Episode 11 – Sex and posttraumatic stress injury — with Dr. Candice Monson

MIND BEYOND THE MISSION EPISODE 11: SEX AND POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS INJURY WITH DR. CANDICE MONSON

Laryssa

Brian, here we are again recording another podcast episode. It’s always exciting. I don’t know about you, but I always have a little bit of nerves and such before we launch into it.

Brian

When I first met our guest, it was actually two days before I got hired for this job. I wasn’t allowed to actually tell anyone that I got hired for the job. I did a podcast with her probably three years ago now, and also that day, joined the new team. It’s like, “Who are you?” “I’m just a guy. Don’t worry about it.” I’ll always remember those two things coming together.

Laryssa

Awesome. I’m very excited that today we have with us Dr. Candice Monson. As I was preparing a bit of an introduction, I don’t even know where to start, Candice. Candice is a Professor of Psychology at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is an author, a researcher, an innovator with things such as cognitive behavioural conjoint therapy (CBCT), which we may touch on today, as well as Nellie Health. She is really a foremost expert on traumatic stress, and she’s here today, which is awesome. It could almost be a little bit intimidating having this conversation with you.

I think I’ve told you before that I’m a bit of a fangirl and appreciate the work that you do. You’ve always made me feel very valued in my lived experience. I very much appreciate that. When I first met you or heard you speak, I attended a conference years ago, and it left such an impression on me. You were one of the first people, whether it would be a clinician, an academic, a researcher, a professional, talk about the importance of including Families in the recovery journey for people with posttraumatic stress injury. I was just so excited and appreciative about that.

Just before we go too much further in, Brian, I’m going to hand it over to you in a second, but I just want to take a minute, if I can. If you guys can indulge me, I want to thank my spouse, Steve. He’s always supported the work that I do. In the podcast I talk a lot about our experiences and his experience in particular, and just really appreciate his willingness to let our experience as individuals and as a couple, as a Family, to talk about that in a public forum. He’s not here, I get to say whatever I want to say about him. I just wanted to thank him because today — and it was funny, Brian, because I approached Steve letting him know what we’re talking about and said, “Hey Steve, just letting you know that Brian and I are going to be talking about intimacy!” (laughs) so here we are. Yes, Brian?

Brian

Yes, Candice, when we first met and had a chat a long time ago, it was pretty apparent to me that you care about this community. Maybe we can start there. When we’re looking at our work and who we’re going to work with and partner with, there are lots of tests to see how we get there. Mine is to try to get a sense of if they actually know who these people are and want to work with them. You do. So welcome to the show, why don’t you give people a little bit of a background as to who you are?

Dr. Candice Monson

Sure. Thank you, Brian and Laryssa. It really is a pleasure to be here because you are two standouts in this community. To be invited to come and talk with you about such a great topic that I feel like is not talked about enough is such a pleasure. I’m very excited about our time together. What got me interested in this area, and I’m now almost 30 years into this gig, is that from the largest part of the funnel is the idea of people transforming.

In the case of people having experienced trauma and then coming out the other side and watching that transformation and being gifted, I truly feel like it’s a gift to be let into people’s lives about some of the most intimate, sometimes humiliating, shame-producing, terrifying kinds of experiences. Then to walk with them alongside them as a co-traveller in that journey is incredibly important.

Then I would say, specifically in terms of the military, Veteran, first responder population, there is something for me that’s very compelling about service. To give yourself over for your country, for your fellow Canadian or American, or whatever country to serve, in order to protect democracy and to protect our rights, that’s at a very philosophical level, it’s very moving for me. I think that population gets put in some of the most precarious situations in terms of the puzzles to unravel. I think that’s why 30 years later, I’m still doing this and feel so compelled by the work I do and love what I do.

Brian

You mentioned earlier in that, Candice, you mentioned transition. I’ll tell you an interesting transition is that 10 years ago, I used to be training platoons of infantrymen. What on earth am I doing on the air talking about intimacy? When Laryssa and I first talked about not just this episode, but the podcast as a whole, the whole idea was to be a little bolder and discuss the things no one actually talks about, but talks about in whispers, and this is it.

We had the courage to have this conversation. Even then, it has still taken us about a year to put pen to paper, and now microphone to our faces, and actually do it. Even though you’re giving us some credit, and we’re saying we want to do this, we’re hesitant to have the discussion. Let’s maybe go into that. Is it taboo? Is it just this, we’re taking the veil off here? At the end of the day, I think I have a statement to make which is, intimacy gets beaten up by mental health issues. It just gets kicked around. I wonder if bringing that into the light can make it any better.

Candice

I think that’s such an important idea, getting it out of the shadows in terms of de-stigmatizing it and being able to have some conversations about it because even in therapy, people are reluctant to talk about it and believe it or not, therapists are reluctant to ask about it. It comes up more frequently in the context of couple therapy. Sex and intimacy is a major part of who we are as humans, but yet, we tend not to talk about it.

I think it’s — and to be honest, it’s especially true in North America for a variety of reasons that we could talk about, but gets very disrupted with mental health. Especially when people have been traumatized because by its very nature, a lot of traumas occur at the hands of other people. Intimacy is a very intrusive… positively intrusive, but it’s still intrusive. You can imagine how it can get disrupted and a lot of symptoms of various disorders can interfere with intimacy, and then some of the treatments that we use biologically also interfere with intimacy.

Laryssa

Yes, and that’s something — I just wanted to be clear that I think a lot of people assume when we use the word intimacy, we’re talking about sex.

Brian

Only.

Laryssa

The physicality — only, exactly. I think all of us, as we prepped for this, acknowledged and just want to let our listeners in on that backstory that we’re talking about intimacy and yes, absolutely, sex is an important part of it. But I think the sense of connection, I think that’s where my mind goes to when I speak about intimacy.

Brian

And not avoiding each other, actually being in each other’s space and being comfortable with it.

Laryssa

Yes, I’m intrigued by a little bit of what you’re talking about. How many things around mental health, both on the part of the person with the diagnosis, but also on the supporter side, all of the various factors that come in to impact intimacy. Maybe there’s loss of trust, maybe there’s loss of self-worth for someone. What do you see in particular as some of the things that impact intimacy when it comes to Veterans and mental health specifically?

Candice

Yes, for sure. Two things I want to go back and touch back to and then we’ll go forward. I do think it’s really important, the point you made about thinking about intimacy as a multidimensional construct. When I say that, meaning there’s just all kinds of different intimacy. There’s even, if you want to get really broad, there’s the intimacy of standing in a store at the self-checkout next to someone. We’re in proximity and in connection even in those cases. We’re in connection and intimacy with our kids or with our intimate partner, with our friends. I think it’s a really good point. There’s physical, there’s emotional, there’s even cognitive intimacy.

There are people who actually are turned on and feel close to people because of their intellect. Say, being sapiosexual, for example. There are so many different dimensions to intimacy and what makes us feel connected to people. I think that’s a really good point. Going forward to your question, I think there are so many different mental health symptoms that can interfere with connection and intimacy. Just taking two, for example, to illustrate, I think anxiety. If you think about anxiety as a heightened fight or flight response, so your body feels like there’s some threat… when we are feeling threatened and we’re anxious, evolutionarily, our bodies, our minds, our emotions are not designed to connect. We’re in a space of figuring out what could be threatening. That can interfere then with the sexual response cycle, for example, in all kinds of ways. It can interfere with even feeling like you want to get close to anyone. It can interfere with being able to get an erection or to have vaginal lubrication because your head’s in a different place, just as a couple examples. If you’re feeling under threat, you probably aren’t having discussions with people revealing yourself because you think something’s coming at you that could be dangerous.

Another example would be with depression. If you’re feeling low mood, you’re going to be less motivated. Things are going to feel less gratifying to you. It’s hard to enjoy things that were once pleasurable. That’s just a couple of examples of how the most common mental health conditions can interfere. I think it’s really important. While Laryssa said the term “supporter,” I do want to say that sometimes supporters have their own mental health issues too.

We are talking about Veterans, but in their own right, the loved ones of those with conditions also have their own mental health challenges that might interfere with their ability to have emotional and physical and cognitive closeness. I think we have to think about how everyone in that system is coming together to dance around intimacy. Intimacy, even if you’re healthy, is hard, let alone when you have these conditions.

Brian

You mentioned, Candice, that we’re not just talking about sex, but we absolutely are talking about it. One of the things that I think I’ve seen, especially speaking to male and female peers over the years, the systems that are out there understand the term, “erectile dysfunction.” When women have been coming forward and saying, “Physical sexual dysfunction for me, where’s that? Where’s there an understanding that we have this, too?” When I heard that the first time, I then heard a chorus from the rest of the room going, yes, exactly.

It was years into working with other Veterans before I’d actually realized that this is under understood, under needed, underserved, under everything. Is that common? Why are we there?

Candice

Yeah. Brian, good on you to bring that up. Just because I think one of the major reasons that there’s been more focus on male sexual dysfunction is because of the medications used to help with erectile dysfunction. We don’t have these obvious strategies that are biological. That’s not to say we don’t have strategies to help with sexual desire and sexual preparation for women. I think, societally, we probably live in a place where there’s a little bit more focus on that for men versus women.

The other thing I was thinking about as you were talking is absolutely both men and women have sexual assaults that can impact on sexual functioning. It’s only relatively more recent, and I say relatively more recent, that we’ve focused on these sexual assaults and brought light on that and how that can impact on people’s wanting to even get close to anyone when there’s that violation that can interfere with functioning. I want to just put a bold, underscore, highlight around the fact that all kinds of gendered people struggle with sexual and emotional functioning. It’s really important for us to address that for everyone, because it is a very human need that we all have.

Laryssa

I think I’d like to unpack some that we’re touching on a few different things. I think I’d just like to review them a little bit for people who might be listening about what potentially could be impacting intimacy in a relationship. We’ve talked a little bit about the symptoms of the diagnosis. Even, for example, someone with posttraumatic stress disorder, if they’re feeling hypervigilant or triggered, the other things are secondary on the list.

We talked about some of the symptoms of depression. We touched a little bit on people’s experiences and psychological impacts. If they’ve experienced sexual trauma of some kind, that can impact or impede it. Different types of trauma, I would imagine, can impact it. I am going to guess that there could be medication issues. Medications that folks take can impact intimacy. Whether it’s physical functioning incapacity, or even some folks have talked about feeling numb when they’re on medication, so that can inhibit it.

Then from the caregiver side, and thank you, Candice, for acknowledging and talking about that. That’s something Brian and I have chatted about over the year in building up to this, is how does that impact a relationship? When you are in a role where you feel you’re a caregiver for someone who is your intimate partner, it’s really hard to flip a switch back and forth. Now I’m the caregiver, now I’m the intimate partner, and we’re going to get jiggy with it… it’s hard to flip that.

Brian

I think of it as, whether it’s a romantic relationship or not, you’re at a peer level. That peer level, if I can call it that, when that becomes 80% caretaker and 20% patient, where’s the love? Where is it? I think it goes out the door with that relationship shift.

Laryssa

Maybe this is leading us to the next question for you, Candice. How can people, and maybe we’re going there really quickly, but there’s so much to talk about here. How can people regain intimacy when they find themselves in that space where there’s that disconnect? Whether it’s the physical intimacy or just — I think physical intimacy so much starts with that, “I just feel connected to you, I just want to spend time with you, I just want to be beside you.” To me, there’s an evolution there.

If people are feeling, yes, if they’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’… I’ve worked in two song lyrics so far, I’m pretty proud of myself.

