73: Individual Family and Community Solutions for PTSD and Addiction with Dr. Ed Tick and Denise Klein
“We need to communalize rather than individualize. And we need to normalize rather than pathologize.” – Ed Tick
The society we’re living in today has forced veterans to carry the moral and social burdens of warfare alone. As a result, their unspoken pain and sorrows evolved into trauma and addiction problems which also affect the family unit that they belong to. From this, societal issues increase and communities sink into decay. To address this problem, Dr. Ed Tick and Denise Klein join the platform to share their wisdom. They impress on seeing beyond the surface recovery and diving deeper into the feelings associated with addiction rather than just the cessation of visible symptoms. They also expound on how to spark significant cultural changes as opposed to smaller individual changes and how to build communities through visualization, open communication, and creating opportunities. They also highlight the need to normalize rather than pathologize. Individual empowerment is the key to strengthen the family and eventually the whole community. Tune in and join the healing movement!
Highlights:
- 04:00 Veteran Experience Help Heal Addiction
- 13:30 Symptoms That Causes Breakdown In Families
- 16:34 Trauma As Normative Part Of Experience
- 18:13 Educating People About Trauma
- 30:08 Everyone Gets Traumatized Everyday
- 35:45 Making Trauma More Visible
- 40:18 Move Into Normalization And Communalization
- 45:31 Warriors Return
- 48:07 Empowerment And Being Authentic
Activate and empower our survivors! Join in as @TFRSolution, Dr. Ed Tick and Denise Klein teach us how to survive the trauma of wars and everyday life. #trauma#veterans#addiction#wounds#healing#empowerment#authentic Share on X
Resources:
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Quotes:
04:58 “To recognize and really, together be profoundly aware…that the struggle with addictions is a response to trauma.” – Ed Tick
11:17 “All streams lead to the same river and that it’s not going to be one size fits all.” – Denise Klein
22:33 “Let go and let God turn your healing over to a higher power.” – Ed Tick
24:41 “Take off the pathological stigma and also realize we are all sharing these wounds, we’re just adapting to them differently, and we need each other and everybody is welcome. Then we have a means for healing.” – Ed Tick
42:26 “We need to communalize rather than individualize. And we need to normalize rather than pathologize.” – Ed Tick
43:18 “Educate the public rather than just treating the survivors- that really needs to be done to change the system.” – Ed Tick
48:11 “Don’t wait for someone else to do something, start doing it yourself.” – Denise Klein
About Ed
Edward Tick is an internationally recognized educator, author and expert on military, veterans, PTSD, and the psychology, spirituality, and history of global trauma, warrior traditions, and military-related issues. For four decades he has conducted pieces of training, retreats, and workshops across the country and overseas. He has trained staff, taught and worked with wounded warriors at major Department of Defense and Veteran Administration facilities and at colleges, universities, hospitals, health care and community centers across the country and overseas. He is also the author of Warrior’s Return: Restoring the Soul After War. He presents a powerful case for changing the way we welcome our veterans back from service―a vision and a path for transforming the wounds of war into sources of wisdom, honor, and growth.
About Denise
Denise Klein, MSW, Executive Director of Milestones Ranch Malibu, one of the nation’s premier dual diagnosis treatment centers, graduated from the University of North Dakota with a Master’s Degree in Social Work in 1992. Prior to graduation, Denise was awarded Social Worker of the Year 1990 by Minot State University for her “commitment, enthusiasm and contributions to the field of social work.” Denise began her career as a Family Advocacy Therapist for the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, helping families struggling with domestic violence and addiction. Later, as CEO and founder of Innerchoice Family Counseling Center in Loveland, Colorado, Denise created and implemented a state of the art in-home based wraparound program for dual diagnosis patients and their families, a program designed to keep families intact rather than removing children from their home. Developing programs that benefit and support the entire family system and assist the patient in creating an emotionally sober and recovery-centric lifestyle is Denise’s ongoing passion.
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 is a very unique conversation, I’ve been looking forward to for awhile, and it’s with two guests and they both been on this show before last year. Denise Klein, the CEO of Malibu Ranch, a small 12 person treatment center outside of Malibu. And then Dr. Ed Tick, the founder of Soldier’s Heart and author of a number of different books. So why this conversation is happening is because Dr. Tick has been involved with trauma with veterans for 20 years or so. And Denise heard the interview that I did with him. Actually Denise is the one that initially turned me on to his interview from another podcast, and she is really curious about how we can, we need addiction recovery space can best utilize the knowledge, and information, and experience that Dr. Ed Tick has had with soldiers.
