Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 721: Left, Write, Hook with Donna Lyon

Transcript

Episode 721: Left, Write, Hook with Donna Lyon · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:10
  Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
• 0:14
  My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
• 0:19
  to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
• 0:23
  who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
• 0:27
  authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
• 0:33
  about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist Project dot com.
• 0:37
  That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. Thanks so five
• 0:43
  four three two one our folks, welcome back to the podcast. Very excited
• 0:49
  to have us. My guest today, Donna Lion. Donna welcome, Thank
• 0:53
  you guys. Great to be here, all right. Doctor Donna Lion is
• 0:56
  the founder and CEO of Left Right Hook that's right spelled with w r I
• 1:02
  te and evidence based boxing and creative writing program for adult survivors of childhood sexual
• 1:07
  abuse and trauma. She's also the editor of the book Left Right Hook Survivor
• 1:11
  Stories from a Creative Writing and Boxing Project, and producer of a documentary film
• 1:17
  that is in post production about the same program. Donna, Welcome to the
• 1:21
  podcast. Thanks guy, so I know it's crazy you well crazy early,
• 1:26
  it's early there. I really appreciate you being here. But before we get
• 1:29
  going, share with the listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
• 1:33
  Yeah. Sure. I grew up in Melbourne, Australia, moved to
• 1:37
  Perth, Western Australia, which is a really kind of small part of a
• 1:41
  small, dry, hot part of Australia. I got out of there at
• 1:45
  twenty one and went to London and then found myself back in Melbourne, Australia,
• 1:49
  and I've been here for the last twenty years. Okay, awesome.
• 1:53
  So I don't know. I'm not sure how I came across your work and
• 1:57
  what you do. But as I read about you and saw what you were
• 2:02
  doing, um I was I was just taken and it's like I kind of
• 2:08
  have this moment on here after that vite her on you. So how did
• 2:12
  this all come about for you, Danna? I think the boxing and the
• 2:16
  writing you know, Left Right Hook really came about, I guess as a
• 2:21
  combination of me coming to terms, you know, with my past abuse.
• 2:28
  And Yeah, I was listening to Yeah podcasts the other day I was just
• 2:31
  like, oh my god, like I'm him um, and I can't remember
• 2:35
  his name, you were interviewing him, but I was just like, Philip
• 2:38
  or something, It's like, that's my story, the way that this guy's
• 2:40
  saying it is my story, um, you know, because it came out
• 2:45
  of basically Phil Goldstein. And you know, I was just like, I
• 2:49
  just want Phil to like kind of come into my body as I mean an
• 2:52
  interview, because I'm like that that that's me. You know. It came
• 2:55
  out of, you know, repressed, dissociated, disconnected childhood that was full
• 3:02
  of terror. And I think I was lucky in some respects that I found
• 3:10
  drama and media and art like kind of making at quite a young age.
• 3:17
  And I think that's really ultimately what kind of saved me, because it kept
• 3:22
  me really curious in life. You know, I fell in love with the
• 3:25
  kind of imaginal world and so that type and because I was associated anyway,
• 3:30
  I often lived in my head and very much outside of my body. So
• 3:35
  the idea to be in character, to be an imagination, to be in
• 3:38
  play felt really safe and really empowering. And so those that kind of passion
• 3:44
  and that love kept me motivated to keep doing life because you know, I
• 3:47
  remember at the age of nine. You know, I wrote a letter to
• 3:51
  God to say, you know, can you take my life? And you
• 3:55
  know, I'm thinking, like where did that come from? You know,
• 3:57
  like I was nine, and of course God didn't answer me. UM,
• 4:01
  and I was forever angry. UM. But you know I UM. And
• 4:06
  so then I studied you know, media and UM and drama, and but
• 4:12
  I didn't really want to be an actor because actually the truth was I couldn't
• 4:15
  connect. I couldn't connect with myself with my body, and so m I
• 4:20
  ended up moving into production, into producing and started a filmmaking career. UM.
