The House That Resilience Built with Tom Glaser

Stanton Shanedling: Hello, everybody! Welcome to Health Chatter. Today's show is about a book, The House That Resilience Built. It's about trauma—childhood trauma. We have a wonderful guest with us, the author of the book, whom I'll introduce in just a moment.

In the meantime, we've got a great crew. I'd love to introduce them all because they've been with us since day one: Maddy Levine-Wolf, Erion Collins, and Deondra Howard. They do our great background research for all our shows, giving us something to talk about so that Barry, Clarence, and I sound kind of smart, at least when we're talking with people.

Also, Matthew Campbell is our production guru. He makes sure that everything comes out to you, the listening audience, in perfect form. Sheridan Nygard does our marketing, and she also does the transcripts for all our shows. If you don't listen to our shows, you can read them on our website, which I'll get to in a second.

Clarence Jones has been with me, and together we've been doing this for… well, we decided it's closing in on five years now, I guess. And so, it's been wonderful being with you, and Barry. Dr. Barry Baines, our medical advisor, is second to none, and he really provides some insights from a medical perspective. So, thanks to everybody.

Hueman Partnership (H-U-E-M-A-N)—"doesn't matter what color skin you are"—Human Partnership is our sponsor for these shows. You can check them out at huemanpartnershipalliance.org, and check us out at Health Chatter Podcast. Again, you can read all our shows. If you have questions about the shows, you can put them on our website and we'll get back to you.

So, there you go. We have a great show today. Tom Glaser is with us. I met Tom about a month or so ago and found out that he has a great book that I've read—and actually, we've all read. I'll start out by saying to the audience here: get the book. It's really worth reading. It really is, and it's really, really well-written and engaging. So, I'll give it a 10 to start out with, okay?

Tom is a master's-level licensed psychologist with 40 years of experience in this arena. His journey from his own childhood trauma, which he explains in the book, led him to writing The House That Resilience Built. He did a book prior to this called Full Heart Living: Conversations with the Happiest People I Know. So, there's a happiness component to his writing, and now he's also dealing with childhood trauma. So, it's great having you, Tom. Thanks for being with us, and I underscore that you're a wonderful writer.

Tom Glaser: Thank you, Stan.

Stanton Shanedling: So, as I was reading the book, these words kept coming into my head, and it just kept going and going and going. Let me just reflect on some of those words, okay?

Tom Glaser: Okay.

Stanton Shanedling: One: Ruminate. You know, we all have a tendency to ruminate, or how do we reflect? Instead of ruminating... I find that ruminating is harder on you than reflecting, personally. And then, of course, there's another "R" word: resilience. You know, how do we become more resilient as we deal with these things? And then other words that kind of came to my mind were grief, happiness, sadness, angst, and wellness, which is near and dear to all our hearts on this show. So, let's...

Clarence: Well, Stan, let me say something real quick. Let me add one other word to that: preventable.

Stanton Shanedling: Yes!

Tom Glaser: Okay.

Stanton Shanedling: Yes.

Clarence: That's the word I want to add.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, absolutely, preventable. So, let's start out with your story, how you got into this altogether, and then we'll get into some of the health-related aspects of it all.

Tom Glaser: Sure, yeah, wow. Great words, by the way, and thank you for the kudos. Yeah, I got into the work sort of by accident, right? When I was in graduate school, the word "trauma"... I don't remember that word coming up. Maybe it was and I don't remember. The concept was... I remember the concept of "the hardest thing that ever happened to you" coming up in graduate school, but you know, we learned, really, it was through the Vietnam War, right? That's where the research really came out, and we learned that there are these really commonly understood causes of trauma, like war, famine, dislocation, and sexual assault. Everybody understands that those are traumas.

But what we learned over time is that other experiences, particularly in childhood, have the same effect on the nervous system and on the body. And that's how we get into my story. From the outside, my childhood would have looked ideal to many people, right? We were fairly well off, we never struggled for the basics, we were educated, and we did some travel. All six of us loaded into the station wagon and went to Washington, D.C., or to the North Carolina coast in the summer.

