My parents had really dramatic um substance abuse problems. My grandmother died. My mom died of an overdose. And then my grandfather, and that all happened between nine and seventeen. It's not nonsensical to be depressed in some circumstances. And in some circumstances, it's completely sensical to stay hyper-vigilant or reactive to protect yourself. You don't need to be aware of everything. If you were aware of everything, your brain would explode. My lab combines two strains. One is understanding the mechanisms, how people adapt and change and how they get stuck. And the other side is understanding what happens in healing and how we can support healing.
So if you have very low parasympathetic nervous system activity, your risk of heart attack, um, early death from multiple causes goes way up. To me, the psychedelics have tremendous potential, and also we have to be careful about how we build it. I don't think anyone on their deathbed ever said I wish I published one more article. Like it is really unfortunate that it takes work to find the right care, but the right care is there.
Welcome to the Living a Life and Balance podcast. My name is Abdullah Bulad. I'm the founder and CEO of the Balance Rehab Clinic. My guest today is Dr. Wendy Dandrea. She's the Chief Science Officer at the Trauma Research Foundation and professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research and director of a psychobiology lab. She's a researcher who moves fluidly between laboratory science and frontline humanitarian programs. I hope you will enjoy. Wendy, what motivated you to do what you do today?
Well, there's a saying that circulates in academia that research is mesearch. And so I think I am no exception to that. Part of my work in trauma is related to being having been raised in a really chaotic environment, being raised as someone who early on was taught to take care of other people and really see carefully other people's needs, prioritize those. As I went into the field and started developing this work professionally, I also got to see some sides of the field that were really failing people, and was able to think about how I could be someone who could use knowledge and teaching to change how we were helping people because so much was really not working.
And so part of it was what I came to with my own family that was uh super stressed and chaotic and messy, um, and lots of poverty and trauma and loss happening throughout that. And um in many ways, wanting a a different life for people in the future than what happened for for me and my brothers and my brother and sister and mom.
Yes. So in the first place, you wanted to understand yourself and why this thing happened to you?
Yeah, I when I was in college, I was part of this um program for um people who came from backgrounds that didn't wind up normally in academia. So it was like a socialization program to help us get into graduate school, essentially. And that was teaching me early on how to articulate a hypothesis and research questions and um so that I would like be ready to get into a graduate program. Um and it was an incredibly successful, wonderful program called the McNair Fellowship. And um the question I landed on was um trying to understand this phenomenon called post-traumatic growth.
Um, and it's essentially was my attempt to ask myself, why am I so okay? Um, and so I spent years having the asking this question of like, how could I have gone through all of this trauma and be fine? Um, until I first of all, and I had this justification built up around um like, oh, it made me stronger, it made me more empathic, it made me more attuned, it made me sensitive to injustice. And and there may be some truth to all of that, but the sort of summary was like, oh, my trauma made me awesome.
Um, and then at some point I realized, like, well, all my friends are awesome and they didn't go through this. So there was this realization that like many people have um, you know, really fulfilling lives without having to like be raked over the coals and dragged through fire to get there. Um, and so as I was starting to realize that um that there was something about post-traumatic growth that wasn't all the way capturing people's story, my my work kind of shifted. But for a long time, I was um really focused on this question of resilience, which now I have a lot of like I have a beef with resilience now and how it's constructed and what it means and who we consider resilient and who we leave out.
Um, and uh, but for a long time, that was really my my story of thinking about like how could someone be okay? Um uh I I think I would, you know, from my where I sit now, I think of it very, very differently. Um, and of course, over time, I was, once I got a little more distance from all of the crises, um, was able to see ways in which I wasn't okay. Um, and all of all of the work that still had to be done to kind of reclaim a more a more full sense of my emotions and my um like right to exist. Um, and that took that took some work.
Um Yeah, I can imagine. But I always ask myself, when do we realize that trauma happened to us? Yeah. Um and and growing up, uh, when was the turning point for you where where you realized, okay, this is this was not normal?
That was that was that was clear early on, and there was a lot of like community acknowledgement and understanding of that. Um my parents had really dramatic um substance abuse problems. Um, and I went to go live with my grandparents. And my grandparents lived in the suburbs where the rest of my family lived in a much more urban, high poverty, high crime area. But my grandparents lived in the suburbs. So I was the only kid who lived with grandparents and having to explain, like, oh, it's not my mom and dad, it's my grandparents, no, my parents aren't dead. So that was always um that was from early on.
I had to do a lot of explaining. Um, and that was so that made things clear. I think also um uh with living with my grandparents, I was a kid living with elderly people, um, and old people have a you know a terrible habit of getting sick and dying. Um, and so um my grandmother died, then my mom died, um, and then my grandfather, who was like the last person around as an adult, died. And that all happened when I between nine and 17. And it was so it it was um on the question of resilience, one of the things that my community and the community around me really did was that so many people stepped in um uh to fill gaps and to be parent figures and family figures and to help sort of shepherd me um into a different place.
Um, I think one of the things that was different um is that um uh my grandfather also uh he wasn't super mobile and he was the one who was primarily taking care of me. And uh instead of uh instead of you know running around and doing a lot of stuff like that, he was retired and he really focused on my cognitive development, my intellectual development. So very early on, I could read and I could write before I started preschool. Um and that I think also was something that shifted how I was viewed in the community.
Um a smart kid who didn't have a lot of economic privilege was just something that wasn't seen around me a lot. And so that I think also led to people supporting me in a lot of ways.
So you repeatedly mentioned now community, how how important it is. You you you're you're you're making it this very obvious. How how important is it in general? And what type of community was it in your case?
Um in my case, it was a lot of um like teachers and friends, parents um uh who kind of came in and clustered around. Sometimes it was like like structure in the community. So, like, you know, our Christmas tree, our Christmas tree had presents that were donated. Um uh and um our food, you know, the our pantry was filled with stuff that was donated. Um so those are, you know, there's some hits and misses in how that lands, but um the care is the care is there. Um for me, but it was really people who um stepped in when they had no obligation.
Um uh they felt some some connection or or calling or um I I don't know what, but um it it wasn't it came from somewhere in them that we were just connected in some way and they they they really kind of uh supported and buttressed me, I think. Um so yeah, I think I mean, and we'll get there, I think, maybe as we talk, but it plays out again and again in the research that community response can can really make or break someone's trajectory.
Would it have been different if you uh if you would have lived in a city compared to uh a countryside uh with outside?
It was a small town, uh medium-sized town. Um uh I think if it had been more country, uh there would probably have been um uh there would have probably been a lot more, you know, engagement with just being outside, which was not what happened. Um uh if it were more city, I think there would have been a lot more um a lot more uh difficulty in terms of people managing like um so many people who are are struggling in cities.
And so that I think would just I was in a place that had resources in a different way.
