Change Your Brain Every Day - What is the Process of Recovery from a Mass Shooting? With Troy and Shannon Zeeman

Episode Date: January 8, 2020

In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen are once again joined by Route 91 shooting survivors Troy and Shannon Zeeman. In this segment, the Zeemans detail their process of recovery in the aftermath of tragedy, outlining relevant steps anyone can take in order to heal from trauma.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are still here with our friends, Troy and Shannon Zeman. And we are, this is just such a topic near and dear to my heart.

So I love what we're talking about. It's terrible what you went through. It's terrible that you were shot, but the number of people that you hopefully and probably got out safely, and you'll never know because they got out safely, fortunately. It's just such an important topic. And we want to hear the rest of your story, but we also want to talk about some strategies and what was the fallout? Like what happened afterwards? You know, the trauma doesn't just happen in the moment right that's why we call it ptsd right yeah so what was the fallout so one of the things that we um talk to managers at businesses and and organizations is to try to get a peer support um or a what we we call employee assistance program at my work um and we want those things things already set up because there might be most in the FBI studies of active shooters, most active shooters are over within four minutes. So we preach to the

businesses and the organizations that four minutes of a very traumatic situation can last 40 years. And so how do we now treat people after the, after the fact of, of you just survived this now, what do we do next? And so what happened was we got back, Shannon and I are, are, my agency was very, very good. She, they were able to put Shannon and I both into counseling and peer support so that we can start talking about and start trying to process this traumatic event that we went through. Immediately. We were in within a week of doing it, which was amazing, which we had a lot of friends that either their health insurance didn't cover it or they were going through the state of California, which the state of California has an amazing program for

victims, but unfortunately they were so inundated because we had so many people there that we had a lot of friends that, and if they even got any help where they would go to a therapist or anything like that, it wasn't someone who had specialized in traumatic situations. So for us, we were extremely lucky at the get-go. We went, like Troy said, four or five times, and we felt we were great. And we have other friends that didn't get to talk to anybody for six to eight months, if that, and then weren't even dealing with someone. It's a really important principle, though, that time time to heal start healing from trauma or grief is immediately it's like the time to heal from the bullet wound right to get that addressed and right deal with it is immediately otherwise it could cause an infection

that takes your life and the same thing is true with psychological trauma, which is really physical trauma, as we could actually see in your brains even later. And I want to applaud you because I know maybe it's a misconception, but there's this conception that police officers are too stoic and they're not going to go to therapy. They're not going to go get it treated because it is an admission of something that's wrong when, in fact, it's the opposite. It's an admission of strength. I think that through my years of service, we realize that not only it's hard to be vulnerable in our job and to be able to say that you're vulnerable and you need help is a difficult, difficult thing for law enforcement anywhere. And so that's why I think over the years, agencies and cities have really come to an understanding that brain health, like Dr. Amon said, is just as important as me going

to the active shooter training and learning how to deal with it. Right. So if we and there are still officers out there, it still takes them a long time to get through this stuff. I'm very lucky that I don't feel like I have to do that. I can go right away. And that's just been a, it's been a great thing over the years to have that backing for employee assistance programs.

And how much more effective are officers going to be if they're not bogged down with all of that, the weight of those situations, like what you went through. And if you're not bogged down with that emotionally and the trauma of that, and you've learned how to release that by going and getting help, you're going to be more effective as an officer. Right. And one thing I learned from coming to Dr. Amen is that there's a, if it's a scale of zero to 10, I can't control, if I don't get all this help, mental help, I can't control that five or six or seven number. It goes zero to 10. So even if I'm dealing with the public and the public is not necessarily appearing to be a threat, I might just believe it's a threat and it's a 10. I can't even say it's a threat as a five. It's on off. It's on off. And so going through the therapy and going through all the stuff that I've gone through, it helps me even deal with the public in a much better way

in understanding my emotions and how I can control that on off switch instead of just being zero to 10. I can go to a five or a four or a three or a seven so you can assess when you go to zero to ten your brain drops in activity right because all that is is threat mode and what we discovered for our imaging work is when people get to that 10 where it's terror their frontal lobes drop so they're making instinctual decisions, not thoughtful decisions. Yeah, and what we do, and Dr. Amen knows this, but what we do as law enforcement and military

is that we get trained for the worst of the worst and we get trained. We do that training over and over again, so we react. So if I can only go zero to 10 and react, then how do I ever make a thought when it's maybe not a 10 threat? It's just the eight threat.

