EP7 | The Trevor Beaman Journey: Special Forces Officer to Mental Health Advocate
Download MP3Alright. Mister Travis Beaman, great to have you on the show. Thank you for joining the podcast Brain Hope and Reality. I feel like you and I, you know, haven't known each other that long, but we certainly had an interesting time together so far.
Trevor Beaman:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And Doctor. Lipoff, I appreciate you having me on the show.
Dr. Lipov:It's an honor to have you. Thank you so much. And I'm so happy we're able to stay in touch. By the way, I love your pen.
Trevor Beaman:No, thanks.
Dr. Lipov:That is a beautiful
Trevor Beaman:pen. Absolutely.
Dr. Lipov:What do you think of my graphics? It's PTSI, not PTSD.
Trevor Beaman:I mean, it's fitting. But, I mean, there's a lot more that goes into what that's saying that I think has to be described and understood.
Dr. Lipov:Exactly. So what I wanna do is kind of briefly for the audience. I I have my own spiel upfront, but maybe you can just quickly tell the background, how we met, and then we'll do the show.
Trevor Beaman:Yeah, so we met back in 2021 at Fort Bragg, or at least we were connected through some people that were doing some work at Fort Bragg. And Jeff Dardia had mentioned my name and someone was like, Hey, we're going to do this new trial to help out with guys that have PTSD, and let's go up to the Stella Center and meet yourself. And that's how we kind of got introduced way back in April, May 2021, but I didn't really meet you until July '1 in Chicago.
Dr. Lipov:Yeah. And just if you could just run a quick background. You're in special forces, so I thought maybe you can just, you know, people you know everything about you. I know something about you, but I thought very brief background, and I love the term you're starting to use. I wonder where you picked it up, wounded healer.
Dr. Lipov:I think that's an amazing So
Trevor Beaman:a little background. I grew up in Chicago, just on the Northern Side up in Glenview, and they're kind of a poor place. And during that time, my stepfather sexually molested me. But I would go on to join the army in February, and I would end up having five combat deployments to Afghanistan and deployment to Africa. And throughout that time, it's having this trauma sense of feeling of this doom sense on me I never knew when something bad was going to happen.
Trevor Beaman:As I described, like being in Afghanistan was like going downtown Chicago. It was always this stress on me that something was not right or something was going to happen to me. And then, you know, so over time with introduction of alcohol, added stresses of moral injury of war, getting more educated and having all these things happen, like I start to really doubt the purpose of living and that I would be a functioning father and husband, and that I would have any self worth or be able to provide the best way possible because of all of this incidences as I was growing up. So, and then I met you and it kinda, I mean, you know, I went to a lot of, you know, psychotherapy and then going to inpatient rehab and working a lot of social work and trying to figure out how to manage stress of life and all of those things try to make day to day living manageable. And it worked.
Trevor Beaman:Those things helped. Psychiatric medication and antidepressants, they helped for a while. But it always came back to all of those events and those traumatic things that I had gone through always seemed to come back over time. I couldn't get them away out of what was like up in my face every single day. And so then, you know, I went to the Stella Center and it kind of really took a lot of load off me, at least with the DSR.
Trevor Beaman:And a lot of sense of living came from the ketamine infusions. But this recent thing I've recently got brought to my attention was this wounded healer concept of there needs to be people that have gone through really hard things and have gone through like the progression of suffering and the journey, then the healing part to be able to have the open arms to the people who are going through that journey portion of their trauma to say, to have someone to be related to, and that someone that understands how they feel inside at that moment of that journey that they're going through. And then I think it also helps that the person who's going through that journey, that there's hope at the end. Because sometimes during those years of working, you tend to think that it will never end and that pain will never ever give. There won't be any end and there is no hope in it to why should I even work even harder as I've been doing this for years and years, And the pain of every single day is just too much.
Trevor Beaman:And so to have that person that gives people that hope to keep trying for another day, it's really kind of, you know, means a lot and it seems very like resident inside me.
Dr. Lipov:So, you know, it's interesting. So even though I've never been in military, but I think the whole concept of wounded healer means a lot to me because I had I may I assume I shared with you. I was healed by a propeller blade, I almost died, when my mother killed herself about a year later. And I was pretty wounded and you know my father was had severe PTSD from World War II out of his squadron of 10,000, 100 made it home. So he gave PTSD or PTSI, hoping the term I'm trying to change.
