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Healing Through Art: Jacqueline Jones on Art Therapy for PTSD and TBI · Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Hey folks, it's Bruce Parkman again with another fantastic episode of our podcast Broken Brains, sponsored by the Mack Parkman Foundation, where we look at the issues of repetitive head trauma and the subsets of repetitive head impacts and repetitive blast exposure that's affecting our kids, our athletes, veterans, you know, millions of citizens here in America and yet we have little understanding of these phenomena and, more importantly, how to treat them and how to improve brain health and how do we optimize brain health.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: So this podcast, again reaching out to our entire network of researchers, scientists, victims, patients, doctors, practitioners, to bring the best expertise here for you to listen to and learn so you can better protect yourselves, better protect your kids and help us all as a society do a better job with brain health.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: And just a reminder that on the Army-Navy game, the Mack Parkman Foundation will be hosting an ACDC concert tailgate live from 9 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon, with Horse Soldier Bourbon as one of our sponsors, blue Fusions the other.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: The entire tailgate is free.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: There's a small donation if you'd like.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: We have food, we have drink, we have rock and roll and it all goes to veterans' mental health and suicide awareness and every cent of that money raised goes to help pay for these alternative treatments for our veterans, so hope to see you there.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: It's getting a lot of attention.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Please reach out to the Mack Parkland Foundation if you want any more information.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Today we have another amazing guest, ms Jacqueline Jones from Flourish Momentum.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I just found out that Miss Jones has been just instrumental in improving the health, the brain health and welfare of our soft veteran population and veteran population Overall.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: She holds a wide variety of certifications to include a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art, master of Education and a Master of Art in Art Therapy, and she's launched her private practice, flores Momentum, in 2021 to expand upon the work that she did with veterans and create her own personal method to leverage the body in our environments to go ahead and create better mental health.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: And she's been especially successful in addressing TBI and PTSD, issues that we know affect so much better of our veteran population.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Ms Jones, welcome to the show and thank you so much for being here today.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: It's nice to meet you.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: So now you know we all about brains.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I mean that's what we talk about here.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about brains.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: So tell us I mean you've got a background, a lot of holistic and naturalistic.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: You know background.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: How did you get into brain health and what drove you here?
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: So background I always saw the value in art.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Growing up it was always my go-to coping mechanism.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: I knew that if anything was bringing me down, if I just sat down and did art, I would feel better about it.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Intersection of art and psychology.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: So one day I wound up in a used bookstore, following the art section and the psychology section, and I found a single book on art therapy.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: So I took that home and read it and learned that that was a thing, even though it was a field that we didn't really hear of many jobs in.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: I started out as an art teacher, so at the master's in education I taught in Fairfax County public schools for a while and it was wonderful.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: But I always did see it as my stepping stone.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: And while I was there it was a normal occurrence for concerning things or we'll call them red flags to come up in kids artworks.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't my role in that setting to process what had come up.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: I'd have to kind of see the artwork and then hand it over to a guidance counselor and I knew that I wanted to be more part of the actually processing what came up, especially when I'm the one that created the container that you know that the subconscious would start to come up in the artwork.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: So it validated my you know desire to go into art therapy.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: I returned to school, I went to GW for a master's in art therapy and while I was there there, my first year-long um internship was actually with children with cancer, which was a whole experience in it in itself.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Um and and from there, actually, when I was leaving teaching, the pta president as his word of like, really kind, supportive advice to me was whatever you do, don't go work with adult men.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: So he knew I was, he knew I was leaving teaching to go into art therapy.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: He was like whatever you do, don't go work with adult men.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: I said why?
