Latest / The Trauma Therapist / The Guest Host Series Christina P. Kantzavelos, LCSW interviews Robert Bransfield

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The Guest Host Series Christina P. Kantzavelos, LCSW interviews Robert Bransfield · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson.
0:04
Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
0:11
Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
0:15
Speaker 2: Hello, doctor Gransfeld, All right, what are you doing today? Good?
0:21
Speaker 2: I'm really excited to have you on here, because I mean,
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Speaker 2: I'm sure we can speak for hours on so many
0:28
Speaker 2: different topics, but I'm most excited to discuss basically the
0:34
Speaker 2: intersection of trauma of chronic illness and various diseases. So
0:43
Speaker 2: first and foremost, you know, just to explain to the audience,
0:46
Speaker 2: how did this path lead you? Like, how did you
0:49
Speaker 2: get to this point in your work?
0:52
Speaker 3: Well, I've always been interested in what actually cause mental
0:55
Speaker 3: illness and what's the exact cause, and it's not an
0:58
Speaker 3: easy thing to figure out, and different theories came and went.
1:01
Speaker 3: My initial training over fifty years ago was it's a
1:07
Speaker 3: psychodynamic it's your mother's fault. Okay, it has to do
1:10
Speaker 3: with like with the Freudian theories, and although maybe maybe
1:14
Speaker 3: there's some role with psychological development, there's a lot of
1:18
Speaker 3: other pieces and I specialized working with treatment resistant patients,
1:25
Speaker 3: and in working with that group, a lot had infectious
1:28
Speaker 3: diseases that contributed and that's why they were treatment resistant.
1:32
Speaker 3: And then when we recognized and addressed the infection, they
1:36
Speaker 3: had better outcomes. And I didn't have anywheres I could
1:41
Speaker 3: send these people to, so I had to figure it
1:43
Speaker 3: out myself. And infections that really come up the most
1:47
Speaker 3: of these tipcorn infections, and often I see these people
1:52
Speaker 3: many years after they were initially infected, so their early
1:57
Speaker 3: infection might be a bullseye rash or maybe not irash,
2:00
Speaker 3: and then they're early maybe cranio neuse symptoms or join things.
2:06
Speaker 3: They maybe they often are inadequately treated or inadequately diagnosed,
2:12
Speaker 3: and then they go on to chronic disease that sadly
2:15
Speaker 3: could have been avoided if people were more attentive to
2:19
Speaker 3: recognizing it and treating it more effectively earlier. So I
2:24
Speaker 3: would have these patients and they would be on fifty
2:28
Speaker 3: different psychomeds and still it would be insufficient, and they
2:32
Speaker 3: would try everything, and then you go the antibiotic route
2:35
Speaker 3: and then you get a better outcome. So then I've
2:39
Speaker 3: done journal articles or given talks on it to try
2:42
Speaker 3: to share that with my colleagues because I think we
2:46
Speaker 3: can help to prevent a lot of illness and problems
2:50
Speaker 3: and if we were more attentive.
2:51
Speaker 1: To that.
2:55
Speaker 2: Percent. There's definitely a lack of education out there amongst
2:59
Speaker 2: medical profession and I think that's why we're not catching
3:02
Speaker 2: things like lime and they're you know, in the in
3:06
Speaker 2: the acute phase. And even for myself, I didn't have
3:09
Speaker 2: a bullseyerash. I didn't find out until way later that
3:11
Speaker 2: I had chronic lime disease. And you know, not many
3:17
Speaker 2: speak on the fact right that lime has over three
3:19
Speaker 2: hundred symptoms, many of which are mental health related. So
3:24
Speaker 2: you know, I have patients come to me and they
3:28
Speaker 2: have treatment resistant anxiety depression, what have you OCD, And
3:35
Speaker 2: I have it as a requirement to go see a
3:38
Speaker 2: lime literate and integrate a physition. And thus far, you know,
3:42
Speaker 2: everyone has been diagnosed with either lime and or a
3:46
Speaker 2: co infection. So there is this correlation that we are finding, right, basically,
3:52
Speaker 2: we're seeing it.
3:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think, like, for instance, I have an
3:56
Speaker 3: assessment I do. It's two hundred and eighty symptoms I
3:59
Speaker 3: look at and every now and then I'll get you
4:01
Speaker 3: some symptoms that aren't on my list, and there's a
4:04
Speaker 3: statistical probability of each one of those symptoms, and it's
4:07
Speaker 3: pattern recognition. That's how you make the diagnosis. So in
4:12
Speaker 3: psychiatry we rely more in a clinical exam and the
4:15
Speaker 3: history rather than lab tests. You don't do a lab
4:19
Speaker 3: test for panic disorder and say if the lab test
4:23
Speaker 3: is negative, you don't have it. You look at the
4:24
Speaker 3: clinical presentation and the clinical presentation of these tick pore
4:28
Speaker 3: and diseases really quite well recognized and very repetitive pattern
4:34
Speaker 3: that you see. Every patient's a little bit different, but
4:37
Speaker 3: there's a lot of similarities in what you see with
4:39
Speaker 3: the clinical presentation. And I think the greater the comorbidity,
4:43
Speaker 3: the poly morbidity that's the actual more exact word, proaly morbidity,
4:47
Speaker 3: the greater the likelihood that it's some condition that it
4:51
Speaker 3: affects the entire system. So it's a systemic disease. It's
4:55
Speaker 3: not just a mental disease that only affects the brain,
5:00
Speaker 3: effects the body as well, and it effects of brain
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Speaker 3: in other ways, not just psychiatric, but neurological and other
5:05
Speaker 3: parts of nervous system. So you have to look at
5:08
Speaker 3: that overall picture and usually over time there's an increased
5:12
Speaker 3: number and severity of symptoms that wax and wane and
5:16
Speaker 3: come and go and get magnified. And it's often baffling
5:21
Speaker 3: to people and frustrating that are are the way our
5:25
Speaker 3: healthcare system works. People that don't comprehend how this works
5:31
Speaker 3: are trying to keep the thought leaders in disseminating information
5:38
Speaker 3: that's not fully accurate, and that's that's been a problem.
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Speaker 2: Definitely, And I feel I feel like I was personally
5:46
Speaker 2: a victim of this. I was passed around like a
5:48
Speaker 2: hot potato given you know, different diagnoses along the way,
5:54
Speaker 2: autoimmune diseases and so forth, And yes, I do have
5:57
Speaker 2: those autoimmune diseases, but they weren't actually finding the causation,
6:01
Speaker 2: what was triggering them underneath until they went to a
6:04
Speaker 2: line literate physician. But there was a lot of medical
6:07
Speaker 2: trauma between those two points.
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Speaker 3: Three reasons. One is a lot of times when there's
6:16
Speaker 3: a difficult diagnosis, someone will say, well, this is probably psychosomatic,
6:20
Speaker 3: and psychosomatic is very specific in terms of what it
6:24
Speaker 3: consists of or doesn't consist of. But a lot of
6:26
Speaker 3: people call something psychosomatic or psychogenic improperly, and so they
6:33
Speaker 3: May Sagotie a psychiatrist. And another issue is that a
6:38
Speaker 3: lot of times there's psychiatric symptoms, cognitive emotional psychiatric symptoms
6:45
Speaker 3: is part of this multi system illness. And then the
6:48
Speaker 3: third part is that a lot of these patients have
6:50
Speaker 3: trauma because part of the trauma is you have something
6:54
Speaker 3: happening to you that makes no sense. It's baffling to you.