But behind closed doors, things weren't appearing so perfect. My mom had some pretty severe mental health issues, and she just raged, raged, raged at us. No one ever saw that happen; even my dad was very rarely privy to those experiences. And this was cutting, cutting, cutting. I mean, awful. Not just yelling—any parent can get overwhelmed and yell and scream a little bit, and most parents know to make a repair very quickly. They'll say, "I'm sorry, that was me. Here's what was going on. You're okay." And people can move on, generally speaking.

Those repairs never happened in our childhood. There was no one witnessing it, saying, "You are not to blame." No one ever talked about it. And then, starting in junior high, I was targeted, and to use the word "bullying" would barely cover what I experienced. I wish there were... we don't have all the language, right? The closest I can come to it is like verbal sexual abuse. I was never physically harmed, but verbally and publicly humiliated repeatedly for appearing too effeminate, right? And I was told publicly the sexual acts that I should be performing—crap like that. I mean, just horrible.

I didn't learn in the home how to speak up for myself. I didn't know that I could have gone to someone. My shame on both counts, both at home and at school, was so huge. I just wanted to disappear. That's all I needed to do—to ignore it, put my head down, and keep going.

So that is, in a nutshell, my own experience of trauma. Do I typically tell my clients this? No. What I believe happens is, because I know trauma personally so deeply, my clients sense in my reactions to them that I get it really deeply. I'm only now becoming public. I mean, I'm near the end of my career now, so now it's public; it's out there, people know. And I don't care anymore because I've worked through it myself. I've gone to my own psychotherapy and done decades of self-development work.

And so I learned... and then I stumbled upon resilience along the way. I just happened to have interests in physical fitness and nutrition. I've always been very relationship-oriented, and I've always been interested in things like mindfulness and meditation. I kind of just stumbled into all these things over time, and only much later did I realize, "Oh, I was practicing the things that helped me to be resilient." So, in a nutshell, that's my story.

Stanton Shanedling: You know, did you have a sense that how you were being treated was normal? When you were growing up, did you think, "Is this the way they're all treated?" Or, you know...

Tom Glaser: In the family, yes. You don't know, right? When you're a child, all we know is our own experience. And again, nobody in my family ever talked about it to anyone. Yeah. So, how do you make a comparison? How do you learn? It wasn't until much later I learned that it's not normal to have a mom who rages at you, calls you names, tells you how awful you are, and uses profanity. I had no idea; I thought that was normal.

The school stuff? No, there I knew that I was targeted. There I could see most people were not treated that way. So again: shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. I thought I was to blame in both cases. If I acted perfectly at home... and this is how I think I probably came into the world with a perfectionist tendency anyhow, and then it got magnified, right? If I'm perfect, maybe my mom won't explode. And at school, too—if I hold my books in the right way, if I talk with a deeper voice, if I do all these things, maybe people won't target me. It didn't help. None of those things... well, maybe they did a little, but I still got targeted. I tried everything I could think of.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah. You know.

Clarence: I have a question, Stan.

Stanton Shanedling: Go ahead, yeah, go ahead.

Clarence: You know, Tom, thank you for sharing that. I think one of the things that you said was that your father never knew, or... but did he... do you think he experienced it at a different level? As a father, he probably witnessed it, but it didn't look the same way as it did for you, yet it had the same kind of impact because it probably shaped how he dealt with the whole issue. I just want to ask that question.

Tom Glaser: So, he didn't witness all of the events; he witnessed some of them. And did he... so, I believe it's a both-and. I believe he really did know, actually. And he had his own trauma, and my mom had her own trauma, right? We all come into life with our own experiences, and we do the best we can. None of this is blaming. My parents were wonderful, good people in many, many ways—good people whom I loved dearly. Come on, they're my parents, you only get your parents, right? They did many good things in the world, and in these ways, they really, really missed the boat. They really, really screwed up.

