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From the archives: Linda Curran, BCPC, LPC, CACD · The Trauma Therapist

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Our Today we even another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests.
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Enjoy. Welcome to the Trauma Ever's podcast, a show about the incredible
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people dedicated to helping those who experienced trauma. My name is gomcpherson, 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, folks, welcome to the Trauma Therapist
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Podcast. My name is gymcferston. I'm a psychologist and I am so excited
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to get this scene going today, really excited about our guests, Linda Curran.
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Linda is a board certified Licensed professional counselor, trauma specialist and veteran clinician.
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Linda's trained thousands of mental health clinicians on trauma treatment all over the country
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and as president of the Intricative Trauma LLC in Havertown, Pennsylvania, place I
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actually used to live in a while ago. But Linda told our audience,
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just a little bit about yourself, and why don't you share some personal information
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and so we can get to know you a little bit better. Well,
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let's see, I just got a new dog. I'm very excited about that.
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Her name's Margaret. I named her after one of the nuns in school
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because she looks like unless she's wearing a habit. You said, I'm you
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said, I'm an author, and it's a trauma specialist. The thing that
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I actually am most proud of is the website that I put together. And
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I didn't let you get to that part, but the website that I put
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together is very similar to what you're doing. It really is bringing together a
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whole bunch of resources for people who are doing this work. You and I
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both know this work is as fulfilling as it is draining at times. So's
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there's resources for both clients and clinicians on there, and I would really like
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people to go there. It's www dot trauma one oh one dot com.
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You don't have to buy anything. There's just tons of resources for people.
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And that's really one thing I want people to know. I got into that.
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And I know you're gonna ask me why I got into this field,
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but I'm going to tell you I didn't choose this field. Really, I
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backed into the field. I tried like hell not to be in this field
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because it meant that I had to go to therapy. So when I went
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to therapy, because I was in grad school. Then I discovered that,
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oh, trauma wasn't just about Holocaust or veterans. Trauma was a really big
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thing and it was in my life, like all over the place in my
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life. But the really sad part is most people have what I have,
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you know, So there's not you know, there's probably you know that I
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would say the lucky percentage of people who have had secure attachments and really have
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had you know, kind of life where they build resiliency rather than been overwhelmed.
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But when you know, when I started looking at trauma and worked in
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community mental health, it was like, oh, well, the problem is
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early childhood trauma, adverse childhood experiences in childhood is what everybody has in common
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that needs that needs to be in therapy or it seems to end up in
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community mental health. Yeah, we definitely going to dive into the website,
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which is phenomenal. I was been looking over that for the past couple of
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weeks. So to get off, you know, on the right foot.
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Here, we start off with a quote something a quote or a mantra that's
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inspired you throughout your life. It could be something that's you know, impacted
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you professionally or personally, what do you have? Well, I have two
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of them. The one I have it's I actually put it in the book
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one hundred and one Troma Informed Interventions because I don't know who wrote it,
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and I would like somebody to step up and say they wrote it. It
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is. It was probably the most touching thing I ever read. I read
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it in somebody's office and it was it was anonymous. Nobody had taken credit
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for the quote, but here it is. It's long. They are survivors.
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If you don't have respect for their strength, you can't be of any
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help. It's a privilege that they let you in. It makes me cry,
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by the way, so maybe I should let you read it. Go
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ahead, Okay, it's a privilege that they let you in. There's no
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reason they should trust you. You can't know their terror. It's your worst
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nightmare come true, a nightmare from which you can never awaken. It's unrelenting.
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There has been no safety, no one, no time, nothing.
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All was tainted. Hope was obliterated time and time again. That they are
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in our office is in itself a supreme act of valor. Okay, regained
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composure. Wow, Okay, and you had another one? Well, the
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other Yeah, the other one is more about my own narcissism. So the
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other one is for me. It was very, very touching. It's William
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Blake quote that I finally got it when I was doing my own personal therapy.
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It's and we are put on earth a little space that we may learn
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to bear the beams of love. Okay, thank you so much. So
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obviously that first one. Let's let's take that first one, if you don't
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mind. I mean, that is so profound and so incredibly touching. I
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mean, you're talking about privilege and you're talking about valor. Let's break that
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down a little. Where has that come in in your life? How has
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that impacted you individually personally? You know, I think that I was doing
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I went to Gestalt Training, which was a three year program after grad school,
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and I went there not for professional reasons. I went there because I
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knew a few people that were gestalt therapists and I thought that they, you
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know, they got something that I didn't get. So when I was in
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GSTAL training, what I learned was in order to be a good professional,
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I had to be a better person. And sitting with clients, I get
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that same feeling you know, it's like the reason that I do so much
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training, or the reason that it's important for me to do my own personal
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work is because of people sitting in front of me. They deserve that.
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They don't deserve me to stay and you know what, like in my narcissism
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or me to stay in my pathology, because it's easier for them for me
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to project the anxiety and let them carry it, you know, any of
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the you know, any of the things that would be boundary issues or any
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of those things, rather than let the client hold it, be very clear
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on what's mine, what's relational, and what's the clients. So I think
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that basically it's a responsibility to the client. Does that make sense to you?
