In semi-retirement, Samuel Simmons lectures and holds men’s groups twice per week. He recently completed a book that details his path to therapy. Though many become therapists as a calling, he entered the field purely by accident and is now one of the leading voices in his field.
After being injured on the job while working as a truck driver for the University of Minnesota, he sought treatment at Abbott Northwestern Pain Clinic. He met a psychologist there who told him that past trauma influences how individuals deal with physical and mental pain. The explanation made sense to Simmons though he had never considered therapy.
Simmons volunteered at the pain clinic and the psychologist mentored him. As part of his workman’s compensation, his job paid for his education toward a business management degree, but they would not allow him to switch his major to counseling.
When a job in the mental health ward that only required a two-year degree opened, he applied and got the job. “[I] was actually a glorified bouncer,” says Simmons. “That’s how I got into the mental health field. I kind of just took advantage of the situation.”
While working there he met a therapist intern who invited him to help out at a community mental health clinic. “In doing that work, I learned on the job,” Simmons explains. “How do physical pain, emotional pain, [and] spiritual pain connect?” were the questions he explored. “[And] how do you process the pain in your life, and how — if you connect those dots — does it get better?”
This exploration led him to use his life experiences to help other Black men. At the beginning of his career, his services didn’t require a license. That changed in the late 1980s. A colleague informed him that a person could get grandfathered into licensure if they completed certification.
This is the route Simmons took. He never received a degree in mental health or chemical dependency from college. He learned through life and work experience.
Simmons’ approach to therapy focuses on respect and honesty. He has difficult conversations with clients without shaming them.
“What I do is based on what I call compassionate accountability,” he explains. “I believe that everybody should be held accountable, but if you don’t add compassion to it, you’ll never be fair.”
Much of the negative behaviors attributed to the African American community were born of living in survival mode, Simmons says. It is then passed down through generations without knowing its origin. It is often defined as culture.
He makes this point by telling how his wife’s family cooks the Thanksgiving meal. His wife cuts the ham in half before putting it in the pan. He asked her why. “Well, mama did,” she answered.
Simmons then asked his mother-in-law why she does it. “Well, Nana did that,” she said. He then asked his wife’s grandmother why she cuts the ham in half.
“And she looks at me and says, ‘Baby, because my pan was too small.’”
Trauma responses can dictate how African Americans see themselves in this country. “Why can’t we get along like the immigrants?” Simmons says is a common question.
His response: “[We] come to America with a different type of trauma. [We] didn’t come to America with a plan. Nobody comes to America as a slave with a plan other than ‘How do I survive?’ and earlier in the process, ‘How do I get back home?’”
Trauma responses, disguised as culture, affect everyday life. This includes how children are raised, how relationships are maintained, and interacting with spouses.
“One of the things I tell my female colleagues who are holding on to relationships for the good of the children, like my family did, [is] if every child has at least one healthy parent, you can raise a good human being,” says Simmons.
He never used to use the term trauma. “We don’t want to deal with that term trauma in our community, even though we are a traumatized community,” he explains. As for describing our experience as resilience, he says being resilient often involves starting over without recognizing the errors in our decisions.
“The original trauma might not be our fault, but the healing is our responsibility,” he says. “You can’t heal when you only want to tell half the truth.”
When it comes to therapy, Simmons says that any program can work with good, honest facilitators. “I have been able to be honest with myself. It allows me to be honest with my clients.”
Simmons’ recently completed book was formed through previous lectures, videos, and TV shows. He says it was a challenging process. He has dyslexia, which makes it difficult to read.
His skill lies in developing his thoughts and theories through online research. He uses experiences from his family in the book to make it relatable.
When the young professionals ask him about his career goals as a youth, he says they often find his responses boring or disappointing. “I didn’t do it traditionally, and the fact that I’m good at it sometimes has a major effect on some of my young colleagues.
“They’ll often say, ‘I learned more from you than I did from my professor. I spent all this money on a degree.’
“My approach is basically respectful honesty,” says Simmons. “How do you talk about difficult things but not make people more ashamed? We’ve been conditioned to be ashamed of our trauma. [Our trauma] is not our fault and [our responses] are natural considering our circumstances.”
Vickie Evans-Nash welcomes reader responses to vnash@spokesman-recorder.com.