This week Dr. Trevor Wilkins, known as the Angry Viking Therapist, discusses the impact of early life experiences on current behavior, trauma in public safety and military professions, and the importance of changing one’s mental filter to overcome adversity. Dr. Wilkins shares his journey from public safety to becoming a therapist and provides insight into his intensive, specialized treatment methods for trauma. The episode emphasizes the significance of taking control and applying practical strategies to improve mental health and overall wellbeing.
Episode Highlights:
03:38 The Power of Predictions in Therapy
11:32 From Public Safety to Therapy
26:33 The Neurotrauma Project and EMDR
32:00 The Impact of Childhood Experiences
35:07 Addressing Trauma and Mental Health
42:42 Complex PTSD and Blocking Beliefs
Dr. Trevor Wilkins, PhD, LPCC-S, NCC, CCTP, is a trauma-focused psychotherapist specializing in PTSD treatment for public safety professionals. A former police officer, firefighter, and EMT, he brings real-world insight to Thin Line Counseling in Lexington, KY. Known for his no-nonsense, action-oriented approach, Dr. Wilkins combines evidence-based methods like EMDR and REBT with deep expertise in law enforcement stress. He serves as Clinical Director for The Wounded Blue, teaches at the University of the Cumberlands, and is pursuing a second PhD in Trauma-Informed Care. Dr. Wilkins is a respected speaker, researcher, and advocate for those who protect and serve.
Learn more at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-wilkins-phd/
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you want to know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words. Instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. The angry Viking therapist, Dr. Trevor Wilkins,
01:01
He heals trauma and it’s not about having good feel good affirmations. He uses neuroscience, psychology and real world work. Dr. Wilkins, the angry Viking therapist, PhD, EMDR expert and trauma specialist. This is a no bullshit, no soft talk, just hold hands kind of strategy. This is about real world doing the work and taking your control back. Doctor, as I said before we hit record, I’ve been admiring your work for a long time. I’m in Sean Ryan’s Patreon.
01:32
And they were asking about potential people to be on his show and somebody recommended you. Oh, great. And so now I can actually be have an informed opinion. If I get to say something to him, who knows, maybe we’ll see on his show, helping even more people with your message. But thank you for being here and thank you for your time, brother. For sure, man. And that’s a big name too. I follow his stuff partly because of the people he has conversations with are my people and what I continue to learn about.
02:00
You know, I never stopped learning. So continue to learn about their stories drive me to, to remind me why I keep doing this. Some days when you do feel burned out or feel like it’s not working or not worth it. I’ll listen to that. And then he’s such a great interviewer, know, like he, knows how to talk to people and, that’s a rare find sometimes these days. So yeah, I listened to his as well. Yeah. He, um, he just comes right at it. Doesn’t hold anything back. Doesn’t give a shit about what side of the opinion you’re on, which is.
02:29
what I try to do because no matter what side you’re on, usually there’s at least a part of what you’re seeing that’s ill-informed or has a lot of confirmation bias attached to it. And if we don’t have the ability to step back and look at it and say, okay, where could I be wrong? Or where am I most likely wrong? And then how is that informing how I do everything else? That literally leads into the type of therapy that you do about who do I believe that I am? What do I believe is this narrative? And so for those that don’t understand, you’re not just a big angry guy.
02:57
I mean that that’s a portion of who you are, but you have a PhD and then you’re actually working on Beginning your second dissertation for your second PhD So you’re doing that in addition to a full-time practice in addition to everything else that you’re doing so and before we hit record I love what you talked about you were saying that You’ve studied trauma. You’ve experienced it. You’ve seen it Knowing what you know about it now What would you have done differently back in those times when you were in the chaos of trauma and the phrase?
03:27
A lot. I would have loved it a lot differently, as it kind of, you look at it in the kind of the stoic and trauma perspective, which is kind of how I see things, it’s my lens today. That’s how I constantly think about stuff in this psychological realm. I would have understood that my filter, that my lens wasn’t necessarily correct. And that doesn’t mean that I had to be nice to people that were bad, or I had to let people off the hook or give them excuses for the bad things they do.
03:56
or even myself, you know, the things that I was doing wrong, it’s not about making excuses. That’s not the filter I’m going for, but understanding this part of the brain that a lot of people think that we’re a response model, right? Like information comes in, we twirl it around in our little supercomputer up there, and then we spit out a response. And I’d make an argument that might be true for finances, setting up calendars, right?
04:22
But the reality is what we do most of the time is not a response model, it’s a prediction model. And your brain constantly gets information in from your five senses about right now and then right now and then right now. That’s what it really knows. And it uses your past experience to make a prediction about what’s going on and what do I need to do about this, maybe even what I think it means. So it’s constantly making these predictions. when it’s most of
04:48
day, that’s fine, right? If you go up to a door, you don’t stand at the door and think how did I get in this place, right? There’s a doorknob and you predict if usually when I grab doorknob, turn doorknob, push doorknob, it opens. That’s likely, right? You know, that’s the most likely, but when you reach 40, you could be shocked with static electricity. It could be locked. It doesn’t open. Somebody could be walking out when you’re walking in and it startles you, right? All pretty benign things in the, history of trauma in the world. But now I have to make a new prediction.
05:18
And you don’t think about it, right? You, if somebody’s coming out, you play the little dance game in the door. Like you go first, you go first. If it shocks you, you pull your hand back. If it’s locked, here’s a good example. If it’s locked, does your filter say, Oh man, did I screw something up in my hair on the wrong day? Or does it do what mine used to do and say, what’s wrong with this piece of crap? You know, why can’t anybody ever show up on time or, know, which is a value that I like about people is doing what they say they’re going to do at the time they say they’re going to do it. But.
05:47
There’s a big difference in my filter. I don’t need to go to, man, uh, gosh, I’m just, you know, the wrong, I’m always wrong, you know, but no, what I need to be willing to do is that I don’t know what the prediction is correct. Uh, I don’t know which one’s, which one’s right. I just need to, I need to widen my predictions. Why my predictions of like, I don’t know, let’s figure this out. Right. And the number of times where.
