Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Dr. Nancy Morgan. This Work Is Spiritual: from the archives
Transcript
- 0:00Or today we even another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests.
- 0:05Enjoy or welcome back to the Trauma Divers Podcast. My name is guiming
- 0:19Person. My mission is to help trauma therapists be their incredible selves, to
- 0:24be human, to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big
- 0:28believer in who we are is more important than what we know, and this
- 0:31requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can
- 0:38learn more about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist Project dot
- 0:42com. That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. Alight,
- 0:56guys, welcome back to the Trauma Divers podcast and Ted you have doctor
- 1:00Nancy Morgan. Back, Nancy, welcome, Thank you guy, So good
- 1:07to be back. Thank you to Doctor Nancy Morgan specializes both and working with
- 1:11adults with severe mental health challenges whose traumatic history is influenced and inform their thoughts
- 1:17and behaviors, and in providing trauma focused training and supervision to future therapists.
- 1:22Her primary work has been in partial hospitalization program settings, where she served as
- 1:26a clinician manager, most often as program supervisor. Currently, doctor Morrigan worked
- 1:33as a director of behavioral health at Life Moves, Northern California's largest agency dedicated
- 1:38to breaking psycholop homelessness, where she's developed a trauma focused, mindfulness based training
- 1:44curriculum. Whe she provides ssydactics, supervisors and mentors graduate psychology students. Awesome,
- 1:52So welcome again, before we could go into your share with all those
- 1:56years, where you're from, where you're calling from, and then let's dive
- 1:59in. Okay, So for those who have heard the previous interviews, you
- 2:06know that I'm from a little town in Colorado. I always like to name
- 2:08that because I think so much of our upbringing informs so much of our views
- 2:15as adults, and so a very strong connection with nature guided me through my
- 2:21early years. And then I came out west and went to college out here
- 2:24in the Bay Area UC Santa Cruz, and then stayed in the Bay Area
- 2:30for graduate school. I am currently sitting at my desk at Life Moves,
- 2:36the agency that you mentioned, where I get to run the program I developed,
- 2:40which is a trauma focused, mindfulness based forty six week graduate training program
- 2:46providing supports to the residents that we're serving here who are currently homeless well,
- 2:53all right, sounds awesome, So let's kind of dive in. You know,
- 2:59before we kind of scheduled this, I'd reach out to you and you
- 3:02shared some kind of exciting things when you're doing something that not a lot of
- 3:08people are doing, and as a result, not a lot of students are
- 3:14getting the opportunity to learn in that kind of contact and setting. So right,
- 3:22share with our listeners what you're doing, and let's let's let's get into
- 3:27it. Okay, Yeah, it is different. So because I'm working not
- 3:32at a community mental health site but at a human services agency that's real focus
- 3:39is on providing the supports necessary, intensive integrated supports to stabilize individuals. Many
- 3:51of these folks are also families with children and sometimes two generations of you know,
- 3:58grandparents, as uncles, people who've been trying to stay in tact,
- 4:01as families who for one reason or another become homeless. And our goal as
- 4:08an agency is to be able to place these individuals in stable housing. So
- 4:13it's very integrated case management support. But now in this agency, we're now
- 4:18in our tenth year of a graduate training site being developed early on by a
- 4:29woman who really deserves a lot of credit because she came in and saw that
- 4:34a lot of these families, children, veterans, individuals could really benefit from
- 4:41clinical supports while they were here. And you know, if we can help
- 4:46people change their minds or their perceptions or their beliefs, and a lot of
- 4:50them faulty beliefs about themselves, that we can help create different futures. So
- 4:58the program arted and developed and sort of morphed into a psychodynamic program. And
- 5:05then when I came in, I'm now in my fourth graduate training year.
- 5:11I really recognize the amount of trauma that was here, and that's always been
- 5:14a part of my background. But I'm also a Bajrihanna Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for
- 5:20almost the last twenty years, and I recognize the need to take care of
- 5:25ourselves and to be able to recognize too differences between perceptions like ultimate and relative
- 5:31realities, and a lot of folks, a lot of folks are really suffering
- 5:38right now and really struggling in a freeman and develop some of our own mindfulness
- 5:46pectuses. Or if I can support the students developing their own, then I
- 5:54am creating a resource source for the students to go in and utilize as they're
- 5:59working with somebody. That really helps reduce the amount of countertransference that comes up
- 6:05for a lot of students and helps them deal with some of their own anxiety.