Brian

Nice. Righteous Brothers I picked up on, by the way. Well done! (laughter)

Laryssa

Yes, do you have some thoughts on how people can take some steps towards finding each other again?

Candice

Yes. Funny, now I was like, okay, what clever song lyric can I —

Laryssa

Well, Let’s Talk About Sex is obvious.

Candice

That’s right, that’s right. How can we restore that? Ooh, there’s so many things. Two things I wanted to say while you were both speaking, one thing I neglected to say, but Laryssa, good on you that you mentioned is emotional numbing is one of the key culprits in not establishing intimacy. Just to talk about that for a second, sharing our thoughts and feelings with other people, whether it’s a romantic or not relationship is really what glues us to other people. It’s like the attachment cement for our connection to other people.

If you’re having a hard time even figuring out, “What am I feeling?” because I’m numb, either because I’m taking medications that numb me or by virtue of the disorder, the longer that posttraumatic stress disorder goes along, it’s like a cancer. It will kill your emotionality. It may be because you’re trying to get rid of the negative emotions, but you’re killing the positive too. In doing the diagnosis, oftentimes as a clinician I’ll say, “Tell me about the positive feelings you have. Are you able to feel connected, and experience love or joy with someone else?” It’s one of the most disabling parts of the disorder as it relates to intimacy. Thank you for underscoring that.

And also just to say the medication, specifically the SSRIs, so the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and the SNRIs (serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors), that class is particularly notorious for making it hard to have an orgasm, for example, and to numb people out. I think those are really good points. I also think that institutionally, it has been a little bit dangerous for us to use the term, “caregiver,” like the caregiver support program in the United States and to call people caregivers.

The system that’s happening in a Family may already set that up, but then now we’ve reified that’s your role, which I think it’s really important, even if that is what the institution is saying, that within a Family that wants to get well, is that there is, as Brian said, an egalitarian equal partnership and not one person that’s one down because you’re going to get parentified as the partner.

I know I didn’t answer your question, but I think anything that brings the functioning of the person who has mental health problems up, and if I was that therapist, is to really talk about how is your Family structured so that each of you are making contributions that are important to the Family? It starts there. It starts in those most basic ways. Brian, it sounds like you may have something you’re wanting to add on about that.

Brian

Oh, yes. Maybe this is my turn of “stump the doctor,” but I’m going to operationalize this a little bit because I think this will matter to the community. If this was World War II, the first time a soldier would see a woman would be a nurse when they got hurt. If this was World War II, your other exposure to women might be on leave. It’s no shock, then, that thousands of Canadian service men came home with brides that they’d either met that were nurses or they’d met while they were on leave in England. That was your exposure to women during conflict.

In Vietnam was the first time, really, that women and children started being weaponized. Suddenly, children were carrying bombs into trenches and things like that. Now in these urban conflicts that we see, particularly in asymmetrical warfare and in a warfare that doesn’t have another country as your opponent, but you have a non-state actor, a group, often your perpetrators are using women and children, using our morals against us. The victims are women and children.

The last major event I dealt with in Afghanistan had 17 people killed in it, and the vast majority of them were women. That is a new military experience to the human experience. Do you think that affects us when we come home, and now, even though it’s a woman that we know, that we love, that we have a history with, I’ve now seen women in a different light. Women can be the enemy now. Does that play out?

Candice

Yeah. No, that’s very interesting. I’ve never had someone articulate that, interesting, in 25 years, but it makes total sense.

Brian

Well, I don’t know that I’m right.

Candice

It would be a very hard thing to study rigorously, but from psychological theory, that would make sense, just that women represent different things. When you’ve had those kinds of experiences, children would represent things. I can tell you the closest thing I’ve seen is I’ve had patients who didn’t want to hold children, didn’t want to be around children, because they had been in situations where they had to harm children, like running a convoy and having to proceed. It makes sense, then, to extrapolate that it would be a — what’s interesting about it is suddenly you have, let’s just take women, and it has all kinds of associations. It has positive associations, but it has negative too. And so now it’s a complicated thing to interact with. That’s very interesting, Brian. Yeah, I can see how that would be a further complication to the story.

