Resilience Development in Action
Discover practical resilience strategies that transform lives. Join Steve Bisson, licensed mental health counselor, as he guides first responders, leaders, and trauma survivors through actionable insights for mental wellness and professional growth.
Each week, dive deep into real conversations about grief processing, trauma recovery, and leadership development. Whether you're a first responder facing daily challenges, a leader navigating high-pressure situations, or someone on their healing journey, this podcast delivers the tools and strategies you need to build lasting resilience.
With over 20 years of mental health counseling experience, Steve brings authentic, professional expertise to every episode, making complex mental health concepts accessible and applicable to real-world situations.
Featured topics include:
• Practical resilience building strategies
• First responder mental wellness
• Trauma recovery and healing
• Leadership development
• Grief processing
• Professional growth
• Mental health insights
• Help you on your healing journey
Each week, join our community towards better mental health and turn your challenges into opportunities for growth with Resilience Development in Action.
Resilience Development in Action
E.110 Courage Amidst Trauma: Finding Healing Through Substance Abuse Struggles
Imagine not only surviving the horrific experience of childhood rape but also courageously seeking justice for that crime. Our guest, Lynn Kee, brings us into her world as she shares the daunting realities of this journey, and the shocking revelation that justice doesn't always pave the way for healing. Our candid discussion with Lynn exposes the secondary trauma of the justice process and the importance of trauma-informed care, especially when dealing with differing rape situations.
Beyond her traumatic past, Lynn opens up about her struggles with substance abuse, a common coping mechanism for trauma survivors. She shares the harrowing story of her sister's battle with addiction and the resulting tragic consequences, a stark reminder of the critical importance of mental health resources. Journey with us as we explore the distinct connection between trauma and substance abuse, and how therapy and proper support play crucial roles in healing and recovery.
As we wrap up this two-part series (and we will have a third part next season), Lynn reveals the aftermath of her sister's fatal battle with addiction, a devastating result of unaddressed trauma, and a failing support system. Lynn's commitment to advocating for survivor protections and raising awareness about the impact of trauma on survivors' lives is nothing short of inspiring. Join us as we delve into the complex, heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful narrative of survival and resilience.
Hi everyone and welcome to episode 110 of Finding your Way Through Therapy. Can't believe I got to that number, but you know we had Lynn on last week and her message is so important. You know, I think that we need to process a little bit of what happened with her, but she's going to kind of like tell us about the tail end of the conviction here. But Lynn Key, someone who wants to really make sure that you understand that sometimes even getting justice doesn't give you justice, and that's not only for her but for her sister. So I'd like to welcome Lynn Key again to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey Steve, how are you today?
Speaker 1:You know what I'm excited to hear the second part, not because of anything, but I think that message needs to be clear to everyone. So I think this is very much warranted that we do two separate episodes.
Speaker 1:Well, I certainly appreciate you having me back truly Well if it can get someone's help or understand a little bit. That's the goal of this podcast too, let's you know, for those who didn't listen to the first podcast, how about we just, like you, do a quick intro of yourself and maybe say you know, we left it off as there was a conviction, and maybe you can just recap a little bit of that and then we'll go from there?
Speaker 2:Sure. So, as Steve said, my name is Lynn Key. I'm 37 years old. I am sorry, just a second. I should have hit. Do not disturb, I am 37 years old.
Speaker 2:I am from Massachusetts, born and bred. I am a survivor of childhood rape. To be quite frank, my sister was also a survivor of childhood rape. Unfortunately, she lost her battle with the addiction that resulted from her trauma in January, and I am now speaking out basically about trauma as the gateway drug and about how important early and adequate trauma intervention and ongoing trauma informed care is when it comes to not just surviving an event like this but navigating the justice system and the pitfalls that exist within the justice system, which can be a secondary trauma, and then learning how to thrive. You know, because, as somebody that's been through that, I'm well aware that I will never be the person I was before the rape, but I am a much better person today, I think, because of what I've learned through the process of working through that trauma. So I'm thriving now, but that has been a very long and difficult process. So that's who I am and what I'm here to talk about.
Speaker 1:What I'd like to get back to is so we talked a little bit about, you know, the grooming phase. We talked about other things that went on, and then, when we finished the last episode, we talked about being in court and you know, your sister had had her conviction for her rape that she went through, which is brutal, and then you were talking about your, the conviction that you're what I call a victimizer, offender, whatever you want to call them had done to you. So we left it off there.
Speaker 1:And you know most people think yay, win for limbs, let's move on. That's not reality. That's absolutely not reality. So I'd like you to share more about this reality.
Speaker 2:You know, steve, it's a really appropriate thing that you just said there, which is like yay, justice has been served, time to move on. Because that is how I felt, and I'm sure how my sister felt, leading up to the completion of the process with the justice system, both of us being raised in a military and public service centric family. We were raised to really believe in the justice system and the American way of doing things and basically we're told that we would receive some modicum of healing through the process and it was in fact quite the opposite. I know for my sister.
Speaker 2:Her offender actually ran from the courthouse. So even though he was convicted, he was on the lamb for two years and it took America's most wanted getting involved to actually apprehend him. And as far as mine was concerned, it took two trials which took four years to get to, to get a conviction. The first trial was a mistrial. Wenger would not vote guilty. The state did offer my offender a plea deal, but he did not want to take it. They in fact offered him zero jail time, which I felt at the time was a slap in the face, and am quite glad that he didn't take it.
