Tell me about your vision. You know, it's so
interesting. Since I started studying trauma,
so I'll tell you a bit of a personal story because
I know that's part of what we're going to get
into. I have been running an international nonprofit,
the Global Family Med Foundation, since 2012.
And in 2015, I found myself working in a long
-term partnership with a medical school called
the Patten Academy in the Kathmandu Valley in
Nepal. And so I was there at the time, just happened
to be there when the earthquakes hit. And so
I found myself having some PTSD symptoms for
the first time in my life. But then I started
recognizing that I'd had some of them during
my divorce. I'd had some of them when I was working
in the hospital setting as a hospitalist dealing
with really sick patients, running codes, working
night shifts for 30 hours. I started recognizing
how much trauma was trapped in my body as I started
researching trauma. post -earthquake and once
i started recognizing how much of it was in my
clinical practice and how many patients were
affected by it i started studying solutions so
the first thing i learned was something called
accelerated resolution therapy which is a quicker
version of EMDR. So it's a really effective way
to manage PTSD symptoms. And sometimes I would
get results in a single session because I'd known
my patients for so long, they could stay in a
really calm body with me, which is essential
to trauma processing. And that success was not
just helping their mental health, it was helping
their physical health. So I'd have people with
diabetes, with chronic lung disease, with hypertension
or blood pressure problems. And they would suddenly
improve from trauma therapy. And I thought, wow,
this has such a significant impact. And at the
same time that I was studying trauma, I was also
studying social innovation and design thinking,
which is really how do we change systems? And
I was recognizing that trauma happens in the
individual, but it's a manifestation of not just
the community, but our ecosystem. And that is
politics, that is in the environment. it's infectious
disease it's all kinds of things that are happening
within our community it's racism it's ableism
uh it's medical trauma so people who've had trauma
at the hands of the medical system and so many
relationships that I've forged have had to be
through that medical trauma and me trying to
work on healing it even subconsciously without
really knowing what it was that I was doing now
I have more understanding of it how much um you
know homophobia and fat phobia and all of these
things that people have been dealing with on
a daily basis is showing up in all of their relationships
and their expectations and their world view their
internalized shame so once i started understanding
that i thought well the modern trauma toolkit
isn't just about like your nervous system it's
about all of the systems around us so i i talk
a lot about all of these things that are impacting
you in the ways that they might be and then i
also talk about not just how do we shift our
nervous system but how do we shift the systems
that we're in so once we are in that window of
tolerance that we can cope that we can manage
what are the systemic level things that we can
do to heal so um from the first time that i outlined
my book and i provided um my agent like the outline
and i said this is the book i really want to
write he said okay let's shop this around and
we we got a lot of you know really awesome offers
on it because um i think it just resonated with
a lot of people and it was so amazing that the
outline like every single chapter that i proposed
is exactly what the book turned out to be and
i wrote it so quickly i actually because I wanted
it to sound really nurturing and safe, I ended
up dictating a lot of it, because I know that
when I'm on TikTok, I have a kind of a gentle
way of approaching things. And I also knew I
wanted to record my own audio book. So like coming
from that book proposal, sorry, say that again,
coming from that book proposal to, you know,
the actual writing, and then the reading, it
was exactly the vision. I had known that. I'd
been locking it in for so long that it just spilled
out of me. And yeah, it needed a lot of editing.
But the original writing was just so emergent.
It was just inside me. It was so easy to pull
a string and let it come out. You know, it's
so interesting as I sit here and I listen to
you, I am drawn in to what you're talking about.
And I think that I'm drawn in because, as I mentioned,
it resonates and relates so much with me. But
there's a part of me, Christine, that is elated.
Like I have an excitement inside of me and I'm
going to get personal, too. I'm so happy that
I am who I am. Right. Because. And I'm happy
to have heard those stories and now today understanding
that I and people are okay being just who they
are, right? And being okay with who you are and
accepting how you understand and love and really
know that everything that happens isn't necessarily
about. us, right? It's about what that individual
is going through. It's about the story. It's
about the core deep things that they've gone
through, and it's not necessarily directed at
us. And so when it comes to customer service,
when it comes to mean people, when it comes to
traffic, I can only control what I can do. But
the reason why we can only control what we can
do, or I say me, It's because I learned that
everybody has a story and that everyone has some
sense of trauma and they're not there yet to
accept it, understand it. And I would, I mean,
as I mentioned before, I would have given anything
to have that conversation with you to check Mark,
like it's okay to hear these stories because
it either develops you or it puts you in a, well,
triggers you to put you in a space where the
flight. fight or freeze happens. And interesting
enough, Christine, I ended up leaving. I ended
up flighting because I didn't understand it.
And so as you mentioned, being on TikTok and
so many people resonating with you, I feel like
I'm one of those people that it would resonate
with because no one really talks about it. And
I loved how you explained the pandemic and now
it's... Still, there's an effect, but then there's
so much more going on in the world and trauma
on top of trauma on top of trauma. And it just
seems like it's ongoing. So it's one of those
things that if people could have an understanding
or be able to understand what it looks like to...
unveil it and be okay with where they were, I
think that that would be, you know, amazing for
the world in general. You know, like, heal the
world, make it a better place. Super excited
about your book. And I know we're a little bit
over time, but I, again, I've grown and I was
intrigued by it. Please share with individuals
where they can get your book from, your website
and your TikTok and other social media handles.
Before I do, Javanka, I'm just going to say that,
like in the first chapter of my book, I described
the difference between resilience and post -traumatic
growth, and you totally embody that. So this
is post -traumatic growth. It's like this different
understanding about yourself and the world. So
you can learn about that at the Modern Trauma
Toolkit, which the website is moderntrauma .com,
which kind of gives you like the... vibes of
the book it's really nurturing and gentle like
literally the cursor turns into a butterfly on
one of the pages um and then the QR code goes
to a hidden page with audio practices videos
um a book club guide um and the last I checked
Amazon had it on sale for like twelve dollars
so it's it's like a really good deal right now
um the audiobook is also available uh through
you know any any website um i also run a company
called safer spaces training and we engage with
individuals we're going to be running short courses
this year as well as companies to learn how to
be more trauma informed so when you have those
people in front of you in the public and they
are emotionally dysregulated or manifesting fight
flight and freeze um what do you do how do you
recognize it how do you prevent yourself from
getting kind of regulated in that same direction
because nervous system states are contagious
so how do we instead of kind of becoming heightened
and amplified and intense ourselves how do we
kind of bring everyone down into like a calm
what we call parasympathetic state so um because
i'm working at a systems level i'm trying to
also do lots of education uh one of my many letters
behind my name is a master's in medical education
so My goal is to spread the word through speaking
engagements, through podcasting, just trying
to get more and more people aware of how trauma
is showing up in themselves, in their families,
in their communities, and more importantly, to
have solutions about it. So many people are aware
of trauma. You know, Oprah Winfrey. co -wrote
a book about it a couple years before mine. Gabor
Maté's in the news. There's so many people who
are more aware of trauma, but there's not as
many people talking about, well, now what? What
do we do? And that's really what I want to get
out there is the toolkit. Thank you for being
here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in
to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing
your reactions as these episodes continue to
move forward. This is going to get more and more
fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.