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From the archives: Mooli Lahad, PhD · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Today we have another episode from the archives with one
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Speaker 1: of my incredible guests. Enjoy Welcome to the Trauma Evers Podcast,
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Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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Speaker 1: of experienced trauma. My name is Goy Macpherson and my
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Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
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Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us. Our guys,
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist podcast. My name is
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Speaker 1: Gay Macpherson, and today I just really excited to introduce
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Speaker 1: my guests all the way from Israel, Professor Muley Lahad Mooe.
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Speaker 2: Are you ready to go?
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Speaker 3: Yes? All right.
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Speaker 2: So Mooley is a senior medical psychologist and has been
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Speaker 2: working with individuals, civilians as well as soldiers and veterans
0:46
Speaker 2: suffering from PTSD since nineteen seventy five. Doctor Mooley is
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Speaker 2: a founder and president of the Community Stress Prevention Center
0:54
Speaker 2: in oh I didn't ask you how to pronounce this
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Speaker 2: in Kurasma, Okay, the oldest center in the world that
1:03
Speaker 2: deals with community as an ecological entity for recovery and
1:06
Speaker 2: healing pre and post critical incidents. Doctor Bode is the
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Speaker 2: author and co author of thirty five books on resiliency
1:12
Speaker 2: and coping from early childhood to old age has developed
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Speaker 2: the intricative model of coping and resiliency. And this is
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Speaker 2: a very interesting model which I want to get into
1:21
Speaker 2: in a bit here. But mooly, that's obviously just a
1:25
Speaker 2: bit about you share with our listeners, if you will,
1:27
Speaker 2: before we get started. Where are you calling from? And
1:32
Speaker 2: just a little bit about that place there, and let's start.
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Speaker 3: Okay, so as you can already suss I'm not that young.
1:43
Speaker 3: I'm in the business since nineteen seventy five and probably
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Speaker 3: one of the most serious senior therapists and people in
1:51
Speaker 3: this field, especially in Israel, because I started work in
1:56
Speaker 3: the time that even PTSD wasn't yet created. It's prior
2:02
Speaker 3: to nineteen eighty. The center that I've developed or created,
2:07
Speaker 3: established whatever and then you would like to call it
2:10
Speaker 3: some thirty five years ago. Is quite unique because the
2:15
Speaker 3: place that we are situated in is the norther of Israel.
2:20
Speaker 3: It's about a mile and a half from the Lebanese
2:23
Speaker 3: border and about something like twenty five miles from the
2:28
Speaker 3: Syrian border. So you can imagine that we have been
2:31
Speaker 3: in the midst of troubles for many years, and thank Godness,
2:35
Speaker 3: we have a relative quiet nowadays. The center was originated
2:41
Speaker 3: because we felt that there is not much I would
2:46
Speaker 3: say response or planning for chill originally that are living
2:52
Speaker 3: in this area, no projects, no plans to deal with
2:58
Speaker 3: things that I would say nowadays are called psycho social.
3:03
Speaker 3: Most of the kids were trained to run to the
3:06
Speaker 3: air age shelter in the eighties and until the year
3:11
Speaker 3: two thousand, this area was under i would say sporadic
3:14
Speaker 3: and sometimes constant shelling, and so kids were trained to
3:18
Speaker 3: run to the shelter. But suppose they came into the
3:22
Speaker 3: shelter eight o'clock in the morning when school started, then
3:26
Speaker 3: what do you do with them for five six hours?
3:29
Speaker 3: And basically everyone got crazy. I mean not psychologically, but
3:34
Speaker 3: I mean emotionally. People were agitated, some kids were crying,
3:39
Speaker 3: most of them bored, and the teachers were also kind
3:43
Speaker 3: of lost, because what do you do with kids in
3:46
Speaker 3: a room that is so small, with so many kids
3:49
Speaker 3: some crying, some jumping, some doing other stuff, and yourself
3:53
Speaker 3: is not really yourself You're not ready to stay for
3:57
Speaker 3: so many hours. So originally we started with that, looking
4:02
Speaker 3: at what can help those who are with the kids,
4:07
Speaker 3: and that's where we started. So many years ago. I
4:11
Speaker 3: came from Tel Aviv, which is the center of Visrael.
4:13
Speaker 3: That's probably a place that is known to most of
4:15
Speaker 3: your listeners, which is right on the Mediterranean, and went
4:21
Speaker 3: all the way up to the mountains, which is a
4:23
Speaker 3: beautiful place, full of greenery, and in the winter sometimes
4:28
Speaker 3: we have snow here. Even it is a very funny country.
4:31
Speaker 3: On the north you may have snow in the winter.
4:34
Speaker 3: And at the same time, if you just travel five
4:36
Speaker 3: hundred kilometers south, you're on the seashore in the lat
4:40
Speaker 3: the Red Sea, and you can go scuba diving and sunbay.
4:45
Speaker 3: So in these five hundred kilometers you have almost all climates.
4:49
Speaker 3: So that's basically where we're situated. And it's a very
4:53
Speaker 3: small town. It's about twenty twenty two thousand inhabitants. But
4:58
Speaker 3: it was in a way a very good laboratory to
5:01
Speaker 3: start all the crazy ideas that we have developed over years. Yes, honestly,
5:07
Speaker 3: I mean we were in a remote area. I believe
5:10
Speaker 3: you were about forced psychologists to start, with a few
5:13
Speaker 3: social workers flying in psychiatrist. We have a small airfield,
5:18
Speaker 3: so they were flying in every so often. So basically
5:21
Speaker 3: we were kind of with the population. I was living
5:24
Speaker 3: there for twenty years. Now I'm living like fifteen kilometers south.
