‘Self-Healing’ Journeys Through Punk

[Editor’s note: In October 2018, Jason Schreurs was diagnosed bipolar. He now volunteers as a bipolar support group facilitator for the Mood Disorders Association of BC, a health coach for Self-Management BC and a crisis line supporter for Kids Help Phone. He’s also a long-time punk, and host of the podcast Scream Therapy. His book, ‘Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey through Mental Health,’ available now, explores punk rock as a therapeutic tool and support for people living with mental health conditions. Content note: this excerpt discusses childhood sexual abuse.]

Punks have been known to choose Stephen Dansiger as a trauma therapist based on a single line in his website bio: “Dr. Steve played CBGB and Max’s Kansas City in the late ’70s.”

Stephen jokes with me about the intersection of his upbringing and client base while wearing a button-up shirt I suspect has a punk T-shirt underneath. Although he’s what I’d call a “decorated” health professional, not many of his colleagues or patients are aware, deep down, or maybe not so deep down, he’s a decorated punk rocker as well.

Stephen spent his teenage years in the Long Island suburbs, less than two hours by metro to the infamous New York live music venues. By age 16, he found himself in the late ’70s New York punk scene’s sweet spot. The city’s pedigree included Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Television, Suicide and Patti Smith. Stephen estimates he saw the Ramones play 20 times. On Sept. 21, 1979, he stared, jaw agape, as the Clash bass player Paul Simonon heaved his bass guitar over his head like a battle axe and smashed it on the Palladium concert hall’s stage, an image immortalized on the band’s London Calling album cover. As I said, Stephen’s decorated.

Now based in California, Stephen’s a family psychologist with a doctorate in clinical psychology. He developed a protocol combining reprocessing therapy and Buddhist mindfulness that’s now used in trauma and addiction treatment centres across the U.S.

As is the case with most people, Stephen has his own trauma to work through. His older cousin, the person teenage Stephen looked up to most, was hit by a drunk driver while walking home with some friends one night. Stephen has no recollection of his mom breaking the news, and the trauma from his cousin’s death led to depression, migraines and drug and alcohol misuse that landed him in recovery in his mid-20s. He tells me without hesitation that the punk scene saved his life, words that always affirm my own experience.

“How did it save my life?” He lets the question hang between us in a shared knowing and looks over his square-ish-rimmed glasses.

“It saved my life by helping me work through my trauma to the extent that I was able to during those days. And then when I went back to the scene as a recovering person, I realized I loved the music even more. Punk became part of my post-traumatic growth-resiliency program. I could really just be in joy in the music.”

Stephen is also a master therapist and trainer in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a psychotherapy developed by American psychologist and educator Francine Shapiro. Using EMDR, therapists ask patients to recall traumatic incidents using bilateral stimulation, such as side-to-side eye movements, to come to adaptive resolutions.

“We’re faced with these traumas that have brought us to maladaptive processing, and we find what we need to survive,” he tells me. “For some, it’s punk rock; for some, it’s alcohol and drugs; for some, it’s dissociation; and for some, it’s as simple as reading books. It could go any direction.”

One piece of a treatment plan

A singer writhes on the floor, screeching bloody fucking murder, while a bass player and drummer lock in so tight it’s as if they’re hearing each other’s thoughts. A guitarist jumps in the air, kicks over an amp and dives into the crowd.

Many punk musicians, as well as members of the audience, describe “going to another place” with the music to purge their inner demons. They often perform as opposite or different versions of how they present in their everyday lives. The reason for this dichotomy, according to Stephen, is that we all dissociate to different degrees.

“When I hear people talking about that effect of dissociating, it can be the music or the performing that helps them to get out of themselves, like really out of themselves, to the point where they’re like another part of themselves, or what you might call a persona,” he says. “For others, it’s more like they’re just in a really, really cool flow state. They’re in mindfulness.”

Stephen’s voice tends to sit in a higher register, and he’s more excitable than the average mental health professional, talking with his hands in an almost worrying frequency. Although he’d cause a multi-car pileup directing traffic, his helicopter-blade gestures help me understand how trauma works and ways to process it. This is what I glean from Stephen’s fast-fingered explanation: I picture a filing cabinet with my traumas inside, except the files are messy and out of order. They can skip past-present-past-present, and I need therapeutic resources to sort through them. Like aspiring toward a meticulous record collection, I can begin to organize and categorize the traumas in my filing cabinet. Punk is one piece of a treatment plan to get my files in order.