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Yeah, it makes perfect sense. You know. It's interesting when we
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when I started this podcast out, I was not going to ask individuals about
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their trauma experience. And in a sense it's almost inescapable. I mean,
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what you what you shared, you know with your first quote, I think
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it is so personal and it's so moving, and now to hear you bringing
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talking about how you bring that into the therapy office is really clearly to how
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challenging and demanding. But what a privilege of this work is so I really
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want to thank you for that. No, absolutely a privilege. So this
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kind of you know, you started talking about the therapy office now, and
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it kind of leads us right into the next question, which is, and
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you said, you kind of backed into this field of trouble trauma. But
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let's let's kind of move back a little and just talk about psychology in general.
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You know, trauma therapy is challenging. You know, our listeners are
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aware of that. You know, you've you've addressed that. But this focus
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here is on your journey as a trauma therapist, your struggles, your influences.
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Share with us how you got into the broad field of psychology in general,
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and then we're then we're going to segue into trauma. Well, I
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don't know. I think everybody, well every girl that I grew up with,
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we all thought we wanted to be psychologists. You know, like beau
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wouldn't be cool to just sit and talk for a living. You know,
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that was like one of those things that it was like, yeah, that's
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an ideal career for teenage girls. Like my daughter is eighteen, and that's
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what she's going to do too, because I think that's the the way that
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we idealized the profession as saying, oh, like this is you know,
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it's just going to be so great. But I actually went for psychology.
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Like when I say I backed into it, I didn't make a decision.
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I took two masters at the same time, so I was thinking public health,
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like for outcome measures and stuff like that. I worked in a hospital
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for twenty years and then I thought, well, all right, I'm not
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you know, I'm not committing to either one of these things. And I
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think that's all part. I don't want to keep saying the word pathology,
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but I think it's all part of you know, Okay, I don't,
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you know, like I don't I don't know what I want to be when
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I grow up. But I don't want to commit to anything because what does
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it say about me? But when I decided, I really decided to go
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you know, full, you know, full into it, I thought,
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oh, cognitive behavioral therapy, this is it, Like I can wrap my
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head around this. These are you know, automatic, I get automatic thoughts,
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I get how to do all these And the funny part is, you
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know, as soon as I started working with clients, they were not nearly
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as impressed as my classmates at how good I was at this, you know,
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because everybody that I saw, you know, the cognitive behavioral therapy,
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you know, it's limited in its usefulness with traumatized people. I'm not saying
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it's not good. It's fabulous, right, and it's a good starting point,
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but it really is a starting point. And so you know, I
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thought, oh, I could do this. This is really not too bad.
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And like I said, then I met some Gestalt therapists that had something
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that I didn't have, and what they had was access to their body and
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their emotions, and that was, oh, what the hell is this?
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You know, so it's like they I watched the director of the Gestalt Institute
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do some work with a traumatized woman and literally, I'm not this woo woo
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kind of person, but I saw the energy change and I saw the woman
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transform in front of me, like I saw the energy come from her body,
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and I really mean that move out like she did, like Mary Luke
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Shack as the woman. She got up and she did this demonstration where you
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know, you push against hands and it really is it's about getting in touch
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with you know, stability in your core and stuff like that. But you
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like, the woman just started shaking and shaking, kind of bringing it like
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Peter Levine's work, but kind of started shaking and you could see the release
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of energy and her whole body changed and her whole face softened. And I
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thought, these people know something I don't know, right, And it was
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terrifying, right, but I thought, that's what I want. And so
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going into COSTUALT Therapy Institute, I was very, very blessed because, you
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know, the three directors are the most fabulous teachers I ever had, and
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I had a really good class. Mostly I was at my growth edge the
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whole time, but there were some other people that were working and I really
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got to do a lot of work vicariously through you know, through them.
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And one of the one of the lessons that for me that I didn't have
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to get directly was people who have a need to feel special have never been
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seen and it, you know, just it was so touching to me because
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that really is when you think of people with avoidant the attachment systems of you
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know, being avoidant or dismissive of relationships. Some people call it the narcissistic
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wound, but that's what it is. It's that you never have been seen,
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so have to feel special. So I saw all that work being done,
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and you know, I did my work. I'm still you know,
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I still do my work. But it was really that was I was really
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very blessed to have, you know, like a great group of people around
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me that were, you know, at their growth edge as well. Yeah,
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that sounds like an amazing experience. And I'll have the link up for
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that in the show notes, and people can get to those show notes by
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going to West Coast Trauma Project dot com and just hitting on the podcast tab
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and Linda your interview will pop right up and we'll have a whole list of
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show notes there. I'll include that link. Fer Gestalt and Mary lou Shack
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was her name, Yeah, Mary Lushack, Philip Lichtenberg and Dave at Henrich,
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they were the directors at the time. Just you know, I can't
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say I can't say enough good things about them because I wouldn't be in the
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field without them. Okay, So there were kind of sprinklings of interest of
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trauma in that discussion you just had there, So talk to us now about
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how you moved into Well, it's the same story because Mary with Jackie is
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she's a a stal therapist, she's a trainer, but she's also a trauma
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specialist. Okay, So Mary Lushak was became a supervisor of mine for some
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time and basically, you know, just I like a sponge, you know,
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like I got everything that I could take from her, and she's as
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generous as can be. So that was really where you know, I went
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to her and I said merely, like this is what I'm doing, and
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she said, well, you know, then thesal training is absolutely you know,
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essential for this, she said, but you want to probably go get
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trained in EMDR. So I went to get trained in EMDR. I went
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for level one training, and I came back and like I said, up,
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my internship was a community mental health So when I came back, what
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I did was re traumatize I would say more than two about two handfuls of
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people, not irrevocably, all right, So I mean I was able to
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do the repair work. But the problem was, and we'll get that.