Speaker 1:To be frank, Speaking of secondary trauma for others you know plea out.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, their thought process was that it would save me the secondary trauma of another trial. But in reality, after that much fight, having him serve no jail time would have been extremely re-traumatizing on a whole different level for me. So essentially what ended up happening is both gentlemen got convicted and around the time of my conviction the second trial my sister's offender was actually caught. So, believe it or not, the very same week that my offender was sentenced and he did receive three to four years in state prison, with an additional five years of probation my sister's offender was also apprehended and sentenced. And the difference between a grooming type rape situation and a violent type rape situation, which all rape is violent, it's a power thing, right?
Speaker 1:I was going to correct you on that but I do have to make that point.
Speaker 2:That something I've learned in therapy.
Speaker 1:Right, it's about the power, not about the physical violence, but the difference between a it's minimizing what a victim went through when it was through grooming, because it was still violent.
Speaker 2:I agree, sir. So the and I'm sorry with the sir thing, you know I'm going to keep doing that. So at the end of the day, the way that the state sees that plays out a lot differently as well. When it comes to the time that these offenders are given and I'm not arguing for or against that, I just want to make that clear for anyone that's going through this there is typically a large difference in time given in a grooming situation versus a traditionally violent rape situation, and her offender was given 15 to 18 years, with an additional two years to be served for the running. So that's where we left off and it was bittersweet, I'm not going to lie, it was. It was somewhat healing, it was closure to a certain extent to see him convicted, to see him sentenced, to see him let away in handcuffs with my sister I know that she was able to sleep at night, for lack of a better term, because she never really slept at night ever again, to be honest but she was looking over her shoulder actively, not knowing where this man had disappeared to for the two years he was on the lamb. So when he was finally behind bars she was able to move on from that aspect of the trauma. Again, move on is a relative term, so we were basically left with like an empty, sinking feeling, I guess is the best way to describe it, because the thing that we had been pursuing in place of our healing you know what I mean Like the thing we were pursuing to heal, did not heal us.
Speaker 2:Now, I personally also was in therapy this entire time. I think I mentioned in the last episode that I had been exposed to therapy at a very young age due to behavioral issues, with, you know, between myself and my mother as a young girl, and I'm glad for that, because the one thing I did maintain throughout the entire process although there were gaps here and there, but just consistently throughout the entire process was cognitive, behavioral, traditional therapy, whereas my sister did not. I think I also mentioned that I had been a really straight edge kid. I had never messed with even smoking a cigarette, drinking, smoking weed, none of that until after I was raped. So for me, after the rape, that is what started to happen. This is prior to the closure through the justice system, right? My sister, on the other hand, had been a kid that was experimenting and when she was raped she locked that right down. So she kind of just like focused on her herself, her school, the boyfriend that she later got and ended up graduating, whereas I dropped out first in my class to preserve my high school record because I literally could not get myself to go to school anymore.
Speaker 2:So that is really what I wanna focus on in this particular discussion, because that had long lasting and profound impacts. It is the number one thing. If I were to have to pinpoint one thing that led to me surviving and thriving and my sister unfortunately losing her battle, and that is again seeking out treatment, seeking out therapy, seeking out later on, a trauma-informed therapy, and then for me that progressed into all different types of therapy and I'm not a trained professional, obviously, I am the person receiving therapy. So when I talk about this it's gonna be in very loose terms, but for me my healing required a whole lot more than traditional cognitive behavioral therapy.
Speaker 2:And my sister once she was unable to hold down the feelings, once those feelings came bubbling back up in a flashback in a doctor's office and to this day I contend she should have been hospitalized right then, and there in the doctor's office she was unable to even get the therapy that she needed to get that under control, to get back to a place where she was able to work through things, even at a cognitive behavioral therapy level. So it's just super important to me that we talk about that.
Speaker 1:Well, let's start off with a couple of things I wanna like. Trauma-informed care gets thrown around and people don't really explain what that means. And trauma-informed care has to do with looking at the whole person, the whole situation, their life situation, how they got there and so on and so forth, and not pretend you know everything, because the stuff that happens is that some therapists and again, I'm not pointing fingers, I guess I am in some ways, but not too much, is that? Oh well, okay, you got your conviction, so you should be happy. Your life started when you got groomed or you got violently raped and they're all violent.
Speaker 1:And no, your life was something before that, and your life has changed significantly since then.
Speaker 1:And you need to be informed on the whole of the human being and the whole situation, and I think it's important for me to explain that to the audience, who may not know what trauma-informed care meets and how that has impact. I think that your message of trauma being the gateway drug is essential for people to understand in a trauma-informed situation. I don't pretend I know everything and nor I promise I don't know everything, but knowing enough about trauma is to not go and say okay, so you put yourself in that situation. I'm not saying this.
Speaker 2:Of course, oh, you put yourself in that situation.
Speaker 1:Now you got your conviction, all right, let's get you better. No, that's like not even a quarter of the story, that's like even the tent of the story. So I wanted to make sure we kind of like talked about that with people, because I think it's very important that we have that. You can hear me well, right.
