Human Up Season 2 Ep 5: The Parallel Paths of Healing, Domestic Violence & Recovery with Beth Flory

This is a transcript of Human Up Podcast Season 2, Episode 5 with Beth Flory which you can watch and listen to here:

Dave: Welcome to the Human Up Podcast. I'm your host, Dave Marlon, and it's an honor to have Beth Flory as our guest today. Good afternoon, Beth. Good afternoon. I love your enthusiasm. Oh, thanks very much. I'm a guy in recovery and a little over 20 years old. I had my last drug and my last drink, and I'm enthusiastic about every day since because I'm free from bondage, from addiction, so I have a lot to be grateful for.

Beth: Absolutely. And congratulations on 20 years. That's an amazing accomplishment.

Dave: Thanks. It's a long time without a cold beer. Now, Beth, you have a story of your own. Can you tell me a little bit about your story, how you came from a survivor to a CEO of a leading nonprofit here in Las Vegas?

Beth: Of course. So now I will put a disclaimer out there that I am the CEO of Safe House, which is primarily a domestic violence organization. Now, I will put a caveat that I am not a domestic violence victim. However, I am a victim of an attempted sexual assault, so an individual and not somebody I knew. If you look at a lot of data, most sexual assaults come from somebody who, in this case it was a stranger. Now I am extremely lucky that I actually was able to deter the individual and essentially fight him off using some intelligence and some wit. But I was still assaulted physically by the person, not sexually because I was able to get away. And subsequently, unfortunately, I did not have a great interaction with the police department, which is a very large story in itself. If you want to know that, I can definitely tell you more about that. However, that did become a catalyst for me wanting to work in the field of violence against women and preventing violence against women. So when I moved to Las Vegas, I saw a position open up in our shelter here at Safe House, and I took that job because it is in alignment with those values, and I worked at the shelter and eventually worked my way up. And now I am the CEO of the organization and I've worked here for 17 years on March 30th.

Dave: Bravo. And thank you for probably helping hundreds and hundreds of women

Beth: Over

Dave: Cover and move on to be self-supporting and have a safe house affected lives.

Beth: Yes. Yep. Very lucky to do that, both in the capacity in the beginning, in direct client services, working directly with individuals and then working my way into working in a more administrative role so that I could, I think one of my philosophies and my job is I've always liked to assist the staff who assist the victims so that I can best support the organization, best support the employees so that we can have an effective mission.

Dave: Now, speaking of this mission, what's the mission actually? What's Safe House?

Beth: So Safe House is a comprehensive domestic violence agency. Through our work, we primarily serve victims of domestic violence. We do serve all genders, however, it is primarily women and their children, of course. And there's a variety of programs that we have to do that, and that includes a 62 bed emergency shelter in a confidential location. We also have advocates. So these are people who may go to court with a client, assist, a client with filling out temporary protective orders or other kinds of documentation or just sitting in the courtroom. It can be really scary to go into a courtroom. Your abuser is there. To have somebody by your side and have your back in that situation is great. And then we also have counselors and we have outreach and education. And another great aspect of our program is we do have bilingual Spanish speakers in nearly every department. So we can help a wide range of individuals who need it, who want to escape the violence. And earlier I mentioned primarily domestic violence because through community partnerships we also help with sexual assault and human trafficking.

Dave: Wow. Well, thank goodness you were there. And I get the feeling like our clinic, you're probably pretty busy.

Beth: We are pretty busy. Unfortunately, it's one of those jobs that we wish we could put ourselves out of business because our goal is to end domestic violence. Our name is actually an acronym. Safe is Stop Abuse in the Family Environment. So the goal is to stop abuse so that we don't have to have a job anymore.

Dave: Right on. I run a clinic addressing homelessness and disorders. Could you talk for a minute about the intersect between domestic violence and abuse towards females and homelessness?

Beth: Absolutely. So a lot of our clients who come into our shelter program, they can be categorized as homeless or they've become homeless because of the violence. So a lot of our victims, they have to make a choice, do I stay in this violent household with this person or do I become homeless? And the important aspect to remember with a victim is financial abuse is present in 99% of domestic violence relationships, 99%. So we see that as the abuser is, oh baby, you don't have to work. I can earn all the income. Well, now you have a victim who doesn't have a job and doesn't have their own income. We've also seen victims where they may have a job and they may have an income, however, that abusive partner has literally taken the money from them, drained bank accounts, ran up credit cards, put the houses in the victim's name, they say they're paying the bills and they don't pay the bills.

