the Matrix. I'm Jonathan and I'm left of center.
And I'm rich and I tend to lean a little bit more to the right.
But the bottom line is is together.
We try to look for the balance of what it means to be human in today's world.
Welcome everybody. You're living in the Matrix.
I'm Jonathan. This is my coast rich say hello rich.
Happy Friday everybody and happy Mother's Day weekend to come.
We know mothers are so important to us and I'm looking forward to how they can
nurture and hear more about what our guest has to say about helping out with
trauma. And we know moms are good at that,
but let's see what Dr.
Dell has to say about some of these things as well.
Yeah. So we have today Dr.
Adam Dell.
He's a clinical psychologist and certified trauma expert and he is a therapist
for the staff of Notre Dame.
And I that just blew my mind having a job title like that.
Dr.
Dell. Welcome.
It's pleasure to have you.
Thanks Jonathan.
Thanks Rich.
It's an honor to be here.
So I want to start with what captured my attention in inviting you was this
narrative through your content on Instagram.
You're a you present a lot of really great content around the concept of
trauma for our audience help us understand what is trauma.
Yeah, that's a great question.
I is such such a term that's pretty ubiquitous and it's utilization in our
culture now from, you know,
the cancelization of a favorite series on Netflix to something that we might
refer to as like a capital T trauma and like evidence-based trauma therapy
communities, which the diagnostic and statistical manual mental health
disorders would define as exposure to something graphic and real and
threatening.
So things that are really common that I've done therapy with certainly
as an active duty officer in the Air Force for almost seven years certainly
had exposure to working with Marines and soldiers and airmen who had had
combat related trauma exposure.
Really, I you know,
I teach a trauma course at Wheaton College and teach teach in their
trauma certification program.
So the the the giant trauma literature differentiates between two types of
trauma non interpersonal trauma and interpersonal trauma and this is true in
the epidemiological literature for both kids adolescents and adults.
There's that big split and overwhelmingly interpersonal trauma that is
between persons trauma like sexual assault physical violence witnessing
someone harming someone else combat related trauma these types of things
have a far greater likelihood of setting someone down the trajectory of
post-traumatic stress contrasted with non interpersonal trauma,
which listen certainly is really disruptive a hurricane tornado natural
disaster a house fire.
Those types of things are horrible and can cause long-term psychopathology
or post-traumatic stress thereafter,
but it's really non interpersonal trauma that I oftentimes am working with
as a psychologist and that's what I do a lot of teaching about you have a
lot of content around kind of the concepts of triggering and triggers help
us understand what is a trigger because you had and I want to set this up a
little bit of you had a line in there of the smell of the alcohol on the
perpetrators breath that the trigger is not just something you think about it's
something you actually feel you experience again and it's unwanted.
So help us unpack that a little bit.
Yeah.
Well, so, you know when we encode memories we do so through our senses.
So, you know, this is why if you have any experience with young kids man,
everything's going in the mouth.
They're tasting things and licking things and touching things and this is
how we perceive the world and you know,
one of the things that I've borrowed from various approaches to trauma
therapy is when you're sitting down with someone and you're just kind of
explaining this process.
Sometimes it's helpful to think about, you know, for you gentlemen now or
for anyone listening to this if I were to say the word dog and if you were
to in a very rudimentary way if you were to think about your memory network
as a file system like what you might find on your desktop on a computer.
You've got a file there.
Labeled dog.
And if you open to that up, there's a ton of stuff in there man.
Like if you ever had a dog that stuff's in there.
If you can think of famous dogs, you know from from Lassie and Rin Tin Tin
to Bluey and you know more contemporary.
If you ever had an emotional experience with dogs, if you ever got bit by a dog
you can think of breeds of dogs.
You can think of all kinds of stuff related to dogs.
And then if I said ocean you could very quickly find that file.
And if you've ever taken a trip to the ocean, you could also think of sensory
things.
I think as somebody who's in northern Indiana, I think of seafood and just
unbelievable stuff that I miss from living closer to the the coast.
And in what's fascinating is if you allowed yourself to open up the ocean
file, you're not thinking about dogs anymore.
And then what happens in a trauma event is you're going through a fairly normal
day and then the ineffable occurs.
Like sexual assault is not something that anybody has a file for at least
not the first time that it happens.
And so you're taking in information in in in it literally like definitionally
incomprehensible setting and there's smell and there's taste and there's
touch feel and there's smells and the problem with trauma related sensory
memory is because there's not a file for it.
It never actually gets put away in the same way that you've already filed away
dog and ocean.
And so for many survivors young and old they will move forward in their life
no longer in acute danger.
However, anything reminiscent of that sensory artifact can immediately
elicit a re-experiencing event which feels as as threatening and as as
overwhelming as the initial exposure to that and so individuals will start
unbelievable cascading waves of avoidance.
It's like I avoid any shows that might remind me of that kind of content.
I avoid as much as I can the memories that I have of that.
I avoid going certain places.
I avoid wearing the same outfit or doing similar things.
I avoid avoid avoid avoid and you know, there's a there's a line in acceptance
and commitment therapy.
It's like control your thoughts and emotions and lose your life and doesn't
necessarily mean that you kill yourself, but it does mean that you radically
amputate away major territory of your life out of fear that you might have a
re-experiencing event as a psychologist.
