August 11, 2025 • 29 mins
Adam Blevins is a former Virginia state trooper who transitioned into mental health and now serves as the operations director of the Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program (VALEAP).
After experiencing firsthand the toll of trauma, he transitioned into mental health, becoming an EMDR provider, ICISF instructor, and PhD student in trauma-informed care. Drawing from his unique perspective as both a first responder and a mental health provider, Adam wrote Welcome to the S.H.I.F.T. Show™: How to Love Yourself in a World That Won't, a raw, unfiltered guide to self-discovery and resilience in an unforgiving world.
In This Episode
The Trauma Therapist PodcastJoin my email list and receive podcast updates and other news: https://bit.ly/3LuAG2i
Listen to all Trauma Therapist Podcast episodes here: https://bit.ly/3VRNy8z
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
After experiencing firsthand the toll of trauma, he transitioned into mental health, becoming an EMDR provider, ICISF instructor, and PhD student in trauma-informed care. Drawing from his unique perspective as both a first responder and a mental health provider, Adam wrote Welcome to the S.H.I.F.T. Show™: How to Love Yourself in a World That Won't, a raw, unfiltered guide to self-discovery and resilience in an unforgiving world.
In This Episode
- VLEAP website
- Adam on Facebook
- Adam’s book: Welcome to The S.H.I.F.T Show
- Adam on Youtube
- Adam on LinkedIn
The Trauma Therapist PodcastJoin my email list and receive podcast updates and other news: https://bit.ly/3LuAG2i
Listen to all Trauma Therapist Podcast episodes here: https://bit.ly/3VRNy8z
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma Papist Podcast. My name is Gom Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go,
So five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome
back to the podcast. Very excited to have us. My
guest today Adam Levins.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Adam, Welcome, Thanks guy, it's good to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
So. Adam is a former Virginia State trooper who transitioned
into mental health and now serves as the operations director
of the Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program. After experiencing firsthand
the toll of trauma, he transitioned into mental health, becoming
an e MDR provider, an ICIF instructor, and a PhD
student in Trauma informed Care. Drawn from his unique perspective
(00:47):
as both a first responder and mental health provider, Adam
wrote the book Welcome to the Shift Show How to
Love Yourself in a World that Won't. It's a raw,
unfiltered guide to self discovery and resilience in an unforgiving world.
Once again, welcome. Before we get going, share with the
listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I was born and raised in a very small town
called Sugar Grove, Virginia, community of about seven hundred people,
and I've lived in a couple other places. I lived
in Rockbridge County, Virginia and Buni Vista for a little while,
and today I find myself in Mary in Virginia, right
between Mount Rogers and White Top Mountain.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So stay Trooper sounds very intense to me.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Can be?
Speaker 3 (01:35):
It can be.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I mean, law enforcement to me in general just is
very intense when you're dealing with dealing with people. How
did let's start off here? How did you get into
this into that field?
Speaker 2 (01:52):
To be honest with you, man, Growing up, it was
it was either law enforcement or the Marine Corps. It
just it came down to a last minute decision of
which which area I felt I wanted to serve in
most and which area I thought that my particular skill
set could be better used. And that came from the
nine to eleven attacks. You know. I was in fifth grade.
My arm was broke, so I couldn't play with the
(02:13):
other kids in pe class, and my teacher and I
sat there and watched the planes hit and I just
remember seeing human beings sprinting towards you know, chaos and
potential death, and I just thought, what type of person
is that? You know? And I wanted to I wanted
to be that person. I wanted to I always wanted
(02:36):
to serve. I've always had a heart to serve, and
the Virginia State Police is where I found my home
to do that.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Now, forgive me for my ignorance.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Here can you chuck theoretically just go right into the
State Police or do you have to go through local
police or how does that work?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You can go straight into state Police. You don't necessarily
have to work for a town, city, or any other
locality first. You can just go straight into the State Police.
It is a very rigorous process. It took me about
a year and a half from the day I put
in the application, through all the screening and psychological examinations
and all that type of stuff until you get into
(03:16):
the academy. My academy was around thirty weeks, and then
you had an additional eight weeks of FTO out into
the field. So really it's it's about a three year
in total process to become a Virginia State Trooper. To
get off of probation and do all that stuff to
where you're you're out there on your own doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And what is the goal or of the state police
relative to local police the.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
State police, It really depends on where you are. You know,
as a trooper, my goal was always to promote public safety,
to enforce the laws of Virginia, and to reduce traffic
accidents and crime in the commonwealth. Excuse me, guy, yeah,
but that was that was typically the goal, and it
depends on where you're at. In some areas, the state
(04:04):
police are generally on the highway because the localities are
such a large agencies. So state police really does a
lot of stuff on the interstate. But in places where
I've served, we're full service, so we handle the highway stuff,
but at the same time we respond to domestics and
all the same type of situations the localities do as well.
Big reason for that is, I'm sorry. Big reason for
(04:26):
that is is a lot of local agencies they don't
they don't have a large sworn population, so we all
kind of work together and make sure that the missions accomplished.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
How long were you in that position.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I was a state trooper for seven and a half years,
served in Rottbridge County and Smith County, Virginia.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Talk about how the awareness of trauma and the impact
of it started to become aware for you, relevant for you.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Man, really really right out of the get go. My
first day on the job, I hadn't even been to
the academy yet. When I went through, you went to
what they were called probate phase, where they would send
you to the academy for a few weeks. You would
do basic driving, firearms, defensive tactics, stuff like that, and
then they would put you back out into the field
for eight more weeks with your FDO before you go
(05:18):
to the academy. And so my first day, my FTO
has taken me around to the courthouse, local agencies. I'm
meeting other law enforcement professionals and attorneys and stuff like that.