So welcome Ed.
Dr. Edward Tick: Thank you Jeff. And thank you Denise, and Denise, thank you for introducing all of us and creating this team.
Denise Klein: Oh, you’re welcome.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. And welcome Denise.
Denise Klein: Thank you Jeff, so happy to be here today, and honored to be part of this process.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah. So one of the main questions here is how the work, the experience that you’ve had, Ed, with veterans can help out in the addiction recovery space. Just a general opener, but can you start to respond to that?
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, sure. And thank you for the invitation and for taking this conversation off. Several ways that I can respond to this and look together at the way the veteran field and the trauma field focusing on veterans in the addiction fields really are overlapping, are really one in this name in a larger understanding and frame. So we all know that veterans suffer profoundly at epidemic levels from Post-traumatic stress disorder, and moral injury, and military sexual trauma. So we all know that by now, and we all know that problems with addictions are one of the major and most troubling symptoms of traumatic wounding. So our journey to help heal from addictions and to help heal trauma really are one in the same. With that said, we have to recognize and really together be profoundly aware, keep it always in our consciousness that the struggle with addictions is a response to trauma. Trauma is the original wound, and addiction is one of the consequences, or the severe consequences, or the symptoms of that wound. When we’re concerned with individual, family, and collective healing, we want to dig down into the causes of the wounding and not only be treating the conditions. As I was thinking about this and preparing for our talk today, I’d like to share a couple of illustrative stories quickly. I’m just, really to kick us off in this discussion to get a deeper look into it. So in preparation for speaking with the two of you today, I had these two very strong clinical vignettes come back to me. One is during facilitation of a combat veterans therapy group. Of course, we see many addiction issues in that population. Well, one particular group, a man was struggling with his alcoholism, and he was open with the other veterans about the struggle. We would hope that in a group with everybody sharing the struggles and support that his attraction to his alcohol use would diminish and he would feel safe in the group. Well, the story I want to share was simply that in one group when he was invited to go deeper into his own stories and his own pain, and other veterans were this, that jumped up in the middle of the group and screamed at all of us: “I’d rather be a hundred times an alcoholic than one time a combat veteran. I’m out of here, I’m going back to AA, I’m going to use AA to control my drinking.” And the — curse the rest of them for talking about war, and scream: “I can’t stand it coming for this healing gives me more pain and I just want to go home and drink. So I’m going back to AA and keep your war healing to yourselves.”
“To recognize and really, together be profoundly aware...that the struggle with addictions is a response to trauma.” - Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: So that’s one story and a clear indication of how some of our survivors are in so much pain. They are clearly using their addictive behavior to kill the pain, and the pain and its memory, associated memories are so painful and so severe that as he said: “I’d rather be an alcoholic and I’d rather be in myself [inaudible] programs, getting support for that symptom rather than looking at and feeling what drove me into the condition in the first place.” That’s a negative story or a negative consequence from our issues. But I want to flip the storytelling and tell a very positive outcome, again, to look at these relations between trauma and addiction. Another combat veteran came in for therapy because he had been stopped. He lost his driver’s license, he had three DWS. The courts rightly ordered him into treatment before he could have his license back. Now this veteran tried several alcohol substance abuse rehab programs and he dropped out of all of them, and then he came to me and asked for individual therapy on these issues. Well, when I inquired: “Why did you drop out of these programs?” They’re all established in our communities, good reports, good reputations, and you will remanded to those by the motor vehicles, and the police department, and he said: “I couldn’t work in any of those programs because none of them would let me talk about the war. I need to talk about the war, what I did, and how I feel, and the horrors that I’m carrying in my psyche, and the things I feel guilty about. And they always said, no, no, no. You’re not allowed to talk about the war until you get sober and give up your abuse. Well, I can’t give it up until I talk about the war.” And I told them: “I would give it up if you let me talk about the war.” But protocol says, no, we have to become sober first and then we can talk about the deeper issues. So I trusted this man, I believed him and I said: “Yes. Okay, I’ll make the agreement with you. I’m not going to confront or challenge your substance abuse issues. We’ll talk about the war in the consequences to you, and we’ll watch closely your use and abuse, and see if talking about the cause helps clear that up. And if not, then we’ll have to revisit it and deal with that.” Well, this man did really good and willing therapy. He went deeply into his very painful war memories, and the actions, and we really didn’t talk about his alcohol and drug use, and it really cleaned up spontaneously because we go deeply into what truly was torturing him. And I have seen both of these men, actually, these are decades old cases. And as we might have predicted, the first gentleman who dropped out is a lifelong AA member, which is good, and he works to stay sober, but he’s pretty depressed, and isolated, and lonely, and has never doubt that wound his deeper wounds. Whereas the first man, his life is thriving. He did give up all substances, he’s sober and happy, and his family is recovered and healed with him, and he’s thriving because he went into the cause of his suffering. These two stories help us look at the relationship between trauma and addictions, and what can and can’t work in the healing process, and I’m offering them as a way to project us into this deeper discussion.
