Jenn 0:00
This episode may contain topics of conversation and theme sensitive to some individuals. It is our intention to talk about the impact of difficult or painful experiences, rather than the graphic details of what happened that being said, these topics may still very well be activating. Feel free to read the description or show notes for a time stamped list of potentially activating content discussed in this episode. Please care for yourself as you listen today, we're glad you're here with us.
Hey, karestan, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thanks for inviting me. I'm looking forward to talking with you. Yeah, me too. So I'll just share a little bit about kind of who you are for our audience and then lead us through a bit of a centering. Sounds great. Awesome. Okay, so my guest today, Dr karestan Conan is a Harvard scientist, trauma researcher and survivor dedicated to transforming how we understand healing and resistance. For more than two decades, she has studied how experiences like violence, disasters and chronic stress become biologically embedded and shape mental and physical health across the lifespan, bridging rigorous science with lived experience and ancient practices such as breath work and yoga, she brings a rare integrative perspective to the science of healing. Her work explores how we can unite evidence and intuition to build healthier individuals, organizations and communities. I'm just, I mean, like, so in alignment with so much of what we also do over at the center. So exactly now, yeah, I know.
Well, welcome to on trauma and power. I'm your host. Jen Turner, co founder and director of the Center for trauma and embodiment. I'm so glad you're here with us. Each episode, I sit down with powerful leaders, educators and survivors from around the world join me for these empowering conversations rooted in whole person, embodied experiences where trauma meets power and healing takes shape. Let's dive in. You.
So when you're ready, we can kind of start with a bit of a practice wonderful welcome to maybe take a moment to acknowledge that you've arrived and that you're here, and that, yes, we have this conversation ahead of us, but also you're welcome to take a moment to drop into your embodied experience, and one way that you might do that could be through movement. So if you'd like, you could begin maybe with some spinal movement, possibly shifting from side to side, so you could shift from one side to the other. Maybe you pause on the side. You're welcome to also shift forward and back. You
at some point, it's possible that movement could become circular, if you'd like. Could circle in either direction. There may be another way that you'd like to move as you're noticing your body or dropping into your embodied experience. You're always welcome to make choices based on what you're noticing in this moment.
And at some point it's a possibility that we arrive back in center and maybe beginning to explore some breathing and moving. One way to do that is maybe where your hands are resting, you begin to lift and lower with your hands. Now this movement could be a few inches, could be a wider movement, but again, maybe beginning to lift and lower with your hands. Now it's possible that you might be interested in linking your breath to this movement, maybe inhaling in one direction and exhaling in another. Or you might be finding in this moment that you would prefer. Or to breathe and move separately. Another way that you're welcome to explore breath and movement could be to bring your palms toward one another and maybe extending your arms out toward the sides and back toward one another.
Possibly moving here at your own pace and tempo, or maybe there's a different way that you'd like To embody this moment, possibly continuing
for three
and two
and one. Then whenever you're ready, you're welcome to find your way back to center, and we can kind of shift gears a little bit here, maybe start our conversation.
Karestan 6:23
That was lovely. Thank
Jenn 6:24
you. You're so welcome. You're so welcome. It's funny how even just a few minutes of intentionally paying attention to your body or dropping into your body just didn't shift things. So I'd love to start a little bit today around you know, I know that you are sort of open and forward facing about your own history, but I'm curious about maybe how that led you to working in this field, and just in general, how you found your way to This intersection right of research on trauma, biology, health and the like integrative quality to the work that you do.
