As a former Marine Recon Scout Sniper, the invisible wounds of moral injury in veterans are a subject close to my heart. It's why I'm honored to sit down with Mary Scott from Pivotal Impact Programs, who joins us with over three decades of mental health expertise. Together, we peel back the layers of this complex issue, sharing insights and stories that reveal the emotional struggles veterans and their loved ones endure. This conversation isn't just about the depths of trauma; it's a testament to the human spirit's capacity to overcome and find hope.
The bonds we forge with others often bear the weight of our experiences, and when those experiences include combat-related trauma, the impact on personal relationships can be profound. Mary and I delve into the ways veterans carry their past into the present, sometimes with heartbreaking consequences. But we also cast light on the transformative power of love and commitment as key allies on the journey toward healing. Our discussion includes the raw truth of dealing with nightmares, the shame and anger tethered to them, and the cathartic release found within the understanding embrace of retreat programs specifically designed for veterans.
Retreats offer a sanctuary for veterans to confront their traumas and rediscover their identities, and in this episode, I recount the life-changing moments these immersive experiences can catalyze. It's not just about the individual either; the group dynamic plays a pivotal role, allowing veterans to build trust and empathy as they share their stories and struggles. From the serene setting of Copper Falls to the guided steps towards healing, we reveal how retreats can pave the way for personal growth and recovery, regardless of one's history. Join us for an unflinchingly honest look at the path to healing moral injury and reclaiming a sense of self after service.
Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
As a former Marine Recon Scout Sniper, the invisible wounds of moral injury in veterans are a subject close to my heart. It's why I'm honored to sit down with Mary Scott from Pivotal Impact Programs, who joins us with over three decades of mental health expertise. Together, we peel back the layers of this complex issue, sharing insights and stories that reveal the emotional struggles veterans and their loved ones endure. This conversation isn't just about the depths of trauma; it's a testament to the human spirit's capacity to overcome and find hope.
The bonds we forge with others often bear the weight of our experiences, and when those experiences include combat-related trauma, the impact on personal relationships can be profound. Mary and I delve into the ways veterans carry their past into the present, sometimes with heartbreaking consequences. But we also cast light on the transformative power of love and commitment as key allies on the journey toward healing. Our discussion includes the raw truth of dealing with nightmares, the shame and anger tethered to them, and the cathartic release found within the understanding embrace of retreat programs specifically designed for veterans.
Retreats offer a sanctuary for veterans to confront their traumas and rediscover their identities, and in this episode, I recount the life-changing moments these immersive experiences can catalyze. It's not just about the individual either; the group dynamic plays a pivotal role, allowing veterans to build trust and empathy as they share their stories and struggles. From the serene setting of Copper Falls to the guided steps towards healing, we reveal how retreats can pave the way for personal growth and recovery, regardless of one's history. Join us for an unflinchingly honest look at the path to healing moral injury and reclaiming a sense of self after service.
Contact Thad - VictoriousVeteranProject@Gmail.com
Thanks for listening!
And why is it such an important thing for you to discuss and unpack?
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, yes, it's. It's, you know, an integral part of my work that I have come to be so comfortable with and so interested in that I have now very confidently gone out on a limb and said I believe that what the VA calls moral injury I don't call it that and I'll get into that in a second but what the VA is is calling moral injury is the signature wound of war, that Trump's post traumatic stress as a as very limiting, more negative fallout of the service experience. They definitely can overlap in certain scenarios, but they can also be mutually exclusive things, and I can explain that as well. But I do believe that moral and ethical conflicts that are so oh my gosh, they're just so commonplace in military service, including training forward, that I, over time, have realized that many more people suffer, often lifelong, from a moral and ethical conflict that slowly has eaten away at them because they didn't have language for it. They didn't know what the exactly what they were feeling.
Speaker 1:My name is Thad David. I'm a former Marine recon scout sniper with two deployments to Iraq. As a civilian, I've now facilitated hundreds of personal and professional development trainings across the country, and it struck me recently that the same things that help civilians will also help veterans succeed in their new roles as well. Join me as we define civilian success principles to inspire veteran victories. Welcome to another episode. I'm here today with Mary Scott. Mary Scott comes to us from Pivotal Impact Programs and she comes to us with 34 years of mental health expertise. I mean 34 years of experience. She brings a ton of knowledge to the table. Mary, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Glad to be here.
Speaker 1:I know you do life coaching workshops and retreats, which I'm very excited to jump into. But just stepping back, I mean 34 years ago, what got you interested into this work?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I had been in corporate business for about 11 years and I thought, no, this is not where I want to be, and I didn't know what I wanted to do except to work with people. And I ended up in the projects, working in the projects for a year and changed my whole life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, and then just stuck with it.
Speaker 2:Yep, went from the projects to grad school and got a degree in clinical master social work, and then my practice just developed and expanded as I learned more and more techniques to really speed healing in people rather than just talking. So it's been quite a journey.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to unpack that and talk about it. I know you've done a ton of work with veterans.
Speaker 2:I have this is my 14th year working with veterans specifically, yeah.
Speaker 1:And what does your work with veterans consist of? What does that look like?
Speaker 2:Well, it all started when I was invited as a counselor down to a trauma informed care program in New Mexico. That is still going. It's one of the top programs. Boulder Crest is one big program. Another one is the one I worked for, national Veterans Wellness and Healing Center. That's an angel fire. And when I was asked I said no, I don't know anything about the military, they will eat me up, no way. And two weeks later, since I'm kind of counterphobic, I go towards which, I fear it's just kind of a trade of mine. I said, okay, I'll do it. I stepped up and they promised me training and I got there and deer in the headlights, all of us, no training at all. And I stayed there for seven years as a counselor and later program director and education facilitator with a co combat veteran, co host, and it changed my life, absolutely changed my life, yeah.
Speaker 1:And did you say angel fire in New Mexico?
Speaker 2:Yeah, have you been there?