So, I think my dad actually did know on some level, but he didn't have the fortune of being taught himself how to stand up to someone. He did not know. I have the privilege of having an education. I have the great privilege that psychotherapy was available when I needed it. It was barely a thing when my parents needed it. The most they could do was get some Valium, maybe, right? That's the best that they had back then.

Clarence: I want to follow up with that, too, because I think what you're saying is so powerful, okay? Because a lot of times, kids and young people, when they go through those kinds of experiences, they blame those parents. There's no forgiveness in that. But what you're saying is that sometimes you don't have the knowledge, and sometimes parents just do the very best that they can at the time. I love what you're saying. Go ahead.

Tom Glaser: Thank you, but this comes after years and years of psychotherapy and looking at it. There's a stage where blame is appropriate, Clarence. There's a stage where we need to do that for ourselves because I thought I was to blame. I thought I was screwed up and that there was something wrong with me.

And when I came to realize, "Wait a minute, maybe they were in the wrong," I'd never been able to have my anger before. I had to have my anger first. I had to have my own rage about it before I could come to any kind of understanding or compassion for them. And that's just a much later stage that comes from really being with it and having self-compassion.

You can't force it, and I see too many people trying to come to forgiveness too soon, before their nervous system is ready. You've got to have the full feelings and know you are okay. And not just from yourself—I'm emphasizing self-compassion here, but none of this happened in isolation. This happened in my own group therapy, which I write about in the book. It happened in psychotherapy with my psychotherapist. It happened because I have friends whom I can trust, with whom I was able to talk about it, and all these people said, "Tom, that wasn't your fault." I got a consistent message over time.

If a child can get those kinds of messages really quickly—and what does that mean? Within a month. We now know it's within a month; there's actually a time period where it has to be quite quick. Children need to be reassured; they need to know they're loved. If children get that, often a trauma response does not develop over time. If they're not met emotionally—and I was not, I was not reassured... I had a lot of love, I did, but I didn't have enough specific love and reassurance about what I was enduring. I didn't have enough protection. I didn't have somebody come in and say, "Their behavior is not okay, we're not going to allow this to happen to you." That's what I needed, and nobody did that. So, I developed a trauma response. I developed false beliefs about myself, about the world, and about other people. I thought I couldn't trust other people, and it interrupted my relationships. Yeah, go ahead.

Stanton Shanedling: So, you know, Clarence, Barry, and myself, we come from public health and medical backgrounds, and we're trained to look at things perhaps simply in the sense of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, okay? And one thing that struck me, at least from reading the book, is: wait a minute now, how can we get to the point where we can truly prevent these types of things from happening? So, Barry, I'd really like to pull you in here. I can only imagine that in your practice along the way, you dealt with patients with medical-oriented issues, but also maybe these types of mental health issues as well.

Barry Baines: Yeah, well, I think that medical model of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment works for some things in a very simplistic way, but quite honestly, to me—again, this is a personal opinion—it doesn't work that way in the real world for a couple of reasons. I'm going to be hoping for some help from Tom on this as I lay this out a bit.

One of the things that's most unrecognized is the significant trauma events that we experience as a part of life. You can't get through life without having ups and downs and having traumas. And I think, Tom, what you point out is that there is this time frame between when a person experiences a trauma and when it can become significant, and that's very individualized. Things that might roll off my back, or Clarence's, or Stan's back, might affect someone else differently. And something that really bothers me a lot, Stan might say, "Barry, what's the big deal? It happens to me every day." So, the response is very individualized.

The other piece of this, to me, is that the role of resilience is also unrecognized or underestimated. You need a tool. But what I'm hearing, Tom, from you—and I'll confess, I haven't read your book yet, however, I did research on it and saw one of the interviews you did about a month ago on CBS talking about the book—is this idea that if it's not addressed right away, people start to construct things to bury it, basically, to try and get on top of it, so it never gets resolved. It's like a volcano that's going to break out and explode somewhere unless it's addressed appropriately.

