Richard Tierney – Healing Trauma Through Recovery and Hope

Richard Tierney
[00:00:00] Ed Watters: Today we are speaking with Richard Tierney, he created a program called [00:01:00] Trauma Recovery Anonymous. Richard, could you please introduce yourself? Let people know just a little more about you, please.
[00:01:08] Richard Tierney: Okay, I’m Richard. Really great to be here. Thank you for having me, Ed. Uh, really cool. I’m loving these podcasts. I just, before I start, I wanna thank people like yourself who wouldn’t have a chance to speak if it wasn’t for people like yourself who started these podcasts. So for that first of all, I wanna say thank you very much. Um, my name is Richard Tierney. I’m originally from Ireland. I’m living in Thailand. I’m now married, I’ve got two teenage, well, they’re young adults now, they’re both going to university. One is twenty and the other is just turning seventeen. They’re both in university. Um, I, I came from Ireland originally.
I, I suffered, I’m sorry, I cut myself shaving tonight. I should’ve left the beard on, but I shaved. And I’ve got two wounds on either side of my lips here, so please forgive those. It’s not a, it’s not a camera thing, it’s me cut myself shaving in two distinct places. Seems crazy, I totally cut myself once and I got two. Anyway, anyway, that’s, that’s, trivial. And I come from [00:02:00] Ireland originally, I’m married now, I’ve got two teenage, uh, young adults now. I keep thinking they’re children, but they’re not. Um, so, uh, I, I live here. And I suffered a trauma when I was twelve years of age. And it, it, really ruined, ruled and defined me. And I was a victim for most of my life. Most of my, for forty years I was a victim. Hated of the world, afraid of everybody and everything, and, uh, pushed my family away, put my friends away, fear of intimacy, of anything at all trying to have it reach me. And I got involved in addictions, just trying to escape. It wasn’t that I wanted to die, I didn’t want to live.
I felt so ashamed of myself and I felt I must have caused my abuse. I must have sent some signals. So all that kind of stuff as a child who doesn’t know any, how to deal with this stuff, was blaming myself for everything. And I got to stage four in AA, I got a, what they call a sponsor. It’s like a mentor, someone who teaches you how to become normal again, how to deal with and interact with people. I used to always be going on about my victimhood, and he said to me one day, he said to me, Isn’t it [00:03:00] time you let that go? I was, I was highly offended. Who do you think you are saying I should let go of this victimhood? This is who I was, this is my, my identity, you know? But it had come to a stage where I’d actually really got comfortable having a, a mentor, someone outside who was able to like be a father figure to me and direct me in my life.
And I didn’t want to throw that away. Although normally I’d run for the hills when someone would, would challenge me, Ed. It wasn’t like, so they were saying I’d run for the hills and they’d never see me again. But I kind of wanted to keep this going because it’s the one kind of sanity I had in my life was this person calling my shots, you know, calling me on my crap or whatever. So I kind of decided I’d try and find some solution. I love that the AA twelve step program, this spiritual aspect to it, that we’re trying to heal a hole in our soul. That my trauma, no one can see my trauma. They can see how it manifests mentally, physically, emotionally, but they cannot see that hole in my soul.
You know, that I can be looking at you here today and you can think, Oh, Richie looks like, apart from his, his cuts and his, [00:04:00] from his shaving, he looks like he’s, he’s sane. But inside, it’s a hole that’s eating away at me. I can be feeling insane on the inside, but outside, look, look normal, you know? And that’s where I was most of my life. I was going through my life, people look at me thinking I’m a normal kind of guy. Where inside, just eating away at me. Ulcers, cancers, disease, dis-ease with myself and the people around me, in conflict with the world around me. And that’s where I came from.
[00:04:23] Ed Watters: Yeah. Well, I can really relate in many ways to that, Richard. I myself, went through lots of trauma early on. At nine years old I was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and that’s pretty early. I went to Alateen, you know, and that AA twelve step program sure does come in handy if, if you use it properly. And there’s, there’s a lot of us out here, that we’ve went through a lot of trauma and we don’t know how to get rid of it. [00:05:00] And it, it feels shameful and dirty and, you know, heavy. It gets really heavy on us. After we find the light, and I really think this communication is part of that light when we can actually sit down and have a conversation without feeling the guilt and the trauma behind the conversation. What was the first step for you to recovering out of this childhood trauma?
[00:05:39] Richard Tierney: I love your question. I, I’ve been blown away by podcasts that seem to have wonderful ways of expressing questions that just, just really kind of open up the whole story. So, so I, I, I knew from, from speaking to this man that I was living a lie. So, so, so from my understanding was, I, I, the A, the AA program took about [00:06:00] twenty-four hours, one day at a time. And that never sunk in until this whole trauma thing. So I’m sixty-three years of age, I I, I’m a husband and, and I’m a father. I’ve got two grown children, I call ’em children, I, I think they be fifty, I’d be calling ’em children. My two grown children in university, you know, and my mother-in-law in the house. We’ve got two dogs and whatever,
and I live in Asia. But I only have these twenty-four hours. So my day to day was I get up at 6:00 AM in the morning and I go to bed at 10:00 PM at night, normally. I’m on at midnight with you tonight ’cause of the time zone, but normally it’s 6:00 AM until 10:00 PM. And then at 10:00 PM at night, I give my whole day to God. I mean, I’m not preaching. I’m not a religious person, I don’t do church, I don’t do manmade religions, I’m not a member of a denomination. But I made a decision that at nighttime I’d say, Okay, God, here’s my day. Here’s the good of it and the bad of it. My, my successes, my failures, my wins, my losses, my challenges, what I failed to do, and what I should have done, and what I didn’t do.
Take all of it and give me eight hours of peaceful [00:07:00] sleep. And when I say I have the conversation at night, for some reason it all leaves my head. I put my head on the pillow, I close my eyes, and I sleep like a fucking log. Wake up the next morning and it’s a case of a whole new day of sixteen hours in front of me. And I do from six until ten, eight hours of work and eight hours of play. And I’ve committed to living in those sixteen hours. And that’s the AA program, gave me the gift of sixteen hours in a day. So I only live in sixteen hours in the day. I don’t think the past is the present anymore, I don’t think the future is the present. I may not wake up tomorrow so the future’s none of my business and the past I’ve realized isn’t anything to do with me.