Speaker 1 7:07
Sure, yeah, I'm happy to talk about that. It's been quite a journey. So when I was young, I always wanted to go to Africa and do development work, which was, which is sort of surprising to people I didn't I had never been there. No one in my family had ever been there. I don't know where this kind of dream came from. So I planned. I'm a planner. Went to college, I studied economic development, and then I went in, worked at the Federal Reserve Bank in the economic development area. And then I went in the Peace Corps in Niger in West Africa. And while I was in the Peace Corps, I was traveling in the northern part of the country I was in, and I was raped, and it was devastating experience, very scary. It happened to me, but my sister had been traveling with me, and so I had her with me afterwards, but we went back to the Capitol after it happened. And, you know, there was, you know, two parts of the trauma, so there was the part of the assault itself. But what was probably even worse was the institutional trauma I experienced afterwards, which I didn't have a name for it till years later. So it started from, started from the medical evacuation I received. I was medically evacuated by myself. So this is in within a couple days after being sexually assaulted, I was put on a plane by myself to Washington, DC, to receive medical care. And, you know, was totally disoriented and in full sort of fight, flight from from the assault. Then I got back to DC, I was first to navigate the sort of institutional system myself, and had experiences where it's basically sort of everything you're told not to do. I experienced that, yeah, so I experienced the, you know, into a medical exam was not, you know, was not sort of given any autonomy or asked. Nothing was asked for my permission. I was, you know, a lot of things about my sexual history were asked which weren't really relevant to why I was there. I went to speak to the inspector general who was in charge of, sort of investigating incidents in the Peace Corps. And was was told, said to me something along the lines of, you know, I'm tired of all you girls going overseas and drinking and dancing and then, you know, coming home and saying you were assaulted. So there was a lot of just trauma after trauma, the institutional trauma. In the end, I kind of, I terminated my Peace Corps. Or service, and went home to my parents house in New Jersey, and I really had full blown, well, now I know it's full blown PTSD, but I didn't know what that was. At the time, I had nightmares. I was very depressed. I thought I had no future. I, you know, really thought I couldn't I, you know, at that point, I really was, at times suicidal and all the things, you know, hyper, vigil, on guard, really hopeless. And I was not from a family that did a lot of therapy, so I did the only thing I knew that we it just wasn't something. They weren't against it, and they wanted to support me, but my parents had no idea what to do, so I did what I always knew how to do, which was I decided, Well, someone must have studied this. So I went to our local independent bookstore. I mean, doesn't exist anymore there, but my small town in New Jersey, and I ordered some books. I found some books. I don't even know how I did at the time, but I read rape trauma syndrome, I read these different books that were written
Speaker 1 11:09
on trauma, and sort of learned about what my experience, what I was experiencing. And then at the same time, I a family friend suggested that I go into therapy. So I was also referred to therapy. She helped me find therapy. But really it was from that really low point where I was trying to figure out how to get through this myself with I luckily I had parents who could support me, gave me a place to live and could support me economically, but really didn't know what to do that I became motivated to help other women who'd experienced what I'd experienced. So that really was so I after that, I changed my my career focus, and I decided I was going to be a therapist. As you know, I'm not. I am a licensed psychologist now, but I mainly do research, but I decided I was going to be a therapist, which led me go to grad school, and then in graduate school, I fell in love with research, and since then, my career really has been on the one hand, in my professional career, researching different aspects of trauma, which we can talk about, including how trauma embeds in the body and causes disease, and there's also been my own personal piece of recovery and development, which led me in other directions, in terms also in terms of the Mind Body practices you you talked about, and it's really only at this stage in my career that I'm bringing them together.
Jenn 12:37
I mean, first of all, just human to human. I'm sorry that that happened to you, and I I'm so grateful for you sharing it with us. Because I think a lot of times people who have been through trauma like that, who have had institutional experiences, can feel shame or stigma around speaking about it as they show up as a professional in the world. So I just, I really appreciate you sharing that. And, yeah,
Karestan 13:03
yeah, and I didn't for I did it for many years. It was really later in my career where I had the opportunity to testify in Congress about my experience in the Peace Corps, and I was quite established by the time I spoke about it. So that's something I'd like to acknowledge, because I sometimes get younger people approaching me, and it was really by the time I spoke publicly about it, I was married, I was child, I was I was associate professor at Harvard, so I was, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't something it took me time to come
Jenn 13:36
out about it fair. I had a very similar experience as well, where it was sort of like part of that, I think, is because lived experience has not been prioritized in this field, and in so many fields, until very recently, it's actually been sort of like a liability for some grade.
Speaker 1 13:55
Yeah, it's a bias. Won't let you be objective. You won't be able to keep yourself out of it. But if that's Yeah,
Jenn 14:02
yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I understand the reluctance, and, let alone, just like, what it's like to disclose something, even if you've done years of therapy, there's a layer of vulnerability always because, yes, because of what you describe, that the response of of the people around you is oftentimes the most painful part of the trauma, or it layers on a whole different trauma. Exactly what happened?
