The Power of Mindful Healing After Trauma | Dean Graves

 Darkcast Network welcome to the dark side of podcasts

>> Tiffanie: M Darkcast Network welcome to the dark side of podcasts. Awareness is both the discovery tool and the healing tool when learning to take control of our mind.

>> Tiffanie: Hello everybody, and welcome to true crime connections. If you've been here before, then welcome back. If you are new, welcome to our inspired and rewired community. We are happy you are here today. We are going to learn how to heal your past, create a happy present, and have the future that you want.


Dean Graves is a mental health counselor who helps veterans deal with PTSD

Joining us today is Dean Graves. He's an author, podcaster, and a mental health counselor. Hi, Dean. Thank you so much for being here.

>> Dean Graves: Thank you, Tiffanie. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

>> Tiffanie: This is important work.

>> Dean Graves: Well, it is important, but it is not as dramatic as the majority of the mental health field would have you believe. Traumas actually dissipate very quickly. I do a lot of work with veterans, some of which have had, some of the older ones have had PTSD since Vietnam, and their traumas go away in ten to 15 minutes. And so, consequently, it transforms their life, and it is very gratifying to see that shift in their perspective of life in such a short period of time. And the same trauma is a trauma. It doesn't matter whether it came from or what environment that it came from, but it's, not something that, people have to continue to live with. It is, as all of our experiences are, it's a learning opportunity, but the learning is about us, not about things around us.


One of the most significant things that we are tasked with learning is compassion

I know the focus of your show is crime victims. Their victim, in and of itself, is, misnomer from a spiritual standpoint. The person that deems himself to be a victim is actually the teacher in that experience. One of the most significant things that we are tasked with learning at the range of consciousness that we all are experiencing, that we're all sharing, is sympathy and compassion and learning the foundations of love. And that is something that has to be, regardless of who we are, regardless of how despicable a behavior that we have shown in the course of our lifetimes. Underneath that, we still are love. And many people that experience victimhood in their lifetime have a pre arranged agreement with the people that they are interacting with, to be the teacher and to provide them with the. The perpetrator with the opportunity, elevate their awareness and surrender their chosen behavior, and have that self awareness to begin the foundation of learning about sympathy and compassion. And so, that's difficult. I understand how difficult that is for people who have been in that victim role. But when they understand the bigger picture, and that their contribution is significant. By being that victim and allowing themselves to learn the tools to heal, how they have interpreted their life experiences and heal from those traumas, then they're almost invariably their feeling of how they have participated in their life date. And from m this point on, after. Once they have these healing experiences, it transforms their whole outlook on what life is and who they are.

>> Tiffanie: So when you say that these veterans, that they can come over this in a very short period of time, is that like a one time deal that forever heals, or is that something that you still have to continually work on?

>> Dean Graves: Now, once it's healed, it's healed, it's gone. And that's one of the things that amazes them. I instruct them after we do do the processes that I use, and they feel that lightness, that illumination of not having that emotional baggage from the trauma anymore, I instruct them, you know, make sure that you've set aside some time tomorrow. I want you to go back and revisit that experience, and I want you to go through it and make sure that there's no emotion left on that experience. because, needless to say, someone, for example, that's had a. Had PSD for 40 years, and they've gone through the VA, they've gone through multitude of whatever methodologies that, have been offered to them and had very little of any results in healing. There is more of learning to adapt their life expectations and behaviors to that distortion that they're carrying. And it's a process that can be, that they can self apply. Once they learn it, they see what it does, they can self apply it and continue their own healing processes without having to revisit, come see me every time that they feel that they have something, they need healing. And that's part of learning confidence in themselves as part of learning that they have a tool to use to heal themselves. The processes are simple, and they're, they're, they're so simple that I've, tried to teach it, and this is a process. The processes that I use were created by a serbian psychologist a number of years ago, and he's now deceased, but he. The processes have received widespread acceptance in eastern Europe, where Serbia is, and Russia and, northern Middle eastern countries. And it has only modestly been accepted by the mental health communities in the United States and in western Europe. And one of the reasons that I think that it's been so, that they've been so hesitant to incorporate it into a healing process is, number one, they don't understand what a trauma is. And number two is so simple, they can't imagine that it has the results that it does. But the second reason is predicated upon the first reason that they don't really understand the nature of a trauma or what our experiences are. And so consequently, it doesn't get used in this country. For those simple reasons, I've tried to. I've offered to teach it to the therapists in, two very large VA hospitals, and the, psychiatrist that they had in charge of the mental health department downplayed the effectiveness of it without really seeing the effectiveness of it. But all day, every day, I don't practice full time. But when I do, the results are consistent, have been consistent for years. I have people from years ago that, you know, are still experiencing the effects of it and the transformation in their lives. And so I have more than passing confidence in its capacity to transform the nature of our experiences.