Speaker 2:I can, and you know what, steve. That brings to mind my first interaction with a new therapist, when my father was starting to notice the Impacts that the rape was having on me before I reported it, and this is a very key moment in in the situation. So I told you in the last episode and I'm glad we got into my early childhood, my sister's early childhood right I told you that I had had a family therapist that I had been seeing since since I was a kid. Well, at a certain point, when you're like 13, 14 years old, you really don't want to be seeing the same therapist that your mother sees, right, especially if you have a strained relationship with your mother. So I had kind of, at a certain point, put up that boundary.
Speaker 2:I recommended on my point right and right, and it just so happened that that was the same time that this gentleman was starting to Groom me. So when I was deep into the situation probably about halfway through the year that he spent actually raping me my father had noticed that I was having difficulty getting up for school, that I was staying up really late, that, you know, I didn't seem to be cleaning my room or showering as often as I had been in the past and typically I was very much the opposite and typically I was very vocal about what was going on with me and obviously he didn't know what was going on with me and I couldn't talk to him about what was actually going on with me. So he basically told me that he was gonna make me go to therapy. He would find a new therapist and we were gonna figure it out. And I got to that therapist and I told him what was going on and this gentleman I will never forget, he barely asked a single question. He certainly did not probe to see If there was something that he wasn't missing. I can tell you that much. I just told him what my symptoms were and he told me that I had overachiever syndrome, that I was burning out and that that was my problem. And you know what, in a lot of ways he was right, because you know I had been over compensating by delving into school, um, and by you know being quote-unquote, the perfect you know, most perfect version of myself, that I could be right. And this one more thing because I had my early childhood trauma right. This one more thing was the straw that broke the camel's back where I could not overcompensate anymore. But I was so Disgusted by that because in that moment I'm like, sir, what you don't know is that my guitar teacher is fucking me on a weekly basis. He also happens to be my dad's you know, one of my dad's best friends. Also happens to be an employee, also happens to be engaged to a woman I very much like, and I don't know what to do. I can't talk to anybody about it, and I certainly can't talk to you about it. And that was that. That was the one and only therapy session that I ever went to with him. Now it's funny because that actually did end up Continuing to play out after I reported the rape.
Speaker 2:That did not stop, that accelerated. As I said a few minutes ago. I could no longer get myself out of bed to go to school on time. I could no longer, you know, at the last minute, bang out my papers or my assignments. I could no longer present the way that I had been presenting for so long, to the point where I knew that I needed to leave high school in order to preserve the record that I had um Built up to that point in time, college was very important to me.
Speaker 2:My whole identity was. I wanted to Um make a difference in the world. I was going to go to Harvard and be a prosecutor, like I was. I was going to do big things right, and now I couldn't even get myself out of bed to go to school. So the last thing that I wanted to do was trash that record. Um. And I remember um. That Really, really, really ramped up when I met my first like real boyfriend and um Um decided to start smoking weed.
Speaker 2:Now, that was not for nine months after I reported this. So for a full nine months I just struggled on um, you know, trying to live the way I had lived prior Um, and everybody was kind of like what the hell is wrong with you, like you need to start putting this in your past. And that was the most frustrating feeling, because it's not like I was sitting around all day Obsessing over the fact that I had been raped or obsessing over what was going to happen with this man and, by the way, that was hard enough to not do that and I was successfully Not doing that, but I could not get out of my own way and I had absolutely no idea why.
Speaker 1:Right and I think that what I, you know, I rolled my eyes, so if you're on youtube you saw. But you know like, oh yeah, well, you know you, you got it off your chest, come on, move on. Oh yeah, I didn't think of that. Thank you so much, I'll do that, thank you. It's not that easy. It's not what happens, and you know you, you know I, most people, I know you talk about trauma being the gateway drug and then it leads to marijuana or what have you, because you got to deal with the fucking symptoms.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you know the effect of the actual trauma. It's been a really long time since I like told this story in this much detail, right, steve? The effects of the actual trauma prior to me ever picking up my first substance Were the exact same effects that being on substances had on me, so it's weird that you just pointed that out. Like I'm the type when I'm using and at this point in my life I I want everybody to know I am california sober I do use weed, I smoke weed as one of my coping mechanisms.
Speaker 1:I have come off all of my.
Speaker 2:I have come off all of my pharmaceuticals and Um. You know, at this point in my life I do not chase my marijuana addiction the way that I would if you want to call it that, that I would chase any other substance. I don't drink, um. I don't do any other mind altering substances. I have had some plant medicine experiences under the guidance of a shaman for real, a shaman, um. But I just want to be clear.
Speaker 1:I don't judge anybody else's sobriety or recovery and for those who missed the last episode how long have you been sobered up?
Speaker 2:It's 18 months now. Congratulations again.
Speaker 1:That's always important for me to point out.
Speaker 2:Congratulations, thank you and and much different from the seven years that I had prior to that severe injury. Um, that led to my relapse because, again, I was using my job and, um, basically like Worldly success, or success in the eyes of society, becoming the person I thought I was supposed to be all along right, as my means to recovery. So when that inevitably hit a roadblock or hit a bump in the road right, um, my recovery went right out the window with it.
Speaker 1:You know, um, uh, essentially, go ahead and I don't want to go too off the topic, because that's important too and I want to focus a little bit more about, like you know, um I you talk about trauma being the gateway drug. Yes leads to marijuana. Yes, anybody else, or anything else, or maybe anybody too.
