Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Instilling Dignity In Our Clients with Dr. Robert Rhoton, PsyD, LPC,

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Instilling Dignity In Our Clients with Dr. Robert Rhoton, PsyD, LPC, · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists Podcast. My name is gaming Person.
0:04
Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
0:11
Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
0:15
Speaker 1: So five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome
0:20
Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have back. Doctor
0:23
Speaker 1: Robert Rotten. Robert welcome, Thank you all right. Doctor Roten
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Speaker 1: is the chief Clinical Officer of the Arizona Trauma Institute,
0:31
Speaker 1: one of our great sponsors. He's President of the Trauma
0:34
Speaker 1: Institute International. A diplomat of the American Academy of Experts
0:38
Speaker 1: in Traumatic Stress, he has spent decades advancing the understanding
0:42
Speaker 1: and treatment of developmental and family trauma. Doctor Roten is
0:45
Speaker 1: supervised outpatient clinics, juvenile justice and substance abuse programs, date
0:50
Speaker 1: treatment centers, and child and Family therapeutic Services. Formerly a
0:55
Speaker 1: professor at Ottawa University, he trained counselors to work with
0:58
Speaker 1: trauma genetic family dynamics using non egoic, compassionate models of care. Today,
1:03
Speaker 1: he consults with agencies and organizations across the globe, helping
1:08
Speaker 1: them strengthen trauma informed systems and improve therapeutic outcomes for
1:12
Speaker 1: both individuals and families. All right, before we get going,
1:17
Speaker 1: the most important thing is are you in the path
1:20
Speaker 1: of the crazy storm?
1:22
Speaker 2: No?
1:24
Speaker 1: Oh wow? Okay, where are you?
1:27
Speaker 2: I'm in the mountains just north of Phoenix.
1:30
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, all right, so we have.
1:34
Speaker 2: Here are mostly dust storms.
1:36
Speaker 1: So okay, so no, no crazy ice. So last time,
1:41
Speaker 1: I know, we touched upon obviously you work with the
1:45
Speaker 1: Arizona Trauma Institute and the resources and courses, et cetera
1:51
Speaker 1: that you offered there. It's very interesting discussion. Today, however,
1:55
Speaker 1: we're gonna shift a little bit and well I'll let
1:59
Speaker 1: you take it take it away. Here, we're going to
2:03
Speaker 1: talk about what resources clients may or may not have,
2:07
Speaker 1: or may or may not think they have, say more.
2:11
Speaker 2: Okay. So, one of the challenges we have in the
2:14
Speaker 2: mental health field is that the way we train therapist
2:18
Speaker 2: is to look for deficits. And we really developed that
2:22
Speaker 2: and then we focus on fixing the deficits. And so,
2:28
Speaker 2: you know, you have people that you know, have been
2:30
Speaker 2: introduced to things like strength based work or asset focused work,
2:36
Speaker 2: but they don't really know how to deliver that. So
2:39
Speaker 2: they bluntly just ask people what are your strengths? And
2:45
Speaker 2: of course people get that deer in the headlights look
2:49
Speaker 2: and they don't know what to say. And it really
2:53
Speaker 2: is kind of an unfortunate lack of skill and understanding.
2:58
Speaker 2: Almost all of us, even if we're not regulated, and
3:01
Speaker 2: get put on the spot by asking a question like
3:04
Speaker 2: that tends to freeze us up. So one of the
3:07
Speaker 2: challenges that you know, we're always talking about with the
3:11
Speaker 2: clinical people is how do you help identify what the
3:16
Speaker 2: resources are?
3:18
Speaker 1: And so.
3:20
Speaker 2: Rather than illustrate how that goes, let me give you
3:23
Speaker 2: some examples.
