Episode 434 Christopher Owens Dianetics Therapy for Veterans Transcript

This transcript is from episode 434 with guest Christopher Owens.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Drive On. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and today my guest is Chris Owens, the Executive Director of the Restored Valor Project, and today we’ll explore how, uh, he and the Restored Valor Project aims to directly tackle the mental health crisis among veterans and the approach to resolving these conditions, uh, you know, beyond just mental health issues.

alleviating the symptoms that go along with some of these, these, uh, conditions. So before we get into all of that and everything else that, that Chris is into, um, Chris, welcome to the show. Really glad to have you here.

Chris Owens: Thank you. Really, really happy to be [00:01:00] here.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, so Chris, tell us a little bit about, uh, yourself and your background and kind of what got you into doing what you’re doing now.

Um, I know before we started talking, you said, you know, you have, you have quite an extensive background and, um, I’d love to know a little bit more about that and kind of where you’re coming from with your, your approach and, um, you know, how you got into what you’re doing now.

Chris Owens: Okay, sure. Um, well, in order to get into how I started in all this, I think there’s a little bit of context I have to give about where this type of counseling even comes from, okay?

Um, I don’t know if you looked much into it prior to this call, but um, so it’s called Dianetics, and Dianetics was originally a book written in 1950 by L. Ron Hubbard. Okay, it was called Dianetics, the Modern Science of Mental Health. Now, some people will recognize that name, L. Ron Hubbard, because he’s the man who later founded Scientology, okay?[00:02:00]

The thing that I would like to point out on this is that It doesn’t matter what somebody’s religious beliefs are, spiritual beliefs, in relation to Dianetics. Dianetics came first, and it’s just a mental science. And what it basically does is it explains exactly where and how pain is stored in the mind, and then how it gets reactivated later to cause the variety of mental difficulties that people experience in life.

Okay, so the reason I mentioned that is because when I was, when I was 17 years old, I was very interested in being a psychologist. I was in high school and I managed to, I don’t know if you, I’m not sure how old you are, um, like I’m 47. So, I don’t know if you remember the commercials years ago, it used to be on TV for Dianetics, it was a com they had the volcano, it went pshhh, read Dianetics by L.

Ron Hubbard, it was this whole, they were, these commercials were on all the time, but they were just, they were real [00:03:00] quick, and I had no idea what the hell it was until I saw an infomercial one Sunday morning. And the infomercial was like 30 minutes and explained. It’s like, oh, okay, that’s what it is.

That’s kind of up my alley. I want to know what that is. So I went to the store that day and I bought the book and I started reading it. And, um, maybe, you know, I sent a card in for more information and they called me, the organization in Philly, which is where I’m near. And, uh, invited me down to check out more and everything.

And, uh, and it was a sign health organization, but that’s where they did all these various courses, right? Dianetics and stuff like that. And my main interest was I wanted to learn how to do that. I wanted to know how to help people using this stuff. And that day I literally, uh, got signed up for it. And so, like, at 17 years old, I got professionally trained on how to handle all this stuff, which is very unusual for a 17 year old to do that.

Um, [00:04:00] I ended up working, I ended up joining staff and working at the organization for about 18 years, uh, doing a variety of, of things. But, um, but Dianetics was always part of, um, was always my love. Um, because it’s, it’s really, it’s quite fascinating, but that’s why, that’s where I originally got trained at this, right?

But I’ve been doing it, uh, all this time. Um, not only did I do the professional training at that time, I then redid the professional training later when it got updated and improved upon. So I did that again. Um, but that’s, that’s where it comes from. That’s where I started to, uh, get trained in this.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay, so from a very young age, uh, you know, a lot of times high school age kids, you ask them, you know, what do they want to do?

And it’s like, ah, gee, I don’t know. I’m still in high school. I’m just a, you know, I’m just a kid and I, I want to be a kid for a little bit longer and hang on to that while the last couple of years are, are fading away before, you know, going off to college or wherever [00:05:00] else life takes them after, after high school.

But it seemed like you pretty much knew. From a pretty early age, what, what it was that you wanted to do. And, um, you know, you shot right out and you, you found ways to do that and, um, got the training and, and did all the, the legwork up front. And, uh, you know, that’s pretty awesome because it’s not often that you hear someone that’s like, I know exactly what I want to want to do and, and, and all that, because people sometimes they.

They change things around and they, they learn as they grow. Like, I know that’s not for me, but you know, you, you had it, you know, from a pretty early age, but, um, so tell us a little bit more about the, the work that you do, um, you know, through this type of, uh, type of therapies. Okay.

Chris Owens: Well, first of all, let me give you a real simple definition for Dianetics.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Chris Owens: Um, well, the origin of the word comes from [00:06:00] Daya, uh, Greek, uh, which is for like mind and noose. I’m sorry, Daiya is through, noose is mind. Okay, so it literally means through the mind, right? But what Dianetics is, is it’s a one on one therapy technique that allows a person to permanently release pain out of a memory.

Okay? Okay. And that statement, just even that definition there, and what I’m saying it can do, Is something that even modern psychology cannot do and even does not even try to advertise and doesn’t even try to claim they can do generally The mental health industry and this cut this kind of gets into You know very much with the situation with veterans, you know If you look at any professional industry, let’s let’s take another one.

Let’s take um, um auto mechanic Okay. Now if your car was making a loud noise and you brought it to your [00:07:00] local mechanic You And he spent 15 minutes on it, and he goes, uh, yeah, yeah. Looks like your car has sputter disorder. Now, here’s what I need you to do. I want you to bring your car back to me once a week.

