Healing Through Trauma: EMDR Therapy for Survivors of Sex Trafficking

Arnold Stricker: 00:00:01

We have a very important show today and I want to give you a warning. The following content contains discussions of sensitive topics, including human trafficking, abuse, and exploitation.

These subjects may be distressing or triggering for some individuals. Please prioritize your well being and feel free to step away if needed. Welcome to St.

Louis in tune and thank you for joining us for fresh perspectives on issues and events with experts, community leaders, and everyday people who are driving change and making an impact that shapes our society and world. I'm Arnold Stricker, along with co host Mark Langston. Mark, how you doing today?

Mark Langston: 00:00:51

I'm okay. For a guy my age. I'm doing all right.

Arnold, we've got a really special show today, a little bit on the serious side, but I think it's going to.

Mark Langston: 00:01:01

Be a very interesting show, a very informative show.

Arnold Stricker: 00:01:05

I want to urge folks to stay with us. It's going to be very beneficial for a lot of individuals.

And that is our hope, is to make sure that if you're listening to this and you are maybe in one of those situations that you have this resource to reach out to along the way to help you. So before we get into introducing our guests, our return to civility is welcome.

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All those kinds of things with a smile help bring you to a new place in a little more convenient and open way. So good words to know.

Again, I want to offer our warning that the following content contains discussions of sensitive topics, including human trafficking, abuse, and exploitation. These subjects may be distressing or triggering for some individuals.

We ask you to please prioritize your well being and feel free to step over away if needed.

We have several guests in studio today and they are going to be talking about a topic that deals with sexual exploitation and how to deal with the trauma related to that. And in studio is Julie. She's a licensed clinical social worker and clinical director for Healing Action Network.

She has a bachelor's from Mizzou and a social work and a master's from UMSL. And she has been an in home parent trainer for parents and caregivers of children who are diagnosed on the autism spectrum disorder.

She's done some work in a domestic violence shelter providing court advocacy, case management, and psychoeducation about violence with the court systems. Heidi is a psychology major from College of the Ozarks.

Great place and a social work masters with a concentration in mental health from the Brown school at social work at Wash U.

She's worked as an intensive crisis home in home therapist utilizing dialectical behavior therapy, motivation, interviewing, and prolonged exposure for some young individuals and families to prevent some hospitalization. And then Megan is a received her bachelor's in social work from Arkansas State University and a master's from Washington University here in St. Louis.

By the way, Heidi is the lead trauma therapist and Megan is a trauma therapist. And Megan worked for youth in need with some homeless and runaway youth.

She's worked as a rehousing caseworker, working with homeless and survivors, and also was on the sexual assault response team and crisis intervention team with the St. Louis City County Court watch. Welcome to St. Louis. In tune, ladies.

Julie: 00:04:11

Thank you for having us.

Arnold Stricker: 00:04:12

First of all, let's describe what healing Action Network is. If someone or all of you want to tackle that, okay?

Julie: 00:04:18

Yeah. So Healing Action Network is a nonprofit organization that provides services to survivors of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation.

We refer to that as CSE, but commercial sexual exploitation is a pretty broad umbrella. So it's really any exchange of a sexual activity, anything in sexual nature, for something else.

So it could be money, it could be food, housing, basic needs, even sometimes substances.

Arnold Stricker: 00:04:45

Wow. You ladies want to offer anything else along with that?

Heidi: 00:04:49

The services we provide along with therapy is also we do service management. So case management for our members, we have staff that are able to help the clients with any basic needs that they may have.

And we also have a peer support program, too.

Staff that have had lived experience and are able to really join with the clients and be able to share their perspectives and partner with them in their journey, too.

Arnold Stricker: 00:05:15

Okay, Meghan, do you need to have something you wanted to offer with that?

Meghan: 00:05:18

Yeah. What's most special is I think we provide, like, holistic care.

So we really look at mental health, we look at the peer support, we look at case management. So really doing some, like, really thorough, intensive wraparound services to make sure our members get good care.

Arnold Stricker: 00:05:31

Now we're going to talk about several acronyms and several words that maybe people who are listening are not completely familiar with, because every area education or law or medicine or therapy has the words and the actually the acronyms that they use. One we're going to talk about is trauma therapy. Another one we're going to talk about is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy.

