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The Trauma and Grief of Life with Dr. Cristi Bundukamara · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma SAPIs podcast. My name is go Macpherson.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
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Speaker 1: those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
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Speaker 1: five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
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Speaker 1: to the podcast. Very excited to have as my guest today,
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Speaker 1: doctor Christy Bandukamara.
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Speaker 2: Christy welcome, Thank you so much so.
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Speaker 1: Christy, known to her patients as Doctor B, is a
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Speaker 1: psychiatric nurse practitioner and the founder of Mentally Strong, a
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Speaker 1: behavioral health clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Combining decades of
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Speaker 1: clinical expertise with her deeply personal experience, Doctor B helps
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Speaker 1: people navigate grief, trauma, and loss through her innovative Mentally
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Speaker 1: Strong method practical framework for building resilience and reclaiming purpose
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Speaker 1: after life's hardest moments. All right, doctor B. Christy, Before
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Speaker 1: we get go in here, share with the listeners where
0:55
Speaker 1: you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: I'm originally from Miami, floor been a psychiatric nurse practitioner
1:02
Speaker 2: for twenty five years, have seven children. By all, I
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Speaker 2: am a go getter for sure, an expert in trauma
1:11
Speaker 2: by default, right like I you know, you know how
1:15
Speaker 2: the industry is. Most psychiatric nurse practitioners are focused on
1:19
Speaker 2: you know, medication management, psychiatric evaluations. Some do some counseling.
1:25
Speaker 2: But when I was going through my own grief in trauma.
1:28
Speaker 2: So the first event happened in two thousand and five.
1:32
Speaker 1: All right, wait, hang on, han, I want I got
1:33
Speaker 1: to stop you. We're going to get into that, but
1:36
Speaker 1: I want to just find out where you're from originally,
1:39
Speaker 1: where you are currently.
1:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am from Miami, Florida, and I'm currently in
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Speaker 2: Colorado Springs, Colorado.
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Speaker 1: Okay, okay, all right, so go on, how how did
1:49
Speaker 1: all this start for you?
1:51
Speaker 2: So in two thousand and five, I lost a son
1:53
Speaker 2: in a drowning accident. I had six other children, so
1:56
Speaker 2: I've adopted five from the foster care system. So they
1:59
Speaker 2: came to me with pretty significant reactive attachment disorder and
2:03
Speaker 2: PTSD and so, you know, just like a good mental
2:08
Speaker 2: health professional, and I was like, oh, I can do this,
2:11
Speaker 2: but it is it is very different when you bring
2:14
Speaker 2: trauma into your home rather than treating you know, trauma
2:18
Speaker 2: as a professional. And so that was my first you know,
2:21
Speaker 2: kind of introduction to traumas bringing in these children. They
2:24
Speaker 2: were nine, ten, and thirteen when they came into my home,
2:28
Speaker 2: both physical and sexual abuse in their past, and obviously
2:32
Speaker 2: abandoned by their biological family. Within a year of adopting
2:39
Speaker 2: this three child sibling group, one of them died in
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Speaker 2: a drowning accident. And so I have four other adopted
2:46
Speaker 2: children and two biological children. And the only reason I
2:49
Speaker 2: differentiate those is because my biological children ended up with
2:53
Speaker 2: a very rare neurodegenerative condition. So I lost my first
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Speaker 2: son in two thousand and five in a drowning accident.
2:59
Speaker 2: After promising these kids that I adopted that they were
3:03
Speaker 2: now safe. Right, we talk about the first step of
3:06
Speaker 2: trauma treatment is being safe, right, being safe to begin
3:10
Speaker 2: working on that trauma. And immediately after being adopted, and
3:16
Speaker 2: I'm trying to convince them that they're safe so that
3:18
Speaker 2: we can start working on their trauma, their biological brother dies,
3:24
Speaker 2: and so you know, there was even more trauma and
3:28
Speaker 2: grief on top of that, right, And I now know,
3:32
Speaker 2: twenty years later, how to actually treat traumatic grief. I
3:36
Speaker 2: do think it's different, and that's where my specialty comes
3:40
Speaker 2: in here. But I'll go on with the story and
3:42
Speaker 2: then we'll kind of talk about how do you actually
3:45
Speaker 2: treat traumatic grief because the end goal is often different.
3:50
Speaker 2: So within a year of my son Johnny dying in
3:54
Speaker 2: a drowning accident, my biological son Reggie started having catastrophic epilepsy,
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Speaker 2: like twelve grandma seizures in a day, completely wiping him
4:04
Speaker 2: out cognitively, beginning to have delays because of these seizures.
