved and encouragement is I can do it and that's gonna sound a lot like and that's my next thing is how is self-esteem built how do you build self-esteem when a kid is born they're not born with self-esteem they just you know they just born in Iraq they don't even know they have a cell going to most psychologists kids babies are born they still think they're part of their parent they don't think they're individuated from their parents so they as they start realizing they're a person is when they're building their self-esteem so in their younger child engage so what happens as we as you're raising kids and all of you here have raised kids you realize that they're sponges they're sucking everything in we we give them these two ideas normally and this is not always true but normally the maternal instinct is to give a tremendous amount of unconditional love to a child and that's where they would get their I am loved it doesn't mean doesn't come from the father as well but it normally is the more feminine aspect is to give them this I am loved and the and then the more masculine aspect is you can do it like you see if most mothers won't say go climb that tree and see if you fall father be like oh you think riding in the street is fine give it a shot see how it works that's his father line not a mother line so the idea of that line and then and by the way that's very important that that mothers know that you shouldn't stop the fathers from giving these challenges to their kids because this is the part where the parents are saying I trust you I believe in you you could do it the mother is saying I fully fully love you you have all the strength and then as they get older and if you study Freud which probably shouldn't because it's old it's not appropriate but it's good stuff but Freud talks about the early years the early years is is basically the maternal years where you're just sucking in love and then the further years as a kid and you have situations where a kid is you know crawling out of the room and they're looking back to see if they have permission to go out of the room then and the file is a go go go go let him go let him go and I was like no I'll bring her back and so you have this situation if you have the right balance of these two things and most people do have the right balance these two things then you grow up with some form of self esteem and I want to be very clear with self-esteem the idea of people having a very high self esteem and having a very low self esteem is very very rare most of us have a self esteem somewhere average so if this self-esteem scale is one to ten and one is the absolute worst self esteem and ten is the highest so most people are somewhere in there like 4 to 7 range and it doesn't stay the same I'm not like a seven self-esteem I stick a seven sticker on me I walk around I could handle anything you're some days you're seven some days you for some days you're - those days you guys stay in bed and you know so it's it's it's constantly changing and it's difficult things happen you you start struggling with you know those days but we're going back and forth and we're basically our challenge between a 4 and a 7 is the our you know kind of a fight between hope and hopelessness we have hope that we could handle this and that's where a good self-esteem and hopelessness is like I don't know if I'm worthy to even deal with this like I don't think I can handle it so I'm collapsing and we all go through this all the time every one of us and then once you wanna you have someone with super high self-esteem and they you know you see them they walk into the room and it's like you could throw challenges out there you can call them insults in like Donald Trump or something you know like you guys even carry free it right so he doesn't care that those people I like to call them that annoying guy who can never understand me ever that's the really high self-esteem it's very rare very rare on the other hand it's also rare to have a very very low self-esteem but that's the people we're talking about what we're talking about and especially when it gets to the level of addiction so I do that I do this with the guys all the time basically you have two scales you have the self-esteem scale and the addiction scale so in I believe that everybody on some level is addicted to things in this world and what does it mean addicted it means we're using outside things to make ourselves feel better if that wasn't true Netflix would have been out of business a long time ago we all are dying to comfort ourselves with outside things and we see it happening in the world but we don't see people throwing away their lives for this stuff you know a guy who go around the weekend I'll get a little girl feel good about himself and I move on with this life or you do a little bit more but that's in general we're all doing it on some level because we don't feel good we like to use these outside things they make us feel better but as your self-esteem goes down your addiction level starts going up if you're a 1 self-esteem you're like a 100 addict and I've never heard this explained to me this way so I think it's a new idea because nobody said this because nobody wants to believe that addiction is some miracle some magical thing that this guy is stuck with addiction that guy's stuck with addiction and and and and they just got it and they're born with it and I have read in Terry and but every single guy who is an addict will perform as if he has an incredibly low self esteem and what does it mean when you have a low self-esteem you're out there hey I'll give you a backup it's addiction I believe all addictions if you really go further back in their life you'll understand that that addictions are almost always people addictions first and what does that mean it means that I don't feel good about myself so I have to make everybody in the room love me and if I don't if not everybody in that room loves me I don't want to go to that room you'll find a lot of addicts early on in life they would skip school because it was so uncomfortable this teacher doesn't like me that maybe don't like me that's I can't go there or if you know any friendships are very you know like if the guy doesn't love you every minute you can't handle it so you'll start seeing this even in a younger age but you'll oh they'll always be incredibly big people pleasers even my attics when they get better I always encourage them to go into things like sales and go into like marketing because they know what everybody in that room wants every addict I deal with at least when they're sober are the most charming people you ever meet in your life they have figured out what is wanted in the world and they go and grab it now what happens is when you're addicted to people it is exhausting because people don't behave they don't act the right way to give you what you need so you walk into