Two things from a medical perspective: as a family doctor or pediatrician, identifying trauma that's significant enough is hard because oftentimes you only see people for acute illnesses or once a year. So, I think the acute medical model is not necessarily going to be very helpful.

And then the other piece is, what's the toolbox that parents need? Like, if your parents had a better toolbox... yeah, I could say love and reassurance, but how do you do that? It's not like a magic formula. A lot of it centers around love and caring, and again, the ability to reassure.

But as you pointed out, our parents had their own traumas that were very different from ours. On the TV interview, you talked about Isabella, and how her behavior toward her son was very much related to her trauma that she never really dealt with regarding her father committing suicide, things like that. So medically, it's about trying to understand that, but the timeliness of it—and I think this becomes more of a public health issue—is how do we educate the community from an educational standpoint and give them tools so that they don't just have a hammer, where everything becomes a nail. That's sort of my first take. I hope that makes some sense.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah. Tom, you know, I've often said that if somebody says they don't have craziness in their family, they're either lying or they're all dead, you know? And so, I think most people agree that at some level, whether it's their immediate family, extended family, or what have you, there's some... in Yiddish, it's called mishagas, right?

Tom Glaser: Hell yeah, a mess.

Stanton Shanedling: Okay. So, a question I really have for you is: how do you actually identify trauma? I mean, trauma is a really heavy word, and it's a heavy diagnosis, as opposed to just sadness, angst, or just being depressed. How do you make that distinction to the level where it becomes trauma?

Tom Glaser: Gosh, you know, what's coming to mind is a client I just saw yesterday who has a tremendous amount of medical anxiety because of inappropriate touch by former medical providers as a child. Horrible, horrible, inexcusable. If we're lucky enough to live to a certain age, we're going to need some medical attention, and she must see medical professionals from time to time.

There's a way, Stan, she talks about it where there's pressure in her speech. The speed at which she talks about these medical things, her anticipation of them, and her fear—it's loaded. It's more than just... everybody gets a little nervous, everybody's heart rate goes up a little bit, generally speaking, when they go to see the doctor. Everybody gets a little scared or there's some trepidation. That's typical, that's usual. Just about everybody has a little bit of that.

This is way more; I can just feel it when she's talking about it. There's the pressured speech, and she goes on about it for so long. These are clues to me that there's something more here—this is more than usual. And then just getting curious: what's this about? Reflecting it back to her: "There's a lot of pressure in your speech. You talk so much more about this than about..." Just reflecting back what I'm hearing and seeing. That alone is actually validating. People are afraid to do that kind of thing, thinking we shouldn't point that out or we can't tell people that. No, you can! You can say that to people, and it actually feels validating. She feels validated: "Oh, you see how anxious I am?" "Yeah, you're really anxious about that." So that's...

Stanton Shanedling: You're saying that trauma, based on your professional experience, you kind of see it as almost a different level. It's just much more magnified.

Tom Glaser: Correct, yes.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, yeah. So, Clarence, I thought of this as I was reading the book as well, from a community perspective. We're all brought up in communities, groups of people, or neighborhoods. It seems to me that your environment around you can just be traumatic. Clarence, any thoughts on that?

Clarence: I agree with you. In fact, trauma is one of the things that's often mentioned in terms of community conversations, but I don't think that trauma is always fully understood. It's experienced, but it's not truly understood enough in a way to address it. In some communities, it's just like, "suck it up," which is normal. This is the way the system works, so you have to figure out ways to navigate through those kinds of things.

I have a colleague, Sam Simmons, who does a lot of work around trauma and is very, very good at it, but it's really hard sometimes for people to understand trauma because they think it's normal. And then the conversation community-wise is that it's just the way it is, and so you continuously have this kind of behavior that occurs both internally and externally because no one really understands what trauma really is. They know they don't feel good, they know it creates behavior issues, but what is it? Having that kind of information is very, very important, and that's why I said your book is kind of smooth. It's the kind of smoothness that people can look at and say, "Okay, I think that's the entry point for a lot of people to talk about this issue," because you're so open in terms of how you express yourself.

