For me, being depressed, it's like
being in the darkest, coldest part of the ocean
with hundred pound weights on my ankle.
And I'm constantly trying to swim up,
you know, and I'm just continuing
to go down, go down, deeper and deeper
in a panic, you know.
And with the panic comes frustration, anger...
Aggression.
All of the emotions that I kinda shelter
kinda all comes up when I'm getting pulled down,
you know, and it just feel
cold, dark, and alone, you know,
and it just eats away at you in the moment
until you figure out how to get yourself out of them chains
and slowly swim up
and feel the pressure release
and you can gasp for air.
It will always come and go.
You know, I had it when I was in college,
but I always told myself, you know, I'm tripping.
You know, I always found an excuse
or something else to sweep it under the rug.
I grew up in Compton, California.
We didn't have much,
but my parents was my biggest protectors
and supporters.
I seen my mom lose all her brothers
to gang violence.
Seeing friends, family members
lose their life at a young age.
I remember one time, a car pulled up slow,
and now you gotta duck and hide behind the car
because now they shooting.
Even to this day, you know, when a car rides up slow,
I'm hesitating, like, "Who is this?"
You know, it took a toll, you know,
so it pushed me to run towards something
that gave me an escape.
And it was always basketball.
Oh, DeRozan!
That was one thing where I could feel like,
you know, I was away from everything
and I could just feel like myself.
DeRozan with a huge finish!
I always tried to use that as my peace,
but never addressing the reality of things
that was going on in the moment.
With the ninth pick in the 2009 NBA draft,
the Toronto Raptors select DeMar DeRozan
from the University of Southern California.
DeRozan fires and hits!
Picks it up.
Oh, he dropped one hard!
DeRozan with the slam.
This here's slamming!
That's what an all-star looks like, folks.
Now you looking up.
You a all-star, you winning, you on TV,
and you got so much attention
until where it just all hits you.
We done suppressed so much pain
throughout the years.
The dark spaces that I was in,
they would come more frequently.
You know, instead of every now and then,
it's every couple days,
then every couple days, now it's for a week.
It was so frequent to where I had to just break down
and address it.
I put out that tweet.
In that little moment, I felt like
I was getting something off.
Then I went to sleep, but you wake up to...
After that, I was forced to address it.
You know, I know a lot of people ashamed
to talk about it.
Athletes never talk about it, and you did.
Several NBA players have shared
their own struggles with mental health.
...depression more common
in the NBA than we think?
...mental health in the NBA.
What should the league do?
I wanna talk about the piece Kevin Love put
on The Players' Tribune,
where he gets very honest
about his battle with anxiety and panic attacks.
He said it best when he said
DeMar DeRozan kinda opened up the doors for him.
I think what DeMar DeRozan has done
in deciding to become public
about his depression and anxiety
is caused a sea change,
certainly in the NBA
and I think in all professional sports
because it's allowed players to be comfortable
speaking out about critically important issues.
The NBA is reportedly looking
into revamping its mental health policies
for the 2019/2020 season.
According to The Athletic,
the league will soon implement new mental health initiatives
that all 30 teams must comply with.
We don't even realize
when we get lost in playing sports,
that's our suppression
of what's going on in our society, you know,
and it took me
damn near till I was 30 till I realized that.
These professional athletes
are experiencing all the struggles
that everyone else in that time frame does
with the addition of fame and financial success
amid all these other pieces
that go along with being a major athlete.
But the world doesn't see it that way.
The world sees it as, "Hey, you have all this fame.
You have all this money.
Your problems must be null and void."
But that is not true.
The human existence still applies.
Going to a therapist or engaging mental wellness
speaks to my vulnerability.
Professional athletes feel,
"My opponent will tune in to that vulnerability,
and maybe the folks that decide about my next contract
will tune in to that vulnerability."
And now, specific
to the African American community,
we don't want outsiders.
That speaks to a long held issue
within our community of, outsiders may not help us.
So hold it.
Don't tell anybody that stuff.
And actually, we don't even wanna talk about it much
in our family circles.
We say, "That boy's been struggling.
He been struggling for years."
Well, those are mental health issues,
mental wellness issues that go unchecked.