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: He said they're not going to get it.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: He said they're not going to get it Like they're not going to get it, they're not going to appreciate it.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: And it was.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: You know he was giving me kind advice, but the way that I received it was like okay, challenge accepted.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go seek out an experience working with adult men and experience working with adult men and so my second year long internship at GW.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: I had the extreme honor of my internship.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: That second year was at the NICO, so at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at Walter Reed, and it aligned with so many things.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: One reason that I wanted to move from art education into art therapy is because I wanted to get involved with more research and things like this to really push the field further, and I wanted to get more into the psychology of what was going on behind art making and also throughout school.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: When you go to school to become a therapist, you're analyzing yourself so hard and a lot of things were coming up.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Same time that I was wanting to intern at NICO, I was also getting more in touch with certain things in my personal life, like I had an uncle who served in Vietnam who had just died of an overdose.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: I had my grandpa escaped the Holocaust and then actually became a translator for our army and he died a couple of years before I was born and the story had always been that he was pushed maliciously into train tracks in New York City, but that year that I was at NICO I was given more information that it was probably suicide.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: And so I and from what I know, I think there's just a lot of things that he didn't deal with.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: He very much took the.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm going to suppress this really far down and yeah, just suppress this really far down.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: And I think it caught up with him.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: And then other personal life things.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: I could just tell that people who hadn't processed war trauma were living out the consequences of it, and and then on top of all of that, I was seeing as an intern at Nyko how people were able to gain insight and express themselves in ways that they really couldn't elsewhere the art therapy.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: We always had a really important nugget of wisdom or piece of the puzzle that no one else was able to access, just because of what we could access through the art.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: So the year that I was at NICO as an intern, the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund was starting to break ground on the satellite clinics, and so they started breaking ground on the Invisible Wound or the Intrepid Spirit 1.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: That was going to be the first NICO satellite at Fort Belvoir, and the team that was designing the Fort Belvoir program came through, did a tour and was starting to piece together what they were going to implement in their own version of the program and they actually were not going to include art therapy, even though the art therapy at NICO is so obviously powerful.
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: So I went when I was a student.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: I went and I did presentations for the clinical staff at Fort Belvoir and it proved like it presented on why the art therapy was such a important piece of the puzzle to have in the interdisciplinary treatment.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: And then I also wrote a a grant proposal to the national endowment for the arts about getting pilot funding.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: And so I basically Fort Belvoir agreed yeah, we'll give you a room to try this out.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: And NEA agreed yeah, we'll pay you for three months, like good luck.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: And so I actually started at Fort Belvoir on their ribbon cutting and they did.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: They gave me a room and I had three months to prove the worth of art therapy in that setting.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And so I really took full advantage of that challenge as well.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: And from the very first day working with clients, I was gathering data.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: So from the very first day I was gathering pre-art therapy data and then I was gathering data from clients at a few different points along their treatment journey, and so by the end of the three months I was able to present to Fort Belvoir and the NEA what I had gathered to show the unique role of art therapy in that setting, and it was that information was so powerful that the pilot turned into a full time contract position, which actually turned into a GS position within that same year, which was incredible.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: The information was so powerful that when the NEA presented it to Congress, they got congressional funding to really expand the creative arts therapies through other invisible wound centers and VAs across the country.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: So that was yeah, that was the very beginning, and there's so many reasons why, wow, there's so many reasons why, wow, there's so many reasons why art therapy is a really powerful tool.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: And then, as we, I'm sure you'll have lots of questions.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I got a whole list.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Every time I've been looking over here I've been making questions.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: This is all.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: This is great.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: It winds up building into all the holistic things.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, to your superintendent's point, we and I, you know, according to my wife, men are all the problems in this world, right?
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So he's probably trying to give you some sage advice stay away from those dudes, because they're just a pain.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: But I mean, I mean, jackie, I mean you're mixing art with with veterans, like with combat veterans, right?
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine how that conversation would even start, like with me.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I was like I can't draw a stick figure and you want me to do like paint or whatever, right, and and and dude, it would be an automatic.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Just no, start, right there, man.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not paying.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: So how do you start your conversations?
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: How do you get these men and women who have been asked by this country to do some amazing things, right, and, you know, have gone through some very, very traumatic experiences?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: How do you start?
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can imagine, with the female population, it's probably a little bit easier, right?
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: But you're talking to an infantryman, a ranger, you know, or whatever, right, they're going to say, hey, you know, I want you to paint or whatever.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: So how does that conversation?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: How do you get them interested?
