Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Stand on the pulpit and scream it out, you know, everywhere. We cannot hate our own culture, hate our own family, disconnect from our, our backgrounds and fully heal. It will be, like you said, a full colonization which is still a violence done unto our spirit, unto our soul. So now it's not about. And people mistake this all the time. It's not about saying it's okay to abuse. It's not about using culture as an abuse. It's not just, just accepting everything in your culture in this monolithic and very passive way. No, no, no, no. But if you are breaking cycles only means breaking away you coming from a colonial perspective that others and diminishes your culture, which always means diminishes a part of you.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Welcome to Deconstructing Therapy, Transforming Therapy and the therapists who lead it. Let's deep dive into conversations reshaping therapy into a for healing, liberation and systemic change.
Join us as we challenge the status quo, reimagine care and celebrate therapists breaking barriers. Let's transform therapy together.
I am so honored to have Dr. Pauline Yugnizarpeck on the show today.
Dr. Pauline is a first generation Iranian Armenian trauma informed psychologist who specializes in working with the children of immigrants and intercultural couples. She operates a group practice called Noor Therapy and Wellness specializing in providing culturally affirming care for residents of California as well as a coaching, speaking, consulting and community education business called Bridging Gaps. Breaking Cycles. It is so good to connect with you. I have been a fan of your content for a while now. So many things therapeutically not fitting with my immigrant clients, especially around like attachment histories and like understanding things. There's so many things that are pathologizing about. Even when we're not pathologizing our clients, there's still this culture of pathologizing their parents or pathologizing their culture unconsciously. Right when we're trying to just make things fit. And there were so many things that really resonated to me from your content that was like, oh yes, that makes sense. We're putting it in this nuanced perspective that really helps me out. So I want to thank you for that. It's helped me out professionally with my clients so much. So I just wanted to hear a little bit about your own story.
What got you started as a healer in this work in general and then maybe what made you shift into doing it the way you're doing it now.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: I appreciate that you, you know, there was a part of you that resonated and maybe even already knew some of the Things that I'm putting out there. And sometimes when we. We see it publicly discussed and legitimized, it just affirms that part of ourselves that I think internally already feels that way. And that's how important it is that we talk about these things. It's not me, it's the message. And the more of us are publicly talking about it, the more affirming it really feels, because these things are happening in the shadows and in silence. And that links to my own story. I was born in Iran. The country had just gone through a lot, was in the middle of a war. My parents moved to where my mom's side of the family was in Los Angeles.
And so I grew up with, you know, my ethnic Armenian background from Iran. So the Iranian community, especially because my parents pastored a Persian speaking church. And, you know, this new American identity and really being able to after elementary school kind of shed that ethnic identity and lean into being white perceived. And so I grew up with this kind of tricultural experience where it was different kind of church culture, then there was a different home culture, and then obviously school and all these other, you know, predominantly white spaces kind of commanded or required different versions of me. And I didn't really know this. This is not a conscious process that was happening. It wasn't consciously a decision to shed parts of my ethnic identity and become more Americanized in order to have more privilege, have more access. But that was the process that was happening that obviously later I've been able to name. It really wasn't until my mom's death in my early 20s and my first experience with therapy that I began thinking about my mental health. I'm kind of thinking about my mental health, particularly in response to the cultural impacts of these various spaces and places and norms and expectations. Expectations. First time I was really reflecting on my family and my role and my identity. And even though it was a really powerful experience, I still felt like something was a little bit maybe missing. And I didn't again, have words for saying, okay, there's still that cultural nuance that isn't really being addressed here. And so what I feel like I did in the first therapy experience was just like, drink the kool Aid and be like, therapy, everybody needs this. I need to go to grad school, get trained, and then take this back to my community, you know, And I think I have a lot of this internalized racism and xenophobia of like, my community is backwards, this is forwards, and I'm gonna go learn this and then I'm gonna come Give them this gift because they don't know, I'm gonna save them, I'm gonna save them. I'm in this place, I'm gonna go get educated. And as I was getting educated, I was becoming so somewhat frustrated with what I was learning. I was, I always say I was that annoying kid asking, wait, what is this? What about for this? What about that culture? And they'd be like, at the end, or wait till you're one multicultural class. Something about this doesn't fit. And I actually felt like, again, that voice was pretty quiet. Even as I was having these experiences in grad school, it was overwhelmingly feeling a lot of shame and pathologizing again of my own culture, of my own family. I started to really resent my family, kind of hate my family, think they're dysfunctional, think they're backwards. It was like I was just seeing all of that pathology everywhere. And it made me really want to disconnect from my culture of origin. It made me want to disconnect from my family, which I really did.