I think one of the things that ends up becoming one of the quintessential
privileges of my career is to help someone to confront the hell of their
history and also take back that territory in their life.
Once they reach the point where it's like enough is a freaking enough of
this the more I avoid it's like a self-amplifying loop for my anxiety in
the short term it makes me feel somewhat relieved but ultimately it just makes
the stuff I'm avoiding just rise in terms of its fearfulness.
And so when individuals decide to confront that either in their memory and
sort of unpacking that with me in therapy or in taking back parts of their
life what it ends up doing is creating that file like constructing a
narrative and being able to put it away not in a way that they have amnesia for
it but in a way that they're no longer so quote triggered by these things
because they're sort of out of a file network and not consolidated.
Yeah, one of the things you've also brought up is and this is a similar line
is like because of this I can't right?
I think you've mentioned that a couple times because and this the spectrum is
wide open for what that could categorize right?
Can you flesh that a little bit more in terms of that and how does your your
faith inform your practice because I think you know you're you're teaching at
Wheaton or you've been at Wheaton I think you know I think one of your
earlier podcasts talked about transcending your identity.
So first part is help us unpack the idea of I can't oh I can't because of this
and how your faith informs your practice.
Yeah, I've been undeniably influenced by in terms of being a therapist by
acceptance and commitment therapy and for your listeners, you know, I think any
therapist worth it worth their salt is going to be able to tell you really
early on sort of here's my background and training and here's what I'd have to
offer to you in the way of a particular approach and I think arguably there is
no better research-supported approach to therapy in the last 30 years or so than
acceptance and commitment therapy and you know we could probably do about 10
of these and fill the time unpacking what Stephen Hayes and his colleagues
have done in the last 30 or 40 years in that tradition.
You know from that approach the vast majority of self-inflicted suffering
now lots of us will experience suffering you asked about trauma earlier is like
the World Health Organization would estimate that for the three of us and
anybody listen into this that over the course of our life on average will have
three or four serious trauma exposures somebody that we love will die maybe
right in front of us or will be seriously harmed or interestingly even
listening to repeated trauma stories can cause a vicarious traumatization and
it's for that reason you know psychiatrists have a very high rate of
suicide. I've had colleagues in my profession who've died by suicide just the
vicarious traumatization of that and so you know that's a ubiquitous phenomenon
we're going to have trauma exposure and in a lot of times that can come external
of us but the reality is that even though it's not the most popular thing
to put on your therapy marketing page sometimes we're not the victim of our
circumstance we are the architect of it and when we architect our own suffering
one of the primary ways we do that are the rules that we establish that kind of
govern our life things that we say to ourselves that we can do or that we can't
do things that we say that we are or that we are not typically these rules
have a lot to do with us with relationships with the world and with
the future and we live in like prisoners to these rules like we're shackled by
them and the two things that kind of flow from those rules tend to be
experiential and emotional avoidance meaning because I have these rules I'm
not the kind of person that would do this kind of a thing or I can't feel
certain feelings and I'm a big books guy you know I think leaders are readers is
a line that I learned early on in the Air Force as an officer and you know I
think that it's really wise for us to turn to subject matter experts and I
really appreciate the content that you guys have on a podcast like this where
you're bringing in subject matter experts from their own kind of areas and
disciplines to talk about the threads that actually are common across humanity
I think it's it's it's it's particularly perspicacious for us to to think about
how if if we tend to as a species want to avoid as a survival tactic and we
tend to avoid and we live in a culture where there's never been more access to
things to help us to numb and avoid like Anna Lemke writes a lot about this in
her book dopamine nation which is one of those books that I think is just a
brilliant thing for almost anybody to take a look at she basically says that
we are cacti in a rain forest you know we are built for scarcity but we are
surrounded with so much stuff that is hedonic and numbing and pleasure
oriented so we literally live in a culture where it's very very easy for us
to binge on screens to binge on food to binge on porn to binge on alcohol or
drugs to just try to avoid you know certain things so so so these rules that
basically govern our lives walk us in these a limited subtractive ways of being
and they cause a lot of suffering for us and so in the tradition of acceptance
and commitment therapy or act you know sometimes I think one of the really cool
things that I get to do with people is just teach them how to disobey their own
mind I was just working with somebody the other day and you know it's like
many people will come to see us because they have something in their life that
they'd like to have changed or different you know it's like oh and you might think
of that as like the problem of what's present you know I've got depression and
I want that down I've got anxiety or I've had trauma memories I want that
down some people will seek me out because of my military background for
very health related things I've got insomnia I've got premature ejaculation
I've got chronic pain I've got I need to lose weight these things all have very
behavioral treatments that are effective and helpful and and so yeah I was work
with a lot of people that are interested in losing weight and you know sometimes
we'll attack these arbitrary rules just to flex agency a little bit so for
example we'll have somebody go through a drive-through of their favorite you know
another great book Van Teleken wrote a book called ultra processed people had
changed my life last year when I read that we'll have somebody pick their
their favorite self sabotaging place to go for food where there's just nothing
but ultra processed food and they'll order their favorite meal they'll pay
for it they'll take one bite and they'll throw the rest of it away just to kind
of like disobey these rules in their mind that I always finish this garbage
