What happens to the eight-year-old boy who finds his aunt collapsed on the floor, pills beneath his feet, and has to call for someone to help her? What happens when, years later, he discovers that the childhood memory he questioned was real?
For Mark Manderson, that experience became part of a much larger story. His aunt died from a drug overdose when he was young, but the memory remained buried until therapy helped him revisit it years later. The grief and understanding that followed would eventually influence a career dedicated to helping people and families affected by addiction.
Episode Summary
In this episode of Thrive While Loving an Addict, KL Wells sits down with Mark Manderson, CEO and founder of Pacific Shores Recovery, to explore what more than two decades of working in addiction recovery have taught him about pain, substance use, family dynamics, and healing.
Mark shares his belief that substance use often serves as an attempt to escape or numb deeper pain, and explains why focusing only on the substance can leave important underlying issues unaddressed. Together, KL and Mark discuss anger and grief, the limits of trying to control someone else's recovery, emotional literacy, generational patterns, and what it can mean to love someone without losing yourself in the process.
Key Discussion Points
- Mark's childhood experience of losing his aunt to a drug overdose and how that loss influenced his life's work
- Revisiting a buried childhood memory through EMDR therapy
- Why substance use can become a way of numbing or escaping deeper emotional pain
- The difference between pain that keeps someone stuck and pain that becomes a source of meaning or purpose
- Why trying to control, fix, or change someone struggling with addiction can exhaust families
- The grief that may exist underneath anger for parents and loved ones
- Mark's five foundational freedoms and the patterns he observed among people who sustained recovery
- Addiction as isolation and the importance of connection and community in recovery
- Emotional literacy and why understanding feelings can be difficult when those skills were never taught
- How generational patterns can influence substance use and family relationships
- Loving someone with an open hand rather than attaching love to a specific outcome
- How the questions we repeatedly ask ourselves can shape our perspective and beliefs
- A Gestalt-based exercise Mark uses to explore guilt and shame carried by family members
Some Questions I Ask
- Can you say more about the idea that pain may have something to teach or show us?
- What does "doing the work" actually look like for someone who has never begun that process?
- What might be a first step for a parent who feels trapped in anger?
- Do you see the addiction crisis as an invitation for people and families to become more aware of deeper patterns?
- How do you continue loving the person while struggling with what addiction is doing?
In This Episode, You Will Learn
- Why addiction may be connected to an attempt to numb underlying emotional pain rather than simply a relationship with a substance
- How trying to control another person's choices can affect families emotionally
- Why grief may sit underneath anger, frustration, and exhaustion
- How pain can be explored and integrated rather than continually avoided
- The five foundational freedoms Mark identified through his work with people in recovery
- Why connection and community can play an important role in recovery
- How emotional literacy can help people better understand what they are experiencing
- How generational patterns may influence addiction and family dynamics
- Why the questions we ask ourselves can influence the answers and perspectives our minds repeatedly return to
- How families can begin examining guilt and shame they may have taken on as their own
- What it can mean to love someone without making your own well-being dependent on their recovery
Resources
The Recovery Way by Mark Manderson
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
TED Talk by Mark Manderson
About the Guest
Mark Manderson is the CEO and founder of Pacific Shores Recovery in Newport Beach, California, and has worked in addiction treatment for more than two decades. His work with individuals and families is informed by both professional experience and his own childhood experience of losing his aunt to addiction.
Through his work, Mark focuses on understanding the pain and emotional patterns that can exist beneath substance use while helping individuals and families develop greater awareness, connection, and emotional understanding. His experience includes working with both veterans and civilians navigating addiction and recovery.
Mark is also the author of The Recovery Way, a speaker, and a confidence coach who offers educational master classes for individuals and families navigating recovery.
Connect With Mark
Instagram
@markcmanderson
Pacific Shores Recovery
Newport Beach, California