And it wasn't until I went back to school for my PhD and had some other women of color friends and worked primarily in spaces with other, you know, people of color, lots of children of immigrants, that I started every once in a while being prompted to use something. I call it going rogue, going off script, prompted to use something that I kind of knew from my own life experience but was not stamped as okay to do in the therapy room, like a self disclosure or like a way of not pathologizing. And it started to work. And that was that moment where I'm like, okay, I think I've been drinking the Kool Aid here, and I think there's a different way to be in looking at some of this. And so I just kept kind of following that. I think it's easy to look back and be like, oh, I knew throughout all of grad school about that. I didn't. I really didn't. There wasn't really social media talking about these things.
I wasn't connected. I think there have been lots of spaces, obviously indigenous psychology and decolonial perspectives. I did not have access to those things. I was learning this through that small inner voice and that overwhelming pathology and beginning to trust in the inner voice a little more and being a little skeptical of what I was learning and then beginning to, in my clinical work, with the thousands and thousands of hours of training, beginning to practice those things and see them land with clients and see clients saying things I had felt before and being like, oh, my Gosh, this is not a me issue. And I'm a sociologist by training. That's kind of the path that I was going on. And so I began looking at these macro level, like if I'm having this and someone 15 years my, you know, my minor from a completely different background is also having this, what are the macro level things that are in. And I just. That began kind of unraveling my solid therapeutic, academic, theoretical understanding. And I began really trusting more and more in that inner knowing, my own lived experience and the health skepticism that I still hold. And 15 years later, here I am doing what I'm doing. But it really began like, I want people to hear that. It really began as dissonance, as questionings, as like a, huh. As a tension inside of me. Like it didn't.
With conscious top down awareness that I was learning a white western paradigm. These were. Aha. That happened by just trusting in those little pieces and continuing to lean into my curiosity and that tension rather than back out of it from discomfort. So that. And from, I really think the thousands of clients I worked with, my training, hearing them, so many of them say some of the same things that really solidified in me this sense that no, there is something to straddling multiple cultural worlds. There is something to looking at where these theories were founded and why they're not fitting. And.
And it just get. Got more and more and more through my curiosity and now learning so much of those theories and perspectives that were there that I didn't have access to and I didn't get taught in my grad programs.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: I can resonate with, you know, first drinking the Kool Aid. So, so many immigrant story, right? You go into therapy and then you're like, oh, I'm enlightened now and everybody's backwards. And you start disassociating from that and therapy's colonizing you. That whole world really is. And that is like, that is the, you know, we talk about the stigma. A lot of like people in different cultures are like against therapy or thinking we don't need it. And I think there's this underlying fear that it is pulling people away from the culture.
