February 9, 2024 • 47 mins
Welcome to an insightful episode of The Slice of Empathy Podcast where we converse with Lisha Song, a seasoned Licensed Mental Health Counselor proficient in handling trauma and complex PTSD. Lisha brings to the table an empowering approach to healing that is inclusive of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual aspects.
We delve into the insights from Lisha's book, "Love What Hurts – A guide for Healing Emotional Wounds and Following Your Intuition", accentuating the potency of this self-help resource in building a robust healing process. Lisha elucidates the nuances of complex PTSD and emphasizes the need for trauma therapy to aid in emotional recovery.
In this engaging discussion, we navigate the issue of 'minimizing personal pain through comparisons', emphasizing the harm it can cause. We illuminate 'toxic positivity' and shed light on the importance of addressing deep-seated pain, stressing the need for a holistic healing approach.
This enlightening episode explores elements of trauma and its resolution process, particularly the role of the physical body in healing. Our guest shares the benefits of systematic healing practices like EMDR therapy, ego state therapy, and somatic experiences. Lisha sketches a clear picture of her extensive healing sessions to demonstrate the imperative of these comprehensive healing strategies.
Through the process of demystifying complex trauma healing concepts, we hope to enlighten listeners on the significant role of comprehensive, rather than surface-level, healing practices.
An important aspect of our discussion includes Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. We bring forth its potential effectiveness by introducing its function and various approaches. We also bring attention to the role of spiritual resources in healing, advocating their role in fostering a sense of protection and unconditional love during one's healing journey.
We sincerely hope that the resources and experiences shared in this episode bolster your understanding and appreciation for EMDR therapy, sparking an interest for those keen on embarking on their own healing journeys.
Connect with Lisha below:
Love What Hurts: A Guide for Healing Emotional Wounds and Following Your Intuition: https://amzn.to/3SrlS7K http://www.SacredHealingPlaceTacoma.com https://www.facebook.com/sacredhealingplacetacoma https://www.instagram.com/sacredhealingplaceMark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:25):
Everyone and welcome back to the Slice of Empathy podcast. Today we are joined
by Alicia Song who is a licensed mental health counselor in Washington state
who has over 20 years of experience working with trauma and complex PTSD.
I'm super excited for Alicia to be able to join us today and tell us a little
bit about her experience integrating the mental, emotional,
(00:45):
physical, and spiritual aspects of self-help to help her clients experience
a more robust healing journey journey that not only infuses self-empowerment, but also self-love.
In her new book, which we'll be exploring, Love What Hurts, A Guide for Healing
Emotional Wounds and Following Your Intuition,
intuitive trauma therapist and teacher Alicia Song shows you how to gently befriend
(01:07):
the wounded parts of the self through wisdom of the body with the energy of curious compassion.
Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. It's great to have you
here. You can start us off with telling us a little bit about you.
So a little bit about me, I have been, I'll just talk about my work.
And if you have some personal questions, I'm happy to answer those as well.
(01:31):
But I've been a trauma therapist for over 23 years.
And I call myself an intuitive trauma therapist because over the past couple of decades,
I've learned how to incorporate intuitive guidance, my own intuition and client's
intuition in with the healing process of therapy, which makes,
(01:55):
in addition to skill sets and trainings and all the things, intuition makes the healing process,
in my opinion, much more robust, especially if you can.
Help a client access their own intuition, their own inner guidance.
I currently live and work in Tacoma, Washington, beautiful Pacific Northwest.
(02:20):
And I've had a private practice now for the last 16 years.
Yeah, working with all kinds of traumas, complex PTSD.
And also I do some teaching and I do some spiritual workshops as well. Awesome.
I love that. And I think what really intrigued me most about your bio,
because I know I've been, I come from a past of abuse and trauma,
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and I'm always looking for ways that I can heal myself and move forward holistically.
And I really love seeing your background.
I know you have a book, Love What Hurts, a guide for healing and emotional wounds
and following your intuition.
I'm really excited by that. I'm definitely going to be checking that out.
Can you tell us a little bit about that and maybe what motivated you to write
(03:07):
the book? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So the book is kind of split into two parts.
The first part is really a bunch of skill sets and leading up to like the idea
of being able to start healing your own emotional wounding through befriending
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those parts of us that we tend to avoid,
that we tend to feel shame about, or we have so much rage or so much grief that
it's scary to access those parts of us.
So human beings are really talented at compartmentalization,
and that's a survival skill,
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especially during the developing years of childhood and adolescence,
where it was best not to be exposing all those parts so that you could just
survive your environments.
But of course, as we get into adulthood, adult relationships,
that compartmentalization doesn't really serve us well, especially if we're
(04:13):
not aware that we're doing that.
So the first half of the book is really teaching the reader how to gentle,
with curious compassion, compassion befriend those parts of us that we've been
avoiding and compartmentalizing all our lives.
When we do that, that becomes a trailhead to healing.
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Because when we can access the rage or the shame with a little tenderness,
with a little compassion and curiosity, those parts start to settle down and
those parts of us start to trust the bigger us,
the bigger self, and helping them to integrate into the bigger self.
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And once we get a hold of that, a hang of that,
then it becomes a lot easier to trust, trust, to listen to, to trust your inner
guidance, aka your intuition.
And that's the second part of the book on how to do that, how to access your
(05:23):
intuition, how to play with it, and eventually how to trust it.
It's not a book to replace any type of trauma therapy, but if you can't get
to trauma therapy because of whatever circumstances you're in,
this is a great supplement until you you can.
And even if you've started trauma therapy, the book is also a great supplement
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to help because trauma therapy is hard, painful work.
And the book can help ease that pain just a little bit.
You know, it's like if you're healing from a physical wound,
the doctor might give you antibiotics or even pain medication.
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And so the antibiotics and the pain medication is sort of a supplement to healing.
But maybe the major part of your healing has to be rest or, you know,
minimizing movement, something like that. that.
So I would call this book a supplement to therapy, or the beginning stages of trauma therapy.
(06:29):
But I definitely understand the components to having therapy.
Also, I know I personally read a lot of self help books.
I recently just read the with those the origins of you amazing,
amazing book. And I highly agree.
I've been in and out of therapy, like throughout probably most most of my life.
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And during those periods of time, like in between, I found a lot of healing
and just so much knowledge and being able to read those books and like learn
more about myself that I never thought I would have learned about.
So yeah, I'm definitely going to be checking that out. It's been a long road for me personally.
(07:11):
Yeah, there's just been so much healing and and being able to pursue therapy,
and then also having self-help books as a guide as well.
And I'm actually, I'm curious if you could tell me, because I know it's something
that's come up, a lot of people associate PTSD, for example,
with maybe soldiers coming back from war or coming back from active duty.
(07:34):
But I think it's a lot more complex than that.
Can a person still experience symptoms of PTSD if they've never experienced actual trauma?
Oh, yeah, 100% they can. And that's what we call complex PTSD.
Although complex PTSD is not an official diagnosis in the DSM.
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But we all all of us in as trauma therapists, we all recognize complex PTSD.
And complex PTSD PTSD does not have to come from a history of dramatic, dramatic trauma.
So it doesn't have to come from combat experience during wartime or physical,
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violent sexual abuse or severe, severe neglect or growing up in a drug addicted
home or what have those are dramatic events of trauma.
But what most people and a lot of people have experienced that,
but what most people have experienced who have symptoms of PTSD,
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but maybe not these types of experiences in their past.
Is the type of messaging that they received as children.
So maybe feeling like they were never good enough for their parents,
or maybe even having a depressed parent, one parent who was working more than
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40 hours a week, gone a lot, maybe had to travel for work.
And then the other parent was so depressed that they rarely came out of their own bedrooms.
And so the children are left to parentify, they're parentified,
so they're left taking care of themselves or each other.
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And things like that, or being told over, you know, the span of your life,
your childhood and adolescence that, you know, you should do,
you should make yourself smaller.
Don't bring on so much attention, make yourself smaller. So the message the
child receives is they're too much.
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You know, they don't belong unless they act a certain way.
Not feeling good enough, not feeling smart enough, pretty enough,
thin enough, all the things.
