September 12, 2025 • 36 mins
Dr. Cristi Bundukamara — known to her patients as Dr. B — is a psychiatric nurse practitioner and the founder of Mentally Strong, a behavioral health clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Combining decades of clinical expertise with her deeply personal experience, Dr. B helps people navigate grief, trauma, and loss through her innovative Mentally Strong Method, a practical framework for building resilience and reclaiming purpose after life’s hardest moments.
Dr. B’s professional work is rooted in unimaginable personal loss. Over several years, she lost a child to an accidental drowning, two more children to a rare genetic disorder, and in 2024, her husband — who also had the disorder. Instead of allowing grief to define her, Dr. B turned her pain into purpose, creating both her clinic and a new approach to processing loss and trauma, where she blends her clinical knowledge with the raw reality of lived experience.
In This Episode
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Combining decades of clinical expertise with her deeply personal experience, Dr. B helps people navigate grief, trauma, and loss through her innovative Mentally Strong Method, a practical framework for building resilience and reclaiming purpose after life’s hardest moments.
Dr. B’s professional work is rooted in unimaginable personal loss. Over several years, she lost a child to an accidental drowning, two more children to a rare genetic disorder, and in 2024, her husband — who also had the disorder. Instead of allowing grief to define her, Dr. B turned her pain into purpose, creating both her clinic and a new approach to processing loss and trauma, where she blends her clinical knowledge with the raw reality of lived experience.
In This Episode
Thank you to our sponsor Jane App - Practice Management Software for Health & Wellness Practitioners. Use code GUY1MO at check out.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
You can learn more about what I do here:
The Trauma Therapist Newsletter: celebrates the people and voices in the mental health profession. And it's free! Check it out here: https://bit.ly/4jGBeSa
———
If you’d like to support The Trauma Therapist Podcast and the work I do you can do that here with a monthly donation of $5, $7, or $10: Donate to The Trauma Therapist Podcast.
Click here to join my email list and receive podcast updates and other news.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma SAPIs podcast. My name is go Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
to the podcast. Very excited to have as my guest today,
doctor Christy Bandukamara.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Christy welcome, Thank you so much so.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Christy, known to her patients as Doctor B, is a
psychiatric nurse practitioner and the founder of Mentally Strong, a
behavioral health clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Combining decades of
clinical expertise with her deeply personal experience, Doctor B helps
people navigate grief, trauma, and loss through her innovative Mentally
(00:44):
Strong method practical framework for building resilience and reclaiming purpose
after life's hardest moments. All right, doctor B. Christy, Before
we get go in here, share with the listeners where
you're from originally and where you are currently.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I'm originally from Miami, floor been a psychiatric nurse practitioner
for twenty five years, have seven children. By all, I
am a go getter for sure, an expert in trauma
by default, right like I you know, you know how
the industry is. Most psychiatric nurse practitioners are focused on
(01:19):
you know, medication management, psychiatric evaluations. Some do some counseling.
But when I was going through my own grief in trauma.
So the first event happened in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
All right, wait, hang on, han, I want I got
to stop you. We're going to get into that, but
I want to just find out where you're from originally,
where you are currently.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, I am from Miami, Florida, and I'm currently in
Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Okay, okay, all right, so go on, how how did
all this start for you?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
So in two thousand and five, I lost a son
in a drowning accident. I had six other children, so
I've adopted five from the foster care system. So they
came to me with pretty significant reactive attachment disorder and
PTSD and so, you know, just like a good mental
health professional, and I was like, oh, I can do this,
(02:11):
but it is it is very different when you bring
trauma into your home rather than treating you know, trauma
as a professional. And so that was my first you know,
kind of introduction to traumas bringing in these children. They
were nine, ten, and thirteen when they came into my home,
both physical and sexual abuse in their past, and obviously
(02:32):
abandoned by their biological family. Within a year of adopting
this three child sibling group, one of them died in
a drowning accident. And so I have four other adopted
children and two biological children. And the only reason I
differentiate those is because my biological children ended up with
(02:53):
a very rare neurodegenerative condition. So I lost my first
son in two thousand and five in a drowning accident.
After promising these kids that I adopted that they were
now safe. Right, we talk about the first step of
trauma treatment is being safe, right, being safe to begin
working on that trauma. And immediately after being adopted, and
(03:16):
I'm trying to convince them that they're safe so that
we can start working on their trauma, their biological brother dies,
and so you know, there was even more trauma and
grief on top of that, right, And I now know,
twenty years later, how to actually treat traumatic grief. I
(03:36):
do think it's different, and that's where my specialty comes
in here. But I'll go on with the story and
then we'll kind of talk about how do you actually
treat traumatic grief because the end goal is often different.
So within a year of my son Johnny dying in
a drowning accident, my biological son Reggie started having catastrophic epilepsy,
(03:59):
like twelve grandma seizures in a day, completely wiping him
out cognitively, beginning to have delays because of these seizures.
No medications were working, and it took them three years,
but they finally diagnosed a very rare neurodegenerative condition called
d RPLA. When I say rare, I mean there's three
(04:22):
families in the United States. So I went on a
mission to save my son and I did everything from
every type of alternative practice to taking him to Japan,
to Canada to the UK for different potential treatments for
this very rare condition, both alternative medicine and ye.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Are you were you a nurse practitioner at this time?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yes, yes, okay, okay, And so I was attacking it
from multiple directions, you know, from a medical standpoint, but
then also this is what opened up my door to
kind of alternative treatment, and both from like supplements and
that kind of stuff, but also types of traumatic work
that I still do. I do a lot of somatic
(05:09):
movement work and you know, sound bowls and reiki and
energy work, but this was kind of the first step
into that, like learning about those things. Unfortunately, my son
passed away in twenty sixteen, and it is a genetic condition.
So my other biological child and my husband was diagnosed
(05:31):
with the same rare condition. My daughter, although she had seizures,
was very responsive to medication, so they would start a medication,
she wouldn't have seizures for six months a year, and
then she'd have one seizure, they'd adjust the medication. So
her presentation looked nothing like her brother who ended up
passing away, So there was no indication that the end
(05:56):
result would be the same. And so I begannally Strong.