5:27
Speaker 3: But at that time and so we had to invent things.
5:32
Speaker 3: And one of the things that probably we'll talk a
5:34
Speaker 3: bit later is that I realized already then, which is
5:39
Speaker 3: I believe about twenty years before even maybe more, but
5:43
Speaker 3: around twenty years before in America, you started to appreciate
5:47
Speaker 3: the concept of resiliency, because I know the resiliency, to
5:52
Speaker 3: be honest. But what I saw is that most people
5:56
Speaker 3: are making it living, are you know, running their own lives.
6:01
Speaker 3: Although they were kind of hyper vigilant and sometimes afraid,
6:05
Speaker 3: but the vast majority of the people in the city
6:09
Speaker 3: were not clients in person. I should tell you I
6:12
Speaker 3: was expecting them to line up, you know. I don't
6:15
Speaker 3: know if you saw recently the videos of the TV
6:20
Speaker 3: from Athens people queuing for money. In those days, it
6:25
Speaker 3: was Russian people queuing for bread. And I expected, coming
6:30
Speaker 3: from the center of Israel, that I.
6:31
Speaker 4: Will see patients, you know, queuing up for miles to
6:36
Speaker 4: be therapized. Well, I didn't see them, and I said
6:39
Speaker 4: to myself, how come when I worked in Tel Avivion,
6:42
Speaker 4: those who came to the clinic, I mean, they were
6:46
Speaker 4: with the same symptoms, although what was different that most
6:50
Speaker 4: of us said that everything they're suffering from its clinical
6:53
Speaker 4: psychology center is due to the rockets, which are known
6:58
Speaker 4: as Catuscha's Russian.
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Speaker 3: So I asked myself, what's wrong with what I studied?
7:04
Speaker 3: How come not at least not everyone, but at least
7:08
Speaker 3: two third of them of this population, it's about let's say,
7:12
Speaker 3: fifteen thousand people are not queuing up. We had the
7:15
Speaker 3: same amount of clients, of course, with different stories. Most
7:24
Speaker 3: of them were connected to the troubles, and so I
7:27
Speaker 3: started to look around and I did my first research
7:31
Speaker 3: on that, and I realized that children are functioning, but
7:35
Speaker 3: they need something. And so that's how the whole business
7:38
Speaker 3: started with this idea.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, this sounds really interesting, and I think you
7:45
Speaker 2: really set the stage well for us, Mooly. I mean,
7:47
Speaker 2: obviously you've been doing this for a long time, and
7:49
Speaker 2: in the specific environment and which you've been doing it,
7:53
Speaker 2: I think has added to the richness of your story
7:57
Speaker 2: and the way you're offering care. Well, let's kind of
8:02
Speaker 2: start here, as we do, with a quote or share
8:06
Speaker 2: with our listeners, a mantra or a phrase whatever that's
8:11
Speaker 2: really served to inspire you and the work you've been doing.
8:17
Speaker 3: You will probably be surprised at the quote I'm going
8:20
Speaker 3: to use about twenty five hundred years old. It's by confuciously,
8:24
Speaker 3: philosopher from China. He said something that later on became
8:29
Speaker 3: the mantra or the quote that my center and myself
8:35
Speaker 3: keep on using. I can tell you thirty years later,
8:40
Speaker 3: it is still I think, very very appropriate. It goes
8:43
Speaker 3: like this, you can't prevent the birds of sorrow hovering
8:48
Speaker 3: above your head. You can only prevent them from building
8:54
Speaker 3: nests in your hair. And that's a beautiful one in
8:57
Speaker 3: my mind. And that was said of twenty five hundred
9:00
Speaker 3: years ago. I think it's very very appropriate, and I
9:05
Speaker 3: believe that it really inspires me.
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Speaker 2: So share with the listeners when that became resonant for you,
9:14
Speaker 2: When and how does that inspire you?
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Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I'll tell you where did I
9:20
Speaker 3: get it from. I went to do my first PhD
9:26
Speaker 3: in England in nineteen eighty two and I somehow got
9:33
Speaker 3: hold of this very very small book that I had
9:38
Speaker 3: some quotes from Confucius, and you know, I looked at them.
9:42
Speaker 3: It was the time that people, you know, everything that
9:45
Speaker 3: was Chinese and all sounds very wise. So I got
9:48
Speaker 3: this little book somewhere. What I looked at you, I said, well,
9:52
Speaker 3: this is really encompasses all that I've been doing in
9:55
Speaker 3: this town and later on overza in the world. We're
9:59
Speaker 3: trying to to give people the tools to help themselves,
10:04
Speaker 3: which is it is very, very central to the whole
10:07
Speaker 3: concept that I'm working with. And when I saw it,
10:12
Speaker 3: I said to myself, you can put in anything and
10:14
Speaker 3: see you can say you can't prevent the birds of grief,
10:20
Speaker 3: you can't prevent the birds of pain, and you just
10:24
Speaker 3: go on with the next part, which is so beautiful.
10:27
Speaker 3: You just can prevent them from building nests in your hair,
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Speaker 3: which is in my mind, a poignant short way to
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Speaker 3: put across the whole concept for me of preparation prevention
10:46
Speaker 3: and that people are resilient if you just help them
10:48
Speaker 3: a bit.
