What happens when the people, relationships or systems that were supposed to keep us safe become part of the trauma—and how do we learn to trust again? Sarah sits down with clinical psychologist and human rights advocate Dr. Kalyani Gopal to explore trauma, trafficking, foster care, displacement, attachment and recovery. Drawing on more than 35 years of experience, Dr. G shares why healing begins with safety, self-regulation and rediscovering who you are beyond what happened to you.
Behaviour, anxiety, substance use and other symptoms may be signalling something deeper. Dr. G explains why understanding underlying trauma matters rather than only addressing what appears on the surface.
Dr. G introduces displacement trauma—what can happen when children repeatedly lose caregivers and attachment bonds through foster care, displacement or other circumstances.
At Dr. G's shelter, survivors initially receive something deceptively simple: time to rest, sleep and eat without expectations. Creating safety gives the mind and body space to begin recovering.
Trauma can leave people defining themselves through what others have told them they are. Recovery means rebuilding self-worth, identity and the ability to decide: Who do I want to be?
Sarah and Dr. G discuss resilience and the enormous difference a supportive person can make. Sometimes one person who genuinely believes in you can change the direction of a life.
“The moment you control your breathing, you control your life. Because breath is life.”
— Dr. Kalyani Gopal
“All it takes is one person to care.”
— Sarah Jordan-Ross
“I have power and have self-agency and I have control over my life. And I have the right to have control over my life.”
— Dr. Kalyani Gopal
Sarah Jordan-Ross (00:00) Hey everybody, welcome back to Taboo Talk, the podcast that breaks the silence, fosters hope, and talks about the tough stuff so you never feel alone. If you're new here, I'm your host, Sarah Jordan Ross. I'm a wellness coach, a speaker, and I believe that our stories have the power to connect us in ways that we don't always expect. And today we're talking about safety, not simply physical safety, but that deeper sense of safety that allows us to trust another person.
Form those relationships, know who we are, and believe that the world is somewhere we can belong. Because what happens when that safety is repeatedly broken? What happens when the people, relationships, or systems that were supposed to protect us become part of the trauma? And perhaps most importantly, how do we learn to trust again? My guest today has spent more than three decades working in some extraordinarily difficult spaces.
Dr. Kayani Gopal is a clinical psychologist, a human rights advocate, and founder and president of the Safe Coalition for Human Rights. Her work has included trauma, foster care, and adoption, human trafficking, gender-based violence, and supporting people whose experiences have profoundly disrupted their sense of safety, trust, and attachment. And what interested me most about Dr. G's work.
Wasn't simply the breadth of her experience, it was the human question underneath it. What actually helps somebody rebuild when their sense of safety has been completely shattered? Doctor G, welcome to Taboo Talk. It's so great to have you here.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (01:48)
Such a pleasure, Sarah. Thank you for having me on your show.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (01:53)
So I've begun every episode in season two with a similar question for every guest. And with the work that you've done, I have a feeling there could be quite a few different answers to this one, but it's what have you seen in the world that you can't now unsee and what does it make you want to do about it?
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (02:17)
wow, there's a few different angles to that. You're right. I
Sarah Jordan-Ross (02:20)
Yeah.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (02:21)
in the biggest one that I can unsee is a little girl who was trafficked. She was barely two and a half, maybe. And what I can unsee I think is the bruises, the pictures, the just the trauma in this child. And it it is one of the most devastating
days that I've had. A little girl, two and a half years old, barely, you know, out of a toddlerhood. She's still in toddlehood really. So that was one of the toughest things. There's just so many. I don't even know where to go with this because it's such a great question. At the same time, there's all these images now that I'm being flooded with of all the different situations that I've and I think another one too that another a very important aspect for me.
Is the work with survivors of trafficking or even foster kids. I'll never forget this one girl, she was 16 years old, sitting in front of me, and I was doing a human trafficking evaluation. You know, I do these court assessments for human trafficking. and she was sitting in front of me and she was rocking back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, just back and forth the whole time. And then I just to I waited. I waited for her to, you know.
