July 3, 2024 • 42 mins
What if your traumas could become the catalyst for your greatest strengths? Join us on an heartfelt exploration with Dr. Hayden Duggan, a remarkable psychologist and founder of Onsite Academy, as he shares his compelling journey from being a firefighter, paramedic, and EMT to becoming a beacon of hope for public safety personnel. Dr. Duggan’s experiences with the Boston Police Stress Support Unit and Boston EMS Peer Support Team set the stage for an eye-opening discussion on mental health and resilience. Adding a unique twist, we delve into his intriguing connection to France, offering a rich historical context to his impressive career and personal life.
We recount the emotional toll and transformative power of the Worcester Cold Storage Fire in 1999, spotlighting the unexpected paths our lives can take when confronted with immense challenges. Dr. Duggan’s anecdotes about working in group homes and dealing with developmental disabilities provide a profound look at the significance of therapy. Emphasizing the critical role of mental health support, he shares a personal story of how the Rorschach test unveiled deeper struggles, including an alcohol dependency, underscoring the importance of therapy in navigating life's complexities.
The journey continues as we examine the severe impact of trauma on mental health through stories like Tim’s, a first responder plagued by PTSD after a heart-wrenching firefight. Dr. Duggan explains how structured debriefing processes and peer support made a world of difference in Tim's recovery, showcasing the necessity of tailored interventions for those who witness traumatic events. The episode wraps up with a call to action for creating ongoing support systems for police, fire, and EMS personnel, highlighting the dire need for programs akin to those available for recovering addicts or prisoners. This conversation is a crucial reminder of the importance of professional help in overcoming mental health and substance abuse issues.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy
.
The goal of this podcast is todemystify therapy, what can
happen in therapy and the widearray of conversations you can
have in and about therapyThrough personal experiences.
Guests will talk about therapy,their experiences with it and
how psychology and therapy arepresent in many places in their
(00:26):
lives, with lots of authenticityand a touch of humor.
Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Bonne année, grand année.
Thank you, happy New Year, andif you want to look grand année,
you can go ahead and look it up.
My name is Steve Bisson.
This is the premiere episode ofseason 11, or episode 133 of
Finding your Way Through Therapy.
Very excited to be here for an11th season.
I'm looking very much forwardto you guys listening and if
(00:54):
you're on YouTube, you're goingto see that I'm going to try to
do these intros and the outrosthat I do recorded like on video
so you can see them.
So this is my first time doingit.
Any feedback is always welcome.
So this is what I'm doing.
But for episode 132, if youlisten to it, as my guests
talked about their experiencelast year on my podcast finding
your way through therapy and itwas really good, so please go
(01:16):
back and listen to that.
But episode 133 will be partone of two with Dr Hayden Duggan
.
Dr Hayden Duggan wrote a fewbooks, but Dr Hayden Duggan also
is the founder of the OnsiteAcademy in Gardner,
massachusetts, a residentialtrauma treatment and training
program for public safetypersonnel.
He's the team clinician forBoston Police Stress Support
(01:38):
Unit and is the chiefpsychologist for the Boston EMS
Peer Support Team.
He's worked in many fields.
He is a former firefighter,he's a paramedic, he's an EMT.
He will talk about that, I'msure, during the interview, and
I'm going to separate it in twobecause I know this is recorded.
You know we recorded it and Iknow this is a two-part episode
(01:58):
for me.
So I know he's going to talkabout that.
He's going to talk about that.
He's going to talk about otherof his experience.
But just a fascinating guy.
This is a guy I've been chasingdown for about six months to
have this interview.
But Hayden is a genuine person,very interesting, and here is
his interview.
Well, hi everyone and welcome tothe first episode, episode 133,
(02:20):
of Finding your Way ThroughTherapy.
I am Steve Bisson.
You've known me for a while.
Season 11 is upon us and I havesomeone who we you know he's a
busy guy, I'm a busy guy.
We finally got together.
I'm excited beyond any possibleimagination anyone could have.
But uh, dr hayden duggan issomeone who has been referred to
(02:41):
me by so many people how howgreat he is.
He started a bunch of differentthings that I'm going to let
him talk about, but I told himbefore this interview that it's
an honor for him, for me to talkto him and he returned the
favor and I'm like no, believeme, it's my honor.
He said people said good thingsabout me and I said who's lying
and why are they lying to you?
But at the end of the day, dayjust very happy to have him.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Welcome to finding your way through therapy.
My pleasure great to be here,my friend and um, as we say, I'm
not any busier than anybodyelse, just less organized hey,
welcome to the club right, aswitnessed by the fact that,
although you sent me multipleemail I mean mean multiple text
messages, et cetera I still, onthe day in question, said oh
yeah, it's 1030.
(03:29):
Just anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
You know it was funny when I saw you at that 30, I
was actually in a session I'mgoing to share this with the
audience and.
I saw you're like I'm waitingand I'm like.
I told my client.
I'm like can you wait onesecond?
And I responded quickly becauseI'm like he's going to sit
there for like 30 minutes.
I can't do that to them.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I would have, that's me, and I had moved somebody to
12, from 1230 to 1030, so thatwe could anyway the other way
around.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
But here we are Great to be here, steve, and I'm glad
to know that it should be saltand not pissing.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Thank you very much.
See, you know, I know you wentto Canada in November, so now
you know, how to say everythingin French suddenly.
That's what happens when you goto Canada.
Well, actually I lived inFrance for a while.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I mean great.
I'm actually one of the fewpeople that really, really loved
it.
I was in the south of France,where it was mostly rural and
farming people, and they werefabulous, so anyway that was.
I don't want to go to the otherside, yes, and where they say
55 is not 5 or 5.
It's 5 or 5.
5 or 5.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yes.
And then Paris, and where theyhate the Parisians as much as
Americans do.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Hate them with pure white hatred.
Pure white, hot hatred, Ishould say.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's what I tell people all the time.
I said you wouldn't besurprised how much most French
people hate the Parisians,except the ones in Paris.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Which is awful because it's such a gorgeous
city, but anyway, people kind ofsuck at that.
But, that's not all of france atall.
No, you know, and we mustremember, it was the french
soldiers that dunkirk, at thevery end, that saved our asses
and are responsible for like 300000 british troops getting off
(05:18):
that beach because and all thosefrench soldiers died and they
stood there and took theoncoming German fire which, had
they used tanks, they would havebroken through, but they didn't
because they wanted to save thetanks for later.
So, yeah, that was the French,and remember our own revolution,
and the French came just intime.
Anyway, I'll shut up, that'snot what we're going to talk
(05:39):
about.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
We could talk about history all forever, because I
love history.
It's part of one of my favoritethings.
Learn about history, as my oldman used to say when he was
alive.
Learn about history becausethose who don't know about it
are doomed to repeat it, and Idon't want to repeat history
sometimes.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Indeed.
And you know, my wife says ifyou ask me what the weather is,
I give you the history ofmeteorology, so it's terrible of
meteorology, so that's terrible.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well, you know we've been.
You know I I kind of like threwa lot of like great things at
you and obviously you returnedthem back.
But maybe people know about meand they know I'm not that great
.
How about and I'm joking, ofcourse um, how about you talk a
little bit about who you are andtell me about yourself?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
well, well, wow, that's a not interesting
question, but I'm a mentalperson, as we call us in the
first responder world.
Yes, I'm, I'm duly diagnosed.
I love the kind of work you do.
We both love doing treatmentand I like crisis intervention
work.
I go back to the days when inthe 70s that was great stuff
(06:47):
Wrote a couple of unread booksand I won't inflict on you what
was about empathy and the othersabout crisis intervention, long
since out of print.
And then I well, how did I getinto emergency services?
My old man had a heart attackand he survived it.
He was a bull, very strong, andI didn't know what to do.
(07:08):
I felt really stupid and I wasin my late 20s, I guess at that
time.
I happened to be home when ithappened and so I said well, I'd
like to be an EMT.
I had no background in emergencyservices at all.
My brother's in the military,maybe I was about 28, I think 26
(07:31):
, 28.
Maybe I wanted a uniform, whoknows?
My local department was hostingan EMT course, a little bit
like the draft.
They said, yeah, no, you cantake it free.
It was expensive in those days,but you got to give us a couple
of years of service on theambulance.
I said, sure, it's fine by me,and that's how it all started.
(07:53):
I got on the meat wagon, as wecall it, and I actually liked it
a lot.
Not that I was all that good atit, but I liked it.
And then you know well, whenyou're there you got to do the
firefighter one deal.
I said, oh okay, so I didn'tknow anything about fires, nor
did I want to Scared the shitout of me.
(08:14):
I figured oh well, I got to doit.
So then I took the plan.
I became a call firefighter fora department.
Back in those days, when mostof the departments were heavily
called, we didn't have as manyprofessional full-time
firefighters.
It was very busy A lot of firesin the 70s.
My God, I loved it.
I loved firefighting to thepoint where and I did it
(08:38):
part-time so it helped me getthrough graduate school I was on
scholarship.
Where'd you go for graduate?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
school Harvard, excuse me.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
That's just why I don't tell anybody.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I know A little bird told me you wouldn't talk about
it, so I figured I'd just say it.
