Facing The Monkey In The Cabinet

What if the pain you keep trying to stop isn’t the problem you’re meant to solve? We open our first episode with the Monkey in the Cabinet, a vivid metaphor for the shock, denial, and compulsive checking that trap spouses of addicts in codependency. From the first gut-punch discovery to the exhausting cycle of confrontation, temporary calm, and fresh chaos, we tell the truth about why control fails and how to step into a different kind of strength.

We share the turning points that changed everything: a counselor naming codependency with disarming clarity, the moment we realized our “savior” stance was fueling the storm, and the decision to stop measuring peace by someone else’s sobriety. Through simple, practical tools—detaching with love, setting clear boundaries, protecting the kids’ stability—we show how to move from crisis management to steady growth. Along the way, we address the heartbreak of spiritual disillusionment and the hope of returning to a grounded identity in Christ that doesn’t rise and fall with another person’s choices.

You’ll hear candid stories, faith-centered insight, and a framework for action you can start today. If you’ve been checking cabinets, searching cars, and sleeping with one eye open, this conversation offers real next steps: download the free codependency guide, explore the Walk Right community, and practice boundaries that honor your values. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help more families find clarity, courage, and healing.

FREE DOWNLOAD- https://funnel.walkrightcommunity.com/guide

www.walkrightministries.com

#walkrightcommunity, #recovery, #addiction #Identity

Transcript

Shock And Denial

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Because now you're in a codependent state of mind with the trauma that you have, and you're like, oh my goodness, she's taken medicine to escape me. She doesn't like me. She's taken medicine because she

Welcome And Mission Of The Show

SPEAKER_00 0:12

doesn't like me. Welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity, a podcast dedicated to providing hope, healing, and support for married individuals whose spouses are battling addiction. Rooted in the truth of your identity in Christ, this podcast offers practical guidance and biblical insight to help you navigate the challenges of addiction within your marriage. Here we'll find encouragement and embrace God's plan for restoration in your life. Let's walk this journey together, one step at a time. Hello, and I want to welcome you to the very first episode of Reclaiming Your Identity Podcast. I'm Steve, and I am super happy that you're here today. Hey, would you please, if you're watching this on YouTube, like, subscribe, and maybe uh forward it to somebody? If you're listening on the podcast platforms, would you please like, subscribe, follow the show? Also, take a moment to follow me on social media. You can find me pretty much everywhere. That would really help me out and really appreciate it and get the word out to help some people that need the help. And there's a lot of us that need the help,

Codependency Defined

SPEAKER_00 1:16

right? Uh, because this show, as you heard, basically for those that are married or partnered with an addict, somebody that's entangled in addiction. And there's plenty of stuff for the addicts out there to try to get help, but what about the people that are entangled with it? So this podcast is a place for that. And again, it's a place for healing, hope, and recovery. I'm super happy that you're here. So, this first episode, we are going to talk about something that people approach me about a lot and ask me to talk about a lot, which is called the monkey in the cabinet. I know it sounds funny, but we'll explain it as we go on with the show because it's very profound and it's very important that you understand what the meaning of this whole story is about the monkey in the cabinet. So before we get into that, let's just talk a little bit about what the problem is with people that are partnered with addicts. Most of them,

Free Guide And Community Invite

SPEAKER_00 2:14

not everybody that is partnered with an addict has codependency, but most of them do. Most people have codependency that are partnered with an addict. And I emphasize that because a lot of us are already stuck in this codependency. We just maybe don't know it. Um, I didn't know I had codependency, but it really flared up when I found out that my ex-wife was an addict. And then for the 13 years that I battled that, this codependency was just like an inferno. So sometimes we don't even know we have it. But a lot of us do have codependency. So if you are letting another person's behavior affect you, or you're obsessed with controlling another person's behavior, you're displaying codependent traits. I like to put it like this. Steve's version's like this. If you're putting all your value and worth into another human being, you're only as good as that human being is. So if you have all your worth and value in somebody that's an addict, and you're gonna be a complete wreck because you're putting all your worth and value into them. You don't know your own worth, you don't know your own value. That's basically codependency, in my words. But codependency has all different kinds of traits, and codependency has all different kinds of aspects to it. And if you go to the link in the show notes, there is a link that I have a free download for people that are married to somebody that's an addict. It is a guide that talks about codependency. It has an evaluation in there about codependency to see maybe if you have some traits, what's going on, and has some great direction on how to get help and healing, which will now I'll point you to the community, the new brand new community, walk right community, which is for those spouses that are trying to find clarity, hope, and healing that are partnered with addicts. So this online community has a bunch of resources, videos, courses that you could take to help you find your true identity in Jesus Christ and be able to move forward from there into healing and transformation. And I wish somebody would have told me about it way before I learned about codependency because I destroyed some of my kids, obviously destroyed my family. But the passion's here to help you, to help you not go through that pain for 13 years to help you not go through that pain as long as I did, and hopefully be able to rectify and save yourself some sanity and your kids, because I know that's a complete hell to walk through. So take a bold step, download that guide, figure out some things that are going on, and then maybe jump into the community. There's a free area of the community. Um jump in there and start your transformation today. Let God get inside of you and transform you. Let him into those deepest, darkest areas that you just block out, and let him get there and give you some peace and hope. I promise you, it will happen. Totally transformed, totally 180 from where I was when I was battling that over 15 years ago.

