Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 778: The Inspiring Memoir of an Incredible Marine with Dedoceo Habi
Transcript
- 0:10All right, welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson.
- 0:14My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be
- 0:19human, to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer
- 0:23in who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires
- 0:26cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn
- 0:32more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
- 0:37That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right,
- 0:42here we go. So five four, three, two and one,
- 0:47our folks, welcome back to the podcast. I am thrilled to have with
- 0:50my guest today, the Docio Hobby, the Dosho welcome. Thank you very
- 0:55much. As an honor to be on board and to share and learn,
- 0:59I appreciate that. So. De Doco is a disabled veteran. He's on
- 1:03the side of taking charge of one's life and getting better. His book is
- 1:06titled Memoirs in the Moment, and he wants to give voice to those who
- 1:10are living productively with post traumatic stress disorder to help change the paradigm of thinking
- 1:15around PTSD. Memoirs in the Moment is an honest portrayal of the intersection between
- 1:21service to others and the impact of PTSD in the life of one service member
- 1:25who served in Berut. The book represents an honest look at the motivations,
- 1:30thoughts, and perspectives that challenge mister Hobby daily and some of the ways he
- 1:34has learned to cope. All right to docio. Welcome once again, Before
- 1:38we could go in here, share with our listeners where you're from originally and
- 1:42where you are currently. Sure again, thank you. So I'm from Savannah,
- 1:47Georgia. I'm a country boy at heart. We lived up and down
- 1:51the East Coast throughout my life and development as a child. I ended up
- 1:57with today, which is in the Los Angeles area. Okay, okay,
- 2:01so we're to begin here. Well, let me put that to you.
- 2:09How did all this start for you? First of all, talk a little
- 2:15bit about your entry into the service. Sure, So, I graduated high
- 2:22school at the age of sixteen in Savannah, Georgia, and then I went
- 2:27to college. By the time I was in set, i was seventeen.
- 2:29But the environment that I was in just did not resonate with who I was
- 2:34at my core. At about the same time, one of my classmates had
- 2:38just got back from Marine Corps boot camp, and when I saw the change
- 2:42in him, I knew the second I saw him that's the route I wanted
- 2:46to take. So by the time, by the end of that year,
- 2:51actually I had enlisted and was making plans to get to Paris Island to begin
- 2:57my journey as a marine. So I was motivated by the evolution I saw
- 3:01in one of my classmates, one of my close friends and classmates. What
- 3:05was it specifically that you saw. I saw that he possessed himself in a
- 3:10way that I thought was admirable. He was self aware, he was clear
- 3:16what his next step in life was, and he just resonated a certain confidence
- 3:23that I did not have. Sounds good to me. I think we all
- 3:28could use some of that. So what happens? Yeah, So going to
- 3:35the Marine Corps, I was. I I just turned eighteen when I went,
- 3:38and I was seventeen when I signed up, and I ended up in
- 3:42Jacksonville, North Carolina. By the time I was nineteen years old, I
- 3:46found myself on a Mediterranean cruise where we spent our time. This was nineteen
- 3:53eighty three, and we ended up spending our time off the coast of Baby
- 3:58Lebanon. We were there as a part of a multinational peacekeeping force. A
- 4:03lot of different nations were involved in trying to create enough space so that the
- 4:06Lebanese people could create us stability, a stable government, and govern themselves.
- 4:14But those that were against it decided that that was not something they wanted to
- 4:17happen. So in the morning of twenty three October nineteen eighty three, a
- 4:23terrorists came in and blew up the barracks, killing two hundred and forty one
- 4:27service members. I happened to be on an Ewogma at the time, where
- 4:31we processed a lot of the wounded and some that didn't make it. Then
- 4:36they offered, they asked for volunteers to go into retrieve any other personal effects
- 4:43or anything else that we might encounter there. I volunteered to go in and
- 4:49then if I may so, I just want to get clear on where so
- 4:54the barracks blew up or was blown up, and where were you at the
- 4:58time at the time it exploded. I was on the Ewo GiMA. We
- 5:01were off the coast, about two three miles off the coast, and the
- 5:05moment it happened and shortly the after, we pulled up anchor and came in
- 5:10closer to the shoreline so that we could uh bring the wounded and deceased in
- 5:15a lot more quickly, okay. And then you also volunteered to go back,
- 5:19right, volunteered to go in to recover any personal effects or any anything
- 5:26else we found. And so I went in, and that's when I got
- 5:30fired upon sniper fire coming our way, that kind of thing. And then
- 5:36shortly thereafter there was there was some exposures as well that went on. Uh,
- 5:42shortly thereafter we got the call to return back to base and then process
- 5:48that's back on board. Wow, so they were waiting for people to go
- 5:54back in and help. Oh my god. Okay, So what happens next?
