The Peter Attia Drive - #339 - Unpacking trauma： How early wounds shape behavior and the path toward healing

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

00:00:16.540 my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity

00:00:21.520 into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and

00:00:26.720 wellness, and we've established a great team of analysts to make this happen. It is extremely

00:00:31.660 important to me to provide all of this content without relying on paid ads. To do this, our work

00:00:36.960 is made entirely possible by our members, and in return, we offer exclusive member-only content

00:00:42.700 and benefits above and beyond what is available for free. If you want to take your knowledge of

00:00:47.940 this space to the next level, it's our goal to ensure members get back much more than the price

00:00:53.200 of the subscription. If you want to learn more about the benefits of our premium membership,

00:00:58.000 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. My guest this week is Jeff English.

00:01:06.440 Jeff is a trauma-focused clinical counselor with extensive experience working with adults, teens,

00:01:11.560 families, and groups. He's worked in multiple settings, including career counseling, life

00:01:16.880 coaching, addiction, recovery, professional workshops, and private practice. He's a licensed

00:01:21.760 professional clinical counselor, a nationally certified counselor, and a certified clinical

00:01:25.980 trauma professional. He's an outreach specialist at the Bridge to Recovery, a residential workshop

00:01:30.640 for individuals suffering from the effects of trauma. I met Jeff in 2017 when I attended the Bridge

00:01:36.180 to Recovery as a client, and we've stayed in close touch ever since. In this episode with Jeff,

00:01:40.920 we discuss the profound impact of trauma and the impact that it has on certain individuals. Jeff shares

00:01:46.480 insights from his experience as a trauma therapist, diving into how moments of perceived helplessness

00:01:51.740 shape our behaviors and how those adaptive strategies can become maladaptive behaviors over

00:01:57.140 time. We explore the concept of the trauma tree examining its roots and its branches, and there's a

00:02:02.820 great framework that they use at the Bridge to Recovery that I still find to be probably the most helpful

00:02:06.780 in explaining what trauma is and how it manifests. Jeff reflects on the transformative power of group

00:02:13.920 therapy in particular at the Bridge to Recovery, and we discuss briefly some of the challenges

00:02:18.680 and breakthroughs that can occur in that sort of a setting. We speak about the role of vulnerability

00:02:22.880 in fostering connection and the challenges in letting go of control, the path from understanding

00:02:27.960 to action in trauma integration. Jeff offers advice on how to find a great trauma therapist,

00:02:34.220 balancing personal growth within relationships and recognizing when it's time to seek help.

00:02:38.780 This is kind of a heartfelt and deeply insightful conversation for anyone grappling with

00:02:42.880 disconnection or seeking to better understand the complexities of their own experience and their own

00:02:48.140 journey of healing. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Jeff English.

00:02:57.640 Jeff.

00:02:58.700 Peter.

00:02:59.520 Kind of hard to believe we're sitting here, huh?

00:03:01.020 Yeah. It is hard to believe. It's amazing. It's good to see you.

00:03:05.720 Likewise. I thought long and hard about how I wanted to structure our discussion today,

00:03:11.080 knowing that this was a conversation I've wanted to have for a very long time. Maybe the easiest way to

00:03:15.840 start is just to talk a little bit about this loaded word of trauma. When I first was introduced to this

00:03:21.420 idea of trauma, I didn't know what it meant. And I think today it's become such a catchy buzzword that

00:03:29.400 everybody is traumatized by something. And I don't know if that represents a pendulum swing or a

00:03:34.180 normalization or what, but why don't we just start with how you describe trauma as a trauma therapist and

00:03:40.360 as someone who's been doing trauma therapy for many years, not just in the recent trendy years for

00:03:46.440 whatever that means. But how do you describe this to people?

00:03:48.920 Well, I would have described it the same way that you described it initially back in the day, trauma.

00:03:53.880 I have to have been at Vietnam, wartime, 9-11. These are those big T traumas. You hear some folks use

00:04:01.200 that type of terminology, but within the spirit of the work, the knee to knee work, really embracing a

00:04:08.240 definition, moments of perceived helplessness. That's what's going to activate the limbic system.

00:04:15.120 So who is to say what one limbic system evaluates as helplessness versus another? That's when we get

00:04:23.160 into this, I think, discovery of most of the people that I meet have been meeting over the last several

00:04:30.120 years are the ones, wow, I think I did experience trauma. You mentioned it's a much more popular thing.

00:04:37.420 And now are we trending in a different direction? So in a lot of my work with clients individually or

00:04:42.400 groups, I say, I hate to oversimplify things, but I think sometimes we just make things too damn

00:04:48.020 complex. A lot of what I do is try to depolarize for folks. And we're getting into these situations to

00:04:56.020 where we live in this world of get over it. It doesn't matter versus like you mentioned, perhaps

00:05:02.300 stay stuck in it. But yeah, moments of perceived helplessness, activating that limbic system.

00:05:09.420 These things can happen sometimes at the bridge. You remember we talked about wounding events and

00:05:15.740 one of those would be a tragic event. Life seems to be going one way before this thing happens. And

00:05:21.640 then this thing happens and life changes and everything is different on the other side of that.

00:05:25.960 A big T event versus someone again, who maybe you could describe it as a thousand paper cuts.

00:05:34.100 Someone growing up, going through childhood daily, being limbically activated, but moments of perceived

00:05:41.340 helplessness that stuck for me. And it's stuck for a lot of clients.

00:05:45.340 So I've written about this in the book, which is that you and I met at a place called the bridge

00:05:51.080 to recovery in December of 2017, seven years ago. That was a very hard chapter for me to write.

00:05:57.660 And one I wrote somewhat reluctantly, but also in the end felt I couldn't not write it. So the book

00:06:03.400 was incomplete without that chapter. Maybe we can even frame this discussion around how a place like

00:06:09.440 that comes to exist and how therapists like you work at places like that. I'll throw one idea out

00:06:16.720 that's worth discussing, but it's literally one of a hundred, which is it might be shocking to some

00:06:21.920 to realize how much group therapy is done at a place like the bridge to recovery. In fact, as I

00:06:28.100 looked through my journal, which I brought back looking through the notes, it's amazing how complex it

00:06:33.660 was for me to be able to open up in front of a group and how I spent the first few days

00:06:39.300 saying virtually nothing, largely because of that discomfort. Maybe tell folks a little bit about

00:06:45.720 the bridge, the type of work that's done there. I forget exactly how I described it in the book,

00:06:50.380 but I described it as this wonderful, horrible place in the woods of Bowling Green, Kentucky.

00:06:56.000 Some folks call it a residential treatment. Some people call it trauma camp. There's a lot of

00:07:01.440 different names. I wrote some other names down here. Do you want to know what I have? I have

00:07:05.120 camp misery, the sadness factory, and the tree of pain. Those are the names I wrote down for the

00:07:12.480 place. And I couldn't argue with any of those. So what is it? It could be described as residential

00:07:17.700 treatment. And I would describe it as residential treatment for disconnection. I think when most

00:07:23.660 folks think of disconnection, they get a little like, well, that's vague. But when most folks think

00:07:29.040 about residential treatment, we tend to jump to substance abuse. That's where people go so that

00:07:34.620 they can go away and get sober. Oftentimes the question would be like, well, why would somebody

00:07:39.680 go to a place like this that's not an addict? I want to use that type of terminology. Disconnection

00:07:45.420 is just the concept that's used at the bridge. And one way of disconnecting is substance abuse,

00:07:51.320 but also screens, sex, relationships, ego, anger. So you just take away the substance,

00:08:01.180 take away the word alcohol and plug in whatever word you want to. You mentioned the group process.

00:08:07.640 So you might have a group of eight folks and there may be three folks in there that identify as

00:08:12.700 substance abusers. And there could be two workaholics in that room. The commonality within the circle is

00:08:19.040 going to be, you may disconnect differently than I do, Peter. But the commonality is, is that

00:08:25.420 especially when life throws us a curve ball, this disconnected version of me seems to come out,

00:08:31.380 jump in my driver's seat, if you will. And that's probably been happening a lot as far as acuity goes,

00:08:36.960 if that's how you find yourself at the bridge. The old saying is nobody gets there because it's a slow

00:08:41.740 Monday. Okay. And then the big word that you use, which I think there's a part of me that wants to say

00:08:47.280 like, Ooh, don't give away the secrets. Let the magic happen. But I also going through the program

00:08:53.340 to work there and know that you can know everything that's going to happen. And then you start going

00:08:58.320 through the process and discomfort's what it's all about. That's when my stuff comes up. So that's

00:09:04.200 the whole idea. If you remember admissions days on a Monday, so we would usually meet the groups by

00:09:10.540 Tuesday, countless times. I've tried to help talk folks off the ledge of leaving. In summary, their reason,

00:09:18.780 all of them, different details. But I came to the bridge and my anxiety was at a seven. Right now, I think

00:09:24.500 it's a nine. I need to get the heck out of here. This place ain't for me. And sometimes they look at me like

00:09:29.300 I've got two heads when I say, you know, actually, you're providing the evidence that this is exactly the type of

00:09:35.920 place for you. That first day there, that Monday, it's a very unpleasant day, I'm sure for everybody.

00:09:41.920 I don't think that's a stretch to take my experience and say that that was unique. Maybe it's worth

00:09:47.420 explaining what are the objectives of this phase one that you describe? From the beginning, I would say

00:09:53.380 getting my history straight, the telling of my life story. Seems simple. Several folks, many folks have

00:10:00.000 done it before, but within and through the lens of what we introduce as far as the trauma tree that

00:10:06.760 you referred to. It's the what happened to me story. And so many of us for so many years, sometimes

00:10:13.980 decades, have been telling the story of what's wrong with me. And so from the very beginning, the shift,

00:10:19.960 the hope is to move a little bit closer to what happened to me. Not within the spirit of an excuse,

00:10:24.620 but an explanation. Oh, wait a second. It makes sense that I do this thing now. There was a utility

00:10:31.520 to this behavior. The group process, it just brings up the stuff. I call them the guards. Parts therapists

00:10:39.160 will call them protective parts. And this isn't new. We use terminology that's new, but it's ego states.

00:10:45.780 But when I say guard, this protective side of Jeff that comes up when he gets vulnerable. And when do I

00:10:51.540 get vulnerable? Typically when I get dropped into a different situation. So that first week,

00:10:56.440 I'm going to live with some new people. I'm going to eat with some new people. I'm going to share a

00:11:01.640 story, share deep information about myself. And that's really the objective is to start within

00:11:08.300 the technical thing that's happening therapeutically is there's a window of tolerance that we all don't

00:11:12.360 have. And so don't want to drop into week two work when we start doing these experiential

00:11:17.720 therapies. But within the spirit of a window of tolerance and experiential therapy, telling your

00:11:23.580 life story is experiential therapy. The content's important, Peter, but so many times the way the

00:11:31.680 story is told is more important or as important, at least as the content of the life story.

00:11:37.620 You talked about the trauma tree. Maybe we can describe the roots and branches of that tree in

00:11:43.360 some detail because that is kind of the meta structure that I think that story gets told.

00:11:48.560 It's the cause and effect piece of it. At least that's how I sort of came to understand it.

00:11:53.100 I've seen many different ways that trauma is described. Obviously, since I left the bridge,

00:12:00.420 it's a topic I'm personally very interested in for myself, for patients, et cetera. Jeff,

00:12:05.000 I always come back to that structure and I think it is the single best one I've seen.

00:12:08.620 Now that doesn't mean that it is the best one. It's just the one that resonates the most

00:12:12.960 with me because causality means so much in my world. And I like the idea that even though it's

00:12:22.060 not a one-to-one mapping, everyone who experiences this trauma will have this manifestation. Clearly

00:12:28.820 not. But if you accept a little bit of the randomness in the system, it's pretty powerful.

00:12:34.200 So maybe walk people through the five roots and the four branches of the trauma tree.

00:12:39.480 The five roots of the trauma tree, that's the what happened to me. This can be seen through the

00:12:45.000 lens of trauma. And for folks where trauma is just too big of a word, can you believe I'm saying that

00:12:49.580 on this podcast? But okay, then lose it. Highly stressful events. So abuse tends to be the one

00:12:56.100 that we talk really the least about at the bridge because that's the one that folks tend to know the

00:13:01.400 most about. That's not to mean that we minimize it. There's just so many different forms of abuse,

00:13:06.380 physical, emotional, abject, social. You move over from abuse and you look at something like

00:13:14.100 neglect, which can be very tricky. So many folks that have experienced neglect, it's an eye-opening

00:13:20.180 experience. Because while something like abuse is something that happened to me, neglect is something

00:13:26.020 that failed to happen for me. And so to see that through the lens of high stress or pain, so many

00:13:33.220 different ways one can be neglected. An example that's used there is the little boy that is going

00:13:40.120 to school and he's being bullied. And he's got these parents who are professionals and they're

00:13:46.760 successful and they're busy and they've got the best of intentions, but they're missing it. They're

00:13:52.140 missing the look on this kid's face when he comes in every day and before he gets on that bus every

00:13:57.360 morning. That question's not being asked. What's happening? And so every day, this little person's

00:14:03.880 being required to go to this place where this thing's going to happen. And evidently, these folks

00:14:10.580 at my house don't have time. And it's important to emphasize, I think, the word intention, because

00:14:17.020 intention is not required. How many times have I said, have I heard, well, they had the best of

00:14:23.320 intentions? It still happened. Or in the case of neglect, it failed to happen. Enmeshment. That's

00:14:31.340 a wounding experience where you've got a boundary violation. So that can happen within the spirit of

00:14:38.880 what we call emotional incest, where a child is put in an age-inappropriate position. Maybe the child

00:14:46.880 becomes best friend, counselor, and confidant for a mom or dad. And then you've just got this engulfing

00:14:53.300 enmeshment, which happens a lot of times in successful families where outcomes and expectations

00:15:01.080 are celebrated and they're not so much the journey. And so that engulfing enmeshment can be one of

00:15:06.900 those situations where this is the way to be. More of a me, mini-me relationship between a parent and a

00:15:12.900 child instead of that I-thou relationship. And in those situations with enmeshment, what typically

00:15:18.680 happens is we either drink the Kool-Aid and get on board with it, or what do we do? We rebel. And I'm

00:15:24.620 not going to do anything that looks anything like this. Neither of those things is probably who I was

00:15:28.120 meant to develop into. I think probably, in my opinion, the umbrella wound, we're talking about

00:15:35.000 the tree, the root of the tree, would be abandonment. And physical desertion or abandonment,

00:15:42.380 that's low-hanging fruit as far as, I think, the general public and knowledge, yes, when somebody

00:15:47.280 leaves. Permanent abandonment, obviously someone passes away. There's death. There's seasonal.