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Speaker 2: No medications were working, and it took them three years,
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Speaker 2: but they finally diagnosed a very rare neurodegenerative condition called
4:18
Speaker 2: d RPLA. When I say rare, I mean there's three
4:22
Speaker 2: families in the United States. So I went on a
4:25
Speaker 2: mission to save my son and I did everything from
4:31
Speaker 2: every type of alternative practice to taking him to Japan,
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Speaker 2: to Canada to the UK for different potential treatments for
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Speaker 2: this very rare condition, both alternative medicine and ye.
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Speaker 1: Are you were you a nurse practitioner at this time?
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, okay, okay, And so I was attacking it
4:51
Speaker 2: from multiple directions, you know, from a medical standpoint, but
4:55
Speaker 2: then also this is what opened up my door to
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Speaker 2: kind of alternative treatment, and both from like supplements and
5:03
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, but also types of traumatic work
5:07
Speaker 2: that I still do. I do a lot of somatic
5:09
Speaker 2: movement work and you know, sound bowls and reiki and
5:13
Speaker 2: energy work, but this was kind of the first step
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Speaker 2: into that, like learning about those things. Unfortunately, my son
5:23
Speaker 2: passed away in twenty sixteen, and it is a genetic condition.
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Speaker 2: So my other biological child and my husband was diagnosed
5:31
Speaker 2: with the same rare condition. My daughter, although she had seizures,
5:37
Speaker 2: was very responsive to medication, so they would start a medication,
5:42
Speaker 2: she wouldn't have seizures for six months a year, and
5:45
Speaker 2: then she'd have one seizure, they'd adjust the medication. So
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Speaker 2: her presentation looked nothing like her brother who ended up
5:51
Speaker 2: passing away, So there was no indication that the end
5:56
Speaker 2: result would be the same. And so I begannally Strong.
6:00
Speaker 2: After Reggie passed away, I knew that I had to
6:04
Speaker 2: teach people what I now call the mentally strong method,
6:06
Speaker 2: which is like this just basic cognitive behavioral approach that
6:10
Speaker 2: anybody can learn how to take care of themselves. And
6:13
Speaker 2: trauma is kind of one of the categories in there,
6:15
Speaker 2: like how do you actually work through your trauma right
6:20
Speaker 2: and the impact that trauma has on your life. In
6:26
Speaker 2: December of twenty twenty one, I woke up to my
6:29
Speaker 2: daughter had died in her sleep, no indication. She ended
6:35
Speaker 2: up dying of sudden, unexpected death and epilepsies. So she
6:37
Speaker 2: did have seizures. And when someone with seizures dies in
6:41
Speaker 2: their sleep, they just there's really no way to tell
6:44
Speaker 2: for sure, but they just assume that they die from
6:46
Speaker 2: a seizure in their sleep. So this gave a whole
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Speaker 2: new level of trauma. Right, So with Reggie's death, I
6:56
Speaker 2: didn't even identify it as trauma. And I think we
6:59
Speaker 2: often do this as mental health professionals, right, we hear
7:02
Speaker 2: such horrible traumatic stories that we don't often recognize our
7:06
Speaker 2: own trauma. I'm like, oh, it's grief, it's grief. And
7:08
Speaker 2: so I was already kind of on that stage of
7:11
Speaker 2: being a grief expert. And I realized after my daughter died,
7:14
Speaker 2: which was completely unexpected and the most personally traumatic, that
7:22
Speaker 2: this was trauma, that this is changing the way I
7:26
Speaker 2: see the world. And so I went on a journey.
7:29
Speaker 2: I created a grief documentary. So on this grief journey,
7:34
Speaker 2: I followed myself with a GoPro. I filmed everything, I did,
7:38
Speaker 2: all kinds of somatic work, spiritual work, professional work. I
7:44
Speaker 2: went and visited the Amen Clinic, and you know, I
7:47
Speaker 2: went to the Aman Clinic, which I don't know if
7:49
Speaker 2: you know, this is where they do spec scans to
7:51
Speaker 2: look at what is actually happening in the brain. And
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Speaker 2: I thought maybe we'd see something different. Friend, You know that,
8:01
Speaker 2: because I had this grief for you, for me, for you.
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Speaker 1: Okay, you were doing all this work for yourself to
8:08
Speaker 1: deal with what the hell has been going on. Hang
8:11
Speaker 1: on a second, let me just pause here, because this
8:15
Speaker 1: story is uh, I mean, it's it's it's just unfathomable.
8:25
Speaker 1: And you're kind of you're you're going over it, and
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Speaker 1: I respect that, and I'm not going to ask you
8:32
Speaker 1: to talk about whatever you don't want to talk about,
8:34
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's unfathomable. I mean, you've already lost
8:38
Speaker 1: three kids that you're talking about here. Let me just
8:43
Speaker 1: take a step back here when you first got all
8:46
Speaker 1: these kids. Forgive my lack of memory here, but how
8:53
Speaker 1: many kids did you adopt compared to how many were biological? Yeah?
