From Breaking News to Breaking Stigma: Trauma, Resilience, and Mental Wellness

hello there fearfully and wonderfully made human today I'm delighted to introduce a fascinating guest Bill prad we met just last month at the wise practice Summit in North Carolina where we instantly connected over our shared experience Es as speakers I was thrilled to share that my presentation at the summit was actually my first CU Talk Amongst peers and Bill with such generosity offered some invaluable advice bill has an impressive Journey that took him from an Emmy

award-winning journalism career to the owner of a successful group practice in Houston Texas today he's a licensed professional counselor and licensed chemical dependency counselor with a specialization in trauma addiction and Leadership coaching his reach extends Beyond his practice Bill's been a corporate trainer crisis responder and facilitator for companies government entities and even the military his background is a unique blend of media psychology and crisis management allowing him to make an impact across various Industries with a

masters in counseling psychology and additional post-graduate certifications from John Hopkins and the University of Houston downtown Bill's expertise is both Broad and deep his impressive pass includes senior leadership roles at hospitals and work as an employee assistance counselor with Ron and the Office of Naval intelligence I'm thrilled for you all to get to know Bill Prasad today and learn from his expertise and insights you can find more about him and his work at pad counseling.com which

I will put in the show notes please please join me in welcoming Bill Bill thank you for coming on the show you're welcome Diana it is my pleasure and you forgot to mention that I'm a bounty hunter also what just kidding I was just like wait man I I thought I got it all Bounty H well I wouldn't be surprised if that ends up on your resume later on in life beat too so tell me like

how did you go from breaking news to Breaking stigma ah well put I had been working in television news for about 15 years and I remember standing on the White House lawn I was in my 40s and thinking well there really isn't anything else for me to do in journalism I love the job it's been a great run but what do I want from the rest of my life and a lot of the questions that I

was asking myself myself surrounded quality of life into my 40s 50s and 60s and that's when I started thinking about the next career and I thought surely I can do more with my education my experience and my skills yeah okay so tell me a little bit about like because we had this conversation but I want the listener to know like journalism because that could go everywhere so tell me a little bit about that part of your

life like you know what I mean like where did you go what did you do what did you cover were you just like you know a sensationalist one or not or was it like serious like you got an Emmy Award like tell me please well my undergraduate degree is actually in newspaper editorial and newspaper management so I started my career working for a small newspaper in the Philadelphia suburbs and then moved on to radio so I

did radio in the Philly suburbs in New Jersey then something called cable television was launching at the time and there was a new TV station that was launching in Wilmington Delaware and so we had to go in and audition for positions and I remember thinking okay the best way to audition uh and to get it right was they were going to shoot standups of us outside and I thought well H how about if I stand in

front of a car and talk about how this car was used in a holdup and they got away with $5 million I certainly wouldn't forget that this is a car and so I thought that is the best way to remember the standups for the the audition so I got called in to do the audition it was raining outside and they brought me into a studio and they said Well we'd actually want you to read to two

cameras the two cameras did not have teleprompters and they handed me copy to read and I went to pick it up and the general manager put his hand over my hand and said no we want you to read it cold oh my word so and I know that stuff because I was in the film industry for a second there you know oh my God so there I was reading cold copy to several cameras I did it

four or five times and left thinking well I did my best I probably didn't get the job and I got the job wow so I ended up working as a reporter in Wilmington Delaware then went on to Waco Texas then on to Asheville Carol North Carolina from Asheville North Carolina I went to Oklahoma City and then from Oklahoma City I went to Seattle wow then from Seattle to Philadelphia Philadelphia to Baltimore Baltimore to Washington and then

eventually started working for two networks as a national correspondent uh I worked for CNN and Fox News this was around between 20 200 and 2006 TV network news was very different then yes um I could navigate both CNN and fox seamlessly right wow okay and and yeah because now according to how what I hear because I hardly ever watch a news CNN and fox are like so opposite so how would you do that you know because

it was wasn't investigating I mean investigative journalism uh no not with the networks I work National correspondent so I covered the White House Congress FBI CIA Pentagon all of the ABCs by the way do you know what do you know what NSA stands for NSA I I National Security no it stands for No Such agency oh it's these folks are spies and that's real yeah wow okay so I I know that according to you know our

conversations before and stuff like because you were course you being this journalist going to these places you were breaking news like in very traumatic situations correct yes as a reporter whether it is a local news reporter or a national reporter you're exposed to a lot of trauma in the various cities throughout the country I reported on a large number of natural disasters homicides some really horrifying uh incidents and accidents and then when I was in Seattle

it was the mura building that was blown up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City April 19th 1995 and they flew me to Oklahoma City a couple of hours after it was blown up I reported on that and then when I was based in Washington DC I was there for 911 when the plane hit the Pentagon so I covered that also ah wow okay so when you how did you stay so focused because I know I've seen

you know on the news the the journalist the reporter has to stay because you're sharing this information with the world and did you you know did you go to your own therapy did how did you know you like to share with us like how did you stay sane when things were not being sane right I have always been um devoutly dedicated to making sure I take care of myself so I have always worked out regularly I

have always eaten well I've always maintained a relationship with a therapist even before I got into the mental health World wow had good friends had a lot of support and then had a sense of spirituality in that I've seen some really bad things and given the depth of Terror that I've seen it is easy for your spirituality to be fractured yes and I never really got to that point I always had a sense of either spirituality

or a sense of resiliency that people are resilient that we can make it through this yeah yeah and so I really held on to that uh there are times when I did start to slide into places where I was starting to feel cynical instead of skeptical about people but I was able to catch myself in those places okay and recover yeah and and I think that's so important for us to hear because we're you and I

are in an industry you know the mental health industry or you know is it a calling is it something you can train is it resiliency training is it and I know that like say for covid right that was something that was a traumatic worldwide traumatic natural disaster experience and I remember when everything was coming down I'm like oh wow this high school that I'm serving as a therapist I got to get it together and so I

went to Natural uh natural disaster training and disa you know with uh Dwight Bane was is his name I don't know if you know him or not but he's in Florida and I just because he does what you did he wasn't a journalist but that whole disaster psychology and I learned so much and I'm so grateful for that training so for you is this something that you utilize from all your experience in either training other therapists

or even how you deal with the clients patients that come to you I think that trauma is not a stranger to me having been around people who are victims of terrorist attacks or victims of crime for so many years years as a reporter stepping into another career where I'm around them again did not feel different did not feel really um did not inspire a lot of fear in me I have a certain Comfort level with trauma

and so I'm able to navigate those situations pretty effectively mostly because of what I had to navigate when I was a reporter yeah I can imagine so tell me like as you you know understanding First Responders right because they face tough emotional challenges you know can you tell me what you've learned working with them especially how they perceive being assigned to light or death Duty because some of them like I know a little bit from working

in an alternative high school I would talk to the police officers that were there the whole time like you know it was a the second we're open a a cop was there and they let you know and then they left when we closed the school for the day and stuff and that was like an extra detail that they were able and I would talk to them and ask them questions like how do you handle that how

do you handle like a car accident or somebody getting shot and stuff and I know I wouldn't be able to do that so like how did you you know what what do you do with them or what did you learn from them well for four years I directed the behavioral health arm for Fairfax County Fire and Rescue and this is one of the largest career fire departments um in the country and so I work mostly with

firefighters about 90% firefighters and 10% police and I got a really intimate opportunity to get to know them not just at the government building but I would spend a lot of time doing ride alongs with them I'd ride in either the the engine or um the medic unit and I'd go with them on fires and car accidents uh when I first told some of my colleagues in the uh Mental Health feel that I was going to

do that they said you don't want to do that I I don't want to do I would not get into a fire engine I thought I can't wait to get into that unit and go with them right so this was a tremendous opportunity to understand them and to be in their world to understand what their world is like and that was also an opportunity to build trust because I've never been a firefighter or a medic but

being with them side by side for 8 to 10 hours a day and eating with them that is one of the ways that you build trust some of the things that I learned about firefighters is that these men and women are some of the funniest people you can work with and it's dark humor okay Joe John Q citizen would not really understand um what they joke about now I also learned that there is a line in

the sand in reference to humor that a firefighter who might be having trouble might joke about something that you never joke about in in the uh fire service and that is the death of a child that is over the line and that is also one of if not the toughest call for a firefighter or a paramedic when a child dies in an accident or failed CPR of a child I remember doing a critical incident response with