So these types of therapy and super important. Yeah, the behavioral science behind it is amazing. It's amazing. And so we talk a lot about this in our training, too, of how I've gone through a number of ambushes and then Las Vegas and and then dealing with people who are the victims of this or the families of this. And it's a big thing and it helps a lot to be able to control that zero to 10 range. You know, I practice martial arts and I love it.

And one of the things they teach you is avoidance. It's awareness and avoidance, right? You stay out of a fight, you can't win as best you can yeah i mean you only fight if you there's no other choice absolutely um so just that philosophy i think is really important i actually think it's an important philosophy for health so you went through a battle with your health we talk about being a warrior for that same reason right avoidance awareness do whatever you can to prevent and when you can't then you have to fight but um it's so interesting um we were talking off camera about strategies and like he he gets all annoyed with me sometimes because we'll go places and i'm like no we can't sit there can't i'm always looking but you don't know where someone something

could come from so it's like i need to sit between the exits because i don't know what is the matter with you but what are some rational strategies He thinks I'm irrational with my strategies. Shannon has been taking me to Stagecoach for like six years before 2017. We couldn't go in 2017. So Stagecoach is a music festival. Stagecoach is a music festival, just like Las Vegas Festival. It's a three-day festival. Big outdoor.

It's a little like Coachella. Yeah. And so I would go there and I would walk the actual perimeter of the venue and look at all of the first aid areas. Of course you do. I do. I'm a trauma nurse. I would look for the law enforcement, the security. I would look for the emergency exits. And so I can't memorize it all, but I know, yes, and I'm aware of the venue and how it's laid out. So if an emergency were to happen, then I know that I would be safe going left

instead of right. If my only option is to go right, because that's all I know, and the danger is right, I'm still gonna go right. So we're teaching people, if you are aware of your scenario. Because we're a little like cattle. We're a little like sheep that way. We follow

that instinct. We follow the crowd. But if you're thinking about it in advance, if you're trained, like you're saying, you will have a plan. You will do something different. Yes. Even though you're not paranoid about it and you're not making a plan right there, it's just in your mind that you know that an exit is right around the building yeah and if you can't see around the building then if a if a threat happens you won't be able to go around the building and check if there's an emergency you're you're just going to go oh my gosh i got to get out of here i know that they're the emergency exits that way i'm going to run that way so that's kind of what we try to teach too and we talk about brain warriors that's what we call our tribe preparation awareness is that they're aware yeah and they're prepared right exactly right you

don't have to be you know what's my word it's not the word's not crazy but paranoid paranoid thank you i'm like you don't have to be prepared everybody calls me paranoid i call me prepared everybody has their own word for it right but like um we would always make fun of troy when we would go to all these venues because but you don't know no we kind of took it back um you know but it was but he was kind of like uber doing it uh over the top a little bit and it was when we were at route 91 my girlfriend had actually said troy we're so proud of you you're relaxing a little bit you're getting more into you know the venue and so he says it's her fault because you know she said that i i relaxed so i got shot yeah no not really not really but we we talk about this like it should be even when you

go into the grocery store you should be aware of where your other options are because you just don't want that single you know exit when you go to work you shouldn't always go the exact same door in and out the exact same stairs in and out um you should know all your different options every single time so like you guys are saying you you know, be aware, have a plan, know what's going around. But it's like we all know, you know, if you're not training your brain, you're not going to remember it. So if you do it one time and then you never do it again,

you're going to forget it. So when we met at the police station in Newport Beach, I was there meeting with Chief Lewis about our program. And he's like, oh, I have to introduce you to Officer Zeman. And he told me what you went through. And then we talked. Yes. You know, one of my thoughts is, oh, you should. I'm like, and then you told me about Shannon and the chemotherapy.

And I'm like, oh, we should look at your brains. Right? I mean, that's just what I do. It's like, oh, we should look at your brains. And then you came. What was that like? I thought it was great. I've never really heard of your work.