Dr. Lipov:And then this living was persistent doom and gloom for years and years. And the big question is always, as you said, hope that's why I put the name hope in podcast because if there is no hope, why even bother? I mean, it's like, you know, have done forty years of being a pain physician and a lot of times people lose hope. They go, you know, I have this horrible pain. It could be emotional, it could be physical, it could be a combination of both.
Dr. Lipov:And it's like, it's gonna be like that forever. So my answer to them is that's why seeing somebody to be treating you, you can fix the pain. You can fix the emotional pain. You can fix, or at least you keep trying because once you give up then the suicide rate goes up. All of that goes up, right?
Dr. Lipov:So I think that's, I love the term and I think you're certainly become much more empathic. As a clinician, it's very important to be empathic. But as a speaker and a leader, I would say you're become, you're much more empathic because you've actually been there. And then I think from people who hear it, it normally normalizes. Horrible things happen to all types of people, all types of strata.
Dr. Lipov:It doesn't matter wealth. It doesn't make no difference. But I think what you've done with that, right? It's no fun to go like, you know, I was there for your Ted talk in Portland, kind of giving a challenge coin. Thank you very much.
Trevor Beaman:But
Dr. Lipov:you know, you're standing in front of 500,000 people or whatever, and you telling a very rough story and you really had them going. I mean, it's like, they were like crying. There's all type of things going on. But the point is people, to me, if you see that, you see, hear that story go, my life is hard, but nah.
Trevor Beaman:His his life was
Dr. Lipov:a lot harder, but yet he stood there and he stands there right now. He's actually done something good with that. And you're doing something positive. Like people ask me, it's like, how how do you your job must be an interesting job to do what you do and you know is it stressful or it's like actually my job is probably the best in the world for me because every time I help somebody I feel like my mother's looking down and say hey you've done something good my name and in her stead. So I think it's an amazing concept and that part of this whole thing about resilience.
Dr. Lipov:Everybody talks about resilience. I've actually, I'm writing a chapter on it, but I'd like to couple throw some learning from what I've learned out of it recently. So whenever I do anything, always research things. So here's I cut down resilience to four letters. HERE, h e r e, humor, exercise, respect, exploration.
Dr. Lipov:Turns out that humor you and I have talked about I think the PTSD is controlled by amygdala, which is part of the brain that controls PTSD or PTSI. Turns out humor has direct impact on amygdala. It can relax or deactivate the amygdala based on neuro scans, which I think is like mind blowing at least to me. Had no idea. Exercise produce endorphins, makes you feel better, gets you out.
Dr. Lipov:Yeah, it's pretty clear. I think self respect is huge. I think if, don't let anybody tell you you're useless and don't let, you know, basically respect yourself, right? Exploration, you want to see what's available. I think that's a very simple way of looking at resilience.
Dr. Lipov:What do you think?
Trevor Beaman:Yeah, so the last one is just curiosity of the brain.
Dr. Lipov:Right. Yeah.
Trevor Beaman:That's fun. And the second one you said was- Exercise. Exercise, that's dopamine. So does it all boil Endorphin. Down our opiate receptors in our brain.
Trevor Beaman:Right. That boils down, like that up and down that are we putting, what are we putting in there for our brain to utilize? Because if you're desensitized, how is that helping? Right? So What if you're
Dr. Lipov:do you mean by that?
Trevor Beaman:So what are you doing for pain? So there's things that you can do on your own for pain relief. Like, so you're doing exercise so that during exercise, the pain of your life isn't felt as much is because you're getting endorphins from the exercise, right? And then a humor is making those same dopamine release, right? The serotonin and all that stuff into your brain.
Trevor Beaman:So those opiate receptors are getting something, right? And the same thing, so what's the third thing you said? And I have a thought on So
Dr. Lipov:humor, exercise, respect, respect for yourself and others.
Trevor Beaman:Yeah, so then it's like, how do you view yourself? And so if you talk down to yourself then and you feel like you're zero value, you provide nothing for others, then why should I live? I mean, that's simple. I mean, that seems to absolutely correlate there. So if you can't, one, make fun of yourself, if you can't take exercise upon yourself, you're not sleeping properly, all of those things are causing issues.
Trevor Beaman:It's not necessarily just one of them.
Dr. Lipov:No, no, of course not.
Trevor Beaman:I like it. I think it's
Dr. Lipov:It's just simple prescriptions. You know, I'd like to You think my mother had a great saying. She said, never say anything about yourself. Somebody will do it for you. Isn't that cute?
