An Army of Normal Folks - Dr. Trina Clayeux: Therapists Aren’t The Only Answer (Pt 1)

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

For every single therapist, there are 350 people looking for that type of support. Dr. Trina and her team at Give An Hour realized that there will never be enough therapists to meet this need. And that the answer is us, their own Army of Normal Folks serving one another in peer support groups and as wellness ambassadors. Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Now, if you, you know, and I've had people, you know, if I say something, they're like, oh my gosh, do you have a good therapist? And I think, wow, that was such a missed opportunity. You could have asked me a connection question like, wow, that seems really hard. What are you doing about that? Or what's, what's your next step? Or, and I think there's the training right there. That's right.

Because as soon as you tell me, first of all, you don't know my history with therapy. You don't know if I've, you know, you don't know my family history with therapy. You don't know how I feel about therapists. It could be terrible. You're afraid of them. I could think that it's all, you know, it's a non-science, but you also aren't taking into account that you just escalated our interaction. You just told me that my stuff's way too big for you. My stuff's way too big for you. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy.

I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. And that last part, it somehow led to an Oscar for the film about our team. That movie's called Undefeated. Y'all, I believe our country's problems can never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big words that nobody ever uses on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks, us. Just you and me deciding, hey you know what, I can help.

That's what Dr. Trina Clayu, the voice you just heard, has done. She's the CEO of Give An Hour, which started by encouraging therapists to donate an hour of therapy a week to military service members, veterans, and their families. But then they realized that for every single therapist that we have in the United States, there are 350 people looking for that very type of support. And so therapists giving an hour, or even recruiting more therapists into the field,

could never meet all of the country's mental health needs. And as you just heard, therapists aren't always the best solution for every person or need out there, so they came up with a solution that I cannot wait for you to hear about right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. I had the mom and the dad. I had an older brother. I have an older brother. And you know, I think just like anybody, I mean, you have like an incredible, I have

incredible memories and feelings from that time. I think I also had a lot of, you know, just like anyone, any adversities that, you know, that you're kind of trebling through that pop up at different times in your life as you're on your journey. And so I had, I think if anyone would ask you, I was like, quiet kid, I did the school, I did the sports, I did kind of all the right things. And then, you know, eventually I just kind of push pretty hard. And so I moved out while I was still in high school and I was like ready to take on the world.

Did you really? You left home in high school? Yeah, yeah, my mother's still a little devastated by it, but yes, and no, like I just, once I decide something, the thing is happening and I just, and I do it without usually anyone knowing either. So it's not a lot of lead up to it. There's some independence over there.

There's something there, I don't know. And it still crops up every now and again in different ways. And so I think that I know when I've hit something that is a driver for me, and then there's no other thing I can see. Do you mind telling me why you moved out? I think, you know, in retrospect, I could probably see a lot of the family dynamics that I probably, you know, in retrospect, I could probably see a lot of the family dynamics

that I probably at that, you know, growing up in Northern Idaho and in the seventies and eighties, I didn't have probably the skill sets for the coping skills for my family didn't have it. And so I think I felt and I, you know, again, this has no relation to my work now, but it, you know, it's a relevant part is I had developed a lot of childhood anxiety, which of course nobody knew what anxiety was in the 70s and 80s. I think that was my first pop of like, this is my coping skill, which is I'm going to revolt.

I'm going to go. I'm going to remove myself. I'm going to go into something else. I think that's something I've had a curb over my lifetime. Actually, I think that really is interesting've had a curb over my lifetime. Actually, I think that really is interesting when we get to give them that word. It was very difficult for me to just go through that. You could tell.

Yeah. I was like, and done. I can tell that's hard for you to talk about, but, and I don't want to pry too much, but you also said it still kills my mom today. So there's something there but the whole point is I'm again I'm not trying to dig deep into your psyche but I do think that's interesting once we talk to give an hour and we'll get to that in a minute.

Trina went on to serve as a leader in all kinds of social impact organizations including workforce training, community college systems, and helping with military spouse employment. So, you know, and I know, you know, you're right, because like the social impact, and I think it's always a little bit of a challenge when you do this type of work, because everybody knows what business is. But when you talk about nonprofits, or you talk about the education space, it comes already kind of pre-packaged for folks when they engage with it. It's like, oh, nonprofit means not very good. That's what I mean by gooey. Right. It's sticky. But what is it? It's not exactly something firm you understand when you hear it. Right. Or it comes with like so much connotation. It's like, oh, it's not as good as business.

