Latest / The Trauma Therapist / From the archives: Gerald Vest, ACSW, LISW, LMT.

Transcript

From the archives: Gerald Vest, ACSW, LISW, LMT. · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Today we have another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests.
0:05
Enjoy Welcome to the Trauma Epors Podcast, a show about the incredible people dedicated
0:14
to helping those who experienced trauma. My name is Goy macpherson and my mission
0:18
is to raise the awareness of trauma and to inspire each of us to help
0:22
those around us. Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Guy
0:28
McPherson, and this is a podcast where we interview master trauma therapists from all
0:33
over the world. People passionate about what they're doing, specializing in trauma therapy
0:38
and making a difference. If you're a trauma therapist or if you're just interested
0:42
in trauma therapy, this is the place today. I am so excited to
0:47
introduce my guest, Jerald West. Jerry, are you ready to go?
0:51
I'm ready Guy, you bet all right? So. Jerry is a veteran
0:55
of the US Army and as a licensed independent social worker, he currently provides
0:59
counseling through Military One Source and Tricare to individuals, couples and families, and
1:04
supervisors, students and professionals for licensing requirements. In addition, Jerry's also an
1:11
organizer consultant trainer at Southern New Mexico Intrigative Health Services Alliance, where he serves
1:17
warriors, vets and their families. I'd also want to include here that formerly
1:22
Jerry served as a senior social worker for the Premier US Army Warrior Restoration and
1:26
Resilience Center in Fort Bliss, Texas. So, Jerry, I've told our
1:33
listeners just a little bit about you, take a moment, share with us
1:36
something personal about yourself to help us get to know you better. Well,
1:41
I've been interested in community mental health for a long time. I started a
1:46
community mental health center in Pittsburgh in nineteen seventy to seventy four where we started
1:52
developing these integrated and holistic health practices. Unfortunately, around nineteen seventy three and
1:59
seventy four, communities started closing their mental hospitals because of the horrendous treatment that
2:06
patients were being received in these cuckoo's nests. We've all, many of us
2:10
have seen one few over the cuckoo's nests, and I also had a good
2:15
opportunity to experience that firsthand as a consultant for the Athens Mental Hospital called Athens
2:22
Mental Health Center. So I saw how horrendously these people were being treated by
2:27
psychiatry, and when they were dumping the mental hospitals, they dumped them right
2:31
into our community health services. Psychiatry came in with their labels and drugs,
2:38
took over our community mental health systems of Pittsburgh where I was located, and
2:44
just destroyed all the good health practices that we were doing in the community that
2:49
I'm starting to get back with now and as I'm working with these injured warriors,
2:53
so my experience goes back quite a ways, and I have personally experienced
2:59
such pain and suffering by these psychiatric therapists who only desire to label and drug
3:07
and code to patients that came into our service centers. And we never did
3:13
that before. We never labeled people, we never had to put them on
3:17
record and where they lose their privacy and confidentiality with the insurance industry for example.
3:24
So I'm just honored to be able to work with these soldiers and their
3:30
families. And I was in the most remarkable health service center ever developed under
3:37
John Fortunado's leadership at Fort Bliss, so I had the good fortune there to
3:42
really work with over two hundred injured warriors and families and see them recover successfully
3:47
as long as they were receiving integrative and holistic health services intensively and extensively.
3:54
Guy, those two words have to go together. Extensively and intensively, because
4:00
every injured warrior and family had been injured to the core intensively and extensively.
4:08
Their whole body, mind, spirit, emotions, their relationships are totally endangered.
4:16
And you're speaking my language, sir, intense and extensive. Let's get
4:21
into that in a short bit. But share with us something personal about you.
4:25
Where are you living. Let's hear something about that. Well. I
4:29
live in Las Crusas, New Mexico. I was brought here. I started
4:33
the social work program in Royal Grand University in Ohio, and I was there
4:39
three years and my kids started speaking appellation and the schools were suffering where we
4:46
were, so we decided to search and New Mexico State University brought me in
4:50
to help develop their social work program at the undergraduate and graduate school levels and
4:57
had the good fortune to do that. Learned about the community and grassroots and
5:02
became a I think a pretty effective community organizer and organizing communities for right action,
5:11
so to speak, to serve humanities to serve people in a healthy,
5:15
responsible, respectful way. And so I've been here thirty five years. My
5:20
wife passed in November. We've been together fifty two years and we had a
5:28
wonderful time together. And we have two children. My daughter is a senior
5:32
social worker in the Denver Public Schools with three grandchildren. And my son's one
5:38
of the finest Shakespearean actors in the country and he's leading Shakespeare in the Sea
5:44
programs in southern California right now. Wow, well, Jerry, thanks so
5:47
much. I mean, there's just a warmth in your voice that I'm sure
5:53
I'm certain comes out in the care you provide. Thanks so much for sharing
5:58
that. Well, thanks for youivity guy. Well, you're welcome. So
6:01
let's use this to move to our next topic, which is the quote.