I’m sixty-three years of age. I’m in my life today as a parent, and a husband, and a father, and a, and a trauma therapist and a member of recovery, and I’m here on a podcast with you. This is my life, this is the complete totality of my life. What happened fifty years ago didn’t happen to the sixty-three-year-old man. Because if what happened to me as a child, if that happened to me today, I’d be big enough and old enough to say, No, that’s not happening. Get back, fuck off. I’d [00:08:00] kill you. It wouldn’t happen to me. So I came to realize that I’m carrying the memory of what happened to my younger self, and I’m carrying sympathy pains for him. But he went through it, not me, you know? Like, I’m a sober person here. Thirty-eight years, thirty years, years ago, I was a chronic alcoholic.
Today, I’m not a chronic alcoholic. I’m sober today, I’m a husband and a father. Thirty-eight years ago, you wouldn’t trust me with your own children. You wouldn’t trust me in a job, you wouldn’t trust me behind the wheel of a car. But today, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m trusted behind the wheel of a car. I’m trusted with my children, other people’s children, I’m trusted in my, in my daily routines. You’re having me on my, on your podcast. If this would be thirty-eight years ago, you wouldn’t leave me near the, the camera for fear I’d make some show. Or, you know, so I can’t be, I can’t be in two places at once. Either I’m here with you today or I’m a twelve-year-old child, fifty years ago. But I can’t be in both places at once.
So, so that was my trauma. My, my understanding of trauma was, I only exist [00:09:00] today so what happened in the past didn’t happen to me. So it’s not my job to get vengeance or justice for what happened in the past. It’d be like, it’d be like, I always think of, Ed, if you and I were close friends and if you broke your leg and I decided to put my leg in a cast and take medication for your physical pain, what benefit would that be to you? I’m walking around with my good leg in a cast, taking medication for your physical pain, medication for your emotional pain. How is that helping you recover? And then six months later, your leg comes out of the cast and you’re fine. And ten years later, I’m still walking around with my leg in a cast, still taking medication for your physical pain, and your, your past, it’s over.
How is that helping you in any way? And then the worst question is, when is that no longer about you and all about me. That’s happened with my trauma, it was no longer about the twelve-year-old child. I had taken ownership of it as though it happened to me, and it hadn’t happened to me. It couldn’t happen to me because I’m a, I’m a grown adult. If that person came near me as a grown adult, I killed the fucker. He wouldn’t get anywhere near me. That was a twelve-year-old child who [00:10:00] lost their innocence, not, not a sixty-two-year-old man. So that, for me, was a turning point. I realized I had to find some way of teaching people how they could separate from the past and give the past back to the younger self.
[00:10:13] Ed Watters: That, that’s interesting right there, Richard. You know, the comment, uh, I had to teach someone. How big is that? When we actually develop the skills to be better in ourselves, is it a natural thing that we want to help others recover?
[00:10:34] Richard Tierney: Well, I, we’re, we’re human beings. We’re, we’re, we’re, we’re, okay. The A A program gave me an understanding of God, which is completely different to the God I, I knew growing up as a Roman Catholic. And even I, I tried joining a Baptist church, didn’t work for me. I tried joining a Protestant church, didn’t work for me. Tried to go back to my Roman Catholic faith, didn’t work for me. Went to a Jesuit church, didn’t work for me. Went to a Presbyterian, organized religion doesn’t work for me. I just, I just realized that. [00:11:00] It’s like in AA, there’s some meetings that work for me, some other meetings I can’t stand.
We’re all personalities, we don’t all fit in. There’s people who can’t stand me, people who just like me, and there’s people who like me. That’s just the way life is. Not everyone’s gonna like me, everyone’s gonna love me, Ed. The same way certain normal people, I cannot handle. Other normal people I love, you know? And other addicts that I don’t like and other people I just, I love. I’m great with other AA members, I’m not quite with members of other twelve step groups. We’re just different people, we just think different, we do things differently. So I don’t get on well with addicts, and addicts don’t get on well with me. I never did drugs. I don’t, I’m not the same mindset as someone who uses drugs. And that’s not saying anything bad about someone who does drugs,
we’re just different people. You know, it’d be like different tribes. It’s like, I, I love this concept of, when I was born, I was born into my parents’ tribe. Now, because I’m born into my parents tribe, it doesn’t mean that my parents are my tribe, you know? My parents were hardworking family [00:12:00] people in Ireland. Now if I want to be a dancer, or a a, a songwriter, or a footballer, or a sports player, I’m not a member of my parents’ tribe, you know? They may want, want me to be a doctor ’cause all the family were doctors, and I wanna be a dancer. Just means, it’s not that I, I’m sitting wrong, I’m not in my tribe. But when I find my tribe, I fit into it. And in AA, I found my tribe. I am not a tribe member of the NA Tribe, or the GA Tribe, or the OA tribe, a member of the AA tribe. And I feel at home. Again, I tried Roman Catholic faith, didn’t work for me. I’m not a member of that tribe. Not a member of the Baptist tribe, or the, or the, uh, Anglican, or the, or the, or the, the, the Partisan,
they’re just not my tribe. Nothing wrong with them. They work for some people and for some people they’re their, they’re a God send. But for me, they’re not my tribe. So I like the concept of having my own understanding of God, but I, I, again, I couldn’t, I couldn’t allow myself to be in control of the process. So having my own understanding could [00:13:00] only go so far. I had to understand that I accept the God of the Bible, just the, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Accept they’re, they’re, they’re the God that I’m talking about. And they have my concept of them rather than my concept of my understanding. If I go with my understanding of God, my brother has be nice to me, stand on my side of the street, fight for my battles, and you know,
that’s not, that’s me being in control like a go-gettcha God. So I had to pick a God outside of me, just the God of the Bible. It is proven, proven by historians and geologists that it’s true and that everything in it is true. So I accept that’s my God. Christ, He’s my God. Now, I don’t have to go to manmade religion, don’t join a denomination. But I can accept that the God of the Bible is my God, and that’s what helped me get over. ‘Cause what I needed to do is I needed to perform a miracle. I need miracles. And to defeat a trauma memory, we need miracles. We need a change of attitude and perspective and that [00:14:00] comes with a miraculous change in us.
