One of the leading modalities to help people heal from trauma is Somatic Experiencing or SE. This is a therapy that focuses on body sensations and to relieve symptoms of PTSD in addition to related psychological and physical problems. Part two of our interview with guest Thayer Case LCSW, SEP will go through each letter of the S.C.O.P.E. acronym, which is a helpful way to remember how to use SE treatment on yourself in real time. Thayer Case is co-director of Maverick Psychotherapy Group and works with children adults and families. He has particular expertise in treating grief, anxiety, depression, attachment issues, ADHD, sensory integration and mild autistic spectrum issues, stress reduction, issues with spirituality, and trauma.
One of the leading modalities to help people heal from trauma is Somatic Experiencing or SE. This is a therapy that focuses on body sensations and to relieve symptoms of PTSD in addition to related psychological and physical problems.
Part two of our interview with guest Thayer Case LCSW, SEP will go through each letter of the S.C.O.P.E. acronym, which is a helpful way to remember how to use SE treatment on yourself in real time.
Thayer Case is co-director of Maverick Psychotherapy Group and works with children adults and families. He has particular expertise in treating grief, anxiety, depression, attachment issues, ADHD, sensory integration and mild autistic spectrum issues, stress reduction, issues with spirituality, and trauma.
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For more information or support contact Kevin or Niseema at info@thepositivemindcenter.com, or call 212-757-4488.
To reach Thayer Kyusan Case go to:
www.maverickpsychotherapygroup.com
For a free download of the SCOPE exercises go to:
https://traumahealing.org/scope/
These are challenging times and we hope this episode served to validate and ease your anxiety about what you may be experiencing.
Please feel free to also suggest show ideas to the above email.
Thank you for listening,
Kevin and Niseema
www.tffpp.org
https://www.kevinlmhc.com
www.niseema.com
www.thepositivemindcenter.com
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This is Kevin O' Donoghue, Licensed New York State Mental Health Counselor. And I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer, Licensed Massage Therapist and trauma specialist. And this is The Positive Mind, where we bring you ideas, concepts, and guests to help you lead a more positively minded life.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:00:47
We've been hearing a lot of bad news lately and witnessing confusing and terrifying events. In our state, in our country. We're living through multiple social crises and there's talk of a coming wave of mental health issues, one being post traumatic stress disorder. You know, nearly one in five Americans, one in five say they have had a physical reaction when thinking about the outbreak, the pandemic, the virus, and I wanted to bring our guest Thayer Case back on, who was working on the front lines. He's a social worker up in Kingston, New York, and works with first line.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:01:30
What do they call them the front line? Front line workers and responders,`"first responders." He was a former emergency medical technician here in New York City back on 9/11. He was one of the first EMTs on the site back on 9/11 so he has a vast experience with communal trauma. And we talked about last week, about his use of something called Somatic Experiencing as a technique, a new technique in Psychotherapy and trauma work to help people. So I wanted to remind people that it's just the thought that could create symptoms for people.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:02:15
And so we want to ask Thayer Case how to take control of this mind that can feel trauma and not actually be experiencing trauma.
Kevin O'Donghue and Thayer Case
00:02:28
Thayer Case, we want to welcome you back to The Positive Mind and we're looking forward to today's show where you can expand on what we talked about last week. Thanks for having me back. So you we're a frontline worker here in New York city. Can you talk a little bit about how your practice expanded to include this missions and values driven work that you're doing now to help frontline workers and people in communities suffering and experiencing trauma?
Thayer Case
00:03:00
I mean the short story is that when I was living in the city, I was working as an EMT and I worked also for some community organizations, one organization was called Plan On A Hotplate where we'd go to all the five boroughs and teach people how to cook on a hot plate for less than $5 a meal for HIV positive men, we had a lot of fun doing that and met some great people. I also, I learned how to cook better. Didn't really stick right along.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:03:35
And you helped a lot of people I assume.
Thayer Case
00:03:37
They did, including me I think so that was nice. And then I was also working as an EMT during that time and I thought about it. Actually I was originally going to join the fire department. There was actually a sign up to take the test and I decided that one of my friends, who I was talking to, was a professor of social work and I was telling him what I noticed. That so many the calls we went on were a heart event where they're actually panic attacks. And so I realized that I should go to social work school. And so I applied and I got in, I went, and was still working as an EMT, a little bit through school.
Thayer Case
00:04:23
And then I was in my first year of my master's program for Columbia when 9/11 happened. So I was able to go down and help out as much as I could.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:04:42
Did that further your passion through your studies and then through the years to come up with this Maverick Psychotherapy Group where you focus on communal trauma and trauma symptoms?
Thayer Case
00:04:53
You know before that I had lived in the city. After college, I actually moved into a monastery up here. I lived there for a bunch of years and when I left, that's been a big part of my practice up here. I'm still a senior student there as well, and after I graduated from a massive program, actually me and my wife, then we moved back for another couple of years. So being part of a community has always been a part of my work and how I think about things. You know, eventually I worked for hospice for a number of years now, I was a social work director at a hospital, and in a nursing home. And I think because it's small living up here, it was interesting to be able to take care of lots of different people of in all walks of life.