6:05
This podcast, the Trauma Therapist podcast, is about getting to know you,
6:10
the master trauma therapists better. In order to do that, we want to
6:15
get to know and hear what's inspired you along your journey, what's compelled you
6:20
to pursue this path. So share with us, if you will, quote
6:25
or mantra something that's inspired or helped you drive you on in your personal journey.
6:32
Well, I think I can identify at least two or three resources.
6:38
One of them was doctor Claudio Niranjo. He's a great psychologist and psychiatrist.
6:45
He wrote to one quest in the early seventies Reformed Rotes called Seekers after Truth,
6:54
and the whole idea was to learn about how we can be the truth
6:59
to speak, we can be what we are. But most of us were
7:03
very confused. Who are we? Where are we? Why are we here?
7:08
We always asking those deep questions, and we spent serious time together developing
7:15
solutions answers to those questions, to practicing meditation during that period of time,
7:20
I also wanted to learn the body and mind inside and out, so I
7:25
became a license massage therapist so I could safely and carefully and skillfully touch my
7:32
clients and introduce them to safe, skillful, nourishing touch. So that's been
7:36
one of my interests because I just know that our society we have right now,
7:43
a society of untouchable so to speak. Schools put up red flags,
7:47
they punished children and others for touching one another, They put them out of
7:51
school, they drug them. Our systems are so failed. Guy, there's
7:57
such a need for those of us who really care for humanity and social systems
8:01
because they're so broken, and so I had great opportunities to learn from the
8:07
best people in the world. Caught in nuranjo Oscar Chazo, who was a
8:11
Bolivian, great Bolivian scientist, And I was initiated into the Tibetan medicine to
8:18
Tartang Toku Rimpichet, who's a Tibetan lama who first left Tibet when the Chinese
8:24
came in, and he wouldn't be with us today, so he went to
8:28
India and then came the United States and trained those of us who were in
8:31
mental health who wanted to learn Tibetan medicine. So I think that's the key
8:35
to my health practices and learning how to use all these different methods and approaches
8:41
to the multiple injuries that our soldiers and families are experiencing today. So you
8:46
talk about humanity, talk about really developing touch utilizing that in a safe way
8:56
for the people who've been injured. Can you break it down for us,
9:00
get specific how you utilize that, maybe how you came to realize that this
9:05
was really important for you. That's really a good question. I think it
9:09
probably evolved with my family development. We came from a lot of kids.
9:15
My brothers were all in service also. I have two of us were in
9:18
the Army and two in the Navy, a summariner and a destroyer and a
9:22
couple of army guys. And you don't do it a lot of touching it,
9:28
you know to it. But I was with seventeen brothers over in France
9:31
for seventeen months and we learned to dance together. We were just growing up,
9:39
like nineteen twenty twenty one years of age and then coming home and I
9:43
just feel like there's been something really missing in our lives when we're not touching.
9:48
And I discovered when I was working with the mental health systems and mymcas
9:52
and other community organizations that people who are touched thry people who aren't straw.
10:01
It was so obvious. Yesterday I met with this soldier who it goes right
10:05
back to their early development too. Guy because for him example, he told
10:11
me his mother detests him because she was raped and he was the result.
10:16
And he went into the army. He served seven years. He's a good
10:20
soldier, but when he came out he had no place to go. He
10:24
turned homeless, no one was responding to him. He was just a lost
10:28
soul because his mother fought mother he lost. Of course, didn't have a
10:33
father, so he didn't have any place to go. And I've noticed that
10:37
people when they're kind of lost in time and space, if we can just
10:43
do some laying on of hands, just put our hands on their shoulders and
10:46
breathed together and unite in the ground. We need to ground these energies too,
10:52
that they come back with there's no stress to the max, that there's
10:56
no self control, relaxed. They don't really know how to survive these enormous
11:05
stressors that hit every system. So I'm so grateful for touch because you know,
11:13
the soldiers trust somebody who touches them safely and skillfully. And I love
11:18
giving facial massages so they can feel their face after they come back from war
11:22
because they're just so stressed. I love giving deep and I have several partners
11:28
now who come into our meetings and now after we're done, they'll go get
11:33
their body massage, they'll get their reiki sessions, they'll get their acupuncture,
11:39
and at the end of that day, they feel like they can't remember when
11:43
they felt so good. So these are These are really helpful tools. I
11:48
don't know how else to say, but they're so important to those of us
11:54
serving our injured warriors and their families and teaching them touch also so that they
12:01
can you know, there's a difference when you're touched physically and you're touch mentally,
12:07
and you're touched emotionally. And I consider spiritual touches like a form of
12:11
meditation that integrates the physical, mental, and emotional conditions of the human being.
