Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Capturing The Present Moment with David Carr: from the archives

Transcript

Capturing The Present Moment with David Carr: from the archives · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Or today we even another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests.
0:05
Enjoy or Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Guy
0:19
mckperson. My mission is to help Trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to
0:24
be human, to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big
0:28
believer in who we are is more important than what we know, and this
0:31
requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can
0:38
learn more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot
0:42
com. That's the Trauma Therapist project dot com. Let's get started, alight,
0:48
guys, Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Guy
0:51
Mickperson. Super excited today to introduce my guest, David Carr. David welcome,
0:57
Thank you guy. I'm a big fan and love your podcast. Thank
1:00
you so much for having me awesome, appreciate it. David written an expos
1:03
titled The Week and Overcome and American Trauma. As a boy, David heard
1:07
the stories of what his father endured as a young boy, disappearing like unexpected
1:12
rain, kicks in the side, and nails in his skin. But David's
1:15
father never set a hand on him. Cycle of abuse, however, wasn't
1:19
broken. David suffered mental and physical abuse from the people that were supposed to
1:23
protect him. As an adult, he realizes now that his continuing mental anguish
1:27
was self inflicted and challenging himself to see his life in a new way.
1:32
David realized that the story of his childhood trauma didn't consist of what happened to
1:36
him, but rather the way he responded to what happened. This realization set
1:41
the stage for him to embark on a transformative journey, one that began as
1:44
a terrified child but has since included him as a mixed martial artist, the
1:49
vice chairman of the Joyful Child Foundation, as an advocate for children's rights nationwide,
1:53
and he David himself has built two successful international companies. He lives on
1:57
a southern California ranch style home with his wife of twenty years and three children.
2:02
David, again, thanks so much for taking the time to do this.
2:06
I I was reading your book, and you know, I don't read
2:10
every book that sent to me. Obviously there are a lot of books,
2:13
but this one was like, you know, geez, so intense, but
2:19
like a flaming h what Arrow through the Heart man. So, as a
2:25
way of an introduction, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much guy.
2:30
I'm I'm like I said, I'm a huge fan and I'm so happy
2:35
to be here, and I hope I can at least help one person out
2:39
there that has a similar type of story. Yeah, so let's let's start
2:46
off with a quote here. I know you have something you want to share
2:50
to kind of set the stage. What do you what do you want to
2:52
share with our audience? Well, you know, I you know, I'm
2:57
I've had a very good life. I have a beautiful life. I've been
3:00
married for twenty years. I live on a beautiful property with a lot of
3:04
animals, and I have three healthy kids that are very successful and and all
3:08
in in private schools, all three teenagers, and so that that can be
3:13
very challenging. But my goal was to raise happy, healthy kids. Uh.
3:20
And so you know, I never talked about my past. I never
3:24
discussed it with my wife. She uh, she had never seen me crying
3:29
fifteen years. It was just something I ever never talked about. And as
3:34
I was looking around at my own children and how happy and healthy they were,
3:38
and obviously they deal with their their struggles and challenges. But you know,
3:44
I started looking a little bit back at my own past and and and
3:46
thinking, you know, I think it's a story I need to tell.
3:53
Uh. You know, I had a I grew up in a family that,
3:58
you know, my father was an alcoholic. He was a grifter,
4:00
if you know what that is. That's somebody who really doesn't have a job
4:04
and goes around and kind of talks people out of their money. And so
4:12
he probably lived in about the twenty two different homes growing up. Sometimes it
4:15
was seedy motel rooms. And I was very always very ashamed. I was
4:20
always very ashamed of it, and so I kept my past very very quiet.
