A guest on Bee The Wellness, tune in to an intimate and real discussion with Dr. Cook on the topic of PTSD
Did you know that post-traumatic stress disorder occurs in more than three times as many physicians than in the general adult population, but certain physicians are more at risk?
Tune in as Dr. Cook “sits” with Vanessa and Adam from Bee The Wellness and shares how his personal experience as an anesthesiologist and 15 years of studying integrative medicine has helped him evolve his practice to treat PTSD. “I think probably many anesthesiologists end up with low PTSD as a side effect of their profession, and I believe my profession oriented me toward this path and has taught me all of the skills I now use to help people get better.”
This episode shares how Ketamine & other PTSD treatments offered at BioReset Medical, are transforming patients to live a better, more resilient, wiser and more positive life.
So even though anesthesiologists get a lot of ptsd, I think we actually have a whole bunch of tools in our backyard that are kind of helpful for it. I just started seeing a lot of people, uh, with that condition and so it became kind of a, a passion play for me, and it might be just about my favorite thing that I do.
You're listening to a Bio Reset medical podcast with Dr. Cook. If you have questions, we're gonna talk more about your symptoms and issues. You can always reach us at 650 888 7950, and we're live. Welcome to the podcast, Matt. Oh, thanks so much. I'm delighted to be here. Thanks a lot. Yeah, we're really excited to, uh, dive into so many topics with you because when we, you know, got your bio and sort of your portfolio if you will, there was just a ton of talking points on there that we were interested in, you know, going to with.
You. So we um, we wanna jump right in and kind of get started and maybe you can just give folks a little bit about your background, um, particularly when it comes to the treatment of P T S D and how you sort of got it mo moving in that direction cuz that's something we really wanna touch on and maybe we can kick off with that as the first sort of talking point.
Okay, cool. Yeah, it is actually pretty interesting. I'm, uh, an anesthesiologist by training, and I think probably a lot of anesthesiologists end up with, well, PTSD as kind of a side effect of the profession. Mm. But I was, uh, working in a hospital and doing trauma surgery, and then I, uh, beat, started, um, Doing, uh, working in surgery centers and I became kind of an expert at what's called regional anesthesia, where I would use an ultrasound and I would put, uh, local anesthetic or numbing your medicine around nerves and, uh, basically put either your arms or your legs or some part of the body to sleep.
And then do surgery. So, and when I did that, people wouldn't have any pain when they woke up cuz the, the area where the surgery was, was totally numb. Hmm. And then I, I, uh, ended up finding out that a lot of times, if, if I used. Other things like stem cells or other, uh, solutions that had growth factors or anti-inflammatory, uh, components.
A lot of times I could do the same technique, putting fluid around nerves and fixed nerve pain. And so then I, uh, I developed a practice that was kind of around that, but interestingly, I'd been studying integrative medicine for about 15 years. And so I put together a practice that was part of integrative medicine, part regenerative, but uh, but an area that had been near and dear to me through that whole experience was PTSD and trauma.
And, uh, it turns out that, There's a technique that comes from anesthesia, uh, called the Ella ganglion block, which is something that can be helpful for that. And turns out there's another thing that can be super helpful called ketamine, which comes from anesthesia. So even though anesthesiologists get a lot of ptsd, I think we actually have a whole bunch of tools in our backyard that are kind of helpful for it.
And because of that, I just started seeing a lot of people. Uh, with that condition. And so it became kind of a, a passion play for me. And it might be just about my favorite thing that I do, so. Yeah. Yeah. So good to see. Yeah. Could see. So, okay. I just wanna clarify. So you're saying that anesthesiologists have, uh, the experience a lot of ptsd d like within the trade?
Uh, well, I think so. And what? Mm-hmm. The, the interesting thing about that is, is in anesthesia, you walk up and meet somebody. And then you have to figure out their entire medical history in like four or five minutes usually. Mm-hmm. And then you take them back and then you put them all the way to sleep and you put a breathing tube in, and then you take over 100% control of their physiology.
So you have to make sure your, their blood pressure is okay. Their, their heart rate is okay. Their oxygen levels are okay. And then you have to let surgeons do crazy things. And sometimes people will lose a liter of blood a minute. Sometimes their heart can go into electrical abnormalities. And so the, the common term about anesthesia is that is hours of, uh, boredom punctuated by moments of terror.
