64: Dr. Ed Tick Shares How Families Can Combat Our Nation’s Leading Disease – Denial – and Stop Patterns of Addiction Trickling Down Through Generations
“Be your own favorite patient… And whatever you’re struggling with makes life really deep and brings you growth and wisdom. Don’t turn away from it; embrace it as riches for you to mine, to gain love and wisdom for the rest of your life.” –Dr. Ed Tick
There’s a strong diversion in the healing spectrum called denial. Apparently, it is the nation’s leading disease as well. It’s hardly pounded within cultures, ancestral lines, communities and families and there’s no escaping its grip. Learn how to combat denial and transgenerational trauma as the American shadow gets exposed and a new perspective on addiction leads to a new identity. Move towards an addiction-free and happy family life with today’s episode. An enduring positive change is on the horizon. Your next move is a step nearer that bright tomorrow.
Highlights:
03:53 Dr. Ed Tick on Addiction as a “Symptom”
15:42 How Families Can Help and Receive Help
24:16 We’re Well or Ill Together
31:50 Denial & Transgenerational Trauma
39:01 Assume Your Identity
44:54 Sending Out Your Recovery Message
49:13 Ancestral Healing
55:34 The American Shadow Exposed
58:01 Be Your Own Favorite Patient
Resources:
War and the Soul: Healing Our Nation’s Veterans From Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by Dr. Edward Tick
Warrior’s Return: Restoring the Soul After War by Dr. Edward Tick
The Practice of Dream Healing: Bringing Ancient Greek Mysteries into Modern Medicine by Dr.Edward Tick and Stephen Larsen
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger
What is more terrifying than addiction? Take a closer look into our nation’s leading disease with @TFRSolution and Dr. Ed Tick #DENIAL #Tribe #symptoms #transgenerationaltrauma #familyhealing #recoverymessage Share on X
Quotes:
05:19 “Addiction is… a symptom, and an expression of deeper dimensions of pain, loneliness, suffering, alienation. If we address those, then we can significantly help relieve the misuse of substances.” –Dr. Ed Tick
06:30 “All of our issues have many sources, but our reductionist interpretations and are putting people in diagnostic pigeonholes reduces our complexity to just that one issue that one answer rather than look at all of us.” –Dr. Ed Tick
14:46 “If we have everything else but… we don’t feel like we’re contributing to life, then we’re still not whole people.” –Dr. Ed Tick
23:23 “So many people in this country are being encouraged to not feel their own feelings… and it’s just increases the potential for sickness for things to get worse is.” –Jeff Jones
24:54 “We’re creating a class of people with diagnoses and disorders, rather than realizing we are all together in this. And these problems belong to all of us. We’re all well or ill together.” –Dr. Ed Tick
54:38 “Family members… for them to do their own work, has such a big impact on the potential of healing the addiction in their own family, today, in this generation, for the next generation, for the past generation is profound here.” –Jeff Jones
31:02 “Symptoms are the soul’s way of trying to speak its truth to us and to our witnesses and helpers, when every other form of communications fail.” –Dr. Ed Tick
31:56 “Come out of your denial.” –Dr. Ed Tick
32:54 “It takes constant struggle to see what is right in front of our eyes.” –George Orwell, quoted by Dr. Ed Tick
38:08 “We have to learn it’s not our fault. But when we are victimized and unhealed, we all internalize that it’s something about us.” – Dr. Ed Tick
38:34 “All these negative internalized judgments that we hold about ourselves, making us feel it’s okay for us to suffer. But then, when we realize we’re imposing it on the people we love… then, we can finally sometimes maybe often grab a hold of it, and we first start to heal in service to them. And then hopefully, we catch up and do it for our selves as well.” –Dr. Ed Tick
40:34 “Somebody who’s recovered from addictions also can’t just hide… You have great wisdom and inner strength because of the trials that you’ve been through. And you’re the best person to help others.” –Dr. Ed Tick
48:57 “One of the messages I like to send here is to let the families know that they can’t really control the contributing factors to addiction that trickle down through the culture but they can create a different structure in their family.” –Jeff Jones
55:52 “We need to recognize that we are living in disaster area regarding sexual abuse. And we have to go public and not be ashamed ourselves, but hold the perpetrators accountable, and as society to own up to it.” –Dr. Ed Tick
58:27 “There’s a path, you can walk it and you CAN walk it.” –Dr. Ed Tick
01:00:04 “Be your own favorite patient. You are really interesting. And whatever you’re struggling with, makes life really deep and brings you growth and wisdom. Don’t turn away from it; embrace it as riches for you to mine, to gain love and wisdom for the rest of your life.” –Dr. Ed Tick
01:00:44 “When there’s sequential steps that we do, it is so much easier for us to make long lasting, positive change.” –Jeff Jones
01:01:03 “No change happens without brain change. And no brain change happens without behavioral change.” –Jeff Jones
01:01:30 “It is possible for people to change really, at any stage.” –Jeff Jones
About Ed
Dr. Edward Tick is widely known for the multiplicity of his expertise. He is a teacher, poet, transformational healer and a dedicated holistic psychotherapist. With his background on PTSD, specifically with Vietnam war veterans, he saw how they are being tormented by deep anguish and unseen loneliness. Dr. Ed has spent the last 40 years understanding and helping them find profound healing. He also authored best-selling books in this avenue. The journey doesn’t stop for Dr. Ed as he walks with these wounded souls back to their “homes.”