Thayer Case
00:05:39
So being a mental health professional, or social worker up in these parts up here, there's a different idea of what privacy is for sure. And so I've got to really know that community really well, especially up here in terms of when I was deep in the Catskills, I was taking care of somebody who had died in their family, a mom or grandmother or grandfather or a child sometimes, or they had been in the hospital, et cetera. And then I eventually went back for some more school and about 12 years ago started this Somatic Experiencing training. And then I started up my own private practice and then eventually I merged my private practice with Maverick Family Counseling.
Thayer Case
00:06:24
And then we kind of just kept growing. And then a couple of years ago, we really did a big pivot and we all decided that we really wanted to put our mission and values in a social justice mission front and center and got a hold of a building, added 10 offices. And we've just had some fantastic people that joined our group. And, anybody who joins our group takes the Somatic Experiencing training. We provided that for folks so we had a shared language that people can do anything they want in terms of modalities, but Somatic Experiencing is a shared language we can all have and that we are developing.
Thayer Case
00:07:09
So it's been really great to be able to work with that. And now we're expanding into being able to serve marginalized populations as much as we can. We also take insurance. That's a part of our mission, the Somatic Experiencing community. When I first started, there was hardly anybody to have insurance it was all private pay. So it was part of my personal mission to bring SE to the Catskills. And to make sure that everybody can have it because I really believed in that. And hopefully that's partly what this is about.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:07:51
As you were talking, I was thinking of the old country doctor kind of feel, I feel like I can sort of get that sense that you were engaging with people on many different levels in many different ways and in communities that are rarely served
Thayer Case and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:08:05
Exactly probably more like an accountant or like a community priest. So here's what I'm interested in. I want to review again, this idea of SCOPE that you introduced to our listeners last week. And then I also want to talk about Somatic Experiencing and how you're applying it in a new way. I think the fact that you're taking insurance with this new modality is breaking new ground in one way, but also I want to talk about how you're delivering it to the community right now.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:08:40
So can we agree to do that for the rest of this hour?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:08:43
For sure. And let's, let's also talk about PTSD because it's a good tool. This SCOPE tool is one that really helps to prevent PTSD in these situations.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:08:52
I just wanna, before I ask you, Thayer, to re-educate our audience about SCOPE and what SCOPE means, read a few, a few more statistics. More than one third of Americans have displayed clinical signs of depression and anxiety, anxiety, or both since the virus began 18%, they experienced nervousness or anxiety most or all of the time during the past week, most feel 67% that the government's response to the crisis is causing even more stress. And finally, there is something called a psychological consequences of collective trauma that is called "Katrina brain."
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:09:39
That can last for more than a decade. I don't know how you measure that down in New Orleans, but I'm really curious about this. And I'm going to ask Thayer if we can talk a little bit about that as well, but Thayer let's go to SCOPE, and how this evolved and how it is useful for people who are experiencing these or even a PTSD or trauma symptoms.
Thayer Case
00:10:05
Somatic Experiencing. This is not really that new at this point. I think it's still being introduced to the general public, but it's been around for probably 40 years almost at this point with Peter Levine and he started this work in the seventies and its really gained steam. I think (inaudible), it was really codified more in the nineties by the work of these fantastic clinicians named Diane Poole Heller and Larry Heller and Ron Feldman. And then a bunch of other folks there who really took Peter's work and made it what it is today and then all the wonderful faculty members and practitioners and assistants out there who've been working hard.
Thayer Case
00:10:47
So it is about 60,000 people. So it's not a huge modality, but I think in the trauma world, you know, with the folks that are kind of the prominent ones, Peter Levine is probably up there. So I just put it out there. It's still gaining steam. I think it's more mainstream issue at this point.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:11:13
And educate me a little bit about it because to me it makes sense that it's gaining steam because I think the average American and most people in general can really recognize that they have symptoms within their body, that they're paying more attention now to their bodies, not necessarily so much to their mind, they are finding the answers in body treatments and paying attention to Somatic symptoms that this is the cure and the clue to healing. So it makes sense.
Thayer Case
00:11:46
Yeah.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:11:47
And I also feel like the medical community and the understandings that are happening now all of this groundbreaking work, it's been sort of all rolling together. Like there's more and more understanding about the body/mind connection. There is more and more understanding about the brain development and nervous system pathways. And it's an incredible time to be in a field of healing and working with mental health issues, physical issues and how they really intersect and come together and they need to be addressed. It's a more holistic approach to address the whole body.
Thayer Case
00:12:25
Exactly. And it's wonderful because I think it really incorporates with lots of different kinds of modalities and including where we all start our lives and this is another way of understanding narratives. It's another way of weaving together narrative and sensations just to kind of have the whole. So it was really a wonderful way of introduction, there's lots of different kinds of Somatic systems. SE is one of them which has particularly good with the shock trauma. And then I can talk a little bit about the SCOPE tool. You know, I think what's interesting about the SCOPE tool, and the origins of it, I'd talked a little bit last time and Niseema and I, we were talking about this before that this is a new kind of the outgrowth of the SE work developed and had been part of it, the development of It and advising on it.
Thayer Case
00:13:14
It's been a collective effort, but these take SE principles and translate it into the front lines. And I think, even if I were talking to Niseema, both of us worked with a lot of people with trauma and this is an opportunity for people to help prevent some of the things that create trauma. And so I think it's, probably maybe before going in to SCOPE for a second is that one of the many definitions of trauma it's too much, too fast, too soon, meaning what is it? It's too much, it's the event. There is subjective experience of the person.
