Episode 65 – “Men and Trauma: How It Shapes Everything”

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#WorkMomSays trauma doesn’t come back as a memory — it comes back as a behavior, and until you understand that, you can’t change it

In this episode, Lori Jo Vest is joined by Dr. Kevin Scott, trauma specialist and Marine Corps combat era veteran, to explore how unaddressed trauma silently drives the way men think, feel, and behave in the world — at home, at work, and in relationships.

Drawing from Dr. Scott’s clinical expertise, his personal journey through dark and tumultuous chapters, and his work doing crisis intervention training for law enforcement, the conversation covers everything from big T vs. little T trauma to moral injury, trauma response styles, mother woundedness, and why men are so rarely given the tools to express or even recognize their own pain.

Lori and Dr. Scott also share practical guidance for anyone — man or woman — who is
struggling with unresolved trauma and wondering where to even begin.

Themes Discussed in This Episode

  • What trauma actually is, and why secondary and vicarious trauma are just as real as direct trauma
  • The difference between big T and little T trauma — and why no one gets to tell you what’s traumatic for you
  • Moral injury: what it is, where it comes from, and how it shows up far beyond the military 
  • Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn — trauma responses and why most of us don’t recognize our own
  • Why men in particular struggle to voice emotions, and how society’s messaging makes healing harder
  • The concept of “mother woundedness” and how early attachment issues can drive resentment and relationship struggles
  • How the digital age and social media have made trauma incessant and normalize
  • Practical first steps for anyone hesitant to seek help — including why you don’t have to eat the elephant in one bite

Episode Highlights

  • 0:14 – Lori introduces Dr. Kevin Scott and sets up the conversation: what happens when men’s struggles with emotional expression aren’t about willingness — but about trauma they may not even recognize?
  • 2:00 – Dr. Scott shares how he came to specialize in trauma, including the Viktor Frankl moment that changed his life: the idea that suffering is no longer suffering once your pain has meaning.
  • 9:36 – Trauma 101: Dr. Scott offers his definition of trauma — any disruption, short or long term, that affects a person’s physical, social, emotional, and spiritual space — and explains why secondary and vicarious trauma are just as real as direct experience.
  • 11:40 – Dr. Scott introduces moral injury, a term with roots in the military that applies to anyone who has had to act against their own values — in parenting, marriage, substance use, and everyday life.
  • 18:20 – Lori and Dr. Scott break down trauma response styles — fight, flight, freeze, and fawn — and why Lori’s lifelong fawning response (“if everybody likes me, I’ll be safe”) shaped so much of her early life.
  • 19:49 – Dr. Scott shares a key insight from world-renowned trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk: trauma doesn’t come back as a memory — it comes back as a behavior. Understanding that changes everything about how we see difficult people, including ourselves
  • 22:47 – Why do some men struggle with authority from women? Dr. Scott introduces the concept of “mother woundedness” — and gets real about how early attachment failures can generate loathing and resentment that goes far beyond ordinary misogyny.
  • 27:18 – Dr. Scott reflects on how a generational shift in parenting has left young men without the emotional vocabulary to express disappointment, shame, fear, or loneliness — and how toxic masculine norms make it even harder.
  • 33:07 – The digital age has made trauma incessant. Dr. Scott explains how a person can now be traumatized from the moment they open their eyes to the moment they close them — and how society hasn’t begun to catch up with what that means.
  • 39:04 – Psychoeducation as a tool for healing: Lori shares how understanding cognitive distortions — like magical thinking — has helped her catch herself in the moment and choose a different response.
  • 43:21 – Dr. Scott tells the story of dismissing his sons’ pain — until he got his own fingers caught in a garage door. The lesson: we owe it to young men to say, “Hey, it’s okay. That hurts.”
  • 48:03 – What to say to a young man who knows he’s struggling but doesn’t want to sit in a therapist’s office. Dr. Scott’s answer: don’t try to eat the elephant in one bite. Start with one drawer. Ask yourself what one thing you could let go of that would make your days better.
  • 51:00 – Lori shares her own experience with groups, sobriety, and the simple but powerful act of telling someone you’re struggling — and how relieved others feel when you do.

