Latest / Moral Injury Support Network Podcast / Rebuilding Identity: Healing Trauma with Dr. Deborah Howell

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Rebuilding Identity: Healing Trauma with Dr. Deborah Howell · Moral Injury Support Network Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey everybody, good afternoon.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: This is Dr Daniel Roberts, president and CEO of Moral Injury Support Network for Service Women Incorporated.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Moral Injury Support Network podcast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Today we feature a special guest, dr Deborah Howell.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: She is a seasoned trauma-sensitive health and wellness professional who combines decades of experience as a physical therapist, life and health coach and wellness educator, utilizing evidence-based trauma-informed and mindfulness practices to support individuals and organizations in navigating the challenges of vicarious trauma, oral injury, grief loss and the complexities of change.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: As a health professional and military veteran, dr Howell brings a unique understanding of the mental, emotional and physical toll that trauma loss and adversity can have on healthcare professionals, first responders, veterans and crisis professionals.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She integrates scientifically-backed techniques with spiritual practices aimed at fostering self-awareness and emotional resilience through the lens of heart intelligence, and shares tools that further help you understand your body's responses and sustain emotional resilience.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Dr Howell is a servant leader who's deeply committed to supporting her colleagues and comrades and frontline responders who dedicate their lives to serving our most vulnerable.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: She is ready to support you to feel empowered and embrace and reclaim your sense of agency, purpose and well-being.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast, dr Howell.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Thank you, dr Evers.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I'm really happy to be here.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Dr Howell, thank you, dr Ebers, I'm really happy to be here.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, how are you?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: How are things going in your, in your profession right now?
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of you know concern new administration in the White House, a lot of changes in the VA and other places.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: So how is how is it?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: How is your ministry, your work going, work going, given the current kind of environment?
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Well, strictly speaking, in the hospital, things are kind of the same, but there's another aspect to my work dealing with Medicaid, and so there's a pending it's sort of a holding status for head injury program that I'm a part of right now, and so that infrastructure has been in process of going through some change, and there was already delay before this, and now there's another few question marks.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: So, um, yeah, so it's kind of a split thing right.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: Some parts of it is still sort of where it's at, you know, and the other part has a wider unknown, anticipate the worst or, you know, kind of work myself into a what if situation, more self-care.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so one of the things I think is really neat that I want to get into with you is your coaching program and your approach to trauma, so that the idea, the good news is, regardless of what happens, um, within our healthcare systems or um, our, our VA system, et cetera, um, a lot of, like I said, a lot of unknowns, you have a program that you can take people through that is a path to healing and wholeness.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about that program?
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it really is to speak about what we don't readily come forth with, right, and that's how we feel about ourselves, right, this aspect of well.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: We're talking about moral injury.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: We're talking about dealing with trauma.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: You know, beliefs we hold, true, that may be skewed right, based on a variety of conditioned beliefs, right and experiences that get reinforced, but the idea is that people are hurting, they're scared and they don't want to be labeled, and they're in professions, right, and live in their life to serve and to care for other people who are vulnerable, right, and yet their own vulnerability cannot be addressed because of a fear of you know this being stigmatized or again being labeled or losing employment, you know, and just not feeling that they'd be understood.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Right, that and so this, this approach that I have, is taking everything that I've learned over the last three decades and integrating it into a holistic approach to addressing what we very deeply right, that we silence ourselves to speak about it with other disturbances, right, like sleep, blood pressure issues, irritability, you know things like that or even performance.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, so would you say in your work?
