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Listening As If Our Lives Depended On It with Laura S Brown PhD · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Papers podcast. My name is got Macpherson.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to the podcast. Thrilled to have back as a guest
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  Speaker 1: on this podcast. Doctor Laura Brown. Laura, welcome back.
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  Speaker 2: It's good to be back. Thanks gutt so.
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  Speaker 1: Laura is a mostly retired trauma healer still teaching and
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  Speaker 1: supervising from behind your screen in Seattle. Her most recent
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  Speaker 1: book is titled Decolonizing Trauma Healing, was released by APA
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  Speaker 1: in November of twenty twenty four.
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  Speaker 3: Laura short and sweet bio, which I like, but we'll
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  Speaker 3: get into it.
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  Speaker 1: So alight, let's obviously there's a lot going on. I
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  Speaker 1: want to kind of set the stage here for our listeners.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: What is going on with your health?
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  Speaker 3: Howse?
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  Speaker 1: I know there's things going on with your voice, and
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  Speaker 1: I want to give you the opportunity to.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Talk about that.
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  Speaker 4: Okay, So if I sound a little strange, it's because
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  Speaker 4: in March, but what fear, I developed a condition called
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  Speaker 4: mathemotic casphonia, and it is a disorder of the nerve
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  Speaker 4: to the vocal hords. And I am early enough in
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  Speaker 4: treatment that my voice often sounds really strange, and sometimes
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  Speaker 4: I can get two more typical voice. But people need
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  Speaker 4: to know that it is the new be going forwards.
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  Speaker 4: Oh I sound a little od In fact, this is
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  Speaker 4: the same speakness order that R. F. Kate Junior has,
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  Speaker 4: only he's many more years of treatment for it.
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  Speaker 3: So does it hurt.
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  Speaker 4: Because it hurt to speak at all? Because it's the problem.
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  Speaker 4: It's caused by spasms of the nerve that controls the
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  Speaker 4: vocal force. So instead of the vucal hoars niceness, they're.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Trying to smash together all the time.
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  Speaker 4: And so I get botox shots in the nerve once
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  Speaker 4: every three months and work the maraventing with the nose.
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  Speaker 4: It's a little bit like any kind of treatment. They
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  Speaker 4: try to figure out what the right about is for
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  Speaker 4: your body, your nerve. And in some ways that's what
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  Speaker 4: I'm starting what I've been writing about now.
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  Speaker 2: For the last few years, which is how do we think.
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  Speaker 4: About healing, not you know, one size fits all away,
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  Speaker 4: but rather like free our minds from that way of thinking.
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  Speaker 4: And in the case of this vocal disorder, sometimes I
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  Speaker 4: sound easier to understand, sometimes harder. Sometimes, you know, at
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  Speaker 4: the end of a treatment cycle, I can't talk at
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  Speaker 4: all for a couple of weeks. And it's a little
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  Speaker 4: bit like healing trauma. There's this back and forth and
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  Speaker 4: it seems like we've gotten some and then we go somewhere.
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  Speaker 2: That turns out to be necessary.
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  Speaker 4: Because it's giving us information about what we're doing.
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  Speaker 2: So it's been interesting having this.
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  Speaker 4: I have this back in nineteen eighty seven and it
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  Speaker 4: went in ter remission with anufuncture and I was fined
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  Speaker 4: till last March, and I'm let old woman down seventy two.
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  Speaker 2: So my body is not responding.
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  Speaker 4: The way it did in nineteen eighty seven when I
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  Speaker 4: was thirty five.
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  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, well, I mean it goes without
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  Speaker 1: saying thank you so much for being willing to come
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  Speaker 1: on a podcast of all.
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  Speaker 2: This is my first venture into that, so thank you
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  Speaker 2: for having me guy.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, it's an honor to have you back here.
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  Speaker 1: This idea, if we can just take a little side
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  Speaker 1: step here, this idea of trauma healing as a one
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  Speaker 1: size fits all thing, it's very interesting to me.
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  Speaker 3: How did that come into your prove.
