Episode 83 Transcription

Welcome to episode 83 of Behind The Mission, a show that sparks conversations with PsychArmor's trusted partners and educational experts. My name is Duane France, and each week I'll be having conversations with podcasts guests that will equip you with tools and resources to effectively engage with and support military service members, Veterans, and their families. You can find the show on your podcast player of choice or by going to www.psycharmor.org/podcast. 

Thanks again for joining us on Behind The Mission. Our work and mission are supported by generous partnerships and sponsors who also believe that education changes lives. This show is brought to you by PsychArmor, the premier education and learning ecosystem, specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that's free to individual learners as well as custom training options for organizations.

On today's episode, I'm having a conversation with Brian Jenkins, Executive Director of the Armed Services Arts Partnership, a creative community that provides free art and comedy classes to members of the military-affiliated population. In leading ASAP, Brian draws on his broad experiences in community building and social entrepreneurship in which he has worked and consulted for social impact and community building ventures across the world. You find out more about Brian by checking out his bio in our show notes, let's get into my conversation with him and come back afterwards to talk about some of the key points. 

DUANE: So Armed Services Arts Partnership, helps service members, Veterans, and those who care for them express themselves through art and theater. How did you get involved in the intersection of creative expression in the military community, Brian?

BRIAN: So community building for me has been the thread of my career. And I've done that with several different populations, working with refugees in Thailand, working with formerly incarcerated folks in Virginia who were becoming entrepreneurs and starting their own businesses. I've worked with folks living through poverty and homelessness, lots of different kinds of communities.

And I'm a civilian. So I'm not, I'm not a Veteran and I don't come from a military back. But when I was introduced to ASAP and went to a performance several years ago, I was invited to go to a show . Heard there was a comedy show Veterans were putting on, thought it sounded like a good time. Uh, go have a couple beers with my buddies and see a comedy show.

I was blown away, not just by the talent of the Veterans that I saw on stage and how hilarious the comedians were, how compelling the storytellers were, how funny the improv groups were, but I was blown away even more by the community that they shared. When that performance ended, it was at dog tag bakery in Washington, DC. I know a lot of people, especially listeners to this podcast are probably familiar, rather than just dispersing and going on their own way I saw as an audience member, all of the Veterans who had performed in the show go down by the waterfront in Georgetown and continue playing improv games together with no audience. Just because they wanted to continue spending time together just because they wanted to continue practicing their art form together. And that was such a beautiful thing for me to see. And I instantly was drawn to this ASAP community. So as I got to know the organization through volunteering and eventually saw that the founder Sam Presler, was stepping down from his role. He and I got together, talked a little bit about it and I threw my hat in the ring to step into the role of executive director. And it's been an incredible journey since then. I've been doing the job now for three years and it has been an absolute joy to really dig in and get to know military culture, get to know this community, get to know the richness of their experiences and the diversity of their experiences in every way. So that's how I got involved. 

DUANE: You know that idea of, Veterans in comedy, you know, people might automatically go back to, I don't know, like stripes, or in the army now with poly shore, something like, but it's this idea of Veterans in comedy. It may not really seem like two things that fit.

BRIAN: They fit together. So perfect. You think about how humor is one of the most important strategies to cope when you're on a deployment. It's one of the ways that you get through some really challenging, difficult days, even in particularly tragic environments or in just the mundane challenges of a deployment.

It's a bonding experience. It's something that allows people to get through the rough times. And so it's, actually a perfect if you think about it.

DUANE: And so absolutely, and maybe those on the outside might be a little put off by some of the humor. Obviously the dark humor. And again, like you said, if you're in these stressful and a, and obviously even, traumatic situations, it can be a defense mechanism, but then that idea of taking that inward facing collaborative humor as a group. And then as you mentioned, for many people stand up comedy, you may be in the room with a bunch of people, it's still that Veteran up in the spotlight telling their story publicly.