Yeah, totally. Those, and so then those moments, terror is like how you. So, um, and so then it, it, it's a, it's a, it is an extremely high stress profession. Uh, but I, I, the story that I'm telling anyways these days is that it, it, it oriented me to a problem and it actually taught me all of these skills that are now the skills that I use to help people.
So I'm actually like totally grateful that I ended up. Getting to go into it. Mm-hmm. Because if I hadn't gone into anesthesia, I don't think I would have any skills to help people, so. Mm-hmm. Right. I'm kinda, I'm kind of delighted about it. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes works out that way. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's like, it really does take, you know, a full understanding of what it is that, that folks are going through.
And I, I think, you know, I think P ts D is a, it is probably this way in a lot of aspects of life, but P T S D is such an magnifying glass for. That, that sort of feeling that you have of like, if you've never had this, then you can't understand what it is that I'm feeling because this is a really weird thing, right?
Your, your body's going through once it's, once you've experienced some, some spike in trauma in one event or this kind of accumulative effect that, that we see kind of in the first responder and, and, um, and military realm. So it totally makes sense, right? That you, that you'd be like, Hey, here's a niche that I can fill.
And something that, that, um, You know, it just becomes super important once you've experienced what it's like to, to sort of see some of the negative aspects of this. So I think it's, I think it's pretty awesome that you're getting this opportunity and, and looking at it as exactly that, like an opportunity to, you know, really give something back in a area that you have kind of a unique experience of.
Right, and so then I'll, I'll kind of tell you about this is, is quite interesting. We, we have a part of our physiology that is paying attention, like just for the three of us here right now. And everybody that's listening, we're all sitting here and every second, every millisecond our brain is, is making a split second decision.
Is everything cool and is everything just totally fine, or is this a fight or flight situation? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Now, normally, let's say this is a podcast, it's kind of a nice, perfect day, so it seems like everything maybe is totally fine. Okay. And so then if everything's totally fine and we're just sitting here having a great talk about life and the nature of reality, then what happens is, is we, the, the brain says, oh, okay, everything's cool, so we're gonna run, rest and relax.
And so when you're running the Rest and Relax program, then that says, oh, okay, everything's fine. So let's do, let's spend some of our. Uh, energy on digestion. Let's relax, let's feel good. All the blood vessels are relaxed because we're not really doing too much. Mm-hmm. And that is a super healthy state to be in.
And then if we're in resting, relax, then we're probably gonna be telling great stories and having a good time. So that means we need our whole brain to be on and working. And so then we turn our whole brain on and we turn our, our memory part of the brain on so that we, so we can remember those good stories and stuff like that right now.
Then if something sketchy happened, The building got on fire. Something crazy happened. Then our, our brain would go uhoh, there's fight or flight. And so then when you go into fight or flight, then all of a sudden we turn off memory because it's not so important cuz we're just gonna move on instinct. And then we vaa construct our blood vessels.
We turn off digestion because the idea is we need to get our blood pressure up and then we need to be able to get outta here. Right now, one way of thinking about P T S D is that it's that the body gets kind of stuck in a fight or flight situation. Mm-hmm. So then you can imagine if you went to war and every couple days there was a big, crazy thing that happened that put you in fight or flight.
At some point you might just say, I think I'll stay in fight or flight all the time. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. Or victims of sexual assault or trauma, or let's say, you know, with everything going on now, racism. Mm-hmm. Um, and so then you have all of these triggers that could be a trigger that someone faces every single day for years and years and years and years.
Mm. And so then that can leave the nervous system stuck in a fight or flight state. And I like to think of, there's probably a lot of people that meet criteria for PTs D, but there's probably a whole bunch more people that are on the PTs D spectrum. They're probably way more in fight or flight than is would be optimal.
But they might not meet criteria to be totally in, in what's called ptsd. And so then our, our philosophy is to try to reset that and part of that is just by telling a great story. Some part of that is ketamine can kind of is this anesthesia drug that can reset the fight or flight nervous system. And then we do these injections.
But what I found is that, Uh, and there's a lot of interesting work in psychedelics kind of looking at this. But what I found is that a multimodal approach where I put together a whole bunch of, uh, different modalities that are working by different mechanisms to help reset that physiology to help. Drive us back into a rest and relaxed state.
And so then you imagine, then you begin to realize meditation, mindfulness, yoga, uh, everything that is good and that is generally culturally and socially known to be good, tends to drive us into that rest and relaxed state. And so now we're basically trying to hack our central nervous system physiology so that we can get into a state of wellness.
