Dr. Jerry, you got the whole world waiting.
Been ready for you to start the conversation.
No point of view, we got the haters confused.
Leave it up to you to bring us all the good news.
Positive five lives and the sex appeal to Dr. Andre Jerry.
Can I get an interview?
You, you, you, you, you, you, you.
Hey, good evening everybody and welcome to a brand new episode of Live with Dr. Andre Jerry.
I'm your host, Dr. Andre Jerry, and it's a privilege to be with you this evening.
I want to give a special shout out to my family and friends who are tuning in,
and to every one of you who are supporting the Artist First Radio Network with your listenership.
I sincerely appreciate your support.
Listen, I want to take a moment to send some love and positive energy and prayers to Puerto Rico.
So, for those of you who may not be aware, Puerto Rico was ravaged by a hurricane Fiona this past Monday,
resulting in a lot of flash flooding and a near total knockout of their already fragile energy grid.
So, many people, particularly those in rural areas, have lost their homes and many more are totally without power right now.
So, if you're like me and you have loved ones on the island, please check on your folks.
And even if you don't, send some prayers and positivity their way because they certainly need it.
Edwin, cuenta conmigo pa y dios de bendiga, te amo mucho.
Now, we have a great show in store for you today.
In fact, I've been looking forward to it for quite some time as we'll be discussing a topic that many people seem to shy away from.
And that's mental health.
We're also going to delve a little deeper into the topic of mental health and discuss intergenerational trauma,
in particular because I feel that it's not really understood by a lot of folks and yet it impacts so many of us,
especially in black and brown communities.
So, with that said, I want to introduce my special guest of the evening.
Now, I first became acquainted with this gentleman through his work as a mental health care practitioner specializing in trauma recovery.
And later through his published work as the author of Sit or Stand Living Successfully Beyond Your Shadows,
which is a powerful testimony that chronicles his own childhood trauma and how he was able to reconcile his painful past
and transform those trials into purpose and passion.
Now, this brother is a nationally recognized mental health care expert who's been featured on Iyana Fix My Life
and A&E's new original series, Digital Addiction, as an interventionist.
As an award-winning television personality, author, and multimedia producer,
he has left an indelible print on the mental health profession and remains committed to improving the lives of others through his work.
And we're so honored to have him as our guest today.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Corey George.
Corey, how are you today, sir?
I am happy to be here. It's been a long day, but listen, every time the topic is here, I tend to come alive, so I'm ready for this conversation.
Great, outstanding. Well, listen, again, it's my pleasure to have you on the show today, and thank you so much for making the time to be here.
So we have a lot that I want to touch on in this episode, but before we get into it,
I'd like you to take an opportunity to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into the mental health care industry.
Well, sure. Well, not to repeat the great info that you gave me.
You know, I realized that after I healed from my adversities and I'm not ashamed of talking about them,
I've dealt with six years of childhood and rape within my family with multiple people. I've dealt with attachment issues for my parents,
abandonment, grief and loss. My grandmother, who I remember first raised me, passed suddenly at the age of seven.
So we have that loss of a parent then, was then raised by my wonderful aunt who became a crack addict.
You know, that's the term we use back then, but a drug addict at the age of 14. So I haven't always spent for myself and been learning how to cope
with failures, learning how to cope with loss, learning that in order for me to feel safe, I could not really depend on anybody anymore,
which was not a good thing, you know, which was not a good thing. So I grew up carrying all of that debt, all of that emotional debt,
and also the abandonment of my father, who was alive, but just wasn't as emotionally attached.
And even learning his story inspired me to go deeper into the traumas of our parents, you know, the traumas of our grandparents and how they affect us.
So going into adulthood, forming those healthy relationships, which is what we're supposed to do in adulthood,
seemingly was out of our grasp. And I cannot understand it because as a child, you know, as a child we cope.
And then those same skills we use, and so the same skills we use in childhood, if they're not changed, they're the same skills we bring into adulthood.
So that's why we see a lot of adults coping as if they're immature, but it's not necessarily that they're immature, it's that they're coping with their childhood
ways of coping. But to us, it looks immature. So, and so for me, just going through the healing process on my own, really,
and not having a supportive family that understood how to do that or how to support, led me to understand that I have a, that I'm the expert on myself.
And I teach people to become the expert on themselves because that's what we're here to do. We're here to master ourselves.
You know, oftentimes we look outward for those fulfillment things such as jobs and money and people, but what if we master ourselves and knew what jobs,
what money and what people actually made us happier, right? So, it's not just about trauma, it's about, can I walk out knowing that I can judge a character
that's best for me because I'm an expert on me. You can't tell me nothing about Corey. So if I know Corey's the will, I know what positions I should not put myself
into. I know what relationships that don't prosper me. I know what jobs I don't want. I know what kind of company I don't need to keep because it doesn't prosper me.
So that's, and so that's how this work is all related into it. The final, the final point of this is, are you mastering yourself?
And that's really the end point for me with my clients is, are you the master of yourself?
Wow, I love how you were able to channel that energy and channel some of the traumatic experiences that you've had as a youngster and then fight your way through that and then turn it into a sense of purpose for you.
And see, that's one of the reasons why I'm so excited about this particular show because we get to highlight mental health awareness and why it matters.
