Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you so much for joining us today as we
offer some education, insight, and hopefully some helpful support to
those impacted by the devastating flooding that happened over the
weekend in central Texas. My name is doctor Elizabeth mcindallan.
I'm the director of the UCDI Institute here in Texas,
where we specialize in using cognitive behavioral therapy to treat
(00:20):
anxiety disorders, which of course also includes trauma. CBT is
the most evidence based intervention for trauma, and we know
that it is an intervention that can help individuals not
just be able to process the trauma, but be able
to get unstuck and live full lives despite experiencing trauma.
What we know is that this weekend's flooding will have
(00:41):
a lasting impact on families and communities for decades to come,
and we are here to support you through it. Today
we're joined by the world renowned doctor Bruce Perry, who
is a leading expert in trauma response, how we can
respond appropriately, and of course how we help individuals live through,
cope and moved through traumatic experiences. We're so excited to
(01:03):
have him today on the podcast and to provide insight, education,
and support. Thank you so much for joining us, and
we're looking forward to providing support today and in the future.
We're going to continue these episodes so that we can
continue to provide appropriate education at appropriate time points, because
what we know is that support tends to and should
(01:23):
come in phases, and certain support is what's needed right now,
where different support will be what's needed later. OCDI Texas
and doctor Bruce Perry's team are going to work together
to make sure we're continuing to provide education and support
along the way. Thank you for joining. We are joined
today by an incredible world renowned trauma expert and specialist,
(01:44):
doctor Bruce Perry, and a community leader who is also
my dad doctor was a doctor, but Jim Mackingdell. Where
we're going to join together to really talk about how
can we show up as a community, How can we
show up to loved ones, of friends, to families, and
of course to those who are directly impacted by this devastation.
(02:05):
So I want to start with a couple of introductions,
and of course we will hop into just what do
we do, where do we start and how do we
make a difference. So first and foremost, I want to
introduce a colleague, a good friend, and a mentor. Doctor
Bruce Perry doctor Perry is a world renowned psychiatrist and
neuroscientists and trauma expert whose groundbreaking work has reshaped how
(02:26):
we understand and respond to the impact of trauma on children, families,
and communities. He's the Principal of Neurosequential Network and Senior
Fellow at the Child Trauma Academy. He formerly served as
the Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital and the
Vice Chair of Psychiatry at Balor College of Medicine. He
has over five hundred scientific publications, book chapters, and presentations
(02:46):
to his name and has truly devoted his life to
helping us understand the lasting and print of trauma on
the developing brain. Doctor Perry is perhaps most widely known
to the public through so many of his best selling books,
including The Boy Who Was raisedst The Dog Born for Love,
and What Happened to You, which he co authored with
over Winfrey. These works have given a voice to the
(03:06):
silent suffering of countless children and illuminated a path towards compassion, healing,
and post traumatic growth. Doctor Perry has been called upon
time and time again in the wake of tragedy, from
school shootings and natural disasters to the traumatic loss of children,
to helping guide communities through unimaginable grief. His insights have
not only shaped trauma informed clinical care, but have also
(03:26):
provided urgent guidelines for caregivers, educators, first responders, policymakers, and
all of us in times of national crisis. Today, as
we are all grappling with the devastation of the Central
Texas floods and the heartbreaking events at Camp Mystic and
within our entire community, were especially grateful to have doctor
Perry with us. His presence reminds us that in our
(03:49):
deepest pain, healing begins with the understanding, and that connection, rhythm,
and compassion are often the foundations for recovery. Thank you
so much for joining us, doctor Perry. We could not
be happier and more grateful.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
To Well, it's my pleasure to be here. It's heartbreaking stuff.
One of the things I'm actually so happy to be
on this because the sense of helplessness that people feel
during these times is something that I've felt. It's like
(04:21):
I'm up in you know, I'm out of the country
right now, and my daughters went to mystic. So just
thinking about it, it's like ough, it's heartbreaking. I can't
even hold in my mind the images of what happened
to those children. And I know that I'm not alone
in that. There's a lot of people that just can
barely tolerate the imagery, the thought of what happened to
(04:45):
those children. You know, one of the things that we
have been doing over the last I don't know thirty
years has been trying to figure out how to respond
to events like this. And sometimes they're man made, know,
their war or some other catastrophic event, they're frequently not
(05:07):
at this scale, right, I mean, this is a The
scale of this devastation is such that there are multiple
layers and levels of complexity where we have to think
as a community of healers, as a community of as
a community about what do you do? But what do
(05:30):
I do with my little, my little slice of experience
to try to make this better? And so maybe we
can talk a little bit about that, because.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It's the pondering what we should do sometimes is paralyzing,
and that leads to the level more of the sense
of hopelessness.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So what I want to do is help people understand
that listen. At whatever level you are, in whatever way
you interact with people who have been impacted by this,
you can have a positive effect that really will contribute
to healing. So I think that's part of what we
should talk.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
About one hundred percent, and I think our goal for
today is exactly that is, how can everybody feel like
they know what step to take next, even if it's
just putting one foot in front of the other, How
they can do that, And also what the community and
our response needs to be, not just right now, but
in the near future and in the long run, because
all of that will make a huge difference on how individuals,
(06:32):
family members, and of course in our entire community heals.
And so next, I want to introduce my dad, James Macindell,
who is next to us on the screen and joining
us today. Jim is a Houston icon entrepreneur and philanthropists
and and is one of the most beloved iconic leaders
in Houston and in Texas. He's the founder of Gallery
Furniture and has become nationally recognized not just for his
(06:54):
business success, but for his unwavering commitment to helping people
in times of crisis. He's more than a businessman, He's
a force of good in the world, from sheltering hundreds
during Hurricane Harvey, defeating families through snowstorms, and now supporting
Texas and Texans affected during these devastating floods. Max legacy
is one of immediate action and unwavering community care. When
(07:16):
tragedy strikes, Jim doesn't ask what should be done, he
simply does it. Today he joins to share his perspective
on how we as community members can show up for
others in moments of grief and uncertainty, and how we
can turn purpose, faith and service into tools for healing.
Thanks for joining us, Dad, and would love to hear
from you a little bit of just how you always
find a way to bring the community together during these times.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Well, the entire state is devastated, not just this Hill country,
but people are affected in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, l Paso,
Houston of course all over the state. It's a tragedy
and every day we get doctor Perry a different story
of more horrors that happened. I'm just here to listen,
(08:01):
to learn, and try to spread the news that healing
is possible through the thoughts of people like yourself. Doctor
Perry and lives. So I'm excited to be here and
learn because we all do feel helpless right now, and
we all want to we all want to help. The
question is how to help. Do we gather supplies to
(08:22):
help people rebuild in central Texas? Do we send money?
How do we help all the Houstonians and the thousands
of people that are affected by this tragedy. So I'm
here to listen to learn. How do we make things
better so people can get through this. I could only
imagine the horror of not only the people that can't
miss it, but all the people that also were drowned
(08:44):
by this horrible storm. So we're here to listen and learn,
and it's a thrill to have live on in doctor Perry,
and for all you Texans out there, I think doctor
Perry is at heart a Texan.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Very true, Doctor Perry.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I'll let you start with just what are the first steps?
Like how does a community start to rebuild? So many
people have questions like what do I say? You know,
how do I show up? I'm afraid to say the
wrong thing, I'm afraid to do something that'll make it worse.
But what is kind of a first response we can
do as a community, and what should we be rallying
for right now?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Well, let me just start with a tiny little bit
of education about the way human beings deal with stress.
And I don't want to get too too academic, but
one of the things that we know is that the
(09:42):
feelings that we have, you know, the anxiety, the despair,
all of these things are related to essentially our body
responding to something that's atypical. It's outside of sort of
what should happen. We all are walking around with an
internal expectation about the way the world works, and when
(10:02):
all of a sudden things don't work that way and catastrophic,
horrific things happen, it challenges us and it makes us
feel unsettled and disregulated and so forth. And now, the
impact of these kinds of events is going to be
very different depending upon how close you were to what
we would consider ground zero, right And what we know
(10:26):
is that if you are in sort of the middle
of this bullseye at ground zero, and you lost a child,
or you lost a home, or you watched someone die
or drown, the degree of distress you feel is going
to be much greater than if you knew somebody who
(10:46):
knew somebody who had a kid who went there. Now
that's not to say that that separate, kind of disconnected
experience is not distressing. It's just that what we've learned
is that the closer you are to the event, the
more likely you are to have these profound responses that
(11:07):
will last over a long period of time and this
echo effect, you know, this sort of the ground zero,
then the first responders, and then the people who knew
and lived with the individuals and ground zero. If you
start to do the numbers and you think about traditional
therapeutic work being oh, we're going to go see a
(11:28):
therapist one our week. They're going to help us with
whatever it is that we do. If you have only
two people, two people in the middle of this ground zero,
two children who watched witnessed a terrible thing, and then
there's twelve people that are kind of in the next
circle out who are first responders who loved and lived
(11:49):
with the people that died. If you just have two people,
what that means is by the time everybody who's been
impacted by that, it presents with mental health challenges. If
you used a traditional one hour a week therapy, you
would need twenty two therapists dedicating fifty percent of their
(12:10):
full week just to meet the needs of that event.
So now if you look at if you look at
the ground zero of this event, we're talking about an
excess of ninety thousand clinicians that would be required to
do one hour a week of mental health service to
help meet these mental health needs. And so what that
(12:34):
tells us right right there, is that our conventional medical
model system isn't going to work. We can't just sort
of rely on that traditional mental health system to meet
these needs. And so now that that's sort of sobering.
But the good news is what we have found, and
(12:56):
what many other people have been seeing over the years,
is that what really heals people is other people, not
necessarily other a therapist. Right. We heal from these tiny
little doses of kindness, of thoughtfulness, of understanding, of listening,
(13:17):
of giving a hug, of being present, of bringing a meal.
You know, these things provide this relational regulation of these
systems in our body that make us feel connected and
safe again. And this is what you know, this is
what I think is going to happen in Texas. I mean,
there's Texas has got so many great communities and so
(13:40):
many people who are capable of being present, attentive, attuned,
which basically means should I say something now or should
I not say something? Should I give you hugs? Should
I not give you a hug? And let you know,
doctor macndale, I'm going to call you doctor macanville until
you start calling me Bruce. All right, So you brought
(14:02):
it up that this being present for other people I
think is going to be a really important thing. And
you know, one of the things that Mac You've always done.
You have always created context to help people come together.
Excuse me, whether it's in your store or supporting other events,
(14:26):
You've done things that help bring people together. This power
of proximity is one of the most powerful healing things
that can happen. And what we've seen is in the beginning,
like when this happens, people are willing to be uncomfortable
in proximity with other people who are hurting. But over
(14:47):
time it gets a little bit more uncomfortable because, as
you said, you don't really know what to say. You
don't know should I bring it up, should it not
bring it up? How do I handle this? And so
in two weeks, three weeks, two months, three months. That's
when the people are going to that are most impacted
by this are going to be struggling the most because
(15:09):
people feel uncomfortable and they and a lot of people
just flee, you know, they just don't know what to say,
or they end up saying something that is makes everybody
feel uncomfortable, and it's this is a very challenging situation.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So what are some of the first steps if you're
a family member who has potentially if you're a family
member who's lost the loved one directly, what can they
do right now for themselves? What would you recommend as
if you were their punishment?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
So the first thing, and we talk about this is
part of what we you know, this is part of
what we're doing right now is education, teaching people about
what what are the normal, absolutely healthy things that will
predictably happen when you are in catastrophic trauma. And again
(16:02):
because the unknown things that we're not used to make
us feel really uncomfortable and more distressed, and because humans
are very contagious to others. If you feel like really
are really really really really worried that they don't bring
it up, they don't ever talk about it, or if
you're really really worried that they're not sleeping, or that
they seem sad, or whatever it is that you're worried about,
(16:23):
you'll just get more disregulated, which means that they'll get
more disregulated, which means they'll be less likely to be
It just leads to this very uncomfortable interaction. So the
first thing is education. Learn about what are the normal
things that happen when people experience traumatic events, And there's
(16:43):
a couple of ways to do that. We have some
materials that will make available to you and to people
who are listening about just simple steps about how do
you talk about death to a child? You know, what's
a reasonable way to explain what's happening to their bodies.