And then try to maintain that set of wellness. Wow. So you said there's a lot there and so I kind of wanna unpack a little bit of this because I think there's some incredibly, um, important aspects to this. So, and so I'm just gonna kind of see if I can package up what, what you're just saying. So there's this, this concept that a persistent state of, of stress, like of an amplitude high enough to kind of get into this fight or flight scenario.
It develops a pattern, right? So in, and then the next time that little thing triggers, we can kind of go right back into that, into that specific phase. And then if we're there long enough, then just as a matter of, you know, conservation of energy or something like that, right? Our body's like, okay, you've, you've lost your hall pass, right?
We're just gonna stay here in this, in this elevated state. Awesome. And, and so what I'm wondering is, you know, how is it that. Is it a matter of like re-patterning that, that state, so where you're using, you know, the tools that you were just discussing to, to kind of break the cycle and then re-pattern the response or how, how do you see that aspect of it?
Yeah. That's so awesome that you said that. That's exactly, I, a lot of times I'll tell people we're, it's almost like we're trying to defrag the hard drive. Mm-hmm. So we're trying to reset what those triggers are. And then we're trying to re-pattern that, like everything is okay. Mm-hmm. And, and now it's kind of tricky cause as, as I mentioned, a few of those triggers, um, it's tricky because often those triggers are not gonna go away.
Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And so then how do we repa and retell kind of a new story about. Who we are, how we are, and what our role in the universe and in our society and culture is. Mm-hmm. And so for each person it's a little bit different, but what I've found is, is that as it's kind of crazy, but as soon as I start talking like we have this possibility to re-pattern it, then people are like, oh, awesome.
And so then like when I first started doing this four or five years ago, people would come in and I would kind of tell them, tell 'em that you could re-pattern things and we're gonna retell the news story and blah, blah, blah. And people would look at me like I was a little crazy. Yeah. And now what happens is people generally come in and they'll say, oh, you know, I listened to all the podcasts.
Mm-hmm. And I totally understood. And then, you know, what he said about re-patterning, I really liked that. And I started to do it, and I'm already like 30% better and I know I'm gonna get better. And, and interestingly, as soon as people kind of come in, in that state, I generally feel like any one of five or six modalities would be pretty darn helpful.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And, and, and if, have you ever heard of the 99 Monkeys? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. It's like, it's, it's so amazing. Like they take like a monkey and they need to, they're living in a lab and they teach 'em a task. Mm-hmm. And it takes like 10 hours to, he's from the task, right? Mm-hmm.
And then they put another monkey in there, and another one, there's 10 monkeys in there. But it still takes like 10 hours to eat for each new monkey to learn the task. Mm. Once you've got like a hundred monkeys in there, then all of a sudden a new monkey comes in and he learns the task like right away. Oh, wow.
Cause he just sees all the monkeys. Yeah. Yeah. And so then my philosophy on, and I'm telling you I was kind of bearing out in my practice, is that. I think people are beginning to realize, oh we can, we can, uh, you said it perfectly, we can re pattern and start to tell a new story and, and reset our physiology.
And what I believe is, is that people are going to become aware that that is fully possible. Mm-hmm. Right. And it was kinda like when I was in medical school, they told me, don't do PTSD cuz nobody gets better. Right, right. They would say that when we walked around the va it was crazy. And so, but I'm saying, oh yeah, everybody's gonna get better.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think there's a real paradigm shift around this and, you know, Adam comes from a background in the fire service. He, uh, left his job. Didn't officially retired, but left his job, uh, early because of our company and, you know, going full-time with us in a, a couple of years ago. And, you know, we've talked at length about his experience with P T S D and he, we've done ayahuasca and we've done some plant medicines and he's had tremendous results.
And so I'm really excited about this idea of ketamine because obviously Ayahuasca is a bigger pill to swallow, if you will. And, you know, Not everyone's necessarily ready to go there, or maybe it's not the appropriate treatment for them. There's lots of reasons why, you know, that's a great cog in the wheel, but maybe it's not the right cog for you.
So I really wanna dive into this Ketamine story because I think that this is something that obviously is legal in the us. Um, you are administering it. You have a protocol around it, so maybe you can just talk a little bit about what that looks like for people. What you know, the process of discovering if you're a good candidate for it, the kind, the actual treatment itself, and some of the results that you're seeing.