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: How do you get them to open up and accept this Because they're just so depressed, anxious to look at anything, do they?
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: What is the value prop that you give to them to get them engaged?
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Because that's amazing, go ahead.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: This is amazing.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Go ahead.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: I have a few different answers.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: So there are a few different answers.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: The first answer is that my most typical greeting is someone walking in my room and saying why the fuck am I here?
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, what the hell am I here for?
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I get that.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: That's why and that was first question right off my back I'm like what?
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: yeah, so I would honestly hear that more than like good morning, how are you?
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: And so I'm very familiar with that.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: And then, once people would come in, a really cool thing about art therapy is that when we're working with people, even if no one else is there, even if it's a one-on-one, even if it's a group, there's projects drying all around the room and so even if someone feels really alone, and even if someone is the only client physically in the room, they may see artworks created by so many other people and it's like.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: It's like an immediate A other people are doing this.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: B whatever is heavy on my heart and mind is showing up in these works, and so I know it's okay here, but in those settings we typically start in a group.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: So I think that helps bring that guard down.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: And it's, you know, a bunch of people.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: It's like five or six people walking in saying why the hell am I here?
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: And then they're all kind of on this, like what are we doing here?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Journey together.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: But.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: But honestly, we wind up winning people over in the first day.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: So there's a few reasons for that.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: One is that we know it's really threatening to give someone who doesn't consider themselves an artist like a blank piece of paper and a pencil and say draw something.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: Because then there's all of this self-judgment about what am I gonna do?
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: I'm not an artist All this self-criticism and judgment comes in.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: So that's actually why in those settings we often start with the mask, because the template is already there.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: And then the way that we give the directions for art therapy is very it's very thought out.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: It always comes across as very simple, but it's very thought out.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: So we give the directions that give enough of an open-ended nature that people can fully authentically self-express, but with enough of a container that they feel like safe and they have direction.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: And we also phrase it like don't worry about what it's going to look like.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: In the end we're going to take a process-oriented approach.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: So so just if you feel like using a certain color, just use it.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: If you feel like creating a certain image, just create it.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: And then at the end, when you wind up with a product, we'll be able to make sense of it and we like to present it as more of a problem solving task rather than quote unquote art making especially at the beginning and that's something that you know a lot of SF guys can do Like you give someone a problem, guys are like top tier MacGyvers and people wind up having a lot, of, a lot of fun with the task actually, and then what winds up making people get one over in the first session is that these things that they had, basically whatever needs to bubble up from the subconscious to be seen by the person, comes up because you have an inner wisdom that wants to be seen and then, once it's on the table, the person has to confront it.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: They put it there.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: I didn't tell you anything about yourself and like, one of the most common compliments I get is thank you for helping me, help myself.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: So it really it breaks down that whole like power differential.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: That can happen in a talk therapy setting where a lot of people get can get defensive if a therapist presents an idea and they're like, and then you know the client then has to go through whether or not that's true about them or not, but in art therapy the client's the one who put it on the table.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: So it's like an immediate okay, I put that there, that's within me.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: What does this mean?
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: And then the other answer.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: There's a few answers to your question.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: So in the first setting they get bought in because a lot of that.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: But also they find a lot of these brain health benefits without even knowing it.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: So when you're art making, your cortisol decreases, so it naturally lowers stress and anxiety and you can only create as fast as you can create.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Which means a lot of times when people are verbally sharing something, that's difficult, you can get flooded.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: But when you're creating, that sets the pace and so it really slows down what's coming in.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: And also the grounding nature of art making it's tactile, you're, you're physically grounding the entire time so people are able to get further with difficult subject matter and they can with talk alone because you're not getting flooded, you're not getting over stimulated, you're not getting overwhelmed, you're setting, you're not getting overwhelmed, you're setting the pace.