• 4:29
  But again, I think I found that the more I tried to do
• 4:31
  life and be adult, the worst it kind of got for me. The
• 4:35
  more I developed a body, you know, became a woman, the worst
• 4:42
  it was. Um. You know, I developed an eating disorder. I
• 4:46
  you know, it was I turned to drugs at the age of fourteen years
• 4:49
  of age. Anyway, you know, I was taking LSD by myself,
• 4:54
  UM, you know, drinking, but everything was by myself. You know,
• 5:00
  I loved you know, I only knew how to be outside of my
• 5:02
  body into my head and so UM. Yeah, just a long journey that
• 5:11
  ended up in a sobriety UM in my thirties. In your thirties, when
• 5:17
  when you were going through the periods of UM dissociation and so forth, were
• 5:28
  to what degree were you aware that that was related to your your childhood and
• 5:34
  the idea, no idea? At what point did you reach out for help?
• 5:41
  Yeah, so at the age of twenty six, I mean, this
• 5:45
  is an interesting part of the story. So about twenty two I went back
• 5:48
  to do a bachelor in majoring and performance studies and it was a three year
• 5:55
  degree and it was absolutely fantastic and lots of movement UM, creative exploration,
• 6:00
  and of course I ended up producing a lot of work that was about alter
• 6:05
  egos, you know, sort of these associated parts of myself as characters.
• 6:12
  And after that I went to do a postgrad of producing and at the beginning
• 6:18
  of that year, that's when I had my first memory of being abused at
• 6:24
  twenty six, And that's how I started my post grade due year. And
• 6:28
  I had no idea, and so I went I went into kind of therapy
• 6:31
  loosely, and I was experiencing effects of association, but nobody named it.
• 6:39
  Nobody, you know, like, yeah, I kind of knew it was
• 6:42
  to do with my child like child's extual abuse. But I was like a
• 6:45
  woman of action. I'm like, right, I've been abused. What am
• 6:47
  I going to do to fix it? You know, I'll go and interview
• 6:51
  the family. I'll you know, go and see somebody, and you know,
• 6:56
  I'll heal and move on with my life. It didn't work out like
• 6:59
  that. Hmm. So how did things unfold? When did you begin to
• 7:08
  get some relief. Well, the more that I tried to sort of go
• 7:13
  into the trauma and you know, get healed, the worse it became.
• 7:17
  UM. And I just didn't have coping mechanisms. And also I the abuse
• 7:24
  was so severe um, and it was my body was in such a state
• 7:28
  of terror. Um that it was just that I just shut down UM or
• 7:31
  I'd regress into it a child. UM. But nobody again was there explaining
• 7:38
  of this is association, this is you know, likely d id this is
• 7:42
  you know, um, et cetera. So that didn't come for six years.
• 7:46
  UM. And that didn't come until I got sobriety. UM. So
• 7:51
  yeah, I mean it's you know, it's it's it's it's one thing too.
• 7:59
  First of all, I still appreciate you coming on your charance a dance.
• 8:05
  I mean, that's not even that doesn't even do it justice. You
• 8:09
  know, to to hear you talk about your upbringing as a kid and going
• 8:15
  through this, how did you survive? Well, that's the to me.
• 8:20
  I I did a listeners agree, But I always say, it's up the
• 8:22
  gift of dissociation. You know, I'm really grateful that I dissociated. I
• 8:28
  don't really just connected. And I do believe it is a survival mechanism.
• 8:33
  It's a tool. Um, you know, it's a gift. And I
• 8:37
  think that I am a very high functioning person. And um, I don't
• 8:41
  think people would really know that about me and understand that that, you know,
• 8:45
  as part of my trajectory. So I was able to front really really
• 8:50
  well. And again, I think it's just the fact that my the trauma
• 8:54
  was so intense that it's split off and um, and and that's not easy.
• 9:00
  Now as I guess, I become that I'm in the adult world,
• 9:05
  playing as an adult and trying to connect with the trauma and trying to connect
• 9:09
  with the memory and trying to connect with a narration of self to give me
• 9:16
  a kind of I guess, a feeling of wholeness, a story that's hard,
• 9:20
  but also at the same time too, that's actually what's kept me alive.