(17:03):
Normalize the fact that they're going to have trouble with sleep,
things are going to pop into their heads that are
going to feel really make them feel really uncomfortable. And
the more the adults and others around the people at
ground zero in this first layer out, the more they
get these relational supports and education, the more likely they
(17:25):
are to get back towards a normal level of regulation.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Earlier, I really loved earlier when you said to us,
you said you know we should be cautious pathologizing every
symptom right now, and instead understand that most of the
traumatic responses are normal.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And I think those of us that have done trauma work,
or we understand trauma work, we know that a true
PTSD diagnosis doesn't typically happen until six months post a
traumatic event, because typical trauma responses are expected.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
One of the things you said earlier was it would
be abnormal if people weren't experiencing heavy green, difficulty sleeping, right,
some of these symptoms, right.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
You know, and the your body has these incredible protective
mechanisms that help keep us alive, and in situations like this,
one of the patterns, sort of one of the coping
mechanisms that we use all the time is probably going
to be very prominent. And it's we call this dissociation.
(18:29):
You know, when your body is in when everybody's kind
of heard of the fight or flight response, right, You like,
when you really get angry at somebody and you get
agitated and you may say something and there's you escalate
and you externalize excuse me. But when you are in
an inescapably distressing situation, inescapable pain inescapable, almost unthinkable horror.
(18:54):
We brought it up, right. I can only think about
that for like a millisecond before I go, oh, I
get just someone else. I can't even think about a
bunch of little girls in those cabins. I can't think
about it. So your brain protects you. You dissociate. And
(19:17):
so a lot of the people, a lot of the
individuals who are dealing with this are going to be robotic.
They're going to seem you know, a lot of times
people will see them and they will appear to be
emotion less, and then that will be misinterpreted and they'll think, oh,
that's abnormal, But that's actually in these times that kind
(19:37):
of physically exhausted, mentally exhausted, with drawn, disengaged. That's one
of the major presentations that people will see. Now, the
other thing that can happen is and this is where
that the dissociation for the people who are most impacted
(20:02):
in three weeks or three months is basically going to
allow people to who are uncomfortable dealing with this. They'll think, oh,
they're fine, they're coping well. And so that's a real
danger point with these families is that the fact that
(20:25):
they aren't having these easily observable external symptoms. People kind
of go, oh, look at they're doing. Find them on
the lawn and they say hi. They get the normal
greetings that you would normally be with a neighbor, but
if you could see inside, you would see the tragic
sadness and distress and the ruminations and all the kinds
(20:48):
of stuff. It's going to be what they have to
deal with. And so that combination leads to this unfortunate
period at about three to six months where people kind
of get back into their norm right. Things are getting rebuilt,
you know, you have every everybody has their the inertia
(21:09):
of their busy life, and so all of these folks
are no longer at the forefront of your mind. And
it can be a week or two weeks or three
weeks and realize, oh, I haven't touched base with so
and so, and a lot of times they feel abandoned, right,
and it's this is this is why I hope we'll
keep doing this kind of thing. You know, we want
(21:31):
to you know, we've talked about this before we went live,
but we really would like to be present for people
who are dealing with this for the duration, not just
a one shot podcast. They're going to need psycho education.
And and right now, one of the sort of one
(21:52):
of the hard things is that the people that are
most impacted by this they can't even they can't learn
anything right now. They're two overwhelmed. And it's such an
odd disconnect because this is when we want to give
them the most Oh, here, read this, do this, we'll
do this, We'll have it. They're least capable of benefiting
from this stuff. Now. We have all these volunteer people
(22:15):
that are going to be there, Volunteer therapists, volunteer walk
around in every one of these big disasters. This is
what happens, all kinds of supports upfront, and then as
people get back to the normal lives and people's needs,
that the people infected by the trauma, their needs increase.
There's all of a sudden, these these slopes intercept and
(22:37):
there's a point when you know the need is completely unmet,
and we leave it to the mental health system, which
is already overwhelmed, getting in a point where.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Everything Yeah, and so I think that leads me to
my next question of so what can we do right
now for those strong, for those suffering, for those either
with children or with family members. Like, what does showing
up right now look like? Because, as you said, we're
going to do many more of these and we're going
to talk about how we show up later when processing
can happen. And that's something I've talked a lot about.
(23:14):
Is you know my area of expertise, which is come
to behavioral therapy. So it's really more of anxiety and
trauma treatment. We can do that work, like I specialize
in that, but it wouldn't be useful to be doing
that right now. Right no one is ready to learn
how to deal with trauma, how to do it right
that they're not there yet, and so the needs are
very different now than they'll be in three or six months.
(23:35):
So what can we do right now?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So this is where max magic always sort of comes in.
Just knowing that somebody is thinking about you. It's helpful
for people knowing that there is some place that they
can get something, that there are people that care about them,
that there are people that there whatever it is. Different
(23:59):
people will have different needs, but that that is a
reflection in the beginning of what I would consider being present.
That's the first thing is being present, and it doesn't
necessarily mean being side by side physical proximity, but just
a text kind of thinking about you, you know, or
(24:20):
signing up for kind of A lot of these families
will need meals. A lot of these families will need
people literally to help them figure out how to prepare,
how to contact a funeral home. You know, these are
young families. They haven't done in this stuff. Usually they
don't know how to do all. All people that need
(24:40):
can really in a lot of different ways if you're present.
And so this is the first thing I would recommend
is that everybody kind of sit down and go, all right,
I'm going to make a list of who do I
know has been impacted by this? Do I have a neighbor,
do I have a relative? Was it my family? And
(25:03):
when you kind of make that catalog of how people
are impacted, you know, even if let's say that you
are pretty proximal, you're involved in searching, and you're involved
in recovery, you're involved in that, at some point you
want to begin to think about, all right, who's being
impacted by this? Is my family? How are they being
(25:24):
impacted by the fact that I'm gone all the time
doing this And I don't want to talk about it.
How are the people that I have talked to impacted?
You know whose children I found? And begin to think
about how can I have a little light touch, you know,
(25:44):
Can I got their phone number? Can I just text
them and say, you know, this is a hard time
thinking about it. That's it light Dutch. But those we heal.
This is the thing about I got to do a
little biology thing right here. When you think about the brain,
the systems and the brain and the way they change
(26:05):
in all of our physiological systems. They don't change because
we activate them for one hour a week, right, They
change because we activate them in tiny little doses all
throughout the week. So if you think about the and
the powerful thing about this is that a lot of
(26:27):
we don't know the right thing to say. I can
tell you. I can guarantee you that you will say
the wrong thing and you're going to rupture, but then
you repair and the very same thing you say on
Sunday night, if you say that on Monday morning, that's
the right thing. If you say it's Sunday night, it's
the wrong thing. You say it again on Monday afternoon,
(26:50):
it's the wrong thing. Everybody is in a mess right
now and over time. What it is is that you're
willing to day there and keep saying be present. Don't
once you realize that you blew it, don't flee. Just repair.
(27:12):
All relationships are about rupture and repair. Rupture and repair.
Think about the people that you love the most. How
often you say I didn't mean that. What I meant
was it's all about coming back together. But when people
recognize that you're there, that's a huge step. So being present,
(27:35):
being attentive, trying to meet the tiny little needs that
somebody might have, like listen, can I get you some coffee?
You know, whatever it is you know. And again Max's
been a genius at that, creating environments where people feel
they can go to, where they can have some they
can be around people who will be sensitive and caring
(27:57):
that the fact that there are the there are you know,
the mac famous, that there's a famous person, a powerful,
famous person in Texas who cares about us, and that's
that means something to people.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
So Dad, I'd love to hear, like what your call
to action would be for obviously yourself, but also other
community members and business owners, and you know, what are
ways you've shown up in the past that you feel
like we can continue to show up. And one thing
we learned is it's not about showing up and doing
one event right, It's about continuing to show up and
continuing to do those events.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Learn from I could learn from doctor Bruce. I shouldn't
call him doctor Perry Bruce about you know, how to
the communities need to be rebuilt. But more important than
bricks and mortar is how do we help these How
do we let people know that we're here for them,
even if it just means saying hello or sending them
(28:59):
a video, let them know we're caring about them. It's
because there's so many people affected by this, and like
what Bruce said is, how do we find these people
to say, hey, we care about you. If you need anything,
give me a give me a call. I know it's
hell going through it right now. How do we how
do we say that to these thousands of people that
are just devastated. The stories go on and on. I
(29:23):
heard some story yesterday about they'd sent their child to
a different camp. They were vacationing down there on the river,
and the entire families wiped out except for the child.
So how do we how do we how do we
reach out and touch these people in a in a
way that's thoughtful and caring, And just like you said, Bruce,
(29:47):
how do we stay with them from from now till
they face Christmas Day without their loved ones.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, that's I mean that part is the biggest challenge
that we've as a field. I think that we've learned
a lot about kind of the acute response and how
to kind of come in and do you know, early
intervention stuff, but we've failed miserably at what you just
(30:18):
talked about, that at staying with families and helping them
get through the waxing and waning of distress. And we
just have to get better. The good news is that
the best if somebody is part of a community of faith,
(30:39):
if somebody is part of a healthy neighborhood, if somebody's
part of some social structure that that group of people,
whether it's just your immediate family or your extended family,
or your neighborhood or your church community, whatever it is,
the healing power in that group is just remarkable. And
(31:01):
part of what we try to do is help the
individuals in those groups. Number one, like I said, we
talked about earlier psycho education learn about you know, you
can learn about what happens to the body, what are
predictable responses. You can teach people that listen, you're going
to be completely frick and exhausted. You're going to think
(31:21):
that you can go back to work after six weeks,
but you're only going to be able to do about
twenty five percent of what you normally would do, and
then you're going to start being hard on yourself and
your employers aren't going to understand it. So the more
we can educate employers, we can educate the schools, we
can educate the community members about what are the normal
(31:44):
trajectories out of these experiences, so that people have, Like
at Saint John's, you know, there will be an impact
on the ability of some kids to learn as efficiently
as they did the year before. And so if you
are aware of that and you pay attention to that,
(32:05):
you can actually make the kinds of accommodations that help
in the children. Individual children kind of get through this
in a better way. But unfortunately, what we tend to
do is that we tend to not understand these things.
So we then compound that the problem by having expectations.
(32:26):
You know, you're just not cutting it at work, Tom,
and you forget oh yeah, six months ago, you do
child around only. Yeah, that's right, but you got to
you got to get this warehouse cleaned out. You know,
somebody's got to do it. And so we if we
can educate the employers, if we can educate the schools,
if we can educate the faith communities, I think there
(32:49):
will be more opportunities for these understanding moments that are
truly therapeutic and and the burden for formal therapy will drop.
And that's kind of what we need. That's what we
have done in Turkey when there was this huge earthquake,
and so we've done in a lot of other places
where we're trying to help the male health community understand that. Listen,
(33:09):
you have a role, but it's more as a conductor.
You know, you're not playing any of the instruments in
the orchestra. But to make this therapeutic sort of music,
somebody's got to play the trumpet, somebody's got to play
the violin, somebody's got to play the drums at the
right time. And you know about this stuff. So you
get them all on the same page and you direct this.