Telephone: (518) 727-8090
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions:
Jeff Jones: Welcome everyone, this is Jeff Jones on the podcast, Families Navigating Addiction & Recovery. And today I am going to be having a conversation with a guide Dr. Edward Tick, who I heard on another podcast on The Trauma Therapist | Podcast. And when I heard this I was so excited. I was so inspired because I was listening to a man that I had a lot to learn from, and largely Dr. Edward Tick, one of his specialties, and I say one of his specialties has been working with Vietnam soldiers. He created a nonprofit which is no longer in existence but was for many years, Soldier’s Heart. He did a phenomenal amount of really good work with soldiers who have a diagnosis of PTSD and has been to Vietnam numerous times, and he has written some books here. I’ll ask him, talk more about himself, but I’m just really inspired to have a conversation here that I see will shine light on part of the reason why this country struggles with addiction recovery, my opinion, but welcome Dr. Ed Tick.
Dr. Edward Tick: Thank you very much Jeff. I’m honored to be with you. I honor and salute the important work you’re doing in our addiction community. Thank you for gathering us all together and doing our best to help our people suffering and also our public. So great that we’re together making this effort.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, thank you. And so, if you could start by just talking a little bit more about yourself so people listening have a better sense of who you are.
Dr. Edward Tick: Sure. Thank you. Well, hello everybody out there. My name Jeff shared is Dr. Ed Tick. I am a holistic psychotherapist, a writer, a poet, a teacher, and I have a profound the holistic and interdisciplinary and psycho-spiritual community orientation. I have been a therapist since the mid 1970’s, and I began, as Jeff said, I do specialize in working with our military and veteran service members, veterans and their families and communities. I have had this specialty since the 1970’s, I began working with Vietnam veterans immediately at the end of the war in 1975 just after they came back and before the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, which was not created until 1980.
Jeff Jones: Wow.
Dr. Edward Tick: I’ve been working with this traumatized population as well as others for over 40 years of great known for our concerns with substance abuse and recovery is that we all probably know that substance abuse is one of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And so, today Jeff and I want to talk about the use and abuse of substances as both a problem in itself. Addiction is a problem. Addiction can be a disease, but I also want to talk about it as a symptom and an expression of deeper dimensions of pain, loneliness, suffering, alienation that if we address those, then we can significantly help relieve the misuse of substances, so that is a major issue with the veteran population and in others.
“Addiction is… a symptom, and an expression of deeper dimensions of pain, loneliness, suffering, alienation. If we address those, then we can significantly help relieve the misuse of substances.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah. Beautiful. I really, really appreciate what you’re saying there about addiction can be a symptom and a symptom of a deeper dimension of what’s going on for a person and not just brain impairment, but also brain impairment.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, it is bringing pyramid post-traumatic stress disorder also is brain impairment, but not exclusively.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: Our medical system and mental health systems both reduce our human complexity and our complex human issues that are, Freud used this word MULTIDETERMINED. All of our issues have many sources, but our reductionist interpretations and putting people in diagnostic pigeonholes reduces our complexity to that one issue, that one answer rather than look at all of us. And I can start with a story from my own clinical work regarding this to help illustrate it.
“All of our issues have many sources, but our reductionist interpretations and are putting people in diagnostic pigeonholes reduces our complexity to just that one issue that one answer rather than look at all of us.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Sure.
Dr. Edward Tick: Well, I do want to just add that you’re right. I began my work with Vietnam veterans. I’m the same age and same generation, and I began after the Vietnam war, but since then my work has been influential enough such that the military uses it. I work with and train our active duty military, and I’ve worked with veterans from every war, actually from the Spanish Civil War up until people coming home from the Sandbox Wars, you know, in the last few days.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: I began with Vietnam veterans, but I’ve generalized that and learned all about violent trauma. And more than that, the global trauma that we are all in and all experiencing today. And I want to get there, but let me begin with this story, this is of a Vietnam veteran. This veteran came in for therapy after he had received three DWS, and his license was taken away and he had been referred several alcohol treatment programs. So he did go through several and each one of them was a failure. In his case, he couldn’t stop drinking and his family wanted him, of course, to stay in treatment and find the right kind of treatment, but they wouldn’t talk to him about what was bothering him. Just find a professional to help you with your alcoholism. So he got that message from family, from friends, from his church members, and from the professional community.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: When he came in for psychotherapy with me, he said: “Nobody will let me talk about what’s really bothering me.” “Okay, sir, I want to talk about what’s really bothering you, I want to hear.” “What do you mean?” “What is it?” “Well, everybody’s making me talk about my alcohol abuse.” “Is that a problem?” “Well, yeah, it really is. I go on benders. I locked myself in motel rooms and get stinking drunk for a weekend. I do that all the time.” “But what do you mean that’s not the problem?” He said: his own words. “The problem is the war. Nobody will let me talk about the war. I know if I can talk about the war, my alcohol abuse will go away. But as long as they keep making me talk about alcohol abuse and tell me, no, you can’t talk about the war until you’re sober, then I just get angrier and more frustrated and go drink more.”
Jeff Jones: Right, right.
Dr. Edward Tick: So we actually, we did talk about the war for a couple of years and he did share his war stories, and in this case it doesn’t always happen, but sometimes in this case, spontaneously as he talked about what was really torturing him. He also spontaneously stopped drinking. He didn’t have the hunger to go numb, to blot out his memories, to cover up, to be in denial anymore because he was letting his real issues, and his real deep pain come out. And so, he sobered up without ever being in a 12 step program or without ever directly struggling with his addiction and abuse issues in therapy. Rather we went underneath to the real issues that were compelling him to drink.