• 9:24
  That's what's kept me really functioning. And I think that's what's kept me
• 9:28
  being able to achieve so many things. What did the healing process, whether
• 9:33
  the beginning of that look like for you, Well, you know, I
• 9:39
  got into talk step program. You know, it's just kind of what they
• 9:43
  say, you know, I hit my rock bottom. I think the other
• 9:48
  thing is go I had no language for my internal world. And so that's
• 9:54
  so I didn't I knew that I inside my head I wanted to kill myself,
• 9:58
  that I I just hated myself so much that I had such low self
• 10:03
  esteem. I felt so much discussed, but I did not have the language
• 10:07
  for it. And so what what was helpful about hitting that rock bottom and
• 10:13
  getting going into recovery And even though that took five months to kind of get
• 10:16
  sober and that's just an icky, gross journey full of you know, so
• 10:20
  much pain, but you also if you do the work, the program does
• 10:24
  work. And so but what was great about that is that it started to
• 10:30
  give me a language because through story and through people getting up and sharing their
• 10:35
  past histories, and naming the stuff that was inside my head. I'm like,
• 10:39
  oh, that's me. Oh, and so I began to be able
• 10:43
  to speak about it, not necessarily the abuse, but the effects, and
• 10:50
  that again was the beginning of this kind of narration of a new self.
• 10:56
  So it's interesting you you say that, and you also said as we started,
• 11:03
  you had that recognition when I was interviewing Phil Goal seen that's me.
• 11:09
  That's I can identify with that too. So how did left right help come
• 11:16
  about? And So when I was in my mid thirties, so this was
• 11:20
  about five years into sobriety and recovery, I started boxing because I felt because
• 11:26
  I always liked fitness, and I was like very physical activities. I hated
• 11:31
  yoga, hated anything that kind of was like I had to sit still and
• 11:35
  be in my body. Of course, being dissociated and you know, having
• 11:39
  trauma kind of memories not good for me. Right, So anything kind of
• 11:41
  really physical body based it kind of aggressive, loved. And I was also
• 11:48
  feeling this incredible anger. And because I was a depressive and my feelings had
• 11:54
  been so numb, like I literally didn't know, I couldn't describe a feeling
• 11:58
  state. I was like oh, this is interesting. I need to do
• 12:05
  something about this, Like I feel really really angry. And also I felt
• 12:07
  like I really wanted to punch someone into my face. Right, So I'm
• 12:11
  like, okay, I should probably go and do something about this. And
• 12:13
  so I checked into boxing classes and then within like a couple of months,
• 12:18
  for a few months, I was like learning fighting and I'm sparring, and
• 12:22
  then I'm in the ring and so with you you know, and of course
• 12:26
  like kind of maybe typical, you know, alcoholic and you know, maybe
• 12:30
  an artist. You know, I'm like, oh, this is going to
• 12:33
  be a good story. You know, I'm straight in the ring. I'm
• 12:35
  fighting this woman. You know, she's got she's in a fifties, she's
• 12:37
  got a gold tooth, you know, and she and I'm having a great
• 12:41
  time. It's fantastic. And so I thought, oh, this is kind
• 12:45
  of you know, cool, And it was a split decision, but in
• 12:48
  the end, you know, went to her. It didn't matter. It
• 12:50
  was just the best feeling in the world, you know. I loved it,
• 12:54
  and so I thought it's always going to be like this. But the
• 12:56
  second time, I started to feel really a lot of anxiety and you know,
• 13:01
  and fear, and I lost the fight. The third time. These
• 13:09
  a competition, the competition fights, so the third time, so this is
• 13:13
  like literally within the first twelve months of fighting, right of like starting boxing.
• 13:18
  The third time, I dissociated in the ring, and I'm like,
• 13:22
  I remember sitting on the on the kind of bench, you know, in
• 13:24
  the kind of little two minute thirty second break or whatever, and I had
• 13:28
  this like part inside that say, you know, they're bigger than me.
