Episode 7: Understanding PTSD: Insights from Real Experiences

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a term that has gained significant attention in recent years, yet many misunderstand its implications. In this episode of Married to Wellness, hosts Jess and Ted delve into their personal experiences with PTSD. Ted, a former police officer, shares his journey, while Jess, a trauma therapist, provides insights into the complexities of trauma and its aftermath. This post aims to clarify common misconceptions about PTSD, highlight effective coping strategies, and offer support for those navigating this challenging condition.

Warning: Descriptions of traumatic events. Listener discretion is advised. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome to Married to Wellness, a Two Roads Wellness Clinic podcast.

SPEAKER_02 0:04

We're Ted and Jessica Nimitz, married for over 20 years and owners of Two Roads Wellness Clinic.

SPEAKER_03 0:09

After years in the wellness world, we've learned that caring for people is about more than just health. It's about relationships, work, family, and how we show up in all of it.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Each episode we'll have real conversations about mental and physical wellness, cutting-edge treatments, changes in healthcare, and the messy, meaningful reality of running a business together while raising a family.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

If you're passionate about wellness, curious about new approaches to care, or trying to build a life in a business you love without burning out, this podcast is for you.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Let's dive in. Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of Married to Wellness. Um this one.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Episode seven.

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Episode seven, numero siete. Yes. Um this one we're talking about PTSD.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Post-traumatic stress disorder.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Yep. Um, full disclosure, Jess and I just kind of winging this one. We wanted to have a conversation about it. You'll get a, I guess, a not a bird's eye view. You'd be a fly on the wall. Uh PTSD. Um, post-traumatic stress. A lot of people, it's it's a buzzword. It's a popular um diagnosis, I guess. Uh a lot of people bandy it about. Um some people hide behind it as an excuse, others truly deal with it. I'm not taking away anything from anybody who's living with it or really dealing with it, but um it uh, you know, it's serious, it can be life-altering depending on how severe it is.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

Yeah, so let's uh preface this episode by saying that so like my specialty is trauma. So I work mostly with um clients that do have trauma and kids or adults. And also that Ted was, you know, uh he did experience um a lot of trauma when he was a police officer. And for a long time he didn't recognize that he did have symptoms of PTSD, and as his wife, who's also a therapist and specializes in trauma.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

And totally objective.

SPEAKER_03 2:15

Yeah, I did recognize that. But, you know, I think we talked about this in previous episodes. I can't be the one to diagnose him with that.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

Right.

SPEAKER_03 2:23

Um so tell a little bit about how this all came about.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Yeah, so so here's the thing. Um, if there's any first responders listening out there, military vets, you know, those were the ones um that kind of get thrust into the limelight when the PTSD discussion uh kicks off. On the backside of that, victims of um, you know, violent crime, victims of abuse, um there's a whole host of ways where PTSD can manifest itself in people. It's not just those of us who wore a badge or carried a gun for a living. It's um so I just I kind of want to caveat the the PTSD discussion around that. And and to l lay a little more groundwork, there are guys and gals still out there doing the first spawner thing um that saw way worse, way more than I did. Um, and my hope is that they're just fine. Chances are they're not, um, just because statistically, uh, like a police officer will encounter, oh, I'm probably gonna butcher the stat, but it's like something to the tune of 400 uh critical incidents in a career, whereas the average human might encounter four in their lifetime if they're not in a military first responder role.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Well, and I think, you know, being aware too, that not everybody that experiences trauma develops PTSD.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Right. There's a that that's thank you for that leading, because there's a genetic component, which I I found out through this process that, you know, predisposes you um to respond to traumatic stress with developing PTSD. So it's like the cards are kind of stacked against you if if you're not aware of it, um, that when you go into these professions where it's life or death, you know, every night you're on shift or what have you, it's um you're gonna you're gonna come out with scars. Like there's no there's just no way around it.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