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: And then also, once you have the product, you've externalized that thing outside of you.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: So a lot of times when we're in a talk situation, if I'm talking to you about something that happened and you're explaining it, that dynamic is expressing that that thing is within you, but once you make art about it, it becomes you and me looking at the art, so it literally removes the issue from you, it helps you become more separate from it, it gives you a safer distance from it.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: And another thing that's really important to note is that when we experience or recall trauma, the verbal areas of our brain become inhibited.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: So people may literally not have the words to adequately explain what happened, or they may have the words but they might not want to use the words, they may not be allowed to use the words, and so, since we're used to talking using a nonverbal approach, like art, therapy feels like a non.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: It feels like a non-direct approach, but actually in the brain it's a more direct route.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: So all the areas of the brain that are active when you're art making are the areas of the brain that are active when you experience trauma or remember it, and so it feels like a backdoor approach, but within the brain is actually a more direct route to all that information.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: And then so all of a sudden, like a lot of the keys to the reasons why things get stuck show up in the artwork and people are able to gain incredible insight, self-awareness, into what's actually the root of why certain symptoms are manifesting.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: They get the answers and so it winds up being a really rewarding like.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: It's calming, it's grounding, it's you're relaxed while facing difficult things, and then you also wind up with this reward sensation at the end, and so it winds up being a really important part of the whole therapeutic process.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Okay, and and yeah.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Well, it sounds like, I mean, you're using art to much like the psychedelic process, uses, you know, the influence of drugs to get people to relax their brain and open up and address issues that are, you know, consciously just locked up or repressed or you know, whatever you know that is.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Yet art is like public, like if I got a thought and I'm on ketamine or something that's in here, that's mine, right, and I don't have to share it.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: You know, and a lot of the trauma that we've experienced, as as veterans, you know, you know in our daily life, you know, are things that we're not comfortable sharing, right, I mean, and even therapists have a hard time getting, you know, especially men, right, but even women, I've seen women that were completely unwilling to open up due to the trauma or the public nature of some of these groups.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Does this art, is this art open to the group or is this, you know, do they have the comfort, their?
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: You know the pathways to expression, expressing trauma, and you work through it.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Are they you, are they allowed to destroy the art?
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: To just at least they got the memory out, or how do you?
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: How do you make them comfortable with?
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: You know, drawing out.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: You know very, very, very private issues.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great question.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: So in some of the research that I was collecting, I wound up having data from several years and so we were able to break it down to and to what are the key symptoms of tbi and ptsd that are being addressed through art.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: But I was also able to break it down to what are the True benefits of the shorter term versus longer term.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: So in the shorter term, art therapy, which is more the group settings, people were really um able to self-express, gain insight and self-awareness and work through some identity issues Like sense of self.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: But in the longer term, that's where most people were working one-on-one through things, and one-on-one they're focusing more on really deep grief and loss, very personal trauma, very personal dimensions of moral injury and that kind of thing.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we're very conscientious in the groups.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: It's more about helping people feel not isolated, not alone in what they're going through, and they'll usually share the more surface level effects, like.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: So they'll all understand you know we're dealing with transitions or such and such effect on our identity or grief in general.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: But then one-on-one that's where they're really going into exactly what happened and processing through it.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: And then, to your point, we can use the process of this, and so I've had people before they were able to really share the details with me about something they're still going through a helpful part of the process.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's drawing something and then keeping it in a sealed envelope.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, testing my trust, is she going to open this envelope over the week?
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: And then the next time when they come back they say I haven't opened the envelope, they'll open it, add more to the drawing, close the envelope kind of give me another test for a week and then eventually get to the place where they walk me through the whole picture.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: Or I've had yeah, or so.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: It's like there's a lot of ways that we can meet the meet the ego and the psyche exactly exactly where it's at to.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: We're very aware of something called the window of tolerance and so know change happens when you're outside of your comfort zone just a little, but if you're too far out of your comfort zone, you completely shut down, and so there's a lot of ways we can use the process to keep people within that range where they're actively able to change in a positive way without forcing them to retreat.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Making them an artist and then a lot of people wind up becoming artists.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: I was going to ask that, yeah, yeah, so people, now they got galleries and they thank you for their new career, right?
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are several, yeah.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: I'd like to see some of that work.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I'd like to see some of that work.
