Ep. 44 - PTSD Recovery | After the Crash

Tina Elsbury: It doesn’t matter your socioeconomic status, it doesn’t matter what you do, who you are, we’ve all had trauma at some point. Every single one of us has had something that sticks with us, and so they always say, “Well, somebody else has it so much worse, so why am I complaining?” Again, I encourage people, “No, you don’t have to compare. It’s okay to say, ‘I don’t feel good about this,’ and get your hiney in to talk to someone. That’s okay. You deserve that opportunity. Take some time for yourself.”

David Craig – H…: I am attorney Dave Craig, managing partner and one of the founders of the law firm of Craig, Kelley & Faultless. I’ve represented people who have been seriously injured or who have had a family member killed in a semi or other big truck wreck for over 30 years. Following the wreck, their lives are chaos. Often they don’t even know enough about the process to ask the right questions. It is my goal to empower you by providing you with the information you need to protect yourself and your family. Each and every episode I will interview top experts and professionals that are involved in truck wreck cases. This is After the Crash.

Oh, welcome ladies and gentlemen to another episode of After the Crash. This is David Craig, your host, and today we have Tina Elsbury as our guest. Tina is a licensed clinical social worker. That means that she’s got a master’s degree in social work, plus she got the licensing. In order to be a clinical licensed social worker, she had to go through the state program, get licensed, and that enables her to diagnose and treat patients on her own. It’s not an easy process and not every social worker is a clinical licensed social worker. So Tina, welcome to the podcast.

Tina Elsbury: Thank you for having me, David.

David Craig – H…: Tina is one of the more fascinating guests that we’ve ever had. So occasionally we have treaters or doctors or folks that are on the podcast that are the type of people who work with our clients after a traumatic event. I couldn’t think of anybody better qualified than Tina to talk to you because Tina works with people who have gone through traumatic events, who have post-traumatic stress disorder from a variety of different things. She’s worked in prisons, she’s worked with gangs, she’s worked with children. She’s worked with adults, she’s worked with all types of traumatic events.
About every type of traumatic event you can imagine, I think Tina has dealt with, and that gives her a unique perspective. She is someone who helps people that have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. As we all know, when you’re in a big traumatic wreck, especially ones involving a tractor trailer or a semi and there’s wrongful death or there’s deaths, there’s injuries, catastrophic injuries, or sometimes not even with a physical type injury. There are significant mental injuries that happen, and my clients deal with that day in and day out. So Tina, first of all, you have dealt with this type of issue in a variety of different settings. Let’s just start off by first talking about what got you into this area.

Tina Elsbury: Well, actually, my concentration in my master’s was medical, but my first job out was in a trauma area. It was children with sexually reactive behavior, so it was a lot of trauma, so children who’d been sexually abused or kiddos who were having sexually reactive behaviors and touching others. It was like baptism by fire. So I started out, I had done some prison work during my master’s, and that was eye-opening and some volunteer work actually at some shelters and things like that for people who’d been released from prison, and so it was a whole other ball game.
But once you get into that field, it’s hard to get out because once you’re effective in the trauma field, you get jobs pretty quickly if you’re effective at it. That was when I did the gang work and everything and the high-profile sex and violent crime stuff. That’s how once you start getting into trauma that you don’t really get out of trauma and you develop a passion for it. Then EMDR came along after that, and I was working with motor vehicle stuff. Everything from soldiers having IED explosions with their motor vehicles there, to people here stateside having motor vehicle accidents. There are a lot of varieties there that we talk about.

David Craig – H…: Well, and I that think it’s important for people to understand that, I think you said one key thing that I really focused on was that you’re passionate about it.

Tina Elsbury: You either do or you don’t, yeah.

David Craig – H…: Yeah, and I think, unfortunately, there’s a lot of people out there earning paychecks that are not as passionate. I think that to be successful at whatever we do, I don’t care what it is, you need to be passionate about it. I really appreciate the fact that when my clients are working with or people who are suffering from this type of a condition that they deal with somebody who’s passionate about getting them better or-

Tina Elsbury: Yes.

David Craig – H…: … helping them make progress.

Tina Elsbury: Yes.

David Craig – H…: Because there are people out there that treat people that aren’t nearly as passionate and they’re just going through and checking, but you are, and-

Tina Elsbury: I love it.

David Craig – H…: … I’m curious, why? Is it because you’ve seen the benefits or what makes you so passionate?

Tina Elsbury: It’s exciting, and I don’t mean it’s exciting that people have trauma. Let’s-

David Craig – H…: Right.

Tina Elsbury: … clarify that. But for me, going into the field period, because I used to teach English, of course, but for me, what got me into this period was my son. I adopted him from birth, of course. At 18 months he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and they said he’d never walk or talk, and that just didn’t seem right to me. I knew he was already doing things that signaled that he was going to do all of those, so I left teaching.
I knew that for me, as educated as I was, it was already difficult navigating that system. I met other parents along the way, other people along the way who I knew did not have the same education level or the same capacity, I think, to navigate the system. I wanted to help other parents get through it better than I did, easier than I did. My son, by the way, rarely stops talking, was walking by two and reading a book by Avi at three. He is on the spectrum, by the way, so I’ve learned his brain. I really believe that it was such a blessing we were meant to be together. So I’ve learned his brain, that spectrum-y brain, which has helped me be a better therapist every single day, a better person every day.

David Craig – H…: Oh, that’s great.

Tina Elsbury: … but a better therapist by far every day because I’ve helped people because of him.

David Craig – H…: I think that’s fascinating. When I was a kid, there was a neighbor who was a lawyer, and I always was fascinated by the fact that everybody went to him for help. He was the go-to guy. I remember thinking that I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to make a difference. I didn’t want to just earn a paycheck, I wanted to make a difference. My dad was a psychologist, and I saw him make a difference in people’s lives. So I think I have that same passion towards what I do, which are complicated personal injury cases, but my office here makes a difference in their lives. Man, it’s easier to get up in the morning, isn’t it when you are passionate?

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, I love it. That first job down in Southern Indiana, when I was doing kiddos who were victims, the docs who interviewed me had said to me that people would be disclosing their incidents to me and stuff. There are a lot of people who can’t do children’s sex crimes. They can’t, and I understand it, I do. God forbid anybody ever touched my kid. But the thing was, for me, I guess how I looked at it, and it was like a momentary thing, you have to decide it’s for you or it’s not. But the way I had looked at it was, again, God forbid if anybody touched up my child, but I would want someone to be that rock to not only get him through it, but to get me through it. I knew someone needed to be a rock to get these kiddos through it and to get those family members through it or the supporting system through whoever it was had a family member touched them.
I knew I needed to be that person, to be that rock, and that’s how I entered that field when I did that job. You learn quickly how to be just like you do for your clients, you have to be that rock. You don’t get too emotionally involved. You have to be that person, and that’s what makes you good in court. When I testify I can do that, I’m that person for them. I’m that voice, and that’s how you learn. Because people always wonder, “I would just get too emotionally involved.” Well, if you’re really good at it, you can’t do that. You can’t go, “Oh, my gosh, it’s all so terrible.” You have to be that support system for those people, and that’s what you do, so that’s why.

David Craig – H…: Well, I think that when it’s a psychological injury, it’s challenging, because at least my experience has been that a lot of people don’t even recognize that they have a problem, or if they do recognize they have a problem, they don’t know why they have a problem.

Tina Elsbury: Exactly.

David Craig – H…: They don’t understand it. Whereas, if I break my arm, everybody can see it and they can put it on an X-ray. But talk a little bit about this type of injury itself.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah. It’s sad too, it’s so stigmatized. I think it’s getting out there more and more that it’s okay to ask for the help. I think too, you were asking about why it’s so enjoyable to do it. The EMDR, I think, is what’s so great because it actually does heal people. When people have the PTSD or even complex PTSD, they don’t know. Because if you have cancer, if you have diabetes, if you have a broken bone, it’s all something that you go to the doctor, you get diagnosed or you have a bone sticking out, it’s easy for people to see, especially after an accident. Right?

David Craig – H…: Mm-hmm.

Tina Elsbury: But the other things that people miss that they wonder about, and I think sometimes they question themselves about, they wonder, “Why am I afraid to drive?” Loved ones, people who weren’t in the accident will say, “Oh, just get back on that horse. You just got to get back out there. Suck it up, buttercup,” or they wonder why they can’t be a very good passenger anymore. Okay? If someone else is driving them after the accident, they wonder why they’re really edgy, or they’re sharp with their loved ones who are driving them, or they’re hanging on to the Jesus handle or to the door and gripping it and sweating. They may not remember the entire ride, because they just almost blank out a little bit, but they brush all that off.
They think, “Oh, I was just being silly,” or, “I’m just being paranoid,” or whatever. Those negative voices that we have in our heads, we’re really hard on ourselves. We’re our own worst critic. So people just push that to the side and they negative self-talk or they allow others to tell them, “Oh, you need to get over it.” They don’t trust their instincts, those gut instincts that we’re born with. They don’t trust that and say, “Something is wrong. I need to get help for this,” and they allow themselves to negative self-talk themselves into believing that oh, they just need to suck it up.

David Craig – H…: Yeah. This podcast is designed for the average everyday person who might find themselves or someone they love or know that are in this traumatic situation. So a lot of them have no knowledge or basis or background. They may have heard of post-traumatic stress, but they don’t even really understand what it is. Let’s start off with you just talking to us about what is post-traumatic stress or complex post-traumatic stress?

Tina Elsbury: Well, okay, so let’s start with post-traumatic stress first. Okay?

David Craig – H…: Okay.