• 13:35
  I can't I can't beat them. And I'm like, uh, this is
• 13:39
  not good. I can't be dissociating and you know in a ring fighting,
• 13:45
  um, you know, because I'm going to get knocked out, Like this
• 13:48
  is not cool. So the fighting journey in total lasted about kind of eighteen
• 13:52
  months, never really you know, I guess I kind of kept coming back
• 13:56
  to this idea of being in a ring to compete and to fight because I
• 14:00
  wanted to kind of confront the trauma. I wanted to beat the dissociation and
• 14:07
  I kind of couldn't, and so I decided, well, okay, I'm
• 14:13
  not this boxing champion. What am I going to do? You know,
• 14:18
  Like this has actually been despite the fight, the fighting which is you know,
• 14:22
  not where I'm winning. Actually, I love training. I love the
• 14:26
  empowering nature of boxing. I love I love the punching. I love the
• 14:31
  physicality. I love the location of being, of being able to okay aggression
• 14:35
  and get it out. I want to work with other women. But because
• 14:39
  I felt like this kind of loser, you know, it's not like I
• 14:43
  could go, yeah, I won five fights, you know, um,
• 14:46
  I thought, well, what can I do that's different? And I thought,
• 14:50
  well, you know, combined with my recovery experience, combined with my
• 14:54
  artistic experience. I'm an academic, so you know, I'm a facilitator,
• 14:58
  a teacher of filmmaker. I've got all these suite of creative tools. Why
• 15:01
  don't we actually spend the first hour writing where we write to a prompt and
• 15:09
  we get out ship that's inside ourselves. You know, we get out stuff
• 15:11
  that's completely unconscious, because that's what's happened, That's that's where my stuff is.
• 15:16
  It's completely unconscious, and we write about it and we share, and
• 15:22
  then I teach them boxing and we basically beat the shit out of the bag
• 15:28
  and no one gets hurt and we can scream and you know, whatever we
• 15:35
  do. And that's how left right hook started. Wow, Now when you
• 15:43
  were when you started boxing, was it a conscious effort to tackle your trauma
• 15:52
  not to begin? I mean, in some respects yes, because by the
• 15:56
  very nature of saying I've got anger, I want to locate this and director,
• 16:00
  that's tackling trauma. So yes. But as I started to do it,
• 16:04
  I you know, and getting punched in the face and experiencing all the
• 16:08
  things that you do and boxing, it was like it was ringing up a
• 16:12
  lot of stuff, and you know, I was, I was in therapy,
• 16:15
  like I was doing a lot guy, right, Like I went full
• 16:19
  guns blazing for my mental health, right like I had to. I did
• 16:22
  prayer ministry for four years. I was doing you know, recovery for five
• 16:30
  years, solid therapy once a week, like literally I had to do something
• 16:34
  every day because the thoughts I wanted to kill myself was so pervasive and so
• 16:40
  like it was like whatever I found, if that was going to if that
• 16:44
  was doing something that felt like it was activating, healing, progressing, whatever
• 16:51
  was you know, like really trapped inside me, I was sticking to it.
• 16:53
  And so boxing felt like that for me. It felt like a way
• 16:57
  for the first time where I could begin to connect my body, um,
• 17:04
  you know with the trauma stuff, because I would just freeze and so like,
• 17:11
  actually, you can't do that, right, Like don't freeze and boxing
• 17:14
  because you're going to get punched in the face, right, And so you
• 17:17
  know, it was like it forced me to move out of that freezing.
• 17:21
  Now that in a competitive space that didn't necessarily eventuate, but in a training
• 17:26
  environment where you're held and nurtured and someone there and you're kind of you know,
• 17:30
  able to you know, the high stakes, aren't there, um,
• 17:33
  that that's a helpful thing to do. Was there something during any of your
• 17:41
  experiences with therapy? Was there something that one of your therapists did that clicked
• 17:49
  for you? Um? I think you know, really the location of parts,
• 17:56
  um. So where I've been with my therapy, it's now for nearly
• 18:00
  ten years, and you know, it was really her that you know,
• 18:03
  clicked into talking to my parts and I presuming all your listeners, no parts.
• 18:10
  And I think once we started to talk to the parts, to do
• 18:17
  art therapy, to draw and to really just kind of gently unearthed that stuff
• 18:29
  that was in there, that was probably what clicked. And I think just
• 18:36
  you know, that reminder to really believe myself because when I denied, which
• 18:44
  was my default and go to that's when you know, things would just stay
• 18:49
  worsed. So like I needed to validate myself constantly even because it because what
• 18:59
  was the hardest guy and always is the hardest I think for survivors, you
• 19:03
  know, like me, is when you don't have the look it was this
• 19:07
  person at this time, this date, and I was exactly this age and
• 19:11
  it happened at this location and he did this or she did this, and
• 19:17
  you know it felt like this, you know, and that's not that.