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: Is this a therapy that you find or that in your experience, because you know our audience is going to be like, wow, art therapy, you know, whatever.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Is this something that you have found that people respond to when other therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy or you know, especially all these SSRIs, srnis, you know have failed these men and women?
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Is this something that they have found that they say, wow, I've never been able to, with other treatments, other routes, other pathways to brain improvement, found anything that worked.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Are you finding that?
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Do people say that, or is this?
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: something that's supplemental to other treatment modalities.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Well, I think that society at large, or the way that we typically test things in science, they want to see that we're complimentary, they want to see that we're nice to have, but what we see is we're really a need to have, honestly.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of studies like looking at the value of CPT versus CPT plus art therapy and studies like that.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: We know that the benefits are higher when it's CPT plus art therapy, cpt plus art therapy.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: We also have a lot of studies that show if someone is involved in art therapy they actually go to their other therapy appointments more often.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: And that's something that I would see when I worked at Eglin.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: A lot people who were like at P3, at seventh group, knew when their clients started seeing me for art therapy or yoga because all of a sudden, guys who would know show them all the time would actually start going Well we all know seven troopers are crazy.
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, I, I, I was, I was a seventh group from 84 to 96.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: So I just, at least you're working with the people that really need it.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Good for you, yeah, yeah.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: No, that's a that Good for you.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's great to hear, and a couple other things on that note.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: We see, especially with a lot of studies done on kids or dealing with more trauma or natural disasters, you're 80% less likely to get PTSD if there's drawing supplies available.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: So if you are able to, automatically externalize stress as it's happening, you're less likely to have it lock in as PTSD.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: Is that something that I'll just interrupt real quick?
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Just, I'm just thinking about parents.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Is that something like you know?
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Parents know when trauma for kids could be as easy as having an altercation with a kid next door.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: You're like, you know, susie don't like me, or I mean we know how kids magnify you know seemingly little events into these life-changing you know nuclear clouds.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Is that you know a way?
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Just a side note, is that a way you know a parent can say, hey, look, get your box of crayons out, and you know, just start.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: You know, drawing me some pictures.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Is that something that?
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: I mean?
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: It's not therapy, it is therapy, but it's just not.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: It's just, I'm just looking at all the ways to hack life, right, and is this a way to raise healthier children, right, when you know that they've?
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: I mean I had two daughters.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Everything was a disaster, right?
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: I mean it's crazy, right.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: It's like it's not that bad, honey, here here's a box of crayons.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Go draw some pictures, let's talk about it yeah, and it would be helpful to let kids just draw it out.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: And then what parents have to be careful of is a lot of the comments that we say to kids.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Thinking that we're being supportive can actually shut down their self-expression.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: So so, for example, like at the an example that that comes to mind at the pediatric oncology clinic you know a child was painting themselves under a black cloud and it was raining black, you know, and the parent is being really supportive and they're like, oh, like, don't you want your cloud to be blue?
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: But the kid drew the cloud black on purpose, on purpose, like whether it was a subconscious purpose.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: There's an intention there.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: So the question is really oh, tell me about, I wonder why your cloud is black.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Like that will help open up more genuine self-expression.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: But once you start saying why isn't your cloud blue, you're going to start, start to alter what they actually need to know.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: This is a good point, because when my son passed away, we found out after he went back through his homework that he had been writing about the afterlife, which is an indicator of suicidal ideation, and our point was you didn't see this right.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: He's writing about the Lord and seeing, know, I mean, and only to find out that you know this is not trained to teach yet is an indicator that you have a struggling child.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: So it'd be interesting from your perspective is how art could be interpreted to be that um, we will call it that that canary in the cold, that cold line where you might see your child drawing something that could indicate deeper trauma that you need to address now that you can't your child, neither you.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: That could affect your child literally throughout his life.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: If we don't grab that issue, that would be an amazing look, because these are the tools that parents need.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was completely uninformed on the impact of contact sports in my son's brain.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: It's education, it's awareness.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: And if parents know, hey, if my kid's drawing pictures and I see him use this color combination, start drawing whatever, I should ask some questions because my child is expressing them something that they're not verbalizing.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, just another book you need to write.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm glad you brought that up, I was thinking about that as something that you might bring up actually, and so we use it like that all the time.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: So, like you compared it to psychedelics.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Imagery is the language of the soul, and in art therapy, another very beautiful power of it is that on a visual field, you can represent so many aspects of a complex situation.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: You can also, on one visual plane, express the positives about something or the negatives about something, or literally work through and transmute something.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: The first day that I started at Belvoir, the first client they gave me was actually someone who had been seeing a behavioral health provider and wasn't able to really verbally express what they really needed to, but they had shared a picture of someone's head exploding, sorry, and the behavioral health provider brought me the picture and said this is gonna be your first client.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Basically, I don't know how to read into this.