Are you holding signs on a corner free the all that's for free because they're just the hearts in it and it's like, but that's not what I get from you. You would be doing so yeah, it's not what folks sign into. And so what I think that, you know, part of it is, is that I was looking for that place where government and business couldn't solve for, they can't solve independently for a social problem. But I think you're navigating this space between all of these things. You're having to almost translate what's meaningful to business and how that matters. Just for instance, I did a lot of work in workforce development, working with young adults, 16 to 24-year-olds

who were pushed out, fade out, drop out from school. So I ran an education and workforce center. So just generally, nobody cared that much about our young people. They cared that they weren't breaking into their cars. They cared about they weren't in the downtown area where all the customers were, but they didn't see it as a viable part of their workforce and they had workforce problems, workforce shortages. And so you're really that person in the in-between who is trying to knit the distance

between this is actually a problem that you have, this is a solution you have, it doesn't look like the solution that maybe you thought you needed. But if we work together, we could help solve for, solve all but solve for some of the workforce issues that you have. And in benefit, these individuals will not be down in the downtown area or stealing your cars. So you see that as social impact.

I do. I do. Because I think you have to have a business mind for what you do. I mean, fundraising, trying to get in these places and spaces, this is not simple work. And you have to be able to understand and be alongside people who are the ones who are not benefiting from the systems the way that they are for whatever and a variety of reasons. And so I think spending time with people, people in poverty, people who are low wealth, people who are low educated, people who don't maybe necessarily have all the same opportunities, when you get to know people, you have no other distance besides advocating for them. And so you really are bringing these things together. Go. You had a look, say it. Go. You had a look. Say it. Just recently we released, on Tuesdays we release our normal episodes. On Friday we release our episode X and they're called Shop Talk and a recent one was on what I

call living in a vacuum and if you live in a vacuum you can't grow and what that means is when you surround yourself with people who look like you, who love like you, who worship like you, who vote like you, and who believe just like you, that every conversation you have is circular, and therefore all of your thought is in a vacuum. And what you just said is what I really challenge everybody in my orbit to do, which is get outside of that vacuum and surround yourself with people who don't look, vote, worship, love, and act just like you. Because that's where the real growth for not only the people you seek to serve, but also you happens.

And that's what you just said in a different way. Yeah, it's so true. And you know, I think there's such simple things that we put to characters. So we think, oh, a person in poverty. Now I know everything I need to know about that person. But when you get to know people, then you find out all the other pieces to it and you have a more complete, you know, person. But I do find that the clipping of folks or this like tight narrative or, you know, and that's what I think a lot of my work has been is taking on these narratives that institutions have also taken on. And so I won't call it the institutions, but I'm thinking like big governmental institutions, I'll use the

Social Security Office just because that's an easy one. Because I guess I can use a personal experience too, when I go into the Social Security Office office and the way that I am engaged with from the moment I walked in, I can tell you that people with middle class who have some power, who have, you know, who feel like they have a voice in things don't appreciate the way that you're engaged with when you walk in the Social Security office. Can you imagine people who don't have the ability to say it because they need the service, they need the thing, they need to get in there. And I think that part of what I've done and then what I've surrounded myself is taking on those systems because we take on people harder than we take on the systems that we all know don't work, aren't people friendly, aren't trying to solve real problems.

I mean, they're trying to solve general problems, but that doesn't help the person who's sitting in front of you to solve a general problem. So I think of things like that. Like, I am wanting to take... I want to penetrate where those systems aren't working. It's not that the system is inherently bad. It's that the system is not necessarily working for people who have individual needs. And I think you can do... I know you can do both. I don't even think you can do both. What is military spouse employment? What is that? Yeah, it was- You did that at one time. That one interests me. Yeah. And I think, again, you're working this conduit between people who don't necessarily

value, like we all think we know what a military spouse is. It's like, oh, that's adorable. You're a military spouse. Like you're- That's adorable. It is. That's how you're very much- That's like a Southern, oh, bless your heart. It's like, oh, that's adorable. You're a military spouse. Like you're... That's adorable. It is. That's how you're very much... That's like a Southern, oh, bless your heart. It's almost condescending. Yes. Yes. I actually have a picture of a place I used to go in North Carolina, and it said the Dependent Center, and that was a spouse. So you were formed as a dependent. You're either being sponsored, you're a dependent. The language itself. The language is what tries to shape