I was head coach in Toronto for seven years,
and knowing DeMar from, you know, I think it was
his second year in the NBA, maybe it had been his third,
watching him grow,
but Brenda and I and our kids were in LA,
I was coaching the All-Star game,
I woke up, you know, to a tweet that he had put out
saying that he was struggling with some situations,
depressions, and it shocked me because you would never know.
And on a personal level,
when we heard that he was struggling,
you just--you feel like you've let him down.
You know, you feel like
your relationship wasn't enough
for them to feel comfortable enough to say that,
and so, you know, I felt like,
"Man, we really dropped the ball."
But I would say too, Brenda, that the coping mechanism
to cover that up is so strong.
Right.
And I think a piece of it
for the individual, the individual says,
"I'm not supposed to have this struggle.
I shouldn't tell people that."
But I'm so proud of him that he normalized
that it's okay to talk about it.
And it made me know that I know what I don't know,
and I'm not qualified and equipped
to get in that territory of a young man's life.
Let's go, DJ.
That's why, when I first got the job here in Detroit,
having someone like Dr. Yeager on our staff
was one of my first things I asked for,
was someone who could deal with that professionally.
So tell me a little bit how you're mentally doing.
How did you come back
from an injury that had you out?
The language of those first few words
that you say to a person is critical.
A lot of people are a pop therapist
or pop psychologist.
"I think this kid's dealing with some anxiety
and maybe some depression."
So hold on.
So tell me the difference between depression and sadness.
Well, people don't really know.
So what's the difference between anxiety
and being nervous?
Well, people don't really know.
So we don't have to move it into a clinical description.
And I think that's important for players.
The best description I give about my version of therapy
is that it's just conversation.
No one is opposed to conversation.
So how was this morning?
It was great. It was great. We had a good time.
-Yeah? -Yeah.
Corey's been amazing.
When he came in last year,
it kinda was a huge relief
'cause you could kinda see guys
kinda let their guards down around him.
Somebody that looks like you,
somebody that just is able to be personable,
able to talk about whatever.
When I got issues and I come talk to you,
I know you can't fix 'em.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it relieves pressure, right?
It relieves a lot of stress off you.
A lot of stress.
And that's what really makes him special
because he don't want nothing from you,
but he wants everything for you.
He wants you to be the best you you can be.
These last three years have been
I'd probably say the toughest three years
I've ever faced in my life.
The stressors are huge.
You know, when everything on the court's going great,
life is great.
But when basketball takes a turn
or when things that you can't control
kinda affect you, it shakes you.
It's like the NBA,
so everyone's watching all of the time.
There's social media, so there's always,
you know, a tweet, an Instagram picture,
you know, there's a trade rumor,
you know, someone getting traded,
someone getting cut.
His parents are getting older. You know, he's a father now.
There's always pressure.
When DeMar said he had depression,
it kinda shook the NBA world up
because most guys didn't know what to think of it.
Does that mean he's soft?
Does that mean he's tough
for coming out and saying this?
How can I understand what this means
to, like, us going forward?
Ready?
Cheese.
-Cheese. -Aww.
Let's roll.
When we talk about mental health,
we talk about it at the stage in which we reach crisis.
And I think it's really more powerful
when you realize that, you know, work it out now,
so then when you do approach a crises,
you've trained and prepared for it
and you're ready.
Breaking news in this Sunday afternoon.
Five-time NBA champion,
former league MVP Kobe Bryant died
earlier this afternoon in Los Angeles
in a helicopter crash.
News reports are just coming in.
Among multiple victims,
Kobe Bryant on that helicopter.
They've decided that whoever wins the tip,
and in this case, Toronto,
they are going to let the shot clock run out
because of the number 24
to honor Kobe Bryant.
I had to play a game that day,
and it was the hardest game I ever had to play in my life.
Man, um...
you know, words...
words can't explain the pain.
Kobe's death impacted everyone,
but specifically these players that are in the NBA.
Too often, with grief and loss,
what we tend to do is lean away from it
'cause we don't know what to do.
So it's my task to lean into it
and support in whatever way each individual is needing.
