[SPEAKER_04]: Therapy Chat podcast episode 513.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the Therapy Chat podcast with Laura Regan, LCSWC.
[SPEAKER_02]: The information shared in this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health professional.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now, here's your host, Laura Regan, LCSWC.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, welcome back to Therapy Chat.
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to the 2026 New Year episode.
[SPEAKER_04]: I said it last year's New Year episode that 2025's podcast episodes would focus more on grief.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know I'm not the only one who was grieving throughout 2025 for a variety of reasons.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I did lose my dad at the end of 2024, and it was very present for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: As 2026 begins, it's been nearly six years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed more than one million people in the US, according to the Johns Hopkins
[SPEAKER_04]: coronavirus resource center, and the people of the U.S. are facing high unemployment, increasingly unaffordable costs of living, loss of trust in the institutions that dominate culture once took for granted, deteriorating protections for our freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to peacefully protest as guaranteed by the constitution.
[SPEAKER_04]: people who immigrated to the U.S. and have been living here legally are being told they're no longer allowed to stay, being deported to places they've never lived, maybe places where they don't speak the language, some are facing torture and secret prisons, some don't know their families don't know where they are.
[SPEAKER_04]: families and children separated.
[SPEAKER_04]: Progress toward a more just and equitable society has been rolled back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Billionaires wealth continues to grow at the expense of the rest of us.
[SPEAKER_04]: And on top of that, many people are quite concerned about what's in the obscene files.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot to be sad about, a lot to be angry about, a lot to fear.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if we're reacting to our fear, we may feel powerless.
[SPEAKER_04]: You've heard me say this before, and many of my guests have affirmed this as well that the truth is that love is the most powerful force.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's more powerful than hate, beer or violence, and people have power.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have the power of love, there's power in connection.
[SPEAKER_04]: and there are many reasons to be hopeful.
[SPEAKER_04]: So in this new year episode, I'll share some clips from some of 2025's therapy chat episodes that I found inspiring.
[SPEAKER_04]: In hopes that they'll offer you some hope, comfort, or something that you need at the time when you're listening.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're feeling grief, you're not alone, Francis Weller, who's one of the,
[SPEAKER_04]: People all will hear from on this week's episode and many others who he's learned from and who we've all learned from would say that it's part of our human condition to feel grief and it's a result of moving away from the connection to the land and other humans as well as the more than human world.
[SPEAKER_04]: As we talked about in my interview with Francis Sweller in Episode 494, whether consciously or unconsciously, we humans are reacting to a loss of connection with the natural world due to what we call progress, the effects of living in modern times, modernity, in this culture of dominance and empire.
[SPEAKER_04]: So here's a clip from that conversation.
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, what is the invitation of the times that we are in right now?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, certainly one of them is to break through our fixations with capitalism.
[SPEAKER_03]: with colonialism, with domination, we're being forced in a way to confront the legacy of what happens when you abandon Seoul.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you abandon Seoul, you basically abandon community.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you abandon community, you buy another comment.
[SPEAKER_03]: If you abandon the comments, there's nothing there that can sustain a people.
[SPEAKER_03]: And we are right at that threshold right now.
[SPEAKER_03]: We might not even
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we've never had to really consider that before.
[SPEAKER_03]: We do now.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, this is where we are.
[SPEAKER_03]: And what is possibly big enough to hold the complexity of that type of reality?
[SPEAKER_03]: And to me, the only answer is soul.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's scary to be living in this time and it's one thing that your work has
[SPEAKER_04]: plant seeds of that there could be possibility.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think because I realized when I read the wild edge of sorrow, I've been pretty much impacted by grief.
[SPEAKER_04]: My whole life, because when I was six, my parents split up in my mom's left and so that loss of my mom, even though,
[SPEAKER_04]: She was, she didn't die, she was still around, but it was like that ambiguous loss, but I couldn't really be with her.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like that's, that's the, like, shape of my life is framed by that loss.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I began to notice how for myself,
[SPEAKER_04]: understand that one, I've looked at endings as the end and not as cycles of change, you know, like, so all change feels like, oh, no, no, you know, no, no, it's got to be like it was.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it can be really hard to
[SPEAKER_04]: grasp a possibility outside of just like there's this ending and that's it and it's all over that and you know like psychically it's like nothing's ever gonna be okay you know but there's something to about the way that like what a child needs from their family growing up that feeling
[SPEAKER_04]: this to be here and hold me.
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's sort of what's been shattered culturally in the Western world.