>> Tiffanie: Gotta have confidence. Confidence is key.

>> Dean Graves: Well, it comes back to confidence in yourself. One of the. One of the biggest, reluctances that people have is you have to identify the experience that. Where the trauma was created, in order to heal it, you have to go back to that experience, and you don't have to relive it, but you do have to go into it enough to be able to recall the strategic moments within that experience that facilitated the traumatic interpretation. People are very reluctant initially to do that because it didn't. It wasn't pleasant the first time they experienced it, and so they don't want to go back to that. But the more confidence they have in the process that it's going to be healed, and the more willing they are to go deeper into the process. And if you think of the emotion as a well, and the deeper that they can go into the well, the more completely and quickly it heals. So that in order to get to that point, we treat the patient's resistance to go to the bottom of the whale as an emotion itself. And, because that's nothing more than a belief that they've incorporated in their mind.


Every experience that we have is a subject and object exchange

So there are processes out there, but understanding what we were talking about initially, that every experience that we have is a subject and object exchange. Someone is always the object, someone is always the subject. And that's the nature of consciousnesses, experiences. throughout all of creation, we perceive the victim to be the subject or the learner, the lesser of the two in the relationship. But the reality is that the victim is the object. They are the teacher and not the subject, that the perpetrator is the subject, and that requires some unpacking, which is fine. We can unpack that as far as you want to unpack that. But when you understand that you're the teacher in the situation, then the magnitude of your whole perspective about those life experiences transforms, and all that we can do is lead the perpetrator, the subject, to water. But you can't make them drink, just like the horse. But, you give them that opportunity in the hopes that, at some point in the future, they have that awareness to realize, the nature of their experience and begin to heal those distortions of perception that permitted them to be the perpetrator in the first place.

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>> Tiffanie: Is this kind of like hypnotherapy?