As we honor the life of Kobe Bryant...
So I just wanna have a brief conversation
about how y'all doing, how y'all feeling about things.
Grief is unique
to each and every individual.
How I do it gonna be different
and look different than how you do it.
And I ask people all the time, "So if we grieve differently,
which one's right?"
-They all right. -All right.
-It's mine. -Yeah.
It's my version.
I think that that means a lot,
just being able to talk about it.
When, I think, probably, like, a couple hours went by...
...I just caught myself
and I was just still sitting in the same spot.
I hadn't moved.
Like, a person that you played against,
a guy that you knew growing up, a idol, like,
you know, it hits you deep.
It's like a open wound that you just--you can't fix.
When I heard about it, the first thing I said is--
my reaction was almost like, "Kobe can't die.
What you mean?"
Yeah.
-That's heavy. -Yeah.
There's that piece of being invincible.
Like, he larger than life.
-Yeah. -"Kobe ain't gone."
Getting a chance to play against Kobe,
I'm like, "All right.
This is real. Like, all right. Like, that's my idol.
Like, this, like, a legend right here."
I think, like, a couple possession went by,
and then all of a sudden, I'm checking him,
and I'm like, "Oh, shoot."
Like, I was checking Kobe.
I know all my boys back home watching.
-Like, everybody's watching. -Come on, G.
The league watching.
Yeah, they watching.
They like, if you don't get this stop, like, it's over.
Like, we gon' clown you at home.
I got him to sign a pair of my shoes after the game,
and he's like, "Man, keep going, man.
Keep doing it."
So that means you get to hold on to that
forever, though.
-Those memories? -Yeah.
No one ever gets to take them.
Then Deuces be sitting beside you when he's 12 or 14
saying, "Dad, so you played against Kobe?"
-Right. Yeah. -You get to tell those stories.
It's gonna be cool.
Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Taking a step back as a parent now,
as a father, it makes me cherish my little man
even more now
because tomorrow's just not promised.
Mm.
It gave me a perspective of,
it's way bigger than just the ball.
Like, that this ball's gonna stop bouncing.
Too often, we don't take the time
to create that space, to understand one another,
and I think this work is allowing me to take my time.
Travelling with the team, being around
gives me an opportunity to be intimate
with those conversations
and build trust.
So I think success is continuing in this vein
relentlessly
to engage in these extremely important conversations
around building mental health.
But we have to have first an understanding.
I was 17 when I left for Syracuse.
I was very anxious
but also very excited.
I knew it was a good choice at the time.
I had such a good first year at Syracuse.
Friends, hobbies, good grades, interesting classes.
I joined everything
that you could possibly think of.
But in summer of 2016,
I had just come back from studying abroad,
and my dad died of a heart attack.
When they told me, I didn't believe it.
And I just... catatonic, sort of.
Didn't talk to anybody.
But in my own world, in my own paranoia,
I didn't believe it.
I thought it was a joke.
The funeral comes,
and I don't believe what's going on
because I feel like everybody's making fun of me.
Everybody's just in on it.
Whatever it is, everybody's in on it,
and I'm just outside of it
because this is happening to me.
I felt like there was something else happening
before the death of my dad,
and I think the death of my dad
sort of catapulted everything forward.
I started isolating.
I started not talking to anybody.
And this was right at the time
where I had started to hear this voice.
And...
I think it's real.
The voice is telling me my thoughts.
All the insecurities.
Commenting on anything I do, anything I think.
And I think people are working with the voice
to humiliate me.
There's a break in sort of reality
and your thoughts.
It makes it hard to distinguish real life
and my paranoia.
Before everything...
Ambar was so intelligent, so alert.
When we came here, to this country,
to get into school,
the professor came to me and said to me,
"This girl is incredible."
When her father died very suddenly,
everything changed.
She came back for vacation and she stayed here,
in my house, and she was unrecognizable.
I needed help.
I didn't believe anybody wanted to help me at the time.
I felt like everybody was just out to get me.
I remember that day, I was in my house
and I was like, "I have to go.
I have to go. I have to leave this place.
I can't stand the subliminal messages
I'm getting all the time.