Thayer Case
00:13:55
So you see something horrible, right? It is too much, too fast, too soon, for the nervous system or for our body/mind to take and it's indigestible, right? So we usually could take something in maybe it's something, like "Whoa, that was surprising". You have a feeling and emotion experienced, maybe it's upset, maybe it's happy or whatever, but it kind of can move through you. So we have a more kind of a, four D experience of whatever's happening.
Thyer Case and Kevin O'Donghue
00:14:28
But when something is traumatic, it's like, Whoa, this is an overload of the system, this system meaning our nervous system, you know? And I just want to say, I wanna ask even our audience to tune into, to this question themselves, have you ever had an experience, well witnessed
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:14:52
An experience that was too much too fast, too overwhelming, to soon. I mean, I know I have. I can't even remember the ones that I have I'm sure. And that's why it makes sense to me that the memory of that is lodged somewhere in my body, that I witnessed a lot of things that were going way too fast when I was young,
Thayer Case
00:15:19
Unless you grew up with like a Skinner box. You know you're going to be subjected to trauma. Trauma is not a pathology, it's just the way things happen sometimes. And it's a wonderful way that we cope with overwhelm. If we didn't have these ways of working with overwhelm, then we all would be in a fetal position on the ground. So it's a very difficult life for most of us. And it's difficult to be alive. And I think these are the ways that we can, this is just one of the ways, one of the things I love about SE and associated Medallia is at its heart it's very freeing. It's a very shame-free. These are just natural ways.
Thayer Case
00:15:59
This is not pathology. A threat response is not pathology. Meaning that it's not an abnormal thing. That doesn't mean something was wrong with somebody. So that's why even just psychoeducation about trauma really helps people feel like, Oh, OK. So I'm not a freak where like there's not something horribly wrong with me. Like my body is doing what it needed to do to respond to it. Now it can reset a little bit, you know? I mean honestly, sometimes it is more complicated than that, but even just hearing that can be really, really soothing to somebody when they suddenly realized that they're not full of shame. So anyway, I'm going to make sure to get to the SCOPE. I think, especially right now with the biggest forest fires ever in California and hurricanes and there's just so much stuff going on right now.
Thayer Case
00:16:46
I mean there's always a lot going on, but it is especially now.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:16:51
So you talk about SCOPE as a preventive tool because I rattled off some of these statistics, like nearly one in five Americans say that have a physical reaction when just thinking about the pandemic. And so we wanna talk first about SCOPE as a preventive tool and I'm going to start with it. Yes. Because I can handle this one: slow down. I mean, I don't have to be a Somatic Experiencing practitioner to know. And it's almost the first thing I tell clients when they come into my office, you are here slow down. Yeah.
Thayer Case
00:17:28
And you know, you don't have to know anything about Somatic Experiencing to do any of these things, all of these things were an outgrowth of SE kind of techniques. In theory, we prevent trauma is a interesting way of talking about it because when people come into our office, you work around an event, you kind of renegotiate it with the nervous system basically. And essentially if you're working in the kind of a traditional SE model, somebody releases what is able to complete thought and fight or flight responses.
Thayer Case and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:18:05
Right. So they couldn't run, they couldn't fight at that time. So generally they freeze. And so we work with the freeze and then work with incomplete movements or feelings or emotions that were not able to happen at that time because everything froze. So, you let people expand their bodies. There's a bunch of demos that Peter Levine has done on YouTube.
Thayer Case
00:18:42
There is a great video of him working with Ray, who is an Afghani war or a veteran of Iraq. And, and that's a really great example. I'm working with somebody who came in, they thought he had Tourette's and a seizure disorder and it ends up, he had been very traumatized. Essentially that you're also following the body. So for instance, if you're working with something that happened like a car accident, for instance, but oftentimes people will have symptoms in their neck or their hands or their chest or their feet, or they have the muscles in their legs because the thing happened so fast that they weren't able to, for instance, I know people can't see me if they're listening, but they put their hands up, which would be a natural reaction.
Thayer Case
00:19:30
So it sometimes like when you're working on a car accident, you have people re-established, if their body needs to move up and put their hands up or re-established that boundary around in their body and it happens naturally, it's not contrived. You don't say now let's put up a wall. I know you can do that. But then that can be really helpful. But in this case, it's really noticing subtle movements in inviting the possibility of these incomplete body/mind responses that couldn't happen, but they need to because we are animals.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:20:04
Well, it's one of the ways that we do that. And like the first thing I'll do with most of my clients is to have them slow down. Like Kevin said, like we need to slow down these events so that the body has an opportunity to organize and do what it needs to do. And now we have the benefit of hindsight in a way to be able to go back and not be in the situation, but to be able to play with our, I remember my teacher, Nancy Napier, who we have had on the show, she's like "were going to play fast and loose with the truth." We're going to just open up this experience in a way so that your body can renegotiate what happened to it and be able to respond to what happened
Niseema Dyan Diemer and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:20:48
In a way that's healthy and organized and your system allows it to release. And it really shifted things, but you know that makes me think of hypervigilance. What if I am because I did not process the trauma 30 years ago. The result is I'm a hypervigilant person. I don't have time to slow down. There's a danger around the corner. There's danger everywhere. I am. There's danger in this session, in this room with you, I am hypervigilant.