6:58
Speaker 3: Your family doesn't unders stand it, and they can't visually
7:03
Speaker 3: see it the way you might see a bell's palsy
7:06
Speaker 3: or a broken arm, So fatigue or brain fob Someone
7:11
Speaker 3: looking at you can't tell and it's like, well you
7:14
Speaker 3: look okay. And then so your family doesn't understand a
7:19
Speaker 3: lot of your doctors don't understand that. Many people in
7:23
Speaker 3: healthcare system don't understand. Now, you're insurance company does understand,
7:27
Speaker 3: but they would don't want to let you know they understand,
7:31
Speaker 3: so they won't sell you a disability insurance policy if
7:34
Speaker 3: you say of history in line, but they all say
7:37
Speaker 3: you're not disabled if you're disabled from mine. So you
7:42
Speaker 3: can feel lost in the system. And many who have
7:46
Speaker 3: this have gone to many different doctors, and doctors often
7:50
Speaker 3: use asylum mentality and just look at the one area
7:54
Speaker 3: they're in. And then a big part of it is
7:56
Speaker 3: the way the testing's done, the two tier tests, where
8:01
Speaker 3: in reality, with the two tier testing, a positive test
8:04
Speaker 3: doesn't mean you have it and a negative test doesn't
8:06
Speaker 3: mean you don't have it, and people aren't used and
8:09
Speaker 3: it requires very complex interpretation. People aren't used to thinking
8:14
Speaker 3: that through. They think a positive test means you have
8:17
Speaker 3: it and a negative test means you don't. That is
8:20
Speaker 3: not the case. And so I think and the CDC
8:27
Speaker 3: and health agencies don't go do a good job of
8:31
Speaker 3: educating the proper interpretation of the test. And so that's
8:37
Speaker 3: I think adds to it. So people are traumatized by
8:40
Speaker 3: all that. And you also see like I see the
8:43
Speaker 3: suicides and the substance abuse. You see a high rate
8:47
Speaker 3: of substance abuse because people get lost in the system.
8:50
Speaker 3: You see suicide, You see disability at a young age,
8:54
Speaker 3: see divorce, family conflict. It does a huge uh impact,
9:02
Speaker 3: negative impact. That's traumatic. And then part of the trauma
9:07
Speaker 3: is it's traumatic. And then you can see post traumatic
9:10
Speaker 3: stress disorder and post traumatic stress disorder and trauma aren't
9:13
Speaker 3: always the same. Like you can have trauma that does
9:17
Speaker 3: not lead to post traumatic stress disorder, or you can
9:21
Speaker 3: have trauma that results in post traumatic stress disorder. So
9:25
Speaker 3: it's it's a different. Some people deal with trauma and
9:30
Speaker 3: they do okay, but other people it goes on to
9:34
Speaker 3: post traumatic stress, which is qualitatively different. Mm hmmmm hmm.
9:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. And and like you said, with this, with this
9:41
Speaker 2: medical trauma, be it just medical trauma or medical you
9:45
Speaker 2: know PTSD. We we have these patients who are not believed, right,
9:51
Speaker 2: they're disbelieve they are misdiagnosed, sometimes for.
9:54
Speaker 3: Decades, yes, yes right, and then yes decades, but.
10:00
Speaker 2: Literal decades, including myself. And this can only exacerbate symptoms,
10:07
Speaker 2: right because here we have even more cortisol. And then
10:10
Speaker 2: I know so many of us feel like medical I
10:12
Speaker 2: call us medical refugees because we do not know where
10:17
Speaker 2: we belong. It's difficult to find a practitioner who believes us,
10:21
Speaker 2: who will accurately test us, diagnose us so on, and
10:27
Speaker 2: then treat us. It's all of it's all of those things.
10:32
Speaker 3: So one of my one of my earlier patients, he
10:34
Speaker 3: had been to fifty six different doctors, and doctor number
10:40
Speaker 3: fifty six understood lyme disease and was treating him. But
10:45
Speaker 3: then someone didn't like the fact that he was making
10:49
Speaker 3: that doctor was making a diagnosis lyme disease that other
10:51
Speaker 3: people were missing. It made them look bad. So then
10:54
Speaker 3: they went after his license. And then a doctor committed
10:57
Speaker 3: suicide and that was rather traumatic to my patient that
11:02
Speaker 3: he went through fifty five doctors and to he found
11:05
Speaker 3: one that understood it. And so then I ended up
11:10
Speaker 3: treating him. I was doing very well now he ended
11:13
Speaker 3: up being adequately treated from both the psych standpoint and
11:18
Speaker 3: someone who was given antibiotics and overall medical treatment. But
11:23
Speaker 3: many people follow of course, not always that extreme, but
11:27
Speaker 3: a lot of people are lost, and it's also economically
11:31
Speaker 3: exhausting a lot. There are a lot of bankruptcies and
11:35
Speaker 3: often there may be more than one person in a
11:37
Speaker 3: family with it, and that adds to it as the trauma.
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Speaker 2: Of course, of course, there's a lot of systemic complexities,
11:48
Speaker 2: you know, within the family unit, within the relationship. I mean,
11:52
Speaker 2: what is it eighty I was just reading a statistic
11:54
Speaker 2: eighty percent of some of couples with one person who
11:58
Speaker 2: has chronic illness and up and divorce, like that's that's.
12:01
Speaker 3: A pretty you see you see that a lot of times.
12:05
Speaker 3: Uh So every now and then you may see family
12:08
Speaker 3: members or support people that are quite good, but a
12:11
Speaker 3: lot of times they don't understand it, and uh, they
12:15
Speaker 3: may mislabeled as lingering and don't you know, it's hard
12:18
Speaker 3: to see. I had a patient with lime disease and
12:21
Speaker 3: there they'd had a broken arm and their arms in
12:23
Speaker 3: a cast, and they were amazed at how people were
12:26
Speaker 3: helping them with doors and things. They were shocked and
12:29
Speaker 3: the arm in a cast was nothing. It was very
12:32
Speaker 3: minimal compared to what they were dealing with. But the
12:36
Speaker 3: people had the sensitivity to understand it, whereas with the
12:39
Speaker 3: lime disease, where they had the the invisible disability, people
12:45
Speaker 3: didn't understand. They weren't supportive or empathetic, and they were
12:50
Speaker 3: treated quite differently. So, but that's the nature of any
12:54
Speaker 3: invisible type of disability, whether it's a d D or
12:58
Speaker 3: depression anxiety.
13:00
Speaker 2: Like yeah, and.
13:03
Speaker 3: So it's uh, that's what we deal with a lot
13:06
Speaker 3: is lack of comprehension of these more complicated things, simple
13:11
Speaker 3: medical problems. People we can understand complex things or are
13:16
Speaker 3: mislabeled until they're better understood exactly.
13:20
Speaker 2: And there's just there's not enough information to the public
13:23
Speaker 2: available on any of this. I mean, not even to
13:26
Speaker 2: doctors apparently, right. I mean I've I've even been to
13:29
Speaker 2: doctors who have told me, to my face, wine disease
13:33
Speaker 2: is not real, or one of the diagnoses I have
13:37
Speaker 2: is incorrect, that I can't have it. I'm too young
13:40
Speaker 2: to have it. Right. You look, you look even a
13:42
Speaker 2: doctor who told me you're so beautiful, you look so vibrant,
13:45
Speaker 2: you can't possibly have X, Y or Z. You know,
13:48
Speaker 2: it's it's harsh. It's harsh on the nervous system. And
13:51
Speaker 2: and I'm curious, like with with the trauma. Let's just
13:55
Speaker 2: say in the younger we know about the the ACE studies, right,
13:58
Speaker 2: and how that there's that and chronic illnesses. I mean,
14:02
Speaker 2: from your perspective and understanding, how does trauma in childhood
14:09
Speaker 2: or just within the early earlier years of life impact
14:13
Speaker 2: our health in the long run?