I can't stand the thinking,
the constant voice in my head
or the constant commentary on everything I'm doing.
Like, I cannot stand it.
I wanna... I wanna die."
My mom called the ambulance
and I was hospitalized.
She didn't want me to touch her.
I wanted to hug her and say, "Ambar, I'm here with you."
That's when I got diagnosed
with schizophrenia.
They painted me the worst picture,
that she was not going to be able to graduate,
that statistics say that children
at that age do not graduate, uh, they can't get a job
because they can't concentrate, they go from job to job.
They can't have a normal life.
And...
they usually commit suicide
early.
That's what the doctor told me.
Being given a diagnosis
of schizophrenia as a prognosis of doom
must stop.
It is not true.
That's clinical mythology.
There are so many negative messages
that come from the mental health system
and from our culture
about what it means to be
someone diagnosed with schizophrenia.
There's still so much that we don't know.
Some would argue that it's a neurochemical brain disease.
Some would argue that it's genetically transmitted.
The wild card in all of it is the issue of trauma.
But what's clearly in front of us
is a human being who's suffering.
And treating people with dignity
and with deep, caring regard
is the first act.
While I was hospitalized,
I met a team of psychiatrists, therapists, nurses.
With schizophrenia,
symptoms usually start presenting in young adults
that are ages 16 to 30.
We work on a shared decision-making model,
which is a psychiatrist that does medication,
myself, the primary clinician,
we also have a nurse and then a supportive
education/employment specialist saying,
"Hey, you know, be part of our team.
Let's figure it out.
If school's important,
let's figure out how you can go to school
and live at home while you kind of adjust
to your experience and what's going on."
During that first six months,
she was experiencing a lot of symptoms.
She had come in, had a session with me.
You know, we followed up with Mom
and said, "Hey, we're feeling really worried.
You know, she says she doesn't have a plan.
She says she's not gonna hurt herself,
but we are worried."
I wanna be just peaceful.
And the very essence of my illness
prevents me from that.
I can't be--I can't be peaceful
when I have a voice following me around.
This voice kept getting stronger.
Noises just everywhere.
And how the fuck am I supposed to ever feel okay?
I don't understand.
I was having a horrible time at my mom's.
She didn't know how to deal with a schizophrenic patient,
so I don't blame her, but I am depressed as hell.
I don't know what day it is sometimes.
I'm sleeping through most of the day.
I sort of got manic,
and I attempted suicide that day.
I was upset that it hadn't worked.
That nothing...
that I still had to wake up to this, you know?
That I had to wake up to this voice.
Personally, it felt like...
sorry.
I wasn't doing my job right. I didn't know what to do.
It took me a while to get Angela--
to feel like Angela was on my side
because I felt like everybody was
on the voice's side, you know?
The voice wants me to be humiliated
and wants me to be down and wants me to feel...
attacked.
After that second hospitalization,
that's when I decide, "Okay.
I am actually schizophrenic.
I'm gonna actually let these people try to help me."
But it took me such a long time
to accept my diagnosis.
Something I still struggle with,
that there's no there, you know?
There's no other place that I need to be
or need to do or will be at.
This is my life.
And I call my mom one day in tears.
And I'm like, "Mom, this is the last time.
Mom, this is the last time. I am gonna get better.
I am... I'm done."
We are celebrating your life.
That...
you were alive.
This year, this picture, I felt like
it was a lot of work to get to this smile.
After she had made that promise,
the way that we were able to get Ambar
to stick with the program is, we focused a lot
on what's important to a young adult.
It's feeling "normal,"
whatever that is to that person.
It's going to school, it's relationships,
it's having a job, feeling productive,
setting a goal and working towards it.
The matter of how I'm going to deal
with my symptoms in the coming years
is critical in determining whether or not
I'm going to spend the rest of my life
in and out of psychiatric care,
or if I'll be able to live a normal and successful life
like many other people
who are diagnosed with schizophrenia do.
I've always wanted independence.
This is literally day one of moving.
-Is it? -It is.
You brought all this here today?
Yeah.
That shit was mad work.
It's surreal.
Like, my own room, my own space.
And it's a big step. It's a big girl move.