Thayer Case
00:21:16
Exactly and there's no opportunity to orient, or to orient yourself to the danger. So then you're constantly looking for the danger because that reaction is incomplete.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:21:26
And the orient is the host. So we are going to get to that. A lot of people don't even know they're hypervigilant. You know, you can see it in their body structure, in the way they carry themselves and their friends might see or their partners might see it, but they themselves might not see that they're hypervigilant.
Thayer Case
00:21:40
And you make a good distinction here because we are going through SCOPE, let me return to that for a second. The important distinction is that were talking about me and my friend Bert Rodgers who is another SEP from Kansas City and and he's also on the team that helps with the crisis stabilization safety. And we're were actually working on a podcast to talk about trauma stuff from AI, like using the Marvel cinematic universe and stuff, so, and geek things. And so what are the things, if you want to think like the healing work for all of the geeks and nerds out there is like you enable somebody to have like the infinity gauntlet so that you can alter the timeline with a person.
Thayer Case
00:22:21
And that's really cool. And that's the healing work is that there the whole time. It could be renegotiated and that the past affects the present, the future, in fact, the past. So its really it's a whole different thing in the healing work. Now let me move back to SCOPE because SCOPE is different. SCOPE is not healing. And slowing down in the context of what we're talking about when a client slows down or somebody you were working with whatever the context is, slows down, that's different. That's using the infinity gauntlet to help slow time at work with time, right. When we're working with SCOPE, we're actually in the moment before anything can happen.
Thayer Case
00:23:05
So were actually the prepotential zone. So we're gone before anything happens. So what SCOPE is kind of like a long time giving somebody Ironman armor or something like that, is what it is. It's a protection against overwhelm. So what is trauma? Trauma is when your nervous system gets overwhelmed, for whatever reason, that it can't negotiate what's happening. So what SCOPE is enabling people, and again, it's originally designed for people who are right in the front lines of whatever it is, a fire or a nurse in the emergency room on the frontline, a shooting, there was one with a slowdown connect to the body oriented pendulate and engage.
Thayer Case
00:23:47
So slow down in this context is not necessarily a healing thing. It's actually more kind of a grounding thing so that somebody feels a little bit more present. If someone is a little bit more present, then they are a little bit more robust. So it's almost kind of like, this is the front line. It's not after the battle.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:24:13
If you're a parent and you're thinking, okay, I have to go up to the school and I don't like going out in public and I don't like going to school events for my kid. And I know that this is going to be a very overwhelming experience for me. Or being at a group or being a group in general.
Thayer Case and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:24:31
And this is good at public speaking things too, that was going to ask about that. But
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:24:36
Let's stay with parenting because parents, you know, parents if they wanted to they can think that everyday is a trauma if you're a hypervigilant, you're worrying about your kid all the time. I mean there's a hypervigilance to being a parent. So let's walk through before our break, we have about six minutes to go, through each of these steps. So people have this tool themselves when they know they're going to be going into a difficult experience where they might feel some overwhelm that they can use these tools. So the first one was saying S slowed down.
Thayer Case
00:25:11
Slow down exactly. Is it taking the, in the way we say it in the thing, has it takes slow or 10 steps with it and feeling, noticing the bottom of your feet. Why? Because grounding can be really helpful. And also feeling when you slow down, you notice the musculature generally in your legs and you can feel yourself a little bit more. And so you're a little bit more present, maybe your body settles a little bit. This might be imperceptible by the way. I agree. But something, just something pauses in the middle of it. And it's not too long of a pause, this is not sitting down and getting into a meditation posture. Where like suddenly lowering your head and doing a walking meditation for the next 10 minutes.
Thayer Case
00:25:53
This is not what this is. This is like your on the way to a bed. You're on the way to that meeting. You're about to go back to the fire and as you're walking, you slow down to 10 steps. Joe Schmoe to you, he doesn't even notice you are doing it.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:26:10
And you've seen emergency doctors in emergency rooms being able to do this themselves. I mean,
Thayer Case
00:26:16
And that's the hope. I haven't been there to witness it, but I think from what we've been hearing, these things can be really helpful. Now these are, this is five, you know, for some people slowing down might be annoying, so you don't do it. Right.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:26:30
Right. Yep. For us hypervigilant types, especially if we're faced with it.
Thayer Case
00:26:34
And an in emergency room, which is done, somebody hears some people who are like "slow down," they were like F off. Right. You know, no, that's not what I want to do. This is just, you slow down just enough. So you notice yourself a little bit more, then you move on.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:26:46
I liked that grounding, you know? And as you do this more and more, I'm sure you can do it in a heartbeat if you really have to. I know my years of practice as a Therapist with the clients coming in and out after each hour that I do, this subconsciously in a way I sort of slow down before my next client comes in.
Thayer Case
00:27:05
(inaudible) an armchair quarterback there but much better.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:27:09
It's that I have a sit down a job. So maybe it's easier for me. I feel my feet on the ground, have all the time, but also this is a great tool, but I do want to see
Thayer Case
00:27:21
It to connect to the body. So again, this is a kind of another quick and dirty way of feeling contained. Generally, the way I usually tell people is if you're feeling like you're starting to disperse, like somebody hit you with the infinity gauntlet again, did you use it for evil? And you are starting to find your molecules starting to move away from your body where you feel like a cloud or are you feel like when there was some Woody Allen movie where Robin Williams is just out of focus and all the rest of the characters are in focus. If you feel like that, then connecting to the body, it's probably a good thing. Why? Because it's helpful because if you're starting to feel dispersed, you are going to lose some of your energy that you need to be focused.