Unknown Speaker 14:30
Exactly? That is very true.
Jenn 14:33
Okay, so Well, I'd love to hear more, because I get so excited whenever I talk with anyone who's who is drawn to research, who does research? It's so different from how my brain works, and I'm so I'm excited to hear more about like, what about research kind of captivated you, and then the research you found yourself being drawn to do?
Speaker 1 14:55
Sure, um, that's a good question. I, you know, growing up, I. Always loved mystery novels, and I think that is there's something similar about being a scientist, is that there is a puzzle and you're trying to figure it out. And so I do think that that was an early sort of sign about that. And I think there was a combination. There was a period of me trying to understand what's happening with me. And then when I was getting my Master's at Columbia, I read an article by Roger Pittman, who was, He's now retired, but a psychiatrist who's in the PTSD field. And it was on physiology and PTSD, it was veterans with combat exposure, big veterans who'd been in combat in Vietnam, and how they responded physiologically to stories about their experience, the simple way of putting it. And I was just blown away by this article, because it matched, sort of my lived experience of having my story come up and being triggered, or seeing something in the environment that reminded me of what happened and how I feel physiologically. And then I was like, wow, someone's actually, this isn't just me. Someone's actually studying this with actually data and publishing on that. I was so blown. I got to meet him and work with him years later, and I just said, your article. It just blew my mind. And so that was the first, first clue. And then in I mean, my graduate school experience was a journey in itself, but what you know, in the early days, and I think even now, even though I'm licensed, but I don't do much direct sort of clinical work these days, but I was always inspired by people's experiences and the people I worked with. So one of my earliest practicums was at the Boston VA Hospital in Jamaica, planned here in Boston, and the Women's Health Sciences Division, so a program that was set up for women veterans. And when I was there, which was quite a while ago now, 20 years ago, the women had mostly experienced military sexual trauma, and so that's why they were being treated in the clinic. Now there's also more combat trauma, but at the time it's military sexual trauma. And I saw all these women I was treating their PTSD, but they had all these physical health problems, diabetes, hypertension, autoimmune disorders, and it always seemed to me, you could see, and they would observe that their mental health affected their physical health. It seems all very obvious now, because we talk about it all the time, but 20 years ago, we didn't talk about it. As their PTSD got aggravated, their pain would get aggravated, and as their pain got aggravated, their PTSD would get aggravated. And I just kept wondering so like, how are these things related? Is, did the PTSD cause these physical health problems? Going forward, years later, that is one of my main areas of research, not my only area, but one of my areas is on this question of, How does trauma and the mental health concepts of trauma relate to these physical health consequences, which we may see decades later, like now we're seeing with sort of dementia, and it was really inspired by the experience of the women I worked with at the VA. So that is, I think so much of the work that I've done has been even, even things that seem very far away from personal experience has been inspired combination of, I mean, it's embarrassing to say, but me search. Me search. And just, you know, my experience talking to people, working with people, hearing what's important to them, and then sort of pulling back and figuring out, how can we study this with in a way that is hopefully leads to being more better able to support people. I mean, that's the ultimate goal. Sometimes it takes a very long time to go from the research to that, but that's really, that's really some of what's motivated me and directed my path.
Jenn 18:54
No, I mean, I think that that, in so many ways too, is, is what can kind of drive us and inspire us to continue to be passionate about this work is when it does impact us and when we resonate with it. It is interesting, too. I think that 20 years, I mean, 20 years ago, a lot of things were different in terms of the way that we understood the impacts of trauma or trauma in a, you know, interpersonal violence or in the home. And I think it can be important to remember that, because it's still in the water that, like we're thinking about trauma in a more either cognitive way and a pathologized way that, you know, because it wasn't so long ago, actually, it wasn't.
Speaker 1 19:39
I mean, I can, I always say I can remember, and maybe this dates me. I when I was in graduate school, I went to graduate school intending to study trauma. I If I got on a plane and someone asked, Oh, what are you saying for graduate school? And I said I was studying trauma, they would study Oh. They would say immediately, oh, like Vietnam veterans. That was the period where there was all these Vietnam Movies. Is platooned. You know about, really, about combat trauma and experience of veterans. And now, if I say the same thing on a plane, I immediately get usually, someone will either they don't want to talk to me. That happens too. They're like, Oh, okay, I'm going back to my movie. I'm sorry I asked, or I mean, but more commonly, they'll say they'll share an experience. They're an experience, a family member's experience, or something they've heard about. So it's just shifted the so that has shifted, and yet, at the same time as you say, there's still so much, I think, so many myths, so much stigma, just because we are more aware of it doesn't mean we always respond better. Actually, that's right.