And there is some legitimacy to that in what all of us experience. So it is beautiful that you were able to really listen to your own intuition and say, wait, this is working what I'm doing here and there. I think there's so many of us that are adjusting in those small ways, but we don't have like what you said, that validation. And that's why it's so important and your voice is so important that you're legitimizing that because it makes the rest of us hear our inner voice and say, okay, good, there's nothing wrong with me here. When I'm doing these self disclosures and when I'm kind of doing things in a different way, it's like, okay, yes, I'm not doing it wrong. I'm not. Not professional.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: No. And everything we know about professionalism is so mired in white supremacy and all the, all the other stuff is like, who gets to decide what a professional looks like and sounds like? And just there's so much policing that happens in the field of therapy. And, you know, your question around how I became a healer is, you know, my parents were pastors and I come from a long line of pastors and counseling is a part of pastoring. There were always my, my parents church sponsored a lot of refugees. There were people that would, you know, stay at our home. There were multiple, like Bible studies and, and home meetings that would happen in our home. And you know, my parents would pray with people, people through a variety of difficulties. You know, the church ends up being the place that people go for, you know, community and support through real big crises. And so counseling and serving people with your whole heart. Even though I'm doing it from maybe a different worldview or religious stance, it was something that I, I'd seen. It makes total sense if, you know, my parents and you know, the longer lineage that I would have ended up here, you know, so I think that that part of why I'm doing what I'm doing. And then on my mom's side, you know, both of my, my grandparents were like physical healers as well. My grandma had so much knowledge of plant medicines and, and just medicines. And my grandfather was a dentist who used a lot of innovative holistic ways, saving teeth and healing. And so both of them were physical healers as well. And so both sides of my family, I have this sense of healing and almost like what I now really call spiritual giftings. These are gifts to be able to sit with people's pain, to conceptualize the path forward, to believe in healing and to believe in that person's inherent movement toward healing and to have the capacity to hold space for the really dark things, but to hold hope. Like all of those pieces are spiritual gifts that I saw and that were modeled for me. The stories that I heard growing up of my grandparents and my grandma taking care of all four, you know, her parents and her in laws and, you know, people that would travel far and wide to come see my grandfather. Those were stories of seeing my parents pray with couples, and it's part of me. Yeah, I think, you know, when you were talking about the. The dissociation, the fear a lot of people, I think, from immigrant communities have that therapy is going to pluck people away from their culture. I don't think that I felt afraid of that or knew what the context that until my mom did die and I was in this place of having lost one parent through death and being on the fringes with my dad, like, I was, you know, just a pure cutoff with him.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: So did it feel like you were losing your culture and your heritage?
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness, let it go. I'm like, let it all burn. You know, Like, I was not in a place that. That was me full Kool Aid year years of.
My culture is so backwards. My family is so backwards. I had major religious differences with them. And so I was just like, I am done with this. And honestly, my mom's death and really toying with whether I was going to choose to also cut off the other parent who was still alive. Like, it put me in this very, very tough situation, rock and a hard place, where I was like, okay, Pauline, I guess you're going to try and figure out how to make it work with this dad of yours, this dad who has very different belief system, this dad that comes from this culture that you think is so back.
And all of those things that I tried, all of those things that I reluctantly put into place from a place of choice, it's not like anyone forced me. I didn't want to cut him off. I didn't want to lose another parent. I didn't want to disconnect from my family because when you have a major loss, especially a loss of a mother, a mother and feminine, you know, the women of. Of my culture were the historians, the legacy keepers, and the cultural. Cultural bastions of the family lineage. And so losing that made me yearn for it and long for it. And now I know that true full healing is not possible with the rec without a reclamation and a reconnection to your culture. I did not knowingly choose that. I chose knowingly because I was like, I don't want to lose contact with my only living parent. But I did not know what I know now. And I stand on the pulpit and scream it out, you know, everywhere. We cannot hate our own culture, hate our own family, disconnect from our. Our backgrounds and fully heal. It will be, like you said, a full colonization which is still a violence done unto our spirit, unto our soul. So now it's not about. And people mistake this all the time. It's not about saying it's okay to abuse. It's not about using culture as an abuse. It's not just accepting everything in your culture in this monolithic and very passive way. No, no, no, no. But if you are breaking cycles only means breaking away.