Speaker 2:Oh no, it was crazy for me. So for me, right? Uh, nine months after, after I've reported it, I'm struggling along. I'm with uh, I'm with a boyfriend, right? Uh, brand new thing in my life had never had a real boyfriend prior to that. You know, you have schoolyard crushes, you have schoolyard relationships, but you've never had a real boyfriend. So, um, this is like the boyfriend I went to high school prom with. Now he, when I met him, he was a childhood friend and he had smoked weed. He knew I was like straight edge and I wasn't down for any of that. So when we started hooking up right Like relationship-wise, because I wasn't having sex on my own yet either Um, basically, I, um, I was supporting him in his attempts to stay away from smoking weed, from drinking and all that stuff, and he was he was successful at it.
Speaker 1:Um, and taking care of someone else is another way to deal with trauma.
Speaker 2:That is actually. That is actually very true when it goes back to being parentified, um when, I was a kid and all of that right, All things you learn through therapy, steve Um.
Speaker 1:I was a new good therapist.
Speaker 2:Right, but years of it. So essentially he he about a month in how to mess up had a little, had a little slip. Whatever told me about it, rinse and repeat a month later. And then, the third time, I showed up at his house with my grandmother and he was high as a kite, like the classic, like cowley from fricking South park levels of high. And thank god my grandmother was clueless, she had no idea, but I was mortified and at that point I decided that I had to let go of whether or not he was gonna smoke weed. If he wanted to smoke weed, he was gonna smoke weed and that was that. But that was also the beginning of the end for me, because then I was around it.
Speaker 2:So then I'm sitting there and I'm in, you know, the mind state and the physical state of having just suffered major trauma for an extended period of time, and I'm surrounded by all these people that are using drugs to cope. And eventually I got curious, um, and I was thinking to myself and I'll never forget it like if he can't stop, like it's, there's got to be something about it that that draws him to it, that prevents him from being able to stop, and that, in that moment was something that I wanted. I just wanted the the, the pain, essentially To stop. I wanted my mind to stop racing, I wanted to numb the intense feelings that I was having, and so I actually asked him If I could smoke with him. And it's funny, because I was so afraid of it that I didn't even like Actually hit the bowl or the joint, like he like shot gun, he like blew the smoke in my mouth because I was so afraid of like ruining my voice being a singer, right, um, but the the very first time I smoked weed, um, it was mission accomplished. It was mission accomplished Like I'll never forget it.
Speaker 2:It was June, it was like midnight, because we snuck out and I was walking down my childhood street and just everything was brighter and like for a minute, I just like forgot that my life sucked and I essentially wanted to die. Now, at that point in time, I didn't. I didn't want to die like, I wasn't suicidal or having suicidal ideation, but I had completely lost my way and completely lost my zest for life, like struggling to get out of bed and care for myself, as I said. So from that day on, I never went a day without smoking weed again and it just very quickly progressed from there.
Speaker 2:I'm sure this poor kid was like what the hell did I do? Because like we uh no sooner had started doing that than we watched like blow with Johnny Depp and I'm like gee, I wonder where we could get some cocaine. And he was like wait what? And like proceed my journey down the deep, dark road of addiction. I was just, I was just out to try. If this is good and it's getting me out of my head, then what else is there that can get me out of my head? And obviously also very concerned about addiction. But you know that's not going to happen to me right, you're special.
Speaker 1:you'll never be addicted.
Speaker 2:I'm somehow different, and it was even to the point where Steve, like I didn't like drinking you know why? Because it messed me up too much like I truly did just want the pain to stop, just wanted my thoughts to either stop being so overwhelming or get a little more organized. You know what I mean? I just I just wanted it to stop, and so when I found something that made it stop, I went full steam ahead. By the time I made it back to school, in the fall I transferred back from Ashland to North Bridge in order to drop out, because I didn't want to drop out in the town that my father was the fire chief in and like embarrass him, essentially. But that's the thing. People should have understood what was going on, and part of why I'm speaking out about this is, I think it's not even so much trauma, informed care as just people not understanding trauma period.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we mean you can have a long conversation about that, because I think that trauma is something that either people want you to erase, because somehow there's an eraser for it, or that you're going to get over it, because everyone gets over trauma and I, you know, I've mentioned this several times on my podcast. I always tell people you don't get over trauma ever. You get through trauma. You get to the other side. That doesn't mean it's still not there, but you know, when people want you to get over it, marijuana sounds good, cocaine sounds good, it sounds good, opiates sound good, anything to just get over it and it's almost like a message. When you're not trauma informed, you give the message of get over it, and then that leads to even worse roads, in my opinion it does, and that's exactly what went down with Amanda.
Speaker 2:So with me, right, as I said, I was very high, functioning in my again like trauma affected way right before the rape, and then the rape put me over the edge. My sister, on the other hand, was very affected. It would seem right, and then her rape made her lean into reformation. I guess I think she almost, and I. We did have conversation about this many, many times. I think she was kind of like you know, i'ma do what Lynn used to do and I'm just gonna focus on school and I'm just gonna focus on my family and focus on, you know, my boyfriend, who's not taking me out to parties and just get through it.