a group of firefighters who were called to a house and it was very clear that the child had been physically abused and of course they report that but having to see that having to care for the child was really hard and in some of those situations where there has been a child seriously hurt or a child killed it was my job along with a trained Pier we were part of a trained team to go to the

fire fire station and do something called a critical incident stress management um diffusing it's a it's a group meeting because these folks working groups these are teams um with with police officers at times police officers ride alone so when we would work with police officers at times it was one-on-one when we worked with firefighters it was always in groups and an interesting thing developed uh one of the first things that you ask when they come back

is is there anything we can get for you water food what do you need because that is the first step toward trying to get them back to a place of functioning uh where things have balanced out where they feel secure and with firefighters who were parents one of the first things they'd ask for is can I call home can I talk to my kids can I talk to whomever is taking care of my kids yeah so

they they'd ask for that first um I remember when I would do ride alongs when I first got a sense of what their humor was like was we were all eating french fries and hamburgers at the uh big table for lunch and the the alarm went off and so we went out on a call came back and someone had written on my my brown paper bag that had been torn open with my food they wrote out

in ketchup help me oh my God no now I knew immediately that was a practical joke yeah uh but that's the kind of men and women that I work with they are so dedicated they work so hard and it is true that they will just run into a burning building yeah I mean Al goes off that's what they do right I mean that's their training that's their job so what do you think they actually do need

say as a therapist that wants to go into the field of disaster psychology or First Responders or you know what I mean like you have the experience so what would you say to someone that might be like one of my interns that might be listening that might want to go into the field you're in you know what would be the first steps to help or to get the knowledge that they need to be an effective therapist

without them having the vicarious trauma and they get burnt out because you know we we can get burned out if we don't take care of ourselves but it might not be the calling for you either so in most Master's programs and PhD or SID programs there isn't any training in reference to what I just described that you have to pick up the training on your own that it it takes a lot of training and a lot

of comfort to walk into a room where maybe all these people in the room at a company yesterday they stepped over the bodies of their co-workers after a mass shooting and remember it's not counseling it's generally a one-off meeting and you go in you attempt to stabilize them you try to get a sense of who needs what you provide them with some education as to what they might be dealing with over the next few days such

as maybe interruptions in sleep patterns interruptions and eating patterns maybe increased sense of anger so you go through all of those various symptoms and then you ask them have anybody has anyone seen some of those symptoms and then you talk about what symptoms might occur when they go home when they're around their loved ones what their loved ones might see so a lot of it is still ability and then providing education and then going forward providing

them with a sense of who might need help and what I mean by that is they always ask well how will I know if I need help and we'll talk about timeline where might you be 30 days from here and how might you recognize that you need additional help and then we provide resources in many cases that resource is either an employee assistance program or if it's First Responders making sure they get connected to whatever Counseling

Center is on the campus or available to each fire station okay how about if there is a first responder police officer a veteran someone that's you know served the community because they're Servants of the community that you know and they go and do the hard job um and they're listening and they because I I did notice there's a stigma big time where it's like I can't seem that looks weak or if I'm scared that I'm going

to end up behind a desk or I'm scared I'm going to end up being crazy or something like that you know what I mean like it just becomes this vicious cycle and they're actually needing help what would you say to that person not you know to someone that might be going oh my goodness I'm I'm having nightmares I'm what should they do for the therapist I would encourage the therapist to get to know that Community by

spending time with them you really can't walk to a fire station and say you won't be seen as weak go to a therapist it it really isn't as simple as that therapist has to get to know what this community is like and how they function um in reference to the firefighters one of the ways that I would try to win them over besides um eating with them and doing ride alongs is to explain here's what we

do and you may never need that but it's important that you know because you might be able to help another fire fighter okay and that really went to their sense of helping others that connected pretty well okay wow all right so tell me how your disaster psychology influenced your Wellness programs that you provide for companies like well tell me what you provide first and then let me know how like the disaster psychology works with that I

mean I think you shared a little but I want to know more about your programs sure so companies call me in to do an assortment of corporate trainings it can be on anxiety or stress and burnout in the workplace it could be on suicide prevention uh it could be a situation where they've recently had a suicide and a few months later they want someone to come in and talk to them about suicide and what to do

if someone becomes suicidal I also do trainings on leadership companies bring me in and I work with managers in reference to leadership and and I use servant leadership as my model um how to lead how to lead through difficult times how to lead through change so there are all types of topics that I will train companies on and since the pandemic it used to be 100% of my trainings were on site now post pandemic it's about