Emdr, we're going to talk about PTSD. Most people understand that, but they may not know about complex PTSD. So we're going to get into all of those things.

But first of all, what does a trauma therapist do?

Heidi: 00:06:10

So a lot of what we do is we are, when the clients come to us, they obviously first came to us because of their history of commercial sexual exploitation or ongoing exploitation that's going on.

But in trauma therapy, we really recognize that there's maybe a lot of other trauma that happened before that exploitation trafficking experience happened or afterwards. And so we try to make it very broad in what the clients are wanting to work on in therapy.

And in trauma therapy, we keep it very focused on understanding the client.

Our members are the expert because they've had the lived experience, they were able to survive, and we really want to partner with them in their healing journey as much as possible.

We really try to figure out what are their biggest goals and what are the things in therapy that are making it hard for them to be able to function well in life and just be able to be adaptive in their current situation.

Then, honestly, being as strengths based as possible is really where we go from, because we know that, like, they were again, able to survive and they have things that they were able to really hold on to that helped them in that situation. So we don't want to take away any of their strategies or symptoms, but a lot of times they are experiencing a lot of suffering.

And so we want to help them understand where that's coming from, that they are having a normal response to a completely horrible situation and really just being able to discover with them if they are interested in doing trauma processing work through EMDR, or if they're feeling too overwhelmed with that, do we try to pull back and maybe try to just help them with emotion regulation skills? Sometimes those basic skills are incredibly important for our clients.

Arnold Stricker: 00:08:00

So how do clients get in touch with you all? Are they referred from the courts or do they come on their own or all of the above or.

Julie: 00:08:07

Yeah, I think we've found that we get our referrals from a very broad all over St. Louis, definitely from the court systems. We've had a lot of referrals from public defenders.

I would say our biggest referral source is probably just word of mouth.

So whether it's our current clients that know people, that have similar experiences to them, and they're like, hey, we get services from this place called healing action. This is everything that they do. You should give them a call.

Especially when we first opened nine years ago, word of mouth was really the way that healing action really grew. So, yeah, mostly word of mouth, but also hospitals, probably other community resources, other nonprofits, too.

Arnold Stricker: 00:08:46

ction.org. healingaction.org.: 3148

Heidi: 00:09:02

We all do.

Arnold Stricker: 00:09:04

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. That's a tough one to say, Mark. Emdr? What is Emdr?

Julie: 00:09:13

Yeah, Emdr is, of course, a type of trauma therapy. It was originally developed by a psychologist named doctor Francine Shapiro. I think this is really interesting.

So she was having a really tough day at work, was taking a walk, and then just. Was just naturally moving her eyes back and forth and found that she had a reduction in her symptoms.

She noticed that, hey, I'm feeling a little bit better. I'm feeling a little calmer. I think there's something behind this. So what EMDR does is it uses what's called bilateral stimulation.

And so if anyone does know about EMDR, they have eye movements. So some people might have seen a light bar where there's a light that just follows that. Your eyes just track and follow back and forth.

Since it's been developed, there have been other forms of bilateral stimulation that have been identified to be just as helpful. So there's tactile bilateral.

So we have little, like, little pebbles that kind of vibrate back and forth if eye movements aren't the most appropriate form of bilateral. And there's also headphones for sound where that has a little beeping back and forth.

And what I like to really tell people about EMDr is a lot of people think it's just for folks that have PTSD, which it definitely is. That's how it was first created, or the purpose of it being created.

And then a lot of research and studies have found that it's been helpful for single incident traumas. So, like a car accident, like maybe a random, like, burglary, robbing, things like that, it's been really helpful for.

For different phobias, for substance use disorders. So it's really broad in who it can help.

Arnold Stricker: 00:10:45

research since, what was it,: 1980

There are some what I would call naysayers who don't really believe that it does any good, but there's a lot of research out that does support it. Now, what does it actually do?

Because as I've been reading more about this and preparing for the interview here, that there's three areas of the brain that it can impact, and that these memories are. They're not stored in the right place. They're, like, frozen. And what you do through this EMDR is help put them in the places where they need to go.

Elaborate on that a little bit more.

Heidi: 00:11:31

Yeah.