[SPEAKER_04]: And as you write about in your in the wild edge of sorrow, you speak about modernity, and I know it comes into this book as well, that that has taken that sense of being held by something
[SPEAKER_04]: beyond the individual that is inherent to indigenous cultures and missing from Western culture.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the passage you read about sovereignty into the sea, uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's very much at the heart of what you're saying, is that the soul has the simultaneous capacity and necessity of honoring the uniqueness of this incarnation.
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no one like Laura anywhere, there's no one like Francis anywhere, you know?
[SPEAKER_03]: That uniqueness is our job to articulate that and express that.
[SPEAKER_03]: The other side of it is to recognize the soul hasn't ongoing longing to participate in
[SPEAKER_03]: whether it's the human world, or the more than human world of animals, and trees, and sky, moon, and cosmos.
[SPEAKER_03]: So simultaneously, the soul has this dance between those two realities.
[SPEAKER_03]: Western, white Western culture in particular has focused almost 100% on the sovereignty piece of it, but not even sovereignty because true sovereignty recognizes it that it's embedded in community.
[SPEAKER_03]: were much more self-centered, individualistically centered, not sovereignty, but individualism.
[SPEAKER_03]: That again is that feeling of being cut off and separated.
[SPEAKER_03]: So one of the things you learn when you're working with grief a lot is that the very few of us ever received the conditions under which our grief could stay fluid and keep moving.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's almost impossible to process your grief in isolation.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we learn to become holders of grief.
[SPEAKER_03]: We learn how to compact it and, you know, I can write about in the wild larger sorrow, people come into my practice and say, I'm depressed and I would listen to them and realize, let's not depression, that's old pressure, that's the weight of untouched sorrows.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then when you sit longer with it, you realize these sorrows are generations old.
[SPEAKER_03]: So not where it's not where we're only carrying our own current grief.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm also carrying ancestral grief and I'm also absorbing the grief around me on any given day of what's happening to our watersheds or what's happening to our sense of decency and democracy.
[SPEAKER_03]: How can we not be affected by that?
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the rub, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_04]: The weights have untouched sorrows.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've definitely been feeling that.
[SPEAKER_04]: What about you?
[SPEAKER_04]: Does that resonate with you at all?
[SPEAKER_04]: If so, Francis is new book in the absence of the ordinary soul work for uncertain times may interest you and there's a link to that in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So as I mentioned, over the past year, people have begun to feel they don't know who to trust and many people have cut ties with acquaintances as well as friends and family over political differences.
[SPEAKER_04]: I talked with Thomas H. U.
[SPEAKER_04]: Bull, PhD in episode 471.
[SPEAKER_04]: and we talked about how if healing doesn't happen collectively, it continues to cycle through generations.
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is what we're seeing now in our society.
[SPEAKER_04]: But coming together is possible.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's listen to a clip from that conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started with this work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe 23 to 25 years ago, and it started off in
[SPEAKER_00]: in the German-speaking part of Europe, like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and what got, and in the groups that I was running, then very soon, of course, the history of the second world were Holocaust.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean almost every participant had that in their family system somehow.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw this kind of patterns emerge because the similar things happen again and again and again just with different participants and so then I felt well life is actually showing to me something showing me something that I need to learn more about and so that's what's the beginning of learning like a long journey like 20 some years of learning about collective trauma
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we did more work between Germany and Jewish participants or Israel and we did work on the Holocaust and the Holocaust trauma and survivors from Holocaust like of concentration camps or the descendants and Nazi descendants.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it very deep and strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you can imagine this is a very charged and strong space.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we had amazing space like it was almost like, when we reached a certain depth, there was such a sacredness in the room also.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of transformation and healing that happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we began to do work on colonialism around the world, racism, and different, different collective trauma fields around the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: We built a lot of projects, NGOs like we did a lot in this 20s, some years and trained many people and yeah, and so we that's a short run through this this work, but
[SPEAKER_00]: that trauma is not just, I mean, not just it's not only a personal experience, but it's actually a system.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we are living in that system and we have normalized some of the systemic aspects of collective trauma and say, this is how the world is.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how the world is when it's hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there are other parts that that's how the world is when it's integrated and healthy and so but to create the discernment I think is what life taught me through the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it's, you know, in my work.
[SPEAKER_04]: In some ways, some of what I've done in my, in my work has been like trying to make systemic change.
[SPEAKER_04]: I, I started out working with survivors of sexual violence.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was like an individual experience that's also a very common experience for groups.
[SPEAKER_04]: And,
[SPEAKER_04]: used in groups, even, you know, in ways of harming people as groups.