Discovering The Pills

SPEAKER_00 5:38

But let's talk about the monkey in the cabinet because I know that you're all probably still thinking, what this is going to be interesting. So let's talk about it. I was married to a person that became an addict about three years into our marriage. I didn't realize or find this out until I was trying to find something in the basement. And I went down and then I found a couple of grocery bags, plastic bags filled with all the prescriptions. Back in the 90s, you were able to go get your prescriptions and they'd staple everything to it. The doctor, the amount of the pills, what kind of pills they were, and they stapled it all together. Well, for some reason, my ex-wife kept all these in a bag. I mean, there was just tons of them. And I started looking at all this stuff, and it was all pain medication, all narcotics, and started looking at this stuff, and it's like, well, 120 pills here, 90 pills here. She was doctor shopping. It was very popular to doctor shop back then. And all the networks weren't connected, and and so you can go to four or five different doctors and complain about your ailments and get all these medicines. Well, anyway, I found that. I found all of that.

The Monkey In The Cabinet Metaphor

SPEAKER_00 6:46

I had to process all of that, and that is the moment you realize there's a monkey in the cabinet. You see, you walk into the kitchen and you open the cabinet door, and the monkey's there with a hammer, and he smacks you right on the head. Wow, that kind of hurts. I don't like that. And you kind of shut the cabinet and you walk away. And that's the point where you're trying to process all this stuff. And I was in shock, I was in denial, I didn't believe it, I didn't want to believe it. And you kind of go through that phase for a little bit, and then I walked back into the cabinet, opened it up, smack. Ow, man, the monkey hit me again, shut the cabinet, and I ran. And that's when you realize, yeah, this is true. This is really happening. What am I gonna do? Is it gonna go away? Maybe it'll just go away. Maybe it's just for a season, maybe I'll just go away. So I'm gonna go back into the kitchen, open up the cabinet. There's the monkey, bam, ow, hit me again. That hurts. Why do I keep doing that? And then you realize that this thing is ongoing, it's not gonna stop. And depending on where you are in life and where you are in that moment, that monkey in the cabinet can be there for a very long time, like it was for me. Because you now approach the person,

Confrontation And Short-Term Recovery

SPEAKER_00 8:17

your spouse, and you say, Hey, I found this out, and there's denial and fights and everything, and it was just you don't know how that's gonna go, and that is so stressful. So some people are afraid to even approach that at some point, especially with codependency. But I approached it, and it didn't go well, and I ended up leaving. I moved out for about a week, and I think it's what scared her at first, and she decided to go to an outpatient place and and get some help. And that was great, she did, and she got help, and we were able to move forward for a little bit, and you go back into the kitchen a little bit later, and you open up the cabinet just to make sure, and the monkey's still there, and he hits you right smack in the forehead, hurts again. You're like, wow, I really thought this monkey was gone. I really thought that I wasn't gonna get hit again. I thought that the outpatient would help. I thought that the recovery would help, I thought that this would help, I thought this would help, and that comes to the point where it's like, okay, I've got to take care of this monkey myself. And you start battling this monkey in the cabinet, and you just can't fight it off, and you shut the cabinet and you walk away. And you gotta figure out a different way to get the monkey, and you go back in and open the