- 6:10And that's also something that if the clients are interested in people can the
- 6:14students can teach the clients and then they have something sustainable to take with them
- 6:17as they go onto their stable housing. So how I get to do this,
- 6:23how I got to do any of this is because Life Moves. We've
- 6:27got about a twenty million dollars a year budget. We're really a large agency
- 6:30covering all of San Mateo and all of Santa Clara County, and we've got
- 6:38probably I guess forty percent of our income is private and that means that I
- 6:45am fully funded. My program is fully funded by private donors. And without
- 6:49the private donors, I really wouldn't have the latitude to do what I'm doing
- 6:56or get to be innovative in the way I'm doing it because I'm beholden to
- 7:01no one other than people who want to fund this program, and then I'm
- 7:06able to do report for them at the end about what we're doing and capturing
- 7:11outcome outcomes that show that their money is translating into something that's not only meaningful
- 7:15while clients are here, but possibly meaningful continuing on for the rest of their
- 7:20lives. Your description of you know, what the program does and how it
- 7:30educates these income and graduate students. You know, my reaction was, this
- 7:38sounds amazing. It also sounds pretty ambitious. I mean it sounds like an
- 7:43ideal almost in a sense. Can you kind of break break it down?
- 7:48What does that look like when these when these students come in, How do
- 7:51you introduce this this topic within the context of these clients. Well, I
- 8:00want to tell you first, I am absolutely an idealist and in the words
- 8:07one of my really treasured mentors, Dick Schwartz, he always talks about being
- 8:13a hope merchant. I'm a huge hopeful chant. You know. I want
- 8:22to and this is this is for me, the dream of what our field
- 8:30can embody at its greatest potential. In terms of the clinical piece. We
- 8:35can do amazing assessment, we can do amazing research, but this clinical piece
- 8:41of working with individuals and working with ourselves is an area that I feel we've
- 8:46we're losing. It's becoming corporatized. It's not becoming it has on so many
- 8:52levels, and I think what we're losing is the ability to really recognize how
- 9:00to develop ourselves and our greatest capacity to do transformational and healing work. So
- 9:07one, that's my premise that this work is meaningful, it has value,
- 9:11and it can be done, but we have to do it in different ways
- 9:16because the first issue is our graduate training. And my first thought in my
- 9:20ideal graduate school program would be to begin immediately working students to develop their own
- 9:28inequalities that are already to be in them. A lot of them just lying
- 9:33dormant, waiting for the attention to really value developmental qualities like compassion and creativity
- 9:43and caring and the call that comes from mindfulness. So many of these qualities
- 9:48are really their greatest strengths. And for those of us who've been doing this
- 9:52work awhile, we realize that at a certain point we had to let go
- 9:56of the books and the theory when nothing was working with the client we were
- 10:03with other than to really drop in and really deeply listen to me present with
- 10:07the client. So one I speak about it. So I'm speaking this afternoon
- 10:13at Palo Alto University. I get to speak with you. This is so
- 10:16great and you know, I get to be able to talk about this.
- 10:20My hope is that people will recognize that we really this is a time for
- 10:28us to innovate. And Adam Grant's wonderful book Originals is one I like to
- 10:33refer to individuals because he really talks about who are the innovators and what is
- 10:39it that they're doing or that we're doing. So I put it out there
- 10:43the students hear about it from other students, and so when it comes time
- 10:50to do the interviews and the Big baypic Fair, I've set up my table.
