Rabbi Shimon Russell, LCSW: "The Uniqueness of 'Learning' Trauma" (Ep 4 of the Fresh Start Podcast)

[Music] robby russell very good to see you very good see you too chase very good to see you too my pleasure um i'm sure you're aware of this podcast this series it's uh it's amazing yeah yeah doing so so special the feedback has been tremendous um what we're going to do today is a little different because i've been speaking to some of the most respected and accomplished clinicians in the field and they're not jewish um and today i wanted to speak about a topic that i felt needs to be i thought we need to discuss it among us jews yeah yeah okay because this is not just regular trauma this is not just trauma that a religious jewish person has that happens to have happened in a religious jewish context this is where the trauma is specifically religious in nature and pretty well put well put okay so you're the expert i want to listen i want to learn talk to me give me my hachnasala hater what do we call this thing what is it where does it come from and what are its effects well it's a broad subject and truthfully honestly to do justice to this this is a course it's not a podcast so here we accept the fact that we're going to do russia program and just understand what's the concept what are we dealing with what are the what's the subject so you could say like this there is we're going to talk about at least that's my understanding about trauma trauma's the relate to the orthodox jew that both overwhelm him generationally and more specifically occur within the context of his childhood his relational development his life in school in yeshiva and what that causes within him and how it if that is how it affects his core sense of self see i've been fighting for decades for decades to term what i term learning trauma that it is in fact trauma it's not just wounds it's not just like regular childhood wounds people go through it they have a rough time in school so they're wounded and they gotta you know maybe have a little therapy get over it some cpt you'll get over it you move on and what i recognized early on is that it actually has the hallmark for many people in fact i believe that the majority of people coming through our systems have some degree or other of learning trauma or they actually have a traumatic relationship to their experiences learning once that occurs in a person's life their experience within their school and home setting is one that they question their sense of self of adequacy do i belong am i really a person who's admired do i exist do i have authenticity do i value within this system that i live in can i stop you for one second yeah please because when you say do i have value within this system that i live in it sounds like you're talking very broadly like in other words a lot of people go to school they didn't succeed at school they felt like they were bad students and so they they get out of school as quickly as possible and they go find some other area of life to succeed in what it sounds like you're describing is this isn't just about my schooling that when there's what you call learning trauma talk to me about this exactly people say to me yeah but in the public school system people fail there too and they hate and they're lousy at math and their terrible geography and they don't do well scholastically you know why is that any different that's not traumatic you're going to do something else sports whatever life business see in our world learning and i'm talking specifically about the the vast majority of all learning that occurs for our children from when they enter primary kindergarten until they finally you know exit the system wherever it is 12th grade or basement or later seminary the primary focus is trying to help you internalize the learning to become an orthodox jewish part of your identity as being a religious jew when you fail in learning the experience of most of the children who don't really even realize what's happened to them is the internally i'm questioning whether i even fit or belong here i i think judaism in judaism in juniors as a jew the core essence of the jury i just want to make sure what you're saying you're not just saying that somebody's going to say i'll never be a talmud no no no it's not about that it's about if the value if i don't help what's going on if i can't really grasp i'm not into the learning the experience a child has is that first of all i'm not really wanted i'm tolerated at best i'm tolerated in this class you know there's a word in yiddish to cover you know who do we fell over we fell over the best students the best academic students they get felled over everybody else gets tolerated so we haven't we have something inherent in the system where unfortunately the learning experience for most of the children is one that includes the experience of being traumatized by feeling that i am threatened by the fact that i know i can't do this well i look listen carefully what is a natural learner what is a natural learner kid goes to school you would hope they would be able to naturally learn correct so what is a natural it's a kid that goes to school for 12 years let's say k through 12 and he doesn't need tutoring to keep up or certainly not extra tutoring resource rooms medication threats punishments grounding at night bribes he doesn't need any of that to be able to learn well and at best at best we look at 10 maybe 15 maybe 10 who could get through without all now what does that mean to all the others what does that mean so you've got 10 percent who naturally learn this is a very enjoyable experience they're being presented the material which they can do well then you've got about 25 percent