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this is suicidal ideation.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this is what he feels like, I don't know if this is a call for help.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: I don't know what this really means.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: And so, in the course of art therapy, it allows us to see and meet all parts of everything that the soul is trying to express.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Um, and so there been a lot of.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: You know, especially verbally, people bring up something and then all of a sudden it's like oh, you're having suicidal ideation, you need to, you need to go inpatient, and it's.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: It can be a really quick process, Whereas in art therapy they might express this aspect of suicidal ideation, but then in the same picture it can kind of morph into well, actually I'm feeling the pain of all of my friends who have taken their own lives, and then it can morph into more of like a meaning making.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: What am I?
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: How can I take this forward?
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: And so you can help someone move through that whole process, from like pain to hope.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Through the art process you can help someone move from.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: The art will really show the person where they feel fragmented and how, and then there's ways we can use it to help them find wholeness again.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: What about as a diagnostic tool?
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: So one of the issues that we have with brain injuries, unless they're apparent like a TBI or a violent hit to the head, is that you know, we don't know they're there, the brain can't feel right.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: Yet the first indicator that we have that a brain has been injured from RHI or RBE is, you know, indications of behavioral, psychological or cognitive behavior, right Aberrations, right Acting out.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: And while you know they might be showing signs of mental illness, we have an entirely untrained psychiatric and medical population that cannot correlate that mental illness with those past.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: You know, repetitive traumatic brain, repetitive, that repetitive trauma, or even IEDCT, right?
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: They'll just say PTSD, right, that big word that some people don't like.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Don't care so if somebody is struggling internally, like my son suffered severe depression and schizophrenia to the point where he ran off a hundred foot rock and he ate that.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Up until the day I saw him last, he was the most amazing, warm, wonderful, loving, generous human being.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yet he hid it.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: We are masters of, even in some of the worst moments of my business life and we're talking five or six years of absolute personal hell.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: My wife had absolutely no idea that my businesses were having a hard time.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I kept it because I didn't want her to know.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: She's my wife.
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: I don't want her to share this pain.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: So can art be used as a diagnostic tool to indicate that, number one, we have mental illness and then number two, under the right levels of awareness, if we have mental illness, can we now go?
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Is there a point of causality?
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Has this man or woman suffered a lot of repetitive brain damage, because now we can treat that.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: We now nowadays can treat the brain and heal the brain better.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: We can improve brain health, but we can't do anything if we don't know there's a brain injury and one of the first indications we have again is mental health.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: So what about this as a diagnostic tool?
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: First indication we have again is mental health.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: So what about this as a diagnostic tool?
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Somebody comes to you mental ill, ptsd, whatever, or just comes to you for art therapy, right?
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Could this be used to?
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: If we identify significant issues like major mood disorders and schizophrenia or depression, whatever, that can almost save these folks lives if we can get them the treatment, because if we don't heal the brain, things just get worse.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: They really do, and we can.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: We can, we can make them feel a little better with our therapy and stuff, but unless we address the prime issue of their mental illness, they're just, you know, they're going to continue to suffer in silence their mental illness.
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: They're just, you know, they're going to continue to suffer in silence.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so a few points.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: One I think people need to realize how it's all interconnected.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: And so we know that having a TBI makes you more predisposed to having a traumatic event get stuck and turn into a chronic PTS.
