Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Relationship and Healing in Trauma with Dr. Robert Rhoton, PsyD, LPC,

Transcript

Relationship and Healing in Trauma with Dr. Robert Rhoton, PsyD, LPC, · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Rivers podcast. My name is Guiming
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Ferson and I interview incredible people who share the story
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: of how trauma has shaped their lives. And a big
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to my guest
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and our sponsors. So five four, three, two and one,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: have my guest today, Doctor Robert Roten.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Robert, welcome, Thank you for having me so.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Doctor Roton is the chief Clinical Officer of the Arizona
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Trauma Institute, one of our sponsors, and President of the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Trauma Institute International. A diplomat of the American Academy of
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Experts in Traumatic Stress, he has spent decades advancing the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: understanding and the treatment of developmental and family trauma. Doctor
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Roton as supervised outpatient clinics, juvenile justice and substance abuse programs,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the Treatment Center, and Child and Family Therapeutic Services. Formerly
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: a professor at Ottawa University, he trained counselors to work
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: with trauma genetic family dynamics using non egoic, compassionate models
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: of care. Today, he consults with agencies and organizations across
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the globe, helping them, strengthen trauma informed systems, and improve
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: therapeutic outcomes for both individuals and families. All right, Robert, obviously,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: just a little bit about you, but before we go in,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: share with our listeners where you're from originally and where
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: you are currently.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Okay, Well, originally I was born in the Phoenix area,
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: and I've lived most of my adult life in the
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: Phoenix area. This last year, I moved to Cottonwood, which
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: is a couple of hours north of Phoenix. So I'm
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: I'm definitely an Arizona guy, and I don't plan and
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: moving out of the state.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: So you know, I like it here.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome. All right, So we're obviously going to talk
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: about the Arizona Trauma Institute, but before we do, how
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: did all this start for you? This this interest is
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: specialization in trauma and so forth.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's that's an interesting question. You know.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: There's the professional answer I gave is that I was
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: teaching college. But the true answer is that I started
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: kind of learning about this stuff to kind of make
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: sense in my own lived experience. Anybody that's familiar with
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: the ACE Scores, which is kind of a landmark study
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: in trauma, I have an a score of nine, and so,
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: you know, I was trying to figure out what people
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: were doing, why they were doing it, from as young
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: as I can imagine, you know, my youngest memories are
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: trying to figure out stuff about people. And as I
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: began to gain more knowledge and education, I realized.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Nobody was really addressing that.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: And when I you know, of course, when I started
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: the college in nineteen seventy one, neuroscience was a baby
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: in the development, and now we have understanding a lot
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: of what's going on. So for me, it's been a
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: lifelong pursuit to unpuzzle the craziness that I experienced and
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: then helping other people be able to so tasel it
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: for themselves as well.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Was that a conscious trying to figure out what was
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: going on because of what you'd experienced or you just
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: were drawn to that kind of subconsciously?
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: I wanted to understand it, and it kind of drove
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: a lot what I did, And what I found was
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: that most people really didn't understand. I mean, talk therapy
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: as it was practiced, you know, up through the say,
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: the late seventies, was either cognitive behavioral or psychoanalytic in nature,
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: and you know, psychoanalytic tends to focus people back on
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: the misery and pain, and that never made sense to me,
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: because you know, you get more of what you focus on.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: So having people go back and slog through pain after
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: pain after failure after misery.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Just doesn't seem to be really very useful to me.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: And then the cognitive approaches, I realized most of my
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: clients didn't have the ability to really function that well,
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: and so gaining an understanding of what's going on in
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: the body and the nervous system and the hormonal system
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: of a person that has a trauma history completely changed
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: how I saw clients.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: It completely changed how I approached things.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: And you know, we for a long time a couple
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: of us that were friends that were doing this research
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: together were the only ones in the US using a
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: salutogenic approach, which is a wellness approach. And when we
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: talk about it with people, they would look at us
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: like what because for.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: What was that not that important? What was the term salutogenic?
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Salutogenic?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Salutogenic?
