or boston area it really impacted everyone in the whole nation all the things that have gone on and all the trauma and heidi we've got some great guests today to talk about because we have a list creel i met her  with the nine hundred and eleven project with columbia university where we were visiting families who had had trauma research study the fire department right heidi yes i've got to i've got to put a plug in for us because we're is one of my dearest friends i have known her for many years we worked together since two thousand to like you said with firefighter families we did a study you were part of bomb where we worked a firefighter families over time and looked at traumatic loss and we should mention how they found hope and it was run by doctor who was a former professor of mine so yes i've known this for we've presented together a lot we've done a lot of workshops and a lot of yeah and work together and she is great and we'll be talking also her about trauma and recovery and then we've got can bring in a whole nother level and as far as trauma he's worked with a lot with trauma because the police deal a lot with traumatic things every single day yeah and one of the things i want to talk to him about is this reoccurring trauma where you've been traumatized you haven't dealt with and because you know i live in san francisco and how do you listen to your and we get together to do the show and when the earthquake happened in san francisco a few years ago i was kind of well i hate to say a bit amused where they were asking everybody all the therapist in the bay area to come and help people who'd been in the earthquake when everybody had been in the earthquake right i mean it's really interesting what police and therapists are asked to do suddenly they're not just a person out there they're somebody who has to go heal trauma and healing your own as well it is a thing we know when you've been through an event like nine hundred and eleven or an earthquake and then you go and work with families that have too but you've also had your own trauma and the other thing mom and dr dan do that they both have in common is that they work with vets and if they have had trauma all right so we're going to learn a lot from them today and then we've got some great music we've got kate mills and she is a singer songwriter and she is going to sing say something and kate told us that she got this song her friend how to trauma and helping her through the trauma so it was something so music so healing is is start out quickly with your own personal trauma that you had a few years ago yeah it's actually you know heidi and i had been working together to about two thousand and seven and right after that my husband had died suddenly in a tragic swimming accident and drowning accident in florida in miami when he was on vacation with my son who was sixteen at the top i'm so it was totally and you've been have been i she'd been working with widows and i remember shortly after larry died you called me and said heidi i had no idea that for years and years i've worked with widows and i would be preparing for my own loss i said that right yeah i don't remember but he said that that was very true and when you're in it though and you're just here it's a different experience yes you know it's interesting that we're saying this because when scott was killed my seventeen year old son and his brother i was teaching at the university of rochester school of nursing and i was the surgical person for the entire surgical service and i were to burn units i worked in families where there were other mobility finance i worked in all sorts of things and then my son was killed in that type of an accident and well i remember thing i thought i knew something about it and i do i think you have helpful things i don't want to minimize that you don't have to have all the experience of the help people but personally what it brings to you on that level unbelievable  yeah and having children you know and having to course with the nine hundred and eleven dollars project as well as with my ex my own experience and everybody else's experience where there are children that you're responsible for that's the st thing you want to figure out how to do is how to help them and i know the widows that was why they let us come and work with them on that project and you know well there is no you may know a lot of stuff by the book when it comes to your own children  would have to say that over the last five and a half years it's been learning by doing you know keep evolving keep trying to keep communication going and trying to understand you know where they're at and you had two teenage boys just i was yelling at the time they were teenagers at the time sixteen and fourteen and mom your kids were twenty one thousand and fourteen levi's both had the whole teenage the teenage years are rough enough and then you put a sudden loss on top of that and yeah now your sixteen year old with there though yes well let me ask you for people who have had the trauma were they been there some wanted been there what it did you find anything through sixteen year old that you had to deal with differently you know one of things about jessie is you know i think it's important to always think about who they are as a person before the trauma occurred because that's how they also go through the trauma and just he was someone as compared to my other son dylan just he was less talkative less communicative with me anyhow i would say he's very communicative and social with his friends so when this happened that continued you see he was still kind of non communicative with me so we had to find other ways to help him talk about that experience and we did we sort out therapy at that time but i would have to say and i went there appears that that wasn't the most successful experience for him he tried it because i suggested it but i think to this day he's still continuing that's interesting you should say that because i ended up getting high i had three daughters and i got into therapy and her other older sister i think they all went once and it w now it wasn't helpful for me and it may have been because i was not a good fit with the person might their best but i didn't find it helpful i found it more helpful to talk to friends especially those that have a loss right and i don't know how did what did you find was helpful with  e with jesse absolutely things that we often find helpful for ourselves as adults having friends around was very key having family around was very key he's very close we're very close with larry's brother so we've been seeing and being very close with larry's brother since this happened and he comes over every week twice a week to push chess with the boys what's his name mark mark thank you that's why you're a great guy he's really go guts really so i think that that provided some sort of continuity connection to larry through his brother a male figure i found was very important you know i'm kind of ok you because they got a lot of great information a cop guide to understanding terrorism and human evil wow well that's a that's a real current one of the stuff that's going on and then another one you brought here is a street survival guide for public safety officers caught strategies for surviving trauma law and terrorism whoa you really get into heaven if you do i have to because i've had probably at least a one thousand or more police offices over the past fifteen years that have been highly traumatized and the title of this book top dogs go i to understanding terrorism is human evil it was worked on quite a while in my head when i was working as the chief psychologist or ministry of psychologist one of the things that bother police and public safety offices and veterans is that when they had the media present trauma oid terrorism for example is