Speaker 1: Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. I was seeing
Speaker 1: kids coming in with chess pain. I was seeing kids
Speaker 1: with autoimmune disease just off the charts, and you know,
Speaker 1: most of these kids were black and brown kids, and
Speaker 1: I just didn't believe the myth that somehow these people
Speaker 1: are sicker, or because they're low income they're sicker. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what if we're all the same and these kids are
Speaker 1: not fundamentally broken, but they're showing a normal biological response
Speaker 1: to a harmful experience. Hello, Hello, Hello everyone, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. Today I
Speaker 1: am really excited and nervous to be talking to the
Speaker 1: Surgeon General of California. And the reason I'm so nervous
Speaker 1: but also excited is because this person's work has really
Speaker 1: illuminated and helped explain a lot of what has been
Speaker 1: going on with me my whole life. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: my therapist said to me, you should go to this
Speaker 1: website and take this quiz and find out your asist scored.
Speaker 1: I'm like, ACES, what are you talking about? And she said,
Speaker 1: ACES is an acronym for adverse childhood experiences. Adverse childhood
Speaker 1: experiences can have effects on us throughout our lives, not
Speaker 1: only in terms of our mental health and our behavioral capacities,
Speaker 1: but also our physical health. Toxic stress PTSD has health consequences.
Speaker 1: People with high ASIS scores have a higher rate of
Speaker 1: heart disease, diabetes, and more. The person who has brought
Speaker 1: the this research to the masses arguably is Surgeon General
Speaker 1: of California, doctor Nadine Burke Harris Nading Burke Harris is
Speaker 1: an award winning physician, researcher, and California's first ever Surgeon General.
Speaker 1: After graduating from Stanford, she turned down multiple job offers
Speaker 1: to work in the most underserved part of San Francisco,
Speaker 1: where she found at the Center for Youth Wellness, an
Speaker 1: organization leading the effort to advance pediatric medicine, raise public awareness,
Speaker 1: and transform the way society responds to children exposed to
Speaker 1: adverse childhood experiences, aces and toxic stress. Dr Burke Harris
Speaker 1: is ted talk how childhood trauma affects health across the
Speaker 1: lifetime has been viewed more than seven million times. Her
Speaker 1: book The Deepest Dwell Healing the long term effects of
Speaker 1: childhood adversity was called indispensable by The New York Times.
Speaker 1: Please enjoy my conversation with Dr Nadine Burke Harris. Hello,
Speaker 1: Dr Nadine Burke Harris, Welcome to the podcast. How are
Speaker 1: you feeling today? I'm feeling very well. Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be with you. I'm so excited
Speaker 1: to have you here. Can you for those folks out
Speaker 1: there who don't who aren't familiar with you and your work,
Speaker 1: can you, dispersed of all, tell them what ACES is
Speaker 1: and then then we can get some background on who
Speaker 1: you are. But can you tell them what ACES stands
Speaker 1: for and why it's important. Yeah. So, the term ACES,
Speaker 1: they stand for Adverse Childhood Experiences and they refer to
Speaker 1: ten categories of experiences of adversity that folks can have
Speaker 1: during their childhood. And it actually comes from this groundbreaking
Speaker 1: research study that was done by the CDC and Kaiser
Speaker 1: Permanente now over two decades ago, when they asked adults
Speaker 1: about their history of exposure to ten categories of adversity,
Speaker 1: and those included physical, emotional or sexual abuse, physical or
Speaker 1: emotional neglect, were growing up in a household where parent
Speaker 1: was mentally ill, substance dependent, incarcerated, where there was parental
Speaker 1: separation or divorce, or domestic violence. And what they found
Speaker 1: in this research study was number one, these aces were
Speaker 1: super common, right, and I think for for so many
Speaker 1: people who have had these experiences, they feel like they're
Speaker 1: the only one. And it turns out that two thirds
Speaker 1: of Americans have experienced at least one of these ten
Speaker 1: categories of average childhood experiences. But the second thing that
Speaker 1: they found was that the more of these that a
Speaker 1: person has exp varience, the more likely they are to
Speaker 1: have not just the things that I think many of
Speaker 1: us intuitively associate with child too trauma, so you know,
Speaker 1: things like depression or anxiety, mental health conditions or behavioral
Speaker 1: health conditions, substance dependence, suicidality, right, all of those things,
Speaker 1: but also heart disease, right, that's the number one killer
Speaker 1: in America. And the more aces a person has, the
Speaker 1: more likely they are to have heart disease, stroke, asthma, diabetes,
Speaker 1: all of these different health conditions. And what we now
Speaker 1: understand from the science and the research that has happened
Speaker 1: is that when we experience adversity and trauma as children,
Speaker 1: because children's brains and bodies are just developing. All of
Speaker 1: those stress hormones that are released during that adversity and
Speaker 1: trauma actually changes the way our brains and bodies are
Speaker 1: wired and can lead to an increased risk of different
Speaker 1: types of health conditions later on down the line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is the piece that that that hits me
Speaker 1: so hard. I was deeply triggered after I took the
Speaker 1: ACES test. I was deeply triggered afterwards. For folks out there,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to go to the website just google
Speaker 1: um number story dot org, thank you, and take the test,
Speaker 1: and I love the website has resources to just in
Speaker 1: case you are triggered, which is great, and we can
Speaker 1: talk about some of those. But for me taking the test,
Speaker 1: I was like, well, my was my mother really mentally
Speaker 1: ill when I think she had O c D And
Speaker 1: so there was just sort of hedging on some of
Speaker 1: the questions. Right when I've spoken about my mother and
Speaker 1: I have my mother was emotionally abusive, and I've spoken
Speaker 1: about this on the podcast before and we were in
Speaker 1: a great place now and we reconciled and healed together
Speaker 1: and it's beautiful. But they even when like no one's watching.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm sort of betraying my mother by
Speaker 1: like telling the truth to myself on an ASIS test. Right.
Speaker 1: So I think that's one of the things that gets
Speaker 1: in the way because you you know, when your TED Talk,
Speaker 1: you say that this is a public health crisis, and
Speaker 1: I still don't feel like there's a big conversation about
Speaker 1: adverse childhood experiences that I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: has to do with shame. It has to do with
Speaker 1: how difficult it is to confront this stuff. What do
Speaker 1: you think about that piece of it? Oh, there's so
Speaker 1: much in what you just said. I've been talking about
Speaker 1: this for a long time. Obviously the TED Talk I
Speaker 1: recorded in and it wasn't until when I wrote my
Speaker 1: book in ten did I ever publicly say anything about
Speaker 1: my own experience of growing up with a mom with
Speaker 1: a chronic mental health condition and talk about being worried
Speaker 1: about betraying your parents. Right, who my mom and I
Speaker 1: My mom is defined as by so many things, right,
Speaker 1: and she was very loving in many ways, but then
Speaker 1: also there were a lot of scary moments. And the
Speaker 1: piece of it that I find to be really important
Speaker 1: and related to your point of what you're saying about
Speaker 1: feeling triggered, which I think it's so good to recognize
Speaker 1: that because when when we are triggered, there's something there, right, like,
Speaker 1: there's something there where. We got to figure out what
Speaker 1: that's about. But for me, ultimately, this work, this information
Speaker 1: is all about healing. It's all about interrupting that intergenerational cycle.
Speaker 1: Because I one of the most profound experiences that I
Speaker 1: ever had was speaking at an onfrience for a bunch
Speaker 1: of young women who rushed up to me and they,
Speaker 1: you know, one young woman said to me, Dr Burke Harris,
Speaker 1: my ACE score is a nine, but my kids are three,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to make sure it stays that way, right,
Speaker 1: And what makes that possible is our ability to have
Speaker 1: a much broader national conversation about these topics, which requires
Speaker 1: us to feel safe in doing that, right, It requires
Speaker 1: some kind of normalizing and understanding that actually, you know,
Speaker 1: you can go back and look at the experience you
Speaker 1: had with whoever was the source of your ass But
Speaker 1: then you go back and say, well, what was the
Speaker 1: source of their aces? And you recognize there's no bad
Speaker 1: guy here, right, There's there's no bad guy. You just
Speaker 1: have a bunch of people who we're doing their best,
Speaker 1: their best with what they can and now what we're
Speaker 1: doing is opening up a conversation, having a dialogue and
Speaker 1: arming people with resources so that we can maybe do
Speaker 1: something different with what we've experienced. Right, And that's what
Speaker 1: number story is all about. It's about raising awareness and
Speaker 1: it's about arming people with resources to understand what does
Speaker 1: their aces mean for them and how do they find
Speaker 1: a path to healing. Absolutely, I love that. I gotta
Speaker 1: take a tea easy break here, but I'll be fast alright.
Speaker 1: Now that's all taken care of. That's get back to
Speaker 1: our chat. So what do you think is getting in
Speaker 1: the way of us having more protocols in place? You
Speaker 1: talk about best practices with children, and you introduce some
Speaker 1: of those at your clinic, and now you're a certain
Speaker 1: in general, what is getting in the way of us
Speaker 1: basically integrating mental health into you know, all of our
Speaker 1: healthcare practices and measuring these kinds of things so that
Speaker 1: we so we're doing asist test whenever people are going
Speaker 1: in for a physical or whatever. Girl, do you know
Speaker 1: that's what we're doing in California? Talk to me, tell me,
Speaker 1: tell me I didn't know this so here in California,
Speaker 1: we've launched an initiative. It's a hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: dollar initiative to train our healthcare clinicians on how to
Speaker 1: screen for advertge childhood experiences, how to assess for that
Speaker 1: toxic stress response, and how to respond with evidence based interventions.
Speaker 1: And we have given over fifty million dollars in grants
Speaker 1: to communities all over California to implement these practices. And
Speaker 1: I will tell you we have trained almost nineteen thousand
Speaker 1: health care clinician so far in California. Very exciting. This
Speaker 1: is world leading stuff. We are the first in the nation,
Speaker 1: first in the world to be doing something of this
Speaker 1: scope and scale. And I will tell you some of
Speaker 1: the difficulties that we have right Like, besides the fact
Speaker 1: that you and I can look at each other right
Speaker 1: now and know that there is not some amazing barrier
Speaker 1: in the neck, right that separates the head from the
Speaker 1: rest of the body, but somehow in medicine and in healthcare,
Speaker 1: we are like, Okay, there's mental health and there's the
Speaker 1: rest of traditional medicine, right, and they're totally separate, and
Speaker 1: they're financed differently. It's just very very separate and that
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense because that's not actually the way
Speaker 1: the body works. Right. The way the body works is
Speaker 1: that this is all integrated our mood, our mental health
Speaker 1: impacts our immune system. Think about our stress response and
Speaker 1: the way our stress response develops. Two of the main
Speaker 1: stress hormones that we have been most studied our adrenaline,
Speaker 1: which is a short term stress hormone, and that is
Speaker 1: the heart pounding. And then cortisol is thought of as
Speaker 1: more of a long term stress hormone. So you can
Speaker 1: imagine famine as something that was like a big stressor
Speaker 1: back in the day. What cortisol does. It increases your
Speaker 1: blood pressure, It increases your blood sugar. It tends to
Speaker 1: make people more aggressive. It affects your sleep, so it
Speaker 1: makes it hard to sleep. Right, All of these things
Speaker 1: to help you stay awake at night so you can
Speaker 1: hunt and eat any critters. And it um helps you
Speaker 1: conserve fat and store belly fat, right because it's a famine, right,
Speaker 1: you need need belly fat. And so all of these
Speaker 1: things are adaptive in an evolutionary standpoint, but in our
Speaker 1: day to day world, it's no longer a famine. Or
Speaker 1: for example, I give the example of your walking in
Speaker 1: a forest and you see a bear. It's not a
Speaker 1: bear in the woods that you have to fight and
Speaker 1: get away from. It's the bear coming home every night.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine the way the stress response works.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be that almost like a thermostat, where
Speaker 1: you have a set point, you experience a threat, you
Speaker 1: activate your stress response. It goes up, up, up, up up.
Speaker 1: When it's done its job, it turns itself off and
Speaker 1: you go back to normal. And that is the fight
Speaker 1: or flight response, and that's what we were designed to do.
Speaker 1: The problem is when we experience high doses of adversity,
Speaker 1: as specially in childhood, that stress thermostat can get a
Speaker 1: little haywire, right, and so we activate our stress response
Speaker 1: and it goes up, up, up, up up, and then
Speaker 1: it stays there right. It doesn't turn itself off, or
Speaker 1: or it gets triggered for teeny tiny things. So it's
Speaker 1: either being activated much more frequently, or it has a
Speaker 1: very hard time turning itself off. I think I'm the ladder, well,
Speaker 1: the ladder, it doesn't turn it doesn't turn off, So
Speaker 1: I'm just it's always heightened. I never feel safe, and
Speaker 1: then I just and I give out and I'm fatigued
Speaker 1: that I'm like, of course, I'm exhausted. That's but that's
Speaker 1: right because that actually it takes a ton of energy
Speaker 1: to do that, And if you were in an environment
Speaker 1: of constant threat, that would be adaptive. But now your
Speaker 1: body is wired that way, right, and it keeps going
Speaker 1: even if there isn't an immediate threat. And this is
Speaker 1: actually something that's really really important to me and toxic stress,
Speaker 1: this prolonged activation of the stress response. And when I
Speaker 1: first started talking about this, honestly, the place I got
Speaker 1: them a lot of flak, like a surprising amount of
Speaker 1: pushback was from mental health clinicians and they were like,
Speaker 1: stay in your lane. You're a pediatrician, why are you
Speaker 1: talking about this? What do you think that was about? Oh?
Speaker 1: You know, I think honestly, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people didn't fully know and understand the science. So when
Speaker 1: I learned about this, because what really brought me into
Speaker 1: this work was I was running a clinic in Bay
Speaker 1: View Hunters Point in San Francisco. This is one of
Speaker 1: the hardest neighborhoods in the city, and I was seeing
Speaker 1: child after child after child. Most of my patients were
Speaker 1: experiencing high doses of adversity and it was impacting their health.