Jeff Jones: Wow. What a great story that really I’m seeing is very well different and unique than a lot of what I hear. One thing that I’m hearing here is that he comes in with a certain perception and you follow him, and believe him, and go with that, and treat him as he is an expert in his own world, which I think of course he should be, but oftentimes as professionals, that’s not the way we’re trying.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, I’m with you very much and stay on that point for a few moments. Yes, I accepted him as the expert of his own inner world, and I accept myself in the therapeutic role as not trying to bring him the theories and the tools that I think will work on him imposed from outside. But rather I want to hear him, listen to him to understand his inner world as he experiences it as accurately as I can, and then unfold our healing plan from his inner experience in ways that are true and accurate for him. And I can expand on that.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: Sorry, I’m going back to my work with veterans, but we’ll talk about this in people with addiction issues as well. What we offer as counselors, as family members, as healing professionals and support providers has to be consistent with the inner truth, the inner experience of our suffering brothers and sisters. When we have an external theory, I’m going to teach you about the broken brain, and I’m going to give you brain chemistry lessons, and I’m going to teach you how to manage your broken brain and avoid your stresses.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: Thank you, that’s a helpful tool, but that doesn’t contribute to my inner healing even if it slowly helps my brain heal.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: But what about me? What about my soul? And my heart? My memory’s? All still caught in the trauma, or the violence, or the abuse that I suffered. It’s still there. We have to witness the original story. We have to support and allow the feelings to come forth, and then we have to suggest our insights, our theories, our tools and practices to be consistent with that person’s story. Not a foreign way of thinking and behaving that we’re imposing to try to fix them.
Jeff Jones: Right. Oh my gosh, that’s just so refreshing to hear. And I say that because that’s not the training that therapists generally get. That’s not the training they get in a master’s degree program.
Dr. Edward Tick: Or even in our various, our advanced mental health trainings, we tend to get training in a particular diagnosis or particular set of theories and tools. We’re not training in how to, well be phenomenologists and deeply listened to and affirm the experience of the other.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: And we certainly don’t get training in how to be spiritual guides. These people have suffered so much that they absolutely need a spiritual path, support of recovery, and of course the 12 step program is a spiritual path. But clinicians are generally trained to avoid discussions of religion and spirituality. Send that person to a clergy person, or to a 12 step group if they want to be spiritual, rather than we as helping professionals saying these are holistic wounds and that isn’t just body and brain, or body mind, but it’s body, mind, and heart. We always leave out the heart, even people who say they’re holistic, say: “Body, mind and spirit.”
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: What about the heart? So it’s body, it’s mind, it’s heart, it’s spirit, and it’s our place in the community. We are not whole without community. Even if we say body, mind, heart, soul, we’re still individuals.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: So it’s also in community and it’s also with meaning with transcendent purpose. So, we have everything else, but we hate our jobs and we’re bored and we don’t feel like we’re to life, then we’re still not whole people. And so we have to attend to every one of those dimensions. And if we neglect any of them, we’re not doing a full job with our people and we’re going to leave holes in them that they might try to fill in dysfunctional ways.
“If we have everything else but… we don't feel like we're contributing to life, then we're still not whole people.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Sure. Well, thank you very much for saying that, and one of the questions that I have, and so I may, you know, ask questions that are, you know, really have no specific answer, but I’m like, one of the things that I’m wondering about from the standpoint of family members because it’s going to be family members who are mostly listening to this podcast. How can this information be most helpful for them?
Dr. Edward Tick: Okay. Well we probably, most of us know this well and have experienced it that it is very often the case that the person struggling with traumatic wounds or with addiction issues is not the person who comes in asking for help. But very commonly it’s a family member who often against great resistance, drag the person in.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: So family members are often the first alarm system. And so to our family members, we need to say, honor that in yourself. If you are concerned, troubled, disturbed, wounded by your loved one’s behavior, it’s very important that you own that, talk about it, you get support forward and that you use that to try to engage your loved one in a healing process.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Beautiful.
Dr. Edward Tick: And then secondly, it’s really important to not be alone with this. And of course Al-anon and other family member groups really help and support people who were living with these issues. And we can of course mention other groups too. And NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness has support groups for family members all over the country for families. So family members, you need to find your community that understands and supports you without negative judgement, and hopefully people who are honest cause similar journey so they can give support and insight because they’ve also traveled this journey. So we need to find our tribe. And in that regard, I want to recommend a book that came out, I think last year, it’s called Tribe by Sebastian Junger. He’s done an extraordinary work about a military, and other trauma, and violent losses in his career. And after documenting many types of traumatic loss, he finally just wrote a shorter, simple book about Tribe and why all need to find that special tribe of people whose experiences support and replicate ours. And that when we find such a tribe, the incidents of these mental health crises significantly diminishes. So he gives the example of Israel quite extensively, and Israel own reports our 1% PTSD rate even though this is a country that’s constantly traumatized and at war.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: And I report from my research in Vietnam that there’s no chronic post-war PTSD in Vietnam. So they work as a tribe and have all of these support systems in place that survivors and family members need. And we can talk about those specifically. Find your tribe, find your tribe.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So one of the things, I mean from listening to other podcasts that I heard you on, one of the things that I was really struck with was this statistic that you just talked about, countries like Vietnam that have had, you know, so much violence and have been over power by other countries for over 2000 years, and literally no chronic PTSD. And so, you know, the question is why? And like, what I learned from you Ed, is the reason why is because those countries deal with the trauma globally. They deal with it as a community, it’s open, they’re not in denial about it. I mean, it sounds like they are honest and genuine with their impact, with what happened to them, how they feel about it, and they create numerous opportunities for people to have those kinds of connections.