who for different reasons have no connection because they are true trauma victims they may have another trauma aside from learning trauma and once you have any other trauma of any other sort chances are your prefrontal cortex is offline and the chances of you learning well is very very diminished so they're out then you've got children who actually do have a technical learning disability and they're diagnosed or otherwise that's right and then you've got everybody else who are trying so hard but never quite feel they can make it they're always outside trying to get inside and they need the tutoring and the extra tutoring and the mentoring of the and the resource rooms and the medications for heaven's sakes the medications and and and the bribery and the rewarding and the punishments to motivate them okay but i'm gonna push back at you for a second please please because what you're describing you're saying this is the experience of most students and i'm saying yes this is the experience of most students what's so traumatizing about it yeah exactly right well so traumatizing is like this that my essence my being should be that i feel a worthy human being i feel valued by my parents by my community and by god i should feel that way i may have to discipline myself to work on myself to maintain that that's true but i should my core essence of who i am i should feel like a worthy being i should feel that way when a child goes through 12 years of school and constantly has the experience of realizing i'm not cutting it you see if you're not cutting in geography or math but you can go and do sports or art or something else no problem but if you're not cutting it in limited kurdish in school what does that say to your nisharma your nephesh about your value as a jew as a person so it's no surprise that people like this grow up always feeling disconnected davening is laborious it's a difficult look let's take it even further children who go to school and there are still schools that will canas fine penalize children for not darveling properly imagine the association you do when a child is given a sitter and he's told to dive in and then some very upset angry looking person canesses him because he's not looking inside gives him a fine for not looking inside what is the association that boy has or girl has to darwining what does daphne even mean to them ever again so later in life you have adults who find that going to shoal is an unbearable experience and they don't know why they want to be part of a community part of a system but find themselves just nervous and anxious about the idea of going to shore about being in a job but let's broaden it i want to go way beyond learning trauma because learning drama is just one detail it's a very profound detail that erodes the sense of self of being a worthy jew it's not about being academics not about the academic piece at all if we're teaching you judaism and torah and meanwhile you're getting the experience daily that you're failing you're not good enough you don't know enough that what that's internalized is i'm not worthy enough now let's add to that let's add to that for example generational holocaust trauma on top of that that unfortunately as it plays out through the generations again we can give this is a course it's not a you know to focus on this we're looking at reactions to life where parents then govern their kin of their children through a reaction to the nazis are coming and i'm going to protect you and take care of you where in fact what i'm doing is frightening you or controlling you from some terror that actually doesn't exist it isn't there but generationally that's how i was brought up either overly controlled and overly sheltered by anxious parents who seem to be worried about something and i'm not sure what that is so that i become that same person either angrily reacting to my parents or also becoming that anxious controlling kind of person frightened of life with a dread that i don't really know what it's about or we have the you know the we don't kiss you know where love doesn't exist we're cushion this you know we don't kiss after two years old we don't you know the the if we can imagine just the loss of loved ones what that felt like which we can't imagine it is unimaginable where a generation of people amongst them survival men shutting down love responsibility yes yes caring yes clothing yes but not love not love in the deepest sense not love of affection and caring that a human being needs to grow and then that gets passed on culturally you know we're cushing this we don't kiss we don't kiss so you have a background of holocaust trauma this surrounds our community deeply and profoundly where people's hun hoggers and behaviors are informed by surviving the holocaust that doesn't exist now three generations later and yet people are still behaving that way where children are brought up wondering what is it i'm meant to be scared of or why am i not loved what is missing and i don't know but i know i'm empty and i'm missing inside take that those same children and put them in an environment where most of them are going to going to experience learning trauma at some point in their journey and they'll experience unfortunately and tragically learning trauma from the finest and best of our community they're born the finest and the best most wonderful people caring mean well-meaning people who completely are unaware totally unaware that the way they're motivating the children is actually destroying the children it's not helping them at all and in fact it's making them feel most of the kids feel disconnected from the whole system where they can't wait to get out they can't wait to leave it now add to