3:24
Speaker 1: Okay, if I may Robert for one second here, So
3:28
Speaker 1: I want to ask an obvious question you said oftentimes
3:32
Speaker 1: and maybe the go to is to help clinicians look
3:38
Speaker 1: for or look at or understand the deficits. Why is
3:42
Speaker 1: it important to look at the strengths as well or
3:46
Speaker 1: the resources as well well?
3:48
Speaker 2: Because the challenge of focusing only on deficits means that
3:53
Speaker 2: you are only underscoring human weakness, human frailties, and human
4:00
Speaker 2: and failures and get overly focused on the fluid emotions
4:06
Speaker 2: related to the pain and misery and suffering. But you know,
4:11
Speaker 2: we know that what you focus on, you get more of,
4:15
Speaker 2: and so why aren't we focusing on what makes them
4:18
Speaker 2: great instead of what makes them broken?
4:21
Speaker 1: Right? And it shifts the whole tone of the relationship
4:27
Speaker 1: and the meeting right away. Wow, I never thought I
4:31
Speaker 1: have strengths. I never thought of that.
4:34
Speaker 2: Well, And a lot of people that have, particularly those
4:37
Speaker 2: that have been in multiple sessions, of multiple therapy attempts,
4:41
Speaker 2: and they've been therapized in a traditional mindset. They come
4:46
Speaker 2: into therapy and they don't really believe they have anything
4:49
Speaker 2: going for them, and a lot of times you're exploring
4:52
Speaker 2: and trying to get a handle on what they might be,
4:56
Speaker 2: what they might be able to have as a resource.
5:00
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because way too often in the mental
5:04
Speaker 2: health work were very narrow and we don't look beyond
5:08
Speaker 2: a certain mark for where the resources are. So let
5:12
Speaker 2: me give you an example. A number of years ago,
5:15
Speaker 2: I worked with a young women in her mid twenties
5:17
Speaker 2: who had been in therapy pretty much since she was thirteen.
5:21
Speaker 2: And she came in and she wanted to work on
5:25
Speaker 2: some traumas from childhood.
5:27
Speaker 1: And.
5:29
Speaker 2: She, you know, she really was very clear that she
5:32
Speaker 2: didn't possess any abilities that she hadn't really there wasn't
5:35
Speaker 2: anything she'd found that really worked. And you know, I
5:40
Speaker 2: could have confronted that like we would in a traditional
5:43
Speaker 2: mental health sense, but what I said instead is I
5:47
Speaker 2: shifted the conversation and I said, tell me about the
5:51
Speaker 2: least sucky experience you remember as a child. And she
5:55
Speaker 2: kind of looked at me and like, well, I and
5:59
Speaker 2: then you know, it took her a couple of minutes
6:01
Speaker 2: to kind of come up with something, and she said, well,
6:03
Speaker 2: you know, it really wasn't suck y. I kind of
6:05
Speaker 2: enjoyed it most of the time. But after school. For
6:08
Speaker 2: a couple of years, after school, I'd go to my
6:10
Speaker 2: grandfather's house and the man had a you know, a
6:14
Speaker 2: little over a half acre garden, and we would garden
6:18
Speaker 2: and he would spend time talking to me. He was
6:20
Speaker 2: a little grumpy sometimes when I didn't do it right,
6:23
Speaker 2: but you know, and she kind of you could see
6:25
Speaker 2: the demeanor change as she was talking about this moment
6:29
Speaker 2: and I but she really didn't think she had she
6:33
Speaker 2: knew anything that was useful or helpful. So I challenged
6:37
Speaker 2: her to get one of those little ceramic pots and
6:41
Speaker 2: plant something anything she wanted in it and send me
6:44
Speaker 2: a picture of it when it began to break through
6:47
Speaker 2: the soil, and which she did, and there was a
6:51
Speaker 2: couple of weeks between the sessions, and when she came
6:54
Speaker 2: back she brought me a picture of where it was now,
6:57
Speaker 2: which is up about you know, an inn. And I said, okay,
7:02
Speaker 2: so look at this. You've have a lot of experience gardening.