And, you know, because we, and when I say we, I'm mostly talking about black and brown people, we're not conditioned to openly discuss mental health, which, you know, to me is really odd because the data and you know this, the data suggests that black and Hispanic communities
experience more trauma and violence than our white counterparts. And, you know, this negatively impacts our overall emotional health and the mental health of our youth who later turn into adults.
And to your point, many of us have had just horrific traumatic experiences in our childhood and in our lives. And we're just expected to, hey, just try to along and deal with it.
Or we're so ashamed or confused about our trauma that we just compartmentalize it away and don't really deal with it.
And by doing that, we don't understand that we're just prolonging the healing process. Would you agree?
Yeah, I would agree. And to expand on a few points is that, and I was talking about this earlier, that engagement I was at. And I said, unfortunately, for some of us, because for me, my childhood was in sixth.
I was penetrated at sixth. I was given alcohol at 10. I felt picked. So because there was such a pivotal part of my life, and this is why childhood trauma is so impactful because we are also developing in that same space,
meaning my brain is developing. My brain is learning based on the environment, based on exposure.
So then, scientifically, when a child goes through sometimes an out treatment and especially if it is prolonged, it is shown to change the shape of the brain.
So trauma is not just a mental health thing. It's a physiological thing.
You know, sometimes the outburst about children that we may deem as a HB or we may deem as just a bad kid. No, that's a trauma response because no one has taught them how to cope with those reactions and those triggers, right?
So it goes deeper and deeper, but not only that, because we've been kind of massaged into trauma.
For some of us, especially when we look at low income communities and poverty, we don't recognize trauma as trauma. We recognize that as daily life.
So for us, trauma has to be explosive. We have to see something explode in our face, but we don't realize that walking through from school and watching someone just stab beef, watching a prostitute,
watching gang violence, having to walk a certain path to and from schools to avoid a heightened chance of violence or death.
How many children, how many youngsters are walking around with PTSD and don't know it because we don't recognize trauma because it's become ingrained in certain people's everyday life.
So that's why for me, when I look at behaviors, most people judge behaviors. I say, what's the story behind that behavior? What's the why?
And then magic happens when you say, what's the why? This country still isn't in a position to ask every person what's the why, because we penalize.
And sometimes unfairly, and I was talking about this issue, is that oftentimes we will see white men be off of mental health services as a form of a plea deal while we're thrown in jail.
And sometimes it's because even the attorneys that are assigned to us are not on our side. These, so it's so many little factors that go into why trauma affects us and it lives within our neighborhoods, it lives within our communities, it lives within our family systems for so long.
And to your point, it can start really early in a person's life. I can imagine being sexually violated at such a young age, six years old, you said. And to your point too, when we look at children, whether it's in grade school or middle school, when we look at all of these destructive behaviors,
we tend to focus so much on the behavior like, oh, that's a bad child or that's a bad seed or, you know, what's going on with that child. But we, those behaviors, like you said, are indicative of some trauma that may have occurred earlier in their life.
And it's just manifesting in these destructive behavioral patterns because it's unhealed stuff, right?
Yes. And, you know, and also because, you know, and so now we're touching on the intergenerational trauma and its twofold. So, so basically one of the definitions of that is the trauma that's passed down through systems.
You know, for example, I will get debated on this and I, and I don't mind because I argue with parents all the time and I tell people I will argue with parents because the kids can't.
You know, when you have severe beatings, how far away from that is beatings during slavery? How far that is an adjustment to, oh, we do it in our culture. Let's make it acceptable, but let's just make it less harsh.
I'm not opposed to spacing. But when it comes to violent beatings and you're calling that discipline, baby, let's remember that we came from slavery where we were tarred and severed and beaten with whips and we've seen pictures.
So, slightly making that a little less impactful doesn't change the fact that it's still impactful.
That's, you know, that's the form of trauma. But also we have to look at the fact that the way we do not talk about certain mental health things becomes introduced, becomes into, well, because of trauma.
And here's the prime example of how I can understand that though. If you're, you know, being black back in the day and you have a mental health issue or you're bothered or you score something wrong, would you go to a white therapist or a white psychiatrist if the pain inflicted came from a white person?
Probably not.
Right. So therefore, the training probably started because we were experimenting on, you know, not many people can say they don't know about the, the horrible experiments that were done to us as a culture years ago.
So now we're looking at the fact that we don't know how to go towards help because in our head, the only help we have are the same people who are violating us. That's the first thing.
So now we don't teach our children to go seek mental health services. That's where the biases and the stigma started. So I can understand that. Right. So there's a plausible reason.
But the problem becomes now that we know better, now that we have black and brown therapists, now that we have other means, we can now not say that that's a reason.
But another way it happens is because, for example, I use my family. I was such a legoon, but I wasn't the only one.
And I wasn't the first in the family. I heard about it happening with people older than me.
Before you go on with that, this is what I want the audience to get. What we're explaining now is what exactly is intergenerational trauma because people hear trauma and then they hear intergenerational.
Like what is that? So what Gory is about to explain is the form of intergenerational trauma. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Gory.
No, no, no, you're fine because the first part of that is the fact that we don't talk about certain things and also the trauma we passed out. So it was twofold.