Tom Glaser: Thank you, Clarence. Yes, and I see this so often: people don't know that what they experienced was trauma because, like you were just saying, it just becomes so normal. I talked about that in my own experience—I just thought this is what people had, I had no idea. And so, yes, that's where education can really help.

And again, that validation helps because there is denial, and by the way, that is a survival mechanism, right? We have this wired deep within us so we can continue. So, yes, we stuff it down, like Barry was saying earlier, like that volcano. We stuff it down so we can survive. That is not bad, that's not wrong—it's a good thing that we can survive, right? The trouble is we overuse these techniques that work. If we're stuffing, stuffing, stuffing trauma, there are other things we end up stuffing, too. Like, I kept myself from being as close to people as I possibly could get to protect myself. "I'm not going to let you hurt me, so I'm going to be distant," right? So then my relationships were not as full and complete as they could be.

But what I was going to say about the denial... oh yeah, the validation. Helping people understand that what they experienced was traumatic opens them up once they get it. It's a relief: "Oh! That's what that was, and that's why I experienced it that way, and that's why I act this way now." Then it begins to make sense, and then you can get some traction. If they want to change their lives, they can begin to start to melt, right? Because we get frozen with trauma.

And trauma, by the way, traumatic memories are stored in the brain differently than other non-traumatic memories. They get stored in the brain in a really stuck way, right? That's protective, that's good, that's not bad—that's how we survive. Later, though, with the help of someone else in the context of a safe, attuned relationship, we can begin to unstuck it, unpack it, and eventually, they become much more like non-traumatic memories. I'm not saying I'm the poster child, but you can hear me—there's a way I can talk about this stuff now that's very different than I could have talked about it 20 or 30 years ago, where I would have been more emotional, I might have been crying, or I might have had a shame attack while talking about it. I can talk about it now... I don't love talking about it, but I can talk about it, right? It's like, "This happened, I know it happened."

Stanton Shanedling: It's released, yeah. Let's talk about that in some of the examples of clients that you gave in the stories, where it really struck me when people just started crying as a release. It was really interesting how you wrote that—how you just let them cry, because that is truly a release.

My doctoral advisor when I was getting my doctorate was Dr. Robert ten Bensel, an international expert in the area of child abuse and neglect. We did a lot of teaching together in that area, and my focus was prevention, and his was from a medical perspective. I can honestly tell you that in all the teachings that we did, the word "trauma" never came up. It just wasn't part of it. It was called child abuse and neglect, or sexual abuse. It was maybe more of a medical diagnosis then, but trauma was never part of our vocabulary, which I personally find very interesting.

All right, so the other thing I wanted to bring up as it relates to Clarence and community is the stuff that goes on around us, okay? You might have been brought up... I'll just use you as an example if you don't mind, Tom... you might have been brought up in a perfect family, let's just call it perfect for illustration here. But think about all the stuff that's going on around us now: war, political angst—I'll just call it that, okay? And what I have noticed is how people react to it, and I just wonder whether or not trauma plays itself out in that type of an arena as well—not just personally in you, but also externally with what's going on around you.

Tom Glaser: Yes, I have a lot of thoughts about that. I'll first say... so yes, in addition to intergenerational trauma, which I was referencing earlier when I talked about my own parents, we have collective trauma. And absolutely, I believe we are experiencing that as a culture right now, Stan. And I would also venture to say that trauma is what has caused much of this strife in our culture. I think we are acting out all the trauma individually and collectively.

So here we are as a culture, as a society—we have an opportunity to wake up, right? The culture is saying something's going on, just like an individual I might work with. Like I was talking about that client with the pressured speech and so much anxiety, the culture is calling us as a collective to say, "Whoa, slow down here, let's look at what has happened. What's our history? What's stuck in us as a culture?" Just like traumatic memories are held in the brain differently, the same thing applies to us collectively. We have free will; we can look at it or we cannot, just like clients can look at their trauma or choose not to. Many people don't, and many people do, and I have no judgment.

