How my own losses made me a better therapist

Michelle:  Well, Hey everybody. And welcome back to Qualified - the place where incredible people share their stories of overcoming great adversity and loss to inspire you and give you hope. I'm Michelle Heaton. It is my pleasure today to introduce a guest who is more than qualified to talk about adversity with us.

Not only has he experienced real hardship and loss in his. But he also earned his master's in counseling and chemical dependency followed by a doctorate in counseling and psychology. He's an expert in human behavior, addiction and anger management. And he's currently in practice locally, helping his clients overcome their own trauma related mental health issues.

Welcome to qualified Ken!

Ken:  Thanks. Michelle's going to be here. 

Michelle: Ken, you invited me to your office where you conduct therapy sessions with your clients. But on this day, you told me your story as I listened and took notes.  You've had your fair share of loss in life. And you told me you wanted to share the lessons you learned on this podcast to help even more people.  Over the course of many years, you've experienced the death of loved ones, illness, depression, and loss of relationships with family members that resulted from traumatic events that took place. Can you start by telling us about your sister?

Ken:  So, you know, one of the most significant losses I ever experienced was as a young man, and in ‘93, my oldest sister who was six years older than me, was driving her 17-year-old son to work, and sadly, an elderly woman ran through a red light going, about 15, 20 miles above the speed limit and hit my sister in the side of her car door killed her instantly. And my nephew was able to get up and walk away from it.

That was probably the first significant loss I ever went through and I didn't really know how to process it. So, I stuffed a lot of it. So that was maybe the first major loss that I'd ever gone through. 

Michelle:   I knew you lost your father, whom you had a very close relationship with. 

 Ken:  I lost my dad who was one of my best friends in the whole world. In fact, I took a leave of absence from my career and when lived with my parents in Southern California for the last year of his life, because my mom couldn't care for him alone and he wanted to stay home.

Yeah. So, one of the things that, I did was I took time off from my career and I thought it would just be maybe a month or a couple of weeks to kind of stabilize my dad. And it ended up being a whole year.  Probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to face was he ended up in the hospital on the last day and he had a respirator strapped to his face and he was exhausted. He'd been on the respirator for three or four days and he was already super weak. And I was his medical designee, and I had to make the decision for the whole family and for my dad. And I felt like I had killed my dad. Even though it was his decision, I'm the one that took the steps that brought his life to an end. And then about a year and a half after that, my mom passed away, and for the first time, in my life, I felt like an orphan.,

  Michelle:   So, after the loss of your sister and both of your parents, you also received some very troubling news about one of your sons.

 Ken: I get a phone call that. My son is in trouble. My oldest son is in trouble with law enforcement.

 Michelle:  you told me the details of that story and how you carried a lot of shame about your son's mental health due to the choices, you made in your life and the impact it had on him. You said you held all those emotions in back then, and that as a result, your mental and physical health began to decline. Can you talk a little bit about that?

 Ken:  When I was 51, I had a massive heart attack and ended up in a coma with a triple bypass surgery. Basically, they told me I was dying. They told me to get my affairs in order.  And the realization that I was going to die was very real. I lost a hundred pounds. I was in the hospital seven times that first year after my heart attack.  And I went up and I lived in Northern Idaho, all alone. And I unplugged everything. I, just prepared myself to die. In fact, I think in a lot of ways, I willed myself to die and developed what's called failure to thrive, which we see in small children that are in abusive situations. But it's basically when you come to the place where you no longer want to live.

 I was on 17 different medications that I took every day., I had to go on social security, disability insurance for seven years because I couldn't practice..., and out of that, I think a deep depression developed and I lost so much. That was so important to me.

Michelle:  So, Ken, one of the biggest contributing factors to your mental and physical condition at that time had to do with your son. And how you were ruminating over the choices you made early in your marriage that would end up negatively impacting his life. You said you blamed yourself because you missed a lot of signs that were present at that time.Talk about that.  

Ken:  You know, Michelle, I think I, I blame myself because I remember being in an event with my first wife before we were even engaged and she kind of threw a temper tantrum in front of everybody at this event. And I, I knew there was like this thing inside of me that went, uh oh.   That thing inside of us leaps up and says, oh crap, red flag, red flag.I ignored, that red flag. And because I can remember that day, distinctly, this is way before we got married to this day. I can remember that day and knowing that I needed to get out of that relationship, I was more worried about what people would say about me than actually standing up and doing the right thing and ending that engagement.

 And I was never taught as a young man, how to listen to those red flags and how to have confidence in stand up for myself and make hard decisions and live with them. In fact, a dear friend of mine, is writing a book right now, the lessons my dad didn't teach me.And I think that that's such a brilliant book idea because there's so many things that our families, our parents don't teach us. And then we get into the adult world and we make these decisions that we think we love each other. It'll all work out.

 Michelle: When I was in a relationship years ago, that was really unhealthy... I learned from that, that if you're going through something with someone and you're afraid to talk about it to somebody else, it's probably wrong. It's a red flag. It's a red flag. Yeah. And it's, it's so basic maybe to somebody listening to hear that they say yeah, of course, but that shame associated with it. If I tell somebody and then I stay in the relationship, you know

 Ken: Exactly, because when, when we start exposing what's going on under the veneer of our lives,  People, well-meaning people start giving us advice or direction or their opinion.  

