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So it's June 15th, 2016,
a warm summer day.

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I had just graduated high school

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and I'm riding the euphoria of all that
comes along with going away to college.

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Now, most stories start off with today
was not a normal day but not mine.

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Today was anything from normal,
from sunup to sundown.

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I cancel plans with my friends.

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I decide to not go to my
favorite museum with my family.

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And I wash my car by hand.

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All of these actions are really
out of the norm for me.

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For whatever reason,
I was home all day.

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And just after drawing off my car,

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I was in my room,
not really doing much.

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And my little sister Allison comes in.

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She asks, "Can we go pick up Maddie
from Jason's house?"

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I say yes without really
giving a second thought,

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and within a couple minutes

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we're driving.

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A little backstory on Maddie and Jason.

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Jason is a junior, goes to my high school,

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and he's dating Maddie,

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a freshman who's friends with my sister.

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Now my sister likes to throw parties
like any other teenager does.

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So I've gotten to know Jason a little bit.

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And what I've learned
from watching him is

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that he is the center of his social group.

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He is the one that everyone

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looks to, to see what they should be doing,

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and if they like it or not.

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Now I've also noticed

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that he can get angry sometimes
and has a hot temper.

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When my sister first asked
if we could go pick up Maddie,

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I said yes pretty quickly.

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And this was for a couple of reasons.

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The first was that it's kind of weird for me

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to pick up a friend from a boyfriend's house.

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Usually, I just chauffer for my sister
from house to house.

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The second was that I had heard
in school about Maddie and Jason

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having some relationship problems,

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and that kind of set an alarm bell off.

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The third was that my sister
wears her arm on her sleeve,

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so it's really easy to tell

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that she was anxious
about the situation also.

So we arrived at Jason's house

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and I parked my black sedan
on the right side of the street,

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opposite from his house.

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I opened the car door
and I stepped out

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into the warm cloudy
afternoon Virginia air.

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And I noticed that Maddie's
sitting on the porch,

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which is out of place.

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Normally my sister's friends

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just wait inside for a text
or knock at the door.

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But Maddie walks across the yard.

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I open the car door
behind mine and she gets in.

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I shut up behind her.

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Now at this point, I have to admit

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that I'm really relieved
that Jason is nowhere to be seen

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and that there had been
no incident or altercation.

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So I head back in the car,
buckle my seatbelt, close the door

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and start a three-point
turn to head home.

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The first turn was the left
in Jason's driveway.

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I put the car in reverse to back out

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and I look up at the house
and noticed a figure in the doorway

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that wasn't there before.

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I recognized him instantly

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from his red, white
and blue American flag tank top.

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It's Jason, and he's holding
a broom in his hand,

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it looks like,

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but as I take a closer look,

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my heart begins to thump into my chest

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as they recognized the metal
in wood as a shotgun.

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I begin to think about
what's about to happen.

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My first thought is that Jason

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is just trying to show
that he's more manly than I am.

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I can't hurt him.
And the second but scarier

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is that he's going to come out
and show his anger through the firearm.

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And that's what I act on.

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I put the car in reverse
and I back out of the driveway.

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I stop and I'm about to head home
and I put the gear shifter

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and drive, and then park.

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Chunk �� chunk �� chunk ��
drive for getting away safely

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and park for getting out and trying
to talk some sense into Jason.

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I choose to drive,

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slowly lift my foot off the brake

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and feel the car start
to push into my back.

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I take one last look at the house
to make sure everything's still okay

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and I don't see Jason anymore.

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But I see red, white and blue
at about waist level

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and notice that Jason's bent over like this.

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As I scan my eyes down, pop.

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I see what looks like a pink mist
covering the door

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that Jason was standing behind.

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I'm trying to wrap my brain
about what just happened

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and I forced myself
to come to the conclusion

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that what I was seeing

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was Jason's brain matter
splattered on the door

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and the skylight above.

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I hear a faint Joey something
just happened from the backseat

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and I realized that I
know something the girls don't:

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Jason just shot himself.

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My first thought is to get the girls away.

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I put the car in drive
and begin to speed away

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across one intersection
and maybe even two.

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I hear rustling from the backseat
and next to me the girls

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are starting to panic.

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There's rustling in seats,
slamming on windows,

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so I locked the car to keep them in.

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I grab the phone and dial 911.

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The operator picks up
and I have to utter the words:

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"I've just witnessed a suicide"

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and chaos immediately
erupts inside the sedan.

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As I'm trying to relay
the information to the operator,

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like the address, my name,
and for some reason my birthday.

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I get a faint look from my sister
with tears in her eyes

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and asks if Jason is going to be okay.