Speaker 1:Several times actually, I don't know, so my wife went to high school in Angel Fire. She's.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're going to have to circle back to this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Have you been to the veterans memorial there?
Speaker 1:No I didn't even know that it was there.
Speaker 2:It's probably one of the most beautiful memorials and museums dedicated to Vietnam. But then all their walkways have beautiful bricks dedicated to all branches of service, all conflicts, all years. It's a very sacred place, yeah.
Speaker 1:And this is in the town, it's in Angel.
Speaker 2:Fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's up on a hill, gorgeous, the population there is in the hundreds when it's not in ski season.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's it. Okay, that's incredible. I'm going to have to go circle back and talk about this because I know she's. I mean, she lived there for many years, so I'm going to Wow yeah, we're going to circle back to this when we're offline, because I'm sure we know some similar folks. But you said, the work that you did there changed your life.
Speaker 2:It did. I keep coming back to this expression. That certainly means a lot to me and that's the triumph of the human spirit, how people who are faced with and you're a former service member, so you know exactly what I'm talking about how people can face unbelievable circumstances and yet triumph over them without their minds shattering, you know, based on what they have to do or force to do, want to do things that break their heart, and yet their mind doesn't break. You know, some people do you know, suffer terribly lifelong.
Speaker 2:But it's amazing to me constantly that many people triumph over circumstances that most of us civilians because I'm not a former service member Most civilians either wouldn't sign up to do or couldn't do. So I have a lot of respect for that and to be able to serve a program that was a seven night is still a seven night, seven day program where we ate with all the participants and their spouse partners and we're with them all day long. You get to know them on a very intimate level and really hear their hearts. And that's what changed my life to be able to sit in front of someone hearing the most. You know stuff you can't dream up and you know you've been to war. So you understand, you can't dream that stuff up, and sometimes multiple things happen all on the same day that are just mind blowing. And yet the person sitting in front of me telling me that is sounding very sane and very, you know, self preserved and self collected, and it's just the triumph of the human spirit.
Speaker 1:Did you? Was it always people that had been through combat that went to these retreats, or was it veterans? Just you've been veterans that hadn't been through combat.
Speaker 2:I would say that the majority had probably were either some active most veterans and had been in combat already Absolutely the active duty ones who came had been in combat and were dealing with something specific. Or some came from a transition battalion like an army transition battalion. Some who came who had never seen combat absolutely deserved to be there, didn't think they deserve to be there, but I can tell you they did because they suffered. Even in training there are accidents which you know. There are accidents that happen in training all the time.
Speaker 2:For an example one guy, vietnam, around the time of Vietnam. He never saw a combat, he never was deployed, but he was building a bomb and he was part of a factory that built the bombs and he feels he did something wrong. He made a grave mistake. The bomb exploded, killed some people, he lived and he suffered his whole life until he came to that retreat and unburdened himself, you know, was able to unpack a little of that load that he had been carrying. You know the shame and the regret. Never had talked about it before. So that's an example of someone who didn't see combat but certainly went through some serious trauma.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, and that was. I can't imagine that scenario, and that's one of the reasons I asked, because I think one thing that I've been uncovering is a lot of veterans, even ones that didn't go to combat, they still struggle, and a lot of times it's because they didn't go to combat. Yes, that too, I feel like they signed up to do quote, unquote their job, yet they didn't get that opportunity, which was no fault of their own or no lack of their trying to.
Speaker 1:It was just something that I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that that was an inclusive thing. But that's pretty incredible how much of it is as you think about it, because I've often heard that a lot of times it's trauma that we've carried with us, that it kind of stacks trauma. You know, it's like childhood trauma into the military and then we get more trauma and it all kind of compounds what thoughts do you have?
Speaker 2:about any of that it can be it's yeah it can be, and I say can be because I don't think now, years later, I don't think that it is always because someone. Let me back up After about three years at that program and a couple hundred people under my belt. At that time I started noticing patterns because when you serve a retreat program and you do the same sort of model each time, you start to see patterns. And one of the patterns, for example, was by about day five out of the seven we could see a person who came in kind of all hang dog, you know, head down, really not wanting to speak, with good reason always good reason or they might have had multiple TBIs and they're not feeling well and they don't want to participate. By day five we saw them over at a different you know meal table, laughing, sitting up straight, entertaining the gang. I mean amazing things like that, but it was always around day five.
Speaker 2:So, similarly, one of the patterns as an education facilitator that I was struggling with is is this is what I'm experiencing with all these different people, all different branches, as I said, and all different ages. There seemed to be those who had a very serious, seriously challenging upbringing and, yes, brought that into their service, because you go into service maybe you're 18, 19, you know, if you go way back in different wars it was even earlier, you know, before they were even 18. But my understanding is the prefrontal cortex doesn't even develop until we're around 23. So we have these young, you know, women and men going into service at 18, 19, and all of this brain activity isn't fully developed. So they're taking, they're taking in what, sorry, they're taking in what certainly happened in their childhoods with them, whether that was a loss of a parent or an alcoholic situation, abusive situation. They're taking that with them into training. But then there's a whole nother group that will tell you themselves they felt that their childhoods that were possibly tough or rough fortified them and actually served them well in the military, because they felt like they went in with a, with almost like armor on already and that they had been tried and tested, so to speak, right. So there's that group. And then there's a whole nother group, a third group.
Speaker 2:So it took me about three years to define this for myself because I thought in a faulty way. I thought, as you just said, everybody who experienced trauma or post-traumatic stress must have suffered in childhood. Not true at all. So the third group came about when I had a Vietnam veteran correct me one day in the middle of education and this is what I love about the education, because it's very interactive. We invite people to participate constantly and interrupt and ask questions and share their you know their thoughts.
