Transcript: Episode 355
355. Guest: Peter Maves
Welcome to the System Speak podcast. If you would like to support our efforts at sharing our story, fighting stigma about Dissociative Identity Disorder, and educating the community and the world about trauma and dissociation, please go to our website at www.systemspeak.org, where there is a button for donations and you can offer a one time donation to support the podcast or become an ongoing subscriber. You can also support us on Patreon for early access to updates and what’s unfolding for us. Simply search for Emma Sunshaw on Patreon. We appreciate the support, the positive feedback, and you sharing our podcast with others. We are also super excited to announce the release of our new online community - a safe place for listeners to connect about the podcast. It feels like any other social media platform where you can share, respond, join groups, and even attend events with us, including the new monthly meetups that start this month. Go to our web page at www.systemspeak.org to join the community. We're excited to see you there.
[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
Our guest today is Peter Maves. Dr. Maves is a licensed Clinical Psychologist practicing in Colorado since 1982, specializing in the treatment of complex trauma and dissociative disorders. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the former Assistant Director of the emergency psychiatric service at Boulder. He was the Clinical Director of Adams Community Mental Health Center, and developed and was the Clinical Director of Centennial Peaks Hospital's Trauma and Dissociative Disorders Treatment Program. He was the Clinical Director of Columbine Hospital's National Trauma Center. Dr. Mayes has served as a practice monitor for the Grievance Board State of Colorado, and was an oral licensing examiner for the Colorado State Board of Psychologist Examiner's Department of Regulatory Agencies. Dr. Maves is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences on the treatment of complex trauma, dissociative disorders, traumatic brain injuries and military trauma. He was a clinical instructor for 20 years, supervising PhD students in the Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a Fellow and former board member of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, where he is currently co-chair of the Regional and Virtual Conference Committee, and the chair-elect of ISSTD’s Professional Training Program. He is a diplomat in clinical forensic counseling, and a member of the European Society for Trauma and Dissociation. Welcome Peter Maves.
[Discussion begins]
[Podcast host is in bold; podcast guest is in standard font]
Hello! Hello.
Thank you for taking time to speak with me.
Absolutely. Thank you for including me in this process.
I am excited to speak with you. My favorite memory of you was in San Francisco, getting to sit next to you while we ate octopus. [Laughter] Right, right. Enjoyed a moment of sociality that would have been the opening of the conference before everything happened. Right. Yes, that, you know what I think about that. That was quite, you know, it was really quite an event to have the event and have it all have it scheduled, and then the day of the board meeting have the World Health Organization declare a pandemic. And then have to fold it all down.
I am currently in Seattle at the conference. It's about to start this weekend. And already just seeing people, some of the people who were there in San Francisco, it has been far more emotional than expected of that restorative process of kind of bookending that experience. Even though it's so ongoing in lots of ways.
Well, yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody. You know, I did, I was down in Nashville for the conference there. And, you know, it was just nice to be someplace rather than just sequestered at home and sequestered in the office. And, you know. One of the things, though, that I think is interesting is that, you know, I had really planned on cutting back clinically before the pandemic started and do more with ISSTD. And, you know, to take over for a while the Professional Training Program and to be together with Jill on the Virtual Committee, and of course just stay with the Finance Committee. And all of a sudden once the pandemic hit, my goodness. I mean, I saw people back, you know, clients and patients that I had not seen in years. And it tapered off a little bit as things, as we got into vaccines and so forth and so on. But I'm seeing, I'm still seeing that higher level of demand now. And I don't know if, I think as you recall, Marc Muret and I did that training, that webinar training, over six months in response to what we felt was going to be an increase in demand and people coming in. You know. And I think we're really are feeling the post in post-traumatic stress right now.
I would absolutely agree. And those trainings that you two did, those months during the pandemic, were incredible. I was always surprised that more people were not accessing them. I know, I know they're available, but it was some of the best training that I had seen. And I got introduced to so many different kinds of things, and so many somatic pieces that I did not know about or did not have examples of how to implement in this kind of context with people. That was really, really helpful. So I appreciate that you too, did that.
Well, you know, it's interesting the way that, I may have said this, the way I met Marc. I was presenting at the European Trauma Society and they had, they were in Belfast. And I went into a seminar room and I sat down in the middle and everybody came in and Mark walked in. I realized that I was in the wrong seminar room. I, that I had no intention of viewing him. I thought that I was going to be hearing somebody else. But, you know, I was kind of in the middle and there were lots of people there. So I thought, “well, I'll just stay.” And goodness, what a difference it made. I mean, you know, he brought to light and put together some techniques and ideas and ways of approaching trauma and dissociation that that I had not seen before. And, you know, really much more of a, you know, bottom-up kind of approach rather than top-down.
