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From the archives: Lisa Ferentz, LCSW-C, DAPA · The Trauma Therapist

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Today we even another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests.
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Enjoy. Welcome to the Trauma Thepist's podcast, a show about the incredible people
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dedicated to helping those who experienced trauma. My name is Goy macpherson, and
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my mission is to raise awareness of trauma and to inspire each of us to
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help those around us. All right, Welcome back to the Trauma Therapists podcast.
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My name is Gay McPherson and I have a cold, so I want
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to just put that out there to everybody. But this is the podcast where
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we are talking to master trauma therapists and really game changers in the field of
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trauma therapy. Today, I am so excited to introduce my guest, Lisa
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Ferrence. Lisa, are you ready to go? I am ready to go.
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And the good news is I have a cold too, all right,
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so we'll be very compassionate with each other. That sounds good, all right.
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So Lisa is a LCSW. She's been in private practice for over thirty
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years and as a national recognized expert in the field of trauma. She's an
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adjunct faculty member at several universities and is a founder of the Institute for Advanced
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Psychotherapy Training and Education, now in this eighth year of providing continuing education to
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mental health professionals. Lisa is also the author of two books treating self destructive
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behaviors in traumatized clients, The Clinician's Guide, as well as Letting Go of
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the Self Destructive Behaviors, a Workbook of Hope and Healing. In two thousand
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and nine, she was voted the Social Worker of the Year by Maryland Society
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for Clinical Social Work. All right, Lisa, that's obviously just a little
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bit about you, but step back first of all. Just tell us something
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a little bit personally about yourself, maybe where you're calling from, and then
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we will dive in. Sure. Sure, So I'm calling for from very
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cold Baltimore, Maryland. It's about twenty degrees here today. I'm originally from
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New York, but I've been in Maryland now for over thirty years, so
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I guess I have to call this my second home. New York is always
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going to be my first home. I started out actually in the theater,
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and I was a dancer and I did musical theater, and I've done that
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for most of my life. Wanted to make that a career, but then
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also wanted a very stable life and wanted a family and children, And if
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you know anything about the theater world, you know that that's a mutually exclusive
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proposition. And so I decided to go into social work instead. And I'm
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really thrilled that I was able to retain so much of my creative identity as
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a clinician and as a trauma specialist. So it's been a wonderful confluence of
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two of my greatest passions, which are theater and doing things that are creative
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and helping people to heal. So I feel very blessed that I can do
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that. Yeah, I think that's really exciting to me. And I hear
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that coming up again and again, the use of or the integration of,
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you know, creativity. I was my last guest talked a lot about that,
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and to where you talk about that, I'm really excited to talk more
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about how you integrate that and or how that influences you and the work you
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do. So we'll get to that, but let's start off with a quote
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or mantra here. You know, this podcast really is about highlighting your journey
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and really kind of focusing in on what's inspired you with the goal of inspiring
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other clinicians. So share with us, Lisa, quote or a mantra,
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something that kind of has inspired you. I love that question. So the
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thing that comes immediately to my mind is a quote from Believe It or Not,
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a science fiction writer named all This Huxley, and years and years ago
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I saw this. I don't even remember where, but it was just on
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a sign somewhere and it said, experience is not what happens to you,
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it's what you do with what happens to you. And as a therapist working
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with trauma and trauma narratives, I really need a way to retain a sense
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of hope in the work that I do. And you know, trauma survivors
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are so focused on why, you know, why did this horrible thing happen
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to me? And of course that's such a legitimate question to ask, but
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those of us in the field who work with trauma know full well that you're
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never going to find a good enough answer to why. And so for me,
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the goal was to begin to move people from why to what can I
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do with it? And that's why that quote really spoke to me and really
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resonated for me, because it's not about the trauma. It's what people do
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with their trauma that really, in so many ways defines their life journey.
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So that's I love that quote. So it's not about what happens to you,
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it's about what you do with what happens to you. I mean,
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there's so much power in that, right. It gives the client of the
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individual the power in the sense. And of course, you know, having
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them or guiding them to own that and accept that power is maybe not so
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easy all the time. But when did that When did that resonate with you?
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When did that become all right? You know what? This is really
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something that I need to pay more attention to. You know, I think
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it kicked in for me, believe it or not, as a grad student
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when I began working with very traumatized folks, and a lot of the clients
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that I was given in my caseload were adult children of alcoholics. And I
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should say that I think I'm in the minority of trauma specialists and that I
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am not a trauma survivor. I grew up in an incredibly loving and safe
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and nurturing family, and so I really didn't fully understand at all what it
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meant to be a trauma survivor and to live with trauma. And very early
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on, as I said, as a grad student, I began to see
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the extraordinary resilience in trauma survivors. And I really began to see the difference
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between clients who were very mired in why did this happen to me? I
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can't believe this was done to me? My life is over? You know,
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the world is a horrible place, versus clients who kind of from their
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own inner wisdom, were able to approach their trauma from this perspective of Okay,
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it happened. I couldn't control it, I can't change it. Where
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do I go from here? Now? What do I do? So I
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really got that inspiration from these extraordinarily resilient, brave, creative, you know,
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courageous clients, and seeing that quote so early in my career, I'm
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so grateful that I saw it when I saw it, because it just clicked
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with what I was actually experiencing sitting in the room with my clients. Yeah,
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I mean, I think that's awesome. And I want to touch back
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on what you started up by saying, was that you know you are in
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the minority, or think you're in the minority of trauma specialists because you haven't
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experienced a trauma. And I think that's a really good point for our listeners
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to take in. You know, not I think there is this belief,
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common belief that individuals go into this field have necessarily you know, become traumatized,
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and that's not always the case. It doesn't have to be. But
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also, you know, just to to to see what you did within these
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different clients, there were individuals who were doing something different and that resilience comes
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through. That's one of the things that really got got me into this field.