7:06
Speaker 2: What would you have to do to get this plant
7:09
Speaker 2: to fully mature and get a good yield from it?
7:13
Speaker 2: She'd paint planted red peppers. And so she walked me
7:19
Speaker 2: through what you would have to do and I said, okay,
7:22
Speaker 2: so you understand that process, right, yeah, so let's go
7:26
Speaker 2: through real quick again. We did, and I said, let's
7:30
Speaker 2: shift therapy to fit that process.
7:34
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, hang on, So this is the work of
7:41
Speaker 1: an experience class. It's got to be. You just didn't
7:44
Speaker 1: start doing this right now. I mean, this is this
7:48
Speaker 1: is so you can just feel this is born of experience.
7:56
Speaker 1: I mean just the very sentence, a very question like
8:00
Speaker 1: not sucky. Right, you didn't say good, you didn't say great,
8:04
Speaker 1: you didn't say exciting. But what about that phrase worked?
8:10
Speaker 1: Do you quote unquote worked or was helpful? Well?
8:13
Speaker 2: The rationale is a lot of people, especially if they've
8:18
Speaker 2: been a lot of therapy, they've developed an identity of
8:20
Speaker 2: it being powerless, and so if you ask them about
8:24
Speaker 2: something good, you run into their inner critic. Well, nothing
8:29
Speaker 2: was really that good. But when you asked them to
8:32
Speaker 2: scale something, what's the least sucky thing that happened? You
8:36
Speaker 2: all of a sudden engage a different part of their
8:38
Speaker 2: brain and they're looking at well, I had all of
8:40
Speaker 2: these experiences, which was the least bad and now you've
8:45
Speaker 2: You've completely shifted their focus and it opens the door
8:50
Speaker 2: to do this, And it's.
8:51
Speaker 1: Almost like, and correct me if I'm wrong here. You're
8:54
Speaker 1: speaking their language. Right. Some might say, well, that's a
8:59
Speaker 1: negative way to put it. How come you not being
9:02
Speaker 1: more positive? Right? That could that would be an argument,
9:05
Speaker 1: kind of a plain argument.
9:06
Speaker 2: Sure, And therapists are really really well in doctrine to
9:11
Speaker 2: use false positives as a way to encourage people. But
9:16
Speaker 2: the reality is, somebody that has a significant history of treatment,
9:22
Speaker 2: particularly for trauma related issues, the way that they maintain
9:28
Speaker 2: the pain of their of their hurts is by not
9:33
Speaker 2: allowing themselves to see that they can do things about it.
9:38
Speaker 2: And so you know, we just shift. We spend most
9:43
Speaker 2: of our time. You know, if I have somebody come
9:45
Speaker 2: in and they look like they have had one hell
9:49
Speaker 2: of a week, I never asked them how their week was.
9:53
Speaker 2: I said, I'll say something like this. You know, I'm
9:55
Speaker 2: getting this vibe that you've just really had a bad week.
9:59
Speaker 2: What did you have to overcome just to get in
10:01
Speaker 2: my door today?
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Speaker 1: Okay, so again again kind of simple, stoundingd question. But
10:10
Speaker 1: why why not say, you know, my god, it looks
10:15
Speaker 1: like you had a hard week. Why why are you
10:17
Speaker 1: not doing that?
10:19
Speaker 2: Because what I do is reinforce their misery and pain,
10:22
Speaker 2: and I don't give them any relief.
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Speaker 1: Right.
10:27
Speaker 2: You know, you come in, I know you have a
10:30
Speaker 2: trauma history. I know you're not regulating very well, which
10:33
Speaker 2: means that you are almost automatically negatively biased. So if
10:40
Speaker 2: I ask you how your week was, even if it
10:43
Speaker 2: was a pretty good week, it's going to get we
10:45
Speaker 2: Let's not I had a miserable week. So I don't
10:49
Speaker 2: ask that question. What I do instead is, you know,
10:53
Speaker 2: I can see you've had a hard week. What did
10:55
Speaker 2: you have to overcome to get here? How did you
10:57
Speaker 2: give your self permission to just do it?