So I like to tell my clients that when they do my program, they’re gonna experience seven miracles. For me, there were three major and four minor. For, for another guy, they were all major. Again, it’s, it’s how it affects you. You’ll know whether it’s a big, big miracle or a small miracle, but you’re gonna perform miracles. Manmade solutions don’t work, medications and therapy don’t work. But solutions, spiritual solution does. Sorry, go on.
[00:14:27] Ed Watters: No, that’s fine. Uh, it, it’s a good conversation. Uh, God is the center of everything in many ways to a lot of people. And I really see those that deny God, they, they tend to have problem lives. And that’s my own opinion, I’ll, I’ll stick with that. And I, I think we all need a higher power. And when we step [00:15:00] into a manmade church, there’s always worry about how the rent’s going to be paid. You know, how many members I have? Am I saving? You can’t save anybody, that’s not your job. You’re not the savior.
And a manmade church always brings inherent problems along with that because of the financial difficulties in our world. So I, I really think that spirituality is a personal thing between you and God, whoever your God might be. And you know, to me there’s one God. You have to really find that, and it’s a journey within your life. I remember young, being young, and I would go from church to church looking for, well, what’s [00:16:00] inside this building that everybody needs? Why are they a, a congregation, if you will? Why does everybody have to feel this is meant for you, this is meant for me, but on the other hand, we have all these different, uh, denominations. So there’s a division there also.
So when we talk religion, I, I really get hung up on it when people want to say, You have to go to church. To me, you are in church every day. And you’re responsible for your actions every day, every minute of the day, and it’s really about owning up to your responsibility as a human being. You’re not gonna be perfect. But if you make a [00:17:00] mistake, it’s all right. And knowing that, you have to be accountable for your actions. I really think that finding that truth beyond religion is where you’re going to find comfort. What do you think about that, Richard?
[00:17:21] Richard Tierney: I’d like to talk about, uh, the, the, the religion. I don’t talk too much about religion because it’s not a religious thing that I do. But there’s, there’s I, about, I’d like to mention about God and Jesus for just, for, for a moment to give you an understanding of how I came about my, my whole idea. Um, I, I used to think there was good and evil. I really believed there was good and evil. You know, that Satan’s out to get us and he, he’s trying to tempt us. It’s always good and evil. And I like the concept that, that, that God lives within us, the King of God, God king, kingdom of God is within us. It’s not out there in the clouds. Not some guy dressed like a Thor sitting in, in a, in an armchair in the clouds looking down here. It’s actually inside us. It’s in our imagination that [00:18:00] we’re the image of God.
We are the I am. If we, anytime I use the words I am, I’m invoking God in my life. So if I’m saying I am depressed, and I am PTSD, and I am hated and no one likes me, I am inviting that into my life. I am creating that scenario and manifesting that into my life. So I have to watch how I use God’s name. So I need to be saying, even though I’m feeling, it’s like, I am gloriously happy, joyous and free. And if I say it enough, it, I’ll manifest that. So I will change. It’s like that miracle, we said changing, we said changing what we say, everything starts changing first, you know? But the, the guy who built out of the, the talk about the guy who built the San Francisco Bridge, he had an idea first. He imagined what the bridge would look like, and he had its idea in his head and found that he drew plans, and now that, then they got the, the bridge.
But the bridge came out with someone’s imagination. And everything in our lives comes from someone’s imagination. So if we wanna have a good life, we have to imagine a good life. So there’s a practice called the dream Prayer, and it’s basically manifestation. When you go to bed at [00:19:00] night, there’s a time just before you sleep when your, your, your conscious mind switches off. And in that moment, you can dream a dream. And dream the most beautiful dream you can think of, of the future, but as though it’s happened already. It’s your dream of how you’re, you’ve got rid of your trauma memory and it’s gone. And you’re a normal person where you can fit in with your family and go to a party and feel comfortable and relaxed
talking about the mundane, stupid things that normal people talk about. That they can talk about and have a long conversation, relaxed. Where we’re all hyper about the poor me, what happened to me. To be relaxed and comfortable in that space or public speaking, as yourself, speaking publicly at an event where you’re calm and you’re confident. And you have this dream prayer going to bed for about five or ten minutes you do every night. And then every time you have a free moment, like you’re driving the car, or you’re sitting on the toilet, you go back and revisit the dream as though it’s happened. And the idea behind a dream prayer is, God hears you having this dream. He believes it must have happened already so He makes it happen in your life. And He manifests it, He creates it. And certainly the event [00:20:00] comes down with your public speaking and you find you’re an ace, you coach your family too, and you’re not all uptight over yourself.
You are able to enjoy the conversation. You realize, I’ve had this dream, I dreamed this dream in, in, in the future and it, it’s come about. This, a dream prayer is, it’s basically manifestation. If we learn to dream prayer, we can create whatever we want in our lives. So that was the first part of it. The second part was to, to, to, for me, I had to accept that there’s no Satan, there’s no evil. That God is responsible for everything, good and bad. And everything I go through, He, He, it’s like the book of Job. If you ever read the book of Job in, in the Bible, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s powerful. This guy had everything and then everything was taken from him. And then there’s, they’re talking about Satan tempts and to see if he really loves God and he does all this to him. And at the end of it, God says, I let this happen because I wanted to make you stronger. And I’m gonna give you back your ten wives and your twenty children, and multiply it by tenfold.
I like that concept. But the fact [00:21:00] that everything that happened to me, I went through my sexual abuse, um, addiction, terrible bullying in school, really very bad bullying where I suffered in school. Was horrific bullying that would’ve killed an elephant, would’ve flawed an elephant. But I survived all these horrific things in my childhood, and then into breakups and rejection, and bullying again as an adult, and all this kind of stuff, and not being misunderstood. All this kind of stuff that happened to me on my journey. And certainly here I am, sixty-two years of age, married with two teenage, well, I keep saying teenage children, two young adults going to university, on Ed Watters Dead America Podcast, creating a trauma program helping people break free of a past trauma.