06:15
maybe except for the times where my life was in danger, you know, on the side of the road or fighting somebody in public safety or except for those true life or death that you really need that prediction response. Everything else, even high stress should have still been a different predictive model. Again, not in the manner that I should give everybody the benefit of the doubt. That’s nice. I don’t know how to do that as well. Right. It’s just that I have to be willing to understand that my filter
06:45
might be a little bit wrong. And how many times, how many times I’ve arrested somebody and it was a big fight, right? I never tried to mistreat people, but say it was a big knock down, drag out fight, or they said some horrible things. And we get on the way to the jail and we’ve got to look, I worked for the state, so we had a little bit of a ride. You get on the way to the jail and we get into a conversation. I think, you know what, this guy in a piece of trash, you know, he makes terrible life decisions and he should have done what he did today, you know, but it wasn’t good.
07:15
but he did and here we are. And that doesn’t mean I have to take it easy on him or like him or it’s okay what he did, but that my filter, which would carry me for 30 minutes after I was done with them, still pissed, which by the way is what I would take home. Maybe my prediction, I don’t know if my prediction’s right or not. I’m not trying to prove or disprove that. I’m just trying to remind myself that there’s more predictions out there. Widen that possibility. And you do that through certain ways. Therapy can help.
07:45
Reading can help. Education can help. would argue the stoicism helps, right? It’s what kind of got me started on the educational route. And it’s just my willingness to know like Marcus Aurelius alone, right? Like in my own broken paraphrase, I’m getting out of bed and sometime during this day I’m going to run into a bunch of morons, you know, and they’re morons cause they don’t know, you know? And he didn’t say, love everybody that you talk to, you know?
08:13
He just said, I got to be willing to be ready. My prediction’s wider for the morons. Right. And so I think that would have, I never did anything in public safety that was inappropriate or illegal or immoral, nothing like that. But it would have changed the way that I talked to some people and had some outcomes. And it definitely would have changed the way that that job affected me over 20 years. And for those that don’t know, tell us what that actual profession was before you got into being a therapist.
08:43
Yeah. So I’ve been around public safety and trauma a long time. I actually just talking to one of my employees the other day and realizing this summer, I will have been around critical trauma for 30 years now, which just saying that number makes me feel old. But when I was 16, I started volunteering for local EMS. They had an Explorer program back then. So spent a couple of years just doing RYLONGs, volunteering and doing different things.
09:05
Literally the day I turned 18, I got my EMT. I took the class my senior year of high school at night. I was very fortunate that because of that volunteering, I knew the director of EMS and he was also the instructor. So I got to take that. I took the NREMT test when I was 17 years old. Couldn’t even get a license yet. So the day I turned 18, I got that, started working in EMS for about three years. Decided I kind of wanted to go to the law enforcement route. I made a mistake of doing a ride along with the police department. I thought that was cooler. So. You got that adrenaline,
09:35
Yeah, man. Well, it was just different. It was being able to go out and make changes instead of just waiting for changes, which I love the MS. would go back into it today. I love that side of it. But at 21 years old, I wanted to go make changes, right? You’re making amazing changes in the MS, but, that’s just where I was in what I wanted to do. So I became dispatcher for a little while, turned 21 and got a law enforcement somewhere in that 18 to 21 range. went to college for a year.
10:05
And I say a year because I figured out that I liked cheap beer and girls more than I liked class. So they decided I was not fit for them. And I ended up on academic suspension. So, you know, I went and did a job that I feel like it, wasn’t going to serve me education and education obviously would come into play later in my life. But so I did that 15 years, uniform law enforcement the years before that as EMS and volunteers. So right at 20 years of public safety.
10:32
Uh, it ended very poorly for me. did not end the way that I wanted it to. was an absolute disaster of a human pushing everything away, angry all the time. And I, I reached out to a couple of different therapists, uh, one of which was known for public safety, but, uh, he just, uh, he doesn’t do therapy does more like critical event kind of thing. And went to a couple others and, and needless to say, it was just an absolute disaster, absolute disaster. So.
11:00
really didn’t have a lot of support from my agency. I don’t know if it’s because they didn’t want to or because they didn’t know how to. I was kind of a mess. I went from amazing employee, know, multiple awards for Braving the Line of Duty, multiple awards for most felony arrests. Like, you know, I really enjoyed that job and I became the worst employee you could have working for you. Just terrible, terrible employee, terrible toxic employee. Of course that related.
11:29
would relate to my family later, would relate to society later. So my career’s ended. I have a couple of what I call the dark years in there. I’m in a really bad place and I had just finished my bachelor’s in criminal justice. I had started that towards into my career for promotional reasons. And one night I’m sitting on my back porch, never going to go to school again. I have no idea what I’m going do with my life. And there’s a master’s in counseling. And I thought, you know what?
11:56
Maybe I can do that and figure out what the heck is wrong with me. Like that was truly my interest. What, what is wrong with me? You know, and maybe I can help a friend out. And I knocked that out in a couple of years, get a license, a professional counselor. I’m never going to go to school again. And then once again, I’m sitting on my back porch and looking at my school website and they have a doctorate. thought, Hey, better learning. And you know, all these years later, as you said, I’m going to finish the second doctorate soon. So it became a really cool job. This kind of.
12:26
the mission in fixing myself became a cool job. And in fact, the first doctorate is when I got really introduced to really stoicism specifically, but just kind of philosophy as a whole. I was in a school that the PhD program was pretty new. So when that happens, you’ll be, it’s the same classes, but you’ll be taught from other sections, education and the math, people teach the stats as opposed to.
12:54
And one of those classes that I really lucked into, it was really hard, was a philosophy and leadership class. Because the doctorate level, the PhD specifically over any doctorate is a philosophy degree. It’s the philosophy of your specialty. So I get introduced to that and this class was scary. There was five different types of philosophy. I can’t remember what they all were, but five different books we had to read. And the only grade in this class.
13:22
was the paper at the end where they give you kind of a consulting scenario or a business scenario. And they’re like, fix it with these books. And, uh, um, the, was an Epictetus book and man, just every line I was like, ah, this makes so much sense. Why can’t I do this? Right. So that would lead to some other type of specific therapies, rational behavior therapy and EMDR that I do. And so, yeah, that was kind of my introduction into volunteer EMS.