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, yes. You’re getting it. And we can fill out the picture for our friends listening and give us a significant direction for what we need to do in our culture in order to, well, to make it friendlier and healthier place for everyone, but especially to help bring significant hope and healing for the traumatic and addictive issues that we’re talking about. So, focusing on Vietnam, well, any culture, what some cultures like Vietnam provide are protective and preventive factors against traumatic breakdown. We can build into our social behavior, practice teachings and practices, and rituals, and holidays that prevent the traumatic breakdown at all, so that when trauma or violence comes, we don’t collapse in the same comprehensive way that we do in the West. And, or, that once the traumatic wounding has happened, seriously help heal it so that it doesn’t become chronic and fixed in the person’s psyche. And in Vietnam as you shared, I’d been to Vietnam 18 times, I’ve spent about a year and a half total in Vietnam. I’ve researched this material all over the country in the remote areas, places, no Western actually, really, I’m proud of this. I’ve gone places, no Westerners have ever been to meet the people directly affected and get the real story from the people who live it, I work with their universities and their Institute of psychology researching this all over the country. So I’m quite confident in what I’m reporting in. It’s critical when we compare how Vietnam, as you rightly said, invaded for over 2000 years. How can they successfully integrate so much violent trauma? Whereas our country, when we were not invaded, has PTSD and substance abuse at epidemic levels.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: When we compare the two cultures, so many factors here, but one matter is that, yes, there’s no denial in Vietnam like there is in the United States. Well, everybody alive at the time experienced the war, the war was there. Whereas here in America, obviously we separated people out, created different classes of people, shipped some people over to Vietnam and everybody else stayed home and didn’t experience it. And we still have that condition even worse now, we remember one of our President’s Commander in Chief in the recent war said: “Americans, you just go shopping in the mall and feed the economy and let the troops take care of the war in Iraq.” That’s sick.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: That is a prescription for social breakdown. That’s telling the public, you don’t have to care about your brothers and sisters who are overseas fighting and killing in a war in your name and with your money.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: So when they come back, you don’t even have to think about them or worry about them. It’s all their problem.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. And it encourages this same pattern of denial. You know, that so many people in this country are being encouraged to not feel their own feelings, not have their own experience about what’s going on, or like in the comment that you made, being encouraged by people in power to isolate if they have feelings to keep it for themselves. And it’s just, yeah, it increases the potential for sickness, for things to get worse is what it sounds like.
“So many people in this country are being encouraged to not feel their own feelings… and it's just increases the potential for sickness for things to get worse is.” –Jeff Jones Share on XDr. Edward Tick: Yes, it does, it does. And our diagnostic system is definitely a Western diagnostic system that grew out of our highly competitive, and individualistic, and materialistic society. So we have an addictions industry, we have our trauma industry, we have not only, you know, millions of people like us in the mental health field trying to help, but we have the pharmaceutical industry making billions of dollars of profit for medications at our people, and the medications may sometimes control some of the symptoms, but they don’t heal when they done the medication. So we are an addictive society. We’re switching with one addiction for another rather than helping people heal. And we’re creating a class of people with diagnoses and disorders rather than realizing we are all together in this, and these problems belonged to all of us.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: We’re all well, or ill together. It’s not that you and I, Jeff, we’ve got it together and we’re really well, but the people we’re counseling, or the sick ones, look, that’s results from our competitive, and individualistic, and materials to society, and the way we do everything here.
“We're creating a class of people with diagnoses and disorders, rather than realizing we are all together in this. And these problems belong to all of us. We're all well or ill together.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: Whereas in a collectivist culture like Vietnam, or Israel, or native American cultures, everybody is involved together. People are not separated out by the diagnosis when they say we are all suffering together, and we all have to listen to each other, hear each other’s stories, confess in public, have really meaningful public rituals and holidays that address the issues rather than, like, well with the veterans patriotic holidays that disguise the issue and give a false feeling of patriotism and glory rather than hear people’s suffering.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: So there are several different memorial days in Vietnam, and in Israel, and both countries really shut down the malls close, malls in Vietnam.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: They’ve got one or two new ones and that’s not a good thing. But for the most part the country closes down and people go to the pagodas, and the churches, and the community centers, and everybody is telling their stories to everybody and people are grieving and remembering together. And people really do, everybody goes to the cemetery’s, and visits the graves, and decorates them, and talks to their ancestors, and everybody’s practicing this together, and it’s a genuine social obligation and expectation. So nobody feels alone with their wounds.
Jeff Jones: Sure. Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: And people then don’t collapse into a secretive individual disorder.
Jeff Jones: Right. So yeah, I love what you are saying here. And so the question that I have is, well, so here’s an example. Here’s a little story. So for instance, like a year ago or something, I worked with a family and they came in together, a family meeting kind of thing. And there was one family member who they were the most worried about who had had crisis after crisis happened with a substance they were involved with. And you know, I really tried to just verbally kind of expand from just that individual to the whole family system, and some of the impact, and challenges, and strengths in past generations, like two or three generations back from the oldest people in the room. And then to identify, you know, the challenges that they had, and you know, the way that they tried to cope, like, what were the coping mechanisms. And when I did that, and I do this with colors, I can see it kind of the colors trickling down through the generations. I mean, and then it gets really obvious, Hey, this just makes sense. This is in our field here and the other family members, one specifically, like I suggested that she get her own therapy and this was the mom, and a year later she finally reached out to do that. It’s like, it really took more pain, it took more kind of struggle and trying the same old strategy over and over again for her to do something as simple. I say simple, but what you said, you know, early on and that is something to the effect of people need to acknowledge their own impact, their own feelings, and to honor that, and to realize that’s an important piece of healing the system, healing the family. And when the family heals, the conditions in the family are less tolerable, are less hospitable to active addiction.