Thirty minutes before the end of the shift, we get
a call for a plane crash and I thought plane
crash in you know, Smith County, Virginia. Now we do
have a small airport here, but it came over the
(05:40):
radio that it was in Saltville, about twenty five minutes away,
and it was a twin engine CESSA occupied two times
and it was a double fatality. And that was the
first day on the job, and a plane crash is
what a plane crash is. You know, I'm not going
to paint the picture for everybody listening or anybody watching,
but it is what you expected to be. And that
was kind of my first taste of oh, all we're
(06:01):
we're we're in some real stuff here. You know, there's
there's some there's a grizzly side to this job. But
from there watching people, you know, seeing what people really
go through. And if you've never been in law enforcement
or in as a first responder, you don't see kind
of behind that curtain of humanity, right, and so you
don't see all of the situations and circumstances that people
(06:25):
find themselves in that that breaks them or that makes
them want to shrink themselves. And as a police officer,
you know, you respond to all types of situations, and
it's usually when somebody's having a really bad day. It's
usually when a trauma has occurred. Right. So that was
really when I started to learn about just how awful
this life can be, just how unforgiving this life can be.
(06:47):
And then I would run into some of these folks
later on in life and and to just see the
impact that it has happened now and kind of seeing
that process as it goes through, and then when it
hit me personally. You know, I can't tell you how
many fatal crashes and how many situations where I just
shoved them down, you know, just attribute it to a
day at work until there's that one that you can't
(07:10):
shove it down anymore. You know, you try to, but
all of a sudden, you know, you're trying to hold
a beach ball underwater. You could hold it there for
a while, but eventually your shoulders are going to give out.
And I responded to a call one day that made
my shoulders go out, and that's when the real impact
of trauma hit me personally in a way that I
had never experienced before. And that was a I won't
(07:33):
get into too much detail about it, but it was
a case that resulted in a homicide investigation involving a
two month old victim, and I essentially watched this poor
child leave this earth knowing there was nothing that I
or anybody else could do right. But this situation was
worldview challenging. It was gruesome because of the circumstances. It
(07:58):
was just all out bad, and that moment kind of
as it's stacked on top of all the other things.
But it brought all those other things back, you know.
It brought the ambush situation that I thought I was
good with back. It brought all these other fatal crashes back.
It brought some personal you know, personal life stuff back,
all the things that I thought I was good with.
(08:18):
But that particular call man, that was the one where
not only did I begin to notice that this has
had a significant impact on my life, but the people
around me started to notice.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And let me interrupt you here for a second. First
of all, thank you for sharing that story.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
My god. The I think.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
In general, many our culture in general has a particular
perspective on the law enforcement and even the military for
that matter, and how they, it's seems, have to deal
with trauma. Like you said, you've got to shove it
(09:04):
down to a certain degree otherwise you can't perform adequately.
But I'm curious, when you got into law enforcement, do
they talk about that at all or is it just
(09:25):
the culture You just deal with the shit and move on.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, So that it's interesting you bring that up because
there has been such a shift in this exact conversation
just over my short career in both law enforcement and
mental health. But when I came through, it was it
was the typical stigma, right, It was that you don't
talk about it, you shove it down, you ignore it,
you figure out where to put it right, but it
(09:50):
can't be here right, right, And so the only and
we got training in the Academy for Mental Health in
terms of dealing with other people in the midst of
crisis and kind of how to de escalate verbal judo
and how to you know, try to meet people where
they are to get them to what they need. But
there's very little conversation about what happens to you when
(10:11):
you experience all these things. And our mental health course,
if my memory serves me correctly, because it's been a
while ago now, but it was a very short hour
to two hour long class where one of the critical
Incident Stress Management team members, one of the peers, came
in and gave a speech about, Hey, you're going to
go through some tough stuff. You know, you're going to
see some things that the human brain may not be
(10:31):
all that well designed to experience. Right when those things happen,
we'll come see or you give us a call, right,
But there wasn't any in depth training on Hey, when
you start to notice those dissociative patterns, when you start
to notice the intrusive images and intrusive memories, when you
start to notice that in the places where you generally
(10:53):
felt safe before you no longer feel safe. You know
all the effects of trauma. Right, we don't talk about this,
and so as you kind of alluded to, it creates
this culture of I'm going to talk about it. We're
going to compartmentalize because it is what we do best, right,
and that works for a little while for some people,
but it doesn't work for everyone, and it certainly doesn't
work for everyone when you keep piling on trauma after
(11:16):
trauma after trauma after trauma, and when you talk about
law enforcement officers that go twenty twenty five year careers,
they're experiencing upwards of three hundred to four hundred critical
incidents just in their career, and it's insane. So we
didn't get a whole lot of stuff then, But as
especially since I've been with the Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program,
(11:39):
we're seeing that change kind of right in front of
us to where there's a lot more conversation in the academies,
there's a lot more conversation on the front end to
where people are now more prepared. Hey, here's the reality
of what this job is. Right, And now several agencies
are building their own peer teams and they have their
own wellness programs, and folks are hiring clinicians to come
(12:00):
in and help guide the program. So that's changing. It's
still a slow process, but the culture is shifting.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So you talked about that experience, your own personal experience
at seemed to be the last straw on the capital's
back in a sense.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
How did that unfold such that.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
You said, would you say, I need to get some help,
I need to do something about this.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
What happened for you?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So to give you just a little bit more backstory,
I was the kind of person who, and I'll just
come out with it, I didn't believe in therapy. I was.
I was a part of that mindset and a part
of that stigma that said, if you go to therapy,
you're weak. If you talk about your feelings and your emotions,
you're you're vulnerable, And to me, vulnerable is weak, right,
And that probably led into the problems that I had
(12:50):
because that's the way I felt about it right. But
when that happened to me and the symptoms started kind
of coming on, I knew something wasn't great, but I
was just like every other time, just shoving it down right.
And it got to the point to where I've never
been much of a drinker. I would drink socially, you know,
if I went out with friends, but I was never
(13:12):
the kind of guy that would just come home and
kill a six pack. That was just never something I did.