It was, it was really fascinating for me. It was good experience both personally to sort of try things out a little bit and see what that was like to be trying some of those techniques, and then the complete therapeutic reframe really changed my practice over the last two years.
I would absolutely agree. I mean, I, you know, for on and off maybe, for a lot more a few years ago I was seeing a lot of Vets and I was seeing a lot of service members that, some of whom had gotten kind of sideways either the, you know, within their way, have in their platoon or squadron or something. And, but mostly they were dealing with PTSD. And I saw a gentleman and he came in and, you know, pretty much indicated that they were wanting him to go back and that he didn't think he could. He didn't, he did not feel like it was ethical for him to go back into being a squadron leader in a combat situation because he was, it was too shaky. And so I listened to him and I, at the end of the our session, I said, you know, I showed him a picture of that kind of squashed figure eight that that Marc uses. And I said that I wanted him to go home and draw that on an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper, and that I would see him in a couple of weeks. And, you know, I saw that look on his face, which was, “What in the world am I doing with this person?” You know, “what is he telling me to do?” But he was a big man. And so the next time he walked in and he sat down, and he didn't sit back. He looked at me. He said, “Doc,” he said, “I don't know what that goddamn thing was that you told me to do, but I feel better.” [Laughter] You know, kind of affective, affective therapy that sneaks up on you.
That's so true. That's so true. We sort of jumped right into some of our shared colleague experiences over the last few years. Catch us up on your story of how you even found out about trauma and dissociation. Can you go back to the beginning and tell us that?
Yeah, I, you know, I had, I had done quite a bit of work while I was getting my PhD with the Emergency Psychiatric Service in Boulder, Colorado. And I became the Assistant Director. And so I was used to working emergency, and so the first the first position, first job that I had when I got my degree was to manage a mental health center, community mental health center, office. And the way that they ran that at that point was that they split emergency from morning to afternoon, and somebody in the office would take, say, the morning shift on Monday and somebody take the morning or the afternoon shift on Monday afternoon, et cetera, through the week. And I decided and wanted to take an emergency shift because I really didn't know the community. It was North Denver and I didn't know it that well, and I wanted to kind of get a sense of what was going on. So I took, you know, if you ever want to know what's going on in the community, take an emergency shift on a Friday afternoon. Which I did. And I saw a woman who came in that was clearly anxious and agitated, and you know, had indicated that she was having a horrible time at home, and that her sister was there with her teenage boys, and she had three or four children. And she was just having a terrible time. So I had her see the psychiatrist in the office, and I scheduled another time for her. And she didn't show up for the next week. And so I didn't think anything about it. And then about a month later she showed up and she reported that things were better, that her sister had left and the things had calmed down at home. And so I had a chance to, I kind of took my eyes off of her and looked out the window or something, and I looked back and I had to, I had a strange feeling that that there was somebody else there. And so I said to her, I said, “you know this is really going to sound strange, but I don't think, I don't think that you're quite the same person that came in here.” And she looked at me and she said, “well, it's about time that you caught on.” And I thought, you know, “what am I caught on to? What's going on here?” And that's what put me in the path of starting to try to find out everything I could about, at that point, multiple personality disorder. Fortunately, there were a couple of clinicians in the Denver area that had started to work with dissociative conditions. And that's what got me going. I mean, that really blossomed for me in terms of starting to find out everything I could.
There was a psychiatrist in the area who was, had located Rick Kluft and was getting supervision consultation from him. And that led to forming an organization at that point, which later became a group within ISSTD. You know, back at that time, I mean, I'm talking almost 30 years ago, we didn't have, there was a lot of formality to much of what ISSTD did. But there were a number of study groups across the United States. And the one that I started together with three or four other clinicians and several psychiatrist turned into 250 plus people attending monthly meetings. So we were able to do our own conferences. We, because there was, there was really no way to get information. It was very difficult, except through, like Rick Kluft and some of the writings, it was extremely difficult to get information about treatment. And we were faced with the same kinds of issues that we're faced with now. Maybe not quite as prevalent, but I think still that the diagnosis is misunderstood. And it is looked at as really not a substantial diagnosis and discounted in a lot of ways. And so it was very difficult to find training. And so what we were able to do was we were able to start to bring people to the Denver area. So we brought Rick and Kathy Steele, Colin Ross and Jim Chu and Bennett Braun. And, you know, it goes on and on and on. We were able to bring them. Bessel did a conference for us two and a half days that we did in Copper Mountain setting. And so we kind of bought, you know, we started to generate training for ourselves. And then now, you know, that all of those groups, they're, you know, the ones that we were associated with and in the Denver area and the Rocky Mountain area, and then the New England society and a lot of the things that Will Wertheimer and Ed were doing in Chicago.