>> Dean Graves: No, no hypnosis. You're absolutely in complete control. I have several processes that I use. Some go deeper than others, and the trauma release process is very simple. It takes about ten minutes. it does nothing. There's no magic to it. All there does is focus our awareness inside. And when you begin to do that, then you begin to have the capabilities of releasing it. But if you understand that we perceive and experience to last some period of time, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, you know, possibly longer, and we perceive that to be one experience. But the reality is that those perceived experience are comprised of dozens of thoughts. Each and every thought that we process is, in and of itself, a complete experience. And the reason that it's a complete experience is we are obligated to make a decision about every single thought. And that decision is the thought that I am thinking right now. Either it feels good and I like it, or it doesn't feel good and I don't like it. And when we obviously want more of what we like, and so we consider all of those experiences that we, thoughts that we process, that we interpret negatively as not being pleasant in and of itself is stress. That is what stress is. And when we enter, entertain, or we encounter an experience that one, two, or up to four experiences, depending on how the perceived experience is, when that thought, that moment, so challenges our perception of selfdevelop, which includes safety and security, then we are unable to make that decision of whether I like it or don't like it. And for that thought, we enter the condition of shock. When you see people that have just lived through a tornado or hurricane and their house is blown away and families, you know, scattered throughout an area, all their possessions are gone. Oftentimes they're, diagnosed as being in a condition of shock. And they just wander around unable really to relate to what's going on around them. And what has happened to those people is their awareness has left their body. So their, body walking around, but their awareness is outside of their body. When we have an experience that we interpret that experience, that perceived experience as a trauma, then between one and four of the individual thoughts that we have processed in the course of that perceived experience did that they caused us to send our awareness out of our body. We were not able to make that essential decision of either it feels good or it doesn't feel good. And in the process that we use to heal that, we simply ask. I simply ask the, patient to scan through that experience. You don't have to relive it, but scan through it and find the peak moment of your emotion, where the emotion is absolutely the strongest. And invariably they can find that in a heartbeat, just, you know. Yeah, well, that's number one. And I have them rated zero to ten, you know, and those are usually tens. And I have them take an imaginary photograph of that moment and then focus their attention. And then we do a quick little turning around exercise. And almost invariably, by the end of their turning around exercise, the emotion off of that moment, they're able, in the condition that they are in now, to make that decision that it doesn't, almost invariably, that it doesn't feel good and they don't want any more of it. But that's not what's important. They brought their awareness back into that moment and they filled that gap in their experience, interpretation. And I've never had, in all the years I've been doing this, I've never had anybody have more than four moments, four instances in the course of their perceived experience where there was that traumatic determination that they couldn't adjudicate the thought whether it felt good or didn't feel good. So usually it's only one or two. I did, Just last week I did a, Vietnam vet that had 50 years of PTSD that he had lived with. And, he went right to it. He knew exactly where it was. He found it. We got rid of it in, about ten minutes. And his life was transformed over that point simply because he was able to fill that gap in his life perceptions, in his experience of life.

>> Tiffanie: What if you don't know the exact point?

>> Dean Graves: You do. Everybody does. I've never had anybody that can't find it. Now, what. What often happens is that resistance that we were talking about earlier will not allow them to find that number ten. Within that experience, you know, the most significant moment, and they'll find one that may be a six or a seven, and we find that six or seven, and we clear that. And once we clear that, then that is like giving them. Giving themselves permission to find that moment that had the ten on it. And then we clear the ten, and then the whole experience becomes clear of emotion.

>> Tiffanie: Very interesting. I've never heard of it this way. Hypnotherapy, where you replace I the thoughts with new thoughts, but not this. Very interesting.

>> Dean Graves: Yeah, you don't need to replace the thoughts. I mean, that's just, you know, it's putting icing over, a burned brownie. It just. It's not. It doesn't heal it, it just covers it up. And the objective is to heal it.

>> Tiffanie: Right. How long does this process usually take?

>> Dean Graves: about ten minutes. And oftentimes, you know, they'll have one. One or more particularly, you know, the. The veterans, they, you know, they're in a war situation, so they have one outstanding experience that is their forefront PTSD creator. But they may have half a dozen others that, you know, will emerge after the big one goes away, and they'll. They'll click them off. Your body's energy system will say, okay, this is the next one you need to work on. And I just ask and they'll say, okay, well, this one came to mind. If it comes to mind, that's the next one you're supposed to work on. And so we do that with each. Everything that comes to mind and we're through when they can't come up with any more experiences.

>> Tiffanie: I mean, this is also for like, bipolar, grief, anxiety, phobias. So much stuff.


The exercises have proven more effective on anxiety disorders than any other technique