After that happened, I became that person.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Now were you married and so forth to different family.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Not married or anything. I was living alone. As a
matter of fact, I was two and a half hours
away from friends and family because of where I was
sent my first duty assignment. But yeah, I would I
would do my eight hour shift, I would come home,
I would start drinking. I would isolate myself. I stopped
going to the gym, I stopped exercising, stopped eating right
(13:42):
at all, and just really was pulling myself away from
everything that could help me right. And so with that,
and as a law enforcement officer, you know your behaviors
and your productivity, it starts to reflect how you are
mentally right. And I started getting complaints from citizens. I
never got complaints. I was a squared Toway trooper. You know.
(14:02):
I did my absolute best to try to make sure
that everybody I encountered had a good experience, you know,
even if they had to leave with tickets, even if
it was you know, not ideal circumstances. I wanted people
to know my heart was in it for the right reason.
I care about you, I want you to be successful,
those types of things. But as the complaints started pouring
in and folks started noticing I wasn't going out to
(14:25):
eat lunch with them, I was starting to isolate myself.
So one day a friend of mine, who was actually
on the State Police peer team, approached me and said,
are you okay? I said, yeah, man, I'm fine, And
I don't know how are we with cussing on this podcast? Okay,
So I said I'm fine and I'll never forget this.
He looked at me and he said, oh, you're fucked up, insecure, neurotic,
(14:47):
and emotional. Got it. That's interesting because that's exactly what
I am. But that's not what I said to you.
So anyway, he extended kind of a helping hand and said,
if you need anything, and I just brushed them off.
I don't need nothing, I'm good, appreciate it. Typical cop response.
And it wasn't too long after that first sergeant gave
(15:09):
me a call and said, you're going to a post
critical incident seminar And I said what is that? And
he said that's a place where cop ghosts or cops
go to talk about their feelings. I said, cool, not
going to that, thanks, So I went to that. It
was the most life changing experience of my life.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
It introduced me to mental health. It introduced me to
peer support, It introduced me to EMDR therapy. Above all else,
it showed me ways out of things that at the
time I did not know there were ways out of.
You know, I just thought, this is a part of me.
Now I'm going to live and I'm gonna die with
this right going to this three day intensive seminar where
(15:52):
I'm surrounded by cops and I'm surrounded by mental health
professionals and chaplains and whoever else. I walked away from there.
I want say better, because that's a bit of a
stretch in three days. But I walked away from that
event with a new duty belt, a new tool belt,
you know. The one before had my firearm and my
pepper spray and my magazines and my keys and whatever else.
(16:13):
This one had peer support, It had mental health, it
had emd art, had acupunctural detoxification, it had you know,
put yourself in front of courses to better understand trauma,
to better understand coping and resiliency. I walked away just feeling.
I walked away feeling as though the island I thought
I was on I was still on it. But I
(16:36):
turned around and looked, and there was a whole lot
of other people standing on that same island. And that's
what it meant to me. And I walked away from there,
going I have to know what happened, how this made
me feel better in just three short days. What was it?
And that's when I decided to go back to school
and get a master's and pursue clinical councils.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
That is so amazing, that's so inspiring. But you walked
in fresh me if I'm wrong, you walked into that seminar.
What thinking this is b us? I don't need this, okay?
So what get more specific here? What was it that
opened your eyes or what was life changing? Did someone
(17:18):
say something, was it just being around all those people?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
What I would say of all the things that come
with the post critical incident seminar, I would say the
top two, the first being on the on the first day,
when you start to hear stories from other people, and
we all tend to measure our trauma, right, we all
tend to well, mine's bigger than yours, or yours is
bigger than mine, So I don't deserve to be in
(17:41):
the solisation all that nonsense. And when you see people
who are not supposed to open up open up, and
the stories that you hear at this place, again, if
you've never been in law enforcement, you wouldn't believe it.
It's stuff that the best directors in Hollywood could not
put on t before you. It's real life pain, it's
(18:02):
real life torment. And when all of us came together
and told our stories and you got that cohesiveness, you
got that unity, you got that feeling of man, I'm
not as alone as I thought I was. It was that,
but it was also EMDR therapy. And I know you've
probably talked about EMDR on this podcast a thousand times,
but when you talk about a police officer who's never
(18:25):
experienced anything like that before. And when you walk out
of this room after having spent an hour with a
therapist that you just met, but who's a culturally competent
therapist who understands cops and how to work with us.
I walked out of there just going.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
What happened? I don't understand And it kind of made
me angry because I didn't understand what happened. And when
you take control away from a cop, you know got issues.
But it was that man. It was experiencing that desensitization
of that trauma and helping me start to see it
from a perspective that I would have never considered without
(19:01):
an intervention. That's when everything switched.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
That's amazing. I'm just let me just remind everyone I'm
speaking with Adam Levins. His book is called Welcome to
the Shift Show. So what happens? You go to the seminar,
you leave the seminar, How does what happens for you?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I had to be a part of it. I had
to figure it out. I immediately reached out to these
folks and said I want to come back. Get me trained.
They got me trained as a peer, and I started
volunteering with that very same program. Wow cheered with them
for about four about four years until the operations director
positioned for the program became available and I put in
(19:49):
for that interviewed against some phenomenal people, and luck of
the draw, they chose me.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
This program that I attribute to I'm gonna be honest
with you, guy, I attributed to saving my life, not
just my career, but saving my life because the path
I was on, No boy, no, this place gave me hope.
And as the operations director now I operate that very
the functioning of that very seminar, and I get to
watch three times a year anywhere from thirty to forty
(20:19):
police officers, dispatchers and their spouses and their partners come
through this thing. And I watched their lives change for
three days. And you see people that haven't smiled in
five years figure out they still can.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
You see you see spouses who are hugging and kissing
and loving on each other who probably haven't spoken in
the last six months. You're seeing people who thought their
lives were over realizing there's a whole lot left on
this whole horizon. You were just a little cloudy for
a little while, and that's the experience now. So I
got that position and I was still in school at
(20:54):
the time. I wrapped up my master's degree back in
twenty twenty three. I'm in residency now in Virginia on
the LPC track. Became emdr trained somewhere in the middle
of that. And when I'm not working with v Elite
full time, my part time position with Rivers of Holk
Counseling in Chantilly, Virginia's I'm just, as I put it
emdring the crap out of people all the time.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Damn so freeing, inspiring.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
My god, So talk to us about the book. How
did that come about?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
It's how it came about was when I was going
through that tough time all those years ago, when I
worked that homicide case and all the things started piling up.
