#26: Bulletproof: Healing from Gun Violence with Jill McMahon
MARCH 6, 2025
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This episode features a conversation with Jill McMahon, a licensed professional counselor, trauma specialist, and gun violence survivor who shares her personal journey and professional insights. In this deeply moving interview, Jill discusses the unique challenges faced by gun violence survivors, the neurobiological effects of trauma on the brain, and effective approaches to healing.
Drawing from both her personal experience of being held hostage at gunpoint as a child and her two decades of clinical work, Jill offers compassionate guidance for survivors, caregivers, and mental health professionals.
Her book "Bulletproof: Healing After Gun Violence and Trauma" serves as a toolkit for understanding and recovering from trauma, with a powerful message that healing is possible and that survivors can emerge with a richer perspective on life.
[01:01] Jill McMahon's Personal Story of Gun Violence
[04:22] Challenges Faced by Gun Violence Survivors
[08:09] Physiological and Biological Responses to Trauma
[12:58] Healing and Regaining Control
[19:00] The Role of Caregivers and Secondary Victims
[23:59] Gaps in Traditional Trauma Treatment
[26:40] Hope and Final Thoughts
Episode Links:
Transcript
Anna: Hello and welcome to Courage to Heal. Today I have a very special guest for you. Jill McMahon is a licensed professional counselor and gun violence survivor.
For over two decades, she has devoted her career to helping people heal after trauma. With a focus on the complexities of suicide, loss, and grief, watching communities and the nation at large continue to grapple with the effects of the gun violence epidemic brought Jill to write her new book, “Bulletproof: Healing After Gun Violence and Trauma.”
By combining personal stories of survivors with practical, compassionate, and accessible approaches to healing, Jill reminds readers that there is hope for healing and recovery. Welcome to Courage to Heal, Jill. It's lovely to have you here.
Jill: It's an honor, Ana. Thank you. I love the passion and the purpose behind your podcast, so that's why I was honored to be a guest.
So excited that you asked.
Anna: Thank you so much. So Jill let's get started with a question of. I wonder if you could just share some of your personal story that led you to write this book.
Jill: Yeah I get asked this question a lot. Actually as you just read in my bio, I am actually a grief and trauma therapist.
However, I am also a gun violence survivor. So right there in Colorado, when I was six, almost seven years old, my mom and I were kidnapped from a local mall. It technically was a carjacking, but I'm, I'm a few years older than you are. At that time there wasn't, carjacking wasn't even a phrase. So some gentleman approached us and, and asked us to give them a ride to a friend's home.
Within a number of minutes and some back and forth with my mom, who actually really did a great job of, of trying to avoid the situation the gentleman got in our car and probably about five minutes later, pulled out a gun and held me hostage. So my poor mother was doing whatever she needed to do to appease them.
And, and what that looked like for me was they, they drove us to our banks and had my mom withdraw all of our family's money until they would release us. So it was eons and eons ago, but that was kind of the beginnings of my gun violence journey. I will also say being from Colorado and in my twenties, I also happened to live four miles away from Columbine on the day of the massacre.
So you know, I, it is interesting when I just step back and, and I look at my life experiences, so many of them that are core memories revolve around some type of gun violence. So, I'm, I'm actually not surprised that this far into my career that this is kind of the direction that I have chosen to take my work.
Anna: Wow, what a scary experience for a little child to have.
Jill: It was, and so different than today. Girl, we didn't have the mental health services available. And if they were, the stigma was so much greater than it is now. I mean, you and I are still battling the mental health stigma for sure.
But back in the day, you didn't really go in for mental health services unless you were experiencing psychosis for the most part. You know how sad that was. So, and there weren't, there wasn't marketing and advertisements for local counselors. I mean, you went if you were really, really sick and then your family kind of kept it a secret.
So those weren't those types of things weren't available to my family then, and so my mom and dad really did the best that they knew how to make me feel safe and secure. I feel really fortunate because I do know that there are a great number of children that don't have the same environment that I was raised in.
Anna: Absolutely. And like you said, you know, gun violence in here in the United States, it is so prevalent. You can live next to. The scene of a school shooting or just become a survivor yourself of some kind of gun violence event, just like that, just like that.
So, in your research and experience, what are some of the unique challenges that gun violence survivors face compared to survivors of other types of trauma?