Jenn 20:49
I'm curious if there, you know, if you could talk a little bit more about some of the research, either that you like to shine a light on, that you've done, or different, you know, different findings or things that you've discovered along the way that have that are impactful, that might be interesting
Speaker 1 21:07
to folks. Oh, sure, I can. Yeah, I can. I can drone on for a while, I'll talk about a few different areas of research that have been interesting to me. So one area is the relationship between trauma and physical health, which I've done in different populations, but in the last 10 years or so, I've really focused on this big study of women. So there's something called the Nurses Health Study too, which is 100,000 women that have been followed over 30 years. And it was set up to look at lifestyle factors and women's health, including oral contraception and diet, all kinds of things in women's health. And so we embedded measures of trauma and PTSD depression in the cohort, and then have followed people over time. And what we've shown, what has been striking to me is the wide ranging impact of trauma and particularly sexual violence, on women's health. So including experiences, most recently, we looked at stalking and sexual harassment, because these are incredibly common experiences women have, and folks hadn't looked at their physical health effects, and they're often considered sort of less serious than than traumas that involve the actual sort of assault, so in a physical way. So what we found is these wide ranging effects with stalking related to increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and then trauma, broadly and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder related to cognitive decline, diabetes, hypertension. I mean, basically, if you name it, we found adverse relationships between trauma and all these health outcomes. But what's really striking, and I think more more promising, because that can just seem like a doom and gloom story. What we've seen is that for women who've experienced trauma and developed, for example, post traumatic stress disorder, if their post traumatic stress disorder remitted or was relieved, and we don't necessarily know why, but if they had it, but it was either, either it diminished. They did something, they had treatment, and it was reduced. They then they don't have these negative health effects. So it's not deterministic. There are different pathways by which trauma is linked to these negative outcomes. And there's evidence that, you know, intervention, which I can, we can talk about, that's a broad range of things that after trauma, can actually reduce these, the risk of these negative things. So there's not, it's sort of not a deterministic story, which I think is the most exciting thing about it, given that, you know, given how many experience people have experienced trauma. On the other end of the spectrum, I've done more genomics research, and so I think some of the most exciting pieces that they are now are the work we're doing at the Broad Institute, which is on epigenetics. So people may familiar with DNA or your DNA sequence, which is set at conception. And if you think of your DNA sequence as the alphabet, you can think of epigenetics as the font. So if you know you get one of those emails or texts in all caps, it's like someone's yelling at you. So epigenetics are chemical modifications to like through the alphabet, to your to your DNA sequence that change how genes are expressed. This sort of simple way of of explaining it,
Speaker 1 24:50
I'll just say another, another explanation, if any of you're familiar with music. So the DNA sequence is the notes, and the epigenetics is the annotation. On the notes, whether you play louder or softer. So we're looking at how people have been really interested, how the environment changes, how our genes are expressed, and how trauma changes, how our genes are expressed, and new technologies are now allowing us to look at that at the cellular level. So are there changes in the way your T cells in your actual in specific cells in your blood, in your body, and then also what, what can buffer those effects, or what can change them back, and how they change over development, because we've known these negative effects of trauma, or, if you say, adverse child experiences on all these long term health outcomes, but it's been unclear exactly why. One of the things when we look at trauma and sexual violence in women is when I started the work, I thought, Well, if you've experienced I know from my own experience, if you've experienced violence, then you know it changes, changes your behavior. Maybe you drink more, smoke, more exercise less, you know there, I mean, there's very basic things, and that's the that's why you might have increased risk of like heart disease. And those things actually explain very little of the relationship. So it's been a puzzle to try to figure out what else is going on and then, and then, why? Like, why do we care? We care basically, to figure out how to better support people who've experienced trauma, especially because these health effects show up years later. And if, if we could know, for example, from your epigenetics, what the future risk was from a traumatic experience? Perhaps we could do a better job of prevention, rather than waiting for these, these diseases to emerge. So that's the that's sort of the long term goal. I always want to bring it back to some kind of intervention, or how we can better help people, or better serve people. But sometimes it does take us a long time to get from A to B. So those are some of the things that are exciting. And I guess the other thing I want to say that's really exciting is that trauma started when I started my my I can, I'll tell the story. So when I was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia, a very prominent psychiatric epidemiologist said to me, Oh, honey, why are you studying something so niche like trauma and PTSD? You're very promising. You should study something real, like depression or schizophrenia. This is in June. Oh, Lord, so and then then the 911 terrorist attacks happen. And I think a lot of things changed with that. But it was a niche field about 20, even 20 years ago. It was, it was a niche scientific field. And I think the other thing that's exciting is it's become a mainstream scientific field. It's gone from having only specialty conferences. And I love the specialty conferences. I go to them, but if you go to any sort of major conference now, there will be people who will be doing work that we would see as trauma related, even if that's not how they label it. And I think that is very exciting, too.