• 19:19
  The truth is around dissociated memories is that they're fragmented, they're repressed. They're
• 19:26
  often stored in the body, or they are stored in the body, and
• 19:30
  the research shows that and it doesn't necessarily come through explicit narrative. It comes
• 19:40
  through that implicit narrative, and that's a narrative of the body, the shaking,
• 19:45
  the shivering, the regressing, the terror, and that that that the
• 19:52
  brain can't compute a linear narrative to support that. But the body is telling,
• 19:59
  right, what was it about? Or is it about parts work that
• 20:03
  resonated with you? Just that's where the trauma leaves um and that's where the
• 20:12
  deep voices that held the truth seemed to um seem to live. And so
• 20:21
  that's it. You know, doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense.
• 20:29
  Reindeer. When I'm speaking with Donna lion doctor, Dunna lion Um, the
• 20:33
  book is left right hook. Now, all right, give us a specific
• 20:40
  idea of what happens. What are you providing with left right hook? This
• 20:44
  writing program a safe or secure space, small intimate um where you come in
• 20:56
  declaring necessarily like fully explicitly, but by its very nature of joining up to
• 21:03
  the program, that you are a survivor of child sexual abuse, that you're
• 21:07
  carrying trauma. Often people don't tell anyone outside a therapist's office. They might
• 21:14
  just tell their close friends. So you're coming into a circle of people who
• 21:18
  are the same. And we really established try to establish emotional and psychological safety
• 21:26
  upfront, which you know takes time. We locate feelings, we do a
• 21:33
  check in, we write, we share, we acknowledge, we might write
• 21:38
  again share acknowledge. What are you writing? Could I come up with prompts
• 21:45
  so the prompts could be provocative, like shame discussed mind body. I turned
• 21:55
  around and you know, he said could be anything. You know, I
• 22:03
  remember dot dot dot um, and then it's whatever comes out. So usually
• 22:07
  I give about three prompts which gives people choice, and then people choose and
• 22:14
  they write for about ten minutes NonStop. And so the whole purpose is to
• 22:18
  bypass the kind of critical faculties. It's not about great writing per se.
• 22:23
  I think great writing comes out. The quality of the writing is excellent because
• 22:27
  it's honest and raw, but you don't you're not setting out to write,
• 22:32
  you know, incredible prosum and if you get stuck. There's a woman gen
• 22:37
  Cross that I got this from. It's like, what I really want to
• 22:41
  say is what I really want to say? Is what I really want to
• 22:42
  say? And then that kind of sent tends to push past that blockage,
• 22:47
  like a writer's block, and so then people share. And it can be
• 22:52
  stuff that's very visceral. It can be stuff that just skirts around trauma.
• 22:56
  It can be stuff that people are like, oh fuck. Most of the
• 23:00
  time it's stuff that you when you hear someone else, you go, wow,
• 23:03
  I'm so sorry that that happened to you. Yeah, you know,
• 23:07
  that's so sad. And I think the other aspect of that is that you
• 23:12
  begin you start, you feel compassion for the person beside you, and because
• 23:19
  they actually are experiencing the same feelings and thoughts and beliefs that you experience,
• 23:25
  and by you experiencing compassion compassion for them, perhaps I can feel compassion towards
• 23:32
  myself because that's the hardest thing again, is to accept self. Wow,
• 23:41
  at what point does the boxing come in? And I can imagine that I'm
• 23:47
  sure you've realized this, but that could be triggering for a lot of people.