(33:30):
You're the conductor. You don't have to make all the music.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, And I love kind of twofold here, which is that?
And that leads me to the next question and point
is what can communities do? And I love to hear
that actually the greatest strength is going to come in communities, right, Churches, schools,
groups getting together and being able to support as a
group is such an impactful thing when people are going
(33:57):
through this. I live in the Heights and so are
all of our trees.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
We put blue ribbons for Greta, who was one of
the little girls from the Heights who died at Camp Mystic,
And it's just the little things you can do as
a community to support the tragic loss that's happening. But
also knowing that that we all know that's not enough, right,
that's a way to show we care, but we want
to do more. And I've gotten so many questions from
(34:24):
community leaders, school counselors, right, leaders of like what do
we do now? And what do we do next? And
so I think for us to talk about what can
schools do right now? I know, for example, Saint John's
Kincaid Memorial and Timbergrove, these places where there was loss,
they are finding ways to come together, have prayer, visuals,
do community events. But it's summer, you know, so it's
(34:46):
a little bit more challenging and difficult. But what can
they do now? Knowing that, we will do more of
these episodes to talk about what they should do next.
And we all know that in the fall, when they're
classmates and their parents are returning to school with other
kids in different and in different settings, right, the needs
will drastically change. But today, what can gallery do? What
(35:07):
can other business owners do? What can churches do? What
can schools do?
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yep. So one of the big things that we've seen,
and a lot of the feedback we've gotten from families
impacted by things like this, is that that communication is terrible.
You know, they don't they don't feel like whether it's
the whatever organizations gathering the resources or whatever is available
(35:33):
out there, they don't hear about it until later. And
so we always recommend kind of making an impact map,
a social impact map. Now this obviously not everybody's going
to do that, but if you are the head of
a church, if you are involved in this out of school,
you really need to make a social impact map, which
(35:55):
is like who was impacted in our school, Who is
like plausibly going to be impacted, you know, the parents,
the relatives, the friends, the neighbors, and actually have some
way to just be aware. Like if you don't know
who is impacted, you are you're not going to have
a clue about what to do. So the first thing
(36:17):
is make people in positions in organizations, with the position
of responsibility or authority, make a social make a sort
of a contact map. Now you can do that if
even if you have a group of friends, right and
you have five, six, seven, eight friends, and you know
somebody in that circle was impacted, you think about who
(36:38):
is on my social impact map, and the least littlest
thing you can do is begin to communicate with them tiny,
whether it's through text or send them a card or
just something. Begin communication and contact. And that's the first thing.
The second thing is once you have an awareness of
who in your sphere of influence has been impacted, then
(37:03):
you educate yourself about what are some predictable things that
we're going to run into and that you can do
that through. There's a variety of print materials and multimedia
content that are available. We have some and we can
make some you know, talk about how to make some
of them available. But there is content that's helpful if
(37:26):
you are completely uneducated about mental health stuff. There's content
that's helpful if you are in the mental health field.
And so it's out there, tends to not be particularly
well organized necessarily, and sometimes it's a very light touch content,
which means that you know you're dealing with a specific
complex thing. Like Mac just described a really unique situation
(37:48):
of a child orphaned by his parents suddenly and catastrophically
being gone. That's very different than an intact family having
a child who was in danger and saw their you know,
their friends swept away. That's a whole that's a different
set of issues. And so part of the dilemma with
(38:12):
the psycho educational content is that when you write it
like you end up writing it sort of that's kind
of generally helpful, but it's not specifically helpful. And so
the benefit of this kind of podcast is that if
people learn about what we're doing over time, they will
(38:36):
be able to have specific queries about what do I
do in this situation, and we can have a conversation
about a specific set of concrete things to do, which
may end up, you know, directing them to people in
their community or people can help them directly. But once
you have the social contact map who's impacted, reach out
(38:59):
to them in little ways, mobilize the other people you
know who will have concerns about them, and then think
about like do they need meals, do they need help
cleaning up? Do they need you know, what are the
concrete needs that they have, and then their emotional social needs,
mental health needs will become apparent over time, But in
(39:21):
the beginning it's very concrete stuff to.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Stick more concrete less.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
How would you create a community event for you know,
right now that would at least show people that everybody
always thinking and praying and caring for them.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Well, that's a good question. I'd have to give that
a little bit of thought, because I do think that,
you know, one of the things I've just just off
the top of my head is that I really think
that maybe a community event for the helpers, not necessarily
for the people that are being impacted yet, so even
(39:59):
a community about all, right, let who wants to help,
because there's a lot of people out there, and can
we give them the level of specific sort of psycho
education so they feel a little bit armed and they
can actually utilize the available print and multimedia content a
(40:20):
little bit better. That's what we would do as an organization.
We kind of go all right, listen, I we would
help the helpers basically.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
So my next question, yeah, yeah, another question I have
that leads me to is what should we not be doing?
I think a lot of us are wondering, like, what
are things we shouldn't be doing right now? What are
things we should what are statements or comments we should avoid?
And people get so nervous it becomes this analysis paralysis
of like I don't I know I need to do something,
(40:52):
but I don't know what to do, so I won't
do anything at all.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah, that's such a common phenomenon. Here's what you have
to do. If you really want to help, you have
to recognize that you're going to feel incredibly uncomfortable this.
Human beings are relational creatures, right. If you run into
somebody who's like, really enthusiastic, pretty soon you feel better.
(41:16):
If you run into somebody who's really down and always negative,
if you spend a lot of time with them, pretty
soon you start to see the world in that way too.
And so what I think we really need to do
is recognize this relational contagion is so powerful and but
(41:37):
what it does during traumatic events is that when somebody
feels so much pain, I mean you suddenly start crying.
Here almost twice on this podcast. You have to be
able to tolerate that distress. Go back in, just go
back in. You have then don't go back to your
(41:58):
where you feel safe and comfortable and not distressed. It's uncomfortable.
You have to recognize you're gonna feel helpless. You're gonna
feel just like you here. I am, I like an
expert in this, and I can guarantee you if I
spend ten minutes with one of these families, I feel
completely helpless, like a moron. But if I stay, there'll
(42:20):
be a moment when they'll say something and I'll go, yeah,
it's pretty normal to be completely exhausted. You're going to
feel very tired, and that's okay, and I can then
start to go from something that I know and help them.
But in the beginning, it's like, there's it's such an
(42:41):
emotional you know, how do you how do you interact
with a weeping parent who's trying to deal with the
horror of their childlife. You got to stay, got to
be present. You're gonna be uncomfortable, you're gonna feel incompetent,
(43:02):
you're gonna feel paralyzed. But if you stay, you'll start
to see little openings where they can hear you, where
they can accept a kind hug, where you can get
them coffee. You know, you'll find little ways this present attentive. Right, wait,
watch what's going on? Listen, watch, and then be attuned.
(43:24):
And when you're tuned in that moment, you kind of
go all right, this, let me give you something, you know,
and then you know it's that's what helps. And it's
because of the discomfort of traumatic pain. That's part of
what drives people away. It's also part of what makes
(43:46):
people want this family that's in pain to be resilient.
We tend to use the term resilience to basically protect
ourselves a lot. Right, The reality is, in order for
them to demonstrate resilience, they're gonna have to go through
all kinds of hell. And yes, maybe they'll demonstrate resilience,
(44:08):
but that's gonna wear down. Resilience is a is a
capability that can be built up and then it can
be worn down. And I can guarantee you the most
resilient family that you know that this connect had, belongs
to a community of faith, has extended family that's supporting them,
has all kinds of economic resources. If they had a
kid that drowned there, their resilience is gonna get worn down,
(44:30):
and in six months they're gonna they're just gonna be struggling.
They'll struggle through the whole time, but it will be
easy for us to say, oh, they're resilient. Look at
that she's and you'll see stuff like, oh, she laughed
at a joke. That doesn't mean she's healed from the
trauma of her child drowning.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
And how do people start to even think about, like
what to say when you can tell someone is struggling
with guilt, right, whatever that guilt might be. I mean,
in particular, we know for cantstic kids, the parents you know,
they weren't there, but even other families and everything that's happening,
there's going to be guilt, right. You know, we've heard
(45:11):
stories about you know, one person survived, one didn't during
this flooding event, and you know, so how do we
start to well, I mean, we can't process it for people,
but how how do people start to process and work
through guilt? What can we do to help with that?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah, that's one of those longer term, sort of cognitive
beliefs that get stuck and is one of the most
challenging parts of working with people and helping people who've
had this kind of traumatic experience and your brain starts
to part of what your brain does to kind of
(45:50):
make sense out of stuff like this is you run
through different scenarios if I don't need do this, this,
I shouldn't have done this, or didn't he told me
not to go there, she's too young, and you just
you can get into these cognitive lives and that's where
therapy actually, you know, lives, the kind of stuff that
actually doctor MC and now the stuff that you do
we would do pretty good here with first names. All right, live,
I'll go back and live.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Thank you. But it is from a trauma, from a
trauma and CBT perspective, like I actually really do know
how to treat that, right, We've done with veterans with PTSD,
people who have experienced mass casualties. All right, but it's
so much later. I don't know how to help people
process it. Right now, I know how to do it
when you're ready for treatment.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
So here here's what I'm gonna and again this is
part of that psycho educational thing. So if you think
about the brain upset on triangle, brain right top is
a cortex. Guilt is a cognition. Guilt is a cognition.
Right now, they're not they don't have any They're so
distressed that most of their cortex is kind of shut
down in some way unavailable. So you can say things
(46:59):
and do things that will not contribute to guilt, right,
but late that that has to be dealt with later
on and usually using the kinds of therapeutic tools and
strengths that you that you have. It's a very challenging thing.
(47:21):
And this is where some of the things that parents
here or that people try to say to comfort somebody
actually contributes to guild. Right. You know, there are people
who have just I can't believe some of the horrible
stuff I've seen on that on social media. Just it's
astounding that in our country people would do that. But
(47:43):
it's a whole different conversation. But that you know, there
are people who have religious beliefs that they go everything
happens for you know, they're in a better place. You
know that that does not help necessarily, And in fact,
for some people, making that statement fits into their own
(48:06):
religious beliefs about what did I do wrong? You know,
how is what I did wrong in my life connected
to this you know event that took my child and
that that kind of guilt is hard to deal with.
So I'm a big fan of this is I think
(48:28):
people need to remember that words in this moment are
not going to be as powerful as just physical proximity.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Yeah, that's favorite. One of his favorite statements that he
taught us growing up is words whisper action, shout. And
I think that's just so clear here, right as like
you show up, your presence is going to mean a
lot more than what you say. What you say, by
the way, half the time when people are experiencing trauma
isn't even heard, right, they can't.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
Yeah, about human beings were made to live playing dyeing groups.
For a lot of those people they were camping down
that on the river and they were swept away, so
they might not have a big group of some of
the other ones to support them. How can you reach
out and find those people and help them?
Speaker 2 (49:22):
That's a really that's I think that's a great question.
The related to that MAC is that there are a
number of people who had children there who were not
from Texas, and so the awareness and sort of the
mobilization of social supports for these families that are different
(49:45):
parts of the country will not be as great as
it is in Texas. So we found this after a
number of sort of high profile events where for example,
after the Sandy Hooks, several of those families moved out
of state and so they literally had, you know, no
(50:07):
benefit of all of the mobilization of supports and activities
and things that were taking place in Connecticut, and they struggled.