Speaker 1: I was seeing it in asthma, but I was seeing
Speaker 1: kids come in with chess pain. I was seeing kids
Speaker 1: with autoimmune disease just off the charts. And you know,
Speaker 1: most of these kids were black and brown kids. And
Speaker 1: I just didn't believe the myth that somehow these people
Speaker 1: are sicker or because their low income they're sicker. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what if we're all the same, and what's happening is
Speaker 1: that these children are being poisoned by what's happening to them, right, Like,
Speaker 1: what if these kids are not fundamentally broken, but they're
Speaker 1: showing a normal biological response to a harmful experience. I
Speaker 1: started researching that, and then I started looking into okay,
Speaker 1: so if we understand this and we see the a
Speaker 1: science and we know all of this, what do we
Speaker 1: do about it. I didn't learn this in medical school.
Speaker 1: I didn't learn this in residency. I never learned how
Speaker 1: to treat this. And so I'm like, well, good thing,
Speaker 1: this is medicine, right, Because if doctors were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we did learned it before, so we're never gonna do
Speaker 1: anything about it, it's unsolvable. Where would we be right
Speaker 1: now with COVID, where would we be right now with HIV?
Speaker 1: Like we can respond to new challenges for stuff we
Speaker 1: didn't know before. So that was the whole thing. I
Speaker 1: started an organization to really do this research and find
Speaker 1: this out this information, the Center for Youth Wellness, And
Speaker 1: that was really how I approached this was just like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so what is the biology behind it? Because if we
Speaker 1: know the biology, we can treat that. And that's what
Speaker 1: we started doing in my clinic and we learned a lot.
Speaker 1: We learned a lot from other experts around the world,
Speaker 1: and then we developed some clinical protocols for how to
Speaker 1: screen for adverse childhood experiences and how to respond look
Speaker 1: at the best evidence of how do you calm down
Speaker 1: an overactive stress response, and a lot of the things
Speaker 1: that you've been talking about meditation, regular exercise, nutrition and
Speaker 1: even more like getting even more point like anti inflammatory diet.
Speaker 1: You know, so certain pieces are really key. Now we're
Speaker 1: seeing data coming out about experiencing nature, right like they
Speaker 1: put e e g s on people and had them
Speaker 1: walk through the city and then had them walk through nature,
Speaker 1: and they see that being in like dense urban environments
Speaker 1: activates the fight or flight response more and being in beautiful,
Speaker 1: calm nature actually stimulates more the parasympathetic and it calms
Speaker 1: down the fight or flight response. All of these things.
Speaker 1: And my thing because I'm a hardcore science nerd, Like
Speaker 1: science is mine. The story you tell about your father
Speaker 1: is just it's so fantastic, and like Dr Nadieberg Harris
Speaker 1: is definitely a nerd. Yeah, so I'll say my my
Speaker 1: for those who don't know, So my dad's my dad's
Speaker 1: a biochemist and my mom is a nurse. And even
Speaker 1: though I have four brothers, none of the other of
Speaker 1: them went into science. But when we were kids, man,
Speaker 1: my dad, if there was something going on, my dad
Speaker 1: would break it down into science. Like he'd see us
Speaker 1: throwing paper airplanes at each other. And instead of your
Speaker 1: standard parent being like stop that, you'll poke an eye out,
Speaker 1: my dad, you know, measure the timing of the flight
Speaker 1: and the wind resistance and gravity's nine point eight meters
Speaker 1: per second squared, like what's the lift under the wings?
Speaker 1: Like that was Basil Burke. So I definitely learned to
Speaker 1: see everything in the world through a scientific lens. And
Speaker 1: then when I became Surgeon General of California. When Governor
Speaker 1: Newsom appointed me, one of the things that he said
Speaker 1: is that we are looking for someone who can take
Speaker 1: an upstream approach, someone who can tackle aces and toxic stress.
Speaker 1: Like he said it specifically. And I just have to
Speaker 1: tell you this because it means so much to me.
Speaker 1: When I started, I got a ton of heat. People
Speaker 1: were saying, you can't screen for aces, and you can't
Speaker 1: do it because if there's not a therapist for every
Speaker 1: single person who screams positive, it's irresponsible. It's all of
Speaker 1: the above. And why were they did they say was irresponsible?