a room you try to charm someone and they're not charm so now what do you do what ends up happening is that addicts at some point discover what they're going to be addicted to and what what is that and and this is a fascinating thing I speak to addicts and I asked them about the first time they use the drug or the alcohol or whatever addiction they have what was it like the first time and you can usually tell the difference between an addict and a non addict by asking this question because every addict I know after they fully understand the question because sometimes they don't understand the question like honest and yeah I liked it when they understand they say it was like love it was like I was finally accepted and I was alright I felt like I was alright the world was normal again and I felt it was like a love affair it sounds like someone who like found this by shirt because all the sudden they found something that they could control to make them feel better if I take this pill I will feel better I don't need this guy to like me and that's by the way when you see attics stop me I gave a speech at a at a school at a graduate school the other day and somebody I had said something similar to this and one of my volunteers at our place said I don't understand he was he was in he's entered by me but he was in that graduate school class so he said he said you just said that that addicts are always very charming yeah like every addict in our place is not charming there are miserable people I hate them I didn't say that but that was raised with a what he was saying and I said that's because you didn't see them sober the second they get on that drug they don't need you anymore they actually feels so free that they could be miserable to you it's like finally the first time of life they could go oh you don't like how I am I don't care because I have heroin in me and heroin makes me feel good I don't need you anymore so that's that's the deal with addicts so addicts discover what I am calling an external self esteem they have figured out a way to grab the self esteem now that stops working obviously you have to take more drugs and different types of drugs and different addictions and it crosses over to other addictions and it gets worse and worse and worse but that's not really a diction is not really what I'm talking about even though I mention a lot but I'm using it as sort of an example of what low self-esteem could do because that's the worst possible scenario of self-esteem is the addicted person who can't even come up with a little bit but the question that I have is I meet the parents they've all been good parents it's this whole thing that like parents aren't good parents and that's a once you know while you deal the situation where somebody went through so much it's such a terrible life at home with such neglect and abuse those people are not at this conference they're not I know where they are and they and and either prisons that Lisa these are some very unhealthy parents most parents are very good parents and they giving over this idea to these kids and they're building their self-esteem so what happened why is a kid and you can have it in the same family of eight kids and a family and two of them have terrible self esteems they're getting all involved addiction the rest of the family's doing great so how does that how does that make any so this is where all those original things I talked about when they asked me you have a TD o DD you know abuse neglect or their nature and that's a big piece of this this is where that comes in because you can already have a good self-esteem or a decent self-esteem as a child and then something horrible happens and I would give an example of my station because it is so horrific and on top of being so horrific there's so much shame and silence and there's it becomes a secret and that kid has to hold that secret and they have shame and they have guilt and they have every imagined bad feeling you could have and that original feeling that I am loves I deserve this love I am deserving of love I am deserving of happiness is reversed because then you say to yourself I don't think I am supposed to be loved I think the world is horrible and I think I don't deserve to be to be anything the world is terrible it's unfair and I I don't think anything good is gonna come out of this now those people could still have that I could do it in them and you'll find this in addicts a little time and the whole fight they'll fight to be the most successful at something and then they just they run out of steam they're running on fumes like with an engine they were just running on the fumes so so that those situation those questions originally what how do these things affect us is that so many kids that we're dealing with and kids that you have as children have been hurt in a way that you could reverse the self-esteem to a level where they don't believe that they could do it or that they could be loved so that is really the issue so the answer to the first question is yes that's why but it's not that in itself we all go through bad things and we do fine it's the fact that those bad things at a young age caused them to reverse her self-esteem and now for the rest of the life to trying to catch up and how does the rest of the world deal with this the rest the world looks at them like this father and goes get your act together let's do this and every single one of you guys in this room who's had a kid that's struggling with this has said to them I don't understand get your act together we all go through hard times I did this to my daughter the other day I said Alice did yet the finish is a semester you think it wasn't hard for me to finish graduate school you got to do your work and she's like I heard that before and that's not the problem I'm suffering here please don't tell me that I'm supposed to I've trained my kids to know how to answer me but they like you're not dealing with this situation right and I wasn't actually one of my daughters my daughter Shaboom use her name because she says every time I do that something public I have to mention her but she said when because she wants me famous but so she she said she said to me once I don't understand if you're a therapist why are you yelling at me so that was a that was I thought the daughter of a therapist line anyway so the idea is we all yelled at our kids get it together okay it's good five minutes I'm done already no I was counting okay so so the rest of the world even the therapy world and the addiction world is all saying we got to fix these kids behaviorally if they get away from drugs if they stay away from the substance they'll be fine but if you don't fix the core self-esteem issue that core self-esteem issue it doesn't matter how much treatment you do about teaching them because if you can fix all drug problems but just taking the drugs out of