But again, three levels. I know of three levels in my family that have been not only abused but also contained abusers.
But if no one talks about it, right? So we have one of my family members. We thought that her child was a product of her being fast at 13.
Well, years later, her child is not here, you know, doesn't.
I found out that she's a product of her being fast. Why didn't we say wait? Why didn't we say somebody violated this?
Because she was 12. She had her on her 30th birthday. Why didn't we say she was late?
And then other people in my family were molested and we knew who they were.
Why are these people showing up at the family unions? Why are these people showing up at the park with us around other kids?
And so then what happens is when you're silent about it, it empowers the perpetrator to also believe, hey, I can get away with this again.
So we were silent about it.
Yeah. So you're empowering them, but you're silent than us and making us believe that we shouldn't talk about it. And then we feel alone because no one understands why I dress banking.
No one understands why I cannot cope with, you know, with the men in my family. I had brothers. I didn't feel like them. I felt separate because I was abused.
I wore sweaters in the summer and nobody thought something was wrong with that.
I would only spend time with the ladies in the family. Nobody thought something was wrong with that, but they teased me, you know, at that point, thinking something else, but just ask me.
And because I wasn't asked, I didn't feel that my issues were important.
Then you pile on, you know, the bullying, you pile on losing my grandmother, you pile on my aunt who I loved dearly, she became a drug addict.
And I was like, well, then what's, which trauma do I deal with first? So which one do you pick apart?
So as a child, I called. I called until I was invisible.
And it didn't bode well in adulthood.
And there's this and stuff there because I don't think it ever goes away, right? But we learned to manage.
So my work is geared on helping people at least manage.
So we look at the internet as we look at that type of trauma, the only answer to that type of trauma is you stopping yours.
We can't go back and fix the right, but the only way that you make sure that your chain that comes from your legacy is different as if you heal.
Really, that is the only cure.
It's healing you and everything. Yeah, because I have kids and my kids will never experience what I experienced.
We talk all the time, even if it's annoying.
Okay, look, I'm your dad. And so I would rather you talk here in the house and get the information from me than, you know, as opposed to seeking it on the street.
So we have a great relationship. It takes time, but they know I'm here to talk.
And they know that things will change starting with me.
So it helps if you're a child and say you're dealing with some form of abuse. If you have parents or parent figures in your life that you feel comfortable talking with, or they always say something to the effect of, you know, you always know you can talk to me.
It's something bothering you if somebody is touching you inappropriately.
It's good to kind of groom your children in that way because if, for instance, they do have that type of experience, then they don't feel so alone.
And they feel like they do have someone that they can go to and say, hey, this is happening to me. I don't know how to deal with it. Can you help me?
Well, I think, well, so let's talk about some of the protective factors because we talk about risk factors, but what are the biggest protective factors in a child or anyone's healing of trauma or dealing with it is, is the social connections, is the family support.
So we can always prevent something from happening, right? But if I know that if someone violates me and I go tell my mom and I've known that to say space, there's going to be a high probability that if I get my treatment and if I get, you know, it gets reported.
If it's handled, the circumstances I deal with later may be much less, if any at all. I know people who may have, I know people who have been molested, but because they have a solid support system and people acting on it, they're fine.
They're okay. So, yeah, so those are one of the most important factors. But then we have to say, how do you come to the safe space? We have to become comfortable with the things that make us uncomfortable.
And my theory is this, and this is what I always say, if a comfortable conversation is the one that you should be having already, that doesn't mean that just because I have kids when we talk, that does not mean that every conversation we have is comfortable.
But damn it, I'm going to get comfortable by the end of that night because their life depends on it. And so safe spaces, we have to create them, but they don't just show up.
We have to manifest that. We have to start talking to our kids at a young age because, you know, science is by the age of two, children understand how you attach to them.
So if you have a, so if you have an, if you have what we call an insecure attachment, that could mean that the child doesn't know that they can go to you for some things and that you're going to be there to help them with their feelings by age two, because it starts at birth.
So you can't wait until your child is eight and eight and say, oh, let's go ahead and make the safe space now. You can, but it'll be more difficult.
Right. Well, Corey, I want to ask you this, you know, because a lot of us do have parents that are engaged and, you know, my parents, you know, for example, they always made me feel welcome to talk to them, to be open with them about things.
But, you know, all throughout my basically middle school and high school, I was bullied. A lot of people don't know that. And it's just something that I was suffering daily.
I was bullied every single day at school. And for some reason, although I had parents, particularly my mother, who would always ask me, how was school? How's everything going? How are you doing?
For some reason, I never shared that with her. I finally did when I was, what, 38, 39 years old? But she was so shocked. She was like, why didn't you tell me about this?
I don't know what it is about bullying. And maybe this is akin to other forms of trauma. We just don't talk about it. Although we can, and there are people there listening, but for some reason we hold it in and just suffer in silence.
What is that about?
I tend to think about bullying. It's such a, bullying is embarrassing. So, it's a distinct thinker, but it's embarrassing. You know, how, and also let's talk about the children that were real to say, hey, listen, you don't, you don't lose fights.
So you don't come on to talk about a fight if you didn't fight bad, but if you didn't lose. So what does that do to a child that they couldn't fight bad?