Jeff Jones: Thank you. Denise, do you want to respond to the stories?
Denise Klein: Absolutely. Thank you for sharing the vignettes, they’re very poignant, and I guess what comes up for me is that when we’re working with patients in residential care, as a social worker, we’re taught to meet the patient where they’re at. And that’s exactly what you did. And in all honesty, when you’re telling these vignettes, sharing these vignettes, I think it’s so important to understand that all streams we do the same river, and it’s not going to be one size fits all. And that’s what makes dual-diagnosis so complex is because, in regard to the story about the first patient that you treated, he was not, what we say at milestones is when you change the roots, you change the fruit, and he did not want to go to the root of it. And then you have to meet them where they’re at, and basically almost go a harm reduction route. Because if they’re not willing to go back into those, to paraphrase you deep dimensions of pain slowly over time, then it’s going to be a different type of recovery sometimes. So I just applaud you for being so present for your patients and sharing stories that both are successful, but it looks very different, correct?
“All streams lead to the same river and that it's not going to be one size fits all.” - Denise Klein Share on XDr. Edward Tick: Yes, correct. Right. If we just looked at the surface or the singular goal of reducing addiction and the good behavior, then the first story sounds successful. And unfortunately, many of our family members, community members, and care institutions don’t look beyond that. Oh, he’s not drinking, he must’ve been successful, but it’s not right, and we all know that. Where he continues to carry the grief, and alienation, shame, and other feelings associated with his military experiences that we never cleaned out. And unfortunately in particular plus step group he chose, he could continue avoiding them and stay in the group, and just talk about addictive behavior, and keep that under control.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. The one question that I had there was, it was to Ed, about trauma from the standpoint of some people’s reaction like the first man in that story to contract, to close off, to build up a wall. And other people’s reaction is the exact opposite like the other story talks about, and I’m wondering from the standpoint of trauma, can you say a little bit more about why that might be?
Dr. Edward Tick: Yeah. Whenever we’re dealing with trauma and the more intense trauma, we are motivated to close down and defend ourselves against it. So we’re always talking about people, ourselves included, any survivors of trauma have been penetrated by some form of world of violence that has caused us extreme dimensions of pain and psychic numbing as we call it in the mental health world. Going numb against the pain is a very common defense. And families, and Denise, you can comment on this as well please, but families report that the psychic numbness among their family members who are trauma survivors is very often the most disturbing symptom that causes the greatest degree of family distress and breakdown. People put up as difficult as they are, explosions of anger, breaking things, needing to isolate, those are all difficult enough. But families report that, my family member husband, wife, child, it doesn’t matter who is numb, and doesn’t show any emotion, and walks around like a zombie, and we can’t get any real emotional connection, they’ve shut down entirely in order to shut down against the pain, and the grief, and the shame they’re carrying, but that is the most distressing symptom that causes the most breakdown in families. So we really have to be aware of that, look at it, realize that people are defending themselves against extreme dimensions of pain, and with trauma dimensions of pain that, well, non-traumatized people may not even understand how deep, how penetrating, how upsetting it is.
And beyond that, we do treat trauma as a terrible wound, but we treat it as something abnormal out of the ordinary when in fact trauma is part of life. Buddha taught us, life is suffering and we all will suffer. And in the world we’re living in now with all of our national, and global, political, social, historical, financial conditions, we are all being traumatized every single day. We’re all in pain and fear, and we all have to work together to not shut down, but to be safe, and trusting, and have integrity to look at, and feel, and express what’s really going on around us, and develop, restored real community, and be talking about all of these matters all the time, and make it safe for anyone and everyone to be able to enter into, and share their deepest pains. So I no longer think of trauma as it’s tragic but not non-normative. It is a normative part of the experience that should not be pathologized and separated out from the rest of human experience, but rather consider it as an essential archetypal quality of human experience that we all need to deal with together. And opportunities for transformation rather than just wounding that causes breakdown.