- 10:56Students come, they express their interests, I have them in for group
- 11:00interviews, and then I have them back for individual interviews. But they already
- 11:03come in pretty much knowing that this is what they're going to get. And
- 11:07for a lot of students, I really have to appreciate them immensely because they're
- 11:11really conditioned and groomed to have successful careers. And so a lot of them
- 11:18choose to work with the homeless in this environment instead of going to probably what
- 11:26would be considered more prestigious sites and settings hospitals. Bas A lot of them
- 11:35move on from here to their internships and go to vas and hospitals. But
- 11:41I'm really glad to get them right here early on, because I know,
- 11:45no matter where they go, they will have developed some greater awareness than I
- 11:48think they're getting much support in being able to develop, and I know they'll
- 11:54take that with them. So I think I covered most of what you said,
- 12:01guy, but I know you did to me again. It's super exciting,
- 12:07and I know I shared this with you last time you spoke, or
- 12:13maybe even both both times we spoke previously. You know, when I was
- 12:18in graduate school, I did the exact opposite of what you're teaching. You
- 12:22know. I'd come to school kind of an older student. I was thinking
- 12:26was thirty five, and I kind I had been in therapy and I got
- 12:28a lot out of it, and I've been around the block a little,
- 12:31and I kind of thought I kind of had that stuff locked in, dialed
- 12:35in. I didn't. I didn't need to work on that so much.
- 12:39And consequently I was like, what book do I need to read? What
- 12:43workshop do I What do I need to bring into me to become, you
- 12:50know, the trauma therapist I wanted to become. I didn't honor just as
- 12:56what you were saying, my own compaction my own creativity. I didn't value
- 13:00that. I didn't understand that is the value of the foundation, the essence
- 13:07of this work. And in addition, exactly what you're saying, I've learned
- 13:15and heard over and over and over again on this podcast from people who've been
- 13:18doing this for years, that that's exactly the gold nugget that these people have
- 13:30come to realize is that they needed to put the book down and open that
- 13:37gate, open that door, open themselves up. And that's not always easy,
- 13:41but that's where you know, the exchange of the heart, the energy
- 13:46that this foundation can happen. That to me is so exciting. Why is
- 13:52that or how is that difficult or challenging for a lot of people? Well,
- 14:01the first thing I'd say is, I think it's challenging for graduate training
- 14:05programs because first they're holding to other regulatory agencies that oversee a lot of how
- 14:13they do well. They oversee what they do and how they do it.
- 14:16But again, I think what happens too is I do know some amazing professors,
- 14:24adding professors, tenure professors who also maintain a limited private practice because they
- 14:30keep their feet and their heart and their hands and their minds in their deep
- 14:35connections with clients and they're always growing and always learning, and meanwhile they're teaching
- 14:39what they need to teach. But I think it can happen that we get
- 14:45locked away into our into our towers and we forget. I don't know why
- 14:52we don't have graduate school trainings that don't feature numerous clients who come in,
- 15:00people from the community who have utilized years of mental health therapy to come in
- 15:09and talk to students about what worked for them and what didn't. Just panel
- 15:13discussions of what worked and what didn't, and then also for us to be
- 15:18able to recognize there are diagnoses that carry a lot of stigma, sociopathy,
- 15:26you know, to antisocial personality, to sort of a lot of stigma,
- 15:31narcissism, but also borderline personality disorder a lot of people. I mean,
- 15:37I have heard I don't know any therapists who have said I don't see borderlines,
- 15:43but I've heard many people say that, And I think that tells me
- 15:48something in you was been able to get prepared to do this work because you
- 15:54don't know who walks in your door. It doesn't matter how affluent they are,
- 15:58how educated they are. We don't know about what happened in early childhood
- 16:03around their attachments. We don't know attachment trauma and how it's played out,
- 16:07but we all can see suffering. And when clients can get up, and
- 16:11a whole spectrum of clients could get up, people who just want to volunteer
- 16:17and tell their stories and then share what hurt them in the therapy process and
- 16:22what helped them. I just think that would be the greatest thing ever and
- 16:26a group and a great opportunity for Q and A with the students. Yeah,
- 16:33and so I do just access to that. It's like the nugget,
- 16:37as you say, it's right there. It just we're walking around it instead
- 16:41of picking it up and realizing how amazingly golden it is. When you talked