I guess I sort of do have a judgment, actually, to be honest. I believe it's better if we do look at our trauma because we can contribute to the world better. I don't know if this answers your question, but that's what immediately comes to mind.

Stanton Shanedling: You know, and you think about, for instance, unfortunately, the rise of anti-Semitism—that's really creating angst for a lot of people. If you think about Holocaust survivors who went through that trauma—and I'll call that trauma, of course—how they react to what they're seeing around them now, and whether that kind of "here we go again" attitude surfaces. And so anyway, I found it to be that there's internal trauma, and then there are external forces that could cause the trauma.

Tom Glaser: Absolutely.

Stanton Shanedling: So, help me out with coping. Once you... again, great client stories... think about how these clients of yours have coped and how they've gotten better, because they all had it at some level.

Tom Glaser: Yeah, absolutely. So, here's where we get at resilience. The analogy I love to use is of a bridge. Think of the Golden Gate Bridge, right? There are these pillars—really tall pillars that are planted firmly in the ground, concrete and steel, some of the strongest materials we know. That's like internal strength in a person. And then there are external supports, the cables, right? Those keep the Golden Gate Bridge standing for decades or hundreds of years. Resilience is like that: really noticing what our internal strengths are and what our external supports are.

The model I love to use comes from Dr. Henry Emmons, an integrative psychiatrist based here in Minnesota, who talks about the three pathways: physical, mental, and heart.

Stanton Shanedling: You mentioned that in the book.

Tom Glaser: Yeah, and it starts with the physical because that's the foundation. So, looking at nutrition, looking at movement of the body, looking at sleep hygiene, and looking at all the things we consume—including social media and news these days, which gets a lot of us into trouble—and attending to those things so we balance our brain. Sometimes we take supplements or even medicines so our system can soothe enough and our nervous system can be calm enough so we can do the work that we need to do.

Then comes mindfulness practices, so we wake up to our thoughts, starting with the breath, yes. But then we can look at the patterns in our mind and the patterns in our emotions, and we can self-soothe enough and refute the irrational messages that, like in my case, got in the way of relationships.

And then we look at the heart: how connected are we with ourselves? How connected are we with other people? How connected are we with something greater—spirituality? How are we giving back? How are we contributing? How open are we?

So: foundation is physical, mindfulness comes second, and connecting the heart comes third. That's the model that I love.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah. One thing that was certainly alluded to throughout your book is the connection that these—frankly, it's not only traumatic events, but just mental health events—can have on potential chronic diseases, like heart disease, for instance. In your experience with some clients, have you ever seen that linkage driving some chronic diseases as well?

Tom Glaser: Oh, I can't speak to it medically, of course, but yes, absolutely. Chronic inflammation leads to these conditions, right? And a lack of attention to the things I was just talking about contributes to or causes inflammation, so absolutely, yes.

Stanton Shanedling: So, I want to link our discussion with a discussion that we had in our last show on pet health—our pets. I can speak from experience, and I know Barry can for sure, where we recently lost our companion, or our soulmate. I can relate; for me, it happened back in October, and I'm still grieving, okay? And it was traumatic when it happened. So, I guess the point I'm trying to make, using that as an illustration, is: do you see distinctions between short-lived trauma—perhaps losing a dear pet—versus this long-standing, historical trauma? Levels of trauma, maybe you could call it.

Tom Glaser: Yeah, right, it's all on a continuum, right? Yeah. Even as I listen to you, Stan, if you don't mind, I hear you and I totally believe you. I'm not minimizing anything you're saying, but I don't hear a traumatic response developing by the way you're talking about this, right? There isn't that pressured speech like in the example I was giving before.

Stanton Shanedling: It would have been different back in October and November.

Tom Glaser: Sure, because of the immediate proximity. Right, but you're on a path—I can just tell you're going to be okay. You're sad, you're going through grief, and it takes a long time to adjust when there's been a being in your home for, I assume, probably what, 14 years or something?

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, it's a long time.