You coming from a colonial perspective that others and diminishes your culture, which always means diminishes a part of you. So I didn't, like, these are the blessings that I didn't choose. I didn't choose my mom dying. I didn't choose the kind of circumstances of my upbringing and the anger that I had toward my parents. But looking back, it was the exact divine ordering of all of my steps to learn something that I, I think, in some ways couldn't have learned otherwise. I was so ready to throw it away because I saw it as such a not good part of me, you know, Like, I did not feel proud of my culture. I hated others from my culture. I was like, so backwards. It's so patriarchal racism.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: You know, just all of those things. And it really was the personal life circumstances that happened that then taught me this valuable lesson that I. I don't know, I could have learned another way, which is disconnection from your culture. I don't mean you have to keep everybody in your life and accept abuse. No, I mean connection to that part of you that is connected to your culture. You cannot heal without accessing the wholeness of who you are. And that includes culture. And it has to. That part has to happen to feel like you are coming back to the essence of who you are and undoing the colonial trauma and violence that was done. If not, we reenact that trauma to ourselves on the pathway with the intention of healing. And that's what keeps so many of us in this place.
Stuckness.
[00:17:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, that is so beautiful. I was like, I. Again, this is like something I have some knowing of, but the way you just put it out there so clearly, and your voice just gets so powerful when you're like, I know this. The full healing cannot happen without this. It's like you're that. I just feel like this huge ancestral knowing just poured out of you as you said that. It's just. That's beautiful.
And yes, you were in such a huge dilemma of, oh, my God, I'm losing my whole culture, or I'm gonna go to this healing ground that I've been taught here this kind of false higher ground. And you were right on the precipice of that. And so you had to make the choice. And I image so wonderful story with you just listening to yourself and kind of integrating the two. Right. I, I am a healer. I was always. My ancestors are healers. I, I don't have to give up the healing to go to my culture. It's actually the opposite. After doing both is how I'm going to actually heal. Like that is so wonderful. And I know you a huge trauma happen to you to put you in that dilemma. But I think everybody kind of has that same dilemma in some way. Maybe it's at a, on a smaller scale and it's a slower way that we have that dilemma. But that dilemma always exists because it's real. Right? It's like because we're not getting that.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Full healing and we're having a part of us constantly in tension with another part of us. And that is so many just on a basic neurobiological level, just such a waste of resources. You are fighting against the essence of who you are. The book, it didn't start with you by Mark Woland talks about the flow of life. And I, I felt that and even there's some biblical pieces. I, I learned that from like a more religious standpoint even before reading his book. And, and being introduced to that concept in that way. The flow of life from one generation to the other, right. Is like this energy that is being passed on. When you are disconnected from that, you are disconnected from the gifts of your lineage. You know, like years ago, I, I, I say that I, I did this panel and I've, I've told this story. I did this panel and I saw somebody there that I've known for almost my entire life. And she and I had not seen each other in over a decade and it was so beautiful. She had me do this panel. We were talking about decolonial work and Palestine and the Los Angeles. We were talking about so many different things. At the end she said, oh my gosh, I could see so much of your mom and your dad in you in my early 20s. That comment would have like thrown me into it. Absolutely not. Please take that back. I want to be nothing like them. And yet I could absolutely feel I am not exactly my dad and my mom. Right. There are major differences in what I believe, how I move through the world. And yet when we reconnect to our culture, which is really connecting to a part of ourselves, we are then right with the energy the flow of life. That means that we can tap into the lineage gifts and the ancestral gifts. If not, we're not in right spirit to receive them because they don't have to be earned or worked at. They are a transmission that's kind of like when you plug in the charger to the wall, electricity flows. But if it's off, if you are disconnected, it gets warped and you can feel it.