- 16:48about, you know, allowing or inviting the graduate students to kind of honor
- 16:56and discover their own creativity and learn the value of it within this work,
- 17:00how a little bit about how you do that? Okay, Yeah, so
- 17:10why go ahead? Yeah? So I think this is super important. So
- 17:18these are students, this is a training year. They're also working with some
- 17:23of the most traumatized people that we can never work with. So they need
- 17:29to have really, really good supports in place so they can do this work
- 17:34and develop their own confidence in their competenence. So the forty six week curriculum
- 17:41is designed strategically to give them the first eight weeks of a deep, deep
- 17:48immersion into foundational trainings that this whole program is built upon. First thing they
- 17:55all get the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Vandercole. This is why they
- 18:00I want them to be informed about trauma and and then I also give them
- 18:07intro to internal family systems. That's what I gave them this year, just
- 18:11because that is a tool they can use with clients. It was written for
- 18:15the lay person and for clients, so I give them that because they can
- 18:18also start looking at their own systems and their own develop their own awareness of
- 18:25from an IFS perspective, self and parts awareness. So I start that pretty
- 18:30early. But then they also get their mandatory reporter training. You know,
- 18:33guy, I was like you. I was in graduate school in my late
- 18:37thirties. I didn't get done until my late thirties, and so from that
- 18:42point on until I came back to the Peninsula and took a course offered by
- 18:48San Mateo County Behavioral Health, a course of mandatory reporter training. I had
- 18:53never ever had training in mandatory reporting. I knew I was one, I
- 18:59had no idea what to do or how to do it, so I thought,
- 19:03well, this is really important. It turns out quite a few of
- 19:06the students, but not all of them, did receive this training last year
- 19:11because I take students that are their second year and on, so they have
- 19:14had some exposure. That's for the doctoral students. I have three master students
- 19:18that are all our therapy students, since this will be sometimes the first time
- 19:22they've worked with clients, so they get that they get We have created,
- 19:27in partnership with the Stanford Trauma researcher doctor Jennifer Keller, a group called BEAR.
- 19:33I've spoken about it. It's building empowerment and resilience and it is a
- 19:40it is funded by one of our funders that really wants to address the issue
- 19:44of intimate partner violence and how often that connects to homelessness for women and their
- 19:48children. So we created BEAR. The first week of our blessed these students
- 19:56hearts because the first week of our of our sort of information session getting to
- 20:03know you icebreakers, it was really short. We had a brief ice breaker
- 20:07and then we launched right into it, five intensive days of the self defense
- 20:14component of BEAR and we got a grant. We've got our body shield,
- 20:18Kickshields myths, and this amazing doctor Keller, who's a black belt, comes
- 20:23in and teaches the students. The first thing we teach somebody is to use
- 20:27their voice and to know that they are worth defending. All of this is
- 20:33about teaching people that they are worth protecting and getting away from harm. It's
- 20:40not about violence, it's not about aggression. It's getting away from harm to
- 20:45save yourself. So that was basically how the students came this week of it
- 20:49this year was to have a full week. It ended up being one of
- 20:52the most amazing bonding experiences ever. Was a total mystery how this could have
- 20:59been as great as it was, but they really they suddenly started to get
- 21:03a sense of what this year was going to be like and really what they
- 21:06were going to do in this year. So that was right off the bat.
- 21:11And then we had the amazing doctor Vill Murrayus who's up at UCSF,
- 21:15who created the Building Bridges curriculum with us, which is really about supporting parents
- 21:21who have experienced trauma to understand the legacy burden of trauma and how to be
- 21:27able to work with that and what happened in their own early attachment, and
- 21:33how to really look ahead to working with their children, many of whom have
- 21:38experienced trauma, but looking ahead like twenty years and what would you want your
- 21:42child to say about you twenty years from now in terms of how they felt
- 21:48parented or loved or supported or nurtured. And that's what we start supporting right
- 21:52now. So all of that is how it all gets started. And then
- 21:59we do we also have a speakers coming, doctor Amy bessel Crow's coming to
- 22:04work on provider training on children and trauma, so they're getting a heavy trauma
- 22:10foundation right off the bat. And then it's one week after another where we're
- 22:15just building over and over and over, doing a lot of IFS videos.