15% trainings on site and the rest virtual which means the whole world has opened up now I could be doing a training for a company in Japan or London uh Canada anywhere okay yeah I mean that's the the positive side of of what happened to us this too right here like us being able to zoom and you're in Texas I'm in Florida you know so I have to always look at the positive and uh and stay

focused but I want to know more about the training okay because to me like you said you have different subjects so is there like a menu or did or are you able to like say a company says well I like the way you speak about this but can you speak about that and then you create it yourself and then you bring it together and then go and and you know present it uh there are times when

a company will come up with an idea we'll talk about it um I will want to talk to senior leaders then I'll want to talk to employees to to ask them what do you think you need a lot of companies make the mistake of decid what their employees need but they don't ask the employees so I get connected to all of that and then if they ask me to actually put together the product then I put

together an evidence-based uh research-based PowerPoint presentation it's not PowerPoint by death um it is a an animated at times performance because what I learned from television is that I could learn and know uh I could be the subject matter expert um but if I didn't keep people interested if I didn't show energy and personality then people will disconnect so it's never 90% subject matter knowledge and 10% personality it's usually 50/50 and when speaking to companies somewhere

along the way I've got to connect to the audience and they've got to like me if they dislike me and feel like I'm stiff or that they can't connect to me at all then they're really not going to absorb the material so a company will come to me directly or a company will be a client of an employee assistance program and that company will ask that EAP Well we'd like a trainer to come in and then

that EAP has access to a bank of experts then the EAP calls me or sends me an email and says bill could you train on this day here's the subject are you comfortable with that and then we go from there okay do you like doing that that or do you like doing one-on-one therapy or both or you know like which one do you like more well I like a variety my private practice has never been wall-to-wall

patient contact it's always been three revenue streams patient contact corporate trainings and then the critical incident stress management work okay so is that your Niche like that's what you're known for yes okay that's wonderful so you know you talked about storytelling right because it is important you're right like if if I sat here monotone and you sat here monotone and they're listening they're they're going to turn that off real quick or they using for sleep like

this exactly yes I could blindfold you with dental floss you'd start to fall asleep yes so can you share a story from you know where you're storytelling to you know like the way you are made a big difference in when you were training I do try to drop in stories and when I talk about journalism at times uh someone will ask me well did you ever make a mistake on the air and I tell the story

of how I standing in front of the MAA building that that uh moments after it was blown up hours after and I thought to myself this is the worst thing that I'm ever going to see as a journalist and of course six years later I was wrong yeah and some of the things that I've seen have just gone beyond the realm of what I thought reality was and then let me tell a funny story so I

was a new reporter in Oklahoma City and it was right around Christmas and the Oklahoma City uh the government city government they bring in a tree every year very big tall tree and uh they light the tree at around 5:00 and of course that's right around news time so the the TV station always sent a reporter out to do a live shot and the reporter would go out and the city would tell him okay we're going

to light it in 60 seconds the reporter would call the station and say okay we're going to go in 60 seconds the anchors would throw to the reporter the reporter would talk about the tree how tall it is and there it is isn't it beautiful well that's not exactly the way it goes I didn't didn't know it but every year they pick the newest reporter to go out on that story because they know that the reporter

will be standing there and they'll be told a minute but it's not really a minute it'll go a minute and a half two minutes and you just have to keep talking so I went out there not knowing this the uh the government official said okay we're going to light it in a minute I called the station they hit me live I started talking now as a TV reporter you have a clock in your head you can

measure things within five seconds because so much of your world comes down to seconds not minutes seconds so I started talking and talking and in my head I heard a little voice saying okay we hit a minute they're a little bit late I kept talking we're at a minute 15 now we're at a minute and a half now this is a long time to just be yapping yeah now we're closing in on two minutes and I'm

starting to run out of things to say so I thought well I've already talked about the ornaments how tall the tree is I should talk about who's responsible for getting the tree here so I talked about how the City of Oklahoma City along with a number of CI Civic groups are all responsible for the Christmas trees's erection now grammatically that is correct but you can imagine what was going on in my head when as soon as