Thayer Case
00:28:07
Now you just do this a little bit because dispersion is also helpful too, because both of these things can prevent overwhelm. So it's a dance. So again crossing your arms, putting your hands up under the armpits, crossing your legs, tilting your head. It's just taking a breath. I love this. You know, it makes me think I should be wearing a compression shirt or something and make it feel really good. You know it's a nice thing that you can do really quickly. So again, it's just this kind of straightforward conduct to the body or whatever it takes you to sometimes squeezing your limbs, like really connecting with the body. Okay. And I'm back in the game.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:28:49
So it's almost a way of saying "I have a body", I feel because when you said C stands for "connect to the body, " I'm like, well, how did you do that? I'm thinking of my stomach right now. Do I connect to my stomach? Or, or my kneecap?
Thayer Case
00:29:03
Or not? But your not going to be thinking that in an emergency situation like that, it's not like these processes have "what am I doing?" It doesn't happen This is just you're like, Oh shoot. I'm getting overwhelmed. I need help. And I can't leave. I can't bail off of the emergency table. I can't run away from the fire. I help expand my capacity a little bit so I don't get traumatized by this and this. So you're not thinking. You just do it. It has an immediate factor. And people are gonna feel a bit better and something like that.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:29:37
I wanna tell people again that you cross your feet. If your sitting in a chair, that's a big, a, that's a big thing right there. I'm feeling like much more at ease once I just cross my ankles. And the other is to take your two hands and cross your arms and put them underneath your armpits. and contract, or are you saying contract or just breathe or do you know?
Thayer Case
00:30:02
To be a big breath better tilt your chin too.
Kevin O'Donoghue and Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:30:14
And we're going to take a break. You are here at The Positive Mind. I'm Kevin O'Donoghue Licensed Mental Health Counselor and I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer Licensed Massage Therapist and Trauma Specialist.
Thayer Case
00:30:22
And we are here with Thayer Case. We'll be back after this break .
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:30:55
With the positive Mind. I am Kevin O Donahue. I'm Niseema Dyan Diemer and we have Thayer Case back with us who is walking us through this technique called SCOPE that you can use as an individual to prevent your system from experiencing overwhelm.
Thayer Case
00:31:14
This is the context of this is on the battlefield so you actually don't wanna relax. You want to expand because if you relax somebody too much they are going to collapse and that is unhelpful. Yeah. So that there was really important distinction so that the slow down is like, what happens? Like This it's somebody is grounded and in their back and running, they are not thinking about it being grounded. There are overwhelmed. They feel like there are dispersing. Maybe they are getting a little dissociated. They can notice that a little bit. Or they are feeling panicked and they feel a little overwhelmed. They connect to the body and then it's over and then they are moving on.
Thayer Case
00:31:54
So it doesn't relax and it might settle the internal organs of somebody. But the word "relax" on the frontline is a no no.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:32:08
Okay. So this is for frontline workers or you yourself when you're facing a frontline situation
Thayer Case
00:32:16
In the actual, in the actual.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:32:18
So something about this connect to the body that I think is probably helpful is that when we get into those states of too muchness, everything's kind of happening in the head and it's in a very small space. And I think sometimes when you connect to your body, it allows you to have more of a full body, more capacity experience because it's like, Oh I'm not just a head walking Around. I have this whole body to support me and that, you know, can help to sort of like, Oh just let everything kind of like move into a little more coherence. And then your focus is back, then you're ready to move in.
Thayer Case
00:32:56
Slow down in. I think I there's two metaphors for that, to help people understand this as opposed to coming down. If you think about a heating distribution system like coils, or a radiator or whatever you have, some sort of a metal object that distributes heat, right? So you have ways of distributing heat in an engine so it doesn't overheat. Or a heat shield on the back of a wood stove or something that helps it so it doesn't absorb heat. So generally when we have a lot of stress The heat is just in one part of the body, what these tools are doing is helping to distribute the same charge or the same amount of energy through the body, because the body, if you are using the whole body, then you're going to have a much better conductor, have the energy and it is not going to be just all focused on one part.
Thayer Case
00:33:56
Now this doesn't have to be conscious as soon as you ground and as soon as you're walking if we are opening it up, BOOM the channel is open little bit more.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:00:00
So you've connected through your body and now you're going to what O means to...
Thayer Case and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:34:00
These aren't necessarily in order or these are just, for our audience, it's important for education purposes for us to get people to say mouthwash, SCOPE, right. It's so important for them to go in sequence. So slow down to connect to the body, orient. Orient what? What orient does is really, really, really important. Orienting is a really great way of basically letting the body or letting you or whatever way you want to say it, letting the person know, where they are.
Thayer Case
00:34:30
That's it. So like when you look around and you move your neck, as you were looking around, so your not just looking with your eyes, can you just take a look at the the environment, you're in generally things loosen up a little bit, like Niseema was talking about last time, you know, you can lose the, you naturally start listening to the muscles in your chest, in your neck. You also are using a different nerve, a different cranial nerve when you were looking around like that. And so basically it's telling your body, you are here. And that is a really nice thing because generally you think about going into a stressful situation. You have the blinders on and suddenly they are there. And then you are not looking around your not taking in the environment at all. So your body doesn't know what to do with it.
