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The Trauma Lens of Addiction with Resh Joseph · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Trauma Thepist Podcast Plus listeners can listen to episodes early
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Speaker 1: going to Apple Podcasts, searching for the Trauma Thepist podcast
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Speaker 1: and signing up today. Welcome to the Trauma Nevers Podcast,
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Speaker 1: a show about the incredible people dedicated to helping those
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Speaker 1: who experienced trauma. My name is got macpherson and my
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Speaker 1: mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire
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Speaker 1: each of us to help those around us. You ready, yes,
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Speaker 1: all right, so here we go. So five, four, three,
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Speaker 1: two and one are folks, Welcome back to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm very excited to have as my guest today, Rash
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Speaker 1: Joseph RESHI welcome.
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Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
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Speaker 1: Guys, thank you, welcome. So. Rash is the clinical director
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Speaker 1: of Highland's Recovery and he specializes in the treatment of
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Speaker 1: complex psychological trauma PTSD, addictions and other trauma related disorders.
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Speaker 1: Rash commenced his career as a doctor in the UK
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Speaker 1: She's practicing Medicine in two thousand and five, and then
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Speaker 1: fully retrained as a counseling psychotherapist, attending a master's in
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Speaker 1: psychology and the Neuroscience of mental health from the prestigious
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Speaker 1: King's College in London. For the past fifteen years, he's
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Speaker 1: practiced exclusively as a psychological professional, working in Singapore, Indonesia,
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Speaker 1: Switzerland and now Australia. His trauma related work experience includes
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Speaker 1: working with the criminal justice system in Singapore as part
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Speaker 1: of the prison psychiatric team, treating individuals with a wide
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Speaker 1: range of serious psychiatric illnesses and severe personality and behavioral disorders.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
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Speaker 1: So, before we go in here, share with all listeners
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Speaker 1: where you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: So. I'm originally from Singapore. That's where I was born,
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Speaker 2: That's where I grew up. When I was in my
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Speaker 2: late teens mid teens, I went to do England. I
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Speaker 2: finished school in England and then went to university and
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Speaker 2: lived in England for two and a half decades and
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Speaker 2: eventually moved back to Asia, moved back to Singapore, and
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Speaker 2: by that point I had left medicine and begun to
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Speaker 2: retrain as a psychologist, a counseling professional. Through my own journey,
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Speaker 2: had come to realize that there was a lot more
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Speaker 2: to be done in this area. Became very became fascinated
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Speaker 2: by it, became fascinated by the science of the brain
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Speaker 2: and the science of human suffering. And at that time
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Speaker 2: there was the beginnings of what we now know is
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Speaker 2: the trauma movement. We had people like Messel Vanderkock and
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Speaker 2: Judith and Gaba Marte were really starting to come to
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Speaker 2: prominence in the late nineteen nineties and the early two thousands,
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Speaker 2: and the work that they did really struck a chord
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Speaker 2: with me, and I wanted to know a lot more
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Speaker 2: about what they did and why it was so relevant
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Speaker 2: to where we are today. And so I moved back
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Speaker 2: to Asia and lived in Asia, sometimes in Singapore, I
3:31
Speaker 2: spent some time in Thailand. I spent seven years in
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Speaker 2: Bali in Indonesia, moved around Asia, and then earlier this year,
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Speaker 2: got a call from an old colleague of mine who
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Speaker 2: was part of this organization called Hilance Recovery, and they
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Speaker 2: contacted me because they wanted to move into the addiction space,
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Speaker 2: but they wanted to do it in a radically different way,
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Speaker 2: wanted to approach it from the trauma angle, which is
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Speaker 2: what I'm all about. And earlier this year that was
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Speaker 2: presented to me, and I thought that it seemed like
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Speaker 2: a very good opportunity to expand what I was doing
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Speaker 2: and to carry it forward here in the Southern Highlands
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Speaker 2: in Australia, and the Southern Highlands in Australia is where
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Speaker 2: I sit currently as clinical director of this wonderful organization.
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Speaker 1: So you brought up a lot of elements. There fascinating
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Speaker 1: background to have moved from medicine to psychotherapy. Why the shift.
