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Global Trauma. How To Change A Culture. Edward Tick, Ph.D: from the archives · The Trauma Therapist

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Or today we even another episode from the argives with one of my incredible guests,
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enjoy or Welcome back to the Trauma Theverst podcast. My name is guyming
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Person. My mission is to help trauma therapists be their incredible selves, to
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be human, to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big
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believer in who we are is more important than what we know, and this
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requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can
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learn more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot
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com. That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, alight,
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guys, Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. Very excited to have
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back as my guest on this podcast. Doctor Edward tick Ed Welcome, Thank
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you guy. Honored to be back with you all right through. Ed Tick,
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as you recall, is an internationally recognized transformational healer, psychotherapist, writer,
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and educator. It has worked internationally on the psycho spiritual and cross cultural
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healing of military in war trauma and on holistic and psycho spiritual healing. He
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was a co founder and executive director of Soldier's Heart, which after thirteen years
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has recently closed its doors. We're gonna be talking about that today. He
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was the Army's US Armies twenty twelve trainer in the Holistic Healing of PTSD,
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training over twenty five hundred chaplains and officers. It is also the author of
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six books, including The Ground, Baking, War and the Soul, as
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well as Warriors Return Restoring the Soul After War Ed. Obviously, that's just
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a little bit about you. But share with our listeners first before we kind
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of dig in here, dive in here, where you're from, where you're
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calling from, and then let's do it. Okay, Well, I'm calling
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from Belgiertown, Massachusetts. Nobody knows where that is. My wife and I
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bought an old eighteen fifty farmhouse that hadn't been for decades. Wow, just
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recently finished restoring it. So we live on a mountain in central Massachusetts.
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Wow. Sounds amazing. It's amazing. It is very beautiful and directly related
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to our conversation. We both know and affirm that beauty and serenity and deep
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connection with nature and the spiritual and visible world is critical when we're doing trauma
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work. So I've got a refuge now where I can live and work and
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also have the universe beyond trauma helping sustain me. All right, So you
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know when I reached out to you, I was excited to you know,
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see your response and you you said, you know, things are kind of
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shifting for you in a big way. So give us, give us a
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little context. What what's what's going on? Sure? Well, in terms
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of how my life and work are shifting, I'd like to mention two things.
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One is that, as you shared with our audience, my nonprofit Soldier's
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Heart has just closed. In fact, tomorrow, February twenty eight is officially
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our last day. So I thank you especially for this this opportunity to share
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and reflect with you, and it helps as a closing ritual. What I
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would like to share with our listeners is that the reason Soldier's Heart has been
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operating for thirteen years as a nonprofit, I've been working with our veterans since
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the end of the Vietnam War, before PTSD was even a diagnosis. So
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I've been at this work for over forty years, for about forty three years,
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and it has been a great honor and I have certainly I've grown and
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changed in ways that I never could have imagined, and I'm very grateful for
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it. I am part of the Brotherhood, and Sisterhood earned my place.
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So regarding the closing of our nonprofit, we have we've run over forty retreats
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in thirteen years. We've done that many or more trainings. I've been leading
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trips to Vietnam for eighteen years. That began before Soldiers. Aret and I
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intend to continue that and continue this work. But here's the crisis. Our
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nation and our world are in such crisis now that and our present government is
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withdrawing support from all kinds of profound social needs. And so in the nonprofit
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world, applications for help from environmental groups, citizen action groups, women's rights,
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abortion rights, immigration groups, every challenged group is they're no longer getting
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federal help or government help, and so they're turning to the non profits.
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So applications are way up in the nonprofit world, while the available money is
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down because you know it's going to the billionaires. And so we've been informed
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by our most loyal supporters that they're no longer going to support military or veteran
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causes because there are so many causes and the wars aren't going away, and
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the politicians aren't talking about them or questioning them. And we've gotten lots of
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notes of gratitude and profound regret that we can't support this work anymore because too
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many other immediate needs are surfacing and falling apart. So there's a big warning
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to us all about the need for nonprofit work. They need for community gathering
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and organizing, and also tragically decreasing awareness, sensitivity involvement in military and veteran
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healing. That's half of what's going on. So I'm I will continue privately
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as I as I was doing before I founded Soldier's Hard but we are going
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through a very sad but honorific closing process. Well now, I'm assuming this
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has kind of been happening for some time, a decrease in the funding you've
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had, or has it just like has it just been a well, quite
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seriously, it happened with a new administration two years ago. As its new
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administration came in, nonprofits started to go into crisis and many disappeared. Soldier's
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Heart has been around for thirteen years, which is a good record for a
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modest sized nonprofit. Most of them don't survive. Sorry for about five years.