Yeah, so it was a a good middle.
Yeah, it was it was the right middle ground for that.
I I I liked the the term like post-traumatic uh growth. Is it something given? Uh does everyone get through that? Or or how was it in your case and how do you see it today from a research perspective?
Yeah, so post-traumatic growth um comes from a uh the lineage is uh researchers are Tadeshi and Calhoun and Susan Nolan Hexema. Um and uh they focus, the the original question came, is actually a little bit grim, like I didn't quite see it um when I was first reading about it, like as a 19-year-old, and now I see it a little differently. The first populations where where they were talking about post-traumatic growth um uh were um widows, women whose husband had husbands had died a little like on the younger side um in middle age.
Um and um the noticing that women experienced a sense of an unexpected sense of empowerment um in the aftermath. And now that I look at that, I'm like, oh, we there was a whole level of social commentary that we were missing about like what is it about having a spouse die that makes your life better? That's uh it's like a there's a whole like there's a lot of problems in in thinking about um what's going on there as opposed to just thinking of it as like, oh, the trauma made them grow and flourish. I don't think that's quite right. Um so right now I think I I I try to kind of walk this line of understanding that there is learning that happens and um uh a sense of fortification that can happen when you see the world through in its complete perspective in all its glory and all its brutality.
And there can be a real societal pull to essentially whitewash suffering. Um, this may be a an I don't know how um universal this perspective is, but in the United States where I'm from, we have this strong narrative of what we say, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and the American dream and all of that stuff, and this notion that like anybody can do anything. And so sometimes when we come to this question of somebody suffering, there's a real quick, like, but that must have made you so strong, but you must have learned so much from that.
Like you must have um a glorification in many ways of people's pain. We we um like to raise up people we see as and and think of them as moving from victim to survivor. Um and that is part of our moving very quickly away from the pain and the reality of it. Um, so so post-traumatic growth, yes, I think there's something real to it, but I think there's also the other side of it, this tendency to move too quickly away from the suffering. Um, and the other piece about it is that um I think there uh this comes from um uh George Bonanno's research on resilience, um, where I think it's a major mistake to think that resilience is the absence of suffering or the absence of psychopathology, um, or the absence of a diagnosis or symptoms.
I think they completely coexist. Um and so to me, sometimes like the most sane reaction to a response is depression. Um it's a sane, like to me, it doesn't, it's not it's not nonsensical to be depressed in some circumstances. Um and in some circumstances it's completely sensical to stay hyper-vigilant or reactive to protect yourself or um what some people might think is a bit paranoid or something. To me, that often makes perfect sense as an adaptation to what someone has lived through. So the idea of talking about resilience is I think of it as um uh we we sometimes commodify um it to um where we equate resilience with like you make a lot of money, you went to a lot of schools, you got a fancy job, um, white picket fence, tidy life, when sometimes sometimes resilience is being in the fight and holding on to joy, and um it's much more complicated.
Yeah, defin definitely. I mean, uh there are also cultural different differences, or also how how someone like generationally growing up in certain areas and regions. Just if I if I look at my background, I I I was born in Lebanon. Um it's a difficult time at the moment, as as as we know as uh as well. But I I always feel the people there, they they feel kind of resilient, but it's it's also just they have learned to live with the pain.
Uh how how is that between avoiding and getting numb?
So one of the things we know about numbing is you don't get to pick and choose um which emotions you keep. Um so I think there's a big difference between compartmentalizing and and having the ability to access that pain when there's time and energy and space or it's the appropriate setting or the right context. Um and the type of numbing that just knocks out all emotion. And people lose access to feeling alive, don't feel a sense of joy or connection with their kids, don't can't let go anywhere.
So I but I I think I would the other thing I would really want to bracket is that um like you mentioned about culture and context, I think there's a really um important it's really important to understand that um context really, really matters. And sometimes the context makes numbing the only option. Um uh and I think that's I think that's okay. If that's whatever keeping people alive and surviving is is the first priority.
And from there um we have to sometimes shift and see if that isn't working anymore, or we need to open up the possibilities for reactions.
Um what are the reactions which could lead to uh post-traumatic growth? What do we need to ask ourselves? What type of um like in your case, what curiosity about yourself and trying to understand your your your past? But certainly not everyone uh would would do that.
There's a big debate in the field about how much do you have to kind of go back into the past to be able to move forward into the future, and I I don't I don't have a firm answer on that. Um uh and I think everyone is sort of looking for something different in their lives, and that's important. Um I think uh one of the one of the big factors is this question of community, and the way it's often talked about in um the foster care literature in particular, um, is this notion of um what we call one safe person.
Um and uh there have been various ways it's been studied and and documented, but the idea is often if if a kid has one person who can truly see them, um celebrate them, be with them through the mass, whether that's a teacher or a grandparent or an aunt and uncle or a big sibling or or whatever, um, whoever it can be, a coach, there's all sorts of ways that someone may come to that, that there is something that the person is able to hold on to. So um some sense of dignity and self and um worth and um some ability to think about um some safe safe space within themselves, I think.
Um but on I would also um I appreciate your point about not everyone sort of uh appears to have flourished or or gr grown from the traumatic experiences, but I also think there's a way in which our lens on what counts as growth is sometimes too limited. Um one of my um inspirations around this and like absolute favorite writers on the topic is someone named Alan Wade. Um and he has um it's my favorite article, if I make everybody read it, um uh called Resistance as Resilience, Small Acts of Living.
Um and it starts with it starts with a um Chinese proverb. Um, when, if I may not get it exactly right, but um when the Grand Duke passes, the wise peasant bows and farts silently. Um and the notion is that sometimes people do things just for themselves that push back against something that feels wrong, and it may feel very inconvenient for people. Um it may be somebody who ref, you know, a kid who refuses to sit down in class, um, or a kid who um maybe, you know, pushes other people when uh pushes somebody when uh they feel like they're being treated unfairly.
But it's it's a yeah, maybe that's not exactly the way we want them to do that. But the impulse to dignity um and the impulse towards um uh commanding respect um is probably healthier than having none of that. Um uh probably healthier than someone who um doesn't have that that push on on their own behalf or on someone else's behalf.
This needs within the community quite an awareness of for trauma-informed communication uh eventually. How how present is it in today's society or in the environment and families uh today?
Oh, I mean, I think no matter what people are doing, they're trying to do something to to survive in some way or to protect part of themselves in some way. I think that's you know, I think that's just built in. And um and certainly there are times we can let go of that and and experience freedom and authenticity, and that's great. But I think a lot of the ways in which we are inconvenient um is really some attempt to either communicate something or preserve some somewhere safe. Um and yeah, I think I can't think of people in any other way.
Um I I I mentioned I used the word psychopathology before, but I like at this point in my life barely even believe in that word. Um so yeah.
How important is communication at its core?