So this is kind of why that social contact map
model is helpful. You know, we always talk to like,
you know, at some point people that are involved in
these camps and people that are involved in the formal
(50:31):
governmental response should create social contact maps like who is
impacted by this? Who are these people? You know, where
do they come from? You know, these people were camping
and the family lives in Oregon. We have to reach
out to them, we have to communicate with them. But
that tends to be poorly done. But that's part of
(50:51):
what has to happen. There has to be an intentional
effort to create a social contact map about who's directly impacted,
who's secondary impacted, whose third degree impacted. And one of
the you know, I have a a I guess it
was just like a presentation that is on our YouTube
(51:12):
channel that I created for colleagues in Turkey where I
talk about this this phenomenon and well, for those of
you who are clinicians, it will have some relevance for
your thinking about and your work with families impacted by
this in Texas. You know, we can make sure that
you get people get links to this and then actually
(51:34):
if we if we do end up having a you know,
as we have more of these, maybe we can have
sort of a little bit of a presentation about some
of these concepts for the clinical teams and responders.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
We would love that. So one question I get a
lot to go ahead, I'm just going to say one
question I'm getting a lot is kind of twofold. It's
from parents of their kids go to school with someone
who was lost in the floods or family members impacted.
And one of the big questions, you know that I'm
hearing a lot is how do I support my child, right,
(52:12):
how do I have conversations about what happened to their friend?
How do I help them process it? How are they
going to show back up in the classroom? And also
when do I know or start to think about signs
and symptoms are normal versus I need to get my
kid their own clinician, I need to get them in therapy. Right,
And we know there were seven hundred and fifty kids
camping at Mystic, right, Yes, there is a huge impact
(52:34):
in that group of young campers that witness things firsthand,
that experienced it. And as we've talked about, right, the
impact of the flooding was not only limited to Mystic,
It's tons of families, tons of individuals, right, eighty plus people.
And so how do we have conversations with kids about
what they're experiencing? How do we normalize that? But what
can we be doing for them right now? Because I
(52:55):
think one of my biggest concerns with the clinician is
that it's summer. I worry that these kids struggling or
sitting at home alone and a lot of them are
not in communities and in school and in classrooms right
now to have each other. And so yeah, I'm just
curious what parents and caregivers can do and be looking
(53:15):
out for.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
We wrote very brief kind of ten point thing about
talking to children about traumatic death, and a lot of
the key elements in that are things that would be
helpful for parents and any adult talking to kids about
something like this, and I again, we can make it available.
(53:37):
There's a there's a very like a one page version
of it started of being distributed by in curial public schools,
and there are some other some a little bit more
deeper detail in a couple of things, and we can
make that available. But the real key is this is
(53:57):
is to talk about it, focus on the developmental age
of the child, make it clear to the child that
you're not afraid to talk about this. It's that it's
like you're not so overwhelmed about it that you that
it's a secret or it's something that you can't talk about,
but the don't. You don't have to go into great detail.
(54:18):
Just talk about it and then invite the child to
talk with you about it anytime they want to talk
about it, and give them control over how they bring
it up and when they bring it up, how long
they talk about it. Because part of what will happen
is if just like I said, I mean, I can
(54:39):
only handle this for like three or four seconds before
I'm like ready to break down, and I'm very distant
from ground zero, so to speak. So children, when they
talk about it or bring it up with a parent,
usually what they'll do is they'll bring up a little
bit of a fear or a thought or a question,
(55:01):
and then the parent will be like, oh my god,
I need to talk about it. They need this sort
of event, they need to do whatever, and we tend
to sort of dig a little bit more, which makes
them feel a little bit more uncomfortable. So the whole
idea is kind of back to what I said earlier
is tiny little doses. It's knowledge and regulation and change
in the brain happens with lots of tiny little doses.
(55:26):
And so they'll have a question, answer the question, and
they'll just kind of wander off. It's sort of like
those of you who've ever dealt with kids and they're
curious about sex right now, you know, five or six
seven year old child will come up and ask a question,
and you know you're like, WHOA, okay, So then you
(55:48):
start this big elaborate explanation and they just walk away.
Oh okay. They didn't want that full explanation. They just
kind of want okay, that's a nice a topic to
get mom and dad kind of stirred up, and that's interesting,
and they walk off. So and then they'll come back
later and they'll get more elaboration and more elaboration. But
(56:12):
that's not the time to give them the birds and
the beast talk. You know, when they're a little kid
and they come up and they ask about a body part,
the same thing's going to happen with this. They'll come
up and go they'll ask about death. You know, where
do you go? What happens? And it'll be like a
big question, but it doesn't need a big answer. And
(56:38):
that's part of what you need to do is stay regulated.
Give them something to hang on to and to kind
of mull around with, and they'll wander off and then
if they want more, they'll come back. Give Giving control
of individuals to process this stuff is really powerful and important.
Speaker 4 (56:54):
Could you give us a couple of examples of people
that are directly respond related to some of the people
who lost their lives. How could in these terrible moments
they stay regulated?
Speaker 2 (57:07):
Well, that's a great that's a great question, Mac. I
think that most people's brains will use dissociation to regulate themselves,
and so what they'll do is that they'll find they'll
have moments where it's just they're right in it and
it's overwhelming, and then they'll sort of numb out, and
(57:28):
so that'll happen. But that's physically exhausting. What I would
recommend that this is really important. If you want to
manage this, you've got to really focus on physical activity, sleep, diet,
socialization four things. And these are things you can control,
(57:49):
but you have to be think about them like they're prescribed,
just like take your vitamin in the morning, take your
ten minute walk, lunch, you know, eat at the same time.
You know, just the more external regulation you get, even
kind of rigid, the more your body will be regulated.
And that's the that's one of the best ways to
(58:10):
start is to use doses of movement, whether it's riding
a bike or swimming or listening to music, whatever is
kind of makes you feel good. You've got to take
these tiny little breaks and and you know, sleep is
sometimes hard to deal with, but try to go to sleep.
(58:33):
You can't go to sleep, get up, do something productive.
Try to go do your same little sleep routine again
doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (58:43):
And I think as a as a you know, anxiety clinician,
and you know, one big thing would be if you
find yourself in this rumination, right, be thoughtful about what
you're doing that may be promoting it, and can you
change and do something different. One thing we really talk
a lot about also, and I think this is so
important with kids right that are experiencing this kind of
secondhand traumas or Vibr's guild to all the things, is
(59:06):
be cautious about exposure to news and media because you know,
one thing I learned a lot from you, Bruce, is
that you know, children, when they hear about something, it's
as if they can sometimes believe as if it's happening
all over again. It's hard for them to understand that
this is a replay of a past event. And so
we need to be thoughtful about that for kids, but
also for ourselves. Right, the more we are sitting here
(59:28):
searching on social media, looking all day, reading news stories, right,
the more just regulated we've become. And that is something
we can behaviorally change. Right, We can limit our own
exposure to this repeated trauma exactly.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
And you know it's studies have shown that if you
expose children to a net like the Challenger disaster, for example,
children who watch that news cycle more than ten times
actually developed trauma related symptoms at the same rate as
kids that actually witnessed it. And so this is something
that you're spot on that's so important that the more
(01:00:05):
people expose themselves to repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, negative things, the
more that's going to have an impact on you. So
it is you know, I'm so glad you brought that up,
because that really is I think the number one controllable
thing that you can do for children and for yourself
(01:00:26):
is to stop watching and scrolling relentlessly.
Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Last two questions I have for today, and then we
have so many more to come, and I'm so excited
to continue the series and provide support in the long
run because that's what we're here for. How do we
help and support our first responders right now? They have
been everywhere, their boots on the ground, and my gut
from what we've talked about is like bring them a meal, right,
help them get to showers, or different things that we
(01:00:53):
can do to get them in a pattern and in
a routine, but we know they've got a long road
ahead as well.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
They have a long road ahead, and they It's interesting
a lot of the people who choose to go into
first responding positions also tend to be kind of not
necessarily good at taking help. They're very good at giving help,
(01:01:18):
but they're not usually that comfortable letting people take care
of them. Now, over time, people are learning more about
this and getting better. But what I would recommend is
you just have to think about them in almost the
same way as you think about people that are ground zero,
is that they need relational regulation. They need to know
(01:01:39):
that you are aware of them and you value them.
They need these concrete things like, hey, you got to
focus on your sleep. You know, you've got to rotate out,
You've got to take some time for yourself, You've got
to meet the needs of your family. You know, do
not make the mistake of compounding this tracky by wearing
(01:02:01):
yourself out and having this echo impact on everybody in
your life. And again, education can help support that. You know,
the more people learn about that, the more they understand
why you're saying that. You know, if you understand you
know a lot of people are like, don't like to
be told what to do, and the first responders typically cops,
(01:02:24):
and they don't like to be told what to do,
particularly by mental health people. But if you tell them
about the biology of responding and about what happens in
the stress response systems, they're much more likely to recognize it. Yeah,
I guess that's probably good for me. But that's a
big hurdle.
Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
We can push this and have some impact. I know
you've done a lot of work in research on what
policymakers need to do and how they need to show
up in these sort of events, and so would love
to hear any feedback and ways we can push our
local policy and of course now well and statewide policymakers
to really help show up in a way that's going
to be most beneficial right now.
Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Yeah, that's again, I think that there will be you know,
people will show up in the short term, right cameras,
they'll show up a disaster, they'll show up. I think
the heartbreaking thing is in six months, when the pain
and agony and misery and the delayed response of building
(01:03:29):
and rebuilding, they're not going to show up because you
know why, what they'll be met with his anger and
the slowness of the responses and what happened, just that's
when they'll not show up. But again, the same thing
as honestly, if you are a policymaker and you have
(01:03:52):
the guts to show up and tolerate the discomfort of
what happens in recovery, you're going to be better. You're
going to help your constituency better. You're going to be
you will be valued more by the people that vote
for you. Do the right thing, that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Final words and thoughts and for today from everybody. Would
love to hear that. And our commitment to our community
is to help show up and serve in the long run,
not the short run. And so Bruce, I just want
to say thank you. The fact that I could text
you yesterday and you could say, all show up anytime tomorrow.
You tell me when, and you're here and offering your
expertise that is grounded by research, by impact, and of
(01:04:36):
course by the way you've shown up for countless tragedies
is something we're just so grateful for.
Speaker 4 (01:04:42):
Absolutely, Bruce, what were they thirty second commercial talking to
people affected, just to let them know that everybody cares
about them.
Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
What would it sound like, oh wow, Mac, you're talking
to the wrong guy. I don't just sound by this
very well, as you probably can tell from this podcast.
I do you know what I think it would be
somebody like you. I think it should be you, a
public figure who's revered to just say, just speak from
(01:05:13):
the heart, you know, let people know that you care.
If you're not going and you're not going to go away,
you're gonna put together supports and resources to help people.
And as we figure out what that's going to look like,
we're going to make sure that you learn about it.
(01:05:34):
Sounds great to me.
Speaker 4 (01:05:35):
Is the honor of being here with you and Liz.
Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Hey, you got quite a daughter there, Mac. He's pretty special.
Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
He takes after him another thank God, Well, thank you
all for being here. I know that so many people
who are watching and listening are struggling and suffering right now.
And the thing we heard countless times today is that
this is going to be uncomfortable. This is going to
be really hard, and we need to all show up
and keep showing up because it is what we can
(01:06:05):
do to help someone else move through this. Try to
get people and encourage people to be in a routine right,
eating meals, doing a little bit of movement, engaging in
their normal activities despite how abnormal everything else is, and
stick with it for the long run. Right community, schools,
loved ones, family members, clinicians. We can all show up
right now, and that's critical, but what's really going to
(01:06:26):
be critical is how we're showing up in one, two, three.
Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Six, twelve months exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Thank you so much, Thank you for your time, Looking
forward to many more in ways we can keep helping,
and we will of course link and share all the
resources we talked about today.
Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Great, my pleasure is great to see you too. Keep
up the good work, you guys, you guys, Thank you
Thank you so much for joining us today as we
offer some education, insight, and hopefully some helpful support to
those impacted by the devastating flooding that happened over the
weekend in central Texas. My name is doctor Elizabeth mcindallan.