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So in one sense, the handwritings on the wall, the wars are
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going on, the politicians aren't talking about it. On the other hand,
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you and I and our other trauma therapist colleagues have made significant contributions and transformations
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in the way we think and talk about trauma, and I want to go
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in that direction with you as well. So it's been shrinking and of concern,
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but suddenly in the last year it went from shrinking to fire alarms going
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off. Is over? So for for you, I mean, I would
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imagine, is there is there? Anger? Is there? Obviously there's frustration.
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How do you What's what's going on for you personally in this transition?
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Wow? Ah? If I summarize and reduce it, I feel profound and
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strange, mixture of great honor and great row as I reflect on what we've
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done and how my work and my organization, Soldier's Art has really been in
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the lead in exploring and revealing and responding to our psycho spiritual wounds, the
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invisible wounds of war at the most archetypal level. And we've had extraordinary success
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and hundreds, maybe thousands of people have been touched by the work and found
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it to work. It really works. The archetypal imagery of the warrior,
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the world warrior traditions, the way other cultures have successfully responded to massive violent
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trauma in their warriors and then their civilians. The fact that there are some
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places in the world where massive violence has gone on or is going on,
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and yet those cultures are united. They communalize the trauma rather than patholologize and
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individualize it. And it's possible to pass through severe violence without the epidemic breakdowns
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we have here, but it's very hard to get that message across to Thunders
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or to our trauma field. And this is my second direction of concern,
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and I share it with you and with all of our good colleagues. We
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all want to address the massive and monstrous suffering that's going on, and we're
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all looking for effective ways to doing it to do it, and I'm profoundly
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concerned that trauma is being pathologized, and that that's a way our culture denies
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the extent of global trauma that we're really in. I'm not only concerned about
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our military and veterans. That remains at the top of my concern and my
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devotion, of course, but what I see is that we are all together.
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I'm talking about the world has moved into global trauma. We are in
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apocalypse. It's not coming, it's here, and every one of our entire
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not just the infrastructure, our social structures are falling apart. Now apocalypse means
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everything is falling apart, so that the underpinnings that foundations are revealed and the
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shadow, the human shadow, comes pouring out and we're really experiencing that.
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Apocalypse also gives us the opportunity for significant personal, social, communal change.
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But the destruction we're causing to the planet is so severe, Our weapons are
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so destructive, and that we don't know if we're going to make it through
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this apocalypse. Apocalypse has come before and humanity has survived, but the degree
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of terror that we're not going to survive is extreme and its way not only
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in our military, it's everybody. And so I am concerned that we can
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in our nation. We are continuing to use PTSD and now moral injury as
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diagnoses of mental unhealth rather than what they are, which is categories of human
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existence and experience that we all have and should not be pathologized, but it
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should be treated in communal settings and with archetypal with social with psychological and spiritual
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awareness and wisdom, rather than everybody that breaks down is an individual mental health
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crisis and treated that way while the rest of us seem to well passed.
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But we're not passing. We're all disturbed. I mean, that is a
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that is a huge and I think a very powerful message. I mean,
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how do you take that now? In what way are you moving and what
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were you carrying that that message forward? I've begun over the last year in
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my public education work, lectures and keynotes and interviews like this, I'm moving
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from military to global trauma. I've learned so much with our warriors about the
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nature of massive trauma that it is. It does put us in a death
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a live or die, kill or be killed, life or death condition.
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It puts us on the moral edge where we are questioning everything, where our
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souls are deeply involved and struggling with what is right and what is wrong?
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Now, what is true and what is false? You know, from from
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the top down, when we're fed falsehoods, it confuses everybody way back in
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the art of war, soun Sue said, if leaders will treat their warriors
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as their beloved children. Then the warriors will follow them everywhere into the depths
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of hell. But if the leaders are mislead them, are our immoral,
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give them wrong causes, the army will fall apart and all the soldiers will
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be wounded and they won't want to follow. We're in that condition. So
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what I'm doing now is trying to educate people what we have learned from military
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trauma that in fact we're all experiencing now and the environment in our society,
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in our families, really across the board. And I'm working as I have
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been, and you have been working to wake up the population to the needs
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of our military and warriors, which is a necessary mission. I'm extending that
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to work to work wake up the population to be really aware and concerned and
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of the archetypal condition that we're in, and that we all have to wake
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up. And we all have to get really strong internally and spiritually, and
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we have to come together in community again as some other cultures communalize their trauma,
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so there's not the individual breakdown. We need to be doing that for
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especially for our warriors and violence survivors, but really for all of us.