Self regulate, because that's what she was doing. And then she finally calms down and she looks at me and I said to her, I said, Why now? Why decide now to come and talk about this? Or why would you what what brought you, you know, to finally f say, okay, this is this is it. I'm not doing it anymore. Sixteen years old, being trafficked by so many people. And she looked at me, she said, You know what? Two days ago I went to the bathroom in this hotel.
The restroom and I sat on the toilet seat and I just cried and cried and cried and cried and I couldn't stop crying. And I and she said, she just looked at me and she said, At that moment, every part of me was broken. Every bone, every part of me was broken. And the look of sheer agony in her eyes, that's why I'll never be able to get that picture out of my head either. The sheer agony in this young girl.
beautiful young girl in the sheer agony in her face. I'm sorry, I let my dogs barking over there. But to look at that and to see that was just so intense.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (04:55)
Yeah.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (04:58)
Yeah, so that's another memory. I mean, I have I have so many cases, you know. I've done this for over
Sarah Jordan-Ross (05:03)
Yeah.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (05:03)
thirty-five years and there's so many young people. And I do apologize for my dog, but I she's a rescue and I better not say anything to her that she'd be very sad. but but she never barks.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (05:16)
We don't want her to be sad.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (05:18)
She chooses never to bark. She never hardly ever barks. She's usually just sitting and just sleeping. but
But yeah, those that was one of the cases that was very profound for me because it it told me how much pain and agony a human being can experience without and still survive it. Because remember, she's sixteen and I've seen thirty year olds. I have a lady who's thirty something years old in my shelter who's been through this at sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, fourteen, fifteen, all the way to up she's now thirty.
And you're looking at that 15 more years of that agony continuing and being so completely destroyed. So many of them have autoimmune disorders. I have cancer, revolving dough cancer patients. I lost one of my house managers, the lady who the first lady I made, a house manager. I'm she I lost her to stage four breast cancer. and she I was the only person she'd speak to. She wouldn't talk to anyone else. She had three girls.
And I try to get in therapy with someone else because I travel, I teach. I try and she says, No, I'm not talking to anyone. I'll wait for you to come back and then we can talk again. So we worked together for, you know, for years and it took me eight months to get out of the trafficking world. And she was 25 at that time. She passed away at 31 from stage four breast cancer. But there there's so there's so many images. Even you ask me that question. It just I just got all these all these images, all these stories, you know, over the years.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (06:54)
thirty-five years is a long time to be helping people in that situation to get out of that situation and you would have seen so many things that made you angry and then others
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (07:09)
I did.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (07:10)
that just completely broke your heart. So
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (07:14)
Right.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (07:14)
with all of that and thirty five years is a long time to be doing it, so what keeps you doing this?
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (07:24)
I think these women and these men, these children, I think my patients really keep me doing this because I know that every patient who walks in, like today I had a young girl, and I because of HIPAA and because of confidentiality, I can't share much. But she didn't even know she was being trafficked. And she was hospitalized multiple, multiple times over the years. And again I'm changing all the entire story because I don't want identification.
multiple times over the years. And none of them had diagnosed her, none of the none of them had asked her the questions I'd asked her. 'Cause I knew I knew she was being trafficked. And and I and I asked her these questions and she's like she told me the whole story and her mother was sitting there flabbergasted because she had been through all the top notch universities in the state, everywhere, Chicago, here, all over the world, all over the place rather. And they'd put out all these medications. None of the medications are working.
Because the real story was trauma.
And I said, Look, can we have a pact? Can you stop s you know, sneaking in people? And she looked at me, she said, I think I can do that now.
And we had an agreement and I'll be seeing her again. And so it's it's it's so important to be able to identify what's really going on with these women because if you don't identify correctly, we are not we're doing a disservice to our patients, right? Because we're not diagnosing them correctly and we're giving them medication after medication, none of it's just working.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (09:02)
And
it could be causing other problems that we don't necessarily see.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (09:06)
Correct. Correct. Do you have seizures
as side effects? You have ticks as side effects. Yeah.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (09:13)
Yeah. And in some ways it's sticking a band aid on the gaping wound that is the underlying trauma.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (09:24)
Right. And trauma can be medicated correctly. It certainly can,
Sarah Jordan-Ross (09:29)
Yes.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (09:29)
because you can stop that from from impacting the brain. It's all about the brain after all. And you can stop that constant, you know, like someone pounding your head constantly. But it but unless you address the underlying reasons why they are having the symptoms they have, you can't really address the symptoms themselves. You can mask the symptoms, right?