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  Speaker 4: You well, if we look at the alphabet soup of
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  Speaker 4: things the people are learning to do for working with
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  Speaker 4: dramatized people, and there is a growing alphabet loop of
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  Speaker 4: eggs at each alphabet soup's the leader or teacher says,
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  Speaker 4: do this and the person's drama will be healed once
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  Speaker 4: I spits all of them. When the person who's been dramatized,
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  Speaker 4: the person who's suffering doesn't respond to the alphabet.
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  Speaker 2: Soup thing, whatever it is.
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  Speaker 4: And you know, the alphabet soup that's popular in the
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  Speaker 4: like this decade is.
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  Speaker 2: Anything slematic if the arm before that, and who knows
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  Speaker 2: what will happen after that?
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  Speaker 4: And be well, cbt's in the background and peace in
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  Speaker 4: the background. And with each of these things, it's that
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  Speaker 4: of saying, who.
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  Speaker 2: Is this person?
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  Speaker 4: What is the social pathology that has created.
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  Speaker 2: They're suffering and prologs they're suffering? How do we meet
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  Speaker 2: them where they are?
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  Speaker 4: How do we figure out what creates safety for them?
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  Speaker 4: We say, oh, I'm not a certificate in.
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  Speaker 2: H Z trauma healing thing that that.
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  Speaker 4: Makes me a trauma as verna going to do this
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  Speaker 4: thing with everybody and if it doesn't work, there's something
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  Speaker 4: wrong with them.
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  Speaker 2: And so the work I've been doing. When I'm writing.
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  Speaker 4: About decolonizing trauma healing, it's decolonizing this Western mindset, not
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  Speaker 4: just for work with indigenous or Global South people, but
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  Speaker 4: really looking at how we've been trained to think about
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  Speaker 4: what we do and about the people we work with,
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  Speaker 4: and about what the heck is going on, because it's not.
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  Speaker 2: Simply that is birds. It is suffering.
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  Speaker 4: There's suffering because nothing has happened to them. That is
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  Speaker 4: usually a broaduct that sub for buss is that maic
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  Speaker 4: oppression what I call social pathology. And you can't do
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  Speaker 4: what size that's all where the person is living in
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  Speaker 4: the middle of ongoing effects of those social pathologies.
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  Speaker 2: So that's the long answer to the short question.
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  Speaker 4: You know me, guy, I never asked her anything in short,
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  Speaker 4: even with my creaky voice.
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  Speaker 1: So I love this topic and you kind of intimated
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  Speaker 1: this is what you're talking about in your book.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I'm talking about, really, kay, the lowness
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  Speaker 4: of the pathology. First of all, it's sake, and we
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  Speaker 4: stop diagnosing humans and we stop getting a medical I
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  Speaker 4: knows this of an illness because that's what PDS he is,
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  Speaker 4: that's what CPTs ME is.
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  Speaker 2: That's what the idea is.
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  Speaker 4: It's a disorder in the person, which is, you know,
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  Speaker 4: I have a disorder, it's actually there in the.
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  Speaker 2: Nerve to my vocal cores.
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  Speaker 4: I have answer, it's actually a disorder of cell division.
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  Speaker 4: But the things that we call disorders and people who've
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  Speaker 4: been exposed to drama aren't really disorders of the person
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  Speaker 4: because they are the natural neural biological responses to different
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  Speaker 4: kinds of dangerous circumstances. Right, It's what our neural biology
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  Speaker 4: evolved to do.
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  Speaker 2: And then the problems are.
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  Speaker 4: That the person goes back in a similarly dangerous situations
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  Speaker 4: or the options we're getting safe enough are not available.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, by the time I will walk into one.
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  Speaker 4: Of our offices, they're doing things that don't work very
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  Speaker 4: well because they're trying to deal with the combination of
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  Speaker 4: hyper arousal and hyperdumbness. And instead of saying, okay, what
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  Speaker 4: does this tell me about the nature of what happened
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  Speaker 4: to the person? What does this tell me about the
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  Speaker 4: effects the day to day of sex of social mythologies
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  Speaker 4: like racism and sexism and what supremacy and you know,
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  Speaker 4: all of those other pieces patriarchy and white supremacy, being
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  Speaker 4: out of the two big bad guys for which everything
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  Speaker 4: else comes. Instead of saying, oh, it's this person affected
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  Speaker 4: by that going around them all the time, how is
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  Speaker 4: this person affected by having had moral injury from having
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  Speaker 4: engaged with these system say, as a part disciplined, we say.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, what are the symptoms locy? Does this this list
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  Speaker 2: or this list?