13:51
to now PhDs in counseling and what I do now. Yeah. And I love that you’re serving this group because these are our people, like you said, first responders, police, law enforcement, veterans, active duty. But I also love that you have this capacity because you’re just talking about trauma in general. So now when you had that CEO who, because a lot of people don’t understand, people will say, Oh, you know, I
14:18
I follow this person’s morning routine and I get up and I do 30 minutes of this and 30 minutes of that and I reflect and I meditate or I journal, which is great, but they don’t understand many of these people. You may be able to re like regurgitate or imitate or mirror their routine, but you will never be able to regurgitate or mirror their trauma that led them to be in the position to start pushing as hard as they do to be driven, to have this almost compulsion.
14:46
And they’ve been able to find something, an outlet, entrepreneurship, where they can do that and that rewards them. But there’s a lot of other things around that that may be darker. And I think that that’s where your work can really help a CEO, a founder, a co-founder, a leader in a business, until those things around them, because they’re just continually reproducing at scale in their business or in their organization or community. Yeah. I love you said that because, um,
15:13
you people that may end up going to my website or find me over the years, right? Yeah, I do have a specialty in public safety and for military and first responders, mainly because of my past. And I get a lot of what I call borrowed credit, right? I don’t know that person’s call or their shooting or their kid call or the wreck or the crappy boss or the, but I know those things. I’ve seen those and, and it can be any profession, right? If you run into somebody that military is famous for this, right? You just,
15:43
there’s a billion jobs in the military. didn’t do all the same thing, but you run into another military person. They got, you know, they got it right. Like that you have this general mentality. Maybe you didn’t love what you did or want to do more of, but, you got this general mentality. So I get a lot of, I call it borrowed credit. I don’t take it lightly. You know, people come in and they’re like, yep, this dude’s been there, you know? So I don’t use my own stories in that way, but
16:08
Unless maybe I’m explaining something or, connecting with somebody, but so I try not to rely on those, but you get borrowed credit. So, so of course I attract that group, uh, there’s not a lot of us, you know, we’re, we’re a small percentage of the U S that, that sign up for military public safety. But as you were just saying, I found a lot of good in working with CEOs, people I call like high performers, right? Cause we’re all kind of cut from a similar cloth.
16:37
Uh, maybe the job’s different, but I think the reason that some of those things that are attractive, like got to do the ice bath, got to do this in the morning, got to, know, those morning routines is, and I’m sure that there are medical and positive things for each of those things that people do. So it does help. Uh, but, uh, it’s, it’s why are they in that routine? They’re in that routine because they know they have to be a high performer today. And what a fascinating thing that.
17:05
you’re kind of talking about that I always notice in the psychological world is look at, and I’m not a tier one military guy. I’ve never done that, but I’ve a lot of friends that are, I’ve clients that are. And one thing I noticed is guys at that level, whether it’s tier one military, whether it’s a specialty in something, whether it’s a high level performer, that’s not the only thing they’re good at, right? They’re just, they’re amazing at that. That’s their skillset that they’ve put together. But most of those guys and gals,
17:35
uh, will blow you away with their knowledge of other things or their tenacity and learning, right? Or their education, right? It’s, it’s not just, Hey, I passed this physical standard and got really good at doing something. That’s amazing. That’s awesome. But you know, one of the reasons that, that there, there, I think there is so much attraction, whether it be in books, whether it be in podcasts, to folks like tier one or public safety people that have been in really high stress.
18:03
situations is they’re able to articulate that as opposed to, to, kind of sink into it and then just be part of the job. And so they can get their point across a little better. Right. I remember listening, we mentioned Sean Ryan, I remember listening to one of his years ago, was driving back from Oklahoma. There’s a group in Oklahoma I work with a lot called Caleb house. Caleb house is a rescue and restorative house for traffic children. So they, they rescue these kids, they have houses for them. They, they do the investigations to get this stuff together.
18:33
So I’m out there quite a bit and I’m driving back. it’s like a seven, eight, nine hour drive for me. And of course, Sean Ryan’s are long. I think there’s a long podcast, uh, which you would think nobody would listen to, but I was listening to one and it was a tier one guy. And through all the stuff I’ve been through and all the stuff that I hear all the time, every day, you know, I’m involved in critical trauma in this side as well now every day. And I remember driving and thinking how many times I said, holy crap.
19:03
to this guy’s story. And it’s not that the intensity of the thing was necessarily more the intensity I’m seeing through other people that have been in critical incidents. It was the complexity of it. was how much of it, which taught me, so that wasn’t the first time I’d heard that, but it was just a good learning lesson, how much what I treat is not traumatic events. We say that, we talk about trauma, what I treat is that dang filter.
19:32
you know, because it’s that filter that’s created by our previous life events that cause us the problems now. And what we like to say, especially in the trauma world, is we know that today’s dysfunction, so today’s anger, anxiety, depression, guilt, trauma, they’re created by previous life events. Now that could be age zero, that could be yesterday, doesn’t have to be childhood, doesn’t have to be a critical event, but it’s those events or things that left us feeling helpless, hopeless, they’re not good enough.
20:01
And that’s what gets re-triggered today. We’re not re-triggering the traumatic event. Yes, we have memories and flashbacks and nightmares or thoughts or feelings or locations or anxieties or triggers. But really, the one that gets us is the ones that left us feeling helpless, hopeless, and not good enough. Those things that talk about who we are. And even if we can articulate, I’m not hopeless, I’m OK, I’m not helpless, I’m OK, I did the best I could, we can articulate that all day long.
20:31
That’s the prefrontal cortex part of the brain. That’s the brain trying to work this out and make sense of this. There’s another part of your brain, the limbic system that says, I don’t know about this. I think we’re in trouble, right? Whether it’s fight or flight, whether it’s massive depression, whether it’s anxiety, know, whatever, whatever that fight or flight comes out for somebody, it’s the overreaction, the over emotional reaction that’s coming from the filter that I talked about. And the only way to change that is to change the predictions.
21:00
get that prefrontal cortex more involved in the emotional state, right? How many times we reacted to something. And, uh, the, the thing I always say is I never replied to an angry email for 24 hours. Right? This is why, this is why I don’t post on Facebook because I may type it out. get me wrong. me tell you something, buddy. But I don’t send it for 24 hours. I’ll leave it in draft. And most of those emails are still in my draft. Not that I don’t respond. Not.
21:28
But I know 24 hours later, because I’ve caught myself wrong many times, 24 hours later, I’m like, Oh, I still feel this way, but I’m going say, I’m going to say this differently. I don’t want to be nice. That’s not the point. But if I’m being over emotional, overreactional is what’s going to get me in trouble. And for years, you know, one of the things that we talk about stoicism all the time is anger, right? So I think people that are angry, whatever that means, angry people are very attracted to stoicism because of
21:58
You know as well as I do, right? You’re a student of it. It’s not a lack of emotion. It’s not being controlled by the emotion. I’m allowed to have emotions, but if they’re controlling me, I’m in trouble, right? So for years, I thought when I started this that I would have to teach guys why anger is bad. You know, like you got to get this out of your life. The problem with that though is that if you’ve never fought somebody on the side of the road in a ditch that doesn’t want to go to the jail,
22:26
And you’re 30 minutes from backup. Like I was anger works, man. Anger works pretty good, right? Military, right? Sometimes you’ve got to go do things that feel morally difficult or scary. Your body doesn’t want to do you go do it. Right? So, so anger, um, even if not destructive anger serves a purpose at times, the anger that gets us in trouble though. And what I usually see in my office or in consulting or online is
22:53
I’ve screamed at my kids and wife again, and 15 minutes later I’m sitting on the couch feeling like a piece of trash, because I did it again. That’s the one that gets us in trouble, right? And every time I say that, or every time that I talk about very difficult words for public safety people in military or Type A people, helpless, hopeless, not good enough, right? Call me helpless in a bar, see what happens, right? I’m not helpless, I’m a tough guy, right? I’m the big angry Viking, right? I can handle myself.
23:23
But every time that I’m sitting there 15 minutes after something and feel like a piece of trash again, that’s exactly what it is. And every person, type A individual or not, who has sat on my couch or talked to me online and I use those words, helpless, hopeless, not good enough, or 15 minutes later you feel like trash, every person’s gone, that’s exactly how I feel at my worst. Like that’s exactly it. And when I started to understand that, that that’s what we have to control,
23:52
Not through deep breathing, which is fine. Not through, you know, meditation, which is great. Those are important things. I’m not going to journal when I’m mad. I’m just not. I don’t care how many doctorates you have behind your name. I’m not going to do it. There’s, there’s great stuff about putting things on paper or talking or, but that’s not going to calm me down. It’s just not. I just know me. You tell me, take five deep breaths. I always like to say if I’m in the kitchen slamming cabinets, cause I’m mad. And, and my wife tells me to take five deep breaths.
24:21
I’m going down the hallway, slam the door, probably twice, probably hard enough to knock the doorbell off the wall. I know because I’ve seen me do it before. Right. And those things aren’t wrong. I just don’t think they’re the fix. Right. So we got to get in there and work on that filter that has left us feeling those ways that, that directly causes the irrational demands that we have on ourselves and other people in the world that causes those reactions, those overreactions. That’s what gets us in real trouble. Well, I think you’re.
24:50
coming from a great point, if we have a motive language, in a lot of ways, like you said, because I talk about this too, man, sometimes you have nothing else in this situation. When you’re in the military, lots of times you’re sleep deprived, you’re dehydrated, you’re low on food. The only emotion that you can grab is anger. And man, that’s not a mistake. Like your body’s not giving you that. That’s not a like superfluous emotion. It’s there to help you survive. Unfortunately, that’s all I grab all the time. And that’s the most available tool.
25:19
And now it’s my preferred tool because what I choose it once or twice. Now that becomes sort of my default, my, my preference. And then that just, there is no other thing on my dropdown menu. It’s anger or nothing. Yep. And so anything that’s an emotion, even though it could be right next to anger, could be fear. could be the fear that I’ll disappoint somebody or the fear that I’ll blow up again. That alone creates that loop. So that all of a sudden we’re continuing to repeat the pattern. And like you’re saying,
25:48
that these ideas like cognitive behavioral therapies is has a lot of stoses and components. Tell us about the method that you’ve used that you’ve created. because I love this, because again, those of us that are military or post military or whatever in these environments, we always have SOPs, standard operating procedures, we always have protocols. So X happens, I go into these five steps. So I love that you have this this methodology that allows us to really say, listen, first of all,
26:18
Can I step back and look at this? How do I stop my lizard brain from smashing on my amygdala and say, hey, you’re in danger even when you’re not. So what would you do? Can you give us kind of an idea of what you come up with and how those tools can help people in the middle of it? Yeah. So recently I started an idea. I’ve been doing this for a long time, but recently I started this idea and I typically start ideas to kind of just focus me as opposed to try to sell a name or a brand or something like that. But I’ve started this idea lately.
26:47
called the Neuro Trauma Project because there were two times I felt like I really excelled in getting better at what I do and understanding people and helping them. The first kind of started with that idea I talked about in college of getting into stoicism, starting to read that, you know, everybody kind of reads the same books in the beginning and like gets the general idea and you got to apply it yourself, right? It’s not about no emotion. It’s just not being in control of them. And so, so I really got into that and my whole left arm is full of
27:15
Stoicism tattoos Marcus Aurelius and Zeno and and a bunch of phrases and sayings really important Contrast the right side my whole right side of my body is all Viking battle tattoos. So, you know, I’ve got my Angry Trevor and dr. Trevor like that’s that’s the split I try to keep I try to stay in dr. Trevor more these days and then we hold hands together in the center of it so you can have yeah, yeah, and sometimes man, they fight against each other, right but
27:44
That was kind of the early like, I’m starting to see, even though it was words and it was thought, I was starting to see how the brain works. Right? So that led me to, I’ll say that one first, that one led me to, it was some rational mode of behavior therapy. It was created by Dr. Albert Ellis. And one of the neat things I didn’t even know at the time is he started under psychoanalysis, right? And he felt like that was, this is Freud, right? That there was just time consuming and ridiculous.