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Um, you know, it seems like probably a lot of people um, most people, if not all people are walking around with some level of trauma that's pretty buried.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: That's maybe affecting them in ways they don't realize, right correct and and sometimes we don't call it trauma, right, we might not even call it trauma so vicarious.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: The vicarious nature of our human, our humanness, is that we actually pick up things in our environment and so if there's something that we witnessed that is unpleasant or just wrong or or terrifying, right or sad, like we, we pick that up vicariously.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: We don't we don't necessarily have to have a direct involvement.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Like there's an accident, for instance, right, and then there's injury, that that impact can be effect, can take effect in our body, right, can, can influence our health, our physiology, in that moment where our fight or flight system, our survival system, instinctively we don't think about it, it just it's right there, right to constrict to, to affect how we're breathing, right, we actually stop breathing, we could be holding our breath.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Right, we're in a macro state of like shock and and some of this can replay itself, if, if it's affecting our sleep, then we we can't sleep right, we're worried, we're concerned.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: And then there's direct nature of trauma, right, if someone has gone through something personal, an experience that directly affects the physical body.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Right, the emotional body.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Right, with abuse, with just, you know, in the lines of, especially looking at veterans, right If in the lines of combat or in the lines of right, seeing a fellow service member injured, or if they feel like they couldn't help them.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Service member injured or if they feel like they couldn't help them, those kinds of things that live in the body over time.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: So you know trauma.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: There's micro trauma, there's little bits where we don't necessarily think it's trauma, even watching the television.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Right, we need to be mindful of our how we take on information, take in information literally into the body, and then what stories and narratives and beliefs get formulated and replayed.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: So what is the the main goal of the program that we're we're talking about?
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: The re.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: So the goal is, whatever the individual is right.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: So I think the first part to anyone participating is number one the desire for something different than what they have, mainly how they feel about themselves, how they feel about what's going on in their life.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: It could be a health condition, right, it can be they're not able to focus, you know, or they just don't feel like this is who I am and they can't shake it.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: So everyone has their own desires for what they want in this life.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So it's not a cookie cutter thing.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: It's certainly take each person and have a conversation and but and the conversation honestly is with oneself, right.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: So how do we do that?
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And the conversation, honestly, is with oneself, right.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: So how do we do that?
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: How do we have an honest conversation with ourself to allow ourself to be vulnerable to our most deepest, most vulnerable place and sensitivity, right, and there's a construct around that.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: So when we're, in a sense, it sounds like we're reconnecting with maybe some part of ourself that may have been I don't want to say broken off, but like because of the trauma and so on, it's like walled off from like that inner strength that we might have, or inner uh, inner genius and our inner um capability, that that's there but we're kind of like now we're maybe separated from it or or it's there's a like a trauma barrier between our conscious and and that deeper restraint is.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Is that?
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: absolutely so.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: There's a few ways to look at that, at just what you're saying.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: There can be like a walling off right, we can wall off to give some sort of space or disconnect in that sense.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Right, there can also be a suppression right when we just push it down, pack it away.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: We can even like package it up nicely with a bow and put it someplace, leave it there right, for some other day, some other time and um, but yeah, there can be a gap in, in to disconnect and, and so that's built into the system for us to survive, right to to do what we do.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: You know, we, we I've spoken to firefighters and law enforcement and you can have that part of the day where you're dealing with such a huge contrast in a birth situation and a traumatic death situation in the same day.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: So how are we going to manage our feelings when both of them are very intense and and and very human and we still have a job to do, right, so there's a.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: What do we do in a job to do?
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: So there's a.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: What do we do in those moments?
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Right Is that we are on board to do what needs to be done, and so that might call for sort of segmenting away those feelings right.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Especially the ones that are like grief right, especially the ones that are like grief right, that kind of thing where we could, you know, experience some of the elation of the birth.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: But even though it's sort of a moderated kind of way to approach, because we can't go too high and we can't go too low, right, those are extremes and that's just in itself and a matter of fact, just as I say that I think about when we talk about retirement right, the same kind of thing that too much right of a change inherently creates stress in the system, you know, know.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: So it's important to realize that this kind of work.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: It's not to go and take this new awareness and then blow it up into the no, because that's terrifying, and so we're going to automatically like, guard against and push back, without trying to do that, because that's more stress upon stress.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: That's already there, but the awareness um to all of this is not necessarily conscious.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: So okay, um, so in your your program is called rebuild your identity after trauma a path to healing and wholeness.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: We're going to have an informational meeting about this next week and inviting people who just are curious about about the program, how it might be able to help them, and we'll put out the details of that informational meeting a little later on.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: But as a sort of brief introduction now, can you give us a couple of steps or elements or pieces of the program?
