you were taught to believe in a safe and predictable world one where you attended ballgames parties and school without fear of harm but what if in a moment that world was shattered by the murder of your loved one what would you do and disasters that have come along recently a lot of you do have trauma and a lot of you have had trauma and you have events that have come up and today we've got some great people and some experts that are going to be on to help you my mom well we are a mother daughter team and we do a weekly series and we are very excited about our guest today we have rod a star in today and she's got a really incredible story her son christopher was murdered and now she works in san quentin with she has produced a documentary on people that work at san quentin help out and her clips called the unfriendly the unlikely friends clip courtesy of chance films and will be showing that and then we've got the larson right w arsenal i recently saw him on the news because he is an expert on traumatic loss and he was speaking about new the newtown tragedy and he speaks all over the country and actually all over the world and writes about dramatic loss and he'll be talking to us a lot today and he's also a track loss of columbia and it's the st class ever taught out of the school of social work and i also work for ten years with the families that lost a firefighter in the world trade center and i watch we did a study looking at traumatic loss over time and we watched how two these families transformed their loss and found hope again and that's really what our our store our show is about how do you transform your life after a loss and how do you find hope again so we want to start with you today with t from radha stern about radha theater because we think it's going to help you to realize the kinds of things that you can do and the kind of hope there is after l for years she searched for ways to transform her grief but it wasn't until she was invited to share her personal story with a group of murderers at california's san quentin state prison but she found the peace she was looking for so my son christopher robin was murdered fifteen years ago march st and he was twenty one years old he was at school and he was killed by a school roommate do you feel like you've been run over by a semi tractor trailer truck but there's no bruises there's no scars you know you just feel completely devastated hurt shocked i lost everything  you know you know it could be a grandmother you know could see a wedding and you just it's a lot i mean in practice ignorance for fifteen years and it's still a lot well well tell us about what you're doing when christopher robin will talk a little bit about how he died you want to talk about i died st yeah christopher was killed by a school roommate because he put dishes in the wrong cabinet  so you know bravado kind of fight in the morning had started and and mark james taylor who shot chris went into his bedroom he had to go through two doors come back here two doors brought a gun and shot him four times and christopher actually had his back to the scene so he was already i thought it was over and you know it was just anger and you know guns do what they're supposed to do the if there's a shot so  e didn't make it to the hospital we didn't have a chance to donate his organs which i was sort of sad about and you know your life just changes it's said there and from the beginning i knew that a i wanted to live not just live but thrive and also very beginning from the very beginning and and also that you know you're thrown into this relationship with a person in this case the perpetrator against your will you know i think about him all the time because he took my son so so how do you find a place in yourself where that's comfortable you know i needed like a quiet relationship instead of a relationship it was eating me alive with with the perpetrator and the san quentin work i think gave that to me camembert my mother saying always give people the benefit of the doubt and i felt like this was not a very nice person to be so angry and to take my son and but at the same time i also wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt is that was this you know a terrible mistake if that person made a terrible mistake i would understand it you know but you know what really happened and so i went on this journey with a call surrogate work with other inmates  talking about my story and the years out were you before you started it was seven ok so this well there's some time in between well yeah when our audience is out there and they're saying well i had a death recently or whatever you kno if someone told me that your want every year to i'd be working in san quentin i would have told they're crazy because you just you're not ready i mean and and it's not just us you know the men who are incarcerated they're not ready to do the work that they need to do to even listen to a person like me  you know and understand either you know in the beginning they're thrown into this environment they don't know like were thrown into an environment we don't know this horrible grief this trauma all right and their family's grief too and i think people you know sometimes don't always remember that yes i think we do i always think about well those families out there that they have to change their name and what about the families of what if she was on the other foot i mean i don't think my son would have ever done something like that but if i was visiting him you know it's getting people together to that of loss of earnings or children to talk about their experiences and the reason i love it is because it normalizes a lot of what we're going through yet it is the st time i didn't feel so alone and i mean my family was incredible and i never felt alone but i mean some ill your territory i walked into a group of people that completely understood where i was you know all had children dying right you know and you know i drive my daughter along with this and you know it was just it was just it was it was hard but it was a comfort and then you know people sort of adopt you and then now i had people take care of them and you know i'm thinking with a prisoner thing that maybe compassionate friends helped you to even be able to do that because you had been in a group and  d so when you went there it wasn't totally foreign to go around people and talk about it yeah and also you know we get used to our stories like i can talk about chris's murder now and not cry most of the time you know i have to be careful when i tell people the  time because you know it's an interesting phenomena you meet people that don't even know that you had a person in your life that was murdered rights or never knew