4:25
And then my father was put in prison for quite a long time when
4:30
I was a ten year old boy. I just didn't know, you know
4:33
what that where he went. My mother never told us, and so it
4:38
was it was quite frightening growing up. There were just no boundaries. My
4:45
mother refused to get a job, and so we were we were kind of
4:48
living off other people's moneys or with the help of relatives or or friends or
4:56
or or pretty much sometimes begging on the street. And so within that framework,
5:02
you know, I said, there's just there's there's no boundaries. So
5:05
it opened the door to a tremendous amount of abuse from a lot of different
5:12
people. And I put examples of different types of abuse. I picked predominantly
5:16
three different types that that that happened with me, and the trauma that resulted
5:23
throughout my life and and really kind of uh solidified itself and and put me
5:30
into a breakdown in my my my early forties. And really what triggered that
5:34
was looking at my own children and and seeing how healthy they were and how
5:40
happy they were, and and looking at them, it really dawned on me
5:45
that I had to look back at my own childhood and and and come to
5:50
terms with it. So, I mean, there's so many questions I want
5:55
to I want to get to. I do want to do the opportunity to
6:00
share your quote. I think it was a Winston Churchill quote. Oh absolutely,
6:04
Yeah, let's let's dig into that. You know, I put that
6:09
in the front of my book because I wanted to, you know, by
6:12
writing the book, I really wanted to inspire every child, woman and child
6:15
that that that has been you know, physically and sexually abuse abused or mentally
6:21
abused that there is hope for them. I'm I'm I'm not a doctor,
6:26
but I see myself as kind of a professional survivor. And so the quote
6:34
that I use in the front of my book was a quote by Winston Churchill
6:39
that says, continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to
6:43
unlocking our out our potential. Never given, never, never in nothing,
6:48
Never yield to force, never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy,
6:55
Winston Churchill. And you know how I apply that quote to to to
7:00
my life and my growth and my healing is that you know, when you
7:05
when you when you make the decision that you've you've had childhood trauma and and
7:11
you want to get better, it's going to be a very large mountain decline
7:15
and you have to take the first step, and it's going to be a
7:18
long fight. But is it worth it? Yes, it absolutely is.
7:24
And I you know, I think I'm living proof of that. And so
7:28
uh so that quote has has has driven me in my life to be raised,
7:34
have a successful marriage, and have three successful teenage boy kids, have
7:40
to two sons and one daughter. So you so you you we're going through
7:46
this this experience of your life you've talked about your father and then the the
7:51
abuse from different angles that happened to you. At what point was there a
8:00
point where you were getting any help of any kind? Yeah, you know,
8:07
I wasn't. I didn't seek out the help of any professionals. The
8:13
interesting thing is, you know, as when you when when you were a
8:18
child and you're born into a family, actually have a chapter on it that
8:22
you know, children are empty canvases and so you only know the environment that
8:26
you were brought up in. And that being the case, I believe it
8:31
or not, Guy, I as much as the mental neglect, physical abuse,
8:37
sexual abuse that took place when you're a child, you unless somebody tells
8:43
you, you don't know anything's wrong. And so it really took becoming an
8:48
adult and backing off and seeing, like I said, the health of my
8:50
children and realizing that, you know, I had to I had to take
8:56
a look at at what happened within my childhood. So was you said you
9:03
were forty when things started to shift for you or let's talk about period.
9:07
One of the yes. One of the big inspirations was is my wife started
9:13
getting involved in charity work. We wanted to start giving back to the community
9:16
because I had started two international companies. My first one I grew for ten
9:22
years, and then I started another one, and we realized we had to
9:26
start giving back to the community. And so she got involved with a very
9:31
new organization which was called the Joyful Child Foundation, which was started I think
9:37
two years before by Aaron Running, whose daughter, Samantha Running, at five
9:43
years old, was taken and molisted and murdered. It was it was a
9:50
very big news sixteen years ago. Samantha would be I think sixteen years old
9:54
today. So this was without your wife didn't know anything about your past,
9:58
correct, correct, that's correct, And she just gravitated into that and uh
10:05
she worked for for years with it and and uh one uh uh won an
10:13
award with him for a Volunteer of the Year. And one day we got
10:18
to be very good friends with Aaron and Kenneth, Samantha's parents, uh,
10:24
who started the organization, and we went out to lunch and uh they talked
10:31
me into being on the board and uh after four hours, and what I
10:35
realized was the foundation was in in in a lot of trouble. Uh uh,
10:43
just from infrastructure standpoint, the people on the board, the people running
10:46
it, and they really didn't have a direction, and uh, you know,
10:50
I I met with them and uh several times and and and was very
10:56
confused and realized that, you know, I don't have anything to offer,
10:58
but maybe one of the things I can offer is that I am an entrepreneur
11:01
and I do know how to take things from nothing and grow them into something
11:07
larger. And so today we were so excited because we're absolutely exploding. Part
11:16
of that is because what's happening on the news media with Bowling in sexual abuse.
