Team

Thuy Bui, Ph.D.

Creator, Executive Producer, Host

Thuy Bui, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and trauma specialist with extensive experience working with families, children, couples, and individuals with relational trauma. She is the creator and Executive Director of Life Design Centre, an innovative psychotherapy studio specializing in the transformation of trauma experiences into meaningful change. Her inspiration for creating Life Design Centre is helping people discover their authentic selves with purpose, meaning, and beauty. Dr. Thuy founded the non-profit organization, People Heal People to develop unconventional and innovative opportunities for people to see mental health services with a new perspective and to communicate principles that help inspire people to expand their individual potential, move towards wholeness, and connect with others. Her new documentary series, Once Upon a Trauma aims to raise the consciousness of others and provide opportunities for people to learn about their own inner work and what they need to grow.

Jamal Hodge

Showrunner, Director, Producer

JAMAL HODGE is an award-winning filmmaker who has won over 100 awards with screenings at Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance, & Cannes. He directed the first season of Discovery I.Ds 'Primal Instinct' and is a Producer on the Animated feature film 'Pierre the Pigeon Hawk' (starring Jennifer Hudson and Whoopi Goldberg). Hodge is a segment Director on the PBS limited docuseries, 'Southern Storytellers', an episodic director on The Black Oak TV series ‘The Table’, and the Director of ‘Madness & Writers the Untold Truth, Maybe? As a writer, Jamal is an active member of The HWA and the SFPA, being nominated for the 2021 & 2022 Rhysling Awards, while his poem 'Colony' placed 2nd at the 2022 Dwarf Stars, making him the first Black poet to place in the history of the competition. His writing is featured in the Anthologies 'Chiral Mad 5' alongside Stephen King and in ‘Qualia Nous Volume 2’ alongside Chuck Palahniuk and Josh Malerman. As well as ‘The Unioverse Anthology: Stories of the Reconvergence’ a book based on the multi-million-dollar gaming franchise from Random Games.

Craig Renaud

Executive Producer

Craig Renaud is a Peabody and DuPont Award-winning filmmaker and has spent the past two decades producing films and television programs with his brother Brent. Their work has won many of the top awards in television and journalism, including a Peabody Award, two Columbia DuPont Awards, two Overseas Press Club Awards, an Edward R. Murrow Award, an IDA Award, a DGA nomination for Best Directors, and multiple Emmy nominations. Their films have also received critical acclaim in Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Forbes, USA Today, the New York Times, Filmmaker Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and American Cinematographer. Craig and his brother Brent also founded the Little Rock Film Festival and the Arkansas Motion Picture Institute.

WHAT IS THE SHOW STRUCTURE?

The show has two story arcs: The patients’ process and Dr. Thuy’s process.

The Patients:

The show follows 8 patients through 10, 30 -45-minute episodes in their weekly and individual therapeutic process. Each episode showcases two of the 8 patients and their progress along with relevant or organic updates to any of the other group members. When a patient is working or being featured the focus will be on a specific trauma that has impacted their life, with a distinct goal of shifting some aspect of how they see that event.

We see their story in three acts:

1) They tell their story

2) They work in therapy individually and group

3) They have an imaginal fantasy of what life could be like that we work to make an experiential reality, either symbolically or actually.

The patients go through a full arc of awareness, insight, and resolution in each episode.

Peripheral educational concepts that are featured in the Patient Process are: