35: Resilience and Transformation: Cultivating a Trauma-Informed Society with Jesse Kohler

We journey through the stories of stress and adversity which, rather than breaking us, actually serve to cultivate resilience with Jesse Kohler, the Executive Director of the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice. Jesse's personal narrative of loss, and the unexpected outreach from a coach that followed, is a touching and powerful illustration of this.

We also examine an often overlooked space - the school system, where trauma-informed policy can make a world of difference. We discuss the need to refocus our attention from outcomes to process, to reevaluate our approach towards children's behaviors in response to trauma, and the urgency of a holistic approach to transform trauma in our society. In this episode, we walk away with a renewed understanding of resilience and the fundamentals of creating a trauma-informed society. Tune in to be inspired and empowered.

You can find out more about Jesse and CTIPP at CTIPP.org, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Transcript

Manya Chylinski: 1:13

Hello, welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host Ma nya Chylinski, . My guest today is Jesse Kohler, executive Director of CTIPP, the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice. We had an amazing conversation. We talked about trauma and resiliency, systemic buffers and relational buffers that help people recover after stress, adversity and trauma. We talked about policies the importance of making change on a local level as well as on the policy level. We had a great conversation. I think you're really going to enjoy listening to what Jesse has to talk about. Find Notes on Resilience on Apple Podcasts, subscribe and, if you like the show, leave us a review. Thanks, hi, jesse. I'm so excited that we're going to be talking today.

Jesse Kohler: 2:08

I am so thrilled to be speaking with you too, manya.

Manya Chylinski: 2:11

Thank you so much. Before we get into the details of who you are and what we're going to talk about, I would love to know if I could wave a magic wand and give you a superpower. What would that be?

Jesse Kohler: 2:25

I often go to impact and influences. It would help with fundraising and political capital. So I don't know exactly what the superpower is there, but the policies that we promote and the fundraising we're trying to do is a small organization. It would be sweet if we could just bypass a lot of those obstacles that we currently face.

Manya Chylinski: 2:46

Yes, and I believe you are not alone in wanting to have that superpower. No.

Jesse Kohler: 2:50

I think that folks that work in the nonprofit space, I think that we would all like to have that superpower.

Manya Chylinski: 2:55

Exactly. Well, when I get that magic wand, I will wave it and I will give you that power, because I so appreciate the mission of your organization, which we're going to talk about in a moment, that I just wish I could grant you that ability.

Jesse Kohler: 3:11

That means a lot, thank you.

Manya Chylinski: 3:13

So tell us, Jesse, who are you and what do you do?

Jesse Kohler: 3:17

Yeah, so my name is Jesse Kohler.

Jesse Kohler: 3:21

I truly have the privilege and pleasure of getting to serve as the acting executive director for the Campaign for Traum-Informed Policy and Practice, or CTIP. We are a national nonprofit organization, very young startup Well, we're transitioning out of the startup world but a young nonprofit organization whose mission is broadly to create a trauma-informed society that promotes support and opportunities for individuals, families and communities so that everyone has the opportunities and supports necessary to thrive. But we work to promote advocacy and practice and just really continue to build the movement around community-led, trauma-informed, prevention-oriented, resilience focused and healing-centered work across the country. And in some ways, we have the vision of wanting to do this all around the world. And I mentioned that I'm in the acting executive director position. I've been on loan in this position from a think tank and formed another nonprofit called the Change Campaign, through which I do some other work as CTIP builds its capacity and we build our team. That is the way that we've been able to grow, but I feel very, very fortunate to be able to do this work every day.

Manya Chylinski: 4:45

Yes, it's amazing work that CTIP does and that you do, and I think it will be clear the deeper we get into this podcast how much I just admire and appreciate the work that you guys do and how much I love CTIP. When I first heard about it I thought, oh, that's it, that's what I want to be doing.