Arnold Stricker: 00:11:32

It was almost Barry layman's turn.

Heidi: 00:11:35

Yeah.

With the triune brain, like, when we think about evolutionary, like, how our brain was developed over time, the very bottom part of our brain is known as, like, the reptilian part of our brain, and that's where a lot of survival lies. So when someone's gone through a traumatic experience, that part of the brain really lights up, because that's a.

When they feel like, okay, something horrible is happening, there's threat, and I need to just react and do what I need to do. And then we've got the mammalian part of our brain. That is where a lot of the emotions are stored.

And the amygdala, I believe, is in that part of the brain. And so that little almond shaped part of the brain is where a lot of the PTSD is stored.

And so after the trauma has happened, even months, years after, the amygdala lights up a lot more for folks who've experienced a lot more trauma than other people. And then what's interesting is the third part of the brain is just the rational part of our brain.

That's the part that we tend to focus a lot on, because that's where our thought processes are. And just being able to be analytical and think through things in an organized fashion, which is great. It's a prefrontal cortex.

But if we get into focusing on therapy in that way, then that can be a little too rational for the folks that have experienced a lot of trauma, because that's not necessarily where the trauma is stored. And so in the middle of trauma, the broca's area, part of the brain, that part tends to shut down.

And that's the part that holds our language and being able to just have a narrative behind what happened. So if that part shuts down. Being able to do talk therapy isn't going to be as successful for people who have a trauma history because you're.

Arnold Stricker: 00:13:24

Not hitting those areas of the brain where that's stored, which is why we.

Meghan: 00:13:28

Often hear, I've talked about this so many times and I just don't feel better. Like, I've talked about this with other therapists and I just doesn't feel like it's going anywhere. Yeah.

Arnold Stricker: 00:13:36

It's interesting because a question was, how does that differ? How does EMdR differ from traditional talk therapy?

And you're getting into that rather than, you know, my words, lay down on the couch and tell me what you're thinking and all those kinds of things, which that doesn't necessarily occur that way versus what you do because there is some talk involved in EMDR also. There's a process. What, eight steps involved in the process?

Julie: 00:13:59

Yeah.

Julie: 00:13:59

Yeah.

Arnold Stricker: 00:13:59

Can you go through those a little bit at a time of so what someone would expect and how this actually works? Because it does work, folks. There's a lot of history on this. Who wants to tackle that one?

Julie: 00:14:13

Yeah.

The eight phases, I won't go into them in great detail, but basically we're going to do some psycho education and make sure that the clients are safe, not just physically but mentally and emotionally. And then they, we're going to really be assessing to make sure that they are in a good place to start processing trauma.

And so once we figure out exactly what they're wanting to target, then we can decide, okay, what is the memory that is most keeping you up at night? And we don't even start there with our clients. A lot of times we start with baby steps. We don't want to start with the most overwhelming memories.

We want to help build up their tolerance and help them feel more comfortable with the process. So a lot of times we start with smaller experiences that we're really distressing.

And after they're able to decide that, figure that out, they come up with what is the negative belief that they have about this memory and something that they believe about themselves or about the world. And then when they can do that, we're able to see what's the emotion behind that?

What's the body sensation that you feel right now as you're feeling it. And that is where it starts to get into a place where we're focusing very much on the actual experience of it.

The part of EMDR that we get most excited about is that bilateral stimulation that doesn't happen till phase four, the desensitization part. It's an important part, but that's when we're going to start trying to decrease the distress around the memory using the bilateral stimulation.

I'm going to pass it off to you, Julie.

Julie: 00:15:50

Yeah. So once we do the bilateral stimulation, and then, you know, the client reports they can use.

Really, with EMDR, you don't have to talk a whole lot, especially when you get to the reprocessing part. So the client gives us a little bit of feedback. Once they're doing the bilateral, what's going on in their body?

What are they noticing during the bilateral? And then eventually, the stress that they're feeling the symptoms is hopefully going to go down.

Once it goes down, we then focus on, we targeted this negative belief you have about yourself.

What is something positive that you'd like to believe instead that can re change the narrative and also re change how they're feeling about themselves due to the trauma. And then we use bilateral again. Hopefully that positive belief about themselves goes up, really strengthens.