BRIAN: I think that's exactly right. You tee that off by talking about how civilians might not understand that dark humor. And I completely agree, and that's one of the reasons why it's so important that when a veteran walks into our classroom, they see 12 other people who have a military affiliation and that creates this immediate sort of exhale, these folks are gonna understand my humor. They're gonna understand my jokes, even if it gets a little dark, sometimes even if it becomes black humor, but you're right at the same time. The other side of it is when they get up on stage and they're performing and they've got a civilian crowd in front of them, which is just the way it's gonna be when you have less than 1% of this country serving in the military.

A lot of these folks, even at this show are gonna be civilian. They're seeing that Veteran work out their own experiences through comedy on that stage. And they're getting to go along the ride with. 

DUANE: And obviously you're talking about, standup comedy that is a cornerstone of what Armed Services Arts Partnership does. But really that's one aspect of creative expression. As a veteran, a mental health professional, I'm a huge proponent of Veterans engaging in some form of create expression in post-military life.

For me, it took the form of writing and producing audio content. Literally what we're doing now is my form of creative expression that really supports me and post-military life. Why do you think it's beneficial for service members and Veterans to express themselves through creative outlets, stand up comedy or others like writing or performing?

BRAIN: So you're right. Standup comedy is one of the art forms we're probably best known for, but our mission is to foster communities where Veterans and their families can thrive through the arts. And the programs that we deliver span everything: improv comedy to storytelling, to creative writing, to acting, to visual arts, like drawing and painting and on and on.

We're really trying to offer lots of different vehicles of creative expression across all art forms. And that's partly because each of those art forms offer something different to the artist. In storytelling, you might be processing something tragic in a sincere and deep and reflective way.

And in comedy, you are finding opportunities to laugh at those experiences. And that's particularly different from something like improv comedy, where you are responding to your teammates and interacting with them on stage, in a live and fresh way. You think about the implications of these art forms in many different contexts.

One of the impacts that we hear about from our improv graduates is how it improves their relationships and it improves their communication. The biggest one that we hear is about improving marriages, actually. One of the rules of improv comedy, when you get up on stage and you're doing a scene is you don't say no  because that, that shuts the scene down. 

DUNAE: It's always yes and. 

BRIAN: Exactly the rule is yes and. So think about the implications for a conversation with a colleague, a friend, or a spouse where the rule is yes and. I'm not gonna shut you down. I'm gonna take what you've given me except it, and move forward. And that can be so productive in an environment where misunderstanding could lead to conflict.

So there's are tons of implications, for the impact of the arts. At the end of the day, the things that we can measure and we see are things like improved resilience, improved confidence, and self-esteem, decreased stress, decreased depression. And then the one that excites me the most is improved social connection and belonging.

Social connection and belonging is a crisis in our country overall right now. But it's even more important among Veterans and military family members. We know that social isolation is a big challenge that Veterans face in their transition to civilian. Reentering into a world that probably doesn't understand their experiences and, trying to reorient themselves.

And we also know that social isolation is a risk factor for all kinds of mental health challenges, whether we're talking about depression or we're talking about something even more serious and tragic like suicide. And so the arts programs that we're offering, they are not art therapy. But we see that our participants, our Veterans experience improvements that directly address a lot of the challenges that folks face in their transition to civilian life.

DUANE: Now I've definitely seen that again. Personally, but also professional as a mental health professional, that did direct clinical work. I've always said that there are many barriers and many almost enumerable barriers between the Veteran and the therapist. But art can be a mediator between the two, almost a bridge between the two.

If you're not able or someone is unwilling to say, go speak to a therapist about this. But they're able to open up through writing or through reflection or through art or some way it can get them to a place where they can get to deal with these clinical things in a more formal way. But art is a mediator between the individual and perhaps the clinician.

BRIAN: I think that's a hundred percent true. A different way I also phrase it sometimes is that art's a back door into understanding your experiences in a new way. If you can't come in the front door, maybe you can go into side and maybe you can come in the back door. And we know that clinical interventions and therapy can sometimes while they're so important and I'm such a huge fan of therapy, it can be stigmatized in the military community unjustly, and that can lead folks to have hesitation, or maybe even have trouble trying therapy.

And when you're writing your story for our graduation show performance, or you're preparing your standup comedy. We're encouraging folks to reflect on their daily life and find that compelling story within it, reflect on their military experience and find the really funny bits, the really funny moments, that they can perform on a stage and a natural byproduct of that is that folks are processing their experiences in a very powerful that actually improves their wellbeing.

DUANE: Another thing and what I like about what you just said is sometimes in therapy, you're going in and you're reliving the worst days right. The hardest things, and doing so in a safe and productive way. But sometimes being focused on so difficult, dark and dangerous things, you forget about the funny stuff you forget about the time where the donkeys were weaving in and out of your convoy and you were donkeys passing on the left, right?

 Which is, to be honest, which is a literal, funny story that I tell, and I avoid telling what happened a half an hour after that, right?

DUANE: That's an example of we forget the funny parts because we focus on the negative parts. And that can be very powerful for Veterans service members to realize there were good things as a part of my military, there were funny things that happened.

BRIAN: I love that. And I also think even those challenging parts, whatever happened 30 minutes later, in some cases, not every case, but in some cases, comedy and humor can be used to process those experiences too, depending on the environment. But, I have some friends who've gone through our comedy bootcamp class who in their graduation show were able to make jokes about an experience of, and I don't say this lightly being shot five times and enduring more than a hundred surgeries after the fact as a result of those injuries. And the humor that folks are able to infuse into those experiences to get by and change their perspective, completely transforms their lives and the way that they think about those experiences. In our research, we can call that self-enhancing humor style. So in self enhancing humor, one of the applications of it is just finding humor in your daily life, right?

Maybe, something frustrating happens to you and, during the day and later on, you can find the joke in it. But it can also be used in particularly challenging environments, whether you're talking about, a gunfight or you're talking about cancer or any number of challenging experiences can actually be transformed into jokes that, that help you to cope and get through those things.

DUANE: And then of course, as you said, this idea of building community, if one Veteran who maybe not be that far along the process sees another Veteran getting up and not being funny about their experiences, but being able to say I've gotten to a place where I can see the absurdity in some of the stuff that's happened. That creates a bond between someone who may not be ready, but they got there. So I can get there too.

BRIAN: Absolutely. And this is not about a trite way of, making light in a way that doesn't value those experiences. It's actually the opposite, right? It's about honoring those experiences as part of your life, and being able to move forward through.

DUANE: Now you've mentioned a couple of different times about research. Obviously, a lot of organizations wanna make Veterans feel better. Like they want to help Veterans overcome whatever it is. But maybe they find something that seems to work with a Veteran or group, or maybe it worked for me and I'm gonna give it to them but there's really not a basis of research to say how this is replicable, how this can be applied to various different populations or how this is sustainable. But ASAP has done some research to be able to back up, like you said, what you're, what you're saying that ASAP does.

BRIAN: Absolutely. And I think when a donor makes a contribution makes a gift to an organization, a nonprofit, they wanna believe that their dollar is having a real impact. And we take that very seriously, especially as an arts organization where the impact of the arts is something that we all feel in our daily life.

We all appreciate the arts, but I think folks often feel like you can't measure it. And the impact of the arts is a bit amorphous and that actually made it even more important for us to dig into the impact of our programs. So we conducted an 18 month mixed methods evaluation with a control group, that utilized externally validated scales.

So I used a lot of buzzwords there, so this was a qualitative and quantitative study. The way that we measured the changes in our participants' wellbeing, things like resilience, self-esteem, social connection, depression, stress, et cetera, was using measurements that other scholars and researchers have been using for many years, sometimes even decades.

And they're proven; we're confident that these measurements are accurate. We're not just coming up with questions in a back room. And then of course having a control group was equally important. Having folks who have never gone through the program before measuring their experiences during that same time period to see what's the comparison with the folks going through our classes. And, at the end of that study, we were able to see statistically significant and lasting over time improvements in all of those things that I've mentioned, which was a huge endorsement of our work. And frankly, it was stronger than we expected it to be, which is exactly what you wanna have happened happen.