Like a patient told me today, I think all my symptoms are masked. You can mask the symptoms with medication, but you cannot solve the un or resolve rather the underlying cause.
So that's why I continue
Sarah Jordan-Ross (10:05)
Have you noticed to
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (10:06)
doing what I do.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (10:08)
Yeah. Cause you need to find that underlying cause and then address it. And have you noticed a big difference when you do actually treat from that space of getting to the the root of the problem and addressing the symptoms rather than just that surface level of of masking the symptoms or controlling
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (10:36)
Yeah.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (10:37)
the symptoms?
that my guess would be, yeah, you control one symptom but then something else will pop up because
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (10:46)
Absolutely.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (10:47)
everything is trying to say, Hey, there's something going on here.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (10:50)
Right, it's like is like the laws, right? It's like you every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So you're gonna have you press something here, something else is gonna be exploding somewhere else.
So yeah, I have I think that's a reason why I continue doing what I do, but also that's one of the main reasons why I love what my work is. I love my work. I never feel like it's work. And I think the greatest joy anyone can have, at least professionally, is working in a space that you never feel tired, that you never feel bored, that you never feel is like draining.
It's like a relationship, right? Because you spend so much of your time working. It's like being in a bad relationship if you don't like what you do.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (11:34)
Yeah, you spend way too much time at work to not be enjoying it. For some people it's you spend more time at work than you do with your family, so it kinda needs to be a place you enjoy to be. And if it isn't then you
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (11:45)
You're right.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (11:46)
should probably do something about that, but that might be a different conversation.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (11:51)
Correct. That could be a very different conversation, right? Right. You know, 'cause then we talk about balancing your life, you know, and why you have to work in order to put food on your table. And sometimes you don't have the education that can give you the opportunities for you to do more than what you're doing. So there's so many factors that go into our lifestyle, right? Into our into our jobs, into our home life and so forth. It's just yeah, it is quite varied and
It's always a very long conversation along those lines though.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (12:23)
Yes.
And that's why my show is called what it is, 'cause we get permission to talk about just about anything.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (12:31)
That's right, that's right. I love the name. I it
Sarah Jordan-Ross (12:33)
Yeah.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (12:33)
just struck me when I saw that name.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (12:36)
Yes. I was originally going to call it something different, being shit we don't talk about, but that name was already taken, so then I started thinking, Alright, what's another word for that?
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (12:49)
You know, I was gonna write a book on divorce and call it The Bitch in the House. Then five couple of months later. I
Sarah Jordan-Ross (12:58)
Brilliant.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (12:59)
think well, a couple of months later, I went to a bookstore and I saw that exact same name. I said, you know what? That name's taken that because I just thought that's what happens, right?
Sarah Jordan-Ross (13:08)
Yes.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (13:09)
I mean, women women get angry and women feel abused and then men too, for that matter.
And then when you finally get out of that situation, you turn into this terrible person, so called terrible person, because you got so much anger inside you, it has to go somewhere.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (13:26)
Yes. And we don't know.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (13:28)
And you're no longer this loving, sweet wife, you suddenly you're being called a bitch
and you're like, Wait, what did I do?
Sarah Jordan-Ross (13:37)
Yes. Our decreasing level of hormones might have something to do with that as well,
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (13:43)
Okay.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (13:44)
in that we s we stop being quite so nice or stop putting up with things that we probably have put up with for for way too long. And I don't know that that's just in in relationships, I think that's life in general of the we start to see things and go, mm
That's not quite right and want to do something about it. I mean, you work in trauma and trafficking and have done for
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (14:11)
Well, look at it this way. Yeah.