And then what I really like about EMDR is we then move into the present moment. So we worked on the past, we go into the present. What kind of present triggers are coming up?

What do you notice just in your day to day life that your brain goes back to these memories? What do you notice in your body? And we reprocess that as well. And then once that's done, we go to the future.

So it has the past, present, future kind of like format. And then we go into the future. What might you expect to come up in the future that might bring up some of these memories again?

Because a lot of people also think EMDR is gonna make everything go away. Unfortunately, it's not magic. It's not gonna make the trauma not happen.

And so there still might be things that come up that could still feel distressing to folks. And so we focus on what can we anticipate that comes up that we can help you be best prepared for how to handle it in that situation.

Arnold Stricker: 00:17:26

Okay. This is Arnold Stricker, along with Mark Langston of St. Louis Entoun. We're talking to Julie, Heidi and Megan from Healing Action Network.

They are all licensed social workers, therapists and trauma therapists and clinical director that deal with treating patients.

I should say, I don't even say patients treating individuals who have been through sexual exploitation, and I would say sex slavery, because it really is. We've done some shows on a lot of women who have and children who have been in those kinds of situations and put in those kinds of abuse situations.

When you're talking about the brain. It's very plastic. It is able to, it does some amazing kinds of things that we're just scratching the surface on.

I was wondering, as you all were talking, if Washington University, which has done a lot of neuroscience research, are they doing some research connections with you guys as it relates to this particular therapy approach?

Meghan: 00:18:25

Not with us specifically, no.

Julie: 00:18:27

We have had a few universities reach out for research studies on survivors of trafficking when we therapy. And just the healing process gets brought up naturally, but not specifically with the effectiveness of EMDR.

Arnold Stricker: 00:18:40

When you're talking to them and you're asking them about something that kind of bubbles up within them, is this like a, when it triggers and you're talking about that, is that a what I would call a response like anger or frustration or shame or is this done through. The word is escaping me because the body releases chemicals when all these things happen. And you're trying to also control that.

If you can control the brain, you're going to control the chemical release and the reaction to all these things. So are those the kinds of things that you see when you're looking for that physical response?

Heidi: 00:19:16

Very much. We do tend to see a lot of their triggers come up and it can look very different from person to person.

For some folks, it really at their trauma responses are, however their triggers are reacting now. It's very likely that's also how they had to react in the middle of the trauma, and it was able to do as little damage as possible.

It was like they were trying to keep themselves safe. And to some extent, it was as effective as it could be.

So whether that's the fight mode where they're just like angry, there's outbursts, they're really just dysregulated. Maybe they freeze.

Maybe they were in a situation where they didn't have any other choice and they just had to get really still and just, they weren't just trying to preserve whatever was happening.

And then flights is just when that looks more sometimes like anxiety, where they just are trying to get out of the situation and just try to cope with whatever that looks like. There's another term called fawn. This can, might maybe look a little bit like people pleasing.

And so if they're just really trying to keep the peace in the situation, even if it's really brutal, but they don't have many other options, then that can look like that, too. So it just depends on what their most effective trauma responses were to keep them safe. And sometimes that's how their triggers can play out.

Meghan: 00:20:36

Yeah, which is what trauma is. It's the nervous system being overwhelmed by something, and it can't cope.

So we're really looking for how the nervous system is reacting and how can we support it to getting back to that natural regulation?

Arnold Stricker: 00:20:48

Speaking of trauma, most people know about PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, but they're not familiar with complex PTSD. Let's distinguish between the two, maybe talk about PTSD, the essence of it, and then what's the difference with complex PTSD?

Heidi: 00:21:05

Yeah. So with complex PTSD, this is more chronic trauma that people have experienced over a long period of time.

It can be months, or it can be years and decades, and it can look many different ways.

But with going back to pts, the way that's defined in the DSM five, which is what counselors and social workers use for diagnosing purposes, it's anything where you directly experienced or witnessed a life threatening event or an event where great danger was happening.

So, like, the more stereotypical examples that we hear about PTSD is having experienced some sort of assault, some sort of physical violence, maybe like a car accident, having combat related experiences in war, things like that. And those are very good examples to use. But also, trauma can be very, very prevalent and very relative, too.