- 22:21I really really appreciate ifs so very much, and then we build more and
- 22:25more into the mindfulness component and every element of this. The work I do
- 22:32with contracted supervisors where they're all we're all on the same page. They'll have
- 22:37their unique perspectives, but we're all on the same page about wanting to cultivate
- 22:41the students qualities within themselves. Then we'll we get to a place where the
- 22:48students are right now. There we have to create a safe container for them
- 22:56to learn to fall down, to get back up again, to know that
- 23:02this is all part of the process. Over and over, I tell them
- 23:04it's a training year. It's a training year. You're learning. And they
- 23:11start by about January to really find their feet. And then I watched them
- 23:15just go into the remainder of the year just so prepared and so willing,
- 23:22and then then their excitement grows. Right now, they're still anxious. They're
- 23:26afraid of doing something wrong. And that's one of the things that we have
- 23:30to work with, which is there is no wrong, you just try.
- 23:33It's like Yoda, you know, there's no try. You just do it.
- 23:37You go out and do it. That reminds me of when I was
- 23:42previously working at a clinic here in northern California. You know, we were
- 23:47assessing and treating kids showing the early signs of psychosis. And I had someone
- 23:52new out of graduate school, and I remember one of the supervisors saying,
- 23:57you know what this relation with these kids, and they were kids we were
- 24:02working with. You've got to be willing to take off your clinical hat and
- 24:07I looked at him and I was like, this guy, nuts, I
- 24:11just know. I've just been in graduated school for four years learning. I
- 24:15just I just got it to fit the way I wanted it to fit.
- 24:18Now you're asking me to take this thing off with you and that I never
- 24:25forgot that. And I over the course of the five years that I was
- 24:29there, I really kind of learned how to do that. And Nancy,
- 24:33it wasn't until you know, when I was at that position and I was
- 24:41at work one day and my mom died. I got called the call.
- 24:44It was crazy, and I had to take off work and had to deal
- 24:48with that, and and then I went back to work and I wasn't ready.
- 24:52I got I got triggered in session with a client. I took off
- 24:53four times. And it wasn't until I went through that process and I came
- 24:57back there was I dropped. I was able to just drop everything and connect
- 25:07with people on a level that I hadn't experienced before. Yeah, yeah,
- 25:14talk about that, Yeah, I can't. It was like it was like
- 25:18you just all of a sudden, your life changed, all of a sudden,
- 25:22All of a sudden, you didn't need to have the controls that you
- 25:26thought you did. That's in your mother's death. There's no control. All
- 25:33you could do is present with it, experience your feelings, your grief,
- 25:37your love, your loss. And that's exactly what the clients need us to
- 25:41do with them. That's exactly it. I don't think I've ever articulated like
- 25:45that. It was. I didn't need that. There was just just trust
- 25:51in to use a happening phrase, trust in the process, trusting in myself,
- 25:57trust in who that I didn't have that need for control. No,
- 26:03yeah, that's exactly what it was. Yeah. Yeah, So that's such
- 26:08a good place to get to, and sometimes it takes that big kind of
- 26:12life event to get you there, but it's very purifying. I mean,
- 26:17it just distills and you get to the heart of what really does matter with
- 26:22the students. When we start, we always meet on Wednesdays nine to twelve
- 26:26thirty. We have our component. That's basically I always have a checking We
- 26:32have a two minute silent meditation. The students may join or not in whatever
- 26:36way they want. I give them a couple prompts about basically allowing any places
- 26:41that might be holding tension their brows, typically their throat, their chest their
- 26:47shoulders, to just allow them to relax and roll back, and to take
- 26:51two minutes and follow your breath, soft gazed down the end of your nose,
- 26:56eyes closed, for anybody who wants it. It's anation. Nobody has
- 27:02to do it, but it's to recognize and honor whatever guidance we have internally
- 27:07externally. I've only begun using these terms in the last couple of years.