Thayer Case
00:35:10
Now in this circumstance with orient, this is a very specific instructions about looking around and colors and shapes. Let your gaze rest on something pleasant or comforting, like a brief visual vacation. I mean, that's something that you could do, that's a very specific thing, we didn't have enough room, the writing on the thing. But if you're like, for instance, looking for colors, like sometimes it is just around the area, just in the general sense, isn't enough. But when you're in really a tense situation that you might want to look around for things, to look on the ground. If you were in a gruesome situation, you're not gonna want to necessarily look at the fire all around you.
Thayer Case
00:35:51
You know, you might want to look up at the sky or the ground. So let your body know what it is,
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:36:01
It strikes me that this is something people do unconsciously all the time. Anyway, you can be in the middle of a task or something. And I, and I know this myself, I'm in the middle of something. And for some reason I'll pull my head up and just look around and then go back to the task, you know? And it's not like I'm orienting to the environment, but I need something to get me out of my focus to make me realize I'm in an environment or something. So I think people are doing this all the time.
Thayer Case
00:36:27
Do you. You also naturally do it when you're curious or when you're open. Like when people are really open and they're curious, they're looking around and exploring the environment, just where you're like, Oh, I've never noticed that before! They know that happens all of the time. So again, this is a preventative measure. This is a little bit different than the way you might use it in a therapy session. Where are you gonna be really working with it really slowly or maybe, but this is a way of like, okay, like I'm losing my stuff here. I need to know where I am. It can be really helpful. And then your back in the game, which brings it to pendulate which is a very, like SE specific kind of intervention.
Thayer Case
00:37:07
And it's like one thing you could do with the healing work and again, this is not the healing work. What this is, this is a way of expanding the capacity, allowing more wind to come into the sail, like using the whole sail as opposed to just a little bit of the sail or using the whole heating distribution as opposed to just a part of it. So you have more resilience, you get less overwhelmed. So you're less likely to be traumatized so you can digest it later. Pendulation is when you move from kind of something that's resourceful as something that's a pain point back through a resourceful. In this case, we were talking about his finding a place that ease or neutral in your body, like soon as somebody whose chest is super tight because they're stressed about whatever they're doing something terrible or something very difficult.
Thayer Case
00:37:59
And they see it can be that it's a very simple, this is where you actually have to use a little bit of your volition in this is that you've kind of, kind of like, okay, wow, okay. My hand's feel really, really open and nice and you're okay. And then you come back to your chest to try this and then you're in touch in your body. And, how does that work? I don't know. As my teacher also Nancy Napier said, this is what we describe it now, who knows how we're going to say it in the future.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:38:28
A firefighter let's say out there fighting a fire could do this in some way. If they are experiencing like a tension or a fear
Kevin O'Donghue and Thayer Case
00:38:36
Or something they can turn to, a point in their body of ease or something because as you do it when you're actually into it, but maybe as you're walking into it or away from it, because as you were talking, we do this: clench your fist and then really as tight as you can clench your fist and then let it go. Yeah. And you can do that. That's a little different if people want to, that's also a great thing to do, like their whole tense of body and release.
Thayer Case and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:39:07
So you do it, that's it. There's lots of, lots of things that you could do that are really helpful. That, and what is included, this is just these things that spell SCOPE I don't know. I love the idea of letting the wind in your sails. It's a great metaphor for what feel all of these things help use the whole sails oppose it just part of the sail right?
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:39:27
If you're, if you start to get into the more traumatic responses or the more acute stress responses, the capacity of your sail diminishes. And so that's why it becomes so hard, you know? And it's like, when you're notice, it's like I'm working so hard here, what's happening. It's like your, just your using just a little tiny bit of your capacity and is like, let's just, I'll just take a moment and you know, okay. Yeah. Like I love that idea of them like let the wind unfurls the whole sail and you can really start to move through things.
Thayer Case
00:40:00
Absolutely. Yeah. It really makes a difference. And so let's get through E because I wanna move on too. So you're working in the community, they know anybody knows the way we do it. Like anybody else in emergency work, basically this is a way of saying, take care yourself, engage socially. They like using engaging socially. In connecting with somebody who you love, your support. However that works for you or whether you're introverted or extroverted, whatever that looks like. You need to know that that really helps. It helps you. It helps you regulate and you know, cause we are a collective animals and that knowing we have a tribe goes a long, long way.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:40:43
And that's where it's like, yeah. Like engaging with your coworkers, your partner, someone, your child looking them in the eyes, just having a sense of, Oh yeah, I'm still here. I'm still connected.
Thayer Case
00:40:54
Knowing that you belong, knowing you belong to a collective that "I am a part of a tribe, even if I am on the frontlines I do belong." And that can be hard for some people. I mean, you know, like again, there's no shame in any of these things. This is fine. Most people can do one of them and also Niseema we were talking before about the concept and then I guess say the truth and autonomy, these things help somebody feel autonomous or, or have a sense of agency in a very dangerous situation it can help with that. And that's what I had noticed when I work with a lot of war veterans so that people would have been in it like that, depending on the level of agency that somebody feels in the context they really do have really mitigates how much PTSD somebody has.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:41:44
If you don't feel powerful, if you feel powerless or helpless, the chances for you to have severe PTSD symptoms, it's much, much greater. Yep. And so talk about agency because you did in the beginning of our first show, which I loved your summary of what we're trying to do as therapists and counselors in general, whether you are in the front lines or just in your life to create and help people get a greater sense of independence and autonomy and agency. I love that as a definition of what we're doing, what you're doing in general. So can you say just a one more thing about autonomy and agency before we shift to talking about these collective traumas?