This corner over here looks a little crazy,
and I have a bunch of clothes on my bed,
so I apologize, but here it is.
At first I was...
I was so mad.
I was furious.
Yeah.
In my culture...
...mom and daughter live together--
-Forever. -Forever.
Have confidence in me.
Like, just, like, understand
how much I need that independence.
It makes me feel very proud.
And you know it does.
Thank you.
Ambar continues to experience
suicidal ideations regularly.
Not actions, not plans, not anything like that,
but the thought is there that, "Oh, gol,
maybe it would be easier
to have just not woken up this morning."
There are triggers, and I'm gonna have bad days
where I'm like, "Today sucked.
I wanna cry today."
That doesn't mean I have to go into the emergency room.
Schizophrenia sounds incredibly scary,
but look at Ambar.
Holding down a full-time job,
working on her master's program,
she's gonna be in school forever,
like, that is what schizophrenia is.
Most of the time,
what's going on in my head doesn't make sense.
But when I sit down and I write it down,
I'm like, "Okay, this made more sense."
"Recovery, as I'm learning, is not a one-stop event.
It is an ongoing, long and tiring road."
Peace is coming to terms with that.
I'm gonna have this every day.
Not in a battle with it,
but just walking alongside it.
It is possible
to have a full and meaningful life
following a diagnosis of a severe mental illness.
I'm a person who was diagnosed with schizophrenia
while I was still a teenager,
and I went on to make my recovery,
earned a doctorate in clinical psychology.
But being able to get up in the morning
and go to work is powerful medicine.
Being able to meet up with a friend for lunch
is powerful personal medicine.
Personal medicines are the things that we do
to be well.
Wherever I could, I wanted to understand
more about what was going on
and why my nervous system was reacting the way that it was.
So four years ago,
only after meeting Meg...
Yeah.
...did you start the process
of trying to figure it out?
-You hadn't tried before? -No.
And I quickly established
that if this relationship was gonna work,
that I was gonna have to deal with my past
because there was anger there.
And it wasn't anger at her, it was just anger,
and she recognized it.
She saw it.
So how do I fix this?
And it was a case of, "You need to go
back to the past,
go back to the point of trauma,
deal with it, process it, and then move forward."
Having now done therapy for four and a bit years,
five years now,
for me, it's all about prevention.
That doesn't mean we have to speak to them
every single day,
but to have someone that can help guide us
and create that awareness in our own life
to when we might be feeling pain
and how to get out of that,
and what the tools are available to us
on any given day to make sure
that it doesn't snowball into something bigger.
EMDR is always something that I wanted to try,
and that was one of the varieties
of different forms of healing or curing
that I was willing to experiment with.
And I never would've been open to that
had I not put in the work and the therapy
that I've done over the years.
EMDR is a relatively new form
of trauma-informed therapy.
Trauma-informed means we are aware of what's happened
to the person when they come to us.
We're not just looking at the symptoms.
We are thinking, "What were the life events
that may have caused those symptoms?"
It's one of those big letter therapies,
EMDR standing for Eye Movement
Desensitization Reprocessing.
And what's specific about EMDR is that we are providing
bilateral stimulation
by either getting the person to move their eyes
or tapping on them
or they're tapping on themselves.
So what EMDR does is that it pairs
the cognitive recollection of the trauma
with a powerful memory of being safe.
You wanna be able to think about the traumatic event
without having the emotional distress
associated with that.
You literally have the person think about the bad thing
at the same time that they're doing
pattern repetitive rhythmic activity,
and it ultimately creates a new default
for that memory.
Hi, Sanja.
Oh, hello.
How are you doing?
I'm good. I'm great.
So how do you feel about us targeting
another memory today?
Let's do it. Where do you wanna start?
So you said there were maybe four or five memories
that are still somewhat disturbing,
and I was wondering, the first one was
coming to the UK on a plane.
For most of my life, I've always felt worried,
concerned, a little bit tense and uptight
whenever I fly back into the UK,
whenever I fly back into London.
And I could never understand why.
I was aware of it.
I wasn't aware of it at the time when I was younger,
but after I started doing therapy and stuff like that,
I became aware of it.
