We believe in functional mental wellness, a holistic approach to mental health. We know that there's hope for those of us who have experienced trauma, even profound trauma and that's why we created the universe is your therapist podcast, we believe whether you call it God, the universe, source, unity or love that there is something much greater than us that conspires for our good, we envision a world of healing and connection and we teach you simple but powerful practices that integrate your mind, body and spirit so that you can come home to your highest self and your truest identity. You are not broken, you are loved, and you can heal. My name is Amy Hoyt, and together with my sister Lena, we will take you on a journey of healing and self discovery. Welcome back to another episode. Today's episode, we are so excited to welcome an Emmy Award, documentarian Eric Christiansen to our show, and we're so excited to talk to him about his work. It's very heart centered, and his latest film, which he is promoting unmasking hope, and it centers on recovering from trauma and building resilience and that grief process. So please help me welcome, Eric to the show. Hello, welcome back. We are so excited to have Eric Christiansen here with us today. And Eric, thank you for joining us. It's so wonderful to have you.
Thanks, Amy. I'm excited to be here and chat with you.
Absolutely. I was very intrigued when I read about you and asked you to come on the podcast with your work as a documentarian and how your project seemed to be very heart centered. And I was wondering if you could kind of talk about how you choose your projects and what draws you to a particular topic,
I laugh because it doesn't feel like I have a choice. And I mean that in a good way they find me. I mean, I found this calling almost 30 years ago, when my home burned down in the panic cave fire disaster in Santa Barbara. And I was I was editor and filmmaker. I've been making films since I was eight years old. And my work was very different before the fire. And then after the fire, I'm like, I should make a movie about this experience. Because it was very unique. The survivors could speak to other survivors. But it was very difficult to communicate the whole experience to outsiders. And that's that's how this whole thing started. I did a film called faces in the fire. And it was about that experience of surviving a disaster. But it was about the recovery afterwards. And it won my first Emmy Award. But more importantly, it was picked up by the National Institute of Mental Health, and put it into their catalog to help other survivors. So that it kind of found me, you know that that fire turned out to have a very big silver lining for me. And now 30 years later, I'm working on my fourth film, unmasking hope. And as I say, they just kind of find me it's been a logical progression of film since I did faces in the fire.
That is wonderful. And I love that what I think what that speaks to is how those experiences that we now as a society know are what we call trauma, that those can really reshape us. And not just in ways that are maladaptive, but also ways that are adaptive where we can take what we've learned in that experience and use it to reach back and help other people.
I'm a huge believer in that I believe in any sort of tragedy, trauma, or even inconvenience that we're faced with that. Somewhere after that we're faced with a fork in the road. And we can either go down the, you know, the entropy, road and just become full of ourselves and live the pity. Or we can turn and go into where we can really use it to help others because of what we went through. And we can reach out because of that experience, because of the experience that we had.
Absolutely. And I find looking back at my own life and some of the hardships that have happened that sometimes I start down the pity road. And then I think, oh gosh, I gotta get off this road. Right and I gotta hop back into some of the gratitude of for the lessons and some of the learning experiences that those provide for me.
Oh my gosh, is so so true. Because, you know, I was just listening myself say that. It seems like it's so. Oh, it's a or b? Well, I'm sorry. There's a lot of gray area in between those two and and we kind of out Slade in between both both places, you know, that's human nature. And hopefully you don't beat yourself up too badly. You know, during that, but it's just all part of the process.
It really is it is a process. And I think what you're speaking to is having self compassion when we are maybe going down that pity road a little bit. And sometimes I feel like when I am going down the pity road, the more experience I have with hardship and building resilience, which I know we're going to talk about because of your film, the quicker I'm able to get back on the other journey, part of my journey that I feel more gratitude in, and I feel more expansive in. But there are, there are also lessons on the pity path, right?
You know, without the hot, I guess you would say, we don't know what cold is, you know, until we put our hand in the fire, we don't know what you know how comfortable it is to be in the in the cooler. So we need both of them. And it's just, it's just a way I think, God set things up so we can have a fuller breadth of experience.
I agree. Tell me, what are some of the lessons you learned? Personally, from that first, that real pivotal experience of the fires?
Oh, my gosh, I mean, it, you know, it, you know, what the big thing I learned is, you can start over, at any point, you can just start over. And, you know, I was I was not having a I didn't have a social relationship with alcohol and drugs at that time. It was a little bit beyond that before and it brought and that fire really brought things to a head. And I just saw it as a point in my life where I could kind of start things over. So you know, I, I kind of had a clean slate. So you know, the thing I've learned is, you can start again, anytime, you know, and I got clean and sober. And I changed the kind of films I was making. You know, everything changed.
