Understanding Trauma: Navigating Recovery and Generational Impact with Terra and Jeff Holbrook

As we delve into the profound world of trauma, we're joined by our distinguished guests, Jeff and Terra Holbrook. Their unique insights and considerable experience offer a refreshing perspective on the subtle nuances of trauma and how it shapes our everyday lives. Discover how trauma extends beyond a singular event and becomes a response, altering how we perceive safety and security. Don't miss out as we uncover the riveting concept of transgenerational trauma and its covert influence on our lives.

Imagine being able to identify the insidious sources of trauma and embarking on a healing journey guided by experiential activities. With the Holbrooks, we navigate this striking process and learn how it helps reconnect with our inner selves, fostering a safe environment. We also explore the intriguing intersection of trauma and parenting, and how our personal narratives of pain and neglect can shape our parenting responses. Parents of addicted children, brace yourselves for some eye-opening revelations!

The episode wraps, learn why creating safety is pivotal in trauma healing. We also delve into the power dynamics of group work and celebrate the undeniable benefits of shared experiences and social interaction in recovery. If you're eager to gain a deeper understanding of trauma and the path to recovery, this episode promises to be an enlightening journey. Don't miss it!

If you want to learn more about attending a 5 day healing intensive with Terra Holbrook, please visit TerraHolbrook.com or call Lisa Reeser at (208) 515-6013. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Party Wreckers podcast, hosted by professional interventionists Matt Brown and Sam Davis. This is a podcast for families or individuals with loved ones who are struggling with addiction or alcoholism and are reluctant to get the help that they need. We hope to educate and entertain you while removing the fear from the conversation. Stay with us and we'll get you through it. Please welcome the Party Wreckers, Matt Brown and Sam Davis.

Speaker 2: 0:40

All right, everybody, this is Matt Brown. I'm out here in Oregon. I'm with my co-host as always, sam Davis. Sam, how's everything going back in Virginia?

Speaker 3: 0:48

Man any better. I'd have to be on medication. It's a little hot, but we'll get through it. I'm excited tonight because I'm talking about my favorite subject and I just hope to soak in all the information that I can. We're going to be talking about trauma on this episode.

Speaker 2: 1:03

Yes, we are. I think you guys are all in for a treat tonight. We have a couple of guests on that are near and dear to me personally. Both of these individuals have done a tremendous amount to help me change my life, and, sam, by the end of this you may want to be on some medication and we'll see. We'll see where this goes, but without further ado, I want to introduce everybody to Jeff and Tara Holbrook. They are part of Tara Vista retreats, if I'm saying that correctly, and they're out of Boise, idaho, and I will let the why don't you guys just go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourselves and we'll go from there Great.

Speaker 4: 1:42

Thank you, matt. I will just start by talking a little bit about what I do, what we do where we started, and just a little bit about us, and then, jeff, you can share whatever you'd like to.

Speaker 5: 1:56

The podcast isn't long enough for me either.

Speaker 4: 2:01

I started working in the Darganelle Hall treatment field probably, I think, around 1995. And Jeff and I Jeff owned a treatment center and I was trying to help in whatever way I could and decided that I would go back to school so that I could work in our program together and went back and got my master's degree I'm a licensed clinical social worker and became our clinical director at that time and then went on, did some private practice stuff and continued as we moved around the country later working for different treatment centers and in 2011, I started working for the Bridge to Recovery at a place that's near and dear to my heart and really began to understand that codependency, anxiety and depression really have all underlying issues, but really the basis of those disorders are the underlying issues from trauma. And as I began to look at it in a different way, from a different view, I decided that I wanted to do some work with getting back into private practice and really help people work through their trauma and help others understand. Bridge to Recovery is in Bowling Green, kentucky, and I wanted to stay home. We were living at the coast at the time and so my great idea was that people would fly into Portland, oregon, and drive two hours out to the coast and maybe do three days of trauma work, and it was a grandiose idea. But I'll tell you what People are so wanting to do trauma work and really understand that I'll be darned if I wasn't booked for months, as people would make that trek to Portland, oregon and drive out to the coast and spend three days in a hotel and then coming to my office to do trauma work in an intensive setting.

Speaker 4: 4:02

And then Jeff and I started working together doing retreats. We worked with first responders and then we also had a lot of people that we knew from the addictions world that wanted to come and do their trauma work. So we decided that we would start looking for a place where we would do this work. And then COVID hit and thank goodness we didn't start before then. And then last year our dream came true that we found this beautiful property just outside of Boise, idaho, and opened up to our VISTA and have been open for a year and we just finished our 22nd retreat and just are incredibly blessed and the work is so beautiful, so incredibly sacred and it really is the thing that I was sent here to do.

Speaker 2: 4:52

Well, I've experienced that personally. I was in your first men's retreat and I would definitely say that this is absolutely what you're put on this earth to do. I got to be the beneficiary of that and I know I said this before we started recording, but whatever you want to talk about from that experience is all green light. Thank you, Matt. So we can dig into that as much as you want. Jeff, how about you Tell us a little bit about your background?