12:18
So when we're calming everything down and all the cells are working together,
12:22
the nervous system, the senses, everything is working. They heal and recover.
12:28
But if they're given drugs, bills and psychic labels for life, we
12:33
can count on them developing that what I consider the VA shuffle. Well,
12:39
you know, Jerry, I think you're speaking some very kind of important and
12:45
profound words here, and I think a lot of our listeners who are beginning
12:48
trauma therapists, or even the therapists with more experience, are probably thinking as
12:54
I am, that touch and veterans somehow don't go together, you know,
13:01
as an oxymen, I mean, just in and of itself. You know,
13:05
we're constantly hearing how difficult it is for veterans to get the care they
13:11
need, to get the therapy they need in and of itself. And then
13:16
you're bringing this whole concept of touch, which is obviously so profound. How
13:22
do you navigate that as well? You're absolutely right, it seems incongruit with
13:30
the military because, if anything, there's been a lot of bad touch going
13:35
on in the military, and a lot of that guy has been because they
13:39
haven't gotten the proper orientation early in their military careers. Well, I served
13:46
as the Fort Bliss Stress Management Health Promotion trainer for twenty five years while I
13:50
was teaching at New Mexico State University, and every week I'd go in and
13:56
work with the soldiers on introducing and have them come in with their couples and
14:01
their families and teaching them how to touch. That this is how important it
14:05
is to touch and learn to touch, because nobody's teaching how to touch,
14:11
they're only setting up rules to have no touch. I see it as a
14:16
holistic perspective because touch connects with all the being. When we touch something,
14:22
it's our first basic human need requirement coming out into the world. We reached
14:26
out that we couldn't see, we couldn't. Our other senses are all in
14:31
the developmental stages. So touch is the most important coming out thing we have.
14:37
And so I kind of identify that with our soldiers coming home, when
14:41
they're coming out back into a society that has forgotten them and doesn't know what
14:48
to do with them, and they don't have any kind of serious plan for
14:54
their health except drugs, labels, and not to upper resources. So we
15:01
returned fifty percent of our injured warriors at the Fort blissar and Center the first
15:07
two years back fit for duty. The first two years we were in operation,
15:13
and it was just remarkable because every soldier forty hours a week for six
15:18
months received intensive touch, massage, acupuncture, rap therapy, yoga, therapeutic
15:26
outings. The whole works to help us heal and recover and restore this veteran.
15:33
And it worked. But then the drugs started coming in, the prescribers
15:41
started coming into the center. I was coordinator water pol and hey, guy,
15:46
there's a good example of touch. These guys in the pool were wrestling
15:52
with each other for the ball, and it was more to get that touch
15:54
and wrestling in that physical contact with the brothers they loved so much that they
16:00
were literally you could see a group hug going on. We didn't blow any
16:07
whistles. That sounds awesome. I mean, you know, your experience in
16:14
these stories are just coming out, and I think everyone can hear that.
16:18
There's so many more and you have just such a wealth of experience. But
16:23
let's let's move on here. This is about highlighting your journey to becoming a
16:27
master trauma therapist. You know, people enter into this specialization of trauma for
16:33
very different reasons. For me, as I've spoken about a lot, you
16:37
know, it had to do with my brother being in the Special Forces and
16:41
returning from the war with PTSD and myself not knowing what to say. You
16:45
know, I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to find out what
16:48
was going on, but I was going about it in all the wrong way
16:52
and really screwing it up. But tell us a story, break it down
16:56
for us. Jerry, what led you into this field of trauma and helping
17:00
these vets. That's a good question, and it's probably more subtle, I
17:07
think probably when I heard about the Ford Bliss Restoration Resilience Center being the total
17:15
health center for trauma. I'd worked with trauma all my life with other people
17:21
and other trauma situations, automobile actions, death and dying and all these things
17:25
for years and years. However, they never should be equated. No trauma
17:30
should ever be equated with war trauma. Hardly anybody in life is required to
17:37
be stressed, anxious and depressed for twenty four to seven, for as long
17:44
as the war's been going on. And I think the military's missed the point
17:48
here, guy that these soldiers in these sets, like your brother, they've
17:52
been at war for twelve years, not just when they're deployed, when they
17:56
come home. They never leave the warsone brothers and sisters are still many of
18:03
them didn't come back. The war is with them forever. So we need
18:08
to find some real comfort and loving and kindness and relaxation. Allow nature to
18:17
take her course with our soldiers. Nature will be our greatest healer if we
18:22
just allow ourselves to be be one with her. I so to speak,
18:27
like her nature aren't true. If we can discover our true nature, we'll
18:32
come out of our trauma. If we don't, we're going to be stuck
18:34
in those dark, cloudy, isolated places. So it's more I think appreciation
18:42
and my own personal experience. A lot of people ask me when they came
18:47
to the R and R Senate. They say, well, here, you're
18:48
seventy five years old. I may have been seventy four then and I'm seventy
18:52
nine now. And they said, how can you do this day in and
18:56
day out? And I said, I do it, but I go home
18:59
every night and I cry. I don't understand it. But and then I
19:03
finally learned I had compassion fatigue, whatever that is. It just we can
19:10
only take so much before all of our systems get stressed to the max too.