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Speaker 2: Variety of reasons, but I suppose broadly. I mean I
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Speaker 2: rely on great writers like M. Scott Peck and renew
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Speaker 2: And for this. Most of us who are attracted to
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Speaker 2: this line of work are attracted to it for very
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Speaker 2: personal reasons. As on renew And said in his wonderful book,
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Speaker 2: Wound is Healer. The person that the psychologist is trying
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Speaker 2: to heal is really himself, and there is a lot
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Speaker 2: of truth to that. For me, I was attracted to
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Speaker 2: this sector of mental health in this industry to my
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Speaker 2: own personal struggles. But also, and this is no slides
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Speaker 2: on the profession as a whole, My father is a surgeon,
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Speaker 2: my brother is a doctor. So I have no personal
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Speaker 2: animosity towards medicine in general. But I just found that
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Speaker 2: for me medicine was not the answer. I eventually came
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Speaker 2: to I suppose you'd call it a crisis of faith.
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Speaker 2: I couldn't continue really to work in an industry. I'd
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Speaker 2: lost faith in The pharmaceutical industry has its place. Medicines
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Speaker 2: have their place. They are part and past of the
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Speaker 2: fantastic advances that we've had over human time. But I felt,
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Speaker 2: certainly for me, they were terribly lacking. And I was
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Speaker 2: really searching for answers to why I and so many
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Speaker 2: like me were suffering, and why medicine seemed to have
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Speaker 2: no answers. And if medicine didn't have any answers, then
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Speaker 2: where are those answers? Well? Why are so many people
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Speaker 2: suffering and the drugs so in effective? Why are so
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Speaker 2: many people depressed? Why are rates of anxiety going through
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Speaker 2: the roof? Why is it that people are now being
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Speaker 2: crippled by a whole alphabet soup of mental health disorders
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Speaker 2: sd ADHD whole variety of things? Was there an answer
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Speaker 2: and in the study of trauma, in the subject of trauma,
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Speaker 2: I found many of those answers.
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Speaker 1: So this, as you call it, crisis of faith, you
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Speaker 1: were experiencing while you were practicing physician.
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Speaker 2: No, I wasn't in practice the at the time I'd
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Speaker 2: already left. I just didn't really know. Yeah, I didn't
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Speaker 2: really know what I was going to do with myself.
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Speaker 2: It was assumed, both by myself and by the members
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Speaker 2: of my family and by most people, that eventually I
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Speaker 2: would just go back to it. But it was Mike
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Speaker 2: would fortune that I discovered the writings of Alice Miller
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Speaker 2: to begin with, and then from her the world of
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Speaker 2: trauma opened up to me. Once I discovered that world,
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Speaker 2: there really was no going back.
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Speaker 1: What was it about the trauma? The writings of trauma?
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Speaker 1: Then the understanding of that spoke with you that kind
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Speaker 1: of inspired seemed to inspire you. What was it about that?
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Speaker 2: Well, to begin with, it began to provide me with
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Speaker 2: a coherent answer as to why many of the experiences
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Speaker 2: that I had, you know, the experiences, the personal experiences
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Speaker 2: that I had, began to make sense. I'd hitherto regarded
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Speaker 2: myself as someone either great, flawed or mad or both insane,
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Speaker 2: you know, mad, bad, all of those things. Suddenly I
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Speaker 2: chanced upon an explanation that was quite radical in that no, no,
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Speaker 2: you're not mad. It's certainly not bad. There is a
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Speaker 2: way to understand and explained, to explain why you are
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Speaker 2: the way you are. And so that was the beginnings
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Speaker 2: of the personal journey, and of course as I began
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Speaker 2: to study the subjects more closely, both on a personal
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Speaker 2: level and then eventually going to university and studying it there.
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Speaker 2: When I went back to retrain, it was something that
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Speaker 2: simply strugg accord. It really resonated with me. It explained
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Speaker 2: things on the macro level, the societal level, the personal level,
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Speaker 2: the family level. It suddenly many of the things that
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Speaker 2: just puzzled me, that just seemed inexplicable to me, began
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Speaker 2: to make sense. And increasingly, as I've gone deeper and
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Speaker 2: deeper into the subject bought in a personal way as
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Speaker 2: well as in a professional way. So much of what
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Speaker 2: ails the world today, when viewed through this lens, can
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Speaker 2: be understood really quite simply, from the terrible global conflicts
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Speaker 2: that we observe to the much smaller personal, familial, societal
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Speaker 2: community conflicts that just continue to plague us as a species.
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Speaker 2: I find that when I view it through this particular lens,
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Speaker 2: the lens of trauma, there's nothing particularly in mysifying about it.
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Speaker 2: The language, the science the understanding to explain what is
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Speaker 2: otherwise intractable and inexplicable human behavior. Is there? Is there?