28:11
So he actually says in some interviews, I went back to my childhood love of stoicism and philosophy and created REBT. Man, I’m in, right? I got to listen to this guy now. And I think he’s one of the best psychologists that there ever was. He’s since passed in the 2000s, but I love his stuff. very direct style, kind of like me. don’t have to knife hand everybody, but I respond to direct style, right? So that really taught me about kind of…
28:37
a phrase that’s used in therapy a lot of kind of top-down thinking, right? You got all this going on. You need to think about this, right? We need to use that prefrontal cortex to understand the predictions, to override those over reactions, over emotions. That to me is the very stoicism side. That to me is the very rational behavior therapy side. I’ve been very fortunate to train with some really amazing people in REBT, including intending the Albert Ellis Institute in New York City a couple of times, like where he, I’m a source guy. I want to go out to the source and it’s been amazing all these years.
29:08
But the neuro trauma part, even though that is neuro, neuro to me, right? The neuro trauma part really began when I started hearing about a type of therapy called EMDR. I have movement desensitization reprocessing, knowing it hung up on the words. And when I first heard of it, the problem was like, like most things, it’s not new. It’s been around for a long time, but I was just hearing of it. I truly believe it became more popular because of the military. Prior to 2001, we had individuals who had
29:37
A deployment, some combat lost a friend or hat, you know, after 2001, people are coming into us that have multiple deployments and tons of friends gone and horrible scenes over and just this inundation of complexity of trauma. Right. So I think we had to up our game is why we kind of found things like EMDR. So the mistake I made is I got on YouTube and I looked at it and it was some weird old lady. Sure. Waving her hand in front of somebody and asking them if they feel better.
30:06
And I’m like, what? No. In fact, I was, I was, I was more than just against it. I was antagonistic. People would call me like, Hey, you’re a trauma specialist. Do you do that EMDR? And I’m like, no, no way. Absolutely. You know, it’s thinking man, get in here, you know, so I go, thankfully, right. Things turn out in your favor. Sometimes I go to a conference or seminar really, where they’re working with public safety members that are hurting. And one of the therapists like, yeah, man, come and watch me do EMDR.
30:35
All right. I can’t wait to show you how stupid it is and how stoicism is the way, you know, because I do still believe in that, but, and in 30 minutes, he had done with this guy, what was taking me three months to do, which wasn’t wrong, right? That the way we were attacking, wasn’t wrong. It’s still a big piece of how I treat things. But now I have this tool and really even more than tool. have this, this way of looking at the brain.
31:04
The way of look, understanding what’s going on in these brain scans. don’t do fmri as my medical doctor, but obviously see them and understand, learn from them and being able to understand what’s really going on here. So now we talked about that top down being, we got to change your thinking to change your emotion. The opposite phrase is, is bottom up, right? We got to use your experiences and your feelings and your beliefs and get that to start changing your thinking, right? To affect this. So they mesh extremely well.
31:34
on paper, seem opposite ideas. know, RABT says it’s not what happens to you that matters. It’s what you have decided this means, which is true. And E &R says this is all from your experiences, right? But where the cool mesh of them, and I had trouble putting together at times, I’d find my own self, where I found over the years is that it’s this amazing combination of yes.
32:00
This, the way you think is because of your life experiences, period. That’s how we learn things. And if you think about it, our value, who we are as a person, how we want people to treat us and how we treat people and what this all means, it’s experientially learned. You have to learn that from outside. We’re not born with that. We’re born with survival. We’re born with some needs, but we learn that from the outside. And it’s not always the problem, but if your parents sucked at teaching you any of that,
32:30
where the world screwed you over early. You don’t have a chance later. One in finding that this is a tough subject, but I know you guys have talked about it sometimes. I talk tough subjects all the time. One in five people in the U S have been molested as a child. Right. There’s two people in this conversation. Right. So it doesn’t take much more of us to put together in a room to realize statistics say one out of the five people standing in this room have gone through that experience. Now that doesn’t mean they’re ruined.
32:59
It doesn’t mean that it’s over forever. I’ve seen great growth from that. Right. But if it’s that prevalent, I spoke to a group of 3000 cops a year ago, do that math, right. That one out of every five, right. So, so we’re bringing this to the profession. We’re bringing this to adulthood. We’re bringing this to the military. We’re bringing this to public safety and law enforcement. And that’s not saying that it jacks us up every time we deal with it. Some people have figured out how to, how to get here.
33:28
You’ve made it this far, right? But if I never learned anything, but helpless, hopeless, not good enough, even if you’ve white knuckled life, right? You turned 18, joined the military, this is going to be it, man. You just white knuckle it. I’m going to make it. I’m doing something with my life and that’s awesome. Do that stuff. Right. But a year from now, you’re going to see something that’s going to punch you in the face. Right. And you’re not, it’s not that.
33:53
there’s, there’s kind of a misnomer about trauma sometimes that like, well, this reminds me of this. No, probably not. Right. This event made you feel this from the past because you filtered it in the same way. Right. Uh, it calls that, that, uh, law enforcement officers go to, right. And they’re, they’re five, 10 and 15 minutes away from tragedy. They’re not on your front porch when it goes wrong. So sometimes they respond to things that have already happened. Right. And how many times
34:22
with those officers, could you legitimately write out a list of like, we did the best we could, this is what we tried, there was no way we could have done this, like no physical way we could have done this better. So we should just feel okay about it, but we don’t, right? A lot of times we do, hey man, that’s terrible, I’m glad I could help in some way, we’ll focus on the family, whatever, right? Like that’s great, but sometimes…
34:47
You carry that crap around for a couple of years and it doesn’t have to be everyday put uniform on. Isn’t, you know, for some people it is, but look at our filter. Our filters jacked up, right? I’m a hopeless, helpless, not good enough piece of trash. Right. And even if those aren’t your words, cause they’re strong and we don’t say that about ourselves, where did that start? Right. I use a series of questions with people that we’re not looking for the moment that it happened in childhood, unless you know of one, right? It could just be.
