WEBVTT

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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


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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
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

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is that he is the center
of his social group.

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He is the one that everyone 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 to pick up a friend

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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.

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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

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and I stepped out 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 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. I shut up behind her.

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Now at this point, I have to admit
that I'm really relieved

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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,

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and he's holding a broom
in his hand - 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.

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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

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and I put the gear shifter,
and drive, and then park.

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Chunk, chunk, chunk,

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drive for getting away safely and park

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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,

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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
was Jason's brain matter

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splattered on the door
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

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and next to me
the girls 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 like

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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

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because I cannot keep myself together
inside with those two girls.

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I know that I have to stay,
at least calm and collected

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to keep them there
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.

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The phone line goes dead.
And the operator hung up.

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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 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
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.

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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

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where people are coming from
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,
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
that were happening

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that showed me
that everything was not great.

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For instance, 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 sound the same.

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I would blank out
into this thousand-yard stare

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replaying the event in my head

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and would be scared over something moving
or someone touching my shoulder.

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And finally,

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I would cry myself to sleep at night,
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 talks

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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
starting to ramp up,

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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,

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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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(Laughter)

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I was eventually found by the police,
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 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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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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Now REM sleep is almost
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
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

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is the therapist would hold their fingers
about six to 12 inches away from my face

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and swipe from my left peripheral
to my right peripheral, 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
where I was upset

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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.

00:14:47.078 --> 00:14:51.051
The first was that I felt responsible
for what the girls had seen.

00:14:51.849 --> 00:14:54.284
Now if you remember I turned left,

00:14:55.040 --> 00:14:57.540
but there's a way to get home straight.

00:14:58.270 --> 00:15:00.989
And I thought that because I turned left

00:15:00.989 --> 00:15:03.491
that that was the reason
the girls saw what happened

00:15:03.491 --> 00:15:05.920
that I was the reason they saw it.

00:15:06.261 --> 00:15:08.855
If I would have gone straight
they would be fine.

00:15:10.650 --> 00:15:14.730
The second was that I felt like
I could have helped Jason.

00:15:15.270 --> 00:15:17.551
I don't know what I could have done

00:15:17.551 --> 00:15:22.318
but I just wish I would have done
something better for him.

00:15:23.511 --> 00:15:27.551
What EMDR helped me do was realize
that I could have done nothing better

00:15:27.551 --> 00:15:30.859
and that situation went the way
it was going to happen.

00:15:32.411 --> 00:15:34.232
Now with traditional talk therapy,

00:15:34.232 --> 00:15:38.452
you can say oh I'm fine;
it wasn't my fault; I'm okay.

00:15:38.822 --> 00:15:40.402
But you can lie;

00:15:40.402 --> 00:15:43.202
you can lie to the therapist
and you can lie to yourself.

00:15:43.602 --> 00:15:45.103
What EMDR does is it really

00:15:45.103 --> 00:15:48.273
forces you to believe
what you're saying and thinking.

00:15:49.243 --> 00:15:53.393
Now one way to show this
is when I've been researching EMDR,

00:15:53.963 --> 00:15:59.835
I found that people would start crying
out of nowhere during the swiping.

00:16:00.193 --> 00:16:03.204
And I thought, no, no,
that doesn't happen to me.

00:16:03.684 --> 00:16:04.894
It happens to me.

00:16:04.894 --> 00:16:06.184
(Laughter)

00:16:06.184 --> 00:16:08.754
We would be sitting there
swiping back and forth

00:16:08.754 --> 00:16:12.474
and I would just
start crying uncontrollably.

00:16:12.474 --> 00:16:15.214
It was like someone
had taken a champagne bottle

00:16:15.214 --> 00:16:16.344
and pop the cork

00:16:16.344 --> 00:16:18.064
and all of that was coming out


00:16:18.064 --> 00:16:21.317
was everything that I
had bottled away on June 15th.

00:16:22.134 --> 00:16:24.107
And now it was finally escaping.

00:16:25.819 --> 00:16:30.608
Luckily, I only needed two EMDR sessions.

00:16:31.465 --> 00:16:35.955
Part of this is due to the fact
of the neural pathways

00:16:35.955 --> 00:16:37.355
that I mentioned earlier,

00:16:37.355 --> 00:16:40.257
and how when one gets used more
it gets easier to follow.

00:16:40.696 --> 00:16:42.006
Now in my brain,

00:16:42.006 --> 00:16:46.436
the trauma only had time
to set up a walking paththrough the woods

00:16:46.436 --> 00:16:48.087
that my brain could follow.

00:16:48.087 --> 00:16:50.276
But in other trauma victims,

00:16:50.276 --> 00:16:52.596
like someone who's been to war


00:16:52.596 --> 00:16:55.478
or someone who's
in an abusive relationship,

00:16:55.478 --> 00:16:58.267
they might have a highway
that's been formed.

00:16:58.267 --> 00:17:02.137
For me, all we had to do is take a rake
and brush the leaves back over,

00:17:02.137 --> 00:17:04.085
and my brain would forget it was there.

00:17:04.085 --> 00:17:05.315
But for someone else,

00:17:05.315 --> 00:17:11.167
you may need to take a jackhammer to it
and plant trees and wait for them to grow,

00:17:11.167 --> 00:17:12.348
and that takes time.

00:17:13.358 --> 00:17:17.408
Now, a little statistic on EMDR to show
that I'm not just like a poster child.

00:17:18.478 --> 00:17:22.364
After on average
of six 50-minute sessions,

00:17:22.838 --> 00:17:26.548
100% of single trauma victims

00:17:26.548 --> 00:17:30.160
and 77% of multi-trauma victims

00:17:30.160 --> 00:17:33.795
had zero signs of PTSD after.

00:17:35.928 --> 00:17:40.259
Now EMDR is just one of the ways
that we're learning about trauma

00:17:40.259 --> 00:17:42.009
and the way our brains process it.

00:17:42.009 --> 00:17:44.219
And who knows what science
is going to bring us

00:17:44.219 --> 00:17:46.310
in five, ten or 20 years.

00:17:46.661 --> 00:17:48.180
What I do know

00:17:48.180 --> 00:17:50.417
is that before this event happened to me

00:17:50.417 --> 00:17:53.370
I thought that trauma was just
something you need to get over,

00:17:53.370 --> 00:17:55.160
just accept it and move on.

00:17:55.869 --> 00:17:57.821
But what I realize now

00:17:58.261 --> 00:18:02.531
is that we have to help ourselves
if we truly want to get past something.

00:18:05.452 --> 00:18:08.914
For months, I was wanting to know
why this happen?

00:18:10.151 --> 00:18:12.141
Why did Jason take his life?

00:18:14.386 --> 00:18:16.092
Why those two girls?

00:18:20.562 --> 00:18:24.696
And what I've learned
is that some events in life

00:18:25.526 --> 00:18:27.540
just feel like a crappy movie,

00:18:28.572 --> 00:18:32.931
one where the last scene ends
with more questions than answers.

00:18:34.032 --> 00:18:36.551
And do we want those answers?

00:18:38.383 --> 00:18:40.587
But we can find peace

00:18:41.532 --> 00:18:45.643
even though we know
we will never get those answers.

00:18:46.873 --> 00:18:49.963
I hope that you think about trauma
differently than you did before

00:18:49.963 --> 00:18:51.454
and have a better understanding

00:18:51.454 --> 00:18:53.884
about how your brain process
the world around you.

00:18:53.884 --> 00:18:57.494
And just remember that sometimes
it needs a little help.

00:18:57.494 --> 00:18:58.775
Thank you.

00:18:58.775 --> 00:19:01.804
(Applause)