Speaker 2:So this guy interrupted me when I was talking about childhood trauma and he said well, that's not true for me at all. He said let me tell you what happened to me. He said I got, I was drafted, I got off a chopper or whatever and dropped me near the DMZ and I got out and I have never seen such horror of what. I had never seen such horror that people were doing to each other. And it happened like right when I got off the plane.
Speaker 2:And he said, my worldview was shattered in that moment. So I said, well, wow, so tell me about that. And he said well, I was raised by my grandparents on a farm in the Midwest. I loved God, country, things were pure and sweet and I had a few friends and I really didn't have anything go wrong and I felt loved, you know, in the, in the bosom of his family. And then bam, he's in Vietnam going. What the hell is going on. How can a human being being do that to another? And so he set me straight on that. He said you know, that's when my my trauma is that my worldview is completely shattered. Yeah, so those are the three. I think those are the three groups those who have childhood trauma, bring it forward. Those who feel that trauma or that difficulty fortified them, got them prepared for combat, so to speak, and those who are blown away by what they're seeing because they're unprepared for that.
Speaker 1:And so almost that would be. I could see that as being a very extreme feeling to be in that scenario Like definitely not the childhood that I was raised in. However, I always felt like it fortified and got me ready for seeing extreme stuff, right, right. But not having seen any of that, I could see where it would be a take some getting used to and, in some cases, not getting used to, right. So that definitely makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:That particular gentleman was having. So this is very common and I didn't even know that this kind of thing existed until I went to you know, until I served that program, and since then it's been so many more, hundreds and hundreds of veterans who have helped me, people like you that have been my teachers. That's why the work is sacred to me, because it's the only way I've learned more of the deeper and more less known things about war is from people who sit in front of me and share their heart. And this gentleman told me this and I've learned that it's fairly common.
Speaker 2:Those who have been traumatized in combat, often during their nightmares will wake up or partially awake and they have hurt their pets who might have happened to be on the bed, and the gentleman tried to strangle his dog, who he loved. And many veterans have say that they have hurt their partners. They are in a half sleep or fully asleep and they're dreaming. And they're dreaming about, you know, approaching an enemy combatant and they are grabbing their wife or their girlfriend or whoever, and they are injuring them. And I heard that story over and over and I had no idea that that was really a thing. But yes, so this particular gentleman whose worldview was shattered brought that into his sleep and in his half sleep would injure his wife. So they were there to address that and we worked through that. So very painful stuff.
Speaker 1:What was just out of curiosity and for anybody listening that may be dealing with a similar struggle. What was the end result for this individual and for his wife that was also in the middle of this, supporting him through it? What took place after this retreat?
Speaker 2:I think that well, during the retreat we met with them. All the counselors there met with their people who were assigned to them, which is so great. You get your own counselor essentially for the whole week at this particular program and it's a model that, if I was well funded enough, I would like to have as well here in Colorado, so that in the afternoon you would meet with the same counselor every day of your five or seven days, whatever length you choose to run a program. So during the program, when I met with this couple, what was so important is for her to understand where his behavior was coming from, because she had no idea, and even that was after working with veterans a number of years. It was even surprising to me, as she was his wife. She had no idea. She had no idea that his behavior was coming from. You know, it was a trauma response, for sure, and she didn't understand that. She didn't know that. So she was in a place in the beginning of blame and saying you know, you can't treat me like this in the night, you can't hurt me.
Speaker 2:Sexual assault was something we talked about upon one occasion, that she felt she had been assaulted by him sexually in the night. That's also something fairly common that I hear. So our work together over those seven days was opening up her eyes to where it was coming from in him and also working with his shame, because he knew exactly where it was coming from and he was horrified by it but didn't really know it was happening because he wouldn't remember fully when he became fully awake. So you know, like anything, it's a matter of hearing both sides of something and working through it and accepting accountability, even if it wasn't something you could have prevented. To be able to accept accountability on his part was key and on her part, to accept that this was coming not from a place of aggression but from absolute unconsciousness and unhealed trauma.
Speaker 1:Perfect sense. I'm thinking about the strength and courage that she would have had to have had to continue to go through supporting that, even in that blame state. You know, take a lot of courage and a lot of love, which also makes me think about, too, is I talked to people at the time.
Speaker 1:They say they don't want to open up to their spouse. Yet if they're already dealing with it is like, well, they're, they're committed, let's just open up fully already, let's talk to them a little bit more. I don't know if that's what you recommend, but I just think about the situation that they're both in and it's there's a lot of stuff going on after that retreat. Were they in a good spot? Were they able to move past this?
Speaker 2:I only you know the thing about doing this type of work, whether you're doing individual work, which I do a lot as well, or whether you're doing a workshop or retreat, you often by, ethically you don't make contact with them unless they make contact with you. But it just so happens that that this particular couple were known by some people, some friends of mine, colleagues of mine in New Mexico, and the word was they're doing well, they're still together. That's all I know. Often I don't get to hear even that much.
Speaker 2:But to your point, there needs to be a lot of love to work through something like that, because the pain around that for both right His pain of, oh my God, I can't believe I've done this, like the man who attacked his dog, I can't believe I did that. I'm horrified by it. I feel so much guilt and shame. But then the anger on the recipients part, the spouses part, so much anger and if there isn't an ability to work through that on both sides, the guilt and the anger it'll blow them apart. Often that kind of thing will blow a couple apart for sure, and it has, it has, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I can definitely see that, and for anybody listening that is worried about getting busted apart, it seems like, if they're still together, if you're still together with your spouse, that that worst case hasn't happened yet and so there's still opportunity to have a conversation and start the dialogue. Yes, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And that's what I mean by the triumph of the human spirit, because I have seen hopeless situations where you know the couple would come down to the program, drive you know five hours and be fighting the whole way. They would tell us later oh God, we fought the whole way down in the car. It was terrible, we didn't want to come to this. He or she didn't want to come, and then it was our. You know things like. It was our last ditch effort, this was our last ditch effort. We've been to counseling, we've done this, we've done that, but we're, you know, we feel hopeless.