Trevor Beaman:Yeah. I mean, unless you're wrong, just like horrible people in this that don't have any empathy or care on you, then it's just like toxic and it's just to drain you completely, which is not. I mean, and that's when people need to say, hey, these are my boundaries, and I'm gonna go back to taking care of self and leave you out of my life.
Dr. Lipov:No, absolutely. So let me let's switch gears if you don't mind to PTSD. I've had recently I have been very aggressively trying to change the name PTSD to PTSI posturing stress injury. So I've had some occasional, not very common, but occasional pushback saying that no, no, no, there's no need to the name change and it doesn't make any difference what term is used because the PKSI, what do you think of that?
Trevor Beaman:Well, defining it absolutely makes a difference for sure. Because if you ask someone on the street, define disorder, and what does that mean to you? And if you say define injury, and what does that mean to you? So if you look at disorder, to me, that is something that you're innately born with, right? Like there's is just the DNA of who you are and there's nothing that can be changed about it.
Trevor Beaman:But the injury thing is that it can be mended, it can be healed, and that you can change that whatever has happened to you. So if the brain is injured, Phineas Gage, right? He had a state go through his head and his behavior changed. He just didn't watch something happen and his behavior changed. There was actual physical damage to his brain.
Trevor Beaman:And then the way he acted after that was because of that injury. So then to say, if we look at a Bears defensive lineman, right? And he hits impact and there's something happens to his brain and he's injured in the CTE concussion, right? And his behavior changes at home. His behavior is changing when he drinks alcohol.
Trevor Beaman:His behavior is changing him because he had a direct something happened to him. So that's like how I I just separate it is that this disorder is innately our makeup as a human being and not something the environment caused me and not something that an experience or an injury to my body caused me. Is two separate things. And so that's why I see this disorder piece attached to it, like to stress, is not makes any sense because stress, good or bad, is based off of either something happening directly to my body or the environment that I'm in. That's why to me it's different.
Dr. Lipov:Right. So one of the things that I wanted to kind of say, Phineas Cage is fascinating story. I just wanna give you some background on that. Mhmm. It's amazing that you know it just shows how much knowledge we have.
Dr. Lipov:So this guy was lying down railroad and he exploded. He put dynamite in and he put one inch pole and dynamite exploded, went through his eye, went the other side. The part I find about that story is fascinating was he went to Mass General, big hospital in this day it still is amazing, And they looked him over and they go, Oh, nothing happened. You had no injury. Everything was fine.
Dr. Lipov:You can walk, can talk, you have normal reflexes. But he had other little problems later. He became animalistic. Anytime he saw a woman, he would take his clothes off, chase her around and so on. That I would say that's not so much.
Dr. Lipov:But what's interesting about PTSD or PTSI, if you look at the brain scans of people who have it, no head injury, no TBI, nothing. You can actually shrink the brain by about 10%, 15% from glutamate secretion. So the point is you don't need a physical injury to the You can actually see something horrible and it changes the brain. And that's why we call it PTSI, post traumatic stress injury. Now TBI, traumatic brain injury and PTSI, unfortunately, occurs way too often.
Trevor Beaman:So now you both of those things that happen.
Dr. Lipov:Right, right.
Trevor Beaman:So now we're talking about like complex PTSI, because now you have an emotional impact and then you also have a physical impact. So now you got to go after both of those things, which Doing one is hard enough, but now have to work on both is extremely difficult.
Dr. Lipov:Exactly. But it's doable. You're an example of I mean, point is and you know, the thing that you minimize it sometimes, but the amount of work you've done after stuff we've done with you is significant because you will get back what you plan, right? If you expect everything to be done for you, which is really not the green Greenbrier style per se, but, you know, you're putting in effort and it gets easier and easier. Do do you find that to be easier and easier as time goes by?
Trevor Beaman:So I think learning the tools and learning how to manage my life and how a real person walks through life was the first thing that I had to realize that everybody has stress in their life. And the way that I handle stress is different because I wasn't taught those coping mechanisms as a kid. I wasn't taught that this is what feeling down feels like, what feeling up feels like. Having mood normal ups and downs is just normal. My problem was is that we're so extreme that when I was low, it was lower than most.