Jenn 28:12
And I guess I'm curious if, for you, if the niche is around the kind of the waking, the collective waking up to the prevalence of trauma, or, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1 28:23
I think that's part of it. I think there is some there is there's been, I don't want to overestimate how far we've come, but I do think there is a, there definitely has been an awareness with trauma, and I would say also the sort of ACEs which, which overlaps, you know, Aces and trauma. There's overlaps and there's some distinctions, but I think both the both sort of fields, have raised awareness. And there, there has been some there is more consciousness of it. It's not like I said. If you just ask the average person, I think they would, they would have heard the word trauma. They'd have some understanding of it beyond maybe a military experience. So yeah,
Jenn 29:03
I think what's so fascinating about the work that you're doing too, is is digging into the cellular level. Because I, as you're talking I'm thinking about how much as a therapist, I use data to help normalize and de stigmatize and even and take blame away from survivors of trauma. Because I think a lot of times even that language of, like, health risk behaviors, yes, sort of like, Well, why didn't you try harder to not drink? And it's like, Okay, why don't we actually look in, like, can we drill down deeper and see what the changes are at a cellular level, that's, to me, that's so exciting and so helpful on an intervention level, even even the education and understanding of that
Speaker 1 29:49
exactly, that's what that is the that is the exactly, that's the hope down the line, that is the hope that we'd actually be able to profile people. And there's probably some, you know, these things are common. Complicated, so experiences of trauma or violence probably interact with, you know, family history, family history of risk of cancer or heart disease and other things. And if we could look at that in, you know, in epigenetics in people's cells would be able to do much better job of, hopefully down the line, of identifying risk and also intervening earlier, because things like trauma, as much as we know that trauma and violence are related to these health outcomes, they are not considered in any of the clinical algorithms. So if you go, you know, if you go to You're younger than me, but at my age, we go, whenever I go to primary care, they give you, you know, heart disease risk score, and based on, you know, body mass index, but based on risk factors and some blood tests. And you know, those don't include aces or violence. And it's a question, it's an empirical question whether they should include them, and actually, you'd have to model it and test and does it improve prediction? But you know, maybe some of the work that's being done could help us figure out whether in what cases we'd want to include those kinds of experiences. They would improve understanding long term health outcomes at an individual level.
Jenn 31:26
Yep, yep. That's that's so powerful. One of the things that really stood out to me when I first got to meet you and hear you speak was your perspective on, you know, someone who is doing this hard science, you've got data, you've got this biological component that you're, you're, you know, noodling around with here, that still your deference and like a reverence, even for the individual experience. And so because I think at times, what I can be frustrated about or bump into in the field of research and clinical care is when research or protocols or treatment interventions don't actually take into account the individual experience and how that's so unique, and I can have all the formulation of how trauma shows up and the impact and what might be helpful, but that actually doesn't necessarily resonate for an individual. Yeah, I'd love to hear your perspective on that from the your vantage point.