Fighting The Monkey And Chaos

SPEAKER_00 9:39

cabinet, he hits you again, you're fighting, wrestling with him, and it's just it's just complete chaos. Complete chaos with this monkey. So I want to reiterate the monkey in the cabinet and getting hit is just when you've come to the real realization that, wow, my spouse is an addict. My spouse is an addict, what am I gonna do? And then maybe you get some help. But the most important thing is the monkey's always there, the monkey's never gonna leave. And you can go in and keep checking on it, and it's gonna hit you in the head and it's gonna hurt, but it's never gonna leave, it's always gonna be there. And when you are codependent, you have a trait, some people, I did, have a trait that I'm gonna turn into the savior. I'm gonna be the one fixing it. So then, not knowing I had codependency, I just jump into action because I generally care about this person and I'm gonna fix this person. And it turns into a toxic relationship because the addictive personality in her is fighting a codependency personality in me. You're gonna stop the addiction. No, I'm not. Oh, yes, you are. No, I'm not. Yes, you are, and that goes back and forth and back and forth. It's that monkey in the cabinet just keeps hitting you in the head, and there's no way around it, and you got to find a way to get this monkey out. You gotta kill this monkey. I mean, you just gotta get it.

Firehouse Analogy And Burnout

SPEAKER_00 11:14

So I describe it like a burning house. You stay inside and try to rescue everyone yourself. You're battling the smoke, you're battling the flames. You have a little garden hose that you're gonna use to put this fire out, right? You just bring it inside, you turn it on, and boom. Reminds me of the episode of uh Everybody Loves Raymond when he lights the curtains and the kitchen on fire with all the grease, and he runs out to get the hose and comes halfway through the family room and falls because it's a shortened hose, and he's trying to squirt from the family room to the kitchen. Just a complete mess. Funny, but in real life it's not funny for us. But that's what we're doing in this fire. And you can you can't find your family in the smoke with your only your iPhone flashlight, you know, that's all you got, and you're trying to find your family, you're trying to save everybody and control all this. The house is burning, the smoke's filling up. If you don't go outside and call 911 and call a professional to come help you, you're all gonna burn up. You're all gonna go into flames. And that's what codependency does inside of an addiction. Because you're all gonna go down with the ship, so to say. Because you keep going back in the kitchen to see if the monkey's there, and you keep going back in the kitchen to find out if you can get this monkey out of the cabinet, and it's just not gonna work.

Losing Sight Of God

SPEAKER_00 12:44

So before long, you may realize that God's not in the picture, God's nowhere in this picture. Where is he? And you start convincing yourself that you've just got to even take more control of the situation because now you've turned yourself away from God. Maybe you don't even know God, but if you did and you turn yourself away because he's not fixing it, he's not fixing her, what's going on? Because now you're in a codependent state of mind with the trauma that you have, and you're like, oh my goodness, she's taking medicine to escape me. She doesn't like me, she's taking medicine because she doesn't like me. I mean, it's amazing what codependency does with your less than thoughts. And when you're in that situation, you keep trying to go fix the monkey. I've that's the number one focus. I've gotta take care of the monkey. I gotta get the monkey out of the cabinet. I can't have the monkey keep hitting me in the head. That is what's destroying this family, that's what's destroying everything. It's your fault, your monkey. We've got to get a way to stop this. You see, I believed in Jesus for a long time. I followed Jesus and his teachings. I was a pastor, I was hiding from the entire church and my church plant and on my radio ministry that I had a wife that was an addict and that we were battling. And while I loved people at church and showed them Jesus and tried to help them and watched God transform all of them, I was so pissed off that he wasn't transforming us,

Savior Complex And Toxic Dance

SPEAKER_00 14:28

and he wasn't fixing her. And why in the heck aren't you fixing her? And that's why I walked away. You're not gonna help me, I'm gonna do it on my own. I don't even think you're real because you're not helping any of this. And I walked away. We have to come to the realization that the monkey's not the focus. I know that's hard to believe sometimes when you're in that mess, but the monkey is not the focus. You're not gonna stop the monkey. You have to stop going into the kitchen to look in the cabinet. That's where true healing's gonna come. That's where you're gonna save yourself. And when you can unplug from that, that's when clarity starts to happen. Now, some people can just come to the realization of that. Unfortunately, I didn't, and I had to go to a Christian counselor and have them slap it out of me that this was what was going on, because I only went to a counselor because I'm a man, I don't need counseling, right? I don't I don't need any of that. I'm strong enough, I know what I'm doing. And I go to a counselor and I'm there for 15 minutes. He's like, Yeah, you're a codependent. You are causing just as much destruction as your wife is, you're destroying your family just as much as she is. You're only using emotions and not a drug.