Trevor Beaman:And then when I was high, it was higher than most people. So, there's that aspect. Then what do I do with all the stress? What can I do that's not drugs or alcohol to take me away disassociate, not to deal with, to cover up the stress that I was having and not really finding a good outlet of either, like recognizing how much that exercise really helps, how much like spirituality can impact the way that I see myself in the world? Being a volunteer to someone, sharing my story and about how I communicate that story impacts other people and how much that took off what was inside of me, because I was able to share it and how to like take that prison down by writing a diary or writing, you know, just a journal, doing all of those little things are things that have helped.
Trevor Beaman:And then go into like different modalities of, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, the EMDR stuff, sitting down in a social worker, sitting down in like an AA meeting or NA meeting and seeing how that and those steps and those things that they're doing, can use every day to make you feel better. And then sleeping well and having a good diet. So there's all these, the circle is vast and it takes time to become an expert at least have- Perficient. Better knowledge in it than what you did at one part in your life. So you go through all of these steps to try and figure out life.
Trevor Beaman:Unfortunately for me, like I'm getting pulled out and deploying in between some of these times. And then, you know, I had the curse of believing that alcohol was going to help me in a lot of the problems. And I was drinking so that I wouldn't remember the past, but at the same time, when I'm drinking, I'm starting to hate myself. So that's not working out. And so, I go to rehab and I learn a vast amount of skills and I spent two or three years like implementing these things and seeing how each one of those things that can help me and understanding that what I'm hearing from my wife isn't exactly what she's saying.
Trevor Beaman:And being able to have a conversation about this is what I heard from you. Is that what you're trying to say? And opening up those communication and that push and pull with the people around me, because I would just hear something and I internalize it and it would just eat me within. And then I finally got to you and then it changed. It's like the it's like the I wanna say the cherry on top, but it allowed all of the skills that I had used in the past to finally put them together and is phenomenal.
Trevor Beaman:And so the two, you know, ketamine and the DSR, right, was the key to unlock all the skills that I had built essentially. Perfect.
Dr. Lipov:So I wanna give you another term, which I recently, I've been looking longevity since I'm getting to be old. So there is a new term called hormesis. I don't know if you've heard that term. No. Hermesis is basically a study of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Dr. Lipov:So the way they figured it out, they were giving fungicides to fungi. If you give a little bit, those fungi become much stronger. If you give too much, it kills. So I think you and I both are example of Farmices. Turns it changes the DNA.
Dr. Lipov:Isn't that amazing? That's why I asked the question. I think what's cool about it, you can actually repair the DNA, make yourself stronger, and there's biological markers now you can actually measure Hermesis. Is that nuts?
Trevor Beaman:I would wonder if like how you would take like different people in their life and be able to measure it as like kids and like do a study on like, we have a 100 kids and they all just go out into life And we meet them at different stages at, know, 20, 60, 80, and whoever. And to see that like document with the things that they've been through and to see how those things are traced within their body.
Dr. Lipov:But the point that I learned out of that is, you know how everybody like, I think most people, including me, try to stay away from trauma, stress, whatever. So what I've heard people say before, it's like, Oh, learned this from trauma. I was like, Uh-huh. Or post trauma growth, it's like, Uh-huh, thank you very much for that. Turns out there's actual science behind it.
Trevor Beaman:Yeah, yeah. Who do? Yeah, I mean, that's like saying that you have to live hard in your 20s and 30s to be a wise man in your 40s.
Dr. Lipov:Depends how hard. Right?
Trevor Beaman:So it's like wisdom, right? You got to put yourself through tough experiences to gain wisdom on your own. Then it's self reflection and being able to come up with an idea and being able then to express it in a manner that is digestible to other humans. So how much time are you spending on doing that as well? It's like, you might have done all these things in your life, but if you never tell anybody about it, is it any good?
Dr. Lipov:I think it's highly individual. Depends what people, but I think what you're doing with, everything you've done so far and everything you, I think you're planning, which is I applaud you highly for that, is that you actually, you can change people's lives, right? If you can save one life or 10 lives, you know, that that's why I I have the best job in the world because actually I can see people's changes and you're opening people's lives to say, hey, I've been through all this craziness, but your craziness may may not be as bad. Who knows? But look where I'm at now.
Dr. Lipov:You're happy and you have a happy family, which is, I think that's all we should be aspiring for as far as
Trevor Beaman:I'm That's absolutely right. So that, I mean, it's the defining of this PTSI is why I think the drive is so incredible, because I think the impact is almost unmeasurable by changing it. Because It's
Dr. Lipov:to be global. It's going to have a global impact.