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Now, I would you know through soldier's heart. Obviously you were working with
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veterans, you were creating programs and groups and trainings and workshops and working with
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those individuals. Now that you're moving into uh this this this topic of global
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trauma, how do you see yourself actually, you know, bringing it down
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to Okay, what are we going to do? What are you? What
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is it? What are you expecting people to do or hoping people can do?
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I mean you mentioned, you know, making people aware, but what
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is the message or the hope that people will will or can do to help
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with this. I'm going to refer again to some of the cultures that I've
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studied and visited where that they deal with trauma very differently, and those cultures
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can be models for us, not just the impact on and fade of the
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individual survivor. So as you know, I go to Vietnam every year.
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I've been there eighteen times, leading healing and reconciliation journeys. And while that's
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valuable to talk about regarding war healing, let's apply it to the global trauma.
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Vietnam has been invaded for two thousand years by powers much larger than theirs.
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The United States War, there was only the last, and yet there's
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no PTS. There's no chronic debilitating PTSD in Vietnam. Their psychological establishment does
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report short term traumatic breakdowns, which are normal after car accident or coming out
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of war. The last time the Vietnamese saw PTSD as we have it here
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was in the nineteen seventies after the American War ended, and it only lasted
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for a short time. They communalize trauma so that there are They take their
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national holidays very seriously. Their Memorial Day is not the beginning of summertime for
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a picnic their version of Memorial Day, and Israel as well. Also Israel
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reports a country that's always at war, unfortunately, that's always threatened and threatening
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reports less than one percent PTSD rate. It's for the same reason the nation
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commune realizes trauma, so in both countries their Memorial Days are very deep,
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sincere times of grieving where the whole country shuts down and they do national rituals
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together. They have many other holidays that we don't have, like the Vietnamese
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have a holiday for them. As for the missing in action, they call
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them the wandering souls because their bodies haven't been found and the funerals haven't been
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completed. Well, we still have about two thousand MIAs. They have a
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quarter million. So they've got a holiday called the Day of Wandering Souls,
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and again everything stops and everybody prays and remembers that their lost ones and does
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communal activities. These are only a few examples, but my point is that
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we need to communalize trauma, not just retreating to our own nuclear family lives
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and hope it doesn't hurt us or struggle individually to survive, but we really,
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in small and large ways, need to get together in communities, not
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only talking about this and becoming aware, but really changing the way we act
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with each other and kind of trying to. It's hard, but every apocalypse
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needs spiritual awakening of the masses in order to bring about the transformation. And
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it seems like our world is in a transformed for the better or die one
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of them the most delicate moments in all of history, and so we really
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have to wake up. And of course our veterans, our warriors can be
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leaders in this. I mean, what you're talking about is really no less
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than a kind of a cultural shift in perception about how things are, how
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trauma is perceived, and treated and integrated into the culture. You know right
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now, I mean, you've got thousands of people who are listening to this,
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most of whom many of whom are our therapists of all different kinds or
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survivors themselves. Yes, what's the message? You know, when they when
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they get off this, when they get out, when they get done listening
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to this, what do you want them to feel? Or what do you
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want them to do or how would you like them or invite them to shift
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to do something differently so that they can help help create this change. Okay,
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So to all of our brothers, sister trauma workers out there, First,
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let's affirm as Buddha said that life is suffering and trauma is the form
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of suffering. We have now that's dominating the world. Secondly, every historical
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period has its it's keynote wound or illness or disorder. So we had hysteria
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Victorian times, and we had schizophrenia in the sixties and at that fit,
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and we had character disorder in the eighties and nineties. Does all fit the
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conditions of the culture that we're living in now? We've got trauma and everybody's
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talking about it, and we should be and it's good to so many therapists
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or respondent. Okay, that being said, we need to accept it as
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a core human condition rather than pathologize it. It's a human condition that we
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can all suffer to different degrees, and we are affected in body, mind,
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heart, spirit, community and meaning all of the above. When we
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only bless everybody who's doing so much good, such good broken brain work and
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understanding how trauma has impacted the brain. But please, please, colleagues out
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there, don't just settle with broken brain work. We will also have to
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we have to engage the heart, the body, the soul, our spiritual
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core and the community. And so please all of us make sure we're working
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on all of those levels, and especially especially it's terrible that we have to
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beg for it, but I guess it's always been true the spiritual level.