[SPEAKER_04]: And a systemic thing that, you know, goes through.
[SPEAKER_04]: generations.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, but I haven't done much in collective trauma like experiences of war, or, you know, people who've been forced, forced migration, things like that, racism, I care about those things.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just, that hasn't been my work.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's really valuable to me
[SPEAKER_04]: peoples are impacted by trauma and how we can heal collectively as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: I see so much in my work and I'm a therapist working with people individually.
[SPEAKER_04]: part of movements as well, you know, with the sexual violence work and other movements, but, you know, you see the historical context and you look at the world right now and see these sort of trends of chaos, violence, political unrest, you know, poverty, deprivation,
[SPEAKER_04]: the effects of colonization and wars, which are part of, you know, the colonization process as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so then you have generations upon generations of traumatized people, including the people who were part of the group that was perpetrating the violence and the ones who were victimized in that time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Who then are going, you know, the survivors and their descendants are going on and trying to live and trying to make and reproduce, you know, and from the place of a lot of unresolved pain and hurt like you said, but you know, I feel like that we don't things don't get resolved and then just continues to repeat in various ways all around the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it seems like it's like, why is this happening?
[SPEAKER_04]: But if you look at the systemic picture, you can kind of see how it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just a look there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think you said it really beautifully.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like if we, maybe for a certain time, the pain is so big that we need to bury it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that we all know that this defense mechanisms are intelligent to keep us surviving and to maybe after catastrophe, like a war or whatever any kind of collective trauma we need at some time to just rebuild the necessities of life, the most basic needs.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think, as you said, we know enough, and that's what I often say now, it's like we know enough about trauma that not having a collective architecture and a mainstream culture around integration of legacies that we have inherited is not responsible anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: unconsciously enrolled in the repetition compulsion, and then we see that cyclically the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know it in ourselves that patterns show up and they come back again and again and we know it in our intimate relationships and we know it's in our parenting maybe that we have similar conversations again and again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it feels like certain things are developing and certain things they are not developing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just replaying themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think if we know
[SPEAKER_00]: after 400 years of slavery racism and or after Holocaust or after dictatorship or after, you know, as you said, the gender violence, if we don't have an architecture that says, okay, we have a professional architecture that can take care of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will take its time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a quick fix, but we have something and that needs to be invented.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that doesn't exist yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: that collective healing is a collective endeavor.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think if governments fund that process, it's a sign that it landed enough in the society, that this is a need, that we need to pay attention to.
[SPEAKER_00]: If not, we are going to reproduce a similar pain again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it looks like, oh, now we are so technologically advanced.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we developed all kinds of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: This will never happen again.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we look at history how often it happened again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think something new is needed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I think understanding that this systemic wounds need to be brought into our attention as a collective.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we need to have collective healing spaces, and I believe also discuss it to develop how collectives can heal themselves.
[SPEAKER_04]: As Thomas named in that discussion, we know healing needs to happen on a collective level, or we will continue repeating the same patterns that have been happening throughout human history.
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel the lesson for me in the last year was about connection with myself, not being distracted away from connecting with the parts of myself that need my capital S self-energy as they'd say in IFS.
[SPEAKER_04]: In February 2025, I went on a weekend, get away with my partner to Tulum, Mexico.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was my first visit there, though I've been to that part of Mexico a few times.
[SPEAKER_04]: Before that, the energy is so magical in Tulum and some say it's a healing vortex.
[SPEAKER_04]: While there, I decided to create a telemetry for therapists, which I'll share more about.
[SPEAKER_04]: But that's now scheduled for April 2026, and I'm planning a second retreat in the same beachfront location in November.
[SPEAKER_04]: So both of these are for therapists only, and the information for the April retreat, which still has space for more participants, is on the trauma therapist network website, and it's in the show notes for this episode.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll add the dates and registration information for the November retreat to the website soon.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if April isn't going to work for you, keep an eye out for the November retreat.
[SPEAKER_04]: I would love to have you there.
[SPEAKER_04]: In March, 2025, my family held a memorial service for my dad, so he passed away in November, and it was a few months before the memorial service took place.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is of course a very important way to honor his life and the love I have for him.
[SPEAKER_04]: And unfortunately, as I'm learning, there's a lot of trauma tangled up with the love for my dad.
[SPEAKER_04]: That trauma is asking to be faced and dealt with alongside my grief.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's been an opportunity now being able to access trauma, which was hidden away, frozen in time and space, waiting for me to be ready to feel it and release it, let it move through, and be metabolized along with its lessons.