I will say too that when we do experience trauma, even if we don't develop PTSD, there are certain trauma responses that we all experience. They may be a little bit different, but similar in the fact that our um nervous system is activated into knowing that we're not safe. And so uh the part of the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system that basically, you know, regulates fight or flight response, um, or sometimes we shut down and we freeze, that part is activated and says, you know, I'm not safe right now. And so we're going to have certain symptoms. Um, for example, you know, the desire to fight uh or run away is normal and human to all of us. Um, people that experience, you know, like kind of like replaying the incident over and over again in their mind. Again, that's normal to happen right afterwards. Uh your brain's trying to understand it. It's trying to process it in a way that we say adap it's adaptive processing. But what happens in PTSD is adaptive processing never really happens. It's uh you're almost like stuck in this loop where you um you just relive it constantly. Relive it. And so, you know, when we can adaptively process a memory, it becomes part of our past. We we learn from it. Um, we it's not good that it happened and we know it's not okay that it happened, but we are able to, it just kind of becomes a part of us. We're no longer experiencing that moment like it's right now. Whereas in PTSD, you are experiencing it like it's in the present.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

It's like spicy deja vu.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

Yes. So Ted calls this spicy deja vu. So Ted, can you can you share a little bit about your experience?

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Yeah, yeah. So kind of the eye-opening moment, I think, for for both of us in terms of my dance with the devil here of PTSD, was we were we were on a trip somewhere. I don't even remember, but you know, you're going to Florida? Maybe. I don't know. That's what it's irrelevant. It was it was okay. It was a road trip, right? And you're like, hey, there's this assessment. Do you want me to help you complete it? And I was like, sure, whatever, you know, kind of blew it off. So we get through it, and I'm answering honestly, and um you scored it for me at the end, and you're like, Oh my gosh. I'm like, what? And you were like, uh this points to pretty severe case, right?

SPEAKER_03 7:16

Um and so it it's Ted, can you share a little bit about like what symptoms you're having at that time that uh back then? Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Um so the weird thing about PTSD is there's no rhyme or reason to the symptoms or really even the triggers. There's some there's some commonalities, like, you know, a lot of guys can't do large groups, can't like certain noises, um lights I've heard have been problematic for some guys. Um I I'm just scratching the surface here. But what were you experiencing? What was I experiencing? Um, kind of like what you said, being stuck in that loop, um nightmares, uh, you know, or or somebody would like I would somebody would uh bring up a subject or a topic. Um at one point it was bad enough where smells were firing it off. Um smells or like even temperature changes, uh which is bringing back up the yeah, yeah. And uh and I think we discovered that in that assessment. And like I remember answering those questions, you were like, Really? How come you never told me that smells did this to you? I was like, I don't know, I didn't think it was relevant.

SPEAKER_03 8:35

Well, and I could tell you from like the out like my perspective, you know, I missed a lot because I didn't know you were feeling that way.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

But like what I could see It's not like I was an open book either.

SPEAKER_03 8:46

What I could see is like we would go on vacation or go somewhere and you didn't want to be out and about around crowds. Yeah. You would always sit.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Still don't.

SPEAKER_03 8:56

Yeah, like where you could see the door, see all the exits, and you kind of train me to sit on the opposite side. So I already do that now.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

Um, also, you know, the nightmares, you know, because you wake up screaming, I wake up screaming, what's going on?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

Yeah, the well, that's what I mean by the symptoms being weird, right? Because the so when I was still active, I don't maybe I had one or two night terrors.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

I remember you having terror.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Did I? But it seems like they got more frequent post-career.

SPEAKER_03 9:32

One night you searched me for weapons. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_02 9:35

Yeah, yeah, you're pretty pissed about that when we woke up. You freshed me last night. I was like, well, was it fun? And you're like, that's not funny.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

I tried to tell you, like, I'd wake up and you'd be like, stop moving, stop resisting, stop resisting. I was like, oh my gosh, this is not fun.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

It's a good time.