Jeff Jones: Yes, yes. We both know and affirm that secrets lead to disturbance and addiction. And when we keep secrets, and even when, oh, my goodness, we are in a mental health system. That’s even many of the practices are saying: “You don’t have to tell your stories, and we don’t even have to work hard on this for a long time. We’re just going to give brief therapy, or cognitive behavioral therapy to teach you think differently and some strategies for keeping yourself out of trouble.” So stories are never told and people never unburden their hearts. And what you and I present is that rather than bringing awareness and healing, well, it might bring information as awareness, but not deep inner wisdom and not telling the stories freezes that condition.
Dr. Edward Tick: And reinforces it as if it were a mental illness because it keeps the memories locked inside, and keeps the feelings locked inside, and memories and feelings locked away secrets will always find they’re disguised way of coming out as symptoms. Symptoms are the soul’s way of trying to speak its truth to us and to our witnesses and helpers when every other form of communication has failed.
“Symptoms are the soul’s way of trying to speak its truth to us and to our witnesses and helpers, when every other form of communications fail.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: That’s very concise. Very, very concise. Wow. Wow. So, I mean, kind of coming down to a practical level, I mean, I have some ideas on how I could answer this question, but before I blather along too much, I’m just curious, like, do you have suggestions for someone who’s listening to this right now, what could they do in their own family? And you’ve mentioned some, but if you can reiterate what some of those strategies an individual could do.
“It takes constant struggle to see what is right in front of our eyes.” –George Orwell, quoted by Dr. Ed Tick Share on XDr. Edward Tick: Yes, sure. Okay, well, for family members, we can’t say it enough, come out of your denial. I’m out of your denial and it’s not easy. You know, the words are easy, we all practice denial. One of the veterans I work with said: “The only thing I learned by going to war for my country is that the denials, the name of the all American disease. Nobody wants to hear or talk about the truth of what I did, but in our country’s name that our country is actually doing.” So I’m going to quote George Orwell here for a moment regarding coming out of denial or wealth. We all remember he wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. He said: “It takes constant struggle to see what is right in front of our eyes.” This constant struggle to see what’s right in front of our own eyes. So family members, let yourself see what’s really going on and you’re not doing yourself or your loved ones favor if you don’t see it, if you talk yourself out of it, if you hope that, Oh, tonight when he or she goes out, they’re not going to go drinking. They’re just going bowling, but they’re not going to have 10 beers, or whatever your story is. Come out of your denial, and embrace what you see as symptomatic of the pain that your loved one and your family is in. Now we call, or our culture calls alcohol, spirits.
“Come out of your denial.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: I don’t think that’s accidental and not to sure of the origin, but I sure do know that when people feel the raft of the spirit, they turn to spirits.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: Heal the void. So for yourself, family members, and for your loved one, what is my loved one using spirits for fill instead of, and what could we do spiritually and communally together that might address that pain and fill that void. So looking together to try to identify what the deeper pains and losses, griefs and traumas are that are impelling the addiction, and letting your loved one know that you know it, and that you see it, and that even if he or she claims otherwise, you know they’re not happy and they’re suffering and it’s affecting everybody.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: Also owning family pain sometimes, well, if I’m drinking too much and giving myself hangovers and headaches, but I think I’m not hurting anybody but myself, I might just keep doing it. But if I hear that my child is afraid of me, my kids hide in the closet when I lose it, or they hide under the bed, or when I wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare, I didn’t realize nobody’s getting any sleep, they’re all waking up. So often it’s the family letting their suffering members that they’re hurting, and this is decaying the entire family, that’s what finally gets people into seeking help. I don’t care if I’m wrecking my own life, but I really don’t want to wreck my spouse and my children’s lives.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: So use the family pain, and the family damage, and you’re not only concerned about him or her, you’re concerned about all of us.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So thank you very much for those specifics there. I want to ask you a little bit more about what you said there: “I don’t care if I’m wrecking my own life, but I don’t want to have my children suffer, or have my spouse suffer, or my siblings, or whatever.” And so to me, I mean, I’ve seen my own stories of that in myself and others actually, but I’m just curious from what you know about trauma Ed, is there something that you can say as to why that’s such a pattern that we don’t own it in ourself, but if we see our loved ones suffering, then that might catch our attention?
Dr. Edward Tick: Yeah, that’s an important question and thanks for pushing us in that direction. My best understanding of that is that people who have survived trauma, and I did as well. I grew up in a family with severe trauma through many generations. So transgenerational trauma was passed on to us for at least three generations back that I’ve been able to trace. And then we had family traumas, and I had personal trauma as well, so my family was loaded it. And of course growing up, no family members were aware of it or acknowledging it. And so it was very destructive and difficult carrying it alone until I understood what was going on and could step out of the family system and look for help and support. So I’m talking from personal experience of the traumatic impact on me from having traumatized parents and my own trauma. What really happens is that we do deeply absorbed and developed a victim identity so that we believe that there must be something wrong or defective with us, that we deserve it. I was sexually abused in the Boy Scouts and I thought there was something wrong with me that attracted older men. I was frightened that all men became this way when they matured, I felt dirty, and ashamed, and unworthy to be around my peers cause this happened to me. But I don’t know if it happened to them or not, and nobody was talking about it. I did talk about it at first and some of my peers shunned me as if I were dirty and not safe to be around. I finally did find other peers who were abused and then I realized there’s a small subgroup of us and we can help and support each other, and it’s not my fault.
Jeff Jones: Right, right, right.