Yeah, congratulations. That is really wonderful. I was just cleaning out a closet actually this morning. And my assistant and I came across all of my medallions from AAA because I've been in the program for you know, 20 some odd years. And she was saying, what are these? I'm like, Whoa, let me tell you. Because, you know, you end up turning into a different person after years and years of sobriety. And thankfully, she doesn't know that part of me. And she just gets to know the functional, adaptive, sober part. So I love hearing stories of sobriety. And when we are our heart is changed and we are really awakened to a higher purpose. I think that's just so beautiful. Thank you first.
I've been Yeah, I've been friends with Bill W now for 31 years not to blow my anonymity. So if my sponsor here says,
yeah, yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. That's beautiful. And tell us what, what's kind of gravitated you towards the topic of trauma? Would you say, I know, you know, when I was getting sober and even in the beginning of kind of healing my own stuff. That wasn't really in the vernacular, that wasn't really a word that we used a lot. But it's definitely gained in awareness. And I would love to know and have our listeners know, kind of how you became more aware of that as a as an actual topic and how you kind of decided to do your new film, unmasking hope,
oh, my gosh, you hit you hit on so many things, because it's this word trauma has gotten to be such a catchphrase. And I have to tell you, my first film face is in the fire. I called it a Grief Recovery film show because it's about grief. And so, you know, yeah, the vernacular has kind of changed and starting out as a as in Grief Recovery. You know, hold on. I'm sorry, I start by I lost my train of thought there. So can we? Yeah, you can edit this right. Can you again, because I was on a good run. And then I started circuit it on that. Yeah, just start over. Okay. Yeah. Could you feed me the question again, please?
Yeah, let me remember. I do all this off the fly.
But we're talking about we're talking about trauma and oh, how did I How did I stumbled across trauma as
used as an actual word and back then it wasn't but it's but now this film actually centers on like post traumatic growth. and so forth. So yeah, kind of talk to us about that.
You know, actually, that's a great question, you hit on so many things there is, trauma has become quite the buzzword, and my original film facing the fire were 30 years ago, I really can see that as a Grief Recovery film. And, you know, how how I came to work in trauma or grief, I understood it. You know, I think, from what we put ourselves through, at least some of us folks in recovery, I put my cell through a considerable amount of trauma, not only the fire, but the one my own punishment by drugs and alcohol. So I understood the trauma, I understood things like that, but I also understood recovery. So it was an amazing gift of empathy I had for other survivors, be it trauma, any kind of trauma. You know, with my film, now I'm working with 911 survivors, mass shooting survivors, you know, after faces in the fire, I did a film called homecoming of Vietnam vets journey. And that was the first time that I really dealt with direct kind of PTSD and trauma with those Vietnam vets. But I came to understand and empathize with them, and their road of what happened to them and their road to recovery. And I made the film, that was my second film, homecoming of Vietnam vets journey. So again, it was just kind of put in front of me. But I also have the gift of the empathy and the understanding, through my own experience, you know, because one of the biggest compliments I've ever received was, after one of the screenings of my film, Homecoming, a Vietnam vets journey, a vet came up to me and goes, you know, are you a veteran? And he said, No, I'm not he goes, then how do you know? So there you go. You know, it's, it's a gift.
It really is. And I feel like that empathy breeds almost a intuition for for pain. But also, it sounds like for you, you've really channeled it into hope, as well. And as I was looking at your body of work these last few days, and just kind of thinking about it, what I see is a pattern of highlighting hardship, and highlighting hope, and redemption, if you will, recovering from it. And that is, I think, such a beautiful message. And that's something I feel so strongly about, that people can heal, we are not stuck, where we are, progress is ever going. And there is always always hope. And so that just speaks to me so deeply your work. And I really appreciate that, that theme that I see throughout it,
you know, thank you so much, because it's a big effort on my part. But something that you said is so interesting is empathy has intuition towards pain, you know, and empathy is doesn't come without dangers, it doesn't come out, it doesn't come without some sort of sacrifice. But on the other side of that sacrifice, to empathize with somebody, you have this connection in this awareness of their experience, and then you can bring about together by just understanding by just hearing their story, you can offer an individual hope, you know, part of the part of the process is just being able to tell your story and tell the truth to somebody that cares. And that's part of my process. When I'm interviewing these people, they know, I mean, I truly care, I'm not, at that point, I tell them, my crew members, I go, you know, number one is transparency with these people. And number two are the people and their experience, then by the way, we're making a movie, you know, and so when you put that first and you come, they're in a kind of a sacred setting to hear this story that sometimes they haven't told anybody else, you know, it reflects to them in importance of their experience. And then it goes to that thing that you were talking about that hope and hope is 80% of all my films are more you know, it's always funny when I get to the first cut of the film, you know, the incident, all the you know, especially with this film 911 and the mass shooting and, and the sexual abuse and the I have another veteran in this one too, and the whole experience in my rack. It's like It's like this much of the film and the film is like this long. I have to take that like crunchy crunchy crunchy down because it's not really about that. It's about what happens after that. But you know, we have a tendency to want to watch the spectacle. Want to be there and be part of this, you know, this, you know, car, you know what? What's that you craning your neck to look at the rubber neck. Yes, the car, we cut that down, and then we get to the hope. You know, we get to the healing and we get to that process and we get to them.
