Category: Transforming Trauma Podcast

A vital tenet of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) is that, no matter how withdrawn or isolated one becomes due to complex trauma, humans remain instinctively and spontaneously drawn towards connection, just as plants are drawn towards the sun. It’s easy, then, to trace a throughline from the organizing principles of NARM to the organic wisdom of the natural world. One clinician has taken that connection literally by embodying psychotherapy in the natural world. 

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, Emily Ruth is joined by Joseph McCaffrey, LPC, LMHC, an Arizona-based NARM therapist specializing in ecotherapy––the formal practice of incorporating nature-based experiences to facilitate healing. Joseph also offers workshops as well as preparation and integration therapy for those exploring non-ordinary states of consciousness through plant medicines, psychedelics, breathwork, and modern-day rites of passage. The pair explore Joseph’s process for applying NARM “in the wild” and his tips for identifying everyday opportunities to re-establish a personal connection to nature no matter where you live.

“Nature is the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, landscape, other features and products of earth as opposed to humans and human creatures,” says Joseph.  Although wilderness experiences played an essential role in Joseph’s early work, he often struggled to comprehend why eco-based therapies alone couldn’t “fix” clients with C-PTSD. “I thought all I needed to do was get people out on the land, have an experience, and everything would be okay,” he admits. NARM training filled in the gaps. “One of the things I’ve heard Dr. Heller [creator of NARM] say is that we are always in connection. If we’re not connected to our hearts and ourselves, how can we open up to a deeper connection with the consciousness of the planet?”  

“We are a part of [the earth], not separate from it,” Joseph shares. “But, I really believe that we’re in this state of psychological estrangement from nature—and our own wildness.”  This creates human suffering. In order to address these deep wounds of disconnection and estrangement, Joseph is excited to share about how to integrate NARM with earth-based experiences, which can be a vehicle for reconnection.

Transforming Trauma thanks Joseph for sharing his integrative trauma-informed approach with our community and introducing us to the growing field of ecotherapy.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Animas Valley Institute

Prescott College

Jon Young

Eligio Stephen Gallego

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Joseph McCaffrey holds an MS in Counseling with a specialization in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Prescott College and an MA in Educational Psychology from the University of Colorado, Denver. Joseph is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in the state of Arizona as well as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) in the state of Washington and specializes in complex developmental trauma and ecotherapy. His approach is trauma-informed, influenced by Ecotherapy, spirituality, mindfulness, and somatic work, and grounded in The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM).

All parents face challenges. Black fathers, however, navigate a unique combination of social and intrapersonal pressures, often without the benefit of culturally nuanced support. That’s changing as more Black fathers, some of whom are also mental health clinicians, educators, or adjacent professionals, speak out about their experiences, create networks of knowledgeable care, and inspire others to seek counseling. But there’s always room for improvement, whether that’s confronting the systemic dynamics undermining the legacy of Black fathers or training clinicians to offer the right kind of help.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth welcomes award-winning counselor, educator, researcher, and author Dr. Michael Hannon to expand on the themes featured in his book Black Fathering and Mental Health: Black Fathers’ Narratives on Raising Their Children Across the Family Life Cycle. He is a mental health counselor at the Center for M.A.R.C.U.S and co-founder, alongside his wife, Dr. LaChan Hannon, of the nonprofit organization Greater Expectations Teaching and Advocacy Center. 

“I get the privilege of researching things that make me curious, and that’s primarily Black fathers’ mental health and wellbeing.” Michael’s desire to better understand the complexities of Black fatherhood led him to the three Ps––protect, provide, prepare––a set of values shared amongst the fathers and would-be-fathers featured in his book. While fathers, in general, have long been socialized to think of the three Ps in solely financial terms, effectively severing them from their innate emotional power, Michael notes that traditional supports fail Black fathers further by perpetuating institutionalized harm. 

Michael hopes his work will invite mental health practitioners to get curious about the traumas that Black fathers experience and be intentional about the kind of help they wish to embody. “If I’m bold, courageous, and humble enough to be like, ‘Yo! I just wanna be the right kind of help,’ like, that’s it,” he says. “And the right kind of help could be me shutting my mouth and just listening.”

Transforming Trauma appreciates Michael’s insight and advocacy on behalf of Black fathers. His thoughtful approach to disrupting harmful tropes and preparing the next generation of healing professionals is deeply inspiring.

