Ologies with Alie Ward - Psychological Traumatology (PTSD & STRESS) with Nicholas Barr

Episode Date: May 28, 2019

What happens to the brain under extreme stress? Why do past traumas haunt us? What kind of therapies work for veterans? And what can we do in day-to-day life to be more resilient to adverse experiences? Traumatologist and social worker Dr. Nicholas Barr has studied PTSD in veterans and homeless youth and explains how traumas affect the rest of our lives and how to bounce back by getting a little help. Also: great resources for lower-cost therapy and what you can do to support loved ones who have experienced trauma. Oh, and Alie needs to adopt a dog.Follow Dr. Nicholas Barr at twitter.com/DrNicholasBarr1A donation was made to: militaryfamily.orgSponsor links: KiwiCo.com/ologies, OMGyes.com/ologies, AirBNB.com/ExperiencesMore links at alieward.com/ologies/traumatologyYou Are That podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/00WJ2qzCeIeetwRy23ABEZBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologiesOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes!Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologiesFollow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWardSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray MorrisTheme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's that little green wispy weed sprouting from a crack in the sidewalk alleyward back with a hopefully hopeful episode of oligies Traumatology, what is trauma who gets PTSD and what steps large and small can you take to heal a heart in a brain? So who is a good one? I got goosebumps both recording and writing it up But first thanks are always in order every week to the many folks who are making this podcast a reality from an idea Million years ago to a weekly thing I get to put together So thanks to everyone on patreon comm slash oligies for tossing in as little as 25 cents an episode to submit your questions

And to join that party also. Thank you to anyone supporting oligies merch by sporting oligies merch It's available at oligies merch.com. There's also a link in the show notes And thank you to all the folks who have rated and subscribed Which keeps oligies up among those science giants in the podcast charts Thank you so much for that and also to everyone who leaves a review for me to read like for example This one by Jersey dork who says I was most touched by the field trip LA natural history museum episode Ali shares her passion and love for the museum and you could feel how happy she was to have changed her career like this She takes a minute toward the end to encourage all listeners to chase what you are passionate about

And I really took that to heart and I'm now taking steps to start a wedding dress brand So good. Congratulations Jersey dork that made me just giddy for you if I do say so myself Get it. Nevermind. Okay. Traumatology very much a noun very much a word. It's a discipline But in researching this intro, I found out there are two kinds what there's medical traumatology Which is surgical wound healing like after accidents or major injuries and then of course there's psychological Traumatology that researches and helps treat people who have witnessed or experienced distress So traumatology either one comes from the greek trauma that means wound or injury and the root for that word Just fun side note meant to rub or twist or pierce in the way that one would have an old creepy weapon

So trauma, you know what after a series of episodes about toads and crickets I just thought we should have a little gander at our squishy But strong human minds and I was chatting with wonderful person and boyfriend Jared sleeper Who helps editologies and he's the host of the mental health podcast make a bad brain And he suggested a friend of his and less than 24 hours later I was headed to this doctor's cute cozy home There was a diploma on the bookcase the smell of some freshly lit incense. He has beard and tattoos He looks like someone who would open like a vintage motorcycle shop, but he's like ha ha surprise

I'm a traumatologist. So he got a cup of coffee We settled into some big comfy chairs to talk shop about clinical bummers But had to help your brain cope with maybe what life has dealt you So this traumatologist has studied the role of mindfulness and meditation and its efficacy and limits in Trauma therapy and other mental health symptoms and disorders So he's taught a mindfulness for practitioners workshop in a psychiatric clinic has worked on research for improving acceptance integration and health among lgbtq plus service members Reducing suicidality among lgbtq plus youth and done extensive research on

Examining mindfulness and therapies for military veterans. He's a cool dude. He's also a member of the association for behavioral and cognitive therapies He's a member of the cognitive behavioral therapy society of southern california He's also part of the national association of social workers And I love this chat because it's very obvious that his mind cares about other minds But also his mind is just a bucket of responsible information on the topic So this episode Maybe not the most hilarious of theologies, but I think it's incredibly important for all of us So we talked about how trauma affects the brain. What trauma is what percentage of folks will have

lasting effects after a traumatic event How clinicians help their patients get over some distressing memories. We also touched on ptsd emdr CBT cbd pe cpt and more so take a deep breath Don't forget to exhale and learn about distressing with your friendly neighborhood traumatologist dr. Nicholas bar So I'm nick bar dr. Nicholas bar. Yeah dr. Nicholas bar. Yeah, how long have you been a doctor? Um, let's see my my decrease right there. I went I think that was last summer. Yeah, so Oh god, actually, I think it defended