>> Dean Graves: Yeah. some of the. Some of the, one of the deeper exercises, it's a little bit more complicated. It usually takes about 30 minutes. Have proven more, effective on, bipolar anxiety disorders, all sorts of anxiety disorders. You know, they have a multitude of names for different anxiety disorders. The problem is the inherent fear that is the operating system that the people have adapted it to. So they say, I have fear of going over a bridge. Okay, well, it's not really going over the bridge. The fear is the problem, or the agoraphobia is the problem. Well, it's not that you're really afraid of. It's fear in general, and that we call a condition. And, the deepest process that I use deals with conditions of our life. I've had, you know, I had a, not long ago, had a very successful local attorney that was a great attorney, did great stuff in court, you know, demonstrated no anxiety, but they would freeze up every time they asked their client for money and had this phobia about asking people for money. And we did the process. It went back to an experience that they had in high school that created this foundational belief that they incorporated into their mind. And when we brought their attention back to that, cleared the emotion off of that, had no more problem. I had a woman that I worked with that had a sexual assault in her twenties. She was only, like, 30, but she had a sexual assault when she was in her twenties. And we cleared that. And when we cleared that, then she had this memory that she. If you would have asked her about the memory, she would have had no memory about it whatsoever. In other words, she had been working, with the therapist for about three years, just dealing with this latter day sexual assault. And the therapist, you know, referred her to me, and we got rid of the emotion that was tied to the later years sexual assault. And she had a memory that her uncle had assaulted her when she was about two or three years old. And so she went and she thought she was just dreaming it, just making it up in her mind. And she went back to ask her mother about it. And her mother was shocked, you know, that she recalled this, but she said, yeah, and that's why your uncle is no longer part of the family. Wow. And so she actually attracted, in the way our experiences work, she attracted that latter day sexual assault based upon her identity formation from when she was two or three. So by healing the first one, that made her aware of the first one, which when we hear that her cleared that, then, you know, the whole deck of cards just fell. The whole stack of cards just fell. And she was, you know, had that recollection, she. She remembered stuff, you know, well, back when she was two, three years old, just as, like, clarity that she had, the event yesterday.

>> Tiffanie: That's crazy. I feel like we all suppress something. Like, there's a couple things that if you would have told me I did when I was little, I'd be like, no, I didn't. But there's pictures saying that I did.

>> Dean Graves: So. Yeah, we all did.

>> Tiffanie: Ah, do you do this over like Zoom or anything too, or only do it remotely?

>> Dean Graves: Yeah, I do it remotely all the time. I prefer to do it in person because I can watch your facial expressions better and see how you're reacting and proceeding through it. But the process works no matter how you are. the deeper process is you need somebody to guide you. But the trauma release and things of that nature, you can do yourself and have the same result. I did it myself. I've used it on myself and, had significant, results and, you know, things that I just said, well, then, gee, it's gone now.

>> Tiffanie: Well, somebody wanted to do it on themselves. How do we do it?

>> Dean Graves: Well, I have the. The processes, detailed and, a book called the identity model, healing from stress and suffering. And it's available on Amazon. It's a simple little book. I wrote it for the mental health profession, but it's not technical at all. Anybody can read it in their, these exercises I've detailed in the back of the book that you can read it and follow it yourself. The more you do it, the more, adept you become at it and the more that you can. But you'll make nuances to it, you know, that are more appropriate for your personal benefit. And that's fine. You can't hurt yourself. There's no, you know, there's no danger in it whatsoever. If you don't do it right. It just doesn't work as efficiently as if, you know, you had honed your skill with it a little bit more. So the more you do it, the better you get at it and you feel what you need in order to achieve the maximum benefit of.

>> Tiffanie: I'll make sure I put the link in the show notes. That way, if anyone's interested. I'm interested. It's very interesting stuff.

>> Dean Graves: Well, in the deeper processes, I have a script in the back of the book as well, that if you can get a, process partner, and all they have to do is follow the script and guide you through the deeper processes, and you can take turns doing that. So you have a healing buddy, so to say. And the interesting thing about it is, in none of these processes do you have to share with the person that you're working with the story, whatever the story is, around the trauma. All you have to do is allow them to guide you to feel the emotion. And this is one of the things that I have. Not arguments, but disagreements with therapists all the time, because therapists are trained to work with the story, they want you to share your story with them, which is only, in the best case scenario, moderately successful. And if you understand that the story is, you remember you used to go to the library and you'd go to the index card catalog, and you look at the book in the card catalog, and then you had to take the card catalog number and go get a book. The book is where you had to go in order to learn what you learned to learn. The story is the card catalog. So by going to the story, that's just going to point you to the book, to the emotion. The emotion is where you have to go in order to heal it, because that's how we've interpreted the experience and that's how we store it. We store it as emotion, and that's called emotional baggage.