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: So like if the same person with no TBI experienced something, they'd be less likely to have that result in PTSD than someone who had a TBI first.
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: And so I think, more awareness of that.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Also, when we're in school for art therapy we have all the same classes that counselors do, like abnormal psychology and all these things.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: We just take the art twist on it so we know how different diagnoses manifest in art, we are aware of how they show up, and so it is really helpful, if someone doesn't know how to look into the art that's presented, to have the person see an art therapist, because we're more trained in how to notice and process through.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: But we're also seeing through brain imaging, that the imagery and themes that people are putting in their art are correlated with what's going on in the brain.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: So there's going to be um, we'll say like darker, more depressive subject matter coming up.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: Uh, they're saying that correlates with less connectivity um in the brain, and then the more connectivity there is in the brain, the more likely there are themes of hope and that kind of thing.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: So you can see.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: Which is important because brain trauma does damage myelin and synaptic density and this all results in lower connection that makes absolute sense from a science perspective and lower connection that makes absolute sense from a science perspective.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: So we can use it diagnostically and we can also use it as, when someone has actually gone through the healing, wow, so like you can a lot of people, especially with insurance and stuff they want to say, oh, you should be able to treat that in six sessions and stuff they want to say, oh, you should be able to treat that in six sessions.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe within six sessions someone is still authentically feeling depressed.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: They're probably and it's showing up in their artwork they're probably not ready to get discharged until without prompting.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: They're naturally showing more themes of hope and that kind of thing in their artwork.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: This is very important to our audience right now because most of the modalities that have been known to improve brain health and I don't think this is one of those psychedelic stuff that actually creates new neuronal growth and stuff, but it's actually a treatment.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Is this covered by insurance or?
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: is this one of those gray?
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: areas.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: It mean it's it's cbt but not cbt, right?
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, is there a billing code or something like that?
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: right, right now, it's state by state.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: So in the military.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Like when we work for military settings, I always had a supervisor that had to co-sign my notes for it to get covered, and within certain states art therapy has gotten its own licensure so they can bill, but in most states it's not there yet.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: So right now that I work on my own, people pay me privately.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Again, something that can help them they have to go out of pocket, and this is something that we're working on from a legislative perspective is that you know, when it comes to men and women that are taking their lives after serving their country, you know, I don't care if the FDA has never recognized this modality.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: If we have men and women saying this has helped me, or it has helped doctors diagnose, you know, conditions that we didn't know about, that helped save their life, then it should be available.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: And it sounds like is there like a school for this, like, do you go to college and become an art therapist, or is this?
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: People like yourself that have been on a journey that kind of find the combination of these.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: You know two processes, you know art and therapy, and you know two industries or two career fields and put them together how do you become an art therapist and where would you find one?
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: To become an art therapist you need to have a master's in art therapy and then we follow the same parallel structure to become a licensed counselor.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: After you have a master's, you can call yourself an art therapist.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: But you can't call yourself a board certified art therapist until you've worked professionally for a few years under supervision and had a certain amount of hours discussing cases with a supervisor and whatnot and then taking a test.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: So we go through that whole board certification process as well.
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, so people can find you.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people can find us and I've had, just to let people know I've had so many people you know work with me for 12 weeks and say I've made more progress here than I have for five or 10 years with the VA.
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: So every single one of my sessions.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, don't even get me on that soapbox right now, man.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, is this covered by the VA or TRICARE?
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Have you had any success with them at all?
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Because that's a very powerful statement to say after 10 years of drugs and CBT and I did 12 weeks with you and I am far a better human being, or, you know, I'm more clean psychologically.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Whatever, it is right, I've progressed, right.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: That's a very powerful state and so are you actively being.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: Is this covered by other than, like the NICO or these, some of the you know the more advanced TBI clinics?
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Are you seeing any coverage or having any luck at all, cause we'd like to help you with that.
