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Join certified trauma professional Dr. Amy Hoyt and licensed therapist Leina Hoyt, MFT at https://www.mendingtrauma.com as they teach you how to recover from trauma and cPTSD. Trauma shows up in our everyday reactions and sensations and recovering requires a multi-prong approach that considers the mind, body and spirit. Dr. Amy and Leina will teach you the most emerging research and skills to empower you to overcome your past traumas. They address nervous system health, somatic therapy, trauma, cPTSD, EMDR, Neurofeedback, IFS (Internal Family Systems therapy), and many other modes of recovering from trauma. As mental health experts, sisters and trauma survivors, they teach you the tools that actually helped them recover, are backed by research and have helped thousands of their clients. Each episode is packed with clinically effective methods as well as scientific findings to guide you through your own trauma healing journey. Whether discussing cPTSD, PTSD, medical trauma, somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, EMDR or neurofeedback, Amy and Leina will help you recover from trauma so that you can reconnect to yourself and others.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (02:10)
Hi everyone, welcome back. So we're in November and if you've been around for the last few years and you're ever on social media, you know that in November, it's also Mo-vember. Which...
Leina (02:27)
is such a silly name but I really like the attention that it draws to men's health issues.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (02:32)
Absolutely. sometimes I think on social media, Movember, the month where men grow out their mustache, is just seen as a fun thing to do. But the origins of Movember started in Australia, two friends, and they have actually linked the movement to men's health issues. And one of their core issues is men's mental health and suicide awareness.
So today we want to focus on men's mental health. So our Movember is men's mental health. And let's talk about what is men's mental health? Is it different than women's?
Leina (03:17)
Good question. I think sometimes people think that it is, but I think really it's human mental health. We're much more similar than we are different, although the way we socialize gender in different countries can contribute to the appearance of wider differences. But
Dr. Amy Hoyt (03:27)
Mm-hmm.
Leina (03:42)
basically, we're all human and we all have mental health challenges. And some of you may have been lucky enough that you haven't had a lot of trauma in your life. And so your mental health challenges might be transitory or short term or not have as much impact on you. But we all struggle with hard things in life and using the mustache as a way to bring attention to men's
health issues, including depression and suicide, I think is a great idea.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:14)
Absolutely anything to raise mental health issues is a great idea. So one of the things that I'd like to touch on is that, you know, because of our training and neurofeedback, we look at brains every day and we use EEG technology to look at brains and we don't see there's no gendered brain. There's, you know, the brain is the brain is the brain. So
Leina (04:18)
Right.
Mm-hmm
Right, uh-huh.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (04:43)
Going back to kind of these social messages, I have seen recently studies that show that men have less close friends as adults than women. We also know that that can be very, very lonely when you don't have close friends. And as men become adults and they
Leina (04:55)
Mm-hmm.
Okay, I guess.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:13)
are working in the world and so forth, for some reason, women can usually continue those connections with close friends and prioritize those alongside their other responsibilities. a lot of men have difficulty forming and keeping those close relationships with other men as adults.
Leina (05:36)
Well, and I, again, I think the way we socialize gender has so much to do with that, with this idea, at least in Western culture, that men have to be strong and it's touchy-feely, pardon me, independent, and it's touchy-feely to talk about emotions or how something has affected you. And it's a tremendous disservice to males to have socialized them this way because it's all a crop of crap.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (05:47)
Independent. Independent.
He
Leina (06:06)
Like emotions happen with everybody and emotions affect everybody. Everybody has them and pretending like we don't or stuffing the emotions usually leads to poor outcomes in relationships, in physical health and in mental health.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:21)
Absolutely. And so, you know, we know from our work in trauma, that when we don't acknowledge our emotions and when we don't, deal with hard things that have happened to us, that we usually adopt coping mechanisms and usually they're maladaptive coping mechanisms. And so, you know, that's not gendered either females, males, mean,
Leina (06:37)
Right.
Yes. Yep.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (06:50)
They are, coping mechanisms are very helpful when we feel like we can't survive, when we're overwhelmed. And we also know that when people are able to get help, those coping mechanisms are able to be reduced, the maladaptive ones, as new coping mechanisms are learned. And so, you know, as you talk about this socialization, I'm also aware that there is,
Leina (07:09)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (07:20)
So we have this kind of lack of close male friends as adults. There's also, you touched on this, some cultural barriers of the way many men, especially in, I think, our generation, because I do see it changing with my children's age, where mental health is much more discussed and much more.
Leina (07:25)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (07:51)
I think de-stigmatized, but we have these cultural norms for our generation that is very, you know, men don't need to get help. It somehow makes you weaker. If you get mental health, might be some, you might think there's something wrong with you. And so those types of stereotypes and stigmas are also really creating barriers to men in their
Leina (07:54)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:20)
I would say 40s, 50s and older getting the help they need.