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Speaker 1: You talked about the work you're doing now at Highlands
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Speaker 1: Recovery before we get to that. So once you started retraining,
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Speaker 1: what were your thoughts? What were your goals? In a sense,
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Speaker 1: were you like, Okay, this is the field I want
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Speaker 1: to work in. I want to help people who have
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Speaker 1: experienced trauma. What was it for you?
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Speaker 2: We're going back some years now. I suppose it would
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Speaker 2: have been to begin with, I just wanted, you know,
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Speaker 2: like a like a like a hungry person that's encountered
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Speaker 2: a feast. You know, I just wanted to consume as
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Speaker 2: much of this as I could. It was a subject
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Speaker 2: that endlessly fascinated me and continues to fascinate me. I
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Speaker 2: continue to live in this world. I just love everything
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Speaker 2: about it, and it was something that I took to
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Speaker 2: so readily and consume me so greatly that it to
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Speaker 2: begin with was just personal consumption. I wanted to read
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Speaker 2: everything on the subject. I wanted to know everything. I
11:37
Speaker 2: wanted to know every facet of this. I wanted to
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Speaker 2: understand it, you know. I just found the thing and
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Speaker 2: as many people will know when you find that thing
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Speaker 2: that captures you, you know, you just enter this almost
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Speaker 2: this twilight zone of the census where nothing else really exists.
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Speaker 2: It's all you think about, all you talk about. And
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Speaker 2: I certainly began my journey to the subject in that way.
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Speaker 2: The desire to help people, the desire to translate that knowledge,
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Speaker 2: that information into a practical way of making a living
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Speaker 2: and constructing a program, and you know, being a therapist,
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Speaker 2: all of that came much much later. To begin with.
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Speaker 2: It was just an all consuming passion and fascination with
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Speaker 2: the subjects and what was being written, what was being researched,
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Speaker 2: what we were finding out, the tantalizing discoveries that were
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Speaker 2: being made by very important men and women. In the
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Speaker 2: early two thousands and late nineteen nineties and early two thousands,
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Speaker 2: some very very important books in this sphear were written.
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Speaker 2: And also couldn't I could not help getting over the
12:49
Speaker 2: feeling that I was on the cusp of a way,
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Speaker 2: that this massive way had broken over the world, and
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Speaker 2: that I was the leading cusp of it, and that
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Speaker 2: it was a really tantlesing time for us as a
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Speaker 2: as a species. Almost you know, that this information was
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Speaker 2: now going to be widespread. I hear it all the
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Speaker 2: time when I work with people here, when I work
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Speaker 2: with people globally, when I work with people in whichever
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Speaker 2: sphere I do, and I tell them what it is
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Speaker 2: I've learned. I explained to them their symptoms, and I
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Speaker 2: help them craft a recovery program based on an understanding
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Speaker 2: of their trauma. They're just done. They're just shocked that
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Speaker 2: there is such a simple way in which to understand
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Speaker 2: their own suffering and how it explains almost everything about them.
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Speaker 2: And that's that's a that's a delight that I never
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Speaker 2: get over even now you know that it's Yeah, that's
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Speaker 2: that would be the passion. I'd say that would be
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Speaker 2: the passion.
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Speaker 1: For many people. It removes a lot of shame. Right.
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Speaker 1: You talked about thinking yourself maybe it was a bad person,
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Speaker 1: maybe as a mad person. Certainly that's the case I
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Speaker 1: think with addiction. So when you're working now in the
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Speaker 1: context of Highland's recovery, how how did this come about?
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Speaker 1: You said you were asked to kind of do things
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Speaker 1: a little bit differently, or they were going to start
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Speaker 1: doing things differently. Bring us there. What was that discussion, like,
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Speaker 1: what were they talking.
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Speaker 2: About So the CEO of the company Camera in Francis
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Speaker 2: is an old friend and colleague of mine. I've known
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Speaker 2: him over a decade. This is going back to when
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Speaker 2: he works in Singapore and I was there at the time,
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Speaker 2: and even back then in the early twenty and tens
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Speaker 2: already I think I'm not really sure how I struck him,
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Speaker 2: but I must have struck him as different because I
14:53
Speaker 2: was perhaps one of the few people attached to his
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Speaker 2: industry who was viewing the whole addiction and alcoholism matrix
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Speaker 2: through the trauma lens, and I think at the time
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Speaker 2: there weren't many people like me. Now, I think that
15:07
Speaker 2: must have struck a chord with him, because when he
15:09
Speaker 2: was approached to head this organization, one of the people
15:13
Speaker 2: he thought of getting as a clinical director was me.