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: I say it is, Yeah, it's a it's a wellness approach. Basically,
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: instead of seeing, oh man, this person has gone through
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: all the misery and they've had all of these failures
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: and they've had.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: All of these challenges.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: Oh pour them, We look at them, Look at what
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: they survived.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: How did they do that.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: They have competencies, they have capacities, and we focus on
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: helping them discover those, operationalize them, and use them. And
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: so it's really a different mindset. I can clearly give
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: you an example. If you're working with particularly intense trauma histories,
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: you're probably going to deal with people that tend to
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: dissociate or avoid. And from a psychoanalytic point of view,
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: that's a problem that needs to be fixed. From a
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: cognitive behavior approach, they say, that's irrational thinking.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: It needs to be fixed from our perspective.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: From a pseudogenic perspective, what you really need to do
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: is teach them how to use it with some intentionality,
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: because it's a tremendous skill if they can use it
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: when they want and avoid it when they don't want.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, instead of having people feel a
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: sense of shame because this is what they do, we
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: teach them how to use it to help them.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: And it's just so much more compassionate and kind of people.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: A whole paradynamic shift in a sense. So at what
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: point did you realize treatment needed to change to shift
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: as you were referring to CBT and psuchodynamic fair, how
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: did you realize that? When did you realize that?
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: I realized that because almost everything I was taught in
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: school didn't work right, and it particularly didn't work with
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: people that had trauma historyes, toxic stress histories, or severe
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: mental health presentations. And you're kind of going like, well,
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: you know, here is all the stuff I was taught
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: and it's not working.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: And you know, then I was kind of in that
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: place where.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: A lot of therapists find that they panic and they
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: run to somebody else to say, what do you do?
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: And that person tells them what they do, and they
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: come back and they do that, and now we have,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: instead of a true information base being shared, we have
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: opinions being shared, and the quality of characters doesn't, you know,
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: doesn't really grow very well. This is not something that
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: you know, this really I became firm in this probably
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: in the mid nineties because I realized that, you know,
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: all the stuff that I'd been taught really didn't prepare
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: me to help people much, and I was actually kind
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: of resentful of that fact.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: They taught what it has state licensure exams.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Right, right, So let's let's talk about this. So one
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: of the things you wanted, I want to make sure
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: we talked about was what students, what students are being taught,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: how they're how they're being taught. Let's kind of talk
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: a little bit about that. You mentioned. They're not really
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: being taught how to how to heal.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: No, they're taught theories and the history of the development
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: of those theories. And then they do they're required to do,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: you know, an internship, but most of them it takes them.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: Their internships run from four to six months. It takes
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: them four months just to learn how to do the paperwork.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: And you know, they're they if if they're working for
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: if they're doing an internship at a place that's worthwhile.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: The only cases they should be getting as.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: An intern are the most easy cases because you know,
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: they don't have the skill set to take on anything
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: that's really serious.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: And when you and then.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: We we turn them loose to the public, and we
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: you know, the supervision is universally poor. You know, how
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: do people become supervisors is that they happen to be
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: licensed and they've worked for a company for a while
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: and so, but there's supervision is its own scientific field.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: There's a real skill to it.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: And most supervisors are not trained to be supervisors. They
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: just happen to be senior you know, counselors that are licensed,
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: that are willing to do it. So you you really
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: don't have a set up where professional development is really
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: taken seriously. And the consequence of having poor supervision and
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: having companies that are set up for efficiency is that
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: it destroys the relationship, which is the thing that provides
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: the most healing and the most stability for staff. So
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: you know, it's it really is a problem the way
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: we educate, the way we educate people to become therapists.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: And I have conversations with universities all over the place
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: around this issue, and what they tell me is, well,
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: you know, the people attracted to being counselors aren't interested
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: in science. But I said, you require that they take
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: a human development course, but you don't require them to
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: understand any anatomy, any hormonal or nervous system work, which
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: seems kind of like, you know, a missed opportunity because
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: we have a lot of people that go into mental
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: health services seeking help when it's not actually a mental
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: health issue.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: At all, it is a biological issue.
