Embracing Post-Traumatic Growth: The Dark Knight of Your Soul and the Resilience of First Responders and Veterans

Speaker 1: Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of Entering the Badge Podcast. I'm your host, jerry Dean Lund, and I don't want you to miss an upcoming episode. So please hit that subscribe button and, while your phone is out, please do me a favor and give us a review on iTunes or Apple Podcasts. It says, hey, this podcast has a great message and we should send it out to more people. So please take that 30 seconds to a minute to do that review and just maybe by doing that it will push this up into someone's podcast feed that really needs this message.

Speaker 1: Number one I'm super excited to announce that I've teamed up with an incredible person, and that person is Dr Tia White. She is a public safety, wellness and empowerment specialist. Together, we have combined our knowledge and expertise to create a five day training course. Now that training course, you can attend different days of that training course, whichever ones fit you, but day one would be peer support and how to structure that and get your team up and running and maybe some of the legalities about that. Days two, three and four are going to be about advanced wellness and sleep and finances and family dynamics and diet and nutrition Complete first responder. For more details.

Speaker 1: My very special guest today is Jessica. She is a documentary film producer, she does some podcasting and she also has some background in educational course production. Jessica is an incredible journalist and you're going to see that, not only in this podcast if you're able to watch it on YouTube, but you're going to just hear it in her voice and her enthusiasm for the story she is telling about post traumatic growth and maybe some of the stories that we're telling ourselves that aren't actually true, or maybe there's a different way to handle post traumatic growth than you've been taught. We dive down deeply into this. I think it's very fun and fascinating. We both share some personal experiences and get very vulnerable about some things, but it's really a lot about the movie that she is producing. It's incredible. It's called The Dark Knight of Your Soul and the other thing is you can support her filmmaking and this movie by a Kickstarter campaign and we'll put all that in the show notes and details so you can do that.

Speaker 1: But let's jump into this episode with Jessica and the funny introduction that I had with her and I didn't cut it out, so this is a vulnerable one for me. Alright, welcome to during the Badge Podcast. My very special guest today is Jennifer Depazzi. She's a documentary film producer. Hey, jessica, how are you doing?

Speaker 3: Hey, well, you got my last name right, but you got my first name wrong. Oh dang, what did I say, jennifer? but you know what's so funny, jerry? people call me Jennifer all the time. I don't know what it is. Maybe I should have been a Jennifer. Literally hundreds of people have said that.

Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so when I start typing you an email this morning, i did type Jennifer. It's my bad, i'm sorry.

Speaker 3: It's funny because right before we hopped on, we were like practicing my last name and then Well, thank you so much for having me on, jennifer.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 3: No worries, please don't apologize.

Speaker 1: Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about the project?

Speaker 3: Yeah, so really excited to be on to talk about Dark Knight of Our Soul. It's a film that we've been working on since 2019, but really the inception started in 2016 when I met my partner, jeff Depazzi, and he was a at the time, 15 years into the military and in JTF2. So he was a sniper in Canada's Tier 1 Special Forces And near the end of his service there, when he was considering getting out. They have a lot of talks with these guys around PTSD and just the inevitability of that sentence. More or less, this is something that's going to happen and congratulations, you get the full package right. So us being that was hard for us to resolve because he seemed fine. I really loved my time in the service and I became a really a better version of myself because of all of the hardships that I went through. Right.

Speaker 3: A couple of years in, he was diagnosed to have severe PTSD, and so you might know this from a lot of the people that you've worked with. But a few years after you go into civilian life, that's when a lot of these symptoms can occur, because there's a lot of alone time, perhaps at a time when you need stimulation the most. It's kind of taken away right, and there's this whole rejig of your identity and what you're even doing here. So in this process we looked at his first statement I am a much better, wiser version of myself because of what I went through and I have PTSD. How can these two things be the same thing? What is that?

Speaker 3: So we came across this term, the scientific name of this, which is post traumatic growth, and so this film is really a philosophical exploration on how we can be fuller, more expressed, wiser, stronger versions of ourselves because of the things that we've gone through, not despite them. Now, what we found was the manifestation of that doesn't necessarily look like what we think it looks like. Getting better doesn't necessarily look like what we think getting better is in terms of conventional wisdom. It doesn't just mean being happy all the time. It means feeling a lot, you feel a lot. So, yeah, and just that was the inception of the film, and we're bringing this to the first responder community, to the veteran community and really to anybody that's experiencing life in general, because adversity and trauma is part of the human skeleton of our experience. It happens to everybody. So first responders in particular are a great audience for this, because it's something that you guys are very aware of and are tackling head on now, thankfully.

Speaker 1: Yeah, You brought up a lot of great points. Where did the PTSD? how did we just start framing that in society? Like what do you know about that? Like how that just became something that is, so I don't know, prevalent now?

