Gina Tabrizy, MS; Trauma as Opportunity for Healing

Montare Media presents Season 2, episode 16 of the Discover U Podcast with JD Kalmenson: Trauma as Opportunity for Healing with Gina Tabrizy

Learn More about Montare Behavioral Health: https://montarebehavioralhealth.com/about/digital-library/

JD Kalmenson interviews Gina Tabrizy, who shares her story of hope and healing as a therapist, and as a trauma survivor and thriver. Gina believes anyone is capable of overcoming and healing their past. Her positive message is life-affirming and inspiring.

Gina Tabrizy, MS, LMFT is a licensed Marriage and Family therapist with thirty years of experience and expertise in the areas of addiction, trauma, and codependency. She’s appeared on local and national television programs speaking about the impact of childhood trauma on addiction. Gina hosts The Recovery Show on KOCI radio.com, has guested on several talk radio programs, presented at national conferences, and given hundreds of lectures. Along with her husband, Gina founded Harmony Heals, Inc., where she is the clinical director, supervising over 24 psychotherapists. She also holds consulting positions for several treatment and residential recovery programs. Gina is the author of two books, Pearls of Wisdom: Affirmations for Daily Living, and Healing is a Love Story. She is also the proud mother of two children, whom she considers her greatest accomplishment and joy.

Host Kalmenson is the CEO/Founder of Renewal Health Group, a family of addiction treatment centers, and Montare Behavioral Health, a comprehensive brand of mental health treatment facilities in Southern California. Kalmenson is a Yale Chabad Scholar, a skilled facilitator, teacher, counselor, and speaker, who has provided chaplain services to prisons, local groups and remote villages throughout the world. His diverse experience as a rabbi, chaplain, and CEO has inspired his passion and deep understanding of the necessity for effective mental health treatment and long-term sobriety.

Follow JD at JDKalmenson.com

Transcript

JD Kalmenson: 

Welcome to another episode of Discover U, our podcast exploring innovative and effective solutions to issues in mental and behavioral health. I'm JD Kalmenson, CEO of Montare behavioral health, a family of dynamic and comprehensive mental health treatment centers in Southern California. I am so honored and excited to introduce you to our wonderful guest today, Gina Tabrizy. Gina is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 30 years of experience and expertise in the areas of addiction, trauma, and codependency. She's appeared on local and national television programs speaking about the impact of childhood trauma on addiction. Gina hosts the Recovery Show on KOCI radio.com, has guested on several talk radio programs and presented at national conferences and given hundreds of lectures. Along with her husband, Gina founded Harmony Heals, where she is the clinical director supervising over 10 psychotherapists. She also holds consulting positions for several treatment centers and residential recovery programs. Gina is the author of two books, Pearls of Wisdom, affirmations for daily living, and Healing is a Love Story. She's also the proud mother of two children whom she considers her greatest accomplishments and joy. 

Welcome, Gina, thank you so much for joining us today and for taking the time to talk about your work with trauma and addiction. 

Gina Tabrizy:

Hi, well, I'm so happy to be here. This is great. I love that introduction. And I keep trying to do things and keep up. So I don't always keep up with my bio. So my husband would want me to say, we now have 24 therapists 

JD Kalmenson:

Oh, that's amazing

Gina Tabrizy:

Which is great. That took another decade to, to get there.

JD Kalmenson:

Yes. And yeah, for sure. And, and it's, it's important that you're meeting the increasing need of folks who are looking, looking for that. So I'd like to jump right in to start off with, I've heard that you decided to become a therapist at 12 years old. Can you tell us a little bit about why you felt that way? I mean, it's a little bit unusual for a 12-year-old to have such a definitive forecast for their life's career and calling.

