Overcoming Addiction Through Emotional Awareness and Healthy Choices with Dr. Andrew Seefeld, Addiction Specialist, & Medical Director, Emergency Department at Speare Memorial Hospital

[00:00:02] Hey, everybody. Saul Marquez here and welcome back to the Outcomes Rocket. I'm excited to have you all back on with us today. I've got the privilege of having Dr. Andrew Seefeld with us on the

[00:00:15] podcast. He is an extraordinary ED physician. He got his doctorate in medicine from Penn State College of Medicine, did his internship at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, and just an incredible contributor to the community, as well as his role leading the emergency department where he is now.

[00:00:38] If you guys think the Seefeld name is familiar, that's because we had Dr. Andrew's brother, Matt, on the podcast before. He's actually his twin. So with that, I want to kick it off. Andrew, I want to welcome you to the podcast and thanks so much for being here.

[00:00:53] Thanks, Saul. Yeah, he is my doppelganger. Matt, we're identical to the core. I'll tell you what, man. When I jumped on, he's like, it's my twin brother. And I jumped on and I'm like, oh my God, like, is this Matt? You guys look very similar. Yep. Yep.

[00:01:12] All right. And then similarly, you guys have gone through some areas of excellence and also areas of challenge. So talk to us about your story. Tell us a little bit about it.

[00:01:23] Yeah, I mean, that's a long podcast question. I can sum it up about six years ago, six years and a month ago, I had reached a level of emotional and physical brokenness that I never thought was

[00:01:35] possible. And that had been a result of a lifetime of negative thought patterns. I'm not good enough. I don't do it right. That translated into a lot of behaviors that tried to kill me. Alcohol, drugs. These are behaviors that I used drinking alcohol, using drugs,

[00:01:53] they are behaviors that I used to quiet down a mind that was intolerable at times. My emotional states, how I felt, how I reacted to situations, how I interpreted data, external circumstances. The lenses that I looked through were skewed with the,

[00:02:12] I'm not good enough. And that translated into a lot of sadness, which I ended up drinking away in some capacities over exercising away, disconnecting from myself, disconnecting from my family. Six years ago, I was left as a puddle on a floor. And what you see

[00:02:30] today, a vibrant, energetic, as you described extraordinary, which is great. I love that word. My existence is extraordinary today as a result of getting and my getting really came at the level

[00:02:41] of emotion, which came at the level of thought. I had to go back in the past and see where this little parts of my brain that want to keep me feeling sad came from. And there's a liberation

[00:02:52] that occurred on the other side of the pain that I went into. And that's what I term this process. I really termed today as emotional sobriety. And I've stopped in my practice. I do emergency medicine primarily, but I'm also entering the realm of addiction medicine. I've stopped focusing

[00:03:10] on substances. I've looked at levels of behavior. As humans, we operate, we choose behaviors that satisfy internal dialogues. And if our internal dialogues are less than, I'm not important, I'm not lovable, behaviors will reflect that. Behaviors drive change. Behavior is important.

[00:03:33] In order for me to choose a healthy behavior, I need to understand how I tick first. And that's really what emotional sobriety is about. The good thing about emotional sobriety is on the other end of it, is you can change the brain. The little parts in my brain,

[00:03:47] the memories and emotional centers that wanted to keep me in this circuit of not good enough, that got transformed. That's called neuroplasticity and that's real. And I'm living proof that it's

[00:03:56] real because I don't react to situations the way I did six years ago. I'm not left like a broken, empty shell anymore. And the beauty for the world is that I can give this back to the world because

[00:04:09] I've created a platform to do so. And that's what my brother and I are doing with my Life Link, which is an app that is free to download. That's what I do with my talks that I go around to

[00:04:20] schools and other venues. So I'm on this podcast. Let's get the message out. We don't have to stay broken. I love that, Andrew. I love that a lot. And yeah, so this concept of emotional sobriety,

[00:04:34] let's unpack it a little bit more. I know it's been tossed out there before, so help us understand what common understanding of it is and maybe what you want us to take away from this concept.