After Reggie passed away, I knew that I had to
teach people what I now call the mentally strong method,
which is like this just basic cognitive behavioral approach that
anybody can learn how to take care of themselves. And
trauma is kind of one of the categories in there,
like how do you actually work through your trauma right
(06:20):
and the impact that trauma has on your life. In
December of twenty twenty one, I woke up to my
daughter had died in her sleep, no indication. She ended
up dying of sudden, unexpected death and epilepsies. So she
did have seizures. And when someone with seizures dies in
(06:41):
their sleep, they just there's really no way to tell
for sure, but they just assume that they die from
a seizure in their sleep. So this gave a whole
new level of trauma. Right, So with Reggie's death, I
didn't even identify it as trauma. And I think we
often do this as mental health professionals, right, we hear
(07:02):
such horrible traumatic stories that we don't often recognize our
own trauma. I'm like, oh, it's grief, it's grief. And
so I was already kind of on that stage of
being a grief expert. And I realized after my daughter died,
which was completely unexpected and the most personally traumatic, that
this was trauma, that this is changing the way I
(07:26):
see the world. And so I went on a journey.
I created a grief documentary. So on this grief journey,
I followed myself with a GoPro. I filmed everything, I did,
all kinds of somatic work, spiritual work, professional work. I
went and visited the Amen Clinic, and you know, I
(07:47):
went to the Aman Clinic, which I don't know if
you know, this is where they do spec scans to
look at what is actually happening in the brain. And
I thought maybe we'd see something different. Friend, You know that,
because I had this grief for you, for me, for you.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Okay, you were doing all this work for yourself to
deal with what the hell has been going on. Hang
on a second, let me just pause here, because this
story is uh, I mean, it's it's it's just unfathomable.
(08:25):
And you're kind of you're you're going over it, and
I respect that, and I'm not going to ask you
to talk about whatever you don't want to talk about,
but it's it's it's unfathomable. I mean, you've already lost
three kids that you're talking about here. Let me just
take a step back here when you first got all
(08:46):
these kids. Forgive my lack of memory here, but how
many kids did you adopt compared to how many were biological? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I adopted five, Okay, two biological and so one adopted child,
both biological children, and most recently my husband. So we're
coming up on the one year anniversary of my husband's death,
which was a hospice type death, and so there was,
you know, there was able to be some grieving prior
(09:20):
to his death. And so when I say I'm a
traumatic grief expert, I lived every type of grief, from
even the grief of losing your husband that's physically still there, right,
like he began to cognitively leave before he physically left, right.
I've you know, the grief of a mother taking her
(09:43):
special needs child to an IEP meeting and being told
over and over again that her child is not going
to measure up and that they're not enough. And those
are you know, like this constant grief that special needs
moms go through. And so I think we as profession
and the reason I like to like get the story
(10:04):
out there like quickly and somewhat unemotional in the beginning,
to get that shock factor out right, Like I am
speaking from a space of true vulnerability and success in
treating myself. And I can tell you I know that
(10:25):
you know, most of your listeners are trauma therapists or therapists.
You know, I try to seek professional help a couple times,
and the words that I hear, are I don't know
how you're still standing, and that how that is received
to the person on the other end is if you
(10:45):
don't know how I'm still standing, how are you supposed
to help me? So I want to get in front
of people who are treating trauma and hearing these stories
and giving you the power that you can hold space
for this. And you know, we know these techniques of like,
(11:06):
you know, don't do the counter transfers, don't take on
you know most of us are impaths, right, you know,
so we we take that on. But then when we
do that, we don't hold a space of strength for
the person who needs us to hold a space of strength.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Well, there's there's a balance there, right, I mean, in
all fairness, your story is outside the bounds of normal
understanding and experience. I mean, one, you know, we hear
when people talk about losing a kid's oftentimes that's registered
as probably the most terrific, horrible thing we as humans
(11:44):
and parents can go through. But it's it's not just
one kid, right for you. So I could understand any
any person in any therapist saying that that doesn't mean
they're not able to to treat you but also you know,
it's how it's communicated. Well let me let's go back
to this. So how did you I mean, obviously you're
(12:08):
cut from a different how are you come on?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I think this is important because I often kind of
get that that somehow Christy Bundukmar doctor b has more
strength than the average average person. And my favorite book
of all time, and I think anybody who works in
trauma needs to read this book is The Man Search
for Meaning by Victor Frankel.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
This is not a book about how to you know, uh,
overcome captivity. It is about the human experience and how
hope in and of itself can allow you to survive.
Just hope and and sometimes that's all we can help
(12:54):
our patients find right that diggy and sometimes you have
to dig really deep. And in my documentary, I'm very vulnerable.
There is you know a period of time that suicidality
made sense to me, like and I always talk to
people about how suicidality can be a a communication of
(13:20):
a feeling of I don't have anything left in me.
It doesn't have to be an action, right, And so
it was difficult and it was not compartmentalized, right, like
a lot of people who have been through difficult things
(13:42):
survive by grit alone, right, like just grit, They don't
actually work through the trauma. They don't. And and trauma
work is hard, as everyone listening here knows, trauma work
is hard. And we live in a culture where we
don't want to do hard things, right, We want to
(14:03):
go through the fast food we don't you know, Yeah,
we know that if we hand cooked all of our
meals and did this and this and this, that you
know would be healthier for us. But it's harder, right,
And so I mean, I know people who are listening
here know how important trauma work is. But I can
(14:24):
tell you I work with a lot of mothers who
have lost children and the physical symptoms. You know, I'm
sure we've all read the book The Body keeps the Score, right,
like the it often comes out in physical ways. If
we don't take that stop and learn how to release
(14:46):
trauma from the body. And when it's cumulative trauma like that,
it it could take a lifetime, right like yeah, but
I always equate it to like a teapot or a
soda can that you've shaken up, right, if you could
just relief a little bit of pressure. You won't explode, right,
(15:08):
You won't, you know, try to complete suicide. You won't
try to hurt somebody, right Like? The what happens internally
can feel so overwhelming. And I've been the title of
my documentary is strength and Vulnerability.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Okay, and hold on? Where can this be?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
So you can My website is mentally strong dot com
and so everything can go back to mentally strong dot
com and watch.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Us on the very cool Let me let me. I
want to ask you about, uh, the work you did,
the treatment you found, the therapy you found that helped you,
and then then I want to segue into how you
started developing mentally strong. So you talked about finding or
(16:07):
seeking treatment help. What did you do? So?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I went to the AMAN Clinic, which is a psychiatric
evaluation cash Bake clinic. They don't work specifically with trauma,
but they do spec scans and they do recommendations for
supplements and things like that. I saw a local psychiatrist
here in Colorado Springs. I tried some TMS. I tried
brain spotting. Brain spotting. I think it was personally personally
(16:37):
the most effective for me. I see an acupuncturist on
a regular basis. I see a functional medicine doctor, and
I do a lot of spiritual work. So when I
say spiritual work, it's kind of in this big bucket
because I don't know that there's one piece of spiritual
work that you know, I can say, like, oh, do this.