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We're gonna talk more about that, and that's one of the things that
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really keeps me going is seeing how people, despite you know, having been
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traumatized and experienced these oftentimes horrific things, still have that light and that hope
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and that you know, ability to get back up. And this is Yeah,
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this is a great kind of lead into our next question, which is
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really how you got into this field. You know, a lot of people
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get into this field for a variety of different reasons. We have listeners who
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have been therapists and you know, don't really think that they've been working with
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client trauma client before you know, for myself, I had a lot to
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do with my brother who was in the Special Forces coming back from I RAQ
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with PTSD, and I was so excited to talk to him, you know,
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and I just pestered him and pestered him really about what what did you
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do? What did you do? What was And he just didn't want to
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talk about it, couldn't talk about it, and I didn't know that.
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Yeah, and I just screwed it up, you know. And a lot
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of really, a lot of this is a lot of what I want to
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do. A lot of what I'm trying to do is to come back in
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a sense and do it the right way. So break it down for us,
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Lisa, you know, how did you get into this field? Well,
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you know, my mom always jokes that from the time I was five
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years old, I would sit on the front step of our house and all
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of the neighborhood kids would come and sit next to me and tell me their
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problems. And I was sort of do you remember Lucy from the Peanuts comic
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strip? Right? So I wasn't charging anybody, but I was. I
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was sort of the Lucy of the neighborhood. And I can't really explain to
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you guy, why it was that I had this this predilection towards like really
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being interested in people's problems. But I just did. And you know,
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I'm the oldest of four kids, and as I said, I grew up
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in a very safe, very loving, wonderful, wonderful family. Still have
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an incredibly wonderful family. So I had this rock solid foundation of growing up
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with this real sense of self worth and self esteem. I was told on
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a daily basis that I could be anything I wanted to be, and I
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could do anything I wanted to do, and so I had incredible secure attachments
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throughout my childhood, and with that had this real interest and fascination in human
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behavior, and just I think I was always a good listener. Maybe being
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the oldest of four kids, you know, that's kind of a skill that
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you, by definition get good at. So although I always wanted to be
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a movie star and a Broadway star, and I was pretty clear up until
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my twenties that that's in fact what I was going to do, there was
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always this other passion sort of in the wings, and that was being so
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curious about human beings and what makes them tip. And I think when I
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made the decision. You know, in my early twenties, I actually got
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my undergraduate degree in theater, so I was still very committed at that point
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to being an actress, but was a psych minor because you know, I
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didn't want to give up that love. When I made the decision to really
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pursue social work and the field of being a psychotherapist. Part of why I
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wanted to do this was because I really wanted to pay it forward. I
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knew what it felt like to wake up every morning and feel good about yourself,
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and I wanted to be able to help other people achieve that that same
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place of inner peace and confidence and the ability because I think from inner peace
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and confidence and self worth comes the capacity to make really good life choices in
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relationships in your career as a parent. So I wanted to do this because
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I wanted to pay it forward. Now, truthfully, I had no idea
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what it was going to be like to work with trauma survivors, and I
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always say I did not sign up to work with multiplicity and people who cut
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themselves and people who are sexually abused. That really was not my intention back
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in my mid twenties, But for whatever the reason, I had a supervisor
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who kept throwing these incredibly difficult cases at me, and a lot of them
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were adult children of alcoholics, and a lot of them had eating disorders and
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histories of sexual abuse and physical abuse. And I realized pretty quickly that I
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was weighing over my head, did not know what I was doing, and
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so I made this very conscious decision, and I think a lot of therapists
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do, and that is I'm going to shut up and listen, and I'm
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going to be the student, and I'm going to let the client be the
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teacher. I need them to teach me what it feels like to grow up
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with trauma, and I need them to teach me about their pain, because
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I did not understand that pain or know that pain. What I did know
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was self worth and confidence and resilience and creativity. And so I figured,
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Okay, that's that's what I can bring to the table, and that's what
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I can help kind of tease out in these clients. But I always say
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I've been in private practice for over thirty years now, and I honestly believe
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that what I've learned and what I know I've learned from my clients, they've
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been so unbelievably generous and gracious in terms of allowing me to be a student
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in their presence and really teaching me, you know, what it's like to
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have the pain that they have. So I provide the hope. You know,
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I'm sort of the cheerleader, and I provide the hope. And certainly
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now I can provide the psycho education and the tools and the resources for self
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soothing and to help them resolve their trauma in ways that are safe and in
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ways that are appropriate. So certainly over the years is you get more seasoned,
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and you go to every workshop, and you read every book there is
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to read, and you get inspired by so many of the giants in our
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field. You know, now I can say I truly know what I'm doing.