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In order to keep myself together
I have to look away.

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I pull the car over and get out
because I cannot keep myself together

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inside with those two girls.

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I know that I have to stay,

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at least, calm and collected
to keep them there

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and away from that door.

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I finish relaying the information
to the operator and they say,

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"Hang on, the police will be there soon."

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And then click.
The phone line goes dead.

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And the operator hung up.
And I'm all alone.

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I stand outside in the familiar
neighborhood of Vista woods

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knowing that I am the only one
that knows what just happened.

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The whole world is oblivious.

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A car drives behind me.

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Someone is mowing their lawn
off to my right,

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and I hear little kids playing to my left.

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Everything is normal

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as far as the rest
of the world is concerned.

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But I am stuck in a different universe
than the rest of the world.

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In a movie when something
like this happens,

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the screen goes dark

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and ominous music comes from underneath.

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But it's not like that.

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I was scared

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and I couldn't do anything about it.

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Now I tell you that story

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because today I want to tell you
what it means to experience trauma.

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Sorry. So there's no real book
on parenting as all parents know.

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There's no textbook you can turn to,
to know what to do next.

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And even if there was
a textbook on parenting,

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I seriously doubt
that any of the chapter titles

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would have been "What to do
when your child misses a shotgun suicide?"

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So my parents did the best thing
they could think of

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and took my sister and me
to a talk therapist in town

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the very next day.

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And we set up more sessions
for that summer,

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and throughout that summer

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we told her what happened
and our feelings and stuff like that.

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And it definitely helped
but it didn't help where I needed it,

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which was in my psyche
if that makes any sense.

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I'm really into knowing
where people are coming from

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in their thoughts, actions, and words.

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And I subject myself
to the same analysis.

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And over the summer,

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I was doing these intrusive thoughts

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and what I was coming up with
was I was milking it.

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I was fine and didn't need
any extra attention.

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And I think a lot of people go through that.

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I thought to myself:

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"This event is in the past Joey;
just move on and get over it."

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So I start school here
at Behrend in the fall

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and on the surface everything's great.

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But there were these little things

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that were happening that showed me
that everything was not great.

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For instance,

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I would be in my dorm room
or in a classroom,

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I don't hear kids down the hall laughing

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and instantly I would think
that they were crying.

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It's really amazing

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how much hysterical laughter
and hysterical crying

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sound the same.

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I would blank out into this thousand-yard

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stare replaying the event in my head
and would be scared

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over something moving
or someone touching my shoulder.

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And finally, I would cry myself
to sleep at night,

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not a sad or angry cry,

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just there staring at the wall
with tears rolling down my face.

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So I'm a bit of a nerd

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and I started researching
what was happening to me.

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And I learned that your brain

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talks through the exchanging
of charged particles

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through neural pathways.

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And when these pathways get used more,

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it's easier for your brain to follow.

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Now most people have heard of
"fight or flight" and what this is,

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is it's an instinct that happens
when your body feels in danger.

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Your amygdala which is the oldest part
of your brain takes control

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and tells the rest of your brain
what to do and your body.

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Now if there's a tiger in front of you,

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you're really not going to benefit
that much from thinking:

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what am I going to do next?

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Oh, what's the tiger going to do next?

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It's a lot more beneficial
for your longevity

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if you fight the tiger
or run away really fast.

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And that's what the amygdala triggers.

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Now my brain thought

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that the right way to act
in a sad or scary situation

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was to do what my amygdala
set on June 15th,

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which makes sense.

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It was just trying to protect me.

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But what it was actually resulting in

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was a torrent of emotions
that I had never felt before.

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Now despite all this,
I was just telling myself:

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"Joey, you're just a freshman.

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You're just anxious about this semester

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starting to ramp up,
and you're homesick."

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Now you know that part in a movie
where things start to really get bad,

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this is that part.

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And the part where they really
started to not get okay

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were my dreams.

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I was struggling to sleep
without nightmares

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and eventually started sleepwalking.

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And one night I started sleepwalking,
left my dorm room, left my building,

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and ended up eight miles
away from campus,

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in rainbow flip-flops.

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I was eventually found by the police,

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disoriented and confused.

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And their first thought was:

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"Dang, this college freshman
definitely cannot handle his booze."

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So he took me to the hospital
and called my parents

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and eventually, everyone realized
that I wasn't drunk or on drugs

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but I was having a PTSD
(posttraumatic stress disorder) breakdown.

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Now this sleepwalking incident
was a wake-up call

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for me and my parents that I needed help,

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and that I wasn't okay.

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And since my dad is a retired marine,

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we're well connected
with the military community.