- 5:58Well, as as old of that, that's when my change occurred.
- 6:02I was not aware of it, of course to me, I was.
- 6:06I know, I was consumed by a certain anger. What I saw it
- 6:13was surreal. It was one could never imagine that they would be exposed to
- 6:18such things. I'll put it to you that way. The things you hear,
- 6:23the smells and so on and so forth, they haunt you. So
- 6:28afterwards, you know, we went back to work. As we did during
- 6:30those days. We never talked about anything but as we did back in those
- 6:33days, and it was like nothing ever happened, but the change had occurred
- 6:38to me, and as a result, I was a different person. I
- 6:42had a very short wick, if you will. I'm always angry, always
- 6:46wanted to attack, always, and also that was compounded by a feeling of
- 6:51hopelessness that was consuming me. How nineteen years old and so after, as
- 7:03you said, there was no quote unquote processing of this for you on how
- 7:08this may have impacted the people who went back exactly, Oh man, no
- 7:13processing. And so ultimately I got ot the Marine Corps. I really I
- 7:18had developed a really bad attitude around the Marine Corps because of the fact that
- 7:27we felt so helpless, and we saw the results of this sense of helplessness
- 7:31in real time, we were exposed to in real time. So I got
- 7:35out and for the next thirty thirty years or so, I lived with PTSD
- 7:42undiagnosed, and because of that, my life was a series of terrible tragedies
- 7:47that happened. I was homeless three times, married multiple times, so any
- 7:56understanding of what was going on, like oh my god, something's going went
- 8:00on or did you, But did you sense a change in yourself? I
- 8:05was not aware of the change. In fact, when I got back home
- 8:07from Beirut, my youngest brother, who could clearly see the change, told
- 8:11me I had gone crazy. He told me something that was wrong and that
- 8:16I need to talk to someone. And my response was, there's nothing wrong
- 8:18with me. Everyone else has a problem and that's something they got to deal
- 8:22with. I got to worry about it and I kept moving. So I
- 8:26was in denial for many many years. As a result, of course,
- 8:31again that my life was a series of ups and downs, a lot of
- 8:33tragedies along the way, a lot of ruined relationships. I wished away everyone
- 8:37who I valued. It was a really bad situation. I reached a really
- 8:43low point, and finally my wife she said to me, in the in
- 8:50the only way that only she could, that I need to go and talk
- 8:56to someone. I happen to han't night me is night tremors and such all
- 9:01these years and no one had ever told me. She told me. Uh,
- 9:05And it really surprised me that she would be that honest with me about
- 9:09it. Uh. And so out of you know, okay, I'll go
- 9:16do it kind of thing. I'm still in denial about my situation, so
- 9:18I go, I'll go talk to someone. So I went to a local
- 9:22VET center in Philadelphia, and within the span of one meeting, it was
- 9:28clear that there was something really tragic going on with me. They had me
- 9:33going in twice a week from that moment until I started gaining some control over
- 9:37things. They slowly started educating me around what was actually happening, why it
- 9:46was happening. I had to learn the different tools to cope with it over
- 9:50and over time, and didn't happen overnight, of course. What was your
- 9:56what was your reaction? How did you take it when this therapist said to
- 10:05you, this might be PTSD? From what happened, how did that go
- 10:11down? Well, initially it was like, okay, even if it is
- 10:16PTSD, I'll just get this treatment and then I'll be fine. I'll be
- 10:20good. Boy. Boy was I wrong with that? So what actually happened
- 10:26was after maybe i'd say about a month or two, while we were in
- 10:31conference, I shared with her. I said, well, I'll be glad
- 10:35when we finished this therapy so that I can finally move on with my life.