Yeah. Well, I think that mimics true life when we have a traumatic event, it is a sliver. But that sliver lives on in our mind as much larger, right? But the reality is the aftermath, where we're actually working towards resilience, we're going through that grief process where we're working on finding the silver lining, that's actually the bulk of the work, that's actually the bulk of the experience, but in our, our brain keeps us a little bit stuck until we can move through that trauma and start healing. So I think your film is really mimicking the process that we go through. When we experience something hard, it but then it's like, we got a we got to go, you know,
that is so true. Unfortunately, though, with a lot of us, you know, it's up here, that that keeps us stuck. You know, and I have an amazing expert in the film, Dr. Katherine shear out of Columbia University, and she talks about prolonged grief, she's a grief expert. And she talks about being stuck in grief, you know, and not being able to progress. And there's actually, you know, a definition for that, which is prolonged grief. And it's just, it's not being able to grow past that. And so, you know, unfortunately, some people have difficulties being able to get into the hope and get moving ahead. And but it's so important to try to reflect the stories of people moving ahead, people finding different so many different modalities of healing, from their grief and from from trauma, trauma is just an incident grief is something that lasts for a long time.
Exactly. Tell me, if you would, what has struck you most with you these different events within the film? What have you seen that's really been helping your subjects heal?
Oh, I mean, that's, that's two things. Two things, for sure. is number one. And we and you and I know about this. Number one is finding your tribe. It's like, oh, there is somebody else that has went through what I went through. So I don't seem as crazy as I thought I was because they went through the same thing. And they're doing the same thing, you know, and, but it's very, very important to connect and find your tribe, somebody similar, somebody that's went through a similar experience. Number two, it's the biggest, I would say it's the jet engine to recovery is when you help somebody else is there's a, there's a woman in my film in unmasking hope, her name's Molly. And she not only went through one mass shooting, she went through to mass shooting, she thought, Oh, well, I've been pre disaster, this is never going to happen again. I go on with my life. Oh, and she was in at borderline. And she was there during a second mass shooting. And so her recovery has been very difficult. But she was found by she found a organization called given our started to get counseling. And then she got to a certain point of healing where she said, You know, I can help some of these people I can, I can become a peer counselor, myself. And her healing just skyrocketed. As soon as she went out there. It goes back to what we were talking about earlier, is using what happened to us to help somebody else. And that is a sure way to get on from zero to 60, on your recovery is to since you have enough under your belt to go help somebody else.
Yeah, and I love that, you know, we see that in recovery programs where we volunteer to help people that are not quite as far along on their journey. We see that in religious organizations. There's a lot of volunteer work, we see that in community organizations. And I love that you're highlighting service as a way of healing because for me that's been extremely beneficial and extremely effective in healing. Tell us more about given our I'm really intrigued by given our because this is amazing.
Well, I'm excited to be named given our ambassador and I came across given error when I was doing my film searching for him coming back from war. And there are an organization that have works with a bit at the time they're working with veterans. And they would have clinicians donate an hour of their time for free therapy. So given out hence given our and so they offer free therapy for people that have went through trauma and various things, PTSD and things like that. And so when it came to unmasking hope we reached out to them again. And they were more than excited to partner with us, which was a huge honor. And as I say they they offer free counseling services to people that went through trauma, they came into the route 91 borderline shooting and offered counselling through a couple other agencies they work with, and they work with veterans, they also have a side to them change direction, which is about reducing stigma of mental health situations and mental health illness. And so why do we have an outreach partner for documentary film, it's because they're able to take our message of the film, in very real ways into community. And it also takes the message of the film to the people that really need it. But it's kinda like I say the film is a doorway to healing. And our outreach partners that we team with is the safety net. So people when they're activated, I don't use like to use, I don't even like to say it trigger. That's not a propriate word anymore. I call it activated. So when people are watching the films, and they're activated, they have someplace to reach out somebody the Clearinghouse someplace to go to, so they can find more information to seek out their own healing.
I think that is so wonderful. And so what is the word I'm looking for? It's so caring of you. And it reflects what you tell your crew that this is people first film second. And so that also reflects that that people are first we don't want to open those wounds without giving them a lifeline. And so I love that given our is able to do that with this film and with other organizations. And tell us a little bit more about how our listeners will be able to view your film, any other information that they can access, any of your work would be great.