Speaker 2:When she graduated high school which was a proud moment for all of us um, she went right into work and then, when she got pregnant at 19, she was like a phenomenal, phenomenal mother, all the while at no point in time addressing what had happened her she could not even talk about it like the America's most wanted episode filming. Those episodes were some of the most difficult days that she had, from the time that the conviction happened until the time when she had her flashback and snapped um later on in her early 20s in that doctor's office. Um, so you know, for me, I was affected, right, I was no longer able to cope and function the way that I had beforehand, but I was facing my triggers. So, uh, there were certain songs that would come on the radio and it would remind me of this gentleman and his band and I would not change the channel. That is key.
Speaker 2:And not everybody can do that and not everybody can do that right away. Some people, it takes years to be exposed to a trigger and to allow themselves to continue to be exposed to said trigger in order to, you know, classically condition themselves back into it being a neutral item. And to this day I still hear those songs and my first thought is that gentleman and his band. But it's a millisecond and it triggers no actual emotion, whereas back in the day, when it first happened, it would trigger all sorts of emotion and I would think about it for a while right and I think that a lot of people listen to x, y, z, you say songs, but whatever, because they're like, oh, if I can get through this song, I'm probably over it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's definitely what people want. They want to get over it. And I think that the message is that you know you don't need to be a tough person, a tough woman, a tough guy, because that shit hurts, and just want to normalize a little bit of that before we go on, because I've had both, like people hang up or listen, change the song or what have you, or they go through it. See, I'm okay, now I'd listen to the whole song. No, that's not exactly how that works. I'm sorry, that's. I wish it worked that way. It'd be freaking great. I'm doing it with everyone, but it's just not how it works.
Speaker 2:Steve, I love that conversation. I love that what you just said, because, at the end of the day, right, it wasn't until 10 years in that I finally had a therapist say to me look, just because you've logically processed and desensitized up here does not mean that you are healed. And I was shook. I had no idea what the hell she was even talking about. I'm like, ma'am, I'm sorry, but isn't the entire point of healing to not be messed up about it in your head, to logically be able to have processed it it doesn't upset you when you talk about it anymore and to be able to be exposed to the triggers that would have upset you in the past? Isn't that what healing is? And she's like no, no, there is head healing and there is heart healing. And you, my friend, are all up here and that is why I stayed sick, steve.
Speaker 2:That's why I'm so about a holistic approach. A holistic approach, and it's funny that you define trauma, if for informed care, as a holistic approach, because that's what it's taken for me to find actual healing. Don't get me wrong. It was super important for me and I was able to have that seven years of sobriety without a real program and work that job and get out of bed and all of that stuff right, because I had done the CBT logical processing reduction in how, how heavily my triggers impacted me but I was by no means healed. I was by no means healed. My life was absolute chaos. I was miserable. I was miserable right.
Speaker 2:Being hyper busy is also a trauma response oh, I was either go or stop, so I all week I'd work like 60 hours a week. I'd be talking about decompressing my day for literal hours with multiple different people after work and then I would crash all weekend like it was. It was not healthy at all. I am in a way, different place today and and it's it's as a result of branching out into more than just talking about it, more than just logically processing it. But I bring up the fact that early on I was in therapy talking about it and I was on my own because I found out about, you know, pavlov's dogs and classical conditioning in science class. And I'm just a nerd like that. I'm like let's try this on myself. I probably shouldn't run from this trigger. If I can't avoid running from this trigger, you know and obviously you have to be safe in the environment that you're doing that. And again, big nerd like I did a whole bunch of my own research. This is the early 2000s.
Speaker 2:I didn't have a therapist to walk me through that particular type of therapy, right, so I'm glad I get it, so you can get through it right, seriously, right, um, but, like I, I'm just glad I did it, because that prevented me from pushing it down, right, um, and having it resurface when I wasn't ready, which is what happened with Amanda, and I think that's something that I would like to get into if you'd like to talk about that please let go ahead.
Speaker 2:I'm, I'm all ears, okay, cool so with Amanda right, um, as I said in the last episode, she was just naturally a more. She would internalize things a lot more than me. I would externalize them, I would let off steam, she would go into her room and, you know, write in a journal. Um, and we have so many journal entries from the time that she was a kid until, you know, right before her death. It's crazy to read. Excuse me for the burp guys, wicked root of me, but anyway, um, essentially she, she did the complete opposite of what I did.
Speaker 2:She would not go to therapy and my parents were, again, like I said, early on in our childhood they were very much of the opinion that, like they should support us in however, we feel we need to heal. So they supported me in being very vocal and in wanting to talk about it, and they supported her in not wanting to talk about it and, critically, not wanting to go to therapy. Um, now, I don't agree with forcing her to talk about her rape and therapy, but I do think as a young child we made a mistake as a family there. We should have had her in therapy, whether she spoke at all or not, just to build a relationship with that therapist Again, coulda, woulda, shoulda. No judgment, this is just in retrospect. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And finding your way through therapy, which is the name of the podcast, right? I remind people that even being in the presence of the therapist and talking about the weather, talking about music, sports, whatever, maybe one day you'll open up, maybe you won't, but my experience has always been that you know people are like, oh, you're talking about the weather, where you're crying, I'm like eventually they'll come around. I really don't care when they come around and that patience about trauma and form. It doesn't even need to be trauma and form. I think it's mental halt, and form Is that you can't say all right, even in my podcast I didn't go.
