KATHLEEN MURPHY
Executive Clinical Director, Breathe Life Healing Centers | Los Angeles, CA
Kathleen Murphy in conversation with Natasha Samtani in West Hollywood, CA | April 2018
Talk to me a little bit about your background and tell me what do you actually do as the executive director?
What does that mean?
Well, I have the great honor and privilege of getting to create the whole clinical program that's designed to use the best clinical modalities that are available, I mean, on the planet to help people heal from the ravages of both the substance abuse, eating disorder, but they're complicated by relational trauma or attachment wounding.
Can you tell me a little bit about Breathe?
Breathe is a treatment center that people come into for a period of 60 to 90 days and it has a full continuum of care. When people are struggling with substance abuse or even sometimes because they're not able to function in their life because their past traumas are interfering with their ability to interact in the here and the now. We also treat people that have difficulty with eating disorders. We live in a world that a
lot of people are judged by the size, or shape, or color of their bodies and it creates substantial suffering and people try to wield, or mold their body into some unnatural way of being that causes great distress and discomfort.
Why people come to treatment is because most people want to love or be loved and have lives that have meaning, but sometimes the strategies that people have been using to do that are ineffective. People feel alone and isolated and feel different and weird, and just want to find somehow, how can I be in connection with you and stay in connection with me, then know that I'm okay. So, that's really what we do. It is like my entire passion. It's my whole commitment in this whole life. Some people wonder why they're here on the planet. Like, what are we doing here? I don't have to ask that question cause I know what I'm doing here. Here I am in West Hollywood, in this fifth floor right on Sunset Boulevard, and in this little corner of the world where I know that every single person that comes before me and sits in my chair, that's what I call it, that they're there for me to work with and I'm here for them. And then I'm walking with that person. I'm walking with them from a kind of slavery into a liberation, to finally access the great human gift of choice. You know how people use that word a lot? You chose this, you chose that. Well free people choose. If you're enslaved by anything, including enslaved by anxiety or addiction or depression or even thoughts that are terrorizing - and then you're driven by a hundred forms of these kind of fears and anxieties - you're not free. So there's no choice available. Choice is a gift, really. No other being that we're aware of not just on this planet, but any galaxy that we're aware of has that gift of choice - to choose to direct your attention, to decide what you're going to focus on. But if you didn't know how to do that, then you're like a slave that is driven by maybe the way people look at you, or other people's thinking, or how you feel, or images that you have no control over that begin to control who you are. Do you know what I mean? There's no freedom in that. So, people seek relief from that through over-spending, gambling, substance abuse and use, and drinking, and drugging, and sexing, and texting, and all the things that are strategies to create happiness except for they don't create that. When you arrive at a moment of intense suffering, that's not the problem. That's the invitation, right? Right there. That pain is a gift that calls your name, that says this is the time that you can wake up.
We're teaching people how to use pain to turn it into gold, to transformation, to liberation. We're teaching people how to use pain as sort of like an alchemy. That very pain that you think is a problem actually is the invitation. That is kind of like alchemy. That is a very energetic force that you turn from suffering into liberation and transformation and possibility. But because without it, sometimes people would just go to sleep in their lives. You might have friends that you see that they're not living in their highest possibility and they're just kind of going through the motions because there's no motivation. Pain is the great motivator if we'll take it that way, if we stop trying to annihilate it, if we stop trying to get rid of it. So now we're having people turn around and go, no, that pain is your calling!
What is your purpose? What is your life mission?
My life mission is to contribute in a meaningful way to the easing of suffering that arises from the suffering that is caused from substance abuse, complicated by relational trauma.
And so with the people that you see, maybe can you walk me through a typical day, if there is one?
Is there a typical day? You can't step into the same river twice, right? It's always different. Well, first of all it's like I'm supervising other therapists and helping them learn how to really be with people in a mindful and meaningful way. I create the clinical programming. One of the other things I do that I love is these experiential groups every week where you can externalize what's really going on. It's kind of like a Broadway play. Except for you put your insides on the outside, which is pretty powerful. I also do five day workshops that whole families do together. They externalize what's going on on the inside so that everybody can understand. I'm dealing with crises all day. I'm putting out fires.