Laryssa

I think that touches on… we’ve spoken a little bit about depression, anxiety, PTSI, but I think moral injury has a factor as well. What the two of you have just been discussing somewhat might fall into moral injury. Something that I’ve found of interest is that, I alluded to it before, when a Veteran is struggling with moral injury in that sense of self-worth, and they have a hard time accepting themselves, “If I can’t love myself, how can I be worthy of someone else loving me?” When I did peer support in years prior, I would hear that from Family members saying, “I feel like my Veteran, my spouse, is pushing me away.”

And I think that can be reciprocated, I just want to be fair here, in that you touched on “caregiver,” and I very consciously use the term “supporter.” I bristle at the term “caregiver,” because it does put a responsibility, just by calling me a caregiver, there’s an onus and a responsibility there. I think if Family members have felt that they have been put in a caregiver role, maybe they’re experiencing compassion fatigue, and maybe they’re experiencing resentment. They might be putting a wall up. Yes, that’s what I was getting at.

I’m really appreciating this conversation because I wonder if couples who are struggling with intimacy, they might not have put consideration to all of these things. Maybe it’s the symptoms, maybe it’s the medication, maybe I need to do a check, where am I at with my feelings of resentment or self-worth or anything else? I think a lot of folks in a couple, when there’s a breakdown of intimacy, they think, “It’s me. It’s because I’m not attractive. It’s me. It’s because of all these other factors,” when really, there can be a lot of other contributing things to it.

Candice

Yes. There are so many things I could say.

Laryssa

I know, we could talk forever on this.

Candice

I love it. Oh, my God. Hopefully, this might be a series. I’m going to say something maybe controversial for the listenership. I even think supporters, like Veteran and supporters, Veterans also are supporting their spouses. Support goes both directions, right?

Laryssa

Hallelujah, yes.

Candice

If we’re aiming for health, if we’re aspiring for health and we are wanting to increase intimacy, two things that I think would be really important to think about as couples is, one is if there’s a high conflict, first things first, you do want to try to get high conflict down because that’s very deteriorating of wanting to be close to someone. Why would I reveal about myself if I think it’s going to be weaponized by my partner? In terms of, increasing intimacy of all kinds with anyone, you’ve got to work to get conflict down. I think that’s incredibly important.

I think the second thing that, I’m just thinking about the best tips I would have, high yield, low cost. The other one is something you said, Laryssa, which is the tendency to mind read, and all of us do it. Especially those we’re closest to, if it’s not going right, we all get in other people’s heads. We rarely mind read to the positive. We tend to mind read to the negative. We tend to not give our partners the benefit of the doubt. I think to whatever extent we can get conflict down, and mind reading, trying to be more agnostic with those that we love. When I say agnostic, meaning not assuming the worst or the best, but just, “I’m open-minded,” and then checking it out. For there to be able to be a dialogue. Then I’m going to bridge that back to your comment about moral injury. A lot of moral injuries have a lot of guilt and shame wrapped around them. What shame wants us to do is go underground. We don’t want to reveal about ourselves, because we’re ashamed. There’s a tendency to want to turtle, or ostrich. One of the best antidotes to shame is revealing oneself, and having someone not think we’re despicable. To the degree possible, for people who are having a lot of shame, for whatever it’s about, whether it’s a moral injury, or it’s shame regarding some behaviour that you’ve done, being able to shed light on it and have someone see you and still love and accept you is incredibly important in that healing process.

Brian

Anger versus resentment. I’d like to hear a little bit about that. I think there’s going to be arguments. Stuff’s going to happen. Things will come up.

Candice

Absolutely.