- 10:41And then she said, well, I just want to be clear with
- 10:43you about something. She said, You're going to have to deal with this
- 10:46dourescr life. That's what PTSD is. It's something that you have to asters
- 10:50your life. And I cried. I cried because I had been living with
- 10:54such misery, this darkness that just consumed my soul, constant feeling of anger,
- 11:05all these different and I wasn't aware that I could I could learn a
- 11:07different way. So it just really it was one of the lower points in
- 11:13my recovery, if you will, because it forced me to really look at
- 11:18myself in the mirror and ask if I had the mustard, if you will,
- 11:22to keep this fight going and do my due diligence to create a plan
- 11:28to manage and mitigate some of the impact of PTSD in my life. Wow.
- 11:35First of all, I just want to pause here, and you know,
- 11:41thank you for coming on here and sharing this story. I mean,
- 11:43I think it takes a lot of guts to do that. And it's just
- 11:50freaking crazy that you know, here in America, this is too going on
- 12:01the treatment of veterans from what you're seeing about that particular point with therapists,
- 12:09when when she let you know that this was going to be a long journey
- 12:13for you. It sounded like she was giving you some straight news. Was
- 12:22she was? There also some hope in that in terms of well there's a
- 12:26way to move forward. Well, one of the things that you know,
- 12:30once she saw my reaction, she was real, very understanding, very compassionate
- 12:35towards me, and very supportive. And one thing she did say is that
- 12:39while it may seem like this is something that is overwhelming that you just can't
- 12:45overcome it, just know that if you do the work, if you do
- 12:50the work, things will get better. And I held on to that.
- 12:54If I do the work, I had to give it a shot because the
- 12:58alternative was that getting more misery, more living in this this dark place which
- 13:05had an outcome that that was not favorable to me. Uh, And so
- 13:11I did the work. Were you if I may ask, were you using
- 13:16substances? I wasn't. I wasn't using it. Well, that's not true.
- 13:20I drank, drank. I guess I drank a little bit more than
- 13:26I could admit. Sometimes for me it was more about trying. Like,
- 13:31for instance, there was a time when I lived in Oakland that my thing
- 13:35was to walk the streets with my gun because I was looking for a way
- 13:39out. A way out meaning you get into a fight with a gunfight with
- 13:46someone and they kill you, you kill them. Kind I was at that
- 13:50point my life. I was. It was just there was nothing, no
- 13:54light in me that I could see. Wow. Wow. But again I
- 14:00got past that, and then in fact, right after that time is when
- 14:05right after that time is when I met my wife and later moved to Philadelphia,
- 14:09which is where I started getting access to care. Okay, so go
- 14:15ahead. I was just gonna say, your wife sounds like a pretty incredible
- 14:20person. I got very lucky. What was her response? How did she
- 14:24react when she learned that you were going through this, not that you were
- 14:30even going through this process, but the way you were. You talked about
- 14:33her mentioning your night terrors. How did she respond to all this? You
- 14:37know, I don't really know. I guess I just got lucky because you
- 14:45know, again, of all the women I have been with in my life,
- 14:48she's the first and only one to really say this is what was happening
- 14:52to me. So her position was I care about you, this is something
- 14:58that's happening that's beyond the school of what I can do for you. But
- 15:01the very least I could do is let you know that I'm here for you.