Gina Tabrizy:

I think so, too. Yeah, it is a little odd to be 12 years old and think about that. I have to say that one of the inspirations was watching the Charlie Brown show and Charlie Brown is a comic series, but it also aired on television back in the day when I was a kid. And so they had a character named Lucy, and Lucy was very, very intelligent, but highly manipulative as well. And Lucy would open up this little … instead of a lemonade stand, she had a psychiatric stand. And so I remember seeing Lucy with this little lemonade stand that spelled psychiatry, like totally inappropriately. It wasn't even spelled correctly, and she would put 5 cents, and I would watch her have people walk up to her and Lucy would just spit the truth out. She would just tell you like it is, she wasn't really nice about it. Sometimes she was probably even bordering on abusive, but she had hutzpah. And so I respected that, and I loved the idea of being able to tell people what you thought, but also giving guidance and giving your opinion and getting paid for it. And I said, I'm gonna do that. It just stuck. And that was it from that point on, I just stayed dedicated to that thought, you know, and that experience. So I was very fortunate to figure it out so young and it's not an easy thing to do. And most people will change their career at least four times in a lifetime. You know, and that's kind of an average, so I'm still at it 36 years in, so

JD Kalmenson:

No, that's amazing. And I, the way I see it is to have that level of clarity at such an early age really reflects the fact that you belong to the few privileged group of people in society that find meaning and purpose in their day job. And that it's not just a job or a career, but it's a calling and when

Gina Tabrizy:

You're yeah, absolutely.

JD Kalmenson:

And you're engaging in your calling every day. That's a, a good recipe.

Gina Tabrizy:

Yeah. It's 100% a passion. I always knew I had two things that really stood out as a kid. I was so very curious, and I needed to understand, I really, I speak to that in my book. I would get so frustrated that my family members had little patience with my inquisitiveness and asking questions became an annoyance to them. And for me, it was a constant searching for understanding and for meaning.  I was that kid that would get plagued with, you know, somebody mistreating me and I needed to understand them. I had compassion for them. Even though I was being bullied and I wanted to figure out, you know, there had to be a solution to this. And it was just, you know, something that the majority of my family didn't know what to do with. 

JD Kalmenson:

I want to go up on a brief tangent for a moment and share with you a story that inspired me for many, many years. One of the Nobel laureates in chemistry was a fellow named Isidor Rabi, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn, New York. And they asked him

Gina Tabrizy: 

I know him, not personally, but I know him.

JD Kalmenson:

So they asked him I'm from New York, too. Oh, you're from New York. That's wonderful. Yes. What neighborhood? Yeah.

Gina Tabrizy:

From the Bronx,

JD Kalmenson: The Bronx, I was visiting an inmate amongst many other inmates in Arizona once. And he told me that he's from New York. I said, we're in New York. He says the only borough that starts with a D and I go through the five boroughs in my head. And I'm saying, I'm sorry, I don't think there are. And he goes “Da Bronx,”

Gina Tabrizy:

Da Bronx, that's awesome.

JD Kalmenson:

Fun fact: why is it called the Bronx? It's not “the Manhattan” or “the Queens.” 

Gina Tabrizy:

I don’t know. 

JD Kalmenson:

There's a reason, it's because it's named after the Bronx family. So they always called it the Bronx. But as I wanted… so Isidor Rabi was asked why he thought that amongst all of his bright and brilliant classmates, he was the one who ended up rising to the top, making this incredible monumental contribution in the world of physics, and winning the Nobel prize. And he said, because of all the other children on, in my class and in the neighborhood, we'd all come home from school. We were all studious. Every single mother would ask their child. “Tell me what great innovation, what great teaching, what great thought did your teacher teach you today?”  My mother was only one who asked me consistently, “what great question did you ask today?”

And you said it was that quest for truth. And that insatiable desire not to settle for anything less than the truth that led him to his discoveries. And I shared that because of what you're saying with that curiosity, I would venture to say is what makes you such an incredible therapist. Because even in the world of therapy, so very often what happens is therapists like all of humanity, we become complacent with our knowledge, whether it's different modalities that we find to be effective, or we feel more comfortable utilizing and employing. And then we look at the client in front of us, and yes, we obviously have to customize and tailor the treatment towards their circumstances and their story and their narrative. But we end up taking what we know and just sort of boxing in their story, into the interventions that we feel comfortable employing. But

Gina Tabrizy: 

Yeah, our narrative of what we think their story is

JD Kalmenson:

That's right. But the truth is that the human being is way too more way too complex and nuanced and distinct, and is composite of so many myriads of component, when we talk to our therapists at Montare, I say, you, you guys are behavioral detectives, you're investigative journalists. You have to approach every story without any type of bias about every, any type of symptoms that you might have treated in the past. That seem to be identical because there can always be such a very different foundational cause and pathway, despite the fact that there appear to be identical symptoms, identical trauma. And that's why I love what you're saying. Curiosity is really a hallmark of just really approaching every client with a fresh set of eyes and in a completely nonbiased way, and not even allowing a previous diagnosis that this client has had to be the barometer of what direction you're gonna take. You know, that's a very special thing. I wanna jump into your unique philosophy on trauma. I understand that you've had your own experiences with trauma. How do they inform the way you treat patients with trauma? 