One common factor worldwide for everybody that experiences depression is it feels heavy

Someone who experiences depression. Psychology has done a marvelous job of mapping all of the byproducts of depression. But the one common factor worldwide for everybody that experiences depression is it feels heavy. When they are feeling depressed, they are feeling heavy. So you have to ask the question, what could possibly feel heavy? Okay, well, what feels heavy is the emotional baggage that they have collected over a lifetime that they have not resolved. And if you understand that every one of our experiences that we have is a homework assignment, there is a message in that experience about us that we are supposed to become aware of, and heal or let go. It's always going to be some belief. And so if you don't do your homework, that doesn't mean that the homework isn't still due. It just means you didn't do your homework. You watch tv or you want to hang out or whatever, you didn't do your homework, you didn't learn the message that was brought to you at the time of the experience. So you get to carry those in the form of emotions, and it accumulates by emotion. So in order to get rid of that emotional baggage, you have to learn the lesson that was brought to you in these experiences, which you do by dealing with the emotion directly itself. And that's why these, methods are so effective. As they go right to the emotion and heal the emotion. You can put the pieces of the puzzle of the story together once you get rid of the emotion, because that's the drag, that's the heaviness. And depression goes away in a very short period of time. If you imagine that before you were born, they told you that your mission in life was to run down to the end of the street, and all you had to do to have a successful life is run down to the end of the street, and we give you a new pair of running shoes and a real cute running outfit. And so you start life and you're running towards the end of the street thinking, this is going to be a piece of cake. And then somebody walks up to you and hands you a 300 pound ball of concrete and say, your mission is the same, but you got to carry this ball of concrete with you. Well, you're thinking, there's no way I can carry this emotional, this ball of concrete and still run. So somehow I have to get rid of this ball of concrete. It is permissible to put that entire ball of concrete down at one time. But in this ball of concrete are all your life lessons, homework that you haven't done. And so it's probable that you're going to have to take it out a chunk at a time. And as you take chunks out of this concrete by healing the emotional baggage that you've collected, by learning the lessons that were brought to you in your life experiences, then it gets lighter and lighter. So you have more energy to do more work to get rid of more of the emotional baggage. And you pick up, you accelerate, you pick up momentum. And so fulfilling your life mission of running down to the end of the street becomes easier and easier until you are as you anticipated that you would be. And just running down to the end of the street with your new jogging togs on jogging clogs.

>> Tiffanie: I mean, whatever. Well, I mean, I think we all have something that we need to heal from everybody. Nobody comes out completely perfect. It's not a thing. You're here to learn a lesson. And, boy, is there a lot of lessons to learn. Yeah, but sure, this is great. I think people could benefit from this for sure, especially people who don't want to try different modalities. I mean, you're talking about ten minutes of your day.

>> Dean Graves: Yeah.

>> Tiffanie: How bad can that be?

>> Dean Graves: Well, at first, you know, when you first start doing it, it's probably going to take more than ten minutes because you're going to have to read it and, you know, understand what it is. So it may take 20 minutes, right. But, it's not difficult. And as I say, it can be safely self applied and you can do it. And I tell people, set aside an hour a day, and, you know, if you set aside 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes on your lunch hour, and 30 minutes at night, whenever your schedule will permit, you don't have to do an hour altogether, but do it, roughly an hour a day. Do it, four times a day, and you'll be amazed at the transformation of your outlook on life and your perspective of interacting with other people, your ability to function in the world and, accomplish and be who you want to be.

>> Tiffanie: I love that. Everybody knows what they want to be. But now you can learn how to be that person.

>> Dean Graves: That's right. That's right. And it is. It is healing once we heal, because our perspectives of life change dramatically. And what we oftentimes thought was essential or important before is, recouched into a whole new perspective of what is important and, what is necessary for us to learn or to accomplish in our lifetime.

>> Tiffanie: Right. It's all about healing.