Speaker 3: Well being different on the other side of trauma has existed ever since. We probably had a pre-fungal cortex, so that's not new. But I'd imagine and I don't know this for sure, but just giving the timing of it PTSD was named scientifically and recognized in the early 80s, so it wasn't actually that long ago, and I'd imagine it was the result of the Vietnam War, a lot of these guys coming back, men and women coming back from really devastating experience, and just let loose and left to cope with their own devices, and then we had just come off of two other world wars. So it was just ripe for understanding what is actually happening here, as we're seeing family units fall apart, veteran suicides falling apart, and just that recognition. Now, what was interesting also was that post-traumatic growth was also named at that same time, which is really curious.

Speaker 3: Right That there is a negativity bias around how we are different on the other side of trauma, and then there's also this positive like what are the benefits? There are benefits to going through the hard thing and testing those edges and seeing what you are able to survive and what you're capable of doing. The problem, though, is like a systemic one. You don't make money from helping people heal Like you watch the documentary short version recently, and one of our experts, anderson Todd, who's the Assistant Director of Wisdom and Consciousness Studies at the University of Toronto, talks about the study from Goldman and Saxe that asks the question is healing people a good profit model? Right, yeah, no, it's not.

Speaker 3: It is profitable to keep people sick, so PTSD really took off. Now, of course, there are a lot of benefits to understanding the complexities of something like PTSD. There's a lot of great work around it, but I personally feel like it's irresponsible to not talk about the other side, because the other side does exist, and so if we focus our narrative into just the bad things that are going to happen, well, what do you think is going to happen? We assume they're going to happen. We look for them in our environment. We get the diagnosis and we're like yes, that's me and this is my only option. Go to therapy here and there. Yes, that's helpful too, but to really believe that you can actually be a better version of yourself on the other side of it is something that really needs to be explored. So that's why we're doing what we can to pick up the baton of post-traumatic growth and bring it to as many people as possible. So that's really like. The whole point of this film is to raise awareness around post-traumatic growth.

Speaker 1: Yeah, is that different than like being resilient post-traumatic growth?

Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good question. So defining these things is tricky. There's no real exact science when it comes to the humanities, but if we were to play around with like a graph to make things simpler? if we look at the whatever this access?

Speaker 3: is let's say it's Y, that would be like your coping, your level of coping, with something thriving. Let's say it's thriving and then, this being time, so as the event happens and it can be one remarkable event or can more likely be a series of little events that chip away at your sense of trust And actually I think the best way to start with this would be to identify what is trauma. So Anderson Todd's theoretical work around what trauma is is that it's a breakdown of trust. So let's say your dad is telling you I'm going to go to your soccer game and he never shows up. And if he doesn't show up once it's like, oh, dad didn't show up, not a big deal. He's telling you he's going to show up and never shows up.

Speaker 3: Then that sense of trust between you and your father starts to break down and that can be traumatic. And then you start to perhaps associate that with other people. Maybe I can't trust other people. And if that starts happening enough and you start creating this environment of distrust in your life, you start to distrust yourself, like is it a me problem, and so that's where things can get really messy. So that's something unremarkable. A lot of times we talk about trauma and it's something crazy happens A lot of people ask me why did I get interested in this?

Speaker 3: I must have some crazy trauma story.

Speaker 3: I don't. My story is totally unremarkable. I have nothing interesting to say about it, but I'm very aware of these little micro moments in my life that made me different. I'm like, oh, that's interesting, which is why I got into this work. So back to that graph. We have a traumatic event that happens, or a series of traumatic events, something that's broken down your trust, and then usually you will dip into a less coping strategy. We call that poetically the dark night of our soul. Dark night of the soul, right, it's a great poem. But it's this feeling of devastation and lostness, or numbness or not enoughness, or just really unpleasant pit, and some people stay there. Some people stay there and that can be considered PTS, right, post-traumatic stress. And then through time some people stay there and some people will start to go up to that scale and they get back to that coping level. And that's resilience, that's like.

Speaker 3: I'm back to where I was everything's good. When we talk about post-traumatic growth, it's going beyond that. It's going beyond that thriving level that you started off with, to another level of inner strength, another level of being able to relate to other people, another level of wanting to be of service in a way that you didn't have access to before.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so once you go through the dip and come up, you're really never the same person again, right?

Speaker 3: So exactly That's why this graph is like a terrible example, because you can experience growth and stress at the same time. The graph should look like this There's always a forward movement in terms of time.

Speaker 3: But, like I mentioned before, this experience of being better is actually experiencing more of life. There are a lot of different ways that this has been said over time. Alan Watts said I can never quote him as well as I should but you can only experience the level of highs as you can experience the level of lows, and you can experience quite a bit of lows without experiencing those highs. But it doesn't work that same way when you experience pleasure. There's just something about it that when you can really really experience the pleasure of life, there's something about that that you can also feel the despair of that as well. Just think about the greatest love you've ever had for your baby, for one of your six children which congratulations on having six children There's something about feeling how much you love them, and isn't it also common to like?

Speaker 3: well, what is that love feeling? There's a sense of longing, and maybe I just hope I can be the best dad ever. Or, like you love your wife And one day we're gonna die.

