The Turmoil of Trauma - Part 1: Cathy Lins

Show Transcript

Announcer: 0:04

Welcome to frame of reference informed intelligent conversations about the issues and challenges facing everyone in today's world, in depth interviews with salt counties, leaders and professionals to help you expand in and form your frame of reference, brought to you by the max FM digital network. Now, here's your host, Rauel LaBreche.

Rauel LaBreche:

 0:26

Welcome to another edition of frame of reference, I'm so glad you decided to click download and listen to this episode. This is going to be a hard episode I would be willing to bet, but also critical in so many ways. So my guest today is none other than Kathy Lenz who is the founder of a wonderful organization called gather my loss cheap, which is really a ministry that was developed out of her own heart and her own experiences, personal experiences, of wanting to see people that were suffering with all kinds of different trauma, and the effects of trauma and how we were talking before we started recording how trauma essentially blows a fuse in our brains. And if that helps to think of it that way, just kind of that that happening in our brains, and we survive it. We get through it physically, but the emotional and spiritual and psychological toll that that trauma takes requires some some serious work. And Kathy is an expert extraordinare in what that work looks like, feels like sounds like walks like a duck talks like a duck. And she was able to bring that duck in full force to help people. Kathy, thank you so much.

Cathy Lins:

 1:46

Thank you. Again,

Rauel LaBreche:

 1:48

we've talked multiple times on different subjects over the years, right. But this is a relatively new adventure

Cathy Lins:

 1:55

for you within this last year, we take it up on spending more and more time with churches putting the call out.

Rauel LaBreche:

 2:02

Okay. And finding that there's a lot of receptivity,

Cathy Lins:

 2:06

there's receptivity in certain pockets, and that's a helpful place to start. That's because as good marketing knows, not everyone is your audience. Yeah,

Rauel LaBreche:

 2:16

finding out who your audience is, and then getting them to understand that they're your audience, right? is always a big challenge with marketing. So and while and I would think given the types of topics that we'll be talking about this, this may be a bit of a tough, tough nut to sell. Because it when you talk about trauma and the ways that trauma is induced and the perpetrators of abuse, it's a lot of No, no, no, that doesn't happen here. There's a lot of ostrich syndrome that I would think occurs right, for different

Cathy Lins:

 2:49

parties for different reasons. I mean, honestly, the, the people who have been most interested at the diocesan level have been the victim assistance coordinators, the ones who receive abuse reports, they disability offices, because they recognize they need to do something on mental health. And according to the research out there, 90% of people who deal with mental health generally have also dealing with trauma, some area of trauma, either because they unfortunately, people with mental illness tend to be victims of abuse and attack and other things they are seen as easy targets. So they're traumatized by that, for some people environmentally, they have experienced trauma, and as a result from that have over time, in some cases, developed mental illnesses.

Rauel LaBreche:

 3:35

So those of you that have just listened to the, you know, Intro three minutes here, you know, pretty much where we're going with this conversation. So I encourage you to not only sit down and process through the kinds of things we're going to talk about, but make sure you have mark this episode. And potentially it is additional, this might be a two parter, folks, but mark it down to for those friends, family members, that you suspect or know that they have dealt with some serious trauma in their lives, because Kathy is going to give you some tools, as well as just talk frankly, about how this thing shows up. Because a lot of the types of things we're talking about have kind of interesting manifestations, or symptomology that present to people and you may you I have found you know, I'd never would have thought that such and such blah, blah, blah, I never would have suspected bla bla bla and it's because our coping strategies tend to consciously and unconsciously kind of helped us to just keep plodding through life without ever

Cathy Lins:

 4:34

in front of worked very hard to what they called the river of denial,

Rauel LaBreche:

 4:39

which is more than just a river in Egypt. Right? That's right. Yeah. So well Kathy, let's keep a little bit of a light hearted things before we delve in here. As you know, I always start with a little bit of a My Favorite Things portion so that our our audiences get a chance to kind of know the person behind the mic there a little bit better. So and you've been through this before so you know, kind of my stock questions So when that happens, I have to kind of go outside

Cathy Lins:

 5:02

the box a little bit. We're gonna dig deeper now.