Jesse Kohler: 5:04

I had the same exact thinking. I learned about CTIP when I was 23. I'm 29 now, but it was a young nonprofit with the justice audacious mission, a total of like $5,000 in the bank. It was all volunteer, incredible board members, and I really am fortunate for the team that we have, from board members and experts to Whitney, Laura and our growing team. It's really an incredible effort and I think that what's special about CTIP that goes unnoticed but is seen in all of the work we do is that we really try to model the model of being trauma-informed internally, and so the process orientation to our work I think is special, in addition to the outcomes that that sort of develops and what comes about from that. I feel so fortunate to be a part of this.

Manya Chylinski: 5:59

Yes, so you guys are walking the walk, as they say.

Jesse Kohler: 6:03

Or we're walking to talk.

Manya Chylinski: 6:04

I'm not sure how it goes.

Jesse Kohler: 6:06

I think that everybody knows what we're talking about To create a transformative movement, not something that just nudges a long change but really transforms the way that our systems operate. We think that we need to model that internally as well to be able to make that change externally.

Manya Chylinski: 6:24

Yes, yes, awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And let's just dive in. When you talk about trauma-informed policy, you can't ignore the topic of resiliency. So what do you think about that word, resiliency?

Jesse Kohler: 6:40

I mean, I think that when I talk about resilience I'll dive into a story in a little bit but stress and adversity is important to development. But tolerable stress and adversity helps to build resilience, which we have this inherent strength and capacity to overcome and grow through the adversities and stresses that we face, so long as it is not so overwhelming and chronic and we have the relational buffers and systemic buffers to be able to grow through that. But I think that in terms of resilience I go back to my own story. I think that stories are incredibly important in this work.

Jesse Kohler: 7:24

And when I was 15, my best friend passed away in a plane crash and I really, really struggled when your best friends with someone from 3 to 15, and then they're gone from your life. Every time you're in school you're reminded of them and it was incredibly difficult to move forward. And I had a little league coach who would coach me in baseball and basketball growing up and I had a relationship with him who coached at the high school and saw that I was struggling. I mean, ney, it was clear he knew me and all of us in the school were struggling. But he reached out to me and he said you know, we work out in the mornings and if you want to come to school at 5am with us and lift, you're welcome to. And I had had recurring nightmares where I wasn't sleeping anyway and so I started to join.

Jesse Kohler: 8:11

When I think about building resilience and the importance of that tolerable stress and relationships, I used the metaphor of how I learned to lift, where we didn't start with any weight on the bars and I didn't have to wait as proxy to stress, I learned the techniques so that way I wouldn't hurt myself when we started to add weight.

Jesse Kohler: 8:31

And then, as we added weight, I always had a spotter around me and so I had that relationship around me where, if I fell, there was someone there to make sure that I didn't get hurt and help me get back up, which helped me push through harder and over time, and through the repetition of that practice, I was able to build more strength to lift more weight. When I think about resilience resiliency to trauma and stress and adversities that we face in our lives, being able to build those capacities and skills over time, through tolerable stress and with relationships and structures in place that support growth and development because we know that too much at any one time of diversity and stress can just I mean be really damaging and harmful. But with the right structures in place, we had this incredible capacity as humans and communities and society, to grow through the stresses that we face and come out stronger on the other side.

Manya Chylinski: 9:37

Well, thank you for sharing your story, and the story of working with your coach and that is sort of a perfect metaphor for resiliency is the way that you worked with this coach to build your strength and and work through what you were going through.

Jesse Kohler: 9:56

Yeah, and there was a whole team and community to be introduced to and it was beautiful. So, coach Felix, if you ever listen to this, thank you for all that you've done for me. I tell him that personally all the time, but in case he wants to hear it over the radio, waves to absolutely, absolutely.

Manya Chylinski: 10:12

I will say thank you too, because it sounds like he really recognized that you needed help and I think that's one of you mentioned their relational buffers. And those relationships people who can recognize that we need help are a real critical part of healing after a trauma and real critical part of our resiliency.

Jesse Kohler: 10:34

Yeah, and going back to CTIPS mission really quickly of promoting opportunities and supports that allow for individuals, families and communities to thrive. He didn't make me do anything, but he gave me an avenue and pathway to engage with an activity that he was there to support with that Right. So we need to offer those opportunities that we're dealing in so often in our society. Those opportunities and supports just don't exist for so many of us.