11:20
And last year, I believe we trained twenty five thousand kids K through
11:26
twelve within the school districts ten days of training, two hours a day,
11:31
a program that teaches them how to protect themselves. And our ultimate goal is
11:37
to have this federal legislation passed by the President nor through Congress to have this
11:45
implemented in every school in America so that these so what we're seeing in the
11:52
media right now, people women and children understand their boundaries and don't have to
11:56
deal with this. So that inspire meet to talking to Aaron to to write
12:03
down my story. And uh, so that's what really inspired me to wrote
12:07
a book. So how were you able to contain you said you weren't you
12:13
know, you didn't get help quote unquote professional help when you were younger.
12:20
How did you go about managing? I mean it sounds like you were really
12:26
successful, right quote unquote Again, I mean, yeah, this guy,
12:31
what what what? That's a really good question. And so my my way
12:37
of coping was that I had, uh a hobby on the side, and
12:43
that hobby uh was mm a martial arts and so I, you know,
12:48
I brown kicking ass, basically brown belts, black belts. And so what
12:52
I would do is I would I would spend a full day at work and
12:56
I would go to a place I term in the in the in the book
13:00
as the Lions did. And it was a place where a lot of amateur
13:03
and professional fighters got together and trained, and we would fight and beat each
13:11
other up on a weekly basis. And so it was a very strange life
13:16
being a successful entrepreneur coming home and my wife had had cottails, and I'd
13:20
walk in and one of her friends martini glasses would drop because I had a
13:28
broken nose and there was blood all over my face. But basically that was
13:31
my therapy. Trauma survivors have a very difficult time being in the present moment
13:41
and the moments that I was fighting. Though I was terrified when I was
13:46
fighting, immediately when I was punched or I threw a punch, it was
13:52
like an ecstasy to be tapped into the now, into the moment, because
13:58
usually I was playing over and over my childhood abuse in my mind, or
14:05
I was thinking about the future of how to protect myself. As you know,
14:09
trauma victims were hyper vigilant people, and so that fighting was my therapy.
14:18
Wow, I mean, there's it's it's you know, when I read
14:24
your book, it immediately brought me back to an experience I had when I
14:31
was working for the county, I mean Northern California, and I was I
14:37
was working at this facility where we kind of assessed and treated kids who were
14:45
showing early signs of psychosis, many of whom, most of whom had experienced
14:48
trauma. And you know, part of the job was getting these calls from
14:54
teachers, parents, therapists, whatever, you know, talking about their kids
14:58
and and ad. You know, you run down the list of what's going
15:01
on, and it's there's always trauma. There's always, for the most part,
15:07
there's abuse. And I just got to this point, like what is
15:11
going on? You know, how what is going on? And your book
15:20
is I mean, I can't imagine the courage it took to put all that
15:24
down. To me, it just seems so damn courageous. Oh thank you
15:31
guy. You know, I guess you know it's it's interesting you say that
15:35
because you know many people and my friends, employees. You know, I
15:41
guess from the general public standpoint, I would be seen as a you know,
15:46
a highly successful man. Alpha I guess I'd be seen as an alpha
15:52
male. And so to to write it down, it took a tremendous amount
15:58
of time and a lot of courage. I really am not touting my horn,
16:03
but you know, to get it down was very, very difficult process.
16:06
In fact, I spent two years actually editing it, and part of
16:10
that was during that time I had to go seek therapy from a therapist,
16:15
doctor Stephen Alkis, Who's Who's Who's a wonderful therapist, and he worked with
16:22
me in trying to get around the idea of exposing myself to the public in
16:33
this way to say that yes, I was abused, I was neglected,
16:37
I was hurt, and one of my my, my my biggest fears was
16:44
for my children to someday read the book. And so, yes, it
16:49
was an absolutely terrifying process. I'm still scared. Did it or has it?
17:00
Oh? How has it impacted your relationship with your wife and your kids?