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But there's something very great about allowing ourselves as therapist to have that sort
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of Buddhist open mind and just be the student and trust that the client is
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always the best expert in the client, you know, not us. Yeah,
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I mean, you just kind of nailed it there. I mean,
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you know, I just love that image of you sitting on the steps,
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you know, as as Lucy in the neighborhood, and you know, just
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being in this environment of love and security, and you know, there's a
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difference between you know, being interested in people's or being able to listen to
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the neighborhood kids and you know, getting interested in their problems and be the
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difference between that and obviously getting involved or specializing in trauma. And you talked
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about being as an undergrad. You know, your supervisor was kind of feeding
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you all these really intense clients and you you know, said, wow,
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I'm kind of waying over my head. And we're going to jump to that
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in our next question. But I love what you said. You know,
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there was a point at which you said, I need to shut up and
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I need to listen. Talk about talk about that a little, Lisa.
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Sure. Sure. My dear friend Dick Schwartz, who I'm sure a lot
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of you know and respect, has a wonderful little saying when he's sitting with
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clients. He often says the word wait, and wait stands for why am
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I talking? And I love that because I think that, you know,
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sometimes and I think this comes from a counter transferential place, sometimes therapists have
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this anxiety about I can't let there be silence, or I always have to
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you know, have a brilliant comeback, or I have to have the solution,
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or I have to have the right answer. And I think that one
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of the really humbling and important things about being sort of the art of being
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a good therapist, if you will, is really being comfortable with the silence
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and trusting, trusting that if we do shut up, that clients do have
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this remarkable capacity to tap into their own inner wisdom. Now, I think
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you have to approach this work with that belief that clients, despite the horrific
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experiences that they've endured, they have this inner wisdom and that that can never
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be extinguished, you know, regardless of what they've been through. And so
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once you really believe that and can hold that in a therapy session, that
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no matter how much pain that client is in, there still is this remarkably
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wise part. And if you can allow for the silence, if you can
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allow for the space, and certainly, I think part of our job as
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therapists is to create a safe holding space, and often that's done with silence.
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But when we can successfully do that and we know that there's a very
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loving, trusting therapeutic relationship, clients do tap into their own inner wisdom and
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that's where so many of their most brilliant insights and answers and life choices,
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you know, come from, as opposed to the therapist telling them what to
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do right right, Yeah, that is gold right there. I mean,
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I think for our listeners to hear that, you know, even as you
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said, Lisa, you know, even though you know many of our clients
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have experienced, well, despite the fact that they've experienced some of these horrific
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events or incidents, the the the power behind us believing that there's still had
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that inner wisdom and how we honor that in session, either through the silence
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and holding that And you said, you know, obviously creating that safe environment
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is crucial. I mean that is awesome. No, it really is.
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And I mean I know, I just know I can picture myself, you
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know, driving commuting to my to my trainings, uh, you know,
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whatever it was, and and for many hours and just wishing I'd had a
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Master of therapist sitting next to me. Guys, I was thinking about my
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clients because this is this type of stuff that you need to hear, and
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it's it it comes up again and again. And this statement that you said,
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you know, when when you realize at one point that you just needed
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to shut up. I mean, there's so many really the guests I have
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have come at one point to that realization and it seems so simple, but
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it's it can oftentimes be kind of a conundrument and difficult. But let's kind
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of let's kind of move on because I really want to get to this one.
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And I think you're gonna light this question up because you've kind of touched
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touched on it a little bit. So, you know, we talked a
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little bit about your journey, what got you into this field, and now
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I want to focus on kind of an early clinical error or mistake. You
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know, some people don't even like that to use that word, but tell
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us a story, Lisa, about an early experience you had where you know,
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things just weren't going right. You kind of, you know, flubbed
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it up, and really what you learn from that? Wait, I only
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I only get to tell you one one. Oh boy, let me go
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through the rolodex and figure out where we're gonna go. Guy. You know,
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I think one of the major mistakes that I made early early on in
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my career, and it's interesting because it flowed from the stuff I alluded to
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earlier, which was, you know, having such a core a good,
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solid sense of self and having these phenomenal role models in terms of having nurturing
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parents. So I told you I wanted to pay it forward and I wanted
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to kind of help people achieve that that same feeling of inner peace and self
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worth. And so I think where that really went haywire as a beginning therapist
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was this desire to kind of be the parent that you never had. And
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so part of my agenda, and again this is all the counter transferential stuff,
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part of my agenda was I was going to give you this extraordinarily reparative
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experience. I was going to be the mother you never had. And what
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that inadvertently did, I mean, I want to say it came from a
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place of good intentions. And you know, it's funny. I give a
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lot of talks about counter transference, and I always like to preface that by
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saying, when we screw up, ninety nine point nine percent of the time,
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it comes from a place of good intention, right. It comes from
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a lot of empathy and compassion that we hold for our clients. That's why
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we go into this field. But the way that I screwed it up was
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that I really inadvertently began to create a lot of codependency with my clients.