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  Speaker 4: Okay, let me pull out I had you daddy alpham
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  Speaker 4: that soup thing.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not saying. Of course you're feeling like this first
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  Speaker 2: of all.
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  Speaker 4: It secondly, you have no reason to trust me because
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  Speaker 4: you don't know me. And by the time you get
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  Speaker 4: to me, you've probably seen.
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  Speaker 2: A bunch of people who said, you know, here's the.
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  Speaker 4: Magic motion, and the magic potion didn't work, and then
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  Speaker 4: they said you were resisting.
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  Speaker 3: What you're describing really feels like.
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  Speaker 1: A problem, if you will, of the quote unquote the
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  Speaker 1: system about how we look at.
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  Speaker 3: Pathology, how we treat pathology, and yet well.
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  Speaker 2: We homology, how we treat offering. All we to read distress.
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  Speaker 4: And we call it pathology rather that suffering or distress.
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  Speaker 2: Have I callaly at pathology?
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  Speaker 4: We put it into the person rather that taking the
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  Speaker 4: socio political view.
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  Speaker 2: Of it, and saying, Ah, the problem is not the person.
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  Speaker 4: They don't have the pathology. And that's really what I've
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  Speaker 4: been trying to say in this book.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm hearing that a couple.
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  Speaker 4: Of people would like to take me out and shut
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  Speaker 4: me up as a result, because I also say, let's
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  Speaker 4: get rid of the worst therapists and therapy.
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  Speaker 2: And acknowledge that you must have been healing.
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  Speaker 4: Each other's traumas and their own dramas since we existed.
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  Speaker 4: But it wasn't until the medical establishment took it over,
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  Speaker 4: Thank you Sigmund Freud, and decided that it all do
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  Speaker 4: you've been suffering, and it became medicalized and ended up
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  Speaker 4: with diagnoses rather than this person is a suffering and
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  Speaker 4: the suffering requires a res not we want to do
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  Speaker 4: something as healers to ameliorate the suffering.
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  Speaker 2: What started with.
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  Speaker 4: A diagnosis that pathologizes the person.
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  Speaker 2: To me is the way that we've been colonized.
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  Speaker 4: We Drava healers have been colonized by Western medicine, and
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  Speaker 4: I its focused on the pathology being in the person.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, I had a discussion once with Robert Spitzer,
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  Speaker 4: who you may know was the architecture of the DSM three,
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  Speaker 4: and we were talking about something I can't remember what
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  Speaker 4: incident to the whole getting rid of egoistomic or the
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  Speaker 4: sensuality topic. And I was saying, Ella's working with people
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  Speaker 4: and they really didn't fit any diagnostic category.
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  Speaker 2: And he said, well, well, they don't have a diagnosis,
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  Speaker 2: you can't treat them.
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  Speaker 4: And I said, mom, what do you mean? He said, well,
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  Speaker 4: you have to have a diagnosis to treat people. I said, no,
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  Speaker 4: that's really backward thinking of different in the nineteen eighties.
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  Speaker 2: But this is really how we are trying to think.
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  Speaker 4: It's like you have to have a diagnosis, which means
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  Speaker 4: you have to say that the person.
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  Speaker 2: Has an illness, not that this is a society yes, illnesses.
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  Speaker 5: Looking looking at this through the lens, you were proposing, here,
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  Speaker 5: what does that do Laura with or what does one do?
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  Speaker 1: What do we do with all of this alphabet suit?
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  Speaker 1: You said, all of these treatment modalities. Certainly you're not
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  Speaker 1: suggesting we throw them out?
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  Speaker 2: Correct I'm.