[SPEAKER_04]: So those parts are now here, and they are, they've been here all along, but now they're asking for my attention.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now where I've had the trauma from so many years ago, literally 40 years prior to my dad's death.
[SPEAKER_04]: when we had a traumatic separation because, well, it happened in response to an incident that occurred when I was 13, not with my dad for the record, that incident caused me and my dad to be separated.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my body has been holding that ever since.
[SPEAKER_04]: with my conscious mind unaware of what it was my body was holding.
[SPEAKER_04]: These parts have stolen that trauma been there, impacting how I saw myself, how I related to myself and others.
[SPEAKER_04]: And as painful as it was to face that trauma, I'm grateful that I was finally able to access it and begin to receive the messages it holds for me.
[SPEAKER_04]: What I've learned so far may be helpful to you, too.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is that I am here to serve others.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's my professional role and that's kind of a life's mission.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it's dangerous to lose connection with myself and service to others.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's important for all of us who are in the helping professions to pay attention to.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't need to look for anyone to protect me because I've been the one who was protected myself and found a way to survive every act of violence that has happened in my life so far.
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea of being a powerless victim is a reaction to trauma.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not a reality about me or you while we may be helpless in a moment when trauma is occurring or not any
[SPEAKER_04]: reaction that we're having is a survival strategy.
[SPEAKER_04]: We choose connection, but we must not lose connection with ourselves for the sake of connection with others.
[SPEAKER_04]: In episodes 4, 74, and 475, Amber Treho, a marriage of family therapist in Indiana, and I talked about how complex trauma can arise when grief is activated.
[SPEAKER_04]: One way to think about it is that the younger part's holding
[SPEAKER_04]: or whatever other unmet needs they're holding, come up for our attention through the grieving process.
[SPEAKER_04]: So here's a clip from my conversation with Amber in episode 4704 that illustrates an example of how our childhood trauma can pop right up in really subtle ways.
[SPEAKER_04]: Amber and I did these episodes
[SPEAKER_04]: grieving and recovering from the trauma of losing one of our primary caregivers for me my dad for her mom.
[SPEAKER_04]: And in this clip, she shares about how when her mother was sick with lung cancer and her child, Amber's child was the same age she was when she experienced some significant trauma from her mom.
[SPEAKER_04]: At the time, they had reconnected, but younger part to perk on activated because it felt so much like her childhood years with her mom, maybe even unconsciously.
[SPEAKER_04]: She explains in this clip.
[SPEAKER_05]: My mom was really neglectful at that time.
[SPEAKER_05]: She started drinking so much and things like that.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I was also really like in a little bit of an emotional flashback, having my mom there and then having my son be the same age.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was when so much of these really traumatic things happened to me.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, so it was just really, really complicated.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I felt that the sticker she got, the meaner she got, um, towards me again, and, and that was hard.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, I wanted to be able to show up for her.
[SPEAKER_05]: I wanted to, and I didn't always do it the right way, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Because I think I had also,
[SPEAKER_05]: started sharing about more about my trauma on my content creation around this time, like shortly before, which is another piece that makes it really complicated because my mom never denied that she did the things she did, but she had a really hard time accepting that it was as traumatic as I made it out to be, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: It was kind of like, well, you just talk about how you went through so much trauma and I was like, well, I did.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so we had some really good conversations around that.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I was able to explain to my mom what CPTSD was and what was probably happening to her while she was having those reactive moments towards her children.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she was, you know, really like, oh, I didn't note, you know, and so that was helpful.
[SPEAKER_05]: But at the same time, it was also just so complicated.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like that role reversal too, which is very much like what is so common for a child in a single parent home, you know, where they're sort of unconsciously parenting the parent, even if the parent doesn't realize it, the child's like suppressing their own needs for the good of the relationship, which is really their way of trying to get their needs met, obviously.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I love that you mentioned that.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm not sure did that ever come up with you with your dad, the role reversal.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I didn't really think it did, but sometimes now when I look back, I realize that there were a lot of things that I suppressed without him consciously telling me to or directly saying for me to because I didn't feel that he could handle my emotions.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, it was like, you know, a lot of times people think that parentification is something that parents do to the kids by
[SPEAKER_04]: Making them meet their needs, you know, and sometimes it is like when a child has to go to the grocery store when they're four or five years old because the parent is sick or something like that, like that is more direct you have to go because I can't do it, but when it's more subtle like you just can sense kids can sense what their parents can handle and can't and sometimes it's inaccurate, but the parent the child is.