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the first part of it again is to identify where we are.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: That's really important is to identify where we are and then from that point, you know, it's to connect with the body.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: So there'll be practices to sort of be present to ourselves, learning how to be present to ourselves with, with practices of um, that are breath work and somatic work, you know, things that get us into the body and again we can't force ourself into the body.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: And again we can't force ourself into the body.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: You know, we want to sit with ourselves, right, and so learning different techniques.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: So there'll be the educational component about understanding and validating our experience.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: You know, and it is a, it's a walk through somewhat, talk through but then feel through program, and ultimately we want to free ourselves of this constriction, this binding, this weightiness, and there are multiple approaches that I have that I will teach you about.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: And this truly the program, is an onboarding.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: It's a six-session program but we start with identifying where we are and our own willingness to kind of open to new experiences.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: So we're addressing our own belief systems, right, any conditioning, our understanding, the differences in traumatic exposures right, vicarious, direct, what have you.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: And so it's kind of a hybrid of the didactic, where there's the teaching, the cognitive piece, but then there's also really the physiology to get the ready for this self exploration, and and it's what I have what I can say is that we invite ourselves, give ourselves permission to feel different, and so there's some of the things that we're going to be consciously ready for, and I can be honest with you, though, the thing is, we can have an agenda and a framework for all of this, and what will happen is what is ready to happen, and that's really below the conscious level, and I want to put people at ease, because this is not forced.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: We don't force healing upon ourselves, and, as a practitioner and as a coach, I'm holding a space for you, and so safety feeling, that felt sense of safety is the invitation to come into a space like that, and it's not in your head, it's not like okay, here's a safe space for you, and I'm telling you that you will either feel it and respond appropriately, because that's the reality of it, yeah, and so it's a gentle approach, it's a compassionate approach and it's a very effective and integrative, holistic approach.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: This six session, integrative, holistic approach, this six session and honestly, it really is.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: It's truly a beginning, because but it's a beginning that can lead people to really living and being who they truly are and and to the potential right that given potential of our life.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: So one of the things you say about this is that it will transform emotional wounds into wisdom.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: Can you explain that a little bit?
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: further.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Can you explain?
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: that a little bit further.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, wounds are interesting because we create scabs over wounds, right.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: So if you think of a wound that you can see when a wound starts to heal, it's scabs, right.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: So when we have wounds internally, we cover them up.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: We cover them up, we mask over what we feel, and.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: But there's information that we can garner from it.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: There's lessons, there's an experience, there's an appreciation that we can gain from the wound.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: And coming back to a place of this, the lens of the body is sacred.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Our life is sacred, honoring who we are right, because we are so good at criticizing ourselves, and this is another place where we can come in and be with ourselves.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And so those wounds, our life experience that have, that are still sort of not healed over.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Yet it can be healed and and and in that space that we can find peace right, because oftentimes there's not find peace right, because oftentimes there's not that peace right.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: And that peace is not necessarily cognitive, like I don't have peace, it's like the body is, like there's a restlessness at times right In the body or a dis-ease, right they call it.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: So we can have illness based on unhealed wounds.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: But you know, wounds are there for the experience at hand, but yet the wounds can provide us information, you know.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: So information, you know, yeah, yeah.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: So what are what are some of the in terms of your work with first responders, military folks, et cetera.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: What are what are some of the?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Is there a story you can tell about somebody that you've really helped in a tremendous way?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: You know, without giving any specifics about that person, but way you know, without giving any specifics about that person, but just you know kind of a little bit of their background, what you did to help them and how they're doing now that kind of thing.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah you know, I have a firefighter in particular that comes to mind.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: And again it was the initial wanting to just feel, care more, to care more, and because when I was talking about this moderate way of living life, sort of being just, sort of in this place, can't really experience the joy, right, and yet there's this automatic suppressing of emotion because of the nature of the work, right, right, right, feel more in life to care more, and so to understand that in the profession and then how it overflowed into their personal life, right, so that work life overflowed into personal life where they still couldn't allow themselves to go either way.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Right, and I know this too from you know, being in the military is that some of the work we do, especially when we have deployments and we come back, we have to have time to decompress, right, and then we have a partner or spouse who's like wanting to tell you everything that happened during the week and and there's a like, you know, tuning out because you can't, it's just no, can't do it, and what that sets up for is like you don't care yeah right that and I just you just left and you know everything went havoc, right.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: There are lots of stories like that from military.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: So this is about our own like ability to connect with ourself and give ourself permission, because we don't know how to hold that space without feeling like we're going to fall apart.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: If, if, if we start to feel right, if we go beyond that that little window, right, right, that capacity right, because this program is to begin to expand our capacity, right.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: So if we're this much being able to tolerate certain things in life, because this keeps us safe, this keeps us feeling safe, feeling in control.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: But if we step outside this space to go too low, where we can't get up anymore, or too high where we're just kind of like you know, and that high could be in, you know, we can have high joy or high anger, right, so there's volatility, there's these other aspects of when there's a heightened right state of excitement, right, excitement from an aggressive point I don't want to say aggressive, but more if there's anger, frustration like rage and yes, you got it.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: So these are the things that, yeah, we want to moderate, but we also want to be able to know how we can enter space and and have some tools right that help us ground, that help us sort of stay present with ourself, because a natural thing about the human body is survival.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: We don't have to think about what we need to do to survive when you know the body alerts us to danger immediately.