Speaker 5: 5:15

I started working in the drug and alcohol field in about 1987. So started out as basically a tech, but they call us associate counselors. I did a lot of counseling and one of those guys I always swear that if you looked me up on the internet, well, first if you looked up the Peter principle on the internet and it would pull up a picture of me where we Peter principle states that we get promoted up to our level of incompetency and I think that's what's happened to me. I started out working for other groups, eventually opened up my own place in Idaho Falls, idaho. I did that and then I started doing a lot of intervention work too in between times. Then it basically became my full time thing and did some consulting. I ran a few different programs. I helped a company open up four or five different programs. I became a corporate vice president with one group and then we moved back to the coast when Tara was doing her thing at the British Recovery and I took over a treatment center over there and I just realized that's not what I wanted to do anymore. I just didn't have it in me, the corporate level stuff and not really being able to help people as much as I wanted to. So Tara's program was doing really well in Oregon and we ended up moving back to Idaho. So I helped Tara for a few months with that and realized it wasn't a whole lot for me to do. So I thought about retiring and then I picked up a couple of consulting things there.

Speaker 5: 7:09

But as Tara was wanting to do more and more group work, we started, like she said. We started looking to open up our own retreat center. We put an offer in on a bed and breakfast in McCall, idaho. It was a beautiful program but somebody beat us to it. They put a bid in about 10 minutes before us and we were grateful. Afterwards we were pretty depressed when we got the news, but it was just as COVID was hitting so we were grateful that didn't happen. So, tara Vista I don't even know how you would describe what it is I do there.

Speaker 5: 7:50

I do the cooking, I do the shopping, I do the logistical stuff. Sometimes I sit in on the groups if it's appropriate, sometimes people want my opinion and it's just been a beautiful thing, guys, watching this thing grow and being able to, because I've experienced Tara's work ever since Tara first started doing it. I gave her her first job in the mental health and the substance abuse industry years ago and just she was I mean, hank used to word natural, but it was because it's more than that. I mean, matt, you experienced her. It's just more than that. She's some kind of connecting to some kind of outside worldly thing, a spiritual kind of thing, and she's able to bring that into the work that she does now and meet people where they are and help them move from where they are to a better place. I mean, I don't know how to describe it, and it's just been wonderful, wonderful to watch this thing happen.

Speaker 2: 8:56

You know, your first move, jeff, is to always poke fun at yourself, and that's one thing I've come to know and love about you. But there's no Peter principle here. Like you're a very competent, capable, amazing man, and one of the things that I got to experience when I was there with you guys for the week was that, even though your role is undefined, you really did serve a tremendous purpose for our group. We got to go and do all this really heavy work upstairs with Tara and then we would come down and have this very humble, compassionate man, take us through the rest of our evening and spend some time with us and eat a meal with us and just kind of be there and allow us to kind of transition into those later hours and kind of come back and put our feet back on solid ground again.

Speaker 2: 9:50

But to see you guys work together was very interesting for me, because to hear even just outside of earshot from one another, to hear you guys talk about the other in the way that you do, it's pretty amazing.

Speaker 2: 10:05

You know, obviously you guys are married and you're in love, but to hear just the professional respect that you guys have for one another and the work that you do only enhance the experience for me while I was there, to really hear you guys talk in such a in a way that honored the other so much. That made the experience even that much more special, and I just wanted to point that out. Thank you, matt. Yeah, absolutely so. I know we've come here tonight to really specifically talk about trauma as it relates to family systems, as it relates to addiction. Tara, you were talking as we were there, about the moment that you kind of discovered for yourself the idea of this inner child and kind of the aha moment that you had, and how that really changed the way that you look at trauma work. Can you talk about that a little bit, if that's okay?

Speaker 4: 11:08

I'd love to thank you. So I had this idea of maybe what inner child work was. I never really connected with it and knew that there was a little broken girl inside of me somewhere and that I could kind of knew that. But even in the work that I had done and some of it was around inner child work I just didn't really understand the concept and so about I think it was seven years ago, I we gather our children every, our grandchildren every year to do cousins camp and we started eight years ago and these kids were little and the backstory on me a little bit is that when I was nine years old my mom left and this particular year three of my grandkids were nine years old and they had come to the coast and we were, you know, doing all kinds of fun things and activities.

Speaker 4: 12:10

But this I was aware. But now I understand, this little nine year old girl inside of me was so curious about those nine year old, especially granddaughters two of them are granddaughters and I remember thinking can they cook and can they clean? And you know, can they?

Speaker 4: 12:26

do the things I was doing after my mom left when I was nine and I had not raised daughters. I have four sons, biological sons, and my stepdaughter came into my life at 11. So this little girl inside of me was extra curious. And so one morning we were gonna do an activity. But the sun came out and it's the Oregon coast. The sun doesn't come out in the morning, it burns off and then it shines. And we were living right on the water and I was like, let's change plans. We're going out to the water right now. And so I'm in the kitchen trying to get breakfast over. I'm saying to Jeff, let's get the wagons packed, the sandwiches packed. Help you, have these kids, help you. And in the back of my mind I'm sure I'm wondering if these kids can do it.