the behavior and the way in which you get to show up in those spaces. And your spouse is, you know, is the person, right? And then you are all the other things. And there's a very silent, not intentional and not even like anything that I could say is like negative, but there's a silent system that kind of shapes how as a spouse you get to show up in certain spaces. No one says it. And so you're, you know, there's some expectations on you, which again, I don't think I was incredibly, I came in very late into that and I don't think I was incredibly amenable to it, but I also saw how much it affected people. So part of what we did though is to work with military spouses to help and again, highly educated, you know, because many

of them are not able, you know, you go to like, I went to Clovis, New Mexico, there's not a lot of employment for me in Clovis, New Mexico. Not a lot. And so they tend to go back to school, they become highly educated, they got multiple degrees, lots of certificates, but a really hard time finding meaning for them, meaningful employment, and certainly not meaningful employment when people are like, oh, and I've had them say this, you're a military spouse. You're only going to be here for a couple of years.

So I'm not going to hire you. So I take off my wedding ring. I did all the things. I had everything as generic as possible. So you couldn't see how much I was moving around. And I think what I wanted to do was help smooth that as generic as possible so you couldn't see how much I was moving around. And, you know, I think what I wanted to do was help smooth that for other military spouses, but also help educate employers about the benefit because again, these will be high functioning, high achieving

professionals who also be incredibly loyal and the expectation that- I was about to say, what about the loyalty factor? Isn't it just embedded in that particular community? Absolutely. I think that. And no one else are forced to make some sort of three-year or five-year commitment to your organization. If you're just Joe Blow, you don't know that Joe Blow didn't just come up, take a job, and he's already looking at your job, or he's looking at using this as a stepping stone. So again, I go back to like the narration out there,

but it's very difficult to say military spouse and have people go like, wow, I really value that. That is incredible. I'd love to hire you. It's definitely, you have to do a lot more upselling. Deist So as I hear all of these different things before a given hour, it's kind of clear to me, well, no, I'm assuming or I'm gathering, better word, gathering. It only took three chances, but I think I got to the word on it. Gathering. That you could have left Gonzaga with this doctor of leadership thing and probably gone to work from Fortune 500 companies.

I'm sure there's people that do that because they're looking for leadership people and leadership roles. But you, on the other hand, wanted to use that preparedness and education to have some measure of change in communities, whether they're one community or another. That's kind of where you bumped along it looks like until you started. You did what you do now. I mean is that right? Is that where your heart is? Oh for sure. Absolutely. And I think bumped along is a good way of, you know, I came up as a first-generation college student so I bumped along a lot of these. Really? Nobody in your family had ever gone to college?

No. And I had no clue. And then you were a doctor. You went all the way through. I had no clue. I went through, oh my gosh You went all the way through. I had no clue. I went through, oh my gosh, between high school graduation and college. I mean, it was like two years, and then I took quite a bit on my undergrad. You know, my parents had gotten divorced, and you know, there was a lot of things that had gone down that, you know, that I kind of extended out. But even my, you asked about a master's program, I didn't know what public administration policy

was. I heard someone say it, and I was like, sounds great, I need to get a master's program. I didn't know what public administration policy was. I heard someone say it and I was like, it sounds great, I need to get a master's degree. So that is very much how I rolled into these things. So again, would have been helpful. So any great advice out there is, you know, do some planning ahead of time. But I think the bump along was I never deviated

and I always tried to figure, I think I was always attracted to the most complex systems that seem impenetrable. They seem like they're just so set that this is it. I worked in prisons and it's not like there's, you know, people are going in and thinking like, how do we revolutionize this? I mean, you do have pockets of folks, but it kind of is what it is. And so for me, I wanted to go where it felt extreme and it felt intractable and to see like what kind of change can you affect in a really thoughtful, genuine way where you are leveraging what you can learn from people to try to really unwind and then reconstruct

those systems. Well, that makes a lot of sense when you get to give an hour. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors. But first I got something really cool to tell you about. We're hosting our second ever live interview we're doing in Memphis on November 7th with Todd Comernicki. This guy is the director of one of the most thought provoking, inspiring, deep movies ever made. One of my favorites, Elf. But he's also the writer of Sully, and now he is the director of Angel Studios'

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at bonhoefferdirector.eventbrite.com that's B-O-N-H-O-E-F-F-E-R director.eventbrite.com in Memphis on November 7th. It should be a good night. We'll be right back. But in 2005, we were founded by a child psychologist, Dr. Debarbra Van Daalen. And I think that, again, an incredible human being just in all respects. But what I think was so interesting is that she really took this to look around corners. And I think that's what wasn't happening in 2005.