and and and you know there's probably a million little examples like that but
it's kind of like how can I identify these rules and then flex my agency in
the direction of self-compassion so that I can build a more meaningful life and
so when I when I work with people I think everybody has avoidance as a theme
song in their life you don't have to be traumatized and have that be your
presenting issue identifying the costs of avoidance helps us to not only deal
with the problem of what's present but I think the far more impactful thing is
the psychologist is to help people to start dealing with the problem of what's
absent like I've got this pain and I've got this history and maybe I've had some
trauma and I've got all these patterns of avoidance and what in the world has
that cut me off from what am I saying no to that I could flip the switch to yes
on I know that's an awful lot I don't mean to just go on and on but it's it
really brings to the point of people have learned how biologically I think
we're waking up to the reality that we create our own trauma that's a new
concept like that's a new idea that people are chewing on and really
recognizing holy cow now what because mental health when I was a child was
exceptional you did it because you had to now it's proactive where you're doing
because you want to coaches are exploding and that graduation means that
I think we're at a turning point of people waking up to I do have trauma you
listed like a couple that were you know like a car crash or a death in the
family everybody's experienced it and they don't understand how it can be a
creeping limiter yeah I think I think that that's I think that's an important
thing to consider you know one of the things that I find really hopeful about
the epidemiological literature around trauma from like the International
Society for Traumatic Stress Studies is the authoritative text that I use in the
in the course that I teach at Wheaton because it is it's more global in its
scope and it's not just like based on the American Psychiatric Association
here's what's really really cool you know it's extremely common that I'll
sit down with parents that are horrified and and the reason that they're horrified
is their three-year-old has had something that was you know in their
mind traumatic and maybe definitionally it actually was and so they'll they'll
seek out sort of the counsel of a psychologist to say like what do we do
now you know like oh my goodness they must come in with the expectation that
any possibility for a normal trajectory has been oblivious and what I think is
so fascinating about these international studies and this comes from all over the
globe including kids that have been completely marginalized or placed in
refugee communities is when young kids are exposed to traumatic events 50% of
them take a resiliency pathway meaning they never have any kind of post
traumatic stress it's distressing for them for a few days because that's just
the nature of what traumatic event is two percent they return back to normal
the next 25% bringing it to 75% are upset for a little while but not even a
month and then they completely returned back to baseline so of the remaining 25%
some of them will develop PTSD and some of them might become pretty vulnerable
to other psychiatric symptomatology what I think is really hopeful about that is
if a young person or an old person experiences a trauma chances are way
better than not that they are not going to develop post-traumatic stress
disorder and surprise yeah by that number here yeah would you say that's
20 yeah that's true for that that's true for the adult literature as well yeah
but you know we think of kids is like so much more malleable and vulnerable and
and you know just in case there's parents listening right one of the
biggest predictors for how your kid will fare after a trauma is parental coping
so it's like the expectations that a parent has not to do not to be
dismissive or ignore or you know invalidate but expectations really
really matter and for parents to come alongside a child with accurate sense of
empathy but also to instill hope with pathway thinking about how we're gonna
get back in the regular rhythm of things and we're gonna get through this as a
family and we're never gonna leave you abandoned you or forsake you and we
believe that we're gonna march through this compared to like I can't believe I
let this happen and like everything is over now we got to take you to 16
different weird creepy mental health people that are all gonna over
stigmatize you and maybe a couple of others that have put you on
psychotropic beds and it's like you know I oftentimes just think like you know my
goodness this literature is so instructive now can you take population
literature like population do like that and apply it perfectly to any one
individual kid or family no of course not but I think there's a lot of truth
in the masses of data that have been compiled and it's a really really
hopeful thing I'd also say gentlemen that like my profession is all our our
diagnostic system is is is literally horrible and again we could talk about
that for a whole nother one of these in terms of just nothing's homogeneous in
our diagnostic system you know there's there's literally hundreds of thousands
hundreds of thousands of combinations of symptoms that would all be different
that would all get the label of PTSD like what in the world is that that's
not even a son even a diagnostic category that's like half of humanity you
know it's like what are we so there's huge problems with that but also I think
a huge problem with my discipline and and maybe maybe you spoke to this
Jonathan about I maybe it's changing a little bit but frankly I think that in
my training I'm better at telling people what's wrong with them than what's
right with them and that's a huge problem you know it's like individuals
come to us and we are trained to assess and diagnose disorders and and and I
wouldn't have known it 20 years ago when I was an undergraduate and working in a
psychiatric hospital put myself through my undergrad but I know now that it's
really common for trauma survivors to get to the other side of their traumatic
experience and have manifest inside of them the various domains of post
traumatic growth and and I would bet for some of the people listening to your
podcast when we talked about post traumatic stress everybody's got sort of
a construct for that in their head you know it's like oh yeah I saw that movie
or you know my uncle Fred's a real weirdo you know like some veteran came
home and da da da da da it's like I don't know why you know we don't
emphasize the possibility of post traumatic growth but this is this is a
theory that has been studied for a long time in many many cultures and it's got