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We need to go so deeply inside ourselves that we can find the core that
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is stronger, stronger than trauma, stronger than suffering, and work together to
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get our spirits to rise above it, and like Israel and like Vietnam,
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and like our Native American communities, to really really come together in community,
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working publicly through ritual, through ceremony, through storytelling, circles, through owning
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the depth of our wound, and that we're all in it together and become
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did I was a keynote speaker at a trauma conference in Canada, so this
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is international, and at our closing panel, people ask the same question,
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what can we therapists do. Most of the therapists on the panel, most
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of the keynote speakers said, well, there's nothing we can do except help
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with the victims. So keep doing good trauma work in your office. And
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I said, I'm going to disagree with that. That's necessary, but not
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sufficient. Therapists also, get out of your offices, get into the community,
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teach the community what we know. Talk in libraries, talk at colleges,
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talk in high schools, talking in your houses of worship. But we
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can't stay sequestered in our offices anymore. We have specialized knowledge, wisdom,
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and techniques for addressing the global crisis that we're in, and we need to
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get out of the office and bring it there. So I said, this
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is my message to all of our colleagues, and some will applaud and some
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will hate me for it. And that's what happened in Canada too. I
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swear I got half of a room of a standing ovation and the other half
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were moaning and groaning and hiding their faces. And no, I'm not going
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out there where it's safe. Sorry, guys, it's safe for us to
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be therapists and keep it in our office. But the world is not safe
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anymore, and we need to take what we have, not criticizing being a
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therapist at all, but saying it has such profound social, political, spiritual,
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communal implications, we need to carry it out. I mean, when
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you think of, you know, the challenge of working with trauma, Oftentimes
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there's therapists themselves obviously, and individuals clients themselves have difficulties, challenges working in
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that kind of micro environment, and you're really asking for an unfolding on a
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grand scale to happen. What do you think are some of the challenges for
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this? Oh goodness, Well, I'm going to quote one of our veterans.
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Denial is the all American disease. That's the whole cold buddy, And
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that's true. That's what I think challenge is the biggest challenge. We are
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a nation in denial, perhaps we're a world in denial, and because of
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the denial, and so it's easy to pathologize anybody who doesn't who's suffering and
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doesn't fit in, and separate them from the rest of us. That protects
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the rest of us. So we're in denial, and we're also terribly greedy,
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and we we want stuff and we don't want our comfortable individual lives disturbed.
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But you know, when we look at our issues with our veterans in
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general, the public doesn't know what to do. A lot of people want
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to help but don't know how, but very many people don't want to be
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touched. Don't tell me about the wars, don't tell me what our veterans
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or what the other people have gone through in the war zone, because it's
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it's quite horrific, and the public doesn't know how horrible it is. And
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so I would say the denials our biggest problem, and fear of seeing and
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feeling the extraordinary dimensions of pain that are out there is really what's beneath it,
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and people seem to have I don't know if this cultural conditions are built
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into us, but generally people have a revulsion against encountering trauma or violence and
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it's aftermath, which is also why we need our warriors because you know this,
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you practice this. Warriors go into danger while the general population flees from
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danger. Warriors protect us. Warriors go out on the line where it's dangerous
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while others back away. That's happened in the mass shootings that we've had.
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It's been veterans in the crowd turning and running into the guns to protect the
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rest of the innocent. So we need our warriors more than ever, and
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we all need to overcome our resistance and denial and admit how difficult things are
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and find ways to be in it together. If you know, someone were
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to come to you and say, all right, ed, you know,
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I've I've read your your thought, I listened to the podcast you did with
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Guy. How do you ideally, how would you like to kind of operationalize
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this in a sense, how would you like to uh formalize this campaign?