(17:00):
But one of the things that has happened in our
fear of professional mental health professionals proselytizing their personal beliefs,
that we've taken our spiritual health out of our mental health,
and especially in traumatic grief, right, and grief is a
(17:21):
spiritual journey, right, Like what what do you believe happens
after that person passes? Where? Where are they? Where are you?
What you know if you were to complete suicide? What
does that mean?
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Like?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
These are these are deep spiritual questions that were you know,
our patients often get into and you know we I
think we feel either ill equipped or scared of proselytizing, right,
and so my biggest healing has come from my spiritual
(17:58):
growth in this process. And exactly what my spiritual journey
is I don't think is super important because I often
think that this is where the fear lies in her
truth is now supposed to be my truth.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
The thing that I just want therapists to hear is
that allowing patients or encouraging patients on this spiritual journey,
whatever that journey. Yeah, whatever that journey is, and that's
you know, I do a lot of that in my
We have intensives here. I have a grief intensive and
(18:36):
mentally Strong intensive, and people will come in and we do.
I think the foundation for all healing is a strong
cognitive behavioral understanding. So I teach the mentally Strong method.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
This is okay, hang on, before you start going to that.
How did you get to the point where you're like, okay,
I want to start teaching this. I want to create
this and talk to us about that.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, it was actually in phases. So when Reggie passed
in twenty sixteen, it took about a year and a half.
But I wrote a book and I started mentally Strong,
and I thought that was the end of my trauma.
I thought that was the end of my story. Right,
I've lost your sons, right, and I'm starting this clinic.
(19:23):
I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner and I'm going to use
the mentally Strong method in this clinic. And I started
speaking kind of on grief. And I'm really against the
five stages of grief that we often teach teach because
it is there's so many other good grief theories like
grow in Grief. I don't know if you've seen, you know,
(19:45):
grow in grief is that the pain of the grief
may never decrease in size, but you can grow your
life around and your life can get bigger. Whereas when
you think of five stages, you somehow think that the
the pain is getting smaller. And you know, anniversaries, birthdays,
(20:05):
holidays are often going to be a trigger for me
and I have a right to be sad and grieve
on those days twenty years from now. And so five
stages of grief, try not to use that one. There's
a dialectical thinking and grief was another really good one
(20:28):
continuing bonds, the grow with grief, attachment theory and grief.
So just not the five stages of grief.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And talking about the one Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Ross Yes, okay, yeah, And I don't know if people
know this, but that was written for patients on hospice.
It was not written for the person left behind, so
it has been kind of stretched and used and it
just kind of got popular as the you know, the
(21:01):
theory and grief, but anybody who's in this field knows
is way more complicated than these little you know, these stages.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Okay, So again, at what point did you say, all right,
I want to create mentally strong How what is the theory,
the modality, the treatment. How did that come about for you?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
So in the in the midst of raising my children,
so I had lost Johnny and I have six more children,
two of them which had pretty significant reactive attachment in PTSD.
And so when they got into their teen years, you know,
all of the things that we often see with with
that population, right that, you know, run away using drugs,
(21:46):
you know, sexual activity, you know, way too early, those
those kinds of things. So I'm I'm managing these these
two teenagers. The other two didn't give me as much problem,
So problems not a fair word. Well, the other two
didn't manage.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Who you asked, I had kids, that's a fair word.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
But the other he didn't manifest their trauma in stressful ways.
So I had two that were, you know, doing all
these things, the mother's worst nightmare. And then I had
Reggie who was seizing almost every day, just medical trauma.
After medical trauma. I mean, his seizures were so intense
(22:28):
that one day he broke his femur in the middle
of a sea. So there was this intensity of what
I was going through as I was raising my children.
Now this is, you know, sixteen seventeen years ago at
this point, right, and I'm trying to I'm already a
psychiatric nurse practitioner. I'm trying to incorporate what I know
(22:52):
into just taking care of myself and raising my kids.
And so I remember the first time my mom said
to me, well do you journal, which we all know
is a great therapeutic tool. My brain doesn't think in sentences, right,
And so I just started mind mapping and I call
it now, call it a thought map. And I began
(23:16):
to journal in like a thought map and just putting
bubbles everywhere. And then I started asking myself questions from like,
you know, from the past, from my childhood. You know,
how does this, you know, affect my relationship with God
and so. And then I get this one piece of
paper that I could look at and meditate on, and
(23:36):
I could begin to see connections. And so there was
a little bit of psychoanalytical therapy going on there, but
you know, cognitively just kind of getting it all out
on paper. And then you know, I was like, Okay,
this is great and it's cathartic and it feels good
to get it all out, But what am I going
to do with this? And I've always been kind of
(23:56):
a self development guru, read all the self development book
and I remember distinctly one day thinking, all of these
books say if I just think positive, positive things will happen, right,
And I was like, yeah, that's great, but it's way
more complicated than that. And so then I started to
(24:18):
like develop different categories that you do different things for.
So of course, negative self talk is going to just
put fuel in the fire and it's not going to
help you in your situation. Right, But just thinking positive,
you know, didn't heal my child, right, Just thinking positive
doesn't stop bad things from happening. And so I began
(24:42):
developing other categories like grief and trauma and behaviors and
choices like you know what part am I choosing? And
you know that my choice is kind of feeding into
you know, what's going on. And so I was doing
this just to take care of myself in raising my children.