• 23:53
  It is, but I think i'd say it's more empowering. And because
• 23:57
  we're not punching each other, you know, it's not it's not the it's
• 24:03
  not the boxing that I did. You know, it's hitting a bag,
• 24:06
  it's hitting pads, um, It's so it's even though I think being in
• 24:11
  the body, yes, can be triggering. I think that that's the triggering
• 24:15
  part. But when you begin to use the empowering stance and movements of boxing,
• 24:22
  it quickly moves you through that, I think, and certainly I believe
• 24:29
  is the experience of many of the people. Now, that's not to say
• 24:32
  that so after that first hour of writing and sharing, then we've pretty much
• 24:37
  dropped tools or pens and we just kind of, you know, take a
• 24:41
  little break, and then we put our wraps on and we just kind of,
• 24:44
  you know, I just slowly start to come into the body, just
• 24:48
  through obviously warm ups, and then it's like okay, like you're getting people
• 24:52
  moving straight away, um, and then all of a sudden they're punching and
• 24:57
  they're all of a sudden they're kind of like externalizing that that crap that they
• 25:03
  were just writing about, and they're pushing each other because we've just had a
• 25:07
  really intimate and vulnerable moment and so now actually I want to see you.
• 25:12
  I want to see you get that out. And so that's the beauty of
• 25:15
  it, you know. And so yeah, I think most of the time,
• 25:18
  i'd say most people feel like better, like after the two hours,
• 25:25
  but I don't again, I don't like to necessarily use language like that because
• 25:29
  it's like better from what you know, Like I think people absolutely feel like,
• 25:33
  oh okay, I'm more grounded. But sometimes you know, when you're
• 25:37
  writing and connecting with this stuff, you're going to feel worse. There's a
• 25:41
  guarantees the is this program? How long is it? It goes for eight
• 25:48
  weeks? Oh wow? Yeah, So it's an eight week program, two
• 25:52
  hours a week like, so it will be in blocks. Wow, Now
• 25:57
  is this in person or online? Or both in person? But in twenty
• 26:03
  twenty I ran a research project and that and so I took it into the
• 26:08
  research space at the University of Melbourne where I work, and we and COVID
• 26:15
  hit So of course we had to pivot online. So that whole project kind
• 26:18
  of flipped on its head and I ended up doing that whole program online with
• 26:22
  the participants. Oh god, Okay, So basically it can be both,
• 26:26
  but at the moment, I think it's best done in person. Right now
• 26:30
  during the eight weeks, is there a some kind of a progression, is
• 26:33
  or a movement in? What is the goal here? The the through the
• 26:37
  eight weeks? The goal for me is always to locate, So locate effects,
• 26:42
  locate the trauma, begin to identify, connect establish and then work towards
• 26:52
  externalization. So I try not to have a grandiose it's not about healing.
• 27:03
  It's a continuum, but it's about beginning to see that actually that happened to
• 27:10
  you, you're not at fault. And I think if people can begin,
• 27:15
  some people will obviously be a greater stages than others. But if they can
• 27:18
  begin to see themselves in the context of a wider socio you know, crisis
• 27:25
  or issue, then the work is done. I would imagine increct me from
• 27:32
  wrong here, but this experience might be helpful slash healing for you watching people.
• 27:42
  Okay, yeah, I set the program up for me. I'm not
• 27:45
  gonna lie, you know, I wanted to you know, right, that
• 27:51
  is another wrong way. I'm sure. Yeah, sure, you set the
• 27:52
  podcast up for yourself in many ways, you know benefit. Yeah, so
• 27:57
  absolutely, I think that it has been an incredible part of my healing and
• 28:04
  and development of yeah, sense of self hose. Um. I think I
• 28:15
  just I've defined constantly that I return to the things that, like, you
• 28:21
  know, maybe I say that haven't necessarily landed for me. Um. And
• 28:26
  I'm not sure if I can give you a specific example, but um,
• 28:30
  I think I begin to believe what I say to people. Maybe it's things
• 28:36
  like you know, that's not my shame. Even that's hard to like kind
• 28:40
  of say it like I say it to others, but like even to saying
• 28:42
  it to you right now, I'm like, oh gosh, there's tears,
• 28:45
  you know. Um uh, you know that it's not my fault. You
• 28:49
  know that. Um. Well, you know, writing is moves towards healing
• 28:56
  connection, it's relational healing. Um and I think, you know, around
• 29:03
  just a kind of sense of integrity of self. It keeps me accountable.