Those can, over time, when you get those messages consistently as a child,
as a teenager, over time you will develop similar symptoms or symptoms of PTSD. PTSD.
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Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I honestly, I can 100% relate.
I know for me personally, I can definitely relate to like minimizing myself,
but I have an older brother, he was more he required, I think,
more attention from my parents.
And so I think I underneath kind of and I've only recently kind of come to this
(10:29):
conclusion and realize this because my parents just always kind of thought,
Oh, you know, she's just so quiet, she must not really like
need anything and she's you know she's she's like a really good child
or whatever and that's only something that
I've realized more recently that kind of like where did that come
from it I think it's not that I necessarily didn't need
their attention I think I saw the way my parents were with with my brother and
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he needed like more attention and I kind of I kind of would be like okay like
maybe internally kind of took the message to where like okay well if I don't
have have any big wants or needs,
then it's all good.
And so, yeah, it's something that I can definitely relate with.
(11:15):
If there's any advice that you might have for someone who may be kind of going
through that process and maybe coming to that realization, how should they approach it?
Well, most humans minimize their situations because we still have the stigma
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that in order to legitimately have PTSD,
you have to have experienced these really dramatic.
Traumatic events in your life. And so most people who haven't experienced that,
or they have, and they're minimizing even those experiences,
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they're going to minimize.
They're going to say like, my stuff is not nearly as bad as my neighbor,
Joe, who went through this, that, and the other, so I shouldn't be complaining.
So that's just the baseline line of most of the humans I see coming through
my practice and just most of the humans I run into in my personal life as well.
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So at the very first step, I would just say consult with a trauma therapist.
Have one session with a trauma therapist just to be curious.
Curiosity is just just a great energy to have,
you know, because you're going in hopefully with neutral emotion and you're
(12:43):
just going in like, Hey, I've been reading some stuff.
People are telling me I should go to therapy. I don't really know if I need trauma therapy.
Can we, can we have a session so we can talk about it?
Because if I've never had it, I've never turned away a client because I thought
they didn't have enough trauma.
That would be the first step that I would take as a client who,
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as a person who's like starting to resonate with all this stuff, right?
And like, well, now what do I do? Because I think I resonate with this stuff.
I think maybe I do have complex PTSD, even though I don't have all these dramatic
events from my life. But it does, I do feel, you know, they second guess themselves a lot.
(13:29):
Just, just take that first meeting with a trauma therapist, a trauma therapist,
not any therapist, but someone who is really well trained, well experienced
with trauma, PTSD, complex trauma. Yeah.
And honestly, not a talk therapy, not someone who just does talk therapy,
even if they say they're a trauma therapist,
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the talk therapy is only accessing a very small portion of your brain,
which is the prefrontal cortex.
It's a beautiful, wonderful, necessary portion of the brain.
It surely helps us get stuff done and stay grounded and stay in reality.
But it alone is what is accessed in talk therapy.
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Talk therapy cannot access or doesn't access very well or readily the sensory
portions of a human, which is where the trauma is stored.
So that's what I would say is have that first session, first appointment with
(14:35):
a trauma therapist and just to see, you know, if legitimately you could,
you know, use trauma therapy or not.
Yeah, I 100% agree. And I think that's amazing advice, because I've,
I've talked with folks who are like, I don't know what I would talk about during
therapy and different things like that.
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And I'm like, well, you never know, you want to just take that,
that kind of first step, you know.
And so I definitely think that's, you know, it's, it's phenomenally,
it's amazingly helpful.
And I've come across folks, I know that, you know, like, when we talk about
minimizing minimizing trauma or situations.
For example, I know like it was prevalent in probably my family and many others
(15:20):
as well were like, oh, you know, you don't have it so bad.
X, Y, and Z person has it worse.
And it's funny, like my mom and I were talking about that somewhat recently
and it's just like, okay, that doesn't really help.
Like, you know, I think, you know, our feelings are still are still valid,
even though like, I don't know, maybe it is worse or something of what is that
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they're going through, but just hearing that isn't helpful.
No, exactly. And there's this,
there's this assumption that there's this finite cake or pie of trauma.
It's finite and not everyone can access those feelings of PTSD because,
Because, you know, Joe over here, well, you know, he's a vet,
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he's a Vietnam vet. So he's got a slice of that pie.
And Mary over here, well, you know, she was raped several times.
So she has a slice of that pie.
As if PTSD is this finite energy.
It's not. It's, unfortunately, it's available to everyone and all of us.
So, yeah, it's a strange thing. And I suppose people started saying things like
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that. Like, well, at least you don't have it as bad as, you know, Sharon or whatever.
But I think the intention is to help lift you up a little bit.
But it really has, because if you think of how worse they have it,
then you're going to feel better, which is really a strange energy exchange anyway.
Like, okay, if I think about the suffering of my friend, that's going to make me feel better.
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So so it i think but i think that's the
the intention and unfortunately you
know it doesn't work and more and more people are
realizing that so which is good that it doesn't work to just minimize and compare
because you we always lose at the compare and contrast game yeah because there's
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always somebody who's got it worse and there's always somebody who's more beautiful smarter,
richer, what have you, right?
So playing that comparison game, everyone loses at that game.
Yeah, I sometimes, and I know probably for a lot of folks can relate to where
like, if you're not comparing your trauma, you're comparing your looks,
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you're comparing your career.
And yeah, I think it's a slope. Yeah, it's no good. Yeah, it's,
you know, it's the, it's the result of living in a patriarchy.
It's the result of living in a competitive society. So society is ill.
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It's sick. You've probably heard of Gabor Maté's book, The Myth of Normal,
where he emphasizes. Yeah.
And so and society needs to keep us ill and sick and reaching for good enough
so that corporations can make money. So that's the baseline we're working with.
So it's really challenging. Yeah.
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So it's super challenging to get healthy and sustain health in a society that
isn't making money off of your illness anymore. anymore. Right.
Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah.
And I honestly think with that in mind, I want to pivot a little bit because
I know this is, it's something that's,
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somewhat of a newer topic at least from what from what i've been feeling and
you know let's let's talk a little bit about toxic positivity because i never
really asked like the that it was i mean i never really knew that there was
actually a definition for it until,
somewhat i don't know probably within the last few years and i'm like wow that
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that was just like a big aha moment like i like that makes sense and i i know
just from my limited knowledge of it But we're like, I know, like,
there's a lot of messaging out there where they're like, you know, stay positive,
have a positive mindset, and everything will go great.
And, and, you know, I understand it to a point.
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But I also think that, you know, what are the lines that cross in a toxic positivity?
And how how can that be identified?
Okay, so I haven't even I even talked about talk about this in a chapter in
my book, it's why positive affirmations don't work.
They don't. So because you have to find out the origin of why you need that positive affirmation.
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Like if you have, if you're working on an affirmation that says I am good enough,
and you have it on post-it notes all over your house, that's fine.
It's not going to work though, unless you get to the origin of why you even
need that mantra in the first place, right?
It's like putting a bandaid over a broken arm.
(20:17):
Like we're avoiding the real wounding here, the depth of the wounding.
Once you address, befriend, access the wounding, where that,
where the opposite of that belief started, that I'm not good enough belief.
Belief, once you address that, and you start addressing, you know,
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then, then the positive affirmations will begin to work for you.
And so what happens is people think.
People are trying to avoid, and I get it, humans, we want to avoid pain.
Our nervous system is wired to avoid painful situations and healing is painful.
So we want to avoid it. So we will bypass it with either spirituality,
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religion, or toxic positivity.
Well, if I just say these positive affirmations 10 times a day,
then I'm going to feel better better about myself.
And, you know, better relationships will come to me, I will make more money,
blah, blah, blah, manifestation, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
And it's just a whole hogwash to me, because you're bypassing the original wounding,
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you have to address the wounding in order to really believe that you are good enough,
that you deserve a respectful, loving, nurturing relationship,
that you deserve that promotion at work.
So until you address the original wounding, you're just bypassing it and you're
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just putting band-aids over broken arms.
And what happens is then a person comes back and goes, okay,
see, I knew it. I am permanently damaged.