Speaker 1 32:34
Yes, it's something as you, as you, we've, we've resonated on I'm very passionate about, and I think about all the time, and I think part of the reason I am so maybe sensitive or tuned into it is because in my own sort of mentioned, I've had my career, professional research journey, which has been sort of very mainstream, in a sense, in the sense that it's sort of mainstream science and emerging areas genomics and, you know, hardcore, some people might say, you know, traditional Harvard tenure track. And then I've had my own personal development healing journey, which has included things that are more everything from yoga, which we, you know, connected on, or acupuncture, which are sort of more, again, mainstream, to some things that are more alternative, that have been helpful to me and haven't been studied scientifically. So I have both that. I guess it's my own lived experience, and I am in these mainstream science environments and can respect the rigor of the type of data and the large scale data we collect. So I think it's sort of me. It's always me with these sort of two parts of myself that are coming together and how I do work. And then I think the other piece of that is even when we do treatment studies, we're looking at averages. So you can do the best clinical trial, and you're looking at whether the treatment effect, the average of treatment effect, differs in case, in people who got the treatment or not. But if you ever look in, if you look at the data from like a clinical trial, that in the clinical trial for people who might not be aware is sort of if you have a group of people who experience trauma, and maybe have post traumatic stress disorder, and you want to test whether a treatment helps them or not, you might assign you will some will end up getting a treatment, and some won't. And if you look within the groups at the end of the study, there'll be a lot of variation and how so the maybe the treatment works, but it doesn't work the same for each person. And you always see that, and so you always have to take that. I think when you're when you're going from those averages to treating an individual person, you always have to keep that into account. And that's true for any. Think it's true for the most sort of mainstream, empirically validated treatments or medications, or it's, you know, it's true for in all cases. So, so I think there's, I mean, so there. So I think about it like that, and then in terms of how, one of the ways we actually try to, so, how do I apply this in our research? And it really depends on the question and the type of project we're doing. But for example, in the broad trauma initiative, one of the places we've been invested in is community based participatory research. And the goal of one of the projects is being led by my colleagues at Northeastern and this is what they and this is what they do. This is the thing that they are known for, doing this kind of work, is to understand, for people who've experienced trauma, this whole question of, How does trauma get embedded in the body? Because I realized I couldn't find any we talked about it, but I actually couldn't find any studies that had talked to, you know, not just case studies, but groups of people who'd experienced trauma. How, from their point of view, do they understand this, and then what's helped them? And so they've done this as Melissa Lincoln and colleagues, they've done a project where they identified work with several different organizations so identify trauma survivors who'd experienced terrorism. They're working with bark, the survivors who've experienced sexual assault and rape to different groups of trauma survivors all within an organization, so that they were nested in a support system, and then interviewed them to find out, how do they understand these questions? How is trauma embedded in the body? What helps them, etc, and some of the things that have been so striking from that is
Speaker 1 36:46
one man will this, this, this will just sticks out to me. He talked about one of the most effective interventions for him was, why are they had someone come to the clinic and do a class where they took them to the grocery store and taught them how to shop with their budget, knowing how much money they had, and then cook. And this was transformative for him, because he was so everyone had been providers for years. Had been told that he had to eat better, but he had a history of February of child abuse and neglect. He didn't know. He really didn't know how he didn't know how to shop, he didn't know what to buy. He didn't know and so that just stuck with me, because I was thinking back when I did one on one clinical work, you know, how many times did I do that? How many times did I talk to someone like, oh, you know, what are you eating? I probably, in a mental health context, I might not even talk to them about it, but if I did, you know, did, I, did I think about that. And so it's just we were, we're learning so much from those interviews, which I, then we, then we want to use that to incorporate, incorporate into the larger scale research. So that is, I mean, that's some of the different ways
Jenn 37:56
it's so exciting to me, you know, I, I, there's a course that I've taught that is around, like, the psychology of illness and wellness, and one of the things that we talk about and like pull through as a thread is the ways that when you go to a doctor or provider, what has really changed in the last 100 years, or maybe even more now, but is, is that we're relying more on this sort of mainstream science and Not On Our lived and felt experience of our body, and how powerful to be able to do both and to even design research around people's experiences. To me, this is so exciting and kind of a great integration of all of the progression that's happened in terms of science and all of the technology that now we can understand about the brain and what's happening, and also intuition and what we feel in the body,
Speaker 1 38:49