[00:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're having to work against it. And that's why therapy is going to be a lot more work. When you're choosing to cut that off and then keep doing the work, you're. It's going to take so much more energy. Yeah.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Yes. And most therapy is going to cut off because every theory we have is coming from a very narrow thing that doesn't even include you. And so it's just reinforce this, this, this. It's not even. At best, it can't even look at that because it's not built like that. At worst, it's going to. And it always kind of does this too, to some people more than others. It will internalize a. Of hatred toward those parts of yourself. And it will not be in just this. I didn't do anything to now become my. My dad, become my. That I am connected. Those ancestral gifts that are mine, they flow through me. And it's natural and it's effortless because this is me being in the right energy, the right alignment. This is me. Whether you call it Dharma, whether you call it fate, whether you. Whatever you call it, this is me fully in line with that. And that's what I want for everyone. Because everybody's gifts are different. But when you tap in, it's just. You're plugging in and it's coming through.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: You know, so much imagery comes up to me as you say that. And not only do. Do they not have access to that other piece, but there's just so much toxic validation around. You got to break the. Break the chain. You're going to break all the bad ancestral trauma or whatever. But it's like, no, you're also cutting off gifts. And I think that's everyone. Immigrants, non immigrant, like white people, everybody. Because everybody is connected to this kind of energy system in some way or another.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Everybody has ancestors. You can't completely vilify a line and you can't glamorize a line because it's human. We are imperfect. And so you're going to have the multitude of different pieces. Not everyone's giftings are going to be the same But I'm sure you can find stories of resilience and victory and strength and stories of, you know, cheating and lying and stealing and doing whatever it might be, because humans are humans. And so it's not about saying only those from non white backgrounds have ancestral. Everybody has ancestors, everybody could do this work.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: And then the power dynamic in the therapy room and what we're getting overwhelmingly within the mental health field can, you know, makes it worse for certain populations. But yeah, you had to kind of, you re embraced yourself for that healing when you thought you had to let go of it. I feel so honored to hear that. Can you tell me from your whole journey what, if any piece, if you had to come up with one or two pieces that you really think are the most vital to share with maybe clients that are struggling with this or other clinicians who are trying to do this work in a different way?
[00:23:17] Speaker A: It is really to not seek externally and to go inward in those places where maybe there's conflict, there's questioning, there's doubt, there's tension. Those are gifts. The places that are difficult are gifts like follow those. I see a lot of especially young clinicians now that this work is more out there and is more legitimized. We've got words for, you know, decolonizing therapy. I did not have that language. I think there can be like, what trainings, what books, what this going out of yourself. Not. Yes, it's like that top down, I have to learn it, which means I don't know it. And then it has to come to me and then I absorb it rather than it is already in you. And actually most of the work is going to be going inward, trusting and reconnecting to self. I say to clients all the time, and really anybody, if you absorb a piece of social media around mental health and it makes you feel worse about yourself or disempowered, more inadequate, there was some something not at play. Anything you hear should connect to that inner fullness and wholeness that already exists within you. And so whether you're clinician and many clinicians go into this from their own wounding. I would not do what I do if I had not been wounded. Right. So we are wounded healers, most of us, and that empathy from a place of our own pain, our own struggles, our own invalidations and things that maybe we will continue forever to be working with other people. And yet it is so important when you are having these moments, to not go external and to get more and more attuned to that inner voice that all of Us have that inner knowing, that trust that you are rebuilding in yourself is the most powerful antidote to what was done to you, because that's where it was severed, right? No matter how many people I have seen as a trauma informed psychologist, how many people I've seen, you know, heal from so many different traumas, work through so many different traumas, the deepest and most painful layer of healing is forgiving yourself. Always that way is learning to retrust yourself. And that beginning where I didn't have the language, I didn't have the following. I didn't have the theory, and I only had my own body and the reconnection, I am so thankful for that because it was not confusion. It was finding the light and finding and reconnecting to an inner sense of trusting and then experimentation. I trusted, I said it to the client. That worked. Then I grew bolder. To do it with the next client is like, you don't have to only learn from the outside in. And I think especially in the mental health field, there is this continuous sense of we're anxious because we want to do the best with our clients. And then we're being constantly sold new trainings and new things and new. And again, I sell a coaching program. I'm saying all of these things that's like both sides of my mouth. But there is a time to absorb externally, and it can never come at the cost of dismissing and denying the voice inside. And so that's what I would say as a client. When you're in therapy, your therapist's voice should not be overriding that voice that you have internally. It should be strengthening it. Like when you are a therapist, you should not be using somebody else's voice, however big they are, even mine. My boldness hopefully gives people the permission to be bold in their voice. That is what a decolonial approach is all about. Whether you're on the receiving end or whether you're the healer. It is this collaborative commitment to reconnecting internally to that part of us that trauma didn't touch. Because we all have whether. Whether it's spirit. I say the part that never absorbed. It's. It's divine, it's source, it's whatever you.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Want to call it, heal. The rest of you, your therapist is in a book, isn't. Yeah, that's the piece that's.