SPEAKER_03 9:52

No, it's spicy. Yeah, it was spicy for sure. And we can laugh about it now. Yeah, but it was definitely not.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah, you gotta I I don't know, if you allow yourself to just fall down that despair vortex of, you know, oh, I can't function. Like, yeah, dude, it sucks, but at some point you gotta and and I'm the biggest hypocrite there is, you gotta get help, which I have not done, just try to self-manage. But if it's bad enough to where it's, you know, killing relationships and your career and that sort of thing, dude, go see somebody. Yeah. Um, so I think sp this there's one specific instance in my career where I was I was early on, right? Um, and the thing that I hated the most was dealing with like death and carnage, right? Like mangled bodies and people being dead and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

Should we have like put a a warning on this? You're probably gonna have to. Well, I'm sorry guys. Warning.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Yeah, but there was this art story. Yeah, so I went to I went to a uh traffic crash. I think I was maybe, I don't know, two years on at that point. And um it was daylight, rural intersection, uh, family of four rolled a stop sign. Somebody else T-boned them, and it was, I mean, it was lights out. The the family that got hit, I'm surprised anybody survived, honestly. But there was a what I assume was the grandma riding shotgun. And um, like I I as I tell you, tell the story, I could I can still see the image in my head and remember the weather and probably one or two guys who were on scene with me out there. But um anyway, this lady took a massive head trauma. Um, like we could she could have got cracked in the head like she did inside of an ER, and she was toast, right? Um it was one of those injuries. So I I rolled up on scene, um, get out, you know, sprint up to the car, try and rip this lady's door open to get her out, finally get the door loose, um, basically cut her seatbelt to extricate her from the car, and I'm just holding there, holding her there, trying to get a response. Uh, because shortly after that, a couple, a couple of my buddies had arrived on scene and they were tending to the other victims. Um, so I'm trying to get a response out of this lady, and uh she's at this point she's vomited, right? And she's got fluid coming out of her ears. So if you know anything about medical stuff, that's like two really, really bad signs. Um, regardless of the fact that she was, I think she was in her 70s, maybe late 60s, early 70s. Anyway, she's a little more fragile because of her age. Um and she like she's looking at me and she's not saying anything, but she's like like we kind of locked eyes, right? And uh she ends up basically just dying in my arms at that point, and uh before the ambulance could even get her out of there. And that one, I don't know why, it that one ate me for a while, and then uh so I think about that time you were getting into the EMDR stuff, right? And um, I thought it was the weirdest thing ever. Like, you know, because if for those of you who don't know what EMDR is, it's what eye movement, desensitization, rewiring, and reprocessing. And reprocessing there it is. So proud of it. So you it's either the use of m bilateral stimulation, so like tapping on your legs or your arms or whatever, or tappers.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Yeah, tappers, or a light bar.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Like at this point, you didn't have any of that stuff, and it was just you're like, you know, sit here, watch my hand, and you did the the back and forth thing, and I'm like, this is so goofy.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

Like if somebody comes in here So yeah, let's back up again. So you did reach out to our pastor to come That was a different incident.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

It was a different incident? Yeah, no, that was when that guy got shot in front of me.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Well, I was gonna say I say this stuff so flippantly, like so dysfunctional.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

Ted did reach out to our pastor at the time.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

Um that was a separate incident for a different incident.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

I'm just remembering when we lived on the third street. Yeah. That's the first one I remember. Um and he did come over and sit with Ted and talk through it with him and you know, prayed with him and all and everything.

SPEAKER_02 14:46

I don't remember the timeline if that if that crash happened or that's the first one I remember, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

Anyway, and then you know, we talked about you seeing somebody uh for support.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

Yeah, that wasn't happening.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

That wasn't gonna happen. So then yeah, I'm waving my fingers over here. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

So and here's here's here's why though. Like it for those of you maybe outside of the first or smaller lifestyle, like if you go and get help, um, it can cost you your career, depending on what department you work for. There is awareness being raised and it's being more accepted in some departments. Um, you know, be it I I can't speak so much to fire, I can speak mostly to law enforcement. Um, but like I think I feel like fire's way more open to it than law enforcement was, but um that there are law enforcement departments who are recognizing it as like, oh, we're putting guys and gals out here night after night. Like, how do we be preventative, right? Like, there's some out there doing it. Um I don't want to paint with a completely you know broad brush. Um but seeking help. Um at that point in time, PTSD awareness wasn't what it is today.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

And uh knowing what you know now, though, would you go to an EMDR therapist?

SPEAKER_02 16:15

If I had to start over?