I just started putting my thoughts on paper. I've always
been I've always liked poetry. I've always I've always been
a writer who never wrote until right now, until this
book finally came to fruition. But it started as just
(21:48):
a personal journal, just putting my thoughts down on paper,
trying to organize and trying to figure out who I
am with all this stuff going on and how do
I deal with it? And as time went on, I
found myself in these programs and I found healing that
kind of found itself on another abandoned ADHD project shelf.
The book did. And then sometime last year, about midway
(22:12):
through the year, summertime in the fall, with certain changes
going on in the world and the divisiveness and seeing
just not only people tear themselves down, but tearing other
people down, I thought, now is the time to take
it off the shelf and put these words on paper
and organize them in such a way that will resonate
(22:32):
with people. So really the gist of the book is
I've seen life from a very unique perspective that not
a lot of people do, and that is as a
law enforcement officer, just stuck in the middle of chaos
and crisis all the time. If you remember Charlottesville twenty seventeen,
I was right in the middle of that when Heather
(22:53):
Hier was killed and dozens of others injured when the
vehicle came through the crowd. My unit was the first
one there. We lost Jay Colin and Burt Bates that
day when the helicopter went down I've lost a lot
of friends. I've lost a lot of friends in this job.
And on top of all those things, watching other people
(23:14):
and kind of watching life unfold, but not just watching
life unfold, watching an unfold in in all walks of life,
at all different developmental stages of life. Right, It's not
just this population, this age group, it's everybody.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And then when you see the backside of that, when
you see the trauma, when you see the chaos, when
you see the real life stuff. And then when I
transitioned into mental health, the effects of that real life
stuff comes and sits right in front of me. Right.
So I've I've peeled back the curtain on humanity in
terms of what I've seen as a police officer and
how I've seen it impact people as a mental health provider.
(23:53):
And what I want this book to be and my
idea with it is to kind of be a bridge
to a lot of this stuff, to help people see
all the different factors in life, both external and internal,
that cause us to shrink ourselves or to be a
version of ourselves that's digestible and palatable to everybody else,
and especially in terms of trauma that oftentimes points us
(24:15):
in the opposite direction of where we need to go right.
Sometimes that blocks us out from getting appropriate help. So
I wrote the book to help people see all of
those things, all of these factors that are causing us
to be less of ourselves or at least feel like
we're less of ourselves. And then it transitions into the
struggle of all that the mental health struggles, the trauma,
(24:38):
the grief, the anxiety, the depression, all those types of things.
What happens when they go unchecked, what happens when you
keep piling these things on. And then it transitions from
there into the Shift show, which the Shift show is.
The shift is an acronym stands for stop, hype, innovate, fight,
and thrive, And basically it's just a simple framework to
(24:59):
help pe people. Once you recognize all those things that
are holding you back, stop giving power to those things right,
Learn what they are, learn how they impact you, and
learn the intervention or whatever it is that you need
to stop giving them power over you so that you
can overcome them and hype yourself up. You know, a
lot of people live their lives, and I saw this,
especially as a police officer. A lot of people live
(25:22):
their lives in the backseat, right, somebody else is steering
and they're kind of being They're just kind of going
along with the flow of their own expectations or other
people's expectations. Rather, So, the age is for hype yourself up. Right,
this is your story, this is your life. Once you
stop giving power to the stuff that hurts you, build,
build yourself up. As you start to build yourself up,
(25:42):
be innovative, right, realize that that's what the eye stands for.
Realize that the way I've been moving through the world,
the way I've been doing things, it's not working for
me because of whatever reason, I'm not healthy in this aspect.
My anxiety has gotten worse, whatever the case may be,
especially as a police officer, Be willing, be open to
new things, be willing to say this hasn't worked for me,
(26:03):
let me try something else. And then the f is
for once you start to learn who that person is,
fight for that person, fight against all the things that
try to bring that person down, right, because we all
know how hard that person is to find in this
life with all the noise and all the stuff. And
as you fight for that person, and you finally get
to the point to where I feel confident in who
(26:24):
I am. I've overcome these struggles and I feel like
I can move forward. Now. This is where we hit
the t this is where we thrive unapologetically who we are.
We're not focused on everybody else's expectations. We're not letting
this stuff drag us down anymore. We're taking actionable steps
each day to be who we want to be and
to be healthy.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
I love that. Love that.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
As we kind of wind down here, you know, I
was thinking about the what's the acronym of the l.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
E AP VA LEAP, Yes, Virginia le VA.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
LEAP, and how incredibly it's helping.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Individual law enforcement and first responders. Now is there anything
Is there another agency that's helping law enforcement agencies as
a whole.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
So our program we handle the entire state. We are
a five O one C three nonprofit. But anytime you
turn on the news and you see a significant event
in the commonwealth, whether it's you know, won't get any
of details of anything because everything that we do is confidential.
But when you turn on the news and see something
bad in Virginia that involves police officers in any kind
(27:36):
of way, VA LEAP is most likely going to be
there behind the curtain, in the shadows. Nobody ever knows
we're there. But we're providing cism services. We're making referrals
to culturally competent trauma and formed clinicians. We're getting people
set up for these seminars. We're getting them whatever they
need to help a lower the impact of this blow
(27:59):
that they just expe' this horrific incident, but also give
them the tools they need to move forward afterwards and
prepare themselves for the next one.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Adam, How do people learn more about you? Learn more
about the book? Get the book way.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
You can learn more about me just I'm on social media.
You can look up Adam Blevin's author if you want
to catch up with me on all the book stuff.
Also welcome to the Shift Show on both Instagram and Facebook.