Speaker 3: There's always this, something on the other side of it, that's heavy too, So that's what we talk about in terms of what is growth, even, it's all of that. It's all of that and holding space and having grace for yourself to experience all of those things. Because there is actually something else that I wanted to get into in terms of PTSD, that relates more to the first responder community and to the veterans and people who really resonate with a hero being the hero. I see that big flag behind you and like what a great image of our current idea of a hero, right, somebody sacrificing their life to make something themselves better in the world, better fights evil, more or less. So.

Speaker 3: This is from the work of Will Store, who's a New York Times journalist, and he talks about something called the perfection of self, somebody who's cultured or chosen a path of performance right.

Speaker 3: And so, as you know, in the service or the frontline, there are SOPs, there are trainings or chains of command, there are special words that you use, you know, like jargon.

Speaker 3: There's all these things that help to mitigate mistakes And these things help you perform as perfectly as possible. Now, clearly, that has benefits, obviously, but it also has some devastating challenges in the civilian world, and I think the best way to dive into this whole thing is to talk about how this might be a universal story for all of us, not just the first responder, right? So if we look at Greek mythology which we in the West have really like integrated our culture as like kind of the skeleton of how we live our lives, they talk about brave heroes who go on these wild adventures. They are in pursuit of these dangerous monsters and to bring back these remarkable prizes. Right? They've mythologized this belief that great strength and, like, lots of love can be gained from the person that struggles and that presents significant courage in the face of danger, and in doing so they can change their lives and they can change the world for the better, right? So 2,500 years later, we're still telling those stories and living these stories, right?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: In the West, the hero is valorized, and rightfully so. they fight against evil. There's this truth that prevails on the other side of it, and love conquers all, and there are tons of movies about this. You can call this the hero's journey, right.

Speaker 1: Right, it's every movie right, almost Totally.

Speaker 3: Now I want to add that something that's interesting is that these Greek myths are different than the myths of Confucius or Asia. In Asian mythology there's no actually there's no happily ever after. It doesn't like result in any, it's not always like depressing, but it doesn't result in that hero riding off into the sunset. You know there's no closure. You have to give yourself the answer and that's in the Asian culture the kind of the pleasure of the story. Right, and you can see that there's like different problems with both of these kind of cultures.

Speaker 3: But talking about the West here, you know, why does this even matter? You know, because it brings us back to the sense of depression and suicide and PTSD in the ways that we can see how we model ourselves. We can see, like, what's pulling the strings of our actions on a subconscious level. We can see that our first responders and our veterans and people that are like them that may not have even chosen that profession, like even a lot of entrepreneurs, they at a certain point may be feeling like they're living this kind of failed hero story. you know, this sense of defeat because there is no closure when you're working as a I was just listening to the podcast you did with a correctional officer, right, What is the closure of a correctional officer when you see a factory of mentally compromised people who have no way out of their own patterning, Like they don't have a lot of tools, And like how are you able to help them other than just keeping them kind of safe? right? And like right right.

Speaker 3: Or if you're the police officer who's chasing down that same kid. You know, and you're realizing like this kid just needs a dad, right, where's the closure in that? You know, i've talked to a lot of paramedics that have gotten into that, that line of work, because they want to help people. And they're going to car accidents and overdoses and they see the person you know take off and they drop them off in the hospital. It's like okay, like did I help this person, like what happened to this person? Right?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: So consciously, it's like we expect our lives to follow that Greek trajectory where we fight evil, so we should win something on the other side of it and everything becomes better. But when a person's sense of agency, or like a sense of self, starts, it starts to fail when we lose control of the narrative right.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: To me it begs this question Our suicides, our depression and PTSD as a result of being a first responder and in that industry, are they all just kinds of failed hero stories, or perceived failed hero stories? Because in a lot of ways, we can't help but experience our lives story Right, i think it was the work of Chris Chris Berth. He's a neuroscientist. He called this the invisible actor at the center of the world. We feel as if we're the heart of this steadily unfolding plot, one that has good guys and bad guys and quests, and so I think that this is something really important that we need to come to terms with, which is why we're doing this documentary, so we can tell a different kind of story. I think that's where the hero's journey really fails us, and that it doesn't talk about what making the world a better place really means.

Speaker 3: And truthfully, that's a difficult thing to define.

Speaker 1: Right, it's really hard.

Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of great in the trailer that you can watch. There's a lot of great people in there with some great information and different takes on life. I think he kind of touched on something that I think is really hard as a first responder in that. and two things actually, and I'll come back to the one. one is grace giving yourself grace. We don't give ourselves grace because we feel that we have to be perfect. Right, i have to run this call perfectly. I have to go, you know, perform at the highest level every single time I get a call for service.

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 1: And there's not much grace there.

Speaker 3: You know, one of the best tools that I've come across to work with, that is the work of Mark England. He runs, it's called Enlifted And it's all story work. And so, just starting with a simple question of like, what does that say about me? You know, when you're finding yourself in a place where you can't be perfect which logically we know, like we, nobody can be perfect And that's nobody expects us to be perfect But in our hearts, but in our bodies, but in like something else, there's like.