I don't think it has to be communication of the details of the experience. I think the communication of the feeling is probably as important or more important than like getting the point by point narrative. Um one of the things. I think a lot about. A lot of my early work, a lot of my like my doctoral work and stuff was really focused on understanding how therapy functioned. And a lot of my work has really moved into understanding how community approaches can support healing. And one of the things I think a lot about is what if we didn't focus on healing what we see as a broken person?
What if we focused on creating an environment around where the community was able to accept and meet people where they were and commute and accept the communication when it's offered? So I have two examples of that. One it has a bit of um hopefully not overly graphic description, but I want to share that so that people don't take get taken off guard. Um a graduate student of mine um had a rotation during their doctoral study um on an inpatient unit in a um an inpatient psychiatric unit, um, an acute unit, uh so short-term.
Um and during um uh the group conversation with the psychiatrist, I'm in clinical psychology, so um we there's in some sometimes feuds between psychiatry and psychology and hierarchies and all sorts of complexities there. Um, but there was a a resident psychiatrist who had um been interviewing or trying to interview a patient who had just been admitted, and came into the group discussion where they were supposed to have a conversation about diagnosis, and was super visibly annoyed with a patient and was talking about her really in derogatory and dismissive ways, and eventually came to the point of saying, I can't even like she's so psychotic and she has this persevative speech, and I can't even figure out what she like what she's here for, what she wants.
I can't do a diagnosis because she's just saying the same thing over and over and over. And whatever I ask her, she keeps saying the same thing over and over. And so everyone in the room was really focused on that as a symptom, right? Persevative speech, yes, it's a symptom in psychosis. Um and so my student, who, you know, I think is brilliant on their an incredible advocate and a wonderful listener, um, you know, peeps up from the corner and says, So what was she saying? Because uh, you know, she's been dismissed, right? Um and the woman had been saying, I was raped, I was raped, I was raped, I was raped, and wouldn't stop saying it.
And the guy, the psychiatrist, kept asking her, like, but what's your date of birth? But like with what's your address, like completely ignoring this incredibly important message. It's not like it was subtle. Um, she wasn't being secretive, it wasn't an oblique communication. Um and was completely uninterested in the fact that that's what she was saying.
What would be the better reaction from his side in this moment?
I I hear you. But let me know what what do you what do you need from me here? Yes. How how can I be with you? I hear you. Just slow down and like let him slow down, him slow down, slow himself down, say this doesn't matter, we can deal with this these questions later. What do you need right now? How can I be with you here?
Yes, not and not just go through a thick uh list of uh questions and so reductionistic, yeah.
Yeah.
But this comes back then to the importance of the human behind the work and and how you can read the room or a person and not just a methodology.
Yes. Um, I think that is a question for training. Um, and I think our training has in many ways taken us, it is hard work to listen and be present. Like for my graduate program, is uh the one that I I teach in at the new school, um, is a relationally focused program. It's got a strong history, particularly around relational psychoanalysis. And the perspective there is you as an instrument and a listener, as you're the most powerful tool that that and ally that that client has. And your listening and tuning into yourself is and your reactions are what helps the client.
And a big part of that work is sorting out when are you, when are your problems your problems, and when are your problems telling you something about the client, um, or your reactions telling you something about the client. And that are that takes years to be able to learn that, um, to really be able to do that. Um and you're not gonna, you can't get that from a manual. Um manuals come later. Um manuals are yeah, manuals are um a loose guide and map to give you some sense of how to orient. But our training has the way there's a a way in which we have um really stripped away the the professional and human capacities of the field and turned it in much more into a technician approach where it's a checklist.
It doesn't work.
What what led you to to this awareness today? So what type of uh education did you did you go through and um to being today a professor and uh chief research officer of the trauma research foundation?
Yeah, thank you. Um so I I went to a small liberal arts college um called Oberlin, which was a very personalized experience and a very um focused experience. Um and uh while I was there, um I did my doctorate at University of Michigan, which is an incredible program in the United States with really great resources um uh to help students really develop and take their time um in this way. And uh that's sort of the the pedigree. Um, but when I was an undergrad um uh in my first year of college, um uh I became um what's called a rape crisis advocate.
And so that meant that I would go with people. Um I was on call at a pager back in the day. We had I had a beeper. Um and I would be paid before this was before cell phones, um, I would be paged to show up either at a hospital or a police station um to meet someone who had just come in saying that they'd experienced sexual assault.
Immediate crisis.
Immediate crisis response, right. And um the the advocate role was to support them and also sometimes sometimes help the system uh reorient towards its goals. Um so it would, there's a medical response, there's a police response, and in between those two things is the process of evidence collection. And the evidence is on the person's body, right? Um so it's a really intrusive, difficult, um, painful, um, sometimes humiliating process, especially if there isn't a lot of care and intentionality in it. Um, on top of that, um policing um has some real um flaws that get entrenched in the culture of it, where people are so there are a lot of different ways people come to come into policing, but there is at least one part of it where people are so overburdened that they try to really hard to separate what they think of as prosecutable cases from unprosecutable cases.
And in doing that, they fall into all sorts of tropes about who is a real victim and who isn't. Um, so um I remember when I got a little more used to it, um a cop pulling me into the hallway when I was supposed to be advocating, you know, with this woman and being with her exam, pulling me into the hallway and saying, you know, she's high as a kite, right? You know she's totally stoned. Um, and essentially trying to root recruit me to say I didn't think she had really been assaulted.
And I was like, What is this? Um you're really talking to the wrong person. And so I was like 20, right?
And so I said back to him something like, Oh, you mean she legally can't consent? Uh, so this must have been an assault. And he was like, Oh. Um, right. So, like, but this sort of same, this thing of what what makes a good uh witness or victim. Um, the thing I saw a lot of, um, and really what shaped much of my um research trajectory later and clinical trajectory was that folks who dissociated, people who um looked numb, were zoned out, uh, weren't present, um, weren't like uh if you're crying hysterically, that somehow was also not allowed.
But someone who didn't seem upset, um, uh maybe laughed at weird times or was sarcastic, um, those folks were immediately written off, um, immediately treated as um probably lying. Um and so um I also had a really strong interest in biology, and I was really interested in using the tools that come out of biology to try to understand where the truth is here. Um, and is there a way of using biological information to help people see something that they can't see otherwise?
Um, that there may be something happening inside um that doesn't make its way to the surface for good reason. Um, so that's how I wound up in this in the bio path.
Yes, and and and this is uh this is the term psychobiology, yeah, which uh again I love. I mean, it's not just uh it's not everything just in the brain, but it's uh a lot of our body response uh to an event or to an activity or a coping mechanism probably as well. How is your understanding today and what what how do you represent this in your work?