Denise Klein: And that reminds me of what you said in the guy [inaudible] podcast is where you talked about bringing it out of the office and into the community, and having these dialogues. Because the three of us can sit here and talk about this today, because probably between all of us, we have at least over a hundred years of working with people who have PTSD. But for the average person, it’s becoming better. However, we need more community education. And I think you’re right, is that it’s happening in the office, one person or one family at a time. But how do we do better to help families and systems from the psychic numbing that’s occurring in society? Because even the practitioners and the doctors are numb because the caseloads are heavy, the needs are high. So that would be my question is I guess, where have you seen that occur? I know you’ve traveled extensively and talked about other cultures, and what would be an action step for us to take in America to do a better job of educating people about trauma?
Dr. Edward Tick: Well, big question. Thank you for asking that. Honored to share some of my experiences and insights from overseas, from really worldwide investigation of these issues. So, well, I’ll jump in with this one. As I think both of you know, I have been leading healing and reconciliation journeys back to Vietnam for a long time. I’ve been working with Vietnam veterans actually since the end of the Vietnam war, so 45 years of veteran work. And then of course, we’ve had so many Wars since then. I’ve become an expert in military trauma. So I’ve worked with veterans and/or their family members just surviving World War I. So really from family members, from veterans of World War I to the present, and with military veterans, actually from the Spanish Civil War to the present Wars. And I have investigated extensively how other cultures today, and also from other times and places have responded to the horrors of massive violent trauma that Wars cause. I’m going to jump to the example of Vietnam, partly because we, Americans, have so much business with Vietnam because of the war, partly because of my great familiarity with, and working culture, and significant research in this that all Americans should know, and that we must learn from. Though the Vietnam, what we call the Vietnam War and they call it the American war, that makes sense. Though there is a massive epidemic level of post-traumatic stress disorder among our veterans. Even though the war was over there in Vietnam, and they had massive casualties as we lost 58,000 people, they had 3 million killed, they had over 5 million wounded, their infrastructure and environment were severely damaged to extreme dimensions. Even with all that, there is no post-traumatic stress disorder in Vietnam. They don’t have work related to PTSD, and it’s directly in response to our concerns today. They have so many preventive and protective factors against traumatic breakdown built into their culture that the people as individuals, families and communities really do resist traumatic breakdown, long term chronic traumatic breakdown, even though horrors of war, and violence, and other forms of trauma.
I have visited them, and we did spend all of our time together discussing what these preventive and protective factors are. So I’ll just summarize a few. And of course, in your program is a residential program, or in our 12 step programs, and in my work with veterans and the soldiers heart retreats, we do some of these practices in smaller, more limited ways. But if we could generalize them to our communities and our nation, we really could transform our conditions into much greatly improved community, national mental health. So for example, a few of the things that are going on in Vietnam. First of all, Vietnam is a Buddhist culture and they have been for thousands of years, and Buddhism is not the official state religion as it is in some countries, but it’s a way of life that completely permeates the people, and that they truly do strive to live up to Buddhist tenets such as, when you were at war, be at war. When you’re at peace, be at peace. So they don’t carry long term anger and resentment. But they said, well, the war ended on April 30th, 1975, we were your friends on May 1st. Why can’t people in the Western World learn and understand that, and also put their weapons down and be friends? They really let go of the past in ways we don’t know how to. Buddhism so permeates the culture, it is a spiritual path for everyone. Whether or not they identify as Buddhists, we teach in recovery that, let go and let God turn your healing over to a higher power. People need to really deeply and collectively be on a spiritual path, and working that spiritual path, and surrounded by others in the family community and ideally in the whole nation. We’re all working the spiritual path together. They have had what we would call Lap groups, or group meetings, or talking circles going on for thousands of years, literally for thousands of years because they’ve been invaded for thousands of years.