Top Quotes

2:21 — “Pain is no longer suffering — your suffering is no longer suffering once your pain has meaning.”

19:49 — “Trauma doesn’t come back as a memory. It comes back as a behavior.”

28:36 — “Society has only taught us, especially as men, that you have to be tough — this strong, macho individual.”

9:04 — “Mastering moving on without closure. I can’t fix everything. You do not get this time back.”

45:26 — “If life hasn’t brought you to your knees where you have shed tears — I’m talking about those visceral, gut-level, ugly-face, snot-still crying — stay away from those people.”

48:49 — “Don’t try to eat the elephant in one bite. Start with cleaning one drawer. Just one drawer.”

Resources Mentioned

Transcript

0:14 Lori: Hello everybody, I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Work Mom Says, Don’t Be an Idiot, where we talk about how to play the emotional contact sport of business so you can experience less drama and more success. And today we are talking about men, trauma, and how it shapes everything. I have an amazing guest today, Dr. Kevin Scott, that I found on LinkedIn. Dr. Scott had some videos about men and trauma, and I know we talk a lot about men needing to open up, but what if the difficulties that men experience with emotional expression aren’t about willingness? So today we’re going to go deeper into how trauma shapes the way that men move through the world, and oftentimes anyone doesn’t realize what’s causing them to behave the way they do. So, meet Dr. Kevin Scott. Hi, Dr. Scott. How are you?

Dr. Kevin Scott: Oh, Lori Jo, how are you doing? First of all, thank you so much for allowing me
to share this space with you and your audience. Looking forward to having a very dynamic and
robust conversation about a wonderful topic — very much needed.

1:54
Lori: So how did trauma become your specialty?

Dr. Kevin Scott: For most individuals, we don’t go out saying, “Hey, I want to specialize in trauma.” For me specifically, it was just a culmination of my life experiences and some very poor choices that I made on my journey. I was in one of many dark, tumultuous moments, and someone had given me a book by Viktor Frankl called Man’s Search for Meaning. And one of the things he said stuck out to me — being an existentialist theorist and the inventor of logotherapy — that pain is no longer suffering, or your suffering is no longer suffering, once your
pain has meaning. That was my aha, coming-to-Jesus, Oprah moment. When we are able to
give our somatic and physiological pain a voice and articulate what we are feeling, that is such a major breakthrough. I tried to run from this calling, Lori Jo, trust me. But divine intervention kept bringing me back.

4:23
Lori: I love it. Well, I’m big on trauma because I’m big on drama. I have experienced a ton of it
— extreme poverty, different kinds of abuse, alcoholism. And once you understand it, know
thyself is one of the best pieces of advice you can give anybody.

9:36
Lori: Let’s do a little quick Trauma 101. What is it?

Dr. Kevin Scott: Trauma to me — if you want a clinical connotation — is any disruption, short or long term, that an individual experiences, whether it be a series of events or a single event, that disrupts their physical, social, emotional, and spiritual space in any manner. And understand this: you do not have to be the direct, primary experiencer of trauma. Secondary and vicarious trauma is just as real as direct trauma. In fact, a lot of individuals are dealing with secondary vicarious trauma and conflating it with anxiety and depression — which may also be symptomatic — but it can also be trauma. There’s another term I’ve been doing a lot of trainings on: moral injury. There’s a strong association between moral injury and trauma, for a lot of different reasons.

11:32
Lori: Okay, I have to ask — what is moral injury?

Dr. Kevin Scott: Moral injury has its roots in the military. It is the result of having to engage in a
behavior that is the antithesis, diametrically opposed, of your belief and value system — your
moral compass. A perfect example: I am a Marine Corps combat era veteran of the Persian Gulf
War, and I truly believe that’s why so many Vietnam veterans are so reluctant to talk about their
experiences. They were engaged in behaviors that went totally against their moral compass. But
moral injury isn’t just applicable to the military. We have moral injury as parents, in marriages, in
substance use disorder. Once you start peeling back those layers of the onion, you realize just
how many people are carrying it.