Tom Glaser: Yeah, so it takes a long time. We know with grief that there are chemicals in the body, and again, you guys could probably talk about this more than I can, but being with our companions, whether they're animal or human, is soothing to our systems. It brings positive hormones like oxytocin and serotonin. And when they die, we don't have that same oxytocin release, so physically, you're experiencing that still in your body, Stan. That's grief.

Stanton Shanedling: It's interesting. You know, Clarence, to your point, it's like, "Oh god, okay, everybody has dogs or cats and they all die, okay, move on." Well, in my case—and Barry, I think in your case, too—it's kind of like... I've described it to people not as a companion, but a soulmate, okay? Which makes the grief harder, and maybe that acute trauma harder. Barry, I don't know, you went through all this.

Barry Baines: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also, when you look in your dog's eyes—and they measure this—not only does your oxytocin go up, but the dog's oxytocin levels go up, too, so it really is the connection. But again, it's an acute trauma, it's an acute loss, and that really goes more into grief.

I did want to just circle back to a thing that Clarence was talking about before, because, Tom, I have a two-part question. I think I know what the answers are, so hopefully, this will be a softball question. But it also relates, Stan, to what you were saying. There are acute traumas that we have, and then there are what I'll call chronic traumas or microtraumas. I think that relates to what you were talking about before, Clarence, where everybody says, "Well, this is just the way it is." And what is "the way it is"? Food deserts in communities, housing issues, environmental issues—those are not going to go away.

So, the two-part question for me is: number one, do acute and these micro or chronic traumas affect us differently? And number two, can you build up your resilience muscles regardless of whether it's acute or these microtraumas? Resilience is much more healthy than just coping, because it's more integrated into us and how we relate to people. Can we build up our resilience muscles so that, like the Golden Gate Bridge, we can deal with those strong winds that come in and it's not going to lock us down too much? I hope you can help me understand that a little bit better.

Tom Glaser: I like to think of the resilience question as tending a garden, because even the most low-maintenance garden needs tending from time to time, right? We don't just stuff the tools into a resilience toolbox once and we're done, pulling a tool out whenever we're ready. No, a resilience toolbox requires daily maintenance. It means basically a daily practice—like, I've got to work out most days, I've got to be careful with what I eat and not eat junk food every day, and I need to have connection with another person pretty much every day. We've got to tend our gardens to keep the muscles going.

In terms of the other question, if I understand it correctly, whatever the trauma is, it affects the nervous system in the same way. That's basically what it comes down to, right? So, in a way, yes, they're all different and they look different, but if it's a trauma, it affects us in a basically universal way. Does that answer the question?

Barry Baines: Well, it sort of does. With the microtrauma or continuous, chronic trauma, you kind of keep getting those neurochemical reactions all the time, whereas with acute trauma, you get a blast, but then it ultimately resets over time—like with the loss of Murphy or the loss of Riker. Over time, it resets a little bit, whereas under chronic stress, you're wearing something out. That's the kind of thing I mean.

Tom Glaser: Got it, yeah. I understand the question better now. More chronic or repeated traumas, like what I experienced, are far more likely to develop into a long-term trauma response, because we call it complex trauma or complex PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). That's when people get really overwhelmed. Yeah, you nailed it.

Stanton Shanedling: Here's an example: my dad passed away when I was young—or what I considered to be young, I was 26. As I reflect on that, I think of it as traumatic when it happened, because I recall saying, "Now what the hell? Where do I go now without my father's guidance?"

And then it morphed into grief, which, by the way, I'm still dealing with. As you go through life, you raise a family or you work, and you kind of put that grief that you should have maybe dealt with back then off to the side, okay? For me, I can speak openly about it: dealing with grief at an older age is not the easiest thing to do, at least it isn't for me. But addressing it is releasing as well. Talking about it, no matter when it is—doesn't matter when—adds to your resilience. That's my take on it, at least.

Tom Glaser: Absolutely, that's my whole work right there, yes. And yes, that was traumatic. 26 is too young. There's this cultural thing where we say once you reach the age of majority—18 or 21—you're an adult and you're supposed to be able to handle things. No, 26 is too young. Forget about it. That is a trauma.