chris and so when you talk about it you know people are just sometimes they have to they stop me you know i'm pretty used to it you also have to take that into going and you know it isn't st time that they really understand what damage or for lack of a better word that they have raised in their life with their crime you know they actually see somebody who's been affected by it you know so you know i'm a mother you know maybe and you know they can relate to what their mother might be going through or the mother of the person whose life they took i mean it's real when you're sitting in front of someone and it's it's very difficult for them it's a real because sitting in the fire you know dealing with all that stuff and it's transfer i mean i've seen it sort of unpack itself the work that i've been doing with a group of men now for about eight years you know how it affects them and it puts some into another perspective and then they also because they're if i could pebble in the pond you know it makes them really understand you know what they created because it's not just them you know it's the community it's their family you know i sr and then if we want to take some questions from our studio audience we've got a great audience here with dale quite a story we've been hearing about you know murder and those kind of things i wanted to ask you i happened to meet a man the other day and while i was waiting to have lunch with a friend and i stopped and talked to him and asked him how he was doing and he said good and he said what are you doing and i said to heidi and i my daughter do grief show public access and he said oh you know i said we're doing a show on trauma and he's suddenly stopped and he said well i had a trauma and i'm like oh really and he said yeah nine hundred and eleven i was in the building right next door to the two and trade towers and he said i remember this guy the plane hit we thought it was a bomb and he said we all ran to the window and looked out we were in the next building he said i saw a man fly down jump off the top of the building i'll never forget and he guys are telling me this his necktie went up in the air like this and then the man opened his coat and said see the lining of my jacques i could see the lining of his coat and then he said and then i saw the plane hit the  tower and i could tell you what the tail number was on that plane and he said i have not talked about this since for ten years that is the st time i have told the stories that when it st happened i was telling everybody so what about that this you know what about that trauma is that ok and he basically looked at me i knew what he was asking me is that ok am i ok that i haven't told the story that that's a really great question but i think it's just really ok that he encountered you and what he saw was someone who could listen to this experience he just knew that you could listen i heard that with rod it was sharing also she was saying how hard it is sometimes to talk about this one thing one of things we know from research on all this is that there are incredible social constraints against disclosing these things because the st world isn't really ready to hear about it but they the responses are consistently kind of changing the topic turning away from you a little bit and you get the message not an uncaring response although it feels that way sometimes but people aren't ready to really engage with that they don't know how to respond and that's why compassionate friends and that's why running into to you and and finding other people who can and counselors and other people who can really provide the kind of empathy and compassion and friends you have that instant empathy right which is just invaluable because you need to feel understood you know i want to say that you know i think you end up feeling in these experiences so completely alone and you feel we call the failsafe uniqueness in research of the belief that i alone am having this experience and no one else could possibly be having this experience it's so strange bizarre unusual awful and then we keep it inside and what our friends cannot provide all the support i think friends are great family is great but you know after at the nd or rd luncheon meeting with your friend yes saying part of my life and then there's this other which everyone tells me every brief parent tells me that they had a life before the event and there's life after the event and they're totally you think you have to create a new normal and like you know yeah we don't  over it we train we have to transform it you know to transform you know one of the things that's interesting with the nine hundred and eleven study that has been working with a club year you've been following those widows for how many years and families we followed them for ten years so they had it's kind of interesting they had an opportunity to talk about it for ten years and have somebody who was interested in saying how are you doing you know they're doing pretty well too aren't they but it took a lot longer than the world wants to feel it does it take it takes a long time we love someone so much to fully you know find hope again and also hope to embrace our new identities who are you without christopher in your life without scott you know so it takes longer i think i think it does and i think that one of things that we found  research is that growth and distress co exist so that you're not going to stress free you can still cry when you see that you're moved that's i think because we still have that those connections and out of the field is really saying we need continuing balance but we've got to find a way to carry the person in our heart where so that we're not having extreme reactions every day but we also don't lose touch so that we can have that love that we feel for this person and what is your name julio daly and i have a question for rhonda rhonda what happened to the perpetrator mark taylor is serving a sentence of nineteen and a half to life he's been in various prisons in your name i mean my name is anthony in my question is were down dr was wondering after someone experiences trauma who is close to me what is the best way for me to help them out great question i think it's a question we all ask ourselves it and it we're all thinking oh i'm not a trained consular i'm not a therapist what can i possibly do but you know that think the same pretty principles apply which is really being available and listening you can't get in any trouble listening you can't listen you're way into trouble and you don't have to really do anything human presence is healing itself and when the things we know about trauma healing is that we have to find a way to be with that in some relationship to