35:17
Life sucked, man. You know, I never learned this stuff. I didn’t realize it. How many people are blown away when I use this line of questioning to get you back to when’s the first time you felt the way that you just described to me and they go.
35:30
10, I was 10 years old. was eight years old, which by the way, is when the prefrontal cortex starts forming and you start learning that stuff, right? Anybody’s raised kids eights when they start having, uh, start asking questions, have a little personality, right? Before that, they’re just JL O man, you know? So are we really surprised anymore? I’m not. Are we really surprised anymore that, that hopeless and helpless are not good enough? Or even if those aren’t your words, but
35:58
Just the things that punch you in the face and bring you down. can’t get past started a long time ago. Doesn’t have to be childhood. Some people made it to 21 before something horrible happened. Right. I’m no longer surprised by the vast majority of people that say, this happened. It wasn’t the car wreck. It wasn’t the combat. The combat was terrible. And the things I had to do and the decisions I had to make. Right. But, but you didn’t try to take your life on the military base.
36:26
because of finances and you’re sad or because of you miss your friend, right? It gets to that level because you feel hopeless, right? Even if that’s not your word, you feel hopeless. And that’s what pushes people to that level, right? Anytime that I see a public safety, you know, life taken of themselves, I try to be careful about words I say, I never, what’s going to course take somebody’s stuff off, you know, it’s so dumb, but like, you know, anytime that somebody does that, I don’t know their story.
36:56
I won’t pretend to know everybody’s story, but I guarantee you at the end, felt helpless, hopeless, and not good enough. Right. Because that’s, that’s how I just know it. Every time I see it, it’s tragic. There’s a, on when this airs, uh, just this week, two officers from one agency took their life. It’s in the news right now. And they’ve had two within the last year do the same. It’s a big agency, right? So numbers, but I don’t know their story, but I guarantee I look at that picture and go, I know.
37:25
that hopeless, helpless, and not good enough feeling, right? And sometimes it’s by pure luck that I’m still here. I agree. And I think that sometimes you’re making some great points. There are times that we go through legitimate trauma, but we may not be traumatized from it, right? We can use that as the thing that post-traumatic growth. We always hear about that. But sometimes, like you said, because we try to compartmentalize that, sheer amount of attrition of micro traumas that happened thereafter.
37:53
that leads to that feeling of helpless, hopeless, not good enough. Also this idea that, like you said, verbiage is important. Some people had this idea that there’s no way out. They’re just in this cycle. This is my life. I’m in this job. This is as far as I’m going. I don’t want to go any further. This is my relationship. It’s pretty much wrecked. This is my child. I’m a horrible role model for them. I already feel like I’ve damaged them because of my sheer presence in their life.
38:21
The only thing that makes sense to me is to not be in this environment. And like you said, they feel like there was no way out. But what you’re showing is like, listen, let’s step back. Like you said, this questioning, show me the evidence that this is true. Show me the evidence that this is actually harming you. And then like you said, you’re backing them back into let’s pull on that thread, let’s unpack that. And now they start to understand. And the other thing that I love that you point out too, I know a lot of people that say,
38:47
Why do I do this? You know, if only I could find the thing, if only I could find the moment, the event, the problem is sometimes they put so much weight onto that event. And then they find it and now they understand it and it still doesn’t change their behavior. They themselves down because they’ve, they had this as this subconscious thing that holds them back. And that becomes an excuse. That becomes a crutch for them to not go out, take ownership, use this idea of stoicism or whatever you want to put in this position.
39:16
But it gives you that capacity to say, okay, no bullshit. This happened. What am I willing to do now? How am I willing to change? And how am I going to allow that to inform how I treat everybody around me, including myself? Yeah. And when you do kind of basic, and this is probably for lots of different forms of trauma focused treatments, right? I did my basic, and what really saved me, you’ll appreciate this with the military side, what really saved me is I told you, I got on YouTube and saw these weirdos.
39:46
You know, doing this, one of the, this makes me so unpopular in the counseling world. Like I hate when they say things like, uh, they’ll be presenting to public safety or military, right? People with our mindset. And they always say things like, I just want to come alongside you and grow with my client. And I’m like, Oh, stop seeing that stuff, man. It freaks us out. Right. I’m not saying that’s bad, but it freaks us out.
40:09
You know, and you don’t have to speak the language. think there’s great therapists out there that have nothing to do with public safety or military that can be amazing at this. I’ve met them. I would never say you have to have the experience. You do need to understand us a little and you, you do need to understand. Trauma, right? You need to understand what this does to us. So fortunately for me, very fortunately for me, uh, I found a retired army colonel that not only did
40:37
EMDR teaches EMDR. And at one point before he passed in fortune, he’s a long time mentor of mine. learned so much from, he received a lifetime achievement award from the international association of EMDR. So you’re like this guy’s he’s done it, man. He’s, literally written the book. It’s right over here over my shoulder. He’s written the book on how to treat these high trauma, high stress, difficult careers and mentalities. So, uh, learned so much from I miss the guy, but
41:04
He was a, he enlisted in the army in Vietnam and he likes to remind you, he, was his, his number started with RA regular and lists, you know, uh, he did it himself. Right. And then he came back as an officer, made it all the way to Colonel and then owned, uh, something called the soldier center, uh, at Fort Campbell near me. So I found somebody with my mentality that understood this. So even with that though, you know, I’ve always looked up to this guy. You finished that first training.
41:33
And you come back and you’re like, I got it. We’re, just going to treat this trauma and we’re going to do the thing, you know, the bilateral stimulation and, we’ll get the right trauma and everything will be great. Right. And this, this is the same in most professions, no matter what you do, like you gotta learn more than that because what would happen is I’d go into these sessions and do the rhetoric that they taught me. Right. Which is what you need in the beginning, like bootcamp, like everything else, you need the beginning steps and they wouldn’t, they’re like,
42:00
No, I mean, I’ve got some crazy calls I think about or like, man, you know, still think about what this happened once in a while when I was 16. like, I mean, I can’t say I’m bothered by it. Obviously we’re going to explore whether that it does bother them or not. But like all these people weren’t saying that they weren’t saying like, Oh man, this call my first year or this thing that does happen. But it turns out that’s like 5 % of the people I talk to. Right.