Speaker 2:Those type of what I call a total immersion model where you're learning from it's not the facilitator, it's not the counselor, it's not the education necessarily, it's all of it, but most of all it's learning from other veterans, learning from other couples, other people like, hey, my circumstances are not exactly like yours, but I'm listening to this guy or this gal and sounds a little bit like mine and I know I'm not alone. It normalizes a lot of weird stuff out there. I mean what people think is weird or unique. I should say not weird, unique, but it normalizes it. And so they, even if they don't share their hearing. So many other people in the room say well, you know, this is what I've been going through and this is how my my partner and I, or my friend, my mother and I, my father and I have worked through that. So it's a. You know their focus because they're there for a number of days, whether it's a weekend or seven, and that's the total immersion.
Speaker 1:And I want to ask you some more about that. And I love the participant centered nature of it. That's what I do in my my career. My, my profession is a lot of participant centered learning.
Speaker 1:Just what you just what you describe right there. That's the benefit of it is is when peers do it and they come to a conclusion together. It's it's much more solidified obviously not to the extreme level that you're talking about, but anything participant centered. I'm 100% on board just because I see the value and the benefit of it. So that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a joy to watch.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's amazing, I can see why you love it. And then the other thing it's I've seen this exercise done. I haven't done it fully, it's more of an anonymous thing, just to kind of air it out there and just kind of let people know. You know, you don't really know what people have going on their mind right now, and so you have everybody throw their deepest, darkest secret into this big hat and it's all anonymously written and then if the room gets gets read out, nobody knows who's a Zeus, because it's all anonymous.
Speaker 2:Well, once you hear, everybody's stuff.
Speaker 1:it's like, wow, the stuff that I brought to the table where I feel so unique in my problems. Like usually everybody's got a battle that they're fighting that you don't really know about, and it doesn't minimize yours, but it just makes us. We're all dealing with stuff right now. Absolutely it felt similar to what you were talking about I think that's something, was it?
Speaker 2:Mother Teresa said something to that effect, like everyone's fighting some type of battle, you know. So it's about trying not to pass judgment, right? I mean, I love that idea, and I also love the idea of throwing things into a hat anonymously. I have done that with groups. Not quite like that. I like your method better, actually. But what I'll do is to break the ice in the very beginning of a group or a retreat. I will have everyone write down a thought or a fear or a hope that they have starting the damn thing right. Everyone has, like you know, major anxiety. What is this going to be like? Is this going to be freaking corny, or is this going to be really personal? Do I have to say anything? And so I'll read all the responses of the hopes and the fears, and that puts it out too, very similar.
Speaker 1:Once you unify, we're all together, probably thinking a lot of, you know, because that's the one thing that's great about it is nobody listens to the thing. Whatever gets read anonymously, nobody thinks judgment upon that person. We all, we can kind of empathize, like oh no, I can see that. I kind of think that as well. So I'm glad somebody else in the room is thinking this too and it's a really good, really good thing.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned earlier that it and this might be the- answer to the question, but I still want to ask because it might not be it, but you said that it takes about five days before people open up, and I got that around day five you can see them open up. That may be the answer, but I want to ask you why? Because I know you're very passionate about the retreat model, where you have that long retreat model of counseling and growth. Is that the reason, and if not, what is your reason, for loving that model so much? So good question.
Speaker 2:I mean again, I would love to have enough funding to be able to have a longer retreat up here. The only retreats I've done up here have been long weekend up in YMCA of the Rockies, estes Park. And that was amazing. No one knew me, but the VA distributed a flyer I sent them and they I was so grateful and they I was so grateful for that and I was overwhelmed with calls. So it was the language maybe I used in the flyer, I don't know, but it spoke to people and there was so much need. But that was only a weekend. So what I essentially did is take a seven day model and I packed it into a weekend and people from New Mexico on my team drove up to help me. They didn't even want gas money. I was shocked. Yeah, I was really touched. All veterans, veteran couples and one vet who was a solo came up to help from the team. But in terms of the seven day model in Angel Fire, that was supported by a million dollar grant. So you're talking about feeding up to 25, 30 people, including staff, for seven days and running all the activities. So I mean we were very fortunate to apply for a million dollar grant from the Department of Behavioral Health in New Mexico and we got it. That supported the program. I don't know how many retreats that supported, but I think it was spent over about two or three years. So I don't have that luxury here. So that's not an answer exactly to your question about what happens on day five.
Speaker 2:I think that the opening up on day five was that they knew they had seven days. When you know you have seven days, you have the luxury of unpacking things slowly In a weekend, like I've been doing here, or want to do more of and have two coming up a now booked for April 26th or 28th, just a weekend. It's going to be more of a. Okay, this is what we're going to, this is what we're doing here. Folks, this is what you know the model is and I can tell you a little bit about that in a minute. And then it will be up to them to determine how ready they feel. They might feel pressure. I don't know. It's my job to help them not feel pressure, but we get kind of down and dirty and do so quickly, as I call it the meat and potatoes.
Speaker 2:We get down to the meat and potatoes and a lot of people come for that. I had one veteran who served in Iraq. He said I want the meat and potatoes. I'm like, can I borrow that expression? I'm using that so you know if they're coming for that that's what they're going to get with me. But also, I am there to be able to. I should be able to gauge the group. Some groups just aren't ready. Some groups are like yeah, we're ready, let's get down to brass tacks right away. So I don't, I can't tell you what it would be like to do a seven day model up here. I think it would be amazing, but it's a long week, so my ideal is five days. That's what I would like to ultimately go towards.
Speaker 1:And you believe that a retreat model is the best.