And when Reggie passed away in twenty sixteen, Like, you know,
(25:06):
that was the end. His life was trauma, right, My
daughter's death was trauma. Her life was not trauma. She
she you know, went to school like that, you know,
she was fairly normal, delayed, but normal and healthy. So
Reggie's life was trauma. And so when he passed away,
I was like, I need to teach the world this, right,
(25:30):
And that's when I opened mentally strong, not knowing that,
you know, a couple of years later, my my daughter
would pass away in her sleep. So and that was
just three and a half years ago. And I would
tell anyone working with someone who has lost a child,
(25:51):
with active therapy and working through what's going on, it
takes a solid five years to feel good in that right. So,
and that's exactly where I was when Maya passed away.
So it had been five years since Reggie's death. I was,
(26:13):
you know, speaking about grief. I was speaking about how
how do you grieve? And one of the main things
that we avoid is the pain. And we must feel
the pain in order to for the intensity and frequency
in which we have to feel it to decrease. And
(26:35):
that was kind of my story. I didn't really talk
much about the trauma, right, because in Reggie's life, his
life was the trauma. And now I was safe, right,
so I thought, And so it didn't seem to be
directly impacting me when my daughter died in her sleep here,
I thought I was an expert, right. And then six
(26:57):
months after my daughter passed away, I realized I have
not even started grieving. I was probably in shock for
a solid six months. And so then I went on
this journey of like, how do you like what is
the difference between the trauma and the grief? Because when
(27:21):
you're sitting in grief, if I tell you, I want
you to sit in the pain of your grief, but
it's a messed with your trauma. All you're doing is
ruminating in your trauma, right, You're not actually just feeling
the pain of the grief.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
And so what I've learned in this last couple of
years is this ameshment that happens. The first step is
to separate the grief and trauma.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
The trauma being the trauma that one experiences due to
the death of a kid.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Or whomever, yep, or you know. For me, I actually
had to do CPR on my child, like there there
was actual you know, flashbacks and you know events that
were were very traumatic. But I want, I want people
to think about what we know about the impact of trauma.
So the impact of trauma can cause anxiety, It can
(28:21):
cause negative thinking, right, it can you know, it causes
those those negative neuropathways to begin. Right, and so whenever
someone's telling you the story of their grief, begin to
start helping them separate. Okay, so if they say, you know,
(28:42):
you know, if I was a better mother, this wouldn't
have happened if I Nope, that's negative self talk. And
you know, maybe there was a behavior of choice, like
for example, you know, with my son, I could have
taken him to the er maybe three hours before I
ended up calling nine to one one and I had
(29:03):
to work through that. Right, that is the trauma of
that decision, Right, I made a decision. But we also
have to like identify that the spiritual conflict. Right if
if I thought God was a loving God, then why
did he take my And I use the word God,
it doesn't matter, universe, spirituality, whatever is the word that
(29:27):
resonates with our clients, right, that's just the word that
that resonates for me. But there was like this spiritual
conflict that that was happening. There was you know, the
negative self talk, the blame. Those things are result of
the trauma. That's not grief, right. And so when I
(29:50):
say sit in the pain of your grief and you
go home and think about what a horrible mother you
were and if you would have just done something differently,
then then I'm then you're actually ruminating in your trauma
and creating a stronger negative neuropathway. Right, That's that's going
to be harder to undo as we you know, as
(30:12):
we know as trauma therapists, right, And so really helping
people this is the most critical step if you have
a patient who is has lost a child, of separating
that grief and trauma, because the first thing that happens
if you are a parent and you have someone who
has lost a child, you know that that countertransference, that empathy,
(30:37):
you know, kind of gets to your soul. Right, So
try to take a deep breath and just remember this
first step. You know how to deal with grief and
you know how to deal with trauma. So the only
difference here is you're going to help them separate that
grief and trauma Because what I say, our trauma, if
(30:59):
we are processing our trauma appropriately, we are processing it
and releasing it. Right whether you're doing E MDR or
you know, somatic yoga or energy work or or running,
I mean even you know that kind of movement with intent,
can can process and release these things out of the
(31:22):
body we need them out.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Grief is a pain. I call it like my badge
of honor, Like I am allowed to be sad and
upset and cry over my children's death until my death,
Like that is a badge of honor, like and it's
part of my story, It's part of who I am.
(31:45):
It changes you. I I liken it to losing a limb.
Let's say you losing a child is like losing a limb.
Like you can function, you can continue. It was obviously
very traumatic, but you can learn to overcome, you can
(32:06):
learn to do all kinds of things, but you'll always
be missing that limb. But what often happens is that
it gets a messed with the trauma and then we're
holding on to the trauma. The therapist is trying to
work through the trauma, but the patient is unconsciously never
(32:27):
going to let that go if they don't separate it
because that's their child, right.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I love that distinction you're making here, and I think
it's very helpful and very useful and probably very difficult
to be aware of when you're in it if you're
not working with a therapist or someone who can see that. Yeah,
all right, Look, I want to be mindful of the
time here. So with mentally strong, what do you do? Do?
(32:56):
You offer courses training and for whom.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
We have all the way from a full clinic in
Colorado Springs that takes insurance to intensives here in town.
So you come for a mini intensive as four hours
or you know, three days or whatever custom you need,
and we work on, you know, just how to be
mentally stronger in those decisions. So the foundation is the
(33:25):
mentally Strong method, which is a CBT approach. And then
what am I going to do with my trauma? How
you know, and really finding what works for you. So
brain spotting was very effective for me. I still use it.
I use it with my clients, but it doesn't you know,
it doesn't resonate with everyone, right like, but it is
important regardless all of us are are experiencing micro traumas.
(33:51):
All the time, Right, how are you personally processing your trauma?
And so I do just like a mentally strong intensive
that is for therapists, for you know, high functioning professionals
who just want to learn how to function better by
having that solid CBT foundation. And then what am I
going to do with my trauma and in truly addressing
(34:15):
your spiritual health wherever you are in that And you know,
we do use you know, some techniques. We you know,
have sound bowls and we have a reiki practitioner and
things like that. But it's not about those one or
two like modalities. It's who am I?
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
This is the you know, life question that we all have.
Who am I? Why am I here? And and especially
when when bad things happen? Right, But but that's a
question for all of us, and so my intensives are
for everybody. And then we do have the online courses.