• 29:10
  Now you also have a documentary. Yeah, so the document well, the
• 29:14
  documentary came out of that research project. So I basically you know, whoever
• 29:18
  signed up for that, it was like, Okay, we're doing an eight
• 29:21
  week program. We're going to study the effects of it to test whether this
• 29:26
  is actually good for your well being, which, by the way, it
• 29:27
  was TICK reduction in PTSD, tick reduction in depression, reduction and anxiety increase
• 29:34
  in personal agency and resilience. That was done, and then it was like,
• 29:38
  but we're also going to probably write a book together where we'll publish our
• 29:44
  writings, and we're going to make a documentary. We don't know what that
• 29:48
  looks like or means. And because COVID of course hit that has taken.
• 29:52
  Now you know, it's actually been a two year kind of participatory arts journey.
• 29:57
  I would say that started out as an eight week boxing workshop and has
• 30:00
  really transformed or evolved into this story of a group of survivors who are beginning
• 30:08
  to find a sense of agency and a politicization of their voice. When you
• 30:18
  look at the landscape with a culture of how we are looking at sexual assault
• 30:29
  survivors, what are your thoughts on this, on how we as a culture
• 30:38
  are, how people are able or unable to come forward. I mean,
• 30:44
  what you're doing is inviting, creating a safe space for people to do that
• 30:48
  and to in a sense, you know, maybe not have as an objective
• 30:56
  heal, but to certainly move forward and to claim ownership of what happened.
• 31:00
  When you look at how our culture is talking about survivorship and even dealing with
• 31:06
  it, what do you see? Well, there's certainly a change, a
• 31:10
  positive change in the narrative. I do see that, And you know,
• 31:14
  I'm so grateful for all the people that have come before us. You know,
• 31:17
  this has been women and men are for generations for change. So I'm
• 31:23
  just one little part of this, right, you know, like praise our
• 31:26
  kind of brothers and sisters that have done that work, you know, and
• 31:30
  never been believed and you know, had their careers ruined and all of this.
• 31:33
  Like I'm an out academic talking about sexual abuse, like it's quite incredible
• 31:41
  UM. And I can do that not lose my job, actually be sort
• 31:45
  of celebrated, you know, elevated. UM. So that that's a landscape
• 31:51
  that's changed. But child's sexual abuse does remain a little hidden, dirty secret,
• 31:57
  and that's because it really happened in our families. And so to expose
• 32:02
  that means to break down the fabric of a kind of patriarchal family unit.
• 32:08
  And that's hard, and I'm not setting out to do that, by the
• 32:13
  way. Unfortunately, child sexual abuse does that just does it ruins, destroys
• 32:20
  families. And so I think that, you know, the narrative, so
• 32:23
  that that that needs to become stronger, and more people like me need to
• 32:30
  speak out. But that takes time. And I think too that we need
• 32:34
  to begin to really understand how trauma is stored in the body, and we
• 32:38
  need to understand how memory is fragmented and how memory is not linear, and
• 32:45
  how the brain is affected through trauma and the nervous system. And so I
• 32:52
  just think that we've got that there's more work to be done, not necessarily
• 32:55
  by me, but by you know, research as psychologists. Except try to
• 33:00
  emphasize that narrative because that's the stuff that's going to help people. And because
• 33:07
  you know, again it took me six years for people to identify that my
• 33:13
  experiences were dissociated. I didn't have language for that. That shouldn't happen.
• 33:17
  A psychologist should have picked that up. They should have told me that.
• 33:22
  And so, you know, yeah, I guess in some respects, maybe
• 33:24
  I do have a little agenda to put to push that because you know,
• 33:29
  all of the symptoms that I showed indicated that I was sexually abused. You
• 33:35
  know, it should have been picked up, and you know, so,
• 33:39
  so I think, yeah, I hope that makes sense. It does.
• 33:45
  Um Donald, what's the best way for people to get in contact with you?
• 33:50
  I think that they should head to Left Right hoook dot com and that
• 33:53
  we know that's a w R T e M. And just visit the website,
• 33:59
  check out the documentary link. You can contact me, and you can
• 34:04
  just keep up to date. Super inspiring. I'd love to have you back
• 34:09
  a letter date to keep up to date with what you're doing. And super
• 34:15
  appreciative of you coming on. So grateful you reached out. Love the work
• 34:19
  you do as well, guys, so I really appreciate it. Thanks all
• 34:22
  right, thank you? Here okay bye