So what one person might experience is incredibly overwhelming. Might not be as overwhelming for another person, but for PTSD, a lot of times, you focus on one singular event that happened.

It was an isolated event. But with complex PTSD, not always, but a lot of times it happened in the developmental years, started going for all through childhood.

It could have been related to their attachment figures, where, like, maybe their caregivers were really unsafe, or there was a lot of trauma that they were impacting with the child also just be just an inner web of a lot of different things that have happened. So, with our clients, it's complex PTSD all the way, because it wasn't just one isolated experience where they were assaulted.

It is usually a long period of time that they experienced exploitation and other trauma, too.

Julie: 00:22:53

Yeah, I think with a lot of our. A lot with our clients, a lot of times when people think about sex trafficking, they think about just that.

And the while that we've all worked here, we've found that there is typically more trauma than just the trafficking that they experience. So, like Heidi said, a lot of our clients have a history of abuse and neglect from parent figures, attachment figures.

They might have experienced maybe some traumas when they were a teen, experience with substance use disorder. And so a lot of times, what we're trying to work on in therapy, along with the trafficking is what they've experienced before or after.

Arnold Stricker: 00:23:29

When you're talking about that, I'm an educator by training.

I think of children who, especially nowadays and who have gone through Covid, who deal with a tremendous amount of situations at home, who don't have an outlet and then who struggle in school and who maybe turn to violence or substance abuse and other kinds of things and really become, they struggle to fit into society. And I really worry about that kind of group. That's the group that you deal with that was maybe back 20 years ago.

Or am I off or is, I know the sexual exploitation kind of thing.

Are people who are grabbed into this, but do you have people who have just horrible lives as they've been growing up and maybe are dealing in a substance abuse problem or coming through or. I know you've mentioned that mainly this is just the sexual exploitation group that you guys deal with. Okay.

Julie: 00:24:29

All right.

Arnold Stricker: 00:24:30

So who deals with the crew who have not been sexually exploited, who deals with those who have struggled with the same kind of things you talked about, sans the sex part.

Meghan: 00:24:41

That's trauma therapy in general. And I think that's what we also really pride ourselves as.

We like this holistic care of making sure to have all that space to acknowledge, like all those things that happened before as well, and making space for them to talk about that and process that too. But other trauma therapy modalities would focus on those traumas that happen repetitively before.

Arnold Stricker: 00:25:02

How prevalent then is EMDR in the St. Louis metropolitan area of what you're talking about there? Megan?

Meghan: 00:25:09

Well, Emdr has grown a lot in the St. Louis area. We have a lot more providers.

We have a lot more trainers, you know, compared to whenever I know the first, it first started getting on the scene, I think it's really blown up and it's because it's become evidence based.

Arnold Stricker: 00:25:25

And did you all that was the impetus where everybody got together in what you're doing at healing action? Was the EMDR, did that come after or which came first?

Julie: 00:25:36

I think, I don't want to, I don't want to say this is a definitive answer, but Katie Rhode is the founder and executive director of healing Action. She's a survivor herself. I think she was on the show.

Julie: 00:25:46

She was a little bit ago.

Arnold Stricker: 00:25:47

You can go to stlintune.com and catch that show. Yes.

Julie: 00:25:51

And so when she first came up with the idea of healing action, she started with that holistic approach. So it's not necessarily that, oh, we should do trauma therapy and we should do case management and introduce things in stages.

She had the big view of healing action was like as a survivor, as someone who's been through services, knows what the realistic services that survivors need. She created healing action with the whole vision in mind.

I think it might have taken a little bit from when healing action first opened to hiring a therapist, but I know that was always the plan from the very beginning, due to all the evidence and research that's out there.

Arnold Stricker: 00:26:27

Okay, we'll be right back. We're going to take a brief break. This is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston on the us radio network. This is Arnold Stricker of St.

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And I want to mention again that the following content contains discussions of sensitive topics, including human trafficking, abuse, and exploitation. These subjects may be distressing or triggering for some individuals. And please prioritize your well being and feel free to step away if needed.

We've been talking about EMDR, which I've always had trouble pronouncing its eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy.