And if I wasn't permanently damaged, these positive affirmations would have helped me by now.
So now they've added another wounding. Does that make sense?
Yeah, 100%. I really love that. And I think that makes, it makes a lot of sense
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because it, you know, you would need to, yeah, it would make sense that you
would need to uncover like what caused, what caused those feelings.
And sometimes I even find myself, you know, when I'm, you know,
having some, some downward thoughts, I'm like, okay, like where,
where, where did I first feel this? Where is this coming from?
Like, you know, when did I start feeling this? And now I'm able to kind of make
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that distinction to where like, this situation in my childhood is when I first
started feeling like this.
This is why I initially had that subconscious belief that, you know,
I wasn't good enough, or, you know, or like certain things, maybe my parents
would say or different things like that.
And so then I would kind of carry it on, kind of, it would kind of carry with me.
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And I, you know, there comes a time where you kind of have to unpack it.
And so when you find, sometimes I find myself kind of feeling these thoughts,
and I try to go back and try to identify them and like, okay,
what, what makes me like, really think like that.
And I think it's, it's been highly beneficial.
Yeah, so I 100% I can 100% agree with that.
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And kind of like thinking about
when we compartmentalize our thoughts and feelings that we go through.
I found for me personally that a lot of unresolved trauma has presented itself
physically over the years, especially as I got older.
If you could tell us a little bit about why involving the physical body is important
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when addressing trauma.
Yeah, I'd be happy to. The physical body is what's storing the trauma because
we are mostly a sensory being, right?
With the exception of the highly necessary prefrontal cortex,
the rest of us, the rest of the
brain, the rest of the body is a sensory sensory, you know, experience.
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And trauma, that's where trauma is stored.
And that's why people say like, I see a lot of clients come into therapy after
years and years of talk therapy, because they just felt like they were talking
about their trauma, but nothing was really changing in their lives.
And their emotions weren't changing either. They weren't feeling any safer in
their bodies, bodies, especially with traumas that have happened to their bodies.
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So you have to involve the body. And how do we do that?
Well, in the beginning, it might be scary to just dive in and,
oh, the trauma is located in my reproductive organs because of sexual trauma or what have you.
Okay, well, that can be really scary to address, especially by yourself, right?
So you start off in the shallow shallow end of the pool, so to speak,
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by just, you know, doing, I don't know, two minutes of meditation.
And all you're doing, if you've never meditated, two minutes could feel like a lifetime.
But let's just start with that. And all you do during that meditation is just noticing,
noticing without trying to change, without judging, this is the hard part,
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without judging how your body is
experiencing those two minutes sitting quietly what
is your breathing like what is the tempo of your breath like in those two minutes
so these are like the small baby steps of getting more aware of your body having
that level of self-awareness has been.
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Amazingly beneficial because i know for me and probably many other people like
you may not even and be aware of it until later in life.
And I think, as you mentioned before, being able to identify and unpack that
trauma, work on resolving it, I think is a great step in the healing process.
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So I want to pivot just a little bit.
Can you tell us a little bit about what does one of your intensive healing sessions look like?
Sure. So after a one hour intake with somebody and we both decide,
yeah, this is a good fit and the intensive program feels like a good fit moving forward,
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then those sessions are three hours long.
And what's what's love it sounds like
a long time but the time
especially for clients goes by pretty fast so that
first intensive session is really just me getting all the details of their childhood
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their family dynamics in their childhood all the players and and all that and
then a separate deliberate detailed trauma history.
Or sometimes, again, because of the stigma of what trauma is supposed to look
like, I call it the disturbing events history.
So any memories that a person has that still is sticking to them today as adults on any level,
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even if it seems like, oh, that happened when I was five years old,
you know, I should be over it by now. Okay, but you're not.
So let's just write it down. Let's include it as part of your history.
That's the first intensive session. And that does take three hours,
unless you are really, really young,
like 20 or 21 years old, you haven't been on the planet, you know,
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as long as a 50 year old, you still have experienced some trauma,
but you might not need, we might not need three hours to get through your entire history.
And then the subsequent intensive session is really where the healing journey is happening.
And that's when I integrate EMDR therapy with ego state therapy and somatic therapy.
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Awareness, somatic experiencing. So somatic is the body.
And then for people who want to access spiritual resources, we integrate those in as well.
And all of those integrated together just create this really lovely,
robust, profound healing experience for people.
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And the exercises from my book, I absolutely use all of the time with my clients,
accessing those wounded parts, seeing them as parts of your personal,
not parts of your actual family,
but these parts of you are now your family and you are the parent to these wounded parts.
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Because the wounded parts tend to be child parts, adolescent parts, or young adult parts.
They're younger than who we are today.
And so I help clients to become the loving, nurturing parent to these parts of themselves. selves.
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I love that. And I think that's just so powerful. And I actually,
I was discussing something similar with my therapist recently,
when dealing with a certain parts of myself that maybe,
you know, feel like, oh, I'm not good enough, or there's a certain situation that happened.
And I think that really puts it into like a better perspective when you think
(29:34):
about about giving that love to your younger self and that process of healing.
When we talk a little bit about, we talk more about trauma.
I know you mentioned EMDR and it's something that actually within the last few
years I've learned about.
(29:54):
I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard great things about it.
And I know folks in my personal life who have done EMDR therapy.
Can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like?
Yeah, absolutely. So EMDR, so it's eye movement, desensitization,
and reprocessing. So it's kind of a long title.
(30:17):
So the eye movement piece, we liken that to the REM stage of sleep,
which, you know, we all know is the most restorative stage of sleep for mind and body.
So the eye movement accesses both hemispheres of the brain.
So then the healing experience becomes much more holistic, as opposed to talk
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therapy, which is just accessing prefrontal cortex. context.
So the eye movement of EMDR, that's the EM.
There's that portion. But what we do is we take a traumatic or just even a bad
memory doesn't have to be traumatic.
In fact, when I'm first starting out with a client, I like to start with the
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not so traumatic memories.
And we use the, you know, subjective units of disturbance scale, SUD scale, zero to 10.
It's the same as you go to the doctor's office, zero to 10, how painful does
your knee feel right now?
And that's the same thing we would ask a trauma client, like this memory,
how painful does it feel to you today?
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Not how it felt when it happened, but today, who you are today,
your perspective today, how painful is this memory for you?
Zero to 10. 10 feels like, oh, that thing happened yesterday.
That's how close it is to me.
Or zero is like, it's just a story. It's emotionally neutral now.
And that is the goal of EMDR therapy is to get everybody emotionally neutral,
(31:45):
or pretty darn close, all the way down to zero with all the traumatic memories. memories.
So in a session, if we're dealing with one particular memory,
we want to know, okay, what are the emotions behind this memory today,
which might be different emotions than when it actually happened at the time?
What are the emotions? What are the negative, irrational beliefs or a belief
(32:11):
that you have about yourself that's related to this memory, but still is something
that you feel about yourself today.
And those beliefs are phrased like, I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy.
I'm permanently damaged.
I take up too much space. I'm not lovable.
(32:33):
So they're irrational, but a person really believes them nonetheless.
So we find the emotion, the negative belief, and then where do you feel all
this energy in your body?
And once we get that information, then we start doing an EMDR session that actually
(32:54):
involves the eye movement.
And a lot of people these days aren't doing actual eye movement.
They're doing other forms of bilateral stimulation, like tapping left and right side of the body.
So sometimes people are tapping their knees or crossing over their chest.
(33:14):
And we call that a butterfly hug, and they're tapping their arms.
They might be holding some electronic tappers that just vibrate in their hands,
alternating side to side, whatever form of bilateral stimulation,
it's all equal, it's all good. It's just whatever your client prefers.
Most of the time, I'm doing actual eye movements with folks.
(33:37):
And they seem to be working well with it, you know, so far.
So, you know, you do, you do maybe a set that goes for like maybe 10 to 15 seconds
of eye movements back and forth as they are remembering this memory.
And for folks who don't remember the details of memories, that's okay too.
(34:01):
Then we just go into the body and into the emotion.
What's your body feel like about this memory?