You opened it up.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I was very, very lucky.
I went to a program calledClinical Psychology and Public
Practice.
It was an experimental program,clinical Psychology and Public
Practice.
It was an experimental program.
It lasted about 25 years andyou couldn't be part of the
program unless you were willingto do public practice, work for
public agencies Later on.
If you want to do privatepractice, that was up to you,
but you had to.
All our internships were inpublic settings.
(09:21):
So it was a good beginning tolearn.
You know, working in placeslike DYS or jails or working for
locked state hospitals, thingslike that.
That's where I sort of started.
But the other side was thefirefighting side and I loved it
(09:43):
and to the point where Iapplied to go full time would
have been my career.
But they were adding a lot offirefighters and there was 14
guys in front of me who had been.
You know they were townies.
They grew up, lived in the town, fought fires as Eagle Scouts,
became part-time firefighters.
(10:03):
They were way ahead of me so Iwas hopeless so I didn't even
try them.
Later on I became part-time.
I was very happy and retired asa deputy many years later.
But I tried to never forgetwhere I came from.
So those are the two sides, theduly diagnosed, either a
psychologizing firefighter or afirefighting psychologist.
(10:27):
I don't know which, um, but itdid I tell you how.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
About a great human that's?
Always good that's a good,that's a good start for me one
thing it does is for me, forthis old dude.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
it kept me very humble because, um, there's no
real place to hide in the fireground and you can be as
arrogant or foolish as yourselfyou are.
And so the defecation you hitthe roadie blades, to put it
politely, and you ran out of airand there's zero visibility.
(11:00):
You suck on your mask and youlost the wall.
You have no freaking idea whereyou are and you feel like
you're going to lose bladdercontrol.
In fact, once I did.
And then you realize okay, this, this stuff is real and it can
kill you and uh.
So let's, let's not get too,let's just stay right size, you
(11:22):
know.
So when nature overwhelms you,I think that's a good experience
.
But anyway, um, yeah, I stayedin for almost 40 years, on and
off retired, in a little smalltown which I love, where I live
here now um and uh, and was apart-time deputy, although when
you're on, when you have thatstanding, you're always that
(11:44):
standing, you're always on callbecause you're always listening,
with a third ear to hear.
You know, did the bus get outof the barn, the ambulance, or
who was on engine two and etcetera?
Oh, I better get going, becausethat's not the crew we want for
that.
So my family just put up withall of it that.
So my family just put up withall of it.
(12:06):
And everybody in emergencyservices knows they miss
Thanksgiving's.
They're running out the door onChristmas Eve, your kid's
birthday party, oh, dad's gone.
You know, children of firstresponders, let alone spouses,
really are a different breedthemselves in terms of
resilience, in terms of justgetting used to.
(12:27):
You know, dad loves to do this,her mom loves to do this.
They're nuts, but it's the wayit is.
I always remember one thing too,and it wasn't fighting the fire
, it was CISM.
The night of the Worcester coldstorage fire my chief came by
and said get in To me and mywife, we're going.
And we got there at about eighto'clock.
(12:49):
The fire had started at 613.
And by the time we got thereall six firefighters were
declared lost.
And that was a night that I'llnever forget.
We did all death notenotifications with Kathy Minahan
and my wife who had lost herhusband in a Charlestown
warehouse fire, ladder 15, over20 years ago.
(13:09):
So a sidebar is that after thecoal storage fire, valerie and
Kathy started a group forspouses who lost a loved one in
the line of duty, called theWings Group.
Winners in's a need of griefservices.
But that night we were sostressed, I guess, or so shocked
(13:30):
, that when we came back at 4 am, um, and we went back and spent
the next eight days there inthe tent, um, we drove right
past our driveway.
You know they talk about, whenyou're having a real post-trauma
symptom, perceptual distortionswhich I'd never really
experienced, even in the size ofthings, and they also talked
(13:52):
about deja vu and jamais vu.
You know that I'm referring tosomething I think I've already
seen, but I actually haven't.
I've never been there.
But jamais vu is also being ina place.
I should know it's familiar butI don't even recognize it.
There's 31 chemicals in thestress response and they are
(14:15):
powerful and they can haveeffects on cognition.
It was 4 am.
We're driving down a dirt roadin Hubbardston and I drove right
past my own driveway and mywife looked at me.
I looked at her.
I said where are we?
She said I don't know where youare, but we just passed her own
(14:37):
driveway.
That was a powerful, verypowerful night.
So yeah, you kind of stay rightsize in those things.
I don't know how I got off onthat.
Let me shut up.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
We were talking about different things in your career
, retiring and all that.
And I think that for me, youknow, worcester, massachusetts,
december 3rd 1999, will beetched in stone in my head and
the Worcester Six is somethingthat's very near and dear to me,
because I was watching TV, Iwas working in a group home that
day.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
We've had similar experiences, yep.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And remember, like as a when I came into this field I
wanted to work with kids.
I end up in a developmentaldisabled home with people who
have Pratt or Willie, and I'mwatching this and I'm like now I
have this intense urge to goand help mentally, not
physically, because I don't havethat capacity for people with
first responders.
(15:31):
So when people ask where youfall you know how did you fall
in this job?
I say ask backwards, it's noteven what I wanted.
And for me, know how did youfall in this job?
I say ask backwards, it's noteven what I wanted.
Um, and and for me it'srealizing that things that
really hit you are just thosethings that you got to remember.
So I don't know if that waslike the um.
Oh, my god, this is what mycalling is, so to speak.
But it was certainly an acornthat was planted in my head,
because all I can do is thinkabout what are the other fight
(15:54):
like?
I didn't.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I knew the other towns there, but I can't imagine
being in the city of Worcester,a firefighter, knowing your six
brothers are in there and Ican't imagine We've had a very
close relationship withWorcester fire for years for
that reason and a guy namedSpike Wallace who's since passed
away, but he was an amazing guy.
(16:15):
He was a Vietnam guy who waswounded and he was on Cambridge
rescue a very smart, intelligent, an amazing guy.
He was a Vietnam guy who waswounded and he was on Cambridge
Rescue.
A very smart, intelligent, justgreat guy.
One of the founders of criticaland stress management in the
Commonwealth.
He and I were in the tent rightat the bottom of the building,
so they stretched yellow tapethat when you came off the deck,
(16:39):
every one of these places has aname for it.
You know Worcester was the deckand New York was the pile and
Oklahoma City was the pit, andwhen you come off these things-
on the job.
I don't mean as doing the stresswork.
You know there's usually aplace where you go for like
racks and a rehabilitationcenter.
(17:02):
So that was ours in the tent,and Spike was the person who
kind of got us started in doingthat kind of stuff at the Cold
Storage Fire.
We were there all eight daysand we've always had a close
relationship with all thoseWorcester folks.
However, I identify with whatyou did because that's how I
(17:22):
started.
I started working after I gotmy degree.
I started working for DYS,started working group homes,
ended up working for theRetarded and then I ended up
ending a first marriage after 13years.
It had its shelf life.
We went separate ways.
We're still very cordial today,thank God, and we co-parented
(17:47):
our kids.
But at that time I went intotherapy because I felt like I
was a mess, plus I was drinkinga lot.
That's how I dealt with mystress.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Now here's another dual diagnosis you were talking
about.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
That's true, and I think this was when I was 36.
How I got into it isinteresting.
I had a supervisor atChildren's Hospital where I did
my postdoc, who was great, andshe said, listen, hey, you got
to learn how to give theRorschach.
And I said, ok, it's my leastfavorite instrument, but so I
(18:28):
had to take it in order to giveit and one of the cards.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And I'm going to stop for a second.
Rorschach is a is aninterpretive test where it's ink
blocks for those who don't knowwhat it is.
Is an interpretive test whereit's ink blocks for those who
don't know what it is.
It's a very much interpretive,unfortunately not very reliable
or valid testing, but I just incase people don't know what it
is.
Part of finding your waythrough therapy is to make it as
clear as I can about whattherapy looks like, what we're
(18:53):
talking about, so I apologizefor it.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
No, I apologize for just throwing it out there.
I should have explained thesame thing.
So, yeah, it's a projectivetest but, as you say, it's not
very reliable, but it can beinteresting.
In my case it probably, youknow, saved my sanity because
I'm the color shock card.
There's one card that everybodyfreaks out on where they see a
monster, whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I a monster, whatever .
I stopped talking.
Oh, and I stared at the card.
That's not interpretive, by theway, that the roshak, I think,
is interpretive, but when yousee people's reaction to it,
that's something you can visiblyobserve and I think there's
psychological value in that.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
You're not kidding and I went someplace else and I
got the lits in on me all lumpand throat.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And I'm looking at this card.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
The room got very silent, still started to spin a
little bit.
She was very kind and very niceto me, said Hayden, I think you
need to see somebody.
So she got me to a fabulousshrink.
I loved him because he swore hewas a combat vet.
He was.
I thought he was the directorof outpatient psychiatry at
McLean.
Just a down to earth guy, right, really made me feel cared
(20:02):
about.