00:15:54.000 Folks leave for work. Military deployment. Folks go to prison. Parents get separated. Parents leave,

00:16:01.500 come back. Now, emotional abandonment, that's that situation where someone's there, but they're really

00:16:06.700 not there. And this emotional self gets denied. And a lot of times when you're emotionally abandoned,

00:16:13.120 it can be a situation where it's emotionally cut back, meaning the house I grew up in, we did anger.

00:16:21.680 That's what we did. Wasn't okay to be sad. Wasn't okay to be scared, but we did anger. So it wasn't

00:16:27.240 like we were emotion-free. It was just, we were cut back to that one. That's the one that I saw the most.

00:16:32.400 And then sometimes it's just the situation where it's cut off and it's blank and no emotion.

00:16:38.820 And I mentioned already the tragic event root of that trauma tree. And so I guess what I mean by

00:16:45.360 the abandonment for me being this umbrella wound is, is when you abuse me, you abandon me. I keep

00:16:52.400 going to parents because those are the folks that we spend the most of our time with in those formative

00:16:57.260 years. But any of these wounds can happen with anybody in our life. And they can also happen any

00:17:03.260 time in life. It's not limited to childhood. When you get something happening, when the brain and the

00:17:09.680 body's developing, it gets concrete, that gets cemented, it gets burnt in. That thing that I'm

00:17:16.240 talking about getting burnt in is how I adapted. I mentioned that the question is what happened to me,

00:17:22.520 but I believe the most important discovery is how I adapted. When you talk about that tree,

00:17:32.520 we're talking about the roots being the wounding experiences. And then that top of that tree is

00:17:38.000 the manifestations, if you will, of the woundedness. This is how I survived. And so you have codependence,

00:17:45.340 you have addictive patterns, you have attachment issues, and a whole slew of just survival strategies,

00:17:54.560 maladaptive survival strategies. And as I say that word maladaptive, I want to wash my mouth out with

00:18:01.720 soap because they are ingenious damage control strategies. The way I describe them, it's an old

00:18:09.820 friend that served me well, and perhaps now it's making life hard. The best example of I can

00:18:15.260 give is of a four-year-old boy spending a lot of time in his bedroom, playing with the door closed,

00:18:21.620 playing loud, so that he doesn't have to hear what's going on in the rest of the house.

00:18:26.820 And then one particular day, he hears his mother in a voice he hasn't ever heard before,

00:18:33.760 tell his father that she thinks her arm's going to be broken, and he has to open the door.

00:18:38.420 And when he opens the door, he sees his mother up against the refrigerator.

00:18:41.600 And the boy's father, he's got her in a hammerlock, arms behind her. And the little boy's got to do

00:18:48.760 something. And he's really outgunned, because let's say dad's 35, and he's four. So he starts

00:18:55.020 walking towards them. And the first room on the right is the bathroom. And he goes into the bathroom,

00:19:00.920 and he lifts the lid on the toilet, and he feigns, fakes, acts as if he's vomiting. And the next

00:19:07.900 thing he hears is, do you hear that? Your son's getting sick. And dad lets mom go. Now, does the

00:19:14.400 boy go back into his bedroom and get out a little journal and write down, manipulation and deception

00:19:20.140 are very effective in life? Probably not. But I say he learned a powerful lesson that day about

00:19:26.260 deception and manipulation. It got him out of trouble. It got his mom out of trouble that day.

00:19:32.440 An old friend that served him well, but perhaps is making life hard. Because healthy folks in adult

00:19:39.820 relationships, Peter, they don't dig deception and manipulation. So that's where my old friend

00:19:45.580 can get in my driver's seat, you could say, and make life hard for me. But a very adaptive skill. I

00:19:52.960 would call it a skill. Some folks would use the language of a character defect. I'm not against that

00:19:57.840 language. I just prefer a skill. I really think that's a powerful bucket because it has enough

00:20:05.480 breadth to include things that don't easily pathologize. Maybe for the sake of completeness,

00:20:13.180 we could just go back and talk about the codependencies, addictions, and attachment issues.

00:20:18.380 I think everybody's familiar with the terminology, but just as within abuse, there are things that

00:20:23.660 people don't quite think. Everybody thinks of sexual and physical abuse. Very few people think of

00:20:27.140 emotional abuse or religious abuse, those kinds of things. So similarly, maybe talk through the

00:20:32.060 breadth of what we think of as addiction, codependency, and attachment disorders.

00:20:37.460 Codependency, the spirit of it, and it's not my definition. It's an old one, but it's the one I

00:20:42.380 prefer. It's an outer reach for inner security. I can't draw that thing from inside of me. I have to

00:20:49.440 get that from something or someone else. You let Jeff know he's okay. I can be okay. But if you're not

00:20:56.720 okay with Jeff, it's hard for me to be okay with Jeff. That's a blanket summary, and I think an

00:21:02.940 accurate summary of codependence. And your addictive patterns, addictions, addictive patterns, I mean,

00:21:07.900 again, these can be substances. These can be process. When I talk about the ego states, the parts,

00:21:13.920 my guards, those parts of me that jump in my driver's seat, I look at those through the lens of

00:21:20.040 addictive patterns because it's that concept of powerlessness. You'll hear folks that are in the

00:21:27.400 programs, such as 12-step programs, they talk about being powerless to something, to get into the

00:21:33.340 surrender of being powerless. Well, you can just take the word alcohol, remove it, and replace it

00:21:38.640 with whatever that behavior is. It's the thing that I do. It's not a bad thing that I can do it sometimes.

00:21:44.800 The problem is I can't not do it. So again, this could be work. This could be ambition. This could be

00:21:50.040 anger. This could be many things. And usually, these things, they're there for a reason. And

00:21:55.780 again, we're back to vulnerability is the enemy. So the goal of all of these maladaptive coping skills,

00:22:03.200 patterns, whatever we want to call them, is we've got to keep Jeff from being vulnerable. We've got to

00:22:08.800 keep that little boy that had that situation with his mother in that refrigerator. We've had a bad

00:22:13.960 experience with vulnerability. So all these parts of me that step in to my driver's seat, they've got a

00:22:19.700 goal. They do their job in different ways, but the goal is to keep me from being vulnerable.

00:22:24.760 Attachment styles. You get four books, you're probably going to get four different numbers of

00:22:29.420 attachment styles. I like simplicity. You'll probably hear me say that more than once. But

00:22:34.080 simplicity, like three most popular. So you've got anxious attachment. It can be clingy, it can be

00:22:39.940 charming, it can look a lot of different ways. But the more of me I give to you, the more of you I expect

00:22:45.100 from you, that's going to be the best chance to keep this thing going. Now, avoidant attachment,

00:22:50.280 the distance. I can be in a relationship and still not give you all of me. I can be with a person,

00:22:56.740 but still have distance. And then there's, I'm not crazy about it, but disorganized attachment,

00:23:02.000 which is a mixed bag of, come here, come here, come here. Now get away. Get you close. Now I need you

00:23:07.200 to get back. That's what happens, unfortunately, with these wounding situations. The thing that we were

00:23:13.760 created for, belonging, connection. Oftentimes that gets coupled with fear. So that's a powerful thing

00:23:22.660 when you get fear, intensity, things of that coupled with belonging. You can have 10 different

00:23:29.140 attachment styles, unhealthy attachment styles, if you will. But the commonality, the common denominator

00:23:35.260 is going to be the insecurity. They may play out differently behaviorally, but it's the insecurity.

00:23:40.480 Well, what does secure attachment look like, Jeff? Well, I don't know. I don't meet those people.

00:23:45.460 But it exists because those folks have trust. And if we go back to the tree, I often think that the

00:23:51.140 wounds or the roots that you keep referring to, it's really the story of my broken trust. How did my

00:23:57.160 trust get broken? And here are all these things that I do ingeniously to handle that.

00:24:03.520 Jeff, when we examine ourselves or we examine or witness others where one or more of the branches

00:24:11.120 of the tree, i.e. the manifestations of trauma are present, is it your belief that that automatically

00:24:17.920 implies there is at least one tie to a root? In other words, is there a scenario whereby these

00:24:25.420 manifestations exist minus the injuring events?

00:24:29.360 I mean, I suppose anything's possible. But with the folks that I've met cross paths with had the

00:24:36.760 honor to work with therapeutically, there's typically always a connection. It gets so tricky

00:24:44.780 because it doesn't really need to be an A plus B equals C. The science of this undoes itself,

00:24:51.320 so to speak. When you bring this up, this question up for me, it brings up a stumbling block that I've

00:24:57.660 witnessed a lot with clients within the spirit of, or before they even become clients. And what I'm

00:25:02.300 getting at is, is nothing happened to me. I don't think about that. Why do I need to talk about that?

00:25:08.720 And I honor that as someone's truth. And of course, the answer therapeutically within the setting of

00:25:14.620 somewhere like the bridge is, okay, I believe you. So you won't have any trouble telling your story.

00:25:19.280 It'll be a breeze for you. You got to roll with that resistance. But the example that comes up for me,

00:25:24.300 and that's where we get into implicit and explicit memory. A good example, I think, is flashbacks.

00:25:29.980 Go back to the example of something where somebody has an image. I think what comes to mind for most

00:25:34.860 folks is an image. Like, I see this thing. So then back to this other person who says,

00:25:39.700 I don't think about this stuff anymore. Like, I don't go into the room and think about my dad

00:25:43.820 cheating on my mother. I don't even remember that stuff. And oftentimes the answer is, sure,

00:25:48.360 you do. What do you mean? Well, you remember through your anxiety, perhaps. Maybe it's not an

00:25:53.180 image. Maybe it's not a sound. Maybe it's not a smell. But that thing that discomfort that you're

00:25:57.700 experiencing, maybe that's the way you remember it. Something that's coming up for me, and again,

00:26:03.620 there's so many case studies, if you will, but within the spirit of making the implicit explicit,

00:26:10.960 the example that I just gave, you know how that process works at the bridge. After the group's over

00:26:17.060 in the evenings, we usually have meetings where the folks can experience some type of maybe a

00:26:22.500 12-step meeting, some kind of meeting. And it's part of the curriculum, if you will, and it's

00:26:27.940 mandatory. We've had clients have panic attacks. I would qualify some of those as that in these

00:26:35.020 situations. The next day, when you're in group trying to unravel something that happened on the

00:26:40.660 previous night, and we're talking about a client that I've been describing, and they're like,

00:26:47.060 obviously, I need to see a medical doctor, but possibly you do. Well, let's try to work in a

00:26:51.460 both-and. Let's unravel this. This process, you give up a certain amount of control. Let's say

00:26:56.660 this client had control issues. And so it's one of the things we ask you to do is give up control

00:27:01.060 at the bridge. And client X says, yes, yes, yes, that's right. So, okay, so you're sitting here,

00:27:07.020 and you know there's exits. You know the people are in the room. You know all the players are here.

00:27:10.920 But for some reason, you're anxious that your anxiety is building to the point to where you

00:27:16.220 experience or you describe this thing as a panic attack. Right, exactly. And I don't need to talk

00:27:20.300 about any of this stuff that you guys are talking about. I said, okay, great. But just play along

00:27:25.000 with me. Who's the most controlling person that you've ever met in your life? Oh, you should have

00:27:29.220 met my grandmother. Okay. Tell me one of the most controlling things your grandmother may have done.

00:27:34.760 Well, I lived with her for three or four years in my childhood. Now, there was that deal with the

00:27:40.020 basement when I was in trouble, the deal with the basement. Can you say more about that? I'd get

00:27:45.840 locked down there. How long? I don't know. It was dark. I learned how to not think about it.

00:27:52.200 Back to the implicit with explicit. So I think about this like files. There's this loss of control file

00:27:58.740 in the traumatized brain. Can I prove that A plus B equals C? No, I can't. There's not going to be

00:28:05.920 anything evidence-based that says that was a situation based on that grandmother's control

00:28:11.000 and abuse in childhood. That is why that panic attack happened. But it certainly gives us something

00:28:15.760 to look at. It's like coordinates on this war board, if you will, in therapy. Wow, there's a part of you

00:28:21.580 that really gets activated when you seemingly don't have control and can't leave a situation.

00:28:27.920 The hope that can come out of that, to see someone who could have been described as resistant to the

00:28:33.240 process, all of a sudden, at least like you're doing right now, nodding your head. I'm going to

00:28:38.140 start thinking about this. Maybe I'm not buying into it, but maybe something did happen to me.

00:28:43.820 Gosh, Jeff, I don't even know where to start. I think there are so many huge hurdles for people

00:28:48.100 to get over when they at least begin to entertain the idea that this is something they should look

00:28:52.760 at. So that's the first one. So the first one is there's something wrong. Unfortunately,

00:28:56.560 as a species, I suppose we have so many remarkable layers of protection that we have to be suffering

00:29:06.140 quite a bit to go through this. I go back to some amazing lines in my journal. No one showed up here

00:29:13.420 on a winning streak. Like, I mean, I'm not going to name who said that, but I bet you can remember who

00:29:19.300 said that. I mean, could not be more true. When I think back to us all sitting there on day one,

00:29:26.820 the 12 of us, I mean, what a collection of losers we were. I mean, if we're just being honest,

00:29:32.260 we were all on the outs. We had lost everything and we were there not because we wanted to be,

00:29:40.000 but almost because we had no choice. How often do you see that? How often do you see people that

00:29:45.500 somehow managed to show up there on the basis of pure introspection as opposed to if I don't do

00:29:52.660 this, I'm going to lose my family. If I don't do this, I'm going to lose my job. If I don't do this,

00:29:56.080 I'm going to lose my life. Well, what you just described, I'll call that answer B. That's the

00:30:00.340 status quo. That's usually how folks get there. Every now and then someone may come in, maybe I

00:30:05.860 could call it a tourist or whatnot, but that doesn't happen much. We would say, and if you remember how that

00:30:09.900 property is, you kind of drive down into it and all the things that are Kentucky, you see on the way

00:30:16.420 in. And we used to play around with this, like, this is hard work and this is uncomfortable. And if

00:30:22.000 it wasn't, there'd be a line of people all the way back up that hill trying to get in here. But if you

00:30:26.500 notice- There's no line. There's no line to get in here. And there's also no gate on this place,

00:30:31.740 meaning you're free to go also. I use, it's just an average seven or eight. When I think of groups,

00:30:37.860 they could be 10, but I use seven and eight. And I think about those folks in that room.

