Erase PTSD Now: The Podcast
Erasing the Silence
Our podcast series focused on real stories, real science, and real change in the fight against trauma and PTSD.
This is a 20-minute podcast format designed to:
- Demystify trauma and the healing process
- Elevate underheard voices: survivors, veterans, clinicians, researchers, and advocates
- Showcase powerful treatments like the Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB)
- Inspire action—from listening to advocacy to funding care
Each episode will center on a single guest—either someone with lived experience or an expert in the field—and will blend powerful storytelling with clear, hopeful insight.
Erase PTSD Now: The Podcast
Target to Zero: Clearing out PTSD in minutes, not years, with Scarlett Williams
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PTSD can feel never ending, and its symptoms can cause so much stress and harm in our lives– insomnia, hypervigilance, difficulty with loved ones, and more. Holding onto the poignant details of trauma is how our brains keep us trapped, and often we don’t know which way to turn.
With 25 years of clinical experience, Scarlett Williams has brought together neuroscience and mental health to create the Target 2 Zero Rapid Trauma Recovery Protocol. With multiple research-backed studies underway, Scarlett has treated 1,000 individuals with her method and seen incredible results at a fraction of the time.
If you’re worried that PTSD will last forever, or like the traditional methods of care aren’t working anymore, this episode is for you. Scarlett and Coleen will cover topics like family dynamics, real world stories, healing from trauma, and how her Target 2 Zero Protocol has the potential to end PTSD symptoms for many people around the world. Listen in for a fascinating conversation.
Get In Touch:
- www.eraseptsdnow.org
- podcast@eraseptsdnow.org
Connect On Social Media:
- Instagram: @_eraseptsdnow
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Connect With Scarlett:
- Website: target2zero.com
- YouTube: www.youtube.com/@target2zerowithscarlettwil584
#PTSD #ErasePTSDNow @eraseptsdnow #StellateGanglionBlock #TraumaRecovery #RapidTraumaRelief #VeteranMentalHealth #FirstResponderSupport #ACEscore #Hypervigilance #NervousSystemHealing #TraumaPrevention #MentalHealthInnovation #EndTheStigma #StressRecovery #PeerSupport
We're a tough, we're a tough culture, right? Like and some of us are tougher than others. And we we don't break. Okay. Like when you're responding to the worst moments and to see other people suffering, some of those details are gonna stick sometimes. And then that's what's causing all of those symptoms. So what we want to do is create a culture where instead of saying, like, you know, are you okay? Or, you know, what's wrong with you? We want to say, you know, where are you at? Zero to 10. And then if you can't clear yourself to zero, I'm gonna help you out. If I can't help you out, I'm gonna get a licensed mental health professional to clear you to zero. Once you learn this, people can use it for themselves to clear to zero, or that peer support will clear most everybody to zero. It's it's a simple technique. I mean, it right, we don't have to we don't have to have PTSD if we don't want it.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to Erase PTSD now, the podcast Erasing the Silence. Here we bring trauma out of the shadows and into the conversation. You'll hear real stories, survivors, veterans, clinicians, researchers. Together we'll explore the healing treatment and the science behind the stelic ganglion block. This isn't just another podcast, it's a movement. And one that demystifies trauma, elevates unheard voices, and inspires action.
SPEAKER_01Today on Erase PTSD Now, Erasing the Silence, we're joined by Scarlett Williams LPC, developer of the Target 20 Rapid Trauma Processing Protocol, and CEO of Scarlett Williams LLC. With over 25 years of professional experience, Scarlett has built a rapid stress recovery and trauma by processing methodology showing remarkable outcomes, including significant symptom reduction and dramatically faster processing times than traditional approaches. Scarlett is challenging how we measure trauma and how quickly we respond to it. Scarlett, welcome. I'm so glad you're here.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Yay. Yay. So um the big picture. You say trauma should be treated with the same urgency as physical injury. What are we getting wrong and how we currently respond to psychological distress?