Rauel LaBreche:

 5:05

We're gonna get bizarre with some of these questions too, but some of them I, you know, I honestly can't say 100%. Remember what I asked him didn't ask, but we'll see what happens. Okay, so I'll start with an easy one favorite movie,

Cathy Lins:

 5:18

When Harry Met Sally. Really?

Rauel LaBreche:

 5:20

I just saw that not to God. That's a wonderful movie.

Cathy Lins:

 5:23

I have seen that several times. Like, I love that movie. It's

Rauel LaBreche:

 5:26

so much fun. Well, Meg Ryan, of course, in that Billy Crystal was just so wonderful with his all trying to get her to wake up. And then all the things that happened. Yeah, that so if anybody out there hasn't seen where you've got two thumbs up from us, Rodgers and Ebert of the podcast circuit. So how about favorite bird?

Cathy Lins:

 5:44

Oh, boy, I'd have to seek probably Canary just because it was something my grandmother always had. And canaries don't live a long life. That is one of those realities. I can't tell you how often I was sent to the pet store to get a new Canary and make sure that I got it home safely from wherever I was. And of course, it had to be a certain color. We had to make sure it was a singer. Sure. And interesting enough, the day that my grandmother died within the hour her Canary died with to Oh, no. And we were like, well, obviously he was like, I can't go on she's not here to sing for I can't do it

Rauel LaBreche:

 6:20

kind of an emotional connection there that they just like I get it. Yeah, yeah. I understand completely. Okay, so yeah, well, yeah, canaries. They were even used for mines, because they were so sensitive to things that humans aren't sensitive. So you would lose the canary? No, all? Yeah. So yeah, they don't want to be a canary in a mine. That's not a good job. So, okay, how about favorite place to go, when you want to relax? What's the most relaxing place you can envision? What's your happy place,

Cathy Lins:

 6:56

my happy place, I have several Happy Places. But one of them I love and I have been missing is going to paint at paint night actually, I just love to, to go and spend like two to three hours painting different designs. And I've done different like the Sunkist wave and just lots of different things. And it's funny, because I've had people one of my friends looked at this, he goes, How many hours did it take you to do that? I'm like, two and a half hours. He was like, stop it. But it was so relaxing.

Rauel LaBreche:

 7:32

Sure why and anyone that hasn't done those and just wants to try it. It's not about the quality of the art, right? I mean, that's great if you have tons of talents, and you can do exactly what you see or whatnot. But it's really more about the therapeutic power of just letting it happen.

Cathy Lins:

 7:49

Right, putting it up on there. And it was great artists from that program. I've gotten to know some of them. They're just like, if every painting turns out, you're not stretching yourself enough to enjoy this enough. So get in there and really work on the art. But it was it was a just a lot of fun to me for the different types of things that I got to create. I even did a painting of my dog Lucy. Oh, and people were like, it actually looks like a dog. That's impressive. It actually looks like Lucy.

Rauel LaBreche:

 8:20

It looks like thanks so much. It looks like a dog. What was your clue? For? I couldn't be a better spot. All right.

Cathy Lins:

 8:29

Well, actually, the best part was the artist actually came in and helped me do the eyes. They said you're gonna put different specs in there to make it seem more lifelike. And so it was fascinating to like, learn more about like how to do eyes to make because it's like, you mean I just just do white with a brown and call it a day and they're like not if you want it to look like a real dog.

Rauel LaBreche:

 8:52

Cool. That's when I you know, guys go out and paint those dog pictures right now. So how about a favorite historical figure

Cathy Lins:

 9:00

who see I loved I used to be a field trip interpreter is the correct term in Washington DC, you have to be licensed to be a tour guide. So

Rauel LaBreche:

 9:12

um, so it's different than a docent where you're like in a particular museum, or I would take

Cathy Lins:

 9:16

kids for Atreus or across the nation's capitol showing them different sites along the way with the National four h Council. What

Rauel LaBreche:

 9:24

just cuz you get licensed doesn't mean you'll tell the truth. Well,

Cathy Lins:

 9:27

this is Washington DC. I mean, come on. Yeah. But I used to my one of my favorites was spending time with the Lincoln Memorial, okay, and understanding more about like, you know, just reading his speech and the things that he had to say and recognizing the different gestures that the artists put into his hands to talk about different time periods. What was happening during his presidency, because that wasn't an EDC presidency.