Um, there’s no guarantee how long. This may be months or years you might be bringing your car back to me. I’ll spend a little time on it. In the meantime, take these. What are those? Oh, those are earplugs. You put those in, you won’t hear it as much while we’re working on the car, right? Like during all these years and stuff of working on it.

You know, if the car doesn’t get better, maybe it didn’t want to get better, it’s possible, you know, so, but, but if that was how, if that was your experience with a mechanic, you’d say, this guy’s a quack, I’m not going to this guy, I’m leaving, find a real mechanic. Yeah,

Scott DeLuzio: right.

Chris Owens: But what if that was the standard?

What if that was the world of mechanics? After a while, you wouldn’t even notice it being weird. You would just know that cars are hard to understand, they’re hard to solve, and maybe one day [00:08:00] after more billions of research are invested, someone will figure out how to make cars work better. But that’s the situation in mental health.

People don’t even see how ridiculous it is. Why can’t you go and just get fixed up? It’s like even me suggesting that to some people is offensive, right? How can you say that? It’s such a you know, you can never get rid of these things They’re just I have to live with them forever And they’re that’s the mindset that we’ve gone into because this profession is so inept Right and then on top of it because the counseling doesn’t work very well People go to an alternative which they would prefer not to but they think is the only thing left which is the drugs Right?

And the psychiatric drugs. I’ll take this, I’ll take that. I mean, when we talk about, you know, what’s the most significant thing that’s always talked about when it comes to veterans is the suicide [00:09:00] rate. Right? 22 people a day. Well, the thing is, is that if you really look into that, you know, trauma by itself does not typically cause suicide.

But you know what does? You know what’s in the side effects of every one of those psych drugs? Silence. Suicidal ideation.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, that actually was astounding to me because I did a little bit of research in some of the medications that get prescribed and I saw that suicidal ideation was like very common amongst most of the ones that I looked at and I was like, how the hell are you going to prescribe something like that to someone who already is, you know, maybe depressed or, you know, having other mental health issues?

Like, wouldn’t that just push them over the edge, you know?

Chris Owens: Yeah, and not only that, it’s not, it’s not even that the drug just pushes them over the edge. The drug can cause suicidal ideation in someone who has no other [00:10:00] thing, like they were nowhere near that before.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Chris Owens: It can cause them to start feeling that way.

So it’s not even like it’s, it just takes a bad situation and makes it a little worse. No, it can completely generate it out of nothing. Right. And so we’re looking at this and we’re saying, you know, we say, oh, the veterans, we have to help them. We have to help them. We have to help them to solve the suicide rate.

And everyone focuses on the trauma, which does need to be helped, but they don’t realize that there’s, it’s like, there’s the original problem. And then there’s the extra problem that was created on top of it by the psychiatric industry that makes it far worse. And so the one thing I’d say is when you do diagnose counseling, like we never, We never do the diagnosis counseling on someone on one of those drugs.

They have to first find a way to safely come off them. Because you don’t know what that drug’s doing to them. You know, if you take a look at antidepressant drugs, they have a side effect, which is depression. Anti anxiety drugs have a side effect, [00:11:00] which is anxiety. So if they’re taking the drug, how much is the drug, and how much is the original condition?

Some people, they had a problem in their, just in their, in their present time environment, they go on the medication, the environment changes, but now they’re still on the medicine. If they were off the medicine, they might find the anxiety’s not there, because it was a present time situation that was causing them, in that case.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, right.

Chris Owens: Anyway,

Scott DeLuzio: no, and all of that makes sense too, because just think about, um, go back to high school science classes and you, you learn, like apply one variable at a time to something as you’re testing your, whatever your hypothesis happens to be in it, you know, as you’re, you’re, you’re going through, you want to make sure that that one change is the thing that’s causing this, as opposed to, you know, Hey, let’s just go throw a whole bunch of stuff together and see what happens.

And, oh yeah, it must’ve been because we added that one thing. Well, you added, you know, five other things to, to the [00:12:00] equation. And now how could you say with any certainty that that one thing was the thing that caused it? You know, it could be, it could have been a combination of things. It could have been, you know, whatever, but, but to your point, if, if you’re working with someone who is on one of these medications, um, you don’t know how that.

medication is affecting them. And it’s like, at the end of the day, we want to address the root cause of the problem and not the symptoms that are caused by the medication. So eliminate that one variable. And now you just have the person that you’re trying to treat and not trying to treat the medication that the person is taking as well.

Right. And so I think that does make sense to kind of eliminate some of those variables in the equation. Right.

Chris Owens: Yeah. And not only that, but um, Some of these drugs have really weird, like, long term effects that can even affect the person after they go off the drug. Um, if [00:13:00] you ever get a chance, look up the, um, some of the, you’ll see like there are groups about akathisia and tardive dyskinesia.

Have you ever heard of those?

Scott DeLuzio: I have not, no.

Chris Owens: So akathisia is like an intense restlessness that you just can’t satiate.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay.

Chris Owens: Um, it can cause a person to like, you know, like they might pace back and forth, but they’re doing that because they just can’t. It’s like, it’s like a, imagine like when you were your most anxious you ever were.

Now, now take the emotion away and just leave that physical tension. And then, but have it be persistent where you can’t get rid of it.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay. And so just constantly maybe fidgeting or pacing or things like that just over and over.

Chris Owens: Yeah, the fidgeting and pacing is more their coping measure for the feeling they have.