And I'm saying all this becauseI was not doing any treatment
myself yet I was still workingfor state agencies and I was
doing 90 hours a week and whatdo you know, I got an ulcer and
it was in the midst of losing aweek.
And what do you know?
I got an ulcer and, of course, Iwas in the midst of losing a
marriage and was also drinkingmyself into oblivion, not
(20:25):
knowing that I had an alcoholproblem, until my sponsor
eventually said to me Hayden,you might not think you're an
alcoholic, but you'll do untilone comes along.
In the meantime, why don't youjust start dealing with it?
But, anyway, physician, healmyself.
So he said to me, the shrinksaid you're working with the
(20:47):
retarded and I said yeah, I'mgoing to link this to CISM and
understanding why incidentsbother us.
He said why are you doing thisto yourself?
Are you at this this many hours?
You have an ulcer now and yougot 90 hours a week.
(21:08):
What, what?
What are you?
Are you trying to make them allunretarded?
He said what connection do youhave to this?
And my God, it was like I justgot hit with a two by four.
I had a younger sister who wasretarded and she died and I was
(21:29):
eight years old when thathappened and I never got to live
with her because in those daysthe prevailing wisdom of
pediatrician was stick them ininstitutions.
We wouldn't do that now.
She died in institution and Iguess that had a much deeper
effect on me than I knew.
So he worked with me many years, a wonderful guy and eventually
(21:49):
I got in the fire department,continued to be a psychologist
living in the town that I was in.
We had a working fire, whichthere were many in those days,
and I just remember you knowCaptain Copeland on the phone on
the radio, who was the brotherof Don Copeland, who was a
famous weather forecaster atthat time.
And Copeland, as we called him,was very quiet.
(22:12):
He was a tough guy, kind.
You know.
If you got three words out ofhim you were getting a lot.
And I just remember I was noton duty.
He tore past my house licensedsiren.
I just heard him say on theradio very quietly, step on it.
People trapped.
That's all Kobe had to say.
So I dropped what I was doing.
(22:33):
I was only a block from thefire station.
So so I got on H 24 first, whichI liked because I was the only
one that could drive it, becauseyou had a double clutch on
upshifts, and I really enjoyedit.
Captain Belmont got in the seatnext to me, a couple of
firefighters.
We arrived unseen and I won'ttell you the story of the fire,
but it was whipping.
We had fire blowing out underthe eaves.
(22:55):
Basically, what had happenedI'll be brief was that a family
was coming back from a skiingvacation.
They drove all night.
Dad went to work.
There was about 7 o'clock inthe morning.
Mom got out of the car it wasFebruary, there was ice, there
was snow and she's unpacking andthe daughter.
The daughter, little Kimberly,12 years old, said Mom, just go
(23:17):
into the house, I'll be upstairs, okay, mom's unpacking.
Literally like five minuteslater the whole house erupts.
What we forgot is that firegoes up and out.
Yeah, so here we see the secondfloor with smoke puffing out
under the eaves and we think thefire's on the second floor.
(23:38):
So we said to the motherwhere's your daughter?
She said she's on the secondfloor.
We did a balls-up search on thesecond floor Zero visibility.
I found the family dog, goldenretriever, dead, threw it down
the stairs.
We had two firefighters injured.
Finally we had to bail out downthe stairs.
Over ladders All fires go outeventually, right, but this one
(24:00):
was ripping and it wassurrounding down from the
outside, so finally it went out.
And then they said, doug, youknow, take a kooker downstairs
and do overall in the basement.
So I'm in the basement pickingthrough, you know, drop down
from the ceiling, sharp likesnow lower blades and everything
smokes beginning to lift, andover by the cellar, sharp like
snow lower blades and everythingSmoke's beginning to lift, and
over by the cellar stairs, I seewhat looks like a garbage bag.
(24:25):
I said, oh, what the F is that?
And it was like figure grounddistortion, like you're focusing
an old slide projector.
Whoa, that comes into focus.
That's a kid.
The charge remains of a kid.
Was in a focus?
That's a kid.
The charge remains of a kid.
And what had happened, steve,was that she decided to go down
to the basement where they had arumpus room and just watch tv.
(24:46):
They've been up all night.
She wanted to relax for aminute, lay down the couch.
She hit the light switch.
Gas had been escaping theentire time they'd been on the
vacation.
That one flicked the switch andit was a gas-fed fire.
It exploded but it went up andout.
Nothing we could have savedthere if we'd known.
But we went to the wrong floor,right, you missed it.
(25:09):
So I ended up shoveling theremains into a body bag, didn't
really think much of it.
You didn't at the time.
Just do your fucking job andshut up, so shovel in.
I remember being surprised athow heavy the internal organs
were the liver, the lung, theheart, the kidneys, stomach.
And then I didn't think much ofit, because what do we do?
(25:30):
We went out and got drunk.
That's how we handle stuff inthose days.
In fact that's what wasencouraged Put out the fire,
step over the body and go getdrunk.
So, eddie West, I was going totell you where you can find a
Bloody Mary breakfast at like 10o'clock in the morning by that
time at the Concord TrafficCircle, yeah, howard Johnson's,
(25:53):
they would see us coming in,looking like we looked.
They'd say the back room, therewe go, the back room.
They'd keep us away from theother customers.
Why am I saying all this?
It effed me up to a fairly well.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Feel free to say the whole word if you want to.
I don't do editing on there's.
No, uh, there's, no, there's, Idon't.
I don't do, uh, editing on thatI appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
So to finish this up and thank you for listening to
it, it's a little long-winded,but it was a seminal event in my
life right, that's why it's notlong-winded, if it's seminal in
your life, but good it didn'twork out too well, um, and I did
have nightmares and flashbacks,as you would have expected,
only because I was so up closeand personal with her.
(26:37):
And I finally went into therapyand I had to get sober because
I was drinking myself into astupor trying to get rid of that
stuff.
And, as they later teach you inthe trauma work, alcohol is not
(26:58):
only central nervous systemdepressant but it does make
flashbacks and nightmares morevivid.
The colors are more vivid andit'll knock you out and put you
to sleep, which is what I wantedbecause I couldn't sleep.
But then you wake up three orfour hours later, fitful, you're
still in your bdus, you gotshit shower shaving, you get to
roll call, I get to work seveno'clock and you go for years
(27:19):
like that no sleep, alcohol, updown, up down, adrenaline
exhaustion.
Adrenaline exhausted, medicated, go to work over time.
That doesn't work too good.
And so what happened to me is,about eight years later, my
department said to me because bythen I was doing some of this
work, I had become a forensicdoctor, I was working for the
(27:42):
courts, I know JL, this is along story, but I wasn't working
with kids anymore, which hadbeen my career for like 15 years
or the retarded, but um, for ajob.
It was the courts and it was agood job and I enjoyed it.
But, um, my department said youknow, there's this new stuff
called critical stressmanagement and, uh, you want to
(28:04):
take a look at it?
Uh, because if you do, we willsend you folks to be helped.
At that time I happened to bethe veterans agent in town.
I was seeing vets free.
My idea of helping them was tosit on my porch and drink Jim
Beam with them.
That was great.
I thought it was great.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
They loved coming to my house.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, I'd go see you for therapy too.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
That's why I stopped drinking too, so now I'm getting
sober.
You've taken away my bestfriend.
I can't sleep.
I still got the images, but atleast I'm not drunk and there's
no order of alcohol in thecourts.
So I went to this program 1989this was and it was taught by
(28:48):
Vicki Harris, who was one of theearly instructors in critical
distress management, and she wasa fabulous speaker.
And I'm there wrapped withattention in a room of 155
firefighters, nashville, newHampshire, and I'm learning a
lot.
I'm way up the back row and shegets to the Hackensack Fire.
I'm trying to talk abouttriggers and events and how you
(29:10):
connect dots.
And the Hackensack Fire was afamous fire in the CISM lore
because what happened was it waslike the cold storage fire in
the sense that there was a wideopen space in the garage.
When they first came in, therewas no smoke, nothing.
They had their masks hangingdown.
(29:30):
What they didn't realize is thefire was ripping in a crawl
space between the ceiling andthe roof, which was concrete and
sealed completely.
So, the fire had no place to gobut down and we couldn't have
vented it because of the roof.
So they walked in, theHackensack firefighters, and it
(29:53):
was one engine crew with alieutenant and five guys, and
they got way far in.
All of a sudden there's areason I'm telling you this it
broke through and the fire camerushing down, just like what
happened to the firefighters.
I know, you know the story, theCold.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Storage.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Fire, that whoomp, when that petroleum-based
insulation let go.
All at the same time thebuilding called storage fire
erupted.
Same thing in hackensack.
And these guys, they'refirefighters.
They put on their masks.
The lieutenant took them to a,a paint locker, a closet in the
back.
They couldn't go back to theinstance.
They came in and they had asteel door.
(30:31):
They closed themselves in andthey couldn't get out because
there was bars on the on thefirst floor window but they had
comms.
So this lieutenant is verycalmly saying yeah, we're stuck
in a paint locker here.