00:30:41.980 There's so many different stories. Just about every group has got somebody in it that's pretty

00:30:47.220 close, if not right on surrender and surrender within the spirit of my way does not work.

00:30:52.540 I don't know if your way is going to work, Jeff, but I'm willing to try it on for a couple of weeks

00:30:56.400 because my way does not work. Now that is a wonderful place to get to that I believe most people

00:31:02.340 don't. Meaning most people don't show up there. Don't get to that type of surrender.

00:31:06.860 I spent many decades. This may sound familiar in this space right here. Life's pretty bad.

00:31:14.700 And I hear what you're saying, but I still think I know what's best for me.

00:31:18.380 And I think that's where most of us spend a lot of time. But when you get in that circle,

00:31:23.120 see, to me, that never mattered because if you were there, you had a chance. You had a chance

00:31:27.400 to get some different perspective. And if you're not there, I think just about every group that I've

00:31:34.040 worked with has had at least one person in there that's, they're out of obligation just to get

00:31:39.120 somebody off their ass. And quite honest with you, to do the thing so that they can go back and say,

00:31:44.540 I tried your thing and it didn't work. I've seen that quite a bit, but there's still a chance for

00:31:49.060 something to happen within that group dynamic. If I tell somebody they're an asshole, I might just

00:31:55.740 be saying that from therapy heel. And maybe that's the same thing that their spouse has been telling

00:31:59.660 them. But if somebody in this circle that's living with you, eating with you, doing this

00:32:05.380 uncomfortable thing with you, if they in some way let you know that they don't dig that thing that

00:32:10.940 you do, i.e. the thing that makes you maybe an asshole. Hmm. Okay. So maybe my spouse isn't the

00:32:17.580 only one saying this. Now, if you like it, I love it. I tried to retire from force and change on folks.

00:32:23.100 But if you examine that, this person's letting me know they don't dig that either. Now I've got a

00:32:30.460 chance to think about doing something different, right? And to pinpoint the explanation for why it

00:32:36.900 is it's hard for me not to do that. It can be so fruitful, even with folks there that are, have less

00:32:43.540 than what I would call healthy intentions, because they do show up there. You alluded to control.

00:32:49.040 One of the huge impediments to people, I think, making the journey to a place like the bridge

00:32:55.660 is that you have to completely cede control. So you show up and you hand over your phone

00:33:02.200 and you go to your room, which is literally a room from a camp. You're sharing a room with somebody

00:33:09.680 else sleeping on a cot that's not comfortable and there's no luxury and you're sharing bathrooms with

00:33:15.980 a bunch of other people and they rummage through your books and they sign off on everything. I mean,

00:33:21.440 I didn't bring any contraband, but I know that there was very limited in what I could bring.

00:33:25.800 Basically, you didn't want anything there that would distract me. I don't think I could have

00:33:29.760 brought books about F1 and sports or whatever. Talk a little bit about the control. I know many

00:33:36.780 people who have ultimately gone to the bridge and this was the thing that made it almost impossible

00:33:41.120 for them to go and they had to fall to a certain level of pain before they would go. And I know

00:33:45.380 other people who just haven't been able to pull the trigger. And I put myself almost in that

00:33:49.180 situation, which is I can't go off the grid for two weeks, four weeks, six weeks. That's not possible.

00:33:54.160 You don't understand the complexity of my life. Surely knowing that you must have a very strong

00:33:59.660 conviction for why it's required. It's such a real thing too. It's true. Some folks can't do it

00:34:06.080 and we can't box ourselves into a world where we're talking about all the fruits of residential

00:34:10.520 programs, but this doesn't have to be an either or thing. But within the spirit of that residential

00:34:15.800 process that you described, so many different ways that I love the titles that you gave the place,

00:34:20.980 the control, it's got vulnerability written all over it. I keep going back to that word,

00:34:25.240 introducing vulnerability. We don't try to induce suffering, but distractions. You mentioned the

00:34:31.140 word distraction. We want to take away as many distractions as possible. I don't pretend to know

00:34:35.760 what you need to happen, what the magic's going to be. But I know that we got a hell of a lot better

00:34:41.380 chance of it happening if you don't have your phone, if you don't have your cigarettes, if you don't have

00:34:46.860 all of these things that help you disconnect, because I need you to be present. And for some of us,

00:34:52.900 that's the vulnerability is being present where my feet are. The one thing you didn't take away that

00:34:58.560 I think if it had been taken, I'm not sure I could have gone was exercise. So I was still able to

00:35:03.760 run at 5.30 in the morning in the woods and do some pushups and stuff like that. Had I not been

00:35:09.140 permitted to do that, I might've lost my mind. Has that ever been questioned that, hey, for some

00:35:13.280 people, exercise is also a bit of a numbing distraction? That's an excellent point. Each

00:35:18.560 case is different. There's no one size fits all. This brings up to me how many times that clients

00:35:24.260 come to me when group breaks and everybody's going to the bathroom, they come up to me and they're like,

00:35:29.380 what do I need to do on breaks or in the evenings? Like, what am I going to do with this downtime?

00:35:33.700 And the answer is some folks need to get serious. So they might want to pick up one of those books

00:35:38.220 on the shelf and read a little bit in our library. Some people need to get serious and some people

00:35:44.160 need to play ping pong. What might look different for you? I did a lot of coloring. Okay. And I did a

00:35:49.940 lot of dot to dot. You guys had a book of super elaborate dot to dots, like a thousand dot puzzles that

00:35:56.920 would actually make beautiful pictures. I never thought I could find something like that so

00:36:01.060 interesting, but I enjoyed it. One might say you had to disconnect and come to the hills of Kentucky

00:36:06.360 to find the space to even discover that or rediscover that. That control thing, that is such a player

00:36:13.040 for so many. It's a human thing. It's not just a client thing. It's a human thing. It's like everyone,

00:36:19.300 I believe, wants to have a certain sense of control. And most folks who have a hysterical reaction,

00:36:26.200 as we say, if it's hysterical, it's historical, to the sense of a lost piece of control, that's where

00:36:33.420 we get back into there's probably a precipitating event. There could be something that needs to be

00:36:38.920 healed here. And that's tricky, too. Healing versus integration. How can we integrate this trauma, this

00:36:45.300 thing that happened? All these words bring up so much for me, but I do want to mention with control

00:36:51.220 because, again, it's case study. Everything is so connected to these, in my experience, to the trauma.

00:36:59.540 Let's take another client, for instance. We're going to stay on this control topic. So let's say

00:37:05.420 this client comes into the group room and this client is getting ready to check in. You know how

00:37:11.800 that thing starts. We kind of just say something to start the day, then everything gets quiet until

00:37:16.280 somebody gets nervous enough that can't stand the silence and starts checking in. Somebody always does it.

00:37:21.220 Can you describe what a check-in is? Because it is actually a pretty interesting experience and

00:37:26.920 I needed a piece of paper to help me do it because I didn't know what the words were.

00:37:31.420 We try to let folks experience or start practicing letting their outside match their inside.

00:37:36.880 And that sounds like a simple goal and it is, but it's a complex scenario. Because again,

00:37:42.360 some of us have paid a price for letting our outside match our inside. And so that's really the

00:37:48.580 spirit of the check-in is to get some practice doing that. Just rigorously with as much honesty

00:37:54.280 as possible. How am I starting this day? Where am I at right now? What's on my heart?

00:37:58.800 Bringing the heart and head together. Kind of how I describe that. Some folks, it's very personal and

00:38:05.080 sometimes it's group dynamics. We want to introduce that. But again, it's let's just get honest.

00:38:10.260 Let's get honest. Because I think that's the beautiful thing about the group. And again,

00:38:14.540 this scenario where if you can't do it with some yahoo at the bridge, I hope everybody's Facebook

00:38:19.860 friends for the rest of their life. But the fact of the matter is you'll never have to see these

00:38:23.300 people again. So if you can't get honest with so-and-so or in front of so-and-so, how can you

00:38:27.420 do it on the couch with the people that are closest to your heart? Because those are the people who end up

00:38:33.920 being, if we want to fall back on the trauma word, our biggest trauma triggers are the people that are

00:38:38.300 closest to our heart. Maybe I can build some muscle memory and being vulnerable in a scenario like

00:38:44.140 we've been describing. So that's the spirit of the check-in. The example that I'm given where this

00:38:49.920 client is in this rocking back and forth, I believe I can take this client's pulse from where I'm

00:38:55.580 sitting at. So I'm going to suggest that that client checks in first. It's kind of my job to

00:39:01.400 notice something like that. They haven't said a crossword in my experience in the first three or

00:39:07.440 four days of their journey. I haven't heard them say the word hell. Flat out, that was a bunch of

00:39:11.880 bullshit last night. Bunch of bullshit. Nobody told us that we were going to that place. I had to sit

00:39:18.680 out there. I wasn't going. Nobody told us anything about that. And let's say this client, one of their

00:39:24.380 calling cards when they approached the bridge was that they were really thrilled about, mentioned

00:39:31.260 about nobody on a winning streak. But one of the wins, they're not void of wins. One of this client's

00:39:36.040 wins, let's say is that like their medication management finally was dialed in. They finally got their

00:39:40.980 anxiety medication dialed in. And so this thing happened. And 18 hours later, I'm looking at this

00:39:48.520 person having this response to literally what it was, was I didn't write on the board every detail

00:39:54.600 that was going to happen that particular day, especially what was going to happen in the evening.

00:39:59.840 When you guys went to a 12-step program offsite.

00:40:01.840 Right. Exactly. In this example, this is the type of reaction still 16 hours later. In this scenario,

00:40:10.640 perhaps I roll the therapy dice if I have the rapport and say something to the effect of, well,

00:40:15.860 at least the medications are dialed in. Perhaps there's an uncomfortable silence that's probably

00:40:20.860 five seconds, but it seems like five minutes. And then maybe in this scenario, we all sigh of relief

00:40:27.360 because this pissed off client smiles and laughs a little. And knowing the journey, let's say this

00:40:35.760 client a day later tells their story. And they tell a story about spending a significant amount of time

00:40:41.880 with a spouse who was controlling and emotionally abusive. And the spirit of their relationship

00:40:49.260 sounded kind of like this, get in the car, you'll know when you get there.

00:40:53.000 Now, did this client have back to flashbacks of this? But there seems to be a file based on this

00:41:00.120 trauma, based on this wounding experience that was able to push through the medication. So don't

00:41:05.840 hear me saying medication's going the wrong way. But in this example, I think the discovery inspires hope

00:41:13.580 in a situation where there seems to be so little hope. And in this scenario that I'm making up,

00:41:19.300 what's the answer? Do I just keep upping the dosage? Well, that thing happened to me. So that

00:41:25.240 must mean, is that the answer? So back to this both and of maybe there's something to look at here.

00:41:31.020 I think that's profound, actually, because you could argue, if you simply look at that experience

00:41:34.960 and say, I need to up the dose, up the dose, up the dose. I mean, at some point, you're going to be comatose.

00:41:38.900 So in other words, there probably is a dose at which there will never be a breakthrough.

00:41:42.220 True. But then you're also not alive. So maybe we're better off, as you said, taking this as a

00:41:48.380 gift, saying, wow, the fact that I got hysterical is now going to point me to something historical

00:41:53.700 that I still need to go and resolve. Maybe there's some work that can be done.

00:41:59.000 Maybe I do need to be on medication to get stabilized. Maybe the medication will help me

00:42:04.000 be stabilized enough to build the window of tolerance that I need to do this type of historical work.

00:42:09.040 But there's also some work that can be done. And we're not just treating symptoms.

00:42:14.120 I'm going to day two of my journal here. I can't help but feel like it's a mistake to be here.

00:42:20.660 How could this place, this experience, possibly make a meaningful difference in my life?

00:42:25.500 Trust the process, they say. Surrender to it, in quotes, I'm told. Okay, I'm here. And I guess I'll try.

00:42:32.980 That was day two. I didn't journal until I got to the bridge. And now it's

00:42:36.300 reams and reams of journals that have been filled since. What fraction of folks show up there with

00:42:41.460 the journal? Do you know? 20%. And now that number goes up, oftentimes the way you just described it.

00:42:49.600 And finding out something different, a different way to do your day. It is an artificial environment,

00:42:55.760 one could say, when we're talking about the bridge. And also it's a metaphor for me in real life.

00:43:01.380 It's not just these therapeutic interventions or what some group member says or what some therapist

00:43:07.820 says. Like all those things can be powerful. But like, what are the things that you added to your

00:43:12.520 day? And how can you take that back with you? Doing your day different. Checking in with which

00:43:18.700 me is in the driver's seat. Journaling is an excellent way to do that. Or just simply some

00:43:24.760 mindfulness and some meditation. And life's busy. We don't always have time to do these things. But

00:43:29.540 take a minute, which me is in the driver's seat? That's the question.

00:43:34.300 So let's talk about the different versions of the kid. There's the kid that's born,

00:43:38.620 the unwounded child. Remind me the name of that child again.

00:43:42.660 The inner child?

00:43:43.340 Inner child.

00:43:43.780 Yeah.

00:43:44.000 That's right. Okay. So inner child.

00:43:45.840 Some folks will refer to the inner child. Some folks prefer the original child.

00:43:49.480 Original child. Okay.

00:43:50.360 The original me, authentic me, but yes.

00:43:53.100 And then we have a wounded child that goes through this experience or these experiences. Again,

00:43:59.320 very important to remind everybody, this could be a bunch of little Ts, none of which look like

00:44:05.700 much. It's too easy, I think, to look at the big Ts and say, I don't have a big T. Could be that the

00:44:11.460 sum of the little Ts actually matters more than a big T in some individuals. And then you have this

00:44:15.820 adaptive child. So the example is that kid who figured out that by being deceptive, he could

00:44:23.380 protect his mom. That was the right thing to do. I mean, clearly the right thing to do. He should do

00:44:28.320 that all day, every day.

00:44:29.940 Yeah. The more time it's done successfully, the more power it takes on.

00:44:33.600 Yep. And then talk about some other examples of how these adaptations that occur to trauma are

00:44:40.600 really valuable. And then they start to become net negative as opposed to net positive.