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Speaker 2: And I think what we both have is a shared
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Speaker 2: passion for the subject, me from a clinical perspective and
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Speaker 2: him from a different one. He's not a clinical person,
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Speaker 2: but I think his passion for drama is equally as
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Speaker 2: great as mine. And he's Australian, so he knows this market,
15:39
Speaker 2: he knows this area, he knows this country far better
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Speaker 2: than I do. I've never lived here. I didn't move
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Speaker 2: here till some months ago. You know that this was
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Speaker 2: completely It's never on my radar. But he must have
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Speaker 2: known something, because when I moved here, there is no
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Speaker 2: one who is approaching objects of alcoholism or alcohol use
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Speaker 2: disorder and the various other addictions that afflict so many people.
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Speaker 2: Yet no one seems to be approaching yet from the
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Speaker 2: trauma perspective, which really rather stagger at me because I
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Speaker 2: always considered Australia. You know, I've met many Australian clinicians
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Speaker 2: over the years. They've always been of the highest order.
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Speaker 2: They're all fantastic, They're all very skilled, very knowledgeable. So
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Speaker 2: it just I was just flabagasted that no one here
16:27
Speaker 2: was approaching addiction from that angle, which just seemed to
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Speaker 2: me so obvious and Russian.
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Speaker 1: Let me interject you for a second. What angle or
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Speaker 1: what angle or angles were they, excuse me, approaching it from?
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Speaker 1: And in turn, what are the other angles that addiction
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Speaker 1: can be looked at?
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Speaker 2: Well, there are four possible angles which you can come
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Speaker 2: There are four possible answers, and the trouble is that
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Speaker 2: none of these answers are absolutely correct. None of them
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Speaker 2: are absolutely wrong either. The first one is you can
17:04
Speaker 2: say it's just bad behavior. The criminal justice model, you know,
17:07
Speaker 2: addicts alcoholics that badly behave. You punish them sufficiently and
17:12
Speaker 2: you'll correct them. I think no serious person thinks in
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Speaker 2: this way any longer. There are still people who do,
17:20
Speaker 2: but no serious person thinks this. I mean it does
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Speaker 2: for one thing, it doesn't explain why why do many
17:26
Speaker 2: intelligent people behave in such fantastically stupid way. No, you know, no,
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Speaker 2: no serious person does this. So there is value in it,
17:35
Speaker 2: because yes, you have people who do some spectacularly bad things.
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Speaker 2: So that's one. The second one, which I see the
17:43
Speaker 2: vestiges of in this country and certainly in many others,
17:47
Speaker 2: broadly call the disease model, or the medical model, which is,
17:50
Speaker 2: you have an inherited illness. It's how you're born. You know,
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Speaker 2: you have a disease. If you like, that disease causes
17:58
Speaker 2: you to do these terrible, you know, the spectacularly stupid things.
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Speaker 2: So that's that. That seems to be the predominant model here.
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Speaker 2: The trouble with that model is that if that is true,
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Speaker 2: if you know, if it's a disease, then you just
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Speaker 2: stop consuming the alcohol. And that's the problem. Solved in
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Speaker 2: the same way that if you're a diabetic you stop
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Speaker 2: eating sugar. Problem solved. There's an end to it. But
18:29
Speaker 2: as most people in the recovery game will tell you,
18:33
Speaker 2: stopping the alcohol is not where your problems end. It's
18:37
Speaker 2: where your problems begin. You haven't addressed the reasons why
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Speaker 2: you started drinking in that way in the first place,
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Speaker 2: Why you drink in a way that is so different
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Speaker 2: to others, Why you can't stop when the negative consequences
18:52
Speaker 2: are beginning to stack up. The wife is about to
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Speaker 2: leave and take the three kids, the boss is about
18:58
Speaker 2: to fire you, and all those things are about to
18:59
Speaker 2: have and yet you cannot stop. You're now sitting in
19:02
Speaker 2: front of a judge on a dui charge, and you
19:05
Speaker 2: still can't stop. You haven't explained any of that. The
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Speaker 2: disease model does not explain that. It's lacking. And what
19:14
Speaker 2: seems to happen here is that we try and fix
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Speaker 2: this in a pharmacological way, which can work. I don't
19:21
Speaker 2: say it can't. What it cannot tell you is it
19:25
Speaker 2: cannot tell you why. It can't tell you why you
19:28
Speaker 2: started down this road in the first place. So that's
19:31
Speaker 2: your second. The third is the trauma model, which views
19:35
Speaker 2: addiction purely as a psychological as a result of psychological injury,
19:41
Speaker 2: which is what trauma is, and that at least makes
19:46
Speaker 2: an attempt to explain to you why you drink or
19:49
Speaker 2: consume substances in the way that you do. I think
19:53
Speaker 2: it's also flawed in that it ignores the undeniable biological
19:58
Speaker 2: aspect to the addiction, which is, you know, all the
20:02
Speaker 2: dopamine systems in the brain are compromise. There is definitely
20:08
Speaker 2: a medical component to it. And then the final way
20:11
Speaker 2: of answering this, which is the way that I think
20:13
Speaker 2: is the best answer we imperfect though it is, is
20:18
Speaker 2: what is now called the biocycle social answer, started in
20:22
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven by an American psychiatrist school George Engel.