Jill: So gun violence is a sudden loss in many ways. And I say that meaning it's a sudden loss of security. It's a sudden loss in faith. It's a sudden loss in hope that, you know, everything's gonna be okay. It's I think you had mentioned that I spent a good portion of my career working with survivors of suicide.
So, you know, for those that aren't in the mental health field, what that really means is a friend or family member that has lost a loved one to suicide. So those of us that are left behind after suicide has occurred. And, interestingly enough, in the United States, 51 percent of suicides are by firearm. So for me, there's a real cross intersection there, right, of my passion about gun violence prevention and my work's purpose, which is working with survivors of suicide.
And that's the firearm and I, I see survivors of a gun violence event and survivors of suicide being so similar in the way that their brains respond to this trauma. And the key there that makes it so different than everything else is that it is sudden. It's nonsensical. You can't make sense of it, right?
If it's a suicide or a gun violence event, it typically is irrational. You and I have read all the headlines. We understand why Joe's… We don't understand, but we've been told that Joe Smith down the street was really upset with his employer and that his employer had taken his benefits away and because he didn't have benefits, he wasn't going to be able to make sure that his child had the medical treatment that she needed.
So he lost his, lost control, lost his temper, took a firearm to work and shot up his employees, right? We get all of the facts, but that doesn't mean. That that event or that act was rational. It is instead irrational. Likewise, suicide often is an irrational three to five minute decision. So for both of those individuals that are left behind, a lot of society doesn't know how to approach them.
That's what makes it additionally complex. Right? So they don't know how to respond. They don't know how to emotionally support. And so for both of those populations, girl, they are left feeling isolated, misunderstood, all alone as if they don't have anybody to talk to, broken, again, go back to, they have lost faith in the world.
They don't know when the next horrible thing is going to occur, right? You and I understand a little bit about the brain, so, you know, we, we both can kind of jump to the conclusion, which is accurate, that that population, both of those populations function primarily under hypervigilant, hypervigilance.
They're just waiting for the next shoe to drop. That's very, very different than, than experiencing a heart attack or a car accident, right? It just, it's loaded.
Anna: I can definitely see that. So, one of the effects on the brain then of such sudden loss due to such an irrational traumatic event would be hypervigilance.
What else is there that happens in our brains due to gun violence?
Jill: Again, another great question that nobody ever asks. One of the primary reasons that I wrote my recent book, Bulletproof, was to help gun violence survivors understand. That there are real physiological and biological responses to this trauma, because what I found in my office time after time again was that a client would come in and they would feel like they were going crazy, and they would feel like nobody could understand, and they would get lost driving home from the grocery store that they've lived down the street from for the last 12 years, right, and they're like, what's happening to me, that they would sleep all of the time, that they just had this fear they would hear a siren on a TV or hear a siren go by blocks and blocks away and suddenly have to curl into a ball or they would break into a sweat.
And so what I wanted to do was to help them under through the book was to help them understand Your brain experiences physiological change after a trauma. So, if we were to take an individual that had not experienced a trauma to a sudden loss trauma to gun violence or suicide, and we were to scan their brain, it would look very different from the scanned brain of the individual that had experienced sudden loss trauma.
You can visibly see it. And so once I explain that to people, holy cow, girl, they are so relieved. It is like the story that they've been telling themselves that they experience life differently. They're getting validation of. They're like, Oh my gosh, I really am. Like my brain really is technically bruised.
But then I validate for them that, yeah, we can heal it. Like any other bruise, it will heal. Right? With the, with the proper guidance. So what we see a lot with a traumatic event and brain effects is that hypervigilant. We see a lot of forgetfulness it dramatically impacts the amygdala and the hippocampus.
Two super big words. They're very important parts of the brain. The, you know, amygdala basically is the emotion center of your brain. It tells you when to be scared. It tells you when there's a train coming and that you need to get out of the way. Right? Well, when we feel that sense of hypervigilance or waiting for the shoe to drop 24/7 for weeks and weeks and weeks, that amygdala kind of starts to wear out a little bit, right?
And it doesn't report accurately to you. And so instead, it just tells you to fear everything or freeze all the time. If you're not fearful, then you freeze. You don't want to move. You don't want to get out of bed. You don't want to go to work. You don't even feel like you need to eat.
The hippocampus, which is the other part of the brain where we see some biological changes after trauma, is our memory center.
So what it does is it's kind of like It's, it's kind of like the archives of a library, it keeps all of our memories. And so, when the brain is super taxed after a trauma, that library starts like, deleting records. And all of the sudden you have huge holes in your memory that you can't fill. Or, for example, like, simple things like, where do they keep the pineapple in the grocery store again?