And it's contagious. So if we're strongly connected to it, our clients will start getting strongly connected to their piece.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: And when you connect to that, you connect to your wholeness. And that's when you realize, oh, I am already whole. I'm trying to change my dynamic with my parents. Okay? But I am whole.
That's a very different place than I am broken, I am less than.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: And then therapy doesn't feel. Everything doesn't feel like it. Oh, it has to be so much work. You have to keep working on yourself. Yes, it's a work, but it's not going against this much resistance.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. And it's going to be a more sustainable way to think about it because no one will ever be healed. We're just going to be healing and living. And that's when you don't turn yourself into a project.
You're still a person. I'm not saying there haven't been seasons where I've done deep trauma work, but then that's not forever. And I didn't do it to then become adequate. I did it because that's a love toward myself, being compassionate toward myself and attuning to what I was needing at that time. But it's the. It's that mindset of I am already whole, I don't need to fix.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: I like that too. I think that's so important for clinicians, of how are you seeking that knowledge? Or that training would ask yourself what energy you're going with first.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: And it comes from that anxiety of like, I'm not enough. What do I have to offer them? What you have to offer them is just holding the fact that they are whole. That's the best gift you can give them. Which starts best by you acknowledging your wholeness. Because like you said, it's contagious. When you have that sense that you are whole, there's almost a confidence, a surrender, and a fate that gets transmitted to clients. And I think so much of the work that we do is energetic, right? That's like everything you hear about. Nervous system regulated. It's body, but it's more than body. It's body and spirit. Right. To get and mind, of course, it's all of you. And when I don't feel like I am broken, that doesn't mean I know everything and every single client. I can help with every single issue. No, but if I know I'm whole, this person is whole, you're going to hold. It's like the medicine woman's prayer, you know, like, I'm not going to fix you. You're not broken. I'm going to be with you as you find your light. And you can't take clients where you've never gone before. And even if Clients don't know you've gone that deep. They will feel it if you have and you're leading them or opening up the door for them or giving them the permission to go that far. And that's that inner work that gets transmitted on an energetic and a spiritual level regardless of, of what's happening. And it, it truly is contagious in that, that anxiety that we're not enough, which is really just a myth that we have taken in from all of the systems and histories that we're talking about.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: It's such an honor to have been able to have this conversation with you. Thank you. Any shout outs for social media website books?
[00:30:03] Speaker A: So like I said, I run the free book club. I also have something called the free translation guide, which people love. That was one of the first things that I did with a client, which is she was telling me that her, you know, immigrant parents always say this particular thing and then she always responds in this way. And I'm like, let's translate it according to their maybe cultural perspective. And I did that and it was like something shifted and I started doing translation work with a lot of my clients. And so I've got a free guide. I've got a Kajabi site that I'll send to you that's got all these. I've got free and low cost resources. I have a course on boundaries. I've got a masterclass on guilt. Like really, I specialize in working with the children of immigrants and all these nuanced things that I think a lot of us struggle with. And I also have individual and group coaching programs. The group one is coming up again in the fall. It only happens once or sometimes twice a year. You can follow me on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook.