Tina Elsbury: That’s going to be something where when you’ve had really an incident or two in your life where your life has been threatened or the life of a loved one, like you’ve lost someone or something like that, and so you start having flashbacks of the event. Okay. Your brain heals. So let’s say there’s an incident for a little while afterwards, your brain does some healing on its own. Then after that, the leftover stuff, so if you’re still having nightmares about it, and if you’re still having a hard time maybe going past where the incident happened and you have maybe some anxiety or some panic attacks, or you notice that your mood is changing, you get angry easily and you’re not really sure why, or you are having a hard time sleeping, not sleeping too much, but having a hard time sleeping, things like that, then you probably need to talk to somebody because more than likely you have some post-traumatic stress, okay? Another biggie, the flashbacks, the triggers from it, okay?
She’ll get triggered. You might flash back to that moment, okay, and suddenly feel like you’re there again. All right? Complex PTSD is, it’s real, first of all, let me go there. But it’s an ICD-11 code, so it’ll be coming down the pipeline. It’s not in the DSM-5 yet, but it’s a code in the ICD-11. We are working on the ICD-10 codes right now. But what it is, is it’s where if you’ve had a lot of childhood trauma or military or if you’ve been held hostage for a while, something like that, any ritual abuse, things like that, then odds are you’ve got complex PTSD. Okay. So if somebody’s had complex PTSD or if they’ve had childhood trauma and then they’re in an accident, let’s say they don’t remember a lot of the childhood trauma and they’re going along functioning somewhat and then they have a vehicle accident, boom, it’s all going to come out. All right? It might be like the final straw.

So they’re going to have not only the MVA stuff, but they’re going to have all of that other stuff come flooding out. It’ll be like the last thing that their brain could hold. Can I get my brain and show it? Okay. All right. I got to show my brain. So this is your brain, okay? All the colored part up here is your cognitive part that has the filters that we try to use so we don’t insult people all the time or just say whatever we’re thinking, right? The limbic system down here, this green part here is where your amygdala is, okay? You’ve got emotional, you’ve got hunger, there are pain sensors down here, all of that. So probably some emotional eating and stuff like that. But this is your amygdala, this is your fight or flight.
This is where trauma is stored, okay? And it’s stored from birth on. All right? It’s down there holding stuff, and we don’t really have access to speech there. It’s just in there and they’re stored. That’s why with EMDR, we go in with an image or a smell or a sound or a feeling, but they’re stored in there in these moments. You might go in with fear to get something, or from accidents, will go in with this image of say, a running motor. Somebody who’s been stuck in an accident if a semi hits them, or whatever, and they’ve got the sound of that motor. Or if a white truck hits them, I can go in with that white, we’ll pull up the white truck, and we can get them back to that. Things like that, and we can get that stuff out.

David Craig – H…: Is it fair to say that somebody has complex post-traumatic stress disorder, they may be functioning at some level and then they have a traumatic event, and these folks are easier or hurt and harder to fix?

Tina Elsbury: Yes.

David Craig – H…: It’s complicated because-
Tina Elsbury: Yes.

David Craig – H…: Is that true?

Tina Elsbury: Yes, it is. Well, we’re not fixing, by the way. Let’s use “heal.”

David Craig – H…: Okay.

Tina Elsbury: Sorry, we like heal.

David Craig – H…: No, and I appreciate that. That’s great.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah. Yeah.

David Craig – H…: So we’re not fixing people like something’s wrong with them. You’re helping them heal, and be able to function easier in society and in their personal lives, make it lot easier for them.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, and just be healthier, make healthier choices. I look at it as everyone has an intended baseline. Once you have a traumatic event, you fall a little bit below your baseline. You’ll have reactive behaviors because of that trauma. Reactive behaviors, meaning, you make choices based upon these reactive behaviors that are below your baseline. Imagine that. Then every time you have a traumatic event, you have more reactive behaviors, meaning you might make more choices based upon those. So, let’s say you have a lot of anxiety. Now you won’t fly or you won’t do whatever. You’re making different choices.
Ultimately, you end up choosing friends and partners based upon these reactive choices far below your baseline. If you’ve started out in childhood having all of this trauma, well, you’re shopping from this pool down here, you end up choosing from people with similar life experiences. You end up falling way below these baselines and you’re choosing people from down in here as well, and you’re choosing behaviors and activities. You’re making all kinds of choices, so it’s about getting healthier to make healthier choices to be around healthier people. Does that make sense?

David Craig – H…: Yeah, absolutely.

Tina Elsbury: All of it, so that you’re in healthier situations all the way around. That’s how I choose to look at that. So that people are looking at themselves in healthier ways versus as broken or needing to be fixed.

David Craig – H…: Gotcha. That makes perfect sense.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah.

David Craig – H…: One of the challenges that I have is that, and maybe it’s because I grew up as the son of a psychologist, people rolled their eyes when I would tell them what my dad did.

Tina Elsbury: I’m sure my son can empathize. Yes.

David Craig – H…: My dad also used hypnosis, and so I’d get double eye rolls when he would work with those people. But I think that that’s true in society in general. It’s better than what it used to be, but this bothers me. So folks go to the hospital. There’s a horrific semi-wreck where people have been killed, maybe the family members next to them have been killed or horrific injuries, and they take them in. Let’s say that your person physically, there’s not much broken. The hospital looks at them, and they might say, “Well, maybe this person has a concussion.”