14:15
Speaker 3: Okay, well off, had I did a journal article, Actually
14:20
Speaker 3: there were two. One was a smaller one, but one
14:23
Speaker 3: adverse childhood events and infects us encephalopathies, And so I
14:33
Speaker 3: think there's a strong bearing there now in general, if
14:36
Speaker 3: you look at trauma in childhood, now understand trauma and
14:40
Speaker 3: post traumatic stress. Now, if you look at like there's
14:45
Speaker 3: trauma that if I'm well prepared. Let's say I'm trained
14:49
Speaker 3: in military and I'm well prepared, and I go into
14:52
Speaker 3: combat zone and there is trauma, but I'm well prepared,
14:55
Speaker 3: I'm not blindsighted. I understand it. I feel empowered to
14:58
Speaker 3: deal with it. Although it's traumatic, I've dealt with it
15:01
Speaker 3: and I'm okay. But post traumatic stress is where you're
15:05
Speaker 3: blindsighted and you're not prepared to deal with it, and
15:09
Speaker 3: then you have trouble processing it and converting it to
15:13
Speaker 3: just a plain old bad memory. Now bad or bad
15:16
Speaker 3: memories are tolerated, but traumatic memories aren't, and you're so
15:21
Speaker 3: your brain keeps going back to it trying to make
15:23
Speaker 3: sense out of it. And a lot of trauma, too
15:27
Speaker 3: is trauma of trust. So if you're traumatized by an
15:31
Speaker 3: earthquake or hurricane tornado, that's traumatic, But the greater trauma
15:37
Speaker 3: is where you trusted someone and they betrayed your trust
15:41
Speaker 3: and you didn't see it coming. So if I look
15:43
Speaker 3: at let's say, childhood trauma of f I think the
15:47
Speaker 3: worst sometimes are pre verbal trauma, and that could be
15:51
Speaker 3: like children who were infants and they were in isolation
15:54
Speaker 3: because of tuberculosis or in orphanages where they had sexual
15:58
Speaker 3: trauma before they had verbal capability, So then they have
16:02
Speaker 3: the emotional traumatic trauma that comes back at them and
16:06
Speaker 3: haunts them, but they can't put in words what it was.
16:10
Speaker 3: They can't understand it, and so your brain goes back
16:15
Speaker 3: to it and trying to make sense out of it
16:17
Speaker 3: and understand it, and you're trying to feel more empowered,
16:22
Speaker 3: and so a lot of that key thing with post
16:26
Speaker 3: traumatic stress or intrusive symptoms. Now, the interesting thing is
16:30
Speaker 3: that lime gives intrusive symptoms a lot of times. It's
16:34
Speaker 3: a way it affects the temporal lobe, so you can
16:36
Speaker 3: get intrusive symptoms even if you have no history of trauma.
16:40
Speaker 3: So lime in and of itself can give a post
16:42
Speaker 3: traumatic stress like problem, and the younger the trauma often
16:48
Speaker 3: the more severe. Now with adverse childhood events, you know,
16:52
Speaker 3: think of four basic kinds of trauma neglect, sexual abuse,
16:56
Speaker 3: physical abuse, and verbal abuse. And the worst of the
17:00
Speaker 3: four is really neglect because when you're neglected and you're
17:04
Speaker 3: not nurtured, it doesn't support you to deal with the
17:08
Speaker 3: predators and the traumatic potential that always is part of
17:12
Speaker 3: the world. So often the formula you can see these
17:18
Speaker 3: dysfunctional families where you might have the primary caregiver, often
17:23
Speaker 3: the mother, but not always, she may be depressed and
17:28
Speaker 3: ineffective and not capable of nurturing. And then other family
17:33
Speaker 3: members may behave in a more predatorial behavior, and then
17:38
Speaker 3: that person in their development doesn't have the ego strength
17:41
Speaker 3: to fend off the predatorial behavior that's there within or
17:45
Speaker 3: outside the family. So that's sometimes the formula that you see.
17:50
Speaker 3: And then you see these intrusive symptoms. Now when lime
17:54
Speaker 3: I have people and they get these horrific intrusive symptoms,
17:57
Speaker 3: and it can be like compare it to you have
18:00
Speaker 3: cable network and you have ten horror show channels and
18:05
Speaker 3: you're flipping from one to the next. It can be
18:08
Speaker 3: like that, and it's intrusiveness. It can go with the
18:13
Speaker 3: type of improper activity in a temporo lobe, it seems,
18:17
Speaker 3: so there's a physiological basis to it. And then so
18:22
Speaker 3: we're trying to reduce these intrusive symptoms. And then when
18:25
Speaker 3: you have the intrusive symptoms, you get a defense mechanism
18:29
Speaker 3: of avoidance, hypervigilance, or emotional numbing or some combination of
18:33
Speaker 3: that or a person may bounce around between any of
18:36
Speaker 3: those three and so it starts with intrusiveness, then you
18:42
Speaker 3: get those other symptoms. Then that can evolve into the anxiety,
18:46
Speaker 3: be a feeling numb, and then you can get depression
18:51
Speaker 3: and be less functional. It then may lead to substance
18:55
Speaker 3: abuse with some people. So think of it like a
18:57
Speaker 3: row of Domino's. But it can still art with the intrusiveness.
19:02
Speaker 3: So a lot of times in treating it, we try
19:04
Speaker 3: to reduce the intrusive symptoms or buffer them so they're
19:08
Speaker 3: less intense and they're less overwhelming. And I think a
19:11
Speaker 3: good visual analogy is did you ever see a movie Ghostbusters?
19:16
Speaker 2: Yeah?
19:16
Speaker 3: Of course, yeah, yeah. Now there's a scene in Ghostbusters
19:19
Speaker 3: where they have the box with all the spooks in it,
19:22
Speaker 3: and when they open up the box, all the spooks
19:25
Speaker 3: come flying out. That's what you don't want to do.
19:28
Speaker 3: That's what you don't want to have happen. So you
19:32
Speaker 3: have to be careful. You don't want that to happen,
19:35
Speaker 3: and that can happen with someone and you don't want
19:38
Speaker 3: to as a therapist encourage that. And because it's overwhelming,
19:43
Speaker 3: it's too much at once, So you don't want these
19:46
Speaker 3: therapies that let it all hang out, let me hear
19:50
Speaker 3: it all. That's no good. You want to be more
19:52
Speaker 3: like an iceberg, and you chip a little bit at
19:55
Speaker 3: the surface, little by little, so a person can feel
19:59
Speaker 3: more empowered. And it's the balance between disempowerment and empowerment.
20:05
Speaker 3: So friends with a lot of people of trauma may
20:07
Speaker 3: be compulsive exercisers, and the exercising may be a way
20:11
Speaker 3: to feel empowered, to balance out the disempowerment that's in
20:15
Speaker 3: your head in the traumatic memory. So you're trying to
20:19
Speaker 3: look at what can you do to reduce the feeling
20:22
Speaker 3: of disempowerment and increase the insensitive empowerment. And part of
20:27
Speaker 3: its understanding, parts of knowing what to do. So the
20:29
Speaker 3: intrusive thought that he might obsess and then it leads
20:32
Speaker 3: to depression, anxiety and or the symptoms. But think of it,
20:38
Speaker 3: where can you intervene And you can intervene in any
20:40
Speaker 3: of those spots and try to turn it around. That's
20:42
Speaker 3: the goal of treatment. Mm hmm. Yeah. And antibotic treatment
20:47
Speaker 3: helps when it's related to infection.
20:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you've seen this right.
20:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, although you have to be careful about the hert
20:55
Speaker 3: time or reaction because sometimes even there if you go
20:58
Speaker 3: too aggressive, too fast, and you could get her timer reaction,
21:02
Speaker 3: that could worsen the post traumatic stress symptoms.
21:05
Speaker 2: You know, I really Neil Nathan has the Sensitive Patience
21:10
Speaker 2: Healing Guide that came out this past this past year,
21:14
Speaker 2: and he really goes into this and discusses this. And
21:17
Speaker 2: even even me when I'm working with someone, often people
21:20
Speaker 2: will come to me, I heard E m d R works.
21:23
Speaker 2: Let's get let's get started. And what I have to
21:25
Speaker 2: explain is, you know you call it. You called it
21:29
Speaker 2: the sorry, the the spoop box, the spoop box right
21:32
Speaker 2: the from Ghostbusters.
21:35
Speaker 3: Oh, the box where you open up. Well, you're you're overwhelmed,
21:39
Speaker 3: you're flooded by it all comes at once. Well, so
21:43
Speaker 3: you have all those memories. It's like it's like opening up,
21:47
Speaker 3: opening up Pandora's Box exactly.