I have the documentary, which is so powerful if you
(34:58):
are even to yeah, if you are even considering like
working with me, I always tell people watch my documentary
because in that hour and a half you will feel
like you know me intimately and that allows you to
trust me. Right, So that that's the documentary and then
(35:20):
I have a book called Pain and Purpose, which is
just that story of how I turn my pain into purpose.
And then I have a couple of work books as well.
But we can send you the link directly for the film,
so you could put it in the description as well.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Oh okay, okay, we'll have that link. All that link
up here at the show notes page at the Trauma
Paperspodcast dot com. Once again, Christie's website is mentally strong
dot com. Chrissy, have to have you back, would love
to have you back. There's so much to talk about here.
Come on, You're incredible. Thank you. I'm so friggin' inspiring. Jesus,
(36:00):
I'm so glad I got I got to meet you.
Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yes, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
All right, we'll be in touch, all right.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Bye bye
Welcome to the Trauma SAPIs podcast. My name is go Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
to the podcast. Very excited to have as my guest today,
doctor Christy Bandukamara.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Christy welcome, Thank you so much so.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Christy, known to her patients as Doctor B, is a
psychiatric nurse practitioner and the founder of Mentally Strong, a
behavioral health clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Combining decades of
clinical expertise with her deeply personal experience, Doctor B helps
people navigate grief, trauma, and loss through her innovative Mentally
(00:44):
Strong method practical framework for building resilience and reclaiming purpose
after life's hardest moments. All right, doctor B. Christy, Before
we get go in here, share with the listeners where
you're from originally and where you are currently.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I'm originally from Miami, floor been a psychiatric nurse practitioner
for twenty five years, have seven children. By all, I
am a go getter for sure, an expert in trauma
by default, right like I you know, you know how
the industry is. Most psychiatric nurse practitioners are focused on
(01:19):
you know, medication management, psychiatric evaluations. Some do some counseling.
But when I was going through my own grief in trauma.
So the first event happened in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
All right, wait, hang on, han, I want I got
to stop you. We're going to get into that, but
I want to just find out where you're from originally,
where you are currently.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, I am from Miami, Florida, and I'm currently in
Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Okay, okay, all right, so go on, how how did
all this start for you?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
So in two thousand and five, I lost a son
in a drowning accident. I had six other children, so
I've adopted five from the foster care system. So they
came to me with pretty significant reactive attachment disorder and
PTSD and so, you know, just like a good mental
health professional, and I was like, oh, I can do this,
(02:11):
but it is it is very different when you bring
trauma into your home rather than treating you know, trauma
as a professional. And so that was my first you know,
kind of introduction to traumas bringing in these children. They
were nine, ten, and thirteen when they came into my home,
both physical and sexual abuse in their past, and obviously
(02:32):
abandoned by their biological family. Within a year of adopting
this three child sibling group, one of them died in
a drowning accident. And so I have four other adopted
children and two biological children. And the only reason I
differentiate those is because my biological children ended up with
(02:53):
a very rare neurodegenerative condition. So I lost my first
son in two thousand and five in a drowning accident.
After promising these kids that I adopted that they were
now safe. Right, we talk about the first step of
trauma treatment is being safe, right, being safe to begin
working on that trauma. And immediately after being adopted, and
(03:16):
I'm trying to convince them that they're safe so that
we can start working on their trauma, their biological brother dies,
and so you know, there was even more trauma and
grief on top of that, right, And I now know,
twenty years later, how to actually treat traumatic grief. I
(03:36):
do think it's different, and that's where my specialty comes
in here. But I'll go on with the story and
then we'll kind of talk about how do you actually
treat traumatic grief because the end goal is often different.
So within a year of my son Johnny dying in
a drowning accident, my biological son Reggie started having catastrophic epilepsy,
(03:59):
like twelve grandma seizures in a day, completely wiping him
out cognitively, beginning to have delays because of these seizures.
No medications were working, and it took them three years,
but they finally diagnosed a very rare neurodegenerative condition called
d RPLA. When I say rare, I mean there's three
(04:22):
families in the United States. So I went on a
mission to save my son and I did everything from
every type of alternative practice to taking him to Japan,
to Canada to the UK for different potential treatments for
this very rare condition, both alternative medicine and ye.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Are you were you a nurse practitioner at this time?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yes, yes, okay, okay, And so I was attacking it
from multiple directions, you know, from a medical standpoint, but
then also this is what opened up my door to
kind of alternative treatment, and both from like supplements and
that kind of stuff, but also types of traumatic work
that I still do. I do a lot of somatic
(05:09):
movement work and you know, sound bowls and reiki and
energy work, but this was kind of the first step
into that, like learning about those things. Unfortunately, my son
passed away in twenty sixteen, and it is a genetic condition.
So my other biological child and my husband was diagnosed
(05:31):
with the same rare condition. My daughter, although she had seizures,
was very responsive to medication, so they would start a medication,
she wouldn't have seizures for six months a year, and
then she'd have one seizure, they'd adjust the medication. So
her presentation looked nothing like her brother who ended up
passing away, So there was no indication that the end
(05:56):
result would be the same. And so I begannally Strong.
After Reggie passed away, I knew that I had to
teach people what I now call the mentally strong method,
which is like this just basic cognitive behavioral approach that
anybody can learn how to take care of themselves. And
trauma is kind of one of the categories in there,
like how do you actually work through your trauma right
(06:20):
and the impact that trauma has on your life. In
December of twenty twenty one, I woke up to my
daughter had died in her sleep, no indication. She ended
up dying of sudden, unexpected death and epilepsies. So she
did have seizures. And when someone with seizures dies in
(06:41):
their sleep, they just there's really no way to tell
for sure, but they just assume that they die from
a seizure in their sleep. So this gave a whole
new level of trauma. Right, So with Reggie's death, I
didn't even identify it as trauma. And I think we
often do this as mental health professionals, right, we hear
(07:02):
such horrible traumatic stories that we don't often recognize our
own trauma. I'm like, oh, it's grief, it's grief. And
so I was already kind of on that stage of
being a grief expert. And I realized after my daughter died,
which was completely unexpected and the most personally traumatic, that
this was trauma, that this is changing the way I
(07:26):
see the world. And so I went on a journey.