And unlike other treatments that focus on directly altering emotions, thoughts and responses resulting from a traumatic experience, EMDR therapy focuses directly on the memory and is intended to change the way that memory is stored in the brain, thus reducing and eliminating the problematic symptoms. I hope that was a good definition.

Heidi: 00:29:39

That was really good.

Arnold Stricker: 00:29:40

I didn't write that. I stole that offline online. I should say, what's the length of a process in which someone who is going through EMDR would. Is it like ten weeks?

Is it like ten days? Is it like a whole year? What is it? I know it's going to be different for different people. What's the average kind of thing?

Heidi: 00:29:59

I would say if our clients particularly experience complex PTSD, it's longer than other people who've experienced maybe just a singular incident. I would say it can, for our population, it can often take years.

I know that might sound really discouraging, but it's because there's so much that we're trying to reprocess and also that beginning stages of EMDR, where we're just working on safety and I, stability, that is really just a huge part of our trust building relationship with us. We don't expect them to just buy into us right away because they experience so much relational trauma.

They probably are going to have a different, we don't want to push that process. So even just them trying to do a lot of safety supports and resourcing in EMDR, oftentimes will take a year.

And the client clients, how they feel comfortable with it.

Meghan: 00:30:59

Yeah. And when we think about what trauma is, it's something happening too much, too fast, too soon.

And so we don't want to repeat that same pattern when they go through therapy.

We want to slow things down, be protective of the nervous system, know that we have all the time to really work through things and that we don't have to rush through it so fast, and we don't have to tell their story really quickly like they may have done in the past. And past therapy relationship has got to.

Arnold Stricker: 00:31:23

Be one of the biggest things that you develop. And it does take time, especially with someone who's not very trusting.

So is it always with one particular therapist all the time, or is it like different therapists, or how does that work?

Julie: 00:31:37

We try our hardest to keep each of our clients with the same therapist just for what's called continuity of care. Like you said, because of the relationship component in therapy, it's really important. We're also a smaller team.

There's a lot of times where I might be working with a survivor, but they still are really familiar and talk with Heidi and Megan. We also run a few trauma therapy groups, and so they also have the opportunity to learn about and work with our other therapists on the team.

So we really try to utilize it from a team approach, too.

Arnold Stricker: 00:32:06

So that's an interesting comment you made. So is it possible that individuals may be in a group kind of setting and then go to the individual setting?

Julie: 00:32:14

Yes.

Arnold Stricker: 00:32:15

How they really do that, it's optional.

Julie: 00:32:17

Yeah. We have two therapy groups right now that really all of our services are optional. We don't mandate our members. Oh, sorry. We call our members.

Heidi: 00:32:26

We love choice.

Julie: 00:32:27

Yeah. We don't mandate them to come. We don't do anything like that.

But a lot of our folks do come to groups just for that additional, you know, just type and space to process things, to learn about different. Learning about themselves. Themselves, really, in how trauma has just affected them and impacted their day to day.

Meghan: 00:32:44

And be in a space with other survivors, too, is healing in a way that we can't provide.

Arnold Stricker: 00:32:49

I agree with that. Someone comes to you and they go, hey, I don't have any insurance. I can't pay for this myself. How is this paid for? Am I just out of luck?

Julie: 00:32:58

The beautiful thing about us being a nonprofit is it is free. Yeah. So they don't have to pay anything. We just have really three criteria. That they live in the St.

Louis metropolitan area, that they are 18 years or older, and that they're a survivor of trafficking and exploitation.

Arnold Stricker: 00:33:16

Okay.

Julie: 00:33:17

So we hope that it's pretty accessible.

Meghan: 00:33:19

Yeah.

Which is also really cool because, you know, a lot of clients are not able to get EMDR because they may not have insurance, they may not have the means. And for us to be able to provide evidence based care that is free is like something that I'm really passionate. I know that we are too.

Arnold Stricker: 00:33:34

That's huge. And I greatly appreciate you all doing that. That's way above and beyond. You have to have, I hate to use the word passion, it's so overused.

You have to have a commitment to knowing that what you're doing is making a difference in people's lives.

-: 4515

Now they're able to cope with what has happened and deal with the emotions in a productive manner, rather than what I would call a destructive manner. All the names will be anonymous, too.

Julie: 00:34:20

Folks, when you asked us this overbreak, I think we all tried thinking of our caseloads and also trying to think of an example that would be identifying.