that wait hold on i'm just trying to keep track okay so one trauma is the learning trauma then there's another trauma which you're saying is intergenerational which is maybe even transmitted by well-intending educators who themselves are dealing with their own trauma absolutely there's a third one i'm going to come to now okay and now you're going to add a third factor yes i am the third one is families we're living in an environment where you know as a jewish nation we want the best for our kids technically what does that actually mean it means we want the best we want the best yeshivas we want the best outcome for our children and we're focusing unfortunately with enormous pressure where if you actually talk to children and talk to young adults their experience is this wasn't about me this was about my parents feeling satisfied and glad and proud that this is my children and i was i hate to say it but they're minorities machine their job is to do a good shoulder so i can feel good about myself it's not conscious i don't believe people actually consciously feel that but we're motivated by this you know should tell us and inform us take a look at your child and see what they need to thrive whereas unfortunately and there's a lot of reasons why this happened that this isn't the place to debate it or discuss it i don't think but what's happened is is how do we make our kids be the best of the best with the best industrial and the best the best life and the best of the best which sounds great in theory but in practice doesn't reflect the truth about who the children really are what we really should be looking at is what's good for them that's what's good what i believe should be you know the products that i have the child where they should be in yeshiva and and what kind of they should do which was more about me than them i'll show an example of what i mean a parent takes a father takes his child to shore with him little kid and i see this all the time and it breaks my heart you see a father brings his kid to shawl at a young age seven eight nine there's always one kid who davens like you know he's like a gilgal from some helicopter from freya de cadiz and he's six seven years old and he is davening like wow some and all the other fathers are eating their hearts out watching this one kid and this one father who's having knackers from that one kid so what's davening look like to them it's nothing they're standing there darling nudging their kid the no no no no no nudging the whole time their kid to darwin fully unaware that what you're actually doing is humiliating your kid and turning him against being insured creating an anxiety experience of being in shawl and anxiety experience of darkening that if you do it enough and you do it fiercely enough the kid ends up traumatized where his experience in life later on and countless countless parents know this adults know this that the thought of being though when they go to shore they can't be in the middle pew they can only be on an edge they can only be on the back they don't even want to go i know people will find any terrorists not to be there at all because the experience of being there activates them where they're going to start having an anxiety attack see if you look at what are we talking about with trauma single event trauma single event which we all understand is very different to what we're talking about here this is complex drama this is a multitude of micro traumas each one on its own if i would describe it you'd say no no that's going to hurt him but that's not what happens what happens is you have a constellation of micro traumas cumulatively from the holocaust generational type traumas the learning traumas that could happen every day kids today it's getting them every day in school the father you know even benching at the table on chavez is traumatic for some kids because of the intensity of desire of the parents to force them to bench the the the pasture sheets of the table can traumatize children who are terrified to come and don't want to be there because they're going to be humiliated because they just don't know they don't remember and they're going to feel they'll see the look of disappointment what do you think it feels like to a child to see that frustrated disappointed look in a father's eyes that more or less say what a waste of my tuition you're a waste of my tuition you know what are you here for like what am i paying all this money for if you were to analyze how bizarre that is to a child's internal world like i don't exist i i don't have exist i'm there like you're paying tuition for me and you're frustrated because i'm a disappointment to your tuition so i don't have a materials other than pleasing you in single event trauma the dsm says as follows a person having who's traumatized who's got ptsd post-traumatic stress disorder right they went through a trauma they will have a severe psychological reaction means they freak out an exposure to internal or external cues that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the original trauma means they had they were bitten by a dog when they were five you know pack of dogs came and they got bitten so for the rest of your life anything dog-like sounds like a dog looks like a dog they'll they're likely to have a severe psychological reaction because they're exposed to an internal external cue that symbolizes or resembles an aspect of the original trauma which was the dog attack does that make sense yeah so now imagine in micro traumas and complex drama you have literally tens of thousands of experiences of being overly controlled overly anxious where i don't exist remember where i feel i'm not i'm not a person i'm not worthy