“Let go and let God turn your healing over to a higher power.” - Ed Tick Share on XPeople have always gone to their pagodas and their community centers upon return or during breaks, and everybody goes, and everybody talks, and the civilians who stayed at home are there to meet the returning veterans and witness their stories, hear their stories, grieve together, pray together, participate in collective ritual together. So those tending communities as you wish the ranch to be attending community where people are in residence together for awhile and everybody’s involved, not just the identified patient in Vietnam, they do that to an extreme degree. People are not alone, but they’re gathering in their homes, their families, their villages and communities, and all over the country gathering this way to witness, and to talk, and to share, and the cultural norm of talking about your story without fear of shame, or guilt, or blame, or inferiority. That’s not there, nobody’s afraid of talking about their story because everybody has stories, and everybody shares if they have stories too. So communalized in the trauma rather than individualizing it as we do. Everybody’s wounded this way, and in some of us it’s broken down deep trauma. So the person is not pathologized, and the trauma is not individualized. And if we can together in our culture take off the pathological stigma and also realize we are all sharing these wounds, we’re just adapting to them differently, and we need each other, and everybody’s are welcome, then we have means for healing. And the last thing I’ll say from that cultural example, but this also occurs around the world and in different cultures, is that they have extensive public holidays, and public events, ceremonies, rituals for sharing the trauma, grieving its losses, bringing it out into the public, making sure everybody recognizes it. And other people don’t. In many other cultures that have their versions of Memorial day, and veterans day, these are not shopping days at the mall, these are very serious cultural, spiritual holidays where the country’s really shut down and the people do their necessary healing work together. Now we could Institute all of these in our culture, but what we really talking about is significant cultural changes rather than smaller individual changes.
“Take off the pathological stigma and also realize we are all sharing these wounds, we're just adapting to them differently, and we need each other and everybody is welcome. Then we have a means for healing.” - Ed Tick Share on X
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Denise Klein: So I think going back to our own communities, I grew up in a small town in North Dakota, and now I live in California, and I say to Malibu has been my journey. And I think that it’s possible if we start in our own communities with conversations like this, and I know that there are a lot of people in our community that are social workers, therapists, interventionists. Just amazing humans who would love to start a trend of giving more reverence to these days that honestly we haven’t done a really great job in acknowledging. I agree wholeheartedly, and I think that’s a fabulous start and can be done actually in each of our own communities. Taking personal responsibility.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, I agree with you wholeheartedly. And if we wait for the entire nation to do it together, we’re going to be waiting up for a long time.
Denise Klein: Exactly. I’m not waiting for the politicians, let’s be our own politicians, and show up.
Dr. Edward Tick: Right. And there’s the activists face, if the people lead, the leaders will follow, or do we need that now? We have to lead the way.
Denise Klein: More than ever. We’re actually seeing people that enroll in our program because of the stress of our political arena and what’s going on that have actually come in to address deep anxiety, and deep depression, and self-medicating issues. And they have been open about the reason for doing it, which is just all of the stress that’s showing up in our world, our TV sets. And I think that’s why so many people are turning to podcasts too because you get to go tune into something that is real, healthy, and not negative.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, I agree with you. I’m fully with you. I have also heard many reports from individuals and from various recovery programs and groups that many people are turning to substances now in response to our political, social, financial crisis. And so bless you and good for you that you’re not only welcoming them in, but that you’re allowing the residents and the identified patients to talk about those things because we can affirm together as three clinicians that in our earlier years of training and early professional practice, we were taught not to talk about politics, that was a void of what’s really going on. But now I hear just as you shared, Denise, that all over the country, clinicians are saying, people are coming in needing to talk about the political situation because in fact, every one of us is being traumatized every single day by this systemic breakdown. So we have to be able to talk about this, and we have to encourage other clinicians to be willing to talk about these issues rather than think that it’s distracting from the real interest psychic material
Denise Klein: Or repress or repressing them. Because it was about four years ago, we started discussing that at almost every clinical staff, and before we talked about the clients, we would clear what was going on for us so we could hold a better, more healing space for our clients and really actively listen. Because if we are repressing all of this, we are not going to be helpful to our patients. So creating that space with our team has been incredibly helpful. I believe myself and in my other teammates
Dr. Edward Tick: And good for you for this another concern we all share, taking care of your team, making sure your team is clear, and strong, and open, and has looked at the very issues that we need to look at with our clients.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, so Ed, one of the questions that I have here, and I think it’s easy for all three of us to agree that everyone gets traumatized everyday in some way, but I’m not sure that people listening to this, they really understand that. Can you say a little bit more about how they might notice?