Even if you don't remember all the details, what are the emotions that you feel
about this memory, regardless of the details, and you can still heal even without all the details.
Love that. That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, as you mentioned,
(34:24):
I actually I know a few folks who've done EMDR and they've done the,
like the, the tapping and I learned a little bit about that and I'm so, I'm so intrigued.
So it's something that I'm actually currently looking into trying out for, for myself.
So yeah, that's, that's, I really appreciate that. And I think our listeners will as well.
(34:44):
It's something that I think it sounds like highly beneficial.
I know it's benefited a a lot of folks that I've known who've done it.
So if also, in regards to your book, can you tell us a little bit about how
your personal healing journey has influenced your book and writing?
(35:05):
Yeah, absolutely. One of the stories that's in my book that really influenced
how I started to shift shift on how I was working with clients.
My own pregnancy journey that began 21 years ago.
Where after a year of trying to get pregnant, it was time to become possibly
(35:30):
more invasive because I was in my early 30s.
And the doc said, well, now we have to just do a bunch of fertility testing
and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I just felt like I didn't want to go down that road yet.
And then I had a dream one night and I too, I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
(35:51):
And at the time of the time in my life, when I was trying to get pregnant,
I hadn't spoken to my dad, my abuser for a decade.
So he was not part of my life for a decade. I had done a lot of therapy,
healing from the childhood stuff and created my own like chosen tribe of loved
(36:12):
ones and really good friends and just felt really good in my life emotionally, personally.
So, but I had this dream one night, really random, but not so random now that
I think about it, where my father was dying in the hospital.
And in the dream, the dream version
(36:32):
of me was a higher self because
she went to the hospital to present
dad with a letter of forgiveness
because the higher self me in
the dream understood that dad
was a dying man and another soul who who was alone in his dying process and
(36:56):
the higher self me recognized that that every soul deserves forgiveness, deserves love,
and deserves not to be alone as they cross over, as they pass away.
So I woke up from that dream and I was like, whoa, that was crazy.
But I knew, I felt it, this is the intuition coming into play,
(37:21):
that the dream had something to do with my inability to get pregnant.
So then I set off on a journey of visiting my dad.
My mother went with me and that visit wasn't particularly dramatic or anything.
It was only like, I don't know, half an hour, 20 minutes.
(37:42):
But what I saw in him as I think he was 78 at the time was a man,
a boy trapped in an old man's body still.
This is what I saw was the evidence of what happens to a human when they do
not address their own traumas. He had his own traumas too.
He was born, when was he born? No, it wasn't during the Great Depression. Yeah, no, it was.
(38:09):
His dad died when he was nine years old and his mother couldn't afford to take care of him.
So she abandoned him at a boy's orphanage where he was sexually abused.
And so he had multiple traumas there before the age of 10.
(38:29):
You have the society's trauma of the Great Depression. You have losing your
father at the age of nine and then your mother abandoning you at the age of 10.
And he had never processed or dealt with any of that.
And you could see it, you know, 78 years later, he was still resentful of his
mother, resentful of the government, just bitter and resentful.
(38:54):
And I didn't really know why I had to go see him.
But I also made an appointment because all the ladies at work were talking about
a craniosacral therapist in town.
I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time.
And her reputation was, oh, yeah, she can get anybody pregnant.
So I had made an appointment with her after I saw my dad.
(39:17):
And she could tell you know if you've ever worked with an energy healer she's
just hovering her hands like over my whole body and i didn't tell her anything
about my childhood or i just said i'm having a hard time getting pregnant and
i don't want to do these invasive procedures,
and she hovered her hands over my body and she could tell that my left ovary
(39:39):
was blocked and she just like nonchalantly said yeah let's go ahead and unblock
that so i'm on the table her her
massage table and she's doing her cranial sacral thing and just gently,
you know, putting a little bit of pressure at the base of my cranium,
at the base of my tailbone and, you know, a little rocking.
(40:00):
And it was such a cathartic experience for me.
I was just emoting. I was crying on the table, releasing all this energy.
I didn't even understand it completely, But, and this might sound a little wackadoodle,
but I heard my reproductive organs say, it is okay now, Leisha.
(40:20):
You are safe. We are safe. And you can let go.
And so I said, okay, I'm going to let go.
And the session was over. and the craniosacral therapist, Donna,
she said, yeah, your leftover is, you know, is unblocked now.
(40:41):
And two weeks later, I had a positive pregnancy test and, you know, he's 20 years old today.
So that to me was just like, and this is happening at a time where I wasn't
super body aware or didn't really understand the body mind connection so well,
or definitely not not super spiritual either.
(41:02):
But to me, it was like, okay, there is there really is this body,
mind, spirit connection.
And it can help us heal.
And that's when I started to integrate more of spirit, more of body in with
my work with clients into the healing process for them.
(41:25):
That's amazingly powerful. And I really appreciate you sharing that with us.
And it's just something that it's, yeah, it's just so powerful how our mind,
body and spirit are connected. connected.
And yeah, just being able to have those experiences.
(41:46):
I've had some similar experiences where, you know, sometimes when you think
about it, I'm a pretty spiritual person.
And, you know, I think, you know, everything happens like when it's meant to
and time plays for a reason.
And I definitely think it's something that a lot of people can relate to.
(42:07):
Can you tell us a little little bit about spirituality looks like when working with clients?
Oh, yeah, this is where it gets really fun. Because whatever,
whatever the resources are, for each individual client, like,
let's, let's use that in your healing journey.
(42:28):
So it doesn't have to be from an organized religion, although that's where most
people get their foundation of spirituality
is, probably being raised in a particular church or what have you.
But if your spirituality is based in nature, awesome.
Let's use the earth to help you get grounded, to help you feel grounded,
(42:52):
to help you feel supported. That's powerful.
If you're practicing Wiccan, if you're part of the the Wiccan religion. Okay.
Let's bring in, you know, your goddesses. Which are the goddesses that help
you feel protected, nurtured, powerful, loved?
(43:14):
And, you know, I use the client's imagination to bring these spiritual resources in.
It can be Jesus. It can be Mary Magdalene, Mother Mary, Mother Teresa.
It ultimately doesn't matter. Or if you have spirit animals that you you resonate
with. Let's bring those animals in.
But before we bring them in, let's talk about why they are your spiritual resources.
(43:39):
What do you feel when you think of them?
And usually I'm looking for characteristics like protection,
unconditional love, nurturing. And it can also be the spirit of ancestors or
loved ones who have passed on.
To help you feel supported in the healing process, to help you feel not alone
(44:02):
in that healing process. Yeah, it's definitely something that I can personally relate to.
I know, no matter what your background is, as far as spirituality and what you
believe in it, there's so many different names.
I know sometimes it's God, sometimes it's the universe.
For me, it's usually when I'm thinking about something, I'm thinking about the
(44:22):
universe. where it's like, please give me a sign.
And just having that core belief and that for me, good things are to come if
I put my energy out into the universe that what I'm seeking for will come to me.
And yeah, it's definitely something that I can relate to.
And I love how you mentioned how inclusive you are in your practice with spirituality.
(44:47):
And I just think that's amazing.
Yeah, it's fun. It's great. I mean, there's people who say like,
oh yeah, I'm Catholic or I'm Christian.
And then when I ask like, okay, how does your spiritual path like help you or inspire you?
And nine times out of 10 people are like, I don't know, they shrug their shoulders.
Like I never really think about God.
(45:09):
And I was like, oh, well, do you want to?
Cause like, this is a huge resource,
you know? And then they start to get excited or at least curious.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And, um, yeah, like, and, and for me,
it's within, been with the last couple of years where my spirituality has kind
(45:31):
of helped kind of guide me.
And helped me kind of, I don't know, make different decisions when sometimes
I'm like, I just, I don't know what to do.
And then I'll be like, universe, give me a sign, you know, and And inevitably, there'll be a sign.
And so and I think also using my intuition and kind of learning how to trust
(45:53):
myself has really helped with that.
So yeah, I really love that.
Can you tell us where we can find you, where we can follow you,
where we can purchase your book?
I know I'll be doing that right away because I'm super excited about it.