21:49
Speaker 2: And that's how I explain it as Pandora's box. So
21:52
Speaker 2: I said, look, if I start E M d R
21:54
Speaker 2: with you right away, you do not have the vessel.
21:58
Speaker 2: In order for those things to come up, we have
22:01
Speaker 2: to create a larger window of tolerance because your window
22:04
Speaker 2: of tolerance is small from being stuck in a fighter
22:06
Speaker 2: flighter chronic stress response. So we're going to start, you know,
22:10
Speaker 2: I do a lot of neural retraining in order to
22:14
Speaker 2: help get folks out of that that chronic stress response.
22:19
Speaker 2: And we start very slowly, and we're very sensitive to this.
22:21
Speaker 2: And I think for any anyone listening who treats patients, clients,
22:27
Speaker 2: especially with with chronic illnesses or complex trauma, it's really
22:31
Speaker 2: important to go to go low. I say low and slow,
22:35
Speaker 2: and and that saper supplements, antibiotics. The lower, the slower,
22:41
Speaker 2: the better to way it hurts Heeimer reaction. And for
22:44
Speaker 2: those who don't know what a Hurtzheimer reaction is, that's
22:46
Speaker 2: when you just have too many endotoxins from from killing
22:50
Speaker 2: from killing whatever the virus or any anything else that
22:55
Speaker 2: that it's going after. You know, when it kills it,
22:58
Speaker 2: it's just too much for your body to be able
22:59
Speaker 2: to to detox right and process sperrakeets, et cetera.
23:05
Speaker 3: So, like at one time, they had these encounter group
23:08
Speaker 3: therapy sessions and it would be a marathon therapy session
23:11
Speaker 3: that would go on for you know, NonStop, for twenty
23:15
Speaker 3: four hours or something like that. It's like let it
23:17
Speaker 3: all hang out, let it all hang out. And that
23:20
Speaker 3: was catastrophic and people would commit suicide from that. Now.
23:24
Speaker 3: I remember I was when I was a resident this
23:27
Speaker 3: over fifty years ago. I had a patient who had
23:29
Speaker 3: depersonalization disorder and she would eat light bulbs and lighter
23:34
Speaker 3: and risk cutting and it's like, why is she doing that?
23:39
Speaker 3: And uh So, in one session, and I was on
23:43
Speaker 3: the third floor of the hospital, and this was in
23:45
Speaker 3: a old building and it had Victorian architecture with it,
23:53
Speaker 3: and there was a big spiral staircase going down the
23:55
Speaker 3: first floor where the patient unit was. So she was
24:00
Speaker 3: talking about the sexual trauma and recalling it, and then
24:05
Speaker 3: she had this detached look in her head, and then
24:08
Speaker 3: she bolted from the room and headed for the spiral staircase,
24:14
Speaker 3: and I went chasing after her and quar her in
24:18
Speaker 3: flight as she was diving down the spiral staircase brought
24:23
Speaker 3: her down to the unit, and I thought, boy, that
24:28
Speaker 3: was a close one. And then later she tried lighting
24:30
Speaker 3: herself on fire. But that taught me very clearly, be
24:37
Speaker 3: careful about opening up indoors box because you don't know
24:39
Speaker 3: what's in it, and the person himself doesn't know what's
24:42
Speaker 3: in it, and so you do want to go low
24:47
Speaker 3: and slow, and you know very better you go too slow.
24:52
Speaker 3: But the big thing is do things that are empowering
24:56
Speaker 3: that buffer the severity, Like there are meds that you
24:59
Speaker 3: can us that reduced the severity of the flashbacks. So
25:04
Speaker 3: that often helps so that these things are less emotionally intense.
25:09
Speaker 3: The prazosin and the pyramate. Sometimes supreptitine can serve that purpose.
25:16
Speaker 3: So therefore when it comes, it's less emotionally charged, and
25:20
Speaker 3: then you can sort it out better. And so that
25:24
Speaker 3: helps it. But you don't better you go too slow
25:28
Speaker 3: than too fast, and do things that help them the
25:34
Speaker 3: person feel more empowered. Like one was a war veteran
25:38
Speaker 3: and he did okay with World War Two, but then
25:42
Speaker 3: when he was in a wheelchair, then the war haunted
25:44
Speaker 3: him because at that point he felt disempowered and then
25:48
Speaker 3: his old memories came back. I used to treat Holocaust survivors.
25:53
Speaker 3: I don't see Holocaust survivors now, but you could pretty
25:56
Speaker 3: much diagnose them in a waiting room. They had this
26:00
Speaker 3: look of terror, and there you would see complex PTSD
26:03
Speaker 3: and PTSD. Begets PTSD. So you may have had trauma
26:08
Speaker 3: from one thing. Let's say you had trauma related to childhood,
26:13
Speaker 3: and then you have an auto accident and it may
26:16
Speaker 3: be a very different kind of trauma, and then it
26:19
Speaker 3: seems like to you're overreacting to this auto accident. But
26:22
Speaker 3: what is happening is it reactivates the old trauma that
26:26
Speaker 3: was never resolved. Now, with the Holocaust survivors, they would
26:30
Speaker 3: usually go in two directions. Either they would become scholars
26:34
Speaker 3: of the Holocaust and research to know every camp that
26:39
Speaker 3: existed in Europe, and that was how they dealt with
26:42
Speaker 3: it by trying to be empowered. Or they would never
26:45
Speaker 3: mention a word about it ever. Okay, but there weren't
26:49
Speaker 3: people really that were in the middle. They either buried
26:52
Speaker 3: it and said I'm just not going to go there
26:55
Speaker 3: and open up Pandora's box, okay, and or they would
26:59
Speaker 3: deal with it by trying to understand and explain it
27:05
Speaker 3: and research it. But with that kind of thing where
27:09
Speaker 3: it was years and years and years of trauma, that
27:13
Speaker 3: is a lot more difficult. But a lot of times
27:16
Speaker 3: you get something and let's say the auto accident, and
27:18
Speaker 3: it may trigger old sexual trauma and it's like, see,
27:22
Speaker 3: you're overreacting to this auto accident. It's a fender bender.
27:28
Speaker 3: But it triggered, you know, so the complex and then
27:32
Speaker 3: once someone has the avoidancehybe arousal or emotional numbing. If
27:36
Speaker 3: you have emotional numbing, you're more susceptible to being traumatized
27:41
Speaker 3: again because your surveillance capability is something that doesn't feel right,
27:45
Speaker 3: isn't working, So then you're easier target for more trauma.
27:50
Speaker 3: So then trauma begets trauma that way, So it's easy
27:54
Speaker 3: for this complex PTSD process the car and it's like
27:59
Speaker 3: layers of it. And I use the analogy of like
28:02
Speaker 3: shipping away at an iceberg. If you do try insight
28:05
Speaker 3: and you deal with what's consciously available, but then as
28:09
Speaker 3: you make headway with that, something else comes. Now some
28:13
Speaker 3: of that could be real trauma, and someone could be
28:14
Speaker 3: false trauma or false memory. And sometimes that occurs, and
28:19
Speaker 3: maybe maybe I can mention a word about false memory
28:21
Speaker 3: because that comes up. Okay, So let's say let's say
28:25
Speaker 3: I had trauma and I blocked it out, and as
28:29
Speaker 3: I try to reconstitute it, I try to guess at
28:32
Speaker 3: what it was, and I might guess wrong. Okay. So
28:35
Speaker 3: I had a patient, for example, and she said that
28:39
Speaker 3: she was sexually assaulted by her uncle, and it was
28:42
Speaker 3: very and the uncle denied it, and it was very
28:46
Speaker 3: upsetting and to the family part. And then she was
28:51
Speaker 3: with her cousin, who was the uncle's daughter, talking about
28:55
Speaker 3: the incident and the cousins she said, gee, it was
29:01
Speaker 3: I remember how bad that was, and said, well, here's
29:03
Speaker 3: how I remember it. You, myself and my brother we
29:07
Speaker 3: were out playing outside and we needed a glass of water.