[00:04:46] As humans, the moment we're born, we're taking in stimuli. What we see, what we hear as we get older, what we read. When this stimuli translates into emotions, emotions are unconscious. Those are

[00:04:57] automatic. Fear, sadness, anger. I don't control my emotions. I can control my feelings. My feelings are a conscious reflection of how I interpret my emotion. So that's something that I actually can have control over. And that's brilliant because if I don't like how I could feel or how

[00:05:18] I feel, I can change my interpretation of the circumstance, the stimuli itself, or I can remove myself from the stimuli. So I have some freedom there. The level of behavior is where most humans

[00:05:29] find breakdown. Thoughts and emotions don't kill us, behaviors do. So I was very depressed growing up. I got diagnosed with major depressive disorder and I've tried to commit suicide in the past. So

[00:05:42] that is, the depression wasn't killing me. It was the behavior of suicide that was killing me. And if I had gotten help with the upstream thoughts that were leading to my sadness, then the behavior

[00:05:54] of suicide wouldn't even have been a thought. And you could say the same thing about alcoholism, drug addiction, all the other behaviors that we choose. Disconnection, social media, gaming, all that stuff. So it can all be problematic. So the breakdown occurs at the level of behavior.

[00:06:09] So emotional sobriety is first and foremost, it's a willingness to sit in my emotional state and not distract from it. So when I feel anger today, I sit in it. I don't react. I don't throw

[00:06:22] a tantrum. I sit in it. It's also a willingness to inquire as to why I feel the way I do. Often we don't ask why. We go straight into reactivity and then we find breakdown. So it's in the why

[00:06:38] where my reshaping of the emotional centers of the brain occurs. If I don't ask why, I'm never going to understand. And if I don't understand, I can't regulate behavior. There's also a level of acceptance that comes with emotional sobriety. I'm a product of perfectionism. My parents were

[00:06:56] perfectionists, my dad especially. My twin brother will say the same thing. I did great stuff as a kid and it still wasn't good enough. And my dad wasn't being mean. My dad was just being the way he was

[00:07:07] raised. But you can do better. He was loving me through that because that's perfectionism. That's what we do. So there's a level of acceptance that comes and Andrew's going to put on his I'm not good

[00:07:17] enough glasses sometimes in the morning and I'm going to interpret circumstances through those lenses. And you can change those lenses. It could be I'm not important, I'm not lovable. All these thoughts, I call them thought addictions. We become addicted to our thinking patterns as children. We just

[00:07:31] don't know it. I realized that at 40 that I was addicted to not good enough and that is where most of my breakdowns occurred in life at the level of thought. So there's a level of acceptance that

[00:07:43] occurs with that and quite honestly I'm my number one comedy show today. In 2024 I laugh at myself on a daily basis, sometimes minutes. I can go to work, I can read an email and be not good enough

[00:07:53] and I just sit there go there you go again. That five-year-old, the science project, handwriting out times roman because we didn't have computers back then. So there's a level of acceptance and I'll finish with this. Emotional sobriety is about adaptive behaviors. Adaptive behavior is a healthy

[00:08:11] behavior. So no matter what I think and no matter how I feel, I will always choose a healthy behavior. So that for I have alcohol and drug addiction in my past so alcohol and drugs are never going to

[00:08:24] be a solution for me again. I accepted that six years ago. So that's brilliant. So now I got to find a healthy behavior. I need to find healthy outlets. So regardless of what I think and how I

[00:08:37] feel, I will always choose a behavior that's in alignment with caring about others, caring about myself, loving others, connecting with the world. These are things that are opposite of what we quote unquote term addiction and all the other crises that we're seeing. We're in a pandemic

[00:08:53] of emotional fragility right now as a result of the pandemic. We've had lots of isolationism and as an emergency doctor, I see on a daily basis handfuls of youth that are having mental health crises, adults with mental health crises, lots of addiction, lots of substance problematic

[00:09:10] substance use. This is a very visceral experience for me because I've lived the life of a major depressed person. I've lived the life of an alcoholic. I've lived the life of a drug addict.