If you can just rip off these,is these grates on this window,
we'll be OK.
But we can't go out the way wecame.
Nobody heard him came.
(30:56):
Nobody heard him.
In those days.
They only had one channel onthe fire ground and the chief
was directing the fire from theoutside.
Multiple incoming units fromother towns, his whole
department there.
Now this thing is ripping.
It started out as just not evensmoking the building possible
fire is now a conflagration, buthe's got a crew way in the back
.
This is before.
We had good you know,procedures around keeping track
(31:17):
of people in a large area,search, et cetera, and they
couldn't.
They couldn't get out and theythey remained very dignified,
just like the cold, the coldstorage, the Worcester Six,
right till the end.
So he thinks like, okay, comeget us, it's getting hot in here
, we're running out of air,right, and you know when that
ding, and then the mass sucksand then you start to ding, ding
(31:39):
, ding, you're out of air sookay we're breathing off the
floor, we're buddy breathing,and they get sounding more
urgent.
They never once lost their cooluntil finally it just stopped.
Nobody on the fire ground heardthem, but everybody in scanner
land heard them, as true in theWorcester Cold Storage Fire.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Many of those families of firefighters lived
in that area and they heardtransmissions of the dying
firefighters.
So, although at that time theCold Storage Fire hadn't
happened yet, we learned a lotbecause the cops came on scene
after it was out and said hey,don't worry, We'll take care,
We'll get you guys out, youdon't need to see that.
(32:21):
The firefighters said excuse me, we take our own people out and
they said well, let us takecare of the buyers of the ME
techs.
We'll take care of it.
They said no you're taking andthere was a fist fight.
So the Gemini team one of thefirst teams in the nation that
was so well regarded with fire,cism team, critical and stress
(32:42):
manager team as you know,everything's volunteer as a
clinician, as a trained teamthat team came in and really had
their hands full because theygot to mend fences between
police and fire.
So that was a fire that wasvery emotional for the crowd to
(33:03):
watch.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
To me.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I started to feel nauseous, I had a rapid
heartbeat and I really felt sickand dizzy.
I got up and I walked out and Iwent to the water fountain
outside and there was a verykind, compassionate EMT named
Neil Bradwin from Boston AMS whohad started their peer support
team and he came up behind me,put his hand on my shoulder.
(33:29):
I jumped like silly he saidyou're getting triggered, aren't
you?
I said yeah, but neil, I oh youintroduce himself.
I don't know why because, uh,I've never been in a huge, large
area search like that, I'venever been in that level of fire
.
He said there's nothing to dowith it.
When your body reaches acertain level of heart rate and
(33:51):
fight or flight and increasedblood flow of the muscles and
all the stuff that's going on inyour brain, you process
information two to ten timesfaster than normal.
It doesn't know that it's notback in something else.
When else have you been thatscared Kimberly Jollyfire that
was easy for me.
So.
So at that point point I gotcism trained.
(34:13):
I did love working with thefolks.
Um, obviously we did everythingfree and I'm almost done the
long story of how we got to theon-site.
I got the help I needed, I didget sober.
I stopped working on thedepartment for quite a while, um
, probably four years, and Ijust concentrated on doing this
(34:35):
stuff.
And they brought a firefighterto me and said you know, we're
going to give you our very best.
His name is Tim Tenney.
1991, the Nickel Street housefire in Gardner.
It was the same kind of thingballoon construction fire, ie
there's a space between thefloors and the walls and the
(34:57):
fire travels up that space.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
So in a balloon construction fire you look in
the basement for the origin,even if it's in the in the
ceiling in the third story,because that's where it started
yes up the side of the buildingso, tim, and just just to stop
you for a second, also to leteveryone know that that's the
construction that was veryprevalent in the new england
(35:20):
area for many, many, many years.
So this is not something likepeople like said oh yeah, this
is going to cause fires, itwasn't purposeful, but this is
something of old structures ofold new england from the late
1800, early 1900.
So I just want to throw thatout so that people don't go and
wait a minute.
Well, why did they build themthat way?
Well, yeah, duh, we didn't knowany better.
(35:40):
That's why.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
But right, I'm sorry.
No, thank you second time.
I thank you um, because I getcranked up and then I forget um
that that's why I'm here.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I'm just just sitting here just listening.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
No, that makes a big difference.
Thanks, anyway, particularlywith Victorian structures.
So Tim and his partner, who wasa Vietnam vet tank commander,
went into this basement Heavy,heavy fire.
My department was there but Iwas not on it yet that was how
much that I was living andacting and they sounded the all
(36:14):
out to get everybody out,because all three fours were
fully involved Tim and hispartner in the basement, because
they'd been told there werethree children there.
The fire had actually startedwhen the mom went across the
street to play cards and drinkwith a friend, she left all
three kids in this basementapartment.
It was one of their birthdays.
(36:36):
They tipped over a candle andstarted the fire.
Anyway, I think the kids were.
The baby was about six monthsold, the kids were two and four
very little.
Tim and his partner were notgoing to leave the ground floor.
Again, zero visibility.
They had what's called arollover, not a flashover, but
the fire was rolling over theirheads all the way down the
(36:56):
hallway and they couldn't forthe life of them find these kids
To this day.
Tim, who's still the chairmanof our board 30 years later,
will tell you that he swearsthat he couldn't possibly have
heard this.
This over the noise of steamwindows breaking, diesel engines
(37:16):
, pumps cranking up, peopletalking, yelling through their
masks, all the sounds of firecombat.
He swears, and so does hispartner, davy up guard, that he
will swear that he heard as hepassed one of the words uh, one
of the the rooms.
He heard a sound like this mom.
That's what he heard and hecouldn't have steve.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
There was weight, there was so much noise you
couldn't hear a thing they wentinto that room and they found,
under underestimated by thepublic, how loud a fire truly is
it really, and they found bothkids in there, so they carried
both kids out.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
in those days um, we didn't have, um, a hyperbaric, a
hyperbaric chamber in this day.
So they got life led to me.
They couldn't save the baby,unfortunately, so they said
we're going to bring this guy Iwas still living and after then,
what we're gonna?
We're gonna bring this kid toyou to do something, because
(38:14):
CISM was very new.
Then All I did, honest to God,was 60 briefings with him, the
standard seven-phase model,which is not therapy.
It's a treatment for a criticalincident.
It's definitely a crisisintervention treatment, but it's
very structured.
It's a structured discussiondesigned to have a very positive
(38:35):
impact.
All it's supposed to do is justlessen the impact of the event
and jumpstart somebody's normalcoping abilities.
It was designed for people whoare already pretty resilient.
It doesn't work with civiliansas well.
It shouldn't be used withcivilians.
It's designed for people who'vebeen there, done it, got the
t-shirt, seen the baddest,maddest, saddest, and they can
(38:59):
handle a tough fact phase whereyou've got to get them to look
in the eye of the tiger and justdescribe sight, sound, smells,
what they went through.
They're able to do that, butyou've got to do it as a group
because they need that peersupport.
You know my telling some medicoh, I understand why you
couldn't intubate that kid on abumpy country road who was very
(39:20):
anterior in his throatpresentation.
You get to the hospital, thenurse look.
He said how come you didn'tmake the tube?
My saying to him oh well, youdid a great job.
I'm not a medic, it doesn'tmean anything.
I have other things to give him, but not that or her.
But another medic looking at himand saying hey, listen, I
understand exactly what you'retalking about.
(39:43):
If I had a dollar for every twoI missed I'd be rich.
That means something.
So that's where we, you know,we began to realize okay, we
have to do this as as a groupwhere possible.
But Tim came along.
So I just did something you'renot supposed to do, which is I
use the model one-to-one.
I had no choice.
He had been in a psychiatrichospital for 30 days.
(40:05):
His department didn't know whatto do with him.
He couldn't function.
He had fluid PTSD and this wasthe best interior guy.
They all said he was the bestinterior structure firefighting
guy they had.
So they didn't mean to do himany harm.
But he was in a psychiatricunit, locked unit for 30 days,
used $18,000 of insurance.
He came back out and he stillcouldn't function Because they
(40:26):
didn't address the trauma.
You know being very well traumainformed.
It's different from regularongoing psychotherapy, which is
fine for something else, but notfor losing two kids in a house
fire.
All we did every time we startto talk.
Steve, he'd get a blindingheadache.
There was such an overload ofchemicals he was sitting on so
(40:48):
much Like Eddie Lee from the oldstate police dress here used to
say kid at the beach for thebeach ball, the more you stuff
it down more for you to takeyour head off when it comes out.
Yeah, so he would just go outto his van he was electrician
and he sleep in his van for 45minutes.
Then he come back in and he getit done.
We went through all seven phasesof a debriefing and he finished
(41:10):
beautifully.
He went back to work, never hadanother day where he lost any
time due to trauma and he and Iseveral years later said hey,
tim, you know, sometimes thedebriefing is not enough.
It's great, but you got to havesome follow through.
But they can't.
They won't go into ongoingtherapy which I do, which you do
(41:33):
, which is great, but sometimesthey just won't do it.
We need a place.
We have halfway houses forrecovering addicts.