I'm the director of the UCDI Institute here in Texas,
where we specialize in using cognitive behavioral therapy to treat
(00:20):
anxiety disorders, which of course also includes trauma. CBT is
the most evidence based intervention for trauma, and we know
that it is an intervention that can help individuals not
just be able to process the trauma, but be able
to get unstuck and live full lives despite experiencing trauma.
What we know is that this weekend's flooding will have
(00:41):
a lasting impact on families and communities for decades to come,
and we are here to support you through it. Today
we're joined by the world renowned doctor Bruce Perry, who
is a leading expert in trauma response, how we can
respond appropriately, and of course how we help individuals live through,
cope and moved through traumatic experiences. We're so excited to
(01:03):
have him today on the podcast and to provide insight, education,
and support. Thank you so much for joining us, and
we're looking forward to providing support today and in the future.
We're going to continue these episodes so that we can
continue to provide appropriate education at appropriate time points, because
what we know is that support tends to and should
(01:23):
come in phases, and certain support is what's needed right now,
where different support will be what's needed later. OCDI Texas
and doctor Bruce Perry's team are going to work together
to make sure we're continuing to provide education and support
along the way. Thank you for joining. We are joined
today by an incredible world renowned trauma expert and specialist,
(01:44):
doctor Bruce Perry, and a community leader who is also
my dad doctor was a doctor, but Jim Mackingdell. Where
we're going to join together to really talk about how
can we show up as a community, How can we
show up to loved ones, of friends, to families, and
of course to those who are directly impacted by this devastation.
(02:05):
So I want to start with a couple of introductions,
and of course we will hop into just what do
we do, where do we start and how do we
make a difference. So first and foremost, I want to
introduce a colleague, a good friend, and a mentor. Doctor
Bruce Perry doctor Perry is a world renowned psychiatrist and
neuroscientists and trauma expert whose groundbreaking work has reshaped how
(02:26):
we understand and respond to the impact of trauma on children, families,
and communities. He's the Principal of Neurosequential Network and Senior
Fellow at the Child Trauma Academy. He formerly served as
the Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital and the
Vice Chair of Psychiatry at Balor College of Medicine. He
has over five hundred scientific publications, book chapters, and presentations
(02:46):
to his name and has truly devoted his life to
helping us understand the lasting and print of trauma on
the developing brain. Doctor Perry is perhaps most widely known
to the public through so many of his best selling books,
including The Boy Who Was raisedst The Dog Born for Love,
and What Happened to You, which he co authored with
over Winfrey. These works have given a voice to the
(03:06):
silent suffering of countless children and illuminated a path towards compassion, healing,
and post traumatic growth. Doctor Perry has been called upon
time and time again in the wake of tragedy, from
school shootings and natural disasters to the traumatic loss of children,
to helping guide communities through unimaginable grief. His insights have
not only shaped trauma informed clinical care, but have also
(03:26):
provided urgent guidelines for caregivers, educators, first responders, policymakers, and
all of us in times of national crisis. Today, as
we are all grappling with the devastation of the Central
Texas floods and the heartbreaking events at Camp Mystic and
within our entire community, were especially grateful to have doctor
Perry with us. His presence reminds us that in our
(03:49):
deepest pain, healing begins with the understanding, and that connection, rhythm,
and compassion are often the foundations for recovery. Thank you
so much for joining us, doctor Perry. We could not
be happier and more grateful.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
To Well, it's my pleasure to be here. It's heartbreaking stuff.
One of the things I'm actually so happy to be
on this because the sense of helplessness that people feel
during these times is something that I've felt. It's like
(04:21):
I'm up in you know, I'm out of the country
right now, and my daughters went to mystic. So just
thinking about it, it's like ough, it's heartbreaking. I can't
even hold in my mind the images of what happened
to those children. And I know that I'm not alone
in that. There's a lot of people that just can
barely tolerate the imagery, the thought of what happened to
(04:45):
those children. You know, one of the things that we
have been doing over the last I don't know thirty
years has been trying to figure out how to respond
to events like this. And sometimes they're man made, know,
their war or some other catastrophic event, they're frequently not
(05:07):
at this scale, right, I mean, this is a The
scale of this devastation is such that there are multiple
layers and levels of complexity where we have to think
as a community of healers, as a community of as
a community about what do you do? But what do
(05:30):
I do with my little, my little slice of experience
to try to make this better? And so maybe we
can talk a little bit about that, because.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It's the pondering what we should do sometimes is paralyzing,
and that leads to the level more of the sense
of hopelessness.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
So what I want to do is help people understand
that listen. At whatever level you are, in whatever way
you interact with people who have been impacted by this,
you can have a positive effect that really will contribute
to healing. So I think that's part of what we
should talk.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
About one hundred percent, and I think our goal for
today is exactly that is, how can everybody feel like
they know what step to take next, even if it's
just putting one foot in front of the other, How
they can do that, And also what the community and
our response needs to be, not just right now, but
in the near future and in the long run, because
all of that will make a huge difference on how individuals,
(06:32):
family members, and of course in our entire community heals.
And so next, I want to introduce my dad, James Macindell,
who is next to us on the screen and joining
us today. Jim is a Houston icon entrepreneur and philanthropists
and and is one of the most beloved iconic leaders
in Houston and in Texas. He's the founder of Gallery
Furniture and has become nationally recognized not just for his
(06:54):
business success, but for his unwavering commitment to helping people
in times of crisis. He's more than a businessman, He's
a force of good in the world, from sheltering hundreds
during Hurricane Harvey, defeating families through snowstorms, and now supporting
Texas and Texans affected during these devastating floods. Max legacy
is one of immediate action and unwavering community care. When
(07:16):
tragedy strikes, Jim doesn't ask what should be done, he
simply does it. Today he joins to share his perspective
on how we as community members can show up for
others in moments of grief and uncertainty, and how we
can turn purpose, faith and service into tools for healing.
Thanks for joining us, Dad, and would love to hear
from you a little bit of just how you always
find a way to bring the community together during these times.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Well, the entire state is devastated, not just this Hill country,
but people are affected in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, l Paso,
Houston of course all over the state. It's a tragedy
and every day we get doctor Perry a different story
of more horrors that happened. I'm just here to listen,
(08:01):
to learn, and try to spread the news that healing
is possible through the thoughts of people like yourself. Doctor
Perry and lives. So I'm excited to be here and
learn because we all do feel helpless right now, and
we all want to we all want to help. The
question is how to help. Do we gather supplies to
(08:22):
help people rebuild in central Texas? Do we send money?
How do we help all the Houstonians and the thousands
of people that are affected by this tragedy. So I'm
here to listen to learn. How do we make things
better so people can get through this. I could only
imagine the horror of not only the people that can't
miss it, but all the people that also were drowned
(08:44):
by this horrible storm. So we're here to listen and learn,
and it's a thrill to have live on in doctor Perry,
and for all you Texans out there, I think doctor
Perry is at heart a Texan.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
Very true, Doctor Perry.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I'll let you start with just what are the first steps?
Like how does a community start to rebuild? So many
people have questions like what do I say? You know,
how do I show up? I'm afraid to say the
wrong thing, I'm afraid to do something that'll make it worse.
But what is kind of a first response we can
do as a community, and what should we be rallying
for right now?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Well, let me just start with a tiny little bit
of education about the way human beings deal with stress.
And I don't want to get too too academic, but
one of the things that we know is that the
(09:42):
feelings that we have, you know, the anxiety, the despair,
all of these things are related to essentially our body
responding to something that's atypical. It's outside of sort of
what should happen. We all are walking around with an
internal expectation about the way the world works, and when
(10:02):
all of a sudden things don't work that way and catastrophic,
horrific things happen, it challenges us and it makes us
feel unsettled and disregulated and so forth. And now, the
impact of these kinds of events is going to be
very different depending upon how close you were to what
we would consider ground zero, right And what we know
(10:26):
is that if you are in sort of the middle
of this bullseye at ground zero, and you lost a child,
or you lost a home, or you watched someone die
or drown, the degree of distress you feel is going
to be much greater than if you knew somebody who
(10:46):
knew somebody who had a kid who went there. Now
that's not to say that that separate, kind of disconnected
experience is not distressing. It's just that what we've learned
is that the closer you are to the event, the
more likely you are to have these profound responses that
(11:07):
will last over a long period of time and this
echo effect, you know, this sort of the ground zero,
then the first responders, and then the people who knew
and lived with the individuals and ground zero. If you
start to do the numbers and you think about traditional
therapeutic work being oh, we're going to go see a
(11:28):
therapist one our week. They're going to help us with
whatever it is that we do. If you have only
two people, two people in the middle of this ground zero,
two children who watched witnessed a terrible thing, and then
there's twelve people that are kind of in the next
circle out who are first responders who loved and lived
(11:49):
with the people that died. If you just have two people,
what that means is by the time everybody who's been
impacted by that, it presents with mental health challenges. If
you used a traditional one hour a week therapy, you
would need twenty two therapists dedicating fifty percent of their
(12:10):
full week just to meet the needs of that event.
So now if you look at if you look at
the ground zero of this event, we're talking about an
excess of ninety thousand clinicians that would be required to
do one hour a week of mental health service to
help meet these mental health needs. And so what that
(12:34):
tells us right right there, is that our conventional medical
model system isn't going to work. We can't just sort
of rely on that traditional mental health system to meet
these needs. And so now that that's sort of sobering.
But the good news is what we have found, and
(12:56):
what many other people have been seeing over the years,
is that what really heals people is other people, not
necessarily other a therapist. Right. We heal from these tiny
little doses of kindness, of thoughtfulness, of understanding, of listening,
(13:17):
of giving a hug, of being present, of bringing a meal.
You know, these things provide this relational regulation of these
systems in our body that make us feel connected and
safe again. And this is what you know, this is
what I think is going to happen in Texas. I mean,
there's Texas has got so many great communities and so
(13:40):
many people who are capable of being present, attentive, attuned,
which basically means should I say something now or should
I not say something? Should I give you hugs? Should
I not give you a hug? And let you know,
doctor macndale, I'm going to call you doctor macanville until
you start calling me Bruce. All right, So you brought
(14:02):
it up that this being present for other people I
think is going to be a really important thing. And
you know, one of the things that Mac You've always done.
You have always created context to help people come together.
Excuse me, whether it's in your store or supporting other events,
(14:26):
You've done things that help bring people together. This power
of proximity is one of the most powerful healing things
that can happen. And what we've seen is in the beginning,
like when this happens, people are willing to be uncomfortable
in proximity with other people who are hurting. But over
(14:47):
time it gets a little bit more uncomfortable because, as
you said, you don't really know what to say. You
don't know should I bring it up, should it not
bring it up? How do I handle this? And so
in two weeks, three weeks, two months, three months. That's
when the people are going to that are most impacted
by this are going to be struggling the most because
(15:09):
people feel uncomfortable and they and a lot of people
just flee, you know, they just don't know what to say,
or they end up saying something that is makes everybody
feel uncomfortable, and it's this is a very challenging situation.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
So what are some of the first steps if you're
a family member who has potentially if you're a family
member who's lost the loved one directly, what can they
do right now for themselves? What would you recommend as
if you were their punishment?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
So the first thing, and we talk about this is
part of what we you know, this is part of
what we're doing right now is education, teaching people about
what what are the normal, absolutely healthy things that will
predictably happen when you are in catastrophic trauma. And again
(16:02):
because the unknown things that we're not used to make
us feel really uncomfortable and more distressed, and because humans
are very contagious to others. If you feel like really
are really really really really worried that they don't bring
it up, they don't ever talk about it, or if
you're really really worried that they're not sleeping, or that
they seem sad, or whatever it is that you're worried about,
(16:23):
you'll just get more disregulated, which means that they'll get
more disregulated, which means they'll be less likely to be
It just leads to this very uncomfortable interaction. So the
first thing is education. Learn about what are the normal
things that happen when people experience traumatic events, And there's
(16:43):
a couple of ways to do that. We have some
materials that will make available to you and to people
who are listening about just simple steps about how do
you talk about death to a child? You know, what's
a reasonable way to explain what's happening to their bodies.
