S1: Welcome in San Diego , I'm Jade Hindman. Today we look at how working on the front lines of law enforcement can wear down on the mind and hear a firsthand story of rising from the ashes. Then a look at a new approach to therapy. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. Paul Parker is often known around town for his role as the former executive officer of the San Diego County Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board , otherwise known as curb for short. Well , last year he made headlines when he resigned from that role. He said he felt like he couldn't make enough meaningful change. Parker is also former executive director of the City of San Diego's Commission on Police Practices. But before all of that , he was a longtime medical death investigator. That experience is the focus of Parker's new memoir , In the Shadows of Death Riding Life's Final Chapter. He writes about his career and death investigations and reveals his journey through alcohol addiction and depression. KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen sat down with Paul last week to talk about it , and listeners should note the following conversation contains mature themes. You can call the hotline 988 for mental health support. Take a listen.
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S3: I had spent many , many years , 26 , 27 years as a death investigator. I realized that I wasn't handling the stress of the job in a healthy way , and ultimately wound up basically crashing and burning , quite frankly , with my mental well-being. I'd been drinking too much , And so I wound up in treatment. And as part of the treatment , it was about writing letters and writing down as part of treatment. So this book started as an outcome of the letter writing. And then , quite frankly , it really started as a suicide note. Wow.
S2: Wow.
S3: They are the eyes , the ears , the hands , the feet for the forensic pathologists at the medical examiner's office who determine the cause and manner of death and also identify the person who died. These investigators are the ones that go out to death scenes. Any death that falls under medical examiner jurisdiction , specifically accident , homicide , suicide , anything unusual , unexpected , even a natural death where there is no doctor. These folks who are not deputy sheriffs , they are not San Diego police officers or anything like that. They are peace officers , but solely for the purpose of conducting on scene death investigations and reviewing medical records and things along those lines. So here in San Diego , I think you have about 18 of them right now. So they take thousands of death reports a year , and they're the ones that go out and and again , lay that foundation for the forensic pathologist. I got involved in death investigation early on in my in my life. I entered law enforcement when I was 18 , a little agency right outside of Phoenix. I was a dispatcher and a property clerk and a crime scene technician , and then went to the Phoenix Regional Police Academy , where I then graduated , became a police officer about a year. About 13 months after I graduated the academy , I made a traffic stop about 2:00 in the morning. So I wound up doing a foot pursuit. I wound up he tried to choke me. He was choking me , I shot him. He then got up and beat me up pretty badly , took my gun and tried to shoot me. And so at that point , I realized maybe law enforcement is not really what I want to do. I stayed in law enforcement for another five years , as I kept getting promoted up through the ranks at the small department , but ultimately was appointed police chief , turned that down , was appointed to go to the National Academy for the FBI. The FBI's National Academy turned that down because I wanted to pursue death investigation. So that in a nutshell , Andrew , is how I got into death investigation.
S2: And most of your experience in this field was in San Diego. You were actually on scene for the 2003 cedar fires. Tell me about that experience.
S3: It was surreal. The day before the cedar fires , by that point , I was a death investigator for about four years here in San Diego County. The day before , it was a Saturday , the day before I went out onto Wildcat Canyon Road for a report of a Double fatality. Motorcycle fatality. Husband and wife who died at the scene. And I remember going out to that scene middle of the day. And it was beautiful. It was just a beautiful place to be. I remember thinking , as I was doing my investigation when I got to the scene and taking my photographs of the wife and the husband , and doing my external examination and making sure that I treated them with respect to get them back to the office so that we could determine cause and manner of death. I told myself , you know what ? I'm going to I got to come back out here on my days off. It's so beautiful. I just want to explore. Less than 24 hours later , I was back out there. Uh , I got the call that morning. I think anybody who lived here during that time understood this was something totally different. We had never seen anything like this. We went out there with our chief medical examiner , who at the time was Doctor Glenn Wagner , and we went out and he and I followed a deputy up Wildcat Canyon Road , wound up bringing back that day seven folks who had died. Several dogs , each one of them seemed to have dogs with them. Almost every one of them had dogs with them , and we brought everybody back. The dogs. And I never , never experienced anything like that. It was it was surreal. Doctor Wagner , who , if anybody knows here in San Diego County , is very loquacious , very vibrant personality. The only thing he really said to me that whole day was that it reminded him of Vietnam. He was very quiet and we were very respectful. The fire had just passed. Things were still burning and smoldering , but we we did everything we could to treat those folks with respect , to make sure that we we got them back to the office and so that the families could move forward.