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: You know, we don't teach therapists to screen for the
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: difference between having a thyroid disorder and chronic depression. And so,
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: you know, if somebody is not aware that there are
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: medical conditions that can that can generate these things and
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: we need to kind of check those out, they just
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: you know, happily go about treating them for depression. Well
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: that no treatment's going to work if there's an underlying
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: physiological issue. So, you know, we really really don't prepare
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: therapists well and in most university settings to really know how.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: To help the folks that they are going to be helping.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: And when you say they're students, aren't really taught how
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: to heal. They're basically taught how to basically regurgerate, regurgitate
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: these theories. What do you mean by healing?
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: Let me give you a simple example, based on what
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: I was just talking about. I got a this has
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: been what two thousand and eight or nine. I got
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: a referral from a little gal who was thirteen and
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: just made her third suicide attempt. She had been attending
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: therapy for almost two years. She'd had four different therapists,
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: she'd had a host of medications, and when I visited
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: r her the very first time, I said, there's something else.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Going on here.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: And I began to ask her parents, you know, she's
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: been having this for the last two and a half years,
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: tell me what was going on six months prior to that,
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: and they just looked at me, like, well, but the
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: problem is this.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: I said, well, I'm not sure that's the problem.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: And.
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: Found out that really her life had been pretty simple.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: The only thing that had been really different was that
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: they had done a two week long camping trip with
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: family in Tennessee. And I said, you know, it feels
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: like it's not depression to me.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: It feels like something else is going on. I said,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: would you.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: Mind if I would consult with a physician friend of
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: mine and they said no, So I did and he said, well,
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: you know the syndots are describing if I was back East,
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: I would consider having her checked for Lymes disease, and
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: so I said, well, you know, so I suggested the
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: family get her checked for Lymes disease.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: At that time. They did two separate tests.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: She came back positive for both, and when they started
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: treating the Lyme's disease, guess what happened to the depression?
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Wow, So you know, you know, we really have to
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: pay attention.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: And the fact that we don't educate counselors on what's
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: going on in this body is a real problem because
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: they are left to think, well, it's a mental health problem.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: It's you know, it's a you know, the there's mental
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: illness there. Well, there may not be mental illness there.
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: We may be dealing with a physical problem. And if
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: you don't have the education to kind of distinguish the difference.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: And I, you know, I lecture at medical schools all
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: over the place, and it's really funny because I had
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: to teach myself all that stuff because I didn't get
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: any of it in college classes.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: So enter Arizona Trauma Institute. You folks offer a lot
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: of different trainings and so forth. How did you become
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: associated affiliated? First off with ATI?
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: Well, I founded ATI. I started it, and I can
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: tell you the reason I started it was because I
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: was irritated that I was, you know, constantly running into
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: people that wanted to do good work.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: And not knowing how.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: So my original concept was just to form this to
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: train people in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, I really wasn't looking to go past that, and.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: You go forward, you know, fifteen years, and now we've
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: trained people in one hundred and thirty countries, and we
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: have active partnerships and in a number of countries that
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: you know might surprise people. So it's grown way past
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: what I initially initially thought. I just wanted therapists locally
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: to have good training. And in one of the things
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: we've done traditionally, if people take training from us, they
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: can join open mentoring sessions, which we don't charge for,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: is to learn how to put these things into practice
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: and have a you know, have a community to get
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: support from.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: So it's really fun. We have people that attend.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: From these things from probably currently about twenty different countries
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: and hearing how they're.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: Putting these things into practice.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: I find that a lot of times they're resourcing each
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: other and it's really been kind of a fun project
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: to do.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: But almost all of them.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: Have suffered under that same idea is why am I
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: not being effective with what with what I was taught
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: in school? And the turnover rate for counsel in organizations
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: is huge. The standard in the in the US or
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: mental health agencies is seventy percent turnover of their clinical staff,
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: and that a lot of clients, a lot of people
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: that become therapists get out of the field within five years. Well,
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: why because we haven't. They're not adequately prepared to help
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: the people. And you know, the cases that I saw
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: in starting, you know, in the eighties.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Were not nearly as.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: Severe as the cases that are pretty common nowadays.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: And so the education system is lagged so far behind
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: the current.
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: Population that presents for therapy that the.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Gap between what.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: These people know graduating and what they need to know
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: is a gulf.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: So, having listened to this interview, you know, the fifteen
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: or twenty minutes that we've already done so far, I
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: think people could have an idea of what goes on
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: what you teach at the Arizona Trauma Institute. But let's
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: get more specific. What are you offering in terms of
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: courses or education there?