And look at it this way there. So when my son was in high school, right, he's now much older, he's married. But when he was in high school, he got a book home from his his school and this was an amazing book, so transformative. Because we spend our entire time, you know, raising our kids, go doing the things you do, taking them to school, taking them to activities, cooking, cleaning, whatever it is we do and working full time. We end up doing all these wonderful things at Superwoman
jobs that we forget ourselves in the process. So all the dreams we had when we were younger, I want to be able to do this and I want to be able to travel and I want to be able to read what, you know, sit for six hours and read a book I want to, or I want to watch taboo talk and not have, you know, not talk to this other person I don't feel like talking to, you know, things like that. And then over the years, it's like we have all these dreams we had as kids, and it's like having this bag, this big bag.
And shoving all those dreams down, like I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And then as you grow older, you start shoving it deeper and deeper and deeper because you're too deep in diapers and school and everything else, that you that your own dreams take a backbench, your own looks take a backbench, your own dress sense takes a backbench. You're happy to get out of bed in the morning, you know? And then and you're delighted to go to bed at night. Yeah, exactly.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (15:33)
And functioning on two hours sleep. Yeah.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (15:37)
See, and you love and you love the idea of even
Thinking about your bed, my son, when he went to school, my daughter is my son, the teacher said, What does your mom like doing the most? He says, Sleeping. If she can sleep, if she can sleep, she's the happiest. So yeah, so anyway, because you you have so little sleep. And so as you grow older, the story has a very interesting ending. Because as you grow older, and like you said, the hormones change and you don't give a care after a while. You know, it's like the bad.
Bursts open. You know, now you're you're past the diaper stage, you're past the school stage, you're past everything else, you're past caring about who thinks what about you, and you no longer care about fitting a certain role. The bad bursts open, and suddenly all your dreams, everything, it comes like slapping you in the face. It's like just hits you hard. And you're like, my God, I need to look after me. And suddenly, in those years, a lot of divorces happen.
A lot of women like, I don't want to be in this relationship anymore. Stuff happens. And then you end up starting to think about what do you want in life? What is it you have not achieved in life? And then women become the most powerful at that stage. Some of the most powerful women are women who have found themselves, no matter what age. But when you find yourself, you're pretty indomitable, you know, pretty tough to beat. And then at that
Sarah Jordan-Ross (17:04)
Yes.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (17:04)
point.
is when you can say, you know what? I'm gonna do what I wanna do and go after my dreams and you still can care about your family, you can still care about your work, but you're now starting caring about you. And that's a sense of self fulfillment.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (17:18)
maybe caring about yes.
And I think that makes you actually better able to care for others because you know who you are and what's important and you're doing those things and actually being who you are. Yeah.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (17:37)
You're not resentful. Yeah, you're
not resentful, you're not angry, you're at peace.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (17:47)
And we function much better from that space than from the angry, bitter
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (17:58)
Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you've some women go through years where they're where they're dealing with a partner or men too, and I I say women, but men too are dealing with a partner who's toxic and controlling and very and insecure. And when you have a partner who's controlling and insecure, no matter what you do, they will never feel happy. No matter what you do, you're never good enough.
And they dehumanize you to the point that you think, my God, I've got to please this person, or they're gonna be mad at me, they're gonna be mad at me, they're gonna mad at me. And they're so busy pleasing that person, they've lost their own identity almost. And they're suddenly a slave to somebody who's half the person they are. If that.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (18:51)
And I say you help a lot of people in that situation find themselves and find the courage to change their situation. No, one of the things I was looking at in some of your work that caught my attention was you use the term displacement trauma.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (19:13)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (19:13)
And so I will get you to unpack exactly what you mean by that, but I was thinking the trauma it impacts our ability to trust, even in the situation that you're explaining, for that woman to actually trust herself because she doesn't even know who she is anymore. And with children that have been in in that situation or that they've been
tossed from one place to another and they don't know quite where they fit or who it's safe for them to trust, how do you help them through that?