S2: It just seems like such a hard job.
S3: During my time as a death investigator , I. I thought that in police work , I thought I'd seen it all. And when I was a police officer , a lot of the a lot of the people that I worked with , you know , they drank a lot. And , you know , some of them were doing things that they probably shouldn't have been doing. You know , they were a lot of extramarital affairs , a lot of promiscuous , uh , behaviors and whatnot. I saw it all. But when I got to death investigation , I saw it more , and I didn't think that was possible. Uh , if you think about it , Andrew , every phone call that comes in to a medical examiner's office , everyone is about death. Every interaction is about death. There are no happy endings. There are. There is not going to save someone from something. You are there because someone died. And so as I begin to dive into that every day , I began to realize that everyone in that office was impacted by death. For me personally , I drank and I drank a lot and no one knew it. No one knew it. At least I don't think anyone knew it. I never I don't believe I ever showed up to work under the influence of anything , but if I wasn't working , I was drinking , hands down. And so for me , you know , that obviously ended a marriage that that wasn't good for my health. Um , but I kept it seemed to keep the the sights , the sounds , the smells. It seemed to keep them at bay for a while.
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S3: So I left death investigation , uh , and I left , you know , I went on I was the assistant coroner in Las Vegas , and I was a chief in Phoenix , and I was an executive. I was a director in Pinal County where they do executions. So I was I was present for five executions. I mean , I had the career I in the southwestern U.S. so basically , again , thousands and thousands of deaths , thousands and thousands of interactions with not one life saved. So after I basically , like I mentioned before , uh , mental health crisis , uh , the alcohol addiction was , was , you know , it controlled me , I was suicidal , I was depressed , um , so I went into treatment for three months. I went to a place in Florida for three months. And , uh , as I was there , I realized that , uh , you know , I wanted to save lives. It would be nice if I could save a life. First , I had to start with saving my own. And then once I realized I was worthy enough to save my life , uh , then I realized , well , there's got to be a way we can save other lives. And I had had a little bit of an experience with club in 2017 , 2018 , but it was not wasn't funded , it wasn't supported. So I thought , what am I doing ? So that's when I went back into death and and went up to LA County and was and ran the day to day operations at their office. But that's where I crashed and burned. So when I was in treatment and when I came out and took care of myself , I thought San Diego County has a huge problem , as we all know , with deaths in custody. And it also had deputy involved shootings and things like that. But really it was deaths in custody. So I thought , well , if there's a way that I can play a role and help this board and this county and this sheriff prevent just one death , um , then maybe that's the right role for me. That's truly the only reason I looked at civilian oversight. That's the only reason. So the folks who know me in San Diego County , if you look back all the news stories all the time I was out there talking , it was always about people who died in custody making policy recommendations to save lives. And with all due respect , those recommendations , uh , you know , 95% of those came from me directly to to the club. But the whole point , it was because I had seen enough death , and I simply wanted to try to help these folks save a life. Andrew , if I may. All of us right now. And this is my motto , right ? All of us right now are living our life. We're all writing our life story. Every one of us. All your listeners. Everyone. Death investigators. People in that line of work. If your death falls under their jurisdiction , they write your final chapter. They do. And so I had written enough final chapters. I had actually , like I said , was going to write my own final chapter because I was so depressed and just so despondent and realized I had lost everything. But I realized , you know what ? There's another way to take this the experiences and try to save a life and write a final chapter that is not necessarily a final chapter. You know , write someone's just another chapter for their life and let them write that final chapter at a later point.
S2: Some of the details you share in this book are really personal. I imagine it was not easy to to put those out to the public.