00:44:46.900 This to me is the Darwinian nature of trauma. We're such resilient, adaptive creatures.

00:44:54.280 The case of this kid, right? That's brilliant. That's adaptive. That's great. All the things that

00:44:59.400 we do to not succumb. Maybe just share a few other clinical examples so that people get a sense of how

00:45:06.040 insidious this can be and why when that kid is 30 and he's in a relationship and he's misbehaving and

00:45:14.600 manipulating his spouse, who's not his father, it starts to backfire.

00:45:21.180 What it brings up for me, so many things, but this concept that I prefer, that's not going to sound

00:45:27.400 very clinical at all. It's grit. Grit is something that I think we all have. I think we're all born with.

00:45:33.360 And you talk about this wounded child and these wounding events.

00:45:37.340 Something happens and a lot of us, out of that, our grit gets covered up. And so I've met so many

00:45:44.640 people that to survive, they did it by submitting. And so losing their voice, becoming compliant,

00:45:53.400 to spend decades trying to find their grit. While another human being out of their woundedness

00:46:01.920 may have survived from grit and they live from it. They can't not live from it. And they live from

00:46:08.320 it from decades. And so the question tends to be at what cost? At what cost? When does this thing,

00:46:14.140 there was a utility to, when is it enough? And I have always fall back on, it's not typically the thing

00:46:22.100 that's bad. It's not the fact that I can do it. It's the fact that I can't not do it. It seems like

00:46:29.920 I can't not do it. That's where that takes me with the utility. And when you mentioned the big T and the

00:46:36.400 little T or those thousand paper cuts, it brings up post-traumatic stress and complex post-traumatic

00:46:44.120 stress. And in no way do I want to minimize what we or a lot of us would describe as big T traumas

00:46:53.200 when we talk about those tragic events, those one-time events. But in the spirit of unraveling

00:46:58.460 things and the healing journey and integration, as a clinician, I would prefer, not that this human had

00:47:05.900 to go through that, but as far as there's that thing, there's the thing we need to work on. I know

00:47:10.640 there's several interventions that have been very successful working on that thing versus this

00:47:16.340 other thing that, again, going back to the example of the child with neglect and every single day

00:47:23.140 going to school, knowing for three years that he was going to be bullied and knowing that no one was

00:47:28.700 noticing. And so having to develop something to survive that living in limbic activation, just think

00:47:36.160 about that. And so how many times, how many years that muscle memory created of going back to the

00:47:44.040 parts language or of that guard, of that adaptive child, unraveling something like that is a whole

00:47:51.040 nother ballgame. Please don't hear me minimizing big T trauma, but within unraveling and the integration,

00:47:58.160 it's just repetitive. In these limbic systems, we only know what we experience. So abject abuse.

00:48:04.420 I've heard horrible stories. You've heard horrible stories. But let's take a child

00:48:08.960 that knows that when mom gets home because of what's happened, her ear is going to be held to

00:48:16.580 the burner on the stove. Abject abuse. Let's take another child that knows there are portions laid out

00:48:24.320 on their plate that will be eaten in a certain way, in a certain manner, at a certain speed. And after

00:48:32.440 that meal, they will be weighed and their side will be pinched. And should things not be as expected,

00:48:40.360 there will be a lecture. Who's to say which one of those humans are more limbically activated?

00:48:47.680 The one doesn't know the experience of the other. It's helplessness. I can't get out of this thing,

00:48:52.820 this thing I'm getting ready to have to do. So again, how can I survive it? And how many times

00:48:58.860 does that happen? And how many years does that take place? And then we get frustrated and we have

00:49:05.060 the shame bug that goes along with it because we're back to the what's wrong with me? Why can I not do

00:49:09.660 this thing? I know this thing's not serving me well now, but I just can't not do it. Yeah, the utility

00:49:16.860 of the behavior. How do you differentiate for folks the difference between shame and guilt? Because for

00:49:22.540 many people, when you show up at the bridge, there's a component of something that you've done that's

00:49:28.740 wrong. You've hurt people along the way. Again, that's, I think, part of the hitting rock bottom

00:49:33.520 that gets you there. It's not just that you've hurt yourself, you've probably injured others. And

00:49:39.180 that's a part of this maladaptive behavior that's now spiraling out of just being adaptive. So how do you

00:49:47.040 talk about the difference between guilt and shame and how do you work somebody out of that?

00:49:51.920 Guilt's about making a mistake. Shame's about being a mistake. Guilt. I did something. I made a

00:49:58.300 mistake. I did something that I wish I hadn't have done. I need to make an apology. There's a way back

00:50:03.820 from that. I'm thinking of this classic John Bradshaw. He's talking about healthy shame versus toxic

00:50:09.020 shame. When you talk about a difference between guilt and shame, we're talking about toxic shame.

00:50:14.000 There's something flawed, this flawed, defective core, if you will, my identity. There's something

00:50:20.960 wrong with me. There's a way back from the guilt. Shame registers differently. So when we talk about

00:50:28.820 folks being wounded, shame, and that's how the shame gets registered. Somebody once told me that my

00:50:35.080 father never had to get sober because he had me and my mother and my sister to carry a shame for him.

00:50:41.280 It can be a generational thing and it comes from somewhere else. But shame can play out two

00:50:47.920 different ways. Some of us, when we're living from our shame, we live out of superiority.

00:50:54.360 Grandiose shame.

00:50:55.600 Grandiosity. I control, I perfect, I judge, I criticize out of my woundedness, out of my shame. That can be

00:51:04.540 the me that you see on the outside. And some folks, the other side of that coin, of course,

00:51:08.900 is inferiority, broken, worthless, and my pathology.

00:51:14.660 Why do you think one chooses preferentially one of those? I mean, I know that my tendency is always

00:51:19.280 more towards grandiosity than inferiority. What do you think it is in some individuals that steers

00:51:24.380 them one way or the other when they're in that? And by the way, I love that these are, I don't even

00:51:28.440 say this to be judgmental. I just think that this is a really interesting way to observe. But

00:51:32.420 I know that when my inner monologue becomes more judgmental, that's a great yellow light for me.

00:51:38.140 It's like, oh, look at the judgy words you're using. Look at the black and white thinking that

00:51:42.640 permeates every statement that you're making that tends to be the gravitational pull. Why do you think

00:51:48.140 certain people have that?

00:51:49.040 That thing you just said is the thing, though, that I can't not hold focus on. That little

00:51:55.180 conversation that you just had with self. Now, you've done the work. You're still doing the work.

00:52:01.500 I'm looking at the journal sitting in front of me. That's just a portion of the work.

00:52:05.180 But having that voice that you've obviously cultivated, that's where the hope is. Because,

00:52:10.920 again, to live in simplicity. I say I hate to oversimplify, but I don't.

00:52:15.400 At the end of the day, I got bad news for the folks out there who think that there's going to

00:52:20.220 come a time through my healing that I just never get triggered again, especially those of us who

00:52:25.100 have experienced trauma. Bad news. You will be triggered again. And this whole integration game

00:52:30.920 is about starting to live a life where I tell stories that go like this. I noticed that I was

00:52:39.460 starting to be really judgmental. I noticed I was getting triggered. I had this little

00:52:45.060 short, subtle thought, conversation, whatever that looked like. Maybe there was something

00:52:48.800 somatic that happened with my body that I did. But I had this thing that I cultivated,

00:52:53.140 this new muscle that gave me enough space to choose my next step. When so many of us,

00:52:59.960 especially out of our shame, out of our trauma, have lived a life telling so many stories that go

00:53:06.140 like this. I got triggered and then I did this. And that's the reaction versus the response.

00:53:12.460 Simple goal, complex process.

00:53:16.300 Yeah, absolutely. Simple and complex, never to be distinguished.

00:53:20.920 There were a bunch of interesting rules at the bridge. No minimizing. You got to stand up to get

00:53:27.120 your own Kleenex. Tell me again, some of the rules and the reasons behind them.

00:53:32.120 First thing is trying to create an emotionally safe place. If we can create a space where folks feel like

00:53:39.720 they can let their outside match their inside, then we got a chance for the magic to happen.

00:53:45.780 Learning a new language. One of those things is I statements. Where so many of us want to make

00:53:51.960 statements for the world, the we, it's a lot easier to address someone's behavior when we're,

00:53:58.380 we're tired of this or we're tired of you doing that. How many times a client may come up to me and

00:54:04.120 say something to the effect of when is somebody going to say something to Peter about being 10

00:54:08.840 minutes late to group? You were never, right? But hear me out here. And the answer is, I think the

00:54:14.620 appropriate answer is we're wondering the same thing. Because if I say it, it weighs about 10 pounds.

00:54:20.080 But again, within that group process, if another peer going through this rigorous journey with me says

00:54:27.380 it tends to weigh a little bit more. That Kleenex rule, you mentioned that there's so much that comes

00:54:33.600 out of, I don't even know what a box of Kleenex costs nowadays. Used to say 99 cents, right? Like

00:54:37.620 so much can come out of that. How hard it is for some clients not to give somebody a Kleenex. You can

00:54:44.900 have the best of intentions in the world, but out of our woundedness, our trauma, our shame, so many of

00:54:51.820 us, the commonality is professional feeling stuffers. A lot of muscle memory and stuffing

00:54:58.400 emotions, especially sadness. And so the very act of handing someone a Kleenex can cut off something

00:55:05.380 that maybe had been 25 years in the making. And there's so much more that can come out of that.

00:55:10.340 Because for the person who's having the emotion, I think about my healing journey that I'm still on

00:55:18.160 and like out of my codependence, like I expected a lot of people to read my mind. I don't ask for what

00:55:23.020 I need, but maybe I'm sitting there thinking, why the hell isn't somebody giving me a Kleenex?

00:55:26.500 Can't they see them crying? And the answer is because you're a grown man. You need to ask for them

00:55:29.840 and go get them yourself, Jeff. And it is the person rescuing me from my pain or are they rescuing

00:55:34.660 themselves? Language that feels guilty, part of those rules back to the I statements and learning how to

00:55:40.740 have, I'm not crazy about the word confrontation, but like it's group dynamics. So I need to let my

00:55:46.560 outside match my inside. So how can I tell another human being that I've got issue with this thing

00:55:51.500 that they're doing? To learn how to say, I get angry when you check in every day as if you love

00:55:58.980 this place. And then on our walks in the afternoon, you're making fun of the process and you're making

00:56:04.160 fun of the therapist and you're talking about the sick behaviors you're going to do as soon as you get

00:56:08.600 back home. I didn't grow up in a house where we talked like that, when you, I feel. It just feels

00:56:13.900 clumsy to, again, to create some new muscle memory and to listen, to be able to listen to somebody.

00:56:19.660 We ask for folks to be present. That sounds like present and supportive. Sounds like the easiest

00:56:24.380 rule. Why would you have to explain that? It's hard to be present when you're not in the room.

00:56:29.120 That's why, if you remember, we take breaks as a group. We try to take them every hour,

00:56:33.540 every 50 minutes. But sometimes, you know, we always encourage the clients, if you need to answer the

00:56:38.100 call of nature before then, just let us know and we'll take a break. Because it can be also really

00:56:44.440 handy to go and use the restroom when Jane checks in, because Jane gets underneath my skin every day

00:56:51.740 and brings up something for me that I need to say out loud. So the rules are there to create,

00:56:57.680 hopefully, the safety so that the magic, if you will, can happen. And also to give folks a chance

00:57:04.640 hit some new muscle memory. And I encourage clients in these scenarios, start it off by

00:57:09.340 acknowledging you're taking a risk. I'm getting ready to take a risk. Peter, I need to say something

00:57:14.000 to you. And that's the spirit of the rules. And what about minimizing? That was a very interesting

00:57:18.920 rule. Yeah. It's an ingenious damage control strategy. Back to the utility of behaviors.

00:57:25.380 If it wasn't that bad, then I don't need to address it. But my behaviors also affect other folks.

00:57:31.220 So when I minimize, let's say, for example, a client, like, it doesn't matter. I got abused.

00:57:38.640 So what? A lot of people get abused. You get over it. It didn't have any effect on me. It doesn't have

00:57:43.400 any effect. And another client, hopefully using some healthy language, when you speak as if child

00:57:51.120 abuse, especially physical child abuse, doesn't affect the child, I feel sad and I feel angry.

00:57:57.820 Because you've got a right to your own truth. But I know how much that abuse affected me.

00:58:05.020 So that minimizing, again, it's very adaptive. But also, if it didn't matter, if none of this stuff

00:58:13.160 matters, I just am. And I think you've proven the theory, something's wrong with me. Or nothing's

00:58:19.120 wrong with me. Superiority or inferiority.

00:58:22.000 How many folks find themselves in a situation where, and I say this because I definitely had a

00:58:29.220 bit of this feeling myself, and I can't imagine I was alone, where there's almost a reluctance to

00:58:34.420 get better because there's also a belief that, yeah, I get it. My life's a bit messy right now. And

00:58:40.860 my response is spilling out into bad areas. But look at all the good. I remember in particular,

00:58:47.480 one of the rants I went on was about how much good has come from my trauma. I think in telling

00:58:54.620 my life story, it was virtually all good. It was, look at this good thing and this good thing and

00:59:00.620 this good thing. And like, we don't want to erase any of this stuff. And I suspect you have a number

00:59:05.900 of people who show up. And yes, it sounds ridiculous because on the one hand, there's clearly a bunch of

00:59:09.960 things that are not good. But they're sort of like, maybe that's a reasonable price to pay in

00:59:14.140 exchange for all this other stuff. How do you help people think through that process and what

00:59:18.560 the trade-offs are? When you describe that scenario, it's like it was your fuel. I'm using

00:59:23.280 the language of parts or guards. I call them guards, these protective parts, these protective

00:59:28.640 adaptive behaviors. I've looked at many of folks, in your example, it would be, thank God you've got

00:59:34.460 ambition. Thank God you've got grit. Thank God you can get angry and you've got a voice. Like,

00:59:40.020 I don't believe I would have met you if you didn't. And I'd say the same thing to somebody

00:59:44.340 who was an alcoholic. Thank God you had that then. I don't think I would have met you should

00:59:49.720 you not have had that. But now can we look at this thing and can we just at least look through

00:59:55.940 the lens of, is it making life hard? An important thing for folks to remember going into, am I going

01:00:03.280 to do the work? Do I need to do the work? Am I working on a part of me, these guards, these

01:00:07.980 protective parts of self, we are not necessarily trying to retire them. And that's what happens,

01:00:13.800 I think, to a lot of folks. That part of them, there's almost a fear of like, how do I exist?