Speaker 2:I do. I've said that to you, I think offline, I think the retreat model for me in my experience is worth its weight in gold. It's not the model, it's a retreat in general. I think anybody running retreats for any type of group they don't have to be service members, but people who want to make big strides in their life. They want to heal something, they want to heal a relationship, they want to feel more comfortable around their triggers, whatever it might be. If you are in that total immersion type experience and you're bonding with others and you're getting reassurance from others and you're hearing their stories and you're feeling that you're not so unique anymore, you're hearing what maybe their spouse is doing to be able to live more in harmony with their partner, whatever it is, you're going to get so much more when you're with other people. It's just what community encourages.
Speaker 2:Down in New Mexico at that program, day five was, I think, those particular people we saw the big change in. They were settling in, I think, to a place of trust. They felt held by the other veterans there, the older veterans there, a lot of OIF and OEF veterans golf on down. Let's say they revere a lot of Vietnam veterans and that was exactly what happened at the program. The Vietnam veterans were almost like the beloved uncle, became like the beloved uncles and aunts to them. I don't want to stress that these were all men, because they weren't. There were a lot of female veterans that came to our program as well and they just became like these older folks that the younger veterans looked up to and felt held by. That was a beautiful thing to watch.
Speaker 1:I've always enjoyed. I've had several conversations with Vietnam veterans now and I always think about things they're dealing with. They're just 30 years, 40 years ahead of me and I always think about what will be going on in my life in 30 years. That's similar to things they're dealing with. It's interesting, but thank you for sharing that. You had also mentioned the three different types of people that show up with the trauma, that they had the trauma and they brought that forward with them. They had the trauma as a kid and it made them stronger, or they never experienced it at all.
Speaker 1:I imagine anybody listening it would classify themselves in maybe one of those three camps. Do all three of those meet different levels of retreats or different levels of items to get healing, or is the healing on the other side still very similar?
Speaker 2:You know, I think, if you are a, I think if the person hosting the retreat has done it enough and has a wide enough array of topics and themes, so to speak themes, you will affect everyone there. Okay, because and that's my, that's what I am responsible to do. Okay, so if I just said this is going to be a retreat just for those who served in combat and experienced, you know, severe trauma during combat, I would leave out so many people that either had trauma prior or came back from, you know, left service and ended up being shattered by some family event or, you know, their wife or their husband died way too young, like a call I got recently. Yeah, there, there are just so many scenarios, right, and if you don't touch on all those different aspects of someone's life, you'll miss helping someone. So the idea is to touch on everything we talk about. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:So we talk about relationship with the self and triggers and put trigger. You know, people have people call out their triggers and stick them up on the wall, and some people are very serious about it. Some people are laughing and what that does is end up with the retreat with these triggers all over the walls that stay there for the, for the time that we're together, and again normalizes them. We talk about sexuality and you know what it's like to be serving sometimes. You know for you know just so many months on end and pornography and the impact of that on intimate relationships and you know how that's all received by the other person in the relationship. I mean, we talk about everything. It's just an example of something that used to be so taboo, but I think it's important to talk about. I remember the first time I said okay, so my, my co-director here doesn't want to unpack this, but I'm going to and we you know the room laughs and and we went forward and did that and it was.
Speaker 2:You know there's a lot of fuel there.
Speaker 1:So I love that you, I love that you stepped into it, because if you're asking people to get vulnerable, and yet at the front of the room, if we're not willing to be vulnerable, it doesn't. You know, there's a certain reciprocal relationship that takes place there, I believe, from the front of the room to participants. So I love that you take it there, you're right, there it is.
Speaker 1:And you also and you had mentioned this in the past and kind of in our, our calls leading up to this some terms of a moral injury or heartbreak, and I know that's at the core of your work and I was hoping maybe you could define more injury or heartbreak. What is that and why is it such an important thing for you to discuss and unpack?
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, yes, it's. It's, you know, an integral part of my work that I have come to be so comfortable with and so interested in that I have now very confidently gone out on a limb and said I believe that what the VA calls moral injury I don't call it that and I'll get into that in a second but what the VA is is calling moral injury is a signature wound of war, that Trump's post-traumatic stress as a as very limiting, more negative fallout of the service experience. They definitely can overlap in certain scenarios, but they can also be mutually exclusive things and I can explain that as well. But I do believe that moral and ethical conflicts that are so oh my gosh, they're just so common place in military service, including training forward, that over time have realized that many more people suffer, often lifelong, from a moral and ethical conflict that slowly has eaten away at them because they didn't have language for it. They didn't know what the exactly what they were feeling. I don't. I'll start here with the term moral injury. I want to say it was about 15 years or so ago. There were several different books written about moral injury and people had never heard the term before it was coined, I think originally I sent you information on this. I don't know if it was coined by Brett Litz, but Brett Litz was a psychologist who began to talk about moral injury.
Speaker 2:More Veterans who I have spoken to over time hate that term. They really hate that term or it throws them because they which I understand the term itself throws them. I had one guy say to me are you what moral injury? Are you telling me that what I did over in Vietnam, I busted my ass in Vietnam, that I should feel guilty about that, that I have some sort of moral guilt about that? And I said no, that's not necessarily what it means at all. So a lot of veterans don't like that term. They also don't like the term injured, because what veteran who's trained well and trained not to be vulnerable, wants to be told that they are injured? No one wants to be told that, veteran or not, no one likes to be called injured or disabled, and yet those terms are still used a lot. So I listened and I don't use that term I use.
Speaker 2:I differentiate between a moral conflict and a moral wound. So you have a moral conflict. An example I can give you is a woman who served the NSA. She was a veteran. She was hired by the NSA and she made a bad call. She felt on something on the heads up display that she was watching and she made a bad call and people were very badly injured and were killed more than just a couple and she felt so much guilt and shame around that she felt it was entirely her fault but she didn't feel. She didn't feel she felt morally wounded but she didn't feel that it was that she was disabled by it. She didn't feel that. She felt that she was to blame. She wanted to move forward in a healthier way but was having a lot of guilt and shame around that and I'm sorry that I've sort of lost my train of thought.