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Transforming Trauma Episode 120: From Pain to Purpose: Navigating the Pressures of Fatherhood, Isolation and Loss with Adam Angel

Transforming Trauma Episode 112: A Former NFL Player on Overcoming Childhood Trauma through Belonging With Gaelin Elmore

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Black Fathering and Mental Health: Black Fathers’ Narratives on Raising Their Children Across the Family Life Cycle

The Center For M.A.R.C.U.S

Greater Expectations Teaching and Advocacy Center

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Dr. Michael Hannon is an award-winning counselor educator and researcher, a practicing counselor, and an author. He is an Associate Professor of Counseling at Montclair State University, a mental health counselor at The Center for MARCUS, and the co-founder of the non-profit organization, Greater Expectations Teaching and Advocacy Center, with his wife, Dr. LaChan (pronounced La-Shon) Hannon.

He is the author of over 30 publications and has been cited over 500 times. His 2022 edited book, Black Fathering and Mental Health, and overall research about the mental health of Black men and fathers has been highlighted in a range of media outlets, including National Public Radio, New York Times, Autism Speaks, Thrive Global, Huffington Post, Waymaker Journal, and Black Enterprise.

The “goal” of incarceration varies depending on who you ask. Whether you consider prison fair retribution for engaging in criminal activity or an opportunity at redemption, most people agree that the punitive nature of the US criminal justice system neither rehabilitates nor curbs recidivism rates. But one allied mental health professional has witnessed the profound impact that a trauma-informed approach can have on inmates, formerly incarcerated individuals, and society at large.   

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth invites Christine Marallen to share her extensive insight into the criminal justice rehabilitative process. Christine is a NARM-Informed Professional, as well as certified prison chaplain and former Director of Prison Ministries for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, a position she left in 2019 to further build Damascus, a nonprofit reentry and staffing organization founded in 2015. As the Chief Strategy Officer for Damascus, she created and facilitated the Damascus Trauma Reentry Program inside numerous correctional facilities around Ohio. The pair also explore the link between incarcerated populations and those who score at intermediate or high risk on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) evaluations, as well as the role that NARM plays in Christine’s work.

“The word trauma, in terms of trauma-informed care, is new even though the business of prison is trauma,” explains Christine, who’s worked with folks experiencing incarceration since 2002. In a desire to bridge her lack of understanding around how complex trauma manifests within this population, Christine discovered NARM. Even at the introductory level of her NARM Training, she was struck by how powerful and intense this work is, as well as its potential impact on so many helping professionals and their clients.

Christine credits NARM for helping her develop language around complex trauma and establish avenues for deep-rooted healing. “It’s hard work, but worth it because how better, especially for practitioners, to sit across from someone who says, I really don’t wanna go to that place, and I know my healing is in that place, and I get to say, I’ve been there!”

Transforming Trauma is grateful to Christine for her work with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and is inspired by her commitment to creating a more trauma-informed and compassionate criminal justice system.

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129: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Shifting the Juvenile and Criminal Justice Systems With David and Katya Dow

118: Listening to What Survivors Need to Address Sexual Trauma and Complex PTSD with Dr. Judith Herman

107: Restorative Justice and the Journey Towards Redemption with Dr. Elaine Leeder

068: Community-Based and Trauma-Informed Tribal Court with Judge Abby Abinati

017: Compassion Prison Project: Bringing Trauma-informed Care into the Prison System with Fritzi Horstman

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Damascus 

NARM Online Basics Training (Level 1)

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Working with the incarcerated since 2002, Christine Marallen is the former Director of Prison Ministries for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, a position she left in 2019 to further build Damascus—a non-profit reentry and staffing organization founded in 2015. As the Chief Strategy Officer for Damascus, Christine facilitates the Damascus Trauma Reentry Program inside numerous correctional facilities around Ohio—a curriculum she created after a decade talking with individuals who struggled to understand what drove their decisions that led them to incarceration.

Christine has lived throughout the U.S. while working with USA Today Newspaper in various sales and marketing management roles from 1988 to 2002. She holds a B.A. in English from Miami University, an M.S. in Criminal Justice, and an M.A. in Theology from Xavier University. She is a certified prison/jail chaplain, a member of the Cincinnati Enquirer Editorial Board, and past President of the American Catholic Correctional Chaplains Association. From 2006 to 2018, Christine taught Criminal Justice at Xavier University and has taken hundreds of undergraduate students into Ohio prisons to learn alongside incarcerated students in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, based out of Temple University. Christine is a NARM Trauma-Informed Professional and excited to apply the model to the curriculum and work she does.