And I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t suffered all those things in the past. And I saw myself suffering them. God gave me each of these challenges to make me the person I am today. I couldn’t see it all along, I thought Satan’s at, at me, or evil’s at me, or someone’s trying to block me from God, or [00:22:00] you know, trying to stump me, whatever. And looking back, I see there’s no Satan. God wants to make me stronger by suffering all these events, so I become stronger. But what I went through would have flawed an, flawed an elephant. I really believe another, another child would’ve probably killed themselves than go through what I went through, I, I suffered some
horrific stuff. I don’t wanna trigger anybody by talking about it. I don’t like talking about what happened in the past, I don’t wanna trigger anybody. So now when I work with a client, I tell the client, we don’t want to talk about what happened to you. The other person’s going to heal you. What we do is we, we label what happened for every person that’s been, one label, that’s a loss of innocence. So twelve years of age, I suffered a trauma event that caused me a loss of innocence. Thirteen to nineteen in boarding school, I suffered numerous losses of innocence. Nineteen to twenty-five in early relationships and being dumped and being made a fool of, I suffered a loss of innocence. And then twenty-five to thirty-five, again, bullying in the workplace, that kind of stuff, I suffered.
So it’s all a loss of innocence. So we can’t [00:23:00] compare our trauma with anybody else, that’s the worst thing we can do. And if you tell people about your trauma, they’ll judgment against what they’ve heard before. Again, it’s, so you just label that thing as a loss of innocence. And my loss of innocence, and so maybe if you were a veteran and, and you look back at your, your younger self at the age of eighteen, enlisted to fight in, in the armed forces in, in a foreign war, their loss of innocence is whatever happened in the war. It’s just called the loss of innocence, before they, before they grew up knowing that man couldn’t harm man. And then they experienced an event with some men performing horrors on other men, that was their loss of innocence. Mine was a sexual one. Someone else might have married into a narcissistic abusive relationship,
that’s their loss of innocence. We just use the label loss of innocence. I know what that means to me. So I’m not feeling threatened or triggered by saying loss of innocence because I know exactly what it was for me. When you say loss of innocence, you’re not comparing with me. You know exactly what your loss of innocence was. And same with someone else who, who was, who was a veteran, someone else who was in a relationship, someone else who saw 9/11, [00:24:00] they just labeled it a loss of innocence. And by admitting a loss of innocence, they’re not triggered, they’re not going back into the trauma. It’s just a loss of innocence, you know?
So that’s the idea with the God thing, it’s a case of if we can accept that God’s in charge of everything, then it, it helps us to, to break free of this. Because we realize what happened in the past was part of my learning curve, was part to make me stronger today. But it isn’t meant to define me, who I am today. So what happened in the past is not my job to get, get vengeance for, get justice for, it didn’t happen to me. But like me getting vengeance or justice for you, having your leg broken by some fellow. That happened to you, didn’t happened to me. You can fight your own battles. Not for me to go around fighting Ed Watter’s battles ’cause he, he was attacked and mocked,
none of my business. I can cheer for you. It didn’t happen to me in the same way it happened to a twelve-year-old child, didn’t happen to me. The thirteen-year-old child or the eighteen-year-old child, didn’t happen to me. It happened to other people and I have to stop fighting their battles. And they don’t [00:25:00] even want me to fight their battles. They’re thinking, What the fuck are you doing coming in trying to fight my battles? You go off. I’ve sacrificed so much so that you’ll be free today to have a life with your wife and your children, and Ed Watters, and, and everyone else in your life. Would you please fuck off and leave your life and stop coming back into the past and taking my shit and giving it life in the future. That’s kind of the idea behind this.
[00:25:25] Ed Watters: Yeah. So you talk about there can be no effect when the cause is removed. That, that’s basically what you’re outlining right there then, cause and effect.
[00:25:40] Richard Tierney: Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s the science. Science tells us that if, if, if, if there’s no cause, then there can’t be an effect. If you, if you look at modern, modern, uh, therapy today, we treat the effect. We treat people for PTSD, or depression, or, you know, or any condition, any disorder that’s, the disorder, [00:26:00] but not the cause of the disorder. You know, if, if we’re treating the, the disorder, not the cause of it, we’re gonna be treating the disorder forever.
We’ve got something like, in this day and age, there’s something like, in the last eighty years, we’ve got 1.4 billion people diagnosed with PTSD. That’s nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Another eighty years, it’s gonna be half of the population. We’re treating the effect and not the cause. But if I treat your cause, so if I work with you, Ed, and I get you to give your past back to, to your young seventeen-year-old Ed, or young twelve-year-old Ed, and you have this spiritual experience of outer body, you see it giving it back to your young Ed and young Ed saying, Thank you for giving my shit back, Ed. I’m gonna fuck off and leave this plane of existence. And they leave the plane of existence and you feel the weight leaving your body. But once it’s gone, it’s like, all this stuff you’ve been doing with your therapist for the last ten years certainly is no longer, let me ask you, How does that make you feel?
Sorry, it’s nothing to do with me. What happened to Ed’s leg has nothing to do with me. It doesn’t make me feel anything, you know? It’s not, what happened to my younger self doesn’t affect me, it has nothing to do with my life today. My life is the sixteen hours with my wife and my teenage, [00:27:00] adult children. And my mother-in-law and the dog, you know? And when we can separate from the past, with the cause gone, there’s no longer any reason for the effect. So then we did the twelve step program of trauma, recovering from doing all that learned behavior.
[00:27:15] Ed Watters: Yeah, I, I kind of like the, uh, K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid. Because when we, when we really keep it simple instead of piling all of these thoughts and traumas on top of us every day when we wake up in the morning and our feet hit the floor, it’s your choice every day how you want to, number one, respond to anything that comes your way. And number two, how, how are you going to make your day better? Because if, if we wake up and something automatically triggers us, [00:28:00] we have to work on trying to make the day better from the very first instance of whatever triggers us. How do we, how do we locate and identify our trigger points so we can be on top of those negative feelings that those trigger points can actually put us into?
