Jason Buck, DBT | Uncommon Living 37 • Morozko Ice Baths
▶ Watch on YouTubeDr. Jason Buck, a Doctor of Behavioral Health, discusses how cold plunge therapy can provide immediate relief for PTSD symptoms by forcing present-moment awareness and activating survival instincts. The conversation explores childhood trauma patterns, Peter Levine's somatic experiencing work, and Marsha Linehan's DBT protocols that use cold water exposure to interrupt catastrophic thinking cycles. Buck advocates for ice baths as a complementary tool—not a cure—for managing trauma responses alongside proper therapeutic integration.
Dr. Jason Buck is a Doctor of Behavioral Health and licensed professional counselor who specializes in trauma treatment. Unlike psychiatrists (medical school) or psychologists (doctorate in psychology), his DBH credential integrates clinical counseling with a medical model approach—assessing both mental and physical wellness in patients.
"I'm not only the hair club president, but I'm also the client. I don't just tell you, use this cognitive tool if it wasn't a cognitive tool that I had seen either benefit me personally or somebody else that I knew personally."
— Dr. Jason Buck
The core principle: your health is directly related to your behaviors. Changing behaviors—sleep, diet, stress management, cold exposure—can improve or degrade health depending on your starting point and direction.
Traumatic experiences in childhood create behavioral patterns that were adaptive at ages 5-10 but become maladaptive in adulthood. Treatment involves accessing and integrating these "exiled" parts of ourselves rather than suppressing them further.
We obsessively replay traumatic experiences in our imagination, searching for resolution. This is universal among intelligent mammals—cheetah cubs attacked by a hyena spent the rest of the day "playing hyena attack," taking turns in different roles to process the trauma.
Simply talking about trauma can cause retraumatization. True healing requires resolving the experience from a position of control—like children who play "doctor" after a scary medical visit, always adopting the authority role.
Dr. Marsha Linehan (founder of DBT) includes cold water face immersion in her protocols for treating borderline personality disorder and PTSD. The mechanism: cold water activates the dive reflex and interrupts the catastrophic thinking cycle.
After the LA fires, Peltz experienced constant background anxiety and catastrophic rumination. She reported that just 11 seconds of cold water on the face could halt these patterns, replacing them with more optimistic thoughts.
"When you're in the ice bath, all your other worries have to go away because all you can do is breathe and survive, and you're activating those survival instincts... whatever that bill I have to pay next week—glad I wrote a note on that because it's not here now."
— Dr. Jason Buck
Cold exposure provides immediate symptom relief but doesn't resolve the underlying trauma (the "5-year-old child in exile"). It's a powerful complementary tool, not a standalone cure.
Both Jason and Thomas reported that DEXA scans showed them as overweight/obese despite being extremely fit. The theory: DEXA scan algorithms aren't calibrated for brown fat.