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I know it's going to be one of the big errors that everybody make.
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It's too much too soon for trauma clients. But for me, it was
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one of those things where it was we're kind of in a catch twenty two
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because I come back from level one training and I have to do fifty EMDR
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sessions on single incident trauma with twenty five clients. And it's hilarious, right,
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And I mean every time I do a training, I say the same
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thing. So I'm sure people are sick to death of hearing it, but
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it's you know, where are you going to find single incident trauma within a
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community mental health setting? It's hilarious. So I did EMDR for processing trauma
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on people who were nowhere near ready to process trauma, you know, because
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I thought that's what I had to do. Went back to Mary Lou and
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said, okay, I'm really you know, I'm doing some damage here.
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So we did a lot of repair work, and I started reading a lot
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about you know, Laurel Parnell's work and people who were Debbie Quorn people were
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doing a lot of the resourcing first, so all of that, you know,
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Belarus Napristek, guided imagery, anything that would be stabilizing. So we
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did all, you know, learned a lot of the stabilization stuff in community
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mental health because it was just absolutely essential to do so. But that really
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that probably is where I got the interest in trauma, just from Mary Lou
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and from being intermunity mental health. Like I said, what they had in
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common was early childhood trauma. So it was like, well, this is
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you know, not only interesting, I imagine I have to know something about
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this. So all the big names of trauma, I you know, read
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their books and saw their stuff, and the big deal that I saw was
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it really wasn't pulled together very well because there's so much brilliance out there in
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the field and it's people follow one or two people and that did and you
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know, hope, my hope is that we get a lot of you know,
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a lot of these resources together so we don't have to reinvent you know,
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we have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to learn something,
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right, great, Yeah, thanks for sharing that kind of early error.
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That definitely was the next topic we were going to talk about. What would
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you say? And I think I think maybe you kind of touched upon it
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though, but what did you learn from that? Basically that the importance of
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resourcing and stabilization. What would you say was your major takeaway from that early
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error? Clinical error Guy? I did a series called Trauma Treatment with you
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know, eight of the eight of the bigger names in trauma, and everybody
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had, you know, the same answer, which was too much, too
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soon. You know, if there were other answers, they were probably for
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me, it was around boundaries, right, boundaries would be one of the
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big I guess clinical and I want to say clinical mistakes, but you were
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going to have Janina Fisher. And Janina Fisher said something that I thought was
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just everybody should hear it is she said, you know, she said,
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I'm a clinical instructor and I am a supervisor, and I would much rather
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have a clinician with a warm heart that needs work on boundaries than have somebody
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with a cold heart and good boundaries because it's so much you know, it's
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so much easier to develop good boundaries than it is to open your heart,
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right right, Awesome, Thanks for sharing. Yeah, Janina is coming on.
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I'm in a consultation group with her and she is just phenomenal obviously,
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but thanks thanks for sharing that. So this kind of brings us to really
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one of my favorite questions, if not my favorite questions. And you know,
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we talked about the challenges of the specialization, but to me, it's
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really important that we know what our why is, you know, and I
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think it can be different. The reason is why we get into this field,
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as opposed to why we keep doing this, what drives us in this
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very challenging profession on a day to day basis. So I'm going to put
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that to you. What keeps you going? What's your why for doing this
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on a day to day basis, Linda, Because it is the most fascinating
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field in the world. You don't have to imagine it because you do it.
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But really it's a miracle lad in career. It really is the only
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way to describe it. I mean to see the resiliency in the human spirit,
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unmitigated courage, relentless hope, just watching people hear heal, like having
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their lives transformed. Not just people's lives, generations and generations of lives being
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transformed because people choose to do their work, they understand that they have a
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responsibility to other people they come in. It's just what else would you want
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to do? I just that's could you share a specific incident, obviously without
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mentioning names, but something that really drove that home for you, drove that
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realization that this is the most amazing field in the world where you know,
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resiliency, courage, and generations are being impacted and affected and in a positive
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way. Now, I've seen many, many clients, and I've seen people
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with burdens of trauma unbelievable to me, you know, just like you know,
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how much pain, how much suffering that they had done in their life,
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and how much abuse and how much neglect and you know what just a
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horror show that was their life. And these are people who you know,
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are good parents, who are you know, positive members of the community.