01:00:19.780 Does that mean that ambitious, at times perfectionist Peter has to go away? Think of folks who go

01:00:25.940 through life out of their woundedness that we might describe as they're always waiting for the other

01:00:30.560 shoe to drop. I mean, I can think of clients, multiple clients who have said, it's not if it's going

01:00:35.360 to drop, it's when and how loud. So they are really good detailed at finding negativity, at finding

01:00:42.260 danger. And they'd be a hell of a good person to have along on a walk in a bad side of town. I'm

01:00:48.420 sure if they were a building inspector, they'd be the best damn one out there. Okay. But can you not

01:00:53.820 do that thing when you go home and sit on your couch? And back to the process and the vulnerability,

01:01:00.000 the vulnerability can get brought up so many different ways. We keep talking about this group

01:01:05.240 process that you experience. There's so many different ways, but the common denominator is

01:01:10.780 the vulnerability is what triggers this protective side, this protective behavior to step in. And when

01:01:18.100 that happens, we can work on it in real time. Should that person be in at least consideration of doing

01:01:25.500 something different? Every time I see you reading your journal, I think to myself, what must that be

01:01:30.780 like? It's surreal, actually. I'm looking at a note. This must have been about day four, though this is

01:01:38.800 day five. We went to 12-step meetings every night, and I found it very difficult and awkward. I didn't

01:01:46.780 understand why we were doing it. I don't have a drinking problem. Why am I at an AA meeting? I don't have a

01:01:52.360 sex addiction problem. Why am I at an SA meeting? I don't have a drug problem. Why am I at the

01:01:56.660 Narcotics Anonymous meeting? I could just keep going from one to the next, to the next, to the next.

01:02:01.100 But I wrote something here, said the SA meeting last night was amazing. Three men shared painful,

01:02:07.880 shameful stories. One of them said that he was getting, I can't even read my handwriting,

01:02:14.440 something, his wife said things about him and his kids. He was losing his family, right? He was losing

01:02:19.140 his wife. He was losing his kids, and he was so upset. But his sponsor told him that he had no

01:02:25.340 right to complain about how his wife feels. I found that very powerful. And it was like he was taking

01:02:31.300 responsibility for his action. And this was interesting, because I remember walking into

01:02:35.700 that meeting kind of thinking, good Lord, another one of these meetings? How many of these things do I

01:02:41.660 have to sit through? People have to remember, too, like we're doing these meetings in a part of town

01:02:46.880 where you're seeing people on the wrong side of the tracks. You are not looking at the affluent part

01:02:52.620 of society showing up to these meetings. You're really seeing people who are hurting beyond just,

01:02:59.400 this is my dirty little secret. How many people have the same reaction I do initially, which is,

01:03:06.160 I'm not a fill-in-the-blank addict. Why do you keep making me go to these meetings every night? By the way,

01:03:11.440 I've already done 12 hours of group therapy. Can't I just go to sleep? Just about 100% of the folks

01:03:17.200 whose survival strategy is not substances, as far as that type of reaction. What am I going to do

01:03:22.720 during the 12-step meeting? Well, you're going to hopefully sit there and get something out of it.

01:03:28.180 You're just going to take alcohol and put in caretaking, put in control, fill in the blank with

01:03:34.800 your word. Helping folks wrap their brain around, they're having an area of powerlessness. It's not

01:03:41.380 always well-received at first. For example, let's say that the client's there because he's married.

01:03:50.320 Let's say he's married to an addict, okay? Wife's an addict. He's considering the same thing. She's the

01:03:56.940 addict or whatever. And so within the spirit of sharing, maybe not in the group, maybe it was

01:04:02.420 overheard. But anyway, the information comes out that this husband talking about his teenage daughter

01:04:08.640 and going through the laundry found birth controls. So discovers that teenage daughter is on birth

01:04:14.780 controls. And so the first words that come out of his mouth, what if the people at church find out?

01:04:22.720 And so when you can, in some way, try to help someone use a different lens, one would say,

01:04:30.940 and I would say this, one might say that you're no less powerless to your image management than your

01:04:39.200 wife is to alcohol. Because you can't get into couples therapy. You're not going to not go to

01:04:45.000 church on Wednesday night and tell the people that you're married to an alcoholic. So the area of

01:04:49.820 powerlessness is image management. So back to that meeting, you're going to fill in image management

01:04:55.260 in that blank where everybody else or some of those people have got alcohol and some of those people

01:04:59.860 have got cocaine. Again, to tell someone that they've got an area of powerlessness or to suggest

01:05:05.880 it, it's not always received well initially, but it can be an aha, eventually an aha moment.

01:05:12.720 So if I recall, Jeff, the end of week one was when we do our story, right?

01:05:17.320 Depending on where you were in the order, but yet tends to be the last few days of week one.

01:05:22.320 Talk about what the instruction set was for each of us as we went off and prepared to do that.

01:05:27.200 The guidelines that we would typically give folks, we always suggest that the clients

01:05:33.380 write something out, bullet point it. We'd ask that the story be told within the framework of

01:05:39.960 the traumatory. These stories don't need to be void of success and great moments. And if it wasn't for

01:05:47.360 my grandfather and that stuff, there's a thing we're here to focus on as well. So the what happened to me

01:05:52.920 and that we'd be given the 45 minutes to tell your story. And we try to stay out of the way as much

01:05:59.760 as possible, unless it's therapeutically necessary. Some folks, rescue would be the wrong word, but some

01:06:06.140 folks can get going down the rabbit hole of dysregulation with their emotions and going into

01:06:11.680 detail. So that client may need a little help moving forward. Whereas another client may machine

01:06:19.820 gun through a story. That's ingenious too. Don't have to feel it if I don't stop. And we might need

01:06:24.920 to slow that client down. But the essence of the story again, is just to tell the what happened to

01:06:31.140 me. And then I think where the real magic can happen is during the feedback. Because you get 45 minutes

01:06:40.400 to use your mouth. And then we ask you to use your ears. And we ask folks to play by one more rule. And that is

01:06:48.680 please do not give feedback to the feedback. And we're back to the control word. Because I've got this thing

01:06:55.260 I'm ready to present. Perhaps I've presented it 10 times and I've got it written out or I've at least got bullet

01:06:59.680 points. So I feel good about it. No problem. But you start telling me how you felt and what came up for you,

01:07:07.300 Peter, when I was talking about my dad and what he did, I don't know how that's going to feel for me.

01:07:14.040 And so many times, almost 100% of the time, within the spirit of not giving feedback to feedback is,

01:07:22.340 feedback equates to, I'm going to throw some love on you. Maybe I didn't have anything in the world

01:07:27.960 common with you. But when you talked about that thing, at eight years old, I felt myself getting

01:07:33.060 angry. And that's how somebody lets somebody know, I was listening to you. I was there with you.

01:07:38.440 90% of the time, at least. And it's so hard for folks to not give, to just sit there and let somebody

01:07:43.660 share from the heart and to not give feedback to that feedback. But so many times it's like, well,

01:07:49.340 my brother had it a lot worse. And it's like, I just throw my hands down and I'm like, it happens

01:07:54.560 almost, that's why we do it. It's like somebody throws some love on you and it's almost like out

01:07:59.720 of my shame and my woundedness, I need to remind you that I'm a piece of shit. And it happens so

01:08:05.300 often. How do you break that cycle? It's very, very difficult. A lot of folks, they think that

01:08:12.380 change is about announcing what they know what they're about to do. I know this is going to sound

01:08:16.960 codependent. Well, if you're firing on all pistons as a therapist, the response should be,

01:08:21.840 then don't say it because there's enough muscle memory there. We need to practice the uncomfortable

01:08:27.380 thing of not saying the thing you've been saying for years, not doing. I'm the last person to be

01:08:33.600 black and white about many things. I think much of my work with clients, individually in groups,

01:08:38.880 what have you, with human beings is finding the gray. But I tell you what, when it comes to

01:08:43.460 compulsive behaviors, complex, post-traumatic stress, these things that we've been doing for years and

01:08:49.480 decades, I'm either strengthening an old connection or I'm building a new one. When those clients say,

01:08:55.860 what should I do when I leave this group room? Do something different and experience what it's

01:09:01.840 like to do something different. And so many times it's not doing something. I mean, we've took the

01:09:06.860 vacuum cleaner away from clients before. It's an ingenious damage control strategy. It's written all

01:09:11.980 over the walls. We're here to talk about some deep stuff. And I'm finally going to be expected to

01:09:16.860 talk about my stuff. We've encouraged other clients to break rules. Some folks at the bridge

01:09:21.820 might not like that, but it's like, you need to go take some coffee into the morning meeting.

01:09:26.100 You've been a rule follower your whole life. Yeah. We were only allowed one coffee a day or

01:09:30.000 something, right? Yeah. That's not much. From what I understand, it's not the strongest coffee in the

01:09:34.900 world either. You do a lot of work now with clients individually as well. I wonder how that is

01:09:43.640 different. I've recommended a number of people go to the bridge. I've recommended a number of

01:09:48.140 people go to PCS, a place I went to three years later and taken together those two places changed

01:09:52.860 my life. And one of the things I've said when people ask me, yeah, but Peter, it's just such

01:09:57.040 a huge commitment. Do I really need to do it? I don't know the answer to that question. I'd love

01:10:00.860 to hear your thoughts. But what I do say is for me in the state that I was in, it could not have been

01:10:09.140 done any other way. I had to have immersion. And I say, I suppose it's not unlike learning a new

01:10:15.940 language where if I decide I want to learn Portuguese and I'm willing to take lessons two

01:10:22.120 hours a week, I'll get there. But if I move to Brazil and no one speaks English to me for a month,

01:10:29.140 I think I'm going to get there a lot faster. And it's not just the sum of the hours. There's

01:10:34.760 something accretive about the total and utter immersion literally in the experience that

01:10:43.000 changes it. So how do you think about the difference between the work you do and have

01:10:48.420 done at the bridge, which is indeed what we're talking about here, this immersive residential

01:10:53.300 type of treatment versus someone who's listening to us that says, I hear everything you guys are

01:10:59.520 saying. I just can't do that. I can't go there yet. Is there something in between? Can I start by

01:11:06.060 working with Jeff just an hour or two a week? How does your work with clients differ? And how do you

01:11:14.680 help somebody decide? Maybe I'll start with this question. How would you give somebody the way to

01:11:20.320 think about whether or not they could find some success in individual therapy versus whether or not

01:11:25.640 it's really just rearranging the deck chairs in the Titanic. You got to go hardcore.

01:11:30.060 Yeah. So the answer would be yes to the, can I do this or can I do that? Yes, because it's not a

01:11:34.500 linear path, whatever it takes, whatever works. Before I started doing this gig, before I found the

01:11:40.280 bridge, I never thought about doing anything residential when it came to mental health and

01:11:45.580 being a professional, being a therapist. And then all of a sudden I couldn't imagine doing it any other

01:11:49.820 way. Couldn't imagine doing it without the group process because all those things that I'm talking

01:11:54.360 about, there's so much access to vulnerability and let's not box ourself in. Because some folks,

01:12:00.440 it's their truth. Some folks, they can't, they just can't go do something like that. The way that it's

01:12:05.220 changed the way that I approach the individual dynamic, the individual therapy, efficiency,

01:12:13.580 not a rush, but I think that through all of the years and all of the clients within the group process

01:12:20.240 and how I see that works and to be able to somehow synthesize that into my individual assessments and

01:12:27.840 the way that I can work with clients, that discovery process doesn't have to be as long as sometimes

01:12:35.000 it plays out to be. So within the spirit of the individual process, it's like we may reach a point

01:12:42.880 where it's like, here's the next level. But the same could be said on the opposite side of that coin.

01:12:48.960 Somebody might be like, I'm going to a residential program. And then they find out all this stuff

01:12:53.960 and we can take that and integrate that into the individual therapy. Practicing individually would

01:13:00.140 have looked so different 10 years ago because of how the trauma, it's no one size fits all. And so to

01:13:08.120 think that this intervention needs to be used because it's my specialty or this has to happen,

01:13:13.560 or this is exactly how long it takes for someone to have a window of tolerance.

01:13:18.560 Every human being is different. And I haven't seen everything because every Tuesday at the bridge will

01:13:24.780 remind you of that, but I've seen a lot. And so my hope is that most people that I meet, or I have

01:13:32.860 met so many people and continue to meet them that you've described them when you talk about folks that

01:13:38.740 like, I've got a lot. If you want to call it high functioning, I've got a lot, but there's something

01:13:43.980 missing. Now they won't all say that initially, but that tends to be the truth. There's still

01:13:49.800 something missing. There's a hole there. Something's just not right.

01:13:54.380 So why are they with you? Meaning from their end, from their standpoint, why are they seeking therapy

01:14:00.460 if it seems all right?

01:14:01.600 Well, it could be because they've just discovered, been exposed to something that happened to let

01:14:07.780 them know maybe not. Oftentimes that client that I just described may have got to see me to get

01:14:14.120 somebody off their back. Like you need to go do some work. You need to go get some help. You need to

01:14:18.160 get to go help. And then it becomes pretty evident whether the person's there for that reason or for

01:14:23.860 something a little more authentic and for self. I think part of my paperwork should also include

01:14:29.120 Jeff English cannot fit a square peg into a round hole, which oftentimes translates into,

01:14:35.540 I can't change somebody else's behavior in your life. You see that a lot too. This person that

01:14:41.860 has finally gotten to a point to where they have been willing to go talk to somebody.

01:14:46.560 And so that is so often the people that I'm seeing.

01:14:50.700 One of the things about the bridge that I assume it's still true, but it was remarkable to me was that

01:14:54.540 everybody who worked there had been a client there. Is that still the case?

01:14:57.860 Outside of some staff members, certainly all of the clinicians, most of the staff members. And I

01:15:03.980 can't imagine being a clinician there or working there without having done that. And that honestly

01:15:10.740 has been the reason why some folks won't work at the bridge. So we don't operate from therapy

01:15:18.660 heel, right? I'm in my own journey too. I've got my challenges as well. Yes. And so to know I'm going

01:15:25.040 to have to do some work and then to wrap your brain around, these are the people I'm going to work with

01:15:30.020 to be able to look at a client like yourself and say, I'm literally not going to ask you to do

01:15:35.060 anything that I haven't done. And to be able to say that from the heart.