19:15
So I really want to caution. John Fortunato was called special meetings for
19:21
us, and he told us, don't you guys work more than two years
19:23
in intensive trauma units. It's just too painful and suffering. He did it
19:27
in Chicago hospitals and other places, and he knew that, and so he
19:32
guided us in there. I just stayed a little bit too long because I
19:36
love the soldiers so much. You want to work, and we just became
19:38
brothers. And I still work with several that I started with about five years
19:44
ago that they just they still live in the area and they still want to
19:48
participate, and now they're starting to at what with all they've learned and how
19:53
to help themselves. They're out helping others now, other veterans. These are
20:00
going to be our best trauma therapist in the future, I think. Guy.
20:03
So you said, Jerry that you were interested in working in the trauma
20:10
field even before you work with veterans. What was it that drew you?
20:15
And you did mention previously that it maybe it was settled, But what was
20:18
it that called you? I think it was a calling, Guy, because
20:22
I feel a real spiritual connection when I'm working with persons suffering the most in
20:29
the world. And I was always attracted something inside me and probably my spirit
20:34
was saying, go to the mental hospital and help those people. Go to
20:38
the prisons. I was the first teacher in a maximum security prison in Pittsburgh.
20:44
I just had to go in these places and see how these human beings
20:48
are being treated and mostly disrespected, disregarded, punished, harmed without any personal
20:56
caring. So there's so few of us, Guy, and I know you're
21:00
life this too. I can hear in near Boy, So it's more of
21:04
a spiritual thing. It's hard to know why, and I try not to
21:10
ever use that too much because it's looking for a single solution often, and
21:15
I think there's a multiplicity of interactions and relationships that get us into this.
21:22
And I think it's I'm being guided and directed to our creator. I'm a
21:27
believer that we're all created and guided in this life too. So I think
21:33
that you know, there's a really good message here for our listeners, which
21:36
is for those listeners who are maybe starting out on this journey or interested in
21:40
trauma therapy. If there's a sense a calling to honor that, you know,
21:45
to go with that and go seek that and pursue that's that's great,
21:49
Jerry, I really appreciate that. Yeah, thanks guy. So we talked
21:53
a little bit about your journey, you know, what led you to the
21:56
specialization of trauma, and you know, you I think pointed out that it's
22:02
not a very easy question to answer. But let's focus now on an early
22:07
clinical era you made and what you learned from that. Tell us a story
22:11
about an early clinical mistake you made that had a significant impact on the work
22:18
you did, what you learned from it, and how it's influenced you as
22:21
a clinician. I'd like to talk a little about I don't think he would
22:26
even mind me mention his name. It's almost forty some years ago, thirty
22:30
five. Yeah, this guy from New York City came into my menial center
22:34
and was looking for some way to withdraw from heroin. And this is good
22:40
because all of our soldiers have to withdraw from all those chemicals and stuff if
22:44
they want to get better. But I just learned so much from him because
22:51
he said he wants to do this, and people can have the desire to
22:56
change. But I had to bailing out of prison three different times in the
23:02
three years I was working with him. And the third time I find it
23:06
could be a mistake, but maybe it wasn't. I said, I'm sorry,
23:10
Louis, I've just had it with you. You want it, you
23:14
say you want to get better, and you don't. You go steal some
23:17
more stuff for your heroin and all the bells are going off and all the
23:21
stores in Pittsburgh. So this is the last time I'm bailing you out.
