You're Not Broken. You're Wounded. | Trauma, EMDR & Healing with Dr. Russ Irwin

We sit down with Dr. Russ Irwin to talk about trauma, grief, and the moment you realize you cannot “get over it” but you can get through it. We break down complex PTSD, why triggers hijack the nervous system, and what real healing looks like when faith and skilled therapy support the process.

• Russ’s personal story of trauma, loss, and finding purpose in helping others 
• The difference between getting over trauma and getting through trauma 
• What complex PTSD means and why it can feel layered 
• Why trauma is stored in the nervous system, not just in memory 
• How triggers work and why the rational brain can go offline 
• How meaning, patterns, and agency shape long-term outcomes 
• What EMDR therapy and Brainspotting do when talk therapy is not enough 
• Attachment theory, insecure attachment, and the “safety equals pain” trap 
• Why awareness matters and why healing needs safe, trusted support 
• The role of faith, belonging, and spiritual connection in recovery 
• Emotional intensity versus emotional connection in relationships 
• Russ’s book Breaking the Cycles of Trauma and what it aims to solve 

For more information about Dr. Russ Irwin and his work, visit:

https://www.irwincoaching.ca/more-about-me

If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to follow the show and connect with us on IG and TikTok at @fortifywellness.

Transcript

Welcome And Safety Disclaimer

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello. You're listening to the Fortify Wellness podcast. I'm Bettina Mahoney, founder of Fortify Wellness. I created Fortify after having to rebuild my own life from burnout, trauma, and the experience of looking okay on the outside while struggling on the inside. Fortify connects people to the right support for their mind, body, and soul through therapy, coaching, fitness, meditation, and wellness resources all in one place. Because most people don't need more content. They need the right support. On this podcast, we have honest conversations about mental health, personal growth, healing, and what it actually takes to feel well and heal. No fake positivity, no quick fixes, just real conversations and practical tools. Before we begin, please note that today's episode includes discussion of trauma and mental health topics that some listeners may find sensitive. Please listen with care. This podcast is not intended to provide medical advice and should not replace care from a qualified healthcare professional.

A Calling Born From Loss

SPEAKER_01 1:05

I am so excited to welcome Dr. Russ Irwin, who is a highly sought-after executive team-building, high-impact culture coach and therapist to C-level executives. With over 20 years of experience in the field of high-performance business coaching and working within the arena of mental health, he received his doctor in psychology and graduate work studies in neuroscience and business from Wharton Business School and Harvard Business Advanced Leadership Development. Dr. Irwin specializes in business development and growth, psychological team performance, and HR assessments. Russ's takes a collaborative approach to working with individuals to help them achieve their goals to improve their overall well-being. I am so excited about this conversation. Let's welcome Dr. Russ. Hi, Russ. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I'm doing good. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

I'm so excited to have you. I talk a lot about trauma. It's one of the baselines of what inspired Fortify for me. And I had to do the real deep inner work, healing work to get through. And healing is an everyday, you know, journey, as we all know. But I want to start off at the baseline. You know, obviously we have so many adversities that we go through in our life. I'm curious if there's a highlighting one for you that ultimately got you into the work that you do today.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah, you know, that's a great question. Um, what I do right now, I would see is a calling, not a career. To me, it is a heavenly assignment working with people and helping people. I didn't initially go back to school. I was in university for 14 years studying. And I didn't go because initially I saw this as a calling. I actually went out of reaction. And what I mean by that is two things. I had residual trauma in my own life. I'd suffered from years. And although I had done a tremendous amount of work, I wanted to continue on with deepening my understanding of that. Second of all, at the time I was married to a wonderful lady, but had uh complex PTSD and suffered greatly from that. And eventually she ultimately took her life. And so, you know, but during those last number of years, my goal was to go to school so I could help her. I think ultimately I have to be honest and say I thought I could learn how to save her. Um, so I went back to get all this education and information, again, ultimately hoping that somehow through understanding and through practice, I would be able to uh to ease her pain. And that didn't happen. And of course, you know, after she had passed, I didn't talk to anybody for about a year. I wouldn't do any therapy because in my mind the story was telling myself, who am I to help people? I couldn't even save my own family. And so that introduced another layer of trauma that I had to work through, you know, with the help of the Lord on that. But that was was part of what got me into the twofold, was my own life experience. And and then, second of all, was going through that with the within my own immediate family.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Wow, I'm so sorry for your loss. That's heartbreaking.