Okay. Right? It’s not that the drug causes that. Now there’s the other condition, tardive dyskinesia, is one that causes actual tics or involuntary movements. Um, you may have seen [00:14:00] commercials now where they, they say, talk about TD or ask your doctor, do you have tardive dyskinesia? The commercials are so misleading because it makes it sound like it’s actually an actual illness.

It’s not. It is purely and 100 percent only from antipsychotics, usually. Uh, I guess other regular psych drugs maybe can cause it, but especially antipsychotics do it. But it’s basically like if you were to go to a mental institution and you see someone and they were like twitching and they’re like, Doing all kinds of stuff like that.

That’s not usually the psychosis that’s causing those motions. That’s the drug that they’re using to treat the psychosis that’s causing that, right? And the problem is, is if they’re on it long enough, it can actually just remain permanent. Okay? Anyway, I don’t want to get stuck on the drugs too much, but the last thing I wanted to say about it was that the whole idea of the medications is that they’re all claimed on this idea of chemical imbalance.

But there is no test, there’s no medical test that any doctor can do, anyone in the world that can prove that, where you could line up ten people, do this medical [00:15:00] test and show that these six have a mental chemical imbalance and these four do not. It doesn’t work like that because the test does not exist.

It is purely a theory that was made up by the marketing departments of psychiatric and pharmaceutical companies. And not only isn’t there a test, but if you were to scour psychiatric textbooks, you would find that there’s not even anywhere that says what the correct chemical balance of a brain is. So how could you test an imbalance when there is no standard to test it against?

Scott DeLuzio: Okay, that’s interesting. Yeah, I didn’t realize that there was, there was, first off, no test and also no standard that exists. So, yeah, how can you address a problem that there’s no standard for? So, like, how do you It’s basically fraud, but it’s

Chris Owens: what passes for mental health.

Scott DeLuzio: Wow. Okay. Interesting. Um, so, uh, in, in talking about this approach in, in the [00:16:00] Dianetics, uh, you know, approach, um, what is it that like, so the patient comes in and they’re, they’re working with you, what is it that that approach does that’s maybe different from traditional, uh, you know, therapy options?

Chris Owens: Okay. Well, the first thing, the first concept to convey is, so in Dianetics, Um, Alan Hubbard talks about a concept called the reactive mind. And this is different than, so if you think about it, in the traditional model in psychology, people think of a conscious and unconscious mind, right? There’s that model.

But in that model, they think of the unconscious mind as being something that’s like, it’s supposed to be there, and it’s just everything that rides underneath the surface, and it’s, you know, it’s just your normal, natural part of yourself. That is not really accurate. Um, in dianetics, it gives a model that is much more useful and works so much better.

So you have, for the conscious mind we refer to as the analytical mind. Okay. That concept is very similar. Okay. Conscious mind, what you’re using to figure out, solve [00:17:00] problems in your life and, you know, your, your basic normal memories and everything along those lines. Sure. The reactive mind is just essentially the repository for all of your pain.

Okay. And that pain has two types. It’s physical pain and it’s emotional pain. Sometimes you’ve got incidents, obviously, that have both, but that’s basically all it is. Physical pain, in other words, times where you got physically hurt, and then emotional pain, which I don’t think I have to describe, but, but that, that basic idea.

Now, when you have a significant painful incident, like I said, it could be physical. Like, for example, it could be, and we would even include something like a surgery. Like, if you get a surgery, your, you know, a drug is used on you to, like, which is essentially a poison that forces you unconscious. You then have various physical actions done to you that cut you, or technically, and then even though the surgery might be, you know, has a purpose to fix something, it itself is still a painful incidence.

That’s when that react might. So it could be a [00:18:00] physical incident, or it could be an emotional one, like someone walks in and says, your mom’s dead, you know, and you go through that. The package of that experience from, from the moment that it kind of, the pain hits you, To, let’s say, when it tapers off and you kind of come back fully to full consciousness, so to speak, fully aware and normalized, that package incident we call an engram.

An engram is just a word, it basically literally means a lasting trace, if you were to look at the etymology of the word. So, the reactive mind is basically composed of these engrams. Now, the difference about it is that these engrams, the memory in them is separate from your normal memories. If I ask you to remember what you had for dinner last night, it’s pretty straightforward memory.

I’m assuming nothing traumatic happened there. Sure. Yeah, right. No, we’re good. Um, and, and so you have the, that, that regular analytical memory [00:19:00] bank, and then you have this reactive memory bank. What happens is A painful incident happens, and then an engram is stored. Now, it can either start to affect you immediately, from there on out, or it can sit dormant until it’s later triggered.

So, one example is, okay, let’s say mom dies. You go through that experience, it’s a big loss, the loss is weighing on you, you are now maybe, maybe you’re kind of depressed after that. Or you’re, maybe you’re not depressed, so to speak, but you are, you are. Your energy and enthusiasm in life have been dampened in some way.

You don’t have as much drive as you used to. So that’s one experience. It happens and then it carries on from there. Another example would be something that, and this kind of gets into a lot of people who end up going on psychiatric drugs when [00:20:00] they don’t know why. So it’s one thing to say, okay, mom died, I’m depressed since then.

Okay, I’m going to go to a therapist and try to get some treatment. But sometimes people go to a counselor and they don’t know why they feel the way they do. They just started to feel that way at some point. That’s where the, that’s where the smoke and mirrors of the whole chemical balance theory really gets its chance to be pushed on someone.