every time in class you know i i i get called on and i read and i get it wrong and i get the look and the chuckles and the laughter from the other kids and i feel stupid because i can't do it properly and i get the disappointed look in my father's eyes those cumulative experiences will make me feel like i don't exist i'm not worthy i'm not a person and they will throw me offline i need to disconnect from that yeah i'll have a severe psychological reaction eventually and just be fed up with it and i'll get nailed for that too and i'll be blamed for that too and yelled that and screamed that for that too so i'm having a life of micro traumas being triggered all that just reading just darvening you know someone says are you up for darvening i hear the word darvening i still have a panic attack micro traumas that occur in the religious world in this suggest called complex trauma you end up needing fight or flight or freeze you've just got to escape and you go offline you're not here you go offline just with seeing like the single event trauma you go offline and how are you meant to function now when you're offline and then you get blamed for that too you're not paying attention you're not focusing you're not listening you're not listening it occurs at the shabbos table the yandev table you know pair of pacer in a family where everyone's freaking out and kids are being told how lazy they are and why you're sleeping and why you're helping you're not worthy you're not useful you're not valuable this is all as a jewish person because it's pace like we're talking about a knife gets falls on the floor and a kid unwittingly picks it up and starts using some freaks out comments comments and they start screaming and get furious with you they could say to you shay fella let's not put the you know we don't let me explain to you bahamut but that anxious anger this all about religion apparently religious life according to the experience of that child is horrible it's frightening and it's certainly not something i feel connected to or want on the other hand i do want it and i do want to be part of it how do i assimilate those experiences so i go offline i partially go offline because i can't handle it i can't deal with it and like i said when you go offline you get blamed for that too you get severely criticized for that too you're late for darvening you don't want to be unsure why not obviously you're not from it's it's so insidious because it takes the core essence of who i am of who i am as a person as a jewish person and it devalues that essence talk about safe secure scene and soothed it's none of the above it's none of the four assets there's no attachment and these people then want to get married and have children be part of it this is our world it's our community this is where i want to be and yet i feel disconnected and lonely i don't feel worthy and i don't know why i have to hide it and i walk around with shame terrible shame inside terrible shame all right so first of all thank you for giving me that picture of that first of all the difference between the complex problem and the single event trauma um because when you know you're right when you say these are micro traumas so when you take any one of them people hear it and they're like what's the big deal like no no like right get over it um but what you've painted is a picture of sort of like this all-encompassing pervasive tension or this stress that it sounds like you're saying it colors the person's whole experience of yiddish experience they're it colors their entire identity as a jew correct and okay so it just basically it it ruins everything and and you and you describe three aspects of it one aspect was the learning trauma like why aren't you learning why can't you learn why why aren't you a natural learner which like you said most kids aren't the second part of it you said was that intergenerational stuff that that you know that holocaust trauma or that that that the tension that's even passed on by well-meaning educators who are dealing with their own trauma okay and then the third thing you mentioned the severe social pressure the severe social pressure of what you call being a knackers machine of living up to certain expectations and and and you know the whole insular community is watching you you're in the fishbowl you're expected to to succeed according to a certain script okay so you painted a very very vivid picture of why a person would just be uncomfortable profoundly uncomfortable okay fine i got that i got that i wanna because we don't have uh a lot more time i wanna just reorient you now first of all i i i know that you were at fresh start in detroit michigan and you were training the staff and you saw the people who were coming through both the men's group and the women's group could you do me one favor describe for me because you described the story how it came to this point now give me a snapshot i'm looking at an adult who's 30 who's 40 who's 50. give me the snapshot what their present looks like as a result of this whole backstory that you just described excellent excellent well actually we made a commitment to do a bit of an experiment at fresh start and specifically not introduced from our point of view religious trauma learning trauma spiritual we we made a decision we're not going to introduce it and we're going to see what happens you're going to pretend it doesn't exist yeah we're just not going to talk about bring it up we're going to watch what happens and incredibly not to me i was not shocked at all but incredibly it went immediately to this place where the men there were talking about their disconnect to shul and their pain and loss their sense of loss and confusion