Grief Has No Finish Line

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Um can you break down how you got through it? And my second part of the question for people that don't know what is complex PTSD.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

Sure. Thank you. Again, great questions, Brittany. Um, I love the fact that you use the phrase how you got through it, because there's a bit of this misnomer within culture, society these days that we're gonna get over this. And, you know, I try to help people to understand, and especially within the Christian Christian world, people like we get over this because God just comes in, shifts your heart, everything's great, you move forward, and that's it, no more pain. As though somehow healing from trauma is a form of amnesia and that you forget everything that's happened to you. I still remember in details all the things that took place in my life, but this thing is gone from the memory. So I have the memories, but I don't have the residual pain anymore. But you know, in terms of um, I think answering that question, I I had to come to realize that it was okay to not be okay. And I was putting pressure on myself as well as some other people were putting pressure on me. Hey, it's been six months now. You should be moving on, you should be getting forward, you should be over this right now. And grief is a very unique animal, and grief doesn't have a specific timeline attached to it. And, you know, I really appreciate the research years and years ago that Elizabeth Keebla-Ross did on death and dying, but there are not cookie-cutter stages that we go through in grieving or even dealing with our trauma. So I had to realize it's okay to not be okay. And that kind of awareness or self-permission, recognizing that I'm not going to get over this, but I am going to get through this with the help of the Lord and some good quality people around me, I think that began to set the stage to start the process of moving forward. So I think awareness and self-permission was a pretty big thing for me. And that's what I try to share with clients, patients, you know, even when I'm doing consulting, is that, you know, I'll say to people that, because they want to get over it, you didn't get through this, or excuse me, you didn't get into this overnight. You're probably not going to get out of this overnight. And this is a process. It's not about plateau or perfectionism. It's about walking through this, journeying through this with some good quality people that are able to help you. So I love that statement that you just use. And I think really that answers a lot. I've learned to get through it with some awareness, for some understanding. In my particular value system, with the help of the Lord, I'm a believer with some really good quality therapists surrounding me, some friends in a great local church. So I was able to move forward, but I don't know that I've gotten over it. It doesn't govern me, it doesn't run me. And the sting is gone from the memory, the pain is gone, but the memories are still there.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

That's so interesting that you bring that up because after I survived my rape, you know, again, six months would go by, a year would go by, and people would say to me, Why aren't you over it yet? And it's so interesting to me because how do you prepare your body and your mind to quote unquote get over it? I don't, and to your point, I don't know if you ever go over it or get it through it or get over it completely, but I'm an EMDR therapy and it completely changed my life to the point where, you know, and of course I'm a believer as well, and God has helped me through it. And I feel like he gave me that experience to help other people, and I really do believe that. Um, and so I think the power of both having EMDR therapy, being able to desensitize myself to the trauma, address it, and understand that I am worthy, that I didn't deserve it, and that God has a has a plan for me. It helps me really cope and come to terms with what I went through. And it doesn't traumatize me as much as it used to. Like I feel like I can share my story and go, yes, that happened, but that is not my whole story. That is just a chapter of my story.

SPEAKER_00 8:22

So I think forgiveness plays a big part in that as well. And, you know, many times people are hesitant to use the word forgiveness because the backlash that can come from that, from the traumatized person, that they create a perception that what I'm actually saying is what that person said or that person did. It's okay. You just need to forgive them. And forgiveness is really not even as much about the other person, it's really about releasing you. And forgiveness not does not in any way condone the behavior of the other person towards you, it actually releases you from that grip.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Yes, I forgave that person and it released me. I also had I I mentioned this in when I um brought Dr. Tabitha onto the podcast, but I had a vision of God hugging me in that place that it happened, and it really released all of that trauma. And I didn't share that for so long because it sounds kind of crazy saying it out loud, but it really did help relieve me of the trauma and the heart-wrenching pain that you feel both physically and emotionally from that trauma.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 9:33

And I know we kind of touched upon that with people misunderstanding, you know, trauma and why are we not getting through this fast enough as if there's a timeline? What do you think are the other misconceptions about trauma that people have and people get wrong?