10:49
Speaker 4: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: I love that, and I love how you adapted that
10:53
Speaker 2: something that's been you know, with us for thousands and
10:57
Speaker 2: thousands of years, and I think it speaks perfec to
11:01
Speaker 2: really the resiliency of the of the human spirit in
11:03
Speaker 2: a sense. Yeah, so moly, let's let's get into this here.
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Speaker 2: I mean, obviously, you know as you said, you've been
11:10
Speaker 2: doing this for a long time, and it's really an
11:12
Speaker 2: honor to speak with you, someone who's had so much
11:15
Speaker 2: experience and uh, you know, have been doing this in
11:20
Speaker 2: the environment in which you have. What got you into
11:23
Speaker 2: this field? Why this field?
11:29
Speaker 3: Well, I should say that in hindsight, I can say
11:35
Speaker 3: that I was drawn to the helping profession about eight
11:43
Speaker 3: years earlier, and that my first experience, which was a
11:49
Speaker 3: bit frustrating, was working with soldiers Israeli soldiers maybe you
11:55
Speaker 3: call it in the state's veterans, because they all finished
11:57
Speaker 3: their service right after the nineteen seventy three war. For
12:02
Speaker 3: some of your audience, young audience, it might sound just
12:05
Speaker 3: before Jesus, so just after Jesus or Buddha, but it
12:08
Speaker 3: was the time that people were living, you know. And
12:11
Speaker 3: I was frustrated because I saw the psychoanalytic work that
12:17
Speaker 3: was done with them, and most of all, the very
12:20
Speaker 3: aggressive exposure using sometimes medications. And I said to myself,
12:27
Speaker 3: I don't like it. But now I was so young
12:30
Speaker 3: and probably somewhat arrogant, and so I followed what my
12:36
Speaker 3: servisors told me. And if I look back to my
12:41
Speaker 3: family history, I must tell you none of my parents
12:46
Speaker 3: were holl of survivors, but I lived in a little
12:51
Speaker 3: part of Haifa where I was born, and some of
12:57
Speaker 3: my very good friends and parents were hollow survivors. Only
13:01
Speaker 3: many years later I realized how this actually impacted me
13:07
Speaker 3: because in many ways my mother, who was the only
13:11
Speaker 3: Sabura is the nickname for an Israeli born person, and
13:18
Speaker 3: she took this social worker role because she wasn't a
13:22
Speaker 3: social worker, she was just a neighbor. And I believe
13:25
Speaker 3: that we were following her, me and my only sister,
13:28
Speaker 3: she's older than me, and we were following her in
13:32
Speaker 3: all this very very I would say, profound goodness to
13:38
Speaker 3: support and help these people, and it got into I
13:43
Speaker 3: would say, the blood system of both of us. My
13:45
Speaker 3: sister is a clinical psychologist in the States and I
13:48
Speaker 3: am a medical psychologist and a trauma experts and bibliotherapist
13:53
Speaker 3: that means working with stories and drama therapist that's working
13:56
Speaker 3: with drama and all therapists. But we're working in this
13:59
Speaker 3: help profession, both of us, and probably it is to
14:02
Speaker 3: do with that. So this is where it started. And
14:07
Speaker 3: then I came to this town Ka, which is difficult
14:13
Speaker 3: for you to pronounce by the way. The meaning is
14:15
Speaker 3: the town of the eighths, which is Israel. Everything that
14:19
Speaker 3: has a meaning which means it's the eight people who
14:22
Speaker 3: are died in nineteen twenty seven in a fortress nearby. Nevermind,
14:28
Speaker 3: I came down with my late wife, my first wife
14:35
Speaker 3: died from Kansas some years ago, and we came to
14:39
Speaker 3: this town as volunteers for a year because it was
14:42
Speaker 3: the thing to do for young professionals, to do something.
14:46
Speaker 3: You know, it's very similar to the States in those
14:49
Speaker 3: days that you were kind of feeling that you have
14:52
Speaker 3: to do something for people who suffers. I mean, this
14:54
Speaker 3: is the late seventies, early eighties, people who are very
14:58
Speaker 3: much into this in community. Psychology was at its height
15:04
Speaker 3: at that time. So it came for a year, and
15:08
Speaker 3: I realized that the fact that it's so far away
15:12
Speaker 3: giving me so much opportunity to bring all my as
15:15
Speaker 3: I call it always crazy ideas, because I should be
15:19
Speaker 3: honest with you. When I started talking about this coping modes,
15:24
Speaker 3: this model that here were interested in, and I came
15:28
Speaker 3: to the first psychologist conference in Tel Aviv, the faces
15:34
Speaker 3: and the eyes of most of my audience actually gave
15:39
Speaker 3: me the impression they think I am other suffering from
15:43
Speaker 3: very high temperature, or that one of these bombs fell
15:47
Speaker 3: on my head. I'm talking nonsense. People are I mean,
15:50
Speaker 3: if they are exposed to such terrible things, they should
15:52
Speaker 3: all have some sort of psychopathology. And here I comment
15:57
Speaker 3: shate with them. So the moment I got really interested,
16:02
Speaker 3: and the amount of willingness to be part of this
16:08
Speaker 3: in this community, in the schools, with the families, and
16:11
Speaker 3: even in the local authority, it really gave me my
16:15
Speaker 3: wife at the time, a lot of inspiration to keep
16:19
Speaker 3: on doing it. And in fact, even after my PhD,
16:23
Speaker 3: which I did in London, I could come anywhere in
16:26
Speaker 3: Israel and got a very good job on any psychological department.