Brian

Then often there’s anger about that. In my opinion, and I’ve certainly walked this path myself, anger shows up, but give it some time and it dissipates. Resentment sticks a little bit more. There’s a lot of things like, I don’t want to tie everything to the deployment scenario, but it’s a pretty big scenario to tackle. When we go away, for example, and then we come home, or even when you go away and so much as doing a 20-year career, if you go to an event with your spouse, I’ve got the uniform, I’ve got the medals, everyone knows my rank, who I am. There’s a persona, whether you’re a private or a general, and then there’s “the spouse of.” I’d be resentful, let’s put it that way.

If this role was reversed and everywhere I went, I was introduced as being in this room because you’re attached to that person, I would resent being squished and buried under that. How about that? Is resentment stickier or worse in terms of intimacy than anger?

Candice

It’s interesting, because the thing that came to mind for some of your listeners who might struggle with substance use issues, resentment is apparently the number one offender for people of substance use. The desire to want to drink away resentment. The way I would think about anger is just as you describe it. It’s a bit of a, like can be a bit of a flash fire. We have our emotionality, that’s what makes us human. We have emotions. Resentment is entrenched anger. You tend to… people tend to feed resentment. You go over and over and over it, and then it gets just more entrenched and gets deep and ugly.

The best antidote to the scenario that you talked about, for the person who’s got the light shined on them is to share the light, that you’re not the plus one always. I think really good couples are good at shining light on their partner in a positive way and sharing the light to help combat that. But sure, you could have resentment of not feeling — and I think a lot of Veteran Families feel like that when they were active duty, and after the fact is like, “Well, I’m an afterthought to this scenario,” not appreciating how important Families are, which has been a part of what I’ve been trying to, for a number of years to say these people really matter in their own right, but also to fulfill your operational, organizational needs and also in terms of like the rehab and recuperation after the fact.

Brian

I think one of the things in my role here is not just on this podcast, but at the Atlas Institute, is just trying to remind people of how the day job creeps into every aspect of your life. I’ll give you an example of what I’m speaking about here, is when that person you’re with, that intimate partner is about to go away and do a job for six, seven, eight months, there’s your spouse leaving, there’s your partner leaving. When they come back, you might be in a situation where you’ve got to go and be intimate with the person who just bombed ISIS, be intimate with the person that for the last seven months has been calling airstrikes on the Taliban, be intimate with a sniper who’s just been working in Mosul, Iraq.

Is there some part of that comes into play? And I’m not questioning whether our partners love us, care about us. What I’m asking is, does the nastiness of the day job, does that come into the bedroom?

Candice

Oh, it certainly can, for sure. Honestly, I just had a session with a police officer talking about their job and feeling like there’s creep. In this case, it was like how [they were] interacting with [their] kid. But yes, of course, for all of us not to bring our day job home into our closest relationship is a struggle. One of the things I think is really important is taking care of ourselves as individuals. There is the piece of us interacting with each other, which is the focus of today in intimacy of all kinds. We all have a personal responsibility to take care of ourselves individually too.

I was talking with this particular officer about doing the “have-to’s.” You’ve got to sleep, got to make sure you’re sleeping well. You got to make sure you’re eating well. Are you exercising? For this person, they had previously done meditation, more mindfulness strategies, because of course it’s possible for that to bleed in and to have some associations, as you were saying, with people that then get associated, those close relationships with other close relationships. Yes, of course.

Laryssa

I think we’ve drawn attention to different types of intimacy, what can affect that intimacy from both sides. Where do folks go from here? If there’s listeners, if this is shedding some light or ringing really close to home for them, where do they go from here? It sounds like there might be a few steps. Taking care of yourself first, and the Family unit it sounds like, and the couple. If someone’s listening, Candice, what’s the next steps?

Candice

One thing I was thinking about, Laryssa, is probably people are different places in the journey. For maybe the person who’s listening and early on, I would want to send the message that it is possible for things to get better, like hope, that there are treatments to make things better. There is credible information out there in terms of getting oneself educated. Atlas is a credible source of information. For those people who have PTSD, the USVA’s National Center for PTSD website is a really good source of information. I think the number one thing is there is hope, no matter how dark it feels, that there is the possibility of things getting better.