Counselor’s Wake-Up Call

SPEAKER_00 16:09

I was like, wow, I was pissed off. Um, I hired you to be on my side to go attack my wife and to validate that I was right and she was wrong, and that she needs to go get help because if I have somebody that is a counselor that's telling my wife that she's wrong too, maybe that will work. What a mess that we're in. So I go home and I f look up codependency and I figure out what it is and I trace it to every single relationship I've had. I'm like, wow, I needed validation in everything I did. Wow. And it just was gonna be a long road. I just knew it was gonna be a long road. And it was a great road of recovery, though, because when I did come back to God and I did allow him in, he showed me that he didn't want me to focus on the monkey. He wanted to focus, he wanted me to focus on me. And that whole time that I'm mad at him and cursing him and blaming him and saying, you know, why are you doing this to my wife? Why is this going on? Why is this going on? He's like, all I wanted to do was talk to you. I'm I'm worried about your heart and your condition, and I want to save you

Turning Back To God And Identity

SPEAKER_00 17:31

from any further destruction. See, because once you can realize that Jesus has always been actively present within you and that your identity is with him, it changes your worldly view, it changes your view of how you see yourself, it changes your view on how you see people, and it's so transforming. And we'll talk about that more in different episodes, but you know, the monkey in the cabinet is so true in many families that have addiction. You come to find this monkey, it hurts, it hits you every time you open it, you fight with it, it wins all the time. You're gonna find a way to make it go away, it never goes away. You're gonna find a way to stop it, it never stops, you're gonna find a way to manipulate so you can just have it your way, and it just never works. And the next thing you know, it's 13 years later, and you're a wreck, your kids are a wreck, and you've gotten nowhere. Folks, you have to stop looking for trying to control the monkey. You have to focus on yourself. You have to save yourself. You have to find clarity in yourself before you can make any other decision on your family in what direction you're gonna go. And I pray that you can find that clarity

Stop Controlling Start Healing

SPEAKER_00 19:05

someday. And I pray that you will just take a step back and look at the destructive behaviors that your kids are seeing. That's my passion now is to help stop that. Because I was a pastor at a church. I was working for God and I'd come home and be a complete jerk to my kids and to my wife because I didn't know how to control the monkey. I didn't know how to deal with those emotions with the monkey. So I just took it out on everybody around me. That's not transformed. That's not transformed at all. You have to let God in. And you have to surrender. And all these things with addiction and step work is the same thing with codependency. You have to just surrender and believe that God wants to rid you of anything that's not who you were created to be. That's not part of your true image. So stop looking for the monkey. Stop trying to control the monkey and focus on yourself.

Protecting Kids And Breaking Patterns

SPEAKER_00 20:19

And this is a great time to again to remind you to check the show notes and download that free guide that I wrote. I wrote this guide that will help you identify everything that I've talked about today, and also give you an evaluation that you can take on yourself to see if you have any of the same crazy you know traits that I had. But also gives you a way out. It also gives you a way to start the process to find healing, hope, and clarity in your life. Again, please like, subscribe, share this episode. I know there's so many hurting people as I speak right now. There are so many husbands and wives that are partnered with somebody that's an addict and they don't know where to turn, they don't know what to do, their life's fallen apart, their kids are falling apart, they're they're just going down with the ship, they're burning up with the house. So send it to them. But I want to create a movement that will start helping and healing people and showing them their true identity and who they were meant to be and their identity in Jesus Christ. Because that's the healing, transforming power that we're all gonna have. And that's what I have. And I love to tell you more about

Surrender And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 21:32

my story and my transformation and all that on future episodes. So please come back, please listen, please reach out if you have any questions. Walk Right Ministries is the web page. You can find all information there about me and the things I support, the things that I do, the community, speaking engagements, all that. But I want to thank you for listening to the first episode The Monkey in the Cabinet. Yes, it's weird, but it's very true, and it's in a lot of People's lives, and uh we'll catch you on the next episodes. And remember, you're always loved, you're always holy. I'll see you in the next episode. God bless

Resources And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_00 22:25

you.