[00:09:19] I've lived the life of an ex. All of this. And so as a physician who can affect change for the world and for himself the way he did, I have that opportunity. So that's also the platform that

[00:09:30] I'm choosing to stamp, so to speak, that I choose to take for the world. Choice. Choice is a wonderful thing. Yeah, I think it's fascinating, Dr. Andrew, that this idea of addiction to thoughts.

[00:09:45] And I haven't thought about that actually. To actually be addicted to a certain way that you think. Help us break that down and what's a good way for us to actually wake up? Because I would

[00:09:57] imagine that for most, like for most of us, we don't realize that we're addicted to a certain way. Right. So what I like to think about, and this is some deep-seated work here. Pam, what I like

[00:10:09] to think about is we feel our thoughts. Think about that for a second. What do you mean I feel a thought? No, we feel our thoughts. Before I even know that I did the I'm not good enough, I feel it

[00:10:20] here. I get a hot face, that fight or flight stuff. I feel the physiology, emotional emotions are felt. So our thoughts are felt. And so understanding that process, right? When I feel that, when I

[00:10:34] read that email from a colleague and I access I didn't do it right, I can stop. I call it a stopgap. I can stop for a second and say, wait, what just happened there? So people new to this process,

[00:10:47] it's really about starting to understand how you feel, understand the physiology, triggers, things like that. So hot face, nausea, pit in your stomach, that's your nervous system is telling you something. That's where you stop and start to identify your thinking patterns.

[00:11:05] Once you start to identify there's we're not extremely different people. We all come from very similar thinking patterns. They're not good enough, they're not important, they're not lovable, they're not didn't do it right or always have to do it right. I need to be right for self-righteousness.

[00:11:21] I'm always wrong, that's a victim. Some of us have lots of them, some of us have few of them. And we learn this as children. And the first time you think about it, it's a conscious process.

[00:11:33] I propose similar to what happens with drugs and alcohol dependency is that it switches at some point into a subconscious process. I can't control the subconscious. So for something to be controlled to have choice, it has to be conscious. So my thinking pattern of not good enough,

[00:11:50] I wasn't even aware I was doing it. Yeah. And it had never been framed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd never, it'd never been framed that way. Right? No, that's the thing we don't, how we wake up. Like I said

[00:12:02] at the beginning, there's a liberation that occurs for the individual when they get emotionally sober. There's a freedom that exists in the space that was once so painful and now is not. And it, again,

[00:12:16] there's a lot of context to this conversation. Emotional sobriety is not something you can really teach in a few minutes here. And to me, it's liberating and I'm lived experience. I'm a

[00:12:27] guy that was as broken as I become. I've been in ICUs, I've been near death, I've attempted suicide, I've been majorly depressed, I've had severe anxiety, severe obsessive compulsive traits. When I was in medical school, I wasn't drinking alcoholically for my life.

[00:12:41] I had spent about a decade really having issues with substances. But for my twenties, when I was in medical school and undergraduate, I wasn't drinking or using drugs, maybe casually drinking

[00:12:52] at times, but it was never a breakdown or never a problem. I had severe depression. I had severe obsessive tendencies. This was all a product of problematic thinking patterns. And I was never brought into the realm of that. I was put on medications, antidepressants. I was put on

[00:13:09] anti-anxiety stuff. He was like, let's do this. Let's do that. I was asked by therapists, like, how do you feel good? Like they focused on how Andrew can feel good. That was the breakdown.

[00:13:19] The therapist that finally got me well six years ago said, how can I make you feel bad? She wasn't being mean about it. She wasn't literally wanting me to feel bad, but she said,

[00:13:28] you have to walk into the pain, Andrew. You have to find that pain that started when you were two and three and four and five and six and seven and got reinforced throughout your adult life.