- 15:05Whatever it takes, this is what you need to do, but you
- 15:09need to go talk to someone. So she was smart enough to know that
- 15:11that was something that that was an area that she had no exposure to,
- 15:18no expertise in, and it was beyond the scope of what she could do
- 15:22in the relationship, and that she could only hope that I would take her
- 15:26advice and go talk to someone. When that therapist was upfront with you and
- 15:33told you that you had to, you might be dealing with this, you
- 15:37know, for the rest of your life. What happened after that, well,
- 15:41I was you know, it was a long walk home for one thing,
- 15:46trying to come to terms with it, and and quite frankly, it's
- 15:50taken years for me to come to terms with even the fact that I have
- 15:54PTSD. There's still that part of me that wants to deny it. But
- 16:00it was a long process and I just I just decided that the best thing
- 16:04I could do is try put forth the effort to at least go through the
- 16:11to to talk about what I was experienced, to try and figure out how
- 16:15I can navigate this thing so that they won't have power over me, but
- 16:18that I can have power over it. And so it just took a lot
- 16:22of time, a lot of talking, a lot of self reflecting, reflecting,
- 16:30and a lot of honesty, you know, And ultimately it got down
- 16:33to slowly and ultimately it got down to the fact that I had to learn
- 16:40to focus on making decisions that reinforce my values. Because of that, I
- 16:48was able to step aside from the haunting memories or the haunting thoughts that come
- 16:53into my head, and then I can say, Hmm, if I do
- 16:59this, will it bring me closer to my value or will it push me
- 17:03further away from the things I value? And so because of little tricks and
- 17:07tools like that I've learned through the years, I've been able to get slowly
- 17:11gain control over how PTSD impacts my life. Wow. I love that.
- 17:18I mean, I think that's pretty profound and something I think we all should
- 17:22be doing as really being having that type of awareness about whether our options are
- 17:30moving us closer or further away from our values. You know, you said,
- 17:34uh previously that it took you a while to even admit that you had
- 17:40PTSD, and you know many times you wanted to deny it. And this
- 17:44might seem, you know, like an obvious question, but for you,
- 17:49what was behind the denying it? Why? Why were you kind of lured
- 17:52to deny it? I would say maybe being macho, maybe being a marine,
- 18:00maybe being a man. You know, we cannot disclose any vulnerabilities.
- 18:07We got to always be Johnny on the spot and grind through it all these
- 18:14different ideals we have around what it means to be a man or what it
- 18:18means to have served in the military. I was contending with that, and
- 18:22ultimately the other thing was is who likes to think about themselves as being weak?
- 18:29Right? And to me that was probably the biggest the biggest challenge.
- 18:34I had to realize that being able to speak your truth is not being and
- 18:40being vulnerable is not a weakness. It's a strength. And I had to
- 18:45learn that. I have to relearn it over and over again until I got
- 18:47to a place where Okay, I can talk about this thing and be honest
- 18:51with people about it and it's not a weakness that I'm doing it. It's
- 18:55a strength that I'm doing it. Were there any did you have any fellow
- 18:59marine who were experiencing similar things? You know, what's interesting is I have
- 19:06three friends who I was real close with back in those back in eighty three,
- 19:11we were all in Bayroud at the same time, and I was the
- 19:14only one who volunteered to go, and I was all who got fired upon
- 19:17of our group. And after beauthe I separated from them. We just went
- 19:22our separate way, or I went my separate way from them. They stayed
- 19:26in contact. Thirty five years later we reconnected. So we reconnected a couple
- 19:32of years ago in New York City, and they two have the same residual
- 19:38type of effects from that experience. Each of them is dealing with some kind
- 19:45of PTSD or emotional issue in their lives as a result of their exposure to
- 19:51what happened to us. And then I have another friend who was actually in
- 19:55the building, the only person out of his room who survived. He we
- 20:02talk about it a lot, and one of the things he says to me
- 20:03over and over again is he he wished he was on my side, and
- 20:10he wished that I could have been on his side, So that I don't
- 20:12because he doesn't. He has a different type of experience. He he's really
- 20:21excitable about things. So it affects us all in the subtle differences between the
- 20:26level of impact it has in each of our lives, but each of us
- 20:32has the same kind of thing happening. I don't remind everyone that I'm speaking
- 20:36with the Hobby. His book is called Memoirs in the Moment. All right,
- 20:42let's just pause here for a second to thank our sponsors. All Right,
- 20:48we are back. You talked about this therapist with the other therapists that
- 20:57they've worked with. Okay, yes, I mean, there's obviously a lot
- 21:02to talk about here, but I am curious about what, really what are
- 21:10some of the things that helped you move through this process and deal with this'
- 21:15That's a really good question. I think the biggest thing was that they I
- 21:19was able to find a therapeutic environment that I felt safe in. One of
- 21:26the benefits that I realized over and over again through the VA is that I
- 21:33actually had there's a certain bond that happens with service members that's unlike a bond
- 21:38we may have with like our sibling, our brother, who a sister who
- 21:42may not have served. And because of this bond, when I walked into
- 21:45some of the VA facilities, I initially some of my initial fears were put
- 21:51to rest. I felt more secure in those environments just walking in the door.