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: Right, don't get your hand off the burner, it's hot, like you.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Don't have to think, oh, my fingers are getting hot, like I should probably take.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: No, it's an instinct, it's hot, get off.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: That's part of our instinctive thing.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Well, what happens when we have emotional right that we will guard against and defend, just like what you're talking about?
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: We wall off, right, but meanwhile the pressure is building Right and the pressure can be expressed with this outburst, also right, of emotion, also right of um, emotion that's that's not modulated or managed in a way that is allowing us to to feel safe anymore, because it really is this inner sense of safety and it's a perceived sense that the this, because it really is this inner sense of safety and it's a perceived sense this brain survival mechanism is in place to keep us safe, to protect us, and so you know, the mind tells us lots of stories and lots of them are not true, and the body is going to reflect honestly what's true.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: So it's really having that working relationship with ourself.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really high joy.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Um is that we can, um, kind of lose sense of, uh, what's realistic or what's really happening or um, you know so.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: So if you're, if you're really low depression, et cetera, then you lose like the sense of hope and you can feel like, even even if you have like an idea about something you could do to make things better, you may likely think that won't work or I'm just going to feel worse, or whatever.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: So you, you, you lose even the ability to try without somebody really to help you know to to you can get out of that place.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: If you get really high, you have to sometimes modulate like your ideas.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: You can get really excited and think, oh, I'm gonna, you know, invest, or you know this money in this and I'm gonna be rich and whatever.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: You know Not a good example.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: But you can, like, you know this money in this and I'm going to be rich and whatever.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: You know, not a good example.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: But you can, like in business, make poor decisions or or in other things, if, because you just have this feeling of like nothing can go wrong, everything you know, and so having that great high feeling is great, but need to be able to modulate maybe the actions that you do while you're feeling that Same thing.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: When you're feeling really low, like I remember years ago a chaplain telling me don't make decisions when you're very emotional, right, and that could be very high or very low.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: It's just you tend to, if you're very low, tend to say, for instance, you had some kind of disagreement with your spouse or some kind of issue that's maybe for a while and it's very emotionally triggering, and you get into that, and then you feel really low because you know you maybe got into that thing again with her.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Whatever it was.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: You may easily think I need to divorce her and get rid of her.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: She doesn't love me.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: You know all this, none of which could be true, right, you could really just be.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe that argument or that issue needs to be resolved, but doesn't mean the whole marriage is bad.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: If you're, if again like if you're really high, you may make decisions that are not don't have enough common sense or enough like practicality to them.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: And so I think there's, it seems to me, a balance of like letting those emotions happen, because if you do get in a toss up with your wife and or your spouse, and you do feel bad about it.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: It's okay to feel bad about it.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Just don't make decisions about it until you get in a better space.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Or it's great to feel really good and be optimistic about the future and love it.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: But you know, before you make a really significant decision, because the way you're feeling, you know, get some other people to think, you know, people you trust to help you think it through, whatever the case is, um.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: So I think there's um, you know, like a balancing of, but a balancing of of like decision-making and so on.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: But at the same time I I do hear what you're saying.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's important to allow those feelings to happen so that you can be true to yourself.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like if I have a really, really important friend who comes to me and is feeling a certain way, I just feel bad about this, I think my wife doesn't love me anymore, or whatever the case is, I'm going to affirm their feelings, in a sense, that they have the right to feel that way and you know I wouldn't shut them down and say you can't feel that way, you need to love your wife, you need to be happy with her, or whatever, I would never do that.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I would just simply be there, present with them while they were feeling those feelings, and then you know, if they decide to make decisions about it, I might say, well, let's think about this and blah, blah, blah.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: But I would acknowledge and affirm their feelings, no matter what they were, because I care about them and I don't want to give the impression or the thought or the idea that something about them isn't good enough, that it's not okay for them to feel a certain way.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: And so I think, kind of it seems like to me that's what this, what you said being present with yourself is about accepting the feelings you have, accepting the thoughts you have, and then acknowledging that you know that it's okay for to feel that way.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: Right, absolutely yes.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, you know, being kind to oneself, being kind, being our own friend.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: You know, I can tell you that many people struggle with that, right, we're great to be judging critics, but nice and kind, and sometimes there's that is something that plays out because of early condition, early experiences, right, so we want to take what's still playing out today.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: We're not going to live in the past, we need to.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: You know, how does the past show up in the present and everything?