Gina Tabrizy:

Well, I think for me, it's important to define it in the very broad scope. I define it. So there's the, you know, the manual of diagnosis that all therapists use, the diagnostic statistical manual that speaks to trauma and trauma disorders from that post-traumatic disordered lens. So it's a catastrophic event or witnessing a catastrophic event, or having had that experience, which then encompasses sexual, physical, emotional, spiritual abuse, and any catastrophe, right? As the many, many shootings that we're all witnessing, which we then have another layer of trauma, which is called vicarious trauma, which is me witnessing or being in relationship with someone who's experiencing a trauma. I now feel traumatized. I took it out even to a broader perspective of any time your emotional needs are not met. You can't frame that as traumatic because you could be a latchkey kid whose parents were really hard working, but never there. And so you had to fend for yourself whether that was making your own meals or figuring out psychologically, emotionally, what was happening to you. The bodily changes that we go to as we go through the stages of development, or it could be a single parent home where, you know, mom or dad had to be working. So they couldn't be with you, or they worked, you know, outrageous hours or an alcoholic home, or just all the different myriads of homes and emotional experiences that people have. They go well, that wasn't abuse, but it was something less than nurturing, so to speak. So I needed to have encouragement and validation, and then I would hear, well, that's good, but it's not good enough. Well, this grade is fine, but this is better. So, you know, the bar was always moving for me. So I felt a sense of never being able to please my caregivers, despite wanting to desperately being that kid that wanted to be the people pleasing kid and do well and be affirmed in that.

So when I didn't get the affirmations much like most kids do who experience emotional trauma is you start filling in the blanks going, well, I guess I'm not good enough. Well, I guess I don't really matter if you're so busy and this relationship is more important, or this substance is more important or that job is more important than me then I'm really not that important. And those children are the children that grow up going well I was never abused. And yet, if you put 'em in a room with sexual abuse survivors or physical abuse survivors, they experience the same emotional angst that their, you know, cohorts experience because the feeling is the same, the emptiness, the loss, the loss of identity, the loss of being loved and cared for, which are basic human needs. We have the need to be regarded. We have the need to be respected.

We have the need to be seen and heard and validated. And when those basic needs go unmet, we are traumatized by that experience. We're left with a wound and sometimes that wound stays open and then retraumatization happens because we start pulling in people, places, and things that don't serve us to feed that wound. And what it really does is just feed the identity that says I'm not worth it, and I'm not good enough. So in essence, we then retraumatize ourselves. 

JD Kalmenson: 

So that's so interesting that you're really grouping together at the very foundational core, the same sort of disorder or experience, or the same sort of negative impact that all trauma victims are going to find themselves feeling. Can you give our audience a few very basic symptoms? So somebody can be able to understand that they might be traumatized in a victim of trauma. 

Gina Tabrizy:

One of the things that happens is self-doubt is one of the greatest precursors of, or recognizing that you have some traumatic experience, a lack of identity, a lack of self-worth, feelings of shame, constant and chronic dysfunctional relationships that are repetitive. Relationships are a huge sign that there is some… when you can't get those right, that's one of your greatest cues that trauma is somewhere in your history. Not being able to attain healthy, loving, compassionate, kind, consistent, and long-term relationships is one of the, the biggest cues, but the factor of shame, the factor of self-loathing and the factor of self-doubt at, at a basic level is that. And then when you get into the deeper traumas, maybe longer sustained traumas, where you've been revictimized over and over again, then you get all kinds of other things, hyper vigilance, depression, anxiety, severe panic disorder, dissociation.