Speaker 1:It's okay. I know you were describing more injury and mentioning that people just do not enjoy that term, which I can. I can understand, yeah, but also it gets me back to I don't know if that brings you back into your thought.
Speaker 2:It brought me back to her. You know the pain she felt around that. So a moral conflict would be that she's got to make that call. She's looking at a heads up display. She has a big decision to make. That's the moral conflict. Do I take these people out or not? Is this the enemy or am I looking at civilians here? That was the dilemma, and she made a call and it was not the right one. So that's the conflict, the heartbreak I told you. I call I don't call moral conflict a heartbreak.
Speaker 2:The heartbreak is the result often, whether it's a soul ache or a heartbreak. It's my opinion, after hearing I don't know now, thousands of stories from all different people civilians and service members that it almost always ends up in a feeling of great shame, sadness, depression, sometimes lifelong, because it feels like I saw this, I did this, I was forced to do this, didn't want to do this, or I did do it, I liked it at the time but I regretted it later. Those are all the different ways it can look. And now I'm carrying this thing that happened to me, that I feel shame around. I don't even believe that the VA has a diagnostic criteria for it yet. I'd have to check that, but for a long time they haven't had any diagnosis for it. They might say, hey, I believe that this client of mine who's sitting in front of me has moral injury, as they call it, but there's no diagnostic criteria, to my understanding, because it's complicated. And the reason it's complicated is that it can show up in literally hundreds of different ways Something you did, something you were forced to do something, you heard something, for instance against the rules of engagement and I guess that happens a lot all the time maybe but something that you know is wrong, but you see someone else do it.
Speaker 2:Maybe you're watching a rape, maybe you're watching somebody doing something that their NCO or whoever told them Don't you dare do that, and they go and do it. You know, whatever it can be watching, listening, doing or, as I think I said earlier, it can be something that you even enjoyed doing at the time, that you thought was funny. Maybe you were, you know, having fun with a bunch of people, you were drunk, you know whatever it might be, and you thought it was a good old time. And then, years later, you get some perspective because you have that distance and you realize that what you all did was quite horrible, what happens often.
Speaker 2:So a moral conflict can happen in the moment or it can happen years later, and it usually is a conflict of your moral code, your own personal sense of right and wrong. Whether the guy or the woman next to you has the same moral code or not, it makes no difference, because there are people who can watch a certain event happen and say, well, that sucked, it's awful, but they don't carry it, they're not broken by it or feel like their soul's been ripped out. And there are those that certainly do carry it, but they hadn't had words for it and it's been. You know, moral and ethical conflicts and the fallout of a soul ache or heartbreak, as I call it has been around since man has been on the planet. You know, ulysses talked about it in the Iliad or the Odyssey, I can't remember, but he talks about injuring a man, killing a man, and then he meets the man's father and the man's father is grieving over the loss of his son and Ulysses starts to feel not proud anymore of taking that man's life as he did. He starts to feel regretful and, in grief for the man's grief, he starts to feel regret. So a moral conflict can produce regret and shame, anger anger at another or anger at oneself and, like I said, it's been around since the beginning of time.
Speaker 2:So when I first bumbled my way through this in New Mexico, it was because my co-director and we talk about this. This is not a confidential thing. He turned to me that day and he said Mary, that's all you. And I said why? You're the veteran. You went to war, Don't you think that this is something you should be handling? And he said absolutely not. I don't want to touch his subject right now, I'm not ready. And then I got it and I said say no more, say no more.
Speaker 2:He flew almost 250 combat missions over Vietnam. So I said, ok, I'll learn. And so I asked a lot of different veterans teach me. This is my understanding of what it means to be witnessing something or be part of something that goes against your own personal sense of right and wrong. So I want to know how you relate to this. Did you ever experience this in your life or in service, and how did it look and how did it make you think and feel, and what have you done to address it, if anything? So that's how I've learned about this topic.
Speaker 1:And what is, you know, if anybody is feeling that, thank you for that great definition of it. And if somebody's in the middle of it, what are the solutions to help people get on the?
Speaker 2:other side of it.
Speaker 2:Well, again, I felt so lucky to have been exposed to so many people and hear it be expressed in so many different ways and use the term moral injury at first, and then we changed it, you know, to moral conflict. I saw heads go down on the table and I misread that as I'm bumbling. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm the non-veteran up here. And then the heads came up, tears going down some of the faces, but at the breaks people coming up to me were saying I get it. Now. My VA counselor said I had post-traumatic stress. I never thought I had PTS or I dropped the D but I never thought I had PTS. But I knew I had something and I was struggling with something, but I didn't. It didn't have a name. Now I get it. So what I was seeing was not so much necessarily grief, I was seeing relief. So the first step to answer your question is understanding what's going on in here and here. If we don't start with that, we can't do any sort of interactive exercises or release techniques which I do a lot of Any type of healing treatments, unless we first help that person understand. Well, tell me about it. What's going on in here, how do you relate to that concept of moral and ethical conflict? How did it look to you? When did you first realize that it was causing you any pain or shame or anger or regret? How does that show up in you? So, after we're able to sort of piece that out, I explained to them which took a while for my co-director and I to really work this out I explained that our sense of morality, our moral compass, exists in the core of our being. It's really in the core. If people have a religious belief, if they have religious beliefs and they believe in God, that might be for them what God gave them, their sense of self, who they are, their core being. One guy who came to the program said well, I don't believe in God, I don't believe that there's this God-given sense of morality. He said to me, it's my core, my core self and my belief system. So all of that is in there at the core of someone's being. Who you are, what your values are, that make you the person that shows up and how you show up. So you've got this core and then you've got your personality, maybe on the outside of your core and your work or your intimate life with your family, whatever it is. You've got this sort of if you can picture that sort of diagram, but in the center resides your moral compass that informs all your decisions and the way you feel about your actions and other people's actions. So when trauma comes in, you can picture this core, this solid core. When trauma comes in, it essentially blows up that sense of surety and confidence in who you are, because when something big happens to you, it can't help but change you, Can't help but change us. So anything that happens in childhood or in service or post-service or whenever it is, if it's big it's going to impact our sense of self.