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Speaker 2: I adopted five, Okay, two biological and so one adopted child,
9:03
Speaker 2: both biological children, and most recently my husband. So we're
9:08
Speaker 2: coming up on the one year anniversary of my husband's death,
9:13
Speaker 2: which was a hospice type death, and so there was,
9:17
Speaker 2: you know, there was able to be some grieving prior
9:20
Speaker 2: to his death. And so when I say I'm a
9:23
Speaker 2: traumatic grief expert, I lived every type of grief, from
9:30
Speaker 2: even the grief of losing your husband that's physically still there, right,
9:35
Speaker 2: like he began to cognitively leave before he physically left, right.
9:40
Speaker 2: I've you know, the grief of a mother taking her
9:43
Speaker 2: special needs child to an IEP meeting and being told
9:47
Speaker 2: over and over again that her child is not going
9:49
Speaker 2: to measure up and that they're not enough. And those
9:52
Speaker 2: are you know, like this constant grief that special needs
9:55
Speaker 2: moms go through. And so I think we as profession
10:01
Speaker 2: and the reason I like to like get the story
10:04
Speaker 2: out there like quickly and somewhat unemotional in the beginning,
10:09
Speaker 2: to get that shock factor out right, Like I am
10:14
Speaker 2: speaking from a space of true vulnerability and success in
10:22
Speaker 2: treating myself. And I can tell you I know that
10:25
Speaker 2: you know, most of your listeners are trauma therapists or therapists.
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Speaker 2: You know, I try to seek professional help a couple times,
10:34
Speaker 2: and the words that I hear, are I don't know
10:38
Speaker 2: how you're still standing, and that how that is received
10:43
Speaker 2: to the person on the other end is if you
10:45
Speaker 2: don't know how I'm still standing, how are you supposed
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Speaker 2: to help me? So I want to get in front
10:52
Speaker 2: of people who are treating trauma and hearing these stories
10:57
Speaker 2: and giving you the power that you can hold space
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Speaker 2: for this. And you know, we know these techniques of like,
11:06
Speaker 2: you know, don't do the counter transfers, don't take on
11:10
Speaker 2: you know most of us are impaths, right, you know,
11:13
Speaker 2: so we we take that on. But then when we
11:16
Speaker 2: do that, we don't hold a space of strength for
11:20
Speaker 2: the person who needs us to hold a space of strength.
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Speaker 1: Well, there's there's a balance there, right, I mean, in
11:25
Speaker 1: all fairness, your story is outside the bounds of normal
11:32
Speaker 1: understanding and experience. I mean, one, you know, we hear
11:36
Speaker 1: when people talk about losing a kid's oftentimes that's registered
11:41
Speaker 1: as probably the most terrific, horrible thing we as humans
11:44
Speaker 1: and parents can go through. But it's it's not just
11:48
Speaker 1: one kid, right for you. So I could understand any
11:51
Speaker 1: any person in any therapist saying that that doesn't mean
11:54
Speaker 1: they're not able to to treat you but also you know,
12:00
Speaker 1: it's how it's communicated. Well let me let's go back
12:03
Speaker 1: to this. So how did you I mean, obviously you're
12:08
Speaker 1: cut from a different how are you come on?
12:12
Speaker 2: I think this is important because I often kind of
12:15
Speaker 2: get that that somehow Christy Bundukmar doctor b has more
12:20
Speaker 2: strength than the average average person. And my favorite book
12:26
Speaker 2: of all time, and I think anybody who works in
12:28
Speaker 2: trauma needs to read this book is The Man Search
12:31
Speaker 2: for Meaning by Victor Frankel.
12:33
Speaker 1: Right.
12:34
Speaker 2: This is not a book about how to you know, uh,
12:37
Speaker 2: overcome captivity. It is about the human experience and how
12:42
Speaker 2: hope in and of itself can allow you to survive.
12:48
Speaker 2: Just hope and and sometimes that's all we can help
12:54
Speaker 2: our patients find right that diggy and sometimes you have
12:59
Speaker 2: to dig really deep. And in my documentary, I'm very vulnerable.
13:03
Speaker 2: There is you know a period of time that suicidality
13:07
Speaker 2: made sense to me, like and I always talk to
13:11
Speaker 2: people about how suicidality can be a a communication of
13:20
Speaker 2: a feeling of I don't have anything left in me.