an unbelievable coalescence like a really really beautiful coalescence with
many of our wisdom traditions and I would say especially a Judeo-Christian
worldview and so I think like being able to bear witness on the other side of the
deep wounds associated with trauma with areas of post-traumatic growth is is
perhaps like the highlight of my career doctor is there a categorical difference
between trauma what we think is trauma done to us or trauma we do to ourselves
you talked about interpersonal and non interpersonal is there a categorical
difference between those two
well so so interpersonal trauma would have to do with when when a person harms
another person you know I'm witnessing somebody you know beat beat my mom you
know as a kid or I'm experiencing sexual assault or or something like that a lot
of times as a psychologist I'll work with individuals that engage in a lot of
like a full a full range of self harmful behaviors and I think I would lump you
know many compulsive addictive type behaviors in that but certainly also
non suicidal self-injurious behaviors like cutting and cutting sure you know
those things however and I'm probably not the subject matter expert to talk
about that I've never heard of someone being diagnosed with with a trauma or a
stressor related condition because they cut themselves in fact many of the times
those types of behaviors are diagnostically considered to be more
personality disordered then actually like a trauma or stressor related
condition interesting okay are we the architects of great amounts of
suffering in our lives and when I say we as in like a universal we like oh man
yeah yeah and again I think it it boils down to the rules that we have and
patterns of avoidance like if I can't feel certain things then I will
literally turn to almost anything else to try to numb distract or get away from
them yeah I think most people really struggle first rich and I have talked
about this a lot I think most men struggle with emotional content in
general emotions are something that men typically avoid and that's where a lot
of trauma lives so it's like you can just live for trauma for a long time
because you just avoid it really well that's sort of a male ethic or a
masculine ethic and what happens is that other things arise to get you to feel
because you have to feel and they usually end up being addictions and
that's it's it I think it's men are struggling with how to deal with those
loss of emotions yeah you know the Navajo people have a legendary story
that that I learned years ago about how they discovered the Grand Canyon and the
story similar to the gospel accounts in the New Testament is kind of so
embarrassing for the main characters that it smacks of being true like if I
had to write a New Testament I wouldn't have made the disciples such dumb asses
you know and so anyway the legend and I think it's a very masculine story is one
that I told a lot of Marines who tend to be the most hyper masculine of all the
services that I worked with I mean I was in the chairforce man but like yeah I
deployed with Marines and you know that's a different breed a cat all
together but you know the Navajo people basically that the legend is that it was
a teenage boy that discovered the Grand Canyon while he was on sort of a
spiritual pilgrimage and he was by himself and he lived in a time
conceivably where the people had lived within about a hundred and fifty miles of
the rim of the canyon but hadn't discovered it yet and so it's really
hard to kind of put yourself into that mindset but you know if you were to
think about kind of the the strange mix of child and adult that a 15 year old is
some of the bravado but also you know the unbelievable naivete and this person
who has no conception of something like this finds himself alone and on the edge
of this canyon on a horse and according to legend he was like so horrified by
the specter of something that big that he must have surmised that he was on the
edge of the world early jumped off his horse and tied himself to a tree next to
the canyon because he was really afraid that he was gonna get sucked into the
void and you know the Navajo people have a beautiful story about this I mean the
people determined that he something had gone wrong in his pilgrimage and they
sort of tracked him there he had had several days of food of water with him
and they sort of lovingly untied him and brought him away from the edge but I
think that story is so relatable to many of us because we will undoubtedly
experience canyon type moments in our life similar to what I mentioned trauma
is it's an ineffable incomprehensible depth of ferocity that we cannot
possibly comprehend and what we will be tempted to do is rather than take it in
is to back away from it avoid it and tie ourself to literally anything that makes
us feel more secure or safe even if it walks us right into the direction of our
own demise yeah what's a simple analogy because you can see the boys the boy is
afraid of the canyon which is anything that we're afraid of that's it he anchors
himself to something that he feels like is stable and nothing is happening it
but it's always imagination well this is why I think you know again our
diagnostic system is pretty wonky and and men far outpace women in certain
diagnostic categories women far outpace men in certain diagnostic categories
when it comes to chemical dependency men outpace women substantially we had you
were in the military service so you were in the midst of sort of the ethic of the
military is we have to go to war potentially so you got to emotionally
prepare yourself for that and I think the ethic of hey I'm gonna grunt it out
and push my emotions down because it's you know war is tough what's your take
on that in terms of the balance of that because in a lot of cases I've worked
with men for 30 years and it's it can be crippling you know it's really
interesting to me I mean I only deployed once I deployed to an undisclosed
location in the Middle East for about seven months in 2016 and that was in
some ways the most difficult but also like the greatest highlight of my career
in the United States Air Force it was a heck of a thing to be over there and
the sense of camaraderie there was unparalleled you know I really
appreciated the teams and the bases that I worked at while I was stateside but
everybody was making a significant sacrifice while we were there I think
Sebastian Younger wrote a book a few years ago but it's really relevant to
the question you raised called Tribe and you know he has a great TED talk on that
subject brilliant guy is basically a reporter that was at war with many
different countries for year after year after year after year after year just
learned what he could from people who were deployed and draws some really
interesting comparisons between like the US Armed Forces and for example the