It, it takes on a whole other level of distress and discomfort. When you start layering the traumas on top of each other, you know, it's not just a one and done, you know. And you add in physical abuse or sexual, or, you know, being in war, et cetera, cetera, there's only so much the mind can do to, to relate to something and to create a state of normalcy with it. And so we have to go outside the realm of what the mind was designed to do in order to still continue to thrive under the circumstances of catastrophe and chaos. And so to me, the mind of someone who's been traumatized is actually quite brilliant. And what they're developing are strategies that go beyond what we were expected to do from a basic human instinct of fight flight or freeze. So, you know, for example, a dissociative identity disorder, which used to be named multiple personality disorder, they're going way outside the realm of reality and nor what we would name normalcy, in this, you know, on this planet earth and going into their minds into another area and creating an alternate life so that they can exist and continue to thrive.

So it's not just surviving. I love to talk about traumas, thrivers, not survivors. Because it's beyond what anyone would expect. Someone who comes from those circumstances to then become a productive and, and, you know, compassionate and purposeful human being. It takes them going outside of, of that limited mindset that says, I'm a victim. I'm not worth it. I'm not good enough. This is who I am. Now it takes so much to step out of that, to build a more purposeful life from trauma. And really that's what I try to address in the book is I want us to reimagine trauma as a moment where we're broken free, where the opportunity is given to us to let go of all the limiting beliefs that we've been hanging onto to allow our spirits to evolve into a greater, purposeful, meaningful human. And that's my vision of reimagining trauma outside of what we've been naming it all these years

JD Kalmenson: 

What you're saying is so fascinating to me because it really has me thinking that we know a lot of very helpful and effective interventions for trauma is the ability to create and generate mindfulness, which allows one to sort of detach themselves in a healthy way and see the experience for what it is externalize it, and not necessarily identify with it to the point where it has control over us, and it could allow us to continuously be triggered. And you talk about the body or the mind of a trauma victim being so brilliant. It's really being compelled even with unhealthy responses like dissociative disorder, but at the core, it's almost like that this, this association is really a defense mechanism to be able to cope. So it might be going a little bit too far if it's completely, you know, relegated with a you know, a clinical disorder of disassociation or multiple personality disorders, but in a certain sense, it's on the right direction. 

 Gina Tabrizy:

Mm-Hmm, it's brilliant. You know, I remember, you know, I had many, I was very blessed to have early on in my career, many dissociative identity, disordered clients. And it's because I was working with very severe trauma back in the late eighties, early nineties to two-thousands. And what I remember saying to them, you know, they were so disturbed at what their minds had done to create these alternate lives that they weren't even conscious with. You know, so part of the therapy is to build, and this is a whole other podcast, but it's to build co-consciousness.  So that they start to become aware of the other personalities. So then they can integrate them. Which is a whole other thing. But I would start to say to them, you're brilliant. And we would just change the language around. It's not a disorder, so to speak. Yes. I understand. We need to name it something so that we know how to treat its, you know, symptoms, but I'd say it's a brilliant, it's a brilliant strategy. You know, to me what you came up with so that you could get through that moment is, is beyond. 

Gina Tabrizy:

 The reality is, is our minds weren't really created for self-destruction. And so just like programming a computer, when you get a glitch in the system, you're gonna have these variables and these other things that will happen, like suicidality, like depression, like anxiety, and you can consider the glitch or the virus to be the trauma. And so instead of it functioning and the mind functioning as it was intended, but at its core, its mission statement is to survive and to go beyond whatever catastrophic event that someone is dealing with. And so I like to speak to that part because clients often don't know that that resiliency is what is going to heal them. It's not just that you got through it it's that you thrived, and you went beyond it, whether that was compartmentalizing and saying, this happens at home and never letting anybody else in the world even know, or be aware of what you were going through and creating a, a very successful, you know, life for yourself. You know, we, we have a template, we have a guide, we have a way of supporting and loving and nurturing people through their healing, but only they know, and the resource of their resiliency being the greatest gift that they possibly could have only they know how far they can go through and come out on the other side, you know, as a completely different human. You know, they don't have to stay attached to the trauma. And let that be the thing that continues to define all the decisions and everything that happens for the rest of their life. It's just unfair.