42:26
which was very infuriating in the beginning and disappointing. like, what am I, what am I doing here? Right. But of course, much like you, cause I know you continuously learn and teach yourself. That’s how you got to this, you know, this level of doing this and your coaching and stuff is that, okay, well that drove me to figure out why. Right. So here’s where the complex PTSD stuff comes in. some people it is the call, right? For some people it is, man, I just can’t get this one out of my mind or every time I’m intimate with my spouse, this comes up.
42:55
Right? That’s very real. But 95 % or maybe more of the time it’s, I don’t know, man, I just feel like a piece of crap. Right? Or I can’t sleep or my marriage is a mess or I’m angry all the time or I can’t stop involving, over involving myself in calls or I’m drinking too much or I’m taking pills that I shouldn’t be taking or I’m doing high risk activities, know, public safety and military world like
43:24
I don’t truly believe that the rate of infidelity is higher than the rest of the world. It’s just very on display. why do we do that? Is it the intimacy? No, it’s the high risk, right? Doesn’t make excuses for it. Don’t do it. But as a fireman, you’re supposed to go and be on call 24 hours, ready to go as soon as the tones go off to maybe the craziest life, most life threatening thing of your life. And then I’m supposed to come home and watch the kids or bathe the kids.
43:54
Right? Like, yes, you have to, you have to do that. You have to man up or woman up. You’re like, yes, you do have to go do that. There is a piece of like, yeah, you signed up for this homie. We gotta go do this. Right. But to pretend that that doesn’t affect us, uh, and then we make decisions in our filter. Ludicrous, ludicrous. So it is the filter that has to be attacked. We may attack it by previous life events to get us where we need to go. Right.
44:22
But one of my favorite things, hate that people are hurting, but one of my favorite things to see what people are hurting is how many times. And some people, can just ask the question, where’d this all come from? Where’d you learn that crap? Right? And they can tell you like, oh, my dad was terrible and they divorced and he used to hit me and, you know, bullied in school or whatever. Some people can tell you, most people are like, I don’t know, man, my life’s just falling apart. And through a series of questions, it’s more than one question, you know, I get to where I want to go, activating some.
44:51
some, some feelings, some emotions, some thoughts and right. Get it all together. And then what’s your earliest memory of feeling this way? This not good enough or I’m a piece of crap or I can’t do anything right. Or the two biggest ones. And this, this may be very telling for people that are listening. The two biggest are I’m not good enough or I don’t matter. If you got one of those in there, guess what your filter is today? You, you.
45:19
You may be able to turn a blind eye to it for a while, right? White knuckling life, right? You get the kids and the, you do the college and you go, you get to work and you make good money and you, but, if you have in there a history of not good enoughs or don’t matters, that didn’t start today. That didn’t start today. It may not be eight. It probably is right. But it, could be 16, 20, 25, but it could be a critical event that happened to you. Right. But.
45:48
I back to what I love, and again, I don’t want people to be hurting. I’m glad I can help, but one of the things I love to see in that, because I know we’re on the right place, is how many times I’ve asked that question and they go, holy crap. When is the first time that you felt like you had to fight for somebody’s affection? Was it in these crappy relationships? No, it was dad. And maybe dad wasn’t an abusive piece of trash, but some people, they are.
46:16
And moms are and divorces and, you know, abuse and, and, but how many times I’ve asked that question and they’re like, I’m acting just like I did when I was aching for that relationship. Right. And we’re not blaming that. We can’t change that. Right. I’m careful with that. I know some therapists get stuck there, you know, let’s, let’s heal the wound with your dad. I don’t know, man. Maybe he’s an a-hole. I don’t know. Right. Like let’s get to work on the helpless, hopeless, and not good enough.
46:46
filter that it causes that’s causing you all these problems, which I call the real signs of PTSD, right? I can give you all the clinical terms for it and the definition, but it’s anger, anxiety, depression, guilt, the not good enoughs, sadness, not healing like it should, attention deficit, right? A big, big topic these days, attention deficit. Maybe it is ADHD. Remember that’s very chemically based neurological issue, right? Maybe it is. I’m not going to negate that.
47:14
maybe it’s survival mechanism for you, right? Somewhere along there, we have these things called blocking beliefs. And to me, they’re the things that get in the way. Your brain is kind of like trails through the mountains, right? And why do we walk on the trails that are previously there? Because they work, right? It might be easier to climb this part of the mountain and forge a new one. I don’t know. That’s okay. Do that physically, right?
47:42
Why does our brain take the path? Because we’ve set these paths before us that kept us alive and pleasured us and, kept us out of trouble or got us in trouble on purpose. Right. But along these trails is these dark, dark caves in the mountains. Right. And that’s where all your stuff is. And we don’t have to unpack all your stuff. That’s one thing I want people to know. We don’t have to unpack all your stuff. Sometimes we need to, right. But we don’t have to unpack all your stuff. The problem is what those caves become is a blocking belief and you can’t get past it.
48:12
Right. And it’s not, I can’t stop thinking about this thing that happened. The blocking beliefs are, I always do wrong. I’ll never get ahead. I’m worthless. I’m helpless. I’m hopeless. I’ll never be good enough. It always goes wrong for me. Right. And the reason I bring those up is not sometimes you can, sometimes you can punch those out of the way, right? Like that with the evidence, right? Make it that stuff out of your life. Let’s, know, sometimes.
48:41
And sometimes you can’t, because you’ve tried a thousand times. Maybe you didn’t know that was the word or that’s what’s going on. But how many times those blocking beliefs didn’t start with the thing that happened six months ago, right? They started 20, 30 years ago, right? And I’m careful not to blame childhood for everything, but it doesn’t surprise me anymore, right? It doesn’t surprise me. Even if it’s not childhood, I will tell you for a fact,
49:09
that it started previous to today, right? That that filter started previous than today. And so that’s my job to attack. That’s, and why I do it in such an intensive model, right? I have a private practice, kind traditional private practice, but I have an intensive model. Like you have to fight this stuff intensively. You have to change the way that you think. We have to change the way that your brain operates. And it’s going to take more than, man, just sit down in front of me for an hour, right?