I said those words right and I just kept talking anyway yeah but I thought I am mortified did you show it do we have Clips can we find these I didn't you you can't because it was too long ago but when I got back to the TV station you can imagine the razing yeah that I was hearing and then I find out yeah every year we find the brand new reporter and just send them out there

just to see what happens want to to flip back to a darker note when I was leaving Oklahoma City to move to Seattle um I gave them four weeks notice and something unusual happened they hired a reporter in two weeks it's generally really difficult to get someone moved and hired in four weeks so last week I was there I met the person who was taking my place now I was one of two reporters working at night

just two people working at night and I was known as the reporter that loved reporter participation so if there was something I could do like get in an airplane or jump out of an airplane or whatever I would do it okay so the woman's name was Kathy Jones and so she talked to me about when we moved here um I've been married for so long and we're thinking about building a family here and having a baby

and so we got to know each other a little bit and then I moved to Oklahoma City and forgot about it months go by I am in The Newsroom in Oklahoma City and one of the producers said Bill didn't you work for work in Oklahoma City and I said yeah and he said well there was um an air show there and one of the reporters at um the a TV station he named the TV station was

in one of the planes they let they let her ride in one of the planes the plane did a barrel roll and didn't come out of it to the ground oh my goodness was killed and I thought that's horrible and that would have been that would have been a 50-50 chance if that was me maybe even more than a 50-50 chance because my hand would have gone up to say okay great you get to ride an

airplane I want to do that so that was a bizarre situation yeah I mean and that makes you think that makes you just understand life right like wow wouldn't that be sort of like what people go through with Survivor guilt in a way no I felt really awful I didn't really feel any guilt because I had not caused the accident right I I was in no way connected to that um but the CH saying to me

50 there's a 50-50 chance you would have been on that plane right that's a little bit of a bizarre story yeah it is a bizarre story like it makes you realize how fragile life is but at the same time how resilient we can be in it you know and so as so let's talk about that let's talk a little bit about how we could break the stigma right because you know I'm sure we could talk about

more of the stories like I could ask you like what was the most impactful story that you ever went live in you know into and that you will never forget you know and then how how did that help you now become a really good therapist it would have been 911 okay that for days there were days when I would just sleep in the news van they'd send us food we'd sleep we'd start the next day and

it really helped me understand resilience to a degree that I just never thought I'd ever see um the Pentagon itself was like a a mini City uh with its own generators brought in its own lighting and its own Mortuary and it was a really hard time yeah I mean I'm already tearing up because I think if the second you say 911 anybody that was that was able to remember things you know because I do and uh

yeah I remember exactly where I was what was happening you know and for you to be a reporter live there that's like whoa whoa so how how do you you know with something like this what would be practical tips and tools because honestly like we might hopefully not but we might have another school shooting another natural disaster like what just happen sorry I'm an emotional therapist so when I think about stuff like that sorry that's okay

my uh listeners know me yeah they know how I am hard to take yeah we uh in the months after 911 if you lived in the Washington DC area I thought for a while that we were the most highly traumatized area in the world because you might remember that after 911 in the month of October there were two men driving around shooting people at random the sniper slangs oh my God and they killed a number of

people and then we had the anthrax problem yeah and then we had the worst case of West Nile virus in the nation's history that summer so for a while you'd look in the air you'd see a plane you'd be reminded of what happened you had to open your mail but there was fear around it you had to go out and get groceries and go to to a gas station but there was fear around that and you

had to leave your house during the summer and you were worried about mosquitoes yeah so I had never seen anything like that pushed together between September and July yeah and so now that you look back and we made it through you know the people that were able to hopefully you know in a healthy way and there's people that are still suffering honestly because maybe they don't have the tools or like you know I know with the

the Parkland shooting here I kept hearing and that's when I went back to being a therapist I wasn't a therapist at the time and that's why God called me to be a therapist again I'm like okay um EMDR I'm not an EMDR specialist at all but I was told that quite a few people that helped them a lot is there other tools or um modalities that you feel is very beneficial that somebody might want to look

into if they're still struggling with certain things like you know the the traumatic experiences yes uh if you are wrestling with trauma remember that trauma is highly treatable at the old school of trauma treatment was well we'll just help you manage some of your stuff so you'll be okay the newer school is that no we can help you recover and Recovery could be measured in you you just don't meet criteria for PTSD anymore you're functioning a