23:25
You either clean yourself up totally or you go find somebody else to work with
23:30
you. And I love you kindly, but this is it. So I
23:34
think then that was his kind of mind, My last straw with him,
23:38
and his last straw with me, and he gave up his cigarettes, went
23:42
to massage school and became a great massage there. I learned so much from
23:51
him too, But you know, we do make mistakes along the way,
23:53
and which led me to believe, not even believe. I don't even want
23:59
to believe anything anymore. I just want to experience it. But if we
24:03
have a self care plan, and I require that of all of our soldiers,
24:07
and I don't know of anyone else who does this, but I'm encouraging
24:10
other trauma therapists to do it for that reason. I just gave if they
24:15
develop a daily self schedule to work on their physical, mental, emotional,
24:21
and spiritual and social relations and work that in into a self care plan,
24:26
have a support group, have an advocate at their side like I was with
24:30
Louis, and work your way through this pain and suffering. And you will
24:37
if you commit and have a plan, and commitment requires. I ask them
24:42
to stand up and raise their right hand. I'm committing myself to be the
24:45
best I can be. I will become the best I can be. I
24:49
just ask them to see that. And you know, guy, I also
24:53
have a mirror in my big mirror in my room, and I ask them
24:56
to stand in front of that room and you show me when you were at
25:02
your highest spirit as a warrior, Show me that warrior inside, show me
25:07
that warrior. And they do. And when they do their shop because it's
25:10
inside them and that's them, they never lose who they really are. Wow,
25:15
Jerry, I'm thinking about how I'm going to get to New Mexico.
25:18
I want to come see you. Oh God, that's what's going through my
25:22
mind right now. I mean, there's just something I think profound is kind
25:29
of overused, but you know, and it's not simply a warm heart and
25:34
it's not simply wanting to care. But in addition to that, I think
25:40
what's coming through is this searing experience that you have that's been honed and that
25:48
really speaks to what it means to be, you know, a master in
25:52
your field. That that's coming out. It really is your observation there because
25:57
it's hard to explain. I say, think you're right though, it just
26:00
comes out as our experience after a while, I'm never going to retire.
26:04
I don't think you will. Yeah, I don't. I don't know.
26:08
But regarding regarding Louis, was it that you quote unquote gave up on him?
26:17
Was that your error? I thought it was at the time, because
26:21
I never wanted to ever. I always swore I'd never give up on anybody.
26:23
But in his case, I felt like my insight was right, and
26:30
apparently it worked because every other time he just kind of ignored it, and
26:33
when he saw that there was nobody going to be there for him anymore.
26:38
This has been a three and it's so hard to withdraw from cigarettes and cocaine
26:45
and heroin. Those are the third level compensatory behaviors. I teach all the
26:49
soldiers about compensations too, that you know, there's there's only four relatively safe
26:56
outlets and every I think everything therapists don't to know that. And I learned
27:00
that from Oscar Chaso, that we have four relatively safe outlets in a society
27:07
that is so out of balance and out of tune. It's amazing. Everybody
27:11
isn't isn't a goner because there's no hardly any loving, kindness, sharing touching.
27:18
Everyone's kind of withdrawing into their own selves and their own groups anyway.
27:23
There's food, sets, drugs, and work, and the military guys can't
27:29
take marijuana. That's one of the best outlets to compensate for a stressed mind,
27:36
body, mind, emotions, It calms it and many have been kicked
27:41
out of the army for taking marijuana to help them with their serious injuries.
27:45
They got to get it together here, because they better start giving medical marijuana
27:49
to this every soldier that wants it's coming back from the wars. It's probably
27:55
one of the best solutions to some of the serious suicides and serious injuries we're
28:02
seeing in the conflicts in the home. It's amazing any family can ever make
28:07
it after these wars. They stressed, chriss. They don't know each other,
28:12
they don't know themselves, they're so hurt. Yeah, I no,
28:17
it's just true, and it's just something that we're being reminded of every day
28:22
in the news. You know. I think one of the reasons why I'm
28:26
really excited to speak with you because it seems like what you're doing is at
28:33
once novel, but at the same time just makes so much sense. It
28:38
seems common sense. This intricative, holistic treatment for warriors you're talking about.
28:45
Correct me if I'm wrong, But this is not the norm, right,
28:48
No, Unfortunately it's not. And there's very few behavioral health clinics inside and
28:55
outside in the military that even refer to us, and we have greater success
29:00
in the integrated areas than they'll ever have in conventional medicine. We've seen it.
29:07
I've seen it over the past five years with these soldiers I've been working
29:10
with. I work with a soldier fifteen hours a week. We do it
29:14
in the groups, we do it individually. We just e spend lots of
29:18
time together because their cold being. We're all healing and recovering from these serious
29:26
injuries, and there are injuries to the cellular formation. And I've learned a
29:32
lot too about the body that every system in the organism has its own mind
29:37
of its own and this is what psychiatry and psychology and mental health doesn't get.
29:44
For example, I don't know of any soldiers that come back who haven't
29:48
had intestinal concerns. They should undergo in testinal cleansing when you come back from
29:53
these futrid toxic places like West Virginia, my western West Virginia, I mean
30:02
from the coal mines another, but all these deployments, they've injured to the
30:07
core. And our digestive system has a mind. If it's someone it has
30:11
to be cleansed. Our cardiovascular system needs totally relieved of all the stress it's
30:18
encountered. The nervous system is just so on red alert twenty four to seven
30:26
when they come home, and they need every possible calming approach, but not
30:33
the drug chemicals that cloud over their mind and make them unable to really interact
30:40
and relate with others and themselves. Those chemicals that are those cocktails. And
30:48
every soldier I've worked with when they've draws from them, they all got better.