49:38
Uh, if I could do that, I’d write a book and be rich, but, a pill or something. don’t know. Right. But electroshock therapy, I don’t know. But the reality is you got a bunch of junk in there and we got to get it. We got to get those blocking beliefs out of the way. So you can continue on these paths. And the last thing I’ll say that the blocking beliefs, uh, which is what I was going to start with is the blocking beliefs are there for a reason. They have served you at some point, right? They have served you. Why do we teach public safety?
50:08
law enforcement, fire. Why do we teach them that if you don’t pay attention to detail and if you mess up, somebody will die. Cause that’s real. It’s not that much, right? Like I’ve screwed up before nobody died. Right. But I got to get you to this level of yes, it’s true. Things can hurt you. People will hurt you. People don’t like you. People do. People will, will do things to harm you.
50:37
You are going into a burning building. That’s crazy by the way, right? We do it because it’s the right thing to do and it’s adrenaline and we want to make it different, right? But military, right? We’re going to send you to another country to fight a war that honestly you can’t control anyway and you know nothing about. Why do we do it? Well, adrenaline, it seems like the right thing to do. I’m kind of excited to go do what I’ve been trained to do, right? Like that’s why we do it, right? It’s not an ongoing thought process.
51:06
We’re not doing it for the wrong reasons. And we’re not teaching people at that level that do those things. Or again, not to exclude anybody else, that just happens to be one of my specialties. Adults with childhood trauma, people that are high-performers CEOs, People that athletes, they’re blocked by the same blocking beliefs because at some point the blocking belief served you, whether it was eight or 15 or 16 or 25 when you got shot at, right?
51:34
At some point, the blocking belief served you. It’s not serving you now when you talk to your kids. Right? So there’s our problem. Yeah. And this is another example of how that adversity really shines a light on things. A lot of people will find that survival mechanism right next to that most impressionable adversity, because that was the thing that allowed them to survive. And because they had to have it so that skill set so sharp, especially at a young age, what happened.
52:01
That developed faster than everything else. So now they’re really good at this thing, whether it be avoidance, whether it be humor to deflect, whether it be the capacity to convince somebody of something, which if you can find the right thing to channel that towards, that’s fantastic. But if you don’t and all you do is learn to circumvent around it, you will never face the hardship, any hardship in your life. You’ll never have a hard conversation with somebody. Therefore your relationships will never be able to go to a level that’s actually something meaningful. And like you said, the same thing with work, with whatever our profession is.
52:32
Doctor, I could talk to you forever. I could, And I’ll have you on the show again in the future for sure. But I want to be respectful of your time because you are helping a lot of people and I want to maintain that integrity of my word. Can you tell us where we can find out more about you? How can CEOs, how can first responders, how can people get in touch with you and work with you and learn more about you?
52:54
Yeah. So some of the easiest ways, know, kind of the thing that’s updated the most is Instagram as much as I don’t want to be on social media. It works right. It gets the message out. So Instagram is dr dr Trevor Wilkins. Uh, and honestly, anywhere you search the angry Viking therapist or the neuro trauma project, you’ll find me, uh, the website is, is either the angry Viking therapist.com or neuro trauma project.com. Uh, and again, that
53:18
I do have a traditional office for people that are in the Lexington, area, right? That that’s, that’s the licensed part. That’s the thing I have to treat a certain way. But the reality is, um, what I’ve learned over the years is, is put together an intensive, usually eight week for most people, an intensive program. Uh, Dr. Hurley, who I talked about was kind of my long time mentor in EMDR. I’m proud to say his name. He started, became an expert in and even published, um,
53:46
studies about doing an EMDR intensives. And for him at the time, you had to go there for two weeks. You had to multiple sessions, you know, like that’s how you were doing all encompassing stuff. And in the military, that would work. They can just send you for two weeks. Right. Uh, so I started doing those in my office and it’s just logistically a nightmare for people. You know, it’s, it’s, I think people are more than willing to use their funds, their hard earned money and their time and their, you know, to, get better. But.
54:16
Two weeks is a long time in today’s world, right? So I have found a way that I can provide that online in a little bit longer, still intense, but you can live your life during these eight weeks. And I think that’s what people need. I get very burned out by the, man, that’s our hour. See you next week. Hope you’re okay till then. Which even in intensive models, it might be once a week. But that mentality, I think you need more. I think you need.
54:45
I think you need the therapy, whatever form that is, I think, or the consulting or the, you know, what, what are the coaching or I think you need that. You need that time and you need, but you need stuff to do in between and a good coach like yourself or, or, or consultant, the kind of my world or therapist. I should have your brain spinning for the next week, figuring out like my favorite. tell people all the time.
55:14
I can’t spend five hours with you, right? Like it’s going to be exhausting for you anyway. Right. But obviously I can talk about trauma for a long time, but, but I want people to get something out of the time they’re sitting in front of me digitally or in person. But I truly believe your best therapy is that drive home, right? Where your brain has to go. Oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. Right. And that’s exactly. And so, and so when we get together again in this intensive model, you can go,
55:42
Yeah, let me tell you where this slapped me in the face, right? Or we can tweak if it didn’t or right. So I do that in a, in that model, that neurotrauma project model. Uh, I call it project because it also reminds me to stay in that place, but it also lets you be your own project, right? Like you got to, you got to take yourself on as a project and I’m going to get you, I’m going to help you. Right. So, so yeah, that’s the best. I do have a YouTube channel, just Dr. Trevor Wilkins. Honestly, if you kind of search my name.
56:10
Because I am licensed professional, I’m pretty easy to find. I’m all over the internet. And yeah, I’d be glad to talk to anybody if I can. Absolutely. And we’ll put all that in the show notes. Like you said, Instagram, you get a lot of great content on there. Thank you. Thank you again so much for everything you’re doing, my friend. I will to you soon. It’s been an honor. All right. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