I created a grief documentary. So on this grief journey,
I followed myself with a GoPro. I filmed everything, I did,
all kinds of somatic work, spiritual work, professional work. I
went and visited the Amen Clinic, and you know, I
(07:47):
went to the Aman Clinic, which I don't know if
you know, this is where they do spec scans to
look at what is actually happening in the brain. And
I thought maybe we'd see something different. Friend, You know that,
because I had this grief for you, for me, for you.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Okay, you were doing all this work for yourself to
deal with what the hell has been going on. Hang
on a second, let me just pause here, because this
story is uh, I mean, it's it's it's just unfathomable.
(08:25):
And you're kind of you're you're going over it, and
I respect that, and I'm not going to ask you
to talk about whatever you don't want to talk about,
but it's it's it's unfathomable. I mean, you've already lost
three kids that you're talking about here. Let me just
take a step back here when you first got all
(08:46):
these kids. Forgive my lack of memory here, but how
many kids did you adopt compared to how many were biological? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I adopted five, Okay, two biological and so one adopted child,
both biological children, and most recently my husband. So we're
coming up on the one year anniversary of my husband's death,
which was a hospice type death, and so there was,
you know, there was able to be some grieving prior
(09:20):
to his death. And so when I say I'm a
traumatic grief expert, I lived every type of grief, from
even the grief of losing your husband that's physically still there, right,
like he began to cognitively leave before he physically left, right.
I've you know, the grief of a mother taking her
(09:43):
special needs child to an IEP meeting and being told
over and over again that her child is not going
to measure up and that they're not enough. And those
are you know, like this constant grief that special needs
moms go through. And so I think we as profession
and the reason I like to like get the story
(10:04):
out there like quickly and somewhat unemotional in the beginning,
to get that shock factor out right, Like I am
speaking from a space of true vulnerability and success in
treating myself. And I can tell you I know that
(10:25):
you know, most of your listeners are trauma therapists or therapists.
You know, I try to seek professional help a couple times,
and the words that I hear, are I don't know
how you're still standing, and that how that is received
to the person on the other end is if you
(10:45):
don't know how I'm still standing, how are you supposed
to help me? So I want to get in front
of people who are treating trauma and hearing these stories
and giving you the power that you can hold space
for this. And you know, we know these techniques of like,
(11:06):
you know, don't do the counter transfers, don't take on
you know most of us are impaths, right, you know,
so we we take that on. But then when we
do that, we don't hold a space of strength for
the person who needs us to hold a space of strength.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Well, there's there's a balance there, right, I mean, in
all fairness, your story is outside the bounds of normal
understanding and experience. I mean, one, you know, we hear
when people talk about losing a kid's oftentimes that's registered
as probably the most terrific, horrible thing we as humans
(11:44):
and parents can go through. But it's it's not just
one kid, right for you. So I could understand any
any person in any therapist saying that that doesn't mean
they're not able to to treat you but also you know,
it's how it's communicated. Well let me let's go back
to this. So how did you I mean, obviously you're
(12:08):
cut from a different how are you come on?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I think this is important because I often kind of
get that that somehow Christy Bundukmar doctor b has more
strength than the average average person. And my favorite book
of all time, and I think anybody who works in
trauma needs to read this book is The Man Search
for Meaning by Victor Frankel.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
This is not a book about how to you know, uh,
overcome captivity. It is about the human experience and how
hope in and of itself can allow you to survive.
Just hope and and sometimes that's all we can help
(12:54):
our patients find right that diggy and sometimes you have
to dig really deep. And in my documentary, I'm very vulnerable.
There is you know a period of time that suicidality
made sense to me, like and I always talk to
people about how suicidality can be a a communication of
(13:20):
a feeling of I don't have anything left in me.
It doesn't have to be an action, right, And so
it was difficult and it was not compartmentalized, right, like
a lot of people who have been through difficult things
(13:42):
survive by grit alone, right, like just grit, They don't
actually work through the trauma. They don't. And and trauma
work is hard, as everyone listening here knows, trauma work
is hard. And we live in a culture where we
don't want to do hard things, right, We want to
(14:03):
go through the fast food we don't you know, Yeah,
we know that if we hand cooked all of our
meals and did this and this and this, that you
know would be healthier for us. But it's harder, right,
And so I mean, I know people who are listening
here know how important trauma work is. But I can
(14:24):
tell you I work with a lot of mothers who
have lost children and the physical symptoms. You know, I'm
sure we've all read the book The Body keeps the Score, right,
like the it often comes out in physical ways. If
we don't take that stop and learn how to release
(14:46):
trauma from the body. And when it's cumulative trauma like that,
it it could take a lifetime, right like yeah, but
I always equate it to like a teapot or a
soda can that you've shaken up, right, if you could
just relief a little bit of pressure. You won't explode, right,
(15:08):
You won't, you know, try to complete suicide. You won't
try to hurt somebody, right Like? The what happens internally
can feel so overwhelming. And I've been the title of
my documentary is strength and Vulnerability.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Okay, and hold on? Where can this be?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
So you can My website is mentally strong dot com
and so everything can go back to mentally strong dot
com and watch.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Us on the very cool Let me let me. I
want to ask you about, uh, the work you did,
the treatment you found, the therapy you found that helped you,
and then then I want to segue into how you
started developing mentally strong. So you talked about finding or
(16:07):
seeking treatment help. What did you do? So?
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I went to the AMAN Clinic, which is a psychiatric
evaluation cash Bake clinic. They don't work specifically with trauma,
but they do spec scans and they do recommendations for
supplements and things like that. I saw a local psychiatrist
here in Colorado Springs. I tried some TMS. I tried
brain spotting. Brain spotting. I think it was personally personally
(16:37):
the most effective for me. I see an acupuncturist on
a regular basis. I see a functional medicine doctor, and
I do a lot of spiritual work. So when I
say spiritual work, it's kind of in this big bucket
because I don't know that there's one piece of spiritual
work that you know, I can say, like, oh, do this.
(17:00):
But one of the things that has happened in our
fear of professional mental health professionals proselytizing their personal beliefs,
that we've taken our spiritual health out of our mental health,
and especially in traumatic grief, right, and grief is a
(17:21):
spiritual journey, right, Like what what do you believe happens
after that person passes? Where? Where are they? Where are you?
