Here in the fifth edited film from Wulf Livingston’s interview with Rob Havelock and Lianne Jones. It provides important insights into what works at Penrhyn House, the residential part of North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC). Rob is Founder of an Eryi (Snowdonia)-based walking and outdoor community dedicated to helping people recovering from addiction and mental health struggles. Lianne is now a Duty Officer at Penrhyn House in Bangor.
When Rob first walked through the doors at Penrhyn House after coming back from Manchester, he went there just for himself. He says this is exactly what you must do initially. However, you’ve then got to leave that attitude behind and get stuck into the ethos of the community, which he was initially very reluctant to do. He was still thinking like an addict—get what I need to get well, and I will be on my merry way and life will treat me well. But it doesn’t work like that. Rob believes the words ‘Community’ and ‘We’ are so important. In community, members are all fighting the same fight, so why not do it together? You have to drop your selfishness, your self-seeking. Getting a sponsor certainly helped Rob see that.
During her early days at Penrhyn House, Lianne was so negative towards herself. She’d never been around a group of people who cared about her and wanted her to get well. The people at Penrhyn loved her when she didn’t love herself and gave her encouragement that she had never previously received. For people to say, ‘Well done, you’re doing great,’ was so special. And all the good things she experienced added up over time and helped her get more and more involved in the community.
In the first four months she was going to Penrhyn House, Lianne was too scared to speak to people. She was anxious about what people would think of her. However, as time went on, she realised that people at Penrhyn cared about her, and she developed friendships. At the same time, it was really hard to take compliments when people in her previous life had been really negative about her. And she had always been so negative towards yourself.
Although she still struggles today when someone says something nice, Lianne knows that she can just say, ‘Thank you.’ She says that it’s about changing your mindset, and she thinks that can take a long time, even years, if you have been seriously damaged by your past and are not in the right environment. She is still working on herself today, but she’s aware of how to speak to herself. When she puts herself down, she says, ‘Stop now! You don’t need to talk to yourself like this.’
Rob points out that when you are in a genuine recovery community, you realise the necessity to be more honest towards yourself and to other people. Honesty is hard, and he has to work on it every day. He often tries to start the day by saying to himself, or in prayer, that he will have an honest day, being honest with people around him. Being dishonest about how you’re feeling can lead to self-pity, which in turn can lead to something else, and ultimately to a whole series of character defects spiralling out of control. His dishonest behaviours can impact negatively on other people. People need to be aware of their behaviours when they walk into Penrhyn House because they can affect the rest of the community.
In his early days in recovery, Rob found it very difficult to trust people, especially people in recovery. He says that drugs take you into a world where you can’t trust people. It’s a dangerous game trusting people in that kind of environment. When you sober up in a helping community, you need to trust people so that you can all help each other. That was a hard thing for him to grasp, that people wanted to help him. And they knew what they were talking about because of their lived experience. It’s the practice of Step 12, the practice of service, as Rob now knows it.
You can see links of other films of this conversation here.