And then more recently we actually had peer reviewed research published on the impact of our comedy bootcamp class, which we've spent some time talking about here. And we're particularly excited about that right now.

DUANE: And I think that, again, this idea of it's easy to say we help Veterans feel better. Many organizations do that. And many organizations do that in a different way. But really, and again, many long time listeners have heard this. There's so many organizations out there. At some point you need to be able to back up what you're actually saying works, with some data and some research.

So we've been talking about why you do it and why you think it's important. What can you share with the audience about how ASAP does what you do? What kind of programs you have and how folks can get involved if they want?

BRIAN: So the primary vehicles of our programming are arts education and performances. For example, our classes are these six or seven week long classes where every weekend, you get together with your class for three hours, and you're doing a deep dive into, one specific art form. So let's take storytelling for example. You walk into your storytelling class, you have two instructors, you have 12 fellow participants and your instructors are usually Veterans who've actually gone through the class themselves. And then later on received training from ASAP to teach that class. You go through your seven weeks of your class.

And then at the end of those seven weeks, you get up on stage and perform in front of the community. Somewhere between 50 and 150 people might be there, to watch you deliver your first ever storytelling performance. So these classes take significant commitment. They take real work from our participants.

They're entirely free to Veterans, service members, military family members. or military caregivers. But even though they're free, we're not gonna let you off the hook. You gotta do some work, to actually get up on that stage. And that's part of why we see such cool and strong outcomes, from these programs because people are really digging into them with us. So the seven week classes are the biggest part of our model that we have. We also have one time workshops that could be just three hours on a Saturday or throughout a weekend. And anything from comic book writing to quilting, to woodworking, to glassflame working, we offer countless different kinds of workshops, to our community.

We try to keep it all fresh and interesting. And then the last piece to mention here is where we're located. So we have online classes that are available to folks nationwide, but we have in person chapter locations in four cities. So we're in the Washington DC Metro area. We're in Hanon Roads, Virginia, the Norfolk area. We're in Indianapolis and we're in San Diego.

DUANE: And I was gonna ask about that. Obviously many organizations, had to transition to some form of virtual engagement, obviously over the past couple of years. But really, again, it speaks to obviously those are four locations that have a lot of Veterans, but there's a lot of Veterans and locations outside of that. And so you do have the ability to host some of these workshops virtually for anyone?

BRIAN: Offering programs online during the pandemic presented a tremendous opportunity for ASAP. In that time, we were able to save a lot of money on venue costs, disappeared during COVID. Lots of different kinds of costs disappeared for us. And we immediately redeployed those funds into offering even more online classes.

And so that means that Veterans have participated in ASAP programs online from all 50 states and from five different countries. We've had folks take our improv class while in Japan or Germany or Baghdad. It's been really cool, to see how interested folks have been in the online programs.

And that's continued. So even though, COVID 19 continues to evolve, we are going to offer online programs for the foreseeable future. Even as we also have all of our in person classes as well.

DUANE: Now  I think that's great. And,I really, personally have heard of, Armed Service Art Partnership and have been a fan for years. But if people wanted to find out more about what ASAP is doing and how they can get involved, how can they do that?

BRIAN: So folks can visit us at ASAP, www.asapasap.org. That's ASAP twice.org and they can scroll through all the different classes and workshops that we've got coming up. And if they wanna experience a performance before they dig into trying the art themselves, we've got a lot of those coming up. Just go to the, attend a show page, and reserve your tickets. We would love to see folks there.

DUANE: That's great, Brian. I really appreciate you coming on the show today.

BRIAN: Thank you so much for having me.

Once again, we would like to thank this week sponsor, PsychArmor. PsychArmor is the premier education and learning ecosystem specializing in military culture content. PsychArmor offers an online e-learning laboratory that is free individual learners as well as custom trading options for organizations. 