Oh, so that's great. That's a super interesting question. Um, ketamine is a, is a, is uh, now this goes into dose. So in high dose ketamine is an anesthesia drug that's a disa disassociative anesthetic that makes you not feel anything and makes people not have pain during anesthesia. So I used to give it a lot to kids and I used to use it all the time as part of anesthesia cuz people would have less pain after surgery.
Mm-hmm. Um, but it turns out you can give it in low dosage and when you give it in low dosage, it turns out it works real well. It's actually a mild psychedelic. Mm-hmm. And then it's mildly disassociative. Um, you can, there's a bunch of different ways that you can give it, so you can give it as a oral lozenge.
And so during Covid we had some people who were at home and we're still doing that, who are pretty traumatized and afraid to go outside. And so stuff like that. And so we will do, uh, a video call with them and they will take, uh, it as a lozenge that goes into the back of their. Their mouth and they kind of, they suck on it, almost like sucking on a lollipop.
Mm-hmm. And then it can take its effect. We do injections of it, like, uh, e like a little, IM injection in, in the clinic and, but the thing we have the most experience with is doing IV infusions. Mm. Uh, and, uh, and, and, and when we do it, we, uh, I almost always do an infusion of a vitamin called before. And I found that NAB makes ketamine work like 50% better, and it also makes it last a lot longer.
Usually ketamine will have a, a, a effect of turning the depression pathway off for a couple of weeks, and then it will, um, uh, people will do a series of six treatments. Mm-hmm. But sometimes I'll get months and months of benefit just from one treatment when I combine it with N A d. Oh wow. Interesting. And what's the mechanism for that?
What do you think is making that difference? I think that N A D, when you put it intravenously, or if you do a subcutaneous injection, and I teach a lot of people about, I teach a lot of doctors how to do this, but when you do N A D N A D helps to reset your mitochondria. And turn the physiologically help to turn the brain back on.
Mm-hmm. So a lot of times when people do it, their brain fog will go away and they'll feel better. And Nav helps to drive oxidate phosphorylation, which is basically, it helps your, your cells and your brain burn energy more efficiently. Mm-hmm. And it helps your mitochondria work a little bit better. And so then my theory is, is that if I can take all the cells in your brain and get them working a little bit, Better than average, right.
Before I do the ketamine, then the ketamine's gonna work better. And that's, so this is just the, a theory that I came up with. Mm-hmm. But it's definitely born out. Yeah. It's almost like making it your brain more bioavailable to it or something. Yeah. Yeah. That's a nice way to say it. Mm-hmm. And, and so, yeah.
And so then what, what is. We're kind of cultivating and curating a story that is centers around, you're gonna heal and you're gonna overcome whatever the trauma was. And in some way the journey of going through that is, is gonna, uh, You're gonna realize that you're more resilient. Your, your wisr, you may have more to give back.
And so there's, we, we try to find a little silver lining within the, everything that's happened. Mm-hmm. And so that is, that's like in big terms. And so we're. Each person, it's a little bit different. And so part of it is talking and, and so sometimes what we'll do with ketamine is we'll do very low dose.
And so mm-hmm. Uh, to, for, for doctors who are listening, I've had women who were in their seventies and eighties who didn't drink and were very sensitive. And I gave them five or 10 milligrams of ketamine and they told me it was the best experience of their life. But five or 10 milligrams of ketamine is a very low dose uhhuh.
But normally for someone who might weigh 70 kilos, um, or like 165 pounds, normally what we would do is we would give 30 milligrams, so like six times that much. Right. And so, uh, the normal dose is half a milligram per kilogram, and so mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We've, and, and the other thing that I've, I've been doing a lot of is I will, will sit and will talk to people and actually do like therapeutic conversations while they're on ketamine, which is kinda similar probably to what, a plant-based medicines.
Right. And it's, what I found is, Because ketamine is mildly disassociative. What I noticed is, is that it kind of separates people a little bit from the trauma and gets them to a point where they can talk about it and, and then in the process of talking through it, then all of a sudden we can begin to kind of defrag some of those triggers and often reset the triggers.
Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Create some space. Yeah, absolutely. So I, I wanna kind of drill down into what the actual, um, biological effects are. So is it working on the serotonin system or is it actually just that it's helping the body to get out of this sympathetic drive? Like what is the thing that is actually kind of re-patterning as you said?