Speaker 1:All right, Lynn, let's hear about your most painful memory of this and let's really dig into it right away. Right, Because that's just so screwed up, that's not how you do it. And then eventually people will open up and I think that that's what is lost when you know people are like, oh, you shouldn't force anyone therapy. I guess that's true, but you can also have someone who's willing to be sitting there with you and just engaging you so that you become a safe person. I know I do. I move in desensitization, reprocessing, EMDR for trauma, and I typically refuse to do it within the first six months of knowing a client, because I need to gain that trust.
Speaker 2:Very smart. And you know, steve, what you just reminded me of is oversharing and overwillingness to open up, which is what I exhibit, is also a trauma response.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it's so it leads you to run.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly so. My sister shutting down that with the way her trauma presented me, being over zealous about sharing and overly quick to open up, was my trauma playing out as well, you know. But critically, at least, I had that safe person and unfortunately for her she did not. Now, when she was about 22, 23 years old right, the kids were like three she had an issue that she had to go into the PCP for, and the PCP was probably going to have to do something down in her nether regions that was going to potentially cause pain. And she was aware that triggers are a thing. And the last time she had physical pain in that area, aside from giving birth, which also kind of triggered her, was the rape. Right, she asked me to accompany her to the doctor. So she was looking back on it. She must have been way more aware of how close to the surface that stuff was. Then she let on, we get to the doctor's office, we let the doctor know what's going on, the doctor goes to do the procedure, and the second that he touched her she snapped. And when I say snapped, I was in the room, steve, I was right there with her. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She started struggling. She called the doctor by her rapist's name I'm getting goosebumps right now and I just started screaming stop. I just started screaming, stop. Because she was not physically present in the room and even at that point in time, knowing nothing about trauma, I knew that was not normal. You know what I mean. So the doctor did stop and she came out of it kind of knowing what I know.
Speaker 2:Now she was fully disassociated. She does not remember a full two week period, or did not, at the time of her death, remember a full two week period after that. But he actually ended up writing her Xanax prescription and sending us home asking us to follow up with our therapist. Now, this is the thing. This was our family doctor. He had known her since she was a little girl. He didn't know what the hell to do. I'm not, I'm really again. Early 2000s, like mid 2000s, mid early 2000s, right, this is like 2010-ish, 2011,. Okay, he didn't have the access to the knowledge that we have today. I do truly believe now, if that happened, somebody would call an ambulance. That's what should have happened. But that was really the beginning of the end for her, steve, because once that bubbled up.
Speaker 2:That was it. That was it. Her PTSD, or what we now know to be CPTSD, was in full swing from that moment on.
Speaker 1:Can you explain what CPTSD stands for?
Speaker 2:Complex post-traumatic stress disorder and the key difference, as far as I understand it again, I'm not a mental health professional but is repeated traumas over a timeframe.
Speaker 1:There's different definitions. It's not an official diagnosis just yet, but it is a layered trauma, whether it's from the same trauma and all those layers that go from that or other traumas that are associated with that initial trauma. And again, there's not like a consensus just yet, but it will get there. I'm sure An interest, and it's because I feel very bad, because I don't wanna like push the story fast forward too much.
Speaker 2:No, it's understandable, it's a lot. It's a lot, steve, and that's why I'm on what I call the mission that I'm on and that my family is on the mission that we're on. So I am all about getting out the message that trauma is the gateway drug, the true gateway drug, and when.
Speaker 2:I say drug, I don't just mean like into addiction, I just mean into a whole host of, I guess, maladaptive coping mechanisms I guess is the best way to put that in later life. And one of the ways that plays out is in actual addictions, as it did with myself, as it did with my sister. Addiction is a symptom of a deeper rooted mental, physical and, I believe, spiritual malady, and trauma is often the source of it, and it doesn't have to be a trauma as severe and as clear cut as a rape. Okay, I had trauma and trauma responses from my parents, divorce from my mother, getting clean, as we discussed in the last episode. So did my sister. It's just that as things progressed, we both had kind of the straw that broke the camel's back moment.
Speaker 1:I just wanna add one thing, because I the myth of normal, which is a book by Gabor Mante.
Speaker 2:Love him.
Speaker 1:But what I love about what he's talking about trauma, he says that, what about if there is no mental illness? And hear me out, it's mental injury and I think I've mentioned this many times before, but I'm gonna say it again.
Speaker 1:So your trauma is your mental injury that you never and I say you, the royal, you not just Lynn this is really the subset of leading to depression, leading to anxiety, leading to all that. And if you can learn how to heal some of these injuries cause it's not usually singular, for the record it's better to go there versus saying oh you got PTSD, here's a med, here's depression, here's a med. I'm opposed to medication, but I'm not for medication solving your issues. That I am opposed to.
Speaker 2:To be fair, it never solved our issues.
Speaker 2:At one point my sister was on 10 or 12 different psych meds.
Speaker 2:There were repeats in the psych meds, so there would be like multiple different antidepressants, multiple different mood stabilizers, multiple different anti-anxiety medications and medications to deal with the symptoms from those medications. You could not tell me, even as a completely untrained layman, that that was smart or made any sense, and we could never get her back to a place where she was stable enough to come off all of the meds and then build from the ground up. My sister was never restabilized at the end of the day after that flashback in the doctor's office, which, again, I didn't have one of those moments because I kept my toe dipped in the pond of the situation and, because of just the nature of who I was as a human being, right I avoided that, whereas she went the opposite route. Now again, neither is right or wrong, but I do believe had she been in with a mental health professional that she trusted when that happened, we would have been able to get the help she needed. Now maybe not the exact help she needed.