[00:28:26] Richard Tierney: Sorry for smiling, I love these questions that, they’re, they’re, they’re wonderful. I, I wish I could think of these questions before and then give ’em to you and say, Ask this question, Ed, when we get there. But like, you’re coming up with these questions that are just mind blowingly wonderful. You know, very simple, but, but very astute. So the, the thing is we have to understand, if the past didn’t happen to us, then we can’t let it trigger us. So all the, we could do a list of all the things that were triggered from and say, None of my business. None of my business. Again, I have to be very careful here because you, you can’t just say to somebody, Okay, it didn’t happen to you. Ignore it, let it go. Because if you, if that is how you’ve defined [00:29:00] yourself for the last ten or twenty years and you, you become your identity and you’re going to the support groups on it, maybe the veteran support group, or the narcissists support group, or the, and you’ve been a member of that group and you’ve been a speaker of that group and a voice and a chairperson and all that kind of stuff,
and suddenly I say to you, Yeah, this didn’t happen to you, walk away, it can be very hard to walk away from your identity if your identity has been victim. It’s nearly impossible. It, it really, so this is the big challenge we have because the whole world says, You’re a victim. Celebrate victimhood. I mean, social welfare give you all these benefits for the veterans, for PTSD, and for all these different conditions. And a part of that life of veteran is you get all this social welfare benefits for PTSD and therapy and, and all this kind of stuff you have coming on top of it. And there’s a huge, and there’s a huge dependence upon the state to remain in that status, you know? It, it kind of stops you from being a normal [00:30:00] person in a job doing nine to five if you don’t have to ever work.
Because now you’re getting all this social welfare benefits, that means you need to never work and you can be retired as part of a really strong, supportive network of support groups kind of stuff. But you lose yourself, your sense of self. But the payoff is almost like, okay. And I’m not knocking veterans. I think any, anyone who’s served their country at any level should be entitled to all that social welfare, whether they stay as a, as someone who’s been damaged or they recover. So if you’ve been diagnosed with PTSD and you are receiving benefits, and then you do this program and you, and you’re healed, you should still be, receive those benefits the rest of your life because you’ve volunteered to be of service to your country.
I don’t think they should say, Well, if you stop doing PTSD, you lose all that income. I think anyone who gives their life to, for the benefit of their, of their, their, of their, their country or the world, Army, Navy, Air Force, police, emergency workers, [00:31:00] nurses, doctors, if you serve your country or your, your world with distinction and you suffer for it, you should be able to have it for the rest of your days. You can still get a job, but you don’t lose the benefit of, we’re not paying you just for the, for the years you worked in the Army, we’re gonna pay you for the rest of your life because you gave up your years, your good years for the Army, or the Navy, or the Air Force, or emergency. We’re gonna continue to pay you long after, till the day you die.
We’re gonna make certain you need never work again if you don’t want to. But if you do want to work, you still get this benefit as well. We’re gonna readjust your tax, we’re gonna increase your insurance. So that’s what I believe should happen to anyone who’s been diagnosed with PTSD. So 1.4 billion people out there diagnosed with PTSD. If you kick your PTSD, you should still get those payments for the rest of your life. That’s something I feel very strongly, but it, it’s not my, my position to say. But I want you to know, I understand it can be scary. The idea if I clear my PTSD, I’m gonna lose all these payments and I haven’t worked in twenty years and I’ve been dependent on state for twenty years.
[00:32:00] So certainly I’m going to step out of that comfort zone and try and find a job. And there’s no jobs going, and I’d be kicked out of my, my, my home, or where I have my, my wellbeing or my welfare, you know, I’ll lose all my, my network of friends. It’s almost safer. The pain we know is safer than the pain we don’t know, that’s the biggest problem we have. For anyone with a condition, it’s safer to stay in the pain you know. Uh, a friend of mine in AA, a veteran of, uh, Korea, lovely man, it’s one of my sponsors I have in AA, eighty-seven years of age, he is. And he spoke about the fact that if he did this program, and he, he wouldn’t do it because if he did this program he’d have to get, he’d have, he’d lose all his benefits and all of his,
and he’s too old to get a job. He’s too old to try and find something to live without the support, and that’s a huge problem. You know, I, I would love to see some government, Donald Trump is god saying anyone who’s ever served [00:33:00] this country gets their social welfare for life, whatever happens, you know? I think that would be, hands down, the first thing they should do is say, anyone who has served their country, Army, Navy, personnel, ambulance, emergency workers, social welfare, social carers, whatever, walking the, the, the, the human, the, the, these super crossing with this, for kids walking across the road, school wardens, whatever. Whatever your situation is, you get social welfare for life on top of you got a job. And we reduce your tax on your job so you’d be, never have to run for anything. I think on a, on a, on a, on a, that should happen. I’m not American, so I don’t have a say in your country, but that’s what I’d love to see happen.
And if anyone is to do anything, Donald Trump’s the one who would do it and I wish he would do something like that. So anyway, that’s what I need to say first and foremost. Because it’s, the idea of saying to someone with PTSD or depression, Let’s cure you of the past trauma memory and then you can be free of your depression and PTSD, there’s a catch in this. Because if they’re free of the PTSD, they may feel, [00:34:00] the people I’ve worked with, with PTSD, they’re the most honorable people I’ve known that can’t live a lie. They can’t claim PTSD benefits if they don’t have PTSD. You know what I mean? They’re not someone who would be willing to cheat the system
even though the system doesn’t take care of them. They’ve, they’ve got loads of morals and honor that they wouldn’t dream of, I think most young men who go off and fight in the war are this very moral, kind of honorable young people who suffer the horrors of war. And then they, they, they still have their morals and their ethics about them and they wouldn’t dream of committing any crime or, you know, that kind of stuff. And so you, you’re talking about doing this program and in two hours having your trauma memory gone. Do the twelve step program, have your PTSD gone, and step back into, into the human race. It’s almost like, the price is too high.
[00:34:53] Ed Watters: Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of interesting. You [00:35:00] know, we, we think about trauma a lot in our lives and it, it’s really one of those big highlights that get overlooked. You know, uh, we, we, we find a solution, and that’s the answer. And it’s, it’s one fits all. And, and I, I think we really need to reexamine that whole mindset of how we look at trauma in the first place. Because like you stated a little earlier in your conversation, my trauma is not the same as somebody else’s, your trauma is not the same as somebody else’s. So we all kinda live our lives and we experience traumas daily, but they’re not the same. And we really have to [00:36:00] remember that in a lot of the ways. Let’s talk a little bit about your program, Richard. What is it and how did you actually come up with it?