They’ll give them a sheet, and they’ll say, “Here are some problems that you might come up with that are, you may be nauseous, you may have trouble focusing, your vision may be blurry. They’ll give them this nice checklist that will say, “If you have these problems, then you ought to follow up with your family doctor or maybe a neurologist.” They give them a sheet, and it gives them some guidance when they walk out of that building. I have never seen in 38 years of practicing law anybody be given a checklist saying, “If you develop these issues, you might want to see a family doctor or a psychologist or a social worker or a therapist.” I’ve never seen that.

Tina Elsbury: Really?

David Craig – H…: But I find emergency room doctors focus on life-threatening injuries, but they don’t focus on, “Here’s your cheat sheet. Here’s what you should look for, for post-traumatic stress. If you see any of these, you need to make a phone call and get help,” and that just bothers me that we treat certain…

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, it bothers me. Yeah.

David Craig – H…: Isn’t that crazy?

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, kind of ticks me off. Yeah.

David Craig – H…: It does me too. They’ll say, “Here’s for your broken leg. Here’s what you got to do. Here, for your soft tissue injury, here’s what you got to do.” But what about the likelihood that someone’s going to develop psychological issues as a result of the wreck? That can be-

Tina Elsbury: I think we should ask them.

David Craig – H…: I think we should advocate that from now on they… because we know that there’s going to be some effect.

Tina Elsbury: There definitely will.

David Craig – H…: Yeah, maybe-

Tina Elsbury: There definitely will.

David Craig – H…: It could be anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, but psychologically-

Tina Elsbury: All of the above.

David Craig – H…: … they’re going to have some issues.

Tina Elsbury: Yes, they will. To go along with that, what ends up happening is it affects their driving, and it can end up causing an accident again because it affects their driving so much. It’s a big deal.

David Craig – H…: Yeah, and I’ve seen people’s lives destroyed because of psychological injuries from trauma from a motor vehicle wreck. I’ve seen them not be able to go back to their jobs. I’ve seen them not be able to stay in a family setting. I’ve seen divorces. I’ve just seen so many horrible things, and people say, “Well, again, if it was a broken arm, they would be going back to the orthopedic surgeon. If it was a surgery, they would go back to the surgeon. If it was a neurologist, it was a brain bleed, they’d go back to the neurologist.” But because they get very little guidance, and I’ve even seen neurologists who with brain injury say, “Don’t worry, shake it off. You’ll be back. You’ll be okay,” old school.

But I see family doctors sometimes look at the psychological issues, and family doctors are fair and great, we all have a purpose, general practitioner lawyers have a purpose. But I narrow my practice down to a specific area, and there are people like you who narrow your area down to a specific area. If somebody came to me and said, “Dave, how do I do a will?” I would say, “Look, I’m the wrong guy.” I would say, “You need to consult with somebody.” General practitioners sometimes don’t do that on psychological injuries. Sometimes they give medication, but they don’t get them help. Do you see that ever in your practice?

Tina Elsbury: I do.

David Craig – H…: It doesn’t bother you as much as it does me?

Tina Elsbury: It does. I get pretty fiery, yes, I do. I take good care of my clients-

David Craig – H…: Yes.

Tina Elsbury: I strongly encourage, I can’t tell people what to do. I strongly encourage, because I don’t want to be a smarty-pants, but I strongly encourage people to do things and seek assistance with providers when necessary. There are questions that I ask because I know things. I know after doing it for this long, I know certain things to look for, so yeah, I do.

David Craig – H…: I wouldn’t ask you to do my heart surgery.

Tina Elsbury: No, I would not. Yeah.

David Craig – H…: So people shouldn’t ask me to do a divorce.

Tina Elsbury: That’s right.

David Craig – H…: But on the other hand-

Tina Elsbury: They go, “How do we do this?”

David Craig – H…: … I’m extraordinarily good at truck wrecks.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah.

David Craig – H…: I’m board certified. I’ve got experience. I have years of knowledge, expertise, and the resources to handle those cases. Same way with a psychological injury. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re listening to this and you have any question about whether you have a psychological injury or not, you need to talk to somebody who specifically treats psychological conditions, not just anybody.

Tina Elsbury: Yes, and I encourage anybody I talk with, my clients as well, I teach them, if say they’ve got a friend or whatever and if I don’t have space or whatever, or if they’ve got a loved one in another state, they’ll have me help them look through therapists. They say, “Will you help us find one?” Because I am very picky about what to look for. You have to have somebody who specializes in trauma because you don’t, God bless all the therapists, but there will be people out there who say, “Well, I do this, this, this, this and this and some trauma.” I do just trauma. It is not that I can’t do other things. I’ve learned all these things, but it’s like I don’t do addictions.

I love the people who do addictions and they just do addictions because they specialize in that. That’s not my thing. But I do trauma, and so you want somebody who does trauma if you are seeking trauma help. It’s a thing where, because those people will specialize then and they will know it really well, and that’s what you need if you need help with trauma. If you have anxiety, there are people out there who could do anxiety. But if it’s trauma that you’ve got, then you really need somebody who’s really good at it because trauma is a heavy duty one. There’s a lot that comes with it because dissociation that goes with it. If you’re missing time somewhere, it takes somebody who is talented in trauma to help you with that, because it is dangerous for people who don’t know it to risk opening some of that up and then not being able to do anything with it.

