We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Layne LoMaglio. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Layne below.

Hi Layne, thanks for joining us today. Is there a heartwarming story from your career that you look back on?

There are too many heartwarming stories of the people I’ve come in contact with through my work, but I wanted to share how I came into this work. I got sober at 18 years old, and at 19 I began working in the addiction and mental health field as a tech at the treatment center I went through. Over the years, I worked at various different treatment centers across central Texas until I had a relapse in 2014. After attempting to get sober again through traditional treatment, I ended up getting picked up by the state of Texas for a stay in the luxurious Texas Department of Criminal Justice. During that stay, which lasted a year, I decided if I were going to continue living, I needed to be sober in recovery. But the Texas prison system doesn’t offer any of the tools I was taught I must have in order to successfully live sober, so I had to improvise and find my own way. I had to find a way to inner peace and solace without meetings, a sponsor or sponsoring others. After my release, I went back into the field of traditional residential and outpatient treatment where eventually I worked up to several different director roles. But what I was witnessing were hundreds of patients getting treatment, then coming back, and then coming back again. People were not finding long-term recovery and the treatment centers were not changing course with these patients to help them. That’s when I decided to use what I learned in prison and other stints of sobriety to help people one on one find not only recovery, but a fulfilling and meaningful life and breaking out of the revolving door that is much of our industry today.

Layne, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Layne LoMaglio and I’m a recovery/mental health coach and interventionist. I started Helm Recovery because, as a person in long term recovery and having been in the addiction field for over a decade, I have seen what we are failing at with helping people overcome addiction and mental health challenges. I provide a catered, bespoke approach to each of my clients and their families in dealing with the immediate crisis of addiction and mental health challenges followed by long term coaching to make and achieve goals they never thought were possible. I provide a layer of compassionate and understanding empowerment and accountability in a world full of shame-based stigma. Helm Recovery builds a road map with each client centered around the 8 dimensions of wellness to find passions, stabilize relationships, build trust, start careers, and overall live life to the fullest. I meet with each client twice per week face to face where we can engage in experiential sessions, go over past goals and set new ones. I work with the families as well because recovery is a team effort and each member of the family deserves to get well.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

In my field, there are no weekends and no guaranteed nights off. Addiction and mental health challenges do not take breaks so we always have to be at the ready. What helped build my reputation is the fact that no matter the time of day or severity of the case, I will always be there and be willing to jump in and take action. I have flown to Georgia at the drop of a dime and waited outside of a jail for 5 hours to make sure a client received the help they needed.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Recovery is not linear and there is no one path. Growing up in the type of recovery that I did, I was taught that there is one way of recovery and other ways are inferior. After having to find my own recovery (again) without the tools I thought I once needed, I discovered that the holistic way that I had found was not inferior or superior to what I had before, but was just different and took on new meaning in my life.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.helmrecovery.com
• Instagram: @helm_recovery
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/helmrecovery
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/helm-recovery/

Image Credits
Sam Ehrnstein