Complex PTSD And Nervous System Trauma

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Well, you know, uh let me uh sort of answer a question you asked a moment ago because I think it will lead in segue into this is what is complex post-traumatic stress disorder? And PTSD is generally the traumatic effects that we experience from a situation. So it could be a divorce, it could be the loss of a loved one. And, you know, we we the trauma is the byproduct of that particular event. Complex PTSD or CPTSD is the accumulation of several events over time. And so things maybe even starting in childhood, that there's been four or five major things that have happened in a person's life. And so it's not so much they're responding to one thing, but it's responding to several things that have accumulated over time. The other thing is there's a bit of a misunderstanding in terms of how trauma is stored within the system. And you, we, we assume and we've been taught that trauma is stored within the memory. And trauma actually isn't stored within the memory, it's stored within the nervous system, which is why we have a lot of physical and somatic responses and reactions to that. And also, secondly, there's a bit of a misunderstanding of how trauma is stored. So it's stored within the nervous system, not the memories. But people think that it's stored on a kind of a horizontal layer. So if you watch somebody, for example, who may have CPDSD and they're describing some of the horrific events throughout their life, they'll describe it on a timeline, a horizontal timeline, and they'll say something like this Well, you know, man, when I was five, this happened. I mean, gosh, I remember when I was 15 and I went through that. And then what pay that divorce when I was 30. And what happens is when I'm focusing on that divorce at 30, it's almost though my subconscious belief system says that when I'm over here, I can kind of forget what happened over here. So this kind of a horizontal explanation or belief is a way of the brain trying to compartmentalize things. So I'm not dealing with this altogether. The problem is that trauma is not stored on a horizontal plane. It's stored on a vertical axis, it's stored in layers. And it's often stored at the subcortical region within the brain where the language centers are not able to access that, which is why things like EMDR, and I'm trained in EMDR and also have level five international in neurobrain spotting. I actually trained under David Grant himself, who actually is the creator of brain spotting. He was an EMDR specialist. And what happens is a lot of traditional talk therapies don't really have the necessary impact in bringing relief and healing to trauma because it's hard for language to get to those subquota regions. The other issue is this is that because it's stored in layers, that when I experience a trigger or an event that brings something up, and I have this hyper-visional or hyper-emotional behavioral reaction, you know, to this person, they say something, they look at me the wrong way, and then I freak out. And then someone says, Whoa, dude, like what are you doing? It's like my behavior at this moment is not really conducive to what just happened. But what people don't realize when we kind of blow in response to a situation, I'm not actually responding to that situation. I'm responding from these situations. And so the trigger just hits me. And it's not like my brain all of a sudden starts going through all the layered archives, which one of these would best sit that? It's just like incoming threat detection, boom. And I have a reaction towards that. And then the other thing is because trauma, you know, trauma impacts our reticular activating system, our limbic system, emotional threat detection centers. You basically have two switches in your brain. You have your emotional switch and you have your rational or logical switch. They really can't be both turned on fully at the same time. So when trauma hits me and I go into threat detection, defensive mode, and my emotional system is just hyper-aroused right now, what happens is my rational thinking goes offline. My prefrontal cortex now, in a sense, shuts down and goes offline. So in that moment, if somebody said, What were you thinking? Like by doing this, I wasn't actually thinking in that moment. But now, fast forward a couple of hours, when my emotional center comes down, I'm like, oh my gosh, how could I say that? How could I do that? And I'm really sorry now. Why? Because I'm actually thinking now about what I did, but then I was emotionally reacting to threat and thinking was gone offline. So that probably answers a few questions there, but it gives a kind of a bit of a brief synopsis as to somebody's misunderstandings and trauma make it more challenging for us to get through it effectively.

Why People React So Differently

SPEAKER_02 14:27

And you know, it's interesting to me because I I don't have any siblings, but I my parents are have tons of siblings. My mom's one of five, my dad's one of seven. And I've noticed across the board how they, you know, they will have the same experiences, but their response is different. So in terms of trauma and things that have happened in their lives or in general across the board. So is trauma, does it affect people, you know, genetically a little bit differently? You know, one thing that would affect someone more long term while the other person might seem unaffected. Does trauma play a huge role in that? Or is it just person to person?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