in our own skin, exactly, cool, right? It's so cool. Yeah, I agree. And it's, I mean, that's another thing I'm just passionate about, is helping, and in my, you know, side world, teaching breath work workshops and yoga and things is is really about which I'm trying to bring more in my mainstream world. Sometimes, I guess, like at the eye roll. Sometimes people say, last year I did, I was doing some very simple sort of breathing or grounding exercises to start my research group meeting. And some people love them, but I noticed some of some people would always come late, and then they admitted to me they're coming so they have they can miss the carriage. Is doing her crazy anyway, is is helping people get back in touch with their intuition. Because I was just recently co led this breath work intensive for women with six weeks online with a colleague of mine, and one of the women said, when expressed, that, you know, what's been important about getting back into her intuition is she's making some health decisions about her kids, and she gets one set of advice from her doctor and one set of. Advice from her kind of alternative community, let's just say, and they conflict, and both are very strong that they're right. And then she's left with like, what do I Yep, how do I know what to do? And so then it's like when she has to go back and kind of figure out what is, what is right for her, her kids, and it's hard when there's so many voices outside screaming at you,
Jenn 40:26
yeah, and you know, it's like, it's also hard when you feel a certain way, but your labs say something else, or exactly. You're like, Okay, well, am I crazy? Or, like, what is this? And right? I just, I think that that's so moving to that that is a part of your research, and I and such an important part, and I guess I kind of wonder too around, what that's been like for you to bring that in, because, you know, if you're in these kind of more hardcore tracks and mainstream track of these hard sciences, Has there been pushback, or what's that been like?
Speaker 1 41:02
And, you know, I would say the biggest for me, the biggest barrier has been my own fear and my own getting past my own. Yeah, fear. I have been afraid of what people would say or how people would respond. But generally, when I've stepped out there, the response professionally has been positive. So I have been and I guess I want to acknowledge that I am I like speaking out about testifying Congress about my sexual assault, which happened when I was quite well established in my career. I am doing this. I'm bringing this sort of integration, um, when I am very well established in my career. So there is so, so I say that just because people, I mean, it is, it is so it days takes a certain level of bravery for me, and I have a certain level of power and privilege that I want to acknowledge doing it so it is. It sort of took me to this point. I've had so many people say that they appreciate it, and especially talking about, I do try to find ways to bring out my experience of having been sexually assaulted when I lecture to whether it's first years with lecture at Harvard or in people's courses. I mean, I talked to the teachers before, and I, you know, I try to, because it's not always the right thing to do, but, but I've generally, the students have always been very positive. I had so many people email me or tell me, Oh, we've never heard a professor talk about this before. We've never had Professor do this before. And so in general, I think it's generally, to my face, people have been positive, and if people have problems with it, they haven't come to me with the problem. So that's fine. They've kept them to themselves or whatever. And that that is, that is fine.
Jenn 43:00
So, yeah, I mean to me, what I it's so much of breaking that third wall, right? You know, I think about that as a therapist too, and showing up in a way that, you know, what is it like to break that third wall and also not do it in a way that burdens someone
Speaker 1 43:16
exactly that's the other piece that burdens, or it's too much for other people. Or yeah, it's, it's Yeah, and I can't always say, obviously, I don't always do it perfectly, but you hope that the overall impact is, yep, good, right? So, and I do think, I mean, I do think there's generational shifts. I think that, I mean, we've had people talk about it. I think that younger folks are a little more open about many things. So I think there is some kind of movement towards bit more openness in even the environments I'm in. We actually, I should say we actually. This is my colleague at the broads idea, and he's basic scientist, but he has started something called the biology of adversity project related to the work I do. We work together, but even more basic science, and he realized that doing this work, studying adversity, and some of it's in mouse models, was bringing up things for his people in his lab that he he hadn't dealt with. So we're used to this. So I'm sort of used to this, not, I mean, used to it, but I kind of it's not. It doesn't surprise me. It might not surprise you, but he in basic science, you know people. It's not something people are very aware of. So he decided to have someone come and be a therapist in residence for a week. So that was a radical. This was his idea. I would he asked me about it, but I was supportive. And she came and she gave a talk on how about trauma, how people respond, but also how certain kinds of material might you know, depending. On your experience, relate to that and be triggering, and what you can do. And then she had people who could just come talk to her who she was clear she wasn't providing therapy, but if they wanted to talk to someone about, well, what is therapy? And like, why would you talk to some? So she talked about different kinds of therapy. It was it was it was at the Broad he did this, and it was amazing. It was an amazing experience. So, so that just showed so that that was happening. I think that, again, there's much there's a lot of open, there's a lot of doors opening that wouldn't have been open. I couldn't imagine something like that happening five years ago even.