SPEAKER_03Oh my gosh. It's not it's not soon enough. And we think it right, we have a thinking that it's gonna take a long time to treat. And I'm finding that that's not the case, right? That trauma targets can be cleared out and as quickly as five to 15 minutes, and you can also use this technique as a preventative. So as soon as an adverse event happens, you can clear it to zero yourself. So there's that possibility space.
SPEAKER_02Can you tell us about how you how how you can get your mind from thinking it's gonna take forever down to getting a target point at 15 minutes? That's pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_03Sure. So I was an EMT, right, and did outdoor science schools, right? So I worked in that arena. I worked as a school counselor for a long time, and then I started doing uh private practice, and then I trained in EMDR. And to me, that was fascinating, right? To reconsolidate trauma for people and to see the differences that would be in some people doing standard EMDR, but other people would not have the same success. So, right, it was about 50% out of 100 it worked, and it took a very long time. So, right, I just read a lot in the neuroscience section of my public library and then started putting different things together to make a protocol that works very quickly for folks, uh, and then also developed it into a preventative, right? Because why, you know, why have trauma affect us uh for long periods of time or for our whole life when we could clear it out very quickly as a treatment? It makes sense to go ahead and then utilize that as a preventative to.
SPEAKER_02I love this. Okay, so now if you're using it as a preventative, how would you identify at that point in time as needing to use the tool?
SPEAKER_03Um, well, you could use it daily. The way that I'm starting to teach it, some sort of train organizations to embed this into their organization is that it's like hand washing, right? We all wash our hands because we know that prevents germs, right? So it took about a hundred years for hand washing to catch on, right? But we brush our teeth, right? To per to for good dental hygiene, right? We don't really have anything for good mental health, right? But we can use this, right? So once you learn to do this, you can use it at the end of your workday to let details of stressful events go. And then, right, you build it into your practice and your routine of your day as a preventative, and then you use it as soon as a a higher stress event occurs. Okay.
SPEAKER_02All right, I like that. So basically, you're saying it would be a fairly easy principle to apply to your day, another tool in your toolkit. Yep. And quicker than quicker than meditation, quicker than meditation.
SPEAKER_03Right, meditation is interesting and meditation is great. Okay, because right, it helps you kind of train your brain to let go of thoughts and just kind of stay calm. When we experience adverse events, right, and you're hanging on to a lot of the details from that those particular events, it's really hard to meditate. And so, right, this you know, this process is you're letting go of those details of that adverse event. So those details aren't bothering you or triggering you in your current experience. Okay.
SPEAKER_02And for somebody that thinks they have an issue with letting go of things, um, you know, of addiction, the this the step program and stuff like that, that has a hard time letting it go. Do you think they would dwell on it more? Or do you is there a way that they can incorporate that into a practice where they really let it go? Or is it something you literally work at?
SPEAKER_03No, it takes about five minutes. And, you know, close to 100% of people are able, the detail, their brains will quickly let go of the details, right? We're not letting go of the fact that an event happened, right? Like I was in a car accident last February, okay. I developed type 1 diabetes in 1998, right? I I those things have happened to me, okay, but the amount that those things bother me and those symptoms that they could cause me, they're not causing me symptoms, right? PTSD symptoms, because I've cleared them to zero. Like, right, like it's a very quick process, you know, it's a fundamental aspect of being human. Once you learn to do this, your brain can do, you know, you can do it all day long if you're if you want to.
SPEAKER_02And to people listening, clearing that to zero has to be like, how, how? So you've you've developed tools that can be used in as little as two to five minutes that's very different from the traditional model of trauma recovery. So, what makes that response so possible? So, why is the person listening hearing this? It sounds so foreign, but what makes it that they can actually do it? And this principle, this concept will work for them. How and how can we get engaged in this?