11:00
Speaker 1: It?
11:01
Speaker 2: And now we're talking about their competencies and the capacity
11:06
Speaker 2: they have, and we get to reinforce that rather than
11:11
Speaker 2: reinforce the misery that they've experienced.
11:17
Speaker 1: How did this How did you start realizing this was
11:22
Speaker 1: a very powerful way to move into a discussion or
11:25
Speaker 1: meet with someone, as opposed to saying, it looks like
11:29
Speaker 1: you had a crazy week.
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Speaker 2: Well, part of it is my own distress. Is the
11:37
Speaker 2: way almost everything I learned in my own educational process.
11:43
Speaker 2: When I actually started working with people, I realized most
11:46
Speaker 2: of it didn't work that well. And what I realized
11:52
Speaker 2: the temptation was for me to say, well, the reason
11:54
Speaker 2: isn't working is because the client is such a mess.
12:00
Speaker 2: Kind of held myself accountable. Is it really that they
12:02
Speaker 2: are a mess? Or is it that I've been brainwashed
12:05
Speaker 2: to think in certain ways that demean the client and
12:09
Speaker 2: rob them of dignity. And so I began to search
12:13
Speaker 2: for alternatives. Fortunately, I was trained in classic Ericsonian methodology,
12:21
Speaker 2: which was you know, pioneered in the fifties but still
12:27
Speaker 2: you know, very very much impactful. But I also was
12:33
Speaker 2: doing research on what other ideas could work, and I
12:37
Speaker 2: ran across the work of Aaron Anandofsky and pseudogenics, which is,
12:42
Speaker 2: how do you promoke health and well being instead of
12:45
Speaker 2: focusing on deficits, how do you focus on what gives
12:50
Speaker 2: them well being? And the combination of that, the research
12:55
Speaker 2: I was doing and my training with the Ericsonian groups
13:00
Speaker 2: fundamentally changed how I began to work with clients.
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Speaker 1: Robert, if you just briefly give our listeners a snapshot
13:07
Speaker 1: of what Ericsonian psychology is.
13:10
Speaker 2: Okay, So most people believe that when they hear the
13:14
Speaker 2: term Milton Erickson, they think of hypnosis. And yes he did.
13:20
Speaker 2: He's very skilled at hypnosis, but he only used it
13:22
Speaker 2: a few percentage to points. But he had a method
13:28
Speaker 2: which is really you know, a lot of people have
13:30
Speaker 2: tried to label it a bunch of things, but it
13:32
Speaker 2: was really a model to help instill dignity into the clients.
13:39
Speaker 2: And he did it very elegantly, and he did it
13:43
Speaker 2: very and most of the time very briefly. And so
13:48
Speaker 2: that's I was exposed to that post graduation, and it
13:54
Speaker 2: just it really did help me because I'm really early
13:58
Speaker 2: on in my career. I was really the point saying,
14:00
Speaker 2: you know, what I was taught in school really doesn't work.