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, it's like maybe the parent could handle it, but the child doesn't feel they can't.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they are suppressing in any way, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I think that's really, really confusing.
[SPEAKER_05]: It is really confusing and it's really common.
[SPEAKER_05]: I love that you named that because it's, I think that a lot of people think it's something parents intentionally do, but a lot of times it's the same thing with regularly, like with our emotions, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, like if we
[SPEAKER_05]: If our parent always has these really big emotions, like we're naturally going to be like, there's no space for our emotions.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then that's one way that that shows up.
[SPEAKER_04]: The next week after the memorial service for my dad that was in March, the following week, I went to the Psychotherapy Network or Symposium.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had an exhibit booth there for Toronto Therapist Network and I talked with thousands of therapists.
[SPEAKER_04]: was so inspiring to be surrounded by so many good people who care about helping others.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll be there again this year, by the way, so if you're going, come say hi to me.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll have a booth with Trauma Therapist Network, and I'll have special offers and discounts on TTN membership.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can join on the spot if you've been waiting.
[SPEAKER_04]: In April, I went to Boulder, Colorado.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was like a week or two after psychotherapy network or so like the gear was moving at a pretty fast and furious pace even though I was trying to
[SPEAKER_04]: slow down in the honor, my grief, but life keeps on going and businesses need to be run.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so I went to Boulder to record the course that I created with therapy with some.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was really challenging, mustering up the courage and strength to do that when I was dealing with so much trauma and grief myself at the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was so happy with how it turned out.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks to their amazing team, especially Asa, the director, who was so patient and helpful.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was feeling really sensitive to be sharing this very vulnerable material about therapy techniques for working with survivors of sexual trauma.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a population so dear to my heart.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the first course I've ever created, worked on a course before, but I've never been able to actually make one and have it done and ready for purchase, but who knew the prominent role the Epstein files, the Diddy trial, and so many other moments of violence and abuse of power would play out in our collective consciousness in 2025.
[SPEAKER_04]: dominated the news.
[SPEAKER_04]: As much as I was unsure how the course would be received, the feedback I'm getting.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's me know that most therapists are not trained in trauma sensitive, semantically oriented therapies with survivors of sexual trauma.
[SPEAKER_04]: People who have enrolled in the course are telling me they've found it really helpful, and that it's helped them recognize some aspects of their own experiences of victimization, which were previously out of their conscious
[SPEAKER_04]: Identifying our blind spots is so important for us as helping professionals because those blind spots when we're not aware of them can lead us to ethical missteps and biases that harm our clients Recognizing what's affecting us makes us better at our jobs
[SPEAKER_04]: avoids doing harm.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that course is available now through Academy of Therapy Wisdom.
[SPEAKER_04]: So be sure to look for the link in the show notes if you're a therapist or other helping professional who doesn't already have that type of training.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like most don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: Survivors of sexual violence are in our midst and we ourselves may be survivors without conscious awareness as was true of me.
[SPEAKER_04]: but our biases will definitely get in the way of our therapeutic work if we don't address them.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you haven't received training and working effectively with survivors of sexual trauma, I recommend that minimum watching the free video linked in the show notes and considering whether the course could be helpful to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: This pretty affordable therapy was done and I predict it will change the way you think about sexual violence.
[SPEAKER_04]: And hopefully the way you approach work human survivors, or you'll find out that you despite your lack of training were kind of instinctively on the right path.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think in 2026, the year the firehorse, more and more humans will recognize the way they've been impressed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we'll see it rise in rejection of the forces of domination and victimization as people reconnect with their sense of empowerment, which has always been there, but may have been hidden due to trauma reactions.
[SPEAKER_04]: From this empowered space,
[SPEAKER_04]: We will come together to protect our neighbors from those who wish to do them harm and we'll find strength to believe that together, we can create a world where all are free and safe from harm and act on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe that won't all happen in one year, but I am encouraged at how I'm seeing people begin to wake up to the truth that what hurts one of us hurts us all.
[SPEAKER_04]: As this week, we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, this quote of his rings true.
[SPEAKER_04]: we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.
[SPEAKER_04]: Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
[SPEAKER_04]: In June of 2025, I traveled to southern Italy for a training in a beautiful setting with a great group of therapists.
[SPEAKER_04]: You may have heard me talking about the authenticity training, authenticity therapy training with Yutie Maro.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it was the person who developed authenticity training.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she has been a guest on my podcast last year as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: being away from the bad news in this country for eight days was really the reset my nervous system needed at that time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had the chance to orient to a different pace of life and it's such a cliche for Americans to say this after going to Europe, but there's a reason we say it because people there are living for what's important family food rest.