Speaker 1:But let me stop you for a second. I hate to interrupt. No, please do. Let's start with a few things. I am not a medically trained person, but I have worked in mental health field for over 20 years and whenever a client comes in and is on over three drugs for mental health reasons, I'm like go see your doctor tell him to figure it out.
Speaker 1:But there's only three that you should be on Whatever that is, they can choose, but because once you hit three, four, five, you don't even know if it's an interaction, if it's, this or that, and a lot of medical professionals have agreed with me. Some would say, well, you don't have a doctor and you didn't go to school, but I don't really care about that crap. So let's start with that.
Speaker 2:How about how it plays out on the street? Because that doesn't matter, right?
Speaker 1:Look at my ego, it gets in the way. At the end of the day, though, again, I just want to be for those who are listening. Lynn knows that I want to get to really keeping this through a certain amount of time, so I'm not trying to cut Lynn's story. Lynn, you know that obviously.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:But what happened? And obviously your sister's no longer here. What happened?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay. So what happened is after that incident in the doctor's office. It took me two weeks to convince my parents that she needed to be hospitalized and eventually we got her hospitalized. Once we got her hospitalized I also let them know that she had had a back surgery and the father of her children had actually gone off the rails with addiction, which is a whole other story. That was a family issue that trickled down to him, and so when she was in that two week period of disassociation, I did catch on that she was recreationally and now self-medicating with pain pills, because that was the time frame. Now I myself had gotten into them and at this point had gone to rehab. My sister had organized an intervention.
Speaker 2:After the trial I spent a year addicted to OxyContin and my sister organized an intervention and my parents sent me to 90 days of treatment down at Gosnold and Cape Cod, which was a very holistic program at the time and I understand, has come even more in that direction and had got me stabilized. So I knew what I was looking at when I was seeing her doing what she was doing. So I let them know and they didn't want to believe that that was as big of an issue, as it was obviously going to become. So what they tried to do was get her stabilized from the flashback, from the disassociation, and they sent her to Bournwood, which Bournwood did a great job.
Speaker 2:But my sister was in such a traumatized like activated state that the treatment was almost re-traumatizing for her.
Speaker 2:So once she came back into her body and realized she didn't remember the previous two weeks and got herself to the point where she could, like you know, string two sentences together and remember what happened yesterday. She got out of there and she still wanted nothing to do with treatment. But now she was in a very activated, unable to push down the memories, unable to cope, much like I had hit back in high school, right, and her addiction just started taking off Now again, because of the type of human being that she was. Whereas I was always very like, hey, this is what I got going on, like it or not, she would do her damnedest to hide it. And so over the years we went through these cycles of it comes out that she's using and her trauma and her using were very linked. So she'd have around the time of the rape in November. She would always have, whether she even realized that was coming or not. Like the body remembers, right the body gets the scores.
Speaker 2:Yes, so every yes, so every November, she would run into a really rough time and if she wasn't using, she would inevitably end up using because again, she had no coping mechanisms. So she would, she would start using and then essentially it would be under the radar and then I would start to pick up on it and then in the beginning I would start to try to make people aware, but nobody wanted to listen. So eventually I just started trying to be there for her and then something bad would happen. It would come up and we would rinse and repeat, you know. But again, because she had such a negative experience at her first like treatment facility, she was always so, so, so hesitant to to do any type of treatment and, having never really restabilized, even when she moved into the later part of her life and things like EMDR became available, she shouldn't have been given the EMDR, steve, because she wasn't stable to begin with. And to circle back to the meds, as things progressed in the medical community we found out, for example, she was allergic to traditional SSRIs, so things like a traditional anti, you know, depressant that any one of us would be on and a doctor would just throw you right which her PCP was prescribing at first. It made her, it made her worse. So it was just a such a complex web of bullshit and by the time we, you know it became clear what was going on. It was just too little, too late.
Speaker 2:We were never quite able to navigate the system and at the end of her life we were trying to get her trauma treatment but they wouldn't take her because I'm talking like McLean hospital wouldn't take her because her addiction was out of control. And then there were certain treatment facilities for her addiction that wouldn't take her because of her mental health issues. What we really needed was trauma informed care at a rehab because, again, the addiction was a symptom of her untreated trauma. And essentially my father not once but twice, once about I don't know, like five years ago and again right before she died sent her to a private rehab facility because we couldn't find any that were covered by Medicare and Mass Health, that were anywhere near even promising to be able to provide the care that she needed, and both of those $20,000 a month facilities fell far short of the mark, did not actually provide the care that they purported to provide.
Speaker 2:So really, that's why last week, when you asked me what is the major takeaway? What's the single biggest thing that can be done? Single biggest thing that can be done is early trauma intervention all right, and adequate trauma intervention. And then you need to couple that with an advocate that knows how to work both the healthcare side of the system and understands the justice system.
Speaker 2:Because, again, both my sister and I were retraumatized by the process, which both of us did not regret going through Please don't get me wrong. We got more than a lot of women get. We got convictions. Both of our offenders served time, but we were retraumatized by it and that was with a very good advocate. In fact, when I ran into problems recently because my offender has resurfaced at my church that he knew was my church and I've now had to dip a toe back into the justice system to see what that's all about and how I go about combating that right, like that advocate is still around, right and even with her it was it was retraumatizing for me and it's retraumatizing right now to have to fight for the protections that I was told when I got this conviction 20 years ago that I was going to get.