“All these negative internalized judgments that we hold about ourselves, making us feel it's okay for us to suffer. But then, when we realize we're imposing it on the people we love… then, we can finally sometimes maybe often grab a hold of it,… Share on XDr. Edward Tick: So really, we have to learn it’s not our fault, but when we are victimized and unhealed, we all internalize that it’s something about us. I was a soldier who killed the wrong people. I was really something ugly and evil that I attracted an abuser. I’m such an — that I can’t control my drinking and I deserve to wreck myself. All these negative internalized judgments that we hold about ourselves and making us feel like it’s okay for us to suffer. But then when we realize we’re imposing it on people we love, and especially on our innocent children, or spouse who’s just trying to help us, then we can finally, sometimes maybe often grab hold of it and we first start to heal in service to them and then hopefully we catch up and do it for ourselves as well.
“We have to learn it's not our fault. But when we are victimized and unhealed, we all internalize that it's something about us.” - Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah, I really appreciate that. I mean, one of the things that I heard that I think is so important here is that we assume an identification, an identity, and that identity is one of a victim of being powerless, of, you know, of having no choices in the world, or no other strategy that we can use.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, right. So, we talked about this a lot in our fields, that we want people to transform their sense of their own identity from victim to survivor, from helpless to empowered, from shameful to honorable, and applying that to our veterans and military population, I do that there as well, helping people embrace going from soldier, sailor, Marine veteran to an honorable returned warrior who has responsibilities, a spiritual warrior through life, who has responsibilities to continue to preserve and protect all of us. And so we need you and you need to be in the healthiest condition possible so you can continue to fulfill these sacred tasks of your identity. Just go back and be an ordinary civilian again, and you should. And somebody who is recovering from addictions also can’t just hide and say, well, I’m just, I’m just an ordinary person. I never had any issues. No. You have great wisdom and inner strength because of the trials that you’ve been through and you’re the best person to help others. That’s our, so many of our 12 step self help groups work.
“Somebody who's recovered from addictions also can't just hide… You have great wisdom and inner strength because of the trials that you've been through. And you're the best person to help others.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in here, I’m kind of getting as a response, you know, part of the transformation is to, like, when someone is in the thick of an incident and they’re, you know, maybe volumes of voices are going up, heart rates are going up. What I see is that’s optimal. Not always possible, but that is to take a pause and question some of the certainties that I may have in my own thinking about myself or others, and transform from, you know, being certain I know I’m right here or whatever to being curious.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, yes. And that’s on target and it is so important, both in our fields we try to teach people to respond rather than react.
Jeff Jones: Yes.
Dr. Edward Tick: And that’s really what you’re talking about with the pause. Whenever we notice ourselves or another person reacting with a supercharge of emotion and talking just as you described, heart rate is up, voices getting louder, talking fast, not thinking, but just spitting back the response. That’s a clue always that that person has been triggered and they are reacting, not responding and material from their heart and from their unconscious is pouring out. And it’s unreflected, unconsidered, and they’re reacting to things that they’re carrying inside themselves from the past.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: Not just to the moment. And so, learning to take that pause, helping the afflicted person learn to take the pause is really important, but us as listeners taking the pause also. Breathe deeply, don’t try to fight back and argue back. Let your overburdened loved one know that you hear them. Wow, you’re really feeling a lot right now. I hear that something’s going on, it’s triggered you. And I know that you’ve got a lot of pain and a lot of anger about a lot of things stored up inside that’s now pouring out. So let’s just both breathe deeply for a few seconds here and recognize how loaded your heart is, and slowly go back into it and find out what’s really bothering you.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. And so, from the standpoint, and I’m gonna, you know, I’m shifting just a little bit, but from the standpoint of the process in the addiction recovery world, which we all know is intervention. And that is kind of like when, you know, the person in the family with the addiction that just chaos is gotten extreme over, and over, and over again. Everything that family members have said and tried haven’t worked and they hire someone for an intervention. There’s, like, old intervention models that are secretive, and then it’s a surprise. And I mean, I know that intervention model is saved people’s lives, but I’ve also seen where it has retraumatized everyone in the family and specifically the individual, they’re body contracts, they pull in, they are not receptive to any kind of change and actually they’re kind of pissed off at their family. And I mean suicidal ideation can happen specifically after this kind of situation. And so one of the things that I have seen that has been helpful and it’s incredibly hard and the family is doing the work here, but that is for them to come together with you named it, like, recovery message and give that to their loved one, and it might sound something, like, you know, thank you, it’s because of your suffering and watching it for so long that I’m aware of my own suffering. And I really want you to know that this didn’t begin with me, this didn’t begin with you. This goes a long way back in our family and actually I have engaged, and the whole family is going to be working together to heal this, and we would love to have you be a part of it. And if you’re not ready right now, know that we’re in this healing process and you’re welcome to join us, whenever.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yeah, I’m with you and salute you and that strategy. And I’m going to relate this back to what we said earlier about Vietnam, that strategy that you just shared for afflicted families is a communal strategy. It affirms that we are all in this together, that trauma and various forms of wounding affected us all and have been going on through the generations. And you’re just experiencing it and registering it in a different way. But we really all have this wound and we all have to work on it. And so you, Jeff, in that intervention, move the afflicted family member from that position of isolation where the identified patient, and it’s your problem and we’re treating your problem. You’re moving them back into the family system saying: “This is systemic, we’re all part of it. It comes from all of us and it comes from previous generations, and it’s been going through our system. And so we all want to be in a healing and recovery process that heals the entire system and the systems intact. And we’re loving you, Lee, inviting you back into it.”