You see what I’m saying? Because they can say, oh yeah, it must be chemical balance since we don’t know what it is. It’s got to be that, right? It couldn’t be anything else.

Scott DeLuzio: It’s a black box situation, right?

Chris Owens: Right, exactly. Exactly. So they really, that’s where most of their customers come from that way. But it’s more like this.

So, okay, let me take a different example. So let’s say, let’s say someone’s claustrophobic. Let’s say that’s their problem. Whenever they get in an elevator, uh, they can’t, they feel like they can’t breathe and they gotta get out. Okay, where’s that come from? Now, you may talk to them and ask them and say, well, when did this start?

And they say, well, ever since my, when I was um, 11, my brother locked me in a [00:21:00] closet for like 10 minutes and, you know, he wouldn’t let me out. And you say, okay, so you weren’t claustrophobic before that? No, no, no, only after that. Okay. But if you look at that experience real closely, if a diagnosed counselor looks at that experience, there was not really any pain in it.

They could breathe fine in the closet, Um, they weren’t physically injured. Um, they were unset, unhappy being in there, but there wasn’t, see, what we call, the term we use for like all of the various, you know, like, the mental health industry has all these labels for everything, right? They like to make labels for things.

The reason they like labels is because it goes in this book that gets a billing code and then they can use that to build the insurance company. You have to pick one of the labels with a billing code to build the insurance company. That’s how it works. So, so, But we just use a general term, which is called aberration, which basically means a departure from a straight line.

Or to see crookedly. Any form of irrationality is basically aberration. So all of the various, because there’s a, there’s a variety [00:22:00] of ways people can have a problem and they could have variations on that. And that’s, you don’t need a name for everyone. It’s just an aberration. Okay. So in this particular case, you would look at this experience with the brother in the closet or brother locking you in the closet.

And there’s not enough pain in that experience to actually cause an aberration. So there’s something more to it. Plus, plus, check this out. One of the clues is when you get in the elevator, you can’t breathe, but you could breathe fine in the closet. Right. So the breath problem has to be coming from somewhere where it was a real problem.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay. In other words, it

Chris Owens: comes from an incident when you actually couldn’t breathe. Or where you were in enough pain that someone around you said something. Here’s an interesting thing in Dianetics, that when you’re in heavy pain, the words and phrases around you can go in as hypnotic commands. So it could also be you got hurt, you’re, let’s say you’re knocked, you get hit over the head with a bat and somebody goes, oh my god, I don’t think you can breathe.[00:23:00]

That can cause asthma later. It can cause things like that. Okay. So you need a command. You either need like a command, the thought of not being able to breathe that would cause that breath, or you need the, a situation where the actually couldn’t breathe in order to get that scenario when they’re in the elevator and can’t breathe.

Okay. So what this person doesn’t remember In this scenario is when they were two years old, some kids locked him in an abandoned refrigerator and he almost suffocated to death. That incident happened when they were two, but then it sat dormant. They weren’t claustrophobic until they ran into the sixth, the brother locked him in the closet and they were tired that day, maybe they’re hungry, they weren’t feeling good already and then this happens and it was enough to trigger the reactive mind.

What the reactive mind said, the reactive mind thinks like an idiot. It thinks in identities. So, it says, this thing is equal to that thing, [00:24:00] which are, maybe they’re not related at all, they’re not equal. The reactive mind says, this, I’m in the closet, this is just like when I was in the refrigerator. And it turns on the engram.

Now it’s active. Now, every time he goes in the elevator or a small space, he can’t breathe, and he gets all the symptoms from the earlier incident when they were two. This is part of the problem with, you know, psychology. They don’t You might go to a regular psychologist, a regular therapist, and you’ll spend all your time talking about the closet incident.

Oh, I just feel this way and I feel that way and I feel that way. But they don’t know that there’s this other incident. That’s the real problem. Sure, sure. That’s just another example of like how it’s different. So in Dianetics, what we would do is we, we would know number one, that we didn’t find the incident we’re looking for yet.

And we would know it when we found it. But, and there are techniques in a session that I can do to trigger [00:25:00] that earlier incident and trigger the memory. Like bring it to their, bring it to the surface. Okay. Once we get a handle on that memory, a little piece of it, they say, Oh, no, I’m getting this image of, uh, I’m getting this image of like white walls.

They’re really close in or something, you know, and then you can start to develop it and get through it. And then here’s the, here’s the amazing thing about Dianetics. Any incidents that we take up in a session will be completely resolved in that one session.

Scott DeLuzio: Oh, okay.

Chris Owens: It doesn’t matter how severe it is.

Doesn’t matter if it’s physical pain, emotional pain, anything else, in, in that session, that, we won’t finish that session until we’re done, that incident. Now, a session in Dianetics is different than other types of counseling, because it’s not like, uh, oh, it’s 45 minutes, see you next week, you know? Sure. Uh, no, this, the, the session length is dictated [00:26:00] by getting to a completion point on whatever we’re addressing.

Understood. Okay. It could be two hours, it could be three hours, you know, it could be something like that. It could be shorter than that, it could be a half hour. It really depends on what you’re addressing, how severe it is, and it’s not just how severe it is, but also where the person’s at. Because, for example, I can tell you, like, there’s a, I can tell you about like a woman years ago who, When she first came in, she was so charged up emotionally about her mother that even the mildest incidents would send her into grief.

Just a mundane thing where mom looked at her a little, you know, critically, you know, she’d go into grief, okay? But after we found some of the key emotional pain incidents that were sitting in the reactive mind and resolved them, very shortly she was at the point where she could look at the most severe incidents related to her mother and it didn’t cause any grief.