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: We do multiple things, but let me just talk about
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: the classes.
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: Most of our classes, and I think we have almost
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: sixty that are online, are mostly clinically related.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: They're for counselors, psychologists, social workers, case managers.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: We have several courses that are designed for the layman,
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: and those courses that are designed for the layman. We
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: actually work in partnership with the Americopa County Community College District,
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: which is a eleven college system in the Phoenix metropolitan
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: area with over two hundred thousand students. We've written curriculum
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: for their courses. We endorse certain classes and provide micro
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: credentials for people that have completed specialties so that when
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: they finish up, we know they can do these things.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: And so that's you know, some of the things that
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: we do.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: But most of our trainings that are available either live
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: or in person, are really targeted to the mental health culture,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: and we have.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: We start with a basic.
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: Three day training just to introduce people to the foundation
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: of you know, what trauma care really is and what
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: it really means and how to begin to apply it.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: Most of the mental health culture out there is driven
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: by business models of efficiency, so you know, you have
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: I'll give you an give you an example. Just talk
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: with an agency in the southeast US. They have one
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: hundred and eighteen therapists. They serve almost seven thousand clients,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: but their average caseload for their mental health professional is
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: close to ninety clients, and there's no way anything any
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: therapist can be effective with ninety clients. And I was
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: kind of talking about that, and this is what the
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: leader of that organization told me, Well, as long as
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: we can build, as long as we can prove that
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: we provided a service and that we can build for it,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: we don't need to worry about anything else.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: And I'm saying no, No, you want.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: To build your organization to drive clinical outcomes. What is
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: your client benefiting from this? You are in an efficiency model.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: You don't even screen, you know who gets what client is.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Just the next counselor in rotation gets the client, whether
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: they're ready for it or not.
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: And so when you have an efficiency based system, you
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: strip away the very thing that therapists need to stay
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: vital in their work and the things that clients need
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: to be successful, and that's relationship. Because efficiency doesn't operate
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: well in a relational model.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: And what most people don't realize is that.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Trauma informed care is a relational structure. It's a it's
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: a structure to give dignity, to to help people see
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: that they have value, that they have worth, that they
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: that they you know, and to lift them that is
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: not what most mental health agencies are structured around. They're
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: structured around documentation, billing, and lack of complaints.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: It sounds to me as though someone who's interested in
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: becoming a therapist of any kind should go straight straight
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: to straight to you. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: of people are gonna have to go through go through
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the system, and then find out that they need to
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: get to what you're offering. And that's very it's that's depressing,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: that's depressing. But enough you mentioned something I want to
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: John Robert, which was your your mentoring model and offering
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about that. That's unded fascinating.
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: Well, when again, we use a solugenic model, which really
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: we're looking at four things almost always, is it comprehensible
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: to the to the person you're working with, Can they
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: understand it? Does it make sense to them? The next
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: is is it something that they could actually manage in
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: the state that they're in now? You know, asking somebody
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: to do cognitive behavior work when their whole system is
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: disregulated and their bodies being filled with stress hormones which
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: takes the prefrontal cortex right offline, is not something that
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: they can manage, So you wouldn't use it until they
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: can manage it. So it can they understand it as
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: it comprehensible, is it manageable? And then finally, does what
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: you're asking them to do personally meaningful for them? Because
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: if it's not meaningful for them, they're not going to
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: do it.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: None of us will do something if we don't feel
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: it's personally meaningful.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: And then the fourth is what are the resources that
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: they already have had to use to survive. Let's identify
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: those and help them use them with intention. So those
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: are very different because it's not a focus on, oh,
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: how giving them a label. It's not focused on, you know,
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: creating a diagnosis and thinking.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: That now I have a diagnosis, I know what to do.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Because the reality is if you have ten clients that
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: are bipolar, you have ten different ways bipolar is going
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: to present. So having a diagnosis does very little for
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: you in to actually bring healing or relief into people's lives.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: And so since most people are trained in that idea
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: that we need a diagnosis and we need to treat
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: the diagnosis, well, it's kind of like you know that
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: you're high on the top of a mountain and they say,
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: don't look down.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: What do you do? You look down?