SPEAKER_03Right, with your traditional therapies, right? Your prolonged exposure therapy, EMDR, uh cognitive reprocessing therapy, right? The ACT brain spotting, right? You're thinking about something, okay, that bothers you, right? And then you're doing some things. You're moving your eyeballs, right? You're thinking about something you might be writing on a piece of paper. With this technique, this is flipping that model to engage uh your gross motor and fine motor system. So you're engaging your sensory motor processing system to make it much faster and easy, and also to create the preventative. And then how can you get engaged on it? So, right, I'm training organizations how to in this um technique so that everybody in the organization can get the training so that they they know how to do the rapid stress recovery protocol and they can use that anytime, anywhere, right? And for organizational training and then embedding peer supports in there. So if somebody can't get to zero, the peer support person can get them to zero. And then if necessary, engaging mental health professionals to get them to zero if they need to get to zero, right? So there's that way, and then mental health professionals to to do this with their clients. Um, I also have an app on my website that people are, if they want to, they can download that and learn the learn the technique themselves to use. So, right, there's multiple ways to gain access to this.
SPEAKER_02Okay, that's good. So, so you're talking about training these people and and they're high performers. What what patterns do you consistently see with them when trauma goes unaddressed? Do you notice anything?
SPEAKER_03Anything that's when some you know, when trauma when adverse events aren't addressed, everybody experiences the same thing, right? Hypervigilance, difficulty sleeping, negative self-talk, uh sometimes people want to harm themselves or harm others, higher rates of stress. Um, you know, it's just, you know, that's been studied across the board for any human experiences similar symptoms when they've experienced adverse events. Like it's just, it's kind of how we are. High performers, kids, you know, first responders, educators. No matter your profession, no matter where you live in the world, we we all experience adverse events the same way or traumatic events the same way.
SPEAKER_02And then what do you see that happening to a family system when these go unaddressed?
SPEAKER_03Gosh, well, you know, it's no fun, right? I mean, you mean that's the reason to get this out for like first responders and military. We see high stress people who choose to do high stress work, right? They're working with the general public and things don't go right all the time, right? And they're running towards danger, okay. Those folks have higher rates of domestic violence, substance abuse, and suicide, right? But rightly so. They're seeing a lot of adverse events, okay. Using this technique to clear that those events out so the brain's not hanging on to those details, right? Brings all of that difficulty, that explosiveness at home way down. So they're just not, you don't have it. It just doesn't, it's not there. But right, you know, grow, you know, growing up in a ha household with high stress, with lots of adverse events, it's no fun. I mean, there, you know, there's lots of argument. I mean, golly gee, probably everybody who's been on your podcast has told you this. You know, it's just not a fun time. It's way stressful. And we don't want that stress, right? We want to help brains let go of those details so everybody in the family system's calmer, everybody in the community is calmer because they're not being triggered all the time by, right? Like, you know, somebody said something and it's triggering something that happened, right? And then the person's yelling. Like, we just calms everybody down. Super easy.
SPEAKER_02Uh and you keep saying that. So I think, and that's probably a concept that sounds so foreign to everybody. So as you say that, you have a zero to uh to ten tool at home, right?
SPEAKER_03So, okay, so zero is the the events not bothering you at all, and tenants really bothering you, right? So, our goal, I mean, the whole reason for giving it the silly name of target to zero is we're headed to zero. So these things don't bother us, right? And getting to zero is possible. And I only say that because I do this, right? Like, I mean, I do, you know, for my private practice, I clear people to zero every day, right? Multiple targets in a session. You know, I mean, I I can clear out a lifetime of trauma in an hour if somebody's very young, right? If somebody's older, it takes me closer to three hours. You know, some people, right, and statistically, you know, some people, it it takes longer than that, right? It's gonna take a lot longer for a statistically smaller portion of the population, right? And but that's okay. It's still faster than those traditional, you know, methods, right? Instead of, you know, it's just, I just I want everybody to know adverse events are awful, right? They happen to us, but they need not affect us for years and years. We can clear these things out very quickly. It makes sense to me to do it as a preventative as opposed to a treatment. I'm trying to put myself out of a job, but it hasn't happened yet. Averse events cause so much difficulty peep for people across their lifespans, right? Uh economically, you know, it's $1.3 trillion per year for Europe and North America, right? I mean, it's a colossal amount of money. And it need not be the case, right? Whenever you know, when an organization learns to use this, they can clear things out for themselves. If they've got past things they want to clear out, it's no problem. Like work trauma for like first responders. I mean, it takes me like 15 minutes clear out, you know, 15, 30 minutes to clear that out for a lifetime of trauma sometimes, right? It it need not be an awful thing that's gonna affect you your whole life, or it's so bad you can't even think about it. Or, you know, like let's open up to the possibility space that we can we can clear these things out very quickly, and people need not have these symptoms.