(17:03):
Normalize the fact that they're going to have trouble with sleep,
things are going to pop into their heads that are
going to feel really make them feel really uncomfortable. And
the more the adults and others around the people at
ground zero in this first layer out, the more they
get these relational supports and education, the more likely they
(17:25):
are to get back towards a normal level of regulation.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Earlier, I really loved earlier when you said to us,
you said you know we should be cautious pathologizing every
symptom right now, and instead understand that most of the
traumatic responses are normal.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And I think those of us that have done trauma work,
or we understand trauma work, we know that a true
PTSD diagnosis doesn't typically happen until six months post a
traumatic event, because typical trauma responses are expected.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Right.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
One of the things you said earlier was it would
be abnormal if people weren't experiencing heavy green, difficulty sleeping, right,
some of these symptoms, right.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
You know, and the your body has these incredible protective
mechanisms that help keep us alive, and in situations like this,
one of the patterns, sort of one of the coping
mechanisms that we use all the time is probably going
to be very prominent. And it's we call this dissociation.
(18:29):
You know, when your body is in when everybody's kind
of heard of the fight or flight response, right, You like,
when you really get angry at somebody and you get
agitated and you may say something and there's you escalate
and you externalize excuse me. But when you are in
an inescapably distressing situation, inescapable pain inescapable, almost unthinkable horror.
(18:54):
We brought it up, right. I can only think about
that for like a millisecond before I go, oh, I
get just someone else. I can't even think about a
bunch of little girls in those cabins. I can't think
about it. So your brain protects you. You dissociate. And
(19:17):
so a lot of the people, a lot of the
individuals who are dealing with this are going to be robotic.
They're going to seem you know, a lot of times
people will see them and they will appear to be
emotion less, and then that will be misinterpreted and they'll think, oh,
that's abnormal, But that's actually in these times that kind
(19:37):
of physically exhausted, mentally exhausted, with drawn, disengaged. That's one
of the major presentations that people will see. Now, the
other thing that can happen is and this is where
that the dissociation for the people who are most impacted
(20:02):
in three weeks or three months is basically going to
allow people to who are uncomfortable dealing with this. They'll think, oh,
they're fine, they're coping well. And so that's a real
danger point with these families is that the fact that
(20:25):
they aren't having these easily observable external symptoms. People kind
of go, oh, look at they're doing. Find them on
the lawn and they say hi. They get the normal
greetings that you would normally be with a neighbor, but
if you could see inside, you would see the tragic
sadness and distress and the ruminations and all the kinds
(20:48):
of stuff. It's going to be what they have to
deal with. And so that combination leads to this unfortunate
period at about three to six months where people kind
of get back into their norm right. Things are getting rebuilt,
you know, you have every everybody has their the inertia
(21:09):
of their busy life, and so all of these folks
are no longer at the forefront of your mind. And
it can be a week or two weeks or three
weeks and realize, oh, I haven't touched base with so
and so, and a lot of times they feel abandoned, right,
and it's this is this is why I hope we'll
keep doing this kind of thing. You know, we want
(21:31):
to you know, we've talked about this before we went live,
but we really would like to be present for people
who are dealing with this for the duration, not just
a one shot podcast. They're going to need psycho education.
And and right now, one of the sort of one
(21:52):
of the hard things is that the people that are
most impacted by this they can't even they can't learn
anything right now. They're two overwhelmed. And it's such an
odd disconnect because this is when we want to give
them the most Oh, here, read this, do this, we'll
do this, We'll have it. They're least capable of benefiting
from this stuff. Now. We have all these volunteer people
(22:15):
that are going to be there, Volunteer therapists, volunteer walk
around in every one of these big disasters. This is
what happens, all kinds of supports upfront, and then as
people get back to the normal lives and people's needs,
that the people infected by the trauma, their needs increase.
There's all of a sudden, these these slopes intercept and
(22:37):
there's a point when you know the need is completely unmet,
and we leave it to the mental health system, which
is already overwhelmed, getting in a point where.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Everything Yeah, and so I think that leads me to
my next question of so what can we do right
now for those strong, for those suffering, for those either
with children or with family members. Like, what does showing
up right now look like? Because, as you said, we're
going to do many more of these and we're going
to talk about how we show up later when processing
can happen. And that's something I've talked a lot about.
(23:14):
Is you know my area of expertise, which is come
to behavioral therapy. So it's really more of anxiety and
trauma treatment. We can do that work, like I specialize
in that, but it wouldn't be useful to be doing
that right now. Right no one is ready to learn
how to deal with trauma, how to do it right
that they're not there yet, and so the needs are
very different now than they'll be in three or six months.
(23:35):
So what can we do right now?
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So this is where max magic always sort of comes in.
Just knowing that somebody is thinking about you. It's helpful
for people knowing that there is some place that they
can get something, that there are people that care about them,
that there are people that there whatever it is. Different
(23:59):
people will have different needs, but that that is a
reflection in the beginning of what I would consider being present.
That's the first thing is being present, and it doesn't
necessarily mean being side by side physical proximity, but just
a text kind of thinking about you, you know, or
(24:20):
signing up for kind of A lot of these families
will need meals. A lot of these families will need
people literally to help them figure out how to prepare,
how to contact a funeral home. You know, these are
young families. They haven't done in this stuff. Usually they
don't know how to do all. All people that need
(24:40):
can really in a lot of different ways if you're present.
And so this is the first thing I would recommend
is that everybody kind of sit down and go, all right,
I'm going to make a list of who do I
know has been impacted by this? Do I have a neighbor,
do I have a relative? Was it my family? And
(25:03):
when you kind of make that catalog of how people
are impacted, you know, even if let's say that you
are pretty proximal, you're involved in searching, and you're involved
in recovery, you're involved in that, at some point you
want to begin to think about, all right, who's being
impacted by this? Is my family? How are they being
(25:24):
impacted by the fact that I'm gone all the time
doing this And I don't want to talk about it.
How are the people that I have talked to impacted?
You know whose children I found? And begin to think
about how can I have a little light touch, you know,
(25:44):
Can I got their phone number? Can I just text
them and say, you know, this is a hard time
thinking about it. That's it light Dutch. But those we heal.
This is the thing about I got to do a
little biology thing right here. When you think about the brain,
the systems and the brain and the way they change
(26:05):
in all of our physiological systems. They don't change because
we activate them for one hour a week, right, They
change because we activate them in tiny little doses all
throughout the week. So if you think about the and
the powerful thing about this is that a lot of
(26:27):
we don't know the right thing to say. I can
tell you. I can guarantee you that you will say
the wrong thing and you're going to rupture, but then
you repair and the very same thing you say on
Sunday night, if you say that on Monday morning, that's
the right thing. If you say it's Sunday night, it's
the wrong thing. You say it again on Monday afternoon,
(26:50):
it's the wrong thing. Everybody is in a mess right
now and over time. What it is is that you're
willing to day there and keep saying be present. Don't
once you realize that you blew it, don't flee. Just repair.
(27:12):
All relationships are about rupture and repair. Rupture and repair.
Think about the people that you love the most. How
often you say I didn't mean that. What I meant
was it's all about coming back together. But when people
recognize that you're there, that's a huge step. So being present,
(27:35):
being attentive, trying to meet the tiny little needs that
somebody might have, like listen, can I get you some coffee?
You know, whatever it is you know. And again Max's
been a genius at that, creating environments where people feel
they can go to, where they can have some they
can be around people who will be sensitive and caring
(27:57):
that the fact that there are the there are you know,
the mac famous, that there's a famous person, a powerful,
famous person in Texas who cares about us, and that's
that means something to people.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
So Dad, I'd love to hear, like what your call
to action would be for obviously yourself, but also other
community members and business owners, and you know, what are
ways you've shown up in the past that you feel
like we can continue to show up. And one thing
we learned is it's not about showing up and doing
one event right, It's about continuing to show up and
continuing to do those events.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Learn from I could learn from doctor Bruce. I shouldn't
call him doctor Perry Bruce about you know, how to
the communities need to be rebuilt. But more important than
bricks and mortar is how do we help these How
do we let people know that we're here for them,
even if it just means saying hello or sending them
(28:59):
a video, let them know we're caring about them. It's
because there's so many people affected by this, and like
what Bruce said is, how do we find these people
to say, hey, we care about you. If you need anything,
give me a give me a call. I know it's
hell going through it right now. How do we how
do we say that to these thousands of people that
are just devastated. The stories go on and on. I
(29:23):
heard some story yesterday about they'd sent their child to
a different camp. They were vacationing down there on the river,
and the entire families wiped out except for the child.
So how do we how do we how do we
reach out and touch these people in a in a
way that's thoughtful and caring, And just like you said, Bruce,
(29:47):
how do we stay with them from from now till
they face Christmas Day without their loved ones.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, that's I mean that part is the biggest challenge
that we've as a field. I think that we've learned
a lot about kind of the acute response and how
to kind of come in and do you know, early
intervention stuff, but we've failed miserably at what you just
(30:18):
talked about, that at staying with families and helping them
get through the waxing and waning of distress. And we
just have to get better. The good news is that
the best if somebody is part of a community of faith,
(30:39):
if somebody is part of a healthy neighborhood, if somebody's
part of some social structure that that group of people,
whether it's just your immediate family or your extended family,
or your neighborhood or your church community, whatever it is,
the healing power in that group is just remarkable. And
(31:01):
part of what we try to do is help the
individuals in those groups. Number one, like I said, we
talked about earlier psycho education learn about you know, you
can learn about what happens to the body, what are
predictable responses. You can teach people that listen, you're going
to be completely frick and exhausted. You're going to think
(31:21):
that you can go back to work after six weeks,
but you're only going to be able to do about
twenty five percent of what you normally would do, and
then you're going to start being hard on yourself and
your employers aren't going to understand it. So the more
we can educate employers, we can educate the schools, we
can educate the community members about what are the normal
(31:44):
trajectories out of these experiences, so that people have, Like
at Saint John's, you know, there will be an impact
on the ability of some kids to learn as efficiently
as they did the year before. And so if you
are aware of that and you pay attention to that,
(32:05):
you can actually make the kinds of accommodations that help
in the children. Individual children kind of get through this
in a better way. But unfortunately, what we tend to
do is that we tend to not understand these things.
So we then compound that the problem by having expectations.
(32:26):
You know, you're just not cutting it at work, Tom,
and you forget oh yeah, six months ago, you do
child around only. Yeah, that's right, but you got to
you got to get this warehouse cleaned out. You know,
somebody's got to do it. And so we if we
can educate the employers, if we can educate the schools,
if we can educate the faith communities, I think there
(32:49):
will be more opportunities for these understanding moments that are
truly therapeutic and and the burden for formal therapy will drop.
And that's kind of what we need. That's what we
have done in Turkey when there was this huge earthquake,
and so we've done in a lot of other places
where we're trying to help the male health community understand that. Listen,
(33:09):
you have a role, but it's more as a conductor.
You know, you're not playing any of the instruments in
the orchestra. But to make this therapeutic sort of music,
somebody's got to play the trumpet, somebody's got to play
the violin, somebody's got to play the drums at the
right time. And you know about this stuff. So you
get them all on the same page and you direct this.
(33:30):
You're the conductor. You don't have to make all the music.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah, And I love kind of twofold here, which is that?