We've got halfway houses forthe retired.
We've got halfway houses,pre-release centers for
prisoners what the F?
We don't have anything forpolice, fire, ems.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Well, that concludes episode 133 of Finding your Way
Through Therapy.
Dr Hayden Duggan, you'll beback next week or next episode,
depending on when you listen tothis, but he will be back for
part two and I can't wait tohear that, and I hope you join
me then.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Please like, subscribe and follow this
podcast on your favoriteplatform.
A glowing review is alwayshelpful and, as a reminder, this
podcast is for informational,educational and entertainment
purposes only.
If you're struggling with amental health or substance abuse
issue, please reach out to aprofessional counselor for
consultation.
If you are in a mental healthcrisis, call 988 for assistance.
(42:32):
This number is available in theUnited States.
Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy
.
The goal of this podcast is todemystify therapy, what can
happen in therapy and the widearray of conversations you can
have in and about therapyThrough personal experiences.
Guests will talk about therapy,their experiences with it and
how psychology and therapy arepresent in many places in their
(00:26):
lives, with lots of authenticityand a touch of humor.
Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Bonne année, grand année.
Thank you, happy New Year, andif you want to look grand année,
you can go ahead and look it up.
My name is Steve Bisson.
This is the premiere episode ofseason 11, or episode 133 of
Finding your Way Through Therapy.
Very excited to be here for an11th season.
I'm looking very much forwardto you guys listening and if
(00:54):
you're on YouTube, you're goingto see that I'm going to try to
do these intros and the outrosthat I do recorded like on video
so you can see them.
So this is my first time doingit.
Any feedback is always welcome.
So this is what I'm doing.
But for episode 132, if youlisten to it, as my guests
talked about their experiencelast year on my podcast finding
your way through therapy and itwas really good, so please go
(01:16):
back and listen to that.
But episode 133 will be partone of two with Dr Hayden Duggan
.
Dr Hayden Duggan wrote a fewbooks, but Dr Hayden Duggan also
is the founder of the OnsiteAcademy in Gardner,
massachusetts, a residentialtrauma treatment and training
program for public safetypersonnel.
He's the team clinician forBoston Police Stress Support
(01:38):
Unit and is the chiefpsychologist for the Boston EMS
Peer Support Team.
He's worked in many fields.
He is a former firefighter,he's a paramedic, he's an EMT.
He will talk about that, I'msure, during the interview, and
I'm going to separate it in twobecause I know this is recorded.
You know we recorded it and Iknow this is a two-part episode
(01:58):
for me.
So I know he's going to talkabout that.
He's going to talk about that.
He's going to talk about otherof his experience.
But just a fascinating guy.
This is a guy I've been chasingdown for about six months to
have this interview.
But Hayden is a genuine person,very interesting, and here is
his interview.
Well, hi everyone and welcome tothe first episode, episode 133,
(02:20):
of Finding your Way ThroughTherapy.
I am Steve Bisson.
You've known me for a while.
Season 11 is upon us and I havesomeone who we you know he's a
busy guy, I'm a busy guy.
We finally got together.
I'm excited beyond any possibleimagination anyone could have.
But uh, dr hayden duggan issomeone who has been referred to
(02:41):
me by so many people how howgreat he is.
He started a bunch of differentthings that I'm going to let
him talk about, but I told himbefore this interview that it's
an honor for him, for me to talkto him and he returned the
favor and I'm like no, believeme, it's my honor.
He said people said good thingsabout me and I said who's lying
and why are they lying to you?
But at the end of the day, dayjust very happy to have him.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Welcome to finding your way through therapy.
My pleasure great to be here,my friend and um, as we say, I'm
not any busier than anybodyelse, just less organized hey,
welcome to the club right, aswitnessed by the fact that,
although you sent me multipleemail I mean mean multiple text
messages, et cetera I still, onthe day in question, said oh
yeah, it's 1030.
(03:29):
Just anyway.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
You know it was funny when I saw you at that 30, I
was actually in a session I'mgoing to share this with the
audience and.
I saw you're like I'm waitingand I'm like.
I told my client.
I'm like can you wait onesecond?
And I responded quickly becauseI'm like he's going to sit
there for like 30 minutes.
I can't do that to them.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I would have, that's me, and I had moved somebody to
12, from 1230 to 1030, so thatwe could anyway the other way
around.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
But here we are Great to be here, steve, and I'm glad
to know that it should be saltand not pissing.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Thank you very much.
See, you know, I know you wentto Canada in November, so now
you know, how to say everythingin French suddenly.
That's what happens when you goto Canada.
Well, actually I lived inFrance for a while.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I mean great.
I'm actually one of the fewpeople that really, really loved
it.
I was in the south of France,where it was mostly rural and
farming people, and they werefabulous, so anyway that was.
I don't want to go to the otherside, yes, and where they say
55 is not 5 or 5.
It's 5 or 5.
5 or 5.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yes.
And then Paris, and where theyhate the Parisians as much as
Americans do.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Hate them with pure white hatred.
Pure white, hot hatred, Ishould say.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's what I tell people all the time.
I said you wouldn't besurprised how much most French
people hate the Parisians,except the ones in Paris.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Which is awful because it's such a gorgeous
city, but anyway, people kind ofsuck at that.
But, that's not all of france atall.
No, you know, and we mustremember, it was the french
soldiers that dunkirk, at thevery end, that saved our asses
and are responsible for like 300000 british troops getting off
(05:18):
that beach because and all thosefrench soldiers died and they
stood there and took theoncoming German fire which, had
they used tanks, they would havebroken through, but they didn't
because they wanted to save thetanks for later.
So, yeah, that was the French,and remember our own revolution,
and the French came just intime.
Anyway, I'll shut up, that'snot what we're going to talk
(05:39):
about.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
We could talk about history all forever, because I
love history.
It's part of one of my favoritethings.
Learn about history, as my oldman used to say when he was
alive.
Learn about history becausethose who don't know about it
are doomed to repeat it, and Idon't want to repeat history
sometimes.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Indeed.
And you know, my wife says ifyou ask me what the weather is,
I give you the history ofmeteorology, so it's terrible of
meteorology, so that's terrible.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well, you know we've been.
You know I I kind of like threwa lot of like great things at
you and obviously you returnedthem back.
But maybe people know about meand they know I'm not that great
.
How about and I'm joking, ofcourse um, how about you talk a
little bit about who you are andtell me about yourself?
Speaker 3 (06:22):
well, well, wow, that's a not interesting
question, but I'm a mentalperson, as we call us in the
first responder world.
Yes, I'm, I'm duly diagnosed.
I love the kind of work you do.
We both love doing treatmentand I like crisis intervention
work.
I go back to the days when inthe 70s that was great stuff
(06:47):
Wrote a couple of unread booksand I won't inflict on you what
was about empathy and the othersabout crisis intervention, long
since out of print.
And then I well, how did I getinto emergency services?
My old man had a heart attackand he survived it.
He was a bull, very strong, andI didn't know what to do.
(07:08):
I felt really stupid and I wasin my late 20s, I guess at that
time.
I happened to be home when ithappened and so I said well, I'd
like to be an EMT.
I had no background in emergencyservices at all.
My brother's in the military,maybe I was about 28, I think 26
(07:31):
, 28.
Maybe I wanted a uniform, whoknows?
My local department was hostingan EMT course, a little bit
like the draft.
They said, yeah, no, you cantake it free.
It was expensive in those days,but you got to give us a couple
of years of service on theambulance.
I said, sure, it's fine by me,and that's how it all started.
(07:53):
I got on the meat wagon, as wecall it, and I actually liked it
a lot.
Not that I was all that good atit, but I liked it.
And then you know well, whenyou're there you got to do the
firefighter one deal.
I said, oh okay, so I didn'tknow anything about fires, nor
did I want to Scared the shitout of me.
(08:14):
I figured oh well, I got to doit.
So then I took the plan.
I became a call firefighter fora department.
Back in those days, when mostof the departments were heavily
called, we didn't have as manyprofessional full-time
firefighters.
It was very busy A lot of firesin the 70s.
My God, I loved it.
I loved firefighting to thepoint where and I did it
(08:38):
part-time so it helped me getthrough graduate school I was on
scholarship.
Where'd you go for graduate?
Speaker 2 (08:45):
school Harvard, excuse me.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
That's just why I don't tell anybody.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I know A little bird told me you wouldn't talk about
it, so I figured I'd just say it.
You opened it up.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
I was very, very lucky.
I went to a program calledClinical Psychology and Public
Practice.
It was an experimental program,clinical Psychology and Public
Practice.
It was an experimental program.
It lasted about 25 years andyou couldn't be part of the
program unless you were willingto do public practice, work for
public agencies Later on.
If you want to do privatepractice, that was up to you,
but you had to.
All our internships were inpublic settings.
(09:21):
So it was a good beginning tolearn.
You know, working in placeslike DYS or jails or working for
locked state hospitals, thingslike that.
That's where I sort of started.
But the other side was thefirefighting side and I loved it
(09:43):
and to the point where Iapplied to go full time would
have been my career.