JD Kalmenson:

And not only that, not only that I, you know, was another interview that we did recently, something fascinating was this was, was communicated to me. Our beliefs about people's ability to heal as a therapist, as a family member, as a friend can really make or break the sustainability of their recovery. And the fun fact that he shared with me, Nick Jaworski, was that schizophrenia in Africa is something that people actually get healed from as opposed to America and other developed countries. In Africa they have a very interesting view of schizophrenia that it's some sort of demonic possession, possessiveness over the spirit of an individual. And they perform certain rights and rituals ex exorcism. And then once those rituals have been performed, people do find healing. We don't see it that way with modern science, right. We have a very different understanding based on the biophysiological underpinnings of schizophrenia.

And yet people suffer with this on a long-term basis. So the belief of whether they can heal or not very much will play into the actual reality of whether they will heal or not. The thing you mentioned before that was, you know, so important for our listeners to understand is that so often beneath all these symptoms of trauma, is this pervading sense of shame. And because shame is so existentially damaging, I feel like that's why the trauma becomes so entrenched. And it renders us so dysfunctional it's we become shadows of our former selves. Why should somebody who's a victim or a survivor of a traumatic episode or event? Why should they buy into the shame? Why does that event make them feel embarrassed? 

Gina Tabrizy:

If you think of it, it depends on when it occurs, right? But if you think of it occurring in early childhood, when someone's identity and their personality is just forming, then the event has to get integrated into who they are. It is much easier for a child to think I'm wrong and I'm defective than my loved one is wrong or defective. My mother doesn't love me and is hurting me is much more difficult for a child. If you think about the nature of how we came into the world attached by the umbilical cord in the womb, our very survival depends on the nurturance of that caregiver. And so symbolically and emotionally, we feed off of them. So it's like asking a child to cut their own umbilical cord. I have to say to myself, you are bad. Not I'm bad, and the mind does not want to accept it.

So through childhood, the child will reject this concept that I have an unloving unhealthy, dysfunctional, horrible, abusive parent. They will reject it. They may reject it all the way into their adulthood, into their twenties. Sometimes they start catching on as an adolescence and they start acting out. And then they act out to wound that parent because they want to, to release the shame and then it becomes anger, right? And it could be very volatile, but what's happening for them is my mind cannot accept that you who gave me life is hurting me. It's that fail safe again in the mind where we are built for surviving and the child can't make that connection so much later in life, where they can actually separate themselves from the parent and say, just cuz you're bad doesn't mean I'm bad, but that's the work of releasing the trauma and releasing the shame.

It's I would say to my clients sometimes to do this exercise, and I would say, look, take a coat, get the rattiest, nastiest coat, or jacket or sweater or whatever hoodie you have in your house and put it in your bedroom and hang it. And on your way out the door every day, I want you to make a decision about, and don't wash it, just let it be nasty. And I want you to make a decision every day, whether you wanna wear it or not. And so oftentimes they'll put it off and they'll do one day, two days, through by week, you know, a week in, two weeks in they're like, this is nasty now, I don't wanna wear it. And I said, it's the same thing it's choosing to identify you as the bad person, instead of going, look, you did something to me that made me feel unworthy. That made me feel dirty. That doesn't mean I am. It's separate from me like the jacket. And at some point you can choose to disrobe.

JD Kalmenson:

I'll, that's amazing.

Gina Tabrizy:

All this. I will no longer own that. That is my identity. It's what happened to me. It's not who I am. And unfortunately, shame makes you feel it's who you are. And that's why it has that lasting stain, that staying power, that other emotions don't

JD Kalmenson:

I have to say that's very powerful because what it really translates into is in a certain sense, we have to not really reanalyze the event or the circumstances or the episode, we have to reanalyze our interpretation. We have to reassess our response. That's what has to happen. And when we do so, we extricate ourselves. We, we, you know, the, somebody once told me my fourth-grade teacher once said that that the difference between a wise man and a smart man is that a smart person can extricate himself or herself from a situation that a wise man or woman would never put themselves into to begin with. We're going back to that event and by negating and, and really taking away all credence and legitimacy to the way we interpreted that event, we're saying there was nothing really damning about us. There's really nothing embarrassing about us at all to begin with. It was really a distorted notion and thought process that we bought into

Gina Tabrizy:

Absolutely I 100%. And I go over it and over it and over it in my book at infinitum, because I want people to get it. If I could change anything, it's for them to change that perception and go look, you're gonna feel bad about it. I'm not saying it's not gonna hurt when you think about being raped or molested or beaten. No, you're gonna feel whatever you're gonna feel, but you're gonna constantly reaffirm to yourself, but that's not me, but that happened to me, but that was done to me, but it's not me, It's not me. And I didn't cause it and I didn't create it. And I didn't draw it to myself, which is a notion that people do add onto trauma. When as people are growing, they retraumatize themselves with those relationships. As I mentioned earlier, it's a cue that you're still replaying the tape of the trauma.