Dean Martin's latest book is called the enigma of consciousness

Was there anything else you wanted to add before we go?

>> Dean Graves: I have a new book that is coming out the end of August. It'll be in your bookstore September 1. Or you can pre order it now. It's called the enigma of consciousness. And the enigma of consciousness, a spiritual exploration of humanity's relationship to creation. And it is, my compendium book so far. It recounts who we are, the structure of creation, how creation began, the, nature of how we create a, false identity or a hierophant, which is actually what we perceive to be as challenged by these life experiences. And, by understanding that. And our relationship to creation gives us fills in the blanks of what it is that we're really trying to heal and who we already are. So it dramatically changes perceptions of self and makes us more aware of the value of our participation in creation.

>> Tiffanie: Very interesting. You're up to, like, five books now, right?

>> Dean Graves: I'm working on the fifth one. Yeah, the. The one that's coming out in, September. first is the fourth one. And it is hopefully, you know, we all have ambitions for. I used to realize that I would work late at night writing, and I'd then turn it off and go to bed thinking, man, that's the greatest literature that's ever been written. And then I go to sleep. I get up the next morning and read what I wrote. And I just know that some third grader came in and rewrote everything that I had written the night before. So I realized maybe that's not the greatest literature that was ever written. So I amended and amended and, amended so I'm not a good writer, but I am a persistent writer. And so I rewrite until it finally sounds right. You know, some people can just sit down and write, and it's perfect their first time through. I'm not that writer. I have to go through it 50 times in order to get it to be, legible. But I think that that's been accomplished by these. In these books.

>> Tiffanie: Don't feel bad, Dean. I'm the same way. I've changed things a million times. I'm like, why would I put that? I don't like that. Reword it.

>> Dean Graves: Yeah. that's that third grader that keeps sneaking in there and rewriting what you wrote.

>> Tiffanie: It's constant and involvement. No, that was the word I want. Yeah. Evolvement. Evolving. Yeah. Because we're constantly.

>> Dean Graves: Constantly evolving. Yeah, yeah. Constantly evolving. Absolutely.

>> Tiffanie: Awesome. And I'll make sure that I put a, link to your website. So if anyone's interested in any of the other books that you've written as well, it's all right there. So I want to thank you so much for being on the show.

>> Dean Graves: Thank you, Tiffanie. I've enjoyed it. I hope, the information I've been able to provide is helpful to your audience. I greatly appreciate the work that you were doing, because there are not enough resources for, They just. They need that contact, that need that verification that they're not alone in their struggles.

>> Tiffanie: Absolutely. That. That's what it's all about. Raising awareness and helping everybody start your re. You got to shift where we've been living in because it doesn't suit us anymore. It's time to heal and move on, and then live the life that we always knew we deserved. Yeah.

>> Dean Graves: Well, understand that when we reduce our stress, that creates a void, and happiness is what fills the void. So bliss is nothing more than the absence of stress. So the more that we can heal and reduce our stress, the happier we get. It's not something that we have to get happy. Happiness will fill the void when we do the healing work.

>> Tiffanie: Right? Right. Happiness is within us. It's just about you bringing it out, right?

>> Dean Graves: Just let it out.

>> Tiffanie: Yeah. Allow it to, like a diamond.

>> Dean Graves: That's right. Yeah, exactly.


Tiffany: Thank you so much for listening to my podcast

>> Tiffanie: All right, well, good. Thank you so much.

>> Dean Graves: Thank you, Tiffanie.

>> Tiffanie: I think we all know somebody who can benefit from this episode. Please make sure to share it with them. and thank you guys so much for listening to my podcast. This really means a lot to me. If one of my episodes has helped you in any way, I would really like to know. It's important for me to know that the work that I'm doing is actually helping people. If you want more of me, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow me on Instagram and TikTok. If you or anyone you know, is in need of national hotlines, please go to truchrimeconnections.com. i have all the phone numbers there listed for anything that you could possibly imagine. All right. My renowned roots community, keep building hope and gaining strength. Until next time.