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They become you know, sports coaches, teachers, and they do really,
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really well. It's kind of inexplicable. How do you how do you explain
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it? And that's what I mean. It's just about courage, you know,
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It's about people saying, Okay, you know, they're like when I
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say unrelenting hope, I mean I have unrelenting hope. But it isn't,
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you know, they say hopes of war letter word. It isn't because you
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know, as long as we're alive, you know that we can change.
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I mean, the part of that's fascinating, isn't. I don't want to
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say it. That's so it sounds harsh. But it isn't just working with
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people, but it's understanding the brain science behind it of why it's possible.
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You know that, you know that people's brains are being rewired. You know,
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their bodies are being affected by the therapy that we do, by the
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therapy that they do. We facilitate the healing, you know. But I
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mean, all the work is you know, I don't want to say that,
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you know, like all the work is done just by that person and
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I'm just sitting there. But I mean the hard work is being vulnerable,
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and that is not my position as a clinician, you know. I mean,
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I'm never more vulnerable than the client because of the chair, you know.
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So it's like that is just to me. It's for somebody to say,
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you hurt my feelings, not in our field but in our world,
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Like that's unheard of. You hurt my feelings. No, you wouldn't want
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to be seen as vulnerable. And these people come in and lay bare their
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soul. But there's no words for that. It's just that that is.
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That's a miracle. That is. That is. Yeah, thank you so
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much for sharing that, And I think it really speaks to this profession and
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really speaks to the work you're doing too. You know. One of the
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things that I want to do here is really tease out the journeys of the
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people I'm talking to, like yourself, and you've just shared some amazing things
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so far. What what is that special quality, that unique quality that you
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feel you have that allows you to do this work on the level that you
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do it? Is it that vulnerability you were talking about? Well, I
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can identify, absolutely identify with a client's vulnerability. I can absolutely identify.
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I mean, I'm not just a therapist, you know, I'm a client
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and we all are, right, I mean, if we're not, If
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you're a clinician and you've never been a client, you're a terrible clinician.
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And to just hear that that's out there, I said it, I meant
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it, you know, And I always tell people that, you know,
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if you're a therapist that doesn't have issues, you're the most dangerous person in
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the room. Right. So it's like to be able to recognize what my
21:12
characterological falls are, right or you know, and accept that their mind like
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that. I guess that's that's part of what I can do. But I
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don't know that it's anything special. I don't know that I have any special
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quality. I think what I do have is I understand what a privilege it
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is to sit in the seat, you know, and I think that that
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that's probably it. I mean, if you that's and I do think that's
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teachable. I think that's teachable. It has to be teachable because it's like
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how do you not know that? You know? Like how do you not
21:45
realize what that chair comes with? You know? It's like there's a power
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differential build into the chair and our job as clinicians is to level that as
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much as possible. But it's never going to be It's never going to be
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level because of the you know, the essence of the world work. Yes,
22:00
the work is the client is more vulnerable, you know, and they
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are late, they are doing they are doing the hard things, all right.
22:08
I don't know if you follow me on Instagram or not, but when
22:12
I do interviews, I usually do two interviews a week. I conduct two
22:17
interviews a week, and usually I get so excited. I get so pumped
22:23
up after these interviews because I get to talk to incredible people. And what
22:29
I usually do is they go on Instagram and I talk about it. I
22:33
want to share that excitement. Usually there's about a two month turnaround on my
22:38
podcast, which means that they don't go live for a couple of months,
22:45
and I have a problem with that because I want to share it. I
22:52
get so excited about these things. So what I've done is I've created a
23:00
a membership called Trauma Therapist Plus and allows people for five dollars a month to
23:06
access these episodes about two months before they get published to the public, and
23:12
you can also listen ad free, which is really cool. So if you're
23:15
interested in that, if you're interested in listening to episodes before they get released
23:21
to the general public and also listening ad free, check it out being access
23:26
it by going to Apple Podcasts and just clicking on any of the episodes that
23:32
has a plus p l us before it. It's exciting. I'm excited about
23:37
it, and you'll also help support the podcast. Thank you so much for
23:41
being a listener. I really appreciate it. Take care. Do you think
23:45
that privilege of that comes with the chair that comes with the work in a
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sense, obviously it's similar in you know, quote unquote regular therapy. Is
24:00
there a difference in trauma therapy? Do you think when you're working with someone
24:03
who's been traumatized. Is there a different understanding that has to be had by
24:11
the clinician? Is there a different there? There is something, there's something
24:15
about knowledge base for this, So I mean to be able to like people
24:18
call it intuition, but I don't think it's intuition as much as it is
24:22
you learn. You know what you're looking for in in people's body posture,
24:26
in their face, in the micro movements of their face. You you understand
24:30
what they're connected to. I mean, I'm talking about this, you know,
24:34
anatomically and physiologically, all that you understand what's happening, that becomes intuitive,
24:41
you know. I mean we also you know that people say like,
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oh, I've always been good at this, or I've had you know,
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I have you know, I have a sense about me, people open up
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to me, those kind of things. I understand that. But there's also
24:51
a honing of these skills that people go, oh, you're you know,
24:53
you're just you're a natural at it, And it isn't people people. I
24:56
mean, you may you may be naturally inclined to be good at it,
24:59
but you have to develop those skills. And those skills are like I said,
25:03
they're teachable. If you're asking what it is in meat that makes me
25:07
makes it easy to identify with clients. It's not just being a client.