“I look at punk rock as being one of the many internal or external resources that a person might have,” Stephen says. “Some people can work their trauma out and have it released and stay that way. They can have a positive result from punk that’s sustainable. For other folks, the punk scene is a great place to work some stuff out, but then it comes back again. So where do you go from there? Where you go is mutual help groups, or treatment, or therapy.”

Amygdala, the brain’s alarm bell

The walnut-sized piece of the brain’s limbic system. It acts as an alarm bell to signal danger, real or perceived, and puts the body into a fight, flight or freeze response. For those who have experienced what’s referred to as “capital T” trauma, such as severe abuse or neglect, an internal alarm bell can ring (danger!), or errant guitar feedback can shock the system (squueeeaaall!). Between fight, flight or freeze, punks often choose to fight. This doesn’t have to be a dust-up with whitepower skinheads in a venue parking lot. It could be managing a mental health condition. It could be fighting each day to survive.

Amygdala, the band

It’s Halloween weekend, October 2016, and I’m at Fest in Gainesville, Florida. Everyone who’s close to me knows I’m a diehard, decade-long veteran of the annual punk festival because I’m always talking about it.

On day one of this particular Fest, I’m watching Amygdala, one of the most rabid groups I’ve laid witness to. The San Antonio, Texas band’s fury is unbelievable, and I thrash along, injected with an endorphin boost. I look up from my headbangs and herkyjerk dance moves and lead wailer Bianca Cruz’s performance tweaks major solidarity in me. She’s crouching and rocking back and forth in anguish, purging memories of her childhood sexual abuse, vocal cords nearly rupturing. Jumping on the spot like she’s pounding her trauma into dust under her feet, she’s dismantling and reconstructing her amygdala’s alarm bell.

Punks at her shows hold space for Bianca, and carved-out safety like this begets empowerment. Safer spaces create an environment to address topics that are fucking hard to talk about within the punk scene, never mind outside it. As I watch Bianca shiver and spasm, double fisting her microphone to shriek even harder, a realization slams me in face. I don’t ever have to bury my childhood sexual abuse. I take a cleansing breath and headbang even harder.

Bianca lives with borderline personality, a mental health condition in which people suffer extreme emotions — usually flipping between love and hate — and traumatic flashbacks, disregulating their moods for days or even weeks. Triggers lurk behind every exchange and experience, waiting to pull those living with borderline into dangerous states.

Onstage, the cyclone cacophony of Amygdala’s punk metal mayhem coupled with Bianca’s blood-curdling screams brings her to constructive tears. I bear witness from the front row and I, in turn, let tears drip down my face and onto my dingy Against Me! shirt. By the end of Amygdala’s set, I’m like a dog wrestling a chew toy, and my neck is stiff for the rest of Fest. My T-shirt is a wasteland of spit from screaming along, so I upgrade to an Amygdala shirt.

“I might remember you from that show,” Bianca says on a dicey video call from San Antonio. She has an unexpectedly calm voice for the person I saw yelling her face off at Fest, and I’m shocked that my dance moves from six years ago stuck with her. Bianca says she rarely forgets people she meets on tour, especially the ones that are having transformative experiences in the front row. She doesn’t downplay the therapeutic affects her music has on people at Amygdala’s shows.

“Me crying, showing these emotions, is really important. I feel it’s my duty to be the person who talks about what we don’t want to talk about. Or scream about,” Bianca says. “Even people who aren’t into punk rock, when they see Amygdala and what I’m doing, they receive it really well, and they say we need more stuff like this — people screaming about the things they’re going through.”

Can folks use punk as a qualitative tool to process trauma? I’m convinced they can. Trauma dissipates with therapy, creative expression and physical activity. Punk combines all three.

For me, punk is both the sword and shield I use to fight my daily battles.

Dr. Stephen says, in his expert opinion, yes, 100 per cent, punk helps process traumatic events, and he’s seen it first-hand. And for Bianca, tears are a positive release, cueing her audiences to release their own.

“People come up to me after shows and they’re crying, but they tell me it’s a good cry. They tell me they’re glad I’m doing this.” Bianca’s voice cracks. “It feels good to know I’m not alone in the struggle.” Being in a band gives Bianca the opportunity to tour and create what she calls a “self-healing journey” through music and lyrics.

Self-healing journey. What a perfect way to describe life as a punk.

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Excerpted from ‘Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey through Mental Health’ by Jason Schreurs. Copyright © 2023 Jason Schreurs. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.