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Speaker 2: It says addiction is part biological, medical, part psychological, but
20:33
Speaker 2: also part social, so it tries to cover all of
20:35
Speaker 2: these bases. The weakness of this argument is that it's
20:39
Speaker 2: a bit like Grandma's night shirt, and it tries to
20:42
Speaker 2: cover everything.
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Speaker 1: So thank you for that explanation.
20:50
Speaker 2: Sorry, that was a little slightly crude joke. Papology.
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Speaker 1: What percentage of people who experience addiction have experienced trauma.
21:09
Speaker 2: I can speak both anecdotally and statistically. In terms of statistics,
21:15
Speaker 2: it's very very vary, but certainly a very very high
21:20
Speaker 2: percentage of them do. From a purely professional anecdotal perspective.
21:26
Speaker 2: In terms of the people that I've come across, I've
21:29
Speaker 2: never met a person who would qualify for alcohol use disorder,
21:35
Speaker 2: a severe alcohol use disorder, or a severe substance use disorder,
21:39
Speaker 2: which is what we call addictions today. I've never met
21:42
Speaker 2: anyone who would qualify for that diagnosis who doesn't have
21:47
Speaker 2: some kind of trauma or stress related disorder. They all
21:51
Speaker 2: have it. If I look hard enough, I'll find the
21:54
Speaker 2: stressor in their childhood, in their work, in their marriage,
21:59
Speaker 2: in some kind of abuse somewhere that kickstarts of the
22:02
Speaker 2: whole thing. So the two, in my view are when
22:06
Speaker 2: you talk about one, you're really talking about the other.
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Speaker 2: You can't talk about one without talking about the other.
22:13
Speaker 1: Right, And I think it was Gabor Mattei certainly who's
22:19
Speaker 1: famously he said, if you see you know where you
22:22
Speaker 1: see addiction, you see trauma. It's kind of unequivocal. So
22:29
Speaker 1: what does this mean now? As you come to work
22:32
Speaker 1: here at Holland's recovery. With what you just said, how
22:39
Speaker 1: do you integrate this into the practice, the training, the
22:44
Speaker 1: treatment that you provide.
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Speaker 2: There it's a very radical shift for the starters. As
22:54
Speaker 2: I previously said, the perspective of you have an illness,
22:58
Speaker 2: you just need to stop drinking doesn't cut the mustards,
23:03
Speaker 2: where in other places perhaps people are told when you
23:06
Speaker 2: stop drinking, they'rein your problems. And I say to people,
23:11
Speaker 2: when you stop drinking, that's when your problems begin. All
23:15
Speaker 2: of the things that all of the problems or the
23:18
Speaker 2: trauma that you're drinking. So it's really the first question, right,
23:27
Speaker 2: Alcohol in many ways is not the problem. You know,
23:31
Speaker 2: if you look at the disease model alcohol or alcohol
23:34
Speaker 2: consumption or substance use, that's the problem. You stop that
23:38
Speaker 2: you solve the problem. My view is that alcohol consumption,
23:43
Speaker 2: substance consumption is the solution to a problem, or at
23:47
Speaker 2: least an attempt to provide yourself with a solution. If
23:51
Speaker 2: you view it that way, then you will immediately see
23:55
Speaker 2: that the second question you ask is if the alcohol
23:58
Speaker 2: is an attempt to solve a problem, what is the
24:01
Speaker 2: problem that the alcohol was trying to solve. That's the
24:05
Speaker 2: question that I'm trying to answer here your alcohol, use
24:09
Speaker 2: your substance, use your pornography, use your gambling, whatever you'd
24:14
Speaker 2: like to call it. That is your attempt to solve
24:17
Speaker 2: a problem. And if that is so, what problem are
24:21
Speaker 2: you trying to solve? I think it's worth your while
24:24
Speaker 2: fanning out and that's what and that's what we do here.