I was like, "Why do I feel so uncomfortable?"
And of course, for me, London is a trigger,
unfortunately, because of what happened to my mum
and because of what I experienced and what I saw.
Was there a particular trip, or does it happen every time?
Is it always the same?
Happens every time.
So can you remember the first time it happened?
No, I can't remember the first time it happened.
I just remember the feeling.
Almost anxiety.
Like a hollow, empty feeling
of almost nervousness, of...
...is it fear?
Everything feels tense.
And in that moment,
as you're starting to get those bodily feelings,
what is the negative thought you have about yourself?
It's being the hunted
and being helpless and not--
knowing that you can't do anything about it.
There is no escape.
There is no way out of this.
So let's say, "I'm helpless."
-Yeah. -I'm helpless. I'm helpless.
So when you think back on that moment
and you think, "I'm helpless," what would you prefer
to believe about yourself now?
I'm not helpless.
It's only for a brief moment of time.
And you're living your life by truth,
so there's nothing to be afraid of.
There's nothing to be worried about.
Just notice what emotions are coming up now.
The decision I was feeling was sadness.
Okay, and where do you notice this in your body?
-Here. -Okay.
So we'll just process this like we did last time.
We'll cross our arms.
Go back to that.
Picture the negative thought, "I'm helpless,"
and notice where you feel it in your body
and just notice what comes up.
It started in my teenage years.
One of the first times that I left the UK
to get away from all of the fallout
from my mum's death was to go to Africa.
I think I was out there for at least two weeks,
and it was such a cure.
It was--I just felt so free.
It was a sense of escapism that I'd never felt before.
And to then come back to the UK
knowing what I was gonna be confronted with
and knowing what I couldn't get away from was scary.
What did you notice there?
Just how, and I guess this is the trauma of it,
is that though--that feeling and those moments
of the past are so deeply connected to the present.
Okay. Go with that.
Just letting any thoughts, feelings, sensations,
whatever comes up.
Other memories. Whatever comes up is good.
Well, it all just comes back to the old...
The trauma is
very much geographical.
Okay. Just go with that.
Just notice.
What's really nice is, it--
I don't know whether this is the intention,
but it, like-- it cleans my hard drive.
It's literally like every time something comes up--
We're done with that.
Great.
Yeah, that's also the goal. Great.
So let's now go back to where we began,
where you are in an airplane.
You know, that beginning picture.
Seat belts on.
Just tune back in and see what comes up now.
Calmness and strength.
Strength because of the calmness.
Even though EMDR is recommended
for big T traumas,
big events like tsunamis or war trauma,
we are really treating, most of the time,
adults who are having memories
of adverse childhood experience
or even life experiences
that didn't get stored correctly.
So you are treating a child
even when you've got a 50-year-old in the room.
One of the biggest lessons
that I've ever learnt in life is,
you've sometimes got to go back
and to deal with really uncomfortable situations
and to be able to process it in order to be able to heal.
For me, therapy has equipped me
to be able to take on anything.
That's why I'm here now.
That's why my wife is here now.
That feeling of being trapped within the family is...
there was no option to leave.
Eventually, when I made that decision for my family,
I was still told, "You can't do this."
And it's like, "Well, how bad does it have to get
until I am allowed to do this?"
Where she was going to end her life.
It shouldn't have to get to that.
Do I have any regrets? Yeah.
My biggest regret is not making more of a stance
earlier on in my relationship with my wife
and calling out the racism when I did.
History was repeating itself.
My mother was chased to her death
while she was in a relationship
with someone that wasn't white.
And now look what's happened.
You wanna talk about history repeating itself?
They're not gonna stop until she dies.
It's incredibly triggering to...
potentially lose another woman in my life.
Like, the list is growing.
And it all comes back to the same people,
the same business model, the same industry.
'Cause my father used to say to me when I was younger,
he used to say to both William and I,
"Well, it was like that for me,
so it's gonna be like that for you."
That doesn't make sense.
Just because you suffered,
that doesn't mean that your kids have to suffer.
In fact, quite the opposite.