something that just happens and goes away as we were talking about loss and trauma something that's full for the offices that respond for example to boylston you better believe a lot of them are going to suffer trauma and as we went talking earlier i quoted something from my earlier work with  book and the piece city quoted i didn't even realize i had written because there's so much i'm writing and working on in there is it something to the effect of it is in allusion to put a timeframe on how often a police officer should be seen and working through trauma loss and terrorism and it is a delusion to try to enforce that was something in substance like that you know you know what's coming up for me when you're saying that is that trying taking any person and flooding them into ok you need to have this unit particularly where people are firemen and policemen and as you say setting up a program for them but we were talking about liz about her kids you know even setting up a program for your kids trying to get a minute then everybody needs to go into therapy at this certain time and people may need to just tell their story right now absolutely as professor liz was saying you know they have to tell th story they have to have the amount of time and it key point is that one cannot prescribe but rather proscribed a time frame because who's to say how long it takes to actually ravel and to help the person reposition the inside of their lives maybe so i being a cop doc i'm also a psychologist and professors so i deal with loss and trauma all the time so i need some time sitting there listening to you right now and maybe i was a policeman in the past and maybe i'm not even that anymore or a psychologist or whatever and then my spouse dies then maybe those experiences from way back in other a lot let go and ramble what key key point in one of the something present and then he started to look up and his eyes thought of the flu not like i'm doing it now and i simply what's up what's going on talk to me put to me is a great way to get it in just down to talk to me nothing doc nothing really and it's stupid i don't want to talk about it i said do me a favor talk to me in a real way what's going on wait a minute i've got to stop right there when you say time to me in a way do you think i'm never heard anybody say that either  because i'm a cop too and a way that you deal with people when you do hostage negotiation anything like that is talk to me be real know me what's going on buddy what's the matter what's the matter and saying it like that of course i can say in another way magnum he had been holding this grief for thirty year as a dad and this is a kid when he when his party got shot he did everything that a cop supposed to do he got down to cover pulled out his thirty eight dollars at the time and he you know he would try to pull him out but he couldn't because the guy was shooting with a forty four magnum to give you a hint it's like hearing a jet engine going off in your face in the years and how this hero called himself a coward was he couldn't talk about it all of these years you limb with feeling like he was a coward who had gone in and grabbed him and pulled him out drinking him on a radio call and got him into on arm p r the patrol car what was gained out of it was that he was able to give his partner relief in the worst moment in his life and i said how did he respond and he hugged him and there were tears that were exchanged and i said that's the key of what you did and not only a incredible story is really framing your story telling people d who are professionals like you and liz if you really had that heavy duty trauma i know you both work with the military telling your story to people who can help you  reframe it in ways and pulling out and pulling out the positive like you're saying mom so that they're not caught in the trauma narrative around and around and the disenfranchised losses which is so key in grieving the aspect that you don't talk about i'm a cop it is a loss for us if you know exactly one of the terms that i've used as a death to functional dissociation with only some public safety in military are they wait a minute so they adapt to it so they can keep working and function so when you a this question for dan do you feel that the police get enough respect yeah absolutely not i think one of the issues that need to be addressed is we talk about community policing but we need to have communities empathically what offices actually go through can go a long way in educating communities to folk with the police that are working in there are giving their lives and to understand too is a great question  police a part of their community so your son or daughter or family member can become a police officer too or anyone in public safety five fighting e m c and that the community owes that in the civic way and the city virtue which is hardly ever spoken about wow well dr dan i just want to tell you when i think police officers i often just thank them randomly for doing the work they're doing because i feel like oftentimes they don't get that kind of  really wonderful because in that time to you saying as a community i appreciate that you are putting your life on the line for me and i may be a stranger but in the next moment you may actually die going into a building story you know we were talking about disenfranchisement that what people really care about what i did they care about what i'm doing and that gives them a new feeling about themselves which which is an important aspect we've got another question in my questions from liz what do you recommend i do to help my neighbor whose husband was killed in an auto accident well one of the things that i think is really key is it's so traumatic and i think i said earlier earlier that the most important thing that i found was having friends family anything that you know you consider supportive to have you know to if you're a friend to be there for that person just listening being unveiled bringing food over and waiting and listening to what she asking her what she think she needs because i think sometimes we rush in because we love them we care about people and we have this idea of what might be helpful but i think sometimes we we forget to ask the person and again maybe not immediately after the trauma and the loss because they're sort of very lost and very scared but as time goes on to really be in touch with them to ask them what do you think i can do what you think might be helpful for you so i think it's a combination of just being available bringing food over i remember that was you know i've done that on families and people did that for me it shows you support which you're around you're not alone i think that very you know i think that that is a really important and i thank you very much for the questions and for the audience you know w community and that's what this whole show is about grief relief is that we're a community here you were we're all part of it we don't grieve alone you know particularly with the internet and all that we're even even more in community now which is a pretty great thing we want to thank you for being part of our community day a work i just like to say also i really feel privileged and if any cop is watching this so far to fight a public safety military this is the station i go to because i feel that this gives a forum to be able to talk about losses in just listening we are it is very disenfranchised from the population period when there is places to go home and i think that what you're doing is fantastic and a privilege to be on on well can i just add one quick thing i'm so very glad we got to have a very quick is even if the person isn't able to talk about it initially after the trauma they may start talking about it two hundred and thirty four years later and that will so be whenever