Speaker 4: 13:10

So I run upstairs and I get in the shower trying to think about all the things that need to be done. And I get in the shower and turn on the water and I look down and there's no shampoo, there's no conditioner, there's no body wash, there's nothing in the shower. And I look down and there's a soggy band-aid that one of those beautiful grandkids had left in there. And all of a sudden I was thrown back into a flashback of being nine years old In the shower where there was no shampoo, no bar of soap, not even a waxy leftover of soap. That often happened to me when I was nine years old. It just wasn't. My father was a very absent father and there was not enough love in this whole world for this little nine-year-old that was left. And so I went into this flashback, never had one before or since, and I was this girl, probably dissociated from this little girl curled up in the corner in the shower and this voice if you know IFS work or parts work I have a part of me that's very critical and judgmental and this part came and really was kind of like one of those cartoon, like a cartoon balloon that had the writing in it and she was saying how dare you bring these kids? You can't take care of yourself. These parents of theirs are gonna be ashamed of you and all these critical voices about the things that I wasn't and couldn't be. And this voice had lived with me a lot of my life and I was there in the shower, almost in this dissociative state, and in that moment it was like God had said to me Tara, you know this little girl inside of you and I put my hand over my heart and I said to that baby girl sweetheart, I've got you and we're never going back there. And I had no idea how this intuitively just came to me. But I said to her you're never gonna go without and I can buy you hundreds of dollars of shampoo and conditioner and anything else that you want. That's, sweetheart, I've got you now.

Speaker 4: 15:14

And I found myself coming back to me in that little critical cartoon bubble that I had just kind of popped and I turned off the water and I thought it is so possible for us to go to those deepest, darkest places of trauma and bring ourselves through them by knowing that we can provide safety for these little ones inside of us that are so unsafe. So I got out of the shower and I looked over at the cloth foot tub that was there and there was every bottle of shampoo and conditioner and bubble bath and whatever else you could find around this tub. And I laughed and went over to the door and I heard Jeff outside getting the beach towel. So I opened the door and said you're not gonna believe what just happened. And he said to me what do we need? And I opened the door and said we don't need anything.

Speaker 4: 16:01

And this dear man looked at me and said what does she need? Meaning that little girl? And I said you find her? He was headed to the store and I said do you find her? The frutiest smelling shampoo and conditioner you can find? Cause, my little girl never got that and I have no idea what happened the rest of the day. I'm sure we went out and played our hearts out and that's the point is that it didn't that episode that was so frightening and terrifying in those minutes before I could bring myself back to regulation and provide safety for myself and I knew I was onto something that could be taught and that could be incorporated in my work. And that was the beginning of the work that I know and love today and the work that I teach other people to be able to do and to bring safety for themselves.

Speaker 2: 16:57

Now, Sam, I don't want to dominate the conversation here, so you jump in and ask whatever questions you have along the way, okay?

Speaker 3: 17:04

Well, I'm thinking of everyone that's tuning in, of which there will be many that don't know what trauma is, that don't know what inner child work is, but that don't know what a trauma workshop is, an immersion into trauma healing and what that looks like. And there's so many people out here that need it, and not just this doesn't stop it just addicted individuals or their family members. There's so many millions of people that are out here struggling with trauma. As Jason Chains says, they have the roadmap to life somewhere in the glove box, but they can't find it that there's something going on. There's just something missing, that toxic relationship after toxic relationship, or just this uneasy feeling.

Speaker 3: 17:52

And I heard another, I was listening to another podcast and I don't remember this guy's name because my memory sucks, but he said he said when you're dealing with trauma. He said so many psychiatrists love to polish the hood of a car with a blown engine and if you don't and this is not a stab at psychiatrists at all, but so many professionals are missing was driving it all of this trauma, generational trauma. So, if we can just take it back, cause I am just, I'm in like I'm all in, 100% and I love when we have you guys on here, what is it?

Speaker 4: 18:35

Yeah, that's the question that everybody wants to know, and we talk about trauma as being those events in our life that overwhelm us and that we don't have the ability to calm or soothe ourselves. I mean, that's what people would look at trauma and probably what most people would think and think of those. They begin to think of those events that happened, and what I want people to know is that trauma isn't an event. Trauma is a response. Trauma is a response that makes us feel unsafe, that changes the way that our central nervous system reacts to life, it puts us on high alert, trying to make sure that we're safe, and it just changes who we are as we build up the defenses against the pain and hurt that those events that happened shape us in some way that we don't ever want to experience it again, and so we build up defenses. We even recreate the trauma, trying to master the thing we couldn't do before. It impacts our lives, it impacts the fiber of who we are, and we set up defenses to not feel the thing that we feel as we have, as the effects of trauma leave us pretty shaken up and sometimes battered and sometimes really broken, and so trauma work isn't about.

Speaker 4: 20:11

You know, when I was early in my career, when I was a private practice therapist, I used to think that the goal of trauma resolution was getting the client to talk about the experience and to be able to make meaning, which is true at some point. But what I know now is that trauma leaves us unsafe emotionally unsafe and that the way that we heal from trauma trauma resolution is creating safety for ourselves and finding our way back to knowing that the trauma could be repeated or that there could be other traumas that affect us, and that we know that we have the tools to create safety and find our way back to ourselves, to self regulate and know that we're safe. And that's, that's really an inside job. You know, we run to people. There's a, there's a writing that's in a really beautiful daily reminder book and it says we, we run to mountains and into the deepest of oceans and into the arms of others trying to find that safety. And it's like that safety is inside of ourselves.

Speaker 2: 21:25

So when you look at, can I say something? Oh, by all means yeah, go ahead, Jeff.

Speaker 5: 21:31

I think a lot of people, a lot of people we've worked with, are kind of have a misconception of what trauma is or what causes trauma. We for a couple years did a quite a bit of work with first responders and they were primary firefighters. So we would get these guys that witnessed, you know, horrendous, you know events some paramedics, some of you know just the rescues, those kind of things so they would come to a retreat thinking that they were dealing with workplace trauma. You know, and hardly ever was it workplace trauma, because it goes deeper than that. Tara would have them really start looking at their lives.