24:27
Speaker 2: It's it seems a very very simple, small difference, but
24:32
Speaker 2: it's not. It's a radical departure. It's a it's a
24:36
Speaker 2: it's a world of difference. And I found certainly working
24:40
Speaker 2: here as I did before I came here. When presented
24:43
Speaker 2: to people in that way, it really does strike accord.
24:47
Speaker 1: So give us a specifics what what might that look like?
24:53
Speaker 1: How someone? How might someone answer that question.
24:59
Speaker 2: In a variety of way. So if they are encouraged
25:03
Speaker 2: to look at their alcohol consumption. The vast majority of
25:08
Speaker 2: the people I work with here have a severe alcohol
25:12
Speaker 2: use disorder. So alcohol is the drug of choice, right,
25:17
Speaker 2: and so what very often they discover is that the
25:22
Speaker 2: reason they're in this place has very little, if anything,
25:25
Speaker 2: to do with the alcohol. The alcohol part of it
25:28
Speaker 2: is reasonably easily solved. You go through a detox process.
25:33
Speaker 2: Once that detox process is completed. You've gone through it.
25:37
Speaker 2: The alcohols out of your system, you've been medically stabilized.
25:40
Speaker 2: That's the alcohol part of it solved. But then they
25:44
Speaker 2: are faced with the question, by me and by my
25:47
Speaker 2: stuff here, why did you go down this path in
25:50
Speaker 2: the first place? That alcohol was there to solve something.
25:55
Speaker 2: And that is where people really discover very fronting and
26:00
Speaker 2: uncountable truths about themselves. They are forced to reanalyze and
26:07
Speaker 2: to reassess relationships that they've had, jobs that they've been in,
26:16
Speaker 2: sometimes the childhood that they live through, and they're forced
26:20
Speaker 2: in any ways to take off the rose dinted glasses
26:23
Speaker 2: that maybe the lives that they led were not as
26:25
Speaker 2: perfect as they had hitherto thought. You know, that really
26:31
Speaker 2: living a luxurious life, or a or a wealthy life,
26:36
Speaker 2: you know, in a very nicely appointed property on the
26:39
Speaker 2: beach front, that is not a vaccination. You know, wealth
26:44
Speaker 2: is not a vaccination against trauma. As I like to
26:47
Speaker 2: tell the people here, and that when they really begin
26:50
Speaker 2: to look at their lives, they realize how the little
26:55
Speaker 2: things or what they thought of as the little things
26:58
Speaker 2: that have happened to them all stacked up and have
27:04
Speaker 2: combined into causing enough of a psychological injury that then
27:09
Speaker 2: necessitated the use of the alcohol in the way that
27:14
Speaker 2: it that they have used. If that makes.
27:18
Speaker 1: Sense, Yeah, it does appreciate that. What are some of
27:21
Speaker 1: the ways, you know, given all the different modalities out
27:25
Speaker 1: there really available to work in this kind of context,
27:32
Speaker 1: what has been your training in terms of trauma treatment
27:36
Speaker 1: modalities and which ones are you integrating into this program.
27:42
Speaker 2: So the perspective that I work from is the one
27:47
Speaker 2: adam brated by Judith Herman in nineteen ninety one. She did,
27:53
Speaker 2: as well as Vandercolt, Joseph Spinezola, and Julian Ford in
27:59
Speaker 2: a very famous Life Mark paper in nineteen ninety one,
28:02
Speaker 2: and it essentially says that effective treatment of trauma comes
28:05
Speaker 2: in three stages. Stage one, which is in many ways
28:10
Speaker 2: what we do here is referred to as stabilization. This
28:14
Speaker 2: is present focus at skills based. It essentially says to
28:18
Speaker 2: the person, whatever your traumas are, the net result of
28:22
Speaker 2: that is that it has made your life very unstable.
28:25
Speaker 2: If I'm drinking half vodka a day, my life is
28:29
Speaker 2: not very stable. If I'm gambling, drinking pholography drug use,
28:36
Speaker 2: if I'm doing all of these things, then my life
28:38
Speaker 2: has become incredibly unstable. But even for those without these
28:43
Speaker 2: addictive behaviors, you can see there is a tremendous amount
28:47
Speaker 2: of instability. They can't manage their anxiety, they have panic attacks,
28:52
Speaker 2: they have intrusive or collecting, they have flashbacks, they have nightmares,
28:56
Speaker 2: they have massive avoidance behaviors, They have a whole constellation
29:00
Speaker 2: of symptoms that make their lives effectively unmanageable or unstable.