Adam Levin's on LinkedIn. If you want to know anything
else about the book or anything, just just reach out
to me. It is available for pre order in the
(28:33):
Kindle Store now. It will launch on May the thirteenth
in print, ebook and audiobook as well. If you want
to learn more about the Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program
for those of you out there, mental health professionals, and officers.
If you want to help out, you can visit us
at www dot VA LEAP dot org. That's www dot
(28:56):
v A l e AP dot org. And yeah, all
my contact information is on there and anybody can reach
me that way.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Okay, we'll have that link up here at the show
notes page at the Trauma Therapists Podcast dot com. Adam, awesome,
Jesus man. Love to have you back, Love to have
you back. All right, we'll be in touch. Thank you
so much.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
It's sir guy. Thank you again
Welcome to the Trauma Papist Podcast. My name is Gom Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go,
So five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome
back to the podcast. Very excited to have us. My
guest today Adam Levins.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Adam, Welcome, Thanks guy, it's good to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
So. Adam is a former Virginia State trooper who transitioned
into mental health and now serves as the operations director
of the Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program. After experiencing firsthand
the toll of trauma, he transitioned into mental health, becoming
an e MDR provider, an ICIF instructor, and a PhD
student in Trauma informed Care. Drawn from his unique perspective
(00:47):
as both a first responder and mental health provider, Adam
wrote the book Welcome to the Shift Show How to
Love Yourself in a World that Won't. It's a raw,
unfiltered guide to self discovery and resilience in an unforgiving world.
Once again, welcome. Before we get going, share with the
listeners where you're from originally and where you are currently.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I was born and raised in a very small town
called Sugar Grove, Virginia, community of about seven hundred people,
and I've lived in a couple other places. I lived
in Rockbridge County, Virginia and Buni Vista for a little while,
and today I find myself in Mary in Virginia, right
between Mount Rogers and White Top Mountain.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So stay Trooper sounds very intense to me.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Can be?
Speaker 3 (01:35):
It can be.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
I mean, law enforcement to me in general just is
very intense when you're dealing with dealing with people. How
did let's start off here? How did you get into
this into that field?
Speaker 2 (01:52):
To be honest with you, man, Growing up, it was
it was either law enforcement or the Marine Corps. It
just it came down to a last minute decision of
which which area I felt I wanted to serve in
most and which area I thought that my particular skill
set could be better used. And that came from the
nine to eleven attacks. You know. I was in fifth grade.
My arm was broke, so I couldn't play with the
(02:13):
other kids in pe class, and my teacher and I
sat there and watched the planes hit and I just
remember seeing human beings sprinting towards you know, chaos and
potential death, and I just thought, what type of person
is that? You know? And I wanted to I wanted
to be that person. I wanted to I always wanted
(02:36):
to serve. I've always had a heart to serve, and
the Virginia State Police is where I found my home
to do that.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Now, forgive me for my ignorance.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Here can you chuck theoretically just go right into the
State Police or do you have to go through local
police or how does that work?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You can go straight into state Police. You don't necessarily
have to work for a town, city, or any other
locality first. You can just go straight into the State Police.
It is a very rigorous process. It took me about
a year and a half from the day I put
in the application, through all the screening and psychological examinations
and all that type of stuff until you get into
(03:16):
the academy. My academy was around thirty weeks, and then
you had an additional eight weeks of FTO out into
the field. So really it's it's about a three year
in total process to become a Virginia State Trooper. To
get off of probation and do all that stuff to
where you're you're out there on your own doing it.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And what is the goal or of the state police
relative to local police the.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
State police, It really depends on where you are. You know,
as a trooper, my goal was always to promote public safety,
to enforce the laws of Virginia, and to reduce traffic
accidents and crime in the commonwealth. Excuse me, guy, yeah,
but that was that was typically the goal, and it
depends on where you're at. In some areas, the state
(04:04):
police are generally on the highway because the localities are
such a large agencies. So state police really does a
lot of stuff on the interstate. But in places where
I've served, we're full service, so we handle the highway stuff,
but at the same time we respond to domestics and
all the same type of situations the localities do as well.
Big reason for that is, I'm sorry. Big reason for
(04:26):
that is is a lot of local agencies they don't
they don't have a large sworn population, so we all
kind of work together and make sure that the missions accomplished.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
How long were you in that position.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
I was a state trooper for seven and a half years,
served in Rottbridge County and Smith County, Virginia.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Talk about how the awareness of trauma and the impact
of it started to become aware for you, relevant for you.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Man, really really right out of the get go. My
first day on the job, I hadn't even been to
the academy yet. When I went through, you went to
what they were called probate phase, where they would send
you to the academy for a few weeks. You would
do basic driving, firearms, defensive tactics, stuff like that, and
then they would put you back out into the field
for eight more weeks with your FDO before you go
(05:18):
to the academy. And so my first day, my FTO
has taken me around to the courthouse, local agencies. I'm
meeting other law enforcement professionals and attorneys and stuff like that.
Thirty minutes before the end of the shift, we get
a call for a plane crash and I thought plane
crash in you know, Smith County, Virginia. Now we do
have a small airport here, but it came over the
(05:40):
radio that it was in Saltville, about twenty five minutes away,
and it was a twin engine CESSA occupied two times
and it was a double fatality. And that was the
first day on the job, and a plane crash is
what a plane crash is. You know, I'm not going
to paint the picture for everybody listening or anybody watching,
but it is what you expected to be. And that
was kind of my first taste of oh, all we're
(06:01):
we're we're in some real stuff here. You know, there's
there's some there's a grizzly side to this job. But
from there watching people, you know, seeing what people really
go through. And if you've never been in law enforcement
or in as a first responder, you don't see kind
of behind that curtain of humanity, right, and so you
don't see all of the situations and circumstances that people
(06:25):
find themselves in that that breaks them or that makes
them want to shrink themselves. And as a police officer,
you know, you respond to all types of situations, and
it's usually when somebody's having a really bad day. It's
usually when a trauma has occurred. Right. So that was
really when I started to learn about just how awful
this life can be, just how unforgiving this life can be.