29:11
Speaker 3: We were thirsty, so we knocked on a man's door
29:14
Speaker 3: and we said, can we have a glass of water?
29:17
Speaker 3: And a man invited you and me in, but not
29:19
Speaker 3: my brother. Something bad happened in that house. My brother
29:24
Speaker 3: then went and got my father, who came and got
29:27
Speaker 3: us and brought us home. Two days later, that man
29:32
Speaker 3: was shot and killed in a very unfortunate hunting accident
29:35
Speaker 3: in the woods. That's what I remember, okay, Now, what happened.
29:41
Speaker 3: Something traumatic happened. She blocked it out. She remembered her uncle,
29:47
Speaker 3: but she blocked out the memory of the man who
29:49
Speaker 3: was there, who was the predator. And then over time,
29:56
Speaker 3: as she tried to reconstitute it and tried to make
30:01
Speaker 3: sense out of it after years, what she came up
30:04
Speaker 3: with was a memory that was traumatic, and she felt trauma,
30:08
Speaker 3: and she remembered her uncle, but she remembered him in
30:11
Speaker 3: the wrong context, so she remembered the person who rescued
30:15
Speaker 3: her as the predator, and then that led to inaccurate accusations.
30:21
Speaker 3: So that's something that sometimes happens with time. It's hard
30:25
Speaker 3: to be accurate about what truly happened. There truly was trauma.
30:29
Speaker 3: But when you can have a memory of an event
30:33
Speaker 3: or a memory of a fantasy to try to reconstitute
30:37
Speaker 3: an event, and they can get jumbled.
30:39
Speaker 2: Together and either way, right, that is how the person
30:45
Speaker 2: survives their trauma.
30:46
Speaker 3: Right, it's still trauma, it's still an intrusive memory, it's
30:49
Speaker 3: still PTSD, but the precise facts of it, of how
30:53
Speaker 3: they try to recount count maybe off. You still need
30:58
Speaker 3: to help peace so that they aren't triggered by something,
31:03
Speaker 3: and usually they're triggered by they see something on TV
31:07
Speaker 3: or something that is associated with it. For instance, Holocaust
31:11
Speaker 3: survivors don't like snow it reminds them of the snow
31:14
Speaker 3: and Poland Vietnam veterans don't like rain and tree lines.
31:19
Speaker 3: There's certain queues that may have a triggering effect. And
31:25
Speaker 3: or when you go to bed at night and you
31:27
Speaker 3: try to sleep, your mind drifts the silent, random, silent
31:31
Speaker 3: episodic thinking, and it may drift there. Or the other
31:35
Speaker 3: thing that can happen is when you're going to rim
31:37
Speaker 3: sleep at three o'clock in the morning and your dream
31:40
Speaker 3: that's where you get intrusive thoughts, so nightmares or intrusiveness
31:44
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night, whereas the other intrusive
31:47
Speaker 3: symptoms drew in a day. So it can come as
31:50
Speaker 3: any of those forms, and it's good to recognize it
31:54
Speaker 3: and see it for what it is.
31:56
Speaker 2: I completely agree, and I think you brought up another
31:59
Speaker 2: important topic of discussion, which is the many layers, because
32:03
Speaker 2: you know, I always say it's it's like an onion,
32:06
Speaker 2: right there, we peel some back, Oh, here it is,
32:09
Speaker 2: and then sometimes after I don't know, the one hundredth peel,
32:14
Speaker 2: that is when the trauma comes up. Because their nervous
32:17
Speaker 2: system is now ready to be able to face it.
32:21
Speaker 2: They have the tools, the resources, and frankly the coregulation piece.
32:27
Speaker 2: And I want to mention how how vital that is
32:30
Speaker 2: for any practitioner to be able to coregulate with their patient,
32:34
Speaker 2: with their client, because that is where they are going
32:37
Speaker 2: to feel the safety to start tiptoeing towards the processing right.
32:43
Speaker 3: And I was trying to saw it down.
32:44
Speaker 2: Now.
32:44
Speaker 3: Also another thing that can be traumatic is if you're
32:46
Speaker 3: a witness and you feel helpless. Now in these cases,
32:50
Speaker 3: sometimes it could be like like, for instance, a case
32:53
Speaker 3: of the fireman and there was a fire in a
32:56
Speaker 3: New York in a basement and there were bars on
32:58
Speaker 3: the window, and he couldn't get to the victim who
33:01
Speaker 3: was inside, who was being burned because the bars were there,
33:05
Speaker 3: and so that you're trying to intervene and you can't.
33:11
Speaker 3: And another thing that sometimes happens is some people traumatize
33:15
Speaker 3: because one a high state of fear. Sometimes you're immobilized,
33:19
Speaker 3: you're paralyzed. And this sometimes happened rape victims or other
33:24
Speaker 3: victims of trauma, where the physically paralyzed and they can't
33:27
Speaker 3: move and they're baffled by that. Now, if you look
33:30
Speaker 3: at a nature show, it's a circuit that we have
33:33
Speaker 3: in our brains, and you see a baby deer and
33:37
Speaker 3: a bear walks by and it's paralyzed by fear and
33:40
Speaker 3: immobilized and that saves its life. And so that's a
33:46
Speaker 3: part of our neurological makeup. It's a defense mechanism we
33:50
Speaker 3: don't fully understand. And when sometimes in extreme fear, you
33:54
Speaker 3: have that paralysis and it's baffling. You see it with
33:58
Speaker 3: sexual abuse now. In one case, it was a person
34:01
Speaker 3: in Vietnam and he was in a jungle in Vietnam
34:04
Speaker 3: and he heard military calm approaching and he was paralyzed.
34:08
Speaker 3: He couldn't move, and it was the only time in
34:10
Speaker 3: his life he was ever paralyzed and could not move,
34:13
Speaker 3: and he was physically paralyzed, and then the whole column
34:16
Speaker 3: of the vitcom walked past him, and the last person
34:19
Speaker 3: in the column stopped, faced him and urinated on his foot,
34:23
Speaker 3: and then the column kept going and they never knew
34:26
Speaker 3: he was there. So he actually did the one thing
34:30
Speaker 3: and the only thing that was life saving, but at
34:33
Speaker 3: the time he couldn't explain it now. So sometimes the
34:37
Speaker 3: trauma is the helplessness were these rescue people, particularly first
34:43
Speaker 3: initial responders, they have a lot of trauma. When I
34:47
Speaker 3: see a trauma case, I see him in the hospital
34:49
Speaker 3: a couple of days later, or on my office weeks
34:52
Speaker 3: or months later, years later, but first responders, it's some
34:57
Speaker 3: family going on a family vacation and then all of
35:00
Speaker 3: a sudden, it's it's a catastrophic accident and they're the
35:03
Speaker 3: first on the scene, and uh so they have a
35:06
Speaker 3: lot of trauma from that, and and they're not always
35:11
Speaker 3: well prepared for it, and they often feel helpless. So
35:15
Speaker 3: it's and now, sometimes let's say with a rape or
35:17
Speaker 3: and assault, if you put up a fight, it may
35:21
Speaker 3: not necessarily help you, it may make it worse, but
35:27
Speaker 3: you have less of a post traumatic stress disorder because
35:30
Speaker 3: it felt you did something and if you fought and lost,
35:34
Speaker 3: it's easier to kind of tolerate that as compared to
35:37
Speaker 3: not fighting. But it's part of that physiology, that paralysis.
35:41
Speaker 3: So that's part of postraumatic stress that a lot of
35:42
Speaker 3: people don't understand.
35:44
Speaker 2: Definitely the freeze, the freeze response, which yeah, yeah, and
35:49
Speaker 2: it can also long term look like different things like
35:52
Speaker 2: literally staring blankly at a wall, not being able right,
35:56
Speaker 2: have the executive functioning right. And and also you know
35:59
Speaker 2: the what you discussed like secondary trauma what first responders
36:05
Speaker 2: so often experience. And then family members right of those
36:08
Speaker 2: with chronic illness and vicarious trauma from being close to me.
