Recovery:- It’s a Brain Thing... with Dave & Susan Kenney

So my guests today are Dave & Susan Kenney - they believe that understanding the brain is the key to recovery and are the pioneers of Actualised Recovery – an approach which combines neuroscience, psychology and lifestyle medicine. After running their own residential recovery program for a decade they have now pivoted to training recovery coaches. In this episode:- At school Dave had excelled at sport but had struggled academically leading to him being called “lazy” Now that he understands so much more about the brain he sees that as a sign of his brain not working properly as he really wanted to do well.. and in fact believes that all children and adults want to do well He got into university on a sports scholarship and became an educator In 2008 as educators Dave & Susan noticed many kids struggling socially, academically and with addiction Although back then they knew nothing about the brain and hadn’t even heard of neuroplasticity they started to wonder whether it was possible to change a brain They came across the work of a neuro psychologist called Daniel Amen – He had published a book called “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life” The book is about neuroplasticity which is our ability to rewire our brains Dave explained the concept that the brain drives behaviour – a concept which has been fundamental to their work and which they decided to apply to the world of recovery and The brain drives our patterns, our cravings and our choices so if we change our brains we can change our behaviour Dave explained that he sees the brain as the hardware of a computer and it’s no good addressing the software if the hardware is faulty So meditation, CBT or any other kind of therapy is not going to work if the brain is not working properly Dave came up with the analogy that trauma can be likened to a virus on a computer … causing our brains to dysfunction He also made the point that not everybody becomes addicted to alcohol – the people who do get addicted have a brain which is chemically predisposed to getting relief from alcohol If we impact and change the brain we can enable the person to create better habits and change their behaviours The catalyst for applying their knowledge to the recovery world was hearing about a friend who had lost her son to suicide which galvanized them into setting up their own recovery centre for 12 years they ran a private residential recovery program based on this Brain First approach – helping thousands of people and living on campus themselves Dave would interview patients on arrival and ask them what they would choose if he could give them anything – nine out of ten said happiness We discussed the futility of chasing short term goals to be happy – whether that’s a shot of tequila or a new car Dave shared his favourite word with us with is:- Eudomonia: which is living a life of long term values – the premise being that happiness and wellbeing come from how we live our lives rather than the pursuit of material wealth or power For Susan the definition of happiness is a life led with purpose Their approach fits with Maslows hierarchy which has purpose and self actualization at the top but physiological needs at the foundations – Susan explained that most patients would be dehydrated on arrival so no amount of therapy was going to work until that was put right They would work on basic health and then the therapies and treatments could come in There was an essential family component to their recovery program which often involved coaching the family how to agree boundaries rather than making threats We talked of the importance of changing patterns in early recovery..- you can’t just take away the alcohol and carry on with the same behaviour… So many of our patterns involve coupling various activities with alcohol – for example cooking dinner while sipping a glass of wine – we have to work on replacing this habit until we can cook happily without the wine “The more a neuron fires th