So you think about how this conversation around mental health is now, which again, I think is very big and it's very muddy and it's a little messy. And there's a ton of interest there. But I also think if you've conscious in 2005, what she was looking at was there are not enough people in her profession, mental health therapists or mental health professionals, and it was in direct response to 9-11. So we were seeing like, really? Now I didn't get that. I didn't know that. That's interesting. Which I think again, just like really took a look at a population that is under-resourced, underserved. Again, we're talking 2005 and the stigma for mental health care coming into a war. What were we going to do? Like really, what are you going to do with this? And the other piece that she had in there was active duty veterans

and their loved ones. And I think that was such an incredible again, foresight to really set up the stage to say, this is not a veteran challenge. This is not an active duty challenge. This is a family challenge. And the loved one has got to play an essential part. And I think you'll see over time that the loved one in many factors has not been held in the same, just held as close to this as it should be. It hasn't been brought in every time. So just to paraphrase, 2001, we sent a bunch of people to war in 2005. We're looking at all of these folks, including loved ones that are affected by military service,

and there's more need than there are therapists. Yeah, I think for sure. And there was a lot more stigma and there was a lot more organizational barriers. So we were a barrier free, so it means free to them, confidential, and no one's going to tell anyone that you're there because that was at that time there is a narrative that you're probably going to lose your job in the military. People are going to think you're crazy. You're not going to be able to promote. And I'm not going to say that those things weren't true.

It really didn't matter because that was the prevailing wisdom of the military. Yeah, perception is reality. It was a perception, right? So it didn't matter. Now I will say the military has been phenomenal. When they got on board with mental health, just like they do with any kind of social thing they take on, they take it fully on. But we're just kind of encapsulating that time.

So what she did was she rallied across the country. We've always been a national mental health organization, mental health professionals to give an hour of free clinical care to that population. And it rallied people across the country. We have had and we continue to have therapists in every state across the country who still give an hour of their time and there's no insurance, there's no payment,

it is a connection between them and it's unlimited, which I think is another thing that again goes back to like a system that should be that I know for a lot of reason can't be, but military often and many populations have this, it takes many times to meet with someone before there's a level of comfortability to then like really start getting into the meat of why you're there. And if you have three sessions, six sessions, 12 sessions, you may have used half of them just trying to see is this person going to do it. But not every therapist is a good fit for the person.

Not every person is a good fit for the therapist. So what I loved is that we made that, created that space for them to work that out. And so it became, I mean, there was nothing like it. And I still think what we offer now, there's nothing like. And so for many years- That's the Genesis. That's the Genesis.

Which is get rid of the stigma, remove barriers, and therapists giving an hour of their time to these military personnel, plus their family, if needed. Because I know the family dynamic when a guy comes back or lady comes back from war That person waiting the person that comes back to him four years later is more times than not the same person that left And these there's that spouse or that child or yeah Well, and sometimes that child was six months old when somebody left and now you got a five-year-old and how do you reintroduce? That so there's a lot but there's still one part. You told me at the top, there's not enough

therapist for the people that need therapy. So even though you got therapists giving an hour, don't we have a whole lot more demand than we have supply? Yeah. Yeah. If you look at like the national numbers, it's one therapist for every 350 people. I looked at Phoenix Metro, it's one for every 680. That's a national- There's one therapist for every 680 in Phoenix. Just one random spot that I looked at. Then 47% of the country is in a workplace shortage for mental health support. Think of that. Almost half the country is in a workplace shortage for mental health support. So think of that.

Almost half the country does not have access to mental health. Rural America, you know, areas that are small, small cities. So how, and you know, again, therapy is a very personal thing. So if you live in one, a really rural community, I mean, not only is there often stigma, there's, you know, it's, there's, you know, it's a small town. You don't want everybody knowing your business. Go back to Northern Ohio, Idaho. How many people are going to go to the therapy? Especially in a smaller, right? That whereby knows a business.