Leina (08:22)
Absolutely, absolutely. And it's really unfortunate because when we are not doing well mentally or emotionally, it really affects all of our relationships and our familial relationships are usually the most to suffer. They suffer the most because we tend to act out our frustration at home more than we do outside of home.
And so it really impacts the whole family.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (08:55)
Absolutely. You know, one of the key parts of our program that we run at Mending Trauma is groups online that are based on gender or gender identification. So if you identify as male, we have a whole program that is just for male mental health and trauma recovery.
Leina (09:11)
Great.
Yep. Yes.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:23)
And if you identify as female, then you go into our female mental health trauma recovery online program. And I'd love to know some of your insights, from running, because Leina runs the all male group. And I'd love to know, with obviously without disclosing any details, some of the benefits you're seeing of men
Leina (09:47)
Sure.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (09:53)
being in a community together.
Leina (09:56)
It's so cool to see. It's really a humbling experience for me. And what we do is we have this half hour community connection every week and people come in and they can ask questions or they can share something that they want support about or just share something they want witnessed. And we have some
excellent discussions where the members of the group are able to get vulnerable and talk about things that have affected them or really bother them. And it resonates with almost every other member. And it gives people a place to connect over not just common
things, but also it gives people a place to connect where there is a lot of emotional safety. There's a sense of emotional safety and where they feel supported by their peers. It's really cool.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (10:52)
That's amazing. I know, you know, my first introduction to group work and I know this isn't group therapy. It's more of a community, drop in where you're, you know, open to discussing anything, it is, I guess it's parallel to group therapy because you are in a group setting and you're being a little more vulnerable.
Leina (11:18)
Right. Well, I think, you know, we've talked several times in this podcast about our two major drives. These are biological drives. They're actually biological imperatives. And one is the drive for safety and the other is the drive for connection. And Brene Brown's work talks about if you can't be vulnerable, it's really hard to have a sense of connection. And so creating spaces for
men to have an opportunity to be vulnerable in an emotionally safe place allows them to feel more connected with each other, which reduces loneliness. It reduces a sense of otherness that so many men with trauma experience. And it benefits their ability to calm down their stress reaction and spend less time in fight or flight.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:13)
Yes, yeah, absolutely. I know I was really hesitant slash angry because you know, anger is my go to when I'm dysregulated and thank goodness, thanks to all the work I've done in neurofeedback, it's way on the back burner. But I remember feeling so angry and so dysregulated when I had to participate in group type therapy.
Leina (12:23)
Right, uh-huh.
Right?
Mmm.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (12:43)
Because I didn't want to be vulnerable to a group of people. I wanted to just keep it one-on-one. As a therapist, Leina, so you see individual clients in your private practice, and you also do community connection with men, what are the benefits of this community that you wouldn't get on a one-on-one appointment with a therapist?
Leina (12:49)
Right. Right.
Correct.
that's such a great question. Well, we know from research that when you've been impacted by trauma, it's usually through a relationship. Not always, let me clarify that, not always, but oftentimes significant relationship trauma occurs either in childhood or as we go throughout our lives with friends, peer groups, partners, et cetera. And when...
Dr. Amy Hoyt (13:26)
Mm-hmm.
Leina (13:41)
When we have this sense that we are different or alone, and you can talk to an individual therapist and they can help normalize things. I mean, that's one of the skills we learned in grad school was normalizing clients experience. That has power. But when you bring a group of people together who have similar experiences, even if the details aren't the same, you start to form
sense of belonging and you have a sense of being seen and heard and understood that is, I believe, often more powerful than individual therapy can be.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (14:25)
So interesting. Well, the research definitely shows that with trauma specifically, community is one of the most effective ways to help people recover. And we know that with trauma specifically, talk therapy is one of the less effective ways. And so
Leina (14:39)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Correct.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (14:53)
In the research, community is more powerful in trauma recovery.
Leina (14:57)
Yes, and we have lived experience from the people in our group who have affirmed that.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (15:05)
Yes, absolutely. So in Movember, as you see all of these amazing men with their mustaches that typically don't have mustaches, we hope it jogs your reticular activating system. Yes, to realize, this is actually a movement about men's health and part of it.
Leina (15:18)
Nectarating? Yep. The part of your brain that notices things.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (15:32)
A big part of that movement is men's mental health. We know that when we work with all humans and help them heal from trauma that our community, our families, our culture, our world becomes a better place. And so we wanted to dedicate this episode to all the men out there who are looking for mental health help or who have been doing their own work.
Leina (15:52)
Absolutely.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (16:02)
And of course, we always have our services that are available specifically delineated by how you identify gender-wise.
Leina (16:12)
Yep, and as they say in Australia, which is apparently where this movement started, if you have been doing your own work, good on ya, mate. One of our sisters married an Australian and I can remember him saying stuff like that, so great. Good on ya.
Dr. Amy Hoyt (16:21)
That's right. Good on ya. That's right. Yes. Yeah, good on ya. goodness. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We look forward to being with you next week and happy Movember.
Leina (16:39)
Take care everybody.