36:12
Speaker 3: They're helpless, they're watching them play, they're watching disaster play
36:15
Speaker 3: out and they can't do anything. So there's a secondary
36:19
Speaker 3: trauma where it isn't just the person himself but the caretaker.
36:22
Speaker 3: And sometimes the caretaker is more traumatized. I had one
36:25
Speaker 3: case and was two little girls and it was a
36:28
Speaker 3: rapist and he was raping the one and he had
36:31
Speaker 3: the other one stand guard, and the one who was
36:33
Speaker 3: forced to stand guard was more traumatized when than one
36:36
Speaker 3: it was raped because they felt helpless.
36:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's truly, it's truly awful. Like that's
36:47
Speaker 2: all you can that's all you can say about it. Well,
36:51
Speaker 2: you know, when it comes to practitioners, right, who who
36:57
Speaker 2: are treating someone who appears to be treatment resistance or
37:01
Speaker 2: presents with complex trauma or PTSD, what is your recommendation
37:06
Speaker 2: to them? Like, what are the steps? Is it a
37:08
Speaker 2: multidisciplinary approaching? What would you recommend?
37:11
Speaker 1: Right?
37:11
Speaker 3: Although I'd say first recognize it. Now, here's another part
37:15
Speaker 3: of it. When it's with line disease, because you get
37:19
Speaker 3: the PTSD more at night, it's hard to relax and
37:23
Speaker 3: you get it in the middle of the night with
37:25
Speaker 3: the dreams, it's hard to sleep. Then you end up
37:28
Speaker 3: sleep deprived. If you sleep def deprived with a chronic
37:31
Speaker 3: infects of disease. It's hard to recover because that makes
37:34
Speaker 3: you immunocompromised. So you want to be able to get
37:39
Speaker 3: a good night's sleep, but you can't do that unless
37:43
Speaker 3: you address the PTSD that may interfere with the ability
37:47
Speaker 3: to sleep and have restorative sleep. Now there's other things
37:51
Speaker 3: that may adversely affect your capacity to sleep other than PTSD,
37:57
Speaker 3: but this is one that comes up a lot. And
38:01
Speaker 3: so that's how it's a vicious cycle. That's something that
38:05
Speaker 3: I'd say, be attentive to that and look at you know, here,
38:09
Speaker 3: it's hard when you look at these things like I
38:11
Speaker 3: did an assessment and I took honor my patients that
38:14
Speaker 3: had lime disease, and I did an inventory and the
38:18
Speaker 3: average patient had eighty two different symptoms and the average
38:22
Speaker 3: person who was healthy, average medical student or patient before
38:26
Speaker 3: they got sick, would have four of those symptoms. And
38:29
Speaker 3: that's on my two d and eighty two hundred and
38:32
Speaker 3: seventy checklist of symptoms. So and now the problem is
38:37
Speaker 3: what symptoms do you go after first? And then you're
38:42
Speaker 3: looking at how do all these symptoms interact with each other?
38:46
Speaker 3: And you know, to try to explain that I could
38:50
Speaker 3: tell a joke that my computer broke down, and I
38:53
Speaker 3: called a computer guy and he looked at the computer
38:56
Speaker 3: and he kicked it in a lower right hand corner
38:59
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, it worked. And he said,
39:01
Speaker 3: that's one hundred dollars. I said, well, all you did
39:04
Speaker 3: was kick it. You know why you charge me one
39:07
Speaker 3: hundred dollars? Said, well, it's five dollars for the labor
39:11
Speaker 3: of kicking it, and it's ninety five dollars for no
39:13
Speaker 3: one where to kick it. Okay. So that's often with
39:17
Speaker 3: these complicated multi system illnesses that have medical, psychiatric, immune,
39:25
Speaker 3: infectious components and other pieces to it. Where do you
39:30
Speaker 3: intervene first, sentond and third And with different people, it's
39:35
Speaker 3: different issues. I think most commonly it's the worst symptom
39:40
Speaker 3: is often fatigued with these people with these complex illness,
39:43
Speaker 3: and most commonly the intervention is trying to get something
39:48
Speaker 3: that improves restorative sleep, whatever the barrier is, and PTSD
39:52
Speaker 3: is one of the barriers, but not the only one.
39:54
Speaker 3: So you're trying to look at how it all fits
39:57
Speaker 3: together and what can you do to under Now. Substance
40:00
Speaker 3: abuse comes up a lot with trauma because they have
40:04
Speaker 3: the emotional numbing and hyper arousal, and then they may
40:08
Speaker 3: turn the substance use to self medicate, and then that
40:12
Speaker 3: can make it worse. So it's it's like an untangled
40:16
Speaker 3: How do you untangle these things sequentially? And that's something
40:20
Speaker 3: you have to look at. How does it all? What's
40:23
Speaker 3: the domino effect of how it began and how it began?
40:28
Speaker 3: Is it necessarily the same way that you come out
40:31
Speaker 3: of it? But it can give some insight, But what
40:34
Speaker 3: is it? How do these symptoms interact that keeps someone
40:38
Speaker 3: in that state? And what's the best way to come
40:41
Speaker 3: out of it? What do you do first, second, third
40:45
Speaker 3: so that you can come out of this and function
40:48
Speaker 3: on a better level. That's the trick and I think
40:51
Speaker 3: when you do it enough you can see how it works.
40:54
Speaker 1: But with a.
40:55
Speaker 3: PTSD, a lot can be reducing the intensity of the flashbacks,
41:01
Speaker 3: the hyper arousal, and you don't want to be hyper arousal.
41:04
Speaker 3: You're wasting all that energy when you have fatigue, you're
41:07
Speaker 3: wasting it on the wrong thing, okay, And you don't
41:10
Speaker 3: want to avoid things And a lot of people are
41:13
Speaker 3: traumatized by the healthcare system, so then they can be
41:16
Speaker 3: avoidant of the healthcare system when they need the healthcare
41:20
Speaker 3: system all right, and the emotional numbing makes you so
41:25
Speaker 3: you can't feel whose bad news and stay away from them.
41:30
Speaker 3: So the defense mechanisms that you use with PTSD can
41:36
Speaker 3: really increase the risk of making the complex PTSD to
41:40
Speaker 3: go on and on and get more severe and get
41:43
Speaker 3: more layers to it if they aren't understood and addressed exactly.
41:49
Speaker 2: And I always use the example of what a complex
41:52
Speaker 2: PTSD PTSD in general, right, think of like a tiger
41:57
Speaker 2: chasing you, because that's essentially what you're brain and thinks
42:00
Speaker 2: is happening. Your hyper arouse You're constantly looking around for threats,
42:04
Speaker 2: and that I was reading something that we are expending
42:08
Speaker 2: upwards to ninety percent of our energy in a hyper
42:11
Speaker 2: aroused state. So if we're chronically hyper aroused, this is
42:15
Speaker 2: what I explained to patients and clients, is that how
42:17
Speaker 2: much of that energy is now going back to you,
42:20
Speaker 2: back to your brain right to all of these to
42:23
Speaker 2: all of these functions, especially especially the brain fog and
42:26
Speaker 2: the fatigue.
42:27
Speaker 3: The body operates in cyclic functioning, so there's stress syndrome
42:33
Speaker 3: and there's sickness syndrome. So if you are in a
42:36
Speaker 3: war zone, you're in stress syndrome because you have to
42:39
Speaker 3: deal with your environment threat and you compromise. So there's
42:43
Speaker 3: a shift of resources towards dealing with the environment at
42:48
Speaker 3: the expense of internal recovery. And sickness syndrome is I
42:52
Speaker 3: caught the flu yesterday, and now I just curl up
42:55
Speaker 3: in a ball and do nothing and get brain fogged
42:57
Speaker 3: and fatigued, and just hang out and do nothing for
43:00
Speaker 3: a few days, and then I recover and all my
43:02
Speaker 3: energy goes inside. But the problem is when you have both.