- 27:12At sixty, I don't mind using them so much anymore. And I mean
- 27:17it's like I'm not afraid of being judged or dismissed because I'll use words like
- 27:22guidance and I just ask because if there's anything that will benefit us in our
- 27:29growth and in our delivery of services to clients, of course I want to
- 27:33welcome it. And then I always have a check in. And there are
- 27:37many times the students have said I needed this so badly this morning, or
- 27:42driving in, I couldn't wait to just get a chance to be here for
- 27:48this two minutes and checking in and by the time, you know, and
- 27:51it's gotten harder, guy, because we kind of outgrew our space here and
- 27:55now we're having to meet off site because I've got nineteen students this year,
- 28:00and when I started, it was nine and it takes a while to get
- 28:03all the way around the table, so we have to limit it about two
- 28:07minutes per person, and not always everybody's there. We have alumni who are
- 28:11here who are doing their own projects and dissiputations, but still it's a much
- 28:15bigger group. But just to take that two minutes and identify what's going on
- 28:19with them, we all hear each other. And I'm so struck by some
- 28:25of the major life events. They're dealing with, divorce with their parents,
- 28:30breakups themselves, significant health issues. I am stunned. Every year it seems
- 28:36like it increases. These are students who are dealing with profoundly serious health issues,
- 28:41and it makes me question the amount of stress anybody is able to carry
- 28:48during a period where they're trying to have relationship, work, school, do
- 28:52all of their assignments. I just I watch them not only so fatigued and
- 28:56tired, but physically physically not well, and so I just think, Okay,
- 29:03I can at least create this space for them to be present and recognize
- 29:07where they are, because if they didn't and we just launched into a training,
- 29:14you know, they're carrying all of that here it can be shared,
- 29:17and a lot of times they're so beautiful the way that they'll just honor each
- 29:21other. We take a break and I'll just see students connecting with each other,
- 29:25and they're often you know, they don't many of them don't know each
- 29:27other before this year. They're from different schools, And it's just always touches
- 29:33me when we when we create the foundation and we provide the supports and we
- 29:38ensure the safety, the students will grow. Just like a plant. It's
- 29:44just we build the foundation. The student's nature is to grow. It's very
- 29:48you know, it's Maslow, it's Rogers, it's that awareness. What really
- 29:53strikes me about what you've been saying throughout here is the how you're honoring the
- 30:03humanness of the clinician within within this process. How you're focusing on that and
- 30:11really valuing that, because you know, you talked about much of this work
- 30:18now is becoming corporatized, and it allows one to to do anything but that
- 30:25right there. Everything has to be the result oriented. But what you're saying
- 30:32here reminds me of something that past guest Peter, Peter Bernstein, really had
- 30:37to learn the hard way, and he said, you know, what I
- 30:40learned is that we're no different than our clients. And that's that's very different
- 30:45than kind of approaching things the way I initially did, and in the most
- 30:51respectful way. I try to which I want to learn so that I can
- 30:55help and I can fix. And that's a very different dynamic. But what
- 31:00you're talking about here, it sounds like a real spiritual process. It is,
- 31:10so it sounds it sounds, it sounds amazing. It really does nineteen
- 31:18people. It sounds like you need to get more people. I have great
- 31:22supervisors assisting me. I couldn't do it with that. Plus every year more
- 31:26alumni stay on to do dissertations or special projects or to aid like in our
- 31:32neuropsyche assessments have I just have wonderful alumni who are coming in and doing great
- 31:37work to help me. I could never do it. I mean, it
- 31:41really does take everybody. But I want to jump back, guy, because
- 31:45one of the things that I remember, I attended the Evolution of Psychotherapy conference
- 31:52last December down in anaheunt Aaron Beck was video sort of video conferenced in.
- 31:57He's there sitting at home in his wheelchair. It's this little red bow tie.
- 32:01And you know, there are students who really learned. They come in
- 32:06and they really learn a lot about CBT, really strong with CBT. That's
- 32:09their hat and that's what that's what they learned, and of course they want
- 32:14to try it. So I always say absolutely, and then if it doesn't
- 32:19work, then I want you to have these other things to fall back on,
- 32:24And so I don't need them to suddenly just take off a hat and
- 32:30be vulnerable. It's like it would never take something away that is the only
- 32:35thing that they might have much confidence in. Or being really steeped in psychodynamic
- 32:39you don't see that as much anymore, but we still see it. But
- 32:43the truth Aaron beck I thought said it so well. He said, we
- 32:46can have manuals, but we can never manualize the therapist. We always have
- 32:53to be the vehicle, the facilitator, the one who is in whatever our
- 33:00theoretical orientation, we're thinking about how to be present and bring forth what is
- 33:07most needed at that time for the land. And so it's good to learn
- 33:15different theoretical approaches. But I can tell you I ran to the end of
- 33:17my train with CBT, and with psychodynamic it did get to a different place,
- 33:22and you mentioned the word spiritual. It got to a place where it
- 33:27became much more spiritual. It was people's existential crises. It was since feelings
- 33:32of meaninglessness, hopelessness, worthlessness. It was very hard to have them focused
- 33:40too much on their thoughts and the negative results that might come from certain thoughts
- 33:46when they were just trying to do everything they could to hold themselves together.