[SPEAKER_04]: what they're passionate about and work is what people do for a certain number of hours each day to pay for expenses, unlike in the US where work is an identity for so many of us and really this is true on the east coast.
[SPEAKER_04]: The first question you ask when you meet people is, what do you do?
[SPEAKER_04]: As if what we do for work is who we are.
[SPEAKER_04]: For those of us, those of you listening who are therapists, it can be really hard to turn off that identity of being a therapist.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so woven into human relationships.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we do need.
[SPEAKER_04]: ways to set that down and just be as Americans.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't take enough time away from work because our whole culture is obsessed with work and productivity.
[SPEAKER_04]: We work to live and live to work but who benefits from that?
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean we benefit by receiving our paycheck so we can afford to pay to live.
[SPEAKER_04]: But really, the ones who are benefiting are not the workers.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the corporations and billionaires reaping the rewards of our labor.
[SPEAKER_04]: For me, COVID was the first thing that really may be in look at my relationship to working.
[SPEAKER_04]: I used to pride myself on having a strong work ethic, but now I see more balances needed in order for me to sustain my career for the next 30 years.
[SPEAKER_04]: And my health.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this trip to Italy led me to recommit to myself that I'm going to ship my clinical practice toward offering more retreats and intensives so that I can help people do deep work and contain the amounts of time and have more flexibility in my schedule.
[SPEAKER_04]: to that I can take more time for rest and my interests and not have my life revolving around my work schedule.
[SPEAKER_04]: So when I think about this idea of balance and overgiving, abandoning connection with myself and service to connection with others, and the pain of witnessing the violence and brutality of this domination-focused world,
[SPEAKER_04]: In 2025, I spoke to many inspiring people who are leaders in their communities and are doing good things in the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: One of them was Dr. Sabrina and Jay, who I also had the beautiful opportunity to spend a little time with in person when I attended a talk Dr. Dan Sequel gave him Baltimore.
[SPEAKER_04]: And she was there too.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's a clip from my conversation with Dr. Sabrina, who now has her own podcast on YouTube called SoulSpeak Conversations for Your Healing Journey.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a link in the show notes to that podcast.
[SPEAKER_06]: And as a therapist, sometimes I'm trying to find that balance between giving it away and keeping for myself being an entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur, which is what we both are.
[SPEAKER_06]: and trying to find that balance but recognizing that I don't own anything and I don't want to worship the money but I do want to make an honest living.
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's the balance between serving humanity and making a living that I love about what we do and I also think that's why we're disproportionately led by women.
[SPEAKER_06]: Because we do have that capacity to hold people without quantifying them, and I'd love that about us.
[SPEAKER_06]: I wish there were more men doing our work, but they're coming, they're coming along, we're creating some, there's a few coming along and I'm excited about them too.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm excited about the men that sit with us that want to relinquish that.
[SPEAKER_06]: until that goal of those notions, because they're a lot of them, they're tired, their hearts are heavy, and they're ready to do some different, I have one come and shortly.
[SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, they get me excited.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm, you know, in the midst of all this happening in the world, I'm really still excited.
[SPEAKER_06]: I still believe in humans.
[SPEAKER_06]: I believe that this is all a test, it's all a trial.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm really trying to pass the test.
[SPEAKER_06]: I want to help other people pass it too.
[SPEAKER_04]: I keep returning to, in this connects with what you said about us all having a divine purpose.
[SPEAKER_04]: I keep returning to this idea.
[SPEAKER_04]: We were born in this time for some reason.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what is it, you know, like, and it's not just like, well, what is it?
[SPEAKER_04]: What is my path?
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, if you're on a path, you're moving towards something you're already working in that energy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, you know, because sometimes when I ask myself, well, what, if I'm here for a purpose, what is it?
[SPEAKER_04]: What am I going to do?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, well, I have, it's not like I haven't been doing anything.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: What?
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, and it can be hard sometimes to recognize what we have done and what we do, how we have contributed.
[SPEAKER_04]: versus like, but there's so much that needs to be done and I should be doing more and all of that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's that balance piece again with, as you said, everything's always changing.
[SPEAKER_04]: So balance is an illusion, too, in a way, because we're constantly trying to figure out where it's a balance in this moment, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And, and you know, it's a really good question that
[SPEAKER_06]: do your part.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And if your part is having this beautiful podcast and running that organization and impacting other healers, that's a huge part.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's huge.