So yeah, if you could tell us where everyone can find you and follow you.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I have a website and it's called sacredhealingplacetacoma.com.
(46:22):
And my Instagram and Facebook are also the same name at sacredhealingplacetacoma.
So the book, Love What Hurts, A Guide for Healing Emotional Wounds and Following
Your Intuition can be found on Amazon or any of your favorite online sites.
(46:43):
Book retailers like Barnes and Noble, Balboa Press, wherever you order your
books from, it'll be there.
Awesome. I'll make sure I get that included in the show notes as well.
So our listeners can be sure to check you out. But yeah, I super appreciate
you taking your time to join us today.
(47:03):
And I really appreciate your time. I think this will be a phenomenal episode for our listeners.
That's awesome. Yes. Thank you for having me, Thank you, Valerie.
Music.
Music.
(00:25):
Everyone and welcome back to the Slice of Empathy podcast. Today we are joined
by Alicia Song who is a licensed mental health counselor in Washington state
who has over 20 years of experience working with trauma and complex PTSD.
I'm super excited for Alicia to be able to join us today and tell us a little
bit about her experience integrating the mental, emotional,
(00:45):
physical, and spiritual aspects of self-help to help her clients experience
a more robust healing journey journey that not only infuses self-empowerment, but also self-love.
In her new book, which we'll be exploring, Love What Hurts, A Guide for Healing
Emotional Wounds and Following Your Intuition,
intuitive trauma therapist and teacher Alicia Song shows you how to gently befriend
(01:07):
the wounded parts of the self through wisdom of the body with the energy of curious compassion.
Thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. It's great to have you
here. You can start us off with telling us a little bit about you.
So a little bit about me, I have been, I'll just talk about my work.
And if you have some personal questions, I'm happy to answer those as well.
(01:31):
But I've been a trauma therapist for over 23 years.
And I call myself an intuitive trauma therapist because over the past couple of decades,
I've learned how to incorporate intuitive guidance, my own intuition and client's
intuition in with the healing process of therapy, which makes,
(01:55):
in addition to skill sets and trainings and all the things, intuition makes the healing process,
in my opinion, much more robust, especially if you can.
Help a client access their own intuition, their own inner guidance.
I currently live and work in Tacoma, Washington, beautiful Pacific Northwest.
(02:20):
And I've had a private practice now for the last 16 years.
Yeah, working with all kinds of traumas, complex PTSD.
And also I do some teaching and I do some spiritual workshops as well. Awesome.
I love that. And I think what really intrigued me most about your bio,
because I know I've been, I come from a past of abuse and trauma,
(02:44):
and I'm always looking for ways that I can heal myself and move forward holistically.
And I really love seeing your background.
I know you have a book, Love What Hurts, a guide for healing and emotional wounds
and following your intuition.
I'm really excited by that. I'm definitely going to be checking that out.
Can you tell us a little bit about that and maybe what motivated you to write
(03:07):
the book? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So the book is kind of split into two parts.
The first part is really a bunch of skill sets and leading up to like the idea
of being able to start healing your own emotional wounding through befriending
(03:28):
those parts of us that we tend to avoid,
that we tend to feel shame about, or we have so much rage or so much grief that
it's scary to access those parts of us.
So human beings are really talented at compartmentalization,
and that's a survival skill,
(03:50):
especially during the developing years of childhood and adolescence,
where it was best not to be exposing all those parts so that you could just
survive your environments.
But of course, as we get into adulthood, adult relationships,
that compartmentalization doesn't really serve us well, especially if we're
(04:13):
not aware that we're doing that.
So the first half of the book is really teaching the reader how to gentle,
with curious compassion, compassion befriend those parts of us that we've been
avoiding and compartmentalizing all our lives.
When we do that, that becomes a trailhead to healing.
(04:38):
Because when we can access the rage or the shame with a little tenderness,
with a little compassion and curiosity, those parts start to settle down and
those parts of us start to trust the bigger us,
the bigger self, and helping them to integrate into the bigger self.
(05:03):
And once we get a hold of that, a hang of that,
then it becomes a lot easier to trust, trust, to listen to, to trust your inner
guidance, aka your intuition.
And that's the second part of the book on how to do that, how to access your
(05:23):
intuition, how to play with it, and eventually how to trust it.
It's not a book to replace any type of trauma therapy, but if you can't get
to trauma therapy because of whatever circumstances you're in,
this is a great supplement until you you can.
And even if you've started trauma therapy, the book is also a great supplement
(05:47):
to help because trauma therapy is hard, painful work.
And the book can help ease that pain just a little bit.
You know, it's like if you're healing from a physical wound,
the doctor might give you antibiotics or even pain medication.
(06:08):
And so the antibiotics and the pain medication is sort of a supplement to healing.
But maybe the major part of your healing has to be rest or, you know,
minimizing movement, something like that. that.
So I would call this book a supplement to therapy, or the beginning stages of trauma therapy.
(06:29):
But I definitely understand the components to having therapy.
Also, I know I personally read a lot of self help books.
I recently just read the with those the origins of you amazing,
amazing book. And I highly agree.
I've been in and out of therapy, like throughout probably most most of my life.
(06:49):
And during those periods of time, like in between, I found a lot of healing
and just so much knowledge and being able to read those books and like learn
more about myself that I never thought I would have learned about.
So yeah, I'm definitely going to be checking that out. It's been a long road for me personally.
(07:11):
Yeah, there's just been so much healing and and being able to pursue therapy,
and then also having self-help books as a guide as well.
And I'm actually, I'm curious if you could tell me, because I know it's something
that's come up, a lot of people associate PTSD, for example,
with maybe soldiers coming back from war or coming back from active duty.
(07:34):
But I think it's a lot more complex than that.
Can a person still experience symptoms of PTSD if they've never experienced actual trauma?
Oh, yeah, 100% they can. And that's what we call complex PTSD.
Although complex PTSD is not an official diagnosis in the DSM.
(07:57):
But we all all of us in as trauma therapists, we all recognize complex PTSD.
And complex PTSD PTSD does not have to come from a history of dramatic, dramatic trauma.
So it doesn't have to come from combat experience during wartime or physical,
(08:17):
violent sexual abuse or severe, severe neglect or growing up in a drug addicted
home or what have those are dramatic events of trauma.
But what most people and a lot of people have experienced that,
but what most people have experienced who have symptoms of PTSD,
(08:40):
but maybe not these types of experiences in their past.
Is the type of messaging that they received as children.
So maybe feeling like they were never good enough for their parents,
or maybe even having a depressed parent, one parent who was working more than
(09:01):
40 hours a week, gone a lot, maybe had to travel for work.
And then the other parent was so depressed that they rarely came out of their own bedrooms.
And so the children are left to parentify, they're parentified,
so they're left taking care of themselves or each other.
(09:22):
And things like that, or being told over, you know, the span of your life,
your childhood and adolescence that, you know, you should do,
you should make yourself smaller.
Don't bring on so much attention, make yourself smaller. So the message the
child receives is they're too much.
(09:44):
You know, they don't belong unless they act a certain way.
Not feeling good enough, not feeling smart enough, pretty enough,
thin enough, all the things.
Those can, over time, when you get those messages consistently as a child,
as a teenager, over time you will develop similar symptoms or symptoms of PTSD. PTSD.
(10:09):
Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I honestly, I can 100% relate.
I know for me personally, I can definitely relate to like minimizing myself,
but I have an older brother, he was more he required, I think,
more attention from my parents.
And so I think I underneath kind of and I've only recently kind of come to this
(10:29):
conclusion and realize this because my parents just always kind of thought,
Oh, you know, she's just so quiet, she must not really like
need anything and she's you know she's she's like a really good child
or whatever and that's only something that
I've realized more recently that kind of like where did that come
from it I think it's not that I necessarily didn't need
their attention I think I saw the way my parents were with with my brother and
(10:55):
he needed like more attention and I kind of I kind of would be like okay like
maybe internally kind of took the message to where like okay well if I don't
have have any big wants or needs,
then it's all good.
And so, yeah, it's something that I can definitely relate with.
(11:15):
If there's any advice that you might have for someone who may be kind of going
through that process and maybe coming to that realization, how should they approach it?
Well, most humans minimize their situations because we still have the stigma
(11:35):
that in order to legitimately have PTSD,
you have to have experienced these really dramatic.
Traumatic events in your life. And so most people who haven't experienced that,
or they have, and they're minimizing even those experiences,
(11:55):
they're going to minimize.
They're going to say like, my stuff is not nearly as bad as my neighbor,
Joe, who went through this, that, and the other, so I shouldn't be complaining.
So that's just the baseline line of most of the humans I see coming through
my practice and just most of the humans I run into in my personal life as well.
(12:18):
So at the very first step, I would just say consult with a trauma therapist.
Have one session with a trauma therapist just to be curious.
Curiosity is just just a great energy to have,
you know, because you're going in hopefully with neutral emotion and you're
(12:43):
just going in like, Hey, I've been reading some stuff.
People are telling me I should go to therapy. I don't really know if I need trauma therapy.
Can we, can we have a session so we can talk about it?
Because if I've never had it, I've never turned away a client because I thought
they didn't have enough trauma.
That would be the first step that I would take as a client who,
(13:08):
as a person who's like starting to resonate with all this stuff, right?
And like, well, now what do I do? Because I think I resonate with this stuff.
I think maybe I do have complex PTSD, even though I don't have all these dramatic
events from my life. But it does, I do feel, you know, they second guess themselves a lot.
(13:29):
Just, just take that first meeting with a trauma therapist, a trauma therapist,
not any therapist, but someone who is really well trained, well experienced
with trauma, PTSD, complex trauma. Yeah.
And honestly, not a talk therapy, not someone who just does talk therapy,
even if they say they're a trauma therapist,
(13:51):
the talk therapy is only accessing a very small portion of your brain,
which is the prefrontal cortex.
It's a beautiful, wonderful, necessary portion of the brain.
It surely helps us get stuff done and stay grounded and stay in reality.
But it alone is what is accessed in talk therapy.
(14:14):
Talk therapy cannot access or doesn't access very well or readily the sensory
portions of a human, which is where the trauma is stored.
So that's what I would say is have that first session, first appointment with
(14:35):
a trauma therapist and just to see, you know, if legitimately you could,
you know, use trauma therapy or not.
Yeah, I 100% agree. And I think that's amazing advice, because I've,
I've talked with folks who are like, I don't know what I would talk about during
therapy and different things like that.
(14:56):
And I'm like, well, you never know, you want to just take that,
that kind of first step, you know.
And so I definitely think that's, you know, it's, it's phenomenally,
it's amazingly helpful.
And I've come across folks, I know that, you know, like, when we talk about
minimizing minimizing trauma or situations.
For example, I know like it was prevalent in probably my family and many others
(15:20):
as well were like, oh, you know, you don't have it so bad.
X, Y, and Z person has it worse.
And it's funny, like my mom and I were talking about that somewhat recently
and it's just like, okay, that doesn't really help.
Like, you know, I think, you know, our feelings are still are still valid,
even though like, I don't know, maybe it is worse or something of what is that
(15:43):
they're going through, but just hearing that isn't helpful.
No, exactly. And there's this,
there's this assumption that there's this finite cake or pie of trauma.
It's finite and not everyone can access those feelings of PTSD because,
Because, you know, Joe over here, well, you know, he's a vet,
(16:06):
he's a Vietnam vet. So he's got a slice of that pie.
And Mary over here, well, you know, she was raped several times.
So she has a slice of that pie.
As if PTSD is this finite energy.
It's not. It's, unfortunately, it's available to everyone and all of us.
So, yeah, it's a strange thing. And I suppose people started saying things like
(16:32):
that. Like, well, at least you don't have it as bad as, you know, Sharon or whatever.
But I think the intention is to help lift you up a little bit.
But it really has, because if you think of how worse they have it,
then you're going to feel better, which is really a strange energy exchange anyway.
Like, okay, if I think about the suffering of my friend, that's going to make me feel better.
(17:00):
So so it i think but i think that's the
the intention and unfortunately you
know it doesn't work and more and more people are
realizing that so which is good that it doesn't work to just minimize and compare
because you we always lose at the compare and contrast game yeah because there's
(17:23):
always somebody who's got it worse and there's always somebody who's more beautiful smarter,
richer, what have you, right?
So playing that comparison game, everyone loses at that game.
Yeah, I sometimes, and I know probably for a lot of folks can relate to where
like, if you're not comparing your trauma, you're comparing your looks,
(17:45):
you're comparing your career.
And yeah, I think it's a slope. Yeah, it's no good. Yeah, it's,
you know, it's the, it's the result of living in a patriarchy.
It's the result of living in a competitive society. So society is ill.
(18:06):
It's sick. You've probably heard of Gabor Maté's book, The Myth of Normal,
where he emphasizes. Yeah.
And so and society needs to keep us ill and sick and reaching for good enough
so that corporations can make money. So that's the baseline we're working with.
So it's really challenging. Yeah.
(18:29):
So it's super challenging to get healthy and sustain health in a society that
isn't making money off of your illness anymore. anymore. Right.
Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah.
And I honestly think with that in mind, I want to pivot a little bit because
I know this is, it's something that's,
(18:51):
somewhat of a newer topic at least from what from what i've been feeling and
you know let's let's talk a little bit about toxic positivity because i never
really asked like the that it was i mean i never really knew that there was
actually a definition for it until,
somewhat i don't know probably within the last few years and i'm like wow that
(19:12):
that was just like a big aha moment like i like that makes sense and i i know
just from my limited knowledge of it But we're like, I know, like,
there's a lot of messaging out there where they're like, you know, stay positive,
have a positive mindset, and everything will go great.
And, and, you know, I understand it to a point.
(19:33):
But I also think that, you know, what are the lines that cross in a toxic positivity?
And how how can that be identified?
Okay, so I haven't even I even talked about talk about this in a chapter in
my book, it's why positive affirmations don't work.
They don't. So because you have to find out the origin of why you need that positive affirmation.
(19:57):
Like if you have, if you're working on an affirmation that says I am good enough,
and you have it on post-it notes all over your house, that's fine.
It's not going to work though, unless you get to the origin of why you even
need that mantra in the first place, right?
It's like putting a bandaid over a broken arm.
(20:17):
Like we're avoiding the real wounding here, the depth of the wounding.
Once you address, befriend, access the wounding, where that,
where the opposite of that belief started, that I'm not good enough belief.
Belief, once you address that, and you start addressing, you know,
(20:38):
then, then the positive affirmations will begin to work for you.
And so what happens is people think.
People are trying to avoid, and I get it, humans, we want to avoid pain.
Our nervous system is wired to avoid painful situations and healing is painful.
So we want to avoid it. So we will bypass it with either spirituality,
(21:03):
religion, or toxic positivity.
Well, if I just say these positive affirmations 10 times a day,
then I'm going to feel better better about myself.
And, you know, better relationships will come to me, I will make more money,
blah, blah, blah, manifestation, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.
And it's just a whole hogwash to me, because you're bypassing the original wounding,
(21:27):
you have to address the wounding in order to really believe that you are good enough,
that you deserve a respectful, loving, nurturing relationship,
that you deserve that promotion at work.
So until you address the original wounding, you're just bypassing it and you're
(21:47):
just putting band-aids over broken arms.
And what happens is then a person comes back and goes, okay,
see, I knew it. I am permanently damaged.
And if I wasn't permanently damaged, these positive affirmations would have helped me by now.
So now they've added another wounding. Does that make sense?
Yeah, 100%. I really love that. And I think that makes, it makes a lot of sense
(22:09):
because it, you know, you would need to, yeah, it would make sense that you
would need to uncover like what caused, what caused those feelings.
And sometimes I even find myself, you know, when I'm, you know,
having some, some downward thoughts, I'm like, okay, like where,
where, where did I first feel this? Where is this coming from?
Like, you know, when did I start feeling this? And now I'm able to kind of make
(22:34):
that distinction to where like, this situation in my childhood is when I first
started feeling like this.
This is why I initially had that subconscious belief that, you know,
I wasn't good enough, or, you know, or like certain things, maybe my parents
would say or different things like that.
And so then I would kind of carry it on, kind of, it would kind of carry with me.
(22:58):
And I, you know, there comes a time where you kind of have to unpack it.
And so when you find, sometimes I find myself kind of feeling these thoughts,
and I try to go back and try to identify them and like, okay,
what, what makes me like, really think like that.
And I think it's, it's been highly beneficial.
Yeah, so I 100% I can 100% agree with that.
(23:21):
And kind of like thinking about
when we compartmentalize our thoughts and feelings that we go through.
I found for me personally that a lot of unresolved trauma has presented itself
physically over the years, especially as I got older.
If you could tell us a little bit about why involving the physical body is important
(23:45):
when addressing trauma.
Yeah, I'd be happy to. The physical body is what's storing the trauma because
we are mostly a sensory being, right?
With the exception of the highly necessary prefrontal cortex,
the rest of us, the rest of the
brain, the rest of the body is a sensory sensory, you know, experience.
(24:07):
And trauma, that's where trauma is stored.
And that's why people say like, I see a lot of clients come into therapy after
years and years of talk therapy, because they just felt like they were talking
about their trauma, but nothing was really changing in their lives.
And their emotions weren't changing either. They weren't feeling any safer in
their bodies, bodies, especially with traumas that have happened to their bodies.
(24:32):
So you have to involve the body. And how do we do that?
Well, in the beginning, it might be scary to just dive in and,
oh, the trauma is located in my reproductive organs because of sexual trauma or what have you.
Okay, well, that can be really scary to address, especially by yourself, right?
So you start off in the shallow shallow end of the pool, so to speak,
(24:55):
by just, you know, doing, I don't know, two minutes of meditation.
And all you're doing, if you've never meditated, two minutes could feel like a lifetime.
But let's just start with that. And all you do during that meditation is just noticing,
noticing without trying to change, without judging, this is the hard part,
(25:16):
without judging how your body is
experiencing those two minutes sitting quietly what
is your breathing like what is the tempo of your breath like in those two minutes
so these are like the small baby steps of getting more aware of your body having
that level of self-awareness has been.
(25:40):
Amazingly beneficial because i know for me and probably many other people like
you may not even and be aware of it until later in life.
And I think, as you mentioned before, being able to identify and unpack that
trauma, work on resolving it, I think is a great step in the healing process.
(26:03):
So I want to pivot just a little bit.
Can you tell us a little bit about what does one of your intensive healing sessions look like?
Sure. So after a one hour intake with somebody and we both decide,
yeah, this is a good fit and the intensive program feels like a good fit moving forward,
(26:25):
then those sessions are three hours long.
And what's what's love it sounds like
a long time but the time
especially for clients goes by pretty fast so that
first intensive session is really just me getting all the details of their childhood
(26:45):
their family dynamics in their childhood all the players and and all that and
then a separate deliberate detailed trauma history.
Or sometimes, again, because of the stigma of what trauma is supposed to look
like, I call it the disturbing events history.
So any memories that a person has that still is sticking to them today as adults on any level,
(27:15):
even if it seems like, oh, that happened when I was five years old,
you know, I should be over it by now. Okay, but you're not.
So let's just write it down. Let's include it as part of your history.
That's the first intensive session. And that does take three hours,
unless you are really, really young,
like 20 or 21 years old, you haven't been on the planet, you know,
(27:37):
as long as a 50 year old, you still have experienced some trauma,
but you might not need, we might not need three hours to get through your entire history.
And then the subsequent intensive session is really where the healing journey is happening.
And that's when I integrate EMDR therapy with ego state therapy and somatic therapy.
(28:02):
Awareness, somatic experiencing. So somatic is the body.
And then for people who want to access spiritual resources, we integrate those in as well.
And all of those integrated together just create this really lovely,
robust, profound healing experience for people.
(28:27):
And the exercises from my book, I absolutely use all of the time with my clients,
accessing those wounded parts, seeing them as parts of your personal,
not parts of your actual family,
but these parts of you are now your family and you are the parent to these wounded parts.
(28:51):
Because the wounded parts tend to be child parts, adolescent parts, or young adult parts.
They're younger than who we are today.
And so I help clients to become the loving, nurturing parent to these parts of themselves. selves.
(29:11):
I love that. And I think that's just so powerful. And I actually,
I was discussing something similar with my therapist recently,
when dealing with a certain parts of myself that maybe,
you know, feel like, oh, I'm not good enough, or there's a certain situation that happened.
And I think that really puts it into like a better perspective when you think
(29:34):
about about giving that love to your younger self and that process of healing.
When we talk a little bit about, we talk more about trauma.
I know you mentioned EMDR and it's something that actually within the last few
years I've learned about.
(29:54):
I haven't tried it yet, but I've heard great things about it.
And I know folks in my personal life who have done EMDR therapy.
Can you tell us a little bit about what that looks like?
Yeah, absolutely. So EMDR, so it's eye movement, desensitization,
and reprocessing. So it's kind of a long title.
(30:17):
So the eye movement piece, we liken that to the REM stage of sleep,
which, you know, we all know is the most restorative stage of sleep for mind and body.
So the eye movement accesses both hemispheres of the brain.
So then the healing experience becomes much more holistic, as opposed to talk
(30:38):
therapy, which is just accessing prefrontal cortex. context.
So the eye movement of EMDR, that's the EM.
There's that portion. But what we do is we take a traumatic or just even a bad
memory doesn't have to be traumatic.
In fact, when I'm first starting out with a client, I like to start with the
(30:59):
not so traumatic memories.
And we use the, you know, subjective units of disturbance scale, SUD scale, zero to 10.
It's the same as you go to the doctor's office, zero to 10, how painful does
your knee feel right now?
And that's the same thing we would ask a trauma client, like this memory,
how painful does it feel to you today?
(31:21):
Not how it felt when it happened, but today, who you are today,
your perspective today, how painful is this memory for you?
Zero to 10. 10 feels like, oh, that thing happened yesterday.
That's how close it is to me.
Or zero is like, it's just a story. It's emotionally neutral now.
And that is the goal of EMDR therapy is to get everybody emotionally neutral,
(31:45):
or pretty darn close, all the way down to zero with all the traumatic memories. memories.
So in a session, if we're dealing with one particular memory,
we want to know, okay, what are the emotions behind this memory today,
which might be different emotions than when it actually happened at the time?
What are the emotions? What are the negative, irrational beliefs or a belief
(32:11):
that you have about yourself that's related to this memory, but still is something
that you feel about yourself today.
And those beliefs are phrased like, I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy.
I'm permanently damaged.
I take up too much space. I'm not lovable.
(32:33):
So they're irrational, but a person really believes them nonetheless.
So we find the emotion, the negative belief, and then where do you feel all
this energy in your body?
And once we get that information, then we start doing an EMDR session that actually
(32:54):
involves the eye movement.
And a lot of people these days aren't doing actual eye movement.
They're doing other forms of bilateral stimulation, like tapping left and right side of the body.
So sometimes people are tapping their knees or crossing over their chest.
(33:14):
And we call that a butterfly hug, and they're tapping their arms.
They might be holding some electronic tappers that just vibrate in their hands,
alternating side to side, whatever form of bilateral stimulation,
it's all equal, it's all good. It's just whatever your client prefers.
Most of the time, I'm doing actual eye movements with folks.
(33:37):
And they seem to be working well with it, you know, so far.
So, you know, you do, you do maybe a set that goes for like maybe 10 to 15 seconds
of eye movements back and forth as they are remembering this memory.
And for folks who don't remember the details of memories, that's okay too.
(34:01):
Then we just go into the body and into the emotion.
What's your body feel like about this memory?
Even if you don't remember all the details, what are the emotions that you feel
about this memory, regardless of the details, and you can still heal even without all the details.
Love that. That makes a lot of sense. And yeah, as you mentioned,
(34:24):
I actually I know a few folks who've done EMDR and they've done the,
like the, the tapping and I learned a little bit about that and I'm so, I'm so intrigued.
So it's something that I'm actually currently looking into trying out for, for myself.
So yeah, that's, that's, I really appreciate that. And I think our listeners will as well.
(34:44):
It's something that I think it sounds like highly beneficial.
I know it's benefited a a lot of folks that I've known who've done it.
So if also, in regards to your book, can you tell us a little bit about how
your personal healing journey has influenced your book and writing?
(35:05):
Yeah, absolutely. One of the stories that's in my book that really influenced
how I started to shift shift on how I was working with clients.
My own pregnancy journey that began 21 years ago.
Where after a year of trying to get pregnant, it was time to become possibly
(35:30):
more invasive because I was in my early 30s.
And the doc said, well, now we have to just do a bunch of fertility testing
and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I just felt like I didn't want to go down that road yet.
And then I had a dream one night and I too, I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
(35:51):
And at the time of the time in my life, when I was trying to get pregnant,
I hadn't spoken to my dad, my abuser for a decade.
So he was not part of my life for a decade. I had done a lot of therapy,
healing from the childhood stuff and created my own like chosen tribe of loved
(36:12):
ones and really good friends and just felt really good in my life emotionally, personally.
So, but I had this dream one night, really random, but not so random now that
I think about it, where my father was dying in the hospital.
And in the dream, the dream version
(36:32):
of me was a higher self because
she went to the hospital to present
dad with a letter of forgiveness
because the higher self me in
the dream understood that dad
was a dying man and another soul who who was alone in his dying process and
(36:56):
the higher self me recognized that that every soul deserves forgiveness, deserves love,
and deserves not to be alone as they cross over, as they pass away.
So I woke up from that dream and I was like, whoa, that was crazy.
But I knew, I felt it, this is the intuition coming into play,
(37:21):
that the dream had something to do with my inability to get pregnant.
So then I set off on a journey of visiting my dad.
My mother went with me and that visit wasn't particularly dramatic or anything.
It was only like, I don't know, half an hour, 20 minutes.
(37:42):
But what I saw in him as I think he was 78 at the time was a man,
a boy trapped in an old man's body still.
This is what I saw was the evidence of what happens to a human when they do
not address their own traumas. He had his own traumas too.
He was born, when was he born? No, it wasn't during the Great Depression. Yeah, no, it was.
(38:09):
His dad died when he was nine years old and his mother couldn't afford to take care of him.
So she abandoned him at a boy's orphanage where he was sexually abused.
And so he had multiple traumas there before the age of 10.
(38:29):
You have the society's trauma of the Great Depression. You have losing your
father at the age of nine and then your mother abandoning you at the age of 10.
And he had never processed or dealt with any of that.
And you could see it, you know, 78 years later, he was still resentful of his
mother, resentful of the government, just bitter and resentful.
(38:54):
And I didn't really know why I had to go see him.
But I also made an appointment because all the ladies at work were talking about
a craniosacral therapist in town.
I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time.
And her reputation was, oh, yeah, she can get anybody pregnant.
So I had made an appointment with her after I saw my dad.
(39:17):
And she could tell you know if you've ever worked with an energy healer she's
just hovering her hands like over my whole body and i didn't tell her anything
about my childhood or i just said i'm having a hard time getting pregnant and
i don't want to do these invasive procedures,
and she hovered her hands over my body and she could tell that my left ovary
(39:39):
was blocked and she just like nonchalantly said yeah let's go ahead and unblock
that so i'm on the table her her
massage table and she's doing her cranial sacral thing and just gently,
you know, putting a little bit of pressure at the base of my cranium,
at the base of my tailbone and, you know, a little rocking.
(40:00):
And it was such a cathartic experience for me.
I was just emoting. I was crying on the table, releasing all this energy.
I didn't even understand it completely, But, and this might sound a little wackadoodle,
but I heard my reproductive organs say, it is okay now, Leisha.
(40:20):
You are safe. We are safe. And you can let go.
And so I said, okay, I'm going to let go.
And the session was over. and the craniosacral therapist, Donna,
she said, yeah, your leftover is, you know, is unblocked now.
(40:41):
And two weeks later, I had a positive pregnancy test and, you know, he's 20 years old today.
So that to me was just like, and this is happening at a time where I wasn't
super body aware or didn't really understand the body mind connection so well,
or definitely not not super spiritual either.
(41:02):
But to me, it was like, okay, there is there really is this body,
mind, spirit connection.
And it can help us heal.
And that's when I started to integrate more of spirit, more of body in with
my work with clients into the healing process for them.
(41:25):
That's amazingly powerful. And I really appreciate you sharing that with us.
And it's just something that it's, yeah, it's just so powerful how our mind,
body and spirit are connected. connected.
And yeah, just being able to have those experiences.
(41:46):
I've had some similar experiences where, you know, sometimes when you think
about it, I'm a pretty spiritual person.
And, you know, I think, you know, everything happens like when it's meant to
and time plays for a reason.
And I definitely think it's something that a lot of people can relate to.
(42:07):
Can you tell us a little little bit about spirituality looks like when working with clients?
Oh, yeah, this is where it gets really fun. Because whatever,
whatever the resources are, for each individual client, like,
let's, let's use that in your healing journey.
(42:28):
So it doesn't have to be from an organized religion, although that's where most
people get their foundation of spirituality
is, probably being raised in a particular church or what have you.
But if your spirituality is based in nature, awesome.
Let's use the earth to help you get grounded, to help you feel grounded,
(42:52):
to help you feel supported. That's powerful.
If you're practicing Wiccan, if you're part of the the Wiccan religion. Okay.
Let's bring in, you know, your goddesses. Which are the goddesses that help
you feel protected, nurtured, powerful, loved?
(43:14):
And, you know, I use the client's imagination to bring these spiritual resources in.
It can be Jesus. It can be Mary Magdalene, Mother Mary, Mother Teresa.
It ultimately doesn't matter. Or if you have spirit animals that you you resonate
with. Let's bring those animals in.
But before we bring them in, let's talk about why they are your spiritual resources.
(43:39):
What do you feel when you think of them?
And usually I'm looking for characteristics like protection,
unconditional love, nurturing. And it can also be the spirit of ancestors or
loved ones who have passed on.
To help you feel supported in the healing process, to help you feel not alone
(44:02):
in that healing process. Yeah, it's definitely something that I can personally relate to.
I know, no matter what your background is, as far as spirituality and what you
believe in it, there's so many different names.
I know sometimes it's God, sometimes it's the universe.
For me, it's usually when I'm thinking about something, I'm thinking about the
(44:22):
universe. where it's like, please give me a sign.
And just having that core belief and that for me, good things are to come if
I put my energy out into the universe that what I'm seeking for will come to me.
And yeah, it's definitely something that I can relate to.
And I love how you mentioned how inclusive you are in your practice with spirituality.
(44:47):
And I just think that's amazing.
Yeah, it's fun. It's great. I mean, there's people who say like,
oh yeah, I'm Catholic or I'm Christian.
And then when I ask like, okay, how does your spiritual path like help you or inspire you?
And nine times out of 10 people are like, I don't know, they shrug their shoulders.
Like I never really think about God.
(45:09):
And I was like, oh, well, do you want to?
Cause like, this is a huge resource,
you know? And then they start to get excited or at least curious.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And, um, yeah, like, and, and for me,
it's within, been with the last couple of years where my spirituality has kind
(45:31):
of helped kind of guide me.
And helped me kind of, I don't know, make different decisions when sometimes
I'm like, I just, I don't know what to do.
And then I'll be like, universe, give me a sign, you know, and And inevitably, there'll be a sign.
And so and I think also using my intuition and kind of learning how to trust
(45:53):
myself has really helped with that.
So yeah, I really love that.
Can you tell us where we can find you, where we can follow you,
where we can purchase your book?
I know I'll be doing that right away because I'm super excited about it.
So yeah, if you could tell us where everyone can find you and follow you.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I have a website and it's called sacredhealingplacetacoma.com.
(46:22):
And my Instagram and Facebook are also the same name at sacredhealingplacetacoma.
So the book, Love What Hurts, A Guide for Healing Emotional Wounds and Following
Your Intuition can be found on Amazon or any of your favorite online sites.
(46:43):
Book retailers like Barnes and Noble, Balboa Press, wherever