13:24
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be an action, right, And so
13:31
Speaker 2: it was difficult and it was not compartmentalized, right, like
13:38
Speaker 2: a lot of people who have been through difficult things
13:42
Speaker 2: survive by grit alone, right, like just grit, They don't
13:47
Speaker 2: actually work through the trauma. They don't. And and trauma
13:51
Speaker 2: work is hard, as everyone listening here knows, trauma work
13:56
Speaker 2: is hard. And we live in a culture where we
14:01
Speaker 2: don't want to do hard things, right, We want to
14:03
Speaker 2: go through the fast food we don't you know, Yeah,
14:06
Speaker 2: we know that if we hand cooked all of our
14:08
Speaker 2: meals and did this and this and this, that you
14:11
Speaker 2: know would be healthier for us. But it's harder, right,
14:15
Speaker 2: And so I mean, I know people who are listening
14:19
Speaker 2: here know how important trauma work is. But I can
14:24
Speaker 2: tell you I work with a lot of mothers who
14:26
Speaker 2: have lost children and the physical symptoms. You know, I'm
14:31
Speaker 2: sure we've all read the book The Body keeps the Score, right,
14:34
Speaker 2: like the it often comes out in physical ways. If
14:39
Speaker 2: we don't take that stop and learn how to release
14:46
Speaker 2: trauma from the body. And when it's cumulative trauma like that,
14:49
Speaker 2: it it could take a lifetime, right like yeah, but
14:53
Speaker 2: I always equate it to like a teapot or a
14:58
Speaker 2: soda can that you've shaken up, right, if you could
15:02
Speaker 2: just relief a little bit of pressure. You won't explode, right,
15:08
Speaker 2: You won't, you know, try to complete suicide. You won't
15:13
Speaker 2: try to hurt somebody, right Like? The what happens internally
15:20
Speaker 2: can feel so overwhelming. And I've been the title of
15:26
Speaker 2: my documentary is strength and Vulnerability.
15:30
Speaker 1: Okay, and hold on? Where can this be?
15:33
Speaker 2: So you can My website is mentally strong dot com
15:37
Speaker 2: and so everything can go back to mentally strong dot
15:39
Speaker 2: com and watch.
15:41
Speaker 1: Us on the very cool Let me let me. I
15:44
Speaker 1: want to ask you about, uh, the work you did,
15:51
Speaker 1: the treatment you found, the therapy you found that helped you,
15:57
Speaker 1: and then then I want to segue into how you
16:00
Speaker 1: started developing mentally strong. So you talked about finding or
16:07
Speaker 1: seeking treatment help. What did you do? So?
16:12
Speaker 2: I went to the AMAN Clinic, which is a psychiatric
16:16
Speaker 2: evaluation cash Bake clinic. They don't work specifically with trauma,
16:20
Speaker 2: but they do spec scans and they do recommendations for
16:24
Speaker 2: supplements and things like that. I saw a local psychiatrist
16:28
Speaker 2: here in Colorado Springs. I tried some TMS. I tried
16:32
Speaker 2: brain spotting. Brain spotting. I think it was personally personally
16:37
Speaker 2: the most effective for me. I see an acupuncturist on
16:42
Speaker 2: a regular basis. I see a functional medicine doctor, and
16:45
Speaker 2: I do a lot of spiritual work. So when I
16:49
Speaker 2: say spiritual work, it's kind of in this big bucket
16:52
Speaker 2: because I don't know that there's one piece of spiritual
16:55
Speaker 2: work that you know, I can say, like, oh, do this.
17:00
Speaker 2: But one of the things that has happened in our
17:04
Speaker 2: fear of professional mental health professionals proselytizing their personal beliefs,
17:11
Speaker 2: that we've taken our spiritual health out of our mental health,
17:16
Speaker 2: and especially in traumatic grief, right, and grief is a
17:21
Speaker 2: spiritual journey, right, Like what what do you believe happens
17:25
Speaker 2: after that person passes? Where? Where are they? Where are you?
17:30
Speaker 2: What you know if you were to complete suicide? What
17:33
Speaker 2: does that mean?
17:33
Speaker 1: Like?
17:33
Speaker 2: These are these are deep spiritual questions that were you know,
17:39
Speaker 2: our patients often get into and you know we I
17:45
Speaker 2: think we feel either ill equipped or scared of proselytizing, right,
17:52
Speaker 2: and so my biggest healing has come from my spiritual
17:58
Speaker 2: growth in this process. And exactly what my spiritual journey
18:03
Speaker 2: is I don't think is super important because I often
18:08
Speaker 2: think that this is where the fear lies in her
18:11
Speaker 2: truth is now supposed to be my truth.
18:13
Speaker 1: Right.