01:15:39.240 That's really an amazing feature. And I sort of imagine that through the lens of anyone who takes

01:15:43.520 care of another person, sort of like people I think are right to be frustrated when they have a

01:15:49.180 doctor who's asking them to take care of themselves when the doctor clearly doesn't take care of

01:15:53.040 themselves. How is it that you can tell me that I need to eat better and exercise when looking at

01:15:57.460 you, it's clear you're not doing those things. It doesn't mean that the advice is incorrect or that

01:16:01.840 you shouldn't listen to it. It's just, you're asking me to do something you won't do. Whereas

01:16:06.700 yeah, at the bridge, we can talk about some of the other things that are very difficult to do there,

01:16:11.080 such as in the second week when you're beating the shit out of things, those are not easy things to do,

01:16:17.940 but to know that when Jeff and Julie are asking you to do it, they did it.

01:16:22.940 Yeah, absolutely. And if you think to the way the journey starts is we disclose. And some

01:16:29.640 professionals will be like, be careful with self-disclosure. It's not about me, it's about

01:16:33.740 them. But like, Hey, we're going to ask you all pretty quickly to start showing us a piece of your

01:16:40.520 soul, so to speak. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about mine. Hopefully we can start

01:16:45.120 building that rapport early. I think we can trust these folks. I think that they can lead us. Maybe

01:16:51.340 not everybody, but like to introduce that. Because like you say, in week two, we ask folks to go

01:16:55.940 places with us. That experiential therapy, and you mentioned one way of doing experiential therapy,

01:17:01.360 the somatic part of what we do, but things have come a long way within the spirit of that process.

01:17:07.980 And when you talked about that learning a language, I love that analogy because you are

01:17:11.760 immersed in that. But it's being able to experience the emotion, hijacking, if you will, of the emotional

01:17:19.820 brain. I liken it to, we're going to walk you down to the edge of the river, and we're going to put

01:17:26.420 your foot into the water. Now the water being here, your past, your pain, right? Because we want you to

01:17:34.100 feel a little bit of the temperature. But we're going to stand here right beside of you, and our job is to

01:17:39.380 keep you in 2024, 25, whatever year. We're going to go there, but we're going to stay here. Dual awareness.

01:17:47.720 That's the integrative part. Some people need to yell because they haven't had a voice. Some people

01:17:55.000 need to learn that they yelled, and they were able to not get lost in it. Everybody's journey being

01:18:00.940 different and befriending. It's almost like some people say, well, I can't put my finger on what it was,

01:18:07.160 but I just, something was different. What is it that you did? I say, well, sometimes you might say

01:18:12.860 we were activating your limbic system so that you could do something different while activated.

01:18:20.160 Learning how to get space from the emotional brain. So many clients, especially clients with trauma,

01:18:27.000 years of frustration, learning coping skills in safe offices with therapists. They're done beautifully

01:18:35.660 and repetitively within that environment. But it's really hard to recreate that back at home or at work

01:18:44.420 when triggered. My coping skills live in a part of the brain that gets hijacked when the emotional brain

01:18:52.680 takes over. And this doesn't always have to be about trauma. Can you believe I'm saying that?

01:18:58.960 The example I give, I'm a professional, right? My mother's 87 years old with dementia. She's living

01:19:06.380 in a nursing home. All the things that go along with that. Irrationality that's involved with that.

01:19:12.000 And so Jeff goes to these visits and he starts noticing that all these visits are starting with

01:19:18.220 my mother talking about how somebody is stealing her blue ink pens and what I call her old lady blue jeans.

01:19:24.800 And so I'm sitting there saying, are you kidding me? Who would want your blue ink pens? Think about

01:19:32.220 this rationally, mom. Who wants these old blue jeans? And how many of my visits, that's how that visit

01:19:39.040 started. It just went downhill from there to literally be sitting in the truck outside before a visit

01:19:45.780 praying. Give me what needs to happen here. And so many times as clinicians, we ask clinicians,

01:19:52.740 you take your hat off, take your therapist hat off, but sometimes you need to put it on because

01:19:59.160 Jeff, the clinician is not sitting there in front of his mother. There's a son sitting there in front

01:20:05.580 of his mother who is facing the reality that it's not his mother anymore. And that's very sad.

01:20:12.980 The anger is a much more comfortable place to be or frustration. So I'm going to argue with mom

01:20:18.680 about how irrational this thought is, right? But it's breaking because I don't want my mom to think

01:20:24.320 that people are stealing her blue ink pens. I want her to change. I want this to be corrected.

01:20:30.040 But I'm forgetting like one of the golden rules of change when it comes to therapy, rolling with

01:20:36.760 resistance. The more that I fight for change, the more this other person is going to fight for the

01:20:44.600 status quo. It happens 99% of the time. But when you sell crazy back to somebody tenfold,

01:20:53.040 they start to suggest rationality. Here's what I mean by that. One day in that truck, I realized I

01:20:58.980 have got to do something different, right? So I'm going to go in there. And when I went in there,

01:21:04.300 I went in there with my executive functioning. I went in there from the prefrontal cortex.

01:21:09.640 And so when mom started talking about her blue jeans and her blue ink pens, my response was,

01:21:15.220 you know what? You're right. And I think I know exactly the lady that's doing it. I'm going to

01:21:19.220 go give her a piece of my mind. And what did my mom say? Jeff, sit down. Be sensible, right? I didn't

01:21:26.940 have access to something that I do all the time with clients, selling crazy back to them. You go home,

01:21:32.560 you'll get your cigarettes back. If you're talking about the bridge, you'll get your cigarettes back.

01:21:36.280 You'll get your phone back. You'll go back home. You'll go back to your perfect girlfriend and

01:21:39.720 life will be okay. And no, I didn't say life's okay. All right. Well, then we got something to

01:21:43.980 talk about. You got to stay here. You're going to die if you don't change. They just fight. They

01:21:48.760 just fight, fight for the status quo. But that Jeff that I was talking about, I didn't have access to

01:21:54.680 those skills. I wasn't being driven. Now there's all the baggage. There's the being the son. There's

01:22:00.000 the trauma related to mom. There's all of that that played into that. But to be able to get access

01:22:05.020 to the, what some folks call the bill paying brain. What year were you a client at the bridge?

01:22:12.840 2016. Okay. So only a year before me. So you'd been a therapist, obviously for many years before.

01:22:21.580 How did you find the bridge? It was an email that I probably wouldn't have read. And it was an opening

01:22:28.220 and a mentor of mine sent me an email and said, I know your story. I know your background. I think

01:22:33.660 you ought to check this place out. And to grow up somewhere like that, Bowling Green, Kentucky,

01:22:39.360 and to not know this place that's existed now for 50 years, it says something. I had a certain

01:22:44.920 mindset about what residential therapy would look like and residential treatment. And yeah,

01:22:51.420 so I was just blown away. And privileged to be able to do the work. I mean, it's a gift. I talk about

01:22:56.780 folks not wanting to do it. And sometimes that being the reason that they won't join the team there.

01:23:02.080 That's a very true thing. I wasn't crazy about doing it either. I knew there was stuff that I

01:23:07.580 was still working on and will still be working on. And it was going to be very vulnerable. In one way,

01:23:12.760 I was like, this is an audition. Do you want to know all my crazy? And they're like, yes, we do.

01:23:18.620 What is it that attracted you to this field?

01:23:21.540 I've done a lot of different things. Sales, marketing. I used to build, I used fencing. People

01:23:27.180 would say, oh, really? Like jousting? I'm like, no. Wooden chain link fences. Let's not go too far

01:23:31.920 with that. I did undergraduate in psychology. And then there was that gap in between me

01:23:37.400 determining and realizing that this is what I need to do. The self-discovery part for me,

01:23:43.960 it was like starting to do my own work and then realizing that to see someone get a taste of hope,

01:23:51.380 to see somebody get a taste of hope, and to be part of that. When I tell clients, you know,

01:23:56.600 it's like, you've got it in you. Maybe I can create a space where it can come out. It's a

01:24:02.020 privilege. I don't take it lightly what I do and what clients trust me with.

01:24:07.580 I think you have a really special talent for it, Jeff. And I just wonder, is that something that

01:24:12.280 only comes because you've experienced the pain as well? Does someone have to have necessarily

01:24:19.680 been through this journey to be able to guide someone through it? Do you think that's necessary?

01:24:24.640 I don't think it's necessary, but it sure as hell helps. I'll say that. The depth of the connection

01:24:32.300 with the heart and the work. Because it's one thing to say, my profession, I've got purpose.

01:24:40.180 I could say I do something that matters. But does that thing matter to me? And it does. Me personally,

01:24:46.860 I think the weight of that purpose is from the pain in addition to the hope. Having that type of

01:24:55.660 impact to where I think I heal a little bit each time I help somebody integrate their trauma. And

01:25:02.560 I've had some amazing things happen in the group room. I'm human. Certain things that I've done in

01:25:08.640 the group room, I don't need to be doing my therapy while I'm leading a group. But certain things that I

01:25:13.480 would do on like art therapy or something, I use the same scene on the board that I use time after

01:25:18.080 time. Because again, that's something that I've tried to unpack and process and I don't need to

01:25:21.740 be doing anything new. And then to be sitting there and because of something that happened in the group

01:25:26.360 room, or maybe it's where I hadn't realized that I look at that scene that I just drew on the board

01:25:30.000 differently. And it's personal. With trauma, when we talk about how it's shame, like it's something

01:25:36.960 that's touched my family. Unfortunately, there's not much of that family left. My sister passed away

01:25:43.640 in 2014. She grew up in the same house that I did. And so piece of my heart's connected because it

01:25:52.320 doesn't have to go that way. You alluded earlier to the generational nature of trauma. Terry Real has

01:25:59.280 written about this in some of the most eloquent ways I've seen. And I think that for some people,

01:26:04.500 that can be the motivation to change once they realize that there's a pattern and that it's not

01:26:09.880 linear. If you have a belief that it's linear, then it's really easy to say, well, I've already

01:26:14.140 stopped it. So for example, if your parents were alcoholics and you're not, well, the story's over.

01:26:20.600 I don't need any help regardless of whatever other behaviors I'm manifesting. But if a person can

01:26:28.140 accept that, no, that's not how it works. There could be this type of trauma in generation G minus

01:26:34.080 two that manifested as a different trauma in G minus one. And now here in G zero, where you are,

01:26:42.460 you have this blind spot to what's going on. I know that for me, that was among the most powerful

01:26:50.560 motivations to stop the cycle as Terry described it. How much do you think that that factors into

01:26:58.520 people's willingness to kind of endure the challenges and discomfort of the journey?

01:27:03.720 Oftentimes it becomes pivotal in willingness and in that surrender game that I mentioned,

01:27:10.000 because I think as a parent, one of my jobs or the most important job is in my opinion,

01:27:18.180 that my children go to bed and wake up safe. They don't grow up in fear. I have a lot to do with that.

01:27:23.780 But like they tell you on the airplanes about your oxygen mask, you got to have yours on first.

01:27:30.260 At the end of the day, being a parent, you mentioned about why I do what I do and what I

01:27:36.000 get out of it and whatnot. And to know my clients on a different level, because doing the work is hard.

01:27:42.860 Sometimes at the end of the day, when you need to have that hard discussion with somebody,

01:27:47.280 when a boundary needs to be set, when conflict resolution in a relationship needs to happen,

01:27:53.420 some days when people finally go to bed and the house is quiet, you just want to watch Netflix

01:27:57.940 to understand like what happens. And what can happen is, is that you put off these things and

01:28:03.960 things start to build and they build and they build. And then when the levy breaks, I'm the worst

01:28:08.680 version of Jeff. If I let that happen, what about that generation? What about that next generation?

01:28:15.480 It's responsibility on a whole different level, but a gift too. A misconception you were describing

01:28:23.560 of, well, at least I don't drink. At least I'm not an alcoholic. So that means that I'm not as bad

01:28:28.500 as my parents and there's no work to be done because there's so many other ways that I can have

01:28:33.480 an unhealthy impact on that next generation. But to be in that place of, okay, this is it.

01:28:40.820 This is it. And I have the opportunity to change this thing. In my case, reverse the cycle.

01:28:49.080 You must encounter a lot of people who have these socially acceptable maladaptive behaviors.

01:28:56.040 In many ways, it makes it even more difficult to reconcile because society is externally sort of

01:29:03.300 patting you on the back for your workaholism, your perfectionism, your achievements and all of those

01:29:08.280 things. I don't know. Is one pattern in your view harder to address than the other? Or is it all

01:29:13.580 about the individual? In other words, if you think about the individual characteristics,

01:29:17.280 the manifestation of the trauma and the nature of the injuries, those are three things that are all

01:29:22.800 blended. Do you try to disentangle those when you're working with people and pattern recognize,

01:29:28.300 or do you just say, nope, every person's a clean slate and we're just trying to figure out how those

01:29:33.300 three things fit together? That's a place I try to operate from. Out of, I think, my humanity,

01:29:38.900 our humanity as clinicians, there's client files. I've seen this. We've seen this one before. And

01:29:44.800 sometimes it needs to be said out loud. Some people need to hear, you know, I've seen you before,

01:29:49.740 right? Not always appreciated, but sometimes it lands.

01:29:53.280 For me, that's a very calming message, actually. The, you know what, Peter, you're not unique here.

01:30:01.240 There are lots of people like you out here. It's really easy to think you're the only one.

01:30:06.400 Yeah. And amazing to wrap your brain maybe around the fact that that's actually calming.

01:30:10.900 It's nice to know. There's certain interventions that tend to go along with certain personalities or

01:30:16.440 certain maladaptive behaviors, if you will. But to the best of my ability, clean slate.

01:30:23.280 What is this person telling me? How they're telling me?

01:30:27.060 When you think about examples, I've seen examples where it seems like everything we're talking about

01:30:31.840 has been taken too far. There's a story I read about a teacher who started every day with her

01:30:38.460 school children, basically trying to get them each to talk about what was making them sad.

01:30:43.780 The story digressed so much. One kid would say, well, I'm sad about the fact that something

01:30:48.780 happened. And it was illegitimate. It sounded actually quite traumatic in that kid's life.

01:30:52.960 They were getting yelled at all the time at home or locked in a room. And it sort of derailed the

01:30:58.040 ability to do anything. This is a group of kindergarten kids that ought to be learning

01:31:02.040 how to write and color and stuff like that. Everything was being pathologized for them.