So [00:27:00] as you unburden things in the reactive mind, the person has more mental wherewithal to attack the rest of the reactive mind.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay.

Chris Owens: It gets easier and easier to handle the rest of it.

Scott DeLuzio: Almost like, uh, you know, going to the gym and exercising those muscles and the more you do it, the better you get and the stronger you get and the easier it gets over time.

To a certain degree

Chris Owens: that?

Scott DeLuzio: Like, like that’s kind of what you’re talking about, right?

Chris Owens: To a certain degree of that, but actually, um, the analogy Alan Hubbard talks about, so imagine like this, imagine you had like, imagine there’s this pool, this reservoir of life force, okay? Like whatever your life energy, whatever you want to call that, mental fortitude, whatever, but let’s imagine it’s like this pool of Mental energy, right?

All, like, what you’re, let’s say, and the pool represents all of the, all of the power you have, mental energy you have, okay? As a painful experience, let’s say an engram happens, it [00:28:00] traps some of that reservoir in the engram. You have another one happen, another one happen, another one happen, another one happen.

After, so when somebody comes in, okay, maybe they’re at a point where half of it is embroiled in engrams. And half of it’s free. Okay, well, they have that other half to attack the first half, but you could have someone, let’s say you’re someone who’s schizophrenic. Well, what you’re talking about there is a situation where there’s like, there’s like 10 percent free and the majority of it is all embroiled in painful experiences.

So they only have this 10 percent and when you’re going to attack an experience in an incident, you have to use some of it. You’re going to get a little bit interrupted, a little bit upset in the middle of the session because you have to attack it, right? And then you’re going to get through it and you’re going to be better at the end of it.

But if you have, let’s say you’ve got somebody, let’s say someone’s schizophrenic, they’re overwhelmed by all the experiences. Now, they’ve got like, let’s just, using arbitrary numbers, they’ve got [00:29:00] 10 units available, but they’re going to attack an incident that’s 15 units. Well, that incident has more power than you have to attack it.

So you can’t, you couldn’t take someone like that and go right into a heavy incident. You would have to first attack really small ones, and build up the reservoir, and so they had more wherewithal. Now, this is another huge difference between the Dianetics approach that Alan Hubbard Dianetics And what psychology and psychiatry do, especially psychiatry.

Um, because in psychiatry, think about this, the people, psychiatry seems to operate on this basis that the worse off the person, the more drastic a treatment they do to someone, right? So if you’re bad off, okay, you get some treatment. If you’re really bad off. They’re gonna give you heavy drugs and dope you up.

If you’re really, really bad off, they’re gonna give you electroshock and zap your brain and cause a seizure intentionally for some weird reason, thinking that that’s therapy. Okay, but what they’re doing is they’re going [00:30:00] more and more severe, harder and harder on a person who can take less and less. It’s the opposite of what you should do.

Someone who’s schizophrenic should be getting Uh, good food, rest, wide open spaces, um, you know, they, they, you know, uh, exercises like that, like, maybe physical exercise, maybe mental things that help, you know, like art, things that make them feel better and, you know, improve their outlook, you know, things like that, that would build them up gradually, you know?

Scott DeLuzio: Sure.

Chris Owens: And then maybe you start to get to address some mild incidents and then you can, you know what I mean? You can go like that, but But that’s the thing is like, um, you have to build the person up. So, so that’s the whole thing is like, as you free up more of that reservoir, they have more to attack the rest of it with.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, I think that that sort of makes sense too. Um, you know, just think, think you have the, the way you’re, you’re phrasing it. Like if you have, you only have 10%, but the, the thing that you’re trying to attack is, you know, [00:31:00] 15%, you know, It’s a bigger enemy, uh, really, you know, and you’re not going to be able to fight it, you know, putting it in, in, uh, you know, maybe military terms, right?

You’re not going to be able to overcome that, uh, that obstacle, that, that enemy. Um, it’s just a bigger, bigger force and you need the bigger force to be able to go and attack that and get it. So, so yeah, smaller victories, uh, build up, uh, you know, you, you. Collect more mental territory, if you will, and then you’re able to go Perfect analogy for this

Chris Owens: podcast, excellent.

Exactly, yeah.

Scott DeLuzio: So you’re taking the small wins, you’re attacking that small base, and you’re now expanding your area of control and influence over it. And then Then you’re able to go and attack the bigger ones because you have that more, more space, more mental clarity, maybe, or, or just, just being able to, uh, you know, have the, um, capacity to go and, and attack those [00:32:00] things.

So, um, yeah, I guess, you know, that makes sense. And obviously it’s, it’s hard to quantify, uh, Um, you know, put in actual numbers. I know that we’re talking kind of in hypotheticals here, but, you know, it’s hard to quantify that, you know, the, the loss of a parent or, uh, you know, a close loved one or something is, is this percentage and, and something else is that percentage, um, you know, it’s probably hard to do that, um, but you can, you can talk in relative terms and say that, you know, this big event that happened is probably a lot more than this other small event.

And so let’s go attack that smaller thing first, right?

