JOURNEY TO FREEDOM

What is Journey to Freedom?

JTF is built by us, for us.
Trauma is the job.
Living with trauma is the journey.

Context Evaluation

We did a Needs Assessment, with interviews, surveys, and focus groups with military personnel, focusing on Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). We identified where they are currently functioning, how they developed to where they are, and where they would like to be.

Data-driven, research-based program design

Implementation Evaluation

Then, we developed a group of top-tier consultants who were participatory action researchers in the JTF. This means that they both participated in the program and learned about themselves, while designing and providing feedback on the program. It was a heavy lift, and our group is used to high intensity.

Outcome Evaluation

Then, we completed program evaluations on the JTF to understand both how the program works and the impacts. We used this evaluation to revise our programming and prepare our next JTF. We engage in this data-driven cycle continuously in order to ensure that our programming is reflexive to participant needs.

How do we operate?

JTF is designed for JSOC. We know the participants are experts. They are not broken. We refuse the philosophy of the Western medical model that requires that we admit that we are broken or damaged in order to access potential cures or treatments. We know that you are used to being the best at what you do and your ceiling for functioning is extremely high. Our consultants felt that if they were unable to reach that level of performance across the board, there must be something wrong with them. "If I was the reason for my own success, then I must be the cause of my failure." This is not true. Simply, they needed the tools to develop their own nervous systems in order to integrate their experiences and live with and adapt to their unique trauma load. The trauma load for JSOC is high and typically comes from multiple sources:

1. Epigenetic/Transgenerational

2. Developmental

3. Institutional

4. Conflict and war zones

How do we adapt?

Living and working in active crisis and conflict leads to coping that will enable survival in the short-term, but will not support adaptation in the long-term. Our participants need to learn the tools to harness their own capacity to adapt in the long-term, while capitalizing on how they have learned to operate in austere environments.

Low floors

Their floor is usually very low. Our participants usually hide their struggles, using high performance as a mask and as coping. Their challenges have usually existed and grown in intensity for years. The ways in which they try to prevent their own suffering leads to more challenges. We know well the pattern of isolation, substance use, depression, anxiety, anger, attentional concerns, and apathy. This pattern will not change without explicit tools and intervention. This pattern is actually intense coping. We have developed an applied trauma continuum that shows you how to move your energy from this pattern to the coping that predicts post-traumatic growth.

Why metacognition?

We have developed the tools and approach with and for JSOC. In JTF, you take a metacognitive approach, which means you learn about your learning. You think about your thinking. Metacognition is the control mechanism for advanced human development. Metacognition allows us to guide our thinking (cognition), monitor and guide our physiological responses and emotional responses, and change our behaviors. We do this through a deep understanding of the power and limitations of the human nervous system. You learn how to monitor and adjust your own coping, in real time, to be adaptive and responsive.

Interdisciplinary approach

We take an interdisciplinary approach. Why does this matter and how is it different from multidisciplinary? Remember the story about the blind sages each holding a different section of the elephant… One says it is broad and flat and firm (touching the side of the animal). Another says it is long and strong and flexible (touching the trunk). Another says it is thin and malleable and wide (touching the ear). Each sage is correct, but only presents a portion of the knowledge. This represents the multidisciplinary approach, where experts from multiple disciplines each give their input. Often, the participant is left to feel like they are on the “expert carousel” where they are spinning from specialist to specialist and there is no structured integration.

Highly individualized curriculum

We have created a structured curriculum with an interdisciplinary approach. For each topic (an area where we focus), we teach you how to integrate the knowledge from multiple domains - the developmental cognitive neurosciences, psychology, education, and spirituality - in order to develop a nuanced understanding of your own functioning. You are unique and you must have a curriculum that is highly individualized. You are the one who understands the entire elephant and you know how to integrate the understanding and apply it to your own functioning. You feel grounded and in charge, because you are. You learn the tools to analyze yourself.

You lead from the front

You are the operator. You take the tools, and work with us to adjust and develop tools that are at the front edge of understandings from research, theory, and practice. You use the tools to change your own functioning. You lead from the front. No one can lead you.

We were not built for easy

Our participants say, “This is not easy, but it’s simple.” We have expert interdisciplinary guides who teach you how to learn sustainable development. You must learn how to regulate in real time, because our internal and external stimuli are constantly changing. Doing your own work on the areas that cause you the most difficulty is not easy. And, once you learn how to do the work, you have these tools for the rest of your life. Your capacity to regulate your own nervous system, using metacognition as the control mechanism, means that you can adapt and thrive, even when new crises occur.
This is our Journey to Freedom.

We are sent for you

You said, "Send me" and now we are sent for you. We will explicitly teach you to capitalize on your capacity to compete: you will compete with your Self to save your Self.
Don't look Left. Don't look Right. Look within.