- 33:52And I see that they you know, they took how many buses and they
- 33:55put themselves together the best they could, and you know, they're just there,
- 34:01and of course they're vulnerable. They may have had therapy in the past
- 34:06that didn't help them, that maybe even hurt them, and they're taking a
- 34:08chance. And two things just come to mind. One is now, because
- 34:15the APA requirement that it went into effect, the students need to have at
- 34:19least one tape session. I encouraged them to do more. But I remember
- 34:22at one our homeless drop in sight in Palato, one of the students had
- 34:28gotten permission from one client she'd work with woman who had just a profound history
- 34:32of trauma, and she said, would you like to be a person that
- 34:37I videotaped for my supervision session? And the woman agreed and signed the release.
- 34:44She went to Goodwill, She got herself the best clothes she could,
- 34:47She did her hair, and when the student had set up the computer and
- 34:53then gotten up to walk around and sit, the computer was on record,
- 34:58the client looked in. She was looking at her reflection, and she was
- 35:01composing herself to give the best presentation of herself. That person had been sleeping
- 35:07in the bushes the night before. This is this is the humanity that we're
- 35:15connecting with. That something in her allowed herself to be even more vulnerable to
- 35:22be seen, but she was going to find a way to be seen in
- 35:24the best possible way. She hadn't given up. There's that, that hope
- 35:30is there? So we that's really that asks us to be incredibly sensitive and
- 35:37incredibly caring. And I tell the students the first thing, you know,
- 35:45I love the word spirit I love it because I love that it comes from
- 35:49Latin spirit is. I love that the first thing we do when we're born
- 35:53is breathe in. The last thing we do in this form is breathe out.
- 35:59And it feels to me like, well, when you're starting with spiritus
- 36:02and you're ending with spiritus, let's just look at this life as being a
- 36:06life full of breath after breath that can inform and nourish us to really look
- 36:13at what our greater capacity is. And if we only look at ourselves as
- 36:16parts without an essence that somehow has healing qualities and perceptive qualities, then we're
- 36:23going to miss a huge part of our potential. And the thing I say
- 36:29to the students is you don't need to believe me, but check it out.
- 36:32Just try just explore it a little bit. So I give them the
- 36:36supports to support it, and then some just go crazy for it, and
- 36:39others are like, Okay, that's been helpful, great, but they've got
- 36:44kind of their path. I just want to support whoever it is doing whatever
- 36:47they're going to do. So people listening to this, you know a lot
- 36:52of them are all clinicians, kind of just starting out on the common inform
- 36:57journey. Maybe people have some experience and now want to become common informed.
- 37:05You only have what twenty people in this program? A couple of things,
- 37:09what would you advise those people who are listening who like this sounds amazing,
- 37:15Nan, It's only has room for twenty people. Obviously, I'm not going
- 37:17to get in there or where would you direct them. Yeah, okay,
- 37:29it's such a good question, guy, I think you and I should be
- 37:32on I think we should speak at some conferences and go to graduate schools and
- 37:38just talk about a bigger vision and a future vision and be able to work
- 37:45with some innovative lectures and professors and graduate students, because I really do think
- 37:52it's the time to envision a healthier, more holistic future for our field.
- 37:59We we have an amazing field, but I don't feel we're maximizing our potential
- 38:05and what we can do and how it can be used in so many greater
- 38:08ways. So one of the things is, of course your podcast, so
- 38:15I get to bring it right back to you. Look what you're doing.