I'm not going to tell dad because dad is going to make me feel like I should have done something. Right? I was bullied. I didn't know that I could talk to somebody because you didn't talk about, talk about my abuse.
But there are certain things that may be so overwhelming that you don't know how. So nothing to say that it will always be perfect if you have support. It just says that heightens the chance that you may have the, like you may have the opportunity to say something and get help or to feel highly supported.
So, you know, but the bullying thing is so debilitating at times because it's happening. So again, so our brains don't start developing until we're 30.
So just think if you're bullied at 12, 13, 6, 7, 15, your brain is not even halfway done. So it's coping with all the, all the factors, all the, all the skills were learned, all of the things that are available and not made available.
All the coping skills that your parents are parents are responsible for teaching you. You know, for me being a parent, my job is to help you and partner with your emotions and teach you how to deal with those emotions to teach you that you have a safe space and to teach you that if you venture out a little bit, you know where home is.
So when we don't get that, that's when we look at the, at the, at the chances that a child has, has the insecurity of not knowing what safety is or not knowing when someone's going to show up because it's not consistent.
Right.
And, you know, and you pay the bills and everything, but we don't like children don't think about bills. Children don't think about rent or mortgage.
We don't like, we're not factoring in because it's not our responsibility, but we're thinking about, wow, how do I feel?
And because it's hampering your brain, well, not hampering, but it can, it can shape your brain development. It can really be a daunting experience for you until you realize, wow, the reason why I am in this way as an adult,
and also especially if you look at your magic relationships, not so much your friendships, but you look at your magic relationships are usually a reflection of things you have and have not worked on.
Right. And you try to work out those issues or try to fix them within the relationship without even realizing that's what you're doing.
Yeah. And I tell people all the time, you know, we talk about, you know, someone who checks all our boxes, right?
And sometimes I tell clients, well, go look at those boxes and tell me if all those boxes are someone else's responsibility.
Or if some of those boxes are your parents' job. And if it's your parents' job, you got to parent yourself now.
I need someone to love me this way or I need someone to check on me all day. No, you needed your mom and daddy to do that.
So why don't you check in with yourself, make sure you're good on them. This man or woman has a job. This man or woman has things to do. They can't do that.
Don't make their job way too hard. They're just trying to get to know you.
Right. I learned the hard way that if you're going into a relationship, not a whole person, and expecting that other person to be your other half and to make up for all of these things that you don't have,
that's really not a good way to go into a relationship. You need to go into a relationship being a whole person, knowing who you are, and not looking for someone to...
What's the word I'm looking for? Help me out.
I don't know.
I've done it myself. I've gone into relationships and I'm thinking, this other person is going to help me with this aspect of my life or this person is going to complete me.
Well, partially the savior conflict, sometimes it's more the savior conflict, savior. So without that covering.
So you look for our parents and savior. So those are listening. Think about this. When you ask them what else to save you, wasn't that the job of your parent to make sure that you were safe and secure and loved?
Yes, it was. So when we look at the savior complex, oh my God, I am nothing without someone old or an infant one, and then also someone has a savior complex.
So a person needs to be saved in the savior complex, which both can be rooted in some type of issues in childhood. Both of you will not do well with each other.
It won't work because we think, oh, these two halves will make a hole. No, these two halves will explode. Because what if the savior thinks you don't need him or her anymore?
What happens is that a form of control spoils where they abuse you to make you feel like you need them. What if you don't need to be saved anymore?
And you don't want the savior. Do you move on now or do you adjust the relationship? So with so many questions, right?
So that's why I said, date yourself. You know, and you read my book, there's a reason why I said, take yourself out on your date.
Take yourself out to a place with an experience of being a food. So you can come back and tell me what your favorite things are.
But I also want to make sure that we talk about trauma, not just some mental health aspect, but trauma affects our physical life.
Because for black people with unmanaged stress, especially black men, it can decrease our life expectancy by 20%. Many people don't know that.
When I talk about trauma, it's not just about how you feel. It's about how is your breast feeling? Is your back hurting? Are you having unexplained headaches?
What if your IBS was based on unmanaged stress? You don't have IBS. It's just that once you manage that stress, you don't have that issue anymore.
And I was telling the testimony earlier that even with women, so usually people who have unmanaged trauma, sometimes the brain,
becomes very sensitized. You think that we go through stuff that we become desensitized, but the brain is not that way.
So with trauma, as you experience it, or as you relive it even with one experience, but if you don't have the triggers that are so extreme,
your brain tends to think it's in danger when it's not. So when the brain even perceives that there's a threat,
your body goes through a whole physiological process just to manage that stress. And usually it's over in a short time,
but with that stress, when the stress is elevated and it's so prolonged, your body has to do a process to come back to balance.
It's called homeostasis. So it comes back to a balance of what it considers your normal heart rate, what it considers your normal blood sugar level,
all these things. But it takes chemicals in your body. It takes hormones. So when you think of one, and so the biggest one we want to think about
is cortisol. But usually if you're in distress or you're in survival mode, your body tends to tell the body,
we need to get some energy out to our muscles and everything so we can activate and maybe fight, you know, fight leave or flee, or even faint.