If you suffered, do everything you can
to make sure that whatever experiences you--
negative experiences that you had,
that you can make it right for your kids.
We chose to put our mental health first.
That's what we're doing
and that's what we will continue to do.
Isn't this all about breaking the cycle?
Isn't this all about making sure
that history doesn't repeat itself?
That whatever pain
and suffering has happened to you,
that you don't pass on?
Traumatic events for children
is different than adults.
It's like, you have a storm.
The adults are a strong tree.
They have a good roots,
and the trauma just, you know, hit the branches.
I'm not saying that it's not a problem.
It's a big problem, but they can overcome it.
They will have issues and et cetera.
But for child, a child is a small bush.
It's not strong.
And if we do not intervene,
then the roots, when they grow up,
can't handle any kind of storm,
even, like, a nice wind.
It will hurt them in the future.
So it's more important
to focus on the children trauma first
because the potential for healing
and recovery is huge.
Fawzi. Hey Fawzi.
What? Did you just wake up?
Yes.
When we first came, we landed over there.
And you, where did you land?
I did not land over here.
I came from behind that mountain and we landed by that beach.
Three hours after we landed,
the Greeks started calling complaining about us,
then the police came and took us.
Once we ran out of gas in the middle of the sea,
then we managed to go back.
You guys tried to come by sea once or twice?
No three times.
Do you understand? If there was a kid who is weak in something,
a Greek boy who is scared of something,
you can help him. You tell him,
"My name is Fawzi and I am from Syria.
I survived a war and was able to cross a sea after three tries
in a perilous journey on a small boat."
You should never forget this one thing.
You are the heroes who crossed the sea.
This is something that is very important.
So today we will find it.
In 2015, I was witness
to one of the most horrible refugee crisis history known.
Two or three boats become 30, 30 become 100,
and almost 1/4 million of people arrive.
You know, I'm almost the only doctor
in the beach,
doing CPR as people lie,
like, everyone looking at me, the doctor who came,
like, "Hey, where are you?
Confirm death."
That's it.
I did, I think, 21 CPRs successful.
I lost six.
...seven, eight, nine, ten,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19...
...21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26.
It's not only the body suffering from trauma.
It's not the body that needs only a surgeon.
It's also there is a mind doing a journey
and needs someone to treat it.
So it took us 21 days,
me and my beautiful and brilliant wife, Maria,
to create Humanity Crew,
and since then, this is what we do.
We focus on the psychological journey
to reconnect these lives back to their soul and minds
that they left behind.
So I am going to place cards of things.
You choose what you feel from the card,
select that right away.
The card that made you remember
a good memory that happened to you.
Remember things that were at that moment,
like sounds and smells.
memories, names.
Anything.
Ok, let us put the cards in front of us.
Take one sheet of paper each.
Stick the card anywhere you want on the paper.
Then you start drawing around it
things you feel complete these memories.
What did you choose? What is it you drew?
Tell us about it. Who wants to start?
When I was registered in the kindergarten,
they used to walk us to the amusement park.
They would give us juice and biscuits.
-Whoa. -Whoa.
Fawzi?
I remember when I was in Syria playing chess with my cousins,
aunts, and mother, laughing and happy.
What makes us different is that we have
the good and the bad right?
There is joy inside of us and there is sadness as well.
And we have to control them.
We have to kick sadness away and keep happiness.
Correct.
To kick it out, we have to talk about it.
Like embers sitting inside of us
and we do not know how to extinguish them.
We have to bring it all out, all of it
until it is out completely.
So we could pour some cold water on it.
As you see, we are going to put cards
that will remind you
of difficult things that happened in your lives.
Things that hurt, things that are sad, horrible things.
Things that we want to extinguish.
So when one of you sees a card that reminds him
of the difficult things he went through.
Fawzi, look at the drawing,
then imagine your body and tell us how you feel?
I was feeling sad when I was in Syria
seeing the airplanes bombing Idlib.
Once an airplane bombed... it caused our window to fall.
Stop and take a deep breath.
Is this the most difficult memory you can remember?
The most difficult time was the last explosion.
Most people died from the shelling
starting every half an hour.
Who died that you know?
My brother died when they hit the playground with explosives.