16:32
Speaker 3: And no I decided to go back to this place
16:35
Speaker 3: because I realized there is so much to do and
16:37
Speaker 3: there is so much openness to this quote unquote experiments.
16:44
Speaker 2: When Mollie, when you first kind of entered into the
16:47
Speaker 2: field of psychology, was trauma something? Again, this was before
16:53
Speaker 2: you know PTSD, but was was the idea of helping
16:57
Speaker 2: people in or who have been traumatized? Was that something
17:00
Speaker 2: on your radar? Was that something that developed for you?
17:06
Speaker 3: I believe it is to do as I said to
17:08
Speaker 3: you the fact that I was a soldier, another fighting
17:12
Speaker 3: one though, But I was a soldier during this nineteen
17:15
Speaker 3: seventy three war, and so many of my friends were
17:19
Speaker 3: either injured, some died, and many of them were considered,
17:24
Speaker 3: as we call it, the transparent wood, which is BDSD.
17:29
Speaker 3: And I just started to do my second degree, and
17:32
Speaker 3: I think that I was intrigued that we are so helpless. Now.
17:37
Speaker 3: The word trauma was there. I mean, in a way,
17:40
Speaker 3: it was mostly when people referred to either Vietnam veterans
17:48
Speaker 3: in the US and very little was written at that
17:50
Speaker 3: time still and Holocaust survivors. But the general I don't
17:57
Speaker 3: like to say that, but I must be honest with you.
18:00
Speaker 3: General attitude to these people were that they were failures.
18:06
Speaker 3: And I should tell you that my first training is
18:09
Speaker 3: in humanistic psychology, and my tutor was a direct student
18:16
Speaker 3: of unistic you know, people like Rogers, which I had
18:23
Speaker 3: later on the honor to be a student of. But
18:28
Speaker 3: you see, I didn't like what I saw, but I
18:31
Speaker 3: was young and I just had to look at it.
18:36
Speaker 3: I'm sure that this is to do with the fact
18:38
Speaker 3: that I was kind of drawn to do things within hospitals,
18:44
Speaker 3: but not in mental hospitals, which is another thing I mean,
18:47
Speaker 3: I believe that I am again sorry to say that
18:50
Speaker 3: one of the first what we call in Israel medical psychologists.
18:54
Speaker 3: Although when I worked in the hospital, mostly in the U,
19:01
Speaker 3: in the UK, but then in Israel, it wasn't so
19:06
Speaker 3: common for non clinical approach. And again this is probably
19:12
Speaker 3: my my way in life, as the song says, it
19:16
Speaker 3: is my way in life not to pathologize people as
19:20
Speaker 3: much as possible.
19:22
Speaker 2: What what could you share would be one of your
19:25
Speaker 2: early mistakes, one of your early clinical errors that you
19:29
Speaker 2: made as you began working in that In that context,
19:32
Speaker 2: I should.
19:33
Speaker 3: Say that it continued to be my mistake, and that's
19:36
Speaker 3: my naivety. I'm very naive, I'm very native. I'm proud
19:42
Speaker 3: of it. I'm very naive, and I'm very optimistic, and
19:46
Speaker 3: I made lots of mistakes because of that, both on
19:49
Speaker 3: an organizational level, as you may understand, but also on
19:53
Speaker 3: a face to face because this this is a very
19:57
Speaker 3: stupid I would say approach for therapy is to be
20:00
Speaker 3: so convinced that one everyone can be helped, and it's
20:08
Speaker 3: of course impossible. And so there were times that I
20:12
Speaker 3: just invested so much in clients that I sometimes called
20:19
Speaker 3: trauma therapy as a wooing profession because you have to
20:22
Speaker 3: woo the client in I also did some I would
20:28
Speaker 3: say silly things, like like endangering myself. In the early eighties,
20:35
Speaker 3: I was working in South Lebanon, way before Israel invaded it.
20:40
Speaker 3: I worked there in a Catholic school and it was
20:44
Speaker 3: very very stupid thing because it was not the work,
20:47
Speaker 3: but I endangered myself several times. Now in practice, I
20:52
Speaker 3: believe that my main mistake was at one point when
20:55
Speaker 3: I was working in a school and there was a
21:00
Speaker 3: young man there that I have consulted the therapist to
21:04
Speaker 3: work with them, because at that time I wasn't working
21:06
Speaker 3: directly with this guy, and I had some worries that
21:12
Speaker 3: this young man is suicidal, but I probably didn't push
21:18
Speaker 3: it enough, and I believe that we didn't do enough
21:23
Speaker 3: to scare the family, although the parents in general generally knew,
21:27
Speaker 3: but you know, the tendencies to not to admit to
21:31
Speaker 3: such terrible thing that your loved ones might commit suicide.
21:38
Speaker 3: And then when it happened, I had lots and lots
21:41
Speaker 3: of very very strong feeling about it. And then my
21:46
Speaker 3: second thing in this case was that I had to
21:49
Speaker 3: go and help the group because it was a youngster
21:53
Speaker 3: in the school and I felt that this is the
21:56
Speaker 3: least the smallest thing I can do. But this is
22:00
Speaker 3: something that over the time as a quiet experienced therapist,
22:07
Speaker 3: I know that you can be naive, you can be optimistic,
22:11
Speaker 3: you can do as much as a person can do,
22:14
Speaker 3: but sometimes the best we have done is not enough
22:18
Speaker 3: and that's frustrating, but it doesn't stop me from doing
22:24
Speaker 3: what I am doing.
