In "Circle" with Trauma Coach Marisa Wandeler on Decolonizing Healing Practices, Resilience and Consent

Marisa Wandeler is a trauma Coach in the somatic mind-body realm with a heavy emphasis on decolonized Psychology. She leans on indigenous practices and meets virtually one-on-one with clients from all over the world to experience their stories as an empathetic witness. 

Marisa says that COVID has shown that in America we have not been equipped to process or handle this current level of suffering. She names  it’s been hard because pre-COVID she was already doing difficult work with her clients in terms of story work and trauma work... Now it’s at a whole new level with totally different layers of coping, resilience and equipping ourselves and one another to move forward in what will be impacting us emotionally for decades to come.

Maggie recalls a post from Marisa’s Instagram (@Latina_heals) about resilience: “The goal of building resilience is not strength or toughness. The goal of resilience is increasing the flexibility and adaptability of the body and brain in navigating the inconsistencies and unexpected of life.”

Marisa says the conversation around resilience starts first with identity and how our bodies are storied in society. “The notion that resilience is really about toughing things out, or being strong enough, or mentally positive enough, isn’t for everyone.” She says that depending on your story, you’ll have different resiliency skills. For People of Color and people who are continually marginalized, positivity isn’t enough. What does it look like in the body and brain to be under stress? Resilience is about how  the body experiences  stress and when that same stress comes up again in our lives, are we able to cope with it in healthy ways? “Resilience is not about effort so much as it is about equipping.”  Marisa says that it doesn’t put us all on an level playing field but it does give us the mutuality of humanity—we all have a nervous systems and a brain and the way we are designed to react to stress has mutuality within everyone’s bodies.

Danielle mentions that her clients have been asking questions around resilience because the struggle keeps going: Is this resilience? Am I actually making it?

Marisa approaches these questions with validation. It’s not just COVID; It’s not just someone’s daily stress. She was raised in El Paso, TX:  “a border Latina.” COVID has brought a different dimension of worry and awareness in her body. When someone asks her about COVID, whether that be politically or related to health, she’s not just thinking about her body. That is not the way she was raised, that is not her culture. She is thinking about how the border is impacted. She’s thinking about the kids at the border. And then you add COVID on top of it. It’s so multilayered in her own body so when she works with her clients they try to name the layers in their body. Even if they can’t get to them all, they name the layers that feel present and the whispers of narratives that are attached. All that noise can feel like overwhelming static in the body. “Sometimes the best we can do with what we have is just lament.” We can be resilient and in lament at the same time if the emotions that we are feeling are being validated for our body.

Marisa says one of the hallmarks of the decolonized approach to trauma healing is to start with consent. The assumption is that we are to go to therapy and automatically offer vulnerability and disclosure when very often the body is not ready for that. Clients need to “feel into” where they are at. It’s about allowing the client to sink into their own body; she asks clients, "is that what your body needs tended to today?” We cannot just assume that we can go to the new place without permission and consent. She says, “I’m not going to push you into disclosure and so what does it look like for you to actually take my offering for care … in a way that can be received.”

1. Consent
2. Exchange of offerin