David Craig – H…: I think that leads us nicely into the next segue way, which is, there are different ways to treat trauma.

Tina Elsbury: Yes.

David Craig – H…: Most of us probably who watch television or whatever, we’re used to therapy sessions where people walk in and they talk about things and the therapist listens and ask lots of questions. But there’s other ways to treat trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, and EMDR is one method that you use.

Tina Elsbury: Yes.

David Craig – H…: I think, folks, it’s important for people to understand this is a scientifically-proven-

Tina Elsbury: Scientific evidence, yes.

David Craig – H…: … method that’s been approved and has the studies and the peer reviews behind it. But I don’t know that many people know what it is or understand it or why it’s effective. So maybe you can first just start off by telling us what is it?

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, it’s evidence-based. It’s allowed in court, so otherwise, I wouldn’t be using it. But it was developed by Francine Shapiro, and it’s bilateral stimulation. It’s eye movement, desensitization, reprocessing, and you’re awake the whole time. People always ask, “Will I be under? Will I be aware of what I’m doing?” I always joke, “Oh, you might ride a goat,” but you will not. But yeah, it’s your brain doing all of the work, and that’s the big deal. That’s the beautiful part of it is your brain is doing all of the work. The eye movements, I don’t use eye movements if people have a history of seizures or serious traumatic brain injuries, but most people do really well with the eye movements. I can use just handheld tappers if they have the other stuff, but I use sound with it and the eye movements.

For me, I like the platform that I think you’ve even seen in the other presentation I did, but I like the eye zone. I’ve been treated eye zone movements, so rather than just the light bar where it goes back and forth. Believe it or not, long ago before I had the light bar doing it for me or the platform I have now, I had to use my hands and do this back and forth all day, every day, which is why I have some back issues now. But now I’ve advanced, and I have this platform that electronically does it for me so that the balls move up and down, side to side in an infinity motion because you get different feelings. I can elicit different feelings from different parts of the brain when I’m doing this, and so it’s fascinating. My clients love it. We go in, again, with the feeling and I clean out all of all the cobwebs so that nothing’s left so that you don’t have any triggers left in there.

It goes pretty quickly. It’s like waves in the ocean. Your feelings come and go, and it reduces the vividness and the emotionality associated with the traumas and would reduce your disturbance levels. Let me use an example. I had a lady who, during a vehicle accident, someone had been ejected from a vehicle and was in the road yelling. The sound of that person in the road was very disturbing for my client. So at the beginning, the disturbance level was 10, we go 10 out of 10, but most of the time it’s a 10+ out of 10 for clients. But by the end, it was a 0 out of 10. She couldn’t pull that sound up anymore, that person screaming. So cognitively, she knows that this occurred, but she can no longer pull it up in her brain. Does that make sense?

David Craig – H…: Mm-hmm.

Tina Elsbury: It’s gone, and she’ll never be able to pull it up again. So that way, it’s not triggering her, it’s not disturbing her, and it’s no more of an issue for her than having lunch with her husband. Does that make sense?

David Craig – H…: Yeah.

Tina Elsbury: It’s just another dot on her timeline in her memory. That’s how it works.

David Craig – H…: Do you do that in combination with traditional type therapy where you’re talking? Or do you just use the EMDR alone, just where you talked about the movement? Or do you combine that with traditional therapy, counseling type therapy?

Tina Elsbury: There are days where we’ll talk. We talk about how the sessions went and things like that and other things that go on in life, but then we’ll have a day where we’re doing EMDR. A lot of times what will happen is when we’re doing the eye movements, we’ll pause and I’ll say, “Well, what’d you notice?” For my clients, what we do is a lot of times, they’ll tell me what they noticed, and I will reframe some things for them so they can notice things in a different way to help them along and clear it out so that they don’t get stuck.

David Craig – H…: The reason I ask is that some people are hesitant to do that, what they envision is going in and having this breakdown session where they’re counseling and they’re talking about it and they’re going back through history. So some people are just resistant to that, and that’s more healing through the counseling, the talking process. But my understanding is that the EMDR, I think you even said it lets the brain heal. The brain does the work.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, the brain does it. Yeah, that thing right there where that girl had been dying in the road, we did not only that one, but another part of that accident, we did two or three parts of the accident in a one-hour session and got rid of them.

David Craig – H…: That’s fantastic.

Tina Elsbury: It’s amazing.

David Craig – H…: I think the next thing is based on your experience, first of all, how long is the session? Then how many sessions do you have to go through to help you deal with the trauma?