Speaker 3: This says something to me, and that's where journaling can be really helpful just to put some distance between your like emotional state and the thing that you're going through, which is usually just a mood Right, it's what they call like weather, not the climate. If you can put a little distance by doing something as simple as just writing that down, like what does this say about me? And just to look at and be like, is that true? You know, just really really be curious about your own internal state, and that's where this work can be more adventurous than depressing or, you know, or heavy, like you can be the detective of your own story.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, i know just from speaking with many guests and many people. It's just the difficulty of having to fill that pressure of always being perfect. And it may not seem like that's something that we should realize that we can't be, but we feel that, like the communities and our could be in the administration expects us to be pretty pretty much perfect. Right, we're humans But it's very difficult to be perfect. It's very difficult to, if you're a police officer, to make 20, 20, less traffic stops and all 20 of them to be like perfect engagements, because when you're only part of the issue, right, i can't help. Sometimes I can predict how people are going to act by the way I act, but sometimes, you know, their reaction to me is something different. So I just think that's just something hard And I think that's a very great way to look at it is like just going through the journal.

Speaker 1: I personally like journaling. I think that's just getting your thoughts out on a paper helps really sell a lot of like emotions. So I really like that idea. And the other thing I want to come oh, go ahead.

Speaker 3: Oh, i just want to add to that Perfectionism is a really interesting topic in this realm because I mean, you guys get a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure to be perfect. Just give it the news And like little mistakes can be devastating, devastating. Normal people make mistakes all the time And it might not result in the kind of news coverage that a police officer might right.

Speaker 3: When they're in an upregulated state and haven't slept and going through their own things and their own families and whatever. We all know those stories. But another side, if we wanted to take like more ownership around that and talk less from a victim state which is really helpful, i find is to see okay, how am I actively participating in my own, in this own narrative? So, as a police officer, first responder or veteran, you need to be perfect because you are, in a sense, helping people that are weaker, people that need help. Maybe they're literally weak you know sick hurt, something like that Maybe they're emotionally or mentally weak, but whatever it is. The sense of authority also is coupled with perfectionism, and so to then acknowledge or give yourself grace that you are imperfect also may imply that you're weak, and that brings you down to this level that you've been fighting and maybe even deemed you know the bad guy or something.

Speaker 3: If we were just to talk in like the simplest terms Because you know, a lot of times things are as simple as that good and bad, you know, and what do you look out for. And if you've been playing for a certain team your whole life the good team and now you're subconsciously kind of like feeling like you're on the other team, that could be really hard to experience. But I think that just acknowledging that consideration, that weakness in this other world, that you're living on the other side of service, is completely a different state than the thing that you were fighting pre-civilian life.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think first responders struggle in that because we don't ever want to be looked at as weak, right Like we want to not ever portray moments of weakness. And you can do see some out there, And I don't mean when I say sometimes maybe this weakness is showing of emotions. You know, after a critical incident you can see the emotions on a lot of the first responders faces and it's not something that they can continue to hide after probably going through many of these types of calls and stuff like that. So they do have these moments of what they would they would consider themselves probably moments of weakness, showing emotion. So it's a difficult and kind of tricky, tricky mindset to have as a first responder. I think we're things like you're talking we're talking about maybe shed some light on things that are maybe in a different perspective because of the way we've been looking at things. Let's be honest in the first responder world quite often is just culturally the same for decades at a time.

Speaker 3: Yeah, well, to me the work here seems to be longevity, right, Because I think a big reason why a lot of people are doing the work that you do is so that they can also provide for their families.

Speaker 3: Right, So to come home and to be emotionally clear and to be the best mom or dad you can be. I think it's so great that we're having these conversations now around how you can be vulnerable in times that are appropriate, clearly, like there are times where it's appropriate and there are times like you need to cowboy up, you know, yeah, but so that it's not stuffed down and that's also a big focus of the documentary is it doesn't go away just because you ignore it.

Speaker 3: And as we know, with the two and a half year or whatever that time frame is after you get out and you start to experience PTSD, they're finding, like these studies are finding, that it starts to show within two years. So if we can work into the system, and now it's so great that you know, i don't know what it's like behind the scenes. For First Responder. I know more about the veteran community than the First.

Speaker 3: Responder community, but I'd imagine that that you are having more conversations around how to express some of the things that need to be repressed in the moment in ways that are healthy. Is that that's happening?

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I mean there's such a close correlation between the veteran world, the military and the first respond like other first responders, because there's a lot of like paramilitary in those types of work. So there is a lot of like direct links And a lot of this. a lot of great studies come out of the military that are used in the first responder world for different things, including treatments that have come out of the studies on military. So the other thing I wanted to touch on is closure. You know, because that was always a big thing for me is trying to get closure on calls Like and it's a little bit different when I work as like a paramedic to like that's to see like, did the treatment I do work? Was it the right treatment for the patient? that used to be really difficult to get and still can be a little bit difficult to get.

Speaker 1: the hospitals that are, we'll say, progressive and want to like give you that closure, they want to help you like, yeah, you did the right things or maybe you could have done these things a little bit different. This is what we know after running a bunch of tests. you know you would have never probably known as a medic, but we know because we ran all these tests and type of things. So that closure is really important because it does weigh on you heavily wondering. But the other part of closure and I completely had left out until just recent conversation what about closure for your family? when you share some of your stories, they they often don't get closer either when you like, like how was your shift And you could say it was great because of these few things or it was really bad because of these few things. but they never get the closure either.