- 21:56One of the other things that I came to realize is that you have
- 22:00to find a therapist who works with you. There's a synergy and a trust
- 22:08that happens. Sometimes it happens a lot quickly, more quickly than others.
- 22:14But if you don't have that trust, if you don't have that synergy,
- 22:18if you don't have that willingness to be open and honest, then you're doing
- 22:22yourself a disservice. Or if the therapist is not at a place where they
- 22:26really can connect with you or understand where you're coming from, that can do
- 22:30you a disservice because you may find yourself getting more frustrated with the kid that
- 22:37you're getting. So I just had to learn that I have to become my
- 22:40own advocate around my mental health care. And unfortunately, fortunately fortunately for me,
- 22:49ninety nine percent of those that I came into contact with with good people
- 22:55who really want the best for me, and I could tell it. So
- 22:57that was very com to me as well. Was it crucial for you to
- 23:04have a therapist who was in the military and or one who I had to
- 23:11combat experience? Was that was that crucial for you. For me, it
- 23:15was not crucial. What was important was that there could be other veterans who
- 23:22were speaking with that therapist who feel comfortable because to me, if if he
- 23:27passed, if the therapist passed that test, then and I'm trusting of my
- 23:33fellow veterans, then I don't have to worry about it. Now. I
- 23:37just had to figure out what my relationship with this therapist would be. So
- 23:44for me personally, that was not a priority. The priority for me was
- 23:48finding someone who I could work with who would help me figure out what tools
- 23:53I needed to focus on to build myself up. Now, more specifically,
- 24:00of treatment, what did you find helpful? Was it talk, therapy,
- 24:03exposure, therapy, Medication was what? For me, It's all about meditation.
- 24:14One of one of the tools I've learned is when I get to a
- 24:17certain anxious place, I have to remove myself from that environment or step away
- 24:23and meditate. Meditation allows me to separate fact and fiction. It allows me
- 24:30to say, wait a minute, there is no no, there is no
- 24:34no no sniper up there. There is that is not going to happen today.
- 24:44So this fear that's causing me to want to shut down and step away
- 24:48is unjustified, right, So I had to learn. So meditation gets me
- 24:53the space, and then focusing on my breathing that helps me with distress was
- 25:00as well. So that's been critical to me. I'll do that in a
- 25:04heartbeat, as they say, because I find it that has been very helpful
- 25:08to me. So talk to us about how this book was born. Memoirs
- 25:15in the Moment, sure so as a result of the many because I've now
- 25:21been actively in therapy for about twelve years now. So as a result of
- 25:26the years, I started talking about my experience in Beaiiru, first with family
- 25:32members and then with others. And what I discovered is by talking to people
- 25:37from this perspective, not from I got this terrible problem, but this is
- 25:41what happened and this is what I'm doing about it. From that perspective,
- 25:45I felt empowered to do more. So I've always been one to believe in
- 25:52writing and the power words, and so I wanted to chronicle my experience in
- 25:57living with PTSD, not from the standpoint of how bad it is, but
- 26:02from the perspective of while this has happened to me, and this has been
- 26:06my experience, we can always make choices to get us to a better place,
- 26:14which is what I've done. So the genesis of the book was I
- 26:17just wanted to share this story in the hopes that somebody out there could read
- 26:21it and start thinking, you know what, I can take the next step
- 26:25in my journey as well now because he did it as he went through all
- 26:30the things he's going through, and what I need to do is nothing compared
- 26:33to that, or maybe it might be a lot, but I can take
- 26:36that next step because someone else has done it before me. And that's the
- 26:40whole just behind the book is to give people a sense of you can move
- 26:44forward despite whatever challenges you may face. You just have to be willing to
- 26:48do the work and be honest with yourself. You know, as you're talking,
- 26:52it sounds so crazy to remember you saying you were in Oakland walking around
- 26:59with it gone, just waiting for someone like to piss you off or whatever.