lot higher so as far as evidence-based treatments that I use um I use EMDR and then I use CPT cognitive processing therapy or I used prolong exposure therapy there are some others but pardon me what can you explain prolong exposure therapy I'm not very um sure first on that so the whole idea around brain habituation is the theory well it's clinically been proven that if you repeatedly and in a measured way um expose someone to a

certain stimulus eventually they will become accustomed to it okay so for example if we took you and your first job maybe at a company and we visited you on day one and said use the liquor scale one being I'm completely relaxed and 10 being um I am really anxious a lot of people would come in maybe at a six or a seven or an eight they'd say of course I'm nervous I don't even know what to

do yet I don't even know the names of the people I'm working with we come back after 90 days there's a good chance you'd come in maybe at a three or four or five now what happened in those 90 days did you become a subject matter expert no you didn't what happened was you kept going back to the same place so prolonged exposure therapy let's say for example that someone was severely beaten and robbed um at

a bus stop mhm and now they've got PTSD um elements of this would call on me to they'd come in they would tell their story in great detail I would stop them and ask them about ask them more questions we'd go through the story maybe in about 10 minutes they would have recorded it on their phone then I'd ask them to tell their story again generally it's about three times in one session and they'd go home

and listen to the recording every day several times wow and then eventually we would do the exposure on the phone and we would have to do exposure in the real world so I might have them be driven by someone else past that bus stop just drive past it a couple of times this week now I'd like you to drive up to it and just stop Next Step would be drive up to it step outside of the

car get back in okay then I'd like you to step out of the car walk over to the bus stop and walk back to the car and so there would be gradual exposure to the the actual situation um between the two it is clinically very effective but as you can tell it's hard it's very hard Psychotherapy yeah um I just had a situation where a a worker was struck um a really small woman she was hit

in the face uh by a man who was angry outside a hospital the man hadn't received treatment he came out and he hit her and she's like 5 foot nothing and so she came to me and she was having all of the symptoms that one a person has right after a trauma and the symptoms that people have acute stress disorder are a normal reaction to an abnormal situation most people will have those and she wanted trauma

treatment and I said so give me a sense of when you are planning to go back to work and she said well I plan to go back to work in six weeks and I said that is not very long and she said well I don't have a choice I'm taking FMLA I'm only going to get six weeks and so I walked her through what I might be able to do and I said in the six weeks

probably the most effective thing that we can do is prolonged exposure therapy so we did that squeezed into six weeks generally this is about 3 months wow so did you meet twice a week we met once or twice a week okay she listened to her story on her phone and then very quickly we got to a place where she had to go back to that entrance of the hospital and it was drive into the parking lot

Drive in get out get back in the car drive in get out have someone escort you drive in get out have the person stay in the car and watch you walk right and I said this is going to be really hard and I'm not absolutely sure it's going to work given we only have this short amount of time and she worked really hard yeah the courage that this woman had was incredible yeah and so she got

there she was able to get to a place where she could get get out of the car and walk in with a minimal level of discomfort and now she's back to work and everything is fine wow so I offer those three intervention methods and a lot of it has to do with how available is the person as far as how many sessions where are they are we doing it uh virtual or in person and then unfortunately

manag care and money have something to do with this yeah that's the whole that's part of it also yeah so that's why I've learned three trauma treatments to offer as many options to an individual who is suffering from trauma as I can right and so if there is a student who wants to specialize in trauma I would strongly suggest you start with one evidence-based treatment and maybe add another and to remember that it is not going

to be wall-to-wall trauma treatment you can't do it it's going to have to be trauma and then maybe some people with depression other people with anxiety maybe another person with an adjustment disorder right but you won't make it if you're in front of six people a day who are who need trauma work you will be of no value to anyone after about a couple of years right because like you have to keep your humanness because like

to me I would think I wouldn't be I mean I wouldn't be able to do it that's for sure as a therapist you know know even it also depends on the personality right every personality is different as a therapist and and and what you're called to do your Niche what you can handle how you take care of yourself but wall-to-wall trauma you have to really become I hate to say like robotic because how do you hear

that much sadness and pain all day long right if if you ask the person to attach a level to their deepest darkest fears and they say well it's about right here I would tell them I'm in it here with most people yeah because there are things that have happened that they could not even imagine yeah happening in their lives right but a clinician who specializes in trauma has to watch the number of hours they're in session