(06:47):
And then I would run into some of these folks
later on in life and and to just see the
impact that it has happened now and kind of seeing
that process as it goes through, and then when it
hit me personally. You know, I can't tell you how
many fatal crashes and how many situations where I just
shoved them down, you know, just attribute it to a
day at work until there's that one that you can't
(07:10):
shove it down anymore. You know, you try to, but
all of a sudden, you know, you're trying to hold
a beach ball underwater. You could hold it there for
a while, but eventually your shoulders are going to give out.
And I responded to a call one day that made
my shoulders go out, and that's when the real impact
of trauma hit me personally in a way that I
had never experienced before. And that was a I won't
(07:33):
get into too much detail about it, but it was
a case that resulted in a homicide investigation involving a
two month old victim, and I essentially watched this poor
child leave this earth knowing there was nothing that I
or anybody else could do right. But this situation was
worldview challenging. It was gruesome because of the circumstances. It
(07:58):
was just all out bad, and that moment kind of
as it's stacked on top of all the other things.
But it brought all those other things back, you know.
It brought the ambush situation that I thought I was
good with back. It brought all these other fatal crashes back.
It brought some personal you know, personal life stuff back,
all the things that I thought I was good with.
(08:18):
But that particular call man, that was the one where
not only did I begin to notice that this has
had a significant impact on my life, but the people
around me started to notice.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And let me interrupt you here for a second. First
of all, thank you for sharing that story.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
My god. The I think.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
In general, many our culture in general has a particular
perspective on the law enforcement and even the military for
that matter, and how they, it's seems, have to deal
with trauma. Like you said, you've got to shove it
(09:04):
down to a certain degree otherwise you can't perform adequately.
But I'm curious, when you got into law enforcement, do
they talk about that at all or is it just
(09:25):
the culture You just deal with the shit and move on.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Yeah, So that it's interesting you bring that up because
there has been such a shift in this exact conversation
just over my short career in both law enforcement and
mental health. But when I came through, it was it
was the typical stigma, right, It was that you don't
talk about it, you shove it down, you ignore it,
you figure out where to put it right, but it
(09:50):
can't be here right, right, And so the only and
we got training in the Academy for Mental Health in
terms of dealing with other people in the midst of
crisis and kind of how to de escalate verbal judo
and how to you know, try to meet people where
they are to get them to what they need. But
there's very little conversation about what happens to you when
(10:11):
you experience all these things. And our mental health course,
if my memory serves me correctly, because it's been a
while ago now, but it was a very short hour
to two hour long class where one of the critical
Incident Stress Management team members, one of the peers, came
in and gave a speech about, Hey, you're going to
go through some tough stuff. You know, you're going to
see some things that the human brain may not be
(10:31):
all that well designed to experience. Right when those things happen,
we'll come see or you give us a call, right,
But there wasn't any in depth training on Hey, when
you start to notice those dissociative patterns, when you start
to notice the intrusive images and intrusive memories, when you
start to notice that in the places where you generally
(10:53):
felt safe before you no longer feel safe. You know
all the effects of trauma. Right, we don't talk about this,
and so as you kind of alluded to, it creates
this culture of I'm going to talk about it. We're
going to compartmentalize because it is what we do best, right,
and that works for a little while for some people,
but it doesn't work for everyone, and it certainly doesn't
work for everyone when you keep piling on trauma after
(11:16):
trauma after trauma after trauma, and when you talk about
law enforcement officers that go twenty twenty five year careers,
they're experiencing upwards of three hundred to four hundred critical
incidents just in their career, and it's insane. So we
didn't get a whole lot of stuff then, But as
especially since I've been with the Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program,
(11:39):
we're seeing that change kind of right in front of
us to where there's a lot more conversation in the academies,
there's a lot more conversation on the front end to
where people are now more prepared. Hey, here's the reality
of what this job is. Right, And now several agencies
are building their own peer teams and they have their
own wellness programs, and folks are hiring clinicians to come
(12:00):
in and help guide the program. So that's changing. It's
still a slow process, but the culture is shifting.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So you talked about that experience, your own personal experience
at seemed to be the last straw on the capital's
back in a sense.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
How did that unfold such that.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
You said, would you say, I need to get some help,
I need to do something about this.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
What happened for you?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
So to give you just a little bit more backstory,
I was the kind of person who, and I'll just
come out with it, I didn't believe in therapy. I was.
I was a part of that mindset and a part
of that stigma that said, if you go to therapy,
you're weak. If you talk about your feelings and your emotions,
you're you're vulnerable, And to me, vulnerable is weak, right,
And that probably led into the problems that I had
(12:50):
because that's the way I felt about it right. But
when that happened to me and the symptoms started kind
of coming on, I knew something wasn't great, but I
was just like every other time, just shoving it down right.
And it got to the point to where I've never
been much of a drinker. I would drink socially, you know,
if I went out with friends, but I was never
(13:12):
the kind of guy that would just come home and
kill a six pack. That was just never something I did.
After that happened, I became that person.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Now were you married and so forth to different family.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Not married or anything. I was living alone. As a
matter of fact, I was two and a half hours
away from friends and family because of where I was
sent my first duty assignment. But yeah, I would I
would do my eight hour shift, I would come home,
I would start drinking. I would isolate myself. I stopped
going to the gym, I stopped exercising, stopped eating right
(13:42):
at all, and just really was pulling myself away from
everything that could help me right. And so with that,
and as a law enforcement officer, you know your behaviors
and your productivity, it starts to reflect how you are
mentally right. And I started getting complaints from citizens. I
never got complaints. I was a squared Toway trooper. You know.
(14:02):
I did my absolute best to try to make sure
that everybody I encountered had a good experience, you know,
even if they had to leave with tickets, even if
it was you know, not ideal circumstances. I wanted people
to know my heart was in it for the right reason.
I care about you, I want you to be successful,
those types of things. But as the complaints started pouring
in and folks started noticing I wasn't going out to
(14:25):
eat lunch with them, I was starting to isolate myself.