So a lot of times our victims have no income, or if they do, they're under crushing debt and so many will choose homelessness overstaying in the abusive relationship, or they have to make that choice. And so by having an emergency shelter, we're able to bridge that gap where somebody doesn't have to be become homeless. But we've even had victims come in who've been sleeping in their car and didn't know that they had a place to go. So very common that intersects. And then with substance use as your clinic serves very common that we work with victims who do have substance use disorders, and that's for a few reasons we've seen it where an abuser has forced one of the victims to use, but also as self-medicating to deal with this terrible situation that they're in.

Dave: Wow. Thank you for identifying that financial mismatch and how that is unfairly leveraged.

Beth: Yes,

Dave: I get the feeling we could do a whole podcast just on that dynamic.

Beth: Absolutely. It's such a factor in lives that I think a lot of people don't recognize because we hear all the time in our field, well, why doesn't she just leave? There are so many reasons why somebody doesn't just leave. That could be children and financial reasons is probably one of the biggest ones that we hear that the person does not have the financial ability to leave otherwise they will be homeless. So you're absolutely right. We could do a whole series on that alone.

Dave: Yeah. Well, I'm thankful Las Vegas has an organization like you. I'm thankful we got a leader like you. What do you think is the most misunderstood part about your job and what you do?

Beth: The most misunderstood part I would say is that piece I just mentioned about why doesn't somebody just leave their abusive relationship? That by far is heard the most I would say. And as I mentioned, there's financial reasons, there's reasons of children involved. Sometimes family is a big part of that, and that could be from either side of the family, pressure from friends, sometimes people embarrassed because they have all these family or friends who saw the red flags of this abuse and warned and they said, no, it's fine. No, it's fine. And so they stayed with their abuser and now it might feel embarrassing to come out of this situation. And there's also the emotional impacts of abuse. So most abusers aren't just physical abuse. Sometimes the most pervasive abuse is emotional abuse. So you have a victim who's been told you can't do anything, you're not going to amount to anything. You can't make it on your own. You're too stupid to do these things. So a lot of our victims, they're so broken down emotionally that they may feel they can't succeed in leaving this horribly abusive relationship. So there are so many reasons somebody doesn't leave. So I would say that is definitely one of the biggest misunderstandings that people have about victims.

Dave: It's interesting, the correlation with substance use, same thing. It's very frequently misunderstood and people say, why don't you just stop using fentanyl and not recognizing an appreciation, the depths of the substance use disorder, just like people not recognizing the position and the stigma that goes with addressing this. Now, when I looked at your literature, I noticed you used the word victim versus individuals who experienced sexual violence or domestic violence or survivors. Can you talk about the nomenclature a little bit?

Beth: Yeah, so we actually use all of those terms when we're speaking about our clients that we work with. So we have used the term victim and then we often use the term survivor as well, especially once somebody is in our program and we're interacting with our clientele, we typically use the word survivor. So they're interchangeable terms. And sometimes I've had individuals who identify with either or both terms. So we have some individuals who are like, no, I'm a victim of this. But then we have other individuals who find power in calling themselves survivor. And so we really just want to meet the person where they're at and let them be called what they want to be called.

Dave: Amen. In our business, I like to be called a person in recovery. Some people might want to call me an alcoholic or a drug addict or a person with a substance use disorder. To me, once you take an active role in addressing it, you move into a person in recovery, which to me could still have some negative connotations, but it does indicate our journey. And I certainly like survivor better than victim

Beth: Same. And usually when I'm speaking about our clientele, I use Survivor probably the most, or sometimes I even do a little hyphenated version and I'll be like victim, survivor. Just to recognize the journey that people are in. Like you recognized just now with people in recovery is you're on a journey and people are at different points in that journey. So a lot of times I use those kind of hybrid terms to describe that person both to be honored, and they're both a space for somebody to be in and feel identify with that space.

Dave: When I watched the podcast you did with Katie, who, Katie is amazing and I'm so grateful for her help, but I saw you talked about trauma and people who experienced trauma and whether or not happiness could be achieved after trauma. Could you go into that? You actually had some amazing pearls in that discussion.