29:06
Speaker 2: So the first part of court first phase is how
29:09
Speaker 2: do we stabilize our lives? How do we still help
29:12
Speaker 2: you to stabilize your life? And this is entirely skills based.
29:16
Speaker 2: Part of it is cognitive, part of it is based
29:19
Speaker 2: on somatic psychology, some of it is behavioral, some of
29:22
Speaker 2: it is environmental. But there's a whole constructive skills that
29:26
Speaker 2: people learn to be able to sell sooth and self stabilized,
29:30
Speaker 2: and that has to happen before anything else. Once the
29:33
Speaker 2: person has done that, then they can consider moving onto
29:37
Speaker 2: phase two, which Hermann referred to as the reprocessing phase.
29:42
Speaker 2: This is in contrast past focused and non skill space.
29:45
Speaker 2: This is where you begin to ask questions like what
29:49
Speaker 2: is it that happened to me? In the past. That
29:52
Speaker 2: is the result of why I'm here. And the reprocessing
29:55
Speaker 2: can be done using EMDR, which is my favorite way,
29:58
Speaker 2: but there are many different ways in which this can
30:00
Speaker 2: be done. One of the great joys of working in
30:03
Speaker 2: a place like this is I have access to people
30:05
Speaker 2: who can reprocess trauma in a variety of marvelous, marvelous ways.
30:10
Speaker 2: I've got someone here who's trained to use a system
30:13
Speaker 2: called IFS, Internal Family Systems created British Shorts. Fantastic way
30:19
Speaker 2: to repress trauma, psychodrama, fantastic way, EMDR, fantastic way, CPT,
30:26
Speaker 2: you know, Patricia Resnik, fantastic. There are many, many fantastic ways,
30:30
Speaker 2: but they all have the same end goal, which is
30:33
Speaker 2: reciprocal inhibition, which is to reduce and eliminate the distress
30:38
Speaker 2: that traumatic memory has on the individual. And that's your
30:42
Speaker 2: phase two. And then there's phase three, which is not
30:46
Speaker 2: a lot of people enter, but I always find it's
30:49
Speaker 2: a good thing when people do it. Which is about
30:51
Speaker 2: the future. What are my relationship ships going to look
30:55
Speaker 2: like moving forward? If I know what I don't want
30:58
Speaker 2: them to look like, If I know what they look
31:00
Speaker 2: like when they damage me, then what do the healthy
31:02
Speaker 2: ones look like. And it's really about building a future
31:06
Speaker 2: that is both meaningful and purposeful in the context of
31:10
Speaker 2: someone suffering. That's I think, I'm very very overlooked and
31:15
Speaker 2: important phase, because unless we do that, then in many ways,
31:19
Speaker 2: my personal suffering is meaningless. You know, what's the reason
31:24
Speaker 2: for it? There isn't one. And so it's the ability
31:26
Speaker 2: to extract meaning from what happened to me or what
31:30
Speaker 2: happened to us that is also a key part of it.
31:33
Speaker 2: And I just thought that that Herman Judith Hermann explained
31:38
Speaker 2: this and laid it out so beautifully in her book
31:41
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one book Trauma and Recovery, And that's
31:46
Speaker 2: the perspective I work from.
31:50
Speaker 1: You can hear the excitement in your voice, you know,
31:54
Speaker 1: and the hope. I mean, I could just imagine the
31:58
Speaker 1: hope that this presents for a lot of people who
32:01
Speaker 1: are who are suffering, are who do find themselves addicted,
32:09
Speaker 1: you know, and again the shame that comes with that
32:12
Speaker 1: and the feeling of being confined and restricted. But you're
32:16
Speaker 1: presenting what appears to me seems to me a very
32:20
Speaker 1: hopeful kind of plate in a sense, we can get
32:25
Speaker 1: through this.
32:30
Speaker 2: I hope is a key ingredient in this whole process.
32:35
Speaker 2: It's also why this process is so powerful when it's
32:39
Speaker 2: done in community such as this one, because so many
32:43
Speaker 2: people who come here have lost hope. They do not
32:47
Speaker 2: think they can recover. They do not think it's possible
32:51
Speaker 2: to retrieve and recover and live healthy, fulfilling, meaningful lives.
32:58
Speaker 2: And it's the ability to see others who are on
33:02
Speaker 2: the same journey, who are a little further along the
33:06
Speaker 2: road let's travel. As M. Scott Peck put it, it's
33:09
Speaker 2: the ability to see that that translates into into hope.