What you know if you were to complete suicide? What
does that mean?
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Like?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
These are these are deep spiritual questions that were you know,
our patients often get into and you know we I
think we feel either ill equipped or scared of proselytizing, right,
and so my biggest healing has come from my spiritual
(17:58):
growth in this process. And exactly what my spiritual journey
is I don't think is super important because I often
think that this is where the fear lies in her
truth is now supposed to be my truth.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
The thing that I just want therapists to hear is
that allowing patients or encouraging patients on this spiritual journey,
whatever that journey. Yeah, whatever that journey is, and that's
you know, I do a lot of that in my
We have intensives here. I have a grief intensive and
(18:36):
mentally Strong intensive, and people will come in and we do.
I think the foundation for all healing is a strong
cognitive behavioral understanding. So I teach the mentally Strong method.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
This is okay, hang on, before you start going to that.
How did you get to the point where you're like, okay,
I want to start teaching this. I want to create
this and talk to us about that.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Well, it was actually in phases. So when Reggie passed
in twenty sixteen, it took about a year and a half.
But I wrote a book and I started mentally Strong,
and I thought that was the end of my trauma.
I thought that was the end of my story. Right,
I've lost your sons, right, and I'm starting this clinic.
(19:23):
I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner and I'm going to use
the mentally Strong method in this clinic. And I started
speaking kind of on grief. And I'm really against the
five stages of grief that we often teach teach because
it is there's so many other good grief theories like
grow in Grief. I don't know if you've seen, you know,
(19:45):
grow in grief is that the pain of the grief
may never decrease in size, but you can grow your
life around and your life can get bigger. Whereas when
you think of five stages, you somehow think that the
the pain is getting smaller. And you know, anniversaries, birthdays,
(20:05):
holidays are often going to be a trigger for me
and I have a right to be sad and grieve
on those days twenty years from now. And so five
stages of grief, try not to use that one. There's
a dialectical thinking and grief was another really good one
(20:28):
continuing bonds, the grow with grief, attachment theory and grief.
So just not the five stages of grief.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And talking about the one Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Ross Yes, okay, yeah, And I don't know if people
know this, but that was written for patients on hospice.
It was not written for the person left behind, so
it has been kind of stretched and used and it
just kind of got popular as the you know, the
(21:01):
theory and grief, but anybody who's in this field knows
is way more complicated than these little you know, these stages.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Okay, So again, at what point did you say, all right,
I want to create mentally strong How what is the theory,
the modality, the treatment. How did that come about for you?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
So in the in the midst of raising my children,
so I had lost Johnny and I have six more children,
two of them which had pretty significant reactive attachment in PTSD.
And so when they got into their teen years, you know,
all of the things that we often see with with
that population, right that, you know, run away using drugs,
(21:46):
you know, sexual activity, you know, way too early, those
those kinds of things. So I'm I'm managing these these
two teenagers. The other two didn't give me as much problem,
So problems not a fair word. Well, the other two
didn't manage.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Who you asked, I had kids, that's a fair word.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
But the other he didn't manifest their trauma in stressful ways.
So I had two that were, you know, doing all
these things, the mother's worst nightmare. And then I had
Reggie who was seizing almost every day, just medical trauma.
After medical trauma. I mean, his seizures were so intense
(22:28):
that one day he broke his femur in the middle
of a sea. So there was this intensity of what
I was going through as I was raising my children.
Now this is, you know, sixteen seventeen years ago at
this point, right, and I'm trying to I'm already a
psychiatric nurse practitioner. I'm trying to incorporate what I know
(22:52):
into just taking care of myself and raising my kids.
And so I remember the first time my mom said
to me, well do you journal, which we all know
is a great therapeutic tool. My brain doesn't think in sentences, right,
And so I just started mind mapping and I call
it now, call it a thought map. And I began
(23:16):
to journal in like a thought map and just putting
bubbles everywhere. And then I started asking myself questions from like,
you know, from the past, from my childhood. You know,
how does this, you know, affect my relationship with God
and so. And then I get this one piece of
paper that I could look at and meditate on, and
(23:36):
I could begin to see connections. And so there was
a little bit of psychoanalytical therapy going on there, but
you know, cognitively just kind of getting it all out
on paper. And then you know, I was like, Okay,
this is great and it's cathartic and it feels good
to get it all out, But what am I going
to do with this? And I've always been kind of
(23:56):
a self development guru, read all the self development book
and I remember distinctly one day thinking, all of these
books say if I just think positive, positive things will happen, right,
And I was like, yeah, that's great, but it's way
more complicated than that. And so then I started to
(24:18):
like develop different categories that you do different things for.
So of course, negative self talk is going to just
put fuel in the fire and it's not going to
help you in your situation. Right, But just thinking positive,
you know, didn't heal my child, right, Just thinking positive
doesn't stop bad things from happening. And so I began
(24:42):
developing other categories like grief and trauma and behaviors and
choices like you know what part am I choosing? And
you know that my choice is kind of feeding into
you know, what's going on. And so I was doing
this just to take care of myself in raising my children.
And when Reggie passed away in twenty sixteen, Like, you know,
(25:06):
that was the end. His life was trauma, right, My
daughter's death was trauma. Her life was not trauma. She
she you know, went to school like that, you know,
she was fairly normal, delayed, but normal and healthy. So
Reggie's life was trauma. And so when he passed away,
I was like, I need to teach the world this, right,
(25:30):
And that's when I opened mentally strong, not knowing that,
you know, a couple of years later, my my daughter
would pass away in her sleep. So and that was
just three and a half years ago. And I would
tell anyone working with someone who has lost a child,
(25:51):
with active therapy and working through what's going on, it
takes a solid five years to feel good in that right. So,
and that's exactly where I was when Maya passed away.
