CBIS Spotlight: William H. Bynum III

William H Bynum III, CBIS, is an LMFT trainee at William Jessup University in Rocklin, Calif., working with One Life Counseling Services and earning his degree in therapy and mental health. Prior to going back to school, Bynum worked in the Anchorage School District as a teacher’s aid. He also worked as a substitute teacher, caregiver, care coordinator, and a traumatic and acquired brain injury advocate.

Why have you chosen a career in brain injury? Why are you passionate about brain injury?

My parents worked for a non-profit organization called Hope Cottages (now Hope Community Resources, Inc.) as live-in resident managers, and I was right there in the midst of the everyday business of taking care of individuals who experienced various forms of physical and mental disabilities; it was a part of my everyday life normal life. Back then they were called clients, but to me, I knew them as family.

But my everyday life changed when, years after experiencing my first seizure two days after I was born, my seizures began to reemerge. No longer was I just a kid free to explore. Now I was disabled, and didn’t know why my brain malfunctioned so much. However, no one in the house treated me differently. They loved me just as they had always loved me.

Around fourth or fifth grade, my seizures had morphed from absence, to petit-mal, and finally, by the age of 12, I was in full-blown clonic tonic or gran-mal. My future was looking more and more bleak. But I was determined to become someone that meant something to me, so I gave caregiving a try, and I loved it. It was like home.

I remained in the caregiving field for years, until my epilepsy stopped me once again. Finally, in 2005, I had the brain surgery I had been desperately hoping for, a right temporal lobectomy. I had to relearn how to walk, talk, use my cognitive ability; most of the things we take for granted. I was, in many ways, a baby again, relying on others to do for me what I could not yet do for myself. I was the client.

After graduating with a degree in youth ministry, I returned to my hometown of Anchorage, Alaska, where I worked in the Anchorage School District as a teacher’s aide in special education and substitute teacher; as a caregiver and care coordinator; and before leaving, as a traumatic and acquired brain injury advocate, where I also earned my certification in brain injury specialty (CBIS). While working with my caseload, it was brought to my attention that many of them were having a hard time receiving therapy services from the local therapists. When I followed up on this, I found that many therapists were highly unaware of the effects of brain injury, that it can easily hide in the behavioral aspect of the therapeutic approach which most therapists are trained in, as LMFTs. I began to offer my services to these organizations to give training that offered to bridge the gap of understanding between behavior and brain injury.

Why is having a CBIS important to you? How is it helpful in your daily work?

I have kept my CBIS over the years, because it is my passion to help individuals who experience BI and their caregivers; to understand it for themselves, and its breadth, even the way it interferes with our very person and behaviors.

While therapists are generally taught to identify and diagnose behavior, it is also important to have some level of capacity to discuss how the brain affects behavior, as more domestic violence and riskier behaviors, like “Power Slap,” become more prevalent and pose a risk of concussions and a high possibility of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). This matters to me because most times when a person is facing “behavioral” changes, the last question often asked by a therapist (if at all) is “have you ever had a concussion?” While sitting with clients, whether they have had or have not experienced brain injury, having the basic understanding of traumatic and acquired brain injury allows me to build a therapeutic alliance I would otherwise have no knowledge of without both training in brain injury and psychotherapy.