Christine currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her Damascus Trauma Reentry Curriculum can be facilitated in any correctional facility; contact Christine for more information at christine.marallen@teamdamascus.com

Without early-stage therapeutic intervention, many at-risk youth face a higher likelihood of becoming adult inmates within the ill-equipped and wildly expensive US prison system. Two advocates, operating at opposite ends of the institutional spectrum, believe that change is possible, especially when we extend trauma-informed support to the youngest and most vulnerable members of our society. 

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth welcomes David and Katya Dow to provide their observations regarding trauma care deficiencies within the juvenile and criminal justice ecosystem. David founded The Texas Innocence Network and is the director of TIN’s Death Penalty Clinic at the University of Houston Law. Katya is a lawyer receiving her Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from NYU. In 2014, the pair established the Juvenile and Children’s Advocacy Project, which provides legal and social services to at-risk, disadvantaged, traumatized, and marginalized youth.

“I became cognizant of some real gaps in understanding in these systems about how behaviors that stem from trauma are misinterpreted and treated as delinquency or misbehavior,” says Katya. “Nobody really understood what was happening with these kids or how trauma played a part.” 

When the root cause of a child’s early trauma and adaptive survival patterns are ignored, the failure reverberates beyond that individual. “I’ve represented maybe 120 guys, and I can count on one hand the number who I think came into this world broken,” notes David. “The others ended up on death row not because they came into the world with a gun in their hands, but because of trauma that happened to them.”  From this perspective, trauma-informed approaches for children, families, communities and systems is urgently needed.

The pair emphasize that providing trauma-informed care is cost-effective over the long-run, not to mention more humane. “When it comes to the [US] criminal and juvenile justice systems, [we] can’t do math. We don’t want to spend $50,000 today, and the cost of not doing that,” asserts David, “is gonna be an enormous multiple.”  So many individuals, families and communities are being devastated by the lack of adequate resources and effective trauma-informed treatment.  Both David and Katya are passionate about changing this.

Transforming Trauma is grateful to David and Katya for their heartfelt commitment to bringing trauma-informed care to all levels of institutional advocacy.   

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Lessons From Death Row Inmates – David R. Dow TedTalk

The Texas Innocence Network

Juvenile and Children’s Advocacy Project

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David R. Dow

David R. Dow is the Cullen Professor at the University of Houston Law Center. He and his wife, Katya Dow, established the Juvenile and Children’s Advocacy Project in 2014. Katya will complete her M.A. in counseling psychology from NYU in December.

For survivors of sexual trauma, repair lies in recognition, not revenge. In our current model of justice, however, victims are often abandoned to heal any way they can within a societal structure that fosters the conditions for their abuse. One researcher believes that the path toward collective recovery begins with a simple act: listening to the wisdom of survivors.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, Emily is honored to welcome psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and author Dr. Judith Lewis Herman for a heartfelt discussion centering on the needs of victims of sexual trauma and society’s role in individual and collective trauma healing. In her latest book, Truth And Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice, Dr. Herman introduces us to a “fourth stage” of the recovery process in which trauma survivors are invited to envision their future.  Dr. Herman’s latest book comes 30 years after her seminal work, Trauma And Recovery, in which she introduced the then radical idea that complex PTSD was a stand-alone diagnosis that differs significantly from PTSD. Her pioneering work led to our current understanding that C-PTSD requires a new framework for diagnosis and effective treatment. 

A lot has happened in the gap between the publication of these two influential, award-winning books––recognition of C-PTSD as a diagnosis by the World Health Organization, the rise of the #MeToo movement, a global pandemic––but Dr. Herman’s advocacy on behalf of survivors and her desire for a more holistic system of restoration has never wavered. “If trauma results from a crime,” she says, “then recovery can’t just be a personal or individual matter because that leaves out the question of justice.” 

In the first three steps of the healing process, Dr. Herman identifies the importance of communal responsibility. A survivor can’t reclaim their safety or agency, for example, without community support. Likewise, society can’t evolve beyond punitive justice into a more expansive and sustainable system without recognizing the survivor’s experience. ”Unless you have a social movement that validates survivors,” Dr. Herman says, “you’re not going to get the powers that be to change how they think.” 

Transforming Trauma is grateful to Dr. Herman for her vital contributions to the field of C-PTSD, her decades-long advocacy on behalf of survivors of sexual trauma, and her faith in the restorative justice process. NARM shares her conviction that healing trauma is only feasible when we restore our connection to self and others.

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Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry (part time) at Harvard Medical School. For thirty years, until she retired, she was Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program at The Cambridge Hospital, Cambridge, MA. Dr. Herman is the author of the award-winning books: Father-Daughter Incest (Harvard University Press, 1981) and Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992).