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (19:58)
Such such a brilliant question. So with displacement trauma, the real fundamental theory behind that is that when children are removed from a caregiver, usually a parent, right? You're removed from a parent. This is a lot about kids in foster care, refugees, right? So when you remove an individual, a child, from a biological parent, you're breaking that attachment bond, the mother child attachment bond at first level.
And then when you put the child in foster care, then you're creating a new bond between the foster parent and the child, or a grandparent, or an aunt, whoever the child goes to. And then when you remove the child from that caregiver to another caregiver, and then to another caregiver and into another caregiver, the level of displacement trauma that takes place because of multiple displacements over a period of time.
Is breaking those attachment bonds so that the child is always very lonely inside. Because there's this huge, I it's like a huge ditch, you know, or a huge pit that you really can't fill with love. Because no matter how much love you pour into that pit, it just gets deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, never fills up. So you never feel whole, never feel whole at all. And as a result, you can have multiple relationships with different, different people.
And we have a clinical term which is called reactive attachment disorder, right? So but really what it is, is multiple relationships with people. And as a result of that, they these relationships are very short-lived. They're not really meaningful. They can be very exploitative. Because when the world hasn't given you anything, you're gonna take. You're gonna take what the world what the world does not want to give you necessarily.
So you grab and you take and you they you you end up with substances because you're trying to self medicate. So you can start doing drugs, you can start drinking heavily, whatever it is. And then your relationships are so superficial because there's if my own mother didn't want me, or if I wasn't wanted by my foster mother, whoever, then what am I worth? Maybe I'm not worthy. It comes down to self worth.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (22:16)
Which
is a really hard place to be because they want that love and connection, but there's also that bit of it's gonna get taken away anyway, or yeah, as you said, they've got that that pit that nothing is going to to fill. So how do you start helping people to
Fill that void or to realize that they do have worth
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (22:47)
So what's really
Sarah Jordan-Ross (22:49)
just because they're here.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (22:51)
Right. So what's really important is
self-regulation, emotional regulation. It all boils down to emotional regulation and you're and regulating your brain, right? Controlling your brain. So how do you control your brain? Your brain is fantastic. I tell you, the human brain is probably the most fascinating, most beautiful thing in the world. You know, I always say we talk about space and outer space, but let's look at inside our own brains. So
So if you look at your own brain, it actually wants to heal. It doesn't necessarily have the tools to heal, but it wants to heal. So how do you heal your brain by providing it with the tools? So what we do is we teach self-regulation. For example, if you're with an a child who's acting out, right? You have a child who's screaming, yelling, shouting. I can give you an example of a clinical case I had from a while ago. You know, the kid was just yelling, screaming, throwing things at her mother, hitting her.
And she had been a perfectly normal child before that. But all of a sudden she started doing all these actions because she had been hurt by in a relationship. She her grades had dropped. She had no control. Mom was going through a divorce. She didn't know where they're gonna live. So she had multiple areas in her life that she didn't feel safe. So when children don't feel safe, they act out. And that's all she was doing. All her all we had to do.
was to create a safe space in her brain so that she could go back to that safe space and calm herself down. So we taught her emotional regulation, cognitive regulation. How do you calm yourself down? Because the moment you control your breathing, you control your life. Because breath is life. So the moment you control that, you can control your life. And so we taught her a lot of techniques on how to cope. So there's there's so much. There's so much one can do. And I actually have my book somewhere here.
This book right here, it's Strong Roots, if you don't mind my sharing this, it's Strong Roots Safe
Sarah Jordan-Ross (24:48)
Go for it.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (24:49)
Wings. and it's on Amazon. It's really based on the ACEs, the adverse childhood experiences, and how to overcome them. So the book has a lot of areas. For example, there's I think I have there's one here that says meet the inner child. Like, how do you meet the inner child? What do you do? You know, and then there's several self-regulating techniques.