43:06
Speaker 3: So when you have a medical illness associated with with
43:11
Speaker 3: with fatigue, and yet you have to keep your job
43:13
Speaker 3: in order to pay your bills, in order to pay
43:17
Speaker 3: have your health insurance so you can get treatment, then
43:20
Speaker 3: you're you're fighting a battle on two fronts. And when
43:23
Speaker 3: you fight a battle on two fronts at the same time,
43:26
Speaker 3: you're not going to do very well. And I think
43:29
Speaker 3: Hitler knew that in World War Two when he was
43:32
Speaker 3: fighting on the Eastern and the Western Front. And you know,
43:36
Speaker 3: you can't do it. So it's, uh, that's the dilemma.
43:41
Speaker 3: You know, where can you have the leeway that you
43:44
Speaker 3: can really what do you tackle in what sequence so
43:49
Speaker 3: that you can get out of that hole.
43:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's so interesting you said that, because truly
43:56
Speaker 2: mental and or any form of chronic illness can feel
43:59
Speaker 2: like you are you are battling.
44:01
Speaker 3: You're at battle.
44:02
Speaker 2: You are at war because of because of your environment,
44:06
Speaker 2: especially if you don't have the support. But even if
44:09
Speaker 2: you do, right, I have a patient who's in the
44:11
Speaker 2: hospital right now, and she feels so unsafe because no
44:13
Speaker 2: one understands all of her complex diagnoses and they keep
44:18
Speaker 2: if they're giving her the wrong medication or something keeps
44:21
Speaker 2: going you know, going wrong essentially. So it's it's hard,
44:26
Speaker 2: it's really hard.
44:27
Speaker 3: Well, sometimes you don't want to explain it so much
44:30
Speaker 3: that you evoke a flood of traumatic memories. You just
44:35
Speaker 3: want to let be as sure that there is an explanation.
44:38
Speaker 3: But we'll get to it little by little. Yeah, and
44:41
Speaker 3: you know you don't want to, like I said, you
44:43
Speaker 3: don't want to open up Pandora's box. So there's a
44:45
Speaker 3: trick to avoid that.
44:46
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, yep, yep, yep. I mean Pandora's box is
44:50
Speaker 2: no different than a Herzheimer's. It's an emotional Hrzheimer response almost.
44:54
Speaker 3: Well, right, yeah, it's uh yeah, although they are. It's
44:57
Speaker 3: like the flood of the memories of all of them,
45:01
Speaker 3: and it may be the initial and the one afterward.
45:04
Speaker 3: And like I said, trauma begots trauma because the defense
45:08
Speaker 3: mechanims that you use make you moreable to being traumatized again.
45:12
Speaker 3: And likewise, if you're like a victim versus the predator,
45:16
Speaker 3: predators think of predator mentality. A predator first start with
45:23
Speaker 3: a lion. He scopes out or heard of antelope, and
45:27
Speaker 3: which one is young, old, crippled, vulnerable, and that's the
45:31
Speaker 3: one he's going to target predators And Charles Manson used
45:35
Speaker 3: to do this. He would sit on a street corner
45:37
Speaker 3: and look for people that he could see his victims
45:40
Speaker 3: to get in his group. And he would have he
45:43
Speaker 3: could read them. And it was the person with self doubt,
45:46
Speaker 3: the person with low self esteem, that would be the
45:50
Speaker 3: person that predators would zero in on and exploit in
45:54
Speaker 3: some way. And that person with self doubt is that
45:58
Speaker 3: person that had child trauma and the trauma may have
46:02
Speaker 3: been abuse, and they doubt themselves. And then you get
46:06
Speaker 3: another predator that smells that and sees that, picks up
46:09
Speaker 3: the body language, and that's the person that they're going
46:12
Speaker 3: to try to use with whatever scam they try to do.
46:16
Speaker 3: So that is how trauma begots trauma.
46:20
Speaker 2: Yeah wow, Well, with decades and decades in this field,
46:28
Speaker 2: what makes you most hopeful?
46:32
Speaker 3: Well, I think we have to use a collaborative approach
46:34
Speaker 3: where we look at all the pieces. You can't just
46:37
Speaker 3: use what we call asylum mentality where I say, well,
46:40
Speaker 3: I'm a psychoanalysis and analyst, that's all I do. Or
46:44
Speaker 3: I'm an infects these person, that's all I do. You
46:48
Speaker 3: have to connect the dots and see how they're all connected.
46:51
Speaker 3: So a lot of the work I do, like my
46:53
Speaker 3: recent article where I looked at how infectious disease contributes
46:58
Speaker 3: to global instability by looking at how parts of the
47:02
Speaker 3: world have the higher load of infectious disease, particularly infects
47:08
Speaker 3: diseases that may contribute to violent behavior, and seeing that
47:13
Speaker 3: connection helps to give global stability. So you have to
47:16
Speaker 3: look at many different things. You have to look at
47:18
Speaker 3: the ecosystem, you have to look at then vectors and
47:25
Speaker 3: what holds those infections, and then look at how the
47:29
Speaker 3: pathophysiology evolves and how that affects mental functioning and how
47:34
Speaker 3: that affects societal behavior and how that can result in
47:39
Speaker 3: be it developmental disorders, general medical illnesses, psychiatric illness, neurological illness, violence,
47:48
Speaker 3: substance abuse, And when you see those and connect the dots,
47:52
Speaker 3: then it's pretty obvious. But you have to have people
47:55
Speaker 3: that jump from one feel to the next, and then
47:58
Speaker 3: what happens is you can get people that want to
48:01
Speaker 3: be in charge because you know, you get it's a
48:05
Speaker 3: part of human nature. They get in power struggles and
48:08
Speaker 3: they want and then that interferes with the cooperative effort
48:11
Speaker 3: to try to piece it all together. And so I
48:15
Speaker 3: think as things go on, thinking that these things are
48:18
Speaker 3: getting a lot more complicated and we have to look
48:21
Speaker 3: at all the pieces, and like the idea that I
48:25
Speaker 3: think infects disease has a lot to do with many
48:28
Speaker 3: of the mental illnesses that we treat, and we have
48:31
Speaker 3: to incorporate that. And it's it's the infection and then
48:34
Speaker 3: the immune reaction to the infection. So and a lot
48:38
Speaker 3: of people you know, like, for instance, infects, these doctors
48:42
Speaker 3: know very or trained maybe with minimal psychiatry fifty years ago,
48:47
Speaker 3: and a lot of psychiatrists have minimal infects disease training
48:51
Speaker 3: many years ago, and none of them are well trained
48:55
Speaker 3: very much in immunology, in immunology of the brain. So
48:59
Speaker 3: you have to we have to be less pigeonholed in
49:03
Speaker 3: our area especially and look at a broader perspective, and
49:08
Speaker 3: only then can we do things. And we have to
49:10
Speaker 3: be willing to work as a team and not get
49:13
Speaker 3: into the usual power struggles with money, ego power that
49:17
Speaker 3: comes up when you whenever humans work together and try
49:22
Speaker 3: to accomplish something, there's human nature that interferes with the
49:26
Speaker 3: effective result. But I think if we use that approach,
49:30
Speaker 3: we can get a lot further with understanding these complicated problems.
49:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, amen to that, realizing you know, we it's not
49:40
Speaker 2: possible for us to know everything, and thus it's that
49:44
Speaker 2: important for us to work together as a team, right right.
49:49
Speaker 3: There's no knowns and no non knowns. But the problem
49:51
Speaker 3: is unknown n knowns that which you don't know, that
49:53
Speaker 3: you don't know. And humility is a very good trade
49:56
Speaker 3: in medicine, and arrogance is a very bad trade of medicine.
49:59
Speaker 3: But there is a lot of arrogance in medicine.