18:15
Speaker 2: The thing that I just want therapists to hear is
18:20
Speaker 2: that allowing patients or encouraging patients on this spiritual journey,
18:27
Speaker 2: whatever that journey. Yeah, whatever that journey is, and that's
18:32
Speaker 2: you know, I do a lot of that in my
18:34
Speaker 2: We have intensives here. I have a grief intensive and
18:36
Speaker 2: mentally Strong intensive, and people will come in and we do.
18:41
Speaker 2: I think the foundation for all healing is a strong
18:44
Speaker 2: cognitive behavioral understanding. So I teach the mentally Strong method.
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Speaker 1: This is okay, hang on, before you start going to that.
18:52
Speaker 1: How did you get to the point where you're like, okay,
18:55
Speaker 1: I want to start teaching this. I want to create
18:58
Speaker 1: this and talk to us about that.
19:00
Speaker 2: Well, it was actually in phases. So when Reggie passed
19:04
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, it took about a year and a half.
19:07
Speaker 2: But I wrote a book and I started mentally Strong,
19:11
Speaker 2: and I thought that was the end of my trauma.
19:14
Speaker 2: I thought that was the end of my story. Right,
19:16
Speaker 2: I've lost your sons, right, and I'm starting this clinic.
19:23
Speaker 2: I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner and I'm going to use
19:26
Speaker 2: the mentally Strong method in this clinic. And I started
19:29
Speaker 2: speaking kind of on grief. And I'm really against the
19:33
Speaker 2: five stages of grief that we often teach teach because
19:37
Speaker 2: it is there's so many other good grief theories like
19:42
Speaker 2: grow in Grief. I don't know if you've seen, you know,
19:45
Speaker 2: grow in grief is that the pain of the grief
19:49
Speaker 2: may never decrease in size, but you can grow your
19:53
Speaker 2: life around and your life can get bigger. Whereas when
19:57
Speaker 2: you think of five stages, you somehow think that the
20:00
Speaker 2: the pain is getting smaller. And you know, anniversaries, birthdays,
20:05
Speaker 2: holidays are often going to be a trigger for me
20:08
Speaker 2: and I have a right to be sad and grieve
20:13
Speaker 2: on those days twenty years from now. And so five
20:19
Speaker 2: stages of grief, try not to use that one. There's
20:24
Speaker 2: a dialectical thinking and grief was another really good one
20:28
Speaker 2: continuing bonds, the grow with grief, attachment theory and grief.
20:32
Speaker 2: So just not the five stages of grief.
20:36
Speaker 1: And talking about the one Elizabeth.
20:40
Speaker 2: Ross Yes, okay, yeah, And I don't know if people
20:43
Speaker 2: know this, but that was written for patients on hospice.
20:47
Speaker 2: It was not written for the person left behind, so
20:53
Speaker 2: it has been kind of stretched and used and it
20:57
Speaker 2: just kind of got popular as the you know, the
21:01
Speaker 2: theory and grief, but anybody who's in this field knows
21:05
Speaker 2: is way more complicated than these little you know, these stages.
21:11
Speaker 1: Okay, So again, at what point did you say, all right,
21:15
Speaker 1: I want to create mentally strong How what is the theory,
21:20
Speaker 1: the modality, the treatment. How did that come about for you?
21:23
Speaker 2: So in the in the midst of raising my children,
21:26
Speaker 2: so I had lost Johnny and I have six more children,
21:31
Speaker 2: two of them which had pretty significant reactive attachment in PTSD.
21:36
Speaker 2: And so when they got into their teen years, you know,
21:39
Speaker 2: all of the things that we often see with with
21:42
Speaker 2: that population, right that, you know, run away using drugs,
21:46
Speaker 2: you know, sexual activity, you know, way too early, those
21:50
Speaker 2: those kinds of things. So I'm I'm managing these these
21:53
Speaker 2: two teenagers. The other two didn't give me as much problem,
21:59
Speaker 2: So problems not a fair word. Well, the other two
22:03
Speaker 2: didn't manage.
22:04
Speaker 1: Who you asked, I had kids, that's a fair word.
22:08
Speaker 2: But the other he didn't manifest their trauma in stressful ways.
22:13
Speaker 2: So I had two that were, you know, doing all
22:17
Speaker 2: these things, the mother's worst nightmare. And then I had
22:19
Speaker 2: Reggie who was seizing almost every day, just medical trauma.
22:25
Speaker 2: After medical trauma. I mean, his seizures were so intense
22:28
Speaker 2: that one day he broke his femur in the middle
22:31
Speaker 2: of a sea. So there was this intensity of what
22:35
Speaker 2: I was going through as I was raising my children.