But they were adding a lot offirefighters and there was 14
guys in front of me who had been.
You know they were townies.
They grew up, lived in the town, fought fires as Eagle Scouts,
became part-time firefighters.
(10:03):
They were way ahead of me so Iwas hopeless so I didn't even
try them.
Later on I became part-time.
I was very happy and retired asa deputy many years later.
But I tried to never forgetwhere I came from.
So those are the two sides, theduly diagnosed, either a
psychologizing firefighter or afirefighting psychologist.
(10:27):
I don't know which, um, but itdid I tell you how.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
About a great human that's?
Always good that's a good,that's a good start for me one
thing it does is for me, forthis old dude.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
it kept me very humble because, um, there's no
real place to hide in the fireground and you can be as
arrogant or foolish as yourselfyou are.
And so the defecation you hitthe roadie blades, to put it
politely, and you ran out of airand there's zero visibility.
(11:00):
You suck on your mask and youlost the wall.
You have no freaking idea whereyou are and you feel like
you're going to lose bladdercontrol.
In fact, once I did.
And then you realize okay, this, this stuff is real and it can
kill you and uh.
So let's, let's not get too,let's just stay right size, you
(11:22):
know.
So when nature overwhelms you,I think that's a good experience
.
But anyway, um, yeah, I stayedin for almost 40 years, on and
off retired, in a little smalltown which I love, where I live
here now um and uh, and was apart-time deputy, although when
you're on, when you have thatstanding, you're always that
(11:44):
standing, you're always on callbecause you're always listening,
with a third ear to hear.
You know, did the bus get outof the barn, the ambulance, or
who was on engine two and etcetera?
Oh, I better get going, becausethat's not the crew we want for
that.
So my family just put up withall of it that.
So my family just put up withall of it.
(12:06):
And everybody in emergencyservices knows they miss
Thanksgiving's.
They're running out the door onChristmas Eve, your kid's
birthday party, oh, dad's gone.
You know, children of firstresponders, let alone spouses,
really are a different breedthemselves in terms of
resilience, in terms of justgetting used to.
(12:27):
You know, dad loves to do this,her mom loves to do this.
They're nuts, but it's the wayit is.
I always remember one thing too,and it wasn't fighting the fire
, it was CISM.
The night of the Worcester coldstorage fire my chief came by
and said get in To me and mywife, we're going.
And we got there at about eighto'clock.
(12:49):
The fire had started at 613.
And by the time we got thereall six firefighters were
declared lost.
And that was a night that I'llnever forget.
We did all death notenotifications with Kathy Minahan
and my wife who had lost herhusband in a Charlestown
warehouse fire, ladder 15, over20 years ago.
(13:09):
So a sidebar is that after thecoal storage fire, valerie and
Kathy started a group forspouses who lost a loved one in
the line of duty, called theWings Group.
Winners in's a need of griefservices.
But that night we were sostressed, I guess, or so shocked
(13:30):
, that when we came back at 4 am, um, and we went back and spent
the next eight days there inthe tent, um, we drove right
past our driveway.
You know they talk about, whenyou're having a real post-trauma
symptom, perceptual distortionswhich I'd never really
experienced, even in the size ofthings, and they also talked
(13:52):
about deja vu and jamais vu.
You know that I'm referring tosomething I think I've already
seen, but I actually haven't.
I've never been there.
But jamais vu is also being ina place.
I should know it's familiar butI don't even recognize it.
There's 31 chemicals in thestress response and they are
(14:15):
powerful and they can haveeffects on cognition.
It was 4 am.
We're driving down a dirt roadin Hubbardston and I drove right
past my own driveway and mywife looked at me.
I looked at her.
I said where are we?
She said I don't know where youare, but we just passed her own
(14:37):
driveway.
That was a powerful, verypowerful night.
So yeah, you kind of stay rightsize in those things.
I don't know how I got off onthat.
Let me shut up.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
We were talking about different things in your career
, retiring and all that.
And I think that for me, youknow, worcester, massachusetts,
december 3rd 1999, will beetched in stone in my head and
the Worcester Six is somethingthat's very near and dear to me,
because I was watching TV, Iwas working in a group home that
day.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
We've had similar experiences, yep.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
And remember, like as a when I came into this field I
wanted to work with kids.
I end up in a developmentaldisabled home with people who
have Pratt or Willie, and I'mwatching this and I'm like now I
have this intense urge to goand help mentally, not
physically, because I don't havethat capacity for people with
first responders.
(15:31):
So when people ask where youfall you know how did you fall
in this job?
I say ask backwards, it's noteven what I wanted.
And for me, know how did youfall in this job?
I say ask backwards, it's noteven what I wanted.
Um, and and for me it'srealizing that things that
really hit you are just thosethings that you got to remember.
So I don't know if that waslike the um.
Oh, my god, this is what mycalling is, so to speak.
But it was certainly an acornthat was planted in my head,
because all I can do is thinkabout what are the other fight
(15:54):
like?
I didn't.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
I knew the other towns there, but I can't imagine
being in the city of Worcester,a firefighter, knowing your six
brothers are in there and Ican't imagine We've had a very
close relationship withWorcester fire for years for
that reason and a guy namedSpike Wallace who's since passed
away, but he was an amazing guy.
(16:15):
He was a Vietnam guy who waswounded and he was on Cambridge
rescue a very smart, intelligent, an amazing guy.
He was a Vietnam guy who waswounded and he was on Cambridge
Rescue.
A very smart, intelligent, justgreat guy.
One of the founders of criticaland stress management in the
Commonwealth.
He and I were in the tent rightat the bottom of the building,
so they stretched yellow tapethat when you came off the deck,
(16:39):
every one of these places has aname for it.
You know Worcester was the deckand New York was the pile and
Oklahoma City was the pit, andwhen you come off these things-
on the job.
I don't mean as doing the stresswork.
You know there's usually aplace where you go for like
racks and a rehabilitationcenter.
(17:02):
So that was ours in the tent,and Spike was the person who
kind of got us started in doingthat kind of stuff at the Cold
Storage Fire.
We were there all eight daysand we've always had a close
relationship with all thoseWorcester folks.
However, I identify with whatyou did because that's how I
(17:22):
started.
I started working after I gotmy degree.
I started working for DYS,started working group homes,
ended up working for theRetarded and then I ended up
ending a first marriage after 13years.
It had its shelf life.
We went separate ways.
We're still very cordial today,thank God, and we co-parented
(17:47):
our kids.
But at that time I went intotherapy because I felt like I
was a mess, plus I was drinkinga lot.
That's how I dealt with mystress.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Now here's another dual diagnosis you were talking
about.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
That's true, and I think this was when I was 36.
How I got into it isinteresting.
I had a supervisor atChildren's Hospital where I did
my postdoc, who was great, andshe said, listen, hey, you got
to learn how to give theRorschach.
And I said, ok, it's my leastfavorite instrument, but so I
(18:28):
had to take it in order to giveit and one of the cards.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And I'm going to stop for a second.
Rorschach is a is aninterpretive test where it's ink
blocks for those who don't knowwhat it is.
Is an interpretive test whereit's ink blocks for those who
don't know what it is.
It's a very much interpretive,unfortunately not very reliable
or valid testing, but I just incase people don't know what it
is.
Part of finding your waythrough therapy is to make it as
clear as I can about whattherapy looks like, what we're
(18:53):
talking about, so I apologizefor it.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
No, I apologize for just throwing it out there.
I should have explained thesame thing.
So, yeah, it's a projectivetest but, as you say, it's not
very reliable, but it can beinteresting.
In my case it probably, youknow, saved my sanity because
I'm the color shock card.
There's one card that everybodyfreaks out on where they see a
monster, whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
I a monster, whatever .
I stopped talking.
Oh, and I stared at the card.
That's not interpretive, by theway, that the roshak, I think,
is interpretive, but when yousee people's reaction to it,
that's something you can visiblyobserve and I think there's
psychological value in that.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
You're not kidding and I went someplace else and I
got the lits in on me all lumpand throat.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And I'm looking at this card.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
The room got very silent, still started to spin a
little bit.
She was very kind and very niceto me, said Hayden, I think you
need to see somebody.
So she got me to a fabulousshrink.
I loved him because he swore hewas a combat vet.
He was.
I thought he was the directorof outpatient psychiatry at
McLean.
Just a down to earth guy, right, really made me feel cared
(20:02):
about.
And I'm saying all this becauseI was not doing any treatment
myself yet I was still workingfor state agencies and I was
doing 90 hours a week and whatdo you know, I got an ulcer and
it was in the midst of losing aweek.
And what do you know?
I got an ulcer and, of course, Iwas in the midst of losing a
marriage and was also drinkingmyself into oblivion, not
(20:25):
knowing that I had an alcoholproblem, until my sponsor
eventually said to me Hayden,you might not think you're an
alcoholic, but you'll do untilone comes along.
In the meantime, why don't youjust start dealing with it?
But, anyway, physician, healmyself.
So he said to me, the shrinksaid you're working with the
(20:47):
retarded and I said yeah, I'mgoing to link this to CISM and
understanding why incidentsbother us.