[00:36:16] Richard Tierney: Okay. Thank you, again. I’m loving these questions. Uh, I got to work in, in an addiction center in Chiang Mai in Thailand. Can I mention the name? Uh, it’s called The Cabin, it’s the first addiction center in Asia. Uh, a group of four, uh, English lads that got together and organized the center, and a huge success. At one stage, it was 120 beds. The biggest center probably in the world. A huge success rate with, with, with addiction primarily. And I, I worked as a support staff and then I, ’cause I, I’d done, uh, practice like EFT and Reiki and whatever, I got to change over to a, uh, holistic practitioner. To huge, and getting work from clients and also holding, uh, twelve, twelve, [00:37:00] twelve step spaces and, and the likes.
And I got to run some meditation groups and I really enjoyed it, it was really, really powerful. And when I got to working with clients, and I got to work with clients who, I think because the center primarily looked at addiction, there were some clients kind of slipping through the cracks and they felt it’d be a good idea to give them a, a, an induction to, to holistic practices. Maybe that would give them some, they weren’t there for addiction. They’re more there for trauma or that kinda stuff. So they tried different breath like TRE, and Miseph, and other Reiki, and whatever, just something that might help them. And they got to try some different things. And I got to work with about, about a hundred clients.
I had huge success, absolutely fantastic success with, with them all using this healing event. So the idea of the healing event is, it’s basically a visualization, it’s all holistic. First of all, I need, need to probably, I stand, I, I hold really strong in my mind is I think there’s two [00:38:00] forms of mental illness. In my early, early years, I had two mental health professionals who worked with me, and they were the most kind, caring, loving, empathetic people. They were really powerful. And now I think mental health professionals are qualified to work with mental illness, and I’m not a mental health professional.
I couldn’t help you when it comes to mental health, it’s a matter out of my depth. I couldn’t help you. But I believe that mental disorders are caused by us bringing the past into the present. They cause a dysregulation in our thinking and in our feeling, whatever. And that’s what a disorder is. Whereas a mental illness is something that you’re born with, or you suffer in an accident, or something happens that affects your brain. So mental health professionals are qualified and they go to college to learn how to deal with that. But the mental disorders, that’s why life coaches, and holistic practitioners, and cognitive therapists can all help with mental disorder. Because it’s, it’s a dysregulation of our emotions and our feelings
and our thought patterns. And that’s why so many people can help in this regard. So my idea was that, [00:39:00] well, again, if it’s cause and effect, and if we can get rid of the cause, well, then like a twelve step program like AA would be fantastic if you create a twelve step program for trauma. To do the twelve steps to get rid of the, the learned behaviors of depression, PTSD, whatever that disorder you have is. They’re learned behaviors. When, when we’re suffering with something like PTSD or depression, our behavior towards our family and friends become distorted and dysfunctional. We’re pushing people away who are trying to get close to us, who love us. Because we’re so scared of empathy and kindness that we’re hurting the people we love and we’re getting divorced from our wives and husbands. And that’s all that learned behavior
we have to change. So we do a twelve step program similar to the twelve steps of AA, but different. But it helps us to undo all that learned behavior that was so dysfunctional in our lives. So there’s two parts, one is the healing event I call The Healing Event. It’s, it’s trauma, it’s how to heal any past trauma now. So I take the clients to four sections of this healing event. The first section is [00:40:00] Seven Foundations, Spiritual Foundation Stones for Performing the Seven Miracles for Changing our Attitude or our Perspective around the Past. That the past didn’t happen to us, it happened to our younger self. And we need to give it back to our younger self.
And those, and those seven foundations, cornerstones, we actually laid the foundations where we’re actually ready to give it away. And then the next two sections, the next one is clearing, clearing our heads of the stinking thinking, faulty feelings. And then we have to also clean our hands of all the negative energy in our hands. In, in the Bible, Jesus healed by laying his hands on people. We’ve got so much energy blocked in our hands, you know? You know, that, that they talk about the thumb holds your anxiety. So you suck your thumb to release your anxiety. Your middle finger is for anger, give the middle finger, yeah. So you have four fingers for fear, your ring finger’s for sadness and grief, and the little finger’s for trust and boundaries.
The center of the palm of your hand is for panic, the side of your hand is stress. [00:41:00] So there’s all these emotions that get locked up in our hands, we have to cleanse our hands of this energy. So we do this practice also, we get rid of the energy out of our hands. Clearing the, this stinking thinking, faulty in our head. And then we get to the torso. We actually, in a visualization, we give the past the bag that we carried on our shoulders. We give this bag, we take it off our back and we give it to our younger self and we see them taking it from us. And in that moment we feel this release in our bodies, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.
A great weight’s lifted off our shoulders. And in that moment you know without a shadow of a doubt that it’s gone from your body. It’ll be like two hours ago you were suffering with nightmares and flashbacks, now you’re completely in a peace of mind. It takes about two hours, it’s quite mind blowing when you see it happen. And each of these clients I worked with, I, I had a, I had a shorter version for about forty minutes, and at the end of the forty minutes, they would be free completely of the past trauma memory. But I hadn’t got a twelve step program created. So I did the trauma, the healing event, but I hadn’t got a twelve step program for follow up. And that, so [00:42:00] I spent the next four years working on a twelve step program.
And, uh, when I finally got a twelve step, and I, I looked at AA and I knew I couldn’t use the twelve, AA twelve steps the way they were written. This wouldn’t suit for trauma. And I, I looked around to see if there’s any twelve step programs created for trauma and people were just taking the twelve steps of AA, taking out the word alcohol and replacing it with the word trauma. And that wouldn’t work. Because in, in, in AA and in other twelve step programs, we’re abstaining from a behavior. We’re abstaining from drink or drugs, or sex or porn, whatever it is, okay? But in trauma, because we’ve given the past back to our younger self, it’s gone from our psyche. So we’re not abstaining from something that we don’t have anymore.