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If you will, I mean, if you if you had, you know,
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all the resources at your disposal, ideally, what would you like to
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see or what would you like to have happen? Well? Goodness, well,
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all the resources? Sure? Then I would begin by making Memorial Day
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and Veterans Day very serious national holidays. See, we could do this if
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the malls shut down, and if leadership and people like us made enough public
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noise, letters to the editor, op eds, interviews like this, getting
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on radios, and we close the malls on Memorial Day and taught people the
28:08
real meaning of the holiday again and gathered in our houses of worship, in
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our civic centers to share who were remembering this day, who are we grieving,
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what are we grieving? And to visit everybody visit the cemeteries. And
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if we had significant public announcements from leadership leading us into memorializing rather than proselytizing
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patriotism, that's one example of how a holiday we already have could become a
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serious national spiritual holiday, reminding us of the original meaning, bringing us together
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and the illitating national grieving that would heal us all and help bring this all
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together. Mother's Day's coming. Also, how many people know that Mother's Day
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was was a Memorial Day After the Civil War. Julia Ward how created it
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in what eighteen eighties as a declar the Mother's Day Proclamation, asking all the
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mothers of the world to no longer send their sons to war to kill other
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people's children. How about if we just read the Mother's Day proclamation on Mother's
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Day instead of sending candy. Okay, we can go on and on with
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this guy. I'm so serious, and we do have the means for doing
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it. Other cultures do, and we do, of course, have to
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start at an individual level, one on one, and help people understand what
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they're carrying. I'm working with two people I can think of right now.
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One woman is working on helping trying to to prevent the use of our hypertechnology
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and outer space. She's a scientist right at the edge where research becomes military
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research and is used in horrific ways. Okay, so she came for help
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because she's in horrible moral dilemma. She does have moral injury, and the
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other people she went to told her, while you're having a psychotic break,
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you're feeling too much, you're hyper sensitive, and you're having nightmares, and
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you must be going psychotic. Well she's not. As soon as we start
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to explore her work and how she feels about it, and that she knows
30:41
that we're on the edge of profound danger if her work is misapplied, She's
30:45
not psychotic. She's profoundly morally and spiritually disturbed. And it only took a
30:52
couple of meetings or to reduce that to her to evaluate whether this is really
31:03
a psychotic break or not, and to hear how frustrated she is in trying
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to bring this out into her community of scientists to for her to start to
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normalize. I'm on a serious moral mission that other people don't get, but
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they have to get. And I have to develop the inner strength to carry
31:25
it through rather than breakdown because I'm getting resistance. So this works on the
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individual level as well. And when people feel their wounds, and we do
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this with our warriors, of course, when people feel their wounds are being
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recognized for what they are and honored, not pathologized, and we're giving them
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this is really important. We're giving them imagery through the healing process that fits
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who they are archetypally, not imagery that is unrelated and that we're telling them,
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really become somebody else rather than embrace your own experience, and we can
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we can transform it, we can treat, we can treat traumatic experience as
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initiatory. One chaplain I worked with, uh, well, he he didn't
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say this to me. I'm remembering an article that he published saying to everyone
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it was an op ed piece. Don't don't think I am less and I
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am broken because I've been to war. I am more. War has made
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me more than I ever could have imagined I would be, and has taught
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me the mysteries of life and death and of what brings people together and breaks
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them apart. And I'm not glad there's war, but I'm very honored that