Arnold Stricker: 00:34:29

Or mix them together. So it sounds. That's fine, too. I just want.

I want people to understand what's this process like, as somebody who has gone through and the success that you've had.

Meghan: 00:34:39

You could use your demo, too. Like when we demo on each other, like, for training.

Julie: 00:34:45

What?

Heidi: 00:34:46

Like whenever. During trainings, when we had a practice.

Julie: 00:34:50

Outside of training, I was thinking about. I was trying to think about all of. All the folks on our caseloads.

And I wouldn't necessarily say that anyone on our caseloads is necessarily done, you know, just due to the amount of trauma that they have to reprocess. And like Heidi said before, it can take years, not always, but it can take a long time.

Something that I feel really passionate about is talking about what's called familial trafficking. And so that's where someone in the family is trafficking. Talk about that person. We have.

It happens a lot more frequently than I think we like to think about, because we think about it, and it's horrible.

But I know I've had a few folks on my caseload where it's been a family member, specifically, even a parent that has been trafficking them from pretty much the time that they were very young.

And just the amount, obviously, of trauma that creates how I just really want to get that out there, that trafficking isn't always the, I'm gonna kidnap you.

Meghan: 00:35:48

So it's gonna be taken?

Julie: 00:35:49

Yeah, no, it's not taken. I'll say there's very minimal times where it actually happens like that.

But I've worked with folks who have that extensive level of trauma, and like I said, I can't necessarily say that we're done in therapy, that they've done everything that they can, and they're, like, 110% healed. But a lot of successes that I've seen in therapy is our members being able to get jobs and maintain them.

Remembers being able to maintain stable housing, because that's been a really big struggle.

Even maintaining relationships, like building a social network, you know, building romantic relationships, like healing relationships that they have with other family members, those wins.

I think we really try to hold on to the most instead of thinking about the end game or like the long game and celebrate with them what seems to be to folks on the outside, like small wins.

But we try to celebrate every single, single one with them to show that every step in the healing progress, every step in the healing process deserves to be celebrated.

Arnold Stricker: 00:36:45

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, people don't think about that kind of experience where a family member would be trafficking them.

Let me ask a reverse question here. You all sit and listen to people's situations and the things that they're going through. And it can be overwhelming even for therapists.

How do you all deal with all of the gook that you hear?

Because it's an emotional weight on you all, too, as you're listening to this, as you're trying to help someone else through something, it can be very, I guess from my vantage point, looking as it, as an outsider could be very exhausting.

Heidi: 00:37:25

Oh, absolutely.

Arnold Stricker: 00:37:26

So how do you deal with all of the stuff that you get during a day or doing sessions? How do you deal with it?

Heidi: 00:37:33

Yeah, we really prioritize good self care, so we take time to check in with each other, debrief. We also really prioritize, like, us doing our own work and going to therapy ourselves to make sure that, like, we're okay to show up for our clients.

Yeah. Making sure outside of sessions we have good containers to make sure we're not caring what's outside of sessions with us in there every day.

Setting good boundaries for ourselves to make sure that we're well and we're taking care of ourselves is really important.

Arnold Stricker: 00:38:01

Great point.

Heidi: 00:38:02

I think it's a really, it's an ongoing process, like things that helped me a year ago. I feel like I have to find other things now.

Right now I'm really into running is great, but there was a time where I was doing yoga after every workday. It just really depends. And the thing is, for me, I have to listen to my body because it's going to change from months.

But I think healing action does a very good job of really centering our care and taking care of us. We get a lot of time off that's paid and so we're able to rejuvenate and take nice long trips.

But we also, we feel good about leaving because we know that we always have a strong team that's going to support our clients while we're out, too.

Arnold Stricker: 00:38:42

Well, take care of your knees. So in 20 years, you'll say, I shouldn't have been running.

Heidi: 00:38:46

I know.

Arnold Stricker: 00:38:46

I should have been growing or something.

Heidi: 00:38:48

Yeah.

Julie: 00:38:49

She was stuck with yoga.

Arnold Stricker: 00:38:51

Yoga was really good. Okay. I know there are people who are listening who are in the situation.