Chris Owens: The other reason why it can be hard to quantify is because, um, and this is another concept that’s, uh, unique in Dianetics, is there’s this concept called chains. And that’s that basically, um, incidents can, similar, a chain of similar incidents can lock into each other and cause, so if you go, let’s say it’s all incidents when you got hit over the head, so you’re 21, you got a car accident, you hit your head in, in that.[00:33:00]

Then when you were 15, you were riding your bike and you went over the handlebars and you hit your head. And when you were eight, you were climbing a tree and you fell down and you hit your head. Okay, so let’s say we go to sit down and address the incident, the car accident. A Dianetics counselor knows that because, because he has a technique that actually works and will resolve it, he knows when it’s not responding and he knows what to look for instead.

So if I address the incident when I was 21, when you’re 21, And it wasn’t after a certain, after applying certain techniques, if it wasn’t reducing its, its force and power as it should, I would know there’s an earlier similar incident to it. And I would ask for the earlier one. And then I would get that when I get to the earliest point that I need to on that chain, that incident will release its pain completely.

And to some degree, it will also lessen the power and force of the later ones.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay.

Chris Owens: Right. Have you ever had the [00:34:00] experience of Um, you, let’s say when you’re young, somebody dies who you were very close with, you’re very upset about it. Later, somebody dies who you aren’t as close to at all, but for some reason you’re more upset.

Than the first time some people Yeah. I think I know what

Scott DeLuzio: you’re talking about. Yeah.

Chris Owens: Right. The re that reason that is, is because the second time they’re feeling the pain from both of them.

Scott DeLuzio: Mm-Hmm. ,

Chris Owens: they triggered the earlier incidents and they’re feeling this, so now it seems like it doesn’t, it didn’t make sense.

It’s, it’s a perfect example of aberration. It’s illogical. Sure. But when you understand how the reactive mind ties into it, it makes perfect sense.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, because, you know, maybe, maybe there’s some, you know, unprocessed, uh, grief and other issues that maybe you were dealing with from that first one, um, that you are just hanging on to, and you just learned to live with maybe.

And then, [00:35:00] Uh, you know, this, this other, uh, event happens and, um, and then now it’s like, okay, now all of it’s coming out and, and it’s like all coming out in, in full force. Um, you know, you, you take maybe the mild form of, of grief that you might have had for this, this other person that you, you know, weren’t maybe as close to, um, and then.

You combine that with whatever you stored away from that original person that you just sort of learned to live with the pain and the guilt maybe or whatever it is that’s associated with it that you that you stored away somewhere and then then it’s it’s coming out with its with its friends now you know they’re all coming out together right um yeah I can see how that that That happens.

Um, and so by addressing that original or, or the earlier, um, incident, um, kind of helps to reduce the, the impact of the, the future [00:36:00] ones, um, you know, however many there, there may have been like you’re, you’re talking to, you know, getting hit in the head several times throughout your life. Um, you know, you have to kind of work on, on the first one and then, then you can start to see the benefits in, in the later ones as well.

Right.

Chris Owens: Yeah, and not only that, but another really unique thing about Dynetics is You can also directly address psychosomatic illnesses with it. If people aren’t familiar with the term, psycho means having to do with the mind, somatic having to do with the body, so it means the mind making the body ill. A lot of people mistakenly think psychosomatic means it’s imaginary.

No, it doesn’t. It actually can physically manifest and still be psychosomatic. It just means that it’s coming from an engram. Where, where an injury happened to that area. With Dianetics, you can actually directly address and resolve those types of things, too. Perfect example is, um, I had a woman recently, and she had been experiencing, she would get these headaches.[00:37:00]

Once in a while, she’d get these headaches, and they were really peculiar because they were only in the back of the head. Um, so, after doing a little bit of looking, we found that it went back to this experience where she was, in the bathroom as a child, like six years old, um, doing, for whatever reason, doing like this kind of like a, like trust falls with her grandfather.

Like she was falling back and he would catch her and he wasn’t paying attention. She fell back and hit her head right on the tile.

Scott DeLuzio: Oh

Chris Owens: wow. And you know, it was very dramatic, but that incident was the reason why now in her late forties, she suddenly started to get, develop headaches. Now, who would know, other than the Dianus Catholic, to connect those two things and find them, because as soon as we addressed the incidents, they were gone.

Scott DeLuzio: Interesting. Pretty,

Chris Owens: pretty amazing.

Scott DeLuzio: It is. Um, and, you know, I think as you’re talking about this, there’s a lot of things, initially I was, my thought [00:38:00] was, you know, the PTSD and other traumatic events that people experience, those tend to be the emotional, um, you know, issues, but people also, uh, you know. Yeah.

so much for joining us today, and we look forward to seeing you again soon. for having me. And, but they may have also been injured in that explosion. And, and so not only they’re kind of carrying doing double duty there, they’re carrying the pain, the physical pain of whatever happened to them, but they’re also carrying the, the mental, emotional side of things because of, of that traumatic event.

And so now, now you have. Kind of two things that you’re dealing with, but they came from the same event. Um, and so that, that initially was my, my, my thought here, but [00:39:00] we’re, we’re, we can be going back to, you know, all sorts of different things. Um, going, you know, back to, um, you’re just a little, little kid, right?

Chris Owens: Oh, yeah. It not actually goes back even further than that. You, in Dianetics, he actually, Um, it was one of the first times anyone discussed prenatal memories, that those memories actually are also accessible. You can, you can actually completely remember incidents that happened in the womb, and none of that, but some of them are actually having an effect on you now physically.

Scott DeLuzio: Interesting.

Chris Owens: It might seem weird and crazy, but it’s, it really works. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of wild. Like I’ve, I’ve walked many people through their own births, um, and, or through prenatal incidents. You think about like, mom’s pregnant with you, she runs into the table, you get, you know, jostled around, your head hurts.