14:04
Speaker 2: And I was frustrating because the systems were designed to
14:07
Speaker 2: support what was going to keep people sick rather than
14:11
Speaker 2: what would help him heal. And I actually considered getting
14:15
Speaker 2: out of the field altogether, and if it hadn't been
14:18
Speaker 2: that I got involved with that and realized the utility
14:23
Speaker 2: of it. You know, Erickson had a concept called utilization
14:29
Speaker 2: that whatever people bring in, you can use it to
14:33
Speaker 2: help them. And then Amanovsky further developed that same idea
14:39
Speaker 2: with his what he called gr RS, which is generalized
14:42
Speaker 2: resistance resources. And so, you know, the fundamental shift was
14:47
Speaker 2: based on my lived experience, the research that I was
14:51
Speaker 2: doing and then experimenting with with this and it. You know,
14:57
Speaker 2: I was getting outcomes that were amazing compared to what
15:00
Speaker 2: I've been getting before. But the other piece that became
15:03
Speaker 2: a parent is that the way I began to think
15:06
Speaker 2: about people and their situations was drastically different. Give me
15:11
Speaker 2: an example, Well, instead of seeing somebody as a collection
15:15
Speaker 2: of symptoms, yeah, I see that quite often. What's happened
15:20
Speaker 2: is that we are dealing with active protective mechanisms and
15:26
Speaker 2: the the while the active protective part may be creating
15:31
Speaker 2: problems from them. There are some there's things noble in
15:36
Speaker 2: the fact that they are taking this taking some action.
15:40
Speaker 2: So it's and we don't acknowledge that enough. You know,
15:45
Speaker 2: one of the questions I sometimes will ask people that
15:49
Speaker 2: are struggling with heavy duty addictions, where's the situation you
15:53
Speaker 2: never use?
15:56
Speaker 1: Where's the situation you never use? Okay? What does that mean?
16:02
Speaker 2: Where you know every addect ivey?
16:05
Speaker 1: Oh, you never use your substances? I see?
16:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, and how do you manage to not use
16:12
Speaker 2: in that situation?
16:14
Speaker 1: Got it?
16:14
Speaker 2: What's you know? What's about this? Because what we often
16:18
Speaker 2: do is we focus on the use and then we're
16:21
Speaker 2: surprised we get more use. What if we focused on
16:24
Speaker 2: the times when they were amazing and didn't use, right,
16:30
Speaker 2: you understand the shift that?
16:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course it's It's really incredible just to think
16:35
Speaker 1: about it. It shifts the whole feeling. I mean, it
16:40
Speaker 1: feels as if you're looking for the sunlight instead of
16:45
Speaker 1: just looking for the darkness or trying to explore the darkness,
16:49
Speaker 1: You're looking for that ray of light. I love that line.
16:55
Speaker 1: Instilling dignity. I mean, I think so many any clients
17:03
Speaker 1: get I'm generalizing here, but walk in feeling they don't
17:06
Speaker 1: even have any dignity.
17:09
Speaker 2: It's true. And a lot of times the system reinforces.
17:12
Speaker 1: That you talked about getting incredible results share. So what
17:21
Speaker 1: did that look like for you when when this started happening.
17:25
Speaker 2: Let me give you an example. So I had a
17:31
Speaker 2: young fellow. He was like thirty one thirty two and
17:37
Speaker 2: had been very successful, he was an engineer, and but
17:44
Speaker 2: he was miserable. He was depressed, he was overwhelmed, and
17:49
Speaker 2: he was just not doing well. And he'd been in
17:51
Speaker 2: therapy a couple of times before, and he could speak
17:54
Speaker 2: the therapy lingo pretty pretty well. But the marriage was
18:00
Speaker 2: that he wasn't making any sustainable changes. He was going
18:05
Speaker 2: in and he would talk about feelings and things, but
18:07
Speaker 2: it wasn't anything concrete. So by focusing on what competencies
18:15
Speaker 2: the person had, what assets they possess, what resources, really
18:20
Speaker 2: discovered that he had put all of these wonderful resources
18:24
Speaker 2: to in his professional life into effect, but he wasn't
18:27
Speaker 2: putting them into effect anywhere else. And we just began
18:31
Speaker 2: the process of migrating strengths that he already had in
18:37
Speaker 2: one area of his life to another. And you know,
18:41
Speaker 2: and it was like we didn't work that long together.
18:46
Speaker 2: I think we worked for about six months. But you know,
18:50
Speaker 2: I run into him occasionally, you know, after that, and
18:53
Speaker 2: he was like, you know that really that changed everything
18:56
Speaker 2: for me. It just changed everything for me.