Speaker 5: 22:16

Why did you become a firefighter? Why did you become a policeman? You know, then it was always because of the way they were brought up. You know there was some kind of childhood trauma. You know there might be third generation cop right, and they'd be telling the story about how abusive their father was. When he'd get home, you know, he'd get drunk, he'd beat up his, their mom or you know, or whatever. So there was all this trauma.

Speaker 5: 22:39

You know that they're trying to control. You know I become a police officer and I try to control things around me. You know I try to control other people. You know I think it's that's the stuff that people don't understand that we sometimes are drawn into our own professions and, like the four of us on this call and I'm assuming that's why Sam's in it too you know comes from our own trauma, you know, from our, our addictions, from our family of origin.

Speaker 5: 23:06

You know all those kind of things, you know, and so part of it that is to make ourselves feel better. You know we go out and help everybody and the dog, you know, along the way, and oftentimes we don't take care of ourselves. You know that's why we see so many people addiction and mental health field, you know end up dying, you know, or relapsing or disappearing. You know it's because we've never really taken care of that. You know. Inner child you know we don't really talk a lot about inner child work, but we do talk about the little kids inside us, you know. But anyhow, I just thought it was important to say that. Thank you.

Speaker 3: 23:47

It's not necessarily an event you know, john Southworth always said he said I gotta, I gotta take my little boy inside out to play. He's got to take my little boy outside to play.

Speaker 5: 23:59

That guy could play too, when he would do that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: 24:04

One of the things that I really want to stress is that trauma, inner child work can be. I mean it does address trauma, but the work that we do, even though we've labeled you know people would call it inner child work I really want to stress that it is. It is providing safety for these younger parts of ourselves that that experienced the lack of nurturing, the abuse, the fear. You know, these traumas, these events can be huge events. They can be, you know, the abuse, the neglect which is terrible. You know. I think we kind of minimize the impact of neglect, but it's terrible. But you know, we don't make it out of childhood, we don't make it out of adolescence without some battering in scars, and so it doesn't have to be these big events, neglect, abuse, you know, whatever it can be, as crazy as the sounds it can be.

Speaker 4: 25:16

My brother was born and I no longer felt safe because I wasn't the focus of my parents. You know I and I didn't know what to do. Or it can be a hospital stay where a child is in pain and you know the back in the day, when I was a child, the parents would have to leave at seven o'clock at night and these children to be in the hospital with getting their tonsils out, which was no big deal, and yet it's a terrifying experience. And so we have to go back and look at it from the view of what was terrifying to the child. Even if it is a normal childhood experience, it can be.

Speaker 4: 25:55

Childhood can be terrifying. Adolescents can be terrifying. Bullying can be terrifying. Any lack of safety you know a parent who is sick, a parent who has cancer, that you know. Feelings of trauma and abandonment can come from that, and the parents make you know. The parent may get better, yet the child is left with, or the adolescent is left with, these trauma experiences that have left them feeling unsafe in the world.

Speaker 4: 26:24

And so the work that I do, yes, is about those little children, but the work may be about this 18 year old rebellious teenager that is pissed off and angry and shows his or her the effects of their lack of safety in a rebellious and angry way. And so, you know, we work on these younger experiences, because that's where the pain often is. And then, by the time we're 18 or 21 years old, we've laid the template for our lives as far as how we react to the early trauma, and then we reenact it, and we can do a timeline from zero to 18 years, and then we overlay on the top how we have reacted, what we've done, how we've recreated the trauma, trying to master the things we couldn't in our younger years. And that is our way of trying to create. It's not like you know. Most of our traumas happen early in life and then the rest of our life is trying to spend. Our bodies are trying to heal from it.

Speaker 2: 27:38

So, as it relates to you know Jeff brought this up and I know Tara, you do work with with some, some ethnic groups around generational trauma. When you look at whether it's, you know, multi generational military families, multi generational first responder families you do a lot of work with the Redox Jewish community and many of them are Holocaust survivors themselves or descendants of Holocaust survivors how does that impact, whether it's a specific ethnic group or family system or generations of family systems, how does that, how do you see that impacting generationally throughout, throughout families?

Speaker 4: 28:16

It's. It's fascinating to understand the reaction from the generation before, from their trauma, their behavior from, perhaps let's just use the Holocaust, their behavior from the Holocaust shutting down, not talking about it, feeling the terror of what happened to them. It's passed on to the next generation as silence and as anger and, as you know, any myriad of ways that it's passed down that the next generation feels like something's wrong with me, and so that next generation, you know, has anxiety, depression that is carried from parents, and so that carry trauma then goes to the next generation. And oftentimes what happens is when one generation pulls in, the next generation tries to make up for that and then will over indulge their children or try and get, give them everything, or try and create a world that's not one of deprivation like they received. And so between this pulling in and and then pushing out the trauma, trauma continues down the lines and it may look totally different, but it started a long time ago in ways of silence and not speaking about it and not making sense of it. I'm sure those Holocaust survivors couldn't even make sense of what happened, let alone talk about it. And so I watched the generations that are impacted carry that shame, carry that trauma and then react to it in whatever way, trying to fix what came before.