I didn't know that you could scan the brain the way you do. And then when Shannon and I came here and you showed me some of the stuff that you did, the brain the way you do. And then when I, Shannon, I came here and you showed me some of the stuff that you did. I was, I was amazed. It was amazing. And it was something that I felt really would help me a lot more than just going to a normal counselor and talking on the couch and saying, yeah, these are the things that I do. I've been doing that for 20 years and I think it has helped. But when I was able to see my actual brain and, and look at it and you say, these are the points that are, we can work on and we can work on specific things. Um, one of the things that you, you've said in the past, um, was with a physical injury, we can see it. And with that physical injury, we treat that physical injury. If I have

a broken arm, I'm not going to treat both of my arms. So when you talk about that kind of stuff, it resonated so much because I was able to say, well, we can focus on this PTSD or this trauma. And instead of trying to look through the whole brain by just voices, right? So, and it's been amazing. I, you guys gave me a plan. I've stuck to that plan. And I went through EMDR and EMDR was an eye opener. I had no idea without you guys telling me it was there. I didn't even know it was there.

It is unbelievable. I went through four treatments and I've gotten past the PTSD in Route 91. And we're working on more stuff through my job and the history that I've had. But it only took four times to do that with the vitamins you've given me and, you know, the breaths and the yoga. I know I do yoga, but it's great. No, it's great. I love yoga. So what are the things?

So in both of your scans, we saw this diamond pattern where your emotional brain is activated. I think, Shannon, for you, it was like, my memory's not what it was. And you thought it was the chemotherapy. And when we saw the trauma pattern, well, when you've been emotionally traumatized by going through cancer, so many people do. That's totally normal that it can actually steal your memory because of chronic stress associated. So some brains after chemotherapy look terribly toxic because they're

poisoning you, right? To poison the cancer. But your brain didn't look terribly toxic, which is good news. But the emotional trauma was clearly still there. And treating that can really help your memory come back and just know that it's okay. It's, I don't have dementia. I'm not headed to the dark place can be really helpful. Oh yeah. So talk about your experience a bit. Well, so I would have to say that I was completely shocked of what you guys

showed me in my brains and in my brain um that i really thought like you were saying it was going to be the toxins that they had put in my body and we were going to see on your your scan of more the do we say the outside of my brain um i thought that was just going to be demolished i never even contemplated the aspect of like, most people, the emotionality of what I was going through. I was in a really dark place. And I just thought it was something that I just needed to keep my head, suck it up, focused and go from the moment I got diagnosed as a breast cancer, with breast cancer, I was going to be a warrior for this, and I was going to kick its butt. this and I was going to kick its butt and

then I was going to help everybody else in its path do the same. Well, you may have done that, but it still takes a toll. Correct. But I never even thought to look at myself for that. It was always just like, oh, well, this we're going to take it and I'm going to go help other people. And then when we were in the Route 91 shooting, it was the same kind of thing. We came back, we did four or five sessions of therapy, and then it was like, okay, we're just going to be here to help everyone else get through it. And it was right around when it was getting close to the anniversary of Route 91 for the two years, and then right after it is my anniversary for my breast cancer survivor,

I started really getting in a dark place that I had no clue. And just coincidentally or magically or as God leads you where you need to go, Troy meets Dr. Amen, and we decide, okay, let's scan our brains. And when they flipped over into like, it was what do you think you're going to see on the emotional side? Because they were like, Oh, that your brain doesn't look as bad as we thought. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, well, what is wrong with me? And he when he flipped it and we had already been there with troy and i knew the diamond formation was trauma trauma um and i saw how much trauma i had i just completely started crying i it was an answer that i never knew was there so you knew

it was there but you didn't know what it was i didn't know what it was. I didn't know what it was. And as soon as they said- And that's why I love the imaging work we do because it uncovers things that people don't know are there. Because if you don't look, how the heck would you ever know? All right, when we come back, so many things. So we're going to try and be as practical as we can. Before you're in a situation, what are the things to do during?

And then be brave like Troy and Shannon and Tana. If you've had trauma in your past, there are tools to help you. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD. You can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at

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