And so now that has come together, you know, thanks to you all, thanks to the, you know, thanks to the really substantial administrative knowledge, has started to bring things together into regional communities and so forth. Which I'm really delighted to see. And you know, and I'm delighted to be associated with Jill Hosey in terms of the virtual and regional because I really feel that the regional conferences when we can get—and I think we're going to be able to do it this year—that when we can be in person, really presents that get together, know everybody, just like you talked about. Gee, it's so good to see somebody. And that affords us the opportunity to do training. It affords us the opportunity to do networking. It expands our presence in terms of marketing and awareness. So, you know, things have really, it was a pretty, in the beginning, it was a pretty small group with, you know, a lot of the mainstays right now.
But, you know, ISSTD also has gone through it's growing pains. And I mean, interestingly enough, there was a time when our conferences for 10 years, 10 years plus, we're always held in Chicago. And that was because we were, the main sponsor was Rush Presbyterian. And that's where Rick Kluft, that's where Bennett Brown was, and a number of, Cathy Fine, and a number of the originators of the society were practicing and seeing people at Rush Presbyterian. And so they sponsored that conferences in Chicago. And those conferences built to a place for where it would not be unusual to have 1000 1200 people coming in to the conference. So the organization was nowhere near as cohesive and well managed as it is now, but there was still a lot of interest in what was going on. And it was that, you know, that was my total, almost 100%, training in how to be able to do the work, the annual conference. I presented and I listened. And there wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have known what to do, if it hadn't been, again, for bringing the people to the Denver area and then being able to go to the annual conference. It had that quality of you know, thank goodness that there's a place that we can go and really receive informed training.
But also, I think one of the things that is so different about ISSTD is the fact that, you know, yes, we have experts, but nobody's a quote unquote expert. I mean, everybody was accessible. And you could be, you know, I could talk to anybody. I could go to anybody. And that was really valuable, and still is, quite frankly. I mean, I'm now doing more of the consultation clinic format. What I'll be doing in person with Rich Lowenstein coming up here at the conference, you know, momentarily. And to me, that is really valuable because, you know, you can bring, everybody can bring the kinds of circumstances and situations that they run up against, and because individuals that we work with have such complexity, and that these kinds of consultation clinics I think are extremely valuable because we can, Rich and I from our experience, we can offer ideas. But I get as many ideas from the participants who are there that I'm putting out. So it's still happening. It's still, it's that exchange of information. I mean, do you do get a sense of that? I mean, you know, how long have you been with us now? A couple of years?
With ISSTD? Yeah. At least four years, if not longer, plus some years in the 90s.
Right. So, I mean, is that, you know, is that the kind of experience that you also get a sense about?
I have found that the trainings are very formative, and that there is so much happening with research that it's the fastest and easiest way to get the most recent updates. But also, if there's anything I've learned from these trainings, is how it has to be so foundational on the actual treatment for complex trauma, for DID. And I think it's so, so necessary because-. I mean, the reason I work so hard for the PTP program or for the webinars, or help with the way that I do is because I really, really believe in what it's doing. And part of that is because starting with my generation and the people who have come after me, their entire education has missed the psychoanalytic training. And simple things like transference and countertransference, and all those pieces that come into play through the process of therapy, much less being such a significant part of DID treatment. And it's just, it's so needed. It's so needed, what you're doing.
I really appreciate the help. So I think the Professional Training Program is an example of what now exists, I mean, in a very comprehensive form thanks to Sue, Joan, and everybody who has spent so much time putting it together. But, you know, these are kind of, as you say, kind of foundational opportunities that we didn't have at the beginning. You know, we didn't have the, you know-. I'm frankly, I'm not altogether sure how much anyone going through graduate program now learns or has exposure to dissociation. Maybe more so post-traumatic stress, but even that, not so much. And so the Professional Training Program really provides that opportunity for, as you say, you know, making sure that we say, okay, you can check the box here to know, you know, what you need to know about the structure and foundation of treatment. And I think it's extremely valuable. And I'm not sure that, I have to guess, that what ISSTD is doing is unique with other professional societies. I mean, do you get a sense of that? I mean, are other societies, do they have this kind of foundational training and comprehensiveness that ISSTD has?