Israeli Armed Forces and I'll just give you like a little snippet to think about
so what one of his fundamental hypotheses in the book is that connection
is protection and so for example if you're an Israeli service member you are
significantly more likely to experience combat related trauma than if you're a
US service member however combat related PTSD in the Israeli Armed Forces almost
non-existent and it's 50% of all service members are service connected with
disability with PTSD in the US so that like that math doesn't make a lot of
sense you know I'm not a research psychologist but even I can kind of
sniff that out it's like if I'm an Israeli service member I'm much more
likely to experience the thing that causes combat PTSD and I don't get it
nearly as often as my American counterparts and one of the things that he suggests is
that in Israel almost every able-bodied person serves in the military of course
so when you go and you go into these sort of unknown hairy and scary
environments and you're faced with these ineffable incomprehensible trauma
experiences and then you come home almost everybody you went to high school
with almost everybody you go to temple with almost everybody on your street
also did something like that came home and has a life and can talk to you about
it but also model something of post-traumatic growth for you it's like
it's like less than 10% of the US population ever serves and it and the
active-duty service component it's like 1% or something like that it's it's
it's infinitesimally small and so it was certainly the case for me you know you
come home from something like that and two or three people from my high school
served in the Air Force you know and I don't really know that's right and so
you come home and like where's the tribe and where's the protection associated
with that and then people suffer individually and instead of coming in
talking to Captain Dell in in uniform they're kind of they're gonna talk to
Captain Morgan because you know that's that's pretty therapeutic in the short
term that's an easy thing to tie yourself to it works really well or else
people wouldn't do it but man it comes with some costs and it's also
acceptable to get drunk you know it's like you don't need to do it all the
time but it is and you can kind of easily hide it alcohol is one of the I
always love the joke to two people get in a fight in a bar they drunk or they
stoned and they're obviously drunk it's like it does something to people and
it's but it's socially acceptable so it's easy to hide you know it also tends
to it makes you know it makes the conversations easier it's a truth serum
of sorts and things like that and the second yeah the second top gun you know
you know with his name Tom Cruise falls in love with the owner of the bar right
and so Jennifer Connelly at that so that it's just and the most famous scenes in
the movie of the first one is that you know righteous brothers song when they're
in the bar right singing to you know Kelly McGillis but I wanted to go back
to the Israel part I think that I don't know if it could be you know if this is
the realm of science or just pure conjecture but the fact that Israel has
been the center of thousands of years of absolute combat and and and warring
tribes taken over right Egyptians Syrians you know Babylonians Romans
Greek I mean Antiochus and all those guys and so I guess I mean if you lived
in like South Central LA and you used to gunshots going off every night they're
not gonna traumatize you right the person who walks into there from you
know outside Kansas and spends a night in South Central is gonna be traumatized
by the amount of gunshots they that they hear and the people that live there
probably are less traumatized by that particular phenomenon so yeah it's
interesting to think about there's actually been some fascinating data
compiled on Jewish people about the genetic loading and effects of
generational trauma yeah you know certainly even prior to the Holocaust
but you know a lot of this research became pretty relevant after that I would
also say the the epidemiological literature for trauma would suggest that
traumas cumulative over time so what that means is that every one of us kind
of has our breaking point with trauma exposure so so you know I mentioned
earlier it's pretty hopeful story one single trauma event is not likely to
produce PTSD but if someone in a serial way is is exposed to repeated trauma
events it just really really builds and we learned this a lot from the military
unfortunately it's kind of like generation or two ago the belief was hey
we deployed that battalion of Marines they came back and they didn't have you
know whatever the label for PTSD was at that time so let's just keep redeploying
them they must be immune to it it's like after a while the weight or the
cumulative effect of trauma builds to the place that it becomes kind of
unbearable and people start to manifest the symptoms of post-traumatic stress
yeah doctor you're you're a counselor for the staff for the professors at
Notre Dame yeah what is that like because it's an interesting juxtaposition of
the professors and Gen Z what which I want to talk about of this emerging
generation that is basically saying hey we need a way to deal with our anxiety
and depression so what is that like you know I I I'm grateful it wasn't my
first gig out of out of grad school you know like it's it's not terribly uncommon
for me to sit down with individuals that receive PhDs in a second or a third
language on another continent you know or someone that might sit down and ask
me about the meta-analytic studies supporting the interventions that I'm
offering one of the things that I've learned from from fighter pilots to you
know faculty is that even the best of people are people at best hmm a lot of
folks will with a real sense of humility you know seek out consultation with a
psychologist and I always just ask people you know if if this goes well I
ask them I ask everybody this the first time I meet them it's kind of like
whatever brings you in here if this if this is profitable to you how would we
be able to measure and know that that was you know that that was occurring
like how would we know if this helps and it's always really instructive to me and
what people actually you know even the brightest of people they'll say I never
really thought about that you know it kind of opens up territory to be able to
kind of say you know what what might we endeavor to do and how realistic is that
I oftentimes think man like we hurt where we care and a lot of people come
to therapy because they want to get rid of anxiety or depression or grief and
it's like outside of a frontal lobotomy or a bottle in front of me I have no
idea how to get that you know I mean could you imagine what your life would
be like if you didn't grieve when your kid died or you didn't feel nervous