We have the memory, we don’t have the details. This is the crucial point. Um, we’re human beings, we have every memory going back to childhood. You may have suppressed memories, but we have all our memories back to when we were a child. I remember at the age of eight, being in an egg and spoon race. I thought I was in the Olympics running down a field with an egg, an egg and a spoon with my friends in a race. You know, this kind of [00:43:00] stuff. I’m sixty-three, but I remember these, I remember these events. Now, I don’t remember the details. I don’t remember if it was a sunny day, I don’t remember if the wind was blowing, I don’t remember if it was raining, I don’t remember if I was hot and sweaty. But I remember I did, I ran in this egg and spoon race at the age of eight, or nine, or seven. But I don’t have the details.
When we bring a past event into the present, we carry all the details. We can remember exactly the details of the event. When we give the event away to our younger self, the details go. And then we only have the memory of the event. So I have the memory today of something happening to a twelve-year- old child. And I can tell you what it was, but I don’t wanna trigger anybody. But I don’t have the details of it. I, I, I don’t, I just don’t have them. They’ve left my psyche. It’s almost like one minute I had all these details of what happened to the twelve-year-old child and I could describe them in detail, and now they’re gone. And I can’t explain how they’re gone. But when I gave the baggage back to him, the details went with him.
And that’s what happens in the event. So the details gone. It’s almost like if I talk about what happened to that child, I know I’m talking about that child, not what happened to me because I don’t have the details. I can’t own the details, [00:44:00] that’s the idea. So the event gives that away, and then we do the twelve step program to clean our side of the street because we’re not, we’re not abstaining from anything because we’ve given it away. Now we’re just cleaning our side of the street. Does that make sense? That’s the whole, that’s the program in, in a nutshell.
[00:44:20] Ed Watters: So, so Richard, uh, when you’re, when you’re talking about the energy zones in the body, is that bringing that Reiki into your
[00:44:33] Richard Tierney: Yeah. Well, I, I, I love, uh, uh, EFT, Tapping, and Acupressure. They’re the two that made the, the most, but again, I’ve got a friend of mine who does Tai Chi and his stuff is wonderful. I’ve got another friend of mine who’s, who’s a yoga instructor, and his, his breathing practices are wonderful. I think there’s so much more out there that I haven’t tapped into. And I can see this program I’ve created is powerful, but I can see someone else coming along that has EFT, and [00:45:00] Reiki, and Acupressure, but also has Tai chi and Yoga and steps into this space and creates a program that’s even ten times better than what I have,
you know? The one thing thing about holistic practices and spiritual practices is there’s a huge whole frontier out there. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve created this program that works. Uh, it, it works, I just know it works. I’ve worked with 105 people who have all broken free of their trauma, PTSD, depression, whatever it was, they’ve, they’ve broken through their loss of innocence and they’re free and living their lives now as normal people. So, but I know that there’s people out there who could probably take this a step further, you know? I, as much as I, I say I have God in my life, I think that probably there’s some Christian out there who could probably perform
miracles. You know, who could, who could talk to you in such a way that would give you such a sense of calmness that after you’ve spoken to them you’d feel this sense of calmness. Like they, they’ve worked a miracle on you, you know? And again, holistic practitioners, my friends who do Tai Chi, I think if they could learn my stuff and their Tai [00:46:00] Chi, they’d take it to another level. I have no doubt that other people can do a better job than me. But I know what I’ve done and what I’ve achieved so far. This program works. And if you have a past trauma memory that’s, that’s, that’s ruling and defining you and you wanna be rid of it, you do this program and you’re free in, in three hours.
[00:46:19] Ed Watters: Interesting. You know, a lot of that goes back to finding that tribe that you talked about. You know, feeling comfort in where you are. That, that’s really truly what we’re all seeking is the comfort of where we are and finding others in the same, maybe not same, but similar situations. It can really help alleviate the trauma in our lives. I found podcasting. And podcasting, I, I say, it’s therapy for myself because it gives me a way to express myself, listen to other people express themselves, [00:47:00] and then it also helps me clarify my own feelings. So really, I, I’m, I’m wondering, the first part of healing is to really find a place where you’re accepted. Is that correct?
[00:47:23] Richard Tierney: I love it. Yeah, yeah. But I, I think, but what I like to think is that, is that somewhere We’re having this podcast today, you and I, okay? We haven’t met each other before, it’s our first time working together. I like to think that somewhere, maybe one of your audience will listen to this podcast, they’ll get hope for where they’re from. Maybe they’re, they’re ready to give up on life, they just have so much PTSD, and so many therapists and medications, and they’re just ready to kill themselves. And I hate to use that word, but they’re, they’re at the end of their tether and they come onto this podcast and they hear this message and it gives them hope.
And then they go on, they embrace life, and they [00:48:00] get past their, their trauma and their PTSD, and they get to have this wonderful life. And they get married, they have kids, and down the road in three or four generations, one of their children creates a cure for cancer, aids. Now no one will ever know that you and I played our part, you know? We won’t get the accolades or the recognition for it, but God will know we did our part. You know, maybe in four generations, someone watching this, one of your audience, there are children would could come up with a cure for cancer, aids and people talk about them and their parents and their grandparents, but no one will know that, me in Thailand and you in America, whatever,
we had this podcast that, midnight in Thailand and whatever, 12 o’clock noon in, in America, and we played our part. And again, and beyond that is, you, you started this podcast. If you hadn’t started this podcast, you wouldn’t have invited me on. If I hadn’t started this twelve step program, I wouldn’t have been invited on. We’ve all done something in our lives that got us to this stage that one of your audience in the future will one day create a cure for cancer, aids. It’s all connected. So I think that what you’re doing is [00:49:00] fantastic. I think the fact that you’re holding this space and you’re allowing people to come on here and share something that’s just against the, the norm, like I, I, I, I mean, I can’t, I can’t speak highly enough of you and the other podcasters who have had me on their shows. I thank you, from the bottom of my heart. Grateful gratitude I have for what you do here.
[00:49:18] Ed Watters: Well, well, we do thank you for that. You know, it’s really why we do it. Because we feel the same way, you never know who you’re going to affect. So always be on your best game when you’re doing it. And if we’re willing and able to do that, you’ll never know how many lives you changed. And that’s the beauty of what you and I are doing right here today. And it, it keeps me going. I, I’ll tell you many times I wanted to say I’ve had enough of this, it’s just enough. But that particular point keeps me on my [00:50:00] game. And I hope, like you stated, somebody listens to this today and finds new inspiration and hope. And that’s why we do it. Richard, uh, our time is coming to a close. It, it seems like it just started and I could go on for hours with you and possibly have you back on for another conversation at a later time. Do you have a call to action for people? Or a bit of wisdom for people?