Speaker 4: 30:04

And the interesting part of working with the Jewish community is that we've got centuries it's not just the Holocaust We've got centuries of being driven out and and and so much pain and suffering. And yet we can look at the Holocaust and say, you know, here's the event, and it's years and years and years of suffering that these people have gone through and and the generations after really, really, really suffer. But it's not any different than the rest of us who. I mean it's different in the magnitude of it. But you know, I look at my grandmother, my great grandmother, and what happened to her and my grandmother and then my mother and then me, and the trauma is just really aren't that different. The way we might handle them are very different. But I can, you know, we can trace back. I can trace back and I think any of us can trace back and look at those traumas and see how we are affected and how we carry shame and pain from past generations.

Speaker 3: 31:07

Ooh, now that you said that, I mean I say all the time that I've traced my generational trauma back to pick its charge on the field of Getty's at Gettysburg in 1863. My third great grandfather marched out on that field, was blown to pieces, never seen or heard from again, and it was there that, when I traced it back, is like where our family started falling apart not really part but really started some, some, some bad coping skills.

Speaker 4: 31:35

Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting. There's a book called it didn't start with me, by a woman is WLLM and and it is fascinating his his research shows that we will actually go back to a certain event that happened with our parents or grandparents and we will reenact that in our lives without even knowing that that event happened. It's a fascinating read and I'm very, very curious to begin to use some of that material for further work that I'm doing, because I absolutely believe that these, this transgenerational trauma, is much more impactful than what we really do understand.

Speaker 3: 32:16

Now, matt, I'm not trying to take over the show here.

Speaker 2: 32:20

No, and you and you're not. I've got plenty of questions bouncing around inside of my noggin over here too. So well, well, you know, to bring this back to kind of the core audience that seems to be paying attention to what Sam and I have to say, we can and we can think about talking about addiction. You know you, oftentimes Sam and I are talking to two parents that seemingly don't have any issues around substance abuse or alcohol abuse. They're very willing to admit hey, yeah, I am enabling this and and it's really hard for me to stop doing that and oftentimes you know we're not, nor should we be, in a position to try to take them through hey, let's talk about your history and talk about your past. But to really help them understand that a lot of what has happened, even in their childhood, informs how they parents, informs what's happened and they may not be able to see.

Speaker 2: 33:15

I look at my family growing up and neither one of my parents ever drank. It really confounded them that one of their sons turned out to be a derogatic and an alcoholic. But as you look at my family in its entirety not just my immediate family, but Aunt's, uncles, cousins there is substance abuse and there's also other behaviors that have been problematic throughout, just not this present generation, but going back, just in terms of just things that I let's put it blandly just some controlling things, things that were used to try to find and make sense and get control of something that was really out of control emotionally. How do you bring that, maybe, to a focal point for parents that might be listening right now to help them understand how their early childhood may be affecting, how they're even just looking at, this problem that's living in their home right now?

Speaker 4: 34:15

Yeah, you know it's a delicate dance because these parents are already devastated and then when you start to bring up something that makes them feel salty even more than they already feel, that hurts and it's painful and it's a delicate dance. But you know, I hate, I really do not like the word codependency, but I want to talk about the concept of what that means for a minute, because codependency isn't. I rely on somebody else, I have to rely on them to see how I feel. But the idea of having a child who is in pain and who we need to withdraw some of the very things that our parental role requires us to do for them. And we're asked to withdraw that not love, but perhaps what looks like nurturing to us, or even monetary support or whatever that is.

Speaker 4: 35:22

And when I am left with the feelings of having to do the very thing that tells me I'm a terrible parent and I can't settle myself down after I have to tell my child, no, I won't pay for this or I won't give you money, we're left with feelings inside of us that are so unsettling, but oftentimes they are impacted by the times that we didn't get what we needed, and so it's not just what's in front of us right now, but often it's the history of our own pain, from our own fears, our own neglect, our own ways, that we wished that somebody would have nurtured us and cared for us in a different way, and then we feel like we're not nurturing our children in the way that, the only way we know how or what we believe and when my lack of nurturing or my pain or my trauma compounds with what I'm required to do for my child and I can't, it expands the response and I'm left in this state of what people would call codependency, but what it really is.

Speaker 4: 36:48

I'm left in this state of an inability to calm myself and to take care of my response, settle myself down, and I can't because it's way too big. Because what's combined? The response of not being able to take care of my child is combined with the response of this younger part of me that needed something that they didn't get either, and that's when we don't have the ability to do the things that really need to be done in order for one of our loved ones to get the help that they need or the boundaries that we set because we can't.

Speaker 2: 37:32

Well, this sounds like it has a lot to do with attachment styles as well, even as it affects our parenting, whether we're anxiously attached or avoidant, or even securely attached, that I see parents that find it very easy to practice what we would call tough love, where it's just like nope, that's it, we're done, end of sentence. And then there's those others that you're just describing that may be more anxiously attached, where I have feelings that I can't contend with if I behave this way and therefore I'm not going to be able to do that.

Speaker 2: 38:06

Yeah, am I getting any work near the mark there.

Speaker 4: 38:09

You're absolutely right.

Speaker 4: 38:11

So you start adding attachment and even if you have a secure attachment but there were some things that happened later on when our stuff gets mixed up with our parenting, when our own pain or whatever gets mixed up with the parenting, it's more difficult.