A lot of times people are upset because for whatever reason there's this instinct to fight or flight, right? Sometimes people had abandoned themselves and I'm here to help people stay with themselves through the fire because transforming - it's really difficult, right? It is like a fire, and people want to run a lot from that. And so I do that through making meaningful connection. Talking.
I don't know if you know this, but I used to play music and you tune a guitar so that it sounds a right note. Well it's the same thing with hearts. It's like the fight or flight comes when your heart is out of tune, and it goes flat or sharp. You tune each other's hearts so that you can stay more in harmony with yourself and your environment. And I know that sounds esoteric, but that's really what's going on. You help people say yes to themselves and yes to life, and how to stay the course. And I'm a meditator, so I would say like, how to keep your seat when the winds are blowing. And sometimes I'm calling people out and sometimes I'm sitting with them and sometimes I'm fighting and sometimes I'm helping. Like if you're with this person and nothing is really working, what does this person really need? And how to throw away limitations of whatever the limitations are, how to conceive a possibility that is outside of previous limitations. What is the possibility here? It's like, how to use our minds to think creatively? That's also my job is to inspire creativity except for our art is their thoughts. Is their pain.
What is your background like? What did you want to be when you grew up? How did you end up in this position where you are fulfilling your life's mission?
I did not take an ordinary course. Yeah. I don't even know if I was able to think about growing up because I came from a pretty brutal background. I was seriously alcoholic by the time I was 12 years old. And I also was born into a family where I wasn't wanted and my mother was a severely mentally ill woman. And so she acted in that way. A lot of times people go, well, what did you lose? And they think of objects. But the biggest casualty of growing up in an environment like that can be a capacity to dream of a future. So it didn't even occur to me that I would stay alive. So if you're not going to be alive, why dream? But somewhere along the line at about 17, I began to respond to this real deep desire of just wanting to be a sober woman. And I began the path of trying to learn how to live sober. I went to 14 rehabs. By the time I got sober, I was living on the street. I had nowhere to go. And I began to learn about what being happy means in that arena and the crucible of that arena. Like, you can hurt my body, you can do a lot of things to me, but you can't take away my capacity to give and create meaning or to find something that I have to give to be of service to another human being. And even in the worst environments. And I read this book, "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. And I read about how people were walking through the snow with their fucking feet falling off, and they're frostbitten. And I thought those people were walking for no good reason whatsoever, but they kept walking. And some people, when they got to the camps, they looked around and they were like, how can I be of service even in this brutal environment? And I thought to myself, if they can walk, I can walk. Even those days that I would feel like giving, up or my feet hurt, or whatever, to this day, I think of all the people that have kept on walking in the service of other human beings. And I think I cannot let their suffering be in vain because I don't think that things happen for a reason, like people say. Because that means I have to accept too much brutality.
But I think that we can generate and create meaning and decide to live in a higher law or higher road. And so I began living like that. I began walking and I began holding in mind the history of all the people that have lived and suffered before me, like MLK, like Gandhi, like Mother Teresa, like people who took suffering and transmuted it into gold. And I might be the lowest of low, but I am that too. I am capable of that too. And so I began this road of being sober and I began looking around me and I thought there's other people like me who really want to be clean, who really want to stop doing harmful and hurtful things, but relapse. Why? And I began to notice a pattern. Every single person that I would see that kept relapsing, I'd ask them, what happened to you when you were a child? And they'd always have some sort of sexual or physical abuse, something like that. And I began to notice, oh, you see, in order to walk a path, you have to trust someone. But if the people that you were supposed to rely on, like priests in churches, people that have power that abuse it - how do you listen to anyone because you can't get to liberation without someone else. And so what I really learned then was that trauma fractures a heart and it puts a fracture in the soul that disrupts the ability to trust, and trust is precious. And so it was this motley other crew of other people just like me, that we began to sew the pieces together and learn how to trust the sound or the rhythm of our own heartbeats, the sound of desire, of wanting to live in each other and one another and began walking the path.