about someone or something that you really cared about that was being
threatened or like have you watched the news for one nanosecond in the last 20
years you don't think there's reasons to be sad or grieved or lament you know
like among religious communities it's like this is this is a historical
artifact that is part of that part of what's necessary and sufficient with the
human condition you know book of Psalms it's like unbelievable like the entire
Psalms of lament you know and so I just think like a lot of people come to
therapy because they want to feel good and I end up trying to work with people
to help them to be good at feeling and I don't think that that's just some dumb
semantic thing I think it's like how can how can we as human beings feel fully
but still pivot freely in the direction of our values to build a meaningful life
and any good exemplar that any one of us has in religion or in the real world has
modeled this for us you know like every every fairy tale story that enamored our
hearts it's like in order to be brave you first have to be afraid and some
dragons need slain and even Jesus wept at Lazarus's tomb sweat blood in the
garden you know it's like flipping tables and things like this is like
whoever someone looks to and truly esteems typically that person has been
able to feel fully but still build a meaningful life well I mean we went back
to some of the disciples and how silly or stupid they could be but I think
that's also part of the beauty of the story right there's Peter you know asking
to build an altar for Moses and Elijah as well as Jesus and he's just laughing
at it you know it's the you know cutting off the servants ear it's the get thee
behind me Satan it's we love Peter because he's the one who even though he
saw Jesus in the mount denied him three times we need that so that's the kind of
reality that that helps us at least and know that he was the rock right and so I
think having those stories that resonate with us we come from an evangelical
background you know I think we need those types of things and I'd actually
like to pivot into what you brought up in one of your earlier reels on habit
formation is not equal to goal acquisition I love this construct
because there's a book called atomic habits and it's about iterative things
and you talked about progressive sanctification but some some of one of
the things that the author does is he says don't say that you're quitting
smoking say that you're a nonsmoker or if you if you're attempting he's already
looking at the goal acquisition right I am this right so I'm not striving I am
and that seems to be a little bit different from our kind of process is
that we're always striving and always slowly building so tell us a little bit
about how that's helpful in terms of because this is stuff where we can
actually think about this on a regular day we don't have to talk about trauma
and deep embedded thing this is a really practical thing to talk about right
because people want to develop better habits right they want to get better and
that but help me flesh that out a little bit yeah yeah well so you know those
those reels came from little snippets from the Wheaton course that I taught in
January and it's always amazing to me how sensorious people could be over like
a 60-second sound bite from a lecture that was like three hours in life you
know and people you know it's like very fascinating how people will take a
little bit of content and kind of try to understand that and then judge it and and
yet you know I appreciate the commentary folks have so so you're right James
clear wrote a great book called atomic habits and he talks a lot about this
many of the best clinical health psychology folks I worked with in the
Air Force talked a lot about this as well this idea that when we set about to
build habits in our life they should be more aligned with cultivating an identity
than they are about a specific outcome and and in the class which of course in
60 seconds you couldn't you couldn't catch but you know my wife and I we
struggled with infertility and an inability to get pregnant for about a
decade and it was my issue I have a really really low sperm count I've had
multiple surgeries on my testicles which I wouldn't recommend to anyone but that's
I've done that and the consequence of that is just an unbelievably low sperm
count and so and so anyway God gifted us two beautiful girls and neither of them
we ever would have expected I mean that truly doctors had told us like the
chances are as close to zero as you could possibly get and so anyway when
when she got pregnant with our second daughter and we were both in our 40s I
just had a great awakening in my spirit I just realized I'm gonna be approaching
60 years old at Amelia Joy's high school graduation and and I am you know easily
30 or 40 pounds overweight I did what every person does got out of the Air
Force I no longer had to maintain a waistline and run a mile and a half in a
certain distance and time and so I gained a bunch of weight didn't you know
take care of myself and I had this unbelievable turning point I lost 70
pounds in the last couple of years and nice and it really traced down to this
idea of self-compassion and and I think this is worthy of bringing up because
we're just three bro Tato chips here just like three three bro Mandarin
chiefs here a couple of bros I presume there's some dudes that listen to this
and you know you're right like men have an issue with some emotions but not all
I mean I've never met a man that's uncomfortable with anger you know it's
like you know it's like oh somebody's gonna fiddle around with your daughter
it's like how do you feel about this like I don't know I'm a guy that really
struggles with this feeling all right I could go to rage pretty darn quick you
know or like watch your favorite sport and it's like I can experience euphoria
and joy pretty quick or despair you know especially if I root for the wrong team
or whatever but self-compassion is a tricky one for men because you know
definitionally I think it conjures up this idea of like self-love or
self-esteem or something and I'm not I'm not promoting narcissism or like you
know look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that you're beautiful I
think of self-compassion very similar to like self-discipline or self-respect
and there was this major shift in me where it was like the things I put in my
body behaviorally can can be an evidence of self-control and self-respect so that
I can be a dad that's kind of worthy of this calling I'm not saying the BMI is
attributed to how good of a dad you are but it was just abundantly clear to me
that I was eating a bunch of ultra processed foods I was drinking too much
alcohol I was not moving I was not eating in a way that would suggest that
I cared a whole lot about what my health span would be and so I read dr.