 Michelle: One of my friends and I were talking recently about a relationship that she's in right now that, she's seeing the red flags, she's feeling that and she knows, and she's not ready. She's not ready to walk away.

 Ken:   And often that's because we think nobody else will love us like this. Nobody else will show us this attention. It must be this one. And many times, it's because of we didn't get the love that we needed as children. 

  Michelle:  So back to your condition at that time, you were sick, depressed out of money and you really didn't even have anyone you could turn to for help what happened next? 

 Ken:  For the first time in my life, I was homeless.   I had no resources. I had one friend that I, I threw out a phone call, because I was desperate.    She was leaving to teach grad school out of the country and I could housesit her house for four weeks. And I was able to do that.  And then one morning early, I was walking, around her house and it was like a nine-hole golf course. And I was just praying literally.  And I had said, God, I need some hope. As I'm walking along. I looked down in the rough of the golf course and here's the bright Pepto Bismol pink golf ball. And so, I walked over and I pick it up and I turned it over to see who made it title list or whoever I'm not a golfer, so, I don't know, but this is what it says, it has a big number two. And then underneath that is the word in capital letters. H O P E hope.  And in that moment, it hit me that before I was even born before any of these problems had happened in my life before I'd made any of these choices to destroy my life, God knew I was going to make all those freewill choices that were going to get me into the emotional gutter.And he put that golf ball there. Knowing that I would walk over and pick it up.   And so, as I walked back to my friend's house, I'm just astounded. I mean, I kept the golf ball. Of course, but I went back and I was just laying on my bed. And in that moment, I gave up, all of the shame, all of the embarrassment, all of the anger, all of that in that moment, I won't say it disappeared completely, but there was relief there. And it wasn't until that moment with that golf ball with, with that day, that shame started to dissipate. And I realized, you know what, people's judgment of me. It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't matter what people think of me, what matters is what I think of me and ultimately even more so what matters is what God thinks of me. And God knows that I'm a man that makes lots of bad decisions. And yet God's grace is right there to compensate for those decisions

Michelle:   That was the turning point, wasn’t it?

Ken:  absolutely.  

Michelle:  So, through all of this, you learned some serious life lessons the hard way.  You talked about the importance of recognizing red flags, of going with that gut feeling. When something doesn't feel right to respond to that instinct.  You know that stuffing the emotions you had over the death of your sister and your parents was not healthy and that grief is something that we need to process and that when we bottle things up inside, it can even affect our physical health. You learned that the choices we make can seriously impact other people and the guilt and shame that results can be devastating to us and to others. And you realized that when our hope runs out, God is always there to turn to and that he can radically change our lives if we let Him.  Any final thoughts about this, Ken?

Ken:  You know, I think there's the big ones that we've hit on, but  I learned that those people that wanted to heal me were always there. I just ignored them or I didn't notice them, or I didn't listen to their message because I was so involved with my emotional crisis. 

The amazing thing about God is when we do our own thing and we get ourselves into trouble and we cry out, he snatches us from that trouble. We may have to pay the consequences for our behavior, but he rescues us. He's always there just waiting for us to say HELP. And so maybe the biggest lesson in loss I learned was don't go through it alone, reach out, grab somebody's hand if someone reaches out to you, grab back. Honestly, I've done therapy for 30 years that things that hurt us the most are people, unkind people, things that people say or don't. , people hurt us the most, but it's also people that heal us the most.

Michelle:  Well, and all of those experiences shaped you and made you who you are today and equipped you to be a better therapist, right?

Ken:   I would love to think so. You know, I, it seems like I would absolutely say I'm a better therapist after I went through my heart attack and loss of my health and the loss of my family after I lost everything, is when everything came into clarity, for me 

 Michelle:  I remember hearing a pastor, who lost his son talking about that, how he used to counsel people that lost loved ones all the time, and try to support them. And it wasn't until he lost his own son, that, he realized that death. Yeah. And the empathy that he had and it's become like a new ministry for him because he's so well versed in, in grief and he understands it.

But you know how in the book of Job, but talks about, and this for me, this was huge. He had his family and in one day they were all taken out. You know, the roof fell and all the kids were in their party and they all died. I lost my only child that was devastating, but he lost all his kids in one day. That's trauma. That's pretty traumatic. And when I read the book, I remember getting to that part where it says, but then in the end God restored Job to where the latter part of his life was better than the first. And I always paused there and I went, yeah, I don't know how does life get better when you lost your only child and it can be.

 Ken:  It’s just different.

 Michelle: And your story is a Testament to that. You've been through so much, but because you kept the faith and called out to God, when you reached the end of your rope, you now have a story of hope to share literally in the form of a pink golf ball with a message of hope.

Ken:  Pepto, Bimal, pink golf ball. All right. 

Michelle:  Well, on that note, I want to thank you so much for agreeing to do this. Ken, thank you for being here.

 Ken:  Thank you. It been a pleasure. 

 Michelle:   So, for those of you listening, I hope you were inspired by Ken's story today.  Everything we go through shapes us and makes us who we are, remember to keep the faith and that one day you'll be able to help someone else with the lessons you learn through your difficult times.

 Thanks for listening.