For women with substance abuse, there's a lot of judgment because of the stigma that's attached to ways that women are supposed to behave. And when you were under the influence of a lot of drugs, it's almost like you become an antenna that attracts people who are hurt in a way where they cause hurt to other people. I mean, you get assaulted easy. People who were abused as children are more likely to be abused as adults, especially as sexual assaults. So unfair. But it's true that children who are sexually abused grow up to be adults who are more likely to be assaulted. Did you know that? No, it's not right. And part of the reason for that is because you don't recognize queues for safety. Cause you're attracted to danger in some way because that's what love feels like to you. And so when learning, that is very hard and it's very long and it's very difficult, but that's where I began to generate my mission, that I was going to be someone who walked through that and I was going to sit in this chair one of these days and that I was going to contribute to how we really help people heal instead of just go, "you just don't want to be clean and you just don't want to get over it. You just wear that stigma." Right? I would know the sound of suffering and so I wouldn't give stupid advice like people do. Like, just do this, just do that. Because we get trapped into ways of relating, evaluating or giving advice, which is inefficient at best. And so learning how to stand with people in their own private hell, so to speak, and become a magnetic attraction. Like let's say you're a client who's scared, didn't know how to trust, has been brutalized in ways that we can't possibly know. And then you see me coming and I have to be able to stand with you. In the fire of where you're at without being afraid of you. And without pushing away what you have to say. But I have to create a magnetic force that is strong enough so that when I begin to backup to come out of the cave of despair that you want to come with me. That's what it is. It's how do you generate magnetic force. So how you inspire people to believe that there's a possibility, even though there's no evidence in the past for that. That's the work. And in order to do that, you have to be real. You have to be authentic. People use that therapist-y voice where, "ah, how do you feel today?" You know, all that bullshit. Yeah, that didn't work here. You have to be true, real, authentic, so that you know that I know and I know that you know, so that you'll take my hand and take a risk. That's what we're doing every single day. And that takes all the horror of my life, and it's like alchemy. It's like fairy tales do come true because you take the dross of life and you spin it on the wheel and it becomes gold.
You were saying that you found this group of people and together, in each other found that trust, filling the void that you had. And can you tell me, from that group of people, what were the events that brought you here?
Well I worked in domestic violence for seven years. And I was sitting at my desk one day and I had a broken heart and I thought, I really want to study this - trauma - like what helps people heal. So I sent out two resumes, one to Boston to Bessel van der Kolk's place, and then another one to The Meadows in Wickenburg, Arizona. And I was 50 years old then and I got a response and the next thing I knew I was on a plane to Wickenburg, to The Meadows. And I moved out there and I began, and I studied with Pia Mellody who is a genius. And I learned her model, she calls it the overview of developmental immaturity. And I worked there with her. And from there I went to the east coast to Caron, which is a well known treatment center. And I did five day workshops where when people come there, they're just stuck. And what you do is you just work with people to get unstuck. That's what they say. Unstuck. And one day I got a call - three jobs out here and I actually didn't want to come here. I liked Pennsylvania like that, all of that. And so I started doing these things, like I walked a labyrinth, I went to a Buddhist monastery, I prayed, should I come here? And it was serendipity that Brad Lamb, who's the owner of Breathe Life Healing Center and Deb Hughes the CEO, they just happened to call me. And I said, well, I just happen to be coming into LA. I'll stop by. And they offered me a position to create the clinical programming here and the next thing I knew I was quitting my job out there and moving out here and creating this amazing program.
People come here all the time and they go, I don't really trust anybody. And I'm like, really? Before you sat on your chair, did you check to see if the chair was stable? We really rely on a lot of people for everything that we're doing - like the clothes that we're wearing, somebody made them. Like who probably wasn't getting paid very much. Every bit of brilliance we get to do really relies on the work that other people did first. And we just get to walk in their light. You see this and what I see is this person, this person and that person and this person who let me stand on their shoulders, you know? [People say], "Oh my God, look at what you've done. You did it all by yourself."
And I'm like, no. Oh I did not.
How lucky is it that somebody would love your work so much? Right. Like the capacity to see, wow, somebody really, really, really admires your work when I know I was a person that nobody would even want to hear one sentence, and then to arrive at the day where someone's like, let me write down what you're saying. I just think how amazing is that! That this is what's possible. And now to have people in my life that want to hear what I have to say and in some ways I've had to learn how to let that be alright instead of trying to stop that flow and just go, wait a minute, this person loves your work. How amazing is that? So that's one of the things that some of my friends who have supported me have made me realize. It's sort of like a signal that yeah, you're on the right road, you're making a difference, you're offering a possibility for people.