Speaker 4: 38:32

But you know, it's interesting that you would say that, because I see these and I'm going to say men, because in my situation it is mostly men this, what we look at, is almost an ability to say, okay, they're cut off then and I'm not going to do that thing. But that is often avoidant. I can't look at it because it's too painful or it's too hurting if I look at it because my stuff comes up and so if they're again, we're talking attachment style, if that's avoidance, then I'm just going to cut it off and it seems like it's easy and, yeah, I can do that, but it's their own avoidance. The only way that they know how to do it is to cut off, because if I look at it, if I feel it it's going to bring me down and I'm not going to do it. So let's just cut, cut it off, cut. You know we'll just do this really tough love and sever, but what's underneath? That is as much pain as what they anxiously attach would be, but they just can't look at it.

Speaker 2: 39:31

Yeah, I mean, Sam, how often are you and I in situations where we ask families to write letters that really tap into a lot of that emotional connection that they have with their addicted loved one, and we get to the rehearsal meeting and they're like I'm not the letter writing kind of guy.

Speaker 5: 39:46

I don't know, it's usually the dad too. It says that, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we started designing family programs years and years ago. Tara and I, we did a lot of different family programs and we would generally would not want to work with the patient. You know, we wanted to work with the families and when we started asking them, well, what was it that you brought into this family, you know, prior to your child being born? You know, and it was always, it was one of those things where I'd take a deep breath whenever she would ask that question, or I would ask that question, because I was afraid they were gonna be offended, that we were actually saying you know, what did you bring to this family? You know, I mean, this started before your kid ever started using you know, whatever. I mean, that was my premise of it and it was always interesting how they would respond, and especially if we'd worked them the right way with the education and support, is that we were doing like group family therapy, you know, and they could actually talk about the multi-generational stuff that went on in their family. You know that they might not be drinkers, but their parents might have been drinkers, you know. So grandma and grandpa were drinkers and so it was really interesting.

Speaker 5: 40:58

We could actually work them through. That, you know, and we would do. We did different things than what most family programs did, you know, and you know we do experiential work with them. We'd actually put them in a horse arena, you know, and, but give them different assignments than you normally would. It would assignment would be. So what do you do different this time? I want you just to observe yourself. You know, don't try to control your child, don't try to control the horse. Of course you know they never can, but let's see what kind of different reaction you get out of the situation by just letting go, you know. So it was really an interesting process to watch these people start to realize it's not just the addiction, you know, it's the system, you know.

Speaker 2: 41:42

So Well, we're not going to be able to get through all this in the next 10 minutes, but we've talked a lot about, you know, the identification of the issue here and what trauma is and how it shows up. What does the work look like to begin helping someone to create that safety for themselves, instead of looking exteriorly for that?

Speaker 5: 42:03

I can't wait to hear her explanation because I get asked this question so many times. You know, and I go. You just got to come and see it.

Speaker 2: 42:14

I mean, that would be my answer if somebody asked me, like you, just got to go talk to Tara. You know, go book a retreat with her, but if you could help. If somebody's thinking about doing this, tara, what can they expect when they when they show up at your front door, and what kind of work are they going to do?

Speaker 4: 42:27

Yeah. Well, the answer is is that we spend five days beginning to rewire the brain for safety. That's that's what we do, and we use experientials to really go in and repair situations or patterns or things that happened, that wired the brain to feel unsafe. And so the first thing that we do is we really explore this story. What is the story of my life? What brought me to feeling unsafe? You know, and a lot of people come and say well, I don't really have trauma. I came because I have anxiety or have relationship problems or I have, you know, depression. I haven't been able to, and so we retrace.

Speaker 4: 43:19

When did you start to feel unsafe? These are all ways that the body manifests not being safe. Relationship problems, you know, are that I'm afraid if you see the real me, and so I keep you at Arms Lake, or I keep myself defended, so you know it prevents intimacy or whatever these you know. So people come and they say, well, I don't really have any trauma. Well, that may be the truth, but at some point you're experiencing these symptoms that tell me that you feel unsafe. So let's look at the story and let's lay it out. And so the first day, we tell stories that each person has 45 minutes to an hour to tell their story and then we use the rest of the day or in the next morning to really track what behaviors today came from the experiences that you had earlier. How were these things played out? What does today's behavior look like? That came from yesterday's lack of safety and we use, you know, some work from that Marilyn Murray came up with she was one of my mentors we really trace back and look at the trauma or whatever those experiences are and then at some point we, as we, get a full look of the story and we know what we're talking about, what we're working for each participant, we are able to go back and pick up these children, reunite with these children, these adolescents, maybe even these 20-year-olds that experienced the pain, the hurt, the trauma.

Speaker 4: 45:01

And what we're really doing is tapping into the subconscious that has all the stories of what happened before. So it's not like it's this, you know, woo-woo. Although it kind of feels woo-woo sometimes, it's not really that woo-woo. We're tapping into what the body already knows and what the body carries, but it lets us come in the psyche, lets us enter into it when we can formulate it in a way that it understands and it understands pain through our childhood by these individuals, these younger ones that experienced it. So we go gather them and then we begin to find out through different experientials how they feel and what they think. There's ways that they will communicate with us as we can get into the subconscious. And so we tap into the subconscious and this isn't hypnosis or anything, it's just ways of being quiet and letting those children know that we're there and that we're safe, that we can tap into what were their pain is and what that is. And then we go back and we reclaim these kids from our parents and we have conversations with the parents.