Absolutely. And it's very, you know, like hunting, fishing, like pull up bootstraps. Like there's so much kind of cultures, like social culture around it too. And then you, you know, you think you can't just, I can't pull somebody from Boise, Idaho, which again, there's a rivalry. Boise's down here, Coeur d'Alene's up here. Those two, you know, they think Boise is the most like liberal, like it's just, you know, hippies everywhere, right? And you've probably been to Boise. People in Northern, Northern Idaho, they get people Boise are liberal. Right, liberal, absolutely. Where people in LA, people think people in Boise are conservative is Dick Satban. Absolutely, absolutely. There are industries and professions that we just don't have enough.

There's not enough people going into education to meet the need. There's certainly the way things are, there's not enough people going into law enforcement to meet the needs of the law enforcement across the country. There's these kinds of things. And I'm just thinking about one in 350, there cannot be enough people in therapy currently and being trained in therapy, whether psychiatry, psychology, social work, whatever, that's meeting the need. So there is need going unsatisfied. Maura Baxter Of course. And I would even put an argument that

it can't be solved by just adding therapists because not, you know, just like any profession, not all teachers are created alike, not all therapists are created alike, and not all therapists are the therapists that we need for some of the conditions that we have. So I think that generating more therapists, I mean, it's part of a strategy. It just can't be part of a solution. And we put so much on the backs of therapists to solve a mental health crisis, but I do think we have a human connection crisis, but the mental health crisis is that we can't just necessarily say more therapists because that doesn't mean better therapists,

quality therapists or therapists that people can even access. And so they are part of a solution, they play an essential role. And I think that part of what we have worked on is like, what else do people actually want and need that we can provide? Which is really the incredible part of this, which is give an hour from the beginning unto itself is awesome. Convincing therapists to give an hour of their time and expertise to help people who need it so they can avoid the stigma and get the help they need along with their family. That in and of itself is awesome.

But that's not really the story. That's not the only. The story is the creativity that you guys took from your experience there and parlayed into what you're doing now, which is. Yeah, we were coming up against like, therapy isn't for everyone. You don't take into account people's culture.

You don't take in account their neighborhood and the socialization of going to therapy. You don't take an account that my young gang member probably isn't gonna go sit in a therapist's office and feel like this is his space. And so what else is there? And so when we really started looking and we're like, you know what peer support has been around centuries,

it's not like it's a new concept, and really came from communities of color. And I always wanna give the recognition there is that this is how communities who've been disinvested have always helped each other and always showed up for each other. Now what we're doing is really trying to make it feel like they can even feel more equipped.

But see, there's where, my first blush, I got a little lost. Oh, sorry. But then I came back to it. But I think it's important. That's a that's a great segue to this. My concern was peer support is great. But what if the peer support? Is not good support? And I don't mean like putting an alcoholic in a room for guys who are alcoholics who

are still doing alcohol. I don't mean that. I mean, the advice and the mentorship being given is for advice. You could actually make things worse for somebody. For sure. But then I read about your five indicators and what you do with the peers. And to me, that's part of the secret sauce. Can you talk about that? Yeah.

Yeah. I think you're right. I mean, people don't generally want our advice, right? They want a connection. And I think what we're trying to really do... Yeah, that's also really true. People generally don't really want our advice, right? They want a connection. I think what we're trying to really do- Yeah, that's also really true. People generally don't really want your advice. They just, what's the old adage?

Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. Yeah, and that is, and I think part of what we're trying to do is re-equip people with that. Like some of it, I feel like, you feel like you have, we care about people, and we care about people we care about, right? We don't care about people we don't care about. So you're really trying to find, though,

is trying to understand people's stories, which to me is more the population-based context, right? A veteran is a context. It doesn't mean that's every veteran's story, but I wanna learn about that so I can bring that's every veteran's story, but I want to learn about that so I can bring that into another veteran to integrate that context into the way that they see the world and how they can use their experience to help someone else. So it's really more about connecting and

looking for connection points rather than saying the right thing. Because I can tell you nobody's going to know what that is. I don't know what the right thing to say, but I can help you show up in a way that that person feels connected to you, feels heard, feels listened. And we could teach you some things like some impulse controls that you want to do, which is I want to give you great advice. I want to tell you about my story. I want to tell you what you should go do rather than trying to teach people to stay in this conversation. And we've created a tool and we were testing out

with the military last week just to see like, how does this tool work in your life? And it was how to keep in a seven minute conversation. And it's more of a framework. It's just like a way of containing things for people to say, could you stay in a conversation that isn't advice, that isn't jumping ahead, that isn't disclosing all of your things to one up them for seven minutes, and to see if it can kind of reduce the need to be thinking ahead and jumping ahead, but rather like you're just on the journey next to them. And part of it, so you mentioned the five signs.