Speaker 2:So I think his name is Bill William Russell, who about oh God, maybe 12, 15 years ago or more, came out with a book called God is Not here and he served as an interrogator in Iraq. He was assigned to an Iraqi intelligence officer and he became an interrogator. That book was just what do you call it? It was reviewed by some military higher ups like brass who said this is the kind of guy we hate. I get it. He came so clean with how he felt, how he when he was assigned to the intelligence officer and he had to interrogate prisoners. He hated it. At first he thought I don't think I'm going to be able to do this, I don't think I can handle it. But he grew to like it, he grew to actually take pleasure in their strategies and then he hated himself for that and then he would go home. He was deployed a couple of times to Iraq but he would go home and he talks about how he would kiss his kids good night. He would hold them and kiss them and read to them and he started to realize that here's this guy who kind of feels like some sick jerk, you know, taking pleasure in his job as an interrogator not pride necessarily, but just really liking the work and doing it very well, and then going home and being tender with his wife and reading to his kids. And he described it so well as feeling like he's two or maybe even three different people. So he ends up in a psych ward.
Speaker 2:Post war he was so confused he felt about who he really was because he felt like he lost his Moral compass. The trauma of what he did and you know all that went on for him before he left service was so intense that the confusion came in of who am I now? Who am I now that I did this? Does it make me a good person or bad person? Am I the guy that kisses her kids and loves his wife and family? Or am I that sick guy who took pleasure in what I did For the military? It was, it's a great book and it never got the attention it deserved, but I found it fascinating and I almost I feel like I want to call him sometime and see if I can get him to come to Colorado and speak. I wonder how he's doing so. He was doing very well when he wrote the book, after, you know, ending up in a psych ward.
Speaker 1:He wrote it after being in a psych ward yeah is he a dress kind of? I mean, I love the using the term. The moral compass was Was shaken. Yeah, towards the end of it was he able to feel like he got his moral compass back on track and if, was that the solution that he needed?
Speaker 2:I think so. He. I mean I'm now you're tapping my long term memory here, but I think he talks about exercises he did like putting the enemy in a chair In his room and making a daily habit of speaking to the enemy and having some sort of reconciliation conversations imaginary obviously that were really therapeutic for him, I think really helped him a lot.
Speaker 1:Was.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry no, that's it. That's all I remember about one of the things he did if you don't mind, because I did not read it.
Speaker 1:so what was the name of the book?
Speaker 2:God is not here okay captain William or captain Bill Russell. He lives in California or he lived in California when he wrote the book. I don't know where he's now.
Speaker 1:Yeah so you mentioned Earlier and thank you for sharing that that a lot of people don't have the language or don't know how to define kind of what they're feeling. Which I know is a brown has a bunch of stuff out that I love her, she's great, how she's fantastic, but she talks about how it's impossible to actually feel and understand the feeling that you can't define. And that brought me back to you stating that you know having the language, so what you have, that you said you have some really exercises that you Really enjoy doing.
Speaker 1:Once you kind of get to that point and just really curious ask what is your favorite these exercise that you do with people, just for anybody listening, what's your favorite thing to do?
Speaker 2:in the case of dealing with someone who's who's challenged by a moral, a moral episode, a conflict that ended up just destroying their, what would it be in the case of deep moral conflicts? This sense of shame can be so great that it destroys their belief in themselves, sometimes to the point of spatially I've read an article about this spatially the person becomes even just you know, completely disoriented. And when I read that I didn't understand it and I began to piece things together over years. And it seems that when someone's moral compass is so rocked or literally feels like it's been ripped out of their body, their soul has been ripped out of their body. That's been described a lot by some in combat that they become disoriented. And I thought, well, why? And I think it's because they don't know really who they are anymore. If you don't have the anchor of a moral compass to inform you inform how you deal with what you've just had to do if you lose that somehow, you literally can lose your sense of identity and therefore, as this article said, in extreme cases even your spatial compass, where you are in space, your proprioception, I think, is the word. I didn't believe that until I met this guy who called himself mad dog and he's an incredible human being and has. He's had a rough road and he's doing quite well now.
Speaker 2:But he had a rough time. He's a Vietnam veteran and he talks about how he ended up going beyond the wire without his weapon. He became so apathetic, he didn't care about anything anymore. He had seen too much During the war and he started, you know, just leaving his weapon behind like just kill me now kind of a feeling. When he got out he was really suffering and he ended up feeling completely disoriented. And when he said that my antenna went up and I said, what do you mean? And he said, mary, I didn't even know where I was in space. He went up and lived homeless. He became homeless and went up and lived in the mountains and he was up there alone for about three years Just trying to get his bearings, literally get his bearings again. But he didn't have the language, he didn't know what he was dealing with, he just knew that he was Very disoriented because too much had happened to him.
Speaker 2:So the way that we worked with him and he actually was my client, so I, you know, I feel very close to him and very respectful of everything. You know all the pain that he went through. He needed to understand what I felt we were looking at, and for him it was a lot about morality, because he was raised with A beautiful moral compass and he felt it was just shattered because of all he saw and part part took in all the stuff he had taken part in. And so we talked about well, who are you now, who do you want to be now? So part of the my exercises around this are really helping the person understand what they've been through, who they think they were in that time, who they want to be now or think that they are now, and where, what kind of person do they really want to be? Let's map out your morals. Let's map out your, your values. Let's look at a series of archetypes.