Tina Elsbury: Well, it depends on the trauma and the person, how ready they are. We break each part down. If it’s a one-time trauma, it may only take a few sessions, especially if the person is really ready. It’s not like you have to have every single thing in that trauma process. It could just be that there are two or three main parts of the trauma that are really disturbing for the person. I had a client one time who came in, and she had been attacked by a couple of guys at gunpoint, and they took her purse. It was really the gun. It was just the gun. That took a day and we did a couple other sessions to wrap up, and that was it. That was really all she needed. For some people, it takes several sessions. If you have complex PTSD, you’re going to be with me a little bit, not going to lie.

David Craig – H…: Makes sense.

Tina Elsbury: Okay? You just are, and that’s okay. But people like it because usually you’ve got other things in life because of that complex PTSD. You’ve had some other stuff build along the way, but it also helps people make healthier choices along the way by staying in and having periodic EMDR, and they do really well.

David Craig – H…: Is there an ideal candidate that does better than others through EMDR, or is there anybody that’s not a good candidate for this?

Tina Elsbury: I would say if somebody’s been diagnosed, say, with borderline personality disorder, dialectical behavioral therapy is far better for that person. DBT is a fantastic form of therapy for somebody with severe mood disorders or personality disorder like borderline. That’s a cream of the crop type of therapy for people in those situations. So I’m not trained in that. I don’t do DBT, but it’s a fantastic form of therapy. But yeah, that’s often is because your core personality is off-center a little bit, and so trying to do EMDR is a little more difficult. When your brain is trying to heal, it’s healing off a little bit, and so those individuals need DBT.

David Craig – H…: Do you find that the majority of people that don’t have what you just talked about, that have post-traumatic stress, benefit from the EMDR treatment?

Tina Elsbury: Yeah. Okay, and the other people who do really well are the people who want to be helped. The people who are, how I don’t want to say this? The people who are actively wanting to help themselves, let’s say that. I’m sure you’ve come across that sometimes, the people who want to help themselves and who are ready to take an active role in that. Let me put it that way. There are some individuals out there who, bless their hearts, I think life really just gets them down and they struggle to have the perspective that they can have an active role in that. So if they struggle to see that sometimes I think that maybe cognitive therapy might be needed first to change that, “Everybody’s against me,” perspective first before EMDR. But people who are already in that, “I’m ready. I’m going to take control,” kind of thing, “I need to make a change,” that those individuals do really well in EMDR.

David Craig – H…: I’m not sure I’ll say, and you may not know the answer to this, but how many people do you think are out there don’t ever get treatment or help for post-traumatic-

Tina Elsbury: A lot.

David Craig – H…: … stress disorder?

Tina Elsbury: A lot.

David Craig – H…: It seems like to me there’s a lot, but what’s your-

Tina Elsbury: A lot.

David Craig – H…: … thought?

Tina Elsbury: A lot. I meet a lot of people, every time I go out and people find out what I do, I don’t lead with it, let me tell you, because it’s either I hear crickets or I get bombarded with questions. It’s like it’s one or the other. People will go, “Oh, I really need your help. I need that,” and they’re not getting it currently. It’s really hard to get friends because people want my help, and you can’t associate with the people you are treating, and just yesterday it happened. It’s really hard, and it’s stunning to me how many people don’t have the treatment and they want it. As soon as they hear about it, they hear you’re a therapist, they’re like, “Oh, God, I really need that. I really need you.” Even if I worked 24/7, I couldn’t get everybody in. I wish I could, because gosh, I want to help them, and I know I could. I get that itchy feeling like, “Oh, I want to do this,” but there’s not a chance.

David Craig – H…: Yeah, right.

Tina Elsbury: You want to be able to provide that service.

David Craig – H…: Yeah.

Tina Elsbury: So yeah, there are lot people who are not getting it.

David Craig – H…: Do people get referred to you by general practitioners? How do people get attended to?

Tina Elsbury: A lot of doctors.

David Craig – H…: Okay.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, I used to work at Community, and so a lot of doctors from there still referred to me.

David Craig – H…: Okay.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, and from other hospitals as well, St. Vincent, I get a lot of referrals from places. But I have some solid standbys at Community, because for a while at Community, I was the only one doing EMDR. At that time, they were giving me 90-minute sessions with patients. But it just became so overwhelming, and so that’s when I decided to leave and I went into a group private practice at that time, and then they had to end up getting a bunch of people trained in EMDR there. But the docs still used me because I’m seasoned. I took my patients with me, and so I’m thankful that they still refer. I just can’t get everybody in.

David Craig – H…: To be a licensed social worker, you obviously had to go get a degree. You had to practice certain number of hours under supervision and all that, but that’s not EMDR. That’s just to be a licensed social worker, I’m thinking?

Tina Elsbury: Yeah.

David Craig – H…: What kind of training did you have to go through to learn the EMDR and just effectively use it?

Tina Elsbury: Well, I got my training on my own, so I paid for it on my own.

David Craig – H…: Okay.