Rauel LaBreche:

 9:49

Yeah. Yeah. So he's your favorite historical personality then too. Yeah. And Lincoln such a fascinating guy in terms of his, the depression bouts that he dealt with I think the movie Lincoln actually did a pretty good job of kind of depicting what what the presidency did to him, even though it was pretty much the early the later part of his presidency that they covered, but you could really see how, you know, it took a lot of stamina just to live through

Cathy Lins:

 10:15

it half the country against you, and then enough to break off. And

Rauel LaBreche:

 10:20

it's not like he came from, you know, high class, whatever, probably one of the few last presidents that was from a common background, him and Harry Truman, I think are probably the two most, you know, actually worked for a living. So, what are you gonna do? How about a favorite, like, city? Do you have a favorite city and the

Cathy Lins:

 10:46

Okay, I'm gonna go location, I'm not going to call it a city per se. Okay, my absolute favorite place that I have visited in the world is Machu Picchu. It is incredibly beautiful. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that since I went there, a lot more tourists have gone. They have a cable car that goes up because the more that you have people coming in, the more places like that get damaged, right, just by the sheer mass of people. But at the time that I was able to go that we went down in Peru, it was probably 15 years ago. Now, we got a chance to actually go to Machu Picchu. And I was just so impressed with the location, we had a wonderful visit to Peru, we got to see the Nazca Lines. And so I don't know if you know what those are. But they are images that from space, you can see them there's like one that looks like a spider and one that looks like a monkey, but they're miles in diameter.

Rauel LaBreche:

 11:40

I have seen those are like carved work. And I'm

Cathy Lins:

 11:43

not entirely sure how they happen. I mean, there's lots of stories about how it makes things. different images that you can see from the air that you would never really notice if you're on the ground, but they were carved and made right. And so it's we got to do that we got to go see the church, the basilica in Lima and then go up to Machu Picchu.

Rauel LaBreche:

 12:05

Interesting. And that's Africa. Is that my inner ashtec

Cathy Lins:

 12:09

rats Inca. Okay.

Rauel LaBreche:

 12:11

Okay, man. Yeah, that's gotta be fascinating, especially when you think about the science that it took to do that in we you know, we primitive peoples,

Cathy Lins:

 12:22

you're talking miles. Like, how did that happen?

Rauel LaBreche:

 12:25

And the structures that are part of you know, all of those remains, you're like, how so? But it's not like there's, you know, ready made building materials anywhere, right?

Cathy Lins:

 12:36

Well, and it's all at the very, very top of the mountain. So you'd have to bring all of those and I don't want to think about the poor people who had to do that. That's another

Rauel LaBreche:

 12:44

yeah, that's, yeah, we can marvel at what they did. But how many died making it happen, right? Mm hmm. Oh, how about let's see I got I think I'll even more outside the box. How about a favorite technological tool? Do you have a favorite like toy?

Cathy Lins:

 12:58

A favorite technical, logical? turistic? Toy? I toy? Um, oh, let me think I'm just trying to think of certainly not myself, my cell phone because I'm like, smartphone. No, I don't think so. I like try try again. Yeah, I

Rauel LaBreche:

 13:16

love hate relationship with our smartphones. Right? If this is smart, I don't know. And then it's like, what is it doing to me? You know, that's, I keep thinking and to us, you know, when you see people walking along, and all they're doing is staring and they're in their, you know, their smartphones, it's like, look around you you almost hit that you almost hit that and you know, whatever.