Speaker 3: Oh, tell me more about that. So what kind of closure do they need? Like closure from you, to be like, and I have resolved this mentally in this way or do they want to know what happened?

Speaker 1: Yeah. So let's say I took this person, they were having chest pain and we took them to the hospital And it was like a really difficult call because we're exactly sure what they were having chest pain And so we kind of dropped them off at the hospital. But let's say, with some reason I don't maybe remind me of my dad or something like had some like something with the back call stood out that I would share with my wife, and then so I share that. She doesn't have any closure either. She kind of wonders in her mind to like whatever happened with that guy. Did he ever like, did they fix his heart? Did they find out it was like something else that they they don't know either. So it weighs on them And it could be lots of different things. So as a first responder, we need to remember to give them closure to and I'm sure that happens in the military as well.

Speaker 3: So, if I can ask you, another question we can play around with this What? what does the closure do in terms of the family, like what? what does that leave them with? I think I just help them.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it just leaves them because they're hanging on that same thread as you and they hear the story after story And I think it just makes them feel like they're kind of like maybe involved in your job, like they're a more intricate part of your, of your job, because in the first responder role there's with a lot of not conversing that conversation that happens at home, because the try to protect our families, right, but if you do share things with your family, they're going to want the closure to. It's just they want to fill people, want closure of things. They don't want to be left hanging on the edge of like what happened, right, you watch those, so those movies, and you're like, wait, it just ended right there.

Speaker 1: Like what happened, like what Are we going to be in a sequel, Or like why did they leave us like that? So that's probably how families are feeling.

Speaker 3: That's really interesting, you know. it's so, so interesting that you brought that up, because it really takes us back to what we were talking about before, around our cultural expectation of closure.

Speaker 3: Yeah this sense of discomfort and like untetheredness when a story isn't finished. But the thing is, you know what I would? what I would argue is what does finished mean He survived? you know, like what would? what is the closure that we need? And this is less of a specific question and more of just like a what if? Yeah, You know, I was watching the news the other day.

Speaker 3: I was like getting my car. Oh my God, I like I have run flats. I had a flat tire for like a long time. I did not know about it, So I just get like my tire completely changed. Anyway, I was in this dismal waiting room And I was watching the news and there's horrifying story. I think it was near me somewhere in Houston And it like it was like a shooting that happened in a family home and some like jealous lover situation, But they didn't harm the kids. So there were three little kids there and like the whole family was murdered basically, And the news anchor was, she said, very matter of fact, thankfully the three children were not harmed in any way, But she also said that they were like covered in blood.

Speaker 3: You know it was like a really graphic story And I was thinking to myself like that is the beginning of an entire story for these kids.

Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you know they will never be the same. And so to me, when I think about closure, i don't think closure ever really doesn't even exist. You know, like closure might be when somebody dies, but that is even the start of somebody else's story. So when we think about like Asian cultures because for anybody listening, i'm half Korean, so like from an Asian perspective, you know we talked about like stories not having closure and that being part of it, there are these things called Zen coins, which are also like these riddles that are unanswerable And you just think about them and you think about them and you think about them And after a while I've never gotten to this point because I don't really get it, but the theory is it opens your mind to like kind of just the perfection of not knowing what the fuck's going on you know, and.

Speaker 3: I think that that is a really interesting thing for us in the West to just consider is there is always an ongoing story, even if somebody survived, or even if you gave them the wrong medication and they died or they were like whatever, like we. I guess this goes more into like my own personal spiritual beliefs. This is okay. This is okay. Yeah, i have to believe in order for the world to make sense for me, i have to believe that in that cliche, that everything happens for a reason, you know that like we're woven into this tapestry of life and we don't know what side of history we're on.

Speaker 3: We can do the next best thing, but we don't know what the results are going to be And as long as I can just do the thing that I think is the next best thing, it brings me so much like it takes a lot of pressure off of me. you know, and I totally understand, that the line of work that I'm in, which is film, is vastly different than the line of work that you're in, but I do think that there's a little something there.

Speaker 1: Oh sure.

Speaker 3: There's in my line of work. it's like high risk, high reward in terms of energy output and like financial gain and making any kind of impact I could make something and spend tons of money on it and nobody will ever see it. There's like a huge risk spend my whole life on something and still never make any kind of media that anyone will care about at all.

Speaker 2: Like that's a huge thing, for filmmakers right.

Speaker 3: So, yeah, just having the belief that all you can do is just the next best thing, and assume that that God, the universe, whatever, is going to take care of the rest, is like the only kind of closure that I can have anyway.

Speaker 1: Yeah, i'm with you, i'm with you, and.

Speaker 3: I get how that sounds. I like talking about film and we're talking about policing and paramedics, but I just trying to draw a little similarity there.

Speaker 1: Well, so you're. You're not really off like, so. Studies have shown that part of being the first responder, one of the like your core values is spirituality.