doing trauma work they have to be really careful we owe that to our patients to take care of ourselves otherwise the work we do do is not going to be effective we will burn out become wounded healers and then we're not really going to be able to help anyone right not even ourselves yeah and you get burnt out and then you're over the job and then you know and I know personally people know my story if

you listen to my podcast I'm and my and you read my blog I'm pretty open therapist even though I know I know you probably were trained like this too like you need to not show any you know you have to be this empty slate you have to you know it's the wholey Dynamic like and I to me I'm going I was working with adolescence I had to be real they could sniff that stuff out anyway like

working with teenagers um and now things have shifted in my practice as well but breaking the breaking the stigma of mental health right especially in the workplace because now you you see oneon-one but you're running a group practice right and and you're offering these different kinds of training but say there's a company owner right now who has a small company of like 100 employees or school or a nonprofit and they're saying all right how do I

even start the open conversation of mental health or mental well-being in my company what would be the first thing that you is there a resource or a book or do they say or you just say just contact me you know for free 15 minute consultation like but I I like to give practical tips to my listeners for you know whoever is listening so say that see or that company owner wanting okay I know this or our

church right or a faith-based community is like all right I need to have someone come and talk about mental well-being where where do I start what do I do one of the first things that you would do is realize there are resources right around you so maybe in a company getting in touch with human resources and asking them what are you seeing what's happening what do these statistics say as far as employees and what they're dealing

with um what do the numbers say in reference to days off use of Health Care Privileges and benefits what are you seeing and then bringing in senior leadership and asking them what are you seeing bringing in managers what are you seeing what are you hearing and that's going to start to give you a sense of what's Happening also tracking um rates of turnover resignations oh wow yeah um also longevity of employees are you hiring people and

then in eight months 8 to 10 months they're gone which is so expensive to do so a lot of the information is right around you now let's say you have discovered some problems and let's say that uh HR and some of the managers have talked about how employees are really stressed uh they're burned out case loads are really high it could be an insurance company uh then your next step uh would be to reach out to

a corporate trainer with a mental health background or reach out to your employee assistance program and ask them to bring in a trainer okay and so that would be my role in in either situation to come in and I'd want to sit down first with senior leadership or human resources whoever got the ball rolling and get a sense of well what are you seeing why am I here what are your goals what do you want to

do here how do you think the audience will the audience be open to talking about mental health um I've been in front of probably the some of the toughest audiences and that would be the military and firefighters and police officers so um as we all know resistance is the problem of the therapist right yeah so um if someone is like starting wanting to do what you do right not the therapy part say it's a therap say

it's me okay and all of a sudden because you experienced my first I mean I hate to say my first because I have I've trained teachers you know in the in the high schools I've done nonprofits in a small 10 group setting because it was a specific thing I'm training them I was good and then I took that challenge because this year was my year to say yes I'm going to get uncomfortable and do something that

instead of staying in a comfort zone and I'm grateful that you were there to experience that with me Bill honestly and you gave me some good tips and you were very encouraging because I had no idea your background you know and you sat there with me and I mean you sat there and listened to me and you could tell that a little bit I was a little nervous here and there but I I love that I

love psychoeducational I love encouraging I love taking what I've learned in the last two three decades I don't want to age us but that's what it is what it is and I want to pass the Baton to the next generation of therapists or not even that just in a group setting you're you're you're helping a bigger group than the one-on-one and so I'm seeing this happening with than me at this moment without saying too much but

what would you say to me like what like what tips are like where do I go where do I start how do I end up speaking in front of a bunch of people like you without going where are my notes and fumbling around with first of all I'd rightsize your expectations and that might be that let's say you're doing a one-hour presentation we go through the presentation but I'd point out well the first slide is a

title Slide the next slide is an introduction the next slide after that are the bullet points that you are going to be going over as in here's what I'm going to tell you so that's about four slides there at the end there is the summation you're taking time for questions and then you're finishing up so that's about four more slides so eight slides are going to be pretty easy then if you add questions to it if

you have a 60-minute presentation you're you're actually going to be speaking for about 45 minutes and the other stuff is going to be really easy and so you're down to 45 minutes and when I teach people how to do Powerpoints I teach them how to add live live off of the PowerPoint meaning you know the material you don't present a PowerPoint that has that looks like a crossword puzzle it's usually three or four lines with a