Speaker 4: 46:14

We do some work around what happened to us in our parenting that probably made us feel unsafe, even if that was not Our parents intent at all. It's never about blaming anybody else. There may be other perpetrators. There may be other things that happened to us bullying or those kinds of things and so we're able to go in and really understand and set boundaries for these kids to say we're letting go of this pain of the past and I've got you now very much, like I did with that little girl, and you're never going to be back in that situation. I will never allow that to happen. And then we begin to really understand If I let go of all this stuff, then who am I Without the trauma that has formed over these years and that has become a part of me? How do I begin to really take a look at my values and begin to understand what safety looks like and how that impacted my identity? And we do some work around that the last day and really beginning to understand what safety looks like for us and what self-love looks like. And so we do some work around that on the last day and it is a deep, deep dive. But we come out on the last day and people are feeling full and ready to go home and it just doesn't happen that they are.

Speaker 4: 47:39

You know, people come in and think, oh my gosh, I'm gonna come undone and you're not gonna be able to put it back together and Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, that's just not. That's just not the truth.

Speaker 4: 47:50

The truth is we can go in there and go to the deepest, down to the bottom, and come up on the other side and protect those younger selves and know that they're loved and that we've got them, and that Begins to rewire the new tracks for safety as they move forward and go home With and and we give them work to do at home and continuing with these younger ones to continue with the safety.

Speaker 4: 48:15

You know that might require a trip back to where they grew up and and conversation and going back and I getting a playlist and in music or you know candy from Childhood, and going back to these places and spaces that these children Even happy times. But but going back and doing some reparative work even after they leave, and it's just a beautiful, sacred, sacred Week where we also do a little bit of IFS work or parts work interspersed with with this, you know, reuniting these children, these kids, these young adults, even and just rewiring the brain for safety now what is needed Before they come to you, like where do they need to be before they come to you?

Speaker 4: 49:03

Well, they need to have some sobriety. People can't be, you know, a month clean, still trying to figure their way out and and and, then just show up and think, oh, I can do this deep dive. You know we have my son is. It is dr Heward and he does An intake with him. He's a naturopathic doctor and does Chronic pain. Work is a specialty which requires Him to really understand the polyvagal theory safety inside the body because chronic pain is about not feeling safe inside the body and the way it manifests itself. And so I use him to do the intake and really help me understand what's going on. You know he gets a different view from them. I'm able to kind of look at those assessments and talk to people before they come in.

Speaker 4: 49:54

You know, people with anxiety, depression, relationship issues are mostly the people who come I don't do a lot of. You know people with a Pretty healthy dose of mental health diagnosis. This is a workshop model. It is not treatment in five days. People have to be able to, you know, have enough Ego strength and resources internal resources and External resources to come and do the deep dive and then be able to go home. You know we are next door, in a little cottage next door but there's not people there that are staying with them at night and so they need to be able to to provide that safety and have the resources to to engage and be with people and interact in the evenings and, you know, show up in group the next day ready to go and Tolerate, tolerate. That is comfort that comes up and yet, like I said, it's a beautiful, loving, kind of a home-centered environment. Jeff and I are there and we really try and care for these people and understand, but it's very sacred work and it's slow and gentle and loving.

Speaker 5: 51:00

Sam, about 65% of the people we work with actually are professionals in the industry too, so it's not just you know we. So we talk to professionals all the time and, you know, ask for referrals, of course, but we're more or less asking them to come so they can come. And some come because they want to learn what Tara does, so they think it's a good way to be able to, to figure out their own professional skill level and try to learn what it is that Tara does. We've had a couple show up thinking they were coming to a training, when you know that's not what it is but They've done beautiful work, so.

Speaker 5: 51:42

So people ask me all the time so who's your perfect client? I usually just tell them you, you know.

Speaker 4: 51:48

so Then you have people don't have to have, you know, this deep-seated trauma. People just come, people who want to work on themselves. Yeah, you know it's for really anybody, everybody it really is, except for cases where people are, you know, newly sober and just trying to find their way, or there's mental health diagnosis that we keep them from, you know, being able to do that deeper work. But really it's for anybody.

Speaker 5: 52:15

We have a couple treatment centers that send us almost monthly. They'll send us one of their staff members and because not because they're afraid they're gonna relapse or something like that they just know that they can come do that work and actually come back and be a better employee.

Speaker 3: 52:32

Well, I can tell you I'm coming. You know, 15 years ago I did some, I did some. I've done the EMDR Scattered throughout my sobriety. But I noticed, out of Northern California, I was out on a trip in April. Everything was perfect. I was with the love of my life. The food was terrific, the climate, the ride, the flight, everything was Absolutely perfect. Couldn't ask for anything better. And every day in the middle of the afternoon my little little voice would come in my head and say you're gonna pay for this shit. Something Bad happen.

Speaker 4: 53:08

The stuff we're talking about, sam right there.

Speaker 5: 53:10

So, sam, you're a perfect client.

Speaker 2: 53:15

So I had one more question and and that is you know a lot of the pushback that I get when I talk to whether it's clients about going to treatment or Family members about coming to do work like this Is they have a resistance to the group dynamic. I don't want to do groups and I know coming to you after 19 years sober was the first time I ever did group therapy. Ever I didn't go to treatment. It was never something I got to experience and I am so glad that I did. I got to show up with a group of men that were really there to take and they took it seriously and Everyone was ready to jump in and and do what you asked us to do. Why do you feel like that group dynamic is more powerful than individual work?