So one of it is helps give people language. So I could say, you know, I know your baseline, I've known you for a short period of time, but I could say, here's your baseline from what I can observe. And then I could say, you know what, today you seem, you just don't seem like you have the same energy, you seem really withdrawn. That's a language that I could put out there rather than coming at it either with more of like a judgment or just seeing something and not saying anything. Like I can see a shift in you, but I'm not saying anything. So what I think it helps us to give people really simple. And this

came from our PSA in 2015 is like, here's the simple language. I can say, you look withdrawn, you seem agitated. I've noticed that, you know, you don't seem like you're taking, you're not going to the gym as much. You're not taking care of yourself. Those are all signs that I just need to pay attention to you and then start to ask some questions. And we teach also kind of overcoming some of the resistance like the, I'm fine. You know, that's people's natural is like, Oh, no, I'm fine. And it's like, well, how do you overcome some of those? We'll be right back. So people that want to give an hour are then taught to look for these five things in conversations or in the people they're

working with. You don't have to be, you can be anybody, but if you're anybody that wants to, we're gonna teach you these five things to just look for. And these five things are ways to maybe communicate in a way that is not personal, judgmental, but also probably open-ended, I would expect to allow the people you're talking with to respond. Sure. Is that right? Absolutely.

And you're right. It can be, you know, we've done this for employers. It's like that mid-level supervisor. You know, if that person notices, again, you're looking at maybe at a performance thing, but you also notice a change in that behavior. You can come and attack it at the performance level. And I can tell you probably going to get a different show up on that person, right? Because now you've in some respect, you've threatened their livelihood, their job, their

stability in that organization. But if you came at it to say, hey, I've just noticed over time, like, you know, you don't seem like you're not really talking to all the team. We have team meetings, you're not speaking up, you seem a little bit withdrawn. I'd love to just find out what's going on. That is a different conversation than if I start just leveling up or anting up on your performance to say you're not getting stuffed on on time. It depends. I always think you're always looking for what is the goal and the goal is to find out what's happening so you can address it and hopefully together.

But I think that it gives a language that we don't use right now. And so we just see an issue and we're kind of attacking the issue rather than going to the person to just really try to work with them. And I think that's why peer support is so effective. And it's very reciprocal. And we have a population that we've worked with for many years, which was the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017.

I was going to ask about that. I think it's a great example. No, go. It's a great example of what you're talking about. I think it's a fantastic one because after that, 65% of the people who were in Vegas at that concert actually were from Southern California. So the next day, including one of our employees, got up, went to California and all the resources for this shooting and memorials and the events

and the money and the victim services all went to PlaySpace to Las Vegas. And you had several years that these individuals across seven counties in Southern California just went back to their day and went back to their life. But we're harboring the trauma and the, I mean, can you imagine that? Can you imagine having been diving behind barriers, not knowing where the bullets are coming from.

In one minute, you're having a blast at a concert in Vegas of all places, living it up, having a blast. In literally a split second, you hear noises, you see people screaming and running. You're probably not able to even conceive of what's going on initially, and then you're diving behind barriers, and you're seeing people get shot and die, police are going crazy, nobody knows what's going on, and then the next day, you're supposed to go back to work.

That is trauma. And you have no connection, because they were so spread out. And that's what you're talking about now is now you have no connection to all of what's going on. So not only are you traumatized, you're alone. Absolutely. You're alone. And really, who do you tell?

How do you have a conversation? Who can even understand what you're going through? A therapist can certainly try and a friend can empathize, but there's no safety in you really feeling what I feel, right? So that's what you try to train peer groups to do. You match people that have the same trauma with people that don't, but you teach them how to see the stressors and a way to talk about it. Right.

And yes, and that group, when we finally were able and requested to come in and, you know, into LA, into, yeah, into into inventory County, California, to bring people together. And again, this has been unaddressed for a very long time. And so even just finding the people, because there's a lot of rules around, you know, who are victims and confidentiality. So there was a lot of upfront work just to get access to the population. And one year later, one year and one month later, there was a second, there was a mass shooting in Ventura County, where several of the people who were in the first one were in the second one. Oh my gosh, are you serious?