You're replaying the shame. That's if I'm worthy, I'm not gonna draw a loving, worthy, kind, beautiful relationship to myself. That doesn't mean I'm trying to manifest that trauma. That means I'm still needing to let it go. I'm still needing to do the work that will allow me to release and separate my identity from the event. And it's such a critical little point, but it's, it's huge in the process of healing cuz you can, you know, I do psychodrama. I do hypnotherapy EMDR, somatic. I do all the things, all the bells, all the whistles and the release is super important. And there's a lot of healing that comes from emotionally releasing that. But until you change the thought that negative thought attached to what you're experiencing, it keeps coming back to haunt you like that stain like that nasty jacket that you just can't throw out the trash because mama gave it to me. And I love her so much. I don't know how to let it go. I believe any human can heal when they know that someone on this planet loves them. And I say, even, and especially if that one person is you and you learn that I truly love yourself. You can heal from anything. I've always said, it only takes one person to love you for you to heal from this trauma. And it can be you. And, and I address that as the final chapter of healing. Trauma is self-love. 

JD Kalmenson:

Yes. And I love that. When you say somebody else in your life who loves you unconditionally can help you really heal from that process. I'm actually reminded of a story that it's in a different context, but it really underscores everything that you've been talking about. It was the legendary CEO back in the eighties of IBM, who one of his executives made a business decision that cost the company 10 million at that time. And he calls in that executive and the executive is obviously about to get fired. And he walks in and he respects the CEO so much, he says, “I'm gonna make your job so much easier. I'm just gonna resign.” He says, “resign, resign for what?” he says, “well, aren't you firing me right now? “He says, “fire you, why would I fire you?” He says, “well, I made a decision that cost IBM, 10 million. Of course you're gonna fire me.” He says, “IBM, just invested 10 million in your education. You're the last person we wanna fire.” And that short little anecdote is really the ability for somebody to see that mistake and not paint and taint you with that mistake and for you to be able to move on having experienced, meaning and purpose in that mistake. An investment in that mistake and, and how much wiser you're going to emerge from that whole process. And that in a nutshell is really, is really what you're describing, what we ought to be doing as therapists and as family members, and as a support system for all the people in our lives that are traumatized. 

Gina Tabrizy: 

That's a beautiful story that you gave and it's something that people can hang onto, cuz it's easy to remember that, but it's like be your own IBM CEO to yourself. And I'm always teaching clients. Would you do this to your sister or your neighbor or your friend, if you put anybody else in the context of this mind, manipulation, and disturbing thought that you're having, would you believe this about anyone else in your life that you care about? No, absolutely not. And would you ever say it to them? No. Then why are you saying it to yourself? Why are you self-destructing instead of, you know, producing…

JD Kalmenson:

And it's not just, it's not just yourself. I mean like I, I, there was a marriage counselor who was counseling a man and his wife, they sometimes exchange very sharp words and he said, you know, he turns to the guy, and he says, you're coming home. And you're very frustrated because of all these different things that happened to you during the day, he says, tell me, would you ever lash out at the Starbucks Barista because you had a bad day? Obviously you wouldn't right. You're a normal guy. So why would you do that to the person you love so much? And it just really puts things in perspective, the self-love, which extends to the people in our lives that are closest to us. I wanna jump for a second and ask you a little bit about trauma and addiction.

Gina Tabrizy:

Absolutely.

JD Kalmenson:

Is it important for somebody to achieve sobriety first before treating the underlying psychological issues? Can you treat one without the other?