SPEAKER_02So there's a lot of talk of talk of ACEs. How do you see this playing into how people discover themselves with an ACES score?
SPEAKER_03Okay, so when so when I have folks come in and I'm like, one is calm and ten is overwhelmed. I know people have a high ACE score when they say they're running at like a four to a six or an eight. Okay. So if they're if you have a high ACE score, you probably have PTSD from all those events. Okay, so if you do a PTSD inventory, you're gonna see heck, I've got a lot of these symptoms. All right, I don't want to have all these symptoms. And then you're gonna ask, what can I do to help? Okay, so I'm proposing something new that we use targets to zero, rapid stress recovery to clear out those targets fast, so then people are not having those symptoms.
SPEAKER_02I think that if I was listening, I just keep getting blown away on the fact that you can do this quickly. Because the struggle for the people that I see with PTSD is they've tried everything. They're they're reaching, and you know, with at Erased PTSD now, they're looking to receive the SGB treatment to reset the amyglia. So this process coupled with that is a great tool for the toolkit because you know they're already there, get the reset, but then develop the tool of the of the getting down to zero is is a win-win everywhere you look at it, but yet you say it's quick. And to them, there's nothing quick about recovery. So I think it's just hard to hard to fathom.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so let me give you some stories. Okay, so I trained, so I've trained 30 therapists across the country in this technique. There's six IRB approved studies going on, collecting data. Three, three have collected data and are ready for publication. You know, three more collecting data right now. Okay. Happy to have more people to research with, happy to have investors, happy to have people help really scale this up. Okay. So I trained a therapist who worked with a veteran who had been in a killer bee killed scenario. He'd been carrying around with that for him for over 20 years. He cleared that out in 15 minutes. That veteran needed no additional follow-up afterwards.
SPEAKER_02That's incredible.
SPEAKER_03I know it is pretty good.
SPEAKER_02And go on, another story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, okay. So I worked with a retired Navy SEAL who had been in Iraq and couldn't drive down roads in rural in the states, right? He lived in a rural area, was having trouble driving down roads in the states if there was an abandoned vehicle on the side of the road. So I said, okay, where he'd been in Iraq and had been, you know, in the like the the I can't remember what they're called, the the explosive devices. And I apologize. There's a lot of acronyms in the military, and I can't remember all the acronyms for everything. So my apologies to everybody in the military for that. I need to learn that language, and I'm happy to learn it. Um, so and I was thinking, I was like, well, that's not good. You know, he needs to be able to drive down, he's a retired Navy SEAL. He needs to be able to drive down the road and not, you know, get all panicky and heart racing real fast when he's driving by an abandoned vehicle. So I was like, okay, let's clear that out. Took me 15 minutes to clear out that event for him. Checked in with him next time. I'm like, how's your driving? He's like, it's fine. Like we experience awful things and we survive them, but we don't need to carry those memories with us. Our brain can let go of those details very quickly. The symptoms drop out very quickly for people. I don't know what else to tell you. I do this over and over again. I've trained other people to do it. I'm training organizations so people can use it as a preventative. It just works.
SPEAKER_02Do you share now? Do you share this for free or do you get paid to share it?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I am a small business owner in the United States. If I lived in a country that had a better support system, or if I was independently wealthy, I would give this away for free. However, I do have to eat and I do have a daughter. So I I hate that I have to ask for money, but I do. I started a company, right?