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And we're pointed
in the direction of EMDR

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which stands for eye movement
desensitization and reprocessing.

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And it's a way to help
our brains deal with trauma.

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So I took a three-week leave of absence
from school to go home to Virginia

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and start EMDR therapy.

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The first session
was about an hour and a half

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and the therapist went over
all the science of everything,

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which again I was into.

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She told me that EMDR
is based on the research of REM sleep

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which is rapid eye movement sleep.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And what happens during REM sleep
or what's theorized at least

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is your eyes are moving
back and forth rapidly and randomly

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and you're filing away
all the information from the day.

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So if you had a stressful day at work,

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your dreams might have
some relation to that.

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99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Now REM sleep is almost

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like the visualization
of what's happening

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and those come out as dreams.

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What was happening when I was dreaming

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was I was seeing June 15th
in a different light.

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Now your brain during REM sleep

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is moving everything

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from your short-term to your long-term.

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And it kind of reads what it is, labels it
and then sends away for filing.

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And it doesn't always come across
exactly in your dreams.

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What was happening in my dreams

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was I was replaying the event
over and over and over again

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because my brain couldn't file it.

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It just kept trying to refile and refile.

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But it just wasn't able to.

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Now the way a typical EMDR session
would go is the therapist

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would hold their fingers
about six to 12 inches away

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from my face and swipe
from my left peripheral

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to my right peripheral,

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back and forth.

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And they call this bilateral stimulation,

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because it stimulates
both hemispheres of your brain.

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She would tell me to put myself
back into June 15th,

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back into the sedan

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and let her know what I was feeling
and what was happening.

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And when I came to a part

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where I was upset or didn't really
understand what was happening or angry,

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she would input a sentence or two,
and then we would swipe on that.

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And now I kind of cement
that thinking into my head.

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Now there were two really big problems
that I was having with June 15th.

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The first was that I felt responsible
for what the girls had seen.

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Now if you remember I turned left,

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but there's a way to get home straight.

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And I thought that because I
turned left that that was the reason

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the girls saw what happened

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that I was the reason they saw it.

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If I would have gone straight
they would be fine.

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The second was that I felt like
I could have helped Jason.

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I don't know what I could have done

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but I just wish I would have done
something better for him.

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What EMDR helped me do was realize
that I could have done nothing better

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and that situation went the way
it was going to happen.

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Now with traditional talk therapy,
you can say oh I'm fine;

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it wasn't my fault; I'm okay.

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But you can lie; you can lie to the therapist
and you can lie to yourself.

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What EMDR does is it really

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forces you to believe
what you're saying and thinking.

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Now one way to show this is
when I've been researching EMDR,

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I found that people
would start crying out of nowhere
during the swiping.

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And I thought, no, no,
that doesn't happen to me.

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It happens to me.

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We would be sitting there
swiping back and forth

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and I would just start
crying uncontrollably.

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It was like someone
had taken a champagne bottle

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and pop the cork

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and all of that was coming out was everything
that I had bottled away on June 15th.

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And now it was finally escaping.

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Luckily, I only needed two EMDR sessions.

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Part of this is due to the fact
of the neural pathways

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that I mentioned earlier

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and how when one gets used more it
gets easier to follow.

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Now in my brain, the trauma only
had time to set up a walking path

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through the woods
that my brain could follow.

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But in other trauma victims,

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like someone who's been to war
or someone who's in an abusive relationship,

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they might have a highway that's been formed.

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For me all we had to do
is take a rake and brush the leaves back over

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and my brain would forget it was there.

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But for someone else, you may need
to take a jackhammer to it

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and plant trees and wait for them
to grow and that takes time.

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Now, a little statistic on EMDR to show
that I'm not just like a poster child.

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After on average
of six 50-minute sessions,

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100% of single trauma victims

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and 77% of multi-trauma victims

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had zero signs of PTSD after.

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Now EMDR is just one of the ways
that we're learning about trauma

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and the way our brains process it.

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And who knows what science
is going to bring us

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in five, ten or 20 years.

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What I do know is

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that before this event happened to me

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I thought that trauma was just
something you need to get over,

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just accept it and move on.

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But what I realize now is

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that we have to help ourselves
if we truly want to get past something.

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For months I was wanting to know
why this happen?

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Why did Jason take his life?

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Why those two girls?

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And what I've learned is
that some events in life

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just feel like a crappy movie,

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one where the last scene ends
with more questions than answers.

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And do we want those answers?

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But we can find peace

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even though we know we will
never get those answers.

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I hope that you think about trauma
differently than you did before

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and have a better understanding

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about how your brain process
the world around you.

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And just remember that sometimes
it needs a little help.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)