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: All our experiences are and we're energy.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Okay, if we don't believe we're energy.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: We're energy.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: We have these remote controls.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: You just touch the car and the car door opens.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Right, experiences are and we're energy.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, if we don't get.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Believe we're energy, we're energy.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: We have these remote controls.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: You just touch the car and the car door opens.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Right, we're, we're electric.
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: Okay, and our emotions are energy.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Right, we can palpate and and we can feel.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: I call it the rotten apple syndrome, like if you put a rotten apple in a bag of healthy apples, what happens?
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: Right, so energetically, we can feel tension in a space, right, we can feel right, and it has a field, and so we have an electric field.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: But internally our experiences have some charge to it.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: So the intensity, the breath, the duration.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: So the intensity, the breath, the duration, all impacts how it's going to register in the system, right, and so we don't want to like uncap and like a genie in a bottle all over the place can begin to release some of this tension and come into some awareness and appreciation and validation of what we feel matters, because it does, and and how we show up for ourself matters.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: And in that place, because there's this other um called overcare, right, where we then are just giving and expending so much for others that we're on the back burner and then, next thing, you know, we don't even know what happened.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Right, because we've taken ill.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: Right, because we've taken ill, we're expending, and expending from this need to feel better about ourselves and, but not just A general sense of feeling better about ourselves, because you know, we like to do that, right, but we still.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: Then there's a balance to overextending.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: There's a balance to overextending, and I went through that myself, thinking I'm in the way of not wanting to be like the system, because I feel that our system is pretty much checkbox.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right, we're not present.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: If you find a physician, a practitioner, a therapist who is present with you wow, right, that's not the norm anymore, that's not the standard of care.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: I can say that because I've been doing was really shocked at what I experienced, okay, and and I know we can do better, and so.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: But when we feel like we have, we're caught up in the wheels of of life.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: We're in this automated kind of world, right, where do we kind of interrupt that?
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: And when we have demands on us that have great responsibility, right, if we leave ourselves out at some point, this catches up and it can catch up on our deathbed, okay, and so I've seen it there too.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: And so if we can come to a point where we're just like, okay, I want to feel better, I want to do better, I don't know how Well, come here and we can begin and learn, how, right, because we're learning as we're going and it's a choice to grow.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: Right, we're going running circles, patterns, whatever, but there's a choice where we wanna actually grow and that's where we take wounds and we take experiences and we just the perspective that we have of our life lives in our body and it and, and so really coming into this communion and integration of an alignment of the best, of who we are right Is of the best of who we are.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Right is going to correlate to our physiology, because everything plays out as a biochemical cocktail in the system hormones, right.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: Cortisol, right, adrenaline, oxytocin, right, dopamine, serotonin all these things that we take medications for Guess what?