17:07
You know, that's a that's a great question. You know, I
17:11
think it's still an ongoing process. You know. I did. Uh,
17:18
I did have some some some wonderful uh Daddy daughter time. Me and my
17:22
me and my my sixteen year old daughter went out to lunch one day and
17:27
my wife, I said, you know, you should probably tell her about
17:32
the book because at some point she will she will see it and I will
17:36
have to have that discussion with my my two sons or younger. And as
17:41
we were, as we were having lunch, I I said, uh,
17:45
you know, I said, Chloe, you know there's something dad wants to
17:48
tell you. And you know, we have a wonderful life. Your your
17:52
your beautiful little girl. You're happy, you're healthy. But just so you
17:56
know, I you know, I had a very difficult childhood and my goal
18:00
in life now is to go out and help people, to help trauma survivors,
18:07
especially kids with childhood trauma. And I said, there's there's a message
18:14
that needs to be given to the world, and that message is that nobody
18:17
has the right to hurt a child. And so I wrote down my story.
18:22
But my story is difficult to read, and if you'd like to,
18:26
you can read at some point, but I preferred you waited until maybe you
18:29
were over twenty one, and you know, and she's in her own world
18:33
and happy, and she listened to me. She looked me in the eye
18:37
and she understood. And her response was, I'm so proud of you,
18:45
Dad. If you can help other people and you can help other kids,
18:51
you did the right thing. And then what was interesting is the next thing
18:56
she said was, Hey, let's after this, Let's go get an ice
18:59
cream. It's got The discussion was over, and I realized in that moment,
19:03
I immediately called my therapist. I called some wonderful people that are that
19:10
are in in the trauma world, trauma therapy world, and uh. I
19:15
let them know her response and they said, my god, you know,
19:18
Dave, she's a healthy, happy girl. You know, you know it's
19:25
uh, you know, you and wife did a good job. And uh.
19:30
And I realized that at that moment that you know it, we could
19:33
turn a really kind of looks like a negative thing into a wonderfully positive thing,
19:41
and so and so that was it was a difficult process, and uh,
19:45
I still have to get to my other two sons, but I think
19:48
it's going to have a positive effect on our lives. What a what a
19:53
beautiful little story. That's so awesome. You're just to share that with your
19:59
your your You're in girl. What's it been like for you? You know,
20:06
I'm thinking now about the listeners of this podcast that are UH therapists or
20:12
or therapists who with experience, who are maybe just starting to learn about trauma,
20:19
trauma care, trauma treatment, UH survivors listen to this podcast parents,
20:27
What has it been like for you? You know, you've you've spent a
20:32
lot of your life kind of managing or or addressing your past in certain ways.
20:38
Now it seems like you're doing it in a in a what could you
20:44
say, a more intentional way or a different way. How has that shift
20:48
affected you and impacted you? Gosh, guy, let's see. Well,
20:56
you know, in after when I did have a breakdown in my in my
21:03
forties, and when I did and I was getting involved in the Joyful Child
21:07
Foundation. When you say, can I can I just what do you mean
21:11
when you say breakdown? What happened? Well, you know, when I
21:15
started looking at my own children and they started getting old and I saw happy
21:18
and healthy they were, and I guess the pressures of life started hitting and
21:22
I decided to really look back on my childhood. I did have somewhat of
21:26
a nervous breakdown, and that's when I actually did go to seek some therapy
21:32
and deal with my trauma. But but you know, writing down the story
21:37
during that time, I guess it was probably an eight year period and you
21:45
know, reading all the books I can, taking all the information I can,
21:51
talking to as many people as I could, attending seminars, I worked
21:56
with the doctor bessel Vandercolko, who performed dm dr on me. And you
22:00
know, after doing that in the process of writing the book, when the
22:04
book was finally finished, I kind of the shift from the healing process and
22:11
then going out with the intention of of wanting to help other people and encourage
22:19
them to especially women and children, to protect themselves and then and then deal
22:23
with their trauma. It feels very empowering, it really does. It's it's
22:29
a it's a it's a wonderful thing to be able to have worked so hard
22:33
to to uh to feel healed, and then and then to give back.