[SPEAKER_06]: And if you, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: you know, that's it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's that's all we have to do.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was talking to someone recently and she was all distraught over policies and politics.
[SPEAKER_06]: And she said to me, this is the worst time in history.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I said, oh honey, honey, honey, you called the descendants of slaves,
[SPEAKER_06]: to tell me that this is the worst time in history.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let me tell you honey, it's not.
[SPEAKER_06]: She's like, oh yeah, you're right.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not.
[SPEAKER_06]: It might be the worst time for you.
[SPEAKER_06]: I would agree that it is the worst time for you right now in your history, it is the worst time for you.
[SPEAKER_06]: But if we look in the big scheme of things, it's not the worst time in history.
[SPEAKER_06]: But it is changed, and it is hard, and it is funky, and it doesn't smell good, and it's changed.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it changed moves.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And in a weird way that what you mentioned about the time and history of enslavement here, specifically we're thinking of right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: And a weird way that's given me that's helped me keep perspective since things have been so chaotic.
[SPEAKER_04]: I keep saying, well, how did people continue to love them?
[SPEAKER_04]: How did they?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because they did.
[SPEAKER_04]: People made babies.
[SPEAKER_04]: So many didn't survive.
[SPEAKER_04]: So many also did survive.
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it reminds me it checks me as a white woman.
[SPEAKER_04]: People have been through, even myself personally, the things that I've been through in my personal life, I've been through worse things than what's happening out in the world and I lived through those things.
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_06]: And are your people Irish?
[SPEAKER_06]: Are you Irish to sin?
[SPEAKER_06]: Your people have been through worse things.
[SPEAKER_04]: The what you're experiencing right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can hear our full conversation in episode 487.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's helpful to keep in perspective that while what's happening right now, the violence and the chaos and the destruction of our civil society are not okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can survive this change even though it's scary and we can do more than in door.
[SPEAKER_04]: We don't just sit back and wait for someone to rescue us as one of Dick Schwartz's books is entitled, you are the one you've been waiting for.
[SPEAKER_04]: we in the U.S. have been conditioned and in some ways anesthetized by modernity to think that we only exist to work and buy things.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we were built to survive hard times and we have that capacity within us.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have the ability to stand up for what we believe is right and to advocate for those who have less power.
[SPEAKER_04]: If we find ourselves collapsing, wanting to curl into a ball and hide, that's a normal response to the trauma we're experiencing.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we need to recognize that it is a trauma response.
[SPEAKER_04]: Six support, tend to ourselves.
[SPEAKER_04]: And remember that we do have within ourselves the power to take action.
[SPEAKER_04]: We always hear how this isn't unprecedented situation,
[SPEAKER_04]: Hopefully, we can find a kind or way forward in these hard times, coming together and remembering we all deserve to feel safe as how we do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can do something differently this time, bring everyone along into this better world that is ahead, get rid of the hierarchical structures, defining more or less worthiness and know that we are all worthy.
[SPEAKER_04]: In our interview last year,
[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Dan Siegel, who's a medical doctor and a scientist, talked about the reality that diversity is better for us as a species, biologically than homogeneity.
[SPEAKER_04]: So this idea of one group being more worthy than another group of survival is just not biologically true for us as a human species.
[SPEAKER_04]: Here is a clip from our conversation episode 496 where he speaks about,
[SPEAKER_04]: what he sees as the way forward.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, we're in this together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't the thing?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in this together.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are sufficient, and we need each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: And needing each other doesn't mean we're insufficient.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just means we're relational beings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we become who we are in our connections.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the work to reconnect.
[SPEAKER_01]: The quantum social change that Karen O'Brien is beautifully writing about is basically saying,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the whole nature of a quantum view versus an atonian view is that we are verb-like processes that are massively connected with one another, an atonian mental view of life is we are now like entities that are separate from one another, time space, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Dimensions which don't have the same meaning in the quantum realm.
[SPEAKER_01]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, all these things kind of are coming together with indigenous teachings, contemplative teachings, so it's not like it's new.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is thousands of years old on one level.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for those that's growing up in modern and individualistic cultures, these calls from Count O'Brien and Joanna Maysee, they're really calls to wake up to indigenous teachings, to contemplative wisdom, and to say, okay, you know, if we want to be,
[SPEAKER_01]: only scientific about it, which we don't have to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if we wanted to be, now there's a science that goes along with these ancient teachings, these wisdom teachings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's an incredibly exciting moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Joanne is always saying, for her body was done, you know, I'd go to dinner with her and say, hey, you're doing with a new UN report.