Speaker 1:Now in the process, and this is where I get really angry and before we go down this, I think that the justice system stuff might be a good episode, maybe for next season.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm down for that. I'd love to hear that I'm down for that.
Speaker 1:Obviously, your sister is no longer here. When did she pass and how did she pass?
Speaker 2:So she passed in January and so what happened was, basically, she was struggling through. She was clean for all intents and purposes. Everybody thought that she was clean. She was trying to complete her nursing degree, which she had been working on from the time that she was like 23 years old, and essentially the stress of trying to complete the nursing degree and trying to raise three young children because she subsequently had a third child about six years ago got to her and she started to self medicate again. Now, we didn't know that until it was too late because, as I said, she just was the type that would not let on that anything was going on until it was out of control. And by the time that she had graduated from nursing school she was pretty out of control. So that started to present in the home and in her relationship.
Speaker 2:Her and her husband got into a fight which we come to find out was over drugs, and DCF became involved, and that is a whole other another thing, and this is where it gets linked back into the justice system, steve, and that's why, like for me, that's what triggered this and I'm not going to go into it right now because again, we could spend a whole other hour and I don't want to do that to you or your listeners right now. But the point is the system was not set up to help her. Once she was at that point, the system saw her as the addict that she was, but not the reason why she was an addict, and therefore they gave her a list of action items to accomplish, but they did not give her any assistance in accomplishing those action items, whereas about five, six years prior, when she had gotten clean, she was in drug court, which was very much the same thing a list of action items but help accomplishing said action items and she was successful and she was clean for several years off of that. So once that happened, once DCF became involved and she was under the microscope, at first they believed that she was clean and they were agreeing that all of these symptoms, all these issues that she was having, were clearly from her trauma.
Speaker 2:But then, when it became clear that it was not just the trauma but it was also drugs and I actually had to, unfortunately, make a call to DCF to tell them what was actually going on, because my mother was terrified, wanted her to get rehab but was afraid to go to say to DCF, like she is in fact using. I've got the kids, they're safe, but what do we do? So I took it upon myself to do that. At that point it was too late. They ultimately removed the children from my mother's home. My father took the baby and the twins went into the foster care system for a little bit. My father now has all three children, but that was really the beginning of the end for my sister. That's the point that my father tried to send her to rehab, paid $20,000 out of pocket, which, by the way, was a thing that he was told when he showed up. When they booked the rehab, they were told to discover it.
Speaker 1:I just want to be very mindful of the time here.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And what did she pass?
Speaker 2:Okay, from drugs. So essentially at the tail end of nine months of that right, they took the kids in March of last year, nine months in, she had just. She had just her body had had enough. She had one very near miss of an overdose in October and DCF actually confronted her without a lawyer, without an advocate, at the last meeting they ever had for with her, let her know that they had discovered that overdose. Now again, this is in January.
Speaker 2:So after the overdose she doubled down, her efforts actually got a therapist actually was trying. She was an intravenous user, she had put the needle down. She was an opiate user. She had stopped using opiates. We now know she was still dabbling.
Speaker 2:But harm reduction is the most important thing and she was working on it. So when they met with her that last week of her life and let her know look, we found out that you had an overdose in October. We do see that you've increased the activity that you've been doing to try to deal with that Since then. But we are changing the goal to adoption. Don't worry, your father will be the one to adopt the kids, if anybody adopts the kids, and hopefully we won't get to that.
Speaker 2:That was too much. I was actually with my father when my sister called to talk to him about that and at that point in time she was doing everything she could to be in good spirits. She was mindful of the fact that they had said that they weren't going to be lost to the system, mindful of the fact that they had said if she keeps doing what she's doing, she'll be okay and they hopefully won't be lost at all. But very, very scared and didn't really see how she was going to accomplish the goal of getting the treatment she needed, to get back into a place that she needed to be in in the situation that she was in, and not two days later she had overdosed and was dead.
Speaker 1:Such a sad story and such a side effect of the trauma.
Speaker 2:Yes, and again, I don't blame anybody. Really, it is what it is. We all make our own decisions. So I want to be clear about that. I'm not blaming the system, I'm not even blaming her rapist at the end of the day, but there is a strong argument to be made that Amanda's life was on borrowed time from the day that she was raped, you know.
Speaker 1:And what I'd love to do is to re-invite you next season to talk a little bit about the justice system, because we didn't even touch base on that, if that's okay with you, oh there's so much going on, Steve, and people can follow it in the media as it plays out.
Speaker 2:Like I said, I am at this point on a mission to become an advocate and an activist for survivors protections on that end of things. But more important to me than that is the trauma as the gateway drug and the conversation about just people becoming more informed about what trauma is, the impact it can have on people, how that actually looks on a day to day level and basically plugging the holes in the system that allow people like my sister to slip through the cracks. Because, again, I had the same opportunities. I came up in the same system. It's simply by virtue of who I am as a human being and that doesn't make me better or worse than Amanda, just the type of person I am. The fact that I outsource instead of going inside. Right that I'm here today. I just had more time to figure my stuff out.
Speaker 1:That's really it. I want to thank you for today and we'll definitely do another episode soon.
Speaker 2:Yes, sir, thank you so much, thank you.