I think that so many people, especially since the pandemic, are looking for online trainings and things like that. But when you talk about the comprehensiveness, that's part of what this has to offer because it is the actual founders of the field speaking, and presenting, or consulting, or teaching, or giving case examples, or walking through the actual theory. It is a profound moment in history that is being recorded as much as the educational offering that it is.
Right. Right. And I. And again, I mean, you know, when I teach a sequence, I always learned something. You know, I'm trying to impart, certainly, my experience and experiences. And I'm always hearing things that I, you know, that I haven't thought about or approaches that can be useful. So it's, you know, it's that interactive part of what we do that I think is so important, and it really is the case that we are confronted with, you know, extremely complex and difficult clinical circumstances and situations. And so much to the benefit of being able to have the support that, you know, that that coming together affords us.
But you know, there were some, there were some dark days in terms of ISSTD and the field, and that principally relates to the kind of onslaught of the false memory syndrome, you know, movement, pressure, and so forth and so on. And that was, you know, I think that that really tested the strength and conviction of our group, of ISSTD, and brought up really a genuine well-founded debate about what we're doing and what was going on. And, I mean, it, you know, for a while it really diminished our ranks, if you will, because individuals were, clinicians were apprehensive about coming into the treatment of-. Well, we didn't at that point, were not calling it complex post traumatic stress. But there was that reluctance. And I think it's, it's, as you say, it's true. I think the positive that came from that beside our taking the time to look amongst ourselves and to say, “well, what are we doing here? And how, in fact, do we substantiate our treatment methods?” And I think from that we're seeing the work like with Bethany Brand in terms of TOP studies, that we're starting to see more and more and more, very thorough and very substantial research. Which is, quite frankly, what we need, as you say. I mean, you can you can find information, you know, quickly by looking at the, you know, what those who are doing the research and the reference sites and what they're looking at. So it's, it was an interesting and also difficult time. I remember that very distinctly an opening day of a conference, way back when, when Frank Putnam stood up and said, you know, this is, we have to take, we have to look at ourselves and we have to look at our methodology, and we have to be extremely aware of the accusations here. And while we may feel and they are inaccurate, we still have to look at ourselves. And I think that that's something that ISSTD has really been good about that. That we've listened to our own members, and we've gone through the process, and I think we're certainly came out on the other side of those years, but it was it was difficult. And were you involved when-. You were kind of involved maybe at the tail end of that, right?
Well, it's interesting because I was a client during the memory war years, and impacted in that way through some of that drama. And then was becoming a clinician following that. And so I sort of had both sides of the experience and saw the impact both ways. Which is actually one of the reasons I started the podcast, because I felt like there were such a residual effect of the trauma that we all collectively experienced both as clients and as clinicians, because of all that.
Right. Right. And, you know, I think that we're kind of slowly building our ranks back, if you will. And, you know, everyone has stayed the course. And I think we've become better for it. And I again, I'm really delighted to see the research and the substantiation that's coming from research. And that we have, you know, that we have a strong scientific committee. That they're really looking at, again, continuing to look at the underpinnings and what are we doing? And how can we present what's happening? Because there's an edge of what I do that is expert testimony and forensic. I tend to work almost exclusively with public defenders because they can't find people to work with them, either because of lack of knowledge about dissociative process and complex post traumatic stress, and that they don't pay very much. So, you know, it's like, well, you know, we need your help and you're going to go into court and you're going to get yelled at, and somebody's going to try to indicate that you don't know what you're talking about. And oh, by the way, we're not going to pay very much. So it's, you know, it's not a popular endeavor, but for me it's a it's a necessary endeavor. How, and as you can well imagine, if there's doubt and if there's skepticism in the general group of treatment professionals about dissociative process and about dissociative identity specifically, you can well imagine and certainly understand the amount of skepticism that is in a forensic setting. And attempting to go into a courtroom setting and substantiate that this person who really didn't remember and doesn't remember what happened or why it happened, or who they were at that point, and so forth and so on. So, but that's, I'm not altogether sure that we're going to have much impact on that forensic setting. And that's understandable. And we have some, Phil Kinster, Steve Frankel, Peter Barach, who's, I don't know if he's still a member but I know he's active in Rich Chavetz’s listserv. You know, these are individuals who brought information about how to deal forensically.