So one day a friend of mine, who was actually
on the State Police peer team, approached me and said,
are you okay? I said, yeah, man, I'm fine, And
I don't know how are we with cussing on this podcast? Okay,
So I said I'm fine and I'll never forget this.
He looked at me and he said, oh, you're fucked up, insecure, neurotic,
(14:47):
and emotional. Got it. That's interesting because that's exactly what
I am. But that's not what I said to you.
So anyway, he extended kind of a helping hand and said,
if you need anything, and I just brushed them off.
I don't need nothing, I'm good, appreciate it. Typical cop response.
And it wasn't too long after that first sergeant gave
(15:09):
me a call and said, you're going to a post
critical incident seminar And I said what is that? And
he said that's a place where cop ghosts or cops
go to talk about their feelings. I said, cool, not
going to that, thanks, So I went to that. It
was the most life changing experience of my life.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Wow. Wow.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
It introduced me to mental health. It introduced me to
peer support, It introduced me to EMDR therapy. Above all else,
it showed me ways out of things that at the
time I did not know there were ways out of.
You know, I just thought, this is a part of me.
Now I'm going to live and I'm gonna die with
this right going to this three day intensive seminar where
(15:52):
I'm surrounded by cops and I'm surrounded by mental health
professionals and chaplains and whoever else. I walked away from there.
I want say better, because that's a bit of a
stretch in three days. But I walked away from that
event with a new duty belt, a new tool belt,
you know. The one before had my firearm and my
pepper spray and my magazines and my keys and whatever else.
(16:13):
This one had peer support, It had mental health, it
had emd art, had acupunctural detoxification, it had you know,
put yourself in front of courses to better understand trauma,
to better understand coping and resiliency. I walked away just feeling.
I walked away feeling as though the island I thought
I was on I was still on it. But I
(16:36):
turned around and looked, and there was a whole lot
of other people standing on that same island. And that's
what it meant to me. And I walked away from there,
going I have to know what happened, how this made
me feel better in just three short days. What was it?
And that's when I decided to go back to school
and get a master's and pursue clinical councils.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
That is so amazing, that's so inspiring. But you walked
in fresh me if I'm wrong, you walked into that seminar.
What thinking this is b us? I don't need this, okay?
So what get more specific here? What was it that
opened your eyes or what was life changing? Did someone
(17:18):
say something, was it just being around all those people?
Speaker 2 (17:21):
What I would say of all the things that come
with the post critical incident seminar, I would say the
top two, the first being on the on the first day,
when you start to hear stories from other people, and
we all tend to measure our trauma, right, we all
tend to well, mine's bigger than yours, or yours is
bigger than mine, So I don't deserve to be in
(17:41):
the solisation all that nonsense. And when you see people
who are not supposed to open up open up, and
the stories that you hear at this place, again, if
you've never been in law enforcement, you wouldn't believe it.
It's stuff that the best directors in Hollywood could not
put on t before you. It's real life pain, it's
(18:02):
real life torment. And when all of us came together
and told our stories and you got that cohesiveness, you
got that unity, you got that feeling of man, I'm
not as alone as I thought I was. It was that,
but it was also EMDR therapy. And I know you've
probably talked about EMDR on this podcast a thousand times,
but when you talk about a police officer who's never
(18:25):
experienced anything like that before. And when you walk out
of this room after having spent an hour with a
therapist that you just met, but who's a culturally competent
therapist who understands cops and how to work with us.
I walked out of there just going.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
What happened?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
What happened? I don't understand And it kind of made
me angry because I didn't understand what happened. And when
you take control away from a cop, you know got issues.
But it was that man. It was experiencing that desensitization
of that trauma and helping me start to see it
from a perspective that I would have never considered without
(19:01):
an intervention. That's when everything switched.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
That's amazing. I'm just let me just remind everyone I'm
speaking with Adam Levins. His book is called Welcome to
the Shift Show. So what happens? You go to the seminar,
you leave the seminar, How does what happens for you?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I had to be a part of it. I had
to figure it out. I immediately reached out to these
folks and said I want to come back. Get me trained.
They got me trained as a peer, and I started
volunteering with that very same program. Wow cheered with them
for about four about four years until the operations director
positioned for the program became available and I put in
(19:49):
for that interviewed against some phenomenal people, and luck of
the draw, they chose me.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
This program that I attribute to I'm gonna be honest
with you, guy, I attributed to saving my life, not
just my career, but saving my life because the path
I was on, No boy, no, this place gave me hope.
And as the operations director now I operate that very
the functioning of that very seminar, and I get to
watch three times a year anywhere from thirty to forty
(20:19):
police officers, dispatchers and their spouses and their partners come
through this thing. And I watched their lives change for
three days. And you see people that haven't smiled in
five years figure out they still can.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
You see you see spouses who are hugging and kissing
and loving on each other who probably haven't spoken in
the last six months. You're seeing people who thought their
lives were over realizing there's a whole lot left on
this whole horizon. You were just a little cloudy for
a little while, and that's the experience now. So I
got that position and I was still in school at
(20:54):
the time. I wrapped up my master's degree back in
twenty twenty three. I'm in residency now in Virginia on
the LPC track. Became emdr trained somewhere in the middle
of that. And when I'm not working with v Elite
full time, my part time position with Rivers of Holk
Counseling in Chantilly, Virginia's I'm just, as I put it
emdring the crap out of people all the time.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Damn so freeing, inspiring.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
My god, So talk to us about the book. How
did that come about?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
It's how it came about was when I was going
through that tough time all those years ago, when I
worked that homicide case and all the things started piling up.
I just started putting my thoughts on paper. I've always
been I've always liked poetry. I've always I've always been
a writer who never wrote until right now, until this
book finally came to fruition. But it started as just
(21:48):
a personal journal, just putting my thoughts down on paper,
trying to organize and trying to figure out who I
am with all this stuff going on and how do
I deal with it? And as time went on, I
found myself in these programs and I found healing that
kind of found itself on another abandoned ADHD project shelf.