- 27:04It's all the way right here to hear you talking about beautifully articulating the
- 27:11purpose of this book. I mean, that's such a it seems like such
- 27:15a distance, does it it circle, Yeah, it is, and and
- 27:19I'm happy about that. You know, we can always look back and find
- 27:26things to regret, and so on and so forth, and I think there's
- 27:30always going to be that, but I choose to look at it from the
- 27:33standpoint of I need to get through the gauntlet to get to where I am
- 27:37today so that I can be a better service, be more authentic to those
- 27:41who I want to help with the work that I'm doing around PTSD. When
- 27:45you say authentic, what do you mean in that context? For instance,
- 27:51oftentimes, when when you're speaking to another person who was in the military about
- 27:56some traumatic experience or their mental health, first thing out many of their mouths
- 28:00is, well, if you haven't been there, you don't know what I'm
- 28:03talking about. And that's a very honest statement. Well, now, because
- 28:07I've shared what I've been exposed to, and I've shown that even through all
- 28:12that and all the years of ups and downs, you can get to a
- 28:15better place. Now, I can speak with some authority, some authenticity to
- 28:19a veteran who may be just coming out and say, look, I understand
- 28:23exactly how you feel. This is what what happened to me, what I've
- 28:29had to overcome, and these are things you need to be mindful of in
- 28:33your journey to getting back to being your complete self. How did you organize
- 28:40the book chronologically? So it's all about sharing my early So I go back
- 28:48to my first the first thought I can remember as a young child in the
- 28:52deep Woodard, Savannah, Georgia, and what and how I viewed and perceived
- 28:56life. Then to the moment in time on went through October when we lost
- 29:02the service members in Beiru, and how that that shift occurred. So I'm
- 29:06going by the various years in my life chronologically to tell a story about how
- 29:11I came, how I went from uh, innocent little child to young marine,
- 29:18to angry marine, to homeless civilian to okay, a man about building
- 29:26himself up and reconnecting with his life and reconnecting to what is most important to
- 29:30him, which is family and my values. So it chronicles that. It's
- 29:36I experience. You know, you mentioned values a couple of times, and
- 29:41I think that was a very again, the very kind of strong statement about
- 29:45being aware of whether your options are moving you toward away from your your values.
- 29:52When did that realization become u for you? Because I could imagine that
- 30:03at some point you were like, I don't even know what hell my values
- 30:07are? You know? Right? Yeah? So I have to thank my
- 30:11current doctor for that. I won't give a name to him, I can
- 30:15say that he has spent a lot of time work helping me work through a
- 30:21lot of these different things. And he started doing this exercise with me.
- 30:25Whereas when I'm facing a dilemma in my mind is dilemma. He get a
- 30:30piece of paper and on one side he writes the positive result and on the
- 30:34other side he write the negative result. And for me, I'm a very
- 30:37visual person as well, And so we would go through this exercise when he
- 30:41said, Okay, you have to make a decision, and you're gonna go
- 30:45this way or you're gonna go that way. The question is which these two
- 30:48directions is the direction that supports your value. And then when confronted with that,
- 30:53I'm now saying, okay, if I say I'm about my family,
- 30:59then I should call my son, right. So little things like that.
- 31:03So over time what happened was I began to see that by doing that exercise
- 31:10and making that a part of how I navigate how I do things, I'm
- 31:12actually building myself up and I'm building towards the things that I value most so
- 31:18that I can have a relationship with my son, with my daughter, with
- 31:22my mom, with my brothers and sisters. I can have relationship with my
- 31:26nieces and nephews. I can get out and say hello to a stranger and
- 31:30not feel that this strangers trying to hurt me. All these different things over
- 31:33time, when I began to see that there is the tangible results of me
- 31:38taking that position. When I was able to see that, it became a
- 31:45part of how I navigate. That's not to say I don't still slip and
- 31:52get caught up, but I can say that when I do slip, Now
- 31:56what used to take a couple months or a couple of weeks for me to
- 32:00get over can take a couple of days or a couple a couple of hours.