Manya Chylinski: 11:06

Right, they don't exist, and sometimes, when they do exist, you can't necessarily find them.

Jesse Kohler: 11:12

Exactly, there is a huge issue with that, where people are trying to promote opportunities and supports and they're difficult to find for a number of reasons.

Manya Chylinski: 11:21

Right Right, you know you mentioned relational buffers and you also mentioned systemic buffers and I know that you and I think a lot about the role of the system in recovery from trauma and building resiliency.

Jesse Kohler: 11:35

So I'd love to just dig into what do you think about that and personally and as director of CTIPS yeah, so I mean our systems and structures so frequently perpetuate stress and adversity that lead to negative outcomes at the individual, family and community levels. We like to put the onus and burden of trauma and resilience on individuals or families and we fail to see the ways that traumatized systems and fractured systems are actually perpetuating stress and adversity. But the way that we've seen that, we also know that structures can reorient to provide and promote supports where we prevent as much preventable stress, adversity, trauma as possible and promote supports that then create those buffers that allow for people to truly thrive again. I mean to go off the same example of when I was 15 and after Doug died, the school system that I was in upper middle class good public schools, like you know, quality public school system in the state of Pennsylvania in the greater Philly area really struggled to pay attention in school and there were actually calls to my parents where it was suggested that I may be best served by no longer being in the public school that I had been built through.

Jesse Kohler: 12:55

Rather than recognizing the complex grief that I was going through, it was suggested to actually take away more of those critical relationships that I had that led to my healing and so the systemic approach to my healing process was it's too much like we can't deal with this.

Jesse Kohler: 13:17

Instead of recognizing how a trauma informed school and CTIPS done a lot of work around trauma informed schools, we develop the trauma informed schools report to promote whole environment approaches to supporting students and, you know, staff with whatever they're going through, that sort of systemic approach where it's so frequently eject and reject when we don't fit into the norms of how our society would like for us to be acting. But obviously trauma is a disruptive part of our normal functioning in life and so that eject, reject model, rather than engaging in those relationships structurally, we so often take away the relationships that we have and I wonder if my parents very fortunate to come from such a loving family as well If I didn't have such strong advocates at home who were there to support like no, I mean, he needs to stay in school, he has other friends like we need to keep him in school what my life trajectory would have looked like otherwise.

Manya Chylinski: 14:23

Right, and this is a larger question that I'm not sure can be answered with a pithy response. But why do you think it is that our systems are not supportive?

Jesse Kohler: 14:34

There are myriad reasons they're under-resourced and so frequently oriented incorrectly.

Jesse Kohler: 14:41

But I think that when you are so outcome oriented I was in second grade or like I was like seven years old, when no child left behind passed legislatively and when there are literally outcomes that tie directly to the funding structures for education systems, we are promoting and perpetuating a need to score well on tests and when anything disrupts that, the very focus and orientation of the way that not just the system, but then how that trickles down to the individuals that operationalize our system the focus is on outcomes instead of process toward healthy development. And I think that I don't have all the answers. That's a huge question and if I had all the answers, then we may as well have that magic wand that would be yes, it's all the funding in the world, but I think that the very orientation of process versus outcomes and starting to improve trends instead of trying to create very specific and targeted outcomes but just improving trends across our society as a whole, is really what we're trying to do with our work at CTIP Right.

Manya Chylinski: 15:55

Right. What do you think that people whether it's individuals or we're looking at the system misunderstand about trauma?

Jesse Kohler: 16:05

So much. I mean, I think that one micro example is that so frequently we look at people and claim them as bad, and we know that part of the trauma. Informed approach is like switching and transforming the question of what's wrong with you to what happened to you and starting to become more compassionate and curious instead of judgmental and promoting shame. But I think that that shows itself in so many different ways, and I think that we also misunderstand children's behaviors as attention seeking behaviors instead of that's the best way that they have to communicate on met needs. And sometimes we see that up through adulthood and we just punish instead of really supporting people's healing and working toward allowing everybody to reach their full potential, which is what oriented me toward getting into this work in the first place. And then, in addition to that, I think that there is a misunderstanding of how we build resilience, how we promote healing broadly.