Oh, psychobiology? Okay, so I do a lot with the bio stuff in part because um one is that it it lets us see things that maybe someone isn't conscious of. Um so I do a lot of tasks that look at uh your brain, your brain categorizes information as safe or unsafe, um, relevant to you or ilrelevant to you very, very quickly, like a third of a second, maybe uh substantially less than a third of a second. Um uh but that, yeah, I I should let me rephrase that. Um your brain becomes aware of things around, or you become aware of things around a third of a second, and the categorization has happened long before that.
Um so using biology as a way of getting at like, oh, we can see changes in the brain, even when the person doesn't even know they've seen something, for example, to a visual visual stimulus. Um, biology is useful there. Biology is also really useful in helping us figure out why it is that some people say, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, and yet their bodies are falling apart. Um, there's some really clear biological mechanisms that make sense of that. Um, because the thing that help helps you know how you're feeling, the ner part of the nervous system that helps you be aware of your feeling, is also the part of the nervous system that um helps you soothe and calm down under stress.
And so if you can't soothe and calm down under stress, or don't recruit the ability to soothe and um calm down under stress, you're also not necessarily going to be aware of all the stress you're you're feeling too. Um I use biology also in settings where communication across um groups and differences might not be readily available. One example is with um by with kids. Kids can't always um easily report or describe what they're experiencing. Um a lot of kids' narratives about themselves are you know received from other people.
Um and then also we um as a um in the mental health field um have not done a great job of thinking about mental health from different cultural perspectives. We there's this phrase that I um I appreciate what it's trying to do, um, but the phrase global mental health just means like not European and North American mental health, which like, wait, what? Uh it's a it's a stupid phrase. Um like it's all global mental health, isn't it? Um uh mental health in refugee camps is this is mental is mental health, refugee camps in or um mental health in um uh community settings, mental health in on the coast, mental health on the beach.
It's all mental health. Like it's mental health, you will put it all over the world. So um uh one of the things psychobiology does is let me see what's similar and what's different. And sometimes the biology is doesn't function the same way across contexts. Um uh or we see different um trends across groups, um, across contexts. So the biology is really helpful when language is really failing.
Yes.
Because the language comes from such a narrow perspective.
If I understand this right, biology is the first reaction we we really uh experience before we have a more cognitive approach to what's what's cognition is so late, it's way down the line. A conscious cognition is like But how can we learn from from from your research? How can we learn to be more aware about our body and uh the sensations and the biological responses?
Okay, well, here's one thing about that. Um, you don't need to be aware of everything. Um if you were aware of everything, your brain would explode. Um uh and in in many cases, actually being hyper-aware of both your internal processes and all the stimuli around you is overwhelming. So one of the contemporary understandings of autism is that it's an inability to filter everything out around you. Um and so that that's a really uh that's a that's a heavy burden to carry, to be conscious of uh, I don't know, the closeness of the microphone and the texture of the chair and um the air conditioning vent and um you know, to have all of that information when you're trying to do something else is not for is not productive.
So your brain is really good at making decisions for you and helping you sort out when you need to know. Um and sometimes it it uh winds up tilting a little bit maybe in a direction of uh thinking you need to know less than you do. Um and then we can we can talk about that. But really, the like your brain does a good job of um helping orient and direct you to things so that you can move efficiently. Like this is like what impulses are, right? Like if you're if you're crossing the street um and there's a you know uh suddenly a bus barreling towards you, you will often get out of the way.
You will not stop and think, like, how big is that bus? And how fast do I need to run? You just go.
That's a knot, yes.
Yes. If you had to think about everything that you were doing, you'd get flattened. Um so so it's it's actually important to not be consciously aware of everything. Um then we think about the motivated unconscious. So that's that's like the automatic or um like the sort of I don't love um machine metaphors for the brain, but that's the sort of automatic and efficiency-based thing. There's probably the like the motivated unconscious, um, and when we don't feel things because it's not emotionally safe, or don't notice things because it's not emotionally safe. We've done really interesting studies with this in my lab um uh with my colleague Greg Siegel.
Um, we did a study where we were able to show um it was addressing the question of essentially is dissociation, so where you blank out or space out, is this just a form of inattention that would be similar to ADHD, um, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Uh because in some ways, people who are dissociating miss what's going on around them, similar to people with ADHD. Um, and so we were wondering if they were the same. And so what we did was do a noticing task where people had to press a button every time they saw um a certain letter on the screen.
We thought essentially, um, if we if it's dissociation, it should their task performance should get worse when we remind them of something negative because their task performance should go down because their emotions are helping them not see what's in front of them. Okay. This is actually the opposite of what happens in ADHD. And ADHD, um, intense emotion helps people focus. It's the same effect of stimulants, right? So any people, and we talk this about this now. I don't let I don't think this is accurate, but dopamine chasing um, where people like um sometimes can't work until they're under pressure of deadline.
Yes.
Um so that's that intensity helps people focus when ADHD is sort of more how their brain is operating. It's not to say you can't have both, but this is, you know, for experimental purposes, we're trying to separate them. Um and so with dissociation, when you bring in negative emotion, people stop being able to see what's right in front of them, like literally don't notice the screen is changing. Um, that's a very different thing from ADHD.
Yes.
Um so then you know, we have to recognize there's a time they needed to not see what was right in front of them. But there's a time when it was impossible to look at the, you know, the face of their screaming parent um or something in front of them. Um and that worked then. And now what happens if their boss is angry or they have to pay attention to a critical teacher or something like that? Um, we need to understand how to help them patrate it and have other options.
What what else are you focusing at in your work at the university and the research?
So um at uh in my lab, one of um some of the stuff we focus. So we my lab combines two kind of strains. One is understanding the mechanisms um that are associated with trauma, how people adapt and change and how they get stuck um doing the thing that helped them survive. Um, and the other side is understanding um what happens in healing and how we can support healing. And so using some of those same tools to support and amplify community-based programs. Um, so I'll work kind of backwards, but um when we think about the healing work and community-based work, um, there's some features of that that are um doing straight, like helping people understand what happens, um, how people, what biology is, how people survive, um, what trauma looks like.
Um, a lot of those programs also work um irrespective of diagnosis or history. So they don't um only include people if they have a certain kind of trauma. They they really work from a community perspective. And um, a lot of those programs, so there's a a destigmatizing approach that is uh prominent in them. And then there's also a lot of those programs incorporate the arts in one way or another, or embodiment in one way or another. So, and that can be through theater or storytelling or music or dance or drumming or um uh sports.
Um, there's can all sorts of ways to do that, but it's really about um giving a person a sense of um agency in their body, um, a sense that their their body can connect them with an experience they feel and that they can accomplish something with it.
Um is it is is the sense through the body the the most successful currently viewed to to have a lot of things.