Was there a specific moment or turning point when you realized your voice?
The power of your voice?
It's funny that you're asking. I found my voice when I worked at Safe Place in Austin as a new kind of a therapist. I want to tell you something from this day. The women that were in my first group, most of them, they're still clean and sober and advocates for other women. And I know this because there's a Facebook. That's how I know. But I was afraid of my voice in a way. Because I would be really direct and I would be afraid, oh I'm not compassionate enough. Cause then I had a misunderstanding that compassion meant skipping through the fields and talking in this soft kind of fake spiritual voice or something. And it was with those women that I got to work with - the results of seeing them walk through their own fire and begin to live and pass it on to other women - that's where I learned, oh, I have a voice that makes a difference.
When I think of the last 10 years, it's been an epic journey. It's not too late. When I was 50, it's like my life took off. Like, I make like five times as much money as I used to make. But that's not the barometer. I began to see that when I spoke to groups of people, that it mattered, that it landed on them. And I found flow. Flow is where the spirit of the universe or the creator of the universe just speaks through you. And you have no idea what's going to happen. It's like painting with the Gods. And so it's where all creativity takes place. You're no longer self conscious. You're not afraid of saying the right thing or the wrong thing. You're not having to impress anyone. And it's just like you're really present in a moment of time, and healing just comes through. Your art comes through your music or whatever. Flow is amazing. When I was a singer, finding flow didn't happen as often. But here it's like every time I do a group, that's my art. That's where that sound and the universe, that healing force comes through and it's not traditional. It doesn't follow any rules. I've done my work. I'm very well trained. I'm educated, right? But that's where the healing happens for people. And so I learned how to trust that voice. That isn't mediated. It's like letting go and just trusting that whatever comes through you is right and good, without second guessing.
I read that you help your clients change their state of being.
So what does that mean?
Have you ever been just really mad? I call it jacked up. The problem is how do you recognize when you're in the jacked up state and so that you can have restraint of tongue and pen and not say things. I really know how to do that. I haven't always known how. So when there's a lot of intense energy, I'm in the state of fight or flight and that moment I have to pause when agitated and wait to make any, decisions from that state. The problem is that people don't recognize that they're in the state. And so it's bringing awareness. It's been bringing awareness of how to recognize a sensation and how your voice sounds and how you are when you're living in this other state of being and how to shift it at will, cause sometimes you need to be up there and there are practices that you can do.
I mean meditation is powerful for that because it brings awareness. I want to know how you know you feel that way. How do you know
"When you arrive at a moment of intense suffering, that's not the problem. That's the invitation.
Right there. That pain is a gift that calls your name, that says, 'this is the time that you can wake up!'"
-kathleen murphy
what's going on right now? Is it happening right now or are you tripping? And really to bring a direct awareness of the state of being that you're inhabiting in the current moment.
We often don't live in the current moment. We're just talking about crap all the time and mistaking it for the present. An example, I was working with somebody once and they said they want peace of mind. I'm like, cool, are you having it right now?. And they're like, uh, yeah. Huh. But they didn't recognize it because you're in a steady state of wanting some other thing at some other time. And so it's even to recognize the state that you're actually inhabiting. But we get into these habitual patterns of thought. For me, they're like jails or prisons. It's like being locked inside your own head and you don't even mind and you don't know it. And then what happens often if you say, oh, are you experiencing peace right now? People will say, yeah, but right away they shift into this other and worried about the future, right? There is no future because it's always now, there is no future. And let me just say this. I think therapeutically it's a mistake when you talk about people's feelings all the time when they're in a state of jacked up, it's useless. But if you can teach a person how to shift states, at will, it's like the key to freedom. It's like the key to the universe, but you have to be awake. That's why you need pain. You need pain to help you stay awake.
You've impacted so many lives and you're clearly an incredible force in all the communities you've entered into. What do you primarily credit your motivation to? Like what gets you up in the morning?