25:10
I mean that I have no doubt that most of your listeners, you know,
25:14
are in this field if their clinicians are in the field to heal themselves
25:18
or to heal the family. At least that's why they got into it.
25:19
So, I mean, there's I make no secret of the fact that you
25:22
know, I you know, I'm an alcoholic. I grew up in an
25:25
alcoholic household. You know, there was there's a trauma all around me,
25:29
trauma and chaos all around me, and that is I mean, I think
25:33
that's part and parcel to being able to identify with somebody, you know,
25:37
But that really only that doesn't give me, you know, it doesn't give
25:41
me any like I don't I don't really understand somebody's unique and individual experience because
25:47
I've had something similar. I can identify, you know, I can identify
25:51
I know what pain is, you know. But but I think there's you
25:53
know, there's there's more to it than just saying like, oh, you
25:56
know, I've always been good at this, It's okay. I'm you know,
26:00
I'm good at I maybe good at this, but there are a lot
26:03
of things I need to know to make me better at this because I owe
26:07
it to the client to do that. Awesome, awesome, thank you so
26:11
much again this. You know, working with clients in the setting of trauma
26:18
can be so draining, as you said at the top, and I think
26:22
to a certain degree, self care in our profession is a word that is
26:30
very amorphous. I think it's kind of the elephant in the room too.
26:33
But what do you do to care for yourself as you do this work?
26:41
Do you do anything? Oh? Well, I wouldn't be in this field
26:45
if I didn't, right, I mean, I'd be washed out long ago.
26:51
Part of I have to say that part of what makes me a good
26:53
clinician is I give you an analogy. When I worked in community mental health,
26:59
I had a lunch box is really big, and I had usually had
27:03
like three cheese sandwiches in it, you know, like you know, some
27:07
fruit and some vegetables and some candy and whatever. And it was nothing that
27:12
was bad for anybody. But I always opened it up and there was always
27:15
planning for me and planning for anybody else, Right, and that really is
27:18
I mean, that's the I mean, I am so well resourced. I
27:23
pride myself on how well resourced I am, and I mean that in all
27:27
those ways, I make sure that that happens, you know, I mean
27:30
when those things about self care. When I was in Communia mental health,
27:33
listening to stories, I think in probably one day, I heard three of
27:38
the most violent rape stories that I had ever heard. And I remember being
27:45
overwhelmed for days, Like I I only wear three days a week, so
27:48
I remember that whole weekend being just completely you know, I could just could
27:53
understand why, you know why I was like so not just dreamed, but
27:59
I was kind of paralyzed. And what it was was I really my empathy,
28:03
Like people talk about empathy dialvet Rothschild talks about up and down, but
28:08
my empathy dial that, you know, like I was really seeing things as
28:11
first person shooter, if you know what I mean, Like from the like
28:15
I when I was hearing the stories, it was coming in as first person.
28:18
Part of the skill of being a therapist is not being detached, but
28:22
being able to dial back that empathy and really put ourselves in a third person,
28:27
you know, so we are not we're not traumatized or retraumatized, because
28:32
that's not really so helpful for a client. I used to liking it too,
28:36
you know, when I was in the emergency room, it wasn't really
28:37
helpful for me to be crying with the family members when my job was to
28:42
intubate somebody and do CPR, you know, like my job was. I
28:45
had to be able to be you know, be okay to do what I
28:49
needed to do. And I think to be able to do what you need
28:52
to do in this field for me and what I do, I mean,
28:56
I need to you know, I need to have support around me all the
28:59
time. I need to be able to talk to somebody about clinical stuff.
29:03
I was been in therapy, you know, more often than not in my
29:07
adult life, you know, just you know, at different times for different
29:11
things. I meditate daily. I do a lot of imagery work, you
29:15
know. I have like the alpha stim walk every day with my sister,
29:18
and I think walking is probably one of the best things that you can do.
29:22
I mean talking about alternating bilateral stem and aerobic exercise and getting air and
29:27
you know, just getting away from what you need to get away from all
29:30
of those things. I do take yoga, you know, I mean,
29:33
and it's like it may even sound a bit self indulgent, but it isn't.
29:37
All of those things are like what I put in the launch box when
29:41
I went to community mental healse. You know, I have them here when
29:45
I need them there there, and if anybody else needs them, they can
29:48
use them. Wow. I'm pretty impressed, pretty impressed. That's a lot,
29:52
and that's that is awesome. I'm just so excited to hear that.