Gina Tabrizy:

The reason a lot of people in the substance use arena don't heal in a way that is sustainable is because they don't address the underlying issues. And the underlying issues are always trauma and addiction is trauma. So you can see how passionate I get about it. If you say I've never had it, I go, you have it now. Your addiction traumatized the hell out of you. Think about what you did, how you did, what you lost, how you felt, what your body's gone through and tell me you haven't been traumatized. And then we'll trace it back to everything that happened before you got there. And before you believe that substances were your way out, instead of help, instead of care, instead of love, instead of solution, you went to the quick fix, which is a drug or an alcohol or sex or gambling or whatever your addiction was. But if someone is in front of you, the opportunity is now because your life is to be lived. Now, not later, you have been living with this sentence of pushing your life off. As long as you've been addicted, you're not living your life, you're existing. So why would I go into that with you and continue to exist with you? If this is the thing that stops you cold, the thing you say you can never talk about, never face, never get over. Then that's the thing we have to help you master because then you'll be free. You won't just be better. You'll be free. And I can tell you that, you know, without fail, all of my clients who came in that had had many, many relapses that had long term depression, this and that, as soon as we went to deal with the trauma and we worked through that, they saw great healing in their life. Addiction's what I did. It's not who I am. You have to do the same work that you do with the trauma. So to me, you can do it from the beginning.  You can do it as soon as there's a willing participant. I offer it to everybody. That doesn't mean everybody bites. You know, I tell some clients will sit in the room with me for three months in a rehab setting and never do a psychodrama and never do the deeper work. I can tell you that most of those clients, you will see relapse. You can almost guarantee it.

JD Kalmenson:

So you don't have to wait for significant sobriety to begin doing the deep trauma work. They're all intertwined. 

Gina Tabrizy:

A lot of people, a lot of people will tell you. Yes. And I'm sure physiologically the brain is still healing. And I think what a beautiful time to get in and work with the brain, when it’s vulnerable…

JD Kalmenson:

When it's vulnerable, when it's open, when it's receptive, because of that rock bottom, because of that rock, bottom sense of susceptibility and vulnerability. And I love what you're saying as well about the same thought processes that help one become healed from trauma are the same thought processes that have to be embedded in the treatment of addiction. And in sobriety you have to not allow the dependencies and the toxicity and all of the detrimental behavioral patterns to become our story. So they really go hand in hand. 

Gina Tabrizy:

And it’s, you know, not identifying yourself as the addict. And I understand I'm a huge fan of 12 step programs and support in that recovery. And most of my dear friends have all been in long term sobriety and that is, you know, the greatest, most, best available, best evidence, best practice tried and true method of sustaining long term sobriety is in the 12 step programs. But I know that it's difficult to identify over and over and over and over and over again with this idea, I'm an addict. I think once you heal, you can say it and you understand it's like for me, going to Catholic church and genuflecting or making the sign of the cross, I'm not really attached to it as an identity. It's just something that I do. And so I want people to identify because I've had clients ask me when they see how I think about trauma, they go, well then what about me going to a meeting every single time saying I'm an addict cuz they feel badly about it. And I said, because you're still healing from the trauma. That identification is painful.

JD Kalmenson:

Yes. No, that makes sense. 

Gina Tabrizy:

And I believe that when you heal from it, you'll be able to say it without the same sting, but I would love to see us expand even there.

JD Kalmenson: Yes, yes.

Gina Tabrizy:

And say I am a brilliant, beautiful, amazing, wonderfully made human who happened to use drugs and alcohol, who happened to have been an addict. I would love to see it in a different language if we could all agree to get behind it and know they're still identifying that they have an illness much like I have cancer much like I have depression that I have to attend to every day. I don't think we have to take that away from the addict without expanding on it.

JD Kalmenson:

It it's so true. We can identify our struggles without saying that this is who we are. We can continue to be vigilant without allowing ourselves to be stigmatized. So that's so, so true. And I wish more people would be on board with that. 

Gina Tabrizy:

You do, I know. Wouldn't it be great to say I use addiction to cope from my pain and I'm Gina.

JD Kalmenson:

Yes. Yes. 

So insightful. That's beautiful. I wanna just talk about one, one point, one more point here. Among so many clinicians there's a debate about whether it's possible to fully recover from trauma or not, where you're constantly in a stage of recovery and things can perpetually trigger you. What's your take on that? 