He said why are you doing thisto yourself?
Are you at this this many hours?
You have an ulcer now and yougot 90 hours a week.
(21:08):
What, what?
What are you?
Are you trying to make them allunretarded?
He said what connection do youhave to this?
And my God, it was like I justgot hit with a two by four.
I had a younger sister who wasretarded and she died and I was
(21:29):
eight years old when thathappened and I never got to live
with her because in those daysthe prevailing wisdom of
pediatrician was stick them ininstitutions.
We wouldn't do that now.
She died in institution and Iguess that had a much deeper
effect on me than I knew.
So he worked with me many years, a wonderful guy and eventually
(21:49):
I got in the fire department,continued to be a psychologist
living in the town that I was in.
We had a working fire, whichthere were many in those days,
and I just remember you knowCaptain Copeland on the phone on
the radio, who was the brotherof Don Copeland, who was a
famous weather forecaster atthat time.
And Copeland, as we called him,was very quiet.
(22:12):
He was a tough guy, kind.
You know.
If you got three words out ofhim you were getting a lot.
And I just remember I was noton duty.
He tore past my house licensedsiren.
I just heard him say on theradio very quietly, step on it.
People trapped.
That's all Kobe had to say.
So I dropped what I was doing.
(22:33):
I was only a block from thefire station.
So so I got on H 24 first, whichI liked because I was the only
one that could drive it, becauseyou had a double clutch on
upshifts, and I really enjoyedit.
Captain Belmont got in the seatnext to me, a couple of
firefighters.
We arrived unseen and I won'ttell you the story of the fire,
but it was whipping.
We had fire blowing out underthe eaves.
(22:55):
Basically, what had happenedI'll be brief was that a family
was coming back from a skiingvacation.
They drove all night.
Dad went to work.
There was about 7 o'clock inthe morning.
Mom got out of the car it wasFebruary, there was ice, there
was snow and she's unpacking andthe daughter.
The daughter, little Kimberly,12 years old, said Mom, just go
(23:17):
into the house, I'll be upstairs, okay, mom's unpacking.
Literally like five minuteslater the whole house erupts.
What we forgot is that firegoes up and out.
Yeah, so here we see the secondfloor with smoke puffing out
under the eaves and we think thefire's on the second floor.
(23:38):
So we said to the motherwhere's your daughter?
She said she's on the secondfloor.
We did a balls-up search on thesecond floor Zero visibility.
I found the family dog, goldenretriever, dead, threw it down
the stairs.
We had two firefighters injured.
Finally we had to bail out downthe stairs.
Over ladders All fires go outeventually, right, but this one
(24:00):
was ripping and it wassurrounding down from the
outside, so finally it went out.
And then they said, doug, youknow, take a kooker downstairs
and do overall in the basement.
So I'm in the basement pickingthrough, you know, drop down
from the ceiling, sharp likesnow lower blades and everything
smokes beginning to lift, andover by the cellar, sharp like
snow lower blades and everythingSmoke's beginning to lift, and
over by the cellar stairs, I seewhat looks like a garbage bag.
(24:25):
I said, oh, what the F is that?
And it was like figure grounddistortion, like you're focusing
an old slide projector.
Whoa, that comes into focus.
That's a kid.
The charge remains of a kid.
Was in a focus?
That's a kid.
The charge remains of a kid.
And what had happened, steve,was that she decided to go down
to the basement where they had arumpus room and just watch tv.
(24:46):
They've been up all night.
She wanted to relax for aminute, lay down the couch.
She hit the light switch.
Gas had been escaping theentire time they'd been on the
vacation.
That one flicked the switch andit was a gas-fed fire.
It exploded but it went up andout.
Nothing we could have savedthere if we'd known.
But we went to the wrong floor,right, you missed it.
(25:09):
So I ended up shoveling theremains into a body bag, didn't
really think much of it.
You didn't at the time.
Just do your fucking job andshut up, so shovel in.
I remember being surprised athow heavy the internal organs
were the liver, the lung, theheart, the kidneys, stomach.
And then I didn't think much ofit, because what do we do?
(25:30):
We went out and got drunk.
That's how we handle stuff inthose days.
In fact that's what wasencouraged Put out the fire,
step over the body and go getdrunk.
So, eddie West, I was going totell you where you can find a
Bloody Mary breakfast at like 10o'clock in the morning by that
time at the Concord TrafficCircle, yeah, howard Johnson's,
(25:53):
they would see us coming in,looking like we looked.
They'd say the back room, therewe go, the back room.
They'd keep us away from theother customers.
Why am I saying all this?
It effed me up to a fairly well.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Feel free to say the whole word if you want to.
I don't do editing on there's.
No, uh, there's, no, there's, Idon't.
I don't do, uh, editing on thatI appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
So to finish this up and thank you for listening to
it, it's a little long-winded,but it was a seminal event in my
life right, that's why it's notlong-winded, if it's seminal in
your life, but good it didn'twork out too well, um, and I did
have nightmares and flashbacks,as you would have expected,
only because I was so up closeand personal with her.
(26:37):
And I finally went into therapyand I had to get sober because
I was drinking myself into astupor trying to get rid of that
stuff.
And, as they later teach you inthe trauma work, alcohol is not
(26:58):
only central nervous systemdepressant but it does make
flashbacks and nightmares morevivid.
The colors are more vivid andit'll knock you out and put you
to sleep, which is what I wantedbecause I couldn't sleep.
But then you wake up three orfour hours later, fitful, you're
still in your bdus, you gotshit shower shaving, you get to
roll call, I get to work seveno'clock and you go for years
(27:19):
like that no sleep, alcohol, updown, up down, adrenaline
exhaustion.
Adrenaline exhausted, medicated, go to work over time.
That doesn't work too good.
And so what happened to me is,about eight years later, my
department said to me because bythen I was doing some of this
work, I had become a forensicdoctor, I was working for the
(27:42):
courts, I know JL, this is along story, but I wasn't working
with kids anymore, which hadbeen my career for like 15 years
or the retarded, but um, for ajob.
It was the courts and it was agood job and I enjoyed it.
But, um, my department said youknow, there's this new stuff
called critical stressmanagement and, uh, you want to
(28:04):
take a look at it?
Uh, because if you do, we willsend you folks to be helped.
At that time I happened to bethe veterans agent in town.
I was seeing vets free.
My idea of helping them was tosit on my porch and drink Jim
Beam with them.
That was great.
I thought it was great.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
They loved coming to my house.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, I'd go see you for therapy too.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
That's why I stopped drinking too, so now I'm getting
sober.
You've taken away my bestfriend.
I can't sleep.
I still got the images, but atleast I'm not drunk and there's
no order of alcohol in thecourts.
So I went to this program 1989this was and it was taught by
(28:48):
Vicki Harris, who was one of theearly instructors in critical
distress management, and she wasa fabulous speaker.
And I'm there wrapped withattention in a room of 155
firefighters, nashville, newHampshire, and I'm learning a
lot.
I'm way up the back row and shegets to the Hackensack Fire.
I'm trying to talk abouttriggers and events and how you
(29:10):
connect dots.
And the Hackensack Fire was afamous fire in the CISM lore
because what happened was it waslike the cold storage fire in
the sense that there was a wideopen space in the garage.
When they first came in, therewas no smoke, nothing.
They had their masks hangingdown.
(29:30):
What they didn't realize is thefire was ripping in a crawl
space between the ceiling andthe roof, which was concrete and
sealed completely.
So, the fire had no place to gobut down and we couldn't have
vented it because of the roof.
So they walked in, theHackensack firefighters, and it
(29:53):
was one engine crew with alieutenant and five guys, and
they got way far in.
All of a sudden there's areason I'm telling you this it
broke through and the fire camerushing down, just like what
happened to the firefighters.
I know, you know the story, theCold.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Storage.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Fire, that whoomp, when that petroleum-based
insulation let go.
All at the same time thebuilding called storage fire
erupted.
Same thing in hackensack.
And these guys, they'refirefighters.
They put on their masks.
The lieutenant took them to a,a paint locker, a closet in the
back.
They couldn't go back to theinstance.
They came in and they had asteel door.
(30:31):
They closed themselves in andthey couldn't get out because
there was bars on the on thefirst floor window but they had
comms.
So this lieutenant is verycalmly saying yeah, we're stuck
in a paint locker here.
If you can just rip off these,is these grates on this window,
we'll be OK.
But we can't go out the way wecame.
Nobody heard him came.
(30:56):
Nobody heard him.
In those days.
They only had one channel onthe fire ground and the chief
was directing the fire from theoutside.
Multiple incoming units fromother towns, his whole
department there.
Now this thing is ripping.
It started out as just not evensmoking the building possible
fire is now a conflagration, buthe's got a crew way in the back
.
This is before.
We had good you know,procedures around keeping track
(31:17):
of people in a large area,search, et cetera, and they
couldn't.
They couldn't get out and theythey remained very dignified,
just like the cold, the coldstorage, the Worcester Six,
right till the end.