29:55
So one of the things that that kind of popped out to me that you
29:59
said was the way you've learned to do the therapy in and of itself is
30:06
a kind of resourcing for yourself. Right, So this not adopting or adopting
30:11
the first person shooter point of view, but rather a third person that in
30:15
and of itself is a self care tool. Yeah, it's it's it's distancing
30:19
with it without not you know, it's not it's nothing about saying I am
30:23
not going to be empathic. It's more about it I need, you know,
30:27
I need to. I need to be resourced enough. I don't need
30:30
to be traumatized to understand this person's trauma, right right, Like I have
30:36
enough to refer back to that I don't have to you know that I don't
30:38
have to, you know, be in this story and not that I'm not
30:44
listening to the story. Don't hear that, you know, it's it's that
30:45
I'm hearing. I'm hearing the story as this is this person's perception of their
30:51
life events, and this is the way they took in the information, and
30:53
this is how it's affected them that came through. Definitely, so I think
30:59
we definitely got that. So that brings us to what's going on now.
31:03
And I know you talked about the website and I kind of want to spend
31:08
some time talk about that because that is phenomenal and that can be reached at
31:15
Trauma one oh one dot com Intricrative Trauma Treatment. And before we startland,
31:21
I just want to say that I, you know, I'm from the East
31:25
Coast, we were talking about this before we started this a little and originally
31:30
from New York. But I studied taekwondo in Havertown, PA a long time
31:38
ago, so that used to be kind of my quote unquote stomping ground.
31:45
Not really, but I love the extent. Yeah, definitely a neighbor and
31:49
another kind of coincidence about six maybe six months ago, I was looking for
31:56
a book. I was looking for a trauma book, and I on Amazon
32:00
and I actually got your book, Trauma Competency, A Clinician's Guide, and
32:04
it is it's phenomenal. I mean, it really is. And I'm going
32:07
to let you talk about the website and then we can get into the books.
32:10
But share with us what you're really excited about, what's going on for
32:15
you now that has really got you going, Well, how about I tell
32:22
you what I should be doing and I'm struggling to do. I have a
32:24
contract with Norton to write a book called Clinician Playbook, Client Workbook, which
32:31
is you know, obviously it's about trauma, but it's kind of working with
32:36
all the you know, the different varieties. And when I say varieties,
32:38
I mean the burden of trauma. So whether it be post traumatic stress,
32:43
whether it be post traumatic stress disorder, single incident or complex PTSD or desno's
32:49
or you know, any of the personality disorders which I really just think are
32:52
of as trauma early and often like treatment I would say treatment algorithm like protocol
33:00
for them. And I don't mean like here's a cake book of how you
33:02
do it. I would never think that that that that is doable, but
33:06
kind of give people an idea of how to assess clients. You know,
33:10
when you assess them, you know what the information means, how to interpret
33:15
the information, and then how to go about a treatment plan for each of
33:20
those. Right. And I'm very excited about it because it'll be a shared
33:22
resource for both client and clinician. And we don't have that. I don't
33:28
see that in like when when I was asked to write the book, I
33:30
said, you know, I said to them, I said, Andrea,
33:32
I don't see a gap in the literature. When I'm looking at you know,
33:36
I look at your authors, I don't see a gap in the literature.
33:37
And then when I thought about it, I thought, you know it
33:39
is missing. There is no resource where you go, Okay, here I
33:44
have that, you know, here is a playbook for you, the client,
33:46
you do the work in here. I have you know, I have
33:50
all the theory here, and I have you know the assessments and why we're
33:52
doing it, and I have you know, I have what I need and
33:55
you have what you need. But they're the same, right, so like
33:59
we'll sharing the same or sharing the same resource. So That's what I'm excited
34:02
about. That It's it's due in January, so I imagine it'll be out
34:07
some time after that. I'm also very excited about something that I haven't started
34:14
yet, but I just put the feelers out for. You know, trauma
34:19
and addiction are about ninety percent correlated, and if people don't know that,
34:23
the numbers say eighty to ninety percent. I've yet to see I've yet to
34:29
see it lower than that. But there's a lot of people out right now
34:31
that again, like when we talk about trauma, addiction is kind of just
34:36
seen as a symptom, whether it be a substance or you know, a
34:39
behavior. It's kind of seen as a symptom of adverse childhood experiences and you
34:44
know, inability to sell sue, inability to regulate emotions of those kind of
34:49
things. So I want to do my next project on trauma and addiction.