You know, there’s, you know, this type of thing, and that, that can cause a problem later, potentially. But these things are actually accessible, you can, you can find them, you know, [00:40:00] in, using Dianetics. Um, oh, one thing, when I mentioned earlier how like a freeze in an incident can cause, it actually can affect, um, it very much can also apply to the, um, physical pain.

Uh, a friend of mine years ago, she was in a bar and someone took a glass and smashed it in her face. And, um, it was mostly a flesh wound as far as the doctor was concerned. He had to do stitches, but everything else seemed like it was fine. But she started to get these headaches and she had them every night.

And they were bad enough. She started taking Percocets to go to sleep. And this is a person who doesn’t like to take aspirin, but that’s how bad it was. So it was maybe three or four weeks later. I’m like, why don’t you come in? Let me give you a session. So when we started, she couldn’t remember any of it.

Like, she can remember walking into the bar, you know, everything, what happened up to it, but she doesn’t remember the middle. So in Dianetics, we have the person, close their eyes, there’s no hypnosis or anything like that used. In fact, hypnosis is not good for you. Um, we don’t want to make people suggest, we want to wake them up.

So, but the person goes [00:41:00] through the experience, they try to go through it as if it’s happening now, you know, re experience it that way. And we do it repetitively, but there’s very specific things that you get the person to focus on where the pain is stored. Okay, and if you get them to do that, it will unlock the pain.

It’s almost like, if you think about the whole incident, it’s like a tarp that’s laying over the person. And imagine there’s just a couple, it’s like three or four nails that are holding this tarp down. And you’re trying to pull the tarp and you can’t get it off. But if you knew what the nails, you knew where the nails were, you knew how to just get those out, The rest of it would just fall apart.

That’s the, that’s the value of Dianetics. Okay. We write to those things and remove those things and the thing falls apart, like in a good way. So in her case, when we got down to it, here’s what the headaches were caused by. Obviously, part of it was, it goes impact, shatter, right? So the impact is a headache, but that wouldn’t have caused the headaches every [00:42:00] night.

The extra element was, and this was only uncovered after going through the incident, like getting to the bottom of it. Right after she got hit, some guy in the bar yells, Damn, that must hurt. Now, the reactive mind, I mentioned before, thinks idiotically. It thinks in the, it takes things literally, for example.

So, he said, he was saying, damn, that must hurt, I bet that hurts, right? The reactive mind hears those words and takes it literally. That has to hurt. It must hurt now. So the reactive mind that phrase after she found that phrase and desensitized it headaches were gone.

Scott DeLuzio: Interesting. Okay.

Chris Owens: Yeah.

Scott DeLuzio: So tell us now a little bit about the uh, Restored Valor project and, and the work that you do, uh, you know, with that and, and, uh, you know, how you’re, how you’re helping folks out through, uh, through that.

Yeah.

Chris Owens: So the, [00:43:00] the model for, um, how we operate Restored Valor is any, if there’s any veteran who feels that they have something they want to address from their time in service, you know, like some trauma or it doesn’t have to be, it doesn’t have to be like, um, a combat trauma. It could be, you know, the loss, they lost their buddy.

You know, uh, you know, like they, their, their, their friend was over there and they died and they’re stuck in that, or, you know, these types of experiences can be sometimes you witness something, sometimes, sometimes they, you know, they did something that’s really affected them, or sometimes they saw something happen to someone else and that really affected them.

Any variety of that, but something that happened during their time in their service, they can, um, they can reach out, and the first thing I’ll do is make sure, okay, I want to make sure they’re not on any current, like, psychiatric drugs or anything like that. If they are, I would point them to certain resources, like, for example, um, there’s a website, cchr.

org, [00:44:00] which stands for Citizens Commission on Human Rights. There’s a number of documentaries that they have on there that really will educate the person about. The kind of things I was telling you about psychiatry and stuff like that, because a lot of it, the first person’s got to realize that they’re being harmed by this other treatment.

The next thing is they’ll need to get, you know, if, like I said, if they’re on those medications, they’ll need to get, um, proper assistance from a doctor to how to wean properly. That’s not something I do. It’s a doctor would do that. Um, anyway, let’s assume they’re not on that, but they’re interested. The first thing I’m having to do is I’m watching the Dianetics video.

It’s about an hour and a half. I have it right on the website. Uh, it’s set up like a YouTube playlist, so it’s like set up as 15 chapters, you know, 15 short videos that play after that. That’s an hour and a half. If anybody wants to go to it directly, they can go to happymind. watch and they can watch that video.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay.

Chris Owens: So, once a person watches the video, they will then understand a lot of these things I was telling you about Dianetics. It gives a [00:45:00] really, it’s really well produced. It explains all about the ReactiveMind, gives lots of examples, it even gives the basic structure of how a session works. It doesn’t get into all the nitty gritty details and additional tools inside that session structure that I can use, but it gives you the basic structure of how a session works.

So after they see that, I say, okay, good, is this, do you want to do that? And they say, yes, good. Then the next thing I would do is I would, Okay, so I don’t know where they’re at. So let’s say they’re in, you know, let’s say they’re in Texas. Okay. So my next job is to locate a Dianetics counselor near them.

And once I do, the charity will pay the counselor to do the session, to do the sessions on that person to resolve the, what they’re, what they’ve been hanging, you know, what’s been, that they’ve been carrying from their military service.

Scott DeLuzio: Okay.