Adia's book outlive which is brilliant he talks about the four pillars
associated with a long health span you know being exercise science nutritional
biochemistry sleep quality and emotional well-being and I can get behind every
one of those you know and so I I also looked and did a deep dive into
nutritional psychiatry so woman and do is a big name in that space this is your
brain on food is a book that she wrote Ramsey is another name of a psychiatrist
that does a lot of nutritional psychiatry vitamins and minerals and
food groups that really promote emotional well-being and in randomized
control trials beat psychotropic meds or go head-to-head with them without you
know the the side effects of weight gain and impotency like the stuff that keeps
you pretty darn depressed so so yeah I started geeking out on that stuff and
here's what I say to men don't pursue self-compassion on the basis of like
feeling or even thoughts because many of us are our own worst critic we've all
got sort of a dictator that lives between our ears I was hearing from mine
even before I connected to this it's like oh my god I looked at I looked at
some of the dudes that these guys just talked to and like who in the world am I
this is gonna be terrible I'm gonna waste their time da da da da da da we all
have that chatter you know also I could not furl my brow and all of a sudden
think positive things about myself that would be weird you know but the next
time I go to the fridge unquestionably I'm either gonna do something that
looks like self-respect or self-control or not the next time I say yes or no to
the thing that I drink that's either gonna look like self-respect or
self-discipline or it's not and and if I can walk that out behaviorally I get to
transform something at an identity level like you know who Adam Dell is Adam
does the kind of guy who exercises unusual self-control in the direction of
what he puts into his body because that's the kind of duty is and if I have
some outcome in mind like oh I'd like to lose 70 pounds I might gain weight lose
weight stay the same plateau da da da da da my motivation doesn't need to rise
and fall on progress towards that one particular goal down the line is every
single day whether I've relapsed or I'm on the path whether it's a good day or a
bad day whether the scale says plus one or minus ten I get to pursue that
identity transformation that sort of evolution of myself that's a heck of a
thing I actually first learned that in the Air Force you know they taught you
how to put your uniform on and make your bed and how your boots should be as the
first things that you did in the morning and there's something profound about that
it's like you belong to a different community now you do things differently
now and we're gonna help you rise up to this identity even though many of you
people have never made your bed you're not the kind of person that does that
and you came here with rules in your head about I don't wake up at 0430 and
exercise I don't make my bed every day I don't pay attention to detail it's like
small disciplined steps in that direction is going to evolve your identity
love it are you seeing a trend one of the things I was going to ask it's a
kind of a two-part question when you were trying to have kids for 10 years
did you look at any kind of unorthodox ways to try to help that situation out
something that might go beyond the pale of a traditional sign that somebody gets
cancer diagnosis and there's always the classic chemo immunology you know you
know radio rate and this you know hacking stuff off right so there's these
these foundational things and the reason I'm asking you that is I'm seeing a
trend of a lot of people who are biohacking and doing a lot of things
especially young men I follow a lot on an X and you've got started with Jordan
Peterson but then you start to see these diets and these carnivore things and
sunlight and setting your balls right and and a variety of things that tend to
kind of say hey we've tried all this medicine we had a guy named dr. Jack
Cruz on who basically says blue light has been the cause of our depression
right that is draining the melatonin blue light is the ruination of this
civilization and so what I'm trying to say is are you seeing this collective
kind of movement in in in in this direction and how much of it could be
actually truly applicable to actually making you live a better life better
community and even avoid the things that would normally cause depression or other
kinds of you know anxiety so it's a big long-winded question I'm sorry you can
impact that yeah you're sort of asking like are there is there benefit in kind
of leaning hard into the direction of these alternative integrative kind of
biohacking approaches to well-being yeah you know and you also asked it in terms
of like our own infertility journey and yeah if I could share something really
personal with you my wife from the time that she was old enough to tote around
a doll baby had always longed to be a mom and when we realized that it was a
mean me issue there was like major grief that both of us went through and there
were kind of dark times that I basically said like babe take the take every asset
that we have and leave me and go do this because I'm not gonna be able to give
this to you and it just felt it felt like something I shouldn't knowingly
take from her you know she had been so faithful and kind to me and you know I
mentioned acceptance and commitment therapy earlier and you know I hope it
doesn't sound like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth because I really
do I really do believe that in our wisdom traditions in terms of
sanctification in the science of shaping behavior and evolving as human beings I
think that we we can all be in a process with that you know we can all be on a
journey with that to build a meaningful life and to show up towards the ceiling
of our potential I also think that more Eastern philosophical radical
acceptance orientation type philosophies make a great deal of sense in a world
as broken as ours where everybody's going out horizontal and I don't mean
acceptance like tolerance and resignation I mean acceptance like I can
be with my life right now exactly as it is and still find contentment content
yeah purpose so for example my favorite Old Testament story I've preached a lot
at multiple churches I went to seminary before I went off to become a
psychologist and one of my favorite Old Testament stories in the world is the
story of Mephibosheth. Bosh in the middle of the world. Bosheth's name is the word shame in Hebrew and this is a story of trauma it's a story of a
five-year-old kid that had his legs broken broken yeah and then he lived the
rest of his life broken and the first thing that you learn about him and the
last thing that you learn about Mephibosheth is that he's lame in both of
his feet and it's so amazing that David's men find him in Lodobar which