the world but that doesn't work because then they get addicted to every other thing you could ever imagine and the secret is they're already addicted to every other thing they can imagine just drugs the loudest of their addictions so so so here's the thing in five minutes how could I explain to you how to fix this well the good news is that most you know about twisted parenting and I'll be finish off so four years in our place and obvious well I've been yelling and screaming that you've got to get down to the core of the issue and this is the core of the issue as I was writing this I wrote down a line that I said the art of repairing your kids eight he came to me and I was like I'm gonna write a book about that so the art of repairing to your kids basically when you're dealing with someone who is at a place where their self-esteem is so low that they can't produce good feelings from the inside so that they can't handle the world we have to rebuild them as if we're starting over when they were babies and I tell my addicts all the time you guys are big babies does that except I mean I want to go and do a job and work till nine o'clock I'm like you're six months old right now wait till you - and then we'll give you a better job that's a healer that sounds insulting but I agree so that's that's that's the so what we have to do is we have to reap implant the idea into these addicts that they are fully loved they're supposed to be loved they're able to be loved and until they get that and it may take years until they get that idea they are never going to be able to do it you will send them to a thousand rehabs and they will walk out and they will go I'm never gonna look at drugs I'm not gonna talk to friends with drugs and I'm not gonna drive my car I'm not gonna call my cell phone I got a million things that they're not gonna do and two weeks later they're back on drugs and what happened because they never got the tank filled up and I mean this is why in the 12-step program they're very focused the first three steps are just about God loving you they don't start with doing work they actually say you're completely powerless what is completely powerless a baby a baby is completely powerless you don't have any power except that you have nothing inside and you need to let Hashem go into you and fill it and you got to let the people that love you and the parents and every on every attic when I deal with them and they and they and they have parents and families that love them their chances of getting better are a thousandfold thousandfold and I could almost predict they're gonna be alright and as all its just except 20% it doesn't mean that because most addicts families have dropped them and that's what sticks are completely different I I actually luckily got to run a sober-living for several years and we're opening again it's a sham but a sober-living was built on these principles most sober livings in the world are built on the principle of you come in get a job go do it go to those do this do this and and what happens is they their tanks are still not filled up so it'll work for a time because there is support and there is stuff there is a touch of it our show we're living when we ran it and this is it was such an incredibly beautiful experience for me because I was able to do what you know what Abhi's been preaching and what we've been preaching for so long and we just love them it's matter fact my staff who was so frustrated cuz they got their their training from more traditional rehab programs and someone making up trouble this guy didn't make his bed this morning right and I would say oh why and they well you throw my camera in he's yelling at people he's fighting people I'm like oh he must be doing really poorly okay so now you your staff again and they hated bringing things up to me because I'll be like okay you need to spend an extra hour with him tonight and you have to help make sandwiches for tomorrow's lunch and I said to everybody out to do all these all these different things and they actually started calling it aggressive compassion that was my tech Niek aggressive compassion because a healthy person wants to make is bed and a healthy person wants to go to work and a healthy person doesn't want to yell at his roommate and say terrible things healthy people want to live good lives I've never met a person who doesn't want to grow and be better I haven't met them they can't do it they don't believe they could do it and they can't do it so I I think it's important that and this is like I'm finishing up with this but I first I want to thank everybody here because like a lot of people here I've gotten a chance to be part of their lives and I'm so all inspired by people especially following the obvious method it's it's it's and they're so lucky because they're so lucky because most of the world would have no idea what I'm talking about right now and they don't I get a lot of arguments what are you talking about but anybody who sat there and changed their idea their paradigm in their head this kid needs full love right now until he's ready to start making a move and when he's ready he's gonna let you know cuz he's been wanting to make a move it's a matter of fact people doing having Fisher of man that very often the kids will come to me be like I'm ready to go why they still loving me let me go and because you're not really ready to go because when you ready to go you'll go that's what happens and you make the move you're gonna find a therapist you're gonna ask for you're gonna ask for someone to help you you're gonna go I need to go to rehab I gotta go because I I'm going on my siblings wedding and I I can't believe that I look like this I I want to get my life together and they'll go out and get better so if we change his paradigm and say we're gonna reparent all these kids and it's not just the parents it's the community it's the shoes and and everything out there has to join in and save somebody is at this level of low self-esteem that he's stooped to the point where he's using addiction to make him feel better every single one of them needs some conditional love that's what they need and then they're ready to make the move and it and it blows everybody's mind when it works because it keeps working and I give all your Braco and some of you in all different levels of doing this method I give you all bruffett to see the success that that that it does happen it happens and I get to see it and I love seeing it and I get I get phone calls from these guys and they stay in touch with me I got far I get phone calls from guys in 20 years ago hundreds of guys are staying in touch with me it's unbelievable they're doing great and people do well but you need to understand this idea that they have to feel I am loved and I can do it and I'm going to say to you guys the same thing you're loved and you can do it thank you Chavez