Thayer Case
00:42:34
I think it's related to collective traumas. I mean, I think that feeling, having a sense of agency, post, during or before, and is something that happens that is potentially overwhelming is really, really important. I mean, that's when we can use attachment theory, like, autonomy and movement towards the autonomy is what security is, being able to know yourself and consider the other person's mind.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:43:06
So when you talk about attachment theory, I just wanna make my audience clear, you know, we talk about a child's attachment to their mom, right. And there is a sick care or any care giver. And traditionally, it was a mother, but now it's s whatever a caregiver. And some children feel a secure bond, secure attachment to their mom so that when mom leaves the room, they still feel connected in attachment to mom. Some, some kids, some children mom leaves the room and all of a sudden they're panicked.
Thayer Case
00:43:36
They do. But they connect connection between the two might feel fraught.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:43:42
Right. That is a very important distinction because they become anxious because what they do, they do, they forget them. But these children that become anxious when mom leaves the room, did they forget the connection or they don't can connect to the attachment inside their body?
Thayer Case
00:44:04
Well, I mean, that's a big discussion! That's 20 hours!
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:44:08
I know. I just want it to educate people about what attachment theory is.
Thayer Case
00:44:13
But in terms of what you said before and how that affects what I tell you about autonomy theory and about connection and coherence is that, what we bring into a situation affects how we are affected by the situation. So if we have experienced a lot of trauma in our lives, know we're more likely to get overwhelmed and then it can be that never ending cycle.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:44:38
So at the beginning of the hour I mentioned something called "Katrina brain. " And in terms of agency, after the fact you go to a city like New Orleans and say, what could you have done to make you feel a greater sense of agency and autonomy before the hurricane hit that would have prevented some of these decades long trauma symptoms?
Thayer Case
00:45:05
Well, probably eradicate racism that probably would help. I think a lot of what collective trauma happens in New Orleans are very racialized trauma here. And so people's communities were devastated, mostly people of color in these communities. And then there was a horrible history of slavery, especially in Louisiana. So there's a lot of talking about collective trauma that first of all, let me just say, I'm not an expert in collective trauma. You don't have to be. You are creating a very clear picture. Yeah. But what I'm saying is I think anybody who's doing trauma work really needs to do their own work on this and they need to have some understanding and listened to a lot of people's experiences because pre-New Orleans, thdough everybody's nervous system is primed anyway, because there's so much racial tension and there's so much oppressive forces, how the government responded.
Thayer Case
00:46:04
I mean, the delays, how FEMA works. All of that being said like that, the fact that I think when we're talking about SCOPE, it means, so I don't know. I mean, that's a huge question. There's intergenerational trauma, there's all these things. So,
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:46:19
And your client, your painting, a very clear picture for our audience about agency and autonomy and the lack of agency or autonomy in certain communities, certain areas throughout our country, throughout the world. And that these are targeted areas where the SCOPE practice in general would be of benefit for anybody and everybody.
Thayer Case
00:46:39
Yeah. SCOPE. If we want to be specific about it SCOPE would have been helpful during the actual event and as people or helping people cope with it, like in terms of intergenerational trauma, like the genocide of the native people. Because a lot of it, of course, is it a nexus of pain in Louisiana and that circles out all throughout our country. I think what people are finally kind of coming to the surface is that, you know, in terms of like autonomy, it's that, you know, when you collectively, you know, even epigenetically, right? So, or karmically or whoever knows the, but you can see it, how these traumas get passed from generation to generation.
Thayer Case
00:47:24
How is that energetically? Is it a genetically is in whatever we don't, I'm like, sorry, but it, if it happens and its real and that people, or whatever member of you are of that part of society, you're going to hold more of a burden. Right? Like for instance, maybe just give you an example. Like for instance in Montana, I was talking to somebody out there who is part of the Crow tribe. So in 1919, when the Spanish flu hit United States, it wiped out almost the entire Crow tribe down to 300 people. And the only reason those guys survived, those people and women, children survived is because they went to the woods and they came back.
Thayer Case
00:48:08
So now we don't hear about how at like Montana, the North and in the Northwest, the people, not only are people, black people being infected more, but native people are getting killed massively right without any help. So that is just a collective trauma that keeps happening. We hear about that in the news, no. You don't hear about it in the news. So those things make things worse because the threat is always there. And that's a big, big, big difference. Just wanted to put that out there.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:48:45
How do you create agency and autonomy for these places when a traumatic event and situations are going to occur, like a pandemic or like a hurricane?
Thayer Case
00:48:56
That's where I think SCOPE comes in handy and we just keep it around like kind of a crisis stabilization. So if you're in a scene, if you're called to a scene or if your parents or whatever, the heck going on in your life, these things can happen in the moment. So I think we can make a solid argument that if we increase these things, kind of like a boost to our autonomy meter up a little bit, right. If we boost our autonomy meter up, then we are less likely to feeling overwhelmed. That we're less likely continuing or passing on a repeating traumatic events because we have more autonomy in the moment, we can make these choices a little bit easier. If we're the professionals, the three of us are out there on the frontline, kind of helping people on using and introducing SCOPE to the people, or having trained to people, running it, like using them to remind people, they use it.