01:31:07.920 So what do you say to the person listening to us that says, we've gone too far? And I get it.

01:31:13.980 I'm sure that some of the people that Jeff works with who have genuinely been abused deserve to be

01:31:19.380 there. But aren't we just coddling people too much? And don't people just need to sort of

01:31:23.860 buck her up? I mean, isn't this what makes us who we are?

01:31:26.940 Yes and no. I'm certain that those things are happening. I would not be comfortable painting a

01:31:33.500 broad brush and saying, yes, we are too far. Again, I'm back to depolarizing things.

01:31:38.280 Most of my folks that I meet through the therapeutic work grew up in much more of the

01:31:45.800 get over it, buck up. And then the other end of this continuum, if you will, is everything is

01:31:52.180 trauma. Let's not box ourselves in. I worry about the example that you just give there because

01:31:57.880 I'm just thinking about kids in general, especially younger kids. Kids can be mean.

01:32:02.260 Is that the space for that? Emotions? Yes. It can be so powerful, I believe, for children to learn

01:32:09.240 about their emotions. But to be guided by them, that's a tricky statement. I would hope the spirit

01:32:16.160 of guiding is learning what the behaviors are, learning when the time and place for emotional

01:32:24.120 attention is and the time and place that it's not for. Again, my experience comes from individuals

01:32:30.800 typically who are from the far other end of that. What would you say to a person who's listening to

01:32:38.120 us who's trying to even understand if they've experienced trauma, which it sounds like a dumb

01:32:44.240 thing to say, but let me give an example, right? So you have a person who's listening who's either

01:32:49.320 introspective enough to realize that some of those things we described as the four branches of the

01:32:54.460 trauma tree, whether it be codependency, attachment disorders, some sort of maladaptive behavior,

01:32:59.140 etc. Addiction, maybe. They're like, okay, I mean, if I'm being brutally honest, I'm not

01:33:05.880 flying on a perfect level. My spouse has complained about X, Y, and Z, and there does seem to be a

01:33:13.140 little bit of interpersonal discontent in this nature, in this relationship, etc. Okay, fine.

01:33:18.420 And then they, if they're, again, in a particularly charitable mood, they look at the kind of five

01:33:22.760 roots of the tree and they're like, well, okay, yeah, I mean, these sort of things happen.

01:33:26.920 But they can't make the leap to say, but does any of that stuff actually rise to the level of

01:33:32.580 quote unquote trauma, even little t trauma? Is the answer just that I need to get my act together and

01:33:39.040 drink a little less and just try to be more present with my kids? It doesn't matter what the fix is,

01:33:45.440 but they're just not sure that going back and stirring the pot of what happened to them during

01:33:51.820 the first 10 years of their life is going to be an exercise worth engaging in. How would you help

01:33:58.040 that person decide that you're right? It's probably not worth stirring that up. Let's just work on some

01:34:03.220 behavioral tools right now to address the behavior versus actually, I don't think you're ever going to

01:34:08.940 truly fix these things until you go back to the root.

01:34:11.300 I think that's a perfect way to approach it. Let's try that. In your example, like maybe I

01:34:17.180 should just do this less and do this more, all these behaviors. Let's try that. Let's put together

01:34:21.260 a plan. Goal setting. I'm coaching you. We're not doing an intervention here, a therapeutic

01:34:25.580 intervention. And if it happens, it happens. Folks who realize or already know that they have trauma

01:34:32.460 or have been wounded significantly. Sometimes I think the word just trips folks up and they just can't

01:34:38.300 get over the word. Wounded, survivors, whatever we want to call these folks, they have a really hard

01:34:44.300 time putting knowing into action. I spent many years as a very well-informed prisoner. I know all this

01:34:53.920 stuff about why it is I do the things that I do, but it's the putting it into action. The thing that

01:35:00.720 you'd said about the not doing, that's where we get to realize, hopefully admit to self if that's the

01:35:08.180 fact, when I come back to see Jeff or whoever, well, the goal is still failing. For some reason, I just

01:35:15.660 can't do that. Well, perhaps there's something significant connected to this. Maybe something needs to be

01:35:23.360 integrated. The part of you that is unwilling to do this thing that you say is the goal and the plan when you

01:35:30.420 sit in front of me, that's who we need to work with.

01:35:33.000 So how do you begin to do that integration? Let's go back to the example you gave because it's so

01:35:39.160 profound and probably tragic where that four-year-old boy that learned how to manipulate and

01:35:46.420 deceive to protect his mom has now carried that behavior into his marriage. So step one is obviously

01:35:54.200 getting to the point where we uncover that story and make the connection, which was an inner child is

01:35:59.780 wounded. That inner child adapted with a strategy that was very positive. Everything about that

01:36:06.560 strategy made sense. But guess what? Your dad isn't hurting your mom anymore because luckily she

01:36:12.800 got a divorce and he's gone. You're now applying that same behavior pattern in relationships that

01:36:18.980 have nothing to do with the relationship in which that was developed to be protective. And he says,

01:36:23.320 okay, I get it, Jeff. How do I change? What are the next steps? How do I go from the understanding of that

01:36:29.780 to creating a new pattern of behavior? Because this is really wired. These paths are heavily,

01:36:35.840 heavily myelinated at this point. In general, what we're going to have to do is we're going to have

01:36:41.960 to expand your window of tolerance, if you will, to vulnerability. Because typically that protective

01:36:48.120 behavior, again, the enemy is vulnerability. And so to create some muscle memory, doing something

01:36:55.960 different when vulnerable, not doing that same thing. When you talked about your experience at the

01:37:01.460 bridge and you talked about what it would have been like if we had a taken away exercise, simply sitting

01:37:07.080 still for some folks is a very vulnerable experience. And so to create an environment where that person

01:37:14.440 can experience the discomfort. And that's why I think that within my work and a lot of professionals

01:37:22.140 looking at individuals from a parts perspective, there's different systems, different theories,

01:37:29.040 internal family systems, structural dissociation, but this language that I'm using, it's not necessarily

01:37:34.840 new because it's like you're talking about. So this is original self, this wounded self, this adapted

01:37:39.920 self. The adapted self tends to have some really hard line beliefs. Safety equals control. Safety equals

01:37:48.340 distance. Safety equals self-abandonment. Safety equals somebody else. And as long as that part of self

01:37:57.000 has that core belief, I believe it's going to be damn near impossible to do those things that I know I

01:38:06.080 should do. So to know that there are interventions that will fit that process. The first question is,

01:38:13.820 do you got issue with this? Because I'm back to, if you like it, I love it. When a client, they're at

01:38:19.560 the bridge and they're there because their spouse, their spouse is going to leave them. Their spouse

01:38:24.260 is finally fed up with it and they've got all these opinions about it. So here I am because they said I

01:38:29.880 needed to go to a place like this. And you know, and you're like, it doesn't sound like you've got a

01:38:33.820 problem at all. What do you mean? You can keep being you. You've just got somebody telling you now that

01:38:39.400 they're not going to deal with it. Maybe it's the biggest controlling jerk in the world. So all you

01:38:44.540 need to do is go find another doormat. I'm just hearing you say your spouse is not. So you decide

01:38:49.540 whether there's a problem there or not. This behavior again, that's become the problematic behavior,

01:38:55.420 how difficult it is to unravel and stop doing that behavior. Again, tied into the trauma, tied into it

01:39:02.080 being an ingenious damage control strategy at a time in life, perhaps, and perhaps done multiple

01:39:09.680 times successfully. So there's a part of self that says, why not do this? We've been doing pretty well

01:39:17.520 like this for a long time. There tend to be these moments along this journey. I assume I'm not unique

01:39:24.240 in this where people have really significant breakthroughs in beliefs. And it's mostly that

01:39:30.720 a belief gets shattered. Again, this is, I think, one of the real joys of having a journal is you can

01:39:36.780 kind of go back and read what that was like and read on this day through this exercise, this really

01:39:43.900 profound thing happened. I mean, I wrote about two of them in that last chapter of my book. I wrote about

01:39:48.880 one at the bridge and one about PCS that were undoubtedly the two biggest breakthroughs in beliefs

01:39:55.060 I've ever had in my life. They've had a far greater impact on anything in my world. And they both

01:40:03.340 happened in an instant. They were huge step function changes in a radical belief system. And what I find

01:40:12.320 interesting about it is how much easier it became to make any change after the fact. I never want to

01:40:19.040 represent that I'm better. We're all in recovery here. But when I think about the December, 2017,

01:40:26.540 April of 2020, or maybe it was by this point, May of 2020, those particular days when those things

01:40:33.240 happened, literally within an instant, I don't understand the neurobiology of how it happens,

01:40:38.060 but something really switches. And I never look at the world the same way I did before. There's an

01:40:44.520 immediate acceptance of something typically. That's the shattering of the belief system is the

01:40:48.880 acceptance of something that is more honest and more close to the innate child that we all were.

01:40:56.060 Is that common? First of all, that people have these major, major life-changing appreciations of

01:41:02.220 something. And then secondly, is that by itself sufficient sometimes to drive change?

01:41:07.260 I'd be careful with the common word, but it happens a lot. I typically hear about it kind of the way you

01:41:13.100 described it. Months, even sometimes years later, it hit me one day or this thing was happening and I

01:41:20.800 was incredibly compelled to do it the old way. And I heard something so-and-so said in my ear,

01:41:26.020 something against that belief system. That's what's so tricky about that process at the bridge. Or if you

01:41:32.280 want to talk about experiential journeys, using experiential therapies. I mean, just going to a process,

01:41:37.720 a group therapy process, residential is an experiential intervention. And so to be able to put my finger on

01:41:43.980 what was it, what exactly was it? And can I prove that that was the thing?

01:41:49.920 It's interesting for me in both cases, it came down to a therapist pushing very hard,

01:41:58.140 but very kindly against a set of assumptions. It was me saying something, offering it up the same

01:42:08.280 answer and the person saying, what about this? What about this? And just maybe describe it as a

01:42:16.740 loving confrontation that when fully backed into a corner in an unthreatening way, collapsed the

01:42:25.000 scaffolding of a mental model. Yeah. And thank God. I mean, when you tell that about putting your

01:42:31.540 finger on that, I've got so much gratitude sitting here. Obviously, I know the moments, several of the

01:42:38.540 moments, and it is common. I think the spirit of you in this example, putting yourself in a position

01:42:46.680 for it to happen. And there being a process to get this guarded version of self out of the way enough

01:42:54.280 to allow something like that to happen. And there's a lot going on to create that or to cultivate that

01:43:01.440 possibility. I think that's absolutely maybe the lesson I would want somebody to learn from this is

01:43:07.120 in science, there's an expression that I think it was Louis Pasteur that said that chance favors the

01:43:12.040 prepared mind. And the idea is that great scientific breakthroughs don't just happen. They happen to

01:43:20.280 people who are toiling in the lab, failing, failing, failing, trying again, trying again,

01:43:28.800 constantly thinking about the problem. And yes, usually something lucky happens that trips them in

01:43:34.180 the direction of a discovery. It's often very much an accident, but that accident can't happen if you're

01:43:40.180 not on the field. That accident doesn't happen if you're in the stands. Maybe that's the takeaway I

01:43:46.320 would want somebody to have here, which is you're very unlikely to have that eureka moment if you're

01:43:52.360 not mired in the trenches of going through the painful work of figuring out your story, understanding,

01:44:01.680 trying to create the map of what's happening. It's unlikely to happen when you're continuing the

01:44:07.100 distractions or the numbing behaviors. Absolutely. Sometimes I guess the frustration with the

01:44:14.000 individual one-on-one therapeutic dynamic would be, I've heard many of the therapists who would ask

01:44:20.540 the question, why would somebody go to a residential program that wasn't an addict or alcoholic? You talk

01:44:25.740 about the frustrations of like the goals, not being able to put the knowing into acting. I see this person

01:44:31.100 we have four steps forward. We had this great 55 minute session. And then six days later, they come

01:44:36.740 back and I'm like, who the hell is this? What happened to them? Well, what happened to them is

01:44:41.320 more than likely they went back and lived underneath the same roof with their biggest trauma trigger.

01:44:46.940 And so in your experience and many others, having the ability to get that separation, season of

01:44:53.460 separation to make that possible. Not the only way to make that possible. Because again, we paint

01:44:57.920 ourselves in a hole to where, you mean, if I can't go to a residential program, I can't heal.

01:45:01.940 We certainly don't want to paint that because then we've got a lot of folks without hope.

01:45:05.460 But one of the ways, absolutely. Do you view your work today, the work you do just with individual

01:45:11.340 clients as something that you prefer to only do with people once they're coming out of a residential

01:45:17.320 program? Or do you take clients that are saying, hey, I think I need help. I'm not ready to fully

01:45:24.180 commit to doing something as intensive and committed as residential care.

01:45:29.360 Either one. Absolutely. Because you mentioned that it's a journey. Healed. Past tense typically

01:45:36.040 isn't a reality. We're all on a healing journey, I hope. Yeah, we can have these lightning bolt moments,

01:45:42.960 get this momentum, make this progress. You described your experience of it and also know that the work

01:45:49.160 continues. Because back to the language of these maladaptive behaviors and all the muscle memory,

01:45:55.420 to have a eureka moment just completely wiped that out. But when you talk about that scenario,

01:46:01.420 yeah, if I know somebody has been to a residential program and I have an idea of what they did,

01:46:06.700 because I have familiarity with where they were at, then I can do a certain thing with that.

01:46:10.560 But at the same time, I guess the fire that it lights for that person that you've been talking

01:46:16.100 about so much is finally getting to the cusp or to that place of, I think I need to look at something.

01:46:23.360 I got a lot of good. You talked about that person, but something's just not right. And to be at that

01:46:28.740 point of that journey that we talked about not being linear and having a system, if you will,

01:46:35.620 where the background, I believe with that group experiential process has a different way of

01:46:42.820 making that one-on-one relationship, I'm back to the word efficient and trauma efficiency,

01:46:49.520 hopefully being able to help recognize here's the what and the when, and let's make sure we're using

01:46:54.500 our time wisely. Jeff, what advice do you have for somebody who's out there trying to find a

01:46:59.480 therapist? They've listened to us today and they've been like, okay, these two guys have got me at

01:47:04.020 least thinking I ought to maybe scratch this a little bit, see if this scab bleeds. What are

01:47:10.180 the attributes they should be looking for? First of all, how do they even begin to like,

01:47:13.280 what do you go on Google and search trauma-based therapy? How do you find somebody? And more

01:47:17.160 importantly, when you find somebody, how do you say, look, I'm going to give this three or four

01:47:22.200 sessions to determine if this is a good use of my time. What are you looking for? Is it, hey,

01:47:27.180 if I'm not uncomfortable in three or four sessions, this person probably isn't doing a good job.