SPEAKER_02Now, from my own curiosity, how so if you were gonna train first responders in Palm Beach County, and I wanted to get you here for whatever summit we had going on, around how much does that that cost? That's just curious. I'm literally being curious, curious about this one.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I don't know because I haven't priced it out yet. Oh, it would be it's about $80 per person. Okay. For the initial training, right? It's like between a hundred, between 80 and 120 for each person that trains in the 1.5 hours, right? There's a, you know, there's a leadership training, right? Because you've got to kind of convince leadership, hey, look, Scarlett can do this. She's done it with other first responders. Okay, we'll try it out. I don't really believe her, right? So you've got to have that leadership training to kind of onboard the leadership, right? You're looking at all the rates of, you know, your suicide rate, your domestic violence, your substance abuse rates are not good. Let's fix this. Okay. So you've got that leadership training, and you've got the all the training for all staff, because everybody could use it, right? Your dispatchers, everybody that works needs this technique, right? Because they can use it once you learn it. You can use it for stuff at home, you can use it for stuff at work. You know, one person, everything, it works for everything. So then you've got that training for everybody, and then you've got other trainings, right? You can do this to enhance performance. There's another training to clear out all the past work trauma you have if you want to do that in a group. But some people like to do that, some people don't. You know, it just depends. And then there's a training to train peer support to embed it in the organization, and then the cultural piece, right? Like I want this works and I want it to work for an organization, right? So I've thought really hard about how to do that. Giving people an hour and a half training, they're not going to remember it, right? You've got to embed it in the organization, make it part of your day, right? Make it part of your week, right? So then the other Part of the training is to teach the peer target to zero embedded peer support specialists how to embed that in the organization to create that cultural change. Right. So we're we're a tough, we're a tough culture, right? Like and some of us are tougher than others. And we we don't break. Okay. Well, as like when you're responding to the worst moments and to see other people suffering, some of those details are going to stick sometimes. And then that's what's causing all of those symptoms. Move through it to clear those out. Okay. So what we want to do is create a culture where instead of saying, like, you know, are you okay? Or, you know, what's wrong with you? We want to say, you know, where are you at? Zero to 10, where are you at? Okay. And then if you can't clear yourself to zero, I'm going to help you out. If I can't help you out, I'm going to get a licensed mental health professional to clear you to zero. Okay. But I think everybody can pretty much do themselves. Can when once you learn this, people can use it for themselves to clear to zero, or that peer support will clear most everybody to zero. It's it's a simple technique. I mean, it right, we don't have to, we don't have to have PTSD if we don't want it. I hate to tell. I mean, I'm glad you have this podcast on erase PTSD because, right, that's what I want to do, right? It's like we don't, we don't have to have all this suffering occur. Like this is working. It works. I love that.
SPEAKER_02Okay, good. All right. So so before we wrap up, is there anything you'd like to share, resource training opportunity, or anything else that somebody can learn about Target to Zero?
SPEAKER_03Sure. So people can go to my website if they if an organization wants to schedule time to discuss how to implement this as an organization, they're welcome to do that. People can follow me on LinkedIn. I've got a YouTube channel. I don't know. I'm happy to help, you know, happy to help to clear things to zero because the differences in people is amazing. And right, like sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's like, wow, I cannot believe there's that big of a difference in that person. Right. So it's like, you know, that's what we want. We want people to not not need to suffer needlessly and that not need to be the case.
SPEAKER_02Okay, all right, good. Okay, so then the first step to erasing the silence around trauma is it's flipping the question.
SPEAKER_03Trauma happens, okay. We all, you know, we're mortal. Somebody you love is gonna die eventually, and that might cause you trauma. There's no way around it. Trauma's part of life, okay. So we need to just be okay with that. Yeah, stuff happens, it's no big deal, okay. And then scaling zero to ten, how much is it bothering you? And then for some people, the 10 people can be at the same event. It might bother one person at a two, it might bother another person at a 10. Okay. And the reason why that doesn't mean one person, there's something wrong with one person or they're bad or something. It just means you're human and those minute details of that event are poignant for you in some way. It just means you're human. And luckily, we can clear it out really quick. And we got the tool to move through it.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Scarlett, for being with us today. Oh, you're so welcome.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for listening to Erase PTSD now, the podcast. If you've been affected by trauma, love someone who has, or want to be a part of real change, this space is for you. New episodes drop every third Wednesday. Follow erase PTSD now so you never miss an episode. And join us in the fight to erase PTSD.