Gina Tabrizy:

I believe with my absolute hope being that anyone can heal from anything, and you don't have to live in a traumatized mind, and you don't have to live being triggered. I believe we all are capable of growing and going past that. And if you look more into sports psychology and positive psychology, and if you watch what people do, all the studies that have been done, people like myself who have cancer, have depression and have reprogrammed, programmed their thinking and reprogrammed how their body functions and athletes who lose a limb, but yet still can play the sport that they played by overcompensating with how they use their mind and their other senses. Right. I believe that. And I believe we should be teaching that. And I believe we should be preaching that from very young ages we should teach kids mindfulness, meditation, sports, psychology. We should teach them how to overcome adversity, not how to suppress it, how to take a pill for it, how to not talk about it, how to keep the family secrets that would be mind blowing that would change the whole outcome of how our world and our universe is in terms of producing healthy, happy, and whole human beings. 

JD Kalmenson:

Beautiful, beautiful. Last but not least any parting stories you'd like to share of the recovery and the lifesaving work that you do. This is so inspiring. 

Gina Tabrizy: Thank you. I'm, I'm blessed on a daily basis to witness what I just described to you. You know, I can think of from my earliest days in my twenties, the first mother who came into me, who was a crystal meth addict, who was in her late thirties, early forties, who lost both her children, her marriage, who was suicidal, who then went through her journey, her healing, loving journey with me and doing all the work that I described to you, who then becomes a CEO of a company, regains her children. Remarries is still clean and sober to this day. Almost 30 years later. I mean, it's like, and she comes to, I got goosebumps. Her name's Tony. If she's out there and happens to be watching, I I've never forgotten her. She was one of my first. And then I think of another young woman who just came into treatment about 90 days ago, who has been incarcerated over and over again who's been human trafficked, who has seen gun violence and participated in such, has witnessed murders, who's been suicidal, who's been sexually assaulted from the time she was 14 years old. Who's a mother who has lost her children who came into treatment, who did the same work saying, I'm just doing this to get the heat off. I don't wanna go to jail but I don't really give a crap if I wind up in jail. At the end of watching her at 90 days to see her tough, thick, skinned, very much a gangster persona that she loved and that she romanticized really stripping down to this beautiful, innocent, precious woman who has rekindled and re embraced relationships with her children. We have open lines of communication now, and we're healing that. She's post 90 days sober. I thought she's probably at a hundred, hundred and something days sober. She's entrenched in a 12-step program with other women who she's always hated and mistrust. She had a very abusive mother to boo besides the violence of the men in her life. So she didn't trust anybody. She cried, she grieved, she hugs women. She loves and it's freaking awesome.

JD Kalmenson:

Wow. Miracles do happen. 

That's extraordinary. Thank you so much for sharing your time, expertise and insight with us. Gina. It was so inspiring to talk with you and thank you for joining us on the Discover U podcast. How can people find out more about the work you do? Is there a website?

Gina Tabrizy: 

Sure. my business name is Harmony Heals. So my husband and I own an outpatient counseling center. That's the one with the 24 therapists, but that's Harmony Heals, H E A L S.com. And then of course at Gina at all of my social media, it's at Gina Tabrizy, T A B R I Z Y. I have Ask Gina on Facebook, I have K O C I radio.com, The recovery Show. I have my books out, which we spoke to beautiful feeling, love story, and pearls of wisdom, affirmations for daily living. Get ready, cuz there's more books coming. The certification is coming. I'm hoping to complete all those by the end of this year, which is amazing. And I'll be doing workshops, retreats, trainings, mentoring, online groups. I'm gonna go for it. These are my legacy years. I call them, so…

JD Kalmenson:

That's awesome.

Kudos to you that says that's really, really inspiring, energetic, and ambitious and healing. That's so beautiful. Thank, thank you to our audience as well for joining us today. And I hope you've learned as much as I have and enjoyed this episode on the Discover U podcast. At Montare we want you to know that you are not alone on your journey and to find out more about our innovative treatment programs, you can find us@monteerbehavioralhealth.com and you can listen to our Discover U podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Wishing all of you vibrant health and a safe and peaceful day. See you next time.