22:37
Speaker 2: Now this is, you know, sixteen seventeen years ago at
22:42
Speaker 2: this point, right, and I'm trying to I'm already a
22:47
Speaker 2: psychiatric nurse practitioner. I'm trying to incorporate what I know
22:52
Speaker 2: into just taking care of myself and raising my kids.
22:56
Speaker 2: And so I remember the first time my mom said
23:00
Speaker 2: to me, well do you journal, which we all know
23:02
Speaker 2: is a great therapeutic tool. My brain doesn't think in sentences, right,
23:08
Speaker 2: And so I just started mind mapping and I call
23:12
Speaker 2: it now, call it a thought map. And I began
23:16
Speaker 2: to journal in like a thought map and just putting
23:20
Speaker 2: bubbles everywhere. And then I started asking myself questions from like,
23:26
Speaker 2: you know, from the past, from my childhood. You know,
23:28
Speaker 2: how does this, you know, affect my relationship with God
23:31
Speaker 2: and so. And then I get this one piece of
23:34
Speaker 2: paper that I could look at and meditate on, and
23:36
Speaker 2: I could begin to see connections. And so there was
23:39
Speaker 2: a little bit of psychoanalytical therapy going on there, but
23:43
Speaker 2: you know, cognitively just kind of getting it all out
23:45
Speaker 2: on paper. And then you know, I was like, Okay,
23:49
Speaker 2: this is great and it's cathartic and it feels good
23:52
Speaker 2: to get it all out, But what am I going
23:53
Speaker 2: to do with this? And I've always been kind of
23:56
Speaker 2: a self development guru, read all the self development book
24:00
Speaker 2: and I remember distinctly one day thinking, all of these
24:06
Speaker 2: books say if I just think positive, positive things will happen, right,
24:10
Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, that's great, but it's way
24:15
Speaker 2: more complicated than that. And so then I started to
24:18
Speaker 2: like develop different categories that you do different things for.
24:23
Speaker 2: So of course, negative self talk is going to just
24:26
Speaker 2: put fuel in the fire and it's not going to
24:30
Speaker 2: help you in your situation. Right, But just thinking positive,
24:34
Speaker 2: you know, didn't heal my child, right, Just thinking positive
24:38
Speaker 2: doesn't stop bad things from happening. And so I began
24:42
Speaker 2: developing other categories like grief and trauma and behaviors and
24:46
Speaker 2: choices like you know what part am I choosing? And
24:50
Speaker 2: you know that my choice is kind of feeding into
24:53
Speaker 2: you know, what's going on. And so I was doing
24:56
Speaker 2: this just to take care of myself in raising my children.
25:01
Speaker 2: And when Reggie passed away in twenty sixteen, Like, you know,
25:06
Speaker 2: that was the end. His life was trauma, right, My
25:11
Speaker 2: daughter's death was trauma. Her life was not trauma. She
25:14
Speaker 2: she you know, went to school like that, you know,
25:17
Speaker 2: she was fairly normal, delayed, but normal and healthy. So
25:23
Speaker 2: Reggie's life was trauma. And so when he passed away,
25:26
Speaker 2: I was like, I need to teach the world this, right,
25:30
Speaker 2: And that's when I opened mentally strong, not knowing that,
25:35
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of years later, my my daughter
25:38
Speaker 2: would pass away in her sleep. So and that was
25:42
Speaker 2: just three and a half years ago. And I would
25:46
Speaker 2: tell anyone working with someone who has lost a child,
25:51
Speaker 2: with active therapy and working through what's going on, it
25:56
Speaker 2: takes a solid five years to feel good in that right. So,
26:06
Speaker 2: and that's exactly where I was when Maya passed away.
26:09
Speaker 2: So it had been five years since Reggie's death. I was,
26:13
Speaker 2: you know, speaking about grief. I was speaking about how
26:17
Speaker 2: how do you grieve? And one of the main things
26:20
Speaker 2: that we avoid is the pain. And we must feel
26:26
Speaker 2: the pain in order to for the intensity and frequency
26:32
Speaker 2: in which we have to feel it to decrease. And
26:35
Speaker 2: that was kind of my story. I didn't really talk
26:38
Speaker 2: much about the trauma, right, because in Reggie's life, his
26:42
Speaker 2: life was the trauma. And now I was safe, right,
26:45
Speaker 2: so I thought, And so it didn't seem to be
26:48
Speaker 2: directly impacting me when my daughter died in her sleep here,
26:52
Speaker 2: I thought I was an expert, right. And then six
26:57
Speaker 2: months after my daughter passed away, I realized I have
27:02
Speaker 2: not even started grieving. I was probably in shock for
27:07
Speaker 2: a solid six months. And so then I went on
27:12
Speaker 2: this journey of like, how do you like what is
27:16
Speaker 2: the difference between the trauma and the grief? Because when
27:21
Speaker 2: you're sitting in grief, if I tell you, I want
27:24
Speaker 2: you to sit in the pain of your grief, but
27:27
Speaker 2: it's a messed with your trauma. All you're doing is
27:30
Speaker 2: ruminating in your trauma, right, You're not actually just feeling
27:34
Speaker 2: the pain of the grief.