Trevor Beaman:Because if it like so what's the impact of a word getting put into the dictionary? Right? Under word. Vernacular Right. Forever.
Trevor Beaman:And if it changes the way that people talk, then it changes the way they receive it. And so if that's the biggest thing is this just, I am going to go get help with X thing and it's just normal. Right? I think that it takes that mysticism out of it, of just this A disorder is something I can't explain. It's almost to say autism diagnosis.
Trevor Beaman:I don't know what's going on in the body. I have no idea. Right? Autism disorder. I'm on the spectrum, but I don't know what's wrong with me.
Trevor Beaman:I have no idea. There's nothing that shows the direct correlation that this is in my brain or in my body that's causing this, or this is different, right? This PTS is like with the scans and the technology that we have of today, you can see the exact injury. And then as you start to do work, treatments and everything, you can see that injury get better. So there's a fix, a cure rather than a management approach.
Dr. Lipov:I call it lifestyle, right? So you don't want to have a medical health lifestyle. So I just want to throw another answer by you. So, you know, in medicine, right, in most medical things, if you can do it, if something happens to a human being, same thing happens to animals, right? So you have an animal model.
Dr. Lipov:So if you have a broken leg, it looks a certain way an x-ray. If you have a broken whatever, anything else you can identify. So if you break a leg of a dog or they have a broken leg, it looks the same.
Trevor Beaman:I
Dr. Lipov:mean, a little different bones, but same thing. So I was able to treat a PTSD dog using Stellag England block. So it turns out, one quarter of the dogs that returned from Iraq, military dogs, have what they call V PTSD, veterinary PTSD. And the symptoms are sleep difficulty, personality change, aggression, or submission. The point is, if you can replicate it, it's not disorder.
Dr. Lipov:It's real. It's not different than broken leg. That's been the whole argument I've been trying to say for a few years now.
Trevor Beaman:So I would ask you then is once the dog gets the treatment they were put back into their pact, what happens?
Dr. Lipov:Well, this particular dog, let me tell you his story. So I only treated one so far. We're trying to set up a time to do six more actually. But this particular dog was being trained as a service dog. Somehow he got off the leash or whatever, got stuck on the truck and got burned.
Dr. Lipov:So horrible. And then before he was a sweet dog, all of that. After that, he was aggressive. He had difficulty. He was trying to he was eating cages because he was so anxious.
Dr. Lipov:Mhmm. So after he was treated, his use of THC that would give him a lot of THC was reduced and his a lot of his personality came back. So he was a pet. He wasn't like in the wild dogs, but he was a pet. So the person who introduced me to him, job is to train service dogs.
Dr. Lipov:So she makes service dogs. So she knows animals very well. So she was very in tune with them.
Trevor Beaman:Yeah, so I would just be curious, is there data or was there data taken that before treatment dog went into dog park with other dogs and acted a certain way. And then after treatment goes into the same dog park with the same amount of different dogs.
Dr. Lipov:Right.
Trevor Beaman:And now behavior has changed. Like that's significant.
Dr. Lipov:That's what the handler told me.
Trevor Beaman:Yeah, that's phenomenal. So if it's happening there, it says, the problem with humans is that we do a really bad job reporting data. Right. And reporting back to doctors so that it can show the effects. That's where we're we're we have problems is that, guys, like, I feel better.
Trevor Beaman:I'm just gonna move go on my way, and I'm not gonna respond to to so that you have data points to show stuff.
Dr. Lipov:This dog was kept at somebody's home. But my point though is, I don't have like a PCL five equivalent for dogs. I don't have anything that fancy. Right? Basically, the good news is the owner was very happy with the result.
Dr. Lipov:Actually, I'll send you the video that I have a YouTube on that, and maybe just quickly look at. Anyway, so I usually try to keep this to thirty minutes.
Trevor Beaman:Yep. Any So I would tell you that the my owner owner is very happy with the results.
Dr. Lipov:You know, my owner is, I call her commander in chief. Yeah. I had my selling done and I was significantly improved by function across the That's
Trevor Beaman:funny. That's awesome. So funny.
Dr. Lipov:You
Trevor Beaman:Anytime. For having me
Dr. Lipov:Thank you. I appreciate the Please
Trevor Beaman:reach out to me. Let me know what I need to do and we'll just know, I'm gonna take you up on I know. I know.
Dr. Lipov:Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay.
Trevor Beaman:Bye bye. Alright, sir.
Dr. Lipov:Bye.