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I was there, and I've been made bigger, deeper, wiser because of
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it. That's what we're working for. Has the attitude and perception or been
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been shifting at all with regards to how not only veterans experience and perceive their
33:19
own trauma, but how the civilians the public perceives veterans. Well, first,
33:28
let's I wonder if you're experiencing this as well. But our younger veterans
33:32
of Iraq and Afghanistan in large part, are rejecting the PTSD diagnosis and they're
33:39
not or they're they're leaving therapy UH that tries to impose that on them,
33:45
and instead they're going to the arts. So we are actually in a renaissance
33:51
of of creative writing, drama, poetry, novels, storytelling, music,
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art, visual arts coming out of the younger veterans. So they are saying,
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don't treat me like I'm a broken person, and don't pathologize me,
34:08
but let me express what's going on me. And in communities where they're doing
34:15
there is good turnout and more civilians are saying now, I believe then in
34:22
past years, from the work of all of our colleagues and our warriors,
34:27
more civilians are saying I want to help, but I don't know how,
34:31
rather than I can't help and get this away from me, said to the
34:36
VA. So it's a teachable moment in history where we can hopefully mobilize civilians
34:44
to have a very different attitude towards trauma. In addition to that, we
34:49
both know this too, and our colleagues are out there. There are so
34:52
many holistic health practices for warriors now, equint their therapy and art, creative
35:00
arts therapies and yoga and drama and working directly with reprogramming the brain. We
35:08
could go on and on, but our field and people involved in it are
35:14
seeing trauma more holistically and seem to be getting more involved with healing, and
35:22
the younger veterans, for sure, are asking for new creative and holistic and
35:28
heart and soul oriented means for working with their wounds. Feels to me,
35:35
i'd like you're truly on the cusp of creating a groundswell, a shift in
35:45
cultural awareness. Oh well, thank you. I hope so, I mean,
35:50
I hope we're there to It feels like it, you know, doing
35:53
these interviews weekend and week out and speaking with people who are in many of
36:00
whom are you know, thought leaders in the field you're you're taking it feels
36:05
like you're taking this dragon by the neck and saying, wait a minute,
36:08
this is where we have to look at. This is where we have to
36:12
the direction in which we have to go. I mean, we could go
36:15
on and on, and in the interest of time, here, let's let's
36:20
kind of take a take a few moments close out. I just want to
36:22
remind everyone that I'm speaking with doctor Edward Tick. What's the best way for
36:27
people to reach out to you? Well as you as we've shared soldier's hardest
36:32
clothes. Now, so there's only a notice on my web page and how
36:36
to get hold of me. So I have a newly email address which is
36:38
simply doctor ed Tick D R E D T I C K, eight little
36:44
letters at Gmail and my new office phone is five one eight seven two seven
36:52
eight zero nine zero people who couldn't get me that way, And I do
36:57
have a new website up it's just my name, Edward tick Coy, so
37:01
people can find me with any of those. And then lastly, any go
37:07
to book recommendations. Yeah, whether whether trauma related or not. Sure,
37:14
I'm going to reiterate that I recommended Homer and the Bible in our first interview,
37:19
but let's go into some of the most more important new work that's coming
37:23
out. So of course I grab it, grab a moment to plug my
37:30
own two books, War and the Soul and Warriors Return, And I do
37:34
want to share with everybody that many, many trauma survivors where non military,
37:38
are also reading and using those books and understanding their own psycho spiritual wounding and
37:45
transformation better. So the books, though they focus on better and trauma,
37:51
are not exclusively. A couple of books in our trauma field I would highly
37:55
recommend are One are not very well known but brilliant, the work of Robert
38:02
Emmett mar spelled m E A g h e R, so I couldn't pronounce
38:08
it until I met him. But Bob Marr. He's got several books out.
38:15
One is called Killing from the Inside Out, where he takes apart to
38:22
just war theory and shows how it's been misused since it was invented. Any
38:32
of Bob's books, Oh, Heracles Gone Mad, Hercules Gone Mad. It's
38:37
another one of his really excellent books on trauma. Look look up the others.
38:44
Just okay, okay, hello, I'm sorry. Very important critical anthology
38:50
that he edited. He and Doug Pryor, who was retired a tenant colonel.
38:54
This is just out a few months. It's called War and Moral Injury
38:59
and it's major reader and you know, people like Jonathan Shay and Sebastian Younger
39:06
and other thought leaders in the field have articles in there. I have a
39:09
chapter, but it's very comprehensive and looks at the whole question of moral injury
39:15
and where it comes from. So very important. The other book I'll mention
39:22
it's focusing on moral injury is David Wood, who was one of our leading
39:27
war correspondents. He's out on the front lines with troops all the time,
39:31
and about a year ago he came out with a book called What Have We
39:35
Done? The Moral Injury of our most recent wars, and that it's not
39:42
only stories but which we get plenty of. But he's showing moral injury in
39:46
the core of the stories rather than mental illness PTSD. And he's also demonstrating
39:53
that we don't recognize moral injury until after we're out of the action and have
40:00
time to think and reflect and realize what it did to us and what we
40:04
did to others. So that's a very important perspective that the longer we sit
40:08
with these old wounds, the more we have the opportunity to look at them
40:13
and what went wrong with them and try to correct it. Awesome. I'll
40:17
have those linked up at the show notes page here at the Traumatist podcast dot
40:21
com ed I was an honor having you back on here. I'm excited to
40:25
get this out and let me know if you know I can do anything to
40:32
beyond publishing this podcast, if I can do anything to to help you,
40:36
because uh, I just I just really admire what you're doing. Thank you
40:39
so much guy. All right, yep, you two. We'll be in contacts to