Jenn 45:35
That's incredible. That's really incredible. And and also, the the something I feel is shifting is, is that acknowledging that in doing the work and being present for it, there's an impact, you know, that is and that deserves tending.
Speaker 1 45:52
Yes, I think there that is very true. And I even it was, it was, you know, good reminder to me, because I can take that, you know, even having done this a while, I can take it free. I get used to it, or I have my ways of, sort of managing, and I can kind of, you know, I don't know, almost forget the impact. Or if we're working, I'm doing less so more clinically direct work, so I might not think about it. So it was a really good. It was a good reminder, and opened up more conversations in my group again about some of these issues. So that's
Jenn 46:27
so great. I think so much of what you know we've been talking at CFTE about lately is we get in this place where we're so fluent in trauma and mechanisms to cope and mental health and the impacts and all of this, and it's such a small percentage of people that actually are going to receive care after they've had a traumatic experience. And so we've been really thinking about this and and and exploring and what are, what are opportunities for healing that are not that are clinically validated, but in empirically validated but that can be accessible in all kinds of ways. I mean, who knows, for even having that therapist come into the lab, you know, what that may have sparked for someone in their own process, and how impactful that can be, and how small of a cohort it is of folks? Yeah, yeah, no, I think
Speaker 1 47:19
that's something I think about a lot. I have no solutions for it, but it's one of the things I'm really excited about. The work you all are doing is this thinking at a more population level, or how do you create opportunities to support people, or people to feel supported that aren't one on one, or aren't, you know, even having to seek out a class or things like that, and there was this work I heard about that I found exciting and interesting. In this context, was a woman. She did research. She noticed that when women go to the hospital after being sexually assaulted or people, but this case, she was working with women that there's a lot of sitting around. Well, two things, she noticed that a lot of times they bring a support person, and that there's a lot of sitting waiting around, and then there was a lot of times a support person's waiting around. So she did an intervention where he was focused on the support person. The goal was to make the support person a better support person, so there was no interaction with the person who'd experienced the trauma. It was all focused on what is the best way to support a person who'd experienced a trauma and and the the women who support person have gotten the intervention were much lower risk of developing PTSD down the line, and so that's the kind of thing. It's like, how would you do that at a large scale? Sort of thinking about my own experience is how different, and I was lucky in many ways, in terms of my family support, but how much easier my experience might have been, despite what happened to me, if the people who I've interacted with medically, legally had, you know, probably had some basic training on how to interact with me, let alone being toxic. But they didn't even have to be super awesome, but if they had had some like basic training and, you know, so I think some, even some things like that are sort of exciting to me is how, you know, how do we help people better understand how to interact with people who recently experienced trauma, or, you know, with themselves or and I love the stuff that you all are doing with, you know, in nature and community spaces.
Jenn 49:43
Yeah, right. And I think that's that's so exciting when you think about, yeah, how is trauma met and witnessed and responded to? Well, I could absolutely talk to you for a whole other hour. I know
Speaker 1 49:58
that's been too fast. I know. Oh, like three hour. We could have our own limited series. Just keep talking and talking and talking. I know get to ask you questions.
Jenn 50:09
We could do that next time. But thank you so much. Just for folks to know that we'll link to you and projects you're doing and initiatives in the program notes, but thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1 50:22
Well, thank you for having me. This was super fun. I love talking to you, and let's let's do this again soon. Absolutely Okay. Take care.
Jenn 50:38
Thank you for joining us for this week's episode of on trauma and power. If this conversation resonated with you or you want to hear more, we'd love for you to subscribe, share or leave a review. Your support helps these stories reach more people. For more information about today's guest, visit heal with cfte.org/podcast, cfte.org/podcast, follow us on Instagram. At on trauma and power to stay connected and continue the conversation, to learn more about all that we have to offer here at the Center for trauma and embodiment, including training and education for mental health movement practitioners and community leaders interested in innovative, body based interventions, head to heal with cfte.org, thank you for being a part of This exploration with me. Until next time, take care. You. You.