You know, a great question. I love your questions. Um, thank you so much, Bettina. Um, so the answer is kind of a yes and. And so, you know, you can have two people that grow up and experience the same environment, but the outcomes later in the life, this guy becomes a millionaire business philanthropist, and this guy's a junkie in jail, but they experience the same thing. A lot of it comes down to personal wiring, a lot of it comes down to personal agency. To what degree of control do I believe I have over my life? And so there are a couple of levers that are involved in the creating of patterns, and patterns generally run the show, not truth and not facts. We're run by the patterns we create. And what often creates those patterns is our thoughts that pair with our emotions. And when a strong thought and a strong emotion are paired together, the brain, in a sense, takes a neurochemical snapshot of that and it goes into the area, the brain is involved with creating meaning. So, what I mean by that is this oftentimes it's not the circumstances that truly affect us, it's the meaning or the interpretation we give to those. Once meaning forms this particular reactive belief system response, that then thought, emotion, meaning start to create our decision making, our behavior, and ultimately the consequences or the results that follow that behavior. So I don't want to say it's about choice, but it really is about choice. It's about meaning. So, for example, my brother and I grew up in the same environment. My brother a few years ago died in my arms. Thank goodness he accepted Christ, like literally a minute before he passed. But my brother and I were on this trajectory based upon our environment, where we lived in the projects, the father we had. You know, I was thrown out of school in my third year of high school. I was just so violent, so full of rage and anger. And, you know, beat a guy close to death, basically, was thrown out of school and nobody would allow me to come back. The irony of it all is I'm a doctor now, but I still don't have a high school diploma. So my brother and I were very involved with violence, alcohol, and drugs, and we were products of an environment. But then what happened is I was given an opportunity to be introduced to God's love to Christ when I was about 19. And based on that and what that did for me, and the new sense of meaning it gave to me as a person and life and what a real father could be like that, that changed a lot of my thinking, a lot of my emotions, and a lot of the meaning that I gave to things. So my brother and I grew up in the same environment, but there was a definite shift when I was 19 and he was 21. He continued on to allow the environment to impact his decision for years and ultimately died because of alcohol and drug abuse. I went this direction over here. And it's not because I was just so wonderful and I was wired for splendor. It was because I was introduced to something that I embraced that had a tremendous impact of how I would think, how I would feel, the meaning I would give to life now, and then henceforth decisions I would make. So this is a bit of a brief explanation, is how oftentimes we can grow up in the same environment and have different outcomes. And I don't want to in any way simplify it for somebody who could be so angry and saying it's just not that easy for us. It's not. But really, oftentimes life does come down to the choices we make. Now that choice might be hard, but then we can invite people into our lives to work with us to help us to make empowering choices and healthy choices rather than destructive ones.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm so sorry for your loss. I just I can't imagine what that must feel like. I and as you're talking about attaching meaning to the experience, it's essentially what EMDR therapy is. You know, it's it's like, what do you attach to a scenario, a very specific scenario in your life? What is the meaning to it? And then desensitizing from it and it re-establishing a new meaning that is healthy.

EMDR, Brainspotting, And Processing Pain

SPEAKER_02 19:16

So do you mind giving people sort of like an overall view of like what EMDR therapy is? I feel like not enough people know what it is, but I think, I think quite honestly, where I was in my life, I think EMDR therapy, because I remember walking in going, okay, I have a list of things I want to get through. Let's do it. And I just thought at that time to really push through and not get in my own way in terms of the trauma I experienced with the rape, amongst others. I realized that talk therapy was not going to do it. Like I really had to dig deep and it was painful, but it happened. So can you give us like an overall view of what EMDR therapy is? And because I think it's really interesting the way that we attach meaning to experiences that might not be logical, that not might might not be the reality of what the situation was.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah. Um, you know, I won't give a kind of an in-depth theoretical framework for the eye movements and all that, but really in a nutshell, I think where EMDR and brain spotting are very similar, going back to what I'd mentioned a few moments ago, is is it is it allows you to go deep into the subcortical regions. It's like opening the door and going into an area that talk therapy would have really some difficulty in taking you into. And the brain does not actually want to hold on to trauma. No, the brain wants to protect you, and the brain will create defensive scenarios for survival. But the brain doesn't want to carry this, it actually wants to process it. It's just either we don't know how to, or we don't allow people into our lives that know how to. So I know a lot of trauma people have said, hey, I've gone to four different therapists and they asked me, well, you know, how do you feel? And all these things. And I mean, nothing wrong with that, but they said, I came out and I just lost faith in the therapeutic system because nobody was able to help me. I said, Did anybody go deep and allow your brain to actually process what was going on? And this the distortions within beliefs, the distortions within thought that are a result of that. And so what happens with EMDR and brain spotting is it's taking the person down into a very, very safe level where the the brain's saying, hey, I'm over here, pain, I'm over here. Come and help me, come and work with me. How do I get to the surface? So I'll stop for a moment and say this about triggers. We know that triggers, we are triggered, we're impacted by something because somehow it or he or she reminds of us a very painful event before and that event comes up. I really help people to reframe triggers in that we see triggers as a negative thing that came and it brought up this awful message. Memory and it's awful, the trigger's bad. I said, but what if a trigger's an invitation to healing? Well, what do you mean? Well, your brain knows, and God knows that deep in those recesses of your being, your soul, and of your brain, this pain is here. God wants it out, your brain wants it out, but nobody knows how to access it. Well, EMDR and brain spotting will go dig deep. Your brain announces, I'm sitting here, here's where my pain is. And you're able to process that again in a safe environment with somebody to bring it to the surface so you can basically work towards washing it away. Um, and and I think what I would say is EMDR and brain spotting is deep level neural work, it's deep level brain work. Whereas talk therapy oftentimes is again, talk therapy involves a lot of rational thoughts. Well, how are you feeling? Let me think about it right now. Well, tell me what happened. Um, okay, well, let me think about it. This happened. And what it does is it tries to invoke healing through the prefrontal cortex, and that doesn't work. You have to go deep, you have to dig deep, you've got to excavate to bring to the surface so that you can bring release to that. And I always say this oftentimes to people is excavation can be painful work, but you can't recover from what you can't acknowledge. You can't recover from what you can't see. And so EMDR and brain spotting allows the opportunity through that excavation to bring something so you can be aware of it. So now I can see it. Now I can acknowledge it. Now I can process it effectively, and I can begin to move through it.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Wow, that's such a great way to put that because it's it's EMDR is not fun and I dread it, but it has been the most helpful therapy I've ever had. And so what I am hearing that you're saying are like triggers are just basically like warning signs that you haven't dealt with the thing that your body is reacting to, which is really interesting. And I'm curious the way that we attach meaning to specific moments in our life that were traumatic. Does it come from childhood of you know our experience and our relationship with our parents and the way that they showed us love and affection?