Tina Elsbury: I went to the actual trainings in person, so I got the basic training first. Then I immediately wanted to get the advanced so that I would be the advanced person. So I went with a lady, Barb McConnell, I think was her name out of Anderson. She was like the goddess of it, and another lady and I did it with her. We would go, I think, every week maybe to her for our supervision or whatever, but we could only go as fast as we could with getting hours of it. But what I was doing is at that time over at Community, I was in this office at Community called Life Check or whatever. We had a psychiatric nurse practitioner and then there was a psychologist and then two LCs. So you had to get a referral to get into me. I worked with this psychiatric nurse practitioner, and docs would send, basically, I would get just trauma people.
I was doing EMDR and trauma all day, every day from the get-go right there. That’s how I got all my EMDR hours because I was doing it hardcore all day, every day. I was seeing victims of war crimes, soldiers, adults who’d been sexually abused all their lives, you name it. I had refugees coming in who I’d get an Arabic translator in there who’d had God awful things happen to them along the way. Just like in motor vehicle accidents, anytime you face a near-death experience, and this is true for anybody in a motor vehicle accident, that is a big PTSD qualifier, and it changes you. Anybody who’s encountered it, it changes you. There’s something in the brain that goes, “Foom,” it’s like a light switch, and you need therapy for it. You just do, because it does, it alters you a little bit. People who’ve encountered it know what I’m talking about. Anybody out there who’s listening, you know what I’m talking about. It does, it changes you.

David Craig – H…: My understanding is that most health insurance will pay for it. Is that right?

Tina Elsbury: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

David Craig – H…: So if you’re listening to this, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I know what she’s talking about.”

Tina Elsbury: Actually, they really like it because it’s so effective.

David Craig – H…: Yeah, so it helps there. You can get it paid for through health insurance. So like a physical therapist, I’ve never really understood, but a physical therapist, a doctor has to prescribe physical therapy. As a lawyer, I can’t prescribe physical therapy or I can’t send somebody to a physical therapist. I can send them to a chiropractor who may do the same thing, but I can’t send them to a physical therapist.

Tina Elsbury: Oftentimes, you only get so many of those a year.

David Craig – H…: Yeah, and so if people who are listening are lawyers, occasionally, lawyers will listen to this, my understanding is they don’t have to have an MD make a referral. A lawyer can send somebody to you if they think they need help. Is that fair? Is that right?

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, you can just call and get therapy. If you feel like you need therapy, you call and get therapy. No one has to send you to therapy. I think, and I don’t know this for sure, some of my TRICARE guys, nice soldiers, I feel like their docs needed to refer them, maybe. I’m not positive on that one, don’t quote me. But theirs might’ve been the only ones that I felt like had to have referrals for some reason. That might’ve changed, I don’t know. But outside of that, I don’t think any of mine ever had to have a referral. Doctors do refer just because I think, at least for me, they know that I’ll take them for sure if they have trauma just because it’s hard to get in with me. They know I’m pretty careful about who I take because I want somebody who has trauma. I won’t just take everyone. You better have trauma. If you’re with me, you’ve got to have trauma.

David Craig – H…: Right.

Tina Elsbury: So yeah.

David Craig – H…: Right. I want to read off a list because I think it’s important for people. There’s a lot of people that are out there that are skeptical, or their spouses are skeptical. I run into a lot of resistance for people. It’s amazing how much resistance people put up to get help.

Tina Elsbury: Men and women, just so we’re clear. Lots of men and women.

David Craig – H…: No, no, believe me, just it’s both. My wife and I, we watch Pooh Bear with our grandkids and our kids, and so my wife says that I’m Tigger-

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, I’m Tigger too.

David Craig – H…: … and she’s Eeyore. But every household has somebody who’s like, “Well, wait a minute, I need to check this out.”

Tina Elsbury: Yeah.

David Craig – H…: I want people to understand that EMDR is approved, it is verified, it’s been tested.

Tina Elsbury: They have MRIs that show before and after of brains before and after with EMDR and they talk about that trauma, because it can be neurological as well as psychological, because it actually alters the size of your amygdala. Because it’s rewiring your brain, that’s where it comes into the, it’s very much physiological. It’s neurological in there and it alters your brain, right?

David Craig – H…: Mm-hmm.

Tina Elsbury: It alters the chemistry and the way your brain is wired, and so it’s not just a mental health disorder as much as it’s neurological as well. So with EMDR, actually, it rewires your brain. It’s very scientific, which is why I like it. There’s cause and effect, and then I can go in and help with that. There’s a lot of strength in going and getting help and improving your quality of life with it, so yeah.

David Craig – H…: It’s also something that’s used all over the world.

Tina Elsbury: Yes, absolutely.

David Craig – H…: I think that’s fascinating. So I think that the cool thing about it is that, so this is not surgery.

Tina Elsbury: Nope.

David Craig – H…: My clients don’t like to get into the closed CT or MRIs. You don’t have to get injections. You don’t have to take pills-

Tina Elsbury: I don’t touch you-

David Craig – H…: … and there’s no tests.

Tina Elsbury: You can do it virtually. You can do it virtually. Yeah.

David Craig – H…: So, the great thing is there’s a lot of the things that people resist are not there for EMDR, and people can go get help. They can go try it, their health insurance will pay for it. God knows that it can make your life so much better by getting that.