how to develop empathy, how to problem solve. So here's one. I I'm trying to show it to you. How to develop empathy different ways. So this teaches you self-talk. So this entire book is about how to communicate with yourself so that you heal. Because it's one thing communicating with other people. A lot of people talk about how do you talk to other people? Well, no, first, how do you talk to yourself? You know, what's your inner voice? What's your
Self-thought, what's your self statements, what's your self-esteem? Because it all comes down to if you feel good about yourself, you're not gonna try and harm other people because you you're feeling good about yourself. So you're gonna feel happy and you you're not you don't care whether people are doing a thing. You're not so impacted by other people's views of you.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (25:59)
Yeah. And it then if you're in a space where you're saying all sorts of horrible things to yourself that you would never dream of saying to anybody else, you've got to learn how to be a bit kinder to yourself and speak more nicely so that you can build that up as well. And I love that you have a book that deals with the aces and shows that it's
Even if you have a lot of them, it is possible to recover from that. I don't know earlier in last season of the show we had Jackie Wilkinson on and Jackie had nine aces. And you would
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (26:47)
Yeah.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (26:48)
think that someone with those experiences
would have had a pretty hard road and she did, but she is also now a wing commander in the British Air Force, which for a woman that's really impressive.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (27:04)
Wow. Yes.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (27:07)
And she she went to university, she's written papers, she has degrees, she but in her own words, she became a chronic overachiever to try and fill that gap.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (27:23)
Right.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (27:24)
Yeah. Have you seen that with with other people that like sometimes they fill the gap with with negative things
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (27:28)
Absolutely.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (27:31)
but sometimes they fill it with what most would deem positive but you need to see what's underneath and driving that.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (27:40)
So in in in in our field, we have what's called this resilience gene, right? The optimism gene and the resilience gene. And people who are more resilient tend to have a more optimistic outlook on life. They don't say, okay, my life is over, you know, poor me, feel sorry for me. They don't play the victim, you know, my dad died, my life sucks, I'm the victim. They don't play that. They go, you know what, this happened.
I have this aces and that aces and that one, but the only safe place I'm in is school. The only safe place I'm in is when I'm studying. So what I'm gonna do is study like crazy and make something of my life so that nobody can ever harm me again.
And being in the Air Force, being in the military, she found a way that nobody's gonna harm me. I'm gonna join the military and I'm not gonna get hurt again. I'm gonna defend myself and defend those I love. I have a judge in this country in the US who became an EEOC judge, that's equal opportunity employer. It's the federal government job. It's very few federal judges you know, it's hard to be a federal judge. And so she
was trafficked from the time she was four years old. And she rose to become a federal judge. She's written a fantastic book, Judging Me. It's called Judging Me. Really great book. so so you know many of them have gone on to write their own books. they finish their PhDs, they've become businesswomen. There's one who is a famous actress, you know, and they and there so there's a line between what makes some people take that route.
Which you said. Now, why do some people choose that way of going versus, you know, going into suicidality and all of the other negative, negative ways of coping with life. And it's all comes down to you may not have much of a social support system, but somewhere along the line in your ha in your life, you met a person who believed in you and wanted you to do well, and you did well.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (29:56)
All
it takes is one person to care.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (30:00)
To believe in you. Yes.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (30:13)
Just trying to think of because
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (30:16)
No, we
Sarah Jordan-Ross (30:16)
there's so many different ways this conversation could go. Having so much fun.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (30:23)
Me too.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (30:26)
Yeah. I think you also talk about like breaking generational patterns and and reparenting, but also the like to do into the who people become when they've gotten out, so they've been rescued from that situation, but getting rescued is only part of the story. There's then what happens after that whole
rebuilding process. Can you take us through what that looks like? How you help people get their lives
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (31:01)
Yeah, so so
Sarah Jordan-Ross (31:03)
back together?
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (31:05)
Yeah, so you know, I work normally in a clinic. I've always worked in a clinic setting, right? So at the clinic I see the patients, I say hello, I do my intake, I do therapy, or I do my evaluation, a psych evaluation, for example. And then they go home. I have no idea what happens to them after they leave my office. None at all. And then I realized I was only treating them a portion of their lives, but there's a huge part of their lives I had no access to. And I couldn't really help.