27:35
Speaker 1: Right.
27:36
Speaker 2: And so what I've learned in this last couple of
27:42
Speaker 2: years is this ameshment that happens. The first step is
27:48
Speaker 2: to separate the grief and trauma.
27:52
Speaker 1: The trauma being the trauma that one experiences due to
27:56
Speaker 1: the death of a kid.
27:57
Speaker 2: Or whomever, yep, or you know. For me, I actually
28:02
Speaker 2: had to do CPR on my child, like there there
28:05
Speaker 2: was actual you know, flashbacks and you know events that
28:10
Speaker 2: were were very traumatic. But I want, I want people
28:14
Speaker 2: to think about what we know about the impact of trauma.
28:17
Speaker 2: So the impact of trauma can cause anxiety, It can
28:21
Speaker 2: cause negative thinking, right, it can you know, it causes
28:26
Speaker 2: those those negative neuropathways to begin. Right, and so whenever
28:32
Speaker 2: someone's telling you the story of their grief, begin to
28:36
Speaker 2: start helping them separate. Okay, so if they say, you know,
28:42
Speaker 2: you know, if I was a better mother, this wouldn't
28:44
Speaker 2: have happened if I Nope, that's negative self talk. And
28:49
Speaker 2: you know, maybe there was a behavior of choice, like
28:52
Speaker 2: for example, you know, with my son, I could have
28:57
Speaker 2: taken him to the er maybe three hours before I
29:01
Speaker 2: ended up calling nine to one one and I had
29:03
Speaker 2: to work through that. Right, that is the trauma of
29:07
Speaker 2: that decision, Right, I made a decision. But we also
29:11
Speaker 2: have to like identify that the spiritual conflict. Right if
29:15
Speaker 2: if I thought God was a loving God, then why
29:17
Speaker 2: did he take my And I use the word God,
29:20
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter, universe, spirituality, whatever is the word that
29:27
Speaker 2: resonates with our clients, right, that's just the word that
29:32
Speaker 2: that resonates for me. But there was like this spiritual
29:35
Speaker 2: conflict that that was happening. There was you know, the
29:40
Speaker 2: negative self talk, the blame. Those things are result of
29:45
Speaker 2: the trauma. That's not grief, right. And so when I
29:50
Speaker 2: say sit in the pain of your grief and you
29:53
Speaker 2: go home and think about what a horrible mother you
29:56
Speaker 2: were and if you would have just done something differently,
29:59
Speaker 2: then then I'm then you're actually ruminating in your trauma
30:04
Speaker 2: and creating a stronger negative neuropathway. Right, That's that's going
30:09
Speaker 2: to be harder to undo as we you know, as
30:12
Speaker 2: we know as trauma therapists, right, And so really helping
30:19
Speaker 2: people this is the most critical step if you have
30:23
Speaker 2: a patient who is has lost a child, of separating
30:27
Speaker 2: that grief and trauma, because the first thing that happens
30:29
Speaker 2: if you are a parent and you have someone who
30:32
Speaker 2: has lost a child, you know that that countertransference, that empathy,
30:37
Speaker 2: you know, kind of gets to your soul. Right, So
30:41
Speaker 2: try to take a deep breath and just remember this
30:43
Speaker 2: first step. You know how to deal with grief and
30:46
Speaker 2: you know how to deal with trauma. So the only
30:48
Speaker 2: difference here is you're going to help them separate that
30:53
Speaker 2: grief and trauma Because what I say, our trauma, if
30:59
Speaker 2: we are processing our trauma appropriately, we are processing it
31:04
Speaker 2: and releasing it. Right whether you're doing E MDR or
31:09
Speaker 2: you know, somatic yoga or energy work or or running,
31:14
Speaker 2: I mean even you know that kind of movement with intent,
31:18
Speaker 2: can can process and release these things out of the
31:22
Speaker 2: body we need them out.
31:24
Speaker 1: Yep.
31:25
Speaker 2: Grief is a pain. I call it like my badge
31:29
Speaker 2: of honor, Like I am allowed to be sad and
31:34
Speaker 2: upset and cry over my children's death until my death,
31:39
Speaker 2: Like that is a badge of honor, like and it's
31:43
Speaker 2: part of my story, It's part of who I am.