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: We produce it in the system, right.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: So if our reliance is only on the external world to make things right, that has limitations.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: We have an abundance in our system.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: We we need to learn how to operate and and that we, we are like custodians of this body.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: We, you know, we, we have our, our charges to take charge.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: But but it's like if we just stay charged, like we talk about you know, like so we can, we need to discharge, right, let go.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: Just like we have an elimination.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: You've taken food, you stimulate it, you use it for what you need to resource your body and then elimination.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Well, why aren't we eliminating some of these like yeah, yeah feelings and emotions that are just not serving us anymore, and they're not even true A lot of them so yeah.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really good.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Um, I I'm looking forward to, um, our informational meeting.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Uh, this will be Friday, february 28th and it's free.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Um, we want to invite people to come to it to really be able to.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: So this informational meeting not like this podcast which we're recording and then people can listen to what we want for the informational being people will be able to attend live, ask you questions about their program, ask you questions about anything they want to really, and so that's an hour-long meeting.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: It's Friday February 28th, not February March 28th, thank you.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: The 28th of this month it's 930 Pacific Time or 1230 Eastern time, and you can figure out central would be 11, mountain be 1030.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: So, but, yeah, free informational meeting.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: We'll do it on zoom and it's to give people a chance to understand, ask all the questions they want about the program and then sign up for it if they want to and be able to get help from you.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: So I think, really encouraging people to show up to it.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: You can find out about the informational meeting by going on Moral Injury Support Network LinkedIn page, facebook page, etc.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: We'll have all the information about it in the show notes of this podcast so you can get exactly how to attend the meeting, as well as my email address and Deborah's email address.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Email address and Deborah's email address, so they can.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: They can reach out to us directly about it and then then we'll go from there, right.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and, and certainly folks can.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: If you have other you know questions about the, even the show, I mean on LinkedIn, you can direct message me.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: But, and if you provide um, you have a link, I'll I'll be happy to share on mine too.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it is an informed um, it's an informal sort of thing.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: This is the first thing that's so important is that you feel like it's okay and it's time and that sense, that felt sense of safety internally.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Right, that is the, so it is for me to create that hold up for you, and then on your end it's is that palpable, right.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: Is that on your end?
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: Right, what you, what you feel with me and you, dr Roberts, present, but as well as within yourself, right, because you're walking in that body 24, seven.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: You're in that body, right, and so it is that internal awareness, awareness and empowerment and and just that peace, right, so that that's what we, we seek and that it does play out with how we function, how we relate to others and and just living the life that we we want to live, we truly want to.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I'm excited to yeah, to answer your questions yeah yeah, no, I'm looking forward to it.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: Um, so, again, anybody out there listening if you're riding in your car and you're listening, and you can always reach out to me, d roberts at misnsorg, and I will make sure you get Deborah's information.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: She gets any questions you have.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: The informational meeting is March 28th, 1230 Eastern Time, 930 Pacific.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: And again, like it's on our social media sites, and again, totally free to come to and we'll just have space in the meeting.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: You don't really have to register in advance or anything.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: You can just use the Zoom link that you'll see in the show notes as well as on our social media sites to log in, and it's open for you there to log in and, um, it's, it's open for you there.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: So, um, dr howell, deborah, it's been great, uh, having you on the show and um, having you know.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: I think we had some great talk.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: I think in in society we're beginning to understand a lot more of the body, uh, mental, emotional state connections and I can say for myself personally, as somebody who's struggled for a long time with, um, the safety of my own emotions and the safety of my own experiences that you know, working with the therapist, it was really helpful to kind of reach back to those experiences and, um, you know, validate them and how I was feeling at the time.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: And then you know sort of reinterpret them, being being able to speak to my inner child or whatever those the Dan from back then and and like sort of reconnect in a positive way to those experiences, reinterpret them and be able to to move forward.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's just um so much to be said for that kind of approach.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: And having talked to senior military leaders, um, who you know many years like um, um sort of charged through their careers, you know high, high speed um type a personalities that that took charge of their careers did really well.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: Many of them at those later years, you know, hit a wall, they wall, they hit us, they hit us um some real challenges and they had to.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: They weren't able to just like power through them, they had to, you know, get help from a therapist or um a holistic practitioner like yourself who can help them.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: You know, with some practices that they can do and think new, thinking about.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: You know about things change the way they looked at things, um, particularly when it comes to military people, about why they viewed emotions um and allowing those emotions other than like rage, anger and aggression that's often served well in the military, but allowing those other kinds of emotions to be present and so on.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: So I think there's tons of validity and, like you said, this is scientifically backed stuff and, you know, I hope people really really tune into that meeting and get a chance to meet you and think about you know, taking part of the program themselves.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, me too, and thank you so much for having me and having this conversation.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're welcome.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, until next time.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, Bye, bye-bye.