And that leads me to the next question and point
is what can communities do? And I love to hear
that actually the greatest strength is going to come in communities, right, Churches, schools,
groups getting together and being able to support as a
group is such an impactful thing when people are going
(33:57):
through this. I live in the Heights and so are
all of our trees.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
We put blue ribbons for Greta, who was one of
the little girls from the Heights who died at Camp Mystic,
And it's just the little things you can do as
a community to support the tragic loss that's happening. But
also knowing that that we all know that's not enough, right,
that's a way to show we care, but we want
to do more. And I've gotten so many questions from
(34:24):
community leaders, school counselors, right, leaders of like what do
we do now? And what do we do next? And
so I think for us to talk about what can
schools do right now? I know, for example, Saint John's
Kincaid Memorial and Timbergrove, these places where there was loss,
they are finding ways to come together, have prayer, visuals,
do community events. But it's summer, you know, so it's
(34:46):
a little bit more challenging and difficult. But what can
they do now? Knowing that, we will do more of
these episodes to talk about what they should do next.
And we all know that in the fall, when they're
classmates and their parents are returning to school with other
kids in different and in different settings, right, the needs
will drastically change. But today, what can gallery do? What
(35:07):
can other business owners do? What can churches do? What
can schools do?
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yep. So one of the big things that we've seen,
and a lot of the feedback we've gotten from families
impacted by things like this, is that that communication is terrible.
You know, they don't they don't feel like whether it's
the whatever organizations gathering the resources or whatever is available
(35:33):
out there, they don't hear about it until later. And
so we always recommend kind of making an impact map,
a social impact map. Now this obviously not everybody's going
to do that, but if you are the head of
a church, if you are involved in this out of school,
you really need to make a social impact map, which
(35:55):
is like who was impacted in our school, Who is
like plausibly going to be impacted, you know, the parents,
the relatives, the friends, the neighbors, and actually have some
way to just be aware. Like if you don't know
who is impacted, you are you're not going to have
a clue about what to do. So the first thing
(36:17):
is make people in positions in organizations, with the position
of responsibility or authority, make a social make a sort
of a contact map. Now you can do that if
even if you have a group of friends, right and
you have five, six, seven, eight friends, and you know
somebody in that circle was impacted, you think about who
(36:38):
is on my social impact map, and the least littlest
thing you can do is begin to communicate with them tiny,
whether it's through text or send them a card or
just something. Begin communication and contact. And that's the first thing.
The second thing is once you have an awareness of
who in your sphere of influence has been impacted, then
(37:03):
you educate yourself about what are some predictable things that
we're going to run into and that you can do
that through. There's a variety of print materials and multimedia
content that are available. We have some and we can
make some you know, talk about how to make some
of them available. But there is content that's helpful if
(37:26):
you are completely uneducated about mental health stuff. There's content
that's helpful if you are in the mental health field.
And so it's out there, tends to not be particularly
well organized necessarily, and sometimes it's a very light touch content,
which means that you know you're dealing with a specific
complex thing. Like Mac just described a really unique situation
(37:48):
of a child orphaned by his parents suddenly and catastrophically
being gone. That's very different than an intact family having
a child who was in danger and saw their you know,
their friends swept away. That's a whole that's a different
set of issues. And so part of the dilemma with
(38:12):
the psycho educational content is that when you write it
like you end up writing it sort of that's kind
of generally helpful, but it's not specifically helpful. And so
the benefit of this kind of podcast is that if
people learn about what we're doing over time, they will
(38:36):
be able to have specific queries about what do I
do in this situation, and we can have a conversation
about a specific set of concrete things to do, which
may end up, you know, directing them to people in
their community or people can help them directly. But once
you have the social contact map who's impacted, reach out
(38:59):
to them in little ways, mobilize the other people you
know who will have concerns about them, and then think
about like do they need meals, do they need help
cleaning up? Do they need you know, what are the
concrete needs that they have, and then their emotional social needs,
mental health needs will become apparent over time, But in
(39:21):
the beginning it's very concrete stuff to.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Stick more concrete less.
Speaker 4 (39:27):
How would you create a community event for you know,
right now that would at least show people that everybody
always thinking and praying and caring for them.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Well, that's a good question. I'd have to give that
a little bit of thought, because I do think that,
you know, one of the things I've just just off
the top of my head is that I really think
that maybe a community event for the helpers, not necessarily
for the people that are being impacted yet, so even
(39:59):
a community about all, right, let who wants to help,
because there's a lot of people out there, and can
we give them the level of specific sort of psycho
education so they feel a little bit armed and they
can actually utilize the available print and multimedia content a
(40:20):
little bit better. That's what we would do as an organization.
We kind of go all right, listen, I we would
help the helpers basically.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
So my next question, yeah, yeah, another question I have
that leads me to is what should we not be doing?
I think a lot of us are wondering, like, what
are things we shouldn't be doing right now? What are
things we should what are statements or comments we should avoid?
And people get so nervous it becomes this analysis paralysis
of like I don't I know I need to do something,
(40:52):
but I don't know what to do, so I won't
do anything at all.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
Yeah, that's such a common phenomenon. Here's what you have
to do. If you really want to help, you have
to recognize that you're going to feel incredibly uncomfortable this.
Human beings are relational creatures, right. If you run into
somebody who's like, really enthusiastic, pretty soon you feel better.
(41:16):
If you run into somebody who's really down and always negative,
if you spend a lot of time with them, pretty
soon you start to see the world in that way too.
And so what I think we really need to do
is recognize this relational contagion is so powerful and but
(41:37):
what it does during traumatic events is that when somebody
feels so much pain, I mean you suddenly start crying.
Here almost twice on this podcast. You have to be
able to tolerate that distress. Go back in, just go
back in. You have then don't go back to your
(41:58):
where you feel safe and comfortable and not distressed. It's uncomfortable.
You have to recognize you're gonna feel helpless. You're gonna
feel just like you here. I am, I like an
expert in this, and I can guarantee you if I
spend ten minutes with one of these families, I feel
completely helpless, like a moron. But if I stay, there'll
(42:20):
be a moment when they'll say something and I'll go, yeah,
it's pretty normal to be completely exhausted. You're going to
feel very tired, and that's okay, and I can then
start to go from something that I know and help them.
But in the beginning, it's like, there's it's such an
(42:41):
emotional you know, how do you how do you interact
with a weeping parent who's trying to deal with the
horror of their childlife. You got to stay, got to
be present. You're gonna be uncomfortable, you're gonna feel incompetent,
(43:02):
you're gonna feel paralyzed. But if you stay, you'll start
to see little openings where they can hear you, where
they can accept a kind hug, where you can get
them coffee. You know, you'll find little ways this present attentive. Right, wait,
watch what's going on? Listen, watch, and then be attuned.
(43:24):
And when you're tuned in that moment, you kind of
go all right, this, let me give you something, you know,
and then you know it's that's what helps. And it's
because of the discomfort of traumatic pain. That's part of
what drives people away. It's also part of what makes
(43:46):
people want this family that's in pain to be resilient.
We tend to use the term resilience to basically protect
ourselves a lot. Right, The reality is, in order for
them to demonstrate resilience, they're gonna have to go through
all kinds of hell. And yes, maybe they'll demonstrate resilience,
(44:08):
but that's gonna wear down. Resilience is a is a
capability that can be built up and then it can
be worn down. And I can guarantee you the most
resilient family that you know that this connect had, belongs
to a community of faith, has extended family that's supporting them,
has all kinds of economic resources. If they had a
kid that drowned there, their resilience is gonna get worn down,
(44:30):
and in six months they're gonna they're just gonna be struggling.
They'll struggle through the whole time, but it will be
easy for us to say, oh, they're resilient. Look at
that she's and you'll see stuff like, oh, she laughed
at a joke. That doesn't mean she's healed from the
trauma of her child drowning.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
And how do people start to even think about, like
what to say when you can tell someone is struggling
with guilt, right, whatever that guilt might be. I mean,
in particular, we know for cantstic kids, the parents you know,
they weren't there, but even other families and everything that's happening,
there's going to be guilt, right. You know, we've heard
(45:11):
stories about you know, one person survived, one didn't during
this flooding event, and you know, so how do we
start to well, I mean, we can't process it for people,
but how how do people start to process and work
through guilt? What can we do to help with that?
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah, that's one of those longer term, sort of cognitive
beliefs that get stuck and is one of the most
challenging parts of working with people and helping people who've
had this kind of traumatic experience and your brain starts
to part of what your brain does to kind of
(45:50):
make sense out of stuff like this is you run
through different scenarios if I don't need do this, this,
I shouldn't have done this, or didn't he told me
not to go there, she's too young, and you just
you can get into these cognitive lives and that's where
therapy actually, you know, lives, the kind of stuff that
actually doctor MC and now the stuff that you do
we would do pretty good here with first names. All right, live,
I'll go back and live.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
Thank you. But it is from a trauma, from a
trauma and CBT perspective, like I actually really do know
how to treat that, right, We've done with veterans with PTSD,
people who have experienced mass casualties. All right, but it's
so much later. I don't know how to help people
process it. Right now, I know how to do it
when you're ready for treatment.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
So here here's what I'm gonna and again this is
part of that psycho educational thing. So if you think
about the brain upset on triangle, brain right top is
a cortex. Guilt is a cognition. Guilt is a cognition.
Right now, they're not they don't have any They're so
distressed that most of their cortex is kind of shut
down in some way unavailable. So you can say things
(46:59):
and do things that will not contribute to guilt, right,
but late that that has to be dealt with later
on and usually using the kinds of therapeutic tools and
strengths that you that you have. It's a very challenging thing.
(47:21):
And this is where some of the things that parents
here or that people try to say to comfort somebody
actually contributes to guild. Right. You know, there are people
who have just I can't believe some of the horrible
stuff I've seen on that on social media. Just it's
astounding that in our country people would do that. But
(47:43):
it's a whole different conversation. But that you know, there
are people who have religious beliefs that they go everything
happens for you know, they're in a better place. You
know that that does not help necessarily, And in fact,
for some people, making that statement fits into their own
(48:06):
religious beliefs about what did I do wrong? You know,
how is what I did wrong in my life connected
to this you know event that took my child and
that that kind of guilt is hard to deal with.
So I'm a big fan of this is I think
(48:28):
people need to remember that words in this moment are
not going to be as powerful as just physical proximity.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Yeah, that's favorite. One of his favorite statements that he
taught us growing up is words whisper action, shout. And
I think that's just so clear here, right as like
you show up, your presence is going to mean a
lot more than what you say. What you say, by
the way, half the time when people are experiencing trauma
isn't even heard, right, they can't.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Exactly.
Speaker 4 (49:01):
Yeah, about human beings were made to live playing dyeing groups.
For a lot of those people they were camping down
that on the river and they were swept away, so
they might not have a big group of some of
the other ones to support them. How can you reach
out and find those people and help them?
Speaker 2 (49:22):
That's a really that's I think that's a great question.
The related to that MAC is that there are a
number of people who had children there who were not
from Texas, and so the awareness and sort of the
mobilization of social supports for these families that are different
(49:45):
parts of the country will not be as great as
it is in Texas. So we found this after a
number of sort of high profile events where for example,
after the Sandy Hooks, several of those families moved out
of state and so they literally had, you know, no
(50:07):
benefit of all of the mobilization of supports and activities
and things that were taking place in Connecticut, and they struggled.