And then sometimes they wouldn't show because they're they'd I said, What happened? They said, I didn't have money for my to come here. I didn't have money to pay for my bus or my, you know, pay someone to bring me here, the Uber driver, whatever. I I didn't have money. And so I realized, you know, we don't access to care is so critical, right? We want to help, but we need to give them access to care. There has to be some access. And so I opened up the shelter in twenty twenty, in the middle of COVID, by the way.
Just like, and everyone's getting
Sarah Jordan-Ross (32:04)
Well done.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (32:05)
homeless, you know, people are getting homeless. Women were at higher risk for domestic violence. There's so much more happening. And so I opened it at that time. We took in like six women at that time, all COVID-related situations. We had the COVID machines, a PPE, you name it, that whole entire COVID lifestyle. And and we took in, and during those two years of COVID, we must have taken about like 25 to 30 women at that point. But anyway, so
These are women who all been trafficked, domestic violence cases, sexual assault cases, and they came in completely broken. Okay, it's bad enough that COVID is going around, but they were completely broken from the experience. So what we do is the very first month they come to us, we don't do anything. We're like, rest, sleep, eat. You want something? You want to go somewhere, we'll take you grocery shopping. You want this, we'll take you there. But this one month.
There are zero expectations. We don't want you to go to work. No phone, because then who knows who you're gonna be calling and which trafficker is gonna show up at our doorstep. So literally have to take that. At the same time, you can't take the phone from them because it's their lifeline for safety if they have to escape. So we sort of gave them a generic phone that they could use. We realized that would be so over the years we've learned a lot of lessons and how to do the work properly. But but that first month is like that, and that
month is transformative. They don't think they're doing anything, but their brains are rewiring that whole month, you know, from a place of danger to a place of safety. And they have no idea that's what their minds are doing and their brains are doing. They just think they're wasting time. And when
Sarah Jordan-Ross (33:47)
Two.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (33:48)
I think, but if you're going to kick us out now and we're going to be asked to kick out. Yeah, so but but after that after that one month we start when they're ready we start therapy.
And then we start talking about reparenting yourself, you know, finding yourself. Who are you? So we give them up to two years to find themselves. We say you have up to two years you can stay with us. And during those two years, we want you to find yourself. And you make whatever money you make is yours. If you go to go have a job, that's great. We don't want your money. Open your bank account, save your money, and eventually go and live in your own place. So none of them stay literally up to two years. The majority of them may stay like eight or nine months.
And then they leave.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (34:30)
time to really recover and figure out who they are and what they they wanna do. Yeah.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (34:35)
They want. Yeah,
because so often we're told this is what you should do, this is who you should be. But it's not
Sarah Jordan-Ross (34:42)
Mm.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (34:43)
it's not something you want or want or should be. You should be what you want to be.
You know?
Sarah Jordan-Ross (34:50)
And it's great that you give people who've been through such a hard time and those things that destroy their sense of who they are. That
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (35:01)
Right.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (35:02)
you give them time to to find that again and actually give them tools that help them to recover and to remember who they are outside of what they've been through.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (35:15)
Right, because their whole lives have been defined by what other people have told them they are. And when you ask them who are you, they don't really know who they are. They can't really describe themselves very well. They can say two things. I'm a woman and I'm white, black, Asian, whatever. You know, that's it. That's the extent of who they are. But there's so much more. And they're so brave, so resilient, so brave. They just need the right the chance to show who they are.
And they haven't been given the chance. They spiral because you spiral from a relationship to to a child to poverty and then, you know, it just how do you get out of it? So that's where we come in. That's where we pull them out.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (36:01)
Yes. And there needs to be more places that actually do that, that that see when people are struggling and give them a place to to find that sense of safety again, to find themselves again and to then build great lives from that.
And I love how you said that that month they think they're wasting time and doing nothing but their whole brain and their nervous system is rewiring and re finding that sense of safety. 'Cause our
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (36:38)
Exactly.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (36:39)
brains are hard wired for for safety. They wanna keep us safe and when you've been through experiences that completely destroy that sense of of safety, it takes time to get it back again.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (36:51)
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (36:58)
You've
spent a lot of your life looking at or seeing the worst things that human beings can do to each other and you've also seen and given people the space to rebuild after everything you've seen and learned.
and the things that you've spent so much time looking at that most of us would rather look away from. What's the thing that gives you hope?