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Well, I again, so great, great questions, Bettina. And I feel bad, which is probably why I'm going into a bit of a lengthy explanation. Some of them are yes and it's the typical psychological answer, right? Well, yeah, but no. Well, which is it? And so obviously, environment does play a huge part in let's just say adult debilitation. John

Attachment Wounds And Safety Equals Pain

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Bowby, a famous, famous psychologist years ago, he was the one that studied infants and family dynamics and relationships and came up with what he called attachment theory. And he came up with what's called secure and insecure attachment. There are two types of attachment. And so, you know, secure attachment is I grew up in that loving family where there's a lot of validation and openness and trust. And so I grew up with this secure form of attachment that I can carry on now into my adult relationships. Insecure attachment, one example of that would be neglect. So if I grow up in this neglectful environment where validation and love and the ability to be seen and to feel safe, psychological and emotional safety is not present, then my brain at a very young age starts to go into survival mode and it's asking this question what do we need to do to survive this right now? And then we carry that survival mode mindset into our adult years. And Peter Fonge, years ago, a fantastic uh behavioral psychologist working with personality disorders, he took a lot of the work of John Bowlby from the 60s and he postulated through his research that a lot of adult personality disorders, particularly borderline personality disorder and PTSD, was correlated to insecure and neglectful attachment in childhood. So what happens is when we're younger, there's an imprint that's taking place, and tapes are being created of how we see things and what is safe and what is not safe, and what is my role and what is my value and my worth. And I'm confused now between love and violence. Like you're my parent and you love me, you say you love me, but then you hurt me. And so the environment is playing a role is how we're going to shape our belief systems and how we do life and relationship later on. But the other thing is this is our brain often creates um heuristics shortcuts. And neuroassociations are conclusions that are created, create shortcuts. So, what I mean by neuroassociations is this I might be two years old. My mom puts me on the couch, goes into the kitchen, I fall off the couch, and I hurt myself and I cry. And she comes in, maybe she nurtures me, maybe she doesn't. Oh, you know what, you're okay, pass me on the back, puts me on the couch again, has to go back to finishing. She got stuff on the stove. I fall off the couch again. So what happens is I equate when I'm younger, falling off the couch with pain. But maybe later on in life, I'm smart enough now to know that, hey, when I sit on the couch, if I or if I fall asleep on the couch and roll off, it's not the end of life. But what if I create this neuroassociation? I'm scared of heights now and I can't figure out why. Or the couch was supposed to be a place of rest and a place of safety. It became a place of pain. So now I create this neuroassociation that safety can equal pain. So I will sabotage the very thing I long for, safety, but I'll sabotage it when it comes why, because I have a neuroassociation that formed that safety equals pain. That maybe when you say love me, you're gonna hurt me. So I'm gonna sabotage potential relationships that are going to the very thing I want, loving belonging. But I know what this leads to. Why? Because I have a neuroassociation attached to it.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Wow. So essentially these experiences that can feel traumatic to us can really distort the way that we can view the world around us and obviously people's actions. And I'm curious if we don't deal with these things, obviously we have, you know, we talked about EMDR, but how do we actively deal with these traumas to not inflict on relationships that are healthy for us and maybe veer away from those that aren't?

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Yeah.

Awareness, Support, And Doing The Work

SPEAKER_00 28:18

And, you know, it's it's hard to do work on something you're totally unaware of. But I think, you know, when we, if like for example, if I was scared of heights, I'd want to, I'd want to look into that. I'd want to explore that. Now, I'm not talking about some therapists have done a real injustice to this particular profession by taking you on rabbit hunts, looking for demons hiding everywhere. And that's not what I'm talking about. But I'm saying taking the moment in a healthy, safe environment to explore some of the things that maybe you find debilitating and to ask myself why. And again, with a trusted, safe person who knows what they're doing is to explore with them. And so a lot of my healing, probably the majority of my healing really came through stages of exploration. You know, being willing to face some things and to ask some tough questions that are going to be painful. But again, I had to get to this place where I realized I can either just live where I am, but I don't want to be that. I don't want to do that. When I became a believer, somehow I had this weird sense inside I'm destined for more. That this getting thrown out of high school and just being drunk every day and amounting to nothing, that and full of rage, that that's not why I was here. And I was really, really impacted years ago by something that Mark Twain had said. And he said, the two greatest days of your life, the first day was the day you were born, the second day was the day you figured out why. And I started to have this sense of destiny about my life. But I knew that there were some residual aspects of my painful yesteryears that were getting in the way or were going to get in the way towards reaching that destiny. So I embarked on a journey over a long period of time of just really wanting to do the work. And I think that that's part of it as well, is why I went this direction. And my brother, who I love very, very much, I mean, as I said, he died in my arms when he was on his way out. I mean, I was there with him. I loved him deeply. But why he went a direction. And so, you know, I think it is that willingness to do the deep work. If we will do that. And, you know, and the other thing is I want to throw out a scripture that really meant a lot to me, even though I didn't understand it. All things work together for good for those that love God. That confuses a lot of traumatized people, and it confused me because my first thought is well, A, don't tell me God's good because if he was that good, why did he allow this to happen? Oh, and B, okay, so I was raped and something good's gonna come from that. What good is there in a rape? There's no good in the event. It's all things can work together to create good. So I know somebody, for example, who who suffered rape. And it was a horrific, terrible thing. And there's no good in that. But as they went through their healing, they started to experience hope, developed a message of hope, probably very similar to what you're doing, Betina. They now travel around the world speaking in large, large forums, bringing hope to people that have experienced particularly sexual trauma. So was the rape good? Absolutely not. Did good come from that? And people are experiencing hope and goodness now because of how she's kind of reframed the goodness that can come from that? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 31:38

Yes, I I do believe that it happened for a reason. And I know when I say that, people kind of look at me like I have 10 heads, but I I do believe that I was strong enough to handle it to be able to hopefully help other people. Because I think that, you know, I I went through through a time in my life where I was in a really dark place after that happened. Because I kind of use the example of like a soldier coming back from war and you've seen so many horrific events. You've probably had, you know, physical and you know, mental, you know, traumas have happened. You come back, life has happened, you know, it life has gone on without you. You come back and people don't understand. And people say things that um are very out of touch and you feel betrayed in a lot of ways. And so that's kind of how I felt. And so my actions went along with it accordingly. And it put me in a really, really dark place until I, you know, found my relationship and grew my relationship with God. It, you know, I struggled and I got to a point, and I think that's what it takes, really, where you get to a point where you're just sick of yourself and you know that you're here for more and you want to live a better life. And so that is when it dramatically changed for me. But I think that's really what it takes, unfortunately, especially if you don't have the support that you really need, not because family or friends can't give it to you, but because they don't know how to give it to you. And I think that is what a lot of people, you know, have that experience, you know?

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Yeah, absolutely. And there's a lot of people that are well-intentioned, they just don't have the tools to offer you right now so that you can work your way through it over time. And then of course, again, sometimes society is not so kind if they're telling us, well, it's been six months, you should be over this by now. So if I'm thinking I need to get over this, then my focus is no longer on how do I get through this, it's how do I get over this. And if getting over is an impossibility, then I'm gonna live very, very frustrated and I'm gonna carry a tremendous amount of shame because I'm trying to obtain something that I'm not meant to obtain. Rather than focusing energy into what's actually rightfully mine, and that is, I can get through this. You know, it I mean, it would be a whole different story, but you know, as I just look through over my life, you know, obviously I grew up in a very horrendous environment. Coming to Christ, you know, obviously was my salvation. Then I began a long-term healing journey. But in the last, say, 12 or 13 years, my father died in my arms, my brother died in my arms, my wife passed away, who I found, and my daughter died last year, and then my mom died on Christmas Eve. So people are like, hold on a second. How are you still standing? Well, A, it's the help of Christ and it's the love of Christ. But, you know, I feel no embarrassment in saying this because I'm a world-renowned therapist and trauma specialist and consultant of businesses. My daughter died a year and a half ago. I still every two weeks go see a grief therapist. And I'm I'm happy to say that because I'm working towards getting through this. And, you know, I could have sat down and said, I know everything I should tell me, so let's just tell me now. It's like, no, I want to go as the client, I want to go as the patient, and I need to open myself up to another objective set of lenses that can help me process on a totally different level that I can't process myself or with myself. My intelligence and my academics is not going to get me through this. I need someone that's gonna hold me during this. It's been one of the most incredible things I do. So I'm all for seeking help. No man is an island, and it's really, really challenging for a lot of people that are still struggling with trauma. They've either sought out the wrong person, being they haven't got the right help yet and the right modality, or they just thought that somehow they'll get over this themselves and you can't. We're better together. And this is why this is a calling for me is to really kind of give back what's been given to me. I'm here because of the love of Christ, but I'm also here because of the help and the hope that was instilled in me from other people.

SPEAKER_02 35:44

Wow. Um, thank you for sharing that and for being so vulnerable. I'm so sorry for your loss. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

And there was a framework that was instilled in me very young in my faith. So at my wife's funeral, this would be 12 years ago now, um, you know, I said, guys, I thank you everyone for coming. I I don't understand this. I I don't know if I ever will. But there's one thing I know, and this is gonna sound really strange to many of you, but I know God is good. I know he's kind, I know he's faithful. And I'm standing here in this funeral, but I can say to you, God is good. He's really good. Now, fast forward a year and a half ago, I'm standing at a funeral again, and I looked out at everyone. I said, you know the irony of tonight? 95% of you that are here for me, for my daughter, were the same people that were here 12 years ago for her mom and my wife. So I want to say the same thing tonight I said 12 years ago. God is still so good, and circumstances don't change his nature. Then why would he? I don't know. Well, then why didn't he? I don't know. But my lack of understanding or the level of my misunderstanding or my circumstances, good or bad, in my mind, it doesn't change his nature. So I had this openness to say, I'm a hurt and I don't get this God. I don't even get my own childhood, but you are good, you are kind, and you don't change. So help me now to navigate my way through this and embrace the kindness and the goodness that is in you and is unchangeable right now. And through that belief system that was grounded over a number of years, and of course, the help and support of both professional and friends, I was able to get through that.

SPEAKER_02 37:38

Wow. Praise God. God is so good, and God, I'm so I'm I I don't know what I would do or how I would have gone through all of these moments in my life if I didn't have God.

Faith, Belonging, And Deep Healing

SPEAKER_02 37:50

And I'm curious, like, how does faith, I mean, you've touched upon it, but how does faith play a role in trauma, you know, for for people?

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Yeah. So if I remove Christ from the mix for a moment, I would say this that, you know, if you consider Maslow's kind of an outdated hierarchy of needs, which really now has been switched to the belief in what's called the six human needs. But the greatest of human needs is the need for belonging. I think that's one of the reasons why God said concerning Adam, it's just not good for you to be alone. So he creates a help meet for him. So belonging is a very powerful thing. And there is the natural belonging that when I connect relationally with a friend, a partner, a spouse, or whomever, or family members. But there's also within us, I am spirit, soul, and body. So my body and my soul, meaning my mind, my thoughts, my emotions, need this belonging connection with my fellow man. But my spirit has been created to connect with God. So there is a sense of longing to belong and a need, a void within me that only he can fill. And so what I'm saying is that when I'm going through or someone's going through traumatic pain, there are things that we can do in the natural and in the physical, and in terms of helping our soul that help the healing process. But there's a void and there's an emptiness, a pain inside that when we allow the Lord to come in, he brings a different depth of healing to that trauma. And he holds us in a way that a tangible person can, even though it's important to have a tangible person.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Wow. And you know, I think healing is a journey. It's not something that we achieve every single day. It's something that's ever growing and ever, you know. And so if someone listening is feeling stuck in a pattern that they've been repeating, you know, for a long time and they're dealing with trauma and they're healing, what's the first thing that you want them to kind of take away and understand about trauma?