[00:50:35] Richard Tierney: I do, I actually do. I, I’m really glad you asked because I’m, I’m really excited about this. Um, again, I spoke about how I think God is the source of everything. Uh, I think it, it’s a wonderful, it’s a wonderful out for all of us to accept that God is the source of everything. All your hardships, all your challenges, and all your glory, all your good, good days. If we can accept that God’s the source for everything, we’re so far ahead of the posse. There’s so many people out there who are disillusioned and [00:51:00] hopeless and giving up, and if we can accept that God has a plan for us. So what I would say to your, your audience is, make a decision to give God a second chance. We all deserve a second chance. I want a second chance of being, at being a husband and a father, and a brother, and, and a nephew, and a, and a son-in-law, and a neighbor, and a member of AA, and whatever, and, and a trauma therapist. I want a second chance of improving on the mistakes I’ve made in the past. As much as I want a second chance, give God a second chance. Try that dream prayer just tonight for the hell of it. When you go down to bed tonight, close your eyes. And before you sleep, get into dreaming something that you want to happen and have a dream of it actually happening. In that sleep of almost falling asleep,
have a dream of it actually happening. As though it’s happened already. And then in the morning, we dream that dream has happened already. And do that for about three weeks. And in three weeks time, look back and see if it’s happened. You, honestly, when we give Him a chance, He’s just waiting for us. I, I love [00:52:00] this thing about, God gave us free will and a book of instructions on how to use it. I remember someone posted, I think on TikTok, they said, God created us so we could enjoy life on this earth. He’s just shocked that we’re choosing scarcity and poverty, and pain, depression rather than choosing abundance of love and life, and happiness and joy. You know, we’re going around thinking that we’re meant to be scared. And the churches are telling us that we’re meant to be poor and scarce and we’re meant to be sinners. And that’s a load of bullocks, in my opinion.
God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. And if you want abundance, think abundance. If you want to be a millionaire, think of being a millionaire. In your dream period tonight, if you’ve got no money, you’ve got no job, dream of someone offering you a job in the next three weeks. In dream time, someone’s gonna offer you a job with the money you need for the job you want. And dream that state in the job you want to do and whatever. And dream, and keep dreaming it morning, noon, and night, five times a day. And in three weeks time, you’re gonna find someone’s offered you a job. You’re gonna go, This is easy. I’ve gotta do dream, dream state, I’m gonna dream, pray every fucking night and every day. And you need [00:53:00] never go to, to a church in your lifetime.
Just dream prayer as much as you can, okay? And if you do that for, for thirty days, by day ten, you won’t know yourself. Twenty times a day, thirty times a day, just every time you got a waking moment. In the office, after your office, you’re not busy on your, on your desk, or the kitchen, or something. Just, we, we, we visit that dream as those happened already, really invoke that it’s actually happened already. And you, before you know it, He’ll make it happen for you. Sorry. I’ve gone on, I can’t stop. Ed, thank you.
[00:53:32] Ed Watters: No, that’s all right. That’s good. You know, the Bible, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth, uh, I believe it a hundred percent. And, uh, in, in the book of Jeremiah, it does tell you, God wants good things for you. And He has good things for you and you, you have to believe that. And if you live it, it works every [00:54:00] day. Richard, it, it’s always great to speaking with people like you. How can people reach out and get involved with you?
[00:54:11] Richard Tierney: Well, I’m happy to say, my, my seventeen-year-old son, he’s just applied to go to university and now in his free time, he’s going to design my website. It’ll be called Trauma Recovery Anonymous, and I hope to have it up in the next two or three weeks. I have my books on Amazon, uh, the trauma, How to Heal Any Past Trauma Memory. About the book, when you do the healing event, you need to have someone read it to you. If you try and do it yourself, it won’t work. Because it’s, it’s like directions. So you might, you might buy a copy and read your copy to somebody else and then they might buy a copy and read that copy to you.
So you have to take the directions from the other person for the event to work. But the twelve step program you can do on your own, okay? So, so if, again, if you wanna work with your therapist, work with your therapist. But you may have someone in, in your support group who also, like you, wants to, wants to break free. And your recovery buddy and you can work together. Fellow [00:55:00] veteran, whatever it is, or, or else your therapist, have your therapist read it to you and do the process. But be open to, just be open to it and it’ll work for you. And then the, the twelve step program is on Amazon as well, they’re both on as Kindle books. And they’re also on, on a, a, a website called Draft2Digital.
They have them in print and digital on most bookstores. You’ll get them there. But you’ll definitely get them on Amazon as a Kindle, okay? And I’ll, I’ll send on to you, Ed, my details so you can put them on the post when you do it so you have the details, content. I have an email address, it’s, uh, richard@traumarecoveryanonymous.com. If you’d like me to work with you one-on-one or ten on ten, or I work, I work with ten on ten at a time. Wanna do Zoom or something? I can set up on Zoom to do a session if you want. You’re afraid of coming on your own, you wanna come with somebody, or I can take you through the session on your own. So it’s richard@traumarecoveryanonymous.com. Ed, thank you very much.
[00:55:57] Ed Watters: Richard, yeah, it’s been a [00:56:00] pleasure having you and all of your links will be in the show notes section. And I wanna say thank you for being here today and sharing your wisdom and techniques with the Dead America Podcast.
[00:56:15] Richard Tierney: Thank you, it was a pleasure being here. I, I know for me it’s 10 o’clock, it’s midnight here, one o’clock now. I’ve loved every moment of it. Maybe, maybe I’ll become a night person. Ed, thank you very much and thank you very much for listening, folks. I hope you were able to understand my fast speech. I get excited when I talk about this stuff, so thank you very much.
[00:56:34] Ed Watters: It’s always good.
Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of the Dead America Podcast. I’m Ed Watters, your host, [00:57:00] enjoy your afternoon wherever you might be.