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Everything will be in the show notes and you can catch up.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: With Pauline Colleen, the psychologist. And that's really where I share as a labor of love, putting a lot of this education out there, sharing of my journey, and just hopefully validating that you are not alone. We might not have the exact same journey, but the more we share these things, stories, the more we feel less alone in a story that is ours and the more we come into contact with the stories that are ours. And that's, that's empowering and that's part of the healing journey as well. So all the socials and lots of freebies as well as you can check out if you want to be guided or go through the container of things that, you know, for my own life experience and my own clinical experience, I've put together, I have programs for. For all of that that you can check out.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: Perfect. Thank you so much.
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Of course. Thank you for having me. I mean, I love talking about this stuff. I feel like it just puts me in such a good mood. And it's a good reminder that again, I'm talking about it now as this very linear thing. But if you're in some part of this journey, it's feeling confusing. It hasn't all come together. Like, please have trust that it's going to get there. Everybody is on their own path in their own time. And I did not know this, and I did not put it all together years ago. Each small piece added to it. And now I'm speaking it into existence as if, like, people are like, oh, you know, so many of these days. I didn't know this at grad school. So if you're a grad student listening to this, if you're an early career professional, you're putting things together, if you're a client being like, I loved Western therapy and I was drinking the Kool Aid. I'm just beginning to question if it's culturally affecting. Like, wherever you are on that journey. I really want you to trust in yourself and trust in the process, because it is happening in perfect timing for you, honey. It's happening exactly as it is meant to be. It did not happen all at once because I think it would have been way too overwhelming for me. I would have been like, absolutely not. This is not my message. This feels so scary. I'm gonna, like, lose my sense and I. I can't do this. Like, I would have just not wanted to even. Or I would have hated the field and not gone into. So, like, just trust that you're gonna get what you get at the time you need. You don't have to get it all at once. I.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: That's such a good reminder.
[00:33:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: This is not an invitation to be like, okay, I gotta go read a million books and now this type of model and. And then you're just going to do it again in that Western mindset with a different word.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. I'm still learning it in so many different arenas. And so it's still coming together. It will never be fully together because I hope as long as I live, I'm learning and growing and new parts of this and uncovering and unlearning. So just trust, trust, trust in the process, in yourself.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: I'm gonna ask you one more question. Just came up in my head. But you know, when you're talking about the energy work and you just know it and you feel it. Like I've, I've done this and I felt this. I'm like nodding along. Suppose that's like a completely new concept to you of like wait, get in touch with my own self. And that part of me that trauma didn't. What does that even mean? How do I do that? What, what advice could you give to somebody who's just been like, you know, consuming a lot of external sources and trying to work on boundaries and doing stuff and now they're having to pause and do it this other way. How do they start?
[00:34:06] Speaker A: That is such a good question and a really practical one. I would say start with your body, just the basics of your body. How do you know that you're thirsty? Are you checking in with yourself? How do you know what an emphatic yes in your body is? A maybe is and an absolute hell no is. Like just begin. People that are constantly consuming from a place of inadequacy, especially mind wise, they're disconnected.
And trauma is also disconnecting, right? Trauma says I'm going to think about every angle and analyze it from my amygdala rather than feel it because feeling is scary. So just start with your basic biological functions. Start with your basic body cues. Can you get more curious about how does your body communicate to you that you're tired, that it needs rest and how do you know it's rest that is rejuvenating rest versus like adventure rest? Like you need a reset, you need something that might be a little more effortful. How do you know you need a nap versus a hike like this sounds basic, but it is the entryway into spirit. You have to reconnect with the rest of you because you've been head not enough. I need to get what theory you are not listening because you're not even like registering the frequencies of your body meaning physical sensations. Warmth, tension, constriction, expansion, floating heavy. Like just begin with the basics and it's likely I've never met someone that is in that kind of state that is also really good at listening to their body's just basic cues. On the most basic level, they will be doing work and not go to the bathroom even though they need to. They will feel thirsty and not to. They'll feel tired and they'll have that second cup of coffee. They won't even, they'll be overriding. And I know it because I was it. I wasn't. You know, I did that for many, many years. You know, you're Overriding, overriding, overriding. And trauma makes it scary to be in your body. So don't start deeply connecting to spirit. Begin by just being in touch with having a body two times Alarm in the day, maybe morning and night. How does my body feel? Can I take a few deep breaths? Not forcing a deep breath. Inviting. How does that feel? Experiment. Very observational. You're not trying to make something happen.