14:51
Lori: Let’s talk about the difference between big T trauma and little T trauma.

Dr. Kevin Scott: Big T trauma is associated with your major disruptions — natural disasters,
physical abuse, verbal abuse, growing up in very abject circumstances, sex trafficking, military
combat. Little T trauma is lower on the hierarchy, but still very real — things like bullying, not
feeling validated by peers, the pressure of those very malleable teenage years. I’ll give you an
example. My oldest granddaughter went to prom, and one day she had a bandage on. I asked
what it was for, and she said she had a pimple. And I realized — who am I to tell you what is
traumatic for you? At 16, a pimple can feel traumatic. I’ve had to learn to shut my mouth and
say, we don’t know what’s causing that person to react the way they do.

18:20
Lori: One of the most interesting aspects of trauma is our trauma response — fight, flight,
freeze, fawn. I didn’t learn until I was in my late 50s that I’m a fawner. My whole life, if
everybody liked me, I’ll be safe. What do you find young men do? Are they aware of their
trauma responses?

Dr. Kevin Scott: I would say very cautiously that I don’t think any of us truly understand why we
respond the way we respond. I had the opportunity to study under and meet world-renowned Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, who wrote The Body Keeps the Score — arguably one of the most
profound trauma experts in the world. And one of the things he says is that trauma doesn’t
come back as a memory — it comes back as a behavior. Once we understand that, we have no
idea what’s making this individual go from zero to 60. What if from a very early age an individual
was always in survival mode? That’s where they’re working from. I’m convinced, Lori, that we all
have a trauma response mechanism that very few of us first acknowledge exists, and then
come to the full realization of what is causing it.

22:42 Lori: Why do some men have such a hard time with authority from women?

Dr. Kevin Scott: That could be four other episodes. But when you discuss it, there’s a concept
called mother woundedness in men. When we have those attachment issues — and I won’t
sugarcoat this — we have some men out here with some very effed-up images and feelings
toward women that go well beyond misogyny. I’m talking about loathing, hatred, resentment,
and bitterness that stems directly from childhood and a lack of attachment bonding.

26:11
Lori: For those of us who love young men and want to see something done to help them, what can we do?


Dr. Kevin Scott: There are a lot of nuances. A person being without a positive male role model
does not remove their responsibility to grow into a responsible man. You have to find the
surrogates. There are a lot of damn good, strong single moms out there. But I truly believe that
starting with my generation — I’m a boomer — we began a downward, deleterious trend in
parenting. We wanted to give our children more than we had. We didn’t want them to
experience the inconveniences we had. And I don’t believe they have the overall resiliency that
we had. I also truly believe that we have not taught our young men, across all different cultures,
to voice their emotions. They don’t know how to express disappointment, shame, hurt,
frustration, fear, or loneliness. Society has only taught men that they have to be tough, strong,
and macho. And then what about the man who is not as masculine as society wants him to be?
We have a very eclectic group of individuals in our culture, whether people like that or not.

33:07
Dr. Kevin Scott: I am so grateful I don’t know how I would have navigated this digital age.
Social media has made trauma incessant. You can literally be traumatized from the time you
open your eyes in the morning to the time you close them at night because of social media and
the digital age. And society has not caught up with the depth and breadth and magnitude of that.
We live in a very normalized traumatic society.

37:02
Lori: If you have trauma in your life — some difficult experience — and you find yourself
behaving in ways that don’t suit you, going to a therapist and spending time unpacking that stuff
can help you develop coping skills and ways to manage your thoughts and emotions that help
you behave more in a way that suits your values, your spirituality, your moral compass. My
latest therapist gave me a piece of paper with about 30 cognitive distortions on it. Now when I’m
getting myself in trouble, I can stop and go — oh, that’s magical thinking, Lori. Stop.