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I was inadvertently giving them this message that they really needed me, that they
19:21
really couldn't get by without me, because I was saying things like, look,
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if you get the urge to hurt yourself in any way, make sure
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you call me first, you know, but before you do anything else,
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call me. And I'm very grateful to my husband, who's brilliant and wise,
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and my best friend who said to me one night at four am,
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when I had just finished an hour and a half phone session with a client
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from two thirty to four am, he turned to me in bed and said,
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do you realize that you do your best work with clients in the middle
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of the night. That was like a really big aha moment. And then
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he said, and by the way, you do you charge them, you
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know, for that hour and a half. And of course the answer was
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no. So I realized that there was this terrible codependency that I was responsible
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for fostering and creating because I was giving them this message that I was going
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to be the best thing that ever happened to them. I was going to
20:15
be the sort of the source through which they were going to do their reperative
20:19
work and heal. And the problem is is once you set that up,
20:25
once you put yourself out there as a twenty four to seven therapist and guy.
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I think this is important because I see this playing out now. I
20:32
do a lot of consulting work for therapists in the field, and I hear
20:36
story after story about therapists who allow their clients to text them any time of
20:41
the day of night where night they email them all night long. See I
20:44
think in the twenty first century, that's kind of what that's morphed into.
20:48
So when we put ourselves out there as therapists who are available twenty four to
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seven, think about the resentment that that's going to create. Not only for
20:57
the therapist, because it will whether they had it or not, it will,
21:00
but think about what happens for the client when they are in crisis and
21:04
they call you at two o'clock in the morning and you don't pick up the
21:07
phone and you don't answer. You're setting up this incredibly unrealistic and unfair expectation
21:14
about your availability. And again you're giving them the message that they can't get
21:18
by without you. So the shift for me occurred really when I began to
21:23
learn about parts work and inner child work, and I had this aha moment
21:27
where I thought, wait a second, it's not about me being the mother
21:32
you never had. It's about me helping you access inside of yourself the mother
21:37
that you never had, and teaching you how to be your own best parent
21:42
to those wounded inner parts and those younger parts inside of you. And what
21:47
that led to was a very profound shift in boundary setting that I did with
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my clients that I was no longer available twenty four to seven. It led
21:56
to a whole new set of messages that I began to give my clients about
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my belief that they had what it takes to be able to heal and tap
22:06
into that inner wisdom. Yeah, no, keep keep going. We know
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we're gonna. I didn't want to interrupt. No, no, no,
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no, that was I mean, I was gonna say, now, I'd
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give you fifty other examples of mistakes, but that's a big one. Yeah,
22:18
that's a big one. Yeah. And I just love the way you
22:21
are articulated that whole thing. I mean, the the way you started out
22:26
with saying, you know, I'm I first of all. I love what
22:30
you said about you know, many of the mistakes we make often come from
22:33
a place of you know, genuine concern and wanting to help. Obviously,
22:38
that's why you know, we go into this field and you know then you
22:42
talked about, you know, I'm going to be the parent you never had,
22:45
and of course you know that's coming from a great place. You know,
22:49
you've had this experience, you had this incredible childhood, and you have
22:52
this great support. But but having this agenda about you know, giving the
22:56
client the reparative experience. And I see when when we're holding that perspective,
23:02
we are coming into session with a different perspective, a different set of tools,
23:07
a different set of techniques and interventions we're using. And then this shift
23:11
happened around this boundary setting and looking at things from a different way and giving
23:17
your clients a different message that is so profound. And I think that's a
23:21
great lesson for you know, many of our listeners to hear, and especially
23:25
new therapists, because you go into this field and you want to learn as
23:29
much as you can, and oftentimes you want to start implementing all these interventions
23:34
and tools and techniques and you invariably, it kind of feels you walk into
23:41
session feeling as if you do know more than the client. But what the
23:45
message, The message I'm getting from you, Lisa, is that you know,
23:48
again you needed to shut up and value and honor the wisdom that the
23:53
clients were going to teach you exactly. That is so powerful. That is
24:00
Yeah, I think you've given me the title for my next book, which
24:03
is just shut up, Just shut up. Well, it goes great with
24:07
that other one. Wait, why am I talking about that? So that
24:15
kind of moves us right into this next question, you know, And it's
24:18
kind of my favorite question, which is, you know, why are we
24:22
in this field? I mean I love that question because, you know,
24:25
asking ourselves why really kind of ignites us. It asks us to really question
24:32
what's motivating us, what's driving us people get into this field for you know,
24:36
a variety of different reasons. Tell us why you're doing this day to
24:41
day? You know, it is it's a great question, and I think
24:44
there there's definitely more than one reason. And I think as I get older
24:47
and do this work longer and longer, in some ways, you know,
24:49
maybe the reasons are shifting. I know that now when I drive to my
24:56
office every day, I always have a grin on my face, and some
24:59
people find that hard to leave, you know, especially when you're working with
25:00
trauma. But it's just so damn inspiring. You know. These are such
25:07
remarkable human beings, and I consider it such an extraordinary privilege really to be
25:11
able to be a witness to their healing journeys. And it's just such a
25:17
blessing in my life to be able to sit with somebody who has struggled in
25:22
so many profound ways and yet, you know, continues to land on their
25:26
feet and continues to be able to have a sense of humor, and to
25:30
be able to still find the joy in things. Watching people blossom and bloom
25:34
and heal is like one of the coolest things you ever get to do.