22:26
Speaker 2: So what's kind of the quote unquote take the message
22:30
Speaker 2: here or the take home for our listeners? Because I'm
22:33
Speaker 2: really curious about the line between being naive and or
22:38
Speaker 2: being overly naive and overly optimistic. Because you know, a
22:42
Speaker 2: lot of therapists, seasoned therapists like yourself and therapists in general,
22:47
Speaker 2: speak about the power of hope and instilling that, especially
22:52
Speaker 2: within individuals who been traumatized. So can you tease out
22:56
Speaker 2: that difference between being overly optimistic and being naive and
23:01
Speaker 2: how that plays out for you.
23:05
Speaker 3: I believe that it is a very important thing for
23:10
Speaker 3: a therapist in my mind, to be optimistic and to
23:15
Speaker 3: transmit this message. But don't be like hypomania. You know
23:22
Speaker 3: that you are just you all over the place in
23:24
Speaker 3: your your client is depressed. This is not the case,
23:28
Speaker 3: but the case is to try and see that there
23:31
Speaker 3: is not one way to help people that sometimes a
23:35
Speaker 3: simple thing could help, like like talking to this person.
23:40
Speaker 3: I mean taking this person out and drink a coffee
23:44
Speaker 3: with him in a cafe, or walk him on the
23:49
Speaker 3: seashore and just talk with him. Or in my center
23:52
Speaker 3: in Kichmen now have a beautiful, beautiful stream that you
23:56
Speaker 3: can go and sit with a client and just just
23:59
Speaker 3: let nate sure and the atmosphere calm them down and
24:03
Speaker 3: then and then see if that's possible. And in Steel
24:06
Speaker 3: hope that means don't lose it. At the same time,
24:09
Speaker 3: we know that if you're too much in that you
24:11
Speaker 3: should be aware of compassion fatigue, which is I realized
24:15
Speaker 3: that my friend Charlie Figley was talking to you. But
24:20
Speaker 3: I mean keep that in mind that this is not
24:23
Speaker 3: something bad that happens to therapists when they feel compassion fatigue.
24:28
Speaker 3: It's just it's just a sign that you probably are
24:31
Speaker 3: too sensitive and you need to take a little break
24:34
Speaker 3: or more more therapy for yourself, or better still, or
24:38
Speaker 3: steal a good supervision. But in general I think that
24:43
Speaker 3: my main message, don't forsake your dreams. I mean uh,
24:48
Speaker 3: and do not pathologize as much as possible. Look at
24:53
Speaker 3: every behavior as the attempt of that person to make
24:56
Speaker 3: it because we're all so vulnerable and so such as
25:01
Speaker 3: an animal that is not really I would say fit
25:08
Speaker 3: for this planet. And so everyone is trying the best,
25:11
Speaker 3: even though those who are to somewhat to some people
25:16
Speaker 3: looks as if they are so to speak, failures, and
25:20
Speaker 3: I believe this is very important. The other the last
25:23
Speaker 3: message here, I would say, try not to call any
25:27
Speaker 3: of your clients chronic, because when you classify them as chronic,
25:32
Speaker 3: you mean there is nothing to do with them. So
25:34
Speaker 3: whenever you feel like that this is a chronic patient,
25:38
Speaker 3: just look at any other world. But don't call them
25:41
Speaker 3: chronic because it means you can't really help them.
25:46
Speaker 2: Sage advice and we'll kind of jump back to this.
25:50
Speaker 2: You know, one of my favorite questions when I do
25:53
Speaker 2: these interviews, and I think it's really curious to hear
25:57
Speaker 2: your response, really is you know what keeps you going?
26:00
Speaker 2: Why are you doing this day to day? And again
26:04
Speaker 2: it's just it's so inspiring that you've been doing this
26:06
Speaker 2: for so long and the way you speak is with
26:10
Speaker 2: still with such enthusiasm and warmth and compassion. So share
26:14
Speaker 2: with our listeners what keeps you going day to day.
26:20
Speaker 3: First of all, the fact that I'm still feeling. I
26:23
Speaker 3: don't allow myself to stop feeling, and I still feel
26:27
Speaker 3: for human suffering a lot. I think this is very
26:30
Speaker 3: important for you. In that case. I'm not working only
26:33
Speaker 3: in Israel, I know if you've looked through my bios,
26:36
Speaker 3: but I'm working everywhere in the world that people are
26:39
Speaker 3: suffering as a result of a major crisis. So maybe Japan,
26:44
Speaker 3: HATI the Mississippi following Katrina ninety eleven. I'm feeling that
26:53
Speaker 3: there is a message that I'm caring with me. This
26:56
Speaker 3: is the idea of resiliency and that people who are
27:00
Speaker 3: traumatized should be helped only with one option, but try
27:05
Speaker 3: and look at them in a holistic plusted. I am
27:09
Speaker 3: doing so many things that keeps me quite I should
27:12
Speaker 3: say energetic, because I'm teaching, I am a therapist, I'm supervising,
27:21
Speaker 3: I belong to many organizations. I wrote books, I'm still
27:24
Speaker 3: writing books. I visit places where I'm trying to give
27:30
Speaker 3: my wisdom and convince people that despite it is a
27:33
Speaker 3: thirty five or forty years old wisdom. It's only a map.