S3: You just you go along. You go to work and you handle it. You don't cry at the scenes. You don't. I mean , you got to keep it together. And there really wasn't talk about the impact that what we were seeing and hearing every day , how it was dealing with us. So I thought there's power and vulnerability. When I was in , when I was away for three months in treatment in Florida. We were in small groups , large groups , and I learned more from my fellow patients than I learned from the therapist. I learned more from watching them share and watching them be vulnerable. And there was there was nothing off limits. And I realized , wow , that's powerful. So I thought , well , why not throw it out there ? It doesn't matter what people think of me. Listen , I've been the executive officer at club for many , many years. Uh , you not really liked much in that position by anybody. And so I'm used to that. It doesn't matter to me anymore. What matters is put it out there. If it can help someone , if it can , if it can show someone that you can be on top of the world. I was on top of the world , Andrew. I was , I was , I was the chief deputy director in Los Angeles , the biggest , most prestigious medical examiner's office in the world. I was on top of the world and , uh , lost it all because I wasn't taking care of myself. I decided I needed to go get help. Thought that. Thought. I thought that was it. I mean , many times , you know , contemplating ending my own life. But here I am , uh , like , risen from the ashes , right ? And so why not be vulnerable ? Why not have the why not start the conversation at club ? I started conversations all the time with the policy recommendations. I never held back. Not with the media , not with the family members , not with the sheriff. And that's what I'm trying to do here. Just throw it out there and see. See if it can help someone.
S2: You said there you there can be a real stigma around talking about mental health , particularly for men.
S3: I mean , very , very , you know , well-known people , people that that had it all and watched them break down. You know , break it all the way down to the basics. And and for me , if they could do that , if everyone that I was in this treatment with was willing to do that , I could do that too. And for me , that's what it was. It was like , no more hiding behind a facade of this person who's on the news all the time and has always got his stuff together. No , no , here it is. Here it is. And I have nothing to lose. Every treatment that they offered me , whether it was electroshock therapy , whether it was , you know , a form of eMDR. It's called art. It didn't matter what it was. Whatever medication I thought I got , I got to try it. So be vulnerable , because you never know where , uh , you know , how are you going to come out on the other end ? And I had nothing to lose , Andrew. So that's what. That's what it mean to do that. Mhm.
S2: Mhm.
S3: First they need to be screened appropriately. I think this is a tough job. Any component of death dealing with death is a tough job. And I think that you need to be psychologically sound , going in to the job. You need to be able to have good , healthy coping mechanisms in place. So for me , you have to screen the person correctly , make sure that they're they're okay to even do this job. And then once they're there you got to have a you have to. It starts at the top. You have to have the culture. Change that. It is okay to not be okay. It is okay to to not to to grapple with what you're seeing every day. When I was in Las Vegas , when I was the assistant coroner in Las Vegas , we had a policy. We created a chaplaincy program , and we had mandatory referrals for the chaplaincy program. If you went to a scene with two or more or three or more people , if someone had died in a fire , there were a couple. If there were baby deaths. Think about that. Those were mandatory referrals to a chaplain. But all those other deaths , no matter what they were , it was just up to you to kind of handle it. The problem is people in that line of work law enforcement , firefighters , medical , legal , death investigators , they don't trust anyone who doesn't do the job. So if you're going to have someone from the Employee Assistance program or human resources or whatever the case might be Chaplin. They're not going to trust them. So it has to start at the top. The people in charge of the office have have to buy into it. They have to walk that walk , show that they're willing to do it , and really make the commitment to have these folks cared for. To have the mandatory check ins to to make sure that they have free access , confidential access to mental health services with no limit on the time that you go , nothing along those lines. And then to to have supervisors. One of the things I've learned many , many years , 26 , 27 years in this line of work , you don't have very many good supervisors in that line of work. You just don't , uh , employees are looked at as a number to cover a shift. So the people that are supervising and running these offices and responsible for investigation divisions or whatever need to actually , I don't know , care about the people that are working for them and know the subtle differences when someone comes in and they're just not themselves. And to be able to , if need be. Send them home with pay , whatever the case might be. Get them to appropriate resources and don't send. Don't continually send them back out into an environment that ultimately may wind up. They may wind up taking their own life , or certainly not doing the justice that the folks who have died deserve.