25:38
So I just I feel like what I do is such a gift and it's
25:42
such a privilege, and so part of why I do it, honestly,
25:47
is just to keep getting that experience and that exposure to the courage and the
25:51
bravery and the resiliency of other people. I also do this work because,
25:55
as we said in the beginning, it's become a beautiful opportunity for me to
26:00
really hold on to the most creative parts of who I am, and I
26:03
think this is a very exciting time to be a trauma specialist because, you
26:07
know, in the old days, we really just did talk therapy, and
26:11
to be quite honest, we did it wrong. We were always working,
26:14
you know, sort of top down, and we were inadvertently creating a lot
26:17
of aberactive experiences for our clients. Most of us used to joke that we
26:22
had a revolving door from our private practice rooms to the local hospitals because we
26:26
didn't know what we were doing, and we just kept, you know,
26:30
kind of putting people right back into a fight flight free state. It's very
26:34
thrilling to me to be a teacher and a clinician in this day and age
26:40
in the world of trauma because thanks to people like Bessel vander Koch and Dan
26:45
Siegel and Daniel Ahman and Janina Fisher and others, what we've come to understand
26:49
is that so much of this work happens, you know, bottom up,
26:53
working with the body, working visually, working creatively, using incorporating art,
26:59
using sand tra using movement. So it's thrilling for me really to be able
27:04
to feel like I'm doing something that is truly meaningful. I'm so proud,
27:10
you know, of what I do, and I'm so proud of any all
27:11
of us in this field because I think that we really really do very important,
27:17
meaningful work. So to be able to put together, you know,
27:21
doing something that's genuinely meaningful and enables me to feel like, even in a
27:25
small way, I can make a difference on this planet. And then to
27:29
be able to bring to that all of the creative stuff that just gets my
27:33
juices flowing and is just so fun and is so now effective in terms of
27:37
how we can help people heal from their trauma. So to be able to
27:42
put those things together is why I love this work and why I keep doing
27:47
this work, because it's fun, it's creative, and you are, you
27:51
know, touching lives and making a difference. Like, wow, what a
27:53
combination of things. You know. There's not a lot of careers where you
27:57
could say that. I certain couldn't say it if I was if I was
28:00
just doing musical theater, you know, And I couldn't say it if I
28:03
was just doing talk therapy all day long. But I can say it because
28:07
I've been able to sort of marry both of those passions in creative and effective
28:12
ways. You have so much power and passion in your voice. Lyce.
28:18
First of all, you don't sound like you have a cold. Nice to
28:22
you. Second of all, you don't sound like you've been doing this for
28:25
thirty years. I mean, it's just so inspiring to me to really hear
28:30
you talk about this, and I love what you're saying about, you know,
28:33
being able to draw from really who you are as a person, the
28:37
different facets of your interests and passions, and bringing that in to this work
28:42
you do, which makes it even more meaningful for you. Give us an
28:48
example of how you're doing that. I mean, you talked a little bit
28:51
about you know, treatment from top down, et cetera. But how do
28:56
you how are you creative with your clients and the work do? Sure,
29:00
So it's kind of cool because you know, in the old days, when
29:03
a client you'd ask a question, right, and the client would say I
29:07
don't know, or they would just be silent or shrug their shoulders. And
29:11
again, you know, when I first started out, those were like really
29:12
scary, deadly moments, right the client says I don't know, and I'm
29:15
sitting there going, well, now, what do I do, well,
29:18
now, what the hell do I do now today? When a client says
29:21
I don't know, for me, that's an exciting, great moment because that's
29:25
a beautiful opportunity to introduce and nonverbal modality. So when a client will say
29:30
something like I know how I feel about this, but I don't have words
29:36
for it, right, that's a very common phenomenon that we get with trauma
29:40
survivors, like I know what I'm feeling inside, but I cannot I can't
29:44
articulate it. There are not words for it. So for me, that's
29:47
a great sort of entree into you know, could we think about line shape
29:52
and color and could you draw what the feeling might look like if it was
29:56
visual? You know, is there a body movement or gesture that could in
30:00
some way illustrate the feeling, Like, forget about words, we don't have
30:03
to use words. Just stand up and move, you know what movement potentially
30:07
could could be a way to communicate what you're feeling. Or I use Santre
30:11
work and I love it. I'm a huge fan of it. So I
30:12
can say, let's just look at all the figurines. See if there's like
30:15
a couple of figures or one figure that in some way could speak to the
30:21
emotion that you're sitting with right now. So you know, those are examples
30:25
of when when you feel that roadblock because there's not a verbal way for the
30:30
client to articulate what they're needing to express. That's when you go to movement.