30:51
Those who didn't withdraw from them and stayed out of our groups and work,
30:56
they're still suffering enormously. So I just know that if they give up
31:00
their chemicals were intensively and extensively, like we said, guy, they're going
31:04
to get better. I've seen it. I had a medic who is on
31:10
the Hidden Enemy Talk by CCHR put out that documentary and they came from Switzerland
31:18
to interview him and me about these drama issues, and he had such great
31:25
experience. For five years he was suffering taking twelve to fourteen of these psychiatric
31:30
medicine. He didn't know what was even happening. He didn't know who he
31:33
was. He was putting a mental hospital, attempted suicide. He was rescued
31:38
there, put back in a hospital. Finally I got him and he recovered.
31:42
I got his family together with him. He was homeless. He was
31:47
five years of marine, ten years as a medic, just one of our
31:51
remarkable warriors. And we should never let our vay and other resources weren't serving
31:59
him and whatsoever. They didn't know what to do. They just know how
32:02
to drug and label. They don't know how to use touch and meditation and
32:08
all these other health resources. One of my soldiers was similarly. He was
32:15
a combat vet, enormously stressed. He swam twenty three laps a day during
32:21
our exercise program and cleanse themselves for swimming. Some of them will find a
32:24
special way. Some use horses and dogs, and there's so many outlets.
32:31
We should use every possible. That's what I'm thinking. Our community said,
32:37
welcome home these vets with every possible health service, and so they can recover
32:43
from twelve years of suffering. They've been suffering for twelve years, going inside
32:47
trying to find out how could they be so hurt, because they've had to
32:52
be twenty four to seven on guard, prepared to die Jerry, what would
32:57
advice do you have for people who want to get into this field. I
33:02
mean, obviously you have so much experience and so much heart and so much
33:07
feeling about this, But to our listeners, for those people maybe who are
33:13
just thinking about getting into the field, or maybe scared about getting into trauma,
33:16
they don't much, They don't know much. What would you say to
33:21
someone, how would you advise them? Well, first off, they've got
33:24
to walk to talk or talk to walk, and they've got to have a
33:28
self care plan, just like the soldiers that they work with. They've got
33:31
to work out work on themselves all those systems. If they don't, they
33:36
won't be trusted. And I've worked with a lot of therapists call themselves trauma
33:42
therapists, but many of them they didn't listen. They would sit at their
33:45
desk, typing on their laptop everything this soldier tells them. So they're doing
33:52
their business. It's a soldier rather than getting to know their clients and their
33:59
patients and be honest and open accept them, allowing them to be who they
34:05
are without judgment, analysis, interpretation, and all those crazy things they learn
34:10
in some of their academic programs. I think they've got to give up those
34:14
ideas of analyzing, interpreting, and judging, because only the injured warriors know
34:20
what they've been through. We'll never know. We only know our own experience.
34:24
And that's what I would tell a trauma therapist. Learn from your veterans,
34:29
learn from them, listen to, don't judge them, don't analyze them,
34:34
just be present with them, be kind, listen. They know,
34:37
they know if you're there just to do your business, and that's why they're
34:42
not attracted to And what does a one hour session and week do for anybody
34:46
anyway? I don't know. Maybe that's just off the top of my head,
34:52
guy, but I think they've got to learn to engage. They're trauma
34:58
persons, they're in jured warriors and others as tho their family that this is
35:05
your brother, this is your sister. Listen to and care about them they
35:09
know, hug them up. I was always the first one to our center
35:14
because I wanted to welcome them into the center every day when they came in.
35:17
I want them to feel this is their home now, and I'm going
35:20
to be in their home. I'm going to be with them twenty four cents.
35:23
So they call it three in the morning, they're up on the mountain.
35:27
Forget where they are or something you know. But it's the most complex,
35:31
probably therapeutic job in the world. You just got to know. If
35:37
you want to change somebody, stay out. But if you want to help
35:42
someone, be help them, be a guide, listen and be a resource.
35:46
Help learn a bunch of community resources. Pull in others resources to help
35:52
your clients. Make sure they get everything. A counseling session, a conventional
35:58
consoling session is like a venting experience. They can do that over a poker
36:02
game or beer. I don't think we ought to even use think about sending
36:08
these injured warriors to conventional practitioners. So just a waste of beautiful humanity.