Speaker 3: That's interesting.

Speaker 1: So it's like I wish I could. There was like three of them, but I cannot remember the other two for some reason off the top of my head. But spirituality, it's a core value for first responders, to no matter, i guess, what you believe it it is. For most first responders it's a big part of their life. So I think there's.

Speaker 3: I would love to hear more about that.

Speaker 1: I think it's for it's like you. You know like what kind of what you're saying. I don't, i just from for me. You have to believe in all the things that you see that there's some higher power out there of, and how that looks for you or for right, someone else's could be different, but through all the trauma and the stuff that you see, you have to believe there's some good out there, there's something that is better out there. Witnessing the different horrific scenes and stuff like that or things to go on Each, i believe there's something better. I mean some. I have a kind of a this is probably. This is off topic, but this is like. I feel like kind of sometimes, like really, that you know people. When people talk about hell, i'm like, yeah, this is probably it, this is probably earth. That could be, you know, just depends on how you look at it. Right, that's that could be here, right here on earth. But I don't know That's interesting.

Speaker 3: My partner, Jeff, recently said on a podcast I thought it was so good. He said hell is like what do you say? Hell is not being able to make sense of your reality.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: And I think, spirituality without it. Whatever that looks like makes sense of a reality. That is like we can take a lot of different perspectives on what reality even is.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: I could live in your home and experience a very different reality than you do And, like one, one of your kids is experiencing a very different reality than the other kid, even though they're living kind of like the same life.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: But that whole belief that like okay, this is a perfect segue into actually the entire thing about this film, is why do bad things happen to good people? You know, I'm sure you've seen some crazy stuff.

Speaker 1: Right, why is?

Speaker 3: this happening, like how can this happen? And some people just seem to be very unlucky, which is like this whole other thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: There's got to be a reason for this, this has got to make sense, and so what we did with the film is we looked at, you know, bio evolutionary standpoint. Why does trauma exist? There is no creation that exists without destruction, ever Like. We look at something that we all understand, which is how our muscles grow.

Speaker 3: You have to tear down, you know some of your muscles in manageable ways, And then they build back up stronger and more resilient and with more capacity, The way that some might believe. I don't know what's true in terms of this, but how the planets were formed right. There are theories around like massive explosions and combustion, and you know, chaos, just chaos happening in the cosmos that created the planets and eventually created us, and we even look at, yeah, how life on this planet was created. you know it's a lot of collisions, a lot of mistakes.

Speaker 3: A lot of adaptations right. With the changing of the weather, creatures need to adapt, and so they create limbs or they get scales, or they create wings or whatever. So our response to trauma is always an adaptation to create a new reality. Now where that gets tricky for us humans is we like things to be easy. I love things to be easy.

Speaker 1: I love being comfortable.

Speaker 3: My house is at a comfortable 20, like 70, 70 degrees, all the time you know. But I know that and you know Amazon like they can practically deliver food right into your mouth these days, right, yeah, yeah, in terms of history that we're aware of anyway. And so with all of these conveniences, like we've forgotten and this is not me on a soapbox, because I have all the things that I avoid as well. But we've forgotten the purpose of trauma, which is to grow and adapt from it.

Speaker 2: We want to medicate it away.

Speaker 3: We want to make it a go away and we want to just forget. it even happened that the purpose of trauma is to help us grow. So growth after trauma isn't just possible, It's not just a phenomenon, It's bio-evolutionarily probable. And what's supposed to happen Now? the thing we had talked about before giving yourself grace to understand, to sit with that that's that gestation period where we find the elixir Back to that hero's journey. We go into the underworld, We go into that pit of hell, We go into our deep dark areas to reclaim these parts of ourselves that we lost. And if we don't come back up with them, that's one of the worst things that can happen, which is that just sucked and it sucked. That was it.

Speaker 2: There was nothing that came from it.

Speaker 3: So again, sometimes the simplest question when we go into those dark places, well, isn't a question at all, it's just to feel it, and I'm sure you've heard that before and people listening have been like you. got to feel it, to heal it.

Speaker 1: It's true.

Speaker 3: There's not a lot of learning. That happens when you're upset You just get through it. But on the other side, when you're starting to feel like you're back to a status quo and things are okay and you have some space for yourself, that's when the real work begins. That's when you start thinking okay, why did I just go through that? What was the purpose of that? And I think this is my theoretical work. I think you actually have to intentionally do that. I think for it to happen out of happenstance requires a lot of synchronicities, a lot of luck for you to just all of a sudden be like oh, i'm better now.

Speaker 3: I do think that we need to intentionally look at what happened and forge a new path forward with what we learned from that, what mistakes to avoid where we really showed up.

Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, when you were talking about this, i remember the part in the trailer that I watched about this on the cellular level of things taking place. Do you wanna get into that a little bit, because I have my own personal beliefs. I believe that a lot of things that we fail and hear and see and do is right And I know it's been scientifically proven in different places that it affects you on a cellular level.

Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so I'm not the science person, but I'm gonna talk about something that wasn't in the doc poorly. Researchers have just recently discovered that, like music can alter the what do they call it? Cellular structures vibrate like, not music like vibrations different you know, they can alter a cellular structure.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: So that's why you can listen to certain kinds of music and be like I actually feel a lot better. You know, maybe it's not even the words, but it's just like the vibe, right?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Now we can also consider our thoughts in the same way, because our thoughts, even though they're not like audible to anybody else, they're audible to us, right? So that implies, in a way, that our thoughts can affect our cellular structure. Now, that's also a tricky thing to like consider because we don't wanna limit our thinking Like I don't wanna think about that because that's bad and I don't want that to mess up myself you know It's good it's good.

Speaker 3: There's a right Like all of this is really so nuanced. But the thing is, to really think about it and to really feel into it allows you to do it in one massive fail swoop And sure you'll come across it here and there. but it's kind of like, if you don't do that, who's that?

Speaker 3: kid from Charlie Brown Pigpen, You know just like without addressing it and just cleaning it up and like feeling it and just being like what is this? It just sort of hovers around like a dirt cloud, you know, and it's a subconscious thought process that's always happening. Now, that's the thing that we wanna avoid. So that was my thought on the cellular thing. I don't know if that was at all what you were talking about, though.

Speaker 1: No, you did touch on it. There's just a lot of science that's coming out, you know Unless I'll break this down, maybe even a little bit different right, i think you sense energy of people, would you say that to be true? Yeah, right, and a lot of people can do it. So I mean, i feel like there's this we're giving. we know our bodies give off energy, and stuff like that. So I just think, with the science and stuff that's out there, that they're like your thoughts to affect your cellular structure, how things are working in your body. I think they're just proving that over and over in different ways and different you know like, and also proving that, yeah, you can sense other people's energy. Like we know that people give off energy. We can see it that they give off energy.

Speaker 3: Oh yeah, i could get really weird with that, but I'll be practical here and say a really good example is like thought forms. Sometimes people have such strong thought forms that it becomes the reality and other people treat them like that. So let's say that you were like bullied your whole life and your like your thought form. is that like people pick on me?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: And if you've ever had this experience I have, where I just like feel like making fun of this person. I don't ever make fun of people, but I just feel like teasing this guy for some reason. You know, we all know that guy right. It's like easy to kind of make fun of like the little brother sort of, even though he's older or bigger or whatever doesn't really matter.

Speaker 3: But and then you can even be like, why are we all doing this? This is so weird, like he's not weird, like there's nothing about him, but his own thought form sends off this just vibe that like I am the person that you make fun of and everyone sort of like buys into it. So that's how. That's how this work kind of, in a funny sense, is so real, you know, like the way that we think about ourselves and we go back to that failed hero story we keep thinking about, like the ways in which maybe we're not helping and this is all all for naught And I'm just a part of a system that, over a factory of people that are f'd up, you know that can create more of that. So, to conclude this documentary, the question was really like why do this work in the first place?

Speaker 3: It's more than a very self positive and self surveying thing to work on yourself, to help yourself become more whole and to grow.

Speaker 3: It's way more than that, even though that's great.

Speaker 3: It's really a moral responsibility for everyone around us to heal ourselves, which is controversial because you shouldn't you know, you shouldn't tell people you have to heal Like that's not a good strategy, but by any means I'm so aware of that But also to recognize that the way that we show up is everything, because the people that are making these huge decisions in the world our politicians, our governments, our corporations, policymakers, parents you know they're just people like you and me, and if they're not looking through the clearest lenses if possible, well, that's why we have so many systemic issues.

Speaker 3: That's why we have that whole laundry list of social issues that there are trillions of documentaries about. It's all stemmed from people that have their own agendas and they're just doing the best that they can, but they're so fogged up by their own BS you know their own like unresolved stories of childhood dad not picking them up and having trust issues and pointing fingers at people that. So our team really believes that if people can subscribe to post-traumatic growth as possibly our greatest mission on this planet, then a lot of that other stuff will just naturally be resolved, maybe not in our generation, but for our kids. Right, because they're really like I say this in jest sometimes because it's a little bit depressing to say I think we can as adults. We are gonna live some fantastic lives if we choose to, and also, though, like it's really about the kids.

Speaker 3: You know, the work that we're doing right now is to help them grow up with as many tools as possible to like, grow up with grace to learn from the mistakes that we had, coming off of an emotionally illiterate you know parents and like grandparents and stuff like that. I'm now understanding the importance of the mission.

Speaker 1: So Yeah Yeah, we've covered some amazing topics that I did not think we would talk about, which is awesome. I love it. But I want, like so why do we want people to go watch this trailer and support it? Like why do we want that? I mean, that seems like a really stupid question, but I know you're going to answer it so well.