33:13
Speaker 2: And hope is it's like a superpower, you know. It's
33:17
Speaker 2: it's the quicktessential human attribute, right. It's it can be
33:21
Speaker 2: simultaneously our greatest strength if we have it, but it
33:25
Speaker 2: can be a terrible weakness when it's not there. And
33:29
Speaker 2: so you're absolutely right to talk about hope in this way.
33:35
Speaker 2: So important.
33:37
Speaker 1: As we kind of wind down here, I want to
33:39
Speaker 1: kind of open up another topic here, but I realized
33:42
Speaker 1: it's a big one. But powdering that hope is the
33:48
Speaker 1: I think is a common understanding in this field that
33:50
Speaker 1: there's a recidivism, right. It takes many times for people
33:56
Speaker 1: to go oftentimes many people many time to go through
34:00
Speaker 1: recovery before it quote unquote sticks speak to that a bit.
34:06
Speaker 2: The two people I think who answered this question best
34:10
Speaker 2: were James Prochaska and Carlo Dicamenti in nineteen eighty one
34:15
Speaker 2: when they it's a very very long name for a
34:18
Speaker 2: very simple theory. They called it the transderrestical model of
34:21
Speaker 2: the stages of change. Really, what this model says is
34:27
Speaker 2: that every person who embarks on a journey here goes
34:32
Speaker 2: through six different stages. They go through a stage where
34:36
Speaker 2: they do not think they have a problem, and then
34:38
Speaker 2: they come to realize that they do, and then they
34:41
Speaker 2: are fully convinced that they do, and then they enact
34:44
Speaker 2: the change, and then they grow, and then they take
34:49
Speaker 2: a step back. But that's part and parcel off this
34:52
Speaker 2: transferrestical model, because there are times where people have to
34:56
Speaker 2: find out what doesn't work as well that is what
35:00
Speaker 2: does work, you know, to put it very very simplicity simplistically,
35:04
Speaker 2: you know, is it possible for me, as a recovering
35:07
Speaker 2: alcoholic to live over a bar? In some cases I
35:11
Speaker 2: might need to find out the answer to that in
35:14
Speaker 2: an uncomfortable way. That is not the same as saying
35:17
Speaker 2: that I've failed, and so that's a very important view
35:21
Speaker 2: that I try to translate to people here. It's not
35:24
Speaker 2: picking up the drink that damages people. If that person
35:28
Speaker 2: happens to pick up a drink, but they contact us
35:32
Speaker 2: or they contact an organization to get back onto the
35:35
Speaker 2: wagon in two weeks, well that's a very different conversation
35:39
Speaker 2: to the person who gets bound on the wagon after
35:41
Speaker 2: two years. It's the two years of being out there
35:48
Speaker 2: in the wilderness, if you like. It's the time that
35:51
Speaker 2: really can cause someone to damage. Very very difficult for
35:55
Speaker 2: a person to burn their life to the ground in
35:57
Speaker 2: two days. So my message to people out there as
36:00
Speaker 2: well as people here as the same. This is part
36:02
Speaker 2: of your recovery process. Take the shame out of it.
36:05
Speaker 2: We are trying to build, you know, trauma resilience and
36:09
Speaker 2: stress resilient systems. They're not always going to work. Sometimes
36:15
Speaker 2: we need to learn what doesn't get back on the wagon.
36:18
Speaker 2: Just get back on it, all.
36:24
Speaker 1: Right, So how do people learn more about what you're
36:27
Speaker 1: doing and Holand's recovery. What's the best way for them
36:30
Speaker 1: to reach you?
36:33
Speaker 2: They can look at our website which is Highlendsrecovery dot
36:36
Speaker 2: com dot au Everything that we're doing is on there.
36:40
Speaker 2: There are many many videos of myself. There are excerpts
36:43
Speaker 2: of podcasts with excellent people like yourself on there where
36:47
Speaker 2: I explain the program in much detail, and there are
36:51
Speaker 2: ways in which to contact us directly, and anyone who
36:54
Speaker 2: contacts us, I'd be very happy to speak with them,
36:59
Speaker 2: and of course they can listen to podcast for just
37:02
Speaker 2: this one.
37:02
Speaker 1: Awesome Russia. Thanks so much for being here. Appreciate it.
37:07
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me on guys. Been
37:09
Speaker 2: a real pleasure to talk about the subject that I
37:12
Speaker 2: can talk about all day every day.
37:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, I appreciate it. All right, we'll be in touch,
37:15
Speaker 1: take care.
37:17
Speaker 2: Thank you.