22:37
And I think I wrote something about that towards the last chapters of my book,
22:44
where there's in the healing process. You know, part of healing is
22:48
you know, uh, that continuous effort like the Winston Churchill quote, but
22:53
then also setting boundaries with people. But the final thing is you have to
23:00
give back and and not just for other people and other trauma survivors, but
23:04
but also it for yourself. It's something that will will uh, you know,
23:12
healing is it's an ongoing process. So it's a in order to facilitate
23:22
that process, that of being healed, it's important for me to go out
23:26
and help with the people. Were there or are there qualities or aspects or
23:34
or or things for lack of a better word that uh you feel you know,
23:41
the listeners, maybe the therapists or the counselor or social workers whomever who
23:47
are listening need to take to heart. You know, yeah, yes,
23:52
you know, uh, you know I was very very fortunate that you know,
23:57
the first therapist I found was, like I said, doctor Stephen Alopus,
24:03
and he's a cognitive behavioral therapist, and he he gave me a very
24:10
safe space to work out of and that was where I really had the chapter
24:15
about boundaries in and they really have to, I would think, create that
24:19
safe space and build a trust. And I know we're all eager to go
24:26
out and uh, you know, heal people right away and our intentions are
24:30
wonderful, but it really takes being in that safe space, listening, understanding,
24:37
and giving it time. And so I do know with trauma victims that
24:45
it can be a very very difficult and long process. So we get triggered
24:49
very easily. You have very hyper vigilant people within the boundaries of your room,
24:56
and it's it's a it's a slippery slope. It's like walking on eggshells.
25:02
I would imagine for a new therapist going in there and you know,
25:06
not knowing what what what might trigger this woman who has been abused. You
25:12
know, I have certain mental triggers and I have physical triggers, and somebody
25:18
with very good intention could come and put their hand on my shoulder and yeah,
25:23
if they touch my the left side of my neck, that's a trigger
25:26
for me and I could jump through the roof and not come back for a
25:29
month. So these the the therapists are so well intentioned and doing such a
25:36
great job. But I would just say that, you know, be very
25:41
patient. It takes time. It takes time. And uh, you know,
25:47
you say, create a safe space. What what did that mean for
25:52
you? How did you know? How did you feel? When did you
25:56
feel was a safe space for you? Oh? Boy, that's that's that's
26:00
a good question. You know. I believe I've been working with him for
26:11
oh gosh, at least fifteen years now. And after fifteen years, we
26:15
started doing this little exercise just a couple of weeks ago where he said,
26:22
Dave, I'm going to try this exercise. He goes, I would like
26:26
to crack the door open about six inches as we're talking here, and I
26:33
want to know, from a one to ten scale, how does that make
26:37
you feel? You know, because he knows that I am hypersensitive to what's
26:41
around me. I'm I'm always ready to jump like an animal at any thing
26:47
that might hurt me or some injustice out there. And he said, so
26:51
he broke the door open. He said, what's on scale of one to
26:53
ten, what's your what's your fear level? I said, I you know,
26:59
I'm at a im out a seven. I'd prefer if you closed the
27:02
door. And and so it's been this thing back and forth where you know,
27:04
after fifteen years, you know, he's he's just starting to open the
27:07
door a little bit, I can be heard, which is a wonderful metaphor
27:11
for me opening the door to my story to the world. And uh it
27:18
hasn't quite opened, uh to a foot yet, but we're working on that.