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Yeah. May I dunno. I say that now. It's it's incredibly hard to you know want to take that step because it's like some rando that you're gonna walk into the office and be like, hey, my head's screwed up. Can you wave your hand in front of my face? Like you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 16:32

Like that's we're kind of joking about it, guys, but I mean it is EMDR is an evidence-based uh therapeutic modality that was discovered in the 1980s. So it's been around a long time. There's been a lot of studies on it. It's used by the VA for PTSD. So I mean, it is a really great treatment option.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Well, it's pick it's picking up steam a lot, right? Absolutely. Because I I still monitor um some cop forums, right? Uh just I don't know why, but I should probably get out of them.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

Well, my point was at the time though, Ted wasn't going to go see someone. Right. And, you know, normally you don't do therapy on your spouse, but uh he was in crisis and he wasn't going anywhere. So I'm going to do EMDR with my husband. And would you say, what was your experience with it?

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Right. Um, so I do I do want to say it's in those forms that guys are recommending it to each other now. Okay. More and more like, you know, because there'll be guys in there who post anonymously, hey, I saw a dead baby tonight. Like, what do I do? I don't know how to reconcile this, right? Because old school it was like go home and drink a fifth and call it a day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Um I think some people still cope that way.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yeah, oh a hundred percent. Uh but that catches up to you faster than even the nightmares. So um anyway, my experience with it. Uh it definitely I took the edge off, if I can call it that. Um, but I s I stopped like the imagery is forever burning my brain. I don't think I'll ever get rid of that, but uh I stopped seeing it on a recurring basis.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

Yeah. And that's what it does. So it's not hypnosis, like it doesn't get rid of the memory. You still have it, it just lessens the intensity that you feel in your body and allows you to be in the present moment instead of in the past.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Right. So like some of the studies you and I have discussed about EMDR is like the roots in it is when so like the the 1800s, when guys were fighting wars back then, everything was done on horseback, and they would ride home, and it was like if they couldn't if they couldn't ride their horse, they'd be they it was almost like they couldn't heal, right? Because the the motion, the up and down, provided some type of uh stimulus, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 19:04

Right. Well the yeah, the horse does provide almost like the bilateral stimulation, you know, and calms. Because of how they move, right? Uh-huh. Yeah. That's why people like um there's a couple of couple of practices close to us, but one is Gateway Family Services in Potomac. Uh Michael Remley, which we'd love to have him on our podcast sometime, but he specializes in equine therapy, um, and he does just that.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Yeah. Which I never understood why I freaking love horses, but yeah. They're fantastic. I don't ever want to own one because they're expensive money bits, but a lot of fun. Um yeah, and I guess on on another side note of I guess coping is uh it's like riding a motorcycle. Um depending on what bike you ride. Myself, I favorite Harley's, which has two cylinders, right? So two pistons going up and down, uh, just rumbling away, right? You don't even think about it when you're on it, you're like just you know, you're thinking, man, this thing sounds awesome. It's, you know, American Iron doing the whole 10 Allen thing, right? Um But looking back, like why I took such a liking to it and why it was just like, you know, I go disappear on some two lane for an hour and a half and come back just feeling completely renewed, I guess, was probably due to the fact of how that those engines run and vibrate. And um I probably shouldn't have said vibrate because I can hear my buddies now, like really taking that out of context. But like the But it's calming, but it's calming because it's that system. Yeah, because those cylinders are just hitting one, two, one-two, one-two, one-two.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Yeah, I know I kind of mentioned a little bit earlier about the autonomic nervous system, but the you know, three different parts of the autonomic nervous system are the um parasympathetic, sympathetic, and dorsal. And in parasympathetic, we're calm. That's where we can connect, sh connect with each other, have empathy, um, relate to each other, things like that. And then the sympathetic is where we're in our fight or flight response. Endorsal is where we're shut down, we're numb. We can't feel we're numbing out to things. Um and we literally have to, if we're endorsal, we have to go through the sympathetic to get to that calm place um in our parasympathetic nervous system. So my point being, uh things like the bilateral, things like the uh, you know, riding your motorcycle, that's taking you from the sympathetic part of your nervous system into the parasympathetic where you feel calm again. Right. And regulate it.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Yeah. So we are at time. Why don't we have you guys back, listeners that is, the next episode for part two.