30:33
That's when you go to drawing. That's when I go to two handed
30:37
writing. That's when I go to sandtre that's when I go to role play
30:41
or let's put the filling in an empty chair. And these are not all
30:44
new strategies. I mean, some of this stuff has been around for a
30:45
long time. But kind of exciting that we can pull stuff that you know,
30:49
Fritz Pearls was doing in gestalt therapy thirty forty years ago, and stuff
30:53
that Milon Erickson was doing, you know with his hypnotic work, and newer
30:57
stuff that Pad opt doing with sensory motor therapy, and we can pull all
31:03
of those nonverbal sort of body based strategies, art therapy based strategies and bring
31:07
them into the therapy room. Now, in order for your listeners to do
31:12
this, they have to have the tools within the room, right, So
31:15
you have to have the santra there. You have to have the figures,
31:18
you have to have the crayons and the markers and the pens and the paper
31:22
like visible where clients can see it. One of the things that I learned
31:26
from Pat Ogden is this concept of curiosity really really important to kind of evoke
31:33
and access and then harness a client's inherent curiosity. And I think one of
31:38
the great ways that we can help clients to be curious about their own narratives
31:44
and their own emotions and their own decision making is to have creative things in
31:49
the office in plain sight. So when a client walks into the room,
31:52
like when a new client walks in and they see the santray and they see
31:56
shelves of figurines, they're going to walk over to it and they're going to
31:59
say, like, what's this And that's evoked. That's evoking curiosity, right.
32:05
They see that, they see the paper, they see the clay like
32:07
it's so so it's not I really want to put that out there. It's
32:10
not just about like knowing that in your bottom drawer you have markers and paper.
32:15
It's like put it something, make it somehow visible to your client,
32:20
because that's going to evoke that the creative that's going to access the creative part
32:24
of them. And what we know in the world of trauma is that trauma
32:29
is not stored in the languaging part of the brain. That's a really important
32:34
thing for people to hear if they don't already know it, that it's not
32:37
stored in Broca's area. Trauma is stored visually, and that's why so many
32:42
of our clients go into flashback and client and trauma is stored viscerally on the
32:46
body, and that's why things like sensory motor psychotherapy and somatic experiencing and movement
32:52
can be so effective in helping clients to reconnect with their narratives. So if
32:58
I always say, you know, when I teach at my institute, I
33:00
always say both to seasoned and very beginning therapists, if you're going to be
33:05
a trauma therapist in twenty fifteen, you cannot just do talk therapy anymore.
33:10
You know, you have to be willing to learn creative modalities because those are
33:15
the true ways into healing for our clients. Yeah, I mean, this
33:22
is this is amazing. You know, as you're talking, Lisa, I'm
33:24
just thinking to myself. I mean, I love, first of all,
33:27
I love what you said about you know, it's not you've got to have
33:30
the crayons and whatever. You've got to have that out so people can see
33:34
it to evoke curiosity. I love that it's not enough just to have everything
33:38
you know in the bottom drawer where you know you can access it when you
33:42
want. That's a whole different ballgame, and it's a whole different perspective,
33:45
and it really is a shift in how you are creating an environment, how
33:51
you're creating that that session and place for your clients. Man, this is
33:55
this is awesome. I know our listeners here are just going, oh my
33:59
god, I gotta I gotta pull over and write this down here. So
34:01
so you know, you've you've already given you know, our listeners so many
34:09
bits of wisdom and gold nuggets here. But you know, many of our
34:15
listeners again are just getting into this field. Many of our listeners are maybe
34:19
more experienced, but don't think that they've worked with you know, individuals have
34:22
been traumatized. But give us break it down for us, give us some
34:28
advice for individuals who are just getting into this field. Yeah, listen,
34:31
I'm going to give you advice, and it's whether you're new or you've been
34:34
doing it for forty years, you know, because I think the day that
34:37
you say I'm too old to get advice is the day that you need to
34:40
like quit what you're doing. So so I think this is for all of
34:45
us, particularly as it pretends to working with traumas orrivors. I want to
34:49
reiterate something that I already alluded to, and that is it's so important to
34:52
set boundaries and to have limits, and to not be available twenty four to
34:57
seven and make it very clear to your clients that you're not make it clear
35:00
that it has nothing to do with not caring about them, but rather you're
35:04
actually attempting to help them gain mastery over being able to access their own internal
35:10
resources for comfort and for soothing. Having said that, equally important that you
35:15
make sure that your clients are connected to other resources for support. So I'm
35:20
a very big believer in making sure that my clients are hooked up with a
35:23
twelve step meeting of some kind, or at the very least have hotlines that
35:28
they can call if they do go into crisis at two o'clock in the morning.
35:30
I'm very big on at least exploring with them spirituality and spiritual connections,
35:37
because I think they can drive tremendous comfort and soothing from that. So set
35:40
limits and make sure that they're connected to other resources. You never want it
35:45
to just be you. When a client says, you know you are my
35:49
lifeline, you are the reason that I'm still here, know that that's a
35:52
huge problem, right because you do not want to be the only person in
35:57
their lives whom they consider to be your resource for support. I have another
36:01
really big saying or sort of mantra that I've really tried to hold true to
36:07
as I become more seasoned, and that is, don't work harder than your
36:09
client does. So if I have a client who's going to work one hundred
36:14
and ten percent, I am right there next to them. But if you've
36:16
got clients working ten percent and you're working one hundred and ten percent, that's
36:22
problematic and it's really not going to play out, you know well. I
36:25
also like to say that you're only as effective professionally as the extent to what
36:30
you take care of yourself personally. And part of what that leads into is
36:35
I think a very a sort of necessary need to have balance in your life.