Well, I'll give you a couple URLs, a couple of websites. First is unmasking hope, the movie.com. And you can go there and just get updates also on Facebook and Instagram. And that will kind of lead you to where we're going to be having our premieres and things like that. We we were supposed to release in October. But our distributor, Anita loves the film so much that they kind of want to ramp into it. So the beginning of the year, we will be having our premiere on public television. So you can actually, you know, call your public television, your local public television station or email them and say, Hey, I heard about this movie unmasking hope, I hope you're going to be carrying this. And for me to find out just kind of what hap is happening with me and my other films is Ec productions.com. And, you know, importantly, also is given our.org If you want to see what they're doing. And they also have a resource pages for my film for people that are affected by sexual trauma, trauma, mass shootings, all sorts of different resources for that, too.
That's wonderful. Thank you so much. I did have another question that I've been mulling over because it's something that I think about quite a bit. How does how does spirituality? I know you mentioned God, how does that factor into the work that you do?
I'm glad you mentioned that it's it's a huge part of my work is, you know, people, they asked me all sorts of questions. How do you find the survivors that you work with? Or how did you come up with this? Or how did this you know, God is my producer? I mean, I've, I've learned to rely on kind of a spiritual workflow. And when people first kind of start working with me, they think it's kind of unorthodox. You know, it's, but I can't explain how I can shoot an interview four years ago, and then all sudden have to, you know, you know, just last month I go shoot something else and then I had all this stuff. And then I bring it back in the edit suite and it works just like it was pieces of a puzzle fitting together. You know, I have to do the work and I have to do the footwork but As I say, you know, God's kind of orchestrating this. So it's a big part of my process. And my, my personal spiritual base is a big part, you know, my spiritual condition, I have to take care of my spiritual condition when I'm working with such a sensitive, you know, subjects and, and also telling these people sacred story, there's nothing more special than to send the rough cut out to say Jack Delaney who was a 911, first responder, and have him get back to me and go, thank you so much, you know, you told my story, the way it was supposed to be told, you know, and that to be able to reflect their personal stories is a huge thing. And so that goes back to me being semi spiritually healthy. That's wonderful.
You know, I led research in Africa for about five years. And we, one of my teams, we went into Rwanda, and we worked with post genocide, women, and we actually talked to them about spirituality and religion and how that factored into their healing. And it was, it was critical, and it's ongoing, of course, but one thing I am really I feel so strongly about is that we need to highlight the benefits of a spiritual program in healing. And that doesn't have you know, we know from recovery, that doesn't have to be religion, it can be anything, it is a power greater than yourself. And so I've been looking in the, you know, the scientific literature for the last few years about it, and it's all there, we just have to start talking about it a little bit more, and not being afraid to, to broach the subject, you know,
you know, and in my 30 years of doing this 31 years, you know, I just, I pray for all the people that I work with, and I have I have my particular beliefs, I never push them on anybody they see by my actions, you know, how, what I do, but I also know that, you know, the solution. It's always, for me, spiritually based, you know, I just, and I, just, as I say, I pray for the people I work with, and the people that have some sort of spiritual basis in their recovery. You know, they, I feel they have a big advantage.
I see that too, in my own work. So thank you for answering that question. I just, I think that's the question of my life that I obsess over is this, this intersection of hardship and spirituality, and how we can use both really to build to build resilience and to build hope, because I think there's so much hope and your work shows, not only me, but so many others, that there's hope, from hardships that we haven't gone through, but you highlight some things that I think most of us are really afraid we would go through or think we couldn't survive that. And you're highlighting that there is hope. And I want to thank you for that. I think that's a really important message.
Well, thank you, it's a huge honor to be able to do this for for the last 30 years, you know, as I say, beyond my fourth film, and be able to reflect the sacred stories of these, these amazing people, you know, and, and it's, you know, it's, it comes down to so much, it's like, people call it great grit, you know, it's also faith. It's believing in the unseen. And, you know, I can be delivered from this. And I hope my film serves that purpose, as a little bit of a reflection of people being able to see other people going through these things, and then aspire to, you know, cause if they can survive 911 If they can survive to mass shootings. And, you know, I think I think I have, I think I have a chance and be happy, you know,
exactly, not just survive, but eventually start to thrive. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I can't thank you enough, Eric, for spending time with me today and for gifting our listeners with your experience and your knowledge. And I've really enjoyed our conversation. So thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you, Amy. It's been great. Now I get to get back to my studio and finish the film. We're putting all the finishing finishing touches on it. We're very, very excited.
It's a wonderful, we will look for it on public television, and we will link all of the Europe URLs that you gave us in our show notes for all of our listeners. And again, thank you so much.
Thank you, Amy.
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