But the cortisol helps to get all of that energy out to all your necessary parts, right? But what if the cortisol is elevated for way too long
and too often? Because also what's happening is with the cortisol erases your blood sugar for a while.
But just think that if you're, but just think if you're constantly triggered and you have all of that in your body,
what if, and what if you're diabetic or pre-diabetic only because you have a bad set of trauma that happened 40 years ago?
What if you have heart disease because your body thinks it's under stress all the time? What if, you know, what if you, yeah,
and what if you can't get pregnant? Because guess what happens, ladies, when your body thinks it's under stress and it's in danger,
when your body's in survival mode, it shuts down systems that it doesn't need for the fight or flight, which is, and one of them is your reproductive system.
So ladies, sometimes if you don't know why you can't conceive, I want you to ask, well, what kind of stress am I dealing with?
Or what kind of unmanaged issues I have on my face? And that's an eye-opener for a lot of people.
It is. And I mean, you've given us such a wealth of information already. I mean, this is a powerful conversation that we're having about the hidden impacts of trauma that's unhealed.
So, I mean, I know our listeners are getting a lot out of this. What we need to do right now is take a short commercial break and then when we return,
we'll finish our discussion on intergenerational trauma and learn more about Corey's upcoming workshop tour. We'll be right back.
Waves of sadness from out of nowhere. Instantly, you feel a weight of despair. A subtle heaviness that leaves you drained.
And a lingering loneliness that remains. Suddenly, there is no reason to smile. And then you become angry for a while.
Lashing out at anyone near, especially the ones you hold dear. Imprisoned by your own emotions, unsettled by the lack of control.
Trying to make sense of it all, meanwhile, it takes its toll. Distancing yourself from family, pushing your friends away, knowing in your heart that maybe you'll need their support one day.
As your despondency becomes palpable and more real, you find it difficult to express how you feel. So you become quiet and do your best to disguise it.
But there is no denying it. There is something wrong because nothing you do feels right. The sadness is overwhelming. But you're too angry to cry.
Deep into the pit of self-pity you're hurled where you realize you're not depressed. You're mad at the world.
This poem, written by Dr. Andre Gerry, is entitled Mad at the World from his literary debut, Write or Die, Expressions of Life, Love and Loss, Volume 1.
Available exclusively on Amazon and Kindle. Write or Die is more than just a collection of poetry. It's a lifestyle.
A call to action to its readers to consider expressive writing, such as poetry, as a catalyst for healing, growth, and change.
Write or Die assists the reader in a way that's relative to them and helps to identify their own emotions.
Each expression is poetically written in an elegant style that's helpful to the reader. For each expressed title motivates in a personal way, providing pure insight and introspection.
Having triumphed over his own trauma and adversity, Dr. Andre Gerry has proven how powerful expressive writing can be to the healing process.
If you're feeling stuck in an emotional state that's keeping you from achieving your highest potential, consider expressive writing as a tool to help identify and release negative thoughts.
Purchase your copy of Write or Die, Expressions of Life, Love and Loss, Volume 1 by Dr. Andre Gerry, available exclusively on Amazon and Kindle.
Write or Die is more than just a collection of poetry, such as poetry, as a catalyst for healing, growth, and change.
This is my storybook, so I'ma be an open book and share it with the rest of the world, it's inspiration, with the effects of this world, so this generation makes them hate who they are and that's not an exaggeration.
It's hard to love yourself when they tell you to be somebody else and wonder why you're insecure and rather stay inside your shell.
That's where you feel safe and so much your reputation changes, so you copy then you paste it, cause at yourself you thought you fell.
Now tell me am I right or am I wrong? I tell a story when I'm writing these songs, look at the man I've become, I've put my focus to my future endeavors.
Now I'm striving for greatness while hurtling, burying, instead of rapping bout shoeing guns and using drugs, it's more like you are supported and you're truly loved.
The more I grow the more my past is affecting me less, I'm adamant about choosing what my trajectory says.
Step back, examine the life you were handed, be the change of your family, work hard and you can be, use the positive attributes to the best of advantage.
I've lived a hard not life, access was never granted to me, but I'm the one that planted the seed and was called the loser but refused to accept it to feed.
Now it's me, I'm the hand at the reach and for help, this is my storybook, here you can read for yourself.
This is my storybook so I'ma be an open book and share it with the rest of the world, it's inspiration.
With the effects of this world to this generation makes them hate who they are and it's not an exaggeration.
It's hard to love yourself when they tell you to be somebody else and wonder why you're insecure and rather stay inside your shell.
That's where you feel safe, it's so much your reputation changes so you compete and you paste it cause at yourself you thought you fell.
Now tell me am I right or am I wrong, I tell a story when I'm writing these songs, look at the man I've become, look at the man I've become, I give all praise to the man up above, but hook it, hook it, hook it.
You're back live with Dr. Andre Gerry.
Hello friends and welcome back to Live with Dr. Andre Gerry.
You just finished listening to one of the latest tracks by independent artist Jill Brown entitled Storybook produced by Vaughn Make Hits and is available on all streaming platforms.
If you're an independent artist or author who'd like to have your work featured on our show, send my team an email at livewithdrandrejerry.com.
So if you're just tuning into the show, we've been discussing mental health awareness and intergenerational trauma with our special guest, Mr. Corey George, who's a nationally recognized mental health consultant and trauma recovery expert.