36:17
So if you want to change somebody, stay out. If you want to
36:22
help them, the doors open. The door's open, and they'll know it
36:27
too, because they're so sensitive. They've been so injured. Every sense picks
36:31
up, every sound, every sense. They can smell what you've been eating
36:36
for lunch, for reasons, everything has been stretched to the max. That's
36:46
war trauma, and it's different than any other kind of trauma. I really
36:51
don't like it when I see them put other trauma issues with war trauma because
36:55
there just isn't anything like it from all my fifty two years of work professional
37:01
practice. So you're saying, as far as providing treatment or healing or help,
37:07
war trauma is in its own category. I think it has to be
37:12
in its own category and requires an enormous amount of experience. I think that's
37:16
why doctor Fortunado hired all of us who had at least fifteen to twenty years
37:22
experience. He didn't hire fresh people out of anywhere, and I think he
37:28
was right about that. Let's move on. You know, you've obviously got
37:32
years of experience in this field. You honed your ability to do this work
37:37
with the idea that each of us has different strengths. What do you think
37:42
it is about you, about what you do that enables you to do the
37:47
work effectively? What do you bring to the table in a sense, I
37:52
think of fearlessness. I'm not afraid of anybody or anything. I practiced some
37:58
martial arts and I feel comfortable inside myself. And I practice meditation three to
38:06
four hours a day, and I've been doing this for thirty five years now,
38:09
so I'm very comfortable with the practices and what's required of us to learn
38:16
these skills so we can pass them on with comfort and skill. I think
38:24
every trauma therapist ought to learn body, mind, spirit, work the whole.
38:30
They ought to learn the whole body, what's going on mentally. Just
38:34
getting mental health treat training isn't. They should get trained in every system.
38:40
That's clearly what's coming out in how you talk about the therapy that you deliver.
38:47
It's obviously coming from this place of holistic usness. It's obviously more than
38:55
just psychological. It's mind, body, in spirit, and it's so exciting
39:04
to hear Jerry. I mean, I just think that our listeners are if
39:07
they're listening to this, if they're driving, they're just getting amped up.
39:10
They're getting psyched because it makes so much sense, and it cuts to the
39:16
core of being in touch with each other, you know, caring about humanity,
39:22
wanting to touch them. I mean, the whole topic of touch is
39:27
so controversial, you know, I want to maybe, as an aside,
39:30
touch on that for a little bit. How do you navigate that? Well?
39:37
I put some guidelines together, and I hope people will visit my website
39:42
because I have a whole program called Guidelines for the safe, skillful use of
39:45
touch, and I'll have a link for that on the show notes page too,
39:50
so that we need to have that safety out there, otherwise we won't
39:57
be trusted. So I let people clearly know very early on about these guidelines,
40:04
and I posted them in my office, you know, and everybody knows
40:07
me, so they know I'm going to hug and touch everybody. I don't
40:12
care who. I just know that's what we how we can relate and get
40:16
the safety security issues out there. Also, one of the biggest fears we
40:22
have is to touch. And two of my great teachers said, when we're
40:27
afraid, or when we experience fear, we're closest to the truth. So
40:34
if we're afraid to touch, that means we're outside of the laws of nature,
40:37
because everything in nature is touching us all the time, whether we're aware
40:43
of that they're not. Does that make any sense, Yeah, it makes
40:45
perfect sense. And it's kind of where I'm with touch, and I just
40:50
love it. I would never have a session without at least doing it.
40:53
Laying on of hands. I love giving foot and hand massage to soldiers because
40:59
they're hurt so bad. I love giving facials. I don't give any naked
41:04
body touch or anything, and we have deep tissue massage where my feeling.
41:09
It's not a belief so much as an experience. I recovered from compassion fatigue
41:14
because I got a deep tissue almost like a roughing session every Saturday morning for
41:22
the last two years I was working in a trauma center and it helped me
41:25
recover enormously because I think we store our pain in our back and we can't
41:31
get to it. We need help. So that's what mommy and Daddy did
41:39
for us. And if they didn't, those kids are suffering. So many
41:45
of the events didn't get the mother and the kindness of loving touch and healthy
41:51
touch, physical man and emotional spiritual touch in their lives and then coming back
41:55
from worse, A lot of this is new to them. So we become
42:00
their brothers. We become there. I think a lot identified with me as
42:05
kind of their elder, and they really their grandparents. Many raised my grandparents
42:09
too, and there was a trust factor there. So I come in with
42:14
some of that trust that helps me with the soldiers too. Guy, and
42:19
we'll have the link to that again on the show notes page, which is
42:23
West Coast Trauma Project dot com. You can hit on podcasts and Jerry's podcast
42:30
his show notes page will come right up. So, Jerry, what what's
42:35
got you going right now in the present? What are you excited about now?
42:40
I'm starting to get organized so that we can tell what's happening. I
42:45
went to the meet with all the school social workers in southern New Mexico a
42:51
couple of weeks ago and introduced them to this whole trauma business Warriors coming Back.