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  Speaker 1: No, but you are, and correct me from you are
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  Speaker 1: suggesting inviting us to really kind of look at this
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  Speaker 1: from a one eight perspective, asking a different question. But
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  Speaker 1: but where what does one do with all these different treatmentalities.
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  Speaker 4: I think I was well first of all, and we
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  Speaker 4: asked ourselves, how can this be a.
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  Speaker 2: Way of healing that bets this person where they are?
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  Speaker 4: And how do we begin with creating enough safety for
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  Speaker 4: this person in the healing relationship and in their life,
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  Speaker 4: for us collaboratively us ASA traumatized person together or alstick
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  Speaker 4: colaboratively more. Where does stuff is that's the worst for them?
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  Speaker 4: And how we might together choose the thing using empariment,
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  Speaker 4: so to speak, on addressing it.
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  Speaker 2: But the first thing is safety.
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  Speaker 4: And actually what I wanted to do is give a
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  Speaker 4: shout out to Judy Herman and Mary Harvey who game
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  Speaker 4: up with a three phase model that says for you
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  Speaker 4: to safety and stabilization.
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  Speaker 2: Will people skip that well completely and safe enough?
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  Speaker 4: If you are a dress woman of scholar in the
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  Speaker 4: United States today, you are never safe because you're under
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  Speaker 4: a tap not just on the street, but from the
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  Speaker 4: highest levels of government. If you are a person with
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  Speaker 4: a disability, you don't know if you're going to be
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: able to get workplace accommodations. Because the whole movement to
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: teach organizations to accommodate people who are different is being
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  Speaker 4: critiqued just routine villainized, and so getting people to a
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: safe and on place and talking about what creates safety,
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  Speaker 4: enough safety so that people can work together with us
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  Speaker 4: figure out what they want to do is ninety percent
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  Speaker 4: of what we need to be doing as healers. And
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  Speaker 4: then we can say, well, here's the things I know
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  Speaker 4: how to do. Here is the menu, for example, and
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  Speaker 4: the warm Brown venue. There is amdr there's greats money,
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: and there's a Person's Center therapy, and there's fecial therapy,
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  Speaker 4: and and there's the overarching intersectentalliboratory methodist bloss. Okay, here's
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  Speaker 4: my venue, and here's what each of these things does.
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  Speaker 4: And here let me give you something to read about it.
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  Speaker 4: Or if you're not a reader, here's a podcast you
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: can listen to, or you know, a book on tape
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: shows you how old I am, an audio.
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  Speaker 2: Book my cottage, and then we'll talk.
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  Speaker 4: Together, and then we'll do an arama. And I'm going
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  Speaker 4: to tell you that none of these nagus of.
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  Speaker 2: Works for everyone. It works for some of the people
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  Speaker 2: some of the time.
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  Speaker 4: And if it's not working for you, and it's not
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  Speaker 4: a problem of you, it's a badness of fit. And
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  Speaker 4: so let's take a look at yo ho. Will we
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  Speaker 4: know that we've got the marabac love enough? No?
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  Speaker 2: If this really is a bad fit for you, and don't.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, in some ways I liken this to my
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  Speaker 4: experience of cancer. So I have a rare form of melanoma.
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  Speaker 2: That occurred in a blaze that this one never shines.
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  Speaker 4: At point one percent of women with melanoma have the melanoma.
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  Speaker 4: So myists, who are great oncologists by the way, started
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: out with the standard treatment.
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  Speaker 2: And what happened is that I had terrible.
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  Speaker 4: Menismatic disease, and so they had to really put their
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  Speaker 4: heads together and say, Okay, what are we gonna do
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  Speaker 4: so this woman doesn't die? And they gave up with
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  Speaker 4: a very lamaramental treatment that I'd never been done before
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  Speaker 4: with anybody with melanoma in the part of my body
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  Speaker 4: where it is, and they tried and it worked.
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  Speaker 2: Ton I'm in the mission. They had to be willing
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  Speaker 2: to do the experiment, and I had to be willing
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: to do the experiment. There's a journal article.
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  Speaker 4: About it now because we want to say it's the
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: lives of all the women with this rare form of melanoma, right,
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  Speaker 4: But my doctors didn't say, well, the usual they didn't work,
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: Oh well you're gonna die, or ah, well.