Cathy Lins:

 13:38

I gonna say I guess tech wise, I'm, I'm not so much married to tech. So as much as I love interacting with people. And so the it's the it's like the microphones the other things that make it possible for me to connect with people. So it's, it's not so much that I'm fascinated by my tech as much as I'm like, hey, if it helps me get to where I need to go. Sure. Sure. I am going to use it use it, use it

Rauel LaBreche:

 14:00

enter Okay, so you're thinking of just some purpose of the thing not the thing itself? I can buy that that's good to answer gonna watch out you do Don Pardo. Good. We're moving right along. Okay, last question. I think we'll go we'll go with this one. Is there is there a favorite kind of person like when you meet someone, and you get a vibe, right? Have you over the course of your life found that there are certain qualities of character that really will make you right away? Oh, I like this person. I want to spend time with them. Um, there's something that's really kind of core to you that

Cathy Lins:

 14:41

I guess they can appreciate people who can laugh at themselves because I admit I'm definitely a learn to laugh at yourself because how to you will never be short

Rauel LaBreche:

 14:50

of material.

Cathy Lins:

 14:52

Yeah, I think other people who share that characteristics of you know, it's like, because it you'll cry it and things that you see in the world. So if you can't find a way to have some sense of humor, in the midst of that, is that to me, I guess is the draw? Well,

Rauel LaBreche:

 15:07

yeah. Isn't there a quality of people that take themselves so seriously? And that's not to say that there aren't things that you do have to treat very seriously. But I think you're right, that that perspective that says, I will be humble, you know, maybe that's what it is, is that humility tends to kind of build a stamp of a response of kindness. Is that That's my experience with things. Yeah. So the more can be humbled about myself that if someone makes a deprecating, remarkable me, I'm like, Oh, you don't even know I have. Let's get my wife in here. She can tell you what really though, you got like that much of the iceberg baby. You know, and that's, to me, that's very liberating to to not have to feel like you have to defend yourself. Because I think, you know, you find with your your work with the Lord, that they just, there's nothing about us for

Cathy Lins:

 16:06

more than one occasion. It's just like, Oh, my goodness,

Rauel LaBreche:

 16:10

we were getting what we deserve. We'd all be, you know, right away as a sec. I'm not gonna even go there. You know, I mean, it's okay to be mad at God. And I think, you know, people need to sometimes deal with the fact that, you know, why did you let that happen? And you know, and then you have to get through that and go, Well, maybe this was for the best.

Cathy Lins:

 16:28

And then a lot of times, I feel like he's going wait for it. Wait for it. She's gonna feel so silly when she realizes, Oh,

Rauel LaBreche:

 16:37

that's a great image got up, wait for it. Just be patient. Come on. So, like a dog with a treat. Right? Sit down. Wait, okay. All right. My guest today is Kathy Lynn. She is the owner, founder. And just judge all around guru of a wonderful organization tall, called gather my lost sheep, which focuses on helping people to heal, and boom, out there can't deal with a little more zooming in their life. We're gonna take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. And we come back we'll start dealing into the thick of this, we're going to go into the woods, folks. So I hope you'll come back when we get done with this word from the sponsors. And join us in the journey. All right, we'll be right back here on 99. Seven Max FM's digital network and frame of reference are you dealing with a moody meow or a whiny woofer or a negative Nayar in your family welfare not Macfarlanes in Sauk city has just the right pet noise and pet foods to put spring in any step and I won't be in any Wolfer and a me Wow in any cat stop by and bring your fur baby with you. We're pet friendly in every way at Macfarlanes. one block south of highway 12. Seven at Carolina Street in Sauk. City. And we're back here on frame of reference. My guest today is Kathy lens, the owner and founder Master Guru gather my loss shape and organization designed to develop to heal people that are suffering from various types of trauma. Which, if any of you out there have realized realize that you've had traumatic events in your life. Yeah, this is an episode. Let's define the Can we just break that word down a little bit to Kathy, I know you and I've talked about this before, but trauma we tend to think of you know, er rooms and, you know, blood spurting all over the place. And as I remember, our first conversation we got into this topic, trauma was it's a bit more open ended than that. And what we may not think of as being a traumatic event may very well be a traumatic event. Not that everybody you know, okay, let's get your trauma now. Because that that ends up trivializing it, but there are, there's kind of a reference point for that, right?