Beth: Absolutely. Individuals can experience happiness after trauma. The research that has gone into trauma recovery is absolutely amazing if people want to read about it. One of the best leaders in the field is Dr. Bessel VanDerKolk, and he talks a lot about trauma. And trauma can be from anything, right? When we think of trauma, that trauma could be from a domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, but it also could be from child abuse, it could also be a natural disaster. Somebody in New Orleans during the hurricane has a traumatic effect from losing their home. And so trauma can be very pervasive. Now, it can also, there's so many factors that might influence somebody in their reaction to trauma, and that could be what state were you in prior to when this trauma happened? How old were you? What kind of family support systems do you have?

And what kind of access to services do you have? And with all that research that's been done, there's been lots of treatment that has been found to work with trauma. Some classic ones that counselors in our field may use is EMDR is a popular one, and it's basically using both sides of the brain in a counseling session. It's really cool because when you see it or hear you're like, that works where you're going back and forth between eye movement. And it's really interesting and it almost, I don't know what the word would be, sounds like magic or something, but it totally works for individuals experiencing trauma. So it's amazing the research and the effort, and there are so many people that I know that have overcome the impact of the trauma or at least able to handle it in a way that they are now so much more happier in their life. And I think our agency is a testament to that just in who works at our agency as well as on our board. We have multiple survivors on our board, including two former clients of ours on our board of directors and who are leading amazingly successful happy lives. If you meet them, you would have no idea that they were a victim.

Dave: Oh, that's beautiful. I'm a clinician and I've been doing this for a while, and we used to use a curriculum called Seeking Safety where we would help clients get to safety, which is really a testament to Safe House because square one, to help a person heal is they got to be safe first before we could do anything. I'm also a big fan of VanDerKolk's work. I certainly read The Body Keeps the Score to really discuss how the somatic effects or the way the body is affected by trauma, how it shows up physiologically as well as psychologically, and the fact that it is a journey to engage in recovering from it. Again, very similar to substance use disorders, not as simple as just stop using methamphetamine. There's a lot of parts involved and it takes time to heal.

Beth: And I was thinking about when you were made that correlation earlier, one key aspect of domestic violence is a cycle of violence. And so oftentimes abusive partners will go in this circle where they're really supportive and giving you all kinds of compliments and super happy. It's like the highest of the high. Well, then you start to get in this tension building phase where you can tell agitated, angry, upset at everything. Well, and then the assault happens. Well, then they go back into this, sorry, lemme give you flowers and cards and all of these things. And it kind of reminds me of the substance use journey too, where you have the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, and that's a difficult cycle to break out of when you feel that high. Well, they promised they wouldn't do it again. It's going to be okay. It feels great, and then it goes to the low again and it puts you in this perpetual cycle that's really challenging to get out of.

Dave: Yeah, agreed. And as you talked about, I recognize there are these correlations because often it feels really great to finally be physiologically separated from the substance. Then you're healing, you're moving on, and then you start getting into a low and you know how you could feel good again using that chemical could immediately elevate you. So I get my heart broke all the time from clients who have been doing well, doing the work and then have a recurrence. I've had similar circumstances because we've helped hundreds of women who've come in here with a substance use disorder, but had I'll say a violent partner or certainly an emotionally abusive partner, and were helping 'em and they're getting strong and they don't know where they are. And I had him maybe in one of my sober living houses in my rehab, and then all of a sudden one of my staff calls and said, Hey, the offender is actually here. And we're like, oh my goodness, how do they find them? And then we find out she called him and asked him to come and we're starting the cycle again, which is a lot like a recurrence or a relapse in my business. What do you call it in your business when they reach out and begin the cycle again?

Beth: Yeah, it's essentially the same thing, and it typically tapes about seven to nine times for somebody to truly leave their abusive partner. I can't think of a specific name for it at this point, but it is a well-known circumstance that we see and are aware of. And it's one reason that we always tell our survivors, you can come back. Just don't tell the abuser where the shelter is located because our shelter is in an undisclosed location. You can't Google it or anything like that. So when an individual comes into our program, we're like, please know you can come back if you decide to go back. We understand we're not going to look down on you for that. We know that it happens. We know it's common. You will be able to come back, but please just don't tell where the shelter is located because then you're not safe there and you won't be able to come back. It's not a secret anymore.