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  Speaker 2: You're gonna have or will just beg your extern to
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  Speaker 2: me and then you're gonna die. I would just haven't
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  Speaker 2: been the usual course.
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  Speaker 4: Of treatment before I had this experiment, And if I
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: learned anything from that experience, it was to reinforce my
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: view that the alphabet soups are great.
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  Speaker 2: And if we make live together, it's something that.
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  Speaker 4: Is made specially for this person, and it takes into
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: account they're international identities, the communities they live in, the
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: kind of support they have available, all of those big
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  Speaker 4: socio political pieces, as well as who is the healer?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, well this person sitting in the room with them,
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: Well we do that that we.
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  Speaker 4: Are likely to really create opportunities for healing, which mainly,
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: for example, the people being angrier, because being angry as
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: a healthy response to oppression, and sometimes people have been
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: going in to doorsals angles shut down as a way
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: of not knowing how bad things are. So it's a
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  Speaker 4: real fiding want a good outcome for the work and
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: not having us divided it but rather I mean the
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: people we work with define it.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I love this. I love what you're saying.
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  Speaker 1: It gets me excited because it it It invites uh
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  Speaker 1: an openness and unfolding.
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  Speaker 3: It invites also, and I.
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  Speaker 1: Think it supports the therapist or healer, whatever term you
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: want to use. It invites their uh, their their idiosyncrasies.
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  Speaker 1: It invites them to come forward. It invites that connection
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: between the two people uh who are who are sitting
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: in front of each other, to exchange and that that resonance,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: that that presence. But what's also interesting here is that
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the whole educational model for therapists certainly doesn't support really
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: what you're talking about, right, That all.
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  Speaker 2: All, all, which is why people buy my books.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Let me ask you something, why? How and when did
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: this become important for you? Laura?
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: Well, this hasn't been important for me always as a therapist,
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: because feminist therapists and always says that the personal is
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: political and that babriarity was the cause of evil problems.
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: What's the longer I've got, you know what, I've been
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: in this business going on.
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  Speaker 2: Fifty years now.
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  Speaker 4: I started graduate school more than fifty years ago, and
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: I was already identified as a feminist therapy.
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  Speaker 2: I was already reading.
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  Speaker 4: These psychiatric pagents, Limerang in Front News, I was already
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  Speaker 4: being ipored by sources.
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  Speaker 2: Outside of my training, and then.
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: Over time reading Librang psychology, reading other decolonial psychologists, reading
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  Speaker 4: critical psychology, being really influenced by figures like Lillian Komostias
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: and Beverly Green, people who are thinking about the intersectional
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: identities of in this case women, so developing what they
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: call woman is de Bouheti's tough of his therapies by
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: being a queer person myself in the world and seeing
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: how the is social construction of the lesbian change from
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: when I came out in nineteen seventy two to the
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  Speaker 4: present day.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, like, we're not scary people anymore.
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  Speaker 4: We are just like average and normal, And the scary
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  Speaker 4: people are the one unless the one percent of the population.
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  Speaker 2: Who are trends, which is just don't get me started
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: on that.
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: Do not get me started on how that population has
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: been used and used politically.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: But it's been my entire.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: Career and looking at trauma and thinking about the sources
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: of trauma and remembering when the DS and three first
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: divine traumas an event outside the range of usual human
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: experience and remembering being in debates through with people about that,
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: because it was clear from all of us who worked
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: with that dual assault.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: And intimate partner violence, it was not outside the rage
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: of usual human experience.
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: So and then looking really at the data, you know,
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: I was on APA's working group on PTSD treatment sidelines,
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: and I could tell you that the studies that were
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: allowed to be reviewed because they threw out so many
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: studies in advance. But the studies that were allowed in
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: the reviews that the working group had to rely.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Upon were those where if.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: They didn't report the drop out rates or there were
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: very few poor people or people of color in the
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: artism and populations.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: At where they were always following people for six.