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: So in a sense for using our metaphors, we’re moving people from the United States to Vietnam, from an individualistic to a communal culture, from a competitive into an empathic one, from it’s your problem to no, we’re all in this together.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. So you know, one of the questions that I’m struck with, and like, when I listened to your podcast on The Trauma Therapist, I really saw how, like, a next part of your work may be this, like, how to approach global trauma, or raise awareness around global trauma. And then with what the approach that I’ve taken and the strategy I’ve used with families is, you know, largely to send the message and let them know that the trauma in their family didn’t come from just their family. It’s we all live in a culture, we’ve all kind of gone through crisis, you know, the depression, every family in, unless it’s a native American family or something, there’s an immigration story. Immigration stories are oftentimes very traumatic, and challenging, and so it’s like one of the messages I like to send here is to let families know that they can’t really control the contributing factors to addiction that trickle down through the culture, but they can create a different structure in their family.
“One of the messages I like to send here is to let the families know that they can't really control the contributing factors to addiction that trickle down through the culture but they can create a different structure in their family.” –Jeff Jones Share on XDr. Edward Tick: Yes, I affirmed that they can create a different structure in their family. As they’re doing that in the family, they are healing their inheritance from previous family members who were traumatized, and depending on people’s spiritual beliefs, they can experience that they’re actually bringing healing to their ancestors, to the people who came before and suffered. Now in native American culture and Vietnamese culture, this is palpable. They do affirm the presence of the ancestors as living spiritual presence that are still concerned with us. So in those cultures, when they’re working on themselves, they’re also working on the people who came before. So that’s another dimension of our spiritual alienation is that we’ve lost that feeling of connection to the generations. My work with those cultures is helped restore that in my life. And I do experience, I have really had profound dreams, and visions, and emotional experiences of this that, one of the reasons I work with veterans is because my godfather, my mother’s only sibling was a Medic in the Battle of the Bulge. And he came home with severe PTSD and had it his entire life until he died in his 80’s. He was my godfather, he passed that energy on to me. So, but this isn’t only about me, I really have experienced and had dreams about this, that by doing my work with our veterans of today, I was helping heal the spirit, the soul of my uncle and my godfather who suffered so much his entire life because of what he experienced in World War II. And I’ve had this similar experience with my grandparents, both of whom were Eastern European refugees who survived the pogroms in the Nazi era. So they came here with trauma. They didn’t heal it themselves, but me healing it in myself and working on my family patterns that come from it, not normally heal the present and protect the future, but in some sense heal them as well.
Jeff Jones: Sure. Oh, my gosh, this is beautiful. Beautiful, wow. I’m just, I have chills down my back, really.
Dr. Edward Tick: Thank you. Let me just share one story a little more deeply and I’ve got tears in my eyes as I say this, you can’t see them, but we’re together in the heart. After all these decades of work with our lawyers, last year, just at this time when I was leading an intensive four day group retreat for military veterans and first responders who are also traumatized. Many of them are vets as well, but they’re all lawyers, domestic lawyers or in the military, but they’re all serving in danger to try to preserve and protect the rest of us, and got to the end of that retreat, and I’ve been doing this for 40 years, and I was feeling the depth and the both the honor and the exhaustion of the work, and I just spontaneously in our last circle had a vision of my godfather, my uncle, who I’ve always seen, I’ve always seen him in my inner eye, and we have pictures of him. I have pictures of him in his, it was red cross helmet and his soiled bloody army uniform. This time for the very first time I had a picture of him, an inner image of him dressed in pure white, with a white helmet, with a huge smile on his face, turning around and walking away, walking to the spirit world saying: “My soul is finally liberated. Finally liberated from my horrible pain I had to live in and serve my whole life.”
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: Look another generation and decades of dealing to get here, but we got here. He’s okay, and I’m okay.
Jeff Jones: Oh, my gosh. Edward, what a powerful vision there, you know, that sounds like more than just a metaphor or something. So I’m, Oh my gosh, my head is spinning here, but I am curious about, you know, for family members who are listening to this, is there one thing, one of the takeaways I’m getting here is, you know, and hopefully other people are too. And that is to the openness and curiosity to do one’s own work, to look at one’s own situation, honor and respect one zone, impact their feelings, what’s going on, and have an understanding that there’s some impersonal patterns at work here.
Dr. Edward Tick: Oh yes. In personal and transpersonal.
Jeff Jones: And transpersonal. And so one of the big takeaways that I’m getting, and I’m hoping family members get here, for them to do their own work has such a big impact on the potential of healing the addiction in their own family today, in this generation, for the next generation, for the past generation, it’s profound here, so that’s one. And I’m also wondering, like, and from your work, and research, and understanding of that the United States is not really honored the global trauma, or communal healing thing. Are there things that you see, or signs, or openings for more awareness and understanding of that to be happening, or is happening?
“Family members… for them to do their own work, has such a big impact on the potential of healing the addiction in their own family, today, in this generation, for the next generation, for the past generation is profound here.” –Jeff Jones Share on XDr. Edward Tick: Oh yeah. There are certainly significant movements that are raising awareness and consciousness. The MeToo movement certainly is an example of that of millions of abuse survivors saying: “Me Too, our stories need to be public. We need to recognize that we are living in disaster area regarding sexual abuse and we have to go public and not be ashamed ourselves, but hold the perpetrators accountable and as society to own up to it.” So we might not be satisfied with the results so far, but the degree of abuse, that women have suffered, that victims of clergy abuse have suffered.