I was testifying in a very, very high powered, intensely dramatic case, and the prosecuting attorney, the DA, at one point stopped and he said, “Dr. Maves,” he said, “how many years have you been practicing voodoo medicine?” I said, “Excuse me, Mr. Cooper?” He said, “Oh, you know, nevermind.” And I said to the judge, I said, you know, “I'd like Mr. Cooper to repeat that question to me, please.” You know, I mean, that's the kind of thing, understandable skepticism in a forensic setting. But I still think that there is a tremendous amount of skepticism across the board. And to maybe be gentler about that, at least a lack of understanding.
You know, it's always of interest to me to hear from a colleague that I've known for years who is a senior person who, you know, has acquired someone dealing with DID or thinks that, and comes to me for some consultation, and how little they know about the process. And it's, I guess it isn't, shouldn't be surprising. But it continues to be surprising. But we're chipping away. And thus the idea of the regional conferences. Although I still think for the most part we're training those who already understand about dissociation. But if we can reach a few that haven't heard and want training. We're doing one in Denver here, and I have, probably have five or six people that I'm hoping to have come to the conference, professionals that are really starting to do the clinical work and the treatment for the first time and where I'm consulting with them, and where they can sit and listen to Colin and get a very comprehensive view of what's going on. So I think we're getting there. And you know, I mean, you're involved at the educational level, and we're doing a lot, aren't we?
I hope so. We are trying. And to hear your story from those beginnings of trying to research and teach each other while you're learning actively in the process of what to do, or how to help, all the way up through the TOP DD studies now, or the fMRI studies from Simone Reinders, or all of this research that's coming out now. It's just a profound transformation through this study of treatment and how to care well for people who are struggle with dissociation. What would you say to a new clinician who is just learning about dissociation? How would you explain that to them or help them understand what they're seeing?
You know, and that's a great question in that that's much of what I find myself doing when someone comes to me for consultation. I mean, what I'm trying to do now is, you know, if someone comes and says, “gee, I'd like to see on this and that,” I'm kind of hoping that they are with a therapist. What I can do is keep the client with their therapist and then I can, you know, then encourage that therapist to do the professional training program and I can be a consultant and so forth and so on. But, you know, I usually grab Judith Herman's book off the shelf, and say, “Take this, you know, and read this as a starting point.” And I really try to put the dissociative process into a conceptualization in terms of a complex post-traumatic stress reaction. And to try to really help new clinicians understand that we usually see a combination, one or the other or unusually both, have some kind of an attachment issue, some kind of disorganized attachment, so that we have this, so that we have, you know, a developmental history where one or both of the parents or primary people in the client’s life has some level of problem, alcoholism, maybe more severe problems, bipolar, and so forth and so on, perhaps themselves dealing with PTSD. So you've got this combination of attachment issues, disorganized attachment, and typically abuse, as you know, and so we get that combination. But I try to have the, someone who is just beginning, again, back to where we started today, to have a foundation to say, “This is what your client is dealing with, even though they are not able to talk about it.” And try to help with some of the basics, you know. That there are so many points of diagnostic confusion and so much overlap with our clients that that's how they come to us with such a need and how we find ourselves, you know, really trying to reach out for some help and clarification. And thus the consultation clinic and the training that we're providing and so forth and so on. But it is that mixture. It really is. So when you start looking at the kind of common points around post-traumatic stress, the top one is the vacillation between the kind of hyperarousal and on guard, you know, flashbacks. And in contrast to that, numb, that very numbed and constricted place. And so if you're not diagnostically familiar with complex post-traumatic stress, and with dissociation and DID, it's very easy to say this is this is a bipolar reaction. There's this, there's this.
I had a, one of my treatment units that I started, I had an extremely well-known from the medical school in Denver come to my unit every Friday, a psychiatrist, and talk about diagnostics. But he would come on a trauma and dissociative disorders treatment unit and diagnosed everyone is bipolar. And so I finally took him to lunch. And I said, “Look, I said, just listen to me. You know, I'm buying lunch, so you get to listen to me.” And I said, “It's, you know, it looks like, it's the you know, ‘quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck,’ but it's not a duck. That's a phenotype. It's it looks like it.” And to his credit, he actually went off to become the chair of a department of a very, very well known psychiatric department and wrote a wrote a small book about the confusion between post-traumatic stress presentations in bipolar disorder.
But so I think, for someone starting out, I want them to have a sense that yes, you're going to see all of these things. You're going to see, there's almost all as a sequence in dissociation, post-traumatic stress, again, from this kind of highly hypervigilant overactive, to numbed and constricted, to kinds of themes of denial, to all hopelessness and helplessness, to a certain level of repetitive behaviors that can look and can be very obsessive-compulsive. But all of this is back to that place where we look to classic post-traumatic stress as the quote unquote, loss of mastery and control.