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S3: Anybody who is a death professional , especially those who have day to day interactions with grieving people , quite frankly , it's not necessarily about the people who died. It's , you know , that never was truly the issue. The issue was dealing and making those notifications to the family , knocking on the door in the middle of the night. Having them come in to get the property of their loved one , having them , you know , just that interaction with them , having questions answered. I want to make sure that the people that do that job that everyone knows , that the people that do that job , that is that's something special , that's the most honorable thing you could be doing. It sets the foundation for how these people hopefully are going to respond as they move forward. So I want people to know about that. Anybody that deals with death , I also want people to know the power of vulnerability. I want people to know that depression in that line of work is runs rampant. But then again , depression runs rampant outside of that line of work , too , right ? And so I think that if we can have the conversation and I think that's happening more , but not in this line of work. But I think if we can have that conversation around depression , specifically male depression and what that looks like and how that really negatively impacts the family structure , how it impacts relationships , how it impacts work environment , toxic environments. I want that conversation to happen. And most importantly , I want people to understand that you can be at the lowest point in your life. I mean , I stood on railroad tracks , I stood on overpasses. I tried to find the courage to take my own life , and luckily , I never found that courage. And so I think for all of us to know that you can be at the lowest point and you can fight addictions , you can fight your demons. But if you're dedicated to making the change dedicated to living a life and , uh , that you can do it. And I'm living proof.
S1: That was Paul Parker speaking with KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen about his new memoir , In the Shadows of Death. Listeners looking for support can call the Suicide and Mental Health Crisis Hotline at nine , eight , eight. Still to come , a different way of approaching therapy by being more open for therapists.
S4: I very much want to open up the idea that they can bring of themselves into the therapy room , and that can be a useful part of the healing process.
S1: Hear more when KPBS Midday Edition returns. Welcome back to KPBS midday Edition. I'm Jade Hindman. Is it possible to change your life in 60 minutes ? Well , a new book about therapy , hour of the heart connecting in the Here and Now digs into what's possible. It is written by renowned psychotherapist and bestselling author Irvine D , along with his son , who is also a psychotherapist , Benjamin Allam. In the book , the therapist duo look at how we can relate to each other better in the moment with more honesty and vulnerability. Joining us now to discuss more about the book is co-author and local San Diegan Ben Golomb. Ben , welcome to the show.
S4: Thanks so much for having me.
S1: Glad to have you here.
S4: And so he shifted to this one hour format to see what he could do in an hour. And he wrote a number of stories in this. And then his memory got worse.
S1: One hour format. What do you mean ? One ? Our format.
S4: I mean that he was seeing clients for one session only. So the traditional 50 minute hour that a therapist would see somebody , but instead of seeing them weekly , he decided he was only going to do it for one hour because his memory wasn't good enough to remember the details from one week to the next. And I should note that he wasn't. He doesn't believe , and I don't believe that one hour is enough therapy for most people , so it's not being presented as this should be the entirety of one's therapy.
S1: Yeah.
S4: Yeah. Well , so first of all , my father , whenever he's been seeing patients over the years , he's always looking for stories that he can bring out and use to teach other therapists things. So as he was doing these one hour sessions , he was saying , oh , that's something interesting , that's something interesting , and write up a short story about it that might eventually be useful for other therapists. My participation became essential because not only was he having trouble with his memory from week to week for his patients , he also wrote a big stack of stories and then looked at them and couldn't really remember. Couldn't keep all of them in his mind at the same time. And so , in essence , we needed somebody who could come in and take these stories and turn them into a book. And that's when we started discussing my collaboration in the project. And ultimately , um , in a way , he wrote the stories and I wrote the book. I put them in order , I fleshed them out , and I started to sort of say , what is he doing theoretically with the clients from one one story to the next , to the next , so that it grows like a good book does. It has a narrative that builds. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. So you threaded all this together.
S4: And he took the most interesting ones out of that. And each one tells a little story , and each story tells a little bit about what is the therapeutic interaction. What is the therapist doing and what is he doing that would help the client discover something new about their life , or about what it is they need to work on.