Dr. Edward Tick: I notice that when I wake up in the morning, I usually wake up before my wife, before I’m even fully conscious, I look at the daily newspaper. I’m working on myself to read a prayer or a poem and watch the birds feeding before I touched the newspaper because I realized that it immediately puts me in a bad mood. It immediately introduces fear and anger into my day before I’m even awake to the day. So I’m just using that as a small personal example. We, people are walking around more agitated, more frightened, moodier, more scared, more worry, and well, our norm has become terribly wounded and dysfunctional. We all think there was still living and operating in some kind of bellcore curve conventional norm where things are sort of okay, and many people just ducking, and hiding, and hoping the crisis is going to pass, but we’re not. We live in a very disturbed, distress pseudo normalcy, and we all need to recognize how it’s affecting us in little ways as well as big ways, and we may not all become addicts. I would say that even with all of the positive reasons for the legalization of marijuana, medical, and recreational going on around the country, we also have to look at the negative reasons and the degree to which people are so frightened and stressed that the general public is using legal and illegal substances more heavily as a response. That just to try to numb out and float through it in a kind of lessened, numbed out high, and not feel the pain and the distress that we’re all under. So everybody needs to be talking about these matters. And it’s great, Denise, that you’re including staff and family members. And I’d like to ask you as well, are there ways in your program that you have for bringing in other members from the community and enlarging the support and awareness system to radiate out from the ranch and the people participating into the surrounding community, and try to use our struggle to heal, to also be genuine community building?
Denise Klein: That’s a great question. I think we’ve done a lot of that for practitioners and physicians in the community where CEU certified, which means we can give Continuing Education Units to practitioners. So we provide a plethora of opportunities for experts to come in and discuss various topics. Trauma has been covered a great deal in the last three to four years, but I think we could do a better job of helping families. And right now what we’re doing is we’re actually working with Mary Gordon McGraw who ran the family program at the Betty Ford Center for years. And she, and I, and Robert Scholz who was assistant clinical director at Pepperdine, have been having a conversation about doing something maybe almost pro bono, a few dollars per person to come in and get education on addiction, trauma, and codependency. And start with that hopefully this fall so that we have a place in our community in Malibu where people can come in every month for lectures from people who really have been in the field for a very long time, and know exactly what they’re talking about, and are inspirational. And so that is one of our strategies for helping with this epidemic of addiction and psychic numbing that’s happening across the board. And we also, a group of us went to London and we spoke on a panel about this same topic about three months ago at Lee Fitzgerald’s conference, and she’s having another one this fall in London, and it was very well received. I think what people are really doing is going back to, even though this is all macro and mezzo issues, we’re going back to the micro of what can we do instead of waiting for somebody else to do it or our government to do it. We’re saying we’re going to take responsibility, we’re going to change the system, and we’re going to move back into our communities.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yes, and that’s another teaching from the activist movement that we need to pay attention to, and bless you for doing it. Think globally, act locally. These issues affect us, and we need to do what we can do right in our communities, and change this system in our little corner of it. Let me ask you as well, I love what you’re doing, bringing the experts in, and making your, the ranch also a center for public education, and awareness, and spreading what was there, also calling more people into service. That’s great. Do you also have any programs where, while you reverse the direction of travel and you and others on the ranch go out into the community and do any events, or ceremonies, or rituals, or awareness building in the community so that we’re making the issues much more visible, putting them really gently, and responsibly in people’s faces. Another one of these significant efforts at trauma healing in Germany, for example, Germany has been responsible in recent decades about dealing with the Holocaust and its aftermath, and its impact on the German people and on all of us. So now all over Germany, there are memorials on every street wherever Jews or gypsies had believed were taken away and sent to, there’s small memorials in front of every house. There are thousands and thousands of them all over the country. Nobody’s allowed to forget anymore. Yeah. And in high schools, in Germany, field trips to the concentration camps are required. Parts of public education end up the military preparation. Every officer in training in German military has to spend time visiting the camps as well. So this was a horrible national trauma. Germany was silent about it after the war for a while, that generation suffered much. Then the entire nation turned around and embraced the trauma and their responsibility for it, and they’re doing all these things and many others to reconcile, and to keep it in the public mind. So we have things, some things like that going on in our communities locally. I’m thinking of a colleague of mine who lives outside of Philadelphia who is a veteran and a psychologist. This isn’t the only place, but he’s organized well, dog tag trees. People who have lost or prayed for family members, they chose a tree in a public place. They’ve gotten permission from the authorities, and they hang hundreds of dog tags in the trees, and they invite people far and wide to hang dog tags for people. They’re worried about who are overseas, or people who were military schools, so you can’t drive back down that highway.
Denise Klein: Beautiful.
Dr. Edward Tick: You see a couple of hundred dog tags hanging in the tree when you drive to work and forget what’s going on.
Denise Klein: Talk about a visualization, that’s the main thing.
Dr. Edward Tick: That can be small and local that really impact the system and make the public remember, recognized, be aware of it, and then creating opportunities for talking about it together.