So, so then ketamine ha, ketamine. It's may one reason why it may be so helpful is that it works broadly ac uh, across the central nervous system. Okay? So it turns off, the most famous thing that's known for is it turns off this pathway called an mda. So it's an MDA antagonist. Mm-hmm. Which may be associated with depression.
And so that's why, that may be why when you give people ketamine and you're beginning to turn the depression pathways off, there's some trials that have shown that ketamine is, uh, has some benefit for people with drug resistant depression, which is pretty difficult topic to deal with. Mm-hmm. But then it also can, is broadly stimulating, uh, across a number of neurotransmitters.
And so the. But then it's also disassociative and it facilitates unwinding emotional triggers. Mm-hmm. And then it's also mildly psychedelic. And a lot of times people will see, oh, I actually have some hope, or, mm-hmm I feel good for the first time. And then, or I, or I'm, you know, another one is, I feel safe for the first time.
Yeah. And, and so then we're, and so I, so which one of those is the one? You know, I don't know. Mm-hmm. But what I'm trying to do is use all of them to then help curate and tell a story that is a story, and the moral of the story is always, It's gonna be amazing. We're gonna overcome whatever the trauma was.
The trauma is gonna make us a somehow more empathic, kinder, gentler person. And then we're gonna ultimately get to be who we were meant to be on this planet and, and, and, uh, and, and then, and then evolve and grow from there. Yeah. So something, something that you said kind of in, in what you were just talking about is that I kind of wanna hover on and make sure that I, that I grasped that and that it was something about when you're saying that there's, you're, when you're re-patterning and kind of creating this new story, I think you said something about what you have to contribute and, and, uh, like meaning the person who's, you know, uh, undergoing the therapy, pointing out that they have something to contribute to this, to this world, is that, Did you, did you say that or did I make that up?
Uh, I think so. Yeah. I, I mean, I love that. That's, I think that's a super amazing concept. So and so, this is it, it just dives right squarely into my experience kind of with, with P T S D and then, and some amount of what I've read about other people's experiences and, and they, you know, one of the feelings, so like for, for me, it specifically, I mean given various, you know, acute, uh, just completely gnarly situations that I found myself in over the course of, you know, 22 years in the fire service, the sort of.
Long-term component of that, the piece that that really tails on at the end, which honestly is stuff that I'm kind of only starting to feel given the, the slowdown in just general life that we've had due to lockdowns and covid and all that, is the sense, the sense of loss of purpose now that I don't do that job anymore.
Right. And it's something that gets really deeply ingrained, is like this, here's this thing and I'm doing this thing and I'm. That's what I'm here for, you know? And that job is very, very good at providing that sort of sense. And something that just when you were, when you were talking about that, like I, I've read about this, I think they call it platoon syndrome or something like that with the guys who are coming back from overseas who.
Outside of this group of peers who have experienced similar things to them, they feel very alone and they feel like there's no one can relate to them. And there's no like ability to like, what am I doing here, you know, without these guys, what am I doing here? And so it's really interesting what you're saying about.
In that space somehow being able to provide them with an opportunity to see the value and the contribution that they are bringing, just as like a person, you know, I don't know where I was going with that, but it's what came to mind. I love, I love, so I'll go with you on this one. I love, love that you said that.
So, um, what I, so the. This is this idea. Ericson and Pi. Were these like European kind of philosophers? Physician characters. And, and so there was these idea of all of these stages of life that you go through. But then the final one is generativity, where you look, you, you give back to society and culture.
You make some kind of sense of what's happened to you and, and then contribute and give back. And in a way, the human condition is typically, One of difficulty and then we die, okay? Mm-hmm. And obviously there's love and good things that happen, but it's the human condition is, is frail and, and, and fraught with difficulty.
And so then the, the, the most important thing is to, is to make some, some, make something of what happened to you and contribute and give back and, and contribute. And so now what happens? Is, is I, and I remember when I went to medical school, you're like a hundred percent that you're gonna do it. Like you're gonna, you're gonna be a doctor, you're gonna go out, you're gonna change the world.
You're gonna do good things. And then next thing you know, you're working 80 hours a week and you can barely keep up. And then we be, you begin to start to have this existential fear that I may not be able to achieve and contribute and actually do anything. Profoundly meaningful with my life. Mm-hmm. And that's, I, I, I felt that moment, like, I felt like uhoh, I may be doing anesthesia and I may never actually contribute and do anything.