27:38
Speaker 3: They shouldn't follow it like one to three, four five instructions.
27:43
Speaker 3: I find a lot of satisfaction when I visit places
27:48
Speaker 3: after years, like the Jungles of Sri Lanka, after the
27:53
Speaker 3: work we did there. Seven years later, I found that
27:56
Speaker 3: little places, you know, remote, very remote down into the
28:00
Speaker 3: jungle hospital, are still using the models, but in their
28:05
Speaker 3: own way. That means that they are making it cultural
28:09
Speaker 3: adaptive and and and to their norms and needs. And
28:13
Speaker 3: I think this this variety of things that I'm doing,
28:15
Speaker 3: and the fact that I have expanded my work of
28:19
Speaker 3: resiliency into ministries here and around the world, into uniform bodies,
28:28
Speaker 3: into the industry, and to the big, big international firms,
28:32
Speaker 3: because I believe that the resiliency is something that needs
28:39
Speaker 3: to to be be developed and not just developed, enhanced
28:45
Speaker 3: and maintained, and that if organizations will work well, first
28:50
Speaker 3: of all, look into the resiliency and abilities of their
28:54
Speaker 3: their workers, not just as as sources of profit, but
28:59
Speaker 3: how could every person that can make the best within
29:03
Speaker 3: their own resources, they will benefit. And I'm not just
29:08
Speaker 3: preaching about it. I can tell that there are so
29:11
Speaker 3: many projects around the world at our mine and my
29:15
Speaker 3: friend's fingerprints are part of it that I'm very proud
29:19
Speaker 3: of it, and that's what keeps me going. Though I'm
29:22
Speaker 3: getting tired too, and probably I'm not slowing down, but
29:28
Speaker 3: I probably will will do other things I love to write,
29:30
Speaker 3: just storybooks for children, which I haven't done enough. These
29:34
Speaker 3: are not on my list of publications. You know, you
29:37
Speaker 3: don't get your credits in the academia for storybooks, but
29:44
Speaker 3: I try to bring it in. I mean the three
29:50
Speaker 3: masterpieces here in Israel by myself and my very good colleague,
29:54
Speaker 3: doctor of Roelan, basically combining stories and art work and
30:00
Speaker 3: and music and everything that is based on our experience
30:05
Speaker 3: that can make people's life much much more manageable and
30:10
Speaker 3: sometimes even more satisfactory.
30:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, beautiful. You know, one of the messages that I'm
30:15
Speaker 2: getting from you, Mouly is you have such an appreciation
30:18
Speaker 2: for a diversity of experiences and appreciating and incorporating that
30:24
Speaker 2: into the work you do. You know, as you said,
30:27
Speaker 2: you're not kind of following modalities or theories and step
30:32
Speaker 2: by step, but you're adapting them to your own work.
30:36
Speaker 2: Could you, and I know we touched upon this a
30:38
Speaker 2: little before, but share with our listeners here and again
30:44
Speaker 2: we have people who are listening who've been in the
30:46
Speaker 2: field for a while, who are just getting into this
30:48
Speaker 2: field of trauma informed treatment. But share some advice for them.
30:55
Speaker 2: And I know, you know you said one of the
30:57
Speaker 2: things was try not to kind of label or need, yeah,
31:02
Speaker 2: pathologize and use the word chronic. But in addition to that,
31:06
Speaker 2: what would you what would you share with our listeners.
31:11
Speaker 3: I think that my philosophy, of course based on a
31:16
Speaker 3: lot of research, because nowadays, if you don't have evidence
31:18
Speaker 3: to it, it's nothing. But I mean I'm still coming
31:21
Speaker 3: from the old times that philosophy was good enough if
31:23
Speaker 3: you start and follow it. As some theoretician says, theory
31:27
Speaker 3: is the best experience experiment. But my philosophy is that
31:32
Speaker 3: first of all, each of us are making our journey
31:36
Speaker 3: on this planet with a very weak beginning. I mean,
31:40
Speaker 3: this is probably the first sentence I say everywhere in
31:44
Speaker 3: the world when I teach, just look at the newborn bird,
31:47
Speaker 3: the human new born baby. We are never equipped to anything.
31:53
Speaker 3: I mean, we can't hide, we can't walk, we can't
31:56
Speaker 3: find out food. So in fact, my first statement is
32:01
Speaker 3: that each and everyone of us is America. And yes,
32:06
Speaker 3: some of us find it very hard. And that's the
32:08
Speaker 3: people who comes to us. I'm saying to all my
32:13
Speaker 3: students and colleagues, remember that on our door, above the door,
32:20
Speaker 3: actually there is a transparent message. This is the place
32:26
Speaker 3: for people who failed in life. And don't fool yourself
32:29
Speaker 3: that you're nice and your polite and your professional that
32:33
Speaker 3: this message is not there. So be aware of that.
32:37
Speaker 3: And if this is the message, and you have to
32:41
Speaker 3: be as sensitive to this and listen to the person
32:47
Speaker 3: and not just listen to the aches, and that's where
32:52
Speaker 3: my model comes from. But listen to the way they
32:55
Speaker 3: tell the stories. And I can tell you that if
32:59
Speaker 3: you listen to the way a person tells a story,
33:03
Speaker 3: you can relatively easy even if the story is about
33:09
Speaker 3: bad things, troubles, even failures, long term failures as you see,
33:15
Speaker 3: I don't say chronic or long term troubles and long
33:19
Speaker 3: term train They have done a journey on these planets.