My dissertation like a year ago last week. So a year. Yeah about a year Thanks. Yeah, and what was your dissertation on? so, um Basically, I looked at the role of mindfulness across kind of the trajectory of military veterans combat related experiences So my first study just was like a head-to-head comparison of trait mindfulness and combat experience as predictors of ptsd and depression Mm-hmm, and then I looked at how Mindfulness and ptsd and depression predicted mental health stigma internalized mental health stigma because we know that's one of the core Barriers to veterans service use behavior like getting mental health services

So nick says that combat is what's called a linear predictor of ptsd So the more war zone Firefights a person may have experienced and the more intense they were the stronger their probability of developing post traumatic Stress disorder, which is our good buddy. We casually call ptsd Nick's research also found that the stronger a veteran stigma about mental illness the stronger their ptsd symptoms tended to be Nick's research also looked at trait mindfulness and its association with ptsd So could mindfulness help veterans with the body and minds response to stress Also, if you don't know what trait mindfulness is you're in really good company

And what is trait mindfulness exactly? Basically when we talk about mindfulness and kind of the western From the western sort of behavioral health psych perspective. It's the ability to pay attention On purpose to present moment phenomenon without judgment or elaboration. So without like ruminating or Avoiding basically that content so things like thoughts feelings behavioral urges Um, and that's like a okay definition from the perspective of like measuring it with Scales, you know self-report scales, but there are a lot of problems with Measuring mindfulness in that in that way like from the kind of buddhist perspective, which is what mindfulness grew out of And that's sort of where I

My undergraduate degrees in religion and my focus was buddhism You really miss a lot when you Define mindfulness in that way. I mean in the buddhist sort of perspective. It's uh much more holistic orientation towards your life and life experience and You know, we probably aren't capturing that level of nuance with like a 24 item questionnaire But then there are other researchers who sort of triangulate on the concept by looking by by taking objective measures of attention

So like measuring attention control and impulsivity and is a lot of that Trait mindfulness is some of that just executive function. Is that frontal lobe stuff? Is that innate or is it situational? Well, so yeah, great question. Thank you. Yeah, the brain regions that would correspond to better mindfulness You know In terms of what we see in like fmri results Yeah, it would be prefrontal cortex and then the hpa axis which is i'm not a neuroscientist, but you know, this is just um

Which is like your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis which kind of regulates like fear and memory So there's one kind of famous study where a bunch of very accomplished meditators, you know, 10 000 hours plus meditation experience So monks Were asked to look at disturbing images So, you know, like horrible pictures like babies with tumors on their faces and things like that while practicing a loving kindness meditation And they showed a lot of prefrontal cortex activation Whereas people who were non-meditators showed a lot of amygdala activation. So like revulsion fear

distress So for more on this you can see the two-part Fiorology episode in which we get to know our brain's Little screaming almond of terror the amygdala. Also, I went to look for that specific study But there had been several like it So I added some of the details that nick mentioned and I came up with some research papers about pediatric facial tumors Which was not what I was intending but moving on. So there have been multiple studies looking at the brains of meditators and

Some have been thrown a little bit of shade just because the principal investigator was a close personal pal of his holiness The Dalai Lama. So people thought perhaps they were biased But that doctor was like you're going to tell a cardiologist not to exercise. Come on Nick himself is very very committed and focused on evidence-based research and I found his phd dissertation In it nick thanks his friends who he says have put up with my predictable response to even the most trivial claims with Okay, but where is the evidence? So, yeah, he's a data dude. And yeah, that will make you better At your executive functions. Um, we see that actually a colleague of mine

Years ago in the same phd program Did a study looking at a mindfulness based intervention with individuals with schizophrenia and she found improvements in executive functioning following her intervention. So yeah, there's there are linkages there So let's trace his path all the way from his pre academic beginnings He got a ba in comparative religion at columbia university. He studied mindfulness in india Did some teaching in laos and got a masters in social work at ucla and a phd at usc Where he's now also doing some post doc work. So can you tell me kind of what brought you to be interested in? Kind of a religious background how that led to trauma. I had a weird like early interest in buddhism

I think like my my dad did a bunch of work in japan growing up through all these books on zen. I didn't