The book did. And then sometime last year, about midway
(22:12):
through the year, summertime in the fall, with certain changes
going on in the world and the divisiveness and seeing
just not only people tear themselves down, but tearing other
people down, I thought, now is the time to take
it off the shelf and put these words on paper
and organize them in such a way that will resonate
(22:32):
with people. So really the gist of the book is
I've seen life from a very unique perspective that not
a lot of people do, and that is as a
law enforcement officer, just stuck in the middle of chaos
and crisis all the time. If you remember Charlottesville twenty seventeen,
I was right in the middle of that when Heather
(22:53):
Hier was killed and dozens of others injured when the
vehicle came through the crowd. My unit was the first
one there. We lost Jay Colin and Burt Bates that
day when the helicopter went down I've lost a lot
of friends. I've lost a lot of friends in this job.
And on top of all those things, watching other people
(23:14):
and kind of watching life unfold, but not just watching
life unfold, watching an unfold in in all walks of life,
at all different developmental stages of life. Right, It's not
just this population, this age group, it's everybody.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And then when you see the backside of that, when
you see the trauma, when you see the chaos, when
you see the real life stuff. And then when I
transitioned into mental health, the effects of that real life
stuff comes and sits right in front of me. Right.
So I've I've peeled back the curtain on humanity in
terms of what I've seen as a police officer and
how I've seen it impact people as a mental health provider.
(23:53):
And what I want this book to be and my
idea with it is to kind of be a bridge
to a lot of this stuff, to help people see
all the different factors in life, both external and internal,
that cause us to shrink ourselves or to be a
version of ourselves that's digestible and palatable to everybody else,
and especially in terms of trauma that oftentimes points us
(24:15):
in the opposite direction of where we need to go right.
Sometimes that blocks us out from getting appropriate help. So
I wrote the book to help people see all of
those things, all of these factors that are causing us
to be less of ourselves or at least feel like
we're less of ourselves. And then it transitions into the
struggle of all that the mental health struggles, the trauma,
(24:38):
the grief, the anxiety, the depression, all those types of things.
What happens when they go unchecked, what happens when you
keep piling these things on. And then it transitions from
there into the Shift show, which the Shift show is.
The shift is an acronym stands for stop, hype, innovate, fight,
and thrive, And basically it's just a simple framework to
(24:59):
help pe people. Once you recognize all those things that
are holding you back, stop giving power to those things right,
Learn what they are, learn how they impact you, and
learn the intervention or whatever it is that you need
to stop giving them power over you so that you
can overcome them and hype yourself up. You know, a
lot of people live their lives, and I saw this,
especially as a police officer. A lot of people live
(25:22):
their lives in the backseat, right, somebody else is steering
and they're kind of being They're just kind of going
along with the flow of their own expectations or other
people's expectations. Rather, So, the age is for hype yourself up. Right,
this is your story, this is your life. Once you
stop giving power to the stuff that hurts you, build,
build yourself up. As you start to build yourself up,
(25:42):
be innovative, right, realize that that's what the eye stands for.
Realize that the way I've been moving through the world,
the way I've been doing things, it's not working for
me because of whatever reason, I'm not healthy in this aspect.
My anxiety has gotten worse, whatever the case may be,
especially as a police officer, Be willing, be open to
new things, be willing to say this hasn't worked for me,
(26:03):
let me try something else. And then the f is
for once you start to learn who that person is,
fight for that person, fight against all the things that
try to bring that person down, right, because we all
know how hard that person is to find in this
life with all the noise and all the stuff. And
as you fight for that person, and you finally get
to the point to where I feel confident in who
(26:24):
I am. I've overcome these struggles and I feel like
I can move forward. Now. This is where we hit
the t this is where we thrive unapologetically who we are.
We're not focused on everybody else's expectations. We're not letting
this stuff drag us down anymore. We're taking actionable steps
each day to be who we want to be and
to be healthy.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
I love that. Love that.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
As we kind of wind down here, you know, I
was thinking about the what's the acronym of the l.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
E AP VA LEAP, Yes, Virginia le VA.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
LEAP, and how incredibly it's helping.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Individual law enforcement and first responders. Now is there anything
Is there another agency that's helping law enforcement agencies as
a whole.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
So our program we handle the entire state. We are
a five O one C three nonprofit. But anytime you
turn on the news and you see a significant event
in the commonwealth, whether it's you know, won't get any
of details of anything because everything that we do is confidential.
But when you turn on the news and see something
bad in Virginia that involves police officers in any kind
(27:36):
of way, VA LEAP is most likely going to be
there behind the curtain, in the shadows. Nobody ever knows
we're there. But we're providing cism services. We're making referrals
to culturally competent trauma and formed clinicians. We're getting people
set up for these seminars. We're getting them whatever they
need to help a lower the impact of this blow
(27:59):
that they just expe' this horrific incident, but also give
them the tools they need to move forward afterwards and
prepare themselves for the next one.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Adam, How do people learn more about you? Learn more
about the book? Get the book way.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
You can learn more about me just I'm on social media.
You can look up Adam Blevin's author if you want
to catch up with me on all the book stuff.
Also welcome to the Shift Show on both Instagram and Facebook.
Adam Levin's on LinkedIn. If you want to know anything
else about the book or anything, just just reach out
to me. It is available for pre order in the
(28:33):
Kindle Store now. It will launch on May the thirteenth
in print, ebook and audiobook as well. If you want
to learn more about the Virginia Law Enforcement Assistance Program
for those of you out there, mental health professionals, and officers.
If you want to help out, you can visit us
at www dot VA LEAP dot org. That's www dot
(28:56):
v A l e AP dot org. And yeah, all
my contact information is on there and anybody can reach
me that way.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Okay, we'll have that link up here at the show
notes page at the Trauma Therapists Podcast dot com. Adam, awesome,
Jesus man. Love to have you back, Love to have
you back. All right, we'll be in touch. Thank you
so much.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
It's sir guy. Thank you again
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com