Speaker 2:So, at the program I used to work for, we had a whole list of archetypes, like loser, fuck up, hero, you know whatever, might have spoken to people. We kind of made him up or we took him out of a book partially and we had a list of about you know, I don't know 50 archetypes and we said, okay, we'd like you to check out this list. Which ones do you resonate with the most? Do you feel like you're a hero? Do you feel like you're a giver? Do you feel like you're a you know a brainiac? Are you a killer? You know whatever, what? Who are you? And we had them check as many as applied and then we worked with them around that. So that's a great exercise, is something we developed.
Speaker 2:And in terms of release techniques, you know when you're working with this stuff the people are often re experiencing and you don't want them to re experience to the point of extreme intensity. You want to keep it you know, boundary as best as possible while helping them tap into some of those feelings. So the techniques that I'm certified in are some of the tapping you've probably heard about emotional freedom technique. I'm certified in that, which I don't use as much anymore. I use what's called a lesser known technique called T A T tapas, acupressure technique, where the person is holding the back of their head. You know, near that, your oxy put the base of the skull and your thumb and ring finger on the bridge of your nose and one or two fingers lightly on the center of your forehead, which is your prefrontal cortex area, and you're essentially trying to. It's kind of obscure, but you're trying to hook up your amygdala. That part of the brain is like a filing cabinet of all those triggers and sights and sounds and smells, memories. You're trying to essentially hook that up to your executive reasoning functions of the brain up here.
Speaker 2:Because when we get triggered whether we're, you know, talking about our past experiences are in the moment when we get triggered what usually happens is there's no gap for us to think logically about a reaction, we just react. Right, it's a hair trigger. I think that's where the word trigger comes from hair trigger. So the prefrontal cortex, those reasoning functions get hijacked by the amygdala. The amygdala just hijacks it. So we don't have time to reason, we just feel or think or move as a trauma response in reaction to that trigger. And you know I've heard I love trigger work because, especially with groups, because, as I said, I love to have everyone call them out. You know the smell of coffee shoppers in the in the sky. You know that pop up, up, up, up up, the smell of Blood fireworks. You know things that people see or things that people do, or the ticking of a fan. There are millions, you know, and they're all so unique to the individual so to have them up on the wall, like I said, really normalizes things. So that's an exercise I would do individually with someone as well.
Speaker 2:My protocol, though, is mainly drilling down on identity. Who am I now? Do I feel like I'm? Two different people are three different people, like Russell, for example, said. Do I want to be different? Is there anything I can change about the past? Is there any one I need to address? Is there anything I need to address with that person that is on, spoken, on said, if they're alive and if they're not, how do I reconcile that? Who am I now? If I don't do that, if I just kind of push it under the rug and let it go home, I now is it. Am I gonna hold this bag of crap? You know that the the shame or the regret, am I gonna hold that forever? Or am I gonna, you know, man up, woman up and go do something about it?
Speaker 1:So we work through identity and get very clear who they feel like they are and who they want to be, and working, you know, setting goals around that so finding out who they feel they are now, who they want to be, and then setting goals, working towards that Mm-hmm, that identity that we want to associate with yes, exactly Huh. I said I just I like that level of thinking a lot and then, you know, part of that work is image replacement.
Speaker 2:I call it, it's my term. There are things out there so you know there are so many great things out there now for veterans to experiment with, to reduce some of the more painful memories, you know, lessen them or or transform them into something more positive. There are a lot of techniques out there, but one of the basic things I love is met guided meditation, and I do it with big groups so you'll have everyone doing it at once and, for example, I will have them Imagine walking through the woods and the different things in the visualization represent different things in life. And I won't tell them that to the end. This is based on a meditation by my mentor, who's no longer with us, but she designed a walk in the woods meditation and people love it because what? What you're doing with them is Having them walk a path through the woods, seeing a certain cup, what that represents to them, asking them what that might Represent, what they do with the cup. Did they touch it? Does it change? Coming across a body of water, coming across a house, a Structure, you don't tell them what it is. You see what shows up for them.
Speaker 2:So a lot of the guys who are coming in when oh gosh, this was around, there's a lot of Iraq Combat veterans who joined our program I think it was within about three years of the surge and they were during this meditation. They were seeing nothing but burned out shacks. They said I can't, you know, I can't see anything positive. I see link, you know, just dry terrain and burned out shacks, and they were getting very triggered by it. So then I would redo the meditation and put in Positive imagery or I would suggest changing. You know, work with this as best you can. You're seeing a burned out shack. Change it into a cabin or some some type of structure You've always wanted to own. What would that be? Would it be modern? Would it be a cabin? Start to build it, start to change your imagery. So I call that image replacement and it's highly effective. And you repeat it and repeat it, and repeat it until they're able to see some really beautiful things in that Meditation.
Speaker 1:For example, I love that exercise. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking some time and so well Sharing all of this wonderful, wonderful information.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you and thanks for your service, dad. I'd like to hear more about that.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to several great conversations. We're just for anybody interested. I know you mentioned you have a retreat coming up. Yeah, where can somebody that wanted to learn more or speak with you or just learn more about what you're doing? Where should they? Where should they go to get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:Well, people are always welcome to call me. My number is not all impact programs. That the retreat very exciting to me because it's been too long with COVID in there. It's been too long since I did any group stuff and I'm really itching to get back to it. That will be in West Loveland at a place that is actually owned by two veterans, or a veteran couple a guardsman and a former senior master sergeant his, his spouse, is a former senior master sergeant. So they're a great couple and they own what's called copper falls. Copper falls wedding and event center. It's a small, completely private place. There's no other people who are going to be there and they have a beautiful waterfall and you know, lovely manicured grounds, a little stream, wildlife walking above the cliff. And that will be April 26th through 28th for anybody who, any veteran who is either active or Now a veteran, with their spouse, partner, support person, that's who it's for so.
Speaker 2:I really look forward to that. Yeah, it'll be a very dynamic, interactive retreat.
Speaker 1:No doubt just speaking and then hearing All of the things that you're doing, I know that's going to be a huge success. Thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Thank you for the time. I really appreciate the opportunity that absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'm looking forward to the next one. I.