“We need to recognize that we are living in disaster area regarding sexual abuse. And we have to go public and not be ashamed ourselves, but hold the perpetrators accountable, and as society to own up to it.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Edward Tick: Those things are out of the closet now. And as difficult as this time is politically the good news, the hopeful news is that we have been in global trauma, this country and the world for a long time, and the United States has really never in a significant way of hasn’t acknowledged slavery, or hasn’t acknowledged the abuse of the native American people. So we have been a violent and abusive country since our founding and all of this abuse has accumulated and continues to do damage to all of us and it has to be exposed, and these movements are exposing it to a significant degree. So really what we have is the American shadow as addictive, and violent, and insensitive as it has been, is being exposed publicly in a major way.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: We don’t know how it’s gonna turn out, but the possibility is significant social awareness, and significant evolution of enough of the population so that we finally take serious action to change these things.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, I really liked the languaging that you use there, and how concise the American shadow exposed, you know? It’s like, wow, so powerful. So like, as we’re getting towards the end of this conversation, were there points that you wanted to mention that we haven’t gone into?
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes. I guess I would like to, for all of our listeners to reinforce our understanding that there are roadmaps home that you and I are not just talking theory, but we’re also talking practice and that there are steps. There are 12 step programs really do give social, familial, psychological, spiritual, emotional tasks, and steps for people to carry. And so there’s a path you can walk it, and you can walk it. Likewise, in my work with veterans, I do outline the steps, the necessary steps of warrior return, the work we have to do and what that work is step-by-step. We can go from wounded, traumatized, the broken to whole person with a restored energy and soul able to carry it. So know that there are roadmaps and find your tribe, and find a good roadmap and become out of denial. And I want to also reinforce and salute what you said: “Be very curious and interested in yourself.” I was fortunate to have one of my early mentors and elders. This is like 30 years ago, so I was in my 30’s, but this gentleman was in his 90’s, he was actually the last living student of Freud, and he was an expert in group psychoanalysis. In his 90’s, he wrote his last book.
“There's a path, you can walk it and you CAN walk it.” –Dr. Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Wow.
Dr. Edward Tick: This is our message to our listeners. He wrote his last book, it was his autobiography. He waited until his 90’s to try to put his own life together and his own mind. The name of his autobiography, remember, lifelong cycle analyst writing his autobiography, and he entitles it, My Favorite Patient.
Jeff Jones: (laughs).
Dr. Edward Tick: So to all of our friends, and colleagues, and loved ones out there, maybe our final message is be your own favorite patient.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: You are really interesting, and whatever you’re struggling with makes life really deep and brings you growth and wisdom. Don’t turn away from it. Embrace it as riches for you to mine, to gain, love, and wisdom for the rest of your life.
“Be your own favorite patient. You are really interesting. And whatever you're struggling with, makes life really deep and brings you growth and wisdom. Don't turn away from it; embrace it as riches for you to mine, to gain love and wisdom for… Share on XJeff Jones: Right. Yeah. Wow. And I really want to say thank you for reiterating again the importance of the 12 steps. And one of the things that I really, really like about the 12 steps other than the fact that it’s all around the world, is that it’s sequential steps. And when there’s sequential steps that we do, it is so much easier for us to make long lasting, positive change. And it’s kind of like one of the things I’ve learned from another podcast guest is, “No change happens without brain change. And no brain change happens without behavioral change.”
“When there's sequential steps that we do, it is so much easier for us to make long lasting, positive change.” –Jeff Jones Share on XDr. Edward Tick: Yes.
“No change happens without brain change. And no brain change happens without behavioral change.” –Jeff Jones Share on XJeff Jones: So having some steps to follow, having a community that supports you, following them, whether it’s Al-anon, or NAMI, or whatever, but it’s just like, it’s so important, and it is possible for people to change really at any stage. So wow, great conversation. And how can people learn more about your work? Or how can they connect with you? What would you like them to do?
“It is possible for people to change really, at any stage.” –Jeff Jones Share on XDr. Edward Tick: Well, thank you. My website is simply my name, www.edwardtick.com just one word. Okay, so edwardtick.com for my website. My email address is also simple, Dr. Ed Tick, -D-R-TE-D-T-I-C-K@G-M-A-I-L.C-O-M, dredtick@gmail.com. My kids laugh and say: “That’s not Dr. Ed Tick, that’s a dredtick.” Easy way to remember it. And my phone number people can feel free to call as well, my phone number is (518) 727-8090. So those are the ways to connect with me directly or learn more about my work. And if I made briefly mention my books, I do have books published. Two of them are poetry and I hope people love poetry, but I’m not gonna recommend them because we’re doing the deep inner work right now. My three really important books that teach some of what we’re sharing about the depths of trauma and how to heal it. Two of them focus specifically on military trauma, but we generalize that as you and I shared to global trauma, his books are called War and the Soul, that was published 2005 by quest books, and then Warrior’s Return came out in 2015 from sounds true. And then I have a third book that is not specifically about military or not specifically about trauma but rather the origins of psychology and medicine in the Western world in ancient Greece. So what original holistic and spiritual healing of all of our afflictions were in the ancient world. How that developed into medicine and psychology as we know it today, and how we can reclaim those originals, spiritual and holistic lessons. And that book is called, The Practice of Dream Healing, that was also published by quest books in 2001. So those three books are my opus to date recording in book form, my healing work and offering these lessons.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Well thank you very much for the conversation and thank you very much for the work that you have been doing for decades here. Thank you.
Dr. Edward Tick: You’re very welcome Jeff. And back at you, thank you for all that you’re doing. Thank you for this invitation. Most importantly, thank you for teaching our public and creating a refuge with an online community and this wisdom for all of us who need it.
Jeff Jones: Thank you, bless you.