S1: Well , I mean , your father , Irvin , is best known for books like The Gift of Therapy. And in many ways , he pioneered. Therapy as literature.
S4: But he came out with his book , Love's Executioner in the late 80s , and that was really the first book that took the rich drama of people's stories and therapy and turned it in to literature. And I think , in so doing , gave therapists permission to make mistakes and to realize what's going on in their own minds , and gave permission for people who are interested in doing therapy to become , to join in in a way that didn't seem so strange. This book does some of the same things. Um , one thing it also does is it provides a memoir of my father's own experience in losing his memory and aging. Uh , and he he was quite brave in being willing to look at his own failures , at his own memory slipping away , and how that became uncomfortable often for him , sometimes embarrassing. Um , so what I really tried to do was tell that story alongside the story of the individual patients.
S1: And that's such a relatable story. So many people deal with loved ones as they age , losing their memory.
S4: And here he was looking at his own mind as it was changing and as it was sort of falling apart. So that's a rare insight for all of us. For me personally , you know , we've been struggling , my family and I've been struggling with the changes that are going on for my father , for better and for worse. He's very aware of the changes that are going on , and I think that working on it with him helped me process it in a way that nobody else had that benefit , and that I was really trying to hold on to a narrative thread when sometimes people who are losing their memory , the narrative starts to slip away. So I was holding on to that , but I was also doing it with him so we could communicate back and forth and notice the changes. Wow.
S1: Wow. Well , you know , another major theme that comes up in the book is vulnerability. Um , from the therapist side. So tell me about how the two of you approach that in your work and how it's addressed in the book.
S4: My father's brand of therapy , if you will. really is based on the relationship that is built between the therapist and the client or the patient , and what he likes to say as a mantra is it's the relationship that heals. So the it's not some other theory of something else that's happening , but it's really built on what you and I experienced together. And part of that has to do with developing a certain intimacy , a certain vulnerability to one another , because what a lot of patients come in with is the desire to connect better with other people in their lives. But it can be very hard to open up to others. And so my father's approach to working on this and mine as well , is to say , look , I'm going to be a real life human being here with you. And I a therapist. I'm willing to be vulnerable , not be an expert doctor and have you be my patient who has a problem , but rather the two of us are real human beings experiencing life. My father likes the word fellow travelers rather than expert. And so the sense is , if I can open up to you , if I can be vulnerable to you , that may make it easier for you to reciprocate and to open up to me. And that's very important for patients who for whom this is a real problem. They may never open up to people in their lives the way they may want to. And here we try to give them a place in which they can have a real relationship and in a sense , learn about what it is to open up so that they can then go home to other people in their lives and be able to do so. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Well , so there's there's connection that comes from this. In what ways does it help someone to navigate things that are going on in their life and to process the things that are happening.
S4: The main idea here is that not for all patients. Certainly , but for the great majority. Problem in connecting is very much at the core of their issues. So my father is also known for doing a lot of existential work , which is essentially applying a lot of philosophy to therapy. And that work would say that we have anxieties about many things in our lives. Death being one of them. But the solution to that is both to live a meaningful life and also to connect with other people. So anxiety you may have that may seem like it is about something else entirely , may be very much healed , or at least helped by being able to connect better with other people.
S1: Well , you know , therapists are usually expected to focus on their clients rather than sharing about themselves.
S4: Even today , 150 years after Freud sort of positioned us as distant from our patients , people are still taught largely not to talk about themselves. The therapists are not to self disclose the terminology we used for it. And my father for 50 years has been saying exactly the opposite. He's been experimenting with how is it useful for me to talk about myself and my feelings ? Now , the thing that's important is , as a therapist , I only want to do that if it's helpful to my client. I don't want to just tell stories about myself , but what my father has found , and I agree that I often see this in my therapy room , is if I can be open about how I'm experiencing the other person. So I'm giving you honest feedback about how you're striking me and how I'm , uh , affected by the way you speak with me. That's very helpful information for you. It may be hard to receive sometimes , but it's very helpful because then we can learn that if you don't give me much information or you answer very sharply. Well , it's quite possible , even probable , that you do that with other people in your life too. So that's useful. That's one type of self-disclosure. The other is I might have stories about my life that might make it easier for you to speak with me. You have some idea of who I am. If you ask me , do I have children ? Well , some fields of therapy might say , don't answer that question. If you ask me in therapy , of course I'm going to tell you I have children. That may make it easier for you as a parent to relate to me.