- 38:17You know. This was a great support for me when I started listening to
- 38:22your podcasts because you're bringing so many people in who've had so much experience and
- 38:27they're speaking about they're speaking from their lived experience, and I think that's huge.
- 38:32The other is we really need to find a way to listen to clients
- 38:36more and do in California what they've done in Oregon for years, which is
- 38:40create a certification process for peer support specialists, and that's people with lived experience
- 38:47who then get certified to come in and do work within community mental health settings
- 38:52and residential settings to be able to be skills trainers, which is a term
- 38:57up in Oregon. I don't know that we've got that here, but to
- 39:00work within the agencies with leadership and with clients to be that bridge. So
- 39:06it's not just too tiered. I think we need that fluidity and learning from
- 39:10these people who are so amazing in the stories that they have to share about
- 39:17their own journey. So it's thinking about doing things like that in California and
- 39:23other states, looking at what your states offer in terms of supports for individuals
- 39:30with lived experience. I think, you know, I think people who are
- 39:39teaching in graduate school, if they drop in and really think about, like
- 39:44you've said, what was missing when you got out? Because I had the
- 39:47same thing. I did have a really amazing mentor and he's still in my
- 39:51life. He's eighty seven now, and you know, curiously, he was
- 39:54the one that said to me one day, he said, Nancy, this
- 39:59work is all spiritual. We just don't call it that because it was back
- 40:02in the eighties, you know, back in the early nineties, and graduate
- 40:07schools didn't call it that, so I'm calling it that, And I think
- 40:15I think it just has to continue rippling out, you know, sort of
- 40:17that drop and rippling out. So talks like this, reading recommendations like you've
- 40:22got human services agencies like Life Moves, any human service agency that is relying
- 40:30a lot on private funding can create a program just like this. I am
- 40:35so happy to share how simple a model this is. And one person at
- 40:39thirty two hours a week, working with some wonderful supervisors can do this work,
- 40:47and we can innovate, and we can work with the population directly.
- 40:52They don't need to come to our office anywhere. So if we can just
- 40:58find one little room in a human services agency out of which we can operate,
- 41:01it can be anything. I think that's also a way to sort of
- 41:06take our work out to the streets. No, what's the best way for
- 41:09people to get in contact with you, Nancy? Because I'd a feeling people
- 41:13will want to my email dr dot nl Morgan at gmail dot com. And
- 41:22then I've got my website which is www dot d r n L Morgan dot
- 41:29com. And then my amazing sons are doing a YouTube page for me.
- 41:37Oh nice, because I've got some videos and trainings that it's really hard to
- 41:42send things over size and sometimes we get into complications around technology. So I
- 41:49just thought it'd be so much easier if people could just click on a particular
- 41:52talker tray. So that's something that in knowing, thank you for two because
- 41:58you've acknowledged and allowed me to take some of what we've done together on Trauma
- 42:04Therapist Podcast and be able to showcase it on that on YouTube site. It's
- 42:07not up yet, it's probably about two months away from being the Okay,
- 42:12well, I'd love to have that as well as your email address and the
- 42:16website on the show notes. Patriot at the Traumatist podcast dot com. Nancy,
- 42:22love it, Love talking to you. Like I said before this,
- 42:25what you say is exactly what I want and aspire this podcast to be about.
- 42:32So it's it's an honor having you on here. It is an honor
- 42:38being on here guy. And there's one last thing and it just pops want
- 42:44to say it if you haven't had her on yet, the woman whose name
- 42:49I'm forgetting, who wrote Trauma Stewardship. Oh, she has been on and
- 42:55she's coming on again. I forget her name. Yeah, yeah, good
- 43:02she's coming back on. Yeah, I've been newly acquainted with that book.
- 43:07I feel like it's a book. If I could have written a book,
- 43:10that's the book I would have written. I love it, and so that
- 43:15is now also a book that I'm recommending to anybody who's doing this work.
- 43:19Another resource to mention. I'm going to here it is briefly, Oh,
- 43:29Laura Vandernewt Mitzki. Yes, that's what it is. That's going to get
- 43:32me all right, Thanks so much. We'll talk to you all right,
- 43:36guy. I wish you a wonderful day, all right, Bye bye