Yeah, it was at a bar and grill on college night. And so one of our employees was actually in both. And what her experience was, was that peer support was the support she needed. Now, it doesn't mean that it was at the exclusion of therapy, but it has had the most profound effect on her. And now she's of course leading all of our peer support efforts. And I think what she and her and other people who are in that similar situation were able to say was she doesn't have to start from zero. She doesn't have to explain everything. She doesn't have to have an entire backstory, right? She could say something and someone else is just like cosigns right there. They

get it. They understand it. And what I loved is that I think this is where one of the places that we showed up in a way, and this was our early work into peer support and why we were like, this is something really magical, is that we continue to work with them. And they said, listen, we want to do a, I think it was the second or third year anniversary, I would think it was the third year anniversary. We want to do a line dancing in Thousand Oaks Park and we want the therapy dogs there and we want to paint rocks and we want music and beer because that was, this was all from a country. You know, that's what, how they all kind of knew each other.

Sounds fun. Sounds fun. Paint rocks, drink beer and have music. And guess what we did? We created that whole thing to make sure that they had that, but we co-created it. They told us what they want to need, how they wanted it to feel, they wanted people to show up. And they got that. And that was, again, it's just like one piece of your healing process in the in-between. They'rebetween, they're meeting weekly, they're meeting in person, they do ice cream socials. They were doing things, but again, we were just keep going back and you're engineering human connection.

You're creating these conditions for people to come together and reciprocally connect. Because if you get me and I get you, we are are both kind of going to be elevated in this energy. And if I say something to you and you don't really react to the same with me, like you're like, yeah, I don't know anybody from Northern Idaho. That seems really weird. Like there's a disconnection, right? So I think that's really what we're focusing on is like, how do you keep maintaining that connection? And it has such a healing effect. And now 13 of the individuals that were in that peer group are now California certified peer supporters,

which we were able to do through this work to get them here to become trained peer supporters. All again, giving an hour. Yeah, absolutely. And they're ready to show up for others. So when you- But explain the certified, because when you say that, immediately people think, oh, they went to school.

No, they didn't go to school. No, they didn't go to school. You guys. We provide a lot of training. We would love to get into certified, and there's a couple of reasons why we haven't done it yet. The certifies are going state to state for the most part. And so they do do like a whole education and they take exams and do the thing. And it has that. There is, and again, this might be just a little bit of my own, this is my Jesuit schooling now, is there's a part of me that doesn't love

for it to be commodified or become a consumer product versus a product that comes from people who use it. So what I like about what we've created with our peer support work, and I just saw it in action for the last couple of days, is that there are tenants that you wanna get across, but it's their experience, whatever that experience. This happened to be military,

that one happens to be mass shooting. You are trying to help them make the connections of their experience, and then you're putting the nuggets in place about how does the five signs show up for you? How could you lean into this conversation? What are some of the complications of saying this to someone? What are your personal barriers for saying that? So you're really trying to make it feel very connected to them instead of sometimes, trainings can become very prescriptive, like you need to show up this way. What I love and what I

heard is the nuance. And the nuance is where all the magic happens, right? Because that's where it's interpersonal. And I'll just give one brief example, but we were talking about with the military about lethal means and suicide risk and locking up. So there's a big push around education, around separating people from a weapon.

And so there's different strategies. It's all very research based. But when you actually talking to folks, you start to understand the way in which either a they work around it or be the complication, the interpersonal complication, like what if I take someone's gun and I'm wrong and it now they can't get a promotion. That's a real thing that you can't just address in a training that says answer these five questions. Yeah, that's interesting. That's the stuff that I'm really interested because to me, that's the in the moment decision that a person has to make. And if you haven't equipped them together, like how do we work through this? How do we talk through it? How

do we dispel some of the things about security clearances. Are they going to get their security clearance taken? Well, the statistic says less than 1% of people have a security clearance stripped, completely taken in the military for mental health. So once you can address that, then you can go back and have a different conversation with folks. So I think that's where I go back to the nuances. You have to really try to listen to people and understand what is their day-to-day life like and how do you make sure that you're equipping the peer support with skills

that they actually want and need day-to-day. And that concludes part one of my conversation with Dr. Trina Clayu. And you do not want to miss part two that's now available to listen to. Together guys, we can change this country. But it starts with you. I'll see you in part two.