S1: Because there's a big difference , I think , between Western psychology and then psychology around the globe and other places. So is this is this approach often used in maybe eastern medicine or.
S4: Well , you've picked me on a good day to ask that question. I had a talk with a thousand therapy students in Taiwan this morning , and they were very interested , and we agreed that there are some cultural differences and that , uh , you know , in America , for instance , we have this great individualistic culture , for better and for worse. And the idea that patients are as isolated as they are , the assumption many of us work with here maybe isn't entirely the same in Taiwan. And yet the idea of really being vulnerable , of opening up , of sharing one's deep things inside , does seem to be the same. And they too expressed that they are not taught this type of methodology. They're taught to remain more distant and we call it professional. Um , one great quote from David Epstein , a narrative therapist I enjoy very much. He said , I want to be a real person , not a professional pretending to be a real person. And I think that echoes very much for me. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. Something else you go into in the book is how the pandemic really impacted how therapy sessions are done , you know , with remote sessions being more accessible at the time. But there were some drawbacks that you write about. What are they.
S4: In terms of therapy today ? I think that doing sessions remotely is actually much better than I expected , particularly when I'm working with individuals. It's much easier for people to squeeze an hour of therapy in their day if they don't have to spend two hours driving or whatever it is. I find that with couples , I much prefer to work in person if possible , or at the very least to have those two people in the same location , because the body language , I think becomes increasingly important. And there is something about having a non unmediated interaction with others that is rich.
S1: Yeah , yeah. You know , you mentioned some of the similarities between you and your father's approach to therapy. What are some of the ways they differ. Yeah.
S4: Yeah. I so I very much do embrace the idea that building a relationship between the two of us is very important. And I'm happy to speak about myself or my response to the other person when that is helpful for them. Um , I come from a theater background , as I say , and so I really enjoy , um , particularly with couples , but also with individuals being able to say things like , hey , let's try this and see what happens. I'm a little bit more focused on the narrative that people tell about their own lives , that they tell themselves. And I believe that a lot of our problems come from that. So I'm interested in adjusting the stories people tell themselves to give themselves more agency and more control in their own story of their life. And in some ways , that's sort of using models of literature and theatre for therapeutic ends , in the sense that it's the inverse of my father using the stories of therapy for literary ends , in a way. And then one other thing I'm really interested in , and I know my father is as well , but it looks very different for him , is I want to help people clarify what their values are , what the things that they hold deeply important to them , and then try and help them align how they're actually living with what they think is most important.
S1: Yeah , I would imagine that your work in theatre helps inform your work as a therapist and that you taking on roles , it builds empathy in ways that you can't even imagine.
S4: Very much so. I think that acting in particular is a empathy machine in a sense , and it's the building of that muscle. And then also working with couples and sometimes with families. Again , I love the idea of , oh , how did that feel ? Okay , let's try it a little differently. How does it feel now ? Have this conversation in a slightly different way and we can see the changes. And then I'm also my theater was very involved with with the body as a tool. So it was sort of on the line between dance and theater. And I'm very interested in how we can access our emotions and the stories we tell ourselves through our bodies , particularly for people for whom , uh , speaking , talk therapy may not be the best modality. So a lot of my research right now for my dissertation is on how we can use the body to inform us of our own stories and our own feelings.
S1: Very interesting.
S4: And that can be a useful part of the healing process. And I think for people seeking therapy to be looking for a therapist who can travel down the road with them , as opposed to standing off at a distance and telling them what to do.
S1: All right. I've been speaking with psychotherapist Benjamin Golomb , whose new book , hour of the Heart Connecting in the Here and Now , is out. He'll actually be speaking about the book at Camino Books in Del Mar on Sunday , May 18th at 3 p.m.. Ben , thanks for being here.
S4: Oh , thank you so much for having me. I hope you can make it to the reading as well.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