Speaker 3: So so for the documentary, like what we're doing right now is raising a Kickstarter campaign, or we are running a Kickstarter campaign to do a couple things to finish the film, because we want custom animations in it, because the topic is a little bit heady and animations can make it really digestible and easy to, easier to consume, but those can be a little bit expensive. So we're raising some funds for that And also to take this to distributors and film festivals and to eventually get it onto a major streaming platform, because we do believe that this adds to the holistic healthcare conversation around the purpose of trauma and what it can do for future generations. And just the feeling sense of the film when you watch it and the feedback that I've gotten is that you know it's not this airy fairy, like everything's going to be fine, you know.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 3: It's kind of intense, but it does add a sense of hope and optimism not blind optimism, but this like forward momentum in a way that I don't think has been told before, and so if we can get it onto something like Netflix or not Geo would just be fantastic. And so the campaign is running until July 6th, so you can go to posttraumaticgrowthfilm and click through to the Kickstarter page And watch the short film, which is 30 minute version of what's going to be a 90 minute feature film, and, yeah, the we're asking for a $15 donation, or more, if you like. We have some cool like rewards there as well. We have challenge coins that we designed that are really pretty.

Speaker 3: We have veteran veteran owned t-shirt company that's donating shirts to anybody who donates over a certain amount, and a bunch of other things. You can watch the film there, and we're also using this Kickstarter as a proof of concept as well, to show that people even care about this, that veterans and first responders care about their health in a way that hasn't been talked about before, and so if you like the film, please do share it with as many people as possible, because that would really help help this whole campaign get going, because we're just a small group of passionate humble people.

Speaker 1: I love it because it's just, it's like you said, there is a different. I don't know it's exciting to me, like when I watch it. It's exciting Like it's a different perspective of things. Like I know there's like to do any. I'm not perfect, right, and I know so there's lots of hard work to do, not to say that I'm ever going to be perfect but I could be better. So there's lots of hard work I still can do to be better. And like these types of you know, documentaries just help me, help me realize I can get there right. And a different perspective, a different view. Because if we back to the perspective, you just keep looking at the same, let's say, issue from one way, you're probably never going to solve it or never like maybe even grow from it, because you're just not getting that Full 360 view of it. And if I'm thinking right, like this is a holistic thing, this is not just one thing right, this is a holistic thing.

Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for saying that. Yeah, as you're talking there, i was thinking about how the film makes me feel because, like I know I made it, but I still like it, like I watch it every once in a while And it, like it, brings me back on path, you know.

Speaker 1: I'm busy.

Speaker 3: I get stressed out, Like I'm going through a separation right now. I just moved to a new city. Sometimes I feel like my life is on fire. I'm perfectly honest, Like actually yesterday I just like broke down crying. I was like what am I doing? And I had one of these moments And the people that we have in that film are just so great.

Speaker 3: Like they come from this place of heart and they have life experience too, which really matter, and it just brings me back to like this is all okay, this is okay, you know. Just it's aligning, you know I'm on my path. Even though this is not what I expected for myself, this is somehow going to make sense at some point, so thank you for saying that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, is there any other ways that people can support the film on social media or anything like that, or they can get behind and share it that way?

Speaker 3: Yeah, So again to watch the short film, you go to posttraumaticgrowthfilm. But we're on Instagram also at darknightofarsoulunderscore. And yeah, you can find me on Instagram as well at Jessica Depotsie. That's D-E-P-A-T-I-E underscore. We're constantly sharing stuff. We're like super shameless around giving this word out as many people as possible. So there are things you can definitely share from that Instagram. It's a very small following so far We're just getting started But I believe that it's going to work out, if it's meant to work out.

Speaker 1: It's going to work out. It's definitely going to work out, Is there? when are you hoping to have it completed?

Speaker 3: Hopefully by the end of the year. So actually on Thursday I'm talking to also any organizations that are listening that want to like create a strategic partnership around this. We have some pretty exciting opportunities that are coming up So we can talk about that. But yeah, i have a couple of interesting calls that are coming up. Fingers crossed, the stars align. This could be really good And we can finish it by the end of the year.

Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome. That's super exciting.

Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. This is great. It's been a pleasure to chat with you.

Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, jessica. I really appreciate it. Thanks for doing. you know that it's kind of hard work in a lot of ways, right, not just like hard work in some ways that this is not a topic that's talked about a lot. So I think it's talked about but maybe not looked at the way that you do.

Speaker 3: I can tell you I never expected to get into trauma work Like this is not where I thought my life was going to be going, but I'm so happy it did. And yeah, it's super intense at times just constantly immersing ourselves in trauma stories and what they might mean. But the thing that I guess I'll leave with is looking into it can be hard, often it's hard, but it's almost always worth it, and so that's been my process through that. It's been hard to sit with these stories, to sit with these people, to sit with my own experiences. It's brought so much up for me that I had forgotten about and never considered would be an issue, but it's super, super worth it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, thank you so much, jessica, i appreciate it.

Speaker 2: Thanks again for listening. Don't forget to rate and review the show wherever you access your podcast. If you know someone that would be great on the show, please get ahold of our host, jerry Dean Lund, through the Instagram handles at Jerry Fire and Fuel or at Enduring the Badge Podcast, also by visiting the show's website, enduringthebadgepodcastcom for additional methods of contact and up-to-date information regarding the show. Remember, the views and opinions expressed during the show solely represent those of our host and the current episode's guest.