So this is kind of why that social contact map
model is helpful. You know, we always talk to like,
you know, at some point people that are involved in
these camps and people that are involved in the formal
(50:31):
governmental response should create social contact maps like who is
impacted by this? Who are these people? You know, where
do they come from? You know, these people were camping
and the family lives in Oregon. We have to reach
out to them, we have to communicate with them. But
that tends to be poorly done. But that's part of
(50:51):
what has to happen. There has to be an intentional
effort to create a social contact map about who's directly impacted,
who's secondary impacted, whose third degree impacted. And one of
the you know, I have a a I guess it
was just like a presentation that is on our YouTube
(51:12):
channel that I created for colleagues in Turkey where I
talk about this this phenomenon and well, for those of
you who are clinicians, it will have some relevance for
your thinking about and your work with families impacted by
this in Texas. You know, we can make sure that
you get people get links to this and then actually
(51:34):
if we if we do end up having a you know,
as we have more of these, maybe we can have
sort of a little bit of a presentation about some
of these concepts for the clinical teams and responders.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
We would love that. So one question I get a
lot to go ahead, I'm just going to say one
question I'm getting a lot is kind of twofold. It's
from parents of their kids go to school with someone
who was lost in the floods or family members impacted.
And one of the big questions, you know that I'm
hearing a lot is how do I support my child, right,
(52:12):
how do I have conversations about what happened to their friend?
How do I help them process it? How are they
going to show back up in the classroom? And also
when do I know or start to think about signs
and symptoms are normal versus I need to get my
kid their own clinician, I need to get them in therapy. Right,
And we know there were seven hundred and fifty kids
camping at Mystic, right, Yes, there is a huge impact
(52:34):
in that group of young campers that witness things firsthand,
that experienced it. And as we've talked about, right, the
impact of the flooding was not only limited to Mystic,
It's tons of families, tons of individuals, right, eighty plus people.
And so how do we have conversations with kids about
what they're experiencing? How do we normalize that? But what
can we be doing for them right now? Because I
(52:55):
think one of my biggest concerns with the clinician is
that it's summer. I worry that these kids struggling or
sitting at home alone and a lot of them are
not in communities and in school and in classrooms right
now to have each other. And so yeah, I'm just
curious what parents and caregivers can do and be looking
(53:15):
out for.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
We wrote very brief kind of ten point thing about
talking to children about traumatic death, and a lot of
the key elements in that are things that would be
helpful for parents and any adult talking to kids about
something like this, and I again, we can make it available.
(53:37):
There's a there's a very like a one page version
of it started of being distributed by in curial public schools,
and there are some other some a little bit more
deeper detail in a couple of things, and we can
make that available. But the real key is this is
(53:57):
is to talk about it, focus on the developmental age
of the child, make it clear to the child that
you're not afraid to talk about this. It's that it's
like you're not so overwhelmed about it that you that
it's a secret or it's something that you can't talk about,
but the don't. You don't have to go into great detail.
(54:18):
Just talk about it and then invite the child to
talk with you about it anytime they want to talk
about it, and give them control over how they bring
it up and when they bring it up, how long
they talk about it. Because part of what will happen
is if just like I said, I mean, I can
(54:39):
only handle this for like three or four seconds before
I'm like ready to break down, and I'm very distant
from ground zero, so to speak. So children, when they
talk about it or bring it up with a parent,
usually what they'll do is they'll bring up a little
bit of a fear or a thought or a question,
(55:01):
and then the parent will be like, oh my god,
I need to talk about it. They need this sort
of event, they need to do whatever, and we tend
to sort of dig a little bit more, which makes
them feel a little bit more uncomfortable. So the whole
idea is kind of back to what I said earlier
is tiny little doses. It's knowledge and regulation and change
in the brain happens with lots of tiny little doses.
(55:26):
And so they'll have a question, answer the question, and
they'll just kind of wander off. It's sort of like
those of you who've ever dealt with kids and they're
curious about sex right now, you know, five or six
seven year old child will come up and ask a question,
and you know you're like, WHOA, okay, So then you
(55:48):
start this big elaborate explanation and they just walk away.
Oh okay. They didn't want that full explanation. They just
kind of want okay, that's a nice a topic to
get mom and dad kind of stirred up, and that's interesting,
and they walk off. So and then they'll come back
later and they'll get more elaboration and more elaboration. But
(56:12):
that's not the time to give them the birds and
the beast talk. You know, when they're a little kid
and they come up and they ask about a body part,
the same thing's going to happen with this. They'll come
up and go they'll ask about death. You know, where
do you go? What happens? And it'll be like a
big question, but it doesn't need a big answer. And
(56:38):
that's part of what you need to do is stay regulated.
Give them something to hang on to and to kind
of mull around with, and they'll wander off and then
if they want more, they'll come back. Give Giving control
of individuals to process this stuff is really powerful and important.
Speaker 4 (56:54):
Could you give us a couple of examples of people
that are directly respond related to some of the people
who lost their lives. How could in these terrible moments
they stay regulated?
Speaker 2 (57:07):
Well, that's a great that's a great question, Mac. I
think that most people's brains will use dissociation to regulate themselves,
and so what they'll do is that they'll find they'll
have moments where it's just they're right in it and
it's overwhelming, and then they'll sort of numb out, and
(57:28):
so that'll happen. But that's physically exhausting. What I would
recommend that this is really important. If you want to
manage this, you've got to really focus on physical activity, sleep, diet,
socialization four things. And these are things you can control,
(57:49):
but you have to be think about them like they're prescribed,
just like take your vitamin in the morning, take your
ten minute walk, lunch, you know, eat at the same time.
You know, just the more external regulation you get, even
kind of rigid, the more your body will be regulated.
And that's the that's one of the best ways to
(58:10):
start is to use doses of movement, whether it's riding
a bike or swimming or listening to music, whatever is
kind of makes you feel good. You've got to take
these tiny little breaks and and you know, sleep is
sometimes hard to deal with, but try to go to sleep.
(58:33):
You can't go to sleep, get up, do something productive.
Try to go do your same little sleep routine again
doesn't work.
Speaker 1 (58:43):
And I think as a as a you know, anxiety clinician,
and you know, one big thing would be if you
find yourself in this rumination, right, be thoughtful about what
you're doing that may be promoting it, and can you
change and do something different. One thing we really talk
a lot about also, and I think this is so
important with kids right that are experiencing this kind of
secondhand traumas or Vibr's guild to all the things, is
(59:06):
be cautious about exposure to news and media because you know,
one thing I learned a lot from you, Bruce, is
that you know, children, when they hear about something, it's
as if they can sometimes believe as if it's happening
all over again. It's hard for them to understand that
this is a replay of a past event. And so
we need to be thoughtful about that for kids, but
also for ourselves. Right, the more we are sitting here
(59:28):
searching on social media, looking all day, reading news stories, right,
the more just regulated we've become. And that is something
we can behaviorally change. Right, We can limit our own
exposure to this repeated trauma exactly.
Speaker 2 (59:41):
And you know it's studies have shown that if you
expose children to a net like the Challenger disaster, for example,
children who watch that news cycle more than ten times
actually developed trauma related symptoms at the same rate as
kids that actually witnessed it. And so this is something
that you're spot on that's so important that the more
(01:00:05):
people expose themselves to repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, negative things, the
more that's going to have an impact on you. So
it is you know, I'm so glad you brought that up,
because that really is I think the number one controllable
thing that you can do for children and for yourself
(01:00:26):
is to stop watching and scrolling relentlessly.
Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Last two questions I have for today, and then we
have so many more to come, and I'm so excited
to continue the series and provide support in the long
run because that's what we're here for. How do we
help and support our first responders right now? They have
been everywhere, their boots on the ground, and my gut
from what we've talked about is like bring them a meal, right,
help them get to showers, or different things that we
(01:00:53):
can do to get them in a pattern and in
a routine, but we know they've got a long road
ahead as well.
Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
They have a long road ahead, and they It's interesting
a lot of the people who choose to go into
first responding positions also tend to be kind of not
necessarily good at taking help. They're very good at giving help,
(01:01:18):
but they're not usually that comfortable letting people take care
of them. Now, over time, people are learning more about
this and getting better. But what I would recommend is
you just have to think about them in almost the
same way as you think about people that are ground zero,
is that they need relational regulation. They need to know
(01:01:39):
that you are aware of them and you value them.
They need these concrete things like, hey, you got to
focus on your sleep. You know, you've got to rotate out,
You've got to take some time for yourself, You've got
to meet the needs of your family. You know, do
not make the mistake of compounding this tracky by wearing
(01:02:01):
yourself out and having this echo impact on everybody in
your life. And again, education can help support that. You know,
the more people learn about that, the more they understand
why you're saying that. You know, if you understand you
know a lot of people are like, don't like to
be told what to do, and the first responders typically cops,
(01:02:24):
and they don't like to be told what to do,
particularly by mental health people. But if you tell them
about the biology of responding and about what happens in
the stress response systems, they're much more likely to recognize it. Yeah,
I guess that's probably good for me. But that's a
big hurdle.
Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
We can push this and have some impact. I know
you've done a lot of work in research on what
policymakers need to do and how they need to show
up in these sort of events, and so would love
to hear any feedback and ways we can push our
local policy and of course now well and statewide policymakers
to really help show up in a way that's going
to be most beneficial right now.
Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Yeah, that's again, I think that there will be you know,
people will show up in the short term, right cameras,
they'll show up a disaster, they'll show up. I think
the heartbreaking thing is in six months, when the pain
and agony and misery and the delayed response of building
(01:03:29):
and rebuilding, they're not going to show up because you
know why, what they'll be met with his anger and
the slowness of the responses and what happened, just that's
when they'll not show up. But again, the same thing
as honestly, if you are a policymaker and you have
(01:03:52):
the guts to show up and tolerate the discomfort of
what happens in recovery, you're going to be better. You're
going to help your constituency better. You're going to be
you will be valued more by the people that vote
for you. Do the right thing, that's right.
Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
Final words and thoughts and for today from everybody. Would
love to hear that. And our commitment to our community
is to help show up and serve in the long run,
not the short run. And so Bruce, I just want
to say thank you. The fact that I could text
you yesterday and you could say, all show up anytime tomorrow.
You tell me when, and you're here and offering your
expertise that is grounded by research, by impact, and of
(01:04:36):
course by the way you've shown up for countless tragedies
is something we're just so grateful for.
Speaker 4 (01:04:42):
Absolutely, Bruce, what were they thirty second commercial talking to
people affected, just to let them know that everybody cares
about them.
Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
What would it sound like, oh wow, Mac, you're talking
to the wrong guy. I don't just sound by this
very well, as you probably can tell from this podcast.
I do you know what I think it would be
somebody like you. I think it should be you, a
public figure who's revered to just say, just speak from
(01:05:13):
the heart, you know, let people know that you care.
If you're not going and you're not going to go away,
you're gonna put together supports and resources to help people.
And as we figure out what that's going to look like,
we're going to make sure that you learn about it.
(01:05:34):
Sounds great to me.
Speaker 4 (01:05:35):
Is the honor of being here with you and Liz.
Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Hey, you got quite a daughter there, Mac. He's pretty special.
Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
He takes after him another thank God, Well, thank you
all for being here. I know that so many people
who are watching and listening are struggling and suffering right now.
And the thing we heard countless times today is that
this is going to be uncomfortable. This is going to
be really hard, and we need to all show up
and keep showing up because it is what we can
(01:06:05):
do to help someone else move through this. Try to
get people and encourage people to be in a routine right,
eating meals, doing a little bit of movement, engaging in
their normal activities despite how abnormal everything else is, and
stick with it for the long run. Right community, schools,
loved ones, family members, clinicians. We can all show up
right now, and that's critical, but what's really going to
(01:06:26):
be critical is how we're showing up in one, two, three.
Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
Six, twelve months exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
Thank you so much, Thank you for your time, Looking
forward to many more in ways we can keep helping,
and we will of course link and share all the
resources we talked about today.
Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Great, my pleasure is great to see you too. Keep
up the good work, you guys, you guys, Thank you
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.