Speaker 1: What was the logic there? People said, you shouldn't screen
Speaker 1: for something that you cannot treat, right. People assume like, well,
Speaker 1: aces happened in the past, and you can't fix what
Speaker 1: happened in the past, So what are you doing? And
Speaker 1: I said, okay, But the point of doing an a
Speaker 1: screen is to understand whether that patient likely has that
Speaker 1: prolonged activation of the stress response, because that is imminently treatable,
Speaker 1: and that, ladies and gentlemen, is science. The National Academies
Speaker 1: of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine release the consensus report in
Speaker 1: saying that toxic stress is treatable. The point is to
Speaker 1: find out how their body is reacting and whether or
Speaker 1: not that may put them at risk for a health
Speaker 1: conditions that if we intervene and help to regulate that
Speaker 1: stress response, we can prevent those health conditions. Right, And
Speaker 1: the whole notion that this is not treatable is just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It's just ridiculous. And that is why I'm so excited
Speaker 1: to bring evidence and medicine and science to bear against
Speaker 1: something that, by the way, two thirds of Americans have
Speaker 1: experienced at least one ACE. This has to be a
Speaker 1: national priority, absolutely, and so what I'm so exciting about
Speaker 1: what you're doing here in California is giving everyone access
Speaker 1: to a level of care that we all deserve because
Speaker 1: we all are thort of dealing with this toxic stress
Speaker 1: in one way or another. And then I wonder if
Speaker 1: there is because when I think about public health, and
Speaker 1: I think about where we are with COVID, what's happened
Speaker 1: over the past year with mask and vaccines, and you're
Speaker 1: saying your tip talk, we know how to treat a
Speaker 1: public health is right, and we identify it and we
Speaker 1: know what to do. You know, people don't smoke on
Speaker 1: airplanes anymore. But like right now people are fighting mask
Speaker 1: on airplanes, like you know, so do you feel I
Speaker 1: mean like there's a resistance and what would that resistance
Speaker 1: be about? I feel like underneath it is a shame
Speaker 1: around mental health. And then I wonder if there is
Speaker 1: in the health care industry, if we are dealing with
Speaker 1: people's stress, with with mindfulness, with meditation, with better nutrition,
Speaker 1: than the sort of profit motives of medicating everything are diminished.
Speaker 1: And you know that, I'm not a conspiracy theorists, but like,
Speaker 1: I think about what gets in the way often, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have two answers to that. So Number one, some
Speaker 1: of the biggest resistance doesn't come from patients, right Doctors say, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't screen my patients will not you know, won't
Speaker 1: like it. And the truth is, the patients all by
Speaker 1: and large, vastly appreciate it. It's the doctors who are
Speaker 1: terrified because they're afraid of opening Pandora's box. They're afraid
Speaker 1: they don't know what to do with the information when
Speaker 1: it comes out. And I think that's an understandable fear
Speaker 1: and the way that we respond in medicine, and this
Speaker 1: is why we stood up such a robust initiative in
Speaker 1: California is because we trained doctors to do everything that
Speaker 1: they do. We trained doctors to cut people open, take
Speaker 1: out their organs, and then sew them back up again.
Speaker 1: We can't train doctors to ask them questions safely, right
Speaker 1: we can. We can. People are right in saying, hey,
Speaker 1: if I'm going to do this as part of my
Speaker 1: as part of screening in physical exams, which is what
Speaker 1: we are doing in California, I need to have the training.
Speaker 1: I need to have the resources, I need to have
Speaker 1: the guidance. I need to have people who know what
Speaker 1: they're doing, who have done this before, who tell me
Speaker 1: how to do it safely. And that's what we're doing
Speaker 1: in California. So for example, we are going to do
Speaker 1: it really rigorously and provide trade and provide guidance and
Speaker 1: all of that. So that's one piece that's important. I
Speaker 1: think the other piece around the pharmacological treatment. I'm going
Speaker 1: to say something that is going to surprise a lot
Speaker 1: of people, which is that when it comes to treating HIV,
Speaker 1: for example, we know how HIV spread, we know all
Speaker 1: that stuff, and so we know, like, oh, hey, if
Speaker 1: you want to prevent it use a conduct. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we know that, but we still developed anti retrovirals and
Speaker 1: that made a really big difference for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And those were drugs, right. So I don't have any
Speaker 1: interest in saying that there's no room for pharmacotherapy here,
Speaker 1: because if there was a medication that helped to regulate
Speaker 1: the stress response for someone who had a disregulated stress response,
Speaker 1: I would commit if it was healing. From my patients,
Speaker 1: the problem that we have was what I was seeing
Speaker 1: in my clinic, which is that we weren't accurately diagnosing
Speaker 1: the problem. We'd see all these kids and be like,
Speaker 1: you've got a d h D. Here's some rittlin. Rittlin
Speaker 1: is a stimulant. If you have an overactive stress response,
Speaker 1: Rittlin is likely to not help you. Okay, Okay, well
Speaker 1: your behavior still didn't get better, so we put you
Speaker 1: on antipsychotic. This, Charlotte is not psychotic. I'd see kids
Speaker 1: on five different psychotropic medications, and my problem was, as
Speaker 1: a field, we did not have the training to know
Speaker 1: what we're treating, which is this disregulation of the stress response.
Speaker 1: And the treatment is several fold. Number one is to
Speaker 1: reduce the dose of adversity and stress. Right, when a
Speaker 1: kid has lead poisoning, first thing is figure out where
Speaker 1: the lead is coming from and get rid of it
Speaker 1: right mitigated. So what are you gonna have some specific
Speaker 1: things that parents can do? Oh my god, my child
Speaker 1: has a high ASIS score? What can I do to
Speaker 1: reduce that level of toxic stress for parents out there?