I have a client with a very similar story, and it's fascinating... I just have found a way to empower myself where I channel his dad. This is what I do: I just tell him, "Your dad would not want you to be suffering in this way. Your dad would not want you to be thinking this way. It's not what he would have wanted for you." And I tell him to look at what his ancestors would hope for him: "How illuminated would your ancestors feel about you now? How would your dad feel about what you've accomplished?" Stuff like that.

Stanton Shanedling: Yeah, you know, part of that—and you've got to get over it—is what your head tells you, but your heart is still pumping a different way, you know? They have to come into sync. Wow, this has been... absolutely.

Clarence: I have a question, though, Stan, before we head out. Okay, Tom, we've acknowledged the fact that we love the book, and we definitely have appreciated you and your presentation today, but from your perspective, what makes your book unique?

Tom Glaser: Oh my gosh, thank you. A couple of things. The inside look into the thought processes of a therapist is pretty dang rare, in my experience. There are some chapters later in the book—after the core chapters, which focus on composite client cases where I bring the reader through key moments in trauma therapy—that show what really makes the difference in bringing a childhood trauma survivor to resilience.

But later in the book, there's a chapter on what to expect if you come to see me for therapy, and it really looks at the whole arc and the resistances that come up in a client. There's also a section on what to do if a loved one tells you they are a trauma survivor. How do you respond? That is not really out there. I wasn't going to include it because I thought it was already out there, but I googled it and couldn't find that kind of thing.

There's also a chapter on what to look for in a therapist. Same thing—I thought it was out there, but it's not, so I included that. Those are chapters that there's just not enough out there about, in my humble opinion.

And as far as my own story, it's pretty rare for therapists to really expose their own history, for good reason—we don't want to contaminate the clients' experiences. But again, I'm old enough that it just doesn't matter anymore. Who cares? Nobody cares, so I appreciate that.

Clarence: You care about yourself.

Stanton Shanedling: We do care about you.

Barry Baines: I care about you, Tom.

Tom Glaser: Thank you!

Stanton Shanedling: Well, our crew does some great background research, and this statistic really struck me: nearly two-thirds of United States adults reported at least one adverse childhood experience, and approximately 1 in 6 adults reported four or more. They reported it, and then it begs the question: how do they deal with it going forward?

Stanton Shanedling: And that’s exactly the point, isn't it? One in six adults with four or more of these experiences—that's a lot of packed-down volcanoes walking around our communities. Tom, as we start to wrap up here, what is the one big takeaway you want someone who is struggling with their past to know when they pick up The House That Resilience Built?

Tom Glaser: It’s never too late. That is the honest-to-god truth. It doesn’t matter if you are 26, 46, or 86. The neuroplasticity of our brains means we can rewire these stuck, frozen places at any stage of life. But you can’t do it in isolation. We are wounded in relationships—whether that’s with a parent or a bully at school—and we have to heal in relationships. Find your safe people, tend your resilience garden every day, and don't be afraid to ask for help.

Stanton Shanedling: Beautifully said, Tom. Truly. Well, folks, the book is The House That Resilience Built by Tom Glaser. Go out and get it. It’s a 10 in my book, and it will give you some incredible insights into your own life and the lives of the people around you.

Tom, thank you so much for being with us today on Health Chatter. We really appreciate your openness, your expertise, and your heart.

Tom Glaser: Thank you, Stan. Thank you, Clarence and Barry. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Clarence: Thank you, Tom. Keep up the great work.

Barry Baines: Yes, thank you, Tom. I’m looking forward to reading it.

Stanton Shanedling: And thank you to our wonderful crew, for making us look good every single week. Thanks again to our sponsor, Hueman Partnership Alliance. Check them out at huemanpartnershipalliance.org.

And to our listeners, remember to check us out at Health Chatter Podcast. Put your questions on our website, read the transcripts, and most importantly, take care of yourselves and each other. We’ll see you next week!