So before the break, we touched on why mental health awareness is important, defined intergenerational trauma in layman's terms, and how to recognize when the effects of intergenerational trauma are manifesting itself in our behavior and actions.
We were talking about before we left a tweet that Mr. George sent out recently and I just want to take some time and just quote it again because it really speaks to what I want to delve into on this second segment of the show.
So Corey, your tweet said, please understand that not to manage your stress or trauma doesn't absolve your body from coping with it. Your body is designed to automatically defend against perceived stress.
Putting this system in overdrive can cost you your life. And in parenthesis, you put decreased life expectancy. I thought this was a really great point. I want you to please elaborate more on it.
Oh, sure. Yes. I felt that thing. I was minding my business, drinking my water, and I felt that thing. This is how ministry works. It just happens.
You know, when you live the life that you want to project, it just shows up. And so I was sitting there thinking about something else. And I said, wow, I think people need to understand. And, you know, being a doctoral student has also provided me the opportunity to now love research when it comes to mental health.
So I'm a doctoral student that focuses solely on trauma. And it's fascinating for me because I talk about it from the brain down to the feet and not just mental health, but the brain, the physical brain down to organs and how it affects you.
And I was talking about in the previous section about when our brain thinks that we're in danger. So I want to use you for example. If you had trauma and you've learned to stuff it, you know, you don't think about it and you think you're coping like you're blocking and all that stuff.
But what if your brain didn't turn off and you said, well, brain thinks it's in final flight mode? And so invisibly, your brain is creating all of this stuff in your body again. You don't know this because you've coped.
But then you have, you know, but then you're having unexplained issues with your digestive system. Or you have an unexplained headache, some back pain.
You know, doctors can't find anything that physically wrong. You have a chronic pain. You may find other issues. You may become, you may be pre-diabetic and maybe underweight, meaning you're not obese.
You're not eating bad, but you're pre-diabetic. You have natural high blood pressure, meaning even if you're not stressed out physically the way that you think, you still have hypertension or pre-hypertension.
So guess what's happening? Your body's constantly fighting for it to come back to homeostasis, which is the safe level for some things in your body.
Well, if those levels of conflict are raised, guess what happens? You set a new bar and it's usually higher now. So if your blood sugar level was at...
All of this comes into place, these different mechanisms in your body and dis-ease. This is coming from someone that's saying, well, I'm just not going to think about that no more.
I don't cry about that no more. I've compartmentalized it away. And they think that they've healed from it, but they haven't.
And that pain, that dis-ease coming from that, is still causing some issues in your body. Is that what you're saying? I want people to really understand it.
No, absolutely.
Because you're not thinking about it and crying about it no more. You're not healed.
And what is the fact is that you don't think you're thinking about it, but you cope so long with it. You actually are thinking about it, but it feels normal.
You know how we talked about how we normalize simple traumas and other things as you grew up or in certain environments? For example, if you're in a war-torn community or in a war-torn nation, you come here to the U.S.,
you're your gunshot, you fight. Because you've heard multiple gunshots. You've seen shell cases, you've seen dead bodies, you've had to run from your own home.
Baby, this ain't nothing. That doesn't mean that they're not traumatized. That doesn't mean that they're not triggered. It just means that they're used to that.
And they can't classify that as trauma.
You normalize it.
Yes.
Right.
So even in the space of you sitting down talking with me, that whole thing may be your fraud that keeps you sane.
Because after the talk, you may go snort a line of coke. You may go have some rampant sex. You may go gamble online. You may go out and do something just to cope just to feel better because anxiety is overwhelming.
So you have a charade. And then when it's over, you still got to cope. This is how that looks. That's why you have executives who also commit suicide.
And just to talk about suicide just for 30 seconds, black men between the ages of 15 and I believe 15 and 36 are the highest group affected by suicide now.
But keep that in mind. These are children that are not talking about it, but all of a sudden they're dead.
And it pains me to know that family and friends are like, I didn't know anything was wrong.
And I feel like we should have known. Right? We should have been able to say something wrong with Billy, but what if we don't question the quiet child?
What if that friend who's always comical is the one that we never thought would kill themselves?
But it is someone who's always joking and funny, maybe in pain because that's how they feel better.
You know, cheers to the clown. So we have all of these indicators that we have room for conversation. We have room.
I will send random texts to not just my clients, but my friends. Hey, listen, I'm just checking in on you. I don't even know if there's anything wrong.
But I just want to let you know that I'm here. That's all.
It means a lot to people. Yeah.
And to your earlier point, I was that child who coped by being funny. I was being the class clown to throw all the attention that was getting the negative attention from bullying.
So you made a good point that just because someone is making jokes all the time and laughing, there may be a lot of pain and unresolved stuff behind that.
Yeah. And you know what we need to do because people ask me what's the answer? I said, start at home. Start at home.
Simply start at home.
And that's when we go downstairs or we go to our kids rooms. Ask them how school was. I started talking to my kids in preschool and they can even talk.
So what was the best so, you know, and so like, for example, school to start it. Ask your kid what their favorite subject is.
Ask them what their worst subject is. Let's say the worst subject is math. Is it because the math is because of the teacher or is it because the students in the classroom?