So he thinks like, okay, comeget us, it's getting hot in here
, we're running out of air,right, and you know when that
ding, and then the mass sucksand then you start to ding, ding
(31:39):
, ding, you're out of air sookay we're breathing off the
floor, we're buddy breathing,and they get sounding more
urgent.
They never once lost their cooluntil finally it just stopped.
Nobody on the fire ground heardthem, but everybody in scanner
land heard them, as true in theWorcester Cold Storage Fire.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Many of those families of firefighters lived
in that area and they heardtransmissions of the dying
firefighters.
So, although at that time theCold Storage Fire hadn't
happened yet, we learned a lotbecause the cops came on scene
after it was out and said hey,don't worry, We'll take care,
We'll get you guys out, youdon't need to see that.
(32:21):
The firefighters said excuse me, we take our own people out and
they said well, let us takecare of the buyers of the ME
techs.
We'll take care of it.
They said no you're taking andthere was a fist fight.
So the Gemini team one of thefirst teams in the nation that
was so well regarded with fire,cism team, critical and stress
(32:42):
manager team as you know,everything's volunteer as a
clinician, as a trained teamthat team came in and really had
their hands full because theygot to mend fences between
police and fire.
So that was a fire that wasvery emotional for the crowd to
(33:03):
watch.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
To me.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I started to feel nauseous, I had a rapid
heartbeat and I really felt sickand dizzy.
I got up and I walked out and Iwent to the water fountain
outside and there was a verykind, compassionate EMT named
Neil Bradwin from Boston AMS whohad started their peer support
team and he came up behind me,put his hand on my shoulder.
(33:29):
I jumped like silly he saidyou're getting triggered, aren't
you?
I said yeah, but neil, I oh youintroduce himself.
I don't know why because, uh,I've never been in a huge, large
area search like that, I'venever been in that level of fire
.
He said there's nothing to dowith it.
When your body reaches acertain level of heart rate and
(33:51):
fight or flight and increasedblood flow of the muscles and
all the stuff that's going on inyour brain, you process
information two to ten timesfaster than normal.
It doesn't know that it's notback in something else.
When else have you been thatscared Kimberly Jollyfire that
was easy for me.
So.
So at that point point I gotcism trained.
(34:13):
I did love working with thefolks.
Um, obviously we did everythingfree and I'm almost done the
long story of how we got to theon-site.
I got the help I needed, I didget sober.
I stopped working on thedepartment for quite a while, um
, probably four years, and Ijust concentrated on doing this
(34:35):
stuff.
And they brought a firefighterto me and said you know, we're
going to give you our very best.
His name is Tim Tenney.
1991, the Nickel Street housefire in Gardner.
It was the same kind of thingballoon construction fire, ie
there's a space between thefloors and the walls and the
(34:57):
fire travels up that space.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
So in a balloon construction fire you look in
the basement for the origin,even if it's in the in the
ceiling in the third story,because that's where it started
yes up the side of the buildingso, tim, and just just to stop
you for a second, also to leteveryone know that that's the
construction that was veryprevalent in the new england
(35:20):
area for many, many, many years.
So this is not something likepeople like said oh yeah, this
is going to cause fires, itwasn't purposeful, but this is
something of old structures ofold new england from the late
1800, early 1900.
So I just want to throw thatout so that people don't go and
wait a minute.
Well, why did they build themthat way?
Well, yeah, duh, we didn't knowany better.
(35:40):
That's why.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
But right, I'm sorry.
No, thank you second time.
I thank you um, because I getcranked up and then I forget um
that that's why I'm here.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
I'm just just sitting here just listening.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
No, that makes a big difference.
Thanks, anyway, particularlywith Victorian structures.
So Tim and his partner, who wasa Vietnam vet tank commander,
went into this basement Heavy,heavy fire.
My department was there but Iwas not on it yet that was how
much that I was living andacting and they sounded the all
(36:14):
out to get everybody out,because all three fours were
fully involved Tim and hispartner in the basement, because
they'd been told there werethree children there.
The fire had actually startedwhen the mom went across the
street to play cards and drinkwith a friend, she left all
three kids in this basementapartment.
It was one of their birthdays.
(36:36):
They tipped over a candle andstarted the fire.
Anyway, I think the kids were.
The baby was about six monthsold, the kids were two and four
very little.
Tim and his partner were notgoing to leave the ground floor.
Again, zero visibility.
They had what's called arollover, not a flashover, but
the fire was rolling over theirheads all the way down the
(36:56):
hallway and they couldn't forthe life of them find these kids
To this day.
Tim, who's still the chairmanof our board 30 years later,
will tell you that he swearsthat he couldn't possibly have
heard this.
This over the noise of steamwindows breaking, diesel engines
(37:16):
, pumps cranking up, peopletalking, yelling through their
masks, all the sounds of firecombat.
He swears, and so does hispartner, davy up guard, that he
will swear that he heard as hepassed one of the words uh, one
of the the rooms.
He heard a sound like this mom.
That's what he heard and hecouldn't have steve.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
There was weight, there was so much noise you
couldn't hear a thing they wentinto that room and they found,
under underestimated by thepublic, how loud a fire truly is
it really, and they found bothkids in there, so they carried
both kids out.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
in those days um, we didn't have, um, a hyperbaric, a
hyperbaric chamber in this day.
So they got life led to me.
They couldn't save the baby,unfortunately, so they said
we're going to bring this guy Iwas still living and after then,
what we're gonna?
We're gonna bring this kid toyou to do something, because
(38:14):
CISM was very new.
Then All I did, honest to God,was 60 briefings with him, the
standard seven-phase model,which is not therapy.
It's a treatment for a criticalincident.
It's definitely a crisisintervention treatment, but it's
very structured.
It's a structured discussiondesigned to have a very positive
(38:35):
impact.
All it's supposed to do is justlessen the impact of the event
and jumpstart somebody's normalcoping abilities.
It was designed for people whoare already pretty resilient.
It doesn't work with civiliansas well.
It shouldn't be used withcivilians.
It's designed for people who'vebeen there, done it, got the
t-shirt, seen the baddest,maddest, saddest, and they can
(38:59):
handle a tough fact phase whereyou've got to get them to look
in the eye of the tiger and justdescribe sight, sound, smells,
what they went through.
They're able to do that, butyou've got to do it as a group
because they need that peersupport.
You know my telling some medicoh, I understand why you
couldn't intubate that kid on abumpy country road who was very
(39:20):
anterior in his throatpresentation.
You get to the hospital, thenurse look.
He said how come you didn'tmake the tube?
My saying to him oh well, youdid a great job.
I'm not a medic, it doesn'tmean anything.
I have other things to give him, but not that or her.
But another medic looking at himand saying hey, listen, I
understand exactly what you'retalking about.
(39:43):
If I had a dollar for every twoI missed I'd be rich.
That means something.
So that's where we, you know,we began to realize okay, we
have to do this as as a groupwhere possible.
But Tim came along.
So I just did something you'renot supposed to do, which is I
use the model one-to-one.
I had no choice.
He had been in a psychiatrichospital for 30 days.
(40:05):
His department didn't know whatto do with him.
He couldn't function.
He had fluid PTSD and this wasthe best interior guy.
They all said he was the bestinterior structure firefighting
guy they had.
So they didn't mean to do himany harm.
But he was in a psychiatricunit, locked unit for 30 days,
used $18,000 of insurance.
He came back out and he stillcouldn't function Because they
(40:26):
didn't address the trauma.
You know being very well traumainformed.
It's different from regularongoing psychotherapy, which is
fine for something else, but notfor losing two kids in a house
fire.
All we did every time we startto talk.
Steve, he'd get a blindingheadache.
There was such an overload ofchemicals he was sitting on so
(40:48):
much Like Eddie Lee from the oldstate police dress here used to
say kid at the beach for thebeach ball, the more you stuff
it down more for you to takeyour head off when it comes out.
Yeah, so he would just go outto his van he was electrician
and he sleep in his van for 45minutes.
Then he come back in and he getit done.
We went through all seven phasesof a debriefing and he finished
(41:10):
beautifully.
He went back to work, never hadanother day where he lost any
time due to trauma and he and Iseveral years later said hey,
tim, you know, sometimes thedebriefing is not enough.
It's great, but you got to havesome follow through.
But they can't.
They won't go into ongoingtherapy which I do, which you do
(41:33):
, which is great, but sometimesthey just won't do it.
We need a place.
We have halfway houses forrecovering addicts.
We've got halfway houses forthe retired.
We've got halfway houses,pre-release centers for
prisoners what the F?
We don't have anything forpolice, fire, ems.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Well, that concludes episode 133 of Finding your Way
Through Therapy.
Dr Hayden Duggan, you'll beback next week or next episode,
depending on when you listen tothis, but he will be back for
part two and I can't wait tohear that, and I hope you join
me then.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
Please like, subscribe and follow this
podcast on your favoriteplatform.
A glowing review is alwayshelpful and, as a reminder, this
podcast is for informational,educational and entertainment
purposes only.
If you're struggling with amental health or substance abuse
issue, please reach out to aprofessional counselor for
consultation.
If you are in a mental healthcrisis, call 988 for assistance.
(42:32):
This number is available in theUnited States.
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