Like, I know I should know that. And I showed up to work with one black shoe on and one brown shoe on. Like, what is that? I have a friend who's a grief specialist. She works at a hospice. She's, executive director. She's been there forever. And after her husband died, she would tell me, not once but twice, she showed up to work, parked in the same spot she's parked in for 12 years, left her driver's side door open, and walked into the office for 8 hours.
Came out and I, I mean, it just, that's, but that's such a prime example of kind of that memory bank just tripping out a little bit, short wiring. That was a long answer, Anna, sorry about that.
Anna: Oh, that was a wonderful answer. I really understand now the effects that that sudden loss has on the brain. That makes a lot of sense.
So let's talk about the concept of healing in this context. What does it mean for survivors and how does it evolve over time?
Jill: Healing for survivors is just regaining control. So I think when something as frightening as gun violence or catastrophic occurs, it really leaves us with a sense of being out of control, right?
Same thing applies for suicide loss survivors. You just don't trust. And I know I've said that a couple times, that it steals your hope and it steals your faith, but really it, it damages your trust that things are good or that things are going to be okay because in your head you just think, well, I mean, I was just going to the movies.
Everything should have been okay. I didn't put myself in harm's way. I just went to the mall. Little did I know that day that I was going to witness somebody die, or that I was going to have a gun pointed in my direction, or that I was going to fear, oh my gosh, for my child's life, right? And so we just kind of lose trust because something big happened to us when we least expect it.
So, you know, when it comes to healing, you have to slowly and slowly and slowly start rebuilding that trust and help that individual realize. That they're actually in more control than they know they are.
So the very first thing I do when it comes to working with survivors and leading them towards healing is I educate them on those biological effects. I just gave you the tip of the iceberg, but we spend some time and then we spend some time talking about their symptoms and how they can slowly start regaining control over those things, right?
So we may, if somebody is afraid of going to the mall now, or can't drive past the mall, you know, we, we might go through some flooding experiences.
So, we may, when they're ready, start driving, you know, I may suggest, I'm not with them in the car. But I might suggest that they start driving in the direction of the mall. They don't have to go by the mall, right, but we're going to start there. Then the following week, maybe we're going to take a loop around the mall.
And then the week after that, we might go into one exterior store of the mall, and then you can come back out. So those are silly examples, but I just want, you know, the listening audience to get an idea. It's miniature episodes of that over and over and over. Whatever the fear is. We're going to flood it, or we're, we're not going to freeze or avoid it.
We're going to walk into it. Once that person feels has regained a sense of safety or security, right? It's amazing once you do that, how much they regain some type of self-confidence, right? So we've educated on what's happening in the brain. We're showing them very, very small ways that they really do have control over their world.
And I almost always suggest EMDR. I think for trauma, EMDR is one of the most impactful, efficient modalities there are there. Do I think it's in and of itself enough? No, but I think it's a great, great addition to talk therapy.
Anna: Fantastic. I'm a big EMDR fan as well, trained in it, so I'm biased, but I love doing it. I love doing it. And I definitely have seen, yes, I've seen the really deep impact it can have on people's lives.
Jill: So it's, it's interesting, you know, when we, when I was sharing with you my personal story and how there really weren't trauma services available back in the day. When I was in my young thirties is when I very first stumbled across EMDR and, you know, by then I thought I had it under control. I thought I was good.
When you go into this field, they make you do your own work, ladies and gentlemen. They just don't let people that are damaged, you know, go and help other people. They put us through some rigorous training to kind of clean out our own crap. And so I, you know, felt like I had really had. Great control over my trauma that my trigger, no pun intended.
My personal trigger for years and years and years was the image of a firearm and being raised in Colorado at the time, and I'm currently in Arizona, both are the wild, wild west, right? So there are firearms. It's not uncommon. We have some pretty rural areas. And, you know, if I saw a billboard for a gun show, I would have a visceral response.
If I were to go to the movies and, you know, there was a dramatic shootout, I would have a visceral response. I would probably not tell anybody I was with, because I knew that they wouldn't understand, so I felt some shame around it. But I would feel shaky, or I would feel sweaty, or I would get, sometimes I would get very, very angry, right?
But again, this is a nuance of being a gun violence survivor. I had a mask on, and I kept it all to myself because it didn't fit the social norm. It didn't fit the typical bubbly chill, right? But once I stumbled across EMDR, it was incredible. Within a few sessions, I felt immediate relief, and since then, I have never had a visceral response to a firearm again.