34:54
And who I think I would like to have is I'm not sure if you're
34:57
familiar with Gibor Matte. Yeah, I love him. He's phenomenal. Yeah,
35:02
in the realm of Hungry Ghosts, and he's a very He's Canadian,
35:08
so he's nice. But you can't hold that against him, and I think
35:14
that he worked. We had some woman named Vicky Reynolds come down and talk
35:17
to us when we had an agency at one point, and they worked together
35:20
up there in Vancouver. He's a psychiatrist, so i'd like him. And
35:24
there's a woman here in your old stamping grounds at the University of Pennsylvania named
35:29
Anna Childress. And then i'd like Claudia Black and Daniel Aman and I think
35:32
we're going to get together. You know, I'll have commentary from doctor vander
35:37
Koulk and hopefully Peter Levine and Stephen Porges as well. But I really would
35:42
like to see that done and done well and bring together the a study the
35:45
adverse childhood experience, a study would love to see, you know, with
35:49
either Anda or Filetti. I have a clinical crush on those, doctor Filetti
35:53
and on doctor porge'es. But notes about it. So that's really that's that's
35:59
what I'm excited about. The website. Like I said, the website has
36:02
been up for a while, and I'm very happy to see just how many
36:06
people are using it. You know, like I said, it doesn't cost
36:09
anything. You just have to sign in, and you know, there's just
36:13
tons of resources. But the resource session section for clients I think is I
36:20
think it's really helpful for people who are looking for a clinician or looking to
36:22
start some sort of therapy with people who are informed at least I mean informed,
36:28
if not sensitive to trauma, if not specialize in it. Yeah,
36:31
the resource section in and of itself is just jam packed. That really struck
36:37
me when I was going through this. You know something that also struck me
36:42
in hearing about your latest project. There seems to be this sense of joining
36:50
that you're trying to bring. You're trying to bring this collaboration between the client
36:54
and the clinician in these projects you're putting together. Would you say that it's
37:00
accurate, especially with the last book you're talking about, right, Well,
37:05
yeah, and yeah absolutely. I mean I think it is ridiculous to have
37:09
a client believe that we're doing something to them, or that we know more
37:14
than they do about them. You know, I mean that this isn't like
37:16
when I say hilarious, I truly mean that. I mean, how on
37:20
earth could we purport to know more than they know about themselves? We know
37:23
some things and they know more, So I think that how you know,
37:28
how we present ourselves as we do have skills and we do have technologies or
37:32
modalities that are helpful. You know that may be helpful for you, but
37:37
I got to know you, you know, and you know you sure,
37:40
sure sure, And that the last project you were talking about, what what
37:45
form is that? Is that? A book? Is that a no?
37:49
I want to kind of like the video series of have some interviews. But
37:53
then I have a new DVD coming out called E MDR Step by Step,
37:58
which is the same kind of thing. There's a lot where there's also client
38:00
demonstrations, So this would be the same kind of thing where you have all
38:04
where we would have all the addiction and the you know, the adverse childhood
38:08
experiences, all of the trauma stuff and the addiction stuff, and then you
38:12
know, show how we work with it. So doing client demonstrations. And
38:15
what I mean by that is there's a guy named Lane Peterson who is in
38:19
Minnesota. He's a friend. He's one of the people who I think is
38:25
very well liked, and then in the people who are very fundamentalist towards DBT
38:31
not very well liked. But he's taken DBT and try to make it accessible
38:36
to everybody to try and like, I think we have some data right now
38:40
that suggests that DBT skills training is what makes the difference. That's where that's
38:45
what it's showing in the research. I've heard Marshall Lenahan talk about that that
38:49
it is the skill. So to be able to bring the skills to people
38:52
and not have to charge one hundred and twenty five dollars a session, I
38:57
think is a real you know, I think that's an admirable thing to do.
39:00
So I'm going out to Minnesota to do a two day with him,
39:02
and I think what we'll do is try to put together how you use these
39:07
you know, dialectical behavioral skills which could be called CBT skills with mindfulness or
39:12
recovery skills including mindfulness, could be called anything, but really how you get
39:15
to stay, you know, how you get in stage one of stabilization and
39:20
safety. You know, how you can use these things without it being such
39:23
like such a comprehence it's like a comprehensive program because we have maybe two of
39:30
them here in all of the Philadelphia area right where people do do quote unquote
39:35
DBT, and you know, so the other people think that like they can't
39:38
use these skills and the skills they're not Marshall Lennahan's skills, right, I
39:44
mean they're CBT skills with mindfulness infused. So I think that to be able
39:49
to teach that to everybody is a good thing. I'm not not one for,
39:53
you know, saying Okay, I put my name on this and now
39:55
nobody else can play, right. I think. On your on your websit
40:00
site, you have an excerpt from a video excerpt from is It Mission Bomb?
40:07
Michael Bomb Michael Bomb Part Pardon Yeah, And I think he says that.
40:12
I think he says that, you know, he says, you know
40:15
what, we're helping people. We're not you know, superstars, we're not
40:20
you know, just uh incredible or amazing people doing amazing things. We're helping.
40:27
He brought it down to the ground, to the earth, and I
40:30
hear that a lot about what you're saying. And I really appreciate that too.