19:00
Speaker 1: Why did he come to you?
19:01
Speaker 2: Originally because he was he felt like the depression he
19:08
Speaker 2: was having was going to be interfering with his work.
19:13
Speaker 2: But you know, he is really talented at organizing, sequencing,
19:21
Speaker 2: you know, bringing things in on time, and being very productive.
19:26
Speaker 2: But he didn't take those skills and used them everywhere
19:31
Speaker 2: in his life. He only used them prior was education,
19:36
Speaker 2: and now it was in his work. And so I
19:39
Speaker 2: didn't have to do I didn't have to pull out
19:43
Speaker 2: a model of therapy for him. We just basically took
19:47
Speaker 2: what he already knew how to do and do well
19:51
Speaker 2: and had him apply that to what was going on
19:53
Speaker 2: in his emotional life.
19:57
Speaker 1: I could see where a lot of us don't even
20:00
Speaker 1: think of having making that switch, right, taking these strengths
20:07
Speaker 1: in this one segment of our lives, how could they
20:10
Speaker 1: ever possibly you know, work or fit in this other
20:14
Speaker 1: area of my life?
20:16
Speaker 2: Yeah?
20:18
Speaker 1: What are the what are if any are the are
20:21
Speaker 1: the challenges people might come up against? Clinicians might come
20:25
Speaker 1: up against with this perspective I mean, I could see
20:34
Speaker 1: someone walking into someone's office, maybe they're you know, they're
20:40
Speaker 1: extremely upset. Just regulated, they might argue, what, well, first,
20:46
Speaker 1: I've got to, you know, just regulate them and calm
20:49
Speaker 1: them that what I don't know, help me out here.
20:52
Speaker 2: Well, what they're mostly trained to do in college programs,
20:56
Speaker 2: at least in the US, is to focus on the
20:59
Speaker 2: emotional upheaval, and we often encourage people to chase emotional states.
21:09
Speaker 2: And the problem with that is that emotional states fluctuate tremendously,
21:16
Speaker 2: you know, based on situation, where you are, who you're with,
21:20
Speaker 2: and so there's no structure that really allows them to
21:26
Speaker 2: be able to actually do this. When you're chasing an
21:30
Speaker 2: ephemeral emotional state, sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.
21:36
Speaker 2: But if you can operate, operationalize a process with that
21:41
Speaker 2: it is identified and structured there, it's much easier for
21:45
Speaker 2: them to do that. But most therapists focus on chasing
21:49
Speaker 2: emotional states rather than you know, making things concrete and
21:55
Speaker 2: usable for your client.
22:00
Speaker 1: Temple of that, I'm a little not sure what you're
22:03
Speaker 1: talking about.
22:04
Speaker 2: So here's a really simple one. I was talking to
22:07
Speaker 2: somebody a couple of days ago, and they were saying, well,
22:10
Speaker 2: you know, I really really want to feel loved in
22:13
Speaker 2: my life, and I sider you, but that's a feeling
22:18
Speaker 2: and you are not really not really able to chase
22:25
Speaker 2: a feeling and make sure you have a way to
22:27
Speaker 2: get it. What would it look like? How would you
22:30
Speaker 2: know you're beginning to get it? What would be the
22:32
Speaker 2: first inkling that you're getting that love? What does it
22:36
Speaker 2: look like when you're seeing it? What's it look like
22:38
Speaker 2: when you feel it? What's sensations? And he was like stunned.
22:43
Speaker 2: He didn't know how to really answer that because all
22:46
Speaker 2: of his attention in his three prior sessions of three
22:49
Speaker 2: prior runs of therapy was to try to grab this state,
22:55
Speaker 2: this emotional state. But it's unhelpful. How are you going
23:00
Speaker 2: to what are the concrete ways that they're going to
23:02
Speaker 2: do that? Well, they can't. It's kind of like, you know,
23:08
Speaker 2: you're dealing with an adolescent, and the adolescent says, I'm
23:11
Speaker 2: going to get straight a's next semester. Okay, what's your
23:16
Speaker 2: plan to do that? You know, what would come first?