So, you know, what, I never really recommend anything to my clients that I haven't tried myself. I just, I'm kind of a firm believer in that, because I want to be able to explain to them what a process is before I suggest it for them, and I'm a, I'm a big, big believer in EMDR. It changed my personal journey.
Anna: That makes so much sense because, I mean, it is a great modality and since you have that personal experience, absolutely. Jill, so your book, it doesn't just talk to survivors, it also addresses caregivers specifically. So what are some of the overlooked challenges that they might be facing?
Jill: Caregivers, I think, are kind of the lost population.
And, these two situations in particular gun violence survivors and survivors of, of suicide loss. I have watched them for years and years and years, try to stand by, try to hold hands or freeze and slowly start backing away because they don't know how to help. Not because they don't want to help, but because they don't know how to help.
So I think what I want, you know, a good portion of the culture to understand or community to understand. Is that, in my opinion, caregivers and first responders and EMTs and paramedics and ER docs are all secondary victims, specifically when we're talking about gun violence. I hear and have been a part of several forums where EM docs are, are gutted and they don't know they need, they know they need to do their job, but every single one of these cases that comes into their ear, which is often.
They are having a very hard time processing, right? And that just continues to build and build and build because they're not really getting any relief from it. I want us all to acknowledge that they are going through something as well, right? And so that's important. I, I implore them to also get their own support services because I'm a firm believer that if you take care of yourself, then you can take care of someone else, right?
We're all so sick of, of the example of the air mask on an airplane, right? So I'm not even gonna go there. I know everybody knows what I'm talking about. It's so interesting because we'll say that to somebody in a counseling session, or we will say that to a parent who's dealing with a teenager that's having troubles and we'll be like, but you need to take care of yourself so you can take care of your child.
Well, why doesn't that apply to us? Because really, in some way, I mean, Anna, I'm going to call us out. We're frontline workers, right? We're, we're holding these memories. And these traumatic events for these gun violence survivors, these sexual assault survivors, these domestic abuse survivors, right? And so I'm calling everybody, specifically friends and family that want to help and don't know how.
It's okay to seek support for yourself. You don't need to judge yourself and say, but I don't have it as bad off as. You know, Mary does because I'm not the one who lost my boyfriend in that gun violence event, you know, I'm just the one that's trying to help her. Well, maybe if you're holding her stuff, so she's calling you and she's regurgitating it on you because you're safe place and you're going to hold that for her.
But then what are you supposed to do with it? Right? So I'm not sure if that answered your question, but I just really wanted to bring awareness. That I look at caregivers as well as being secondary victims.
Anna: Absolutely, because secondary PTSD is a real thing. A lot of people don't realize that it is. But absolutely for anybody who is exposed to trauma secondhand, so to speak, they will have very similar effects, maybe not as severe, but they will have the same effects in their brain and their nervous system and as a result in their life and behaviors.
Jill: And it's valid, right? So it's interesting, along the way I had learned that those families or individuals that didn't experience an event firsthand They always would say to me, but I, but I wasn't there, so I don't have it as bad off as Mary.
We'll use Mary as an example again. Mary has it worse off than me. Once I started digging and scratching under the surface, what I began to realize is that oftentimes, the movie reel that they've created in their minds of what the event looked like, can be worse. More bloody, more tragic, more detailed visual than the actual event was to see in person.
Right? So all that really matters is what's happening in your movie reel. That's what we have to clean out. So, it's just acknowledging that they need care too and acknowledging that it's okay to not know what to say. It's okay to fear, you know sitting next to your loved one that's struggling. Just sit there.
Nobody says you have to fix it. Don't, don't try to fix it.
Anna: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So, you know, don't try to fix it and definitely make sure you get your own support for your mental health. . I'm curious, as you, you know, as you were writing the book and as you were doing your, your job, did you find that there are any gaps in traditional trauma treatment approaches when it comes to gun violence specifically?
Jill: Yes and no. I, I think that a lot of the modalities that we have do work. I also think that we still need to fill in a lot of the blanks. So you had mentioned earlier that not only did I, you know, write the book as a toolkit for the survivor of gun violence, but for their caregivers, the third population that I wrote the book for, there's three, is the young mental health clinician.