Denise Klein: I love all of that. Our alumni have really wanted to be involved with this as well, and in fact, a group of them are creating a musical on trauma and codependency presently, and that’s something that they’re leaning forward with. And we were involved with Christopher Kennedy before he passed away. We had this same dialogue, because like you, he had traveled around the world, and he had more of a macro view than most of us did. And we were going to start these. In fact, we did. It was about a month before he passed away. We had roughly 350 people from the community show up, and he talked about these very things and the solutions. So I think that there are things that you shared that we can do and continue to come up with creative experiential ways of really capturing people’s hearts and their enthusiasm to show up more. And what I really hear that happens overseas is that, it’s just normalized. It’s safe to talk about, it’s okay to talk about it. In fact, not talking about it is the problem. In America, I think that people are just overwhelmed and don’t know how to talk about it, and then they become super sensitive to saying the wrong thing. And is there anything you can say to help in regard to that? How, with the stigma and even just the hypersensitivity, which can be a good thing because people don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. They don’t want to say the wrong thing, but is there any words of wisdom that you can guide us all on in regard to that?
Dr. Edward Tick: Well, you’ve put your finger on several really important matters. The first I want to say, I want to congratulate you and your group on creating the musical that you’re working on. And one of the most effective means, we all know this, but let’s remind ourselves and our listeners, the art, use the arts extensively and in as many creative ways as we can. While arts are extraordinary for healing because they allow and encourage catharsis, and storytelling, and taking the secrets out of their hidden place, and turning them back over to the public. And our performances are forms of public ritual. Even if we don’t make it sacred, we’re still performing in public in a ritualized manner and making what’s private public. So using the arts as much as possible is a good strategy, and the arts are also a safe meeting place. It’s safer to be in front of a play and see somebody’s story being performed than to sit one on one in a small group and listen to somebody’s story directly, and be responsible for a relationship. So the arts are a really good intermediary for doing this work for everybody.
Jeff Jones: Sure.
Dr. Edward Tick: The two nubs of wisdom that you had mentioned that I want to reinforce are that we need to move our public, and professional, and clinical discussions of these matters from, instead of individualizing the wound, we need to communalize it. A difference between what happens in the United States, in the Western World, and what happens in Vietnam, and Asian, or in traditional cultures, is that they communalized. We individualize the trauma or the addiction and then tell the suffering victim that it’s their fault and it’s something with their psychology rather than moving the other way. These are collective wounds we’re all suffering, and some of us cope with it in these negative ways. So we need to communalized rather than individualized, and we need to normalize rather than pathologize.
“We need to communalize rather than individualize. And we need to normalize rather than pathologize.” - Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dr. Edward Tick: What we’re experiencing is normal and healthy, and in fact, you’re in touch with what’s going on around us today, and we all need to be aware the way you are aware, and allow ourselves to feel these things. So we move into normalization and communalisation, and sharing that way. So something I, when I’m speaking with a veteran audience, I always tell them: “You’re not the problem. You’re suffering the consequences, but you’re not the problem. And it’s not your fault. It’s our culture that these actions, and you were operating in all of our names, and we’re all responsible. We all have to carry this together.” It’s educating the public rather than just treating the survivors that really needs to be done to change the system.
“Educate the public rather than just treating the survivors- that really needs to be done to change the system.” - Ed Tick Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah. So Ed, I have a quote here from one of your books, the book Restoring the Warrior’s Soul: An Essential Guide to Coming Home. And the quote is, “Lifelong suffering after war is not inevitable, but in our culture we have unwittingly forced our veterans to carry the moral and social burdens of warfare alone.” And when I read that, boy, I just couldn’t help but see, in my mind seems very similar to addiction, and I’m just curious, what’s your sense there?
Dr. Edward Tick: Oh, I strongly agree with you. Yes. Whether it’s a veteran suffering PTSD or any of the other invisible wounds of war, or a person struggling with addiction issues, or people with other forms of psychosocial breakdown or dysfunction, we over, and over, and over again blame the victim, diagnose the victim, and then feed our massive medical mental health system. It’s actually, while we’re making our livings off it, but the profiteering it’s going on is repulsive and wrong. And the degree to which, of course, we all know this, we turn responsibility over to the pharmacological corporations to come up with more drugs to throw it the symptoms without changing any of the problem, while there may be massive profits on it is horrible. So yes, add people with addictions, and veterans suffering war wounds are really in the same category of vulnerable brothers and sisters who then were the diagnosis we throw at them as a stigma, and then they are patients to be treated for the rest of their lives rather than brothers and sisters who are valuable and we all work together to help restore their lives.
Jeff Jones: Wow.
Denise Klein: It sounds to me like America needs an intervention.
Dr. Edward Tick: Yeah, yes.