Speaker 4: 53:59

I'm so glad you asked that question because I was recently asked about the benefits of doing individual work and the benefits of doing group work, and I will tell you this there are no benefits of doing individual work. I couldn't come up with any. But the benefits of doing group work or this, is that you come it's scary to come and see you know who's not know who's in the group and share your story and all that, but the view that you get of yourself in reflection of the other people in the group. You can't get in one-on-one and so in one-on-one you bring your story and it's only from your view and you don't have a way to look at it differently, to really impact the way. It's just mono vision, you know, and so that's all you bring and that's all we work with.

Speaker 4: 54:49

But that, but the, the way that you can begin, use other people's stories and the way that they tell their story. You have a ha after a ha after a ha in your, in an understanding your story at a deeper level that you just don't get. And then we have Kara, who is our yoga breath work Guru. That is just phenomenal. You, matt, you, yeah, she is she is something else.

Speaker 4: 55:20

And we don't do that in one-on-one, you know you don't get the, you don't get to really Incorporate the body work you're, the trauma is stored inside the body and and if we just sit and do talk therapy, that doesn't release any of that. And so, as scary as it is and I know that it's scary there are no benefits in doing just one-on-one work because it's so expansive in the way that we are able to understand from a different level the way that Kara works, the way that You're in this beautiful group and being held by these people that honor your story and you become part of the solution as you share your story in all of your bravery and and as you connect with them. And you know, if we're looking at at healing, safety comes from a group, from from being in social interaction. I mean that that safety. Yet we don't, we don't know that, but our body responds to that social interaction. That's why family, love a family and that connectedness is so important and we bring that to the healing process when we do that in groups.

Speaker 2: 56:31

Well, and it's been something that's carried on with our group since leaving. We've stayed in touch we have we have group calls, we have a text thread. We get to celebrate Milestones in each other's lives. One of the guys is about to be a dad and the others you know our other celebrating other milestones. And then there's times where we're in crisis and we're there for each other, and so it's been a powerful tool, even after leaving Idaho.

Speaker 4: 56:52

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 56:53

I love that. Guys. Thank you so so much. I, we, sam and I have been talking about this since since I got back, like, hey, we need to do this, we need to have them on, and you know, we were talking about you guys on a previous episode a couple weeks ago and I just felt like, okay, it's time we need we need to get you guys on here, and so if people are interested in coming and doing this work with you, tara, how can they begin that process?

Speaker 4: 57:20

So they can go onto the website Tara Holbrookcom. Tera, h-o-l-b-r-o-o-k. Com. There's the information on there to get ahold of Lisa, who is the person who does all the inquiries. If they will get ahold of her, she will send them the information. You can always give out my number, matt, if you you know. If people contact you and they can call me directly, I'll turn them over to Lisa. But I would be willing to talk to anybody who wants to know if it's a fit for them.

Speaker 2: 57:52

Well, I'll put Lisa's phone number and I'll put the website in the show notes so that people can have that in writing to refer to After they're done listening. Sam, any other questions you've got that you want to ask before we're done here tonight? Oh?

Speaker 3: 58:04

I've got hundreds. We're gonna need a part two. We're definitely gonna need a part two after your work.

Speaker 2: 58:11

And you can come back and we can. We can have the, the experience where we all know what we're talking about from first-hand.

Speaker 5: 58:16

That's a beautiful idea, matt. I'll have Lisa called Sam in about half hour. Sounds good.

Speaker 3: 58:23

Yeah, I'm good with that.

Speaker 4: 58:25

I would love to do this again. I would really love to do this again. This is my heart, um, you know, it's what I get to do and I'm so grateful, so I would love to do this again.

Speaker 3: 58:35

Wonderful, yeah, I mean. Look, the most of the world's problems this I'll just narrow it down to our country most of our nation's problems Are the result of trauma. I'm a believer in that, absolutely. What's the race problem we're having? It's all just traumatized people blaming everyone else, blaming each other, and we're all traumatized Just running around here saying, well, if you do right, then we'd be okay, and it's just, we got to do our own work. It's all drama.

Speaker 2: 59:03

Amen brother.

Speaker 4: 59:04

Yeah, absolutely true.

Speaker 2: 59:06

We had Rick Hubbard on last year talking about generational trauma in the black community and how that has affected substance abuse and alcoholism and and the just the correlations he made to, you know, slavery, even in his own family line. You know he's four generations removed from slavery and just told a brilliant story about how recovery came into his life after you know that that generational trauma kept getting passed down until it reached him and and how the work that he's done has been able to shift that. And um, I think that there's probably a lot of people that have that same result after coming and doing the work with you. And I know, and our group is looking forward, at some point, once, uh, phase two comes on board, we're we're looking forward to coming back and and digging into the next level, but, uh, until then we'll you'll probably get an email from us in the next couple weeks on phase two.

Speaker 5: 59:56

You know, wonderful, wonderful.

Speaker 4: 59:58

Well, yeah, with some dates sounds good. Yeah, sounds good Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:00:02

Awesome. Thank you guys.

Speaker 4: 1:00:03

Thank you so much, you guys. It was such a joy to be with you.

Speaker 2: 1:00:06

Likewise. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: 1:00:15

Thanks again for listening to the party records. If you liked what you heard, please leave us a rating and a review. This helps us get the word out to more people, to learn more or to ask us a question we can answer in a future episode. Please visit us at party recordscom and remember don't enable addiction ever. On behalf of the party records matt brown and sam davis. Let's talk again soon.