Speaker 1: A couple of things I saw all the time in
Speaker 1: my clinical practice. Mom's bringing in a child, right, and
Speaker 1: you've got a person who maybe dad's been laying hands
Speaker 1: on for quite some time, and mom thinks, oh, he's
Speaker 1: hurting me, but he's not hurting my child. So I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna separate. And I have seen so many parents
Speaker 1: who have been willing, once they understand the harm that
Speaker 1: it actually is physically damaging their child's brain and body
Speaker 1: to witness that domestic violence, are willing to do for
Speaker 1: their child what they were not able to do for themselves.
Speaker 1: For example, man, I had a dad who took care
Speaker 1: of his kids, and this dad had issues with substance dependence,
Speaker 1: he had PTSD, he had, you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff going on. And he said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: am realizing now how all this stuff is affecting my kids,
Speaker 1: because obviously I was this doctor, so I'm saying, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: these things it's not you're doing your stuff and you're
Speaker 1: it doesn't harm your kids because your your children witnessing it.
Speaker 1: And I saw this dad go to rehab, go to therapy,
Speaker 1: do his stuff, and bring his kids in for their
Speaker 1: appointment every week. So this one of the most important
Speaker 1: things for parents is if you're concerned about your child,
Speaker 1: one of the first things is to look at your
Speaker 1: own aces, look at your own mental health issues. And
Speaker 1: I will tell you my you know, my own experience
Speaker 1: was that my mom's mental health condition was untreated for many, many,
Speaker 1: many many years. And I will tell you schizophrenia is
Speaker 1: a treatable health condition. There is no reason she should
Speaker 1: have gone untreated for so many years. And she finally
Speaker 1: did get treatment, and again it was such a game changer.
Speaker 1: But I think for so long the shame and the stigma, yes, right,
Speaker 1: means that we don't acknowledge what's going on, we don't
Speaker 1: deal with it for ourselves, and we kind of try
Speaker 1: to sweep it under the rug. And we have to
Speaker 1: let go of the shame and stigma. We have to
Speaker 1: let go of the shaman sama around. Mental health issues
Speaker 1: is the health issue just like anything else that is crucial, crucial, crucial.
Speaker 1: It's time for a short break when we come back
Speaker 1: more with our guest. Alrighty, then let's just dive right
Speaker 1: back in. I want to stay it for myself as
Speaker 1: an adult, even though I don't have a child that
Speaker 1: I need to be there for and get myself healthy for.
Speaker 1: How do I, as as an adult look at the
Speaker 1: inner child inside me and say, you deserve to have
Speaker 1: fewer adverse experiences. So for the people I think who
Speaker 1: don't have kids, who are struggling, but this is an adult, Like,
Speaker 1: what is that self compassion look like? Yeah? So one
Speaker 1: of the pieces that I saw over and over again
Speaker 1: when I was taking treating my patients and especially my teenagers,
Speaker 1: I would say, oh, because of what you've experienced, your
Speaker 1: body maybe releasing more stress mormones than it should and
Speaker 1: it can look and feel like being quick to anger,
Speaker 1: or having trouble controlling your impulses all that stuff, And
Speaker 1: like almost every time the response I would get is, oh,
Speaker 1: you mean I'm not crazy? And so that first step
Speaker 1: of that self compassion is to recognize, like, oh, you
Speaker 1: know what there's nothing wrong with me, Like, my body
Speaker 1: is responding in the way that our bodies were actually
Speaker 1: designed to respond to the types of things that I experienced,
Speaker 1: and there's something that I couldn't do about it. Right,
Speaker 1: So the meditation, the exercise. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I talk a lot about is having like a green, yellow,
Speaker 1: red chart. So green is like, hey, how do I
Speaker 1: feel when I'm in the green? Right, Green is I'm
Speaker 1: doing well, everything's going fine. And then yellow? What does
Speaker 1: yellow look like for me? I'm having trouble sleeping, my
Speaker 1: heart is racing, my thoughts become obsessive, my asthma is
Speaker 1: acting up, my blood sugar seems high, and I can't
Speaker 1: I'm having a hard time with managing my diet. Eaties,
Speaker 1: you figure out what that is, and then you say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: what's the plan. Okay, I'm gonna step up. I'm going
Speaker 1: to go from my meditation once a day to twice
Speaker 1: a day. I'm going to reach out to these trusted
Speaker 1: folks in my life who I know are there and
Speaker 1: be like, girl, let's get together, it's time, you know,
Speaker 1: and get extra good on the nutrition. Cut out the
Speaker 1: inflammatory foods. Right, We're gonna really keep it tight to
Speaker 1: tune us back in. What if you do that and
Speaker 1: you still go into the red? What does red look like?
Speaker 1: Red might look like thoughts of self harm. Red might
Speaker 1: look like, you know, really really bad asthma and being hospitalized,
Speaker 1: And then what do you do with the red? Talk
Speaker 1: to your doctor, talk to your therapist. We're hearing more
Speaker 1: and more about people like Naomi Osaka, right tennis star,
Speaker 1: who said, you know what, I don't know if she
Speaker 1: was in the red or not, but she was like,
Speaker 1: this rex my mental health. I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: it for me, just like I'm actually doing everything I've
Speaker 1: chosen everything in my life. I'm not doing something I
Speaker 1: don't want to do. So like why am I sis stressed?