And so when I try to help someone who's starting out in the treatment is to say, “yes, you're going to see all of these things, and you're going to feel all of these things.” Because one of the dilemmas that we face is that individuals who have been immersed in this inescapable trauma, this overwhelming attachment kinds of problems, and/or abuse, is that you're going to have a lot of characterological processes come up. And you know, I speak about this a lot, have spoken about it a lot, because that complicates things. And so, you know, you've heard it, I've heard it a million times. “Well, it's not dissociative identity stuff, it's just borderline, it's just, you know, some type of personality disorder.” Well, there's no “just” to that. That's in and of itself, those conditions are difficult to work with, and difficult for us as clinicians to work with because there are so many, you know, action defenses. There's so much splitting. There's, so much projective identification, that we can really get knocked off of our feet. So that's another thing that when someone is starting is to say, “Find some type of consultation group. Find someone who can help you, you know. And obviously, connect with ISSTD. You know, and start to go to the conferences, start to do the professional training, start to understand what's going on from a very comprehensive standpoint.” But it's, and, you know, I really do say that you're, that as a new clinician, and me as an old clinician, we're going to be, we're going to have days where we're just flattened.
My wife is an art therapist. She worked in trauma also for 30 plus years, and we worked collaboratively. And thank goodness for that, that I can come home and go, “Oh, my goodness,” you know, that I'm just flattened. And that's part of it. That it's, that that's what happens. And we just, again, we reach out for the support and understanding that we get through ISSTD and through really working collaboratively. I, because of my inpatient, you know, creating and directing units, I very much have a collaborative kind of sense about things. I work collaboratively with a physical therapist who was involved with a trauma program here in Boulder, Colorado, for a while run by Bob Scare. And so I very much like to have more of a team approach. And, you know, and that's, that's also what I talk to someone who's just beginning to work in the area to say, you know, “Get some consultation. Get some people that can come in and assist and help you.” Because we all need it. You know, I certainly continue to need it and, you know, just trying to find a way to figure it out and to help them. So it's kind of it kind of a mouthful, isn't it, when somebody starts out? You're kind of giving them a lot in a hurry.
It's a lot to untangle and a lot to stay present with. And in the case with DID, it's so many threads to keep track of.
Yeah, it really is. One of the things, though, that I talk about when I do training, and especially with community mental health centers, is that that we really are doing basic therapy. We're doing good therapy. And as you say, it's extremely important to have an understanding of the kind of basics of what we imagine goes on in the treatment setting. So that it's that it's helpful to know that yes, we're going to have these countertransference. We're going to have these feelings. We're going to be seeing in a variety of ways. We’re going to, we are in the case of more characterological process, we are going to feel. We're going to feel. We're really going to feel. And in a lot of cases, we're going to feel diminished and unsure of ourselves, and so forth and so on. But it's really, the core is, as always is a, you know, therapy approaches that, you know, is where you go for your foundation. And I'm not particularly concerned about the a particular therapeutic approach. I think it is important to know, no matter what approach, I think it is important to know about our own reactions in terms of countertransference and how we're going to be seen by our clients and patients in terms of transference. But I think it's just do good therapy and then find out the nuances and the amplification that we provide through our ISSTD training. That that becomes important because it certainly is, you know, someone who has never been in the room when someone makes a move from one place to another, from one state to another, that can be pretty unnerving. And, you know, it's really good to have that preparation.
I just want to close with I think that that's absolutely true, and I appreciate you sharing both the history and the importance of us learning together, the different generations, the unfolding research, all of it is so so powerful and is what brings healing both to us as clinicians who have endured so much, as well as the people that we are trying to help who have endured so much. But thank you for talking to us today. And I am so grateful that you were able to come talk.
Listen, thanks for having me. And listen, I greatly appreciate the work you're doing. I mean, I really see, as you've heard me today, I really see that the training function is such a substantial core for ISSTD. And so onward and upward to both of us. Thanks for having me. Take good care.
Thank you so much. Goodbye.
See ya.
[Break]
Thank you for listening. Your support really helps us feel less alone while we sort through all of this and learn together. Maybe it will help you in some ways too. You can connect with us on Patreon. And join us for free in our new online community by going to our website at www.systemspeak.org. If there's anything we've learned in the last four years of this podcast, it's that connection brings healing. We look forward to connecting with you.