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: And you know then it triggers all of this. Why
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: would we do that to somebody? Yet in mental health
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: we do it all the time. We focus on negative,
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: painful emotions and we light up the amiglatist system. And
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: when you light up the amiglative system, you put the
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: person in survival mode.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: And when they're in survival.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Mode, they can't think clearly, they can't plan, they can't
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: follow through. Why in the world would we ever do
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: that to somebody. Imagine you're a child and every interaction
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: with your parent is a criticism for you or a
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: fault finding with you.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: There's something wrong with you.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: We have created a mental health world that is like
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: a critical parent. Well, this is what's wrong with you,
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: and this is what you need to be fixed, instead
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: of what is wonderful about this person? What is amazing
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: about that? Why am I not uncovering that? Why am
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: I not utilizing that? And that's the primary flaw that
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: I see out there is that this point of view,
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: the traditional mental health point of view, underserves people, and
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: it underserves them badly.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Robert, you're really good at this, do you do a
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: lot of interviews. I am very inspiringly, you're very inspiring.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: So all right, as we kind of wind down here,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: I think our listeners have a good idea, but specifically,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: who who's the Arizona Trauma Institute. Who are the classes
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: for any therapist, anyone interested? You mentioned lay audience as well.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Sure, we have people that take a lot of our
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: classes that are not therapists because they just want.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: To know the information.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: Strange enough, we have a good number of parents that
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: are struggling with children that want to understand, particularly if
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: they've adopted children and didn't realize what was going to.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: Come with that.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: But most of the most all the courses are designed
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: for therapists, you know, social workers, psychologists and you.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Know other human service workers.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: We have a few that are designed for educators, but
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: the bulk of what we do is really targeted towards
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: the mental health world. And but we have we even
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: have clients from from that will take those and then
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: we get nasty notes from their therapists. They take this
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: information back and say why aren't why aren't you doing this?
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: And so every once in a while I'll have somebody
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: call me and say, you know, I'm I'm I live here,
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: I'm having trouble finding a therapist, and I will comp
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: them a basic training so they know what to look for.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: And that always.
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: Seems to put pressure on the people that they go
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: visit with. So so that's kind of but our main,
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: our main focus is on clinical programming.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Okay, as we kind of wind down here, Robert, what's
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: the best way for people to learn more about the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: Arizona Truma Institute.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: Go to our website, do a search on Google for
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Arizona Trauma Institute. You're going to pull it up. You
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: can spend some time on it. We also have a
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: LinkedIn page, Facebook page. I don't particularly monitor the Facebook page,
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: but I usually am monitoring the LinkedIn page. So, and
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: we we really do respond pretty well to people, and
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: you know, we we do a lot of public service
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: kinds of things. I spent the hour before I joined
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: you today, I spent with a group of people that
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: are working with trauma survivors that through the from the
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: hurricane in Jamaica. Oh well, you know, it's just some
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: you know, they had some questions on so I do
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: kind of explain the difference between crisis and trauma and
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: that they're really doing with crisis, and this is what
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: you need to do in crisis. And when people get
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: through with crisis, maybe they'll need trauma therapy. But you know,
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: so those kinds of things. But yeah, we really, we
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: really do try to build a community wherever we are
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: working because it's really tough for therapists to go to
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: work with people that don't have any idea what we're
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: talking about and use a different kind of language or
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: get supervision. So we do the mentoring, we offer the
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: classes to support them so that they can have some
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: help in actually putting these things into practice.
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: And if you're curious, you're welcome to join one if
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: you want.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Guy, I tell you, you know, obviously I interview a
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: lot of people, but what sets you apart what you've
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: talked about, really the difference in what people are actually
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: are learning and what actually needs to be done and
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: how you are kind of transferring that into your education
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: and your courses is really inspiring. So I appreciate that,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: and I'll take you up on that offer. For our listeners.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: The website is azitrauma dot org and we'll have that
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: linked up here at the show notes page at the
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Trauma therapist podcast dot com doctr roten awesome, super inspiring.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you, We'll be in touch. Thank you, all right, sir,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: all right,