I don't think you can leave it out. Um I don't try to I don't try to I think there's a question of like what works for who in what order, um, rather than like what is the most successful thing. Um, because everyone has different there are people who would will never ever go to any sort of like drumming circle. Um and we have to have something for them. Uh so some people need to start with the abstract thought before they can kind of maybe dive in. Um so you have to meet people where they are. Um uh yeah, so all of that work is really trying to understand a lot of these, how these communities are built.
Um, and then the mechanism work helps us have a sense about what to how to understand how those programs might be working and functioning. And so on the mechanism side, um some of the uh I've done a lot of work around unconscious processes, unconscious attention, um, unconscious bias and awareness of um how people like will um become super aware of something related to trauma, and then their immediate responses to shutdown.
Yes.
And so there's a that's one of the things that's been important to understand is that it's not that it's not just that people are like walking around in a daze or a cloud, it's that they're taking something in and shutting out. Um uh and so thinking about how to widen um that time before they shut down is is one of the clinical goals. Um we also do a lot of work um uh around social connection, um, which I can describe in a minute, um, around um shame and how shame is different from fear.
Um, and then closely adjacent to all of these things, um, we do a lot of work right now around emotional abuse, um, uh, which according to so uh we use The DSM for all of our diagnoses, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Psychiatric Disorders, for all of our them, it really drives our research, our healthcare in the United States, less than it used to, but still pretty firmly. And in that, in that um sort of canonical way of thinking, emotional abuse does not count as a trauma for PTSD.
How do we differentiate then? Also from a legal perspective.
This is gonna sound crazy. But emotion child maltreatment is not necessarily considered trauma by the DSM. So neglect and emotional abuse are not necessarily considered traumatic events, even if they're maltreatment. I don't quite understand the mental gymnastics to do that. But uh the conceptualization of trauma that the DSM has landed on is specifically around um uh physical harm, threat of death, or what they used they obliquely for many years called threat to bodily integrity and now have been more explicit about calling sexual assault.
Um but those are those three types of bodily harm is central to the I and I don't agree with this, but bodily harm is central to the official DSM definition.
It's more action-based, it's something happening uh physically and less like just mental, verbal, emotional at the end.
Yeah. Yeah.
And and how big is it? How big? Yeah, how big in in sense like uh what's the proportion between emotional abuse and and other types of when you were talking about the legal definition, so emotional abuse is incredibly prevalent.
Um uh and one of the things that has happened, there are a few studies on this, um, I can't pull the author's name out of my mind right now, but um, that have shown that um sometimes when we attempt to work with people with parents around physical abuse, if we don't treat the core dysregulation and lack of parenting skill that that parent has, it just comes out in emotional abuse. Um they scream instead of hitting. Um and so one of the pieces of work that I'm I'm really excited about um uh coming forward soon out of our lab with my um uh alumni from my lab, Noga Maron, um, is on um the association of different types of maltreatment, emotional abuse, neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, um, to adult diagnoses.
So diagnoses are flawed, but uh if we're taking even that circumscribed group um of folks who wind up with diagnosable psychopathology, um one of the things that we were really um we set out to just say is this potentially as impactful? Is emotional abuse as impactful as other forms of recognized maltreatment, which do count as traumas? So that was our question. Um and what we found was that in almost every case across the board for diagnoses for ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, um uh schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, um uh eating disorders, um, emotional abuse was as impactful as physical abuse and neglect, or physical abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse.
And in almost all cases, it was more, it had a stronger to statistical association.
Yes. That's very significant to me to be to to to focus on it.
Um well, yeah, I'm curious how you how you take it and what you think about it.
Um about emotional abuse in general, you mean? Yeah, I believe, I believe it's underrated uh by by by far, because it's happening every day and in every household. It could happen without being seen. And that's the difficulty why probably people don't recognize it as a problem. And the victims themselves probably have difficulty to differentiate is this now an abuse or not, in some cases.
It's hugely difficult to understand what is um, especially if you're talking about different cohort nor norms, like what is what do what do you know, kids or teenagers now find overly critical um or hostile versus what someone you know 50 years ago might have thought of as that. Um the way different cultures and groups and periods of time talk about bodies has changed dramatically, talk about gender has changed dramatically. So there's a it's complicated. Um and our our interpretation in the paper, and we're very, very um, we talk about this at length in the paper, is that our argument is not that this is worse than that.
I have zero interest in a trauma Olympics. We're like competing for what's worse than what. But the statistical association is stronger because we don't recognize the problem. And that when we don't recognize that this is a good reason for someone to seek support, then we don't break the connection between that experience and a later outcome. So, you know, if someone has intervention that happens because of physical abuse, whether that's system support coming in to protect the kid or later they go to therapy and say, Oh, you know, I heard like now I know this is abuse because they've learned about it, um, that weakens then the correlation that we find in the study.
Um, but we don't have we don't do that in the same way with emotional abuse. Um we don't take kids out of the home for emotional abuse.
So do you think this is mainly happening to to children or adults?
I should be clear, this study and per this this is a meta-analysis going um representing, I think, uh over a hundred different studies looking at um uh something like over 5,000 participants over time. Um so it's an aggregate, a study of studies. Um uh this particular one was looking at um childhood, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Um, but no, I don't think it only happens then. Um I think it happens certainly, you know, between spouses, between adult parents and um, you know, adult parents and their adult children. Um uh what we call workplace harassment seems very parallel to this.
And then the thing that I think we miss a lot of um is thinking about societal discrimination um as really just a form of like mass emotional abuse.
Can you elaborate a little bit more about that?
Yeah, I think there are lots of ways that people are both overtly and covertly given messages that they aren't valued and don't don't deserve to stand where they stand and be where they breathe how they breathe and live how they live, um, whether that's because of their um sexual identity and sexual um preferences or gender expression or preferences, um, or because of their race or ethnicity or religion, or um because of um their income or their ability level or body size. There are lots of, there's a very narrow box of what is considered a valuable person. Um and we give people socially, we give people messages about who essentially will be privileged to be protected and who we let be run over.
But this gets more complicated in my view, because it's not then just about me uh abusing you emotionally, but it's really something cultural, uh society-wide recognized abuse.
Right. Um, yes, it's uh yeah, right. It's social media, it's um it's communicated in a thousand different and you know, TVs and movies and other media, it's in political situations, it's in a thousand different places. And it really does raise the question of personal responsibility and where we all sit in terms of taking care of everyone around us, particularly people who are you know are vulnerable or um likely to be impacted or are constantly receiving those messages. It it's really it's it's a lot to ask of everybody. Um, it's the kind of thing where uh it's nobody's nobody's fault, so it's everybody's responsibility.
Um, I mean that's a little bit of an overstatement. It's definitely some people's fault, but it still winds up being everybody's responsibility.
I mean, life is complicated in most cases. So you have to take care about yourself, your families, your children, your your surrounding, and then take care about the society, how how you impact other passively.