And yet you're profoundly helping people and guiding people through difficult things. Being an, our background is almost the same, cuz being an anesthesiologist is like being a first responder. Right. But then, um, what I have found is that every single person that I've ever met with PTSD and trauma is almost all the same.
It's all similar themes and concepts. And stories, right? And then at first when I would hear those stories, it was a little bit overwhelming because they were somewhat reminiscent of maybe my own story. But now when I hear those stories, I just get like empathetic in this incredible like kind of soft and like almost like I'll almost be kind of happy because I'll be like, oh, we're gonna totally help you.
Yeah. Like you're gonna overcome this. And so then to me that's the antidote to the platoon syndrome. Because it turns out whether if you could have added in a platoon, right? But you might actually be able to help a victim of sexual assault, which is like, almost like the opposite, but it's still similar to like, because it's, it was a, it was a, a, you both have p, ptsd, D from not feeling safe.
Mm. And so and so. Then what happens is, is in reality we're all the same and we're all looking for the same thing. And so then we just have to figure out how we can do something to contribute and actually you're totally doing exactly the right thing cuz you're talking to people and spreading good, good information.
So it's actually, yeah, you're doing perfect. Thanks. You're on track, right? On track. No, it's really amazing and I would just, you know, I. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts because something that has occurred to me is that I actually think most people do experience P T S D at some point in their life and that, you know, these therapies or therapies like plant medicine are, what have you, are almost applicable for, for most people.
Like we, most of us have stored trauma that if we were able to release, if we were able to, um, re-pattern as you say, you know, it. It's, we don't necessarily have to be suicidal before, you know, we can optimize some of these patterns. And so I'm curious like what you tell people, you know, what kind of person you tell, uh, you know, who's good for this sort of treatment, or who you would say, okay, hey, if you're experiencing any of this, this could be beneficial.
Yeah, that's a really good one. Mm-hmm. And so then I, I would say that I would like 100% agree with everything you just said. Mm-hmm. And, and so then in terms of processing through that, then you begin to say, well, there's all roads lead to healing. And so then you've got, obviously you mentioned the plant-based medicine, which I think is interesting.
I, ayahuasca is, you know, people get so nauseated and it's kind of a little bit uncontrolled and hard to manage. Mm-hmm. Ketamine, we can start really low. It's safe, it's legal. Mm-hmm. And so I think it is a nice place for people to start. Mm-hmm. Um, uh, we do the Stella Ganglia block. There's, but then remember my 99 Monkeys.
I, I'm telling you that I think that as, as consciousness around this grows and as people begin to realize, oh, I can kind of take control of that and I can reset that, uh, and I can begin to reset those triggers, what I think is, is that there's going to be an evolving. Story that people tell, which is, yeah, I have a little PTSD around this or that, but I'm beginning to heal it.
And then the second that starts it be, it is like a fractal that kind of start just continues to create more and more healing, uh mm-hmm. In, in a more robust way. Yeah. I love it. The 99 Monkeys thing is, is super fascinating and I think so to, to kind of give some legs to that from my perspective, like I, I think a huge piece of this is literally just.
People sharing very authentically what their experience with all of this stuff has been. And, and I know in the fire service it's still. It's still a little bit taboo, you know, and I was fortunate to work for a department that was very progressive in the, they called it critical incident stress management, but like the debriefing, debriefing processes and that there was a very clear protocol for kind of how to unwind people after these acute, uh, situations.
And, but it really starts with a group of peers who you have some respect for and can, you know, as opposed to sitting down with like a mental health professional, you're like, what? What do you know about this? You know what I mean? Which obviously they probably know a lot, but not from an experience perspective.
Right. So sitting down with that group peers and then just sharing the story and that opens up this idea. And then, you know, the facilitator who's been through this a number of times says, Hey, well this was my story and here's where I am now. And guess what? You know, there's nothing wrong with you. You're having a perfectly normal reaction to an abnormal situation, right?
And so it's just, it starts this kind of unfolding. Of the story that I'm broken or the story that this is how I'm going to be forever. And, and the, the, the fear that I think comes from that, which probably just kind of doubles down the overall problem, right? So, If we can get the message out right, if we can put more monkeys in the cage, so to speak, right?
We're just getting people in here and saying, Hey, look, here's what's going on. Here's what's available to you, like the speed at which this whole thing. PE people can fundamentally heal themselves and recognize maybe where their patterns of trauma are, and then feel comfortable and maybe even excited about, you know, the future.
That's. That's cool. I think that's a fantastic analogy for this, f