-: 4515

Julie: 00:39:21

What's coming to mind right now is that while us at healing action, we have a peer, but the rest of us, we don't have that lived experience. And so we as service providers aren't coming in to be the experts of what you've gone through.

We truly and wholeheartedly believe that every one of our survivors are the experts of their story in healing. I'm gonna sound cheesy. Healing isn't linear. Healing can look like lots of ups, lots of downs.

But we want to be with our survivors every single step of the way.

Whether it's a day that's, you know, everything sucks, the world sucks, people suck, or the days that we do get to celebrate those little ones with them, we really, like I said, want to be along for the journey with them and to support them and meet them where they're at and whatever that healing looks like for them.

Arnold Stricker: 00:40:07

Okay. Heidi?

Heidi: 00:40:09

Yeah. Something that comes to mind also, it ties back to your question of a case study.

If I had someone out there that was listening to this and was wondering, like, how I could get help, I would say, please, just come to healing action. You are never too far gone. I think a lot of our clients that first start working with us, they feel like they're almost like damaged goods.

There's nothing that can be done. There's a little bit of hope because they did end up like working with us.

But whether it's they have such severe phobia, they can't even leave their apartment, or they can't secure a job because they have so much triggers and flashbacks, whatever it might be. And when I think about a group of clients I've worked with that are all on similar journeys.

Yes, we're still doing EMDR reprocessing, but it's been really incredible to see how a lot of them have secured jobs. They're in healthy relationships. They're leaders on their university campuses leading amazing initiatives.

I am absolutely humbled by some of the work that the members are doing outside of the work that they do with us.

But we also have seen those very same members living out of their car and just coming out of exploitation and not having like a penny to their name so that it's never too far gone. And please, we want to work with everybody.

Meghan: 00:41:30

Meganehen echoing a lot of the same things that Heidi said is there's nothing wrong with you. Horrible things happen to you. And, you know, a lot of times with PTSD and trauma, a lot of it is like, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me?

Horrible things have happened to you and that we're really here to walk along with you in your journey, wherever that path is. And that we're going to be here to cheerlead you along the way. And then also with trauma, what we see is a lot of trauma symptoms.

And with, like, therapy or healing, you're really coming home to yourself.

Like, once you work through all that healing and giving yourself the option to really come home to yourself after a lot of that, you owe that to yourself, and you deserve that, too.

Arnold Stricker: 00:42:08

What a great resource you are to these individuals who come to you to seek some assistance and hopefully some relief along the way to get a little recovery going for their lives. And I think the St.

Louis area is very fortunate to have you all here and to have a network like that in which they can really connect with, I think, of people who are in outstate Missouri or in cities that do not have this resource available to them. So thank you all very much for that.

Julie: 00:42:36

Thank you, folks.

Arnold Stricker: 00:42:37

-: 4515

Heidi: 00:42:45

I think one important resource to know is we recently expanded our therapy program.

And also what that means is we've been able to hire new telehealth therapists who are able to provide the same therapeutic services for survivors in rural Missouri. And it's over telehealth. So that's also a helpful thing for people to know if they're interested in getting in contact with us.

Arnold Stricker: 00:43:09

And this can be for males and females?

Julie: 00:43:12

Yes, all gender identities.

Julie: 00:43:14

Okay.

Arnold Stricker: 00:43:14

All right. Very good. Very good. Okay.

Mark, what a great interview this was and talking to them about this and very appreciative of your taking your time to come in and talk with us about this.

And hopefully, listeners, you've gained some insights and maybe you know someone, maybe you are one of the individuals who would benefit from this particular group at healing action and what they're doing with EMD. We're going to close our episode today. We're just going to sign off and gratefully appreciate you all listening.

You can hear additional shows@stluntune.com in which you can check this podcast out and re listen to it and send it to your friends and send it to people who you think may be interested in hearing what we've talked about. Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Pod Chaser or your preferred podcast platform. I want to thank Bob Bertha Seller for our theme music.

I want to thank our guests, and we had Julie, Heidi and Megan. And I want to thank Mark for being our co host today. St. Luce in Tune is a production of Motif Media Group and the US radio network.

Remember to keep seeking, keep learning, walk worthy, and let your light shine. For St. Lucien toon, I'm Arnold Stricker.