Jesse Kohler: 17:13

So frequently we have a treatment first approach where we need to go to therapy, and therapy is wonderful for some people and sometimes it doesn't work for others.

Jesse Kohler: 17:23

And there are different modalities beyond the traditional talk therapy that can also work, but there are other therapeutic interventions.

Jesse Kohler: 17:31

And then there is, of course, the example of Coach Felix and the wrestling team accepting a baseball player into lift with them, that helped lead to, you know, I mean the outcome of that was that I slept better because I was exhausted at the end of the day, I was able to focus better in school because I had already like sort of got my energy out and my brain and body were ready for the school day, and that helped to promote healing.

Jesse Kohler: 17:57

And that is more of a prevention orientation. I mean, if we look at the public health pyramid where we're promoting primary prevention and secondary prevention and better intervention as well as treatment, then we don't have this bottleneck that we've created in our society of a treatment first approach, where not everybody is able to access the services that they may need, and we can create more of a community orientation to again prevent a lot of the stress and adversity that leads to trauma, as well as create buffers that may be able to get people at least some of the support that they need. Without one-on-one opportunities, which again are important, I don't mean to downplay that. But we need a more holistic approach to the way that we look at transforming trauma in our society.

Manya Chylinski: 18:47

Right, and, you know, in the context of something that you and I have worked on together the Post Disaster Mental Health Response Act. You know, one of the things that I think is really important about that is that it's going to help get the word out that this is a normal response to this trauma that you have experienced, and my dream is that, by getting that recognition early on after experiencing a trauma or a natural disaster, for example, that will help people tap into their own resiliency and then not need to go further in the system to get treatment we talk about oh, there aren't enough mental health professionals out there, but that presupposes that treatment orientation like you're talking about, versus. Can we help people before they get to that place?

Jesse Kohler: 19:37

Yeah, and there's another bill in Congress that's moving right now in bipartisan, bicameral fashion, called the Community Mental Wellness and Resilience Act. That is all about promoting connections and resources and capacities and skills in communities that reorient through a population level resilience and public health approach, so that way, before disaster strikes, we are better oriented where, if and when there's an extreme weather event or some sort of you know I mean going back to the Boston Marathon bombing and other widely traumatic events we have those connections in place that we can rebuild more quickly.

Manya Chylinski: 20:22

And of course there's then also the reality that we hope that disaster does not strike in those communities and then the communities are still better oriented to address the trauma and you know just what is going on in the communities, Right, even if disaster doesn't strike right well, that's great and I love that that's going through the process right now, because that is building that resiliency and building that capacity ahead of time, because Certainly we know bad things do happen, disasters happen, and the moment it happens is not the time to try to figure out what you're supposed to do to take care of people's mental health.

Jesse Kohler: 21:03

Yeah, there's. I mean going back even a couple questions to what do we misunderstand about trauma from a neuroscientific perspective? When, when disaster does strikes and More a better way to put that is when there is Dysregulation, whether at an individual level or widespread. So frequently we try to reason with people when they are Dysregulated, and they are literally. We have seen in fmRIs that they are most active in their midbrain, toward their brainstem, which is where fight, flight, freeze, fawn, faint Exists. They are not in the prefrontal cortex where reasoning can happen.

Jesse Kohler: 21:41

We have to go through and Dr Bruce Perry has the three Rs of regulate, relate and reason, where we start to work back Through the brain because it develops from the bottom up and from the inside out Okay. And when we become stressed we go toward that deeper part of our brain, mm-hmm, where we regulate and then we relate, because Relationships are the greatest buffer to stress and trauma that we have as humans. We go through the limbic system to the prefrontal cortex, where then we're able to reason. But if we try to reason right away with folks who are dysregulated, oftentimes it just perpetuates further dysregulation and it doesn't actually really Help in right. There's more that we need to do and we need to recognize from a neural lot, from like a neuroscientific perspective, where people are. Brain science is really helpful in dealing with humans because we all use our brains as we navigate this life.