Dave: And again, we're similar here that a lot of our clients have a recurrence and we don't shame them and we're not mad at them. We recognize that happens. We just say, please don't bring the drugs into our facility a communicable disease, and we don't want you to hurt other people. So I get it. Some of our clients have to leave and go drink or use fentanyl or methamphetamine. But if you do that, just know that if you want to stop in the future, you could come back.

Beth: And I think an interesting parallel I'm thinking of now as we're talking too, is with substances, I think sometimes it has to do with ease of use. It is that, not immediate gratification, but to make life easier. So it's really easy to get ahold of substances. Unfortunately, I think it's much easier to get ahold of an illegal substance than it is to get prescription medication sometimes within our city. To see a psychiatrist is really difficult within our city if you are underinsured or uninsured. And I think there's some similarity there with our victims returning to their abuser because it can be so difficult in our community to make it on your own, especially as a single mother. I honestly don't know how some of our clientele do it. I have no idea. I don't have children. So it really amazes me how successful some individuals are. But I can also see how it's like, man, it's so hard. It's so hard to go through trying to get this new job, trying to get this apartment, trying to do all these steps to make your life better, that it is easy to kind of relapse back into the old situation and understandable because it is so hard, so hard.

Dave: Agreed. Talking to you has really helped illuminate some of the similarities in the parallels that we have. And again, I'm very grateful that you're out here available and helping. If a woman wants to get in touch with you, or excuse me, if a victim wants to get in touch with you, how do they do that?

Beth: So we have a 24 hour crisis hotline. The phone number is five six four three two two seven. And as I said, it is night or day. So we have staff who answer that phone in the middle of the night, in the middle of the morning, in the middle of the day, person can call that phone number. And if individual does not, if English is not their primary language, we do have access to a language line. So we can do basically, it's kind of like a three-way call with any language so we can help anybody that needs it. And we'll talk with that victim survivor. So if the individual is like, Hey, I need shelter, then we'll determine if we have space available for them and their children and they can come into shelter. And some people may say, Hey, I don't need shelter right now. I just want counseling, or I just want to advocate.

Then we'll make sure they're connected with that staff member. And then also sometimes we get people who call who it's more informational. They want to know, okay, when I am ready to leave, what do I need to do? And so we will safety plan with that person. One thing people don't think about is abusive partners really like to make it hard for you to leave. And so they may destroy your driver's license, your birth certificate, your social security cards. They'll shred it or hide it. So we go through a whole step-by-step process of how can we safety plan so that you can leave this situation safely because it's very dangerous when you want to leave. The abuser does not want you to leave and come up with that plan. And so the person knows, yes, there's a place to go. I now have a plan. I know what I need to do when I'm ready to go. So we're willing to talk through that whole process too. And understand maybe right now is not the right time, but maybe tomorrow is. Maybe next week is maybe one year from now is. But no matter what, we're here when you're ready.

Dave: This is where the rip cord is when you need to pull the parachute. And it's same thing in Vegas, stronger for substance use when we have a lot of clients call. I still have, I'm half done with my baggie. I know I need to come here. I'm not coming today, but I just wanted to talk and know you're here. Well, that's cool.

Beth: And I will tell you that we have absolutely referred people to your program.

Dave: Thank you. And likewise, we have referred females, and I'm sorry I keep harping and gendering what you do, but it is predominantly a female referral system for us.

Beth: Yeah, absolutely. And it's totally okay. We started as a women's only organization, but expanded because we do recognize domestic violence does happen across genders. And we also like the lgbtq plus community to know that we assist individuals too. So we will help everyone that needs it. If you are in a violent home, we will help you.

Dave: Oh, that's cool. I've had multiple adolescent or early or late teen men who were thrown out of their home physically by a non understanding parent, and we're traumatized and homeless and stuck. So I know that that is a real issue regardless of your gender. I ask everybody who comes on my podcast this question, the name of the podcast is Human Up. Beth Flory, what does human Up mean to you?

Beth: I think human up means that we as a community can lift each other up and even across our different genres that we work in, like we just said to each other, we've referred to each other because we view our victim survivor clientele, person in recovery, alcoholic, whatever that is as a human being. And through our collective efforts, especially in the Vegas community, we can lift each other up. So that's what that means to me.

Dave: Bravo could have put it better myself. Thank you very much for being my guest today. I'm grateful we work together. And on behalf of Las Vegas, thank you, Beth for all of you do,

Beth: And thank you for what you do.

Dave: This has been the Human Up Podcast with Dave Marlon.