40:34
Yeah, just being able to say that when I'm not. He says
40:37
something like, you know, God didn't put you on this earth, you
40:40
know, to to heal every type of trauma. You know, that's that's
40:44
imaginable, you know, like it's like have a critical eye, like there's
40:46
a lot of things that are helpful, but there is no magic. There's
40:50
no bullet, you know, and so what like, anything that works for
40:54
this client who's sitting in front of me, what works for this client,
40:59
let's use it. That means you have to have a real big toolbox,
41:01
you know, you have to have a lot of things in it. And
41:05
that's really one of the things that I admire about doctor Vanderkolca is that he
41:07
says is, you know, good intentions and warm feelings do not substitute for
41:12
becoming really good at what you do, you know, And that to me,
41:15
that is like you got to hear that if these are people's lives in
41:20
your hands, and I mean that, you know, I'm not saying that
41:22
you're in charge of them, but I'm saying you have people's lives in your
41:24
hand, and you better treat that with care. Yeah. So, a
41:29
lot of the people who are going to be listening to this, who are
41:31
listening to this are interested in learning about trauma. Can you recommend to go
41:37
to books for them? Now, obviously your books are going to be you
41:43
don't know, you don't have to say about my books. I don't who
41:45
I'm going to recommend. I tell you why, Judy Hermann's Trauma and Recovery,
41:50
because it is the best book in complex and the best is the first
41:53
book and then the seminal work in complex trauma right disorders of you know,
41:59
extreme streng Okay, So she's the first person to ever say, hey,
42:02
guess what, PTSD doesn't fit everybody there. You know, there's a whole
42:07
attachment thing, there's a whole you know what about months and years, you
42:09
know what about all these things that make PTSD different from complex PTSD. And
42:16
so she's the first person to really put it in in terms of this is
42:20
a political issue. So you know, between her and vander Kolk, the
42:24
tons of work with borderline personality disorder and complex PTSD, and I think that
42:30
all their work is seminal. So her book, everybody should read that.
42:32
Anybody that's in our field should read it, regardless of the fact if they
42:36
call themselves trauma informed or not. They should read it. The other book
42:40
and this, and I mean, I have a lot of trauma books,
42:43
but I do want to push this one. And I don't know either one
42:45
of these authors. It's a mere Levine and Rachel Heller. The book is
42:50
called Attached, the New Science of Adult Attachment and how it can help you
42:53
find and keep love. Now it's for the general public, but all of
42:58
the research is in it. It's just mentioned and if you want to go
43:00
to the research, it's in the back. But I mean it's where I
43:02
give it to every client that I see, because most you know, most
43:06
of I would say, every client that I see comes in with insecure attachment
43:10
or disorganized, then insecured either organized or disorganized, but always insecure over them
43:15
when they start with me, does generally work with access to So I give
43:20
everybody that and I just think it is a fabulous jump off point for people
43:23
to start understanding the template, you know, the relational template that they started
43:28
with, and to be able to get just get a view on People will
43:31
say to me like, I don't I don't want to go look at it
43:34
the past. You know why we have to go look at my childhood.
43:37
I'm not sitting here talking about my childhood. And I say, well,
43:38
you know, I wouldn't talk about anything, but if it bite you in
43:42
the es every day, it's worth a mention, right, And so this
43:45
is one of those ways you know that people can you know, people can
43:47
people can say, oh, I can see that in me, maybe there
43:52
maybe there is something to this. Got it great? Okay, And those
43:55
two books will definitely be on the show notes paid at West Coast Trauma Project
44:00
dot com and you can hit podcast. Judith Hermann's book is obviously talked about
44:06
all over the place as ciminal works say book that. Bessel vander Kolk's book,
44:10
The Body Keeps the Score will be out this month as well, and
44:14
you know, can't recommend that more. He edited his first book, Traumatic
44:16
Stress, you know, and he hasn't really put anything out since then because
44:21
he's been doing the research and because he's been applying all the theories because he's
44:24
been a clinician and a researcher. You know, he's a good scientist,
44:27
so he hasn't had time to write. But this is the first book that
44:30
he has out in God Forever. Oh and that's coming out this month,
44:32
so we'll definitely be looking forward to that as well. Okay, so we're
44:37
kind of winding down. Let's hear from you, Linda, best advice that
44:43
you've ever had and that could be the personally, professionally the best place to
44:47
contact you. And then we'll say goodbye. Okay, the best place to
44:52
contact me is easier Linda at Trauma one oh one dot com. Okay,
44:58
that's the easy way and best advice I ever got. You know, I
45:01
would have to say it's the serenity prayer. I know, I'm pretty sure
45:07
most people know it. But you know, like accepting the things cannot change
45:10
the wisdom to know the difference, so to be able to you know,
45:13
like there are certain things that I can affect, certain things that I can't
45:17
affect, and those things just need to be accepted. And you know,
45:21
once once I accept, once I accept where I am right now, then
45:25
change happens. It's not, you know, there's no striving. So I
45:29
think that's probably the best advice. And I think you, you know,
45:34
opened up a door to yourself and shared so much of your of your journey
45:38
that I really appreciate. I just want to say thank you so much and
45:44
we'll talk soon. Thank you very much, guy, it was a pleasure
45:46
to meet you. Eve Dom common S