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (37:38)
What a great question. I think what gives me hope is the fact that ever since I began the nonprofit, because I'm a private practitioner essentially, but ever since I began the nonprofit, there's so many people who have come to help. Because a nonprofit doesn't have any funds. It's always poor by just by definition, I think. But so many people have.
Come to support us. I mean, we start with zero. We had no bank account. You know, we had open a bank account. We started zero funds. We had no funds. I put in my own money to run the first conference, where we changed the paradigm from people like me being the experts to survivors being the experts, and we held it in the Hilton and the conference here. Because when I went to get funding for the conference, and this was back in 2020.
thirteen, twenty fourteen. When I went around asking people, asking organizations, will you be my fiscal sponsor? Because otherwise I pay a lot of taxes because, you know, private money if you funding is t is taxed. But if I were to do it through a nonprofit charity, charities are not taxed. So they wouldn't have to pay taxes to hotels. So I said, could you please help me out? I want to run this conference for these ladies so that their voices are heard by everyone around the world. And what the and the and the and the
nonprofits said to me, many of them said to me, Well, what's in it for us? And a friend of mine who is also a psychologist, she she looked at me, she said, I think you're being trafficked at this point. Because they're asking you, what's in
Sarah Jordan-Ross (39:18)
Ha ha
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (39:18)
it for you So So So we went down to the Attorney General's office, 'cause that's where nonprofits are built are are created or are registered. And we came up with the name, Safe Coalition for Human Rights, and we registered ourselves as a nonprofit.
And by December of that year, December's the end of fiscal year, we were we became a charity nonprofit. It was amazing. We became actually registered as a what's called a 501c3, which means it's a non it's tax exempt. It's a tax-exempt organization. So that's what happened. But yeah, and ever since then, people have just come and said, How can we help? And that is so lovely, you know. It's so that's what gives me hope.
The goodness of the human the goodness in humanity is not lost.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (40:13)
For all the bad that is out there and you've seen a lot of it, there is good. And there is people who genuinely just want to help.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (40:23)
Yes.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (40:28)
That's a pretty good way for us to end our chat today, is that as much as there is horrible things that happen in the world and horrible people that do awful things to to each other, there is just as many, if not more, good people, kind, caring people who just want to
Help who want when they see that something is broken they want to fix it. Or more,
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (41:01)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (41:02)
they want to as in your case, they want to give the people the tools to help them fix themselves.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (41:13)
Right.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (41:14)
And I think that's what will will stick with me from this conversation is that
We can heal, said
We just sometimes need a few extra tools than than what we have and that space to feel safe.
And to find ourselves again. And I loved when you spoke about resilience and that some people we just have a different way of of seeing things and a slightly more Yep. Bad stuff happens but
good can come out of it in some way or another. Or I don't have to let that be the thing that defines who I am moving forward because I get to decide who I am.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (42:15)
Exactly. I have power and have self agency and I have control over my life.
And I have the right to have control over my life.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (42:29)
Very well said. I want to thank you for for bringing both your expertise but also your heart and humanity to this conversation. For everyone who's listening, thank you for joining us. If this conversation has encouraged you, challenged you, has you saying I want to do something to help, or if it's helped you understand.
trauma and healing from a slightly different perspective then please share this episode with someone else who just might need to hear it. 'Cause that's how we break the silence and how we continue to foster hope.
Until next time, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and remember, your story matters, so share it. Because you never know it might be your story that changes someone else's life. Doctor G, thank you for being here with us today.
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (43:36)
Such a pleasure.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (43:39)
Is there anything else you'd like to leave people with?
Dr Kalyani Gopal, PhD, SAFECHR (43:43)
I would just like to say, just given everything that's happening in the world right now, there's so much trauma all around the world. Just practice human decency. Practice kindness. Because you don't know what the other person's going through. You only know what you're going through. But people don't always share what they're going through, so be kind.
Sarah Jordan-Ross (44:12)
I'm Sarah Jordan Ross, and this has been Taboo Talk. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.