50:01
Speaker 2: There's so there's so much, Yeah, there's so much. I
50:05
Speaker 2: would say, like unhealed ego is how I how I
50:08
Speaker 2: frame it, and it's unfortunate because it essentially then gets
50:13
Speaker 2: projected onto the patient and they suffer for it and
50:17
Speaker 2: then hence medical PTSD. So yeah, I thank you so much.
50:24
Speaker 2: I'd like to ask where where can any listeners or
50:29
Speaker 2: those who are watching find you and find your research.
50:33
Speaker 3: Well, for instance, if they do a Google search, a
50:36
Speaker 3: lot of things come up, Like one article relevant to
50:39
Speaker 3: this would be psychosomatic somatop psychic multicystem illness, and medical
50:46
Speaker 3: uncertaintly you know, differentiating those and that looks at what
50:51
Speaker 3: we're talking about. Also adverse childhood events, post traumatic stress disorder,
50:57
Speaker 3: and infections and sephilopathies of another article relevant to do.
51:02
Speaker 3: And then I've done a lot of articles on LIME
51:05
Speaker 3: and different facets of it. The most recent article was
51:08
Speaker 3: about infectious disease mental impairment associated with violence and global
51:18
Speaker 3: instability looking at on a global level, and and a
51:23
Speaker 3: lot of that is global h PTSD in parts of
51:26
Speaker 3: the world and these war zones, these conflict zones. And
51:30
Speaker 3: another one recently about where we did an autopsy with
51:34
Speaker 3: a homicide suicide and you know, a fatal outcome associated
51:41
Speaker 3: with burlosis. But google my name and you'll get a
51:48
Speaker 3: lot of that or some of the other videos I've done,
51:51
Speaker 3: and that's a good way to find things.
51:53
Speaker 2: Okay, and are you taking patients?
51:58
Speaker 3: Well? The problem is I have all these people calling
52:03
Speaker 3: and it's giving post traumatic stress disorder to the two
52:07
Speaker 3: women that work in my office because I can't treat everybody, Okay,
52:13
Speaker 3: So I think I think people need to learn how
52:18
Speaker 3: to do it themselves and not think that they'll just
52:20
Speaker 3: send any of these cases to me. There's too many
52:25
Speaker 3: of these cases, and if somebody, you know, if they
52:30
Speaker 3: want to learn, there's a lot of platforms to learn more.
52:33
Speaker 1: I have.
52:35
Speaker 3: A group on the Internet of educating healthcare workers and
52:39
Speaker 3: psychiatrists about these link with microbes and mental illness. I've
52:43
Speaker 3: been doing that twenty six years and I'm trying to
52:48
Speaker 3: do different educational platforms to expand it because these patients
52:52
Speaker 3: are everywhere and we need everybody needs to treat their
52:56
Speaker 3: share of it. I can't treat them all be found easily,
53:01
Speaker 3: but I can't treat everybody.
53:04
Speaker 2: I understand. I'm in the same boat, a very long
53:06
Speaker 2: waiting list because there just aren't.
53:08
Speaker 3: That many of them, and everybody wants to go to
53:11
Speaker 3: the top and no.
53:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what this, what this speaks to reflex upon
53:18
Speaker 2: is a lack of education, a lack of understanding, a
53:22
Speaker 2: lack of training. So I'm working on a on a
53:24
Speaker 2: CU course for practitioners as well, right now, good hope
53:29
Speaker 2: you know, hoping more more can be out there. And
53:34
Speaker 2: do you happen to have that checklist of all those symptoms?
53:38
Speaker 3: By the way, is that something email to you? I
53:40
Speaker 3: have a longer one and a shorter one and I'm
53:43
Speaker 3: happy to share it and anybody can use it. And
53:46
Speaker 3: that's the checklist that was developed as a result of
53:50
Speaker 3: that research project. And yeah, anybody can use it. And
53:55
Speaker 3: I think then it's pretty obvious as you go through it.
53:58
Speaker 3: It also helps your treatment in it.
54:01
Speaker 2: Great, yeah that So I will link some of your
54:05
Speaker 2: research we discussed, right, I'll.
54:06
Speaker 3: Send it to you and then you can share it,
54:08
Speaker 3: all right. And also what I'll send to you too
54:11
Speaker 3: is if you with the interest of lime disease, I
54:15
Speaker 3: have a whole list of neurose of journal articles, peer
54:21
Speaker 3: reviewed articles that show an association between lime, tickboorren disease
54:26
Speaker 3: and psychiatric symptoms. So there's a five hundred articles and
54:31
Speaker 3: then also there's ninety some with tickbore disease and dementia
54:36
Speaker 3: on that list. Wow. So if somebody questions there's no connection, say, okay,
54:43
Speaker 3: let's go through each one of these journal articles one
54:45
Speaker 3: by one and then tell me there's no connection. Right.
54:49
Speaker 2: And I have to just use the example of a
54:51
Speaker 2: good friend of mine who is diagnosed with early onset
54:54
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's in her thirties, place on medication, only to find
54:59
Speaker 2: out it was indeed line disease and co infections. And
55:03
Speaker 2: she's in remission now. So she was actually a featured
55:08
Speaker 2: in a reader's digest article. So it is something, and
55:12
Speaker 2: it's I have you know of someone with dimensional Alzheimer's.
55:15
Speaker 2: It's good to have those things ruled out.
55:18
Speaker 3: No, No, I think Alzheimer's there's a lot of attention now,
55:20
Speaker 3: it's not just there. For instance, the shingles vaccine reduces
55:24
Speaker 3: the risk of Alzheimer's, but a lot of infections. I
55:27
Speaker 3: think you get immunocompromise when you're older. And I think
55:30
Speaker 3: then a long list of infections, some of which aren't
55:34
Speaker 3: yet identified, you know, can be part of dementia. You
55:39
Speaker 3: do see it would take point disease, but you see
55:41
Speaker 3: with other infections too, and there and a lot of
55:45
Speaker 3: these plaques and tangles is really the immune system fighting
55:48
Speaker 3: something else, So they're not looking back far enough at
55:52
Speaker 3: the real cause. So when you think of this connection,
55:56
Speaker 3: it's always a formula. You have some vulnerability and environmental trigger,
56:01
Speaker 3: and the environmental trigger can be infectious or something else.
56:06
Speaker 3: And that's the formula for most disease.
56:09
Speaker 2: M Yeah, Okay, And last but not least, is there
56:15
Speaker 2: anything that you would hope someone listening to or watching
56:19
Speaker 2: this walks away with today.
56:24
Speaker 3: Well, keep an open mind, look at all the pieces,
56:29
Speaker 3: and don't be rigid and black and white. Don't be
56:35
Speaker 3: very careful about the current lime disease two tier testing.
56:39
Speaker 3: It was never standardized for late stage disease, and it's
56:43
Speaker 3: an immune based test for an organism that's immuno suppressant
56:48
Speaker 3: and immuno evasive. So therefore, conceptually that's flawed. And I
56:56
Speaker 3: think things change with time. Be open in the new ideas,
57:01
Speaker 3: and I think any idea maybe has a piece, but
57:04
Speaker 3: it doesn't explain everything. And I think you have to
57:08
Speaker 3: look at multiple things contribute to disease. There's multiple physiology
57:14
Speaker 3: and multiple manifestations. All three of those areas, so it's
57:18
Speaker 3: not so black and white and rigid. So always retain
57:23
Speaker 3: a lot of humility and open mindedness, and I think
57:27
Speaker 3: that allows us to go forward and work with people
57:29
Speaker 3: that don't normally work with. They're trying to understand the
57:32
Speaker 3: piece that you don't understand.
57:35
Speaker 2: Right, yes, yes, agreed, and yeah, the more we learn,
57:39
Speaker 2: the less we know, and flexibility goes goes a long way.
57:42
Speaker 2: So thank you, Okay, thank your time and your wisdom.
57:46
Speaker 3: Thanks for doing this, okay, okay, yeah.
57:50
Speaker 2: Likewise, take care all right by
58:00
Speaker 1: The lay day time