So it had been five years since Reggie's death. I was,
(26:13):
you know, speaking about grief. I was speaking about how
how do you grieve? And one of the main things
that we avoid is the pain. And we must feel
the pain in order to for the intensity and frequency
in which we have to feel it to decrease. And
(26:35):
that was kind of my story. I didn't really talk
much about the trauma, right, because in Reggie's life, his
life was the trauma. And now I was safe, right,
so I thought, And so it didn't seem to be
directly impacting me when my daughter died in her sleep here,
I thought I was an expert, right. And then six
(26:57):
months after my daughter passed away, I realized I have
not even started grieving. I was probably in shock for
a solid six months. And so then I went on
this journey of like, how do you like what is
the difference between the trauma and the grief? Because when
(27:21):
you're sitting in grief, if I tell you, I want
you to sit in the pain of your grief, but
it's a messed with your trauma. All you're doing is
ruminating in your trauma, right, You're not actually just feeling
the pain of the grief.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
And so what I've learned in this last couple of
years is this ameshment that happens. The first step is
to separate the grief and trauma.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
The trauma being the trauma that one experiences due to
the death of a kid.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Or whomever, yep, or you know. For me, I actually
had to do CPR on my child, like there there
was actual you know, flashbacks and you know events that
were were very traumatic. But I want, I want people
to think about what we know about the impact of trauma.
So the impact of trauma can cause anxiety, It can
(28:21):
cause negative thinking, right, it can you know, it causes
those those negative neuropathways to begin. Right, and so whenever
someone's telling you the story of their grief, begin to
start helping them separate. Okay, so if they say, you know,
(28:42):
you know, if I was a better mother, this wouldn't
have happened if I Nope, that's negative self talk. And
you know, maybe there was a behavior of choice, like
for example, you know, with my son, I could have
taken him to the er maybe three hours before I
ended up calling nine to one one and I had
(29:03):
to work through that. Right, that is the trauma of
that decision, Right, I made a decision. But we also
have to like identify that the spiritual conflict. Right if
if I thought God was a loving God, then why
did he take my And I use the word God,
it doesn't matter, universe, spirituality, whatever is the word that
(29:27):
resonates with our clients, right, that's just the word that
that resonates for me. But there was like this spiritual
conflict that that was happening. There was you know, the
negative self talk, the blame. Those things are result of
the trauma. That's not grief, right. And so when I
(29:50):
say sit in the pain of your grief and you
go home and think about what a horrible mother you
were and if you would have just done something differently,
then then I'm then you're actually ruminating in your trauma
and creating a stronger negative neuropathway. Right, That's that's going
to be harder to undo as we you know, as
(30:12):
we know as trauma therapists, right, And so really helping
people this is the most critical step if you have
a patient who is has lost a child, of separating
that grief and trauma, because the first thing that happens
if you are a parent and you have someone who
has lost a child, you know that that countertransference, that empathy,
(30:37):
you know, kind of gets to your soul. Right, So
try to take a deep breath and just remember this
first step. You know how to deal with grief and
you know how to deal with trauma. So the only
difference here is you're going to help them separate that
grief and trauma Because what I say, our trauma, if
(30:59):
we are processing our trauma appropriately, we are processing it
and releasing it. Right whether you're doing E MDR or
you know, somatic yoga or energy work or or running,
I mean even you know that kind of movement with intent,
can can process and release these things out of the
(31:22):
body we need them out.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Grief is a pain. I call it like my badge
of honor, Like I am allowed to be sad and
upset and cry over my children's death until my death,
Like that is a badge of honor, like and it's
part of my story, It's part of who I am.
(31:45):
It changes you. I I liken it to losing a limb.
Let's say you losing a child is like losing a limb.
Like you can function, you can continue. It was obviously
very traumatic, but you can learn to overcome, you can
(32:06):
learn to do all kinds of things, but you'll always
be missing that limb. But what often happens is that
it gets a messed with the trauma and then we're
holding on to the trauma. The therapist is trying to
work through the trauma, but the patient is unconsciously never
(32:27):
going to let that go if they don't separate it
because that's their child, right.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I love that distinction you're making here, and I think
it's very helpful and very useful and probably very difficult
to be aware of when you're in it if you're
not working with a therapist or someone who can see that. Yeah,
all right, Look, I want to be mindful of the
time here. So with mentally strong, what do you do? Do?
(32:56):
You offer courses training and for whom.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
We have all the way from a full clinic in
Colorado Springs that takes insurance to intensives here in town.
So you come for a mini intensive as four hours
or you know, three days or whatever custom you need,
and we work on, you know, just how to be
mentally stronger in those decisions. So the foundation is the
(33:25):
mentally Strong method, which is a CBT approach. And then
what am I going to do with my trauma? How
you know, and really finding what works for you. So
brain spotting was very effective for me. I still use it.
I use it with my clients, but it doesn't you know,
it doesn't resonate with everyone, right like, but it is
important regardless all of us are are experiencing micro traumas.
(33:51):
All the time, Right, how are you personally processing your trauma?
And so I do just like a mentally strong intensive
that is for therapists, for you know, high functioning professionals
who just want to learn how to function better by
having that solid CBT foundation. And then what am I
going to do with my trauma and in truly addressing
(34:15):
your spiritual health wherever you are in that And you know,
we do use you know, some techniques. We you know,
have sound bowls and we have a reiki practitioner and
things like that. But it's not about those one or
two like modalities. It's who am I?
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Right?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
This is the you know, life question that we all have.
Who am I? Why am I here? And and especially
when when bad things happen? Right, But but that's a
question for all of us, and so my intensives are
for everybody. And then we do have the online courses.
I have the documentary, which is so powerful if you
(34:58):
are even to yeah, if you are even considering like
working with me, I always tell people watch my documentary
because in that hour and a half you will feel
like you know me intimately and that allows you to
trust me. Right, So that that's the documentary and then
(35:20):
I have a book called Pain and Purpose, which is
just that story of how I turn my pain into purpose.
And then I have a couple of work books as well.
But we can send you the link directly for the film,
so you could put it in the description as well.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Oh okay, okay, we'll have that link. All that link
up here at the show notes page at the Trauma
Paperspodcast dot com. Once again, Christie's website is mentally strong
dot com. Chrissy, have to have you back, would love
to have you back. There's so much to talk about here.
Come on, You're incredible. Thank you. I'm so friggin' inspiring. Jesus,
(36:00):
I'm so glad I got I got to meet you.
Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yes, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
All right, we'll be in touch, all right.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Bye bye
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