01:47:31.220 What are the metrics? Certainly want some input from a professional, a seasoned professional,

01:47:37.880 a personal referral. You mentioned, do I just Google? Trauma-informed is kind of like the buzz

01:47:44.660 thing. And what does this mean? Did you go to a 45-minute seminar on trauma does affect folks and

01:47:50.060 now you're trauma-informed? Is there a certification that people should be aware of that says you're a

01:47:54.580 true trauma-based therapist? There are several, but I would be more interested in what I do when

01:48:01.540 I look at bios is sometimes I get more concerned about the more specialties I see. So when I see

01:48:08.540 these lists that cover every class that someone takes during a graduate program for counseling,

01:48:14.560 that troubles me. How come? It looks great. I cover all of these different things. But no depth.

01:48:19.800 Yeah. But like how much muscle memory do you have as a clinician working with a certain population

01:48:26.400 the way that you do it? And where did that muscle memory come from? That's a big part of what I do

01:48:32.920 is helping folks make sure that they are with the right person. That's where I go with the efficiency

01:48:39.440 of it. Knowing the story, learning the story, getting that eye-opening moment, and then that hint that

01:48:45.940 someone wants something different, and then to be a part of that process or to point them in the right

01:48:51.080 direction. What else should they be looking for? So they find somebody, they think they even get a

01:48:56.180 personal referral that says this person is good. How should they evaluate what is going on and if

01:49:01.340 they're on the right path within a month, for example? What's a sign that things are going well?

01:49:05.520 What's a sign that things are not going well? I personally think that sometimes I would say that

01:49:10.980 challenge. How challenged do you feel? How do you feel going into a session? How do you feel after

01:49:17.000 the session? What's a good sign? Is going in apprehensive and coming out exhausted a good sign?

01:49:23.700 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it's a good story when it's like, I can't wait to talk to Jeff

01:49:28.520 because I'm going to get to gripe for 55 minutes and he's going to let me pay him for that. Now it's

01:49:33.820 happened before and I would just say we need to call this what it is. If this is where you want to put

01:49:39.300 your anger at for an hour, we can do that, but let's call it what it is because we're not working

01:49:44.280 on change here. So what's happening? What's being illuminated? Because they wouldn't call it a

01:49:50.180 blind spot if I could see it. So what's happening within that back and forth? What did I not know?

01:49:56.920 What made me think? What made me pause? But the main thing is what's different? Not all therapeutic

01:50:03.160 relationships are a good match. And so to just know that that's a reality and to give yourself

01:50:09.760 permission after an adequate amount of time, this isn't working. Let's not keep doing this.

01:50:15.000 Let's not keep doing something that's not working. Life's short.

01:50:18.480 I'm looking at my last entry before I left the bridge. I see a couple of great lines here.

01:50:23.640 One of my favorite other co-residents there, she said this. She said,

01:50:28.660 I asked God why he beat me down this year. He said he broke me open. I thought that was very

01:50:34.380 powerful. You said on the way out, the more you cry here, the more you win here. That was pretty

01:50:40.220 interesting. There's just no escaping it, is there? Like it's very, very difficult. If the name of the

01:50:46.340 game is I have to become vulnerable to become connected, that's the central thesis here. I am

01:50:53.060 disconnected and I am using something to stay disconnected. Sometimes those things are obviously

01:51:00.200 bad like drugs and alcohol. Sometimes and many times they are not that obviously bad like work

01:51:05.360 and perfectionism or cleanliness or you pick it, right? Depending on the extent of it. But I have

01:51:11.040 to get vulnerable to be connected and being vulnerable feels like getting broken down and

01:51:17.000 you're going to shed some tears. Exactly. And the sheer fact or thought of shedding the tears

01:51:22.420 might amplify the vulnerability through the roof. So it's written all over the walls, literally. I

01:51:27.900 mean, if you remember group rooms with emotion words on the walls. And to have clinicians sit in that

01:51:34.240 room as guests of ours and refer to them as negative emotions. I squirm in my seat. Maybe they're not as

01:51:42.480 comfortable, but like there's a utility to all of these emotions. And I liken stuffing emotions to like

01:51:48.880 tightening the string on a guitar. And you think of how many times, how many times that you've stuffed

01:51:54.340 that emotion. What happens? And that thing right there, I think a lot of folks have been misinformed or

01:52:03.060 it was an old way of doing things. But I think a lot of folks go into it thinking that they've got to

01:52:08.260 have this explosion with their emotions for the thing to happen. And if being lost in my emotion,

01:52:16.440 if drowning in a pool of tears is what trauma integration is, then let me have no part of it.

01:52:22.180 Because if dysregulated emotions is what comes out of the work, then I keep referring to them as guards.

01:52:28.160 My guards, my protective parts, they've got more reason than ever to do their job.

01:52:34.240 You just introduced me to vulnerability and it was overwhelming. So when working with the client,

01:52:41.120 regardless of the setting, it's befriending vulnerability. And to introduce vulnerability

01:52:47.460 as overwhelming, that is counterproductive. These protective selves, you mentioned back to the

01:52:54.840 connection. And human connection is vulnerable. It's not something that's meant to be controlled.

01:53:00.640 There's unknowns. There's another person. We really don't know what they're going to do,

01:53:05.760 what they're going to say, how we're going to be received. That's vulnerable. And if you look

01:53:11.860 through the lens of these protective parts, my guards, the irony is the means by which they do their

01:53:17.860 job typically brings me the thing that they most fear. Another example. Let's say that a client,

01:53:27.740 this is one that works sometimes. Let's say that a client, like one of their things is they've got

01:53:33.080 some trauma. They've got some insecurities around betrayals and they're in a relationship. And one

01:53:39.640 day their partner comes home and tells them that their ex is back working at the hospital where they

01:53:44.060 work at. Now, who wants to hear that? Nobody wants to hear that. But it's going to be especially bad

01:53:49.540 news for somebody with a betrayal file. It's going to be very vulnerable. Introduce vulnerability

01:53:55.100 into the equation. This is where the disconnected self shows up. I have to do something to take

01:54:03.080 care of that vulnerability. So I have this avoidant part. I used to call him the too cool

01:54:08.280 for school part. And he was born out of hearing a lot of what kind of man's he going to be? What

01:54:12.860 kind of man's he going to be? So in other words, this part of me doesn't believe that a man says

01:54:17.280 something like, I'm scared, I'm vulnerable. So this part of me says, you want to hear about all the

01:54:23.260 skeletons in my closet? I don't care that your ex is back at work five years ago. But when that

01:54:29.740 partner's on their seven to seven shifts, it's hard for me to be connected, Jeff, when all that

01:54:35.360 stuff starts going on through insecurities and betrayals and things of that nature. So I need

01:54:41.700 something, something to step in and take me away. And that's where that disconnection comes in. For

01:54:47.100 some folks, it would be drinking or whatnot. Then the spirit of the example that I'm given and trying

01:54:51.400 to give the irony is, again, the problem is not having the parts. It's how they do their job and

01:54:58.420 the relationship between those parts. Because eventually what happens is, is that as I do the

01:55:05.280 thing with, let's say the behavior is drinking. So I'm drinking, I'm drinking, I'm drinking. And

01:55:09.380 eventually I get to a point to where not thinking that much about what might be going on at that

01:55:14.620 hospital. And then I get to a point to where my buddy leaves. We were watching the ball game. I was

01:55:18.340 able to be connected, Jeff, in front of him. But now I'm really starting to get up in my head about

01:55:21.960 what might be going on at the hospital where my partner's at. When the phone finally rings

01:55:26.620 at 1130 or 12 or whatever, it's not connected, Jeff, that answers the phone. I'm using myself

01:55:32.200 in this made up example, right? But it's going to be a disconnected version of Jeff. You having fun?

01:55:37.540 Why the night's so young, maybe you guys will have time to go at it again, right? All this woundedness

01:55:42.280 starts coming out. And so eventually what happens is in this example, if this partner's got any

01:55:47.160 healthy going on, I'm going to come downstairs one day and there's going to be a note that says,

01:55:52.020 I wasn't created to save you. I can't do this. You need some help. And now have I ever been any

01:55:58.320 sadder than I am? Because it's a triangle of vulnerability, sad, shame, and fear. And that's

01:56:04.740 what all these guarded parts of self, they're there to protect us against that. But you see the means by

01:56:10.380 which the protected, disconnected self did its work actually played out, brought me the thing that

01:56:17.440 I feared the most. So now here I am sitting at this table alone, realizing what's happened.

01:56:25.420 That's how that happened. So back to disconnection, connection, what is connected?

01:56:29.880 Jeff says, I know this is my stuff and I've got work to do. It's a reminder that I've got work to do,

01:56:35.800 but I got to tell you, I got to be honest with me. It bothers me what you just told me

01:56:39.200 about this person being back working with you. It bothers me, but that's a very vulnerable thing

01:56:43.840 to say. Of course, you can only really say that if your partner is equally vulnerable,

01:56:48.460 because if your partner is not vulnerable, that that message isn't going to land and that's going

01:56:54.200 to be triggering to that person. And I guess all of this is a long-winded way of saying you have

01:56:58.720 to have two healthy people to make a relationship work. You can't just have one.

01:57:02.060 Absolutely. That might not be welcomed. That emotional, vulnerable self might not be welcomed.

01:57:09.600 And that's information that's necessary, a necessary information about my partner.

01:57:14.100 It bothers me in that example. I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm not asking you to quit your job

01:57:19.020 or anything like that, but I just need you to know my truth. And I've got work to do around this,

01:57:23.840 but it does bother me. It scares me to death. It scares me to death. Probably the bravest words I've

01:57:29.240 ever said to another human being in my life is it scares me to death.

01:57:32.060 I spent so many years trying to act like it did.

01:57:35.280 If you're in that relationship where one of you is feeling like, hey, I can be vulnerable here,

01:57:41.180 but it's not being reciprocated. What are the tips for maybe helping your spouse? If this is

01:57:46.220 thinking about it as a marriage or something like that, what can the vulnerable member of that

01:57:50.560 relationship do to help the other one? Because it's not going to be tenable indefinitely. How do you

01:57:56.540 lovingly get that person to come to a place where they want to get help?

01:58:02.600 A lot of folks have wasted years trying to pull and push people into help. You just have to be the

01:58:07.240 agent of change in the relationship. You have to break the dance. So in this particular dance is it's,

01:58:13.140 I'm wanting to be vulnerable and you're not having anything of it. Something's got to change. So you

01:58:18.380 got to sharpen your skills with the boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. And sometimes

01:58:23.560 it's a worn out word, but it's a hell of a skill to be able to utilize and to be able to set a healthy

01:58:30.200 boundary. Top tier boundary setting oftentimes doesn't include the word you. Flows folks away

01:58:37.580 when you just talk about me. I realize when this behavior happens, whatever fill in the blank,

01:58:45.540 that it's affecting me. I'm building resentment and this isn't good for me. When this behavior happens

01:58:52.880 again, I'm going to choose to do blank. And whatever blank is, is whatever change looks like.

01:58:58.660 It might be in this example, like I want to be able to share my heart with you, but evidently I

01:59:03.320 can't. So I'll be taking it to my best friend. And so to be able to set the boundary and set a

01:59:10.240 boundary where there's a consequence, it's something that I can hold. It's something that I can do

01:59:15.120 because a boundary without a consequence is useless. Jeff, I want to thank you very much for

01:59:20.680 not just coming today, but for obviously being a really important part of my life. I owe you a great

01:59:25.280 debt of gratitude as I do a number of therapists who I've been really lucky to work with, but I will

01:59:31.600 forever reflect on what can only be described as just an unbelievably difficult experience that

01:59:40.300 I'm so glad I had no idea how bad it was going to be when I reluctantly agreed to go because I just

01:59:46.420 don't think I ever would have done it. And I've had the privilege of encouraging many people to go

01:59:51.240 since then, not just to the bridge, but to other places as well. I think almost without exception,

01:59:56.760 it's helped them. In fact, I know it has. I can't think of an exception where it hasn't. So

02:00:00.300 if someone's listening to us and they're sort of contemplating either dipping their toe in by

02:00:06.240 working with a therapist and trying to probe some of these things, or if they're thinking about

02:00:10.420 jumping in the lake, then going to a residential place like the bridge, what would you say to them?

02:00:15.540 If there's a voice saying it, listen. If there's a voice, even if it's a whisper, it's there for a

02:00:23.980 reason. And I think more important than anything else, you're either going to deal with it or it's

02:00:29.540 going to deal with you. My hope for the you and humanity and what we do as far as helping people,

02:00:36.540 in this case, we're talking about emotional health, but longevity, yeah, deal with this. Grab the

02:00:42.240 bull by the horns. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be part of

02:00:47.500 your journey and congratulations on everything. Keep up the good work, brother. Thank you for

02:00:53.240 listening to this week's episode of The Drive. Head over to peteratiyamd.com forward slash show notes

02:01:00.340 if you want to dig deeper into this episode. You can also find me on YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter,

02:01:06.560 all with the handle peteratiyamd. You can also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or

02:01:12.140 whatever podcast player you use. This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does

02:01:18.180 not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional healthcare services, including

02:01:22.760 the giving of medical advice. No doctor-patient relationship is formed. The use of this information

02:01:28.860 and the materials linked to this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content on this podcast is not

02:01:35.260 intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not

02:01:40.820 disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice from any medical condition they have, and they should

02:01:45.540 seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. Finally, I take all conflicts

02:01:51.880 of interest very seriously. For all of my disclosures and the companies I invest in or advise, please

02:01:57.780 visit peteratiyamd.com forward slash about where I keep an up-to-date and active list of all disclosures.

02:02:05.260 Thank you.

The Peter Attia Drive - March 10, 2025

#339 - Unpacking trauma： How early wounds shape behavior and the path toward healing ｜ Jeff English

Episode Stats

Length

Words per Minute

Word Count

Sentence Count

Misogynist Sentences

Hate Speech Sentences

Summary

Transcript