33:24
Speaker 3: So listen to them carefully and see how they did
33:27
Speaker 3: this journey before you plange on them all your wisdom
33:32
Speaker 3: and methods. Because I mean one of the other things,
33:37
Speaker 3: and I mean talking to you makes me a bit
33:40
Speaker 3: uneasy because I'm kind of preaching and I don't like it.
33:44
Speaker 3: But I would like to say to my friends and
33:47
Speaker 3: colleagues and students, by God, try not to be interesting.
33:52
Speaker 3: Be interested, because so many of us are trying to
33:55
Speaker 3: be interesting. That means wise giving interpretation all that. I'm
34:00
Speaker 3: not objecting to it, But the first thing is be interested,
34:04
Speaker 3: be interested in their story, be interested as human, be
34:08
Speaker 3: interested in them. I mean, if you do that, you
34:13
Speaker 3: already breage over. And if you do it with their
34:16
Speaker 3: own language, it means if you're emotional, I shouldn't give
34:18
Speaker 3: you a whole list of advices that are really not
34:21
Speaker 3: where you are. And if you're very imaginative, I shouldn't,
34:25
Speaker 3: you know, start ground you because because you're not there,
34:29
Speaker 3: you are in your imagination. So if you start off
34:33
Speaker 3: with that, the first thing you give to that other
34:37
Speaker 3: person is that you are really listening to them, not
34:41
Speaker 3: just you know, like the easy way to say you're empathizing. Yes,
34:46
Speaker 3: empathizing is not just emotional. Empathizing is to every word
34:50
Speaker 3: a person is trying to convey their story. And by that,
34:55
Speaker 3: I think in my experience, and of course I shouldn't
34:59
Speaker 3: say that this is the only experience of the best experience.
35:02
Speaker 3: It's just my experience. You instill some little hope in
35:08
Speaker 3: these people, and people are getting out of lock, cleaning,
35:11
Speaker 3: many of them saying I don't know if you helped me,
35:13
Speaker 3: but you gave me a lot of hope. So that's
35:15
Speaker 3: that's a very good start.
35:17
Speaker 2: I love those smoothly, just really inspiring, you know. Just
35:22
Speaker 2: you began by seeing each and every one of us
35:24
Speaker 2: as a miracle, you know, and again, listen to the
35:27
Speaker 2: way your clients or the people you're working with are
35:29
Speaker 2: telling their story before you plant on them all of
35:32
Speaker 2: your own wisdom.
35:35
Speaker 3: And then you know, and don't forget it. I have
35:37
Speaker 3: two PhDs, and I have several professors, so I know
35:40
Speaker 3: all the theories. That's probably why I can play humble,
35:44
Speaker 3: you know.
35:45
Speaker 2: And then you know, rather than trying to be interesting,
35:50
Speaker 2: you know, work towards being interested. And you talked about
35:54
Speaker 2: how that creates an environment to really hear and listen
35:59
Speaker 2: to what the story the person before you is trying
36:04
Speaker 2: to share. I love that. So, Mollie, can you share
36:07
Speaker 2: with our listeners two books. I'm going to try to
36:10
Speaker 2: hold you the two books in the interest of time
36:13
Speaker 2: here that have really kind of informed the work you
36:17
Speaker 2: do your life. Even then they don't have to be
36:21
Speaker 2: trauma related.
36:24
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if it's it's humble enough to
36:28
Speaker 3: talk about my own books, those that are in English,
36:31
Speaker 3: because many of them are not in English. At least
36:34
Speaker 3: I will share one of them with the audience, though
36:38
Speaker 3: I have to apologize that these publishers are really taking
36:44
Speaker 3: extremely high price, and I don't know, I can't convince
36:48
Speaker 3: them to do anything because that's the policy. But anyway,
36:52
Speaker 3: this is still I said, I don't like protocols, but
36:55
Speaker 3: this is a kind of a protocol. Basically, it's a
36:57
Speaker 3: guide that is incombon encompassing the small that we developed
37:02
Speaker 3: and was very well accepted, and we had several studies
37:07
Speaker 3: the show. It's very effective, just like EMDR. It's known
37:12
Speaker 3: as c F CBT. I know everyone is now bowing
37:18
Speaker 3: and putting their hands on CBD, which I am very
37:21
Speaker 3: fond of and I'm using it a lot. I think
37:23
Speaker 3: there is a lot in it. However, many people are
37:27
Speaker 3: finding that is not enough for them. So the CPAR
37:30
Speaker 3: CIBT is the book. The book is published by Iosios Press,
37:36
Speaker 3: is a NATO sponsored publishing house. And they published it
37:42
Speaker 3: because we trained people from around Europe, Eastern Europe and
37:47
Speaker 3: some countries that Israel don't have contact with, but we
37:52
Speaker 3: train them out of Israel. This is from Afghanistan and
37:55
Speaker 3: Pakistan and other places like this. So they are the
37:59
Speaker 3: publishers the book. The book is giving a bit of
38:02
Speaker 3: my philosophy, a lot of my experience, and it guides
38:07
Speaker 3: a therapist, I mean like a step by step so
38:09
Speaker 3: so they can hopefully do it if they have a
38:12
Speaker 3: good background in psychotrauma treatment. The other book is a
38:17
Speaker 3: very old book. You still can find it because it's
38:20
Speaker 3: a treasure. I'm not talking about trauma book here. I'm
38:24
Speaker 3: talking about a book that one of my greatest inspirations
38:29
Speaker 3: in therapy, Violet Oakland there a child Gish style therapist
38:36
Speaker 3: using her methods and developed many methods based on her
38:39
Speaker 3: approach for adults too. The book is called Windows to
38:45
Speaker 3: Our Children. What is very interesting that it was written
38:50
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy just just you know, a bit after Jesus,
38:54
Speaker 3: as I said earlier. But the beauty about it is
39:00
Speaker 3: she was working with children who were traumatized, but the
39:03
Speaker 3: word trauma was not there. I mean nineteen seventy by God.