31:45
Speaker 2: It changes you. I I liken it to losing a limb.
31:52
Speaker 2: Let's say you losing a child is like losing a limb.
31:57
Speaker 2: Like you can function, you can continue. It was obviously
32:00
Speaker 2: very traumatic, but you can learn to overcome, you can
32:06
Speaker 2: learn to do all kinds of things, but you'll always
32:10
Speaker 2: be missing that limb. But what often happens is that
32:15
Speaker 2: it gets a messed with the trauma and then we're
32:19
Speaker 2: holding on to the trauma. The therapist is trying to
32:23
Speaker 2: work through the trauma, but the patient is unconsciously never
32:27
Speaker 2: going to let that go if they don't separate it
32:31
Speaker 2: because that's their child, right.
32:34
Speaker 1: I love that distinction you're making here, and I think
32:36
Speaker 1: it's very helpful and very useful and probably very difficult
32:41
Speaker 1: to be aware of when you're in it if you're
32:44
Speaker 1: not working with a therapist or someone who can see that. Yeah,
32:50
Speaker 1: all right, Look, I want to be mindful of the
32:51
Speaker 1: time here. So with mentally strong, what do you do? Do?
32:56
Speaker 1: You offer courses training and for whom.
33:01
Speaker 2: We have all the way from a full clinic in
33:03
Speaker 2: Colorado Springs that takes insurance to intensives here in town.
33:08
Speaker 2: So you come for a mini intensive as four hours
33:12
Speaker 2: or you know, three days or whatever custom you need,
33:15
Speaker 2: and we work on, you know, just how to be
33:20
Speaker 2: mentally stronger in those decisions. So the foundation is the
33:25
Speaker 2: mentally Strong method, which is a CBT approach. And then
33:28
Speaker 2: what am I going to do with my trauma? How
33:31
Speaker 2: you know, and really finding what works for you. So
33:34
Speaker 2: brain spotting was very effective for me. I still use it.
33:39
Speaker 2: I use it with my clients, but it doesn't you know,
33:42
Speaker 2: it doesn't resonate with everyone, right like, but it is
33:45
Speaker 2: important regardless all of us are are experiencing micro traumas.
33:51
Speaker 2: All the time, Right, how are you personally processing your trauma?
33:55
Speaker 2: And so I do just like a mentally strong intensive
33:58
Speaker 2: that is for therapists, for you know, high functioning professionals
34:02
Speaker 2: who just want to learn how to function better by
34:07
Speaker 2: having that solid CBT foundation. And then what am I
34:11
Speaker 2: going to do with my trauma and in truly addressing
34:15
Speaker 2: your spiritual health wherever you are in that And you know,
34:19
Speaker 2: we do use you know, some techniques. We you know,
34:22
Speaker 2: have sound bowls and we have a reiki practitioner and
34:26
Speaker 2: things like that. But it's not about those one or
34:29
Speaker 2: two like modalities. It's who am I?
34:33
Speaker 1: Right?
34:34
Speaker 2: This is the you know, life question that we all have.
34:37
Speaker 2: Who am I? Why am I here? And and especially
34:42
Speaker 2: when when bad things happen? Right, But but that's a
34:46
Speaker 2: question for all of us, and so my intensives are
34:49
Speaker 2: for everybody. And then we do have the online courses.
34:53
Speaker 2: I have the documentary, which is so powerful if you
34:58
Speaker 2: are even to yeah, if you are even considering like
35:04
Speaker 2: working with me, I always tell people watch my documentary
35:07
Speaker 2: because in that hour and a half you will feel
35:10
Speaker 2: like you know me intimately and that allows you to
35:15
Speaker 2: trust me. Right, So that that's the documentary and then
35:20
Speaker 2: I have a book called Pain and Purpose, which is
35:24
Speaker 2: just that story of how I turn my pain into purpose.
35:27
Speaker 2: And then I have a couple of work books as well.
35:30
Speaker 2: But we can send you the link directly for the film,
35:35
Speaker 2: so you could put it in the description as well.
35:37
Speaker 1: Oh okay, okay, we'll have that link. All that link
35:39
Speaker 1: up here at the show notes page at the Trauma
35:42
Speaker 1: Paperspodcast dot com. Once again, Christie's website is mentally strong
35:47
Speaker 1: dot com. Chrissy, have to have you back, would love
35:50
Speaker 1: to have you back. There's so much to talk about here.
35:52
Speaker 1: Come on, You're incredible. Thank you. I'm so friggin' inspiring. Jesus,
36:00
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I got I got to meet you.
36:02
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here.
36:04
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you so much.
36:05
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be in touch, all right.
36:07
Speaker 2: Bye bye