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Is as much awareness, excavate for awareness. And the greater the awareness is not that awareness itself heals, because knowledge is not power, unlike what Francis Bacon once said. Knowledge is not power, but the application of that knowledge is. And so I excavate and I dig deep. I hit that dig deep button for awareness. And now that I'm aware of these things, I can now seek out the people or the tools or whatever I need to help translate that awareness now into a form of healing. I would also say this that sometimes where there's a bit of a blockage when it comes to traumatic healing is the misunderstanding of emotions. And we wrongly distinguish, and I think it was one of your questions, that we wrongly distinguish between emotional intensity and emotional connection. So let me just for a quick brief moment define those. Is emotional intensity is the strength of the emotions that are being experienced at that moment. They may not be good, they could be awful, but emotional intensity is the strength of the emotion I'm experiencing. Emotional connection is the depth of the safety, the trust, the sense of consistent security that I feel in that moment. So a lot of people will experience an emotional intensity and they mistake that for emotional connection. And so again, if I have a neuroassociation that love equals pain, then when I have this insecure, unsafe sense of intensity emotionally going on, it's kind of like, well, I equate that with love. I guess I'm in love because this is intense, man. Like we, you know, you hear people say, you know, we we love hard and we fight hard. Well, maybe I'm not going to challenge everyone that says that, but I think when we can understand the difference between the two, because you have emotional intensity doesn't mean that you have love. And it certainly doesn't mean you have safety. If you have emotional connection, then you can have emotional intensity within the safe construct right now.

Breaking The Cycles And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 41:55

Wow. Thank you so much, Dr. Ross. I am really excited. I don't know if you're sharing publicly yet. And if and if you aren't, then I can cut this part out. But I know they have a book coming out. Do you want to share briefly about the book?

SPEAKER_00 42:08

Well, you know, I think it was a long time coming. It's been years in kind of in my mind and in my heart. And, you know, I'll be honest with you, it really took three or four people the last year to basically just sit me down and prophetically say, write the book. One of them was Taylor Welch. Taylor's a good friend, and and Taylor's actually writing the foreword for the book. My pastor and a few others said, the world needs this, Russ. You've got to release this. And then my next thought is, yeah, okay, well, nobody knows me. I'm not really an author. I'm, you know, sure I'm a speaker and a coach and a consultant therapist, but who's going to buy my book type of deal? Um, and then his publishing company reached out to me. And they had published a number of Taylor's books. And so really it was Taylor setting up, you need to meet with this guy. So they met with me and I began to share the story, and they're like, this is a bestseller. Like, you got to write the book. So I began the journey of actually writing the book. It's called Breaking the Cycles of Trauma. And where the book is a little bit different from what I have been told is there are a lot of books that are written from a medical perspective. So, for example, Gabor Mate, who was one of my advisors, who's also a medical doctor, has written some fantastic material on trauma. And then there's some pastors from a spiritual perspective have tried to write books on from a biblical thought or lens on trauma. What the publisher said is what you've done that is radically different, is you are an expert in the area of neuroscience and therapy and Bible, and you brought the neuroscience and scripture and your own personal experience and combine them together. And we don't know anybody else that has done that. So it's called breaking the cycle of trauma because for most people, trauma is a cycle that we get caught in. And we wonder, will I ever get out of this? How do I get fixed? Well, you're not broken, so you don't need to be fixed. You're wounded, you need to be healed. So this book is really about bringing some thoughts and some answers and some real practical tools how you can do that. Um, it comes out somewhere around the end of July or August. There now, from what I understand, the publisher told me they're going global with the book. So it will be available in over 40,000 locations, um, probably by sometime early August, late July.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

Wow, I cannot really read it.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Yeah, I'm excited about the impact it will have. There's been a lot of warfare over it, so I know it's gonna have impact.

SPEAKER_02 44:30

Wow. I'm so excited to read it, and I know our listeners will be too. And thank you so much for coming on today and for your vulnerability. I really, really appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Thank you, Betina. I hope this helped and bless you for what you're doing, your own journey, your own story. And, you know, I just pray that Fortify wellness just explodes. And just so many people find life and healing through not only the testimony, but the gift that God's imparted in you to bring life. So thank you for who you are.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

Thank you so much. I send that right back at you. I know that you're like this conversation, uh, I felt was a blessing. I wasn't ex sometimes people come on and I wasn't expecting the the the impact, and you've made such an impact already. So thank you so much. And God bless you. And and may your book just continue to bless so many other people with me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

And if can I just say if people wanted to reach out, they can reach me through my website as well. It's uh www.erwincoaching.ca. And uh, and then uh there's lots of stuff, material and different things that they can just find on there to uh to help them. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

Take care.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Thank you so much for listening to the Fortify Wellness Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to follow the show and connect with us on IG and TikTok at Fortify Wellness A T F O R T I F Y Wellness. And remember, no matter what season you're navigating, you're not alone fortifiers. Can't wait to talk next week. Be well.