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: I'm not covered yet by them.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: I'm starting to find some nonprofits that will help.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: So I've gotten to see a few clients who have nonprofits pay for their-.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Then you need to set up the booth at our Army-Navy game halftime show a tailgate man to let people know, right, let people know this exists.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Right, cause this, this is amazing.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Um, uh, we need I got a bunch of more questions, so we're going to have to have you back on the show, uh, but, um, as we close out, tell us about.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: You know how people find you, right?
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Um, where do they go?
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: And what's coming up next for Jackie?
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Right, what's coming up?
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Forced Momentum, what is it that's coming up, you know?
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Is it courses, books, movies, whatever?
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: How do people find you?
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Because, absolutely, I mean up until and, denny, thank you so much for bringing this lady.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't even know this was a thing, but I'm finding out something that helps people, and we are always about promoting, you know, modalities that can help people improve their lives, whether they've been a, you know they're just, you know they're a victim of trauma or, in our case, you know our focus is, you know, predatory brain trauma.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: So what's up next for Jackie?
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: And Flourish Momentum.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: Well, people can find me.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: I have a website, flourishmomentumcom, and I have recently gotten it upgraded.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: I'm super proud of it now.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: So if people are curious, I have on there.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: My about page is solid.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: You can find out all my credentials, where I've worked, what I have to offer.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: You can also access different publications.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: So I've written a different peer-reviewed journal articles on art therapy with TBI, ptsd, military populations, some book chapters as well.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: It's all linked there.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: The different offerings that I have are all listed out so people can learn much more through my website.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I'm really active on Instagram.
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: They can find me at flourish, underscore, momentum and what's next?
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: So the way that I currently work, now that I'm working privately, I really address people through their mind, body, soul and space, so I can pull in clinical art therapy, yoga, meditation, energy healing, reiki, theta healing and Feng Shui, and so there have actually been a lot of people who did psychedelics and then came to me for more of an integration piece.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's interesting.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that's been interesting.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: One more thing I just want to note and it's been mentioned on your podcast before.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, that's interesting into neurodegenerative disorders.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: We get there through the IRS yoga nidra that I do so and I've had a lot of clients you know everyone so many people wear a whoop or a ring or that kind of thing.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: I've had a lot of clients come to me having had broken sleep, not able to get into deep sleep for years, and we're able to get there in that yoga nidra and then when we do it in session it translates to much deeper sleep at night.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: So there is hope to get that.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Even a bad sleep with all these drugs.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Well, jackie, I can't thank you enough and I really appreciate you opening this app, my aperture even wider on this amazing therapy I didn't even know it existed.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: And the fact that you know you can get grown men to pick up crayons and paint brushes and stuff is pretty cool.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: I guarantee you my art ain't going on anybody's wall.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: My wife might hang it up just to make me proud, or whatever right you might surprise yourself.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I might, but anyway, I'm a bagpiper, I just make loud noise.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: But anyways, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show and helping us open this up to our audience, and we wish you all the luck in the world.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: We will be in touch.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Please reach out, we'll.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I want to put you in touch with our foundation so you understand that you are a another uh you know, opportunity for our veterans and our kids and NFL athletes to improve their lives, and I cannot thank you enough for what you do for our population.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: You cannot thank you enough for what you do for our population.
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for everything you're doing.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: We're trying and folks just remember the Youth Contact Spokes and Broken Brains book is free.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: You can go to our website, you can download it.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Look at 88 pages, that's it right.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe a six-pack of beer, a bag of popcorn and you've got some pictures for all of our veterans.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Look man pictures, right, and you could become one of the most informed people on this planet.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: And we are working on a guide for veterans to understand the impacts of RBE so you can educate the VA and you can educate TriCare on why you need, you know, to be supported in your quest for improved brain health.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: And I just want to make a call out to our producer, danny Caballero.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Please visit his podcast Security Halt Amazing guy If you're looking for podcast support.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: Dude's incredible, but don't be eating up too much of his time because he's pretty important to us over here too.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: But I just want to shout out to our producer he finds guests like Jackie and he's amazing.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: But to everybody out, you thank you for uh, you know spending some time with jackie and I on the show.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: We look forward to the next episode of broken brains.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: Take care thank you, thank you.