Coffee! I'm a very deeply philosophical person, but one day somebody was asking me this question on a job interview. And I thought, what does get me up in the morning? And I thought, well, coffee, because even if I'm really depressed, there's always coffee. So that's actually true.
That might be the most relatable thing anyone's ever said in an interview!
It's the one thing I'm not giving up. Cause I wake up, that's the first thing I do. And then I truly do think like this - Oh my God, another day to learn how to love. How lucky am I!
That's amazing. So what would you say to someone who is at a crossroads in their life, maybe in terms of career or just their life path and they're feeling really discouraged. You have the opportunity to say something to them.
I would probably read you a Dr. Seuss Book. It sounds like you're in the waiting place where everybody's waiting. Right? And that is difficult. It's like when there's a seed underground and it looks like nothing is happening, there's no flower above and it's in the dark, and it's learning how to trust those times. I mean, isn't that the secret to life because those times always end, and if you knew it was going to end, you would enjoy it a little bit more. And it's like trust. Trusting that life force is really moving in that frustration, which is energy, right? Which is trying to drive you forward. And I suppose in those moments I would just look around and see who it is that you can be of service to. And just doing that next thing that's in front of you, doors begin to open. Cause I can tell you this, I did not know where I was going. 49, and then 50, next thing I know, I just follow a path, put one foot in front of the other. All the lights are green. No red lights.
It's like when you're walking in your true walk with yourself, even during the times of silence, which are necessary for the next thing. Learning to trust that those times are vital and necessary. It's the question. It's staying with the question. It's just like a seed. You can't hurry it. But you water it, you be a service. You put one foot in front of the other, you pay attention and you just keep on moving.
So to you, to Kathleen, what does it mean to be powerful?
To make someone's life better, to have the means to create change or better someone else's life. I just want to say this - I got to officiate a wedding this weekend. They asked me because the teachings that I give created more harmony in the relationship of two young people and I think to myself, yeah, I've been a success. That's what it means. That I helped people learn how to love each other better, more deeply, more committed. But I want to say one other thing about power: to recognize it. And a great teacher told me this, if you don't recognize the power that you have or that people give you, you will abuse it unwittingly. Especially if you're a teacher or a therapist or some sort of role model. And it's being responsible to it and for it, and being care filled with it. And that matters because sometimes people go, well, we're all human. But if you agree, if you sign up to take a position of leadership or power, it means that you are called to higher responsibility.
There's a pledge that it's necessary that you take with yourself that you would cause no harm. It's not that we don't cause harm, but that you will truly hold yourself to the power and the responsibility and the boundaries that the position requires. Too often we see people go, I didn't ask for the power, it doesn't matter. .
So you found this group of people. What filled up the space between finding these people and then ending up at age 49 and the turning point?
I was born in New York City in the Bronx, and then my father got a job in Panama, Central America. So I lived there until I was 21, and then after that I lived most of my adult life in Texas. In Austin. And I went to school there, UT Austin. That's one of the greatest gifts of my life right there too, to get an education. I graduated from college when I was 40. And that was because I had the supportive community of people that were dedicated to sobriety and the spiritual awakening that happened to be in a 12 step community. And those were the people that illuminated a path for me to walk on so that I could begin to live the life that I was meant to. And that took years. And so there was just a lot of years of suiting up and showing up and working. Making $10 an hour and things like that.
And then eventually I built a new ground.
Have you seen greater success with your more unique approach to therapy?
To this day, yeah. Cause what I see is like for instance, it's a like lot of times people come because they have a lot of fears. So there's this energy and their relationship to it is this, I want to push it away. I want to get rid of you. But if you push something away, if you push, it's like this is a law of physics that we are subject to. For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. So the stress becomes more intense, not less intense. And so what I notice is I have clients come into a compassionate and accepting relationship. So it's like how to learn to live from a state of love, which doesn't necessarily mean being nice, but it means being authentic and compassionate and kind and gentle and direct. Once you stop that pushing, there's an immediate relaxing that and when the body is in a state of relaxation, the mind shifts naturally. So that you don't have to try hard. It's kind of like when you put your hand on the stove and it burns. You don't have to try to move it. I do the next right thing automatically, and it's true in therapy too.