The first point that I would like to emphasize that Brian described admirably is the role of humor in coping with stressful situations. Everyone has probably experienced this before and the more stressful or even traumatic the situation, the more we'll try to use humor to deal with it. 

We may be trying to reassure others or ourselves, or we may be trying to cover up her own feelings of vulnerability or mask other emotions like anger or fear. For service members and Veterans the humor can certainly get pretty dark. We laugh and make jokes about things that A aren't all that funny. And B

I would shock people if we talked about it. Even as I was putting this together, I went down memory lane for a bit, with some funny stories, mainly for my first deployment to Afghanistan. Wondering which ones I should tell here. And I won't. Not because they're not appropriate, but they would take way too long to explain what the short time that we have left. 

Suffice to say that when I've shared these stories with people who care about me, they didn't laugh about them the way my buddies and I did. They were shocked and even kind of angry that I would joke about something so serious. But that's what makes the comedy work that ASAP does so important. 

My funny stories in the context of a backyard barbecue or randomly at the dinner table may not be considered funny by those around me, but in the context of being up on a stage in a comedy club, they absolutely can be. Being able to help Veterans express their experiences through humor in a safe and supportive environment can certainly be a path to healing. 

The other point that I'd like to make, could be filed under the, everyone knows that category. But the true benefit of ASAP is not just in providing an outlet for creative expression, but building a sense of community and service members, Veterans, and their families. When we served, we were part of a community, whether we liked it or not. 

There was not much privacy in the military, especially in training environments around deployments. It could get overwhelming at times, but you were constantly surrounded by people. And being a military family member wasn't much different. And that there were always those around you who were familiar with the same things you were familiar with and experiencing the same things you did. 

When a service member and their family leave the military however, the separation from the community can be jarring. You go from a familiar community to an unfamiliar community. And one that may not understand your point of view, or even get your jokes like we just talked about. 

Humans are social creatures, even introverts and folks who prefer to sit quietly on the edges of the group. But we need social interaction to live rich and full lives. Isolation is a key element in the development of emotional distress and even suicidal crisis. Organizations like ASAP allow Veterans who are interested in expressing themselves through creative arts to build a community around that. 

Just like organizations, like Team RWB allow Veterans who are interested in fitness to build a community around that. Or even PsychArmor building a community with those who are supporting service members, Veterans and their families. 

Social connectedness is critical for mental health and wellbeing. And it's great to see a program like ASAP doing the good work of keeping that going for folks who work with them. So I hope you appreciated my conversation with Brian. 

If you did let us know by dropping a review or sending us an email info@psycharmor.org. We'd appreciate knowing that you're listening, what you think and what you'd like to hear about in future episodes.

For this week, PsychArmor resource of the week, I'd like to share the link to the PsychArmor course, Making Connections and Networking. Regardless of your military background or previous work experience, this course helps service members, veterans, and their families learn how to network in their new communities. You can find a link to the resource in our show notes. 

So thanks for taking the time to listen to this episode. Make sure to take a look at the show notes, which you can find at the podcast app as well as on www.psycharmor.org/podcast. While you're there, you can find hundreds of online training videos delivered by nationally recognized subject matter experts who are committed to educating the civilian community about military culture. 

All of these courses are free to individual learners. You wouldn't be listening if you didn't care and it's that curiosity and passion for supporting service members and their families that we want to encourage and appreciate. Come back each week for another conversation and make sure to engage with on social media and let us know what you think about the show. I'd like to express special things to Operation Encore and Navy Seahawk pilot, Jerry Maniscalco, for our theme song, Don't Kill The Messenger. 

Much appreciation to the team at PsychArmor that makes the show happen. Carole Turner, Vice President of Strategic Communications who keeps me on track and is an outstanding guest coordinator and Emma Atherall who provides valuable coordination and support. The show was produced by Headspace and timing and all rights to the show remain reserved by PsychArmor. Feel free to share the show in fact, we request that you do and make sure to let folks know where you heard it. Join us next time for another great episode. And until then stay aware, get educated and be well.