36:42
It's really funny when I talk to when I train trauma specialists, and
36:45
I say to them, you know, what do you guys do for fun
36:50
or for a hobby. Here's what I hear. They watch SVU on television,
36:54
they read books about serial killers. They go to every conference they can
36:59
go to about Trump. You know, they have thirteen books on their nights
37:01
day that they've bought a conferences that are about trauma. It's so important to
37:07
have a whole other part of your life that has nothing to do with trauma
37:10
and has nothing to do with your work. So it's really about finding that
37:15
counterbalance to trauma, you know, going towards hobbies and relationships that are joyful
37:21
and really are not about, you know, women getting raped. The number
37:25
one show that therapists watch, or the number one channel they watch, is
37:29
the Lifetime channel. And I don't know if you know the Lifetime channel,
37:32
but the Lifetime channel is just movie after movie after movie about women being stalked
37:37
and raped. And it's interesting because, you know, it speaks to trauma
37:40
survivors like it calls our name, because that's what we do for a living.
37:45
But even more important that we you know that we're doing stuff that has
37:50
nothing to do with trauma. And I to this day, I perform in
37:53
community theater, I act, I direct, I choreograph high school musicals.
37:59
I make sure that I'm doing stuff that is totally joyful and has nothing to
38:01
do, you know, with trauma. My other basic rule of thumb or
38:07
advice that I give people is someone has to stay grounded and present at all
38:10
times in the therapy session. And it better be you, because it's often
38:15
not the client. So really really important, and I'm going to say this
38:20
guy specifically to trauma specialists who are themselves trauma survivors. This is where it
38:27
gets really important to kind of make sure that you've done your own healing work
38:31
and that you're not dissociating and that you're not getting triggered. You've really got
38:37
to be that present resource for your clients because they're zoning out all the time,
38:43
you know, as you know in a therapy session, so we've really
38:45
got to be able to hold the present moment. And lastly, around the
38:50
issue of self disclosure, because I think that that there is a clinical place
38:54
for self disclosure, but I always say, don't let the spotlight stay on
38:58
you for more than five seconds. Make sure it goes right back to the
39:01
client. Otherwise the therapy session is about you, and that's problematic. So
39:07
all right, boundaries. Make sure the clients are connected to other modes of
39:13
support. You talked about spirituality and you know, making sure that we're not
39:16
working harder than our clients self nourishment, self care, and I love this.
39:22
Someone has to say grounded and present at all times, and it better
39:27
be you. Yep, and yeah, and you know, making sure that
39:30
the spotlight is non us for more than five seconds. These are all going
39:36
to be up on the show notes page at West Coast Trauma Project dot com.
39:38
We're gonna have all your information your website, which is amazing. We
39:42
haven't gotten to your books, which we'll get to next. Share with us
39:45
too, books which have inspired you and they can be either trauma related or
39:51
not. Lisa, Oh okay, interesting, oh gosh, only too well.
39:55
I mean, I have to say Norman Deutsche's book The Brain That Changes
39:59
Itself was just monumental for me because the whole concept of neuroplasticity is so hopeful
40:06
and so exciting for those of us in the trauma world to know that the
40:10
brain is malleable and capable of growth and changed until the day we die,
40:15
rather than what I learned in grad school, which was that basically our brains
40:17
peak at eighteen and then it's downhill from there, right our brain cells just
40:22
keep dying off. So his book The Brain That Changes Itself, I just,
40:25
oh, man, that book just was thrilling for me to read.
40:30
And it's really accessible and well written. So I love that book and it's
40:36
very inspiring, gives you lots of hope. And I also think the other
40:38
thing in the trauma field that is so important that Lewis Cozolino wrote about in
40:45
again a very accessible and beautifully written book called The Neurobiology of Human Relationships,
40:50
And certainly Dan Siegel I just have to sort of put his name out there
40:52
because he's written so many similar kinds of books. But this notion that the
40:58
impact that relationship it has on brain development, I think is just breakthrough stuff.
41:04
So the Neurobiology of the Human Relationship, I love that book. Any
41:09
book about attachment, I actually think is really important for people in the trauma
41:13
world to have some familiarity with because even though that's not a new concept,
41:19
the whole notion of secure versus disorganized attachment is really getting a resurgence now in
41:23
the field of trauma, and really important to understand the impact that attachment has,
41:29
you know, throughout a person's life in terms of affect regulation versus affect
41:34
dysregulation. I love anything by Richard Schwartz because I think his internal family systems
41:38
model parts work is just It's such an integral part of how I work,
41:44
both with people with multiplicity and people who don't have multiplicity. I just think
41:47
his model is internal family Systems is brilliant. So I love anything that Dick
41:52
has written. And I'm very proud of my books. Guy, I don't
41:55
mean to sound self promoting, but I'll tell you why I'm proud of books.