27:21
Guy. Wow, And it's it's awesome. It's awesome. I love
27:29
talking to you. You know. It's just to hear everything you've gone through
27:36
and how you're I don't know, dealing uh with with this whole with your
27:42
life and with your kids and your family. Is it's inspiring. Oh,
27:47
thank you so much. Guys. Like I said, I'm i'm I'm a
27:52
huge fan. You're doing some fantastic work and I'm i'm I'm so excited to
27:56
be with you here. Well, I appreciate that. So let's uh talk
28:00
about any up, well, any books or a book you want to recommend
28:06
to our listeners, trauma lord or not. Yeah. Absolutely. You know
28:08
one of the books that really helped me, and I think is just you
28:11
know, uh, it was when I when I when my my therapist first
28:15
gave it to me, me being a uh kind of what looks like an
28:21
alpha male, tough guy, gave me this book called you know, uh
28:23
uh The Courage to Heal, and I was like, I was like,
28:27
Steve, this this book is for women, and uh. But as I
28:33
read through, it was like, it has wonderful stories of different women in
28:38
different situations that have gone through mental, physical, and sexual abuse and and
28:45
and it was so helpful hearing their stories, knowing that, you know,
28:49
people had stories like me out there that and and the realization that, my
28:56
gosh, from this book, I realized, you know, you know,
28:59
h one in three women is sexually abused before the age of eighteen. One
29:03
in six men it's sexually abused before the age of eighteen. I know,
29:07
if this was if this was a disease, the CDC would put the country
29:12
into one fifth of the country into triage. And so people need to start
29:18
speaking up. And so The Courage to Heal was just a wonderful starting point
29:22
for me. Another book I would recommend is because with my my my trauma
29:30
came a lot of terrible obsessive compulsive disorder o c D. For me,
29:37
was personally a very difficult thing to deal with, but it really helped me
29:44
in the business world to get things right, and I think that that helped
29:47
me to become successful. But one of the wonderful OCD books, it's kind
29:52
of an OCD and trauma for dummies, is a book called brainlock by Jefferies
30:00
At Schwartz, and so that was incredibly helpful. And I do have to
30:03
mention as a third book, my my, my good friend doctor Bessel vander
30:08
Kulk, whose book came out I think last year, called The Body Keeps
30:15
the Score, Oh yeah, which is a wonderful book. And I think
30:21
I think Bessel really had the intention of reaching out to more of the public.
30:26
I know his last books have been pretty much for the psychotherapy world,
30:32
and so I'm so happy for Bessel that his books has been successfully. When
30:37
I worked with Bessel, he did say he was going to possibly have our
30:41
session in the book, and that wasn't in there, so I was very
30:44
disappointed, But I love Bessel to death. So all right, we got
30:49
The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, Number one, Brainlocke
30:56
Number two Jeffrey Schwartz, Jeffrey Schwartz and then the body keeps score. But
31:02
bissel Bendecocke, Well, everything here that we're talking about, we'll be listed
31:07
up at the show notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. So
31:11
what's what's next for you? Uh? David? What? Uh? You're
31:18
You're on a mission. I'm absolutely on a mission. I am on a
31:22
mission with along with the Joyful Child Foundation and Aaron Runyan who's coming out with
31:27
her book probably in the next six months, to get federal legislation pass that
31:32
every child can be trained in America in every school K through twelve, so
31:38
that we can end child abuse in this country and then we'll work on the
31:44
rest of the world. But that is all, and we finally have the
31:48
template to do that. We have implemented the Brave program over twelve years.
31:52
We've had teachers, doctors, uh, people in many many field to look
32:00
at it, and it is now working and there's a huge demand for it.
32:02
Like I said, we trained over twenty five thousand children last year,
32:07
you know, and vice chair of the Joyful Child Foundation. And it looks
32:12
like we might be signing the deal with Boys and Girls Club, which which
32:15
is very very exciting, right now, and I think when I wrote this
32:19
book, guy, I really thought it would just kind of go into obscurity,
32:22
and now that I have a lot of people very interested in it,
32:27
I think because of the Me too movement right now, and it's wonderful to
32:34
see this happening in our lifetimes. I think we're going to look back at
32:38
this time one hundred years from now and it's going to be like Rosa Parks
32:46
on the bus. You know, she said no, and it's time for
32:51
all of us to say no to anything that causes childhood trauma. So so
32:58
I'm very excited about the book and it's it's released coming up, which should
33:05
be in the next six months. I can get a copy to people.
33:09
They email me through UH American Trauma at gmail dot com. And we are
33:17
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and that'd be a at Facebook at
33:24
America's Silent War. Okay again, I'll have all those linked up with the
33:29
show notes page. David. Thank you so much man for taking the time
33:32
to do this. It was a pleasure meeting you and talking with you,
33:37
and it's so inspiring. I appreciate it. Thank you, guy. I'm
33:44
a big fan, and thank you so much for having me all right,
33:45
man take care it