few words and that's it and you should be able to add Li off of that make sure you breathe and one of the best ways to get relaxed and to win over an audience is get there early and talk to people wow yeah so in my presentations I'm in the middle of doing a series of modules with a large company and it's live I get there early and people are sitting around and I walk around and

it's in the morning so someone might be munching on a bagel and I'll ask them how's breakfast usually a bagel every morning I'll walk around say hello I'll thank them for being there I'll just make chitchat with them and that's a really important part of the presentation being able to connect with the audience and talk to them before and then um look for opportunities to walk I I do my best work when I'm not in front

of a Podium I'm walking around I'm chatting with people I'm asking them questions directly what do you think right saw a head knot over here is that what your thought is so I my style is to engage directly with the audience and when you're doing that um there is an even a reduced amount of time even more of subject matter and more personality and connecting to the audience and then also um learn to breathe learn to

do inhale for three hold for one exhale for six I did that when I worked as a reporter at times there were times when um it's called a double box in TV so here's the anchor on in one box and up up Pops Bill the anchor says bill prad is standing by live at the scene of the fire well at times I would be standing there and I would do my breathing exercises okay no one would

know and I would just slow everything down I learned very early that the faster that I speak the greater chance I'm going to go blank and if I speak really fast people who are watching and listening will think that's rather odd it'll make them uncomfortable and so I learned a long time ago to slow down relax and then one person in TV news when I I would always look at the tape of my work looking for

things I could do better and he walked by he looked at me he looked at the tape looked back at me and he said bill you know you're never as good as you think you are and you're never as bad as you think you are oh wow well there's an interesting perspective yeah I love that what he's saying yeah Never As Good As you think you are you're never as bad as you think you are love

that that's like that's grounding right there that's like yeah okay what's and what's the what's the worst thing that can happen at that moment I don't know I mean listen you I'm grateful that you were there and you gave me some of those tips um it it was a subject that you know made people uncomfortable I'm trying to do it right by it without be being political or anything like that right I was just trying to

give information to make people understand so maybe you could ask Whitney if you're coming next year that you be a speaker what do you think of that that'd be a lot of fun I am definitely going to be there yes me too I I would love to present I've been I have presented on a topic that takes a look at the Bible and the DSM and we know what the DSM says about mental illness what does

the bible yeah about mental illness what does the Bible say about Jesus and stress oh my goodness oh please please because when she does that um I think she puts a call out to speakers or whatever or a call to act you know a call whatever casting no it's not a cting wrong wrong career Diana so for me I would love that I would love to learn about that and get a see you on that and

just that or how you went from solo to group because we didn't even touch that it's been an hour already we've already had communication I usually like to you know wind it down now so to me like maybe I'll have to have you on again just about business skills and group practice and all that but buil you know thank you so much for your time I really appreciate it I also would like to know if you

have any final words for the audience sure please believe in yourself and capture opportunities to build resilience sometimes we just don't take advantage of what's around us sometimes we're in a dark place and we think that it's never ending but there is a way out uh there's something called the Stockdale Paradox where at times if you think that and you look at a situation and you think that well it could get a little worse but eventually

I will get out of it MH it's called the stock out Paradox things might get a little worse worse but I will get through this yes yes we will get through this because right now like ever since 2020 I think we' all been trying to get through this yes right and so you know guys like for all my listeners here that are listening at this moment he's right like see what the resources get connected I know

sometimes we get stuck in emotions but understand this that that I know what I believe my listeners understand if you listen to my podcast that I am a believer a disciple of Jesus Christ and we have to understand that we are here for a purpose and a reason and you know you could figure that out you know just be still understand and know that you are resilient like our cells are meant to heal you know if

we're talking scientifically like right you get a wound it heals over and it's the same for our mind and our heart and just seek help it's there's nothing to be embarrassed about you know or it's not a weakness actually it's a strength when you can say I need help you know yes so again Bill thank you so much for coming on and listener don't ever forget to trust in the Lord guard your heart and renew your

mind bye bye bye and now for the disclaimer to make sure you understand that you are responsible for you the content provided on the holistic counselor podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice diagnosis or treatment always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or mental condition never disre regard professional medical advice

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