why i don't want to go and go on time and be there and and feeling these you know everyone wants it that's the fascinating thing you know deep down we're all yidden and we want this we want to be part of this but it's so unbearable to want to be part of it and find that somehow something inside of you sees it as a threat to walk into shawl it sees it as a threat to open a cedar and daven to go to a sheer you know i want to go to a shear and participate somewhere and i have no idea why but i have this feeling of dread you know the most heartbreaking example to me is go ahead the father whose child comes to him and wants to do homework absolutely you can father can't overcome his own trigger to learn with his child i have countless clients of mine who said this to me have cried with me with the shame you cannot imagine the depth of their shame to realize i can't do homework with my kid because i'm embarrassed i'm embarrassed about the fact i really don't think i know it don't know how to do it and i feel full of anxiety just sitting there then what happens is they'll find they'll hire a tutor and they'll find a terrorist and the wife will be upset with him and why don't you do it you're meant to be a father and they come up with like excuses but it's really defensive excuses and then comes the severe psychological reaction the anxiety and all they want to do is run away and escape they just want to run away escape that's where they go offline you see trauma is all about being offline and rep repairing from trauma recovering from trauma is about being present is being here in the moment is being connected with my life my experiences with davening my experiences with mitzvahs you know how many when you're traumatized you may go through the mitzvahs it's like you have no idea what you're doing and in fact as people have said putting on feeling it feels like it's burning on my arm i don't i want to get it on and off and i don't know why i have no clue why because the connection to it makes me feel humiliated and shamed and it's that shame that that binds a person where they can't function properly and then they get blamed for that too and they're always blamed for that okay so in the remaining time i have with you i want to put out some hope i want to put out a message of hope you described a vivid picture of the past how it leads up to an adult who is you know struggling in life you you pick you you give us a picture of the present you know like how someone would present themselves when they come into a program like fresh start talk to me about the future talk to me about what it looks like in the best case scenario when when there's healing and how does it happen and what does it look like when it happens you see what it looks like what it really looks like is for us to learn in terms of recovery in terms of recovery for those already damaged it means learning how to be present how to be here in the moment how to let go of my shame and stop devaluing myself and realize that the circumstances of my life orchestrated those feelings within me and then in fact i can repair that and see myself as a unbelievably valuable asset to clarisol and i can be defined as a person a healthy gazunter part of claudia's soul a person who's worthy in the eyes of hashem which i don't feel that's what recovery is coming back to that place to see that in myself and to value and realize i can love myself and realize hashem loves me too in the remaining moments you have with me talk to me as a parent what can i do for my child karen has to know this do whatever you call him no problem whatever you think it is but don't do anything if you're not doing it lovingly just do it with love whatever you want to encourage your child to learn encourage your child to dive and teach them a mids for whatever you're doing you do it with love or better you don't do it that the real answer the real answer is that you see we could have school systems and clarity so and take kids to shul well what a world of difference if you have your kid in shawl and you tell schaefer dove in as much as you can whatever you do hashem will appreciate and next week maybe you'll do more don't worry do the best you can you're meant to do your avoider what do i have to nudge him for to do everything why do i have to force the kids to feel embarrassed you know why don't we do like get rid of the partial sheets or ask the youngest kid and ask anyone else if you want to add feel free you don't have to if you don't want to see tara tara we have one statement about love your neighbor right well after that clown god alberto what does it mean there cloud golden baton you know it means it doesn't say zen mitzvah good day libertarian it says that clown god alberto you know what it means it means that every mitzvah the whole torah has to be looked at in the framework of the so i don't mind if we teach and educate and help and do all that we're doing but within the framework of love of love so we encourage people with love and we help people feel loved so then this goes away and we don't need fresh start love is the vehicle through which we can change this so we can do we can do discipline we can do education we can do everything we want to do with our children and help them but we do it through the vehicle of love i don't know how else to say it very clear it's it's very very clear and um there will probably be people who have questions um and require further clarification but you're willing to come back on with me again yes hope chase you know it's a pleasure always to talk to you okay fantastic so i look forward to our next meeting and that's ish i'm looking forward to thank you very much my pleasure be well [Music] you