Tina Elsbury: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

David Craig – H…: I just hope that people see this and listen to it, watch either on YouTube or listen to it on Spotify or wherever they listen to their podcasts. There’s no harm in trying and getting to the right person. If someone is interested, how do they reach out to you to potentially get help or to get a referral to someone else?

Tina Elsbury: I’m Healthy Mind LLC. They can contact you to get to me. They can reach me by my number. Will that be on your podcast?

David Craig – H…: Yeah. Why don’t you go ahead and say it and then we’ll just put it on the screen?

Tina Elsbury: 317-703-9229. They can text me. That would be the easiest way, and then I can get back to them. But that’s for my company, Healthy Mind LLC.

David Craig – H…: Okay.

Tina Elsbury: That’s my company. I can give them more information. There are two websites that I trust for them to research EMDR. So the first one is emdria.org, so it’s E-M-D-R-I-A.org. That’s the world organization, and then there’s emdr.com. Those are the two trusted ones. Outside of that, no. I’m a member of the organization as well for both of those. But those are the two trusted websites, tons of information on both of those and very trusted there.

David Craig – H…: I think you mentioned, you treat folks all over Indiana or just in central Indiana?

Tina Elsbury: All over Indiana. All over the state.

David Craig – H…: Okay.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah. I have people all over the state, first responders, everything, all over the state. Yeah.

David Craig – H…: Okay, and so you can do this virtually as well?

Tina Elsbury: Yeah, my platform is virtual. I was in the office, and every time I talk about getting another office, my clients balk at me because they like the virtual. A lot of it’s because EMDR, when people have trauma or especially the motor vehicle accidents or heavier trauma or whatever, and again, some of my clients are, they work in law enforcement, different things like that, they’ll work maybe in crime units or whatever where their cases are really heavy, and when we do the EMDR in the very beginning, it can wear you out. It’s a new way for your brain to process information, and right afterwards, you don’t always just feel like driving.

It’s really nice for people to be at home in the comfort on your couch or in your recliner or whatever is so that you can just relax after a session or be out in the car on your lunch break so that you don’t have to drive somewhere. Every time I’ve attempted to say, “Do you want to help me to get in the office?” “Oh, no, it’s okay.” I’m like, “Okay,” because I would use the same platform in person or virtually. I love the platform, but yeah, they really like it. Occasionally, I’ve had a couple of people will come in person for a longer session. They’ll pay out of pocket to do an extra session or two or three. They’ve done that. I don’t mind that because I have an office here in the house. But yeah, they love the virtual platform.

David Craig – H…: So Tina, what else would you like to talk about? This is your subject matter.

Tina Elsbury: I just can’t say enough good things about it. I know that my clients love to talk about it. My clients, if they could all be here saying, “Oh, my stars, do it, do it, do it,” they would. Different quotes from some of my clients, one of my clients said, “Man, if I had me some Jay-Z money, I’d do this every day.” That’s a quote from one. He cracked me up. My clients, they love it. I have everything from just everyday people to CEOs to, like I said, law enforcement. I have everybody, and no one is free from the risk of trauma. That’s the thing. That’s the biggie. It doesn’t matter your socioeconomic status, it doesn’t matter what you do, who you are, we’ve all had trauma at some point. Every single one of us has had something that sticks with us. When it’s something that you can recall really clearly in your mind from years and years ago, and you’re like, “I can still see this happening,” well, there’s probably a reason for that.

It hasn’t processed appropriately, and you should probably talk to somebody about it. Even if it’s bullying on the playground, you have no idea how much trauma work I do with people for bullying on the playground. It hinders them in the way they socialize with others or the way they don’t socialize with others. The little things that people think of, it doesn’t have to be that somebody held a knife to your throat or that you got smashed by a couple of semis, it can be all kinds of things. I think people think that they have had to go to battle overseas to have trauma, and that’s such a misguided thought. They always think, “Well, somebody else has it so much worse, so why am I complaining?” Again, I encourage people, “No, you don’t have to compare. Just because you’re not a starving child in Ethiopia doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma, so don’t compare all the time. Just it’s okay to say, ‘I don’t feel good about this,’ and get your hiney in to talk to someone. That’s okay. You deserve that opportunity. Take some time for yourself.”

David Craig – H…: Couldn’t agree more.

Tina Elsbury: Yeah.

David Craig – H…: Well, Tina, unless there’s anything else?

Tina Elsbury: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

David Craig – H…: Thank you so much for all the work that you do for our clients and for other trauma patients.

Tina Elsbury: Absolutely, my pleasure.

David Craig – H…: Thank you for being a guest.

Tina Elsbury: Thank you for having me.

David Craig – H…: This is David Craig, and you’ve been listening to After the Crash. If you’d more information about me or my law firm, please go to our website, ckflaw.com, or if you’d like to talk to me, you can call one 1-800-ASK-DAVID. If you would like a guide on what to do after a truck wreck, go pick up my book, Semitruck Wreck: A Guide for Victims and Their Families, which is available on Amazon, or you can download it for free on our website, ckflaw.com.