23:19
Speaker 2: How would we know that you're making progress? You know
23:23
Speaker 2: those things are necessary? And so I think it isn't
23:27
Speaker 2: that a lack of goodness on the part of the therapist.
23:30
Speaker 2: What it is is a is a misunderstanding that they
23:34
Speaker 2: need to focus on helping people achieve emotional states without
23:39
Speaker 2: giving them this, without helping them develop the structure to
23:43
Speaker 2: actually act into that.
23:46
Speaker 1: So, using that example of the gentleman who wanted to
23:49
Speaker 1: feel more loved, he might have said, well, I guess
23:55
Speaker 1: I need to talk to my partner more.
23:58
Speaker 2: Or what Well, you might have said something like that,
24:02
Speaker 2: what he basically you know? Okay, so when where let's
24:08
Speaker 2: plan this out? What would it look like? What would
24:11
Speaker 2: it what would the conversation sound like?
24:14
Speaker 1: Okay, So getting super specific on the actions needed to get.
24:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can. You want to what's the process, what's
24:24
Speaker 2: the action, what's the movement involved? And the goal of
24:29
Speaker 2: having love, which is an emotional state, is wonderful, but
24:33
Speaker 2: if you can't operationalize it, it's hard to act into.
24:37
Speaker 1: It, right and it even feels empowering to a certain
24:45
Speaker 1: degree to be able to identify what I need to
24:50
Speaker 1: do to get there. Yeah? Right, So okay, in terms
24:59
Speaker 1: of of the resources you're offering for therapists, clinicians and
25:06
Speaker 1: such on, are these some of the things you guys
25:09
Speaker 1: are talking about and what capacity, how so.
25:14
Speaker 2: Well We do it in a couple of ways. We
25:16
Speaker 2: have the clinical trainings which will introduce people to this
25:20
Speaker 2: way of thinking. But the other piece is we also
25:25
Speaker 2: realize that because this is quite different than what most
25:28
Speaker 2: people have been trained on and supervised to, we also
25:33
Speaker 2: provide ongoing mentoring for people that have attended our clinical trainings.
25:39
Speaker 2: So for the last five years, we've probably had close
25:44
Speaker 2: to four hundred people that have spent periods of time
25:48
Speaker 2: with us kind of learning how to put this stuff
25:51
Speaker 2: into practice. We meet, you know several times, you know,
25:55
Speaker 2: different like by Tuesday morning one that I did this morning.
25:59
Speaker 2: Most of the people that tim that one, or from
26:02
Speaker 2: the Mideast the Monday night ones I do are a
26:05
Speaker 2: lot of people from Southeast Asia and the Philippines, so,
26:09
Speaker 2: you know, but they are they're learning how to apply
26:14
Speaker 2: those concepts that they were exposed to in the therapy piece,
26:18
Speaker 2: and that's really good for them because in their community
26:25
Speaker 2: of other mental health workers, people say, well, why aren't
26:27
Speaker 2: you focusing on what we focus on? And you want
26:31
Speaker 2: to make somebody, you know, a room full of therapists
26:34
Speaker 2: real uncomfortable, you start talking about focusing on people's resources
26:39
Speaker 2: and you just see them kind of panic because that's
26:41
Speaker 2: not what they were trained to do. And so you know,
26:45
Speaker 2: if you're if you're going to practice this way, you
26:47
Speaker 2: almost need a community of like minded people to support you.
26:53
Speaker 1: What kind of a a mental shift does this require
26:59
Speaker 1: for a therapist? I mean, is it just is it?