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: Months after the end of the quote unquote intervention, and
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: those of the gold standards for what it is that
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: we're using are things that throw people out to exclude
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: them up front if they have quote codarving conditions, Well,
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: have you ever seen a traumatized person who wasn't also
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: dealing with the substance or food or gambling or over
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: exercise were untill in the blank.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: If you do that, you're not allowed to be buddies.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: Oh, they're getting these unicorns who've also had drama exposure.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: The money it will drop out during the intervention experiment
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: and then they follow them for a really short period
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: of time. You and I both know and he listened
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: to that. How ridiculous does that sound to you? And
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: there were a number of us who were real therapists
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: in the group, Christine Courtois, Joe Cook, myself, who were
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: amazing our excuse me, excuse me?
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Uh could we look at the problem of these.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: Sunnies and we kind of got show, we says, shouted
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: down by the majority of out the table. But that's
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: part of the problem, and it's been part of the
• 24:45
  Speaker 4: problem for a very long time. And then you end
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: up also having and this is a personal fridigue some
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: of the amazing powders of ours field, like Beny Urban To.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Whom I want to bowed out in gratitude.
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: I know what.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I'm so excited to know he is going to be
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: one of.
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: The keyno to the ISSTD conference in March. It's like, yay,
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: it's in her hometown and she could come. But Judy
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: doesn't get the gratitudy deserves. She didn't start an instan
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: with her name on it. She didn't patent a special thing.
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: He just did brilliant work. That's all she's not is
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: do brilliant work. We don't pay attention to people like that,
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: or to Paula Catlin, a blessed bevery who.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Really talked about misogyny and its effense.
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: We pet people who are willing to be famous, or
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: people who are willing to appropriate the healing strategies of
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: other cultures and tweak them a little bit.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: And say, God, here's this new thing.
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: He knows something from it informed yoga and putting bookmarks
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: around it on her His yo is a trauma healing
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: technique that arises from Hinduism that's been practiced for thousands
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: of years.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Meditation from Buddhism.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: Oh, we get to heal the Buddhism stripped out of
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: it and we get vifleness.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: People don't say.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: Oh, by the way, this is a healing strategy that
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: comes from a spiritual base. So we've got all this
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: also appropriation of other cultures ways of healing, and we.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Don't pay attention to our own.
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: Cultures the ways of healing, which is the other thing
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: that I write about in my book, is that we
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: need as healers to look at how did we learn
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: it our own culture, in our own god, what was healing?
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: And I realized after I wrote that, that there was
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: a reason why I used to feed clients. They would
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: come in, they would be just regulated, and I would say,
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: would you want.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: A nice power bar?
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I should something. I thought, have you
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: eaten today? Now? Aren't Jewish? Why are we doing any
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: young people? We give them chickens zoop. I was raised
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: with two grandmothers like that.
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: One of the things that jumps out to me, Laura,
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: when I hear you talk, is it feels like you're.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Bringing the healing process down to an elemental human level,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: a connection, a safety level.
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: When in.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: As opposed to that, a lot of us, a lot
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: of people, a lot of new students. I think the
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: culture of therapist education isn't so much that it's just
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: reaching for this these alphabet suits first and foremost, and
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: again we're not talking about throwing out those different modalities.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: But having said all this, what do you say to.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: The therapists and healers who are listening to this, who
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: love what you're saying? Where do they Okay? What do
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: I do now? Laura, I go from here.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's the guy. Where we go from here?
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: It's first of all the humility, you knowing, the knowing
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: that we do not know, and too valueing the not
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: knowing rather than reaching Laura helbertees, I'm the Hecklberty's model,
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: the young guy who knows everything models. Sorry guy, uh,
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: the person knows everything model is very much one. It's
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: not entirely Western civilization, but it's very predominant in Western stations.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: But we go to humility.
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: We realize that the young new therapists are desperately looking
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: there's something to give them authority because they are afraid
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: and they do feel new and they don't know that
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: is that walking into a slop where you don't know
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: what's gonna happen next or what monster you're gonna eat.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: So supporting that aubility, reporting that unknowing, supporting the fact that.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: What happens in therapy, in the.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: Heilling process is impermanent. That we may have a great
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: seni in one week and the next week the person
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: comes in and it feels and if everything has been undone.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: And I think one of the gifts that having done
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: it for a really long time is realizing that we
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: are It looked like we went like this, and in
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: fact we were going like this.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: And so, and the hubility to follow the people we work.