Cathy Lins:

 19:05

It's that experience where you feel like your physical self or your life is potentially in danger, okay? And and you either personally experienced it or you witness someone else in the midst of that. And even sometimes hearing someone else's story being that first responder can cause you to experience trauma in that moment. Sure. It's that that panic that that sense that actually gets burned into the brain of you know, this is bad this is very bad. We've got to in much like we talked about what your blow up view is because like, this is so traumatic, so bad. We can't stop it from going forward, but at least I can cause your emotion your interfere a little a little bit of a run interference with your memory to help you get through it at that moment. Sure. And I will always look at things that God and say this is like God going okay, there Gotta get some help on that one, we're gonna come back around, but right now just to get them through where they are, right, this is what we got to do. This is what happened, right?

Rauel LaBreche:

 20:07

I've talked with Dr. McAuliffe in area here a number of times, and he talks about the, the brain has that ability to just kind of throw up the protection screen. And, you know, we as long as we're in that protective mode, it's very difficult for us to learn. And when we're in the learning exploring mode, it's very difficult for us to be protective. And I think a lot of people want to be most people, I think, want to be in that Learning Mode. But there's been so many things that have been traumatic that they've just they put up the protective conditions, screens, you know, forcefields are up, and they just can't let them down. Good, isn't it like the the longer it's up, the harder it is to let down.

Cathy Lins:

 20:44

And this is the tricky part here. Because for some folks who have experienced a traumatic experience, it does not automatically become PTSD, post traumatic stress disorders, most traumatic stress. In most cases, it's like maybe like 20% that may actually develop PTSD. And it really goes back to what kind of support and help do you have at that moment, when you have an a traumatic event, we'll break this down a few different ways. Let's talk about the different types of trauma. And I literally, like when I do this presentation with churches, I'm like, I'm going to list off some different things that might cause trauma, and you write down and let me know which of these might potentially happen in your area in your community? And they're like, okay, okay, we're ready. I said, Is it possible that someone could have an accident, a car accident, a farming accident, a, any of those could potentially cause a trauma response, a natural disaster of flooding, tornado, hurricane, any of those an act of terror or a violence, terrorism, I mean, I think of September 11, that just happened, potential source or trauma and unexpected loss, it could be the loss of the job that you've really loved a loss of your income, or loss of a family member or loss of any of those kinds of losses, could trigger a trauma response, which is part of the reason we see what's going on with COVID. Right now, right? witnessing violence, think about all of our kids in the street and some of the neighborhoods in the end and the violence that they see in a day in day out basis, maybe even living in a family where domestic violence is happening. That's all considered the acute form of a trauma. If there's a repetitive long term repeated process, it might be prolonged family violence, or community violence, where it goes on for years, it may be long term illness, and it's treatment. Because sometimes when you go in for cancer treatments, you go in for skin burns, and some of those medical treatments are traumatic and their experience

Rauel LaBreche:

 22:49

rabies shots, seriously, right?

Cathy Lins:

 22:53

Chronic bullying, chronic poverty and related stressors related to that poverty is constant struggle to try to keep going, exposure to war, torture, force displacement, think of all those refugees, everybody from Afghanistan, some of the people who came back from war, some of all of those are going to be passable, repetitive traumas. And again, think about how you'd have to treat trauma and how it's different. If it's a one time thing, if it's a repetitive thing, the last main category is called complex, where it may be happening over a long period of time, lots of different sources of the harm. And in most of these cases, there's no way to escape that setting. So we're talking about in this particular case, human trafficking, prisoners of war, refugee camps, ongoing neglect by your caregivers, domestic violence that has gone on and on any type of ongoing where you may have been experiencing sexual assault, abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, over a long period where you are held captive, all of those will be considered the complex. And for some kids, their childhood, that developmental trauma includes that piece for some domestic violence survivors, it actually falls into that category

Rauel LaBreche:

 24:14

in order to go in. And then those are the three

Cathy Lins:

 24:17

main ones. And just as a secondary, it's the developmental trauma, which is why you see the Adverse Childhood Experiences studies, where they show they have your checklist with 10 questions of Did you you see your parents fight or beat each other? Did they have mental illness? Where did they end up in prison? Did they all have these different factors? They have a scale of zero to 10. And depending on how many adverse fact childhood factors that you have, the more that you have, the more likely that you will have lifetime health problems, behavioral problems, emotional health problems going forward. Right, you know, I mean, so it's that kind of work. And there's also the historic When we look at discrimination, harassment, maybe it's their slavery, the wars that have gone on the colonialism. But the residential schools, that's all a very different flavor. The intergenerational is mainly because let's say that you experienced this traumatic event, and you now live your life in a particular way. It's kind of like the story where they said, Why do you make your ham that way? Why do you cut the end off? Because that's way my mother did it. People who live with someone else who has that trauma, they will pass ways of behavior down, because that's how they've seen their elders do it. And they continue to do it. Yeah, that's that intergenerational

Rauel LaBreche:

 25:41

going on African American communities, they'll talk about the effects of generational rape women in those communities, because there have been, you know, not only within slavery times where women were just, you know, you and when you when, right, but then that got passed on to their mom, or their children and their children. And they tend to be they've learned this sort of behavior or, you know, way of masking or way of coping with regular generational abuse, that, you know, most people can't even begin to relate to what that's like. And, you know, it strikes me too, that there's a part of this that is really ugly. There's a part of this, it's very individual. I mean, because you think about the perpetrators of the abuse, and that that's dealing with some pretty ugly parts of the human spirit that why would anyone even do that to a person

Cathy Lins:

 26:36

for those situations where it was someone else involved? Right?

Rauel LaBreche:

 26:39

I mean, an accident is an accident, and that those are when those things happen when a trauma of you know, a hurricane, or the trauma of a car accident, you know, or the trauma of someone getting killed in a situation where it's like, Oh, my God, how did that happen? Those traumas are tend to be my experience, at least as they tend to be more about why, why? Why? And you can't quite answer that question fully. Right. So that in itself becomes kind of traumatic, because you can't process you can't figure out why this would happen. And sometimes you'll never well. But then the there's also that individual component where what might be traumatic to me, may not be traumatic to you, and then you've got an issue of lack of empathy, because I just get over it, right? I mean, that's

Cathy Lins:

 27:29

the thing that so often people hear of, why don't can't you just let that go. Right. And I always think it's interesting, because if you've actually developed PTSD, it's not about you letting it go. It's about the fact that it won't let you go. It's hanging on to you. And until it's processed until it's dealt with, it's not going to stop. And here's the thing that I think is so interesting talking to church folks, is I'm like, Okay, gang, I everything that I've just first of all, I said, How many of you could imagine something like this happening in your parish? So they're like, oh, my gosh, there's a lot of there are several things that could be at play at any point. I said, so first of all, one of the first things we have to look at is universal response. And what I mean by that, because people like what I said, How long did it take them to train us that if somebody has a bloody nose, the first thing I think of is not to just grab their nose, but to put a glove on my hand, and then grab their nose? Because I assume whether I know or not, that there may be a pathogen in the blood that they have, right? What if we assumed everybody is probably dealing with a trauma? So let's have that foresight ahead of time, to give them the grace to work through whatever they're dealing with, and not make a judgement? Because the first thing that tends to happen in that moment, is for people to say, what's wrong with them? Right? That's like, wait, what's been done to them? That's causing them to act out in the way that I'm seeing in front of me right now. Right?

Rauel LaBreche:

 28:56

What's the story behind that behavior?

Cathy Lins:

 28:58

And then I always tell folks there here's the pro tip, don't ask them because chances are good, they couldn't tell you at that moment. Right. But here's the next important question then ask is, What can I do right now to help them feel safe? Because lack of safety is why that's happening. And I just tell folks, when you see a kind of over the top reaction for someone, that's a pretty good indicator, their trauma has just been triggered their memory of what has happened. And then let's just be clear that they're not interacting with the memory, their amygdala, whose whole job it is, is to keep us safe. It takes in information from our five senses, how we see things, hear things, taste, things, touch things. It brings in information and it looks and says, Have I seen this anywhere before? And if I have was a good or