42:57
And I told every social worker, and I think if the VA took
43:01
on this kind of idea that everyone who walks into VA is your responsibility,
43:09
Everyone who comes in for help in your system is your responsibilities. Everybody who
43:15
belongs to that system. They can't allow anybody in that system to not serve
43:21
those people with the highest regard, respect, dignity, kindness, and knowledge
43:25
and wisdom and truth. They can't be fake. And they've got to be
43:30
real and genuine and kind and learn how to engage their own family. Even
43:37
if they aren't doing well with even their own family, they shouldn't be engaging
43:42
others. They should take a look at themselves. We've got to clean our
43:45
actum. And that's kind of where I am. I'm excited about. I
43:50
want to stop kids from being put in detention centers. I want to stop
43:54
them from what they do in our community. If they identify them with a
44:00
psychiatric disorder, they send them to the mental hospital. They're put in a
44:05
row and some service person comes makes them sit and take their drug cocktails till
44:12
they drew, and then they can go back to their rooms. That's how
44:15
they're introduced to health in a mental hospital no different from the ones I saw
44:20
in nineteen seventy. Hasn't changed at all. Psychiatry is humanity's killer. They're
44:29
destroying lives every day that come into It's so sad to see these families have
44:35
been suffering. I have this image when I'm working with a soldier that comes
44:39
back from wars to the mother and their two little children are sitting in the
44:45
back of the humbee while they're partners in the driver's seat or up on the
44:52
gun, you know, and they're sitting there holding their babies tightly and hoping
45:00
happens to daddy today. It's not imaginary. It's when the families, the
45:08
whole families at war. They don't get it. Yeah, the whole family's
45:15
been at war a whole families, and then they come home and the family's
45:19
so mad. They don't know what happened. They don't know how to come
45:22
out of that grief and suffering themselves. They're not getting any kind of loving,
45:27
caring attention. You're only getting drugs and labels. That makes me sick.
45:31
You know. It's just I think so moving to hear you talk about
45:36
this, and I think so many of us who are listening will definitely want
45:39
to do something and definitely kind of reach out and get in touch with you,
45:45
Jerry. So I think you can expect some emails. Okay, So,
45:51
can you recommend to go to trauma books for our listeners which have had
45:55
a major impact on the work you do. I would like to recommend the
46:01
books that I have on my website, most of those I borrow from.
46:07
I have a whole series of bibliography on my website. We'll definitely have a
46:14
link for that too. Probably one of the most important books a soldier will
46:17
ever get if he's able and not really hurt too physically. It's called Psychocalisthenics.
46:25
It's Peakels dot org. It's a twenty three yoga type positions and postures
46:32
all coordinated with the breath that produces a strength, coordination, balance, and
46:37
flexibility, and he restores all those and I adapt to that series of exercises
46:44
for the soldiers along with some Tea gong in our touch programs and especially meditations,
46:50
different forms of meditation, Calming the body mind spirit is so essential,
46:54
and then keeping a dream journal, following their self care plans. And I
47:01
especially appreciate Tartang Toku Impassee. He had a book called Gesture of Balance.
47:07
He's written twenty three books, but he's trained American therapists in Tibetan medicine,
47:15
and I feel like that's my primary guy, Tartang Toku Impassee. Any one
47:22
of his books is going to serve his meditation books. I used them in
47:25
teaching my holistic classes at New Mexico State for years and the students loved them.
47:30
They all left school feeling better about themselves. My idea, no one
47:37
should ever come to us guy, whether it's individual, group, couple,
47:40
or family, and not feel that they're a better person when they leave us
47:45
because they they've learned something from us that's on us, open, accepting and
47:50
allowing, and we're not showing off. We're not trying to push anything on
47:54
them or force them to do anything, but we have they recognize we have
47:59
some tools, and they call them tools. I'm glad because if they have
48:02
these tools, they're going to get better. Talk won't be enough. The
48:07
book you mentioned just your Balance? Was that just your Balance? Okay?
48:12
Yeah, we'll have a link to that on the show notes page as well.
48:16
Jerry, thank you so much. I mean, this has been incredible.
48:22
It's incredible for me too. Guy. Just you're such a good time
48:27
interview. I mean, I just feel like I could talk to you for
48:30
every year. You're definitely a trauma there. Well, I appreciate that,
48:34
all right. Jerry, You've just been so kind with your time, with
48:37
your energy, with your experience. Thank you so much, and we will
48:43
talk soon. Oh, thank you guy. I really appreciate the opportunity,
48:46
and you've been such a great interview. I really felt comfortable with you.
48:50
You know how to engage soldiers, I know. And I'd love to meet
48:53
your brother sometime too. Well that might happen, all right, So thank
48:59
you so much. Thank you, bade bye bye.