27:04
Speaker 1: Is it challenging just because most people haven't been trained
27:08
Speaker 1: this way? Or is it challenging because it's kind of
27:16
Speaker 1: giving a trust over to the process and the client
27:20
Speaker 1: and kind of honoring what is it?
27:24
Speaker 2: I think the biggest challenge people have with this is
27:28
Speaker 2: the fact that it's so different than what they were
27:30
Speaker 2: trained to do, and it's so different than the rest
27:34
Speaker 2: of the culture. A lot of mental health providers would
27:37
Speaker 2: want to be liked and accepted by their peers more
27:42
Speaker 2: than they want to provide good services for their clients.
27:46
Speaker 2: And so do you find a lot of resistance when
27:51
Speaker 2: when you start talking this way with people, particularly in
27:54
Speaker 2: public formats, you make them really uncomfortable. And when when
28:00
Speaker 2: I used to run clinics, I would have people that
28:03
Speaker 2: would they would refer cases to me, but occasionally I
28:07
Speaker 2: would hear them complaining about my point of view because
28:11
Speaker 2: you know, you know, yet if they had cases they
28:14
Speaker 2: couldn't manage, they'd send them to me. So I it's
28:17
Speaker 2: that kind of you know, they want to feel like
28:20
Speaker 2: they are fitting in and being like everybody else, and
28:24
Speaker 2: the problem is fitting in and being like everybody else
28:26
Speaker 2: means you're going to underserve your client. And so we've
28:32
Speaker 2: been kind of on this crusade for twenty five twenty
28:38
Speaker 2: almost twenty eight years to have people be able to
28:44
Speaker 2: look at someone differently. Very few mental health providers look
28:49
Speaker 2: at a client and see anything redeeming or wonderful about them.
28:54
Speaker 2: They the way the system operates kind of robs them
28:58
Speaker 2: of dignity. And in a simple thing, most companies that
29:03
Speaker 2: do intakes have a bunch of paperwork that really is invasive,
29:09
Speaker 2: and you haven't got a person stable enough to really
29:12
Speaker 2: give you truthful answers, and so what you end up
29:16
Speaker 2: doing a lot of times is actually alienating people right
29:19
Speaker 2: on the intake. Why do we do that? Well, we're
29:22
Speaker 2: so we are so focused on how broken they are
29:27
Speaker 2: that we don't see what's wonderful about them.
29:32
Speaker 1: Jesus, you know, you have an incredible way of articulating
29:40
Speaker 1: your process, which is so very different I've got to
29:45
Speaker 1: say from a lot of other people and obviously well
29:50
Speaker 1: meaning people that I speak with, but there's something very
29:54
Speaker 1: inspiring and empowering about this, Robert. I love it. Thank you,
30:00
Speaker 1: love it, appreciate it all right? How do people learn
30:03
Speaker 1: more about you and the trainings you folks are offering
30:07
Speaker 1: at Arizona Trauma Institute.
30:09
Speaker 2: Sure, if people would like to explore our trainings, they
30:14
Speaker 2: can go on to the Arizona Trauma website and do
30:19
Speaker 2: a search for our courses, both live and online. If
30:24
Speaker 2: they want to follow me personally, I have almost twenty
30:29
Speaker 2: thousand people on LinkedIn in my network on LinkedIn, and
30:33
Speaker 2: they're more than welcome to follow me on LinkedIn. We
30:38
Speaker 2: usually are publishing four or five articles a week that
30:44
Speaker 2: all are reflective of this kind of mindset.
30:49
Speaker 1: So if that would be good, okay, and that's easy
30:52
Speaker 1: Trauma dot org. Correct, okay, and we'll have all that
30:56
Speaker 1: linked up here at the show notes page at the
30:58
Speaker 1: Trauma Therapist to podcast dot com. Robert, appreciate you. Thank
31:03
Speaker 1: you so much again for being here.
31:05
Speaker 2: You're welcome, all right.
31:06
Speaker 1: We'll be in touch by a bye h