Speaker 1: And I think for me, a lot of it is
Speaker 1: just so hardwired, and it's just it's a habit for
Speaker 1: forty nine years. This is how I've responded, you know,
Speaker 1: And I've been talking about this for years as a
Speaker 1: as a trans person, as a as a black person,
Speaker 1: as a black trans person, Like I've never felt safe
Speaker 1: walking down the street. I feel like constantly under attack. Right,
Speaker 1: So that like that heightened you know, toxic stress thing
Speaker 1: is the habit in my nervous system that my body
Speaker 1: has to unlearn. So what I would say to that
Speaker 1: is that and this is why public health is so
Speaker 1: important and I'm so grateful to be in the role
Speaker 1: of California Surgeon General, is that you can do that
Speaker 1: individual work to unlearn that, and it's really really important
Speaker 1: for you to do that. But this is where public
Speaker 1: health comes in. We actually have to make it safe
Speaker 1: for you to walk down the street. There is a
Speaker 1: certain amount of when it comes to public health where
Speaker 1: you can't just ask the individual to do better, be better,
Speaker 1: do differently. Individual overcoming the situation, you have to change
Speaker 1: the structure of the society. Because if we didn't sanitize
Speaker 1: our water, and every time you turn on the tap
Speaker 1: came a whole pile of E. Coli telling you to like,
Speaker 1: oh well, just you know, see if you can get
Speaker 1: better from another bout of Cholorado is not okay. We
Speaker 1: as a society have an obligation to sanitize the watermen.
Speaker 1: We have an obligation to reduce the sources of adversity,
Speaker 1: and that is a PubL look health thing. No individual
Speaker 1: is going to do that, and that's why public policy matters. Amen,
Speaker 1: Thank you, so much for saying that, because I I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here in all the beautiful privilege of my life,
Speaker 1: just working my ass off to be psychologically and emotionally well.
Speaker 1: But then there's still a world where it's not safe
Speaker 1: for me, even as a celebrity, as a black trans woman,
Speaker 1: to walk down the street and know that I can
Speaker 1: get home safely. We have to have those public policies.
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful you said, And I think that's
Speaker 1: the point of this podcast for everyone out there who's listening,
Speaker 1: who is struggling, because a lot of us are struggling.
Speaker 1: Racism is an adverse experience, adversity, sexism, misogyny, transphobia, being
Speaker 1: poor in America, that's living in a world where people
Speaker 1: are anti immigrants. These are adversities that affect our mental health,
Speaker 1: that make people hyper vision and release cortisol. And injustice
Speaker 1: is stressful as fuck. In justice, it's stressful as fun,
Speaker 1: it's post stressing, it's killing keeps killing us. So so
Speaker 1: that is actually right, And that is why I am
Speaker 1: a science warrior, because our ability to make public policy
Speaker 1: is determined by the strength of the science. When we
Speaker 1: figured out that lead was neurotoxic, right, and caused irreversible
Speaker 1: neurologic damage. The basis of that science was the basis
Speaker 1: of removing lead out of gasoline, out of paint, out
Speaker 1: of pipes. And I'll tell you none of those industries
Speaker 1: liked it. No one was like, oh yeah, I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to spend more money to do something different. What for
Speaker 1: public health and public safety? And this is why one
Speaker 1: of my still to this day proudest moments was reading
Speaker 1: the ruling from the federal court that enjoined the Trump
Speaker 1: administration against their policy of separating children from their parents
Speaker 1: at the border, when they said, you know what, that
Speaker 1: policy is illegal. On page thirteen of that ruling, it says,
Speaker 1: the science shows that this leads to toxic stress. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's what we're talking about, right. This is
Speaker 1: why the way that we do this, the rigor with
Speaker 1: which we do this, the science that we bring to
Speaker 1: it matters, because on the basis of science, we can
Speaker 1: make policy. And what the science tells us is exactly
Speaker 1: what you just said, is that trauma is damaging to
Speaker 1: our brains and bodies, and it leads to health problems,
Speaker 1: physical and mental and behavioral. And you know what, for
Speaker 1: the people who really don't care about whether you feel
Speaker 1: included and safe in our environment. Maybe they will care
Speaker 1: about the trillions of dollars that we are spending on
Speaker 1: healthcare for treating trauma related health conditions. I published a
Speaker 1: paper last year to show for the state of California alone,
Speaker 1: the cost of adverse childhood experiences from just eight health
Speaker 1: conditions is a hundred and twelve billion dollars per year.
Speaker 1: So this is a public health imperative and creating safe
Speaker 1: and inclusive communities and environments. It's not just a matter
Speaker 1: of liberal values or conservative values or anything. It is
Speaker 1: a matter of public health. It is a matter of
Speaker 1: life or death, and it is a matter of economic
Speaker 1: viability for our nation. Um. I thank you so much
Speaker 1: for your work. I probably get talk to you all day,
Speaker 1: But do you have anything else you want to say?