[00:13:39] You have to go into that painful space to then get liberated out of it. And that's really what this emotional sobriety work is. I love it. Yeah. And it's this idea of your thoughts,

[00:13:53] you're addicted to them. And then the emotions that you're having as a result of those thoughts, you're addicted to them. Are they serving you? Are they not? The serving you or not?

[00:14:04] And what I hear you saying is it's what you said is the breakdown happens at the behavior. So let's unpack that some more. Think about it this way. So I'm glad I have the emotions

[00:14:15] that I have. Emotions are survival mechanisms. If our caveman ancestors didn't have fear and anger, they wouldn't have survived. So if I'm out hiking in the woods, I live in New Hampshire. If I'm out

[00:14:29] hiking in the woods, I see a bear. I want the emotion of fear to translate into exit, have healthy behavior. But here's the thing. We live in 2024 where there's not lots of bears

[00:14:38] around and I'm not being chased by a bear, at least like my caveman ancestors might've been, or maybe they had saber tooth tigers or whatever it was back then. Or what I'm getting at is our

[00:14:46] physiology has not really changed, but our venue has. So my emotions and my feelings, and that's a conversation probably for a whole podcast is the difference between emotions and feelings, but understanding that the feelings, how I feel about circumstances is often skewed.

[00:15:05] And I'd never knew that. I just thought I was right about it. I thought I deserved to feel a certain way. One of the greatest gifts I was given in emotional sobriety work is that

[00:15:16] nobody makes me feel anything. Nothing makes me feel anything. People don't like to hear that because they go, what do you mean? My dad made me feel sad today. No, I interpreted words out

[00:15:26] of my dad's mouth and I generated sadness. That's empowering. At first you can be a victim to that statement. Okay, what are you talking about? I just read this on social media and they're me. That's an interpretation. Understanding that I can have choice as to how I feel,

[00:15:44] that's where liberation occurs. When I started doing talks, I was extremely nervous to do talks. Now, are you surprised, Saul? I'm a perfectionist. I'm always going to do it wrong. So if I go do a

[00:15:57] talk, then I'm going to just know that I did it wrong. I'm going to interpret data like the patient that I look at people's faces and like, oh, he doesn't like this. So I would walk into these

[00:16:08] things and have fear and feel anxious. And that was my relationship to social existence and speaking to others. Fast forward to my last talk, I did a talk just a couple of weeks ago at the Northern

[00:16:23] New England Society of Addiction Medicine at the big venue for addiction specialists out here in the Northeast. And my relationship to fear has changed. I walk in there and I feel excited.

[00:16:35] I still have the, I'm not going to do it right card, but it doesn't derail me the way it used to. Yeah. And how did you change that? How did you change from, I feel like fear of speaking,

[00:16:51] I'm not going to do it to I feel fear of speaking now I want. Like what happened? A lot of it is, yeah, a lot of it is number one, it's reshaping the parts of the brain that would

[00:17:01] tell me I'm not going to do it. That's limbic system stuff. So memory and emotional centers. And honestly, a lot of it is telling the truth about how I feel. I'll go into these talks and

[00:17:11] I'll share with the group exactly how I'm feeling. And when we externalize our feelings, we almost, we can create, we lessen them, we attenuate them, we weaken the signaling. Think about yourself, how often we keep our feelings inside and they fester. So the emotions and the feelings,

[00:17:32] they fester, you're depressed, you're sitting in your room, you're not doing anything. I lived that life. I never talked about it. I was afraid to share my breakdowns with others because I was a doctor and I'm not allowed to supposedly not supposed to have breakdowns or whatnot,

[00:17:44] all that stigma garbage. So the reality is if I tell the truth about it, and if I externalize how I'm feeling, often I realized number one, that I am good enough because I get a lot of good

[00:17:57] feedback from these talks. And I guess there could be a group of enablers that just going around trying to enable me to tell me that I'm okay. But I don't think I'm that important. I don't think

[00:18:08] it's the world that savvy yet. So no, I tell the truth about it and inquire. If you're sitting, if you read an email and your boss sends you an email and you access not good enough, go ask,