39:07
Speaker 3: So she had this beautiful, beautiful way to look at them.
39:10
Speaker 3: She said, A child in trauma, sorry, sorry, it wasn't trouble,
39:15
Speaker 3: A child in trouble does not believe her own senses.
39:21
Speaker 3: And I found it very profound and very very correct.
39:26
Speaker 3: I worked a lot with traumatized children, and I can
39:30
Speaker 3: tell you that a child in trouble, a child that
39:32
Speaker 3: was the word for her for trauma, does not believe
39:36
Speaker 3: their own senses. In fact, my finding is that they
39:40
Speaker 3: hardly play, or they lose their playfulness. And this book
39:45
Speaker 3: is full of treasures and ideas of how to reinspire,
39:50
Speaker 3: reinsteeal this ability to be playful or I would say
39:55
Speaker 3: creative in hell way, but playful in my terms. And
39:59
Speaker 3: if you look at a storytelling, which is my other expertise,
40:04
Speaker 3: and you look at this term, the child in trouble
40:06
Speaker 3: does not believe her own senses, you go back immediately
40:11
Speaker 3: to little Red riding hood, because you see, everyone knows
40:16
Speaker 3: that she knew her grandmother, and everyone knows that she
40:19
Speaker 3: knew the wolf because she met him on the way
40:21
Speaker 3: and she got instructions not to talk to him or whatever.
40:24
Speaker 3: And then when she comes to the granny's house and
40:29
Speaker 3: she sees the face that she actually saw some some
40:33
Speaker 3: time ago, I mean a few minutes or hour ago,
40:38
Speaker 3: and she knows how her grandmother looks like, but she
40:41
Speaker 3: somehow has her system understand something terrible have happened. And
40:47
Speaker 3: then she starts asking this, let's say, quote unquote silly
40:52
Speaker 3: questions about the size of the eyes, that knows, et cetera.
40:56
Speaker 3: And it means to me that she lost her a
40:59
Speaker 3: confidence in her own senses. So it's beautiful that it's
41:04
Speaker 3: even so many thousand, one hundred years ago. The idea
41:08
Speaker 3: of a child in trouble does not believe her own senses,
41:11
Speaker 3: because if she would believe her own senses, she probably
41:14
Speaker 3: would have run away. And I feel this is a
41:19
Speaker 3: great book for both for beginnings and for people who
41:23
Speaker 3: have experienced. But I haven't had a chance to get
41:25
Speaker 3: hold of this book. It's called Windows to Our Children
41:28
Speaker 3: and the author is Violet open There. Our book calls
41:33
Speaker 3: protocol for Treatment of post Traumatic stress Disorder, which is
41:36
Speaker 3: c for us civit. I need to tell you that
41:39
Speaker 3: it's caused by myself and my very good colleague Mickey Duran.
41:44
Speaker 2: And both of those in addition to everything we're talking
41:47
Speaker 2: about here will be up at the show notes page
41:49
Speaker 2: at West Coast Trauma Project dot com under the podcast tab,
41:55
Speaker 2: in addition to links for your website and your bo Moly,
42:01
Speaker 2: what's the best way for people to contact you?
42:05
Speaker 3: Well, the best way is to go onto our website.
42:10
Speaker 3: And I need to tell you a little secret. Although
42:13
Speaker 3: it's a now that it's online, it's a big secret
42:16
Speaker 3: that is now known to everyone. I'm going to have
42:21
Speaker 3: a semi sabbatical in the States as from March twenty sixteen.
42:29
Speaker 3: I'll be probably New Haven, so they still can community
42:36
Speaker 3: communicate with me all the time through our center's website.
42:41
Speaker 3: And the website is I c SPC or for those
42:48
Speaker 3: who are still knowing the terms like I for India
42:54
Speaker 3: and see for Charlie, and as for sugar and pea
42:58
Speaker 3: for Papa and see for child Charlie. So I c
43:01
Speaker 3: SPC dot org. That's it. I SPC dot org.
43:06
Speaker 2: Great, and again we'll have that linkedup at the show
43:08
Speaker 2: notes page. Moly, it's been awesome speaking with you. If
43:12
Speaker 2: I if I could use such word, I mean, you're
43:14
Speaker 2: just so inspiring and I truly loved your advice that
43:20
Speaker 2: you gave I'm just really excited to share that with
43:22
Speaker 2: our listeners here. I want to thank you so much
43:25
Speaker 2: for taking the time to do this or it's really
43:28
Speaker 2: it's been an honor.
43:28
Speaker 3: Really, thank you very much. Guy.
43:31
Speaker 2: All right, bye bye bye