literally means no pasture no hope no man's land and bring him up it's just a
beautiful story I've got my I figured that sermon somewhere online but anyway
when I gave that sermon at in Enid Oklahoma really close to the pilot
training base where I was an officer in the Air Force I shared with a
congregation there that one of the areas of brokenness in our life like the the
things that despite being affiliated as one of God's children that I still
carried this lameness it was this infertility issue and at the time we had
we had foster kids living with us we had done that for years and years and years
we had grieved through it we recommitted to one another we sort of
embraced the reality that even if this doesn't change God is good we can be
committed to one another it was not an accident that we partnered together and
we get to still build something meaningful and I looked out into the
audience and I'm sharing this and I'm emotional my wife's got tears rolling
down her face and she was pregnant there and we had no idea oh my gosh she was
pregnant with Adeline yeah our first child and yeah it's just like such an
amazing thing you know that's not everybody's story and I'm not sharing
that to say that and there were a lot of people that came up to me afterwards
and they're like have you tried ashwagandha and have you you know you
know fan your balls or something you know it's like you know for us it was
kind of like that is one of the most things I've ever been to to radical
acceptance and contentment like I wish this was different but even though it's
not I can be with this and still find joy and still find meaning and that
honestly that that's kind of what post-traumatic growth is like people
don't get post-traumatic growth as the opposite of post-traumatic stress you
can only get post-traumatic growth if you have experienced horrific harm from
trauma and in healing from the trauma you might develop a deeper relationship
with God a deeper empathy with other people a newfound set of possibilities
and new possibilities to go in the direction of these are various domains
of post-traumatic growth that come after the suffering has occurred but if we
don't allow ourselves to feel fully like to hug the cactus or embrace the suck
you know or all these terms that I heard from the military if we don't allow
ourselves to go through the dark night of the soul then we never get to the
break of dawn which is just a radiant light that's worth showing up to and so
this is why I think you know you mentioned spirituality earlier and I
think this is what is so distinctive in my mind about Jesus as a central figure
in a religious in a religious frame that he has something to say about the problem
of evil not by transcending it or philosophizing it but going through it
and I think it was Edward Shalito one of my favorite poems praying to this
suffering Christ this Christ that was betrayed and beaten almost to death and
crucified in front of his mom you know you think about like painting the most
graphic and horrific unjust reprehensible scene that any human could
go through and he didn't deserve it and Edward Shalito praying to that Christ
said the other gods were strong but thou wast weak they rode but thou did
stumble to a throne but to our wounds only your wounds can speak for no other
God has wounds but thou alone Wow and I just think like that's something I could
you know that's something I could gravitate to you know that like by his
wounds were healed yep in our in our wounds we find you know we find him or
something that he experienced Dr. Dell we have time for about two more questions
and yeah and I want to ask you what drew you to this type of work yeah I was a
sexually abused little boy growing up in Pennsylvania and I carried that with me
for a long darn time and I ended up disclosing the full details of that in
college in a counseling center with a lady named Carol and I don't remember a
darn thing that Carol said to me in that session but I'll never forget the tear
that ran down her cheek when I looked up at her and found the courage to look her
in the eyes after I talked about horrific graphic sexual assaults and and
you know I I went through kind of a healing journey with her in in that
process and also found faith in college and it was the coalescence of those two
things that initially moved me in the direction of ministry however a lot of
people were showing up to the church with addictions and domestic violence and
you know schizophrenia spectrum disorders and it's like whoo if I've got
a chance to learn more about this I'd like to and I'm really drawn to that
work and so yeah it set me on a path I was just so lucky I was an alternate to
get into my doc program which meant I wasn't a first selection but one of
their shiny stars dropped out so I got in by the like the back door I was an
alternate into the Air Force and so their shiny star dropped out and I got
in by the back door and I feel like in some ways I'm a Mephibosheth of God I
don't deserve a seat at the table but I'm there and happy to happy to continue
to serve in that way so yeah it's cultivated in pain in my own story
well even the pregnancy is just another example of just an amazing impossibility
if you would and and yet here we are Wow well I'm on a light note then what are
the plans for Mother's Day weekend how are we gonna celebrate your two
beautiful daughters and your wife what's going on yeah so we've got well we we do
a lot of art at our house and so there is carefully crafted series of cards
that are hidden under my four-year-old's bed right now that we'll share with
Jeanine and then we're taking her to the zoo the South Bend Zoo which is a
favorite place of hers and then we're gonna take her out to eat wherever she
wants to go so she doesn't have to make us knuckleheads another meal hopefully
you know nothing would be really sufficient but hopefully it'll be
meaningful for her so Wow what a joy it's been an absolute pleasure to chat
with you I am gonna I'm looking forward to more conversations it sounds like
we've got a lot we can unpack and break things down so thank you so much for
joining us this has just been absolutely mind-blowing and uplifting and
educational hey thanks guys I was just such an honor that you reached out I
really appreciate it dr. Dell again this has been fantastic because I appreciate
your wisdom there's something in speaking with someone who really dives
deep into this subject and it's my personal belief that people are waking
up to the need to heal their trauma and you've added a tremendous amount to that
conversation today thank you for sharing your wisdom so to all of our listeners
thank you for staying with us and please comment we've been getting a huge
increase in listeners so thank you to those groups please comment let us know
and recommend who you'd like to see us on if you want to introduce us to
somebody so to everyone out there have a great Mother's Day weekend much love
everybody