Speaker 1: Before I asked my last question just for anyone who
Speaker 1: wants to learn more about their own aces. The powerful
Speaker 1: thing about the number story website is that you know,
Speaker 1: no two people have the same response, right. No two
Speaker 1: people who have experienced three aces experienced it the same way.
Speaker 1: And that's why the story is equally as important as
Speaker 1: the number, right, And so that that's the piece that
Speaker 1: is so beautiful. And I think that now that we
Speaker 1: are armed with this information, we have the power to
Speaker 1: write how our story turns out. I believe fundamentally that
Speaker 1: we have the power to transform this world, and we
Speaker 1: do it one conversation at a time. I love that
Speaker 1: so much. The last question I was ask all my
Speaker 1: guests is what else is true for you? And this
Speaker 1: comes from my therapeutic practice community resiliency model and the
Speaker 1: idea of both. And even though there may be anxiety
Speaker 1: and one part of our body, another part of our
Speaker 1: body might be neutral and positive, and we can focus
Speaker 1: on that, then we can exist in a place of both.
Speaker 1: And so when you know when you are struggling and
Speaker 1: things are rough for you, Dr Nadine Vick Harris, what
Speaker 1: helps you get through? What else is true for you?
Speaker 1: I would say what else is true for me is
Speaker 1: I think a recognition of my own vulnerability is what
Speaker 1: makes me strong and resilience. Because then I put into
Speaker 1: place very mindfully the scaffolding, the infrastructure, the supports that
Speaker 1: will keep me going and doing this for a really
Speaker 1: long time, which was I think a big way that
Speaker 1: this this research and this science was very helpful in
Speaker 1: my own life, because I think before that I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm strong, I don't need blah blah blah, and it's
Speaker 1: it was exacting, it was exactly the opposite. I love that.
Speaker 1: As a burnet brown stand Bernet says that vulnerability is
Speaker 1: can scarce, but it's our greatest source of strength, and
Speaker 1: it is our The best measure of courage is our
Speaker 1: ability to be vulnerable. Thank you so much, Dr Nadine
Speaker 1: burg Harris. I'm deeply honored. You don't even know how
Speaker 1: honored I am to be having this conversation with you.
Speaker 1: I'm deeply moved by your work. Your work has really
Speaker 1: changed my life in really important ways. Even though I'm
Speaker 1: still struggling, knowing that there is a way out because
Speaker 1: of your work, it's it gives me a lot of hope.
Speaker 1: It's I guess my. What else is true in this
Speaker 1: moment is that there are brilliant, incredible, empathetic, compassionate healthcare
Speaker 1: workers who are Actually you're a certain general of our
Speaker 1: state and you are making a difference in a beautiful way.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for spending this time with me.
Speaker 1: Oh it's my joy. Thank you, Oh my god. Dr
Speaker 1: Nating burg Harris. There is a sense of purpose to
Speaker 1: the work that she does that is beyond her, which
Speaker 1: I think is just all of what we should all be,
Speaker 1: you know, working towards and if we invite in the
Speaker 1: information and then do the work to reduce toxic stress
Speaker 1: in our lives. This feels game changing to me because
Speaker 1: it feels like it's deeply connected to For me personally,
Speaker 1: I don't ever feel safe, and there has been incredible
Speaker 1: improvement in my life. But the heart wiring of safety,
Speaker 1: the heart wiring of trauma responses in my body, that's
Speaker 1: starting when I was a child. When Dr nadin Burg
Speaker 1: Harres said that this starts in childhood and affects the
Speaker 1: way our brains developed, affects the ways our immune system
Speaker 1: to develop, it's like I can be a lot easier
Speaker 1: all myself. I think I'm so emotional lized with that
Speaker 1: conversation because it's like I think I should have it
Speaker 1: figured out, and it's okay that I don't. Oh number story,
Speaker 1: Google number story, go to the website. It's okay to
Speaker 1: go and take the test, and you're not crazy when
Speaker 1: it feels overwhelming, like it's too much, that's just a
Speaker 1: biological response to what's happened to you and you can
Speaker 1: survive it. M Thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 1: Laverne Cox Show. Please rate reviews, subscribe and share with
Speaker 1: everyone you know. Join me next week for my conversation
Speaker 1: with New York Times bestselling author, researcher, and lecturer Dr
Speaker 1: Joe Dispenser. He uses the latest scientific studies to learn
Speaker 1: how meditation affects the brain and body. Dr Joe has
Speaker 1: developed a way for people to heal their bodies, make
Speaker 1: significant changes in their lives, and manifest their dreams. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox
Speaker 1: and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time,
Speaker 1: stay in the Last. The Laverne Cox Show is a
Speaker 1: production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio.
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