it while we feel safe and another human being a caring person who has caring for us being with us in that moment that we're with our experience is is a healing experience  so henry now one who is a theologian wrote about the difference between zero and one and the one is very important and i think that that's very important to show up so my my message is really we have to show up for people who are experiencing these things we have to if they want support if they feel that they are having a little trouble with it and they want to talk i believe that everyone should have an opportunity to get support i think it's very important we as a culture provide  that i think this is such a good point because early on something you know you want to do something for people and fix it and what they really need is just someone to sit there acknowledging validate you know you know a lot of books self help books they don't need a lot there's  cascade of advice that always comes pouring down effect when you ask for if people people have been traumatized how hollow where the responses of others the majority of responses people report are not very helpful because they're giving advice they're they're there we're trying to be helpful in all the ways when normally help let's problem solve but you can't problem solve this you can't just take it and say let's do this and do that you have to show up and before we take another question i don't want to forget i most forgot we've got a couple of books here right it has a book that's coming up called grease print and we're excited about that a practical guide for supporting a grieving person and dr dale has one called the helper's journey working with facing grief loss and life threatening illness is great so let's make sure we get the turtles on camera all right we've got another question ok yeah it's marty in my question is for dale what do you feel how do you feel about people who have experienced a traumatic loss taking antidepressants what we often find is that we think they're really being helpful because we are having this placebo effect and they in conjunction with counseling or compassionate friends seem to work better there are some medications that are being recommended for trauma versus major depressive disorder versus from prolonged grief disorder which we haven't really had any pharmacotherapy for but m basic stance toward it is you have to really consult with folks in medicine work with somebody who understands that grief is not depression because this is one of the primary confusions that happens out there  and primary care providers here basic primary care physician very often it's tough for them in the ten minute session to really figure out why are you depressed or are you grieving and now we have with the d s m five with the breeding exclusion being removed which is happening in april of this year we're going to have a situation where there is a potential for more and they depressants being prescribed so the physicians have to really be get more education that they're not going to be prescribing them for things routinely and we also have to really ourselves kind of look at how can we get support for ourselves and i think that these there's can be some role for major depression of antidepressants but i think when we look at the research we see that for mild to moderate depression it isn't really and i think that if you look at prevent we know that norway seventy eight percent of mothers who had lost their children qualified for complicated grief diagnosis so i have just you know in every ever day depressed brief people are having pretty high levels of depression and in the st six months five months you have very frequent frequent high frequency of major depression i guess i'd like to say if you are recently received and you've never been on antidepressants do not do  interest st go to a psychologist or a counselor to spurn grief and loss and then if they feel like they need to refer you they can refer you because if you go to a psychiatrist you may end up on an antidepressant when you don't need one because grief often does look like depression early on however and events may be so psychiatry's that there who are experts in depression you know there is a cabbie out i wouldn't go there st i would go that but it wouldn't be my  wife it's a very it's a very tricky issue i mean we're struggling with it in england now they're really really opting for a cognitive behavioral therapy almost st with depression and but it's kind of an online i really like a therapist or some other kind for people who are having a difficult but one thing i want to say about all this is that in terms of of professional assistance the two questions you have to ask are are you having trouble dealing with this loss and the nd is would you like is a huge issue for our culture and there's a very controversial topic and i think we're all going to be wrestling with it and i think it's it's it's a it's a tough one we have a huge pharmaceutical industry making twenty billion dollars a year they're highly motivated they're advertising to us saying ask your physician if this would be appropriate so we have a lot of pressure for that but we also have to get support to people who are seriously in trouble which can happen with a traumatic  and we have to use all the means we possibly can ok there we have one more question before you know the shootings in connecticut were something that you know everybody saw you couldn't get away from it and you know i'm thinking about you rather you know having been through such a traumatic loss to go and talk about it over and over and kind of really experience it and i'm just wondering for people who may have had something in the past and then get to this kind of stuff or even people who haven't had anything to magic happen to them recently or in their lives what might be some of the things to look out for you know in ourselves that we should notice if we are experiencing some sort of trauma just by virtue of seeing this on t v in such a big way great question thank you oh my heart just drops because i know exactly how the parents feel right so my heart just the st thing that happens is my heart just dropped and then i give myself permission to talk about it people say this newtown was really hard for me because i just feel for every parent you know and it and it's not just the new towns it's every day you read in the paper and my heart just sinks you know what we're going to have to close out your this show has been brought to you by the open the hope foundation helping people find hope after us be sure to visit hope dot com where you can listen to radio programs watch open to hope t v read articles a few books you can also join dr gloria