So I would really, my goal is to get this book. In graduate school programs, because I would love to see training on how to work with this population, because I think you and I unfortunately realize that this population is not going to diminish in our country anytime soon, someday, but we're not there yet.
Right. And so if anything, right now, that population is growing and, you know Again, I'm a little bit older than you are, but in my training, there was zero discussion of it. In my training, we hardly talked about suicide. And, you know, I had, I went to a pretty reputable, I got a great education, all of the things, but anything that I know about suicide loss, about suicide grief, About suicidal ideation.
I didn't necessarily learn that in graduate school. And so you know, I just, I want to, I would love to see that done differently. And I would love to see us start arming the younger mental health professionals with some real tools so that they feel confident in working with the population and so that they don't treat this, both, both of the populations I'm speaking about.
Gun violence survivors and suicide survivors that they don't treat them like any other trauma or any other loss, because I think what happens in that situation. You lose your client because your client feels unheard. I've seen that in my office over and over again, right? That they get, they get treated as if they are experiencing traditional grief.
And it never works.
Anna: So you need a specific set of skills here. And I agree. I mean, here in the States, your book should be required reading for young clinicians in grad school.
Jill: That's the goal. We're working on it.
Anna: Oh, I hope you get there. I hope you get there for sure. So I'm curious, what gives you hope in this field despite the challenging nature of this work?
Jill: Writing the book gave me a lot of hope. I have to be honest. I told most people when they asked me what that experience was like, because I had a thriving, I had, past tense, a very thriving mental health practice. I'm a private practitioner and I closed it about a year and a half ago or two years ago.
After the pandemic, when you and I both know there are not enough therapists out there right now to treat the people that are needing services, and when business was booming, I decided to close because I felt the need to do this instead. And so, I think just being able to create a tool that I think is gonna have real purpose has provided me hope.
And getting asked to do podcasts like this, in all honesty I did one, a webinar earlier this week with a gentleman from India. And, and he also said gun violence is not an issue there. I mean, he's like, I don't, I don't know anybody who's ever died by suicide. I've never seen a firearm. You know, this is a uniquely American situation.
But he had another guest on who was this amazing young man, his name is Joshua Bird from Atlanta. And what he's doing in the gun violence prevention world for young black men is outstanding. So I'm really through this exploration that I'm doing and through my passion work, I'm meeting incredible, incredible people that I didn't know that were out there that are younger than me.
That are as passionate as me that are really moving to create change. And I think we're going to get there. I do. I really believe it. I just wish we would have gotten there sooner.
Anna: Oh, me too. Me too. I mean, I'm so grateful for you writing this book and doing this work because it is absolutely needed. Like you said, it's very often, right, even though you said that was back then, but still there is this shame and stigma associated with seeking help, especially when I think guns are so common.
Jill: And there is this notion of Oh, that shouldn't bother you so much.
Right. It's, so I read a study earlier this week there was a study in New Jersey that was just published. And they had asked firearm owners, how many of them secure their firearms. 60 percent of the study that they sampled said that they have multiple firearms, but they keep at least one not locked up and accessible at all times.
60 Percent. And of that 60%, all of them said that they don't worry about suicidality in their home. Well, I can tell you from 20 years of work, none of my clients were worried about suicidality in their homes either. But when there is a firearm available If it's a teenager who's having a bad day at school, or if it's an individual who's, you know, had a depressive episode for two years, when there is a firearm available during that three to five minute of irrational thinking, that is now lethal.
We need to create some change.
Anna: Absolutely, we do. I couldn't agree more with you there. And Jill, what is the one message that you want survivors to take away from your book?
Jill: That there's hope, that you're not broken forever, that, as weird as this sounds, so I kind of hesitate saying this, but even though this horrific thing has happened to you it in some ways is kind of “What's going to make you special?”
And you have to read the book to figure out what that means. You are going to gain some pretty significant growth from this. It is 100 percent possible, and you're going to come out of this on the other side with a perspective of life that not a lot of people are going to be able to relate to, but it's going to be richer.
Anna: I love that message. Thank you for sharing it. And Jill, thank you so much for joining me today. This is such an important topic and your book is so needed and necessary when gun violence is so unfortunately common. I will make sure to link it in the show notes so that people can purchase it if they're interested. Thank you so much for stopping by.
Jill: Oh, my honor. Thank you, Ana.
Anna: And for all of you listening, I hope you leave feeling a little more empowered. Remember, healing takes time, and you're exactly where you need to be. Take care of yourselves, and until we meet again, be kind to your heart.