43:21
Dr. Kevin Scott: My oldest son got stung by a bee and cried, and I told him it couldn’t have hurt
that bad. My youngest got his fingers caught in a garage door and was crying, and I said the same thing. Then one day I got my fingers caught in the garage door. I turned into an eight-
year-old child. I had to go back to my sons and apologize. The point I’m trying to make is this:
as men, we have to have conversations with our sons, nephews, brothers, colleagues — and
tell them it’s okay. It’s okay. How can you tell someone going through a divorce to just suck it
up? No. That hurts. Period. Men are vulnerable. Men have feelings and emotions. Any man that
says he doesn’t is lying. I truly believe a good cry is very therapeutic.

48:03
Lori: What advice would you give to a young man who’s struggling but resistant to therapy?

Dr. Kevin Scott: There’s a saying in NA — Narcotics Anonymous — that the therapeutic value
of one addict helping another is without parallel. You can substitute the word addict with
anything. So first: you are never going through your trauma alone — even though it feels that
way. There is a phalanx of individuals who will stand and support you. Second: instead of
looking at cleaning your whole house, or renovating it, I would say — can you just straighten out
one drawer? Just start with one drawer. Ask yourself, what one thing could I get rid of that would
make my days better? Don’t try to eat the elephant in one bite. It took a long, long time for Kevin
to learn how to love Kevin again.

51:00
Lori: Groups have been really valuable to me — Adult Children of Alcoholics, for example. I am
completely an alcoholic. If I take a drink, something’s going to happen, and it’s not going to be
good. How did I get where I am? Groups. Community. Support from other people. If you’re
struggling, share it with someone. Find a safe person. Because I think a lot of people are
relieved when someone else says, “This is what’s going on with me.” It’s like: oh good, I don’t
have to put up the big facade either.
Dr. Kevin Scott: Absolutely. If you think you’re the only person going through this, go Google it.
Watch how many groups pop up. And if you don’t see your group, start it — and watch how
many people come in.

52:27
Lori: Dr. Scott, thank you so much for being here. Where can people find you?
Dr. Kevin Scott: My website is TheCrisisPeer.com. You can reach out to me through the
contact information there. And for anyone dealing with trauma or needing any kind of resource,
call your local community mental health organizations — places like Common Ground and
others — and just Google them from your local area and start there. Lori, I think you’re doing a
fantastic job reaching young individuals and your audience. I’m truly humbled. Thank you for
sharing this space.

53:49
Lori: We will definitely have you back. Thank you so much for joining us, listeners. I’m on
YouTube — if you’re watching, please hit that subscribe button. We also have a website at
WorkMomSays.com. If you’d like to get in touch with me, be a guest, suggest a guest, or just
have a question you’d like me to answer, reach out to me there. I’m also an open networker on
LinkedIn. Thank you again for joining us, and we’ll see you soon with more helpful information to
help you play the emotional contact sport of business and life.

Who Is Our Ideal Listener?

This podcast is for young professionals who want to learn to play the emotional contact sport of
business and experience less drama and more success.

How can you be more logical and less emotional? Be strategic, and Work Mom Says can help you.

“I tell people to back up, put down the magnifying glass, and look at the big picture when you’re
responding to something,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom. “In doing this, you will understand that
what’s really upsetting you right now will be something you don’t even remember next week.”

What Value Can People Get From Listening to This Podcast?

Listening to Work Mom Says can help you grow your mood management skills, grow your ability to reframe situations, and look at things from a strategic point of view. This makes it easier to go into a work situation and get the most positive results.

On Work Mom Says, we also offer tips and tricks for creating connected positive relationships
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“I also like to talk about developing traits like optimism, persistence, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness,
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Why Do I Do This? A Few More Words From Work Mom

I do this because I naturally fell into the Work Mom role when I worked in the ad agency business and had so much fun with it. I also realized I had made just about every mistake there was to make. I don’t hold myself out as a stellar example of how you should be. I hold myself out there as someone who has been bruised, battered, and beaten up and learned some important lessons. I’d love to share these lessons with young people so they don’t have to make those same mistakes or be the idiot I was.

I also want to help young professionals realize that many things our culture prioritizes aren’t
really important. We talk a lot about what should be important and how to present your best face
at the office so that you can succeed.

I’ve learned so much throughout my career, and it’s gratifying to share that with young professionals and help them avoid some of those mistakes and get to that success sooner.