You're just getting in touch with the fullness of who you are. Like if you don't have connection to your body, you don't have connection to your spirit. Body and spirit, emotions and spirit are very in tune. And our intuition speaks in those whispers. It doesn't usually like yell at us. And so if you're not used to listening to when you're thirsty or you're tired, you're also not going to hear. This isn't the right job for you. Or ship has served its purpose and either it needs to shift or you need to be ready to go. Like you're not going to be quiet enough to listen to those things. If you're just operating as like a walking head, that's it, you know.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: So I think there's so many of us that, I mean I was for forever but yeah, you're just ahead walking around.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: Practical and basic level. Which is kind of a misnomer because people think that it's easy. So hard to do. So hard to do to be in touch with your body. So many things are going to come up. Right. That's why we go to our head to often to escape and disconnect from the lack of safety or the fullness of the experience we register when we are in touch with our bodies. So it has to happen slowly, but it's not easy. But that's the entryway in is.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And that feels less overwhelming that you have to sit down and kind of do this heavy work and meditate.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: If you're in that state, you won't actually be able to access that. It'll just be spinning your gears in the head realm. You know, like you have to be in touch with the body, you know, like that holistic reconnection. Body and mind have to happen before body, mind and spirit come in. Because spirit will talk to you more in body sensations, felt experiences, visions, visuals, a feeling something than it will in actual sentences about things. And so if you're not connected to your body, just you won't be tuned into the frequency or the radio channel to even get that entry in.
[00:38:12] Speaker B: And then if you can't get connect, then you're shaming yourself and then you're spiraling over and over again. So I just, I really like that even just why am I sleeping? Not just am I tired? Where is that desire to sleep coming from? I like that a lot too. Just getting curious and curious.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: Really, really basic one is to reconnect to the natural world. When we reconnect to the natural world in many ways we do reconnect to the body. Being in nature resets our circadian rhythm. It helps us to sleep better, it slows us down, it like does a lot physiologically for us and we can feel awe and wonder which really excites expand us and get us into a spirit place. So really if it's hard for you to even take care of those basic things, Another simple thing is just being in nature because we are part of the natural world and you will feel things and have access to things when you are in nature. That I think being in our fast paced, really digitized world disconnects us from further and makes us more headed. And so I think it is important if you don't even know where to start with taking care of your basic needs because you know the health and wellness industry has just kind of co opted that and made everything this like optimal this and all the supplements and all that. You know, if that feels overwhelming or gets you into a perfectionistic place, just get back to the basics of being in nature because you are part of the natural world. And reconnecting to being a part of the natural world slows us down. But like it deepens our roots and it gets us connected as well as broadens our feeling that we belong to something bigger than ourselves. So nature is a really powerful and kind of potent way to reconnect to the body as well. And many of us just don't do it enough.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Beautifully said. Thank you so much.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Thank you for having me. These are the topics I love to talk about, so to talk about them with you makes me so, so happy.
[00:39:53] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Yes, very enlightening. I know I'm going to be sitting with a lot of the stuff you said and it's going to integrate in different way hopefully. Until next time. Sounds good. Take care.
Join the movement and keep the conversation going@deconstructing therapy.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at deconstructingtherapy. If you found value in today's episode, please subscribe and rate us on Spotify and Apple podcasts. If you are able to and would like to help sustain the podcast. You can find us at buymeacoffee.com deconstructingtherapy to show your support.
Thank you for listening.