It's uh I think about this all the time, being someone who works in the trauma field. Like the last thing I would ever want to be is like someone who's spending all of my time doing trauma research, trying to support these programs, they're doing like this incredible work globally, trying to get the message out about emotional abuse. The last thing I would ever want to be is someone who is like dedicating massive amounts of my time doing the work and then like screams at my waitress and ruins her day. Um, you know, like you you just can't, if you're gonna do the work, like I would rather be someone who absolutely accomplished nothing in my job if it meant If if I could only choose between being decent all the time or accomplishing things, um, I would choose just be decent all the time.
Um, and if uh you know, I don't I think that it it we we really um have to really beware the the hyp the hypocrisy.
Um uh and it comes back to focusing on what we really can influence in in our surrounding and in our environment.
Yeah. Yeah, and like what it takes to stay in that frame and to keep walking the walk. Um uh and that's also something that kind of takes us back to uh where we were starting around the complication of um resilience. Um uh there's uh an incredible researcher named David R. Williams who does research on discrimination. And so that system, the nervous system that I part of the nervous system I was describing, the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the thing that helps us regulate and stay calm. Um in in many groups, low parasympathetic nervous system activity is, and I'm gonna way oversimplify this, but um, is um really an indicator of health risk.
So if you have very low parasympathetic nervous system activity, your risk of heart attack, um, early death from multiple causes goes way up. Um this is well documented by a researcher uh named um uh Bigger, who was a cardiologist at Columbia, where your um 10-year mortality odds ratio goes up by about three if you're in like the lowest quartile of heart rate variability, like three times higher of death over the next 10 years. It's really serious. But um at particular in particular age groups and for particular groups, it's the opposite.
Very high heart rate variability is the thing that is um predictive. Uh sorry, vague uh parasympathetic activity is heart rate measured by heart rate variability. Um very high parasympathetic activity um is related to mortality. And that's particularly true um in the US among black Americans who um David R. Williams refers to it as the cost of resilience who have to stay calm in a lot of situations because it could create life threat if they don't.
Yes, like an ongoing tension, uh being performing.
And that's uh and having to stay safe. Yes. Because the the um the tables can turn really quickly. And so um that being something that it leads to burnout, um, that leads to exhaustion and then creates risk.
That brings up the question, you know, what is resilience? Is resilience something we it's a construct we build up to to cope with whatever comes at us uh through life? Or or is it something that really calms us and makes us stronger to distance ourselves from okay, it's um we're not so influenced as much as before by what's happening to us.
Yeah, I um I heard someone once say, and I really, really liked it, um, that he doesn't if and he it was funny because he thought I won't name him because it was of the the circumstance, um, but he thought he you know he thought he was like being really wild. Um and I love that this is like what researchers think of as wild. Um but he said if I have to go out on a limb and and say something really crazy, I'm gonna say that there's no such thing as resilient people, they're resilient communities. Um and I really, really like that notion that we aren't it it sh we shouldn't be thinking of this as something we expect one person to hold. Um, this is something we hold as a group.
And if some per if a person is is falling behind and failing, it's the community that isn't doing the work.
Yeah, it's yeah, I I I I kind of agree because resilience seems like okay, you made it. You you you have achieved something. Yeah, you get it, you get a blue ribbon. Yes, a ribbon, or you you you you yeah, it's also performance focused uh in our society, probably as well. But actually, isn't it the opposite of just being grounded and and safe within ourselves and who we are and who we want to be and what we want to influence in in life?
Yeah, I I completely agree. I feel like it's this like ability to to own yourself um and um something, some connection, ability to stay connected, some ability to have curiosity, or some spark, or some joy, or holding on to something more than just like you got through, um you made it to five o'clock. Um yeah.
This is something I see a lot also in high performers, like entrepreneurs, CEOs, uh who most of the time also in wealthy growing up in wealthy families, their parents or grandparents that have been also very successful. They feel the pressure also to perform. Uh that that's but at some point it um it comes up.
Yeah. Yeah, I I I've said about this before. Like you can, you know, be the most powerful CEO in the world. And if you don't know your kids' names, um, you know, if you don't know what size shoe your kids wear, you know, you're you're missing out on something real in life.
Yes. Yeah, uh I agree. I mean, um what I learned from it in my life is just a slowdown.
Uh slowdown. Yes.
I love work. I've always been an entrepreneur and have businesses. I love work, and I see this also in most of our clients. Uh, but if it's the only thing we are focusing at, we're missing life. We're missing out life in general. I mean, like my my my son goes to football. I have three three children, daughters, uh, horse riding, horseback riding, and and and tennis and all other activities. And this makes life complicated within a family system, also. So so different interests we have to balance out at the same time.
But it's for me so important. There is nothing more important than being and watching my my kids' um activities. So I show them first how important they are to me, but but also to give them this uh uh safety, there is someone for them as long as they want it and as long they need it. At some point they they want to leave, and that's fine too.
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really beautiful. I yeah, and and work isn't gonna love you back. Um and I don't think anyone on their deathbed ever said, I wish I published one more article. Like, meh, like that's not yeah. It it's it's certainly it's great to have that external validation and it absolutely is related to a sense of meaning. But yeah, I have I have two little girls and um uh oh it yeah, it's so one of one of the things that's been interesting has been um having them be part, uh like so that to me this is sort of subterfuge um uh and being slightly subversive around um how I think like some of the uh real pitfalls of capitalism play out and and work culture play out, um, is that I bring them with stuff to me all the time.
Um and I mean, because of the area I work in, I have to be, you know, I would never bring them into some place where they were hearing gruesome trauma stories, but they can, you know, they can hear me talk about biology and um they can uh you know come to a place where people are maybe doing some um mirroring and theater exercises and stuff that are are really that's related to trauma or or be with me when I'm doing writing and having meetings. Um this is like one of the real, you know, mixed sort of uh gold silver linings of COVID is we got used to seeing everyone's families on camera. And I just have never given that up.
So um to me to like bring them into the world and have them be part of um and like uh and I, you know, uh accept that they're inconvenient for other people and they're gonna interrupt and they're gonna not, you know, my attention will be divided and and they're more important than anything else. And and um beautifully and unexpectedly, they often um bring the work and the room to life in really fun ways.
Um what way?
Oh, um I took um my my colleague um Mike Mikinchuk was running um some uh a train a demonstration of a training he does um in Kenya. Um and I brought my 11-year-old. Um, and there were all of these um attunement exercises in the group where you we would do like, you know, like mirroring of each other and uh in partners. Um and and everyone was like very serious and like um you know, like nervous and awkward. And my 11-year-old, who is uh a petite 11-year-old, like it's mistaken for an eight-year-old often, um uh was paired with a guy who was like six foot seven to do these activities.
And she had him like like rolling around and like doing all of this ridiculous stuff. And by the end of it, all of us who had like been there so serious and uptuned, we're all like rolling in the ground, laughing and cracking up. And she just like reminded us that that's way better.
It's way better to be ridiculous, just be human and uh enjoy also the ride, yeah, just yeah, about the results.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It it's very I mean, I see this very often also in parenthood uh today. How how can we how can we avoid pain or uh trauma in our children? And can we avoid it at all? And what what what how do you how do you communicate to your children to avoid or be the role model?
Well, um, I mean, not every kid is living in the same setting, right? So there are kids, we have to, the reality is that there are kids for whom it's unavoidable, just completely unavoidable. Um my colleague Alexandra Chen works with kids who have been medically evacuated from Gaza. Um that's their reality. Um so um I think that her work, and she can speak to it much better than I can, is to to really be honest about the unfairness of the world. Um uh with my own family.
Um, I mean, my mom, my mom died of an overdose. Um and uh I I live in New York City, and um substance use is very visible. And uh from when my you know my girls, we talk about it as mind medicine. Um, and uh at this conversation with my daughter, my mom's name was um Sherry. Uh the kids call her Nana Sherry. Um my daughter was asking about you know the visible substance use in our neighborhood, and um asked me about a man who who had probably used opiates and was leaning um and um asked what he had done, and I'd said he'd taken mind medicine.
And she said, Why do people take mind medicine? And I said, Well, sometimes it makes all of their pain feelings go away and they have too much pain. And um and she said, Oh, is that why Nana Sherry died? Um and I said, Oh yeah, honey. And kids, um, her response was because if you make all your feelings go away, you're not alive anymore. Um, I mean, she was like four asking this question. So I can't, I don't think you can keep the world from kids. You just have to help them understand it on their terms and um how how they see it and where they are with it, and um live in that in-between if it makes sense and it doesn't make sense, um and give them the tools to to trust themselves and find help where they can.
Um grow up with a healthy portion of self-esteem.
And like and and and like celebrate uh the fact that they're incredibly inconvenient and like belligerent and Um and that that like that that stubbornness.
Um I always laugh because I have really strong my kids have really strong personalities. I remember like one time with my my kiddo being like, um, honey, please finish your dinner, eat your dinner. And she's like, I know what my body needs.
And she used to tell me, um, I hate yoga. Nobody's gonna tell me when to breathe.
At what age?
Like four.
Four. Okay.
Okay. Wow. But the thing, and I I love it, even though it's sometimes really inconvenient. Like just eat your fish fingers, kid. I just hate your sack.
Don't negotiate it.
But it's so good. Yeah, it's so good. It's gonna serve them so well.
Yeah, I believe so too.
Yeah.
Um, can you can you tell me more about the current work and focus of the uh trauma research foundation?
Uh yes. So, in many ways, the trauma research foundation is very much uh the integration of these worlds I straddle where we think about how trauma functions and how we help it recover, how people we help people recover from it and heal from it and integrate it. And um the field has what we call the research practice divide, where generally um research, whether it's on mechanism or treatment, happens in ways that clinicians and practitioners do not find useful or helpful. Um, and researchers then are all sort of um can be rather condescending about stubborn clinicians who don't just do what they're told because the research said this is what they should do.
Um, and clinicians who feel extremely frustrated and then dismiss research on the grounds that I live in this reality and I see what I see and I know what I know. And why don't you try researching something that matters is essentially how that fight goes. Um, so really put part of the work of the Trauma Research Foundation right now is to try to narrow that gap by helping each of those sides learn how to be present and listen to each other in ways that are less hierarchical and combative, so that research and practice can happen together, um, and that research research can be done in ways that are completely relevant to the practice that already happens, with the hopeful consequence that not just we learn more about what works for whom, in what order, but also so that we can support and celebrate the good work that is done and stop wasting that time on things that aren't gonna aren't gonna get people anywhere.
Um, so we're essentially in a in a fundraising push and campaign so that we can um do this as a sort of training, matchmaking, and funded enterprise that we can support people with, that we can um bring in resources to help it it's not just bringing money in and then making a grant, it's bringing them in, undergoing a transformational process and then and then having them go forward to create something new from it.
Well, what are like the latest or new uh developments uh which are promising in the in the field of trauma treatment?
So there are different angles on that. I mean, I think the one uh one piece is around, I mean, psychedelics are the thing right now. They're having a moment. Um, there's also a lot more um willingness to we talk about it now as alternative or adjunctive therapies, um, but things like incorporating movement um uh or um anything that involves that sort of more social component that's got um some traction right now, um, which is funny because that's how people have you know healed for thousands of years.
But we pay more attention to it now. Um that's getting the seal of approval. Um uh we also um uh there are uh things like internal family systems, uh deep brain reorienting. Um uh there's a lot more um move towards like integrated practice. Um there's a just a big gap between like what you learn about in like your grad school or MSW for the most part, about like do prolonged exposure or do CPT or do this, you know, six or 12-week therapy, um, and what people are actually doing in practice.
Um what people are actually doing in practice would, you know, strays far from from the manual and far from the mold. Um that's probably for the best. I wish they just had um more support in um navigating it strategically rather than having to like invent it for themselves and discover it through um trial and error. Um that to me is a training problem with the field.
Aaron Powell Also not to look at uh individual uh treatment uh modalities as uh as isolated and uh so it's more integrated approaches which uh could lead to a positive results with an individual.
I think the big the next big push is going to be doing this in a systems approach through a systems approach. So, like, for example, working in in and with schools. Um, kids spend at least as much time in school as they do with their families by the time you know they're in fifth uh in kindergarten. Um uh it's like it's just a resource question, like an hour a week of individual therapy versus having a school that understands and supports and maybe doesn't care if the kid gets up and walks around because they're um having a hard time concentrating. Um, maybe doesn't give them a hard time about that or discipline them, um, thinking about um doing this in a system-focused way and really taking care of the caretakers who are carrying the work and who then with such burden get pulled out of their best selves.
Yes.
Yeah.
Psychedelic, you mentioned it's something big or uh growing. How how promising is it? And are we are we there to to be implemented on a global scale?
Yeah, uh well, global scale, I don't know. Um I don't know if I don't know how things translate across context, and I don't know that the work is far enough along to say that. Um to me, the psychedelics have tremendous potential, and also we have to be careful about how we build it. Um I um don't find great promise in uh standalone psychedelics that aren't embedded in healing in some healing and integration space. Um I don't know that that healing and integration space always is or has to be a therapist doing therapy.
Right now, I think that's probably like the the professional pathway forward in this. Um but I, you know, I do know and I've I've published on this work with um my uh student CJ Healy as first author of like we see healing happening in all sorts of other spaces. Um uh they have a great paper on raves um uh and showing healing happening in raves, which is really cool. Um, but raves are also a like an intentional culture and community as well, um, where they actually have structure built in to support people through distress um and support people with integration. Um uh they're not just like really great dance parties, they're also really great dance parties.