- 32:05So I'm able to better manage the realities of my emotional experience because I'm
- 32:10focusing on my values and something bigger than me. Wow. All right,
- 32:16So as we kind of wind down here, do those show who's this book
- 32:22for? This book is for anyone who's gone through any type of traumatic experience,
- 32:27whether it's military or not. Because trauma is trauma. There are different
- 32:30degrees of it. But I do believe that human being responds pretty much in
- 32:35the same way to traumatic experiences, or they begin to display the same kinds
- 32:40of behaviors as a result of it if it goes unchecked or unaddressed. So
- 32:46it's for anyone who's dealing with a trauma in their lives who want to get
- 32:52a sense of what can be accomplished if you just do the work. It's
- 32:57a light read, it's not technical. Told us about. I try to
- 33:00have as much fun with it as I can by talking about some of the
- 33:05laughs in my life as such as well. But it's a very honest portrayal
- 33:08of what my life has been from that point to this. For the therapists,
- 33:16we're obviously a lot of therapists are listening to this of all different kinds.
- 33:20Survivors, what suggestions would you have to the therapists who are listening to
- 33:27this in terms of working with veterans And I would also even go so far
- 33:37as to say working with men who've experienced trauma. Wow. So I like
- 33:45to think, which is really ironic, because there's that part of it I'm
- 33:51always fighting with, but I like to think that there's goodness in all people
- 33:54first and foremost, and what happens is life happens in that and this can
- 34:00get clouded. So what I would what I would do is I would encourage
- 34:04all therapists who are interested in providing services to those with PTSD or military or
- 34:09mail to keep pushing forward to create a space where the veteran or the individual
- 34:17can feel safe, can feel that that you they are being heard, uh,
- 34:23and that you're not you're not making any assumptions or that you're not just
- 34:28checking ABCD off the list. Right. I know that a lot of the
- 34:34evaluations have to deal with scoring and so on and so forth, and that's
- 34:37that's fine, that's needed. I think though, what a veteran or what
- 34:42I needed was to be able to talk to someone in a safe place where
- 34:46I can get to a place where I was vulnerable. And I don't know
- 34:52that I could say it was a conscious choice. I just feel that looking
- 34:55back, that's what was needed, that's what I needed, and that's what
- 34:59happened. It caused me to feel less fearful about taking the next step in
- 35:05my evolution. So I would say, create that kind of space. Now,
- 35:12I've never seen it. I've heard that some some therapists have kind of
- 35:15tried to push back on a person's experience. I would say, please don't
- 35:22do that, because whether we imagine the experience or whether it really happen in
- 35:30our minds, it's real to us, and we develop our persona based on
- 35:35what we believe. And so the challenge then becomes, how do you navigate
- 35:39that in such a way that you don't then you keep the person individual interested
- 35:46in the services that you're offering them. And so that's the challenge. And
- 35:52to me, it's all about being able to acknowledge this is what this person
- 35:55believes right here, right now, while you can see it's the truth and
- 36:00not as well, it's not real. That's where that person is right now,
- 36:04so we have to kind of walk him or her to a better place.
- 36:08Awesome right to do. So, you know, what's the best way
- 36:12for people to get in contact with you? People can reach me through my
- 36:15website, which is Memoirs dot Work https Memoirs dot Work. They can also
- 36:24learn a little bit about the Bayviot experience there and they can purchase the book.
- 36:30We are on Barnes and Noble and we are on Amazon, so they
- 36:36can purchase a book from there. But again they can also get access to
- 36:40helpful things right now on the website, for instance, you can do a
- 36:44survey or self assessment if you will, to see if you are dealing with
- 36:49any of the traits of PTSD, that kind of stuff. I wanted to
- 36:52be helpful to people right now so that going forward they can have a place
- 36:57where they can use use those resources to continue to build themselves. Awesome.
- 37:02We'll have all those looked up the show notes page at the Trauma Diapence podcast
- 37:07dot com. Deducio, love to have you back, man. You are
- 37:12awesome. Thank you so much for joining me anytime. Thank you all right,
- 37:15Thank you for what you're doing. I appreciate it, and we veterans
- 37:19appreciate it as well. Thank you. Shiate that all right, take care,