And my aunt died as well.
May Allah have mercy on her.
What is the thing that Fawzi
is scared the most to talk about?
The thing that I am scared to talk about
is when my brother died.
Do you want us to talk alone later?
I am not going to be able to talk because, if I do,
I will begin to cry.
That is not bad at all.
When you were telling us your story, I was crying.
I feel that you are about to cry.
Nothing will happen to us if we cry.
Come tomorrow, we will talk.
Perfect.
Dear Fawzi, do not be afraid.
Yalla, Aboud, you hero.
Do not forget that, like they had a safe space, we have one.
A long day is ahead of us, as well as many other errands,
so it is very important that we digest it.
What is the thing that you feel now?
What is the thing that you feel that is sitting inside of you?
Maybe we should stop working.
You know we can't stop it.
Essam, we know we can't stop it, this work.
If we do not do this work, who else is going to do it?
Do you imagine that these boys have safe spots in their lives?
We also have them.
I'm trying to find my own.
If we look at children,
we have a huge opportunity
not only to ease it or to reframe it.
We have an opportunity to transform it.
Where do we sit?
Same as yesterday.
Would you like to sit here?
Here.
Ok, are you with me?
Yes.
Or you are with me a little bit?
No.
Are you afraid?
Not that much.
Are you afraid that we are going to talk
about something you're scared to talk about?
The only thing I do not like to talk about is the bombing.
That is why we have to defeat it.
You have lots and lots of happiness.
You are always smiling, so we could defeat everything.
Here it is.
You did not want to talk about your brother
when we talked about when you got bombed, right?
Because I am afraid of that story.
What is the story, what do you remember from it?
I am terrified of that story
because when my brother was killed,
I did not see his head.
He was blown into pieces.
Did you go to where he was?
Were you with him at the playground?
No.
When he was blown away,
his friends who were playing ball with him told us.
So I ran to him, but I did not see his body.
I saw nothing left of him.
How sad are you if zero is less sad
and ten is the most sadness?
Seven out of ten, seven.
If you wanna help someone
to recover from trauma,
you need to do all you can to do the intervention
as close as to the location of the trauma
and the times it happened.
But if not, it's not the end.
For Fawzi, the things he talk about
is more things that happen in Syria.
So using cards and imagination,
we make them go back to these moments
and then also bring it to a safe place
where he can feel calm.
One more time, breathe and then look at it.
Take a very good deep breath.
Is there a scene or a picture that you may say to yourself
that you never saw?
I am trying to forget my brother but I cannot.
What do you mean when you say,
"I am trying not to remember my brother?"
When I say, "I am not trying to remember my brother,"
it's because, when I do, I cry and become sad.
Can we take this picture away? Because I am about to cry.
What?
Now I am about to cry.
Why not?
What did you see when you went to the playground
after the bombing with your mother?
Me? Inside of me, it felt like my heart stopped.
My mother cried till she became crippled,
unable to move her leg.
Do not be afraid to talk or cry.
Inside of you there is a war.
There is a war between the good memories versus the bad ones.
What is going to determine who Fawzi is going to be next year,
ten or twenty years from now,
is the winner of this battle.
Therefore, in order for you to win, you have to fight them.
Correct.
Do you want to try and do something exciting?
Yes.
This is you.
No, for real, this is how I see you.
I want you to draw or color the hero that is Fawzi.
Because Fawzi is a hero.
You are stronger than Superman and Spiderman.
You are Super Fawzi.
Super Fawzi does not dress like the rest.
Which do you think are your qualities that make you a hero?
For me, courage is the only thing
that provides me with power.
My brain and my thoughts.
It's a very simple act of prevention.
It's much easier to prevent than to treat later.
I am going to call him Super Fawzi.
All you need is to be in the right place
and to take advantage of this traumatic experience
and transform it to something good.
We call it the golden hour.
I want to bring out any feeling
that is deep inside us.
What else do I want to get out?
I want to get anger from inside of me.
Fawzi and his siblings
and his friends are heroes.
I really, truly believe that they are heroes.
So our duty is to help them
process the trauma,
try to find the good memories,
and bring it back.