Manya Chylinski: 22:38

Yes, absolutely. There's a lot of reasons. We are in a society that's not necessarily trauma informed. Think about, like the stigma about talking about mental health. Is there something that we could change the way that we're thinking? That would you know, maybe flip the switch and we could? You know, we could easily build that trauma informed society, and maybe I'm talking magic wand stuff here.

Jesse Kohler: 23:04

Hey, no, I mean I don't know if there's any silver bullet, but there are a lot of things that we could do to promote a more trauma informed society. I mean one thing that I think, as a white 29 year old man who's been raised in this society, is that so frequently it's seen as strength to Just be able to bottle things up and move through, and I think that in a trauma informed way, true psychological strength Looks like being able to create a coherent narrative through stressful situations and be able to sort of move through those experiences and frame those experiences in a way that doesn't Deep in our dysregulation, like if you are able to remain regulated while talking and connecting about the things that have been Harmful and impactful in our lives. That is strength. I mean, that is like a very solid definition of psychological strength and I don't think that that is necessarily promoted. But there's so many other things beyond just that side of the stigma that I think we need to do to really create a trauma informed society.

Jesse Kohler: 24:13

One other thing that comes to mind is, like we know the empirical evidence base around the importance of having belonging and meaning in our lives and so Much of the policies that are being promoted at a primordial level in our society again, where we take away the individual onus and start to see how broader society is impacting people. We reduce the amount of belonging that people are able to feel through so many different policies and through oppressive structures, and that's widely across the country in so many different ways, and we don't create opportunities for people to find meaning In their lives in the way that they want. And if we were able to do that, there would be more fulfillment, there would be more engagement and we would create conditions to him of empowerment, and Empowerment is so antithetical to what trauma does to us in stripping away our agency and autonomy in many ways, and so creating those conditions of empowerment would also be another way to create a more trauma informed society. So I think that there's like multiple things at multiple levels that need to be done.

Manya Chylinski: 25:22

Right, and we know and had guests on the podcast, we know that people are approaching this from so many different angles and so many people are thinking about it and kind of Chipping away at each piece of it. And I know you're on the the policy and practice side. What's giving you hope about that side of this?

Jesse Kohler: 25:45

I think that the growing commitment around rise from trauma act, the community mental wellness and resilience act on both sides of the aisle and across chambers where those seem to be growing, are really hopeful.

Jesse Kohler: 25:59

I just got out of a two day summit for the interagency task force on trauma informed care, where agencies are thinking about how to operationalize this through the federal government, and so, again, the work being done at all levels is so important to giving me hope.

Jesse Kohler: 26:16

The beginning of my career was in a Philadelphia public high school and I was, after my master's degree in educational leadership, the director of development at a community center, and so also the work that's going on at the hyper local level.

Jesse Kohler: 26:30

True, when I think about policy, I think about the individual relationships. Who is the child that is going through something, who, through the education that CTIP provides and the promoting, not just CTIP, but like the ongoing evolution of our collective understanding around trauma and resilience, and strength and hope and healing, where an adult is able to connect differently than they otherwise would have with an individual child who is going through something, and create that buffer that leads to different life outcomes. That are happening all across the country, all around the world, and like while working on policy at a very macro level that impacts hundreds of millions of people, potentially in positive ways, we hope. The idea of those very micro and grass root orientation, of how this changes one life at a time and how we can reorient systems to create more of that is what gives me the most hope and what I try to keep in mind as much as possible.

Manya Chylinski: 27:35

Yes, I imagine having something like that to keep in mind through some of what must be frustrations sometimes when you're doing the kind of job that you're doing.

Jesse Kohler: 27:46

Certainly frustrating. A lot of the time it was hard, it was reall hard CTIPP got bigger during COVID and so before that I was in an all volunteer role but to watch the way that our country fumbled to respond accordingly to a widely traumatizing event and the mismanagement, the fighting, which was understandable, through a trauma-informed lens, like I understand and try to be compassionate toward the stresses that every level of our society was facing, while again, covid did not create the problem. Covid exacerbated so many existing issues where our society was structured in a way that we were waiting essentially, for something to happen that was just gonna break our system, and that was COVID just continued to break already fractured and fracturing systems.