[SPEAKER_01]: She goes, you know, it's really hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm grieving the fact that our human family is not doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have so excited to be alive.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much work for us to do, you know, and it really always gave me inspiration to hang with her because
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what else is there to do but give it a big try as my daughter tells me, you know, to be really passionate about the purpose and the direction, but not obsessed about the specific outcome and so we're going to do this together, do it with fun and humor or do it together and no direction is an integrated direction.
[SPEAKER_01]: to become generative, not degenerative, to become inclusive, not exclusive, to be allowing differentiated voices and bringing them all to the table.
[SPEAKER_01]: bringing them to the guiding forces that are directing us, not just saying, okay, let them have this land over there, or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's wonder of richness in our diversity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I understand some people are traumatized and want just things to be exactly like they are, or whatever, and you know, and we gotta help them heal.
[SPEAKER_01]: and realize that the truth that love is an integrative emergence of all of us honoring our differences.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's health and that's a health statement of making not a political statement.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is some saying it as a scientist, as a physician, as a psychotherapist, integration honors differences in promote linkages and it's a medical statement.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when we see the chaos and rigidity that arise when we don't promote integration, you can feel the suffering of that emerges all over the place, and that's when integration is not being honored.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you know, we have a kind of a clear path.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an integrative path if we're going to be healers and health promoters and advocates for the truth.
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure that that is the way forward because it's about, you know, how do we, where do we go from here, not looking back and saying, well, not that, you know, there isn't a lot of value and understanding how we got here, but, you know, now what not just trying to contract and do things the same way that, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I know we got to stop soon in Newtonian time, but it was for the extended time.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you, if you feel into, we do this in the, all the interpersonal neurovlogy stuff, but if you feel where there's chaos or where there's rigidity, whether it's in a classroom or a company or a country or a planet, you know integration is being impaired.
[SPEAKER_01]: our job can be integrationists.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if it's in the small thing of your own internal mind, do the work.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are nine domains of integration you can work on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's just within your family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's just within the community.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's just within your state.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's just within your country.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe it's just within the planet.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just our human family, whatever the chest is, don't worry about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You start making little changes.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the idea of quantum social change.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are going to be ripple effects.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you don't want to do the quantum stuff, you know, Christachus and Fowler of this incredible book, I'll connect it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You start bringing integration into whatever is the just world.
[SPEAKER_01]: You bring justice, which is integration made visible too.
[SPEAKER_01]: You bring that in the world, and that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that's the work we do.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, it is in your personality to do.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do that, and we're not helpless.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when you feel helpless, get helpful and there's a lot for us to do and it's a beautiful thing I do it with joy, do it with a smile in your face, because we can do this together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or I like to say, you know, not just we need we, MW, we can do this together.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's a very helpful note for us to end on with our new years episode.
[SPEAKER_04]: We are in this together.
[SPEAKER_04]: We are doing this thing called life as the artist's formerly known as Prince once said.
[SPEAKER_04]: I hope you're finding community where you are or making community.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you don't have what you need in that regard.
[SPEAKER_04]: For therapists, I have two ways to support you in connection with your peers.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're welcome to join trauma therapists network and be a part of our beautiful community, which meets live every week on Zoom.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you need some space to rest, restore, recover, heal and reset, place consider joining us in the mind body and soul healing retreat until in Mexico, which takes place in April, 2026.
[SPEAKER_04]: As I mentioned, a second retreat is planned for November.
[SPEAKER_04]: and the dates will be announced on my social media and the trauma therapists network website.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's a link in the show notes to get the information about the retreat.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you need more support and staying well while you support others, whether you're therapist or other helping professional, over the next couple months therapy chat will include many episodes about Vicarious trauma, burnout prevention,
[SPEAKER_04]: and resourcing ourselves with self-care.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you won't want to miss those.
[SPEAKER_04]: A head in 2026, I have a bunch of fascinating topics lined up for you and many wonderful guests, including Linda Tye, Dr. Leslie Corn, Achila Riley Richardson, Zabi Yamasaki,
[SPEAKER_04]: And so so so so so so so so many more and I have a long, long list of people who I need to send scheduling links to so if we've talked about having you on and you haven't heard from me feel free to check in with me because I'm working my way through the list that I have and
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to miss anyone.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm looking forward to having some more conversations about sexual trauma, about attachment, and collective healing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Akila is going to talk about her work with marginalized couples in therapy, which is so good.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's so much good stuff coming up.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just can't wait to share all of that with you, but until then, thank you for listening to Therapy Chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate you so much.