I feel like this is a place where my own lived experience comes in. I’ve watched people who’ve suffered for 30+ years with disorders get better, so it is possible. The other thing I would say for people who are maybe a little further along in the journey is, and this may be controversial too, but I’ll say it, which is, are you getting good treatment? Are you getting good intervention? One of the things about the current landscape of mental health is it’s a cottage industry, and so there’s just a lot of variability in what people can get in the community and just maybe thinking a little bit, educating yourself a little bit about what you should be getting in terms of quality treatment.

For instance, there’s science-backed couple therapies, science-backed individual therapy, and just encouraging people to get to those therapies, that will increase the likelihood that you get better. Those are the first things that come to mind.

Brian

One thing I’ve noticed in this chat and also in other conversations, it seems to be that there’s commonality. You called them the “have-to’s” or “must-do’s” or whatever. If we were having a conversation on traumatic brain injury as we just recently have, one of the key pieces of advice was good eating, good sleeping, good exercise. I went through cancer two years ago. People have asked me what to do. I’ve told them good eating, good sleeping, good exercise, and listen to your doctor and actually do the things you’re told.

And here we are again talking about something within people’s lives that’s of critical importance. I think sometimes people are waiting to hear this really complicated answer, and at the end of the day, one of the simple answers that I’m hearing here is, guess what, guys? Go to bed, get up, have some routine, eat properly, move your body around. It’s prevalent in everything. Here we are again, eat well, sleep well, exercise.

Candice

Do the do’s. Again, in the recovery community, start back to the basics that are really important as a foundation. I do think that there is, and you made me think about it, Brian, in my business we would say there are common factors. There are common factors to all the things that work, including just taking care of yourself in the most biological ways? Are you eating? Are you sleeping? Are you moving? Duh.

I think there’s a little bit of an interesting tendency in the world of trauma recovery for people to want these like magic fixes, like these quick fixes, “okay, what’s the next thing?” when the reality is, getting better requires– there are probably some common factors to that too, which is in the case of trauma recovery is facing down what it is that you fear. There are different ways of doing that, but what works for people who are depressed, anxious, have PTSD, it’s a lot of approaching and facing.

It’s age-old adage, but you’re going to get what you put into it. There’s probably nothing that’s going to be — hands that are going to be laid on that are going to really fix it. It takes a lot of hard work by couples and Families and individuals to make that happen.

Laryssa

It brings me back to the beginning of this conversation that it’s taken a little bit of courage on Brian and my behalf to have this conversation, putting it out there. Intimacy is something that I have had to struggle with and examine, like how I’m not closing myself off from my spouse and maintaining that sense of connection. So I guess I would encourage folks to be courageous because one of the other factors is I don’t think you can sort this out on your own. You either need to connect with your spouse or connect with a professional and partake in psychotherapy, talk therapy to help you work through it. Be courageous because it can be a really tough conversation to have.

Brian

I think, some of the things we trained you to do when you were serving don’t serve you all that well in this area. Be okay with learning something new. Part of how you survived that previous part of your life was learning how to disassociate. “Just the facts, ma’am.” I investigate a scene not by figuring out how everyone feels, by trying to figure out what happened and that’s it. How could this go really bad for me right now? It’s going to take probably some deliberate work and training to get out of that mode and get back into, “I got to connect with this person.” It’s difficult.

That’s, if I give advice to people, it’s like, “Well, let’s be okay to train for this too.” I just did a podcast on intimacy. What the heck just happened to me?

Candice

You made it. Look at you. You’re brave. This was awesome. Thank you guys so very much.

Laryssa

Candice, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us in this brave discussion and the insights that you provided.

Candice

Yes, my pleasure. Thank you for bringing this conversation to bear. It was fantastic.

Brian

We’ll see everyone soon again on Mind Beyond the Mission. Thank you very much.