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: With and not be afraid of the swamp that we
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: are going into, and not feel as if we've got
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: to a learn authority. It's been of coming up with
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: a treatment plan, which is like such nonsense, frankly.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Mak okay. The plan is we're going to meet as.
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: Often as the person and I becauseide is a good
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: idea they can afford. And we're gonna do this as
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: long as the person and I I think it's a
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: good idea. And we're going to do these experiments with
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: whatever we have in our kit bags. Now we're gonna
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: start with the relationship. We're gonna start with really listening
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: as if our lives depended on it, and we're gonna
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: do that over and over and over again.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: And we're gonna let.
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: Ourselves be frightened, which you mean you get it, assultant,
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: which means you don't try to fake it, which means
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: you say to the person you're working with, you know,
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: I don't know what to do right now, I judgably
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: don't know what to do. Is it okay with you
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: if I talk to my assaulted things and really supporting
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: that model of being a drama healer rather than.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: Oh look at me, I'm not this certificate and this certificate.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: I'm an expert and I know what to do, and
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: you know we've been here before. It's no, actually no,
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: And that.
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: Really up adds the model of a gal development that
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: has been given all of us for however long. I mean,
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: like I said, I started graduates little fifty years ago
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: and one of the first things I figured out is
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: that I was smarter than a lot of the faculty,
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: and I read more journals than all of them. All
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: but one of them did really well with that.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: The water didn't do well with that.
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: Oh well, oh being being being scared, being all threwhelmed
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: and letting that be the normals a being a trauma healer.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Let me remind every when I'm speaking with Laura Brown.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: The book is titled Decolonizing Trauma Healing. Laura, as we
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: wind down here, what's what's next for you? I mean,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I'm just reminded of everything that's going on for you
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: personally health wise, especially, So.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: What's next is I'm writing a compadion book. I said,
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: he would you write a book?
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: I don't how to do this? Why'm writing there?
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: How to do this one?
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Which I say, amasically, I'm not an expert, but I
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: have some ideas and they might work for you.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: So I'm actually demonstrating and modeling what it is that
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: I'm talking about, which is I'm not the expert.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: I'm the person who got to write the book. I'm
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: working on that. Am I halfway done?
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: I'm continuing to get remissed for my voice and every
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: three months I get to try a Leah two so far.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: So we overdose the first time, we underdouse.
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: The second time, so probably next time will try something
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: in between.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: We'll keep working at it till we get it right.
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: I promise myself when I wrote this book that this
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: will be the last professional book I wrote. And then
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: ABA said, oh, please wantn't do.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: This companion book.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: I'm like, Okay, I've got three mystery novels which I've written.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Two to six check and That's what I'm doing next.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: That and getting back to traveling again, which I've been
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: doing more since the end of my marriage.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: What jumps out for me is so the APA published
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: this book.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, now, the the first my first reaction is I'm
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: a little surprised, and maybe this is a naive response,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: but does this seem to be antithetical to the formality
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: of the APA and so forth?
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: You know, they published a lot really radical book.
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: They published Memorations Psychology, and they published the Colonial Psychology,
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: and they published Fromanist the more recent psychology, published a
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: lot of this because frankly selves really well for them
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: and is a capitalist society and they're a capitalist organization.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: I actually didn't think when it would get in the
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: editors and they would say.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: No, we're not going to do this, and no, they
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: didn't do that.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: I was very surprised, and I think it's some ways
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: is an interesting astimisition between me and a p A
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: with whom I've always had is happy relationship.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Look, Laura, I mean it goes without saying I love.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: You.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: If I may say that, you're just such an inspiration.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: You're what I I hope my podcast is about this
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: incredible energy and force and compassion and inspiration. And I'm
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: just so happy that you're welcome. I'm so happy you're
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: here and you're back. You're welcome back.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Anytime.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I hope next time my voice is easier here.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: Thank you again.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: All Right, I take care of he's hefe but record
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: H