Thayer Case
00:49:44
We always have to remember the context in which the event is happening. And that that's always a skill for SCOPE. And SCOPE is nothing except just these techniques that people can use in these intense situations. Again, this is different than when you're slowing down in a therapy session or even different how you might use it. If you're connected to the body or even at orienting therapy or healing sessions, I've used this for people I worked with people would do combat sports. I do too. I'm an avid Brazilian jujitsu practitioner. And I have worked with people that do MMA and compete. And they were like, in Brazil you used it before they bend down, and these things help in combat sports too
Thayer Case and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:50:28
Because you don't want to de-escalate somebody to really relax when you go into it, you want to be present, alert, supple. You don't want to be relaxed. And you don't want to blow your adrenaline either. So we only have about three minutes left. I want to head over to this. That's what I'm saying. Right. It makes total sense. And I have to be, I'll have to be honest, as I'm sitting here talking now, I'm thinking I have the rest of my day to live and I'm feeling like it's going to be overwhelming and I'm not on the frontlines, but I am.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:51:00
I have a stressful day ahead of me and I am going to practice slowing down. I'm going to practice connecting to my body. I'm going to practice orienting what you're saying here, go ahead. I'm going to practice. Just bring in the image of a sail. Getting full of wind is a relief in some way from me. And so I know you came on and talking, wanting to talk about delivering this to people on the front lines and when they're experiencing potential overwhelm, but I can't help feeling that this is useful for all of us. It is,
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:51:37
It's a tool of agency. Oh, now I've got something I can do that we'll help me be able to get through. I now know, OK. These five, a handful of tools, and I can use any one of them at any time. Okay. Like here's the day unfolding. Here's the situation unfolding. Can I slow down? Can I just connect to the ground a little bit? These are the little ways that I can just open the stuff.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:52:07
Exactly. Right. If the results of that is I'm not going to shout out my kid or I'm going to make a different decision in the room. I was thinking is like the agent of the agency, agents of shield. There are the agents of agency. So we're not like, this is like your right. And I think these are the things we can do. I think it can be applied to anything because anybody who is experiencing stress is experiencing a threat and you can take these tools and spin them and make them magic.
Thayer Case and Kevin O'Donoghue
00:52:44
And, but the reason I kept honing it down as if there are also really important for what you're in the game, the battle whether it's a raging fire or you're irritated because the computer crashed it doesn't right. It works right. It works. And what I thought it was when I was thinking about the rest of my day and feeling overwhelmed it's I could easily see the sense of agency going out of my system. Like I thought, how am I going to maintain agency at three o'clock this afternoon? When I have to give a presentation?
Kevin O'Donoghue and Thayer Case
00:53:14
I mean, here it is 9:00 AM. And I'm thinking I'm so worried about the overwhelmed six hours from now. And my agency just goes out the door and it's just like holding, gripping to get through the rest of the day. And I think these tools are going to be really, really helpful for me to renew my agency. Think you need a wonder woman model, or like a coffee cup with a powerful image on it, that might help. So we've been talking to Thayer Case who's up in Kingston, New York, and really is a part of a therapy practice that is missions and values driven.
Kevin O'Donoghue and Thayer Case
00:53:56
That is a community based. He wakes up every morning thinking, "how can I not only help people, but help my community and help communities in need." And he's brought to us today, if things thinking about among other things, this a Somatic Experiencing tool, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, and it all starts with slow down. Folks, slow down. if people are interested in to do like a little brief trainings on helping workplaces and so forth with this, just so you know.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:54:34
And that we want to help get the word out. If here are people who are interested, they can email thayercasemsw@gmail.com. And if you are interested in having a workplace or learn a little bit more about this, I can, at the very least help direct you to the right direction. There are a bunch of us who are very talented people, a lot more experience and different kinds of situations, we can help out, but we're going to get the word out there and they can get you on your website is Maverick Psychotherapy Group.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:55:14
I want to throw out there the trauma healing, the SE website, where you can download a free copy of a really wonderful graphic that goes through these five stages. And you can do that at traumahealing.org/SCOPE. And you can get this and put it on your desk and remember.
Kevin O'Donoghue
00:55:37
So you've been listening to The Positive Mind and that's it for today. Thayer we want to thank you once again. We want to thank our affiliate stations. Niseema, go right ahead.
Niseema Dyan Diemer
00:55:46
So we have a, the new affiliates who picked us up. KACR 96.1 in Alameda, California. KAOS nine or 89.3 at Olympia Washington. KXCR 90.7 in Florence, Oregon. K Y G T 102.7, Idaho Springs, Colorado KPPQ 104.1, Ventura, California, w GRN 94.1 Columbus, Ohio wr WK 93.9 in Richmond, Virginia. We'd like to thank our Producer Connie Shannon our chief engineer Geoff Brady. you can contact us at foundationforpositivepsychology.org
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00:56:26
Or tffpp.org with questions, comments, or suggestions for the show,
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00:56:31
Slow down, folks. Have a good week.
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00:56:34
MUSIC.