[00:18:19] walk up to your boss and say, Hey, I read this email. Do you think I'm terrible? Am I bad at my job? That's vulnerability. Now there's a risk that comes with that. Your boss may look at you

[00:18:30] and say, yes, you're terrible. Then I have choice though. Right? I have choice to improve. But more often than not the thoughts and feelings that we have are totally skewed. They come from a wired emotional memory center that started when we were like two

[00:18:44] and three, and we just satisfy the same narrative. What's that quote? 99% of what I worry about doesn't happen. Doesn't that hurt us? Yes. That sounds great. Yes. That's it. I love this. I love this. And folks, by the way, today's about you. Today's about you and

[00:19:03] understanding you better. Me, understanding me better. And Dr. Andrew here helping us with his story. It's really cool because when somebody shares their story and the lessons they learn, you learn a lesson in your own. So today I'm thankful for Dr. Andrew's story and the work

[00:19:21] that he's doing and how he's transitioning his career from emergency medicine to now, what did you call it? Addictive medicine? Yeah. So I'm actually currently I'm applying to obtain, it's called a practice pathway for some of us board certified docs in certain

[00:19:37] specialties, emergency being one of them. If we generate, if we've done enough to satisfy the requirements of what a fellowship in addiction medicine would do, which is a one-year fellowship, you can go ahead and sit for the board. So I'm really, I'm focused. I'm working with

[00:19:49] professionals health program here in New Hampshire. I'm actually delivering a curriculum as we speak on emotional sobriety. I've already done one course. I'm doing my second cohort now. We're really building this platform and this curriculum and really getting people into the

[00:20:03] idea that they don't have to suffer. We don't have to be victims of our emotions, our thoughts anymore. And regardless, like I said, regardless of how I think and how I feel, I can still choose

[00:20:13] a healthy behavior and that's liberating. Well, Andrew, I really appreciate you coming on, sharing this mission of yours, making our lives better as a result of it. If anybody that's listening or watching us right now wants to learn more, how can they get in touch with you?

[00:20:29] And where can they follow you? So social media wise, I do have, I'll usually post stuff on, I guess we call it X now. I still struggle with that. I still call it Twitter. I'm old school

[00:20:41] Twitter. Right? So sober doc, my little sober S O B and then capital E R underscore doctor. Yeah. And that was somebody had taken sober doctor. I was like, come on, you can't be two of us. It's even better. Right? Right. Yeah. And I post some stuff there.

[00:21:01] And then my lifelink, it's a free app. My brother and I have been batting this around and building this platform for the last five or six years now. And you can go on the app store.

[00:21:11] It's a Google or the Android or iPhone store, Apple store and download my lifelink. And like I said, it's free. We're not making money off this. It's about connecting with each other. It's about identifying. I do a men's emotional sobriety meeting every Tuesday at 7 PM Eastern

[00:21:26] time. It's a zoom. We have people around the U S level and they actually sometimes in the world, you absolutely can. It's we'll leave it in the show notes. You don't have to put it in the show

[00:21:37] notes. That'd be perfect. Cause there's a password that's associated, but yes, that's probably the easiest way to reach out to me. I love it. Some great opportunities to get in touch with Dr. Andrew here. You're not listening to this on accident. It's actually happening on purpose.

[00:21:52] So take advantage of that purpose and, and take action on something today that might have spoken to you or something that you saw then may have said, Oh my gosh, I got to do something about

[00:22:04] this. I certainly got some thoughts going myself. So Dr. Andrew, I want to thank you for being with us today. It's been a lot of fun. It's been great. Every time I do a podcast, I prepare mentally.

[00:22:16] And I'm almost certain I won't do it right. Shocker. No, that's just a thought though. Right? I don't have to get derailed by my thinking anymore. That's the beauty of this work. Appreciate you. And folks again, just a reminder, check everything out in the show notes. We'll

[00:22:34] leave ways to get into Dr. Andrew, check out his meeting as well as his work on X. And you'll want to follow. So thanks again for tuning in everybody and Dr. Andrew. Thanks for being with us.