Chris Owens: Okay. The purpose of the service of it, we’re not going to try to tackle their whole life and everything like that with Within the confines of what we do in the charity, we’re here to handle the military stuff.

After that, if they want to [00:46:00] do more with Dianetics, obviously they can, they could hire that counselor as a personal, you know, as a counselor, if they want to do other things in their life. But we’re trying to just clean up the military service. That’s the purpose of the charity, right? And, um, but that’s basically it.

There’s no cost to the veteran. Um, we’re just here to help them resolve these things and show these things are solvable. There is a secondary thing I’ll also say. A secondary service that, um, I can do, maybe for organizations, like if they want to have me come out, fly me out, that kind of thing. One of the really cool things about Dianetics is that, okay, there’s doing it at a professional level like myself.

I have all the bells and whistles at my disposal, but you can actually use Dianetics with its basic session structure at a novice level peer to peer. Okay. I can do a seminar on a room full of people where it’s like a [00:47:00] weekend seminar. They go, we go through the video, but we also go through examples and everything like that.

And then what happens is everybody pairs up. And they have, they have like a, a little thing that has the, the steps of the procedure and then supervised, they can do sessions on each other.

Scott DeLuzio: Oh, interesting.

Chris Owens: Right? That’s another, that’s just another alternative. And, and like I said, it’s not, it obviously it’s, you have more tools at your disposal when you’re a professional, but you can get so much benefit just even from the basic structure.

And so sometimes people that might be appealing to them, like there might be a group and they want to learn that to help each other do peer to peer type stuff, and that’s okay too.

Scott DeLuzio: Well, that’s awesome, and I’m glad that you offer this resource to, uh, to folks, to veterans, um, you know, especially, you know, with the context of this show.

Um, you know, one of the things that we do on this show is, uh, highlight organizations like yours that provide, uh, [00:48:00] alternatives to the traditional, uh,

You mentioned some things like, you know, sometimes artwork or painting or something. It might be just the thing that someone needs to kind of calm their mind. And so we talked about things, all sorts of alternatives. Because, you Uh, you know, some people may feel more comfortable with one than another and, and the whole point is, you know, keep trying something until you find that thing that works.

And, and maybe, you know, maybe it’s Dianetics. Maybe that’s the thing that works for you that you feel comfortable with and that you want to do. And so I’m, I’m happy to, uh, be able to, Introduce this organization to, uh, you know, my listeners because I want, I want people to have all the tools and all the resources available to them, uh, you know, at their disposal so that they, they know, um, you know, that there is still an option that, that they don’t have to, um, you know, Make any kind of permanent, uh, you know, decisions like, like, uh, [00:49:00] suicide or, or something like that, because they don’t see any other option.

And so, you know, the more options we have available, um, the way I see it is that just means, Hey, I tried this other thing. It didn’t work, check it off the list, move on to the next thing. And so, you know, I’m, I’m really glad that you’re, first off, that you’re doing what you’re doing. Um, and also that we’re able to, uh, you know, help highlight it too.

And hopefully, um, you know, it’s something that, that somebody decides, you know, Hey, I, I’ve, I’ve tried a couple of other things maybe, or, or maybe I’m just, Trying to figure it out just from the start right now. And I, I, I need to do something and, and so yeah. Give it a shot. Um, you know, like you said, absolutely there’s no, no cost to the veteran, um, to, to go through, you know, some of their military issues.

Um, and, and so. You know, you really don’t have anything to lose. It’s not like you’re, you’re, um, you know, going in for a surgery that might be risky or something like that. It, it’s a pretty low risk, uh, [00:50:00] type of situation. And, and so, um, you know, the way I, I see it is, you know, why not give it a try? If you, if you feel like all hope is lost, give, give something to try and, and do something.

Um, you know, the, uh, there’s, there’s a saying, um, the best thing that you can do is the right thing. Uh, The second best thing that you could do is the wrong thing. And the, the worst thing that you could do is nothing. And so like, get out there and try, try different things. And I’m super glad that you were able to come on the show and share what you do and what your organization does, uh, to, to help the veterans, um, because that, that just gives them, uh, one more, one more option in their, their toolkit that they are able to use, uh, in, in.

Their journey, you know, so, um, anything else that you’d like to share? Any, any other websites? I know I’ll have the, the cchr. org and happymind. watch, uh, that you mentioned. Uh, I’ll put those in the show notes. [00:51:00] Any other websites or any other ways that people can get in touch?

Chris Owens: Well, the charity website is RestoredValor.

org and, um, obviously, you know, in order to do this kind of work, uh, you know, anyone out there who’s interested in donating for this type of work, it will help to, uh, make it available for veterans. So, um,

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, and so, uh, I’m assuming donation, uh, information is on the website as well, and people can find that there.

So, yeah, definitely, if, uh, you know, this is not something that you, uh, you know, are in need of for yourself, but you’re looking to help somebody out, uh, you know, definitely consider making a donation. I’ll have a link to all of those websites that we talked about in the show. I’ll have that on the website, uh, and in the show notes.

So you can you can find all those links there. But Chris, thank you again for all the work that you’re doing and for taking the time to come on. I think your work to kind of challenge the [00:52:00] status quo in the mental health industry is going to be helpful for some folks and will hopefully get them the relief and the help that they need.

So I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Chris Owens: Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

Scott DeLuzio: You bet.

Thanks for listening to the Drive On Podcast. If you want to support the show, please check out Scott’s book, Surviving Son on Amazon. All of the sales from that book go directly back into this podcast and work to help veterans in need. You can also follow the Drive On Podcast on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.