42:00
I'm proud of them because I think there, really, there are so
42:05
few books out there that talk about self destructive behavior from a deep, pathologized
42:10
and strengths based approach. So much of the research out there, so many
42:15
of the books out there that talk about things like cutting and eating disorders and
42:19
addiction always make it synonymous with borderline personality disorder, and I don't see it
42:24
that way at all. I look at these behaviors as coping strategies. I
42:29
look at them as creative and brilliant and necessary. And then of course the
42:34
role of the goal of the therapeutic process is to give clients new resources and
42:38
tools so that they no longer need those dysfunctional coping strategies and can let them
42:44
go. And I'm really proud of the books that I've written because it's a
42:47
very unique and very different spin on working with what I think can be very
42:52
frightening and triggering behaviors for therapists. So I'm proud of those books. You
42:59
can let me know whether you want me to say the titles or not.
43:01
Well, i'll say the titles. You wanted to speak a little bit more
43:04
about them. So we're talking about treating self destructive behaviors and traumatized clients,
43:07
a clinician's guide, and also in its second edition, Letting Go of Self
43:13
Destructive Behavior is a workbook of hope and healing. And I really like what
43:16
you said about, you know, coming at this topic from a different perspective.
43:21
Say more about that. Yeah, you know, in this field for
43:23
so many years that we've had this sort of rigid approach to working with these
43:27
behaviors, including things like forcing clients to sign standard safety contracts which totally don't
43:32
work and completely blow up in your face. And I think exact, you
43:36
know, create a power struggle and actually exacerbate the cutting or the addictive behavior.
43:42
So I think we got that all wrong. I think pathologizing it by
43:45
saying this is synonymous with borderline personality is a mistake. For me, borderline
43:50
personality means trauma survivor. And just to give you a very quick example of
43:54
what the impact I think that that has. If I were to call you
43:58
on the phone and say, I know you're really busy, but could you
44:00
please take on this other client? I know you can help her. She's
44:02
borderline, Okay, what's your reaction to that? You know, in your
44:07
most honest moments, your reaction is I'm really sorry. In my case,
44:10
lot is full. But if instead I called you and said, I know
44:14
you're busy, but could you please take this woman? I know you can
44:15
help her, she's a trauma survivor, I'm going to suggest that what that's
44:21
going to immediately evoke is our feelings of empathy and compassion in you. And
44:24
so I think we've made this major major mistake in the mental health field.
44:29
By labeling trauma survivors as people with borderline personality, because we're literally putting a
44:35
glass ceiling on the extent to which we believe they can heal, and that
44:38
absolutely is going to affect the outcome of treatment. So I think that's a
44:44
major, major problem. And the third thing is is that we sort of
44:47
put this demand on people who do things like cud or burn their bodies or
44:52
have eating disorders, you know, because of our own anxiety as clinicians,
44:55
we really push them to give up these behaviors. But the part that we
45:00
leave out is, now, what are they going to do? So until
45:02
we're giving them new ways of self soothing and communicating their pain narratives and short
45:08
circuiting untenable thoughts and feelings, until they have a repertoire of healthy coping strategies,
45:15
how can we possibly expect that they're going to give up these behaviors and
45:20
not relapse or not turned to another kind of self destructive behavior. So I
45:25
think that for years we've been putting the cart before the horse by having this
45:29
expectation that people simply stop cutting before we've given them resources to accomplish what cutting
45:36
does for them. Because they're you know, people get something from their behaviors.
45:39
They wouldn't be doing them if they didn't get something from them. Yeah,
45:45
so again, treating self destructive behaviors and traumatized clients, a Clinician's Guide
45:49
and Letting Go of self Destructive Behaviors a Workbook of Hope and Healing, both
45:52
of which the links will be up on the podcast page West Coast Project dot
46:00
com. Lisa, how do people get in touch with you if they want
46:04
to reach out? Sure? So. Actually one of the easier ways is
46:07
through my website, which is just Lisafarrens dot com, and that can give
46:10
you access to my email, and it will also give you access to a
46:15
lot of resources that I'm constantly putting on the website. I also have a
46:20
professional Facebook page if they go to Lisa Farren's Trauma Specialist. Every day we
46:24
put up articles and inspirational sayings and research and things for both clinicians and lay
46:32
people to really just sort of keep our understanding of trauma state of the art.
46:37
So the Facebook page link I'm in LinkedIn. I'm fifty six years old,
46:42
but I'm still trying to, you know, be with it social media.
46:46
Yeah, well, let me tell you something. You nailed it.
46:50
Man. You are just phenomenal. You're just so inspired to talk to And
46:53
I'll tell you why, because you know you're coming at this obviously from so
46:59
much experience. But for me, you really shed the light on the importance
47:05
of being created, the importance of you honoring who we are and those other
47:08
aspects of ourselves and being able to bring that into the work we do,
47:14
and also being able to come at this from the perspective of yes, obviously
47:20
it's important for us to learn and have the techniques, but you've also got
47:23
to shut up and listen. And there's so much power in that and that
47:28
I just keep coming back to that because for me, that indicates a kind
47:32
of acceptance of the wisdom of the client. And I just think you sent
47:39
that message to our listeners and it's so powerful and so profound. Again,
47:45
everything's going to be up on the show notes page list. I want to
47:46
thank you so much. Thank you. What a pleasure, What a pleasure
47:51
to talk with you guy. I love what you're doing. This is an
47:52
awesome thing that you're doing, so keep doing it. Thank you so much.
47:57
All right, we'll talk soon, Okay, Bye bye. At mo
48:15
ma, eve Com,