Jesse Kohler: 28:42

But there have been a lot of sleepless nights, mania, there have been a lot of tears and it's hard sometimes, but then you hold on to the hope and you move in through every day. And what else can we do? I feel so fortunate to have that opportunity around again going back to meaning and belonging where, even through the tough times that are really hard and we all face it in multiple ways, that there is something that we hold on to that keeps us going through difficult times. And again I've been fortunate to have incredible people around me, a community of support, other people and colleagues and advocates across the country that are doing this work that make those times easier to get through.

Manya Chylinski: 29:27

Yeah, all right, so we're getting close to the end. What is one question that you wish I had asked you, and how would you answer it?

Jesse Kohler: 29:36

What a great question Like what's the most important factor in my life that has gotten me through a lot of the hard times that I've faced, because there's also been eating disorders and like a lot of other stuff beyond, just like the parts of our stories that we share right, there's so much more than we could share in this one podcast, but I have been surrounded by love from before I was born, and there's been so many other privileges that cannot be overlooked by friends and family and feeling like I had a place in this society.

Jesse Kohler: 30:12

I think we're so critical to not just me getting through really difficult times in my life, but also being able to take risks that have led me to be able to help lead, see, tip and put myself in the position and again, a lot of privileges have led to that but that allowed for me, at 23 years old, to decide that this is how I was going to help the world and ride that out for the last six years and continue to be committed to that over time. And I think that everyone can have people in their lives that believe in them and that love them and want what's best for them, while our society may never be perfect and there is so much work to do. I can imagine a world in which every child, every adult, every family and every community is surrounded by love that helps us find new senses of meaning and belonging and gets us through this difficult time that we're going through and helps us rebuild toward a more hopeful and better future.

Manya Chylinski: 31:20

Wow, thank you for asking that question and answering it. I appreciate that. So, as we're getting ready to wrap up, what would you tell your 18-year-old self about resiliency? Oh man.

Jesse Kohler: 31:34

I have a lot to learn from my 18-year-old self. Actually, I've been trying to tap back in. I wish that my 18-year-old self knew that I didn't need to be perfect to be good enough and that life is long and hard and challenging and incredibly worthwhile, but that sometimes I was going to fall back down and that didn't mean that I was letting dug down, that didn't mean that I was letting. I had really built myself back up in a way that was sort of single-tracked, and I wish that my 18-year-old self knew that I mattered and that I didn't need to be perfect to matter. If I loved and did the best that I could, that that's good enough and if I do that as best as I can for as long as I can, I'll end up all right, yeah.

Manya Chylinski: 32:32

Well, thank you for sharing that and, before we wrap up, tell us how can our listeners reach you to learn more about you and about CTIP.

Jesse Kohler: 32:42

So you could go to ctipp. org c-t-i-p-p-p-dot-o-r-g. There are opportunities to join our community advocacy network. We have a ton of free resources on our website and continue to come out with more. We have calls and networking opportunities and would love for every listener and all of their friends and family and whomever else in their network to join in that as well as we work to build this movement. My email is jessie at ctiporg, and folks are welcome to reach out to myself or anyone else on our incredible team. We are also on LinkedIn, facebook, twitter, instagram. We have a YouTube page and I think that that's all of the social media pages and addition to our website that we currently have, so you can find us on all of those as well, through CTIPP as the best way to reach me.

Manya Chylinski: 33:36

All right, we'll put links in there too, just so make everybody happy. Jesse, thank you so much. This has been such a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us.

Jesse Kohler: 33:46

No Manya, thank you. And thank you, in addition to this conversation, for a decade's worth of advocacy that led to substantive change and real policy change that is going to make a lot of people's lives better in the future. I mean, you are a huge source of hope and inspiration for advocates that are doing this work everywhere. To know that it might be long, it's a long process, it's tiring and exhausting at times, but at the end of the day, transformation really is possible, and so I want to take the opportunity to thank you too.

Manya Chylinski: 34:18

Oh, thank you for saying that it was an amazing process. Yes, so, and thank you to our listeners for joining us today, and we will see you again soon. Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, Mania Chilinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, wwwmaniacilinskicom, or email me at mania at Mania Chilinski, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.