Um, but there's there's a whole culture around healing with psychedelics there. So I think there's potential, but we also have to be cautious. And I think the big thing um is uh Gouldolan does this really phenomenal work of showing the opening of the what's a biological critical period. This is when you can learn certain things. Um, and then the ability to learn those things becomes much more difficult with time. The canonical example for humans is language, right? It's easy to language, multiple language acquisition is easy early in life, gets harder. There's also a critical period for um learning social safety, that other people are a good other people around you are a good thing, um, and a sign that you're protected, not a sign that you're under threat.
And her work in animals, we'll see how it translates to humans, suggests that what psychedelics do is reopen critical periods for learning social safety. And if that's the case, and they stay open in a way that's essentially um proportional to how long the psychoactive window is. So, you know, ketamine stays you're in animals, ketamine you're it's active for 45 minutes, the window is maybe two days, LSD is active for like 12 hours, and the window is maybe a month that someone stays open, right? So that means what happens in that window is really important.
So if the person goes back into an unsafe, hostile, um, overtaxed under resource circumstance, you have just ground them back in. You have re-entrenched what they experience. So what but also nor can they go into like a cocoon because they have to live in the world. And so it's a it's got a real engineering aspect to it of how do we get people into an environment that is going to actually help them with the rest of their lives.
Yes. That's what there are so many factors which need to be to be to be considered, uh, and not just uh like I've taken now 10 sessions of ketamine therapy and um I supposed to heal, but it did nothing. Right. So that that's that's what I often hear sometimes. Yeah, I did this type of therapy, individually isolated and not integrated, and not in a setting, and not where the windows you're talking about are not used.
Yeah, right. You did the IV infusion and then you went back into the exact same situation. Yeah, I'm I'm not for that. Um yeah, that what you're what you're kind of capturing, and it you this is you've done this a few times, is that essentially like research is this process of like stripping everything away and simplifying it and then recomplicating it, and then simplifying it and recomplicating it over and over.
Um creating a standard people can rely on and multiply.
Yeah.
So repeat it.
Yeah, I think about it as like in many ways, research uh um uh Bessel van der Koelk and I, the um uh co-founder of the Trauma Research Foundation, um, and I have this debate all the time about he he keeps talking about empirically validated treatments, and I'm like, oh yeah, uh like I don't want to use that language, I don't want to, because that you know, that's complicated. Um, and and I think a lot of the um and not wanting res, and I really am with him on this, and not wanting research to be hierarchical, um, in that like these are the experts and these are like the peons who know nothing. Um, but really thinking about research as a vehicle for translating incredibly honed intuition and skill.
Um, I like I like you being open about it and and but also critical, not uh to uh uh to think uh that's the right way, because tomorrow it can be can be proved uh slightly different or nuanced, let's call it.
Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah, it can be both. I mean, we have been I don't know if we're returning to bloodletting, right? Like we used to think science used to tell us that that was the way to cure people. Um we can science sometimes tells us we're wrong and we can look really silly to people who come here a hundred years from now.
What what other topics within the field of trauma, trauma research, mental health, would you would you love to go into deeper and do further research if money wouldn't be an issue?
I think one of the most important areas to be working with is around um on this topic of systems change, of how do we seed a person? How do we like sort of seed and implant positive actors to help elevate a system, as opposed to thinking about how we have often this sort of downward spiral of increasing chaos and um trauma in a system so that systems become like really saturated with trauma? How do we how do we seed a system with like do-go gooders to to bring it up? Um and how do we amplify that in a way that actually really supports everyone?
Um, I have colleagues who have done really interesting work in their community-based programs that begin to show that effect. Um and how how to and I think the other thing, I it's um, I was at a um a dinner for around World Health Organization stuff and um understanding trauma in children, and there was this like collective outrage of like, essentially, you know, this is the biggest problem we have in society. Why aren't people listening? And you know, there's this refrain of this, and I appreciate the anger. I'm with the outrage, but like, what if we actually just ask that question?
Why aren't people listening? What happens in our communication that makes it hard for them to hear? Um, how do we need to communicate differently to bring everyone along into wanting to actually be in a place where it doesn't they don't feel called to be emotionally abusive or physically abusive? It doesn't feel like it's not something they're fighting against or resisting, it just doesn't feel like who they are anymore. What if we actually like found a way to call people into that? Um so that's that system level stuff. Um like essentially, I would like to be irrelevant. Um, it would be nice if we were all out of jobs.
It's it's a beautiful purpose you're following and uh work you're doing. I think it uh uh it um it may uh and it will create certain standards where people can rely on and therapists can rely on uh to help then further people.
I want therapists to have standards to rely on, and I also don't want them to be afraid to question. Yes. When they're being told something works and they don't they don't see it or believe it, or the evidence isn't persuasive. I want them to be legitimate thought partners.
Beautiful. What do you do in your personal life to stay in balance, Wendy?
Well, I have those my my little girls who definitely pull me in to dance shows or cooking things together. Um uh we do a lot of uh family meals and routine. I um I do not overwork. Um I work a lot, but I don't I most of my work stays in the workday. I don't work when I'm at home, um, like in the evenings. Um, I usually don't work on the weekends unless I'm traveling for a conference or something. Um uh a lot of music. My uh my husband and I met jazz dancing, um, like old jazz dance, Lindy Hop Charleston stuff, like from the 30s.
Yeah.
Um so music and dance are really important for us. Nice. Um getting into theater and art and all of that side that um speaks to something sometimes much better than than any other work. Um uh and um just solidarity with my people, humor, um uh yeah, all of all of that stuff.
Yeah, the ease side to activate both parts of the brain, yeah. Hopefully. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Is there something you you would like to share with everyone out there who um could be a recommendation, could be something you you just want uh everyone to know?
Yeah. Um I think I there there aren't two sides of the thing. One is that really like what what we how we uh impact each other matters. Um we matter to other people and um how we see them matters, and holding on to that so that you're that we're all prepared to be um able to meet that calling and rise to that occasion, I think is critical. And the other is really to to not for people who feel lost um and like nothing has helped them to not not give up. There is um it takes a lot of it, it is uh really unfortunate that it takes work to find the right care.
Um, but the right care is there. Um there is something for everyone.
Yes. And probably try things out. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't it doesn't uh work maybe for with the with the first thing you uh approach, but eventually at some point.
Yeah.
Wendy, thank you so much for being here. I love the conversation and uh really think your your work is beautiful. You're bringing um so much uh uh awareness and knowledge to the world, and uh it's so important. Keep uh keep doing what you do, and I I will enjoy and follow it.
Thank you, thank you. It's wonderful to talk.