Denise Klein: I know you’ve written six books, which book addresses the ideas that you just shared the most. So if someone were to want to dive into this more, we could say get this book, this one will help you understand more about what you experienced.
Dr. Edward Tick: Well, then I would say my most recent published book is Warrior’s Return, and Jeff was quoted restoring the soul after war. Because it’s my most recent, and because it has perhaps the most exploration of worldwide, and cross cultural traditions, and the ways other cultures have interpreted and responded to traumatic wounding. And because it also collects all of the wisdom that I’ve been able to for all these decades from other cultures. And abstracts and generalized that into the necessary steps of healing, and return what occurred after trauma. And as we’ve shared earlier, they are very similar in essence to the 12 steps. So what trauma survivors, and what addiction survivors need to do is really quite similar in taking their fearless moral inventory in making immense addressing the wounds that they’ve caused, and not just as seeking forgiveness and ownership, but making amends and rebuilding the world that we’ve harmed. As you rightly said, so many of your graduates want to go out and do service in realizing that our wounds have transformed us into witnesses, spiritual witnesses who then can turn around and give back to others who are suffering in this way. And so finding forms of meaningful service that give meaning to the suffering we’ve had. I learned how horrible violent trauma is. I have learned how deadly and destructive myself and my family addictions are, and so I’m going to go out and become a witness to this, and go back into the world, sharing this wisdom, reaching out further survivors, and educating the public, and transforming our communities. So there’s really meaningful spiritual and social action that comes with the identity of survivorship.
Jeff Jones: And I, Oh, my gosh, this is such a rich conversation, and I’m aware of the time. So I want to ask both of you, is there something that you wanted to bring into this conversation that we haven’t gone to yet, Denise?
Denise Klein: My thought is just individual empowerment. Don’t wait for someone else to do something, start doing it yourself. And he gave some wonderful examples of things that we can all do, because once you start taking action, you’re really modeling by attraction, and it starts to create a life of its own is what I’ve witnessed in our community. So I’m just so grateful for all the work, rich work you’ve done, and this opportunity to be here with you, Jeff, and all you do for families. I know you do so much in Colorado and so much outreach in you, and just so grateful to be part of this dialogue today.
“Don't wait for someone else to do something, start doing it yourself.” - Denise Klein Share on XJeff Jones: Yeah, yeah. I know I have been very inspired, and I’ve written down a number of ideas that I can go.
Denise Klein: Exactly.
Jeff Jones: So Ed, things that you wanted to bring in that we haven’t touched on.
Dr. Edward Tick: That we haven’t touched on. I would underline some of the things that we have touched on.
Jeff Jones: Okay, please.
Dr. Edward Tick: Bring it out into the community. Bring the work out into the community. Don’t just keep it in the consulting room. Take some risks that feel somewhat unconventional and unsafe for us as clinicians, we’re used to working privately and confidentially, but we need to bring the work out. Respectfully, carefully, but break out of those boundaries and enter into a shared consciousness of the wounds that we’re all carrying. And I use this as a mantra for myself because working with war survivors, I’ve had to be able to keep my heart open to witness extraordinary dimensions of violence and pain. And so the mantra that I use for myself that I want to share with all of us is, walk through hell with your heart wide open. We are all in an apocalyptic time, and we need to keep our hearts open to it and to each other, and share what is really going on inside or each of us and all of us. So it’s okay for us to allow our eyes to be flooded with tears as we’re talking about matters. And that’s good modeling rather than as we were taught in the old days, we really detached, and objective, and don’t show your humanity. We need to show our humanity and share it, as long as it’s in service to the people that we’re tending and not calling attention to ourselves. But the real, be authentic, keep our hearts open, get out of our consulting rooms and into the community with this wisdom. And yes, activate and empower our survivors to be part of this healing movement that we are all trying to nurture together.
Jeff Jones: Beautiful. Beautiful. Denise, any last words?
Denise Klein: No, it’s just a lot to percolate on it. Beautiful and it so inspiring.
Jeff Jones: Oh, my gosh.
Denise Klein: And I know I’m gonna go back and listen to this over and over, and send it out to all my friends to get them fired up. So God bless you for all you’re doing, and your dedication to the veterans and to the world.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Well, thank you both. I really appreciated this, and yeah, I’m going to listen to this a number of times myself, and there’s a lot of really great info here that I want to absorb and percolate on, but thank you both.
Dr. Edward Tick: Thank you, and thank you Denise, bless you both, and honored to be on this mission with two such beautiful souls as you.