You see how we can go down the rabbit hole?
Right. Yeah. And if your kid's on a bus system, and so how was your ride?
To and from school. Was it comfortable?
Because kids would always know that it's important to say anything.
My so my kid told me once once he felt bullied. Oh, that was handled in one day.
You telling me my kid is bullied. All right, let me tell me. So let me start off with this work computer. Let me go to the school.
By 315 I got a call saying service handle your son. Your son is I have to worry. That's how you handle stuff.
You know, I know my my parent would have would have stepped in and done the same. Had I just been honest and said, hey, mom, dad, I'm being bullied at school every day.
I know they would have been on top of it. Yeah, you know, you know, yeah, you have to deal. Don't judge yourself. You were a child. You didn't know, you know, there could have been several reasons that you may not even think about now.
So this is not to penalize parents or even children or even your your former self. But are you a parent now? No.
Okay, so if you were a parent or if you knew your niece and nephew were being bullied, as answer, what would you do now?
I don't think my advice is appropriate because the advice that I have because I, I just okay, I'll just talk briefly about this. I was not physically bullied, but I was verbally bullied.
And, you know, looking back, I just, it doesn't I just, I thought I thought it would have been easier looking back if I just would have got beat up because the psychological emotional scars that you carry into adulthood are a lot worse than just healing
with a black eye or something. Yeah, yeah, but let's be real, but let's be real from from this practitioner. You still would have had other mental scars, along with the mental scars you have now, because now you have to deal with violence.
So how would you feel if you, you know, if you had a violence, you have to heal? What if you became a fighter just because someone bothered you? You felt the only way I got to deal with this, I'm going to fight because I didn't defend myself.
And now I'm going to fight another chance and now people call you violent. So no, I don't think so. That's why I don't like people going into the rabbit hole of regret thinking if it happened this way, I would be different.
I just told you how I just told you how it would be worse. So you still want to hold on.
I mean, I lived that. I lived that. I was as an adult, I was so angry at that child version of me who didn't fight back.
Yeah, I almost came up with. Yeah. And yeah. And yeah, but now we have to love ourselves.
So we have to love ourselves. We have to forgive ourselves for simply not reacting.
Yes. What if you, you know, what if you were intimidated? It's okay. You were a child.
There are some things you just can't undo to see what men do normally.
You get into our adult minds thinking, Oh, now that I'm a girl, I can think better, but you know, you were six, seven, 12, 15.
Now you think it would afford your mind. You're trying to get into place.
So what if I did this? You were not 40 in school. You were your age.
That's all. You have to allow that kid to have his moment and say, Well, it happened.
I can't change this fact, but I can change how it can help me and not haunt me now.
So you think that you, yeah. So you think you would have, you would, that you thought about, Oh, it would have been better if I would have gotten beaten up.
It would have been different if you had won the fight. So that's a whole clear difference, right?
That's the whole clear difference. See, see, I would charge you after this, after this pain for a session, but
Yes, send me the bill. Yes. So this is why I do what I do because I need to help people untangle that mess, that baggage, that mess.
Is that we're trying to, we're, we're trying to fix something that we possibly can't.
If we get stuck in this whole thing, you're regretting it becomes a cycle.
That's why you're angry because you can't do nothing about it. That's why you're angry.
You're angry because you can't change it. Not because it happened anymore.
You're now angry because you cannot change it. And wouldn't that be almost insanity thinking I'm mad because I cannot change something that's happened.
That was literally my entire 20s. I want to ask you this in terms of forgiveness. How does that look when you're trying to heal from trauma?
Say the person who abused you or whatever, say that person has passed on and you, you haven't gotten to that forgiveness aspect.
If the person is gone or forgiveness is somehow not attainable, how do they navigate around that key piece of healing?
Well, I use a different term. I don't follow the recommendation of the word forgiveness anymore.
Because usually forgiveness, most people say it's just attached to another being. I have to forgive so and so, but how can I forgive so and so if they wreck my life?
Okay, let's not use that word. I could tell you would, do you want to liberate yourself from the effects of what you brought?
How does that sound to you?
That sounds better.
That sounds better, right? That doesn't take into account anybody else. Even though forgiveness should not take into account anybody else,
although if you look at the spiritual term of it, with thinking I have to forgive the person. Okay, if it doesn't work for you, let's change the verbage.
There's many times in my sessions I just change the words because the verbage is the trigger.
So if I was to work with you, I would say let's work on liberation.
If you want to feel different, act different, love differently, live differently, what needs to happen?
You have to liberate yourself. It doesn't take into account any perpetrators.
I like the term liberate better.
Yeah, so this is the gift of what healing can look like. It's specific for you. If I know that the word forgiveness doesn't work for you,
we can change a word if I can get you back to the masterpiece of your life.
Yes.
That's why healing is so specific. So when people ask me what I do to heal, I can give you a menu that doesn't mean it works for you.
A lot of people think forgiveness is, oh, it means that what they did was okay. What do you think about that?
I think it's a miss normal because people do think, oh, if I forgive you, then that's a hall pass or it's not forgive you. I need to go tell you.
No, forgiveness is just your way of saying, I'm stopping the cycle of replay because, you know, because to not forgive is just as intentional as forgiving.
So to not forgive, you must replay everything and you must keep owning it.
That's forgive. I'm gonna give you tonight. In order to not forgive, you have to keep owning something that you don't have to own anymore.
Yes, I was raping abuse. I sure was. I can tell you some of the stuff that I was told. Like I said, I was given alcohol. I was penetrated.
It was horrible. But I'm okay.
People ask me, well, do you talk to the people? Why would I talk to them? I liberated myself. That had nothing to do with me going up and saying, hey, guess what? I'm liberated now.
No, that was my gift to myself. And now I can talk about all these things without lynching.
But I want to go back to something that I talked about earlier. My father's trauma growing up and witnessing the, you know, witnessing the drowning of his brother and him having health issues.
My mother, well, my first mother who died was his mother. So my grandmother was his mother. Died and he was 27.
My grandfather, who loved me dearly, but blamed him for his son's death. That's trauma.
And I don't remember him having any grief, counseling, or anything of a family.
So by the time he became a father, I was his first kid. He was already a broken person passing on broken feeling.
And I say that because all of the stuff that he felt and he inherited, some of those things will pass on to me and to our sibling, well, to my sibling.
So we don't inherit the trauma, but we inherit the on and off switchers in our DNA.
You know, and so again, so if you have a propensity for anxiety or depression, that it's almost like a fuse box in your apartment or your home.
It's a switch. It's either on or off. There's a higher probability that if someone has a speech trauma and has it healed from it in an effective way, they can pass on those traits.
It doesn't change the DNA. It just changes some of the markers.
And so I'm told, guys, so you know how I talked about with women, it could affect whether or not they can conceive.
But with men and I've gotten this wrong. I said, guess what? All this pain and torment is affecting your sperm.
They're like, what? It's affecting your sperm.
I said, if you have a kid right now born, it's highly likely that the newborn baby will inherit some of these traits.
That's why some of us have a higher chance of being depressed, having anxiety, having the chance of also developing mental or mood disorders.
It is that intricate.
Right. It's a part of our pathology.
Yeah. And so when you say the angry black man, no. I say he's anxious and depressed. He's scared.
I don't like the angry black man thing because we talk up and we speak our voice. If he was scared, well, wait a minute, you don't have to cope that way.
We do because you don't hear us when we're silent.
Well, I want to ask you something about your book. I'm going to switch gears just a little bit.
Sure.
So I'm currently reading your book. I haven't made it all the way through it, but you share a lot as you have discussed about your personal journey with trauma in this book.
How difficult was you to share all these intimate details about yourself and your family and what was their reaction to?
Did they stop talking to you? Did some of them cuss you out? What was the feedback?
I think one or two people may have a lot of sense of that. But first of all, there's no name shared.
Secondly, you didn't have anything to say when I was going through it. This is my story. That's the first thing I own that.
Secondly, part of it was when I started writing the book, I didn't know there was a book. I just knew I had something going on spirit.
I wanted to write down. So the original book was like 500 pages because I just kept typing. A lot of it was repeat stuff.
I just started writing one day and I stopped and I said, oh, I'm done. But writing for me at seven was my saving grace.
That was what writing allowed me to escape my world.
And so in my writing, I had the best family. Either I had the best family or my dad was dead because the dad that was present wasn't effective for me.
So either I wrote in the Galleon father or he was dead. I didn't live in this. We weren't on, you know, who stands for welfare.
My mom was, you know, some special woman.
And my writing now was now used for the education of mental health and motivational stuff.
So the gift that I had to partially save me is the thing that saves me now.
So writing was the easiest thing for me. And also I wasn't a talker. I started so bad.
So that's why many people were shocked when they found out that you on TV, you on A&E, you doing this.
Yeah, back then I couldn't talk to save my life.
And this is why I say I am the living proof that look at me now.
I want you to say that at the end of your journey. Actually, the middle of your journey, don't wait for it.
But don't wait until the end. As soon as you want to, I want you to learn to say, look at me now though.
Look at me now.
Corey, don't wait. We have more time. We've got to, I hate to cut you off.
We got to start wrapping up this show, but this has been phenomenal.
Like we were able to unpack a lot in this short time as it relates to mental health, awareness, you know, awareness and tools that, you know, we can use to assist ourselves with overcoming trauma
and emotional baggage. Again, I want to thank you so much for your time this evening.
I'm so happy that we were able to get a full hour with your expertise. It's much appreciated.
What we're going to do is if you'd like to sign up for Corey's upcoming Living Beyond Your Baggage workshop or to purchase his books,
Fit or Stand Living Successfully Beyond Your Shadows, we're going to include links on our webpage at artistfirst.com.
So be sure to check that out. But I want to thank all of our listeners today.
I hope this show served you in some way. In fact, I know it did. I'm looking at text messages now from friends and family.
They're thanking me so much for this episode. So Corey, again, thank you so much. Appreciate your time today. So much, sir.
Listen, thank you for inviting me and for offering me the opportunity to share my ministry. So thank you so much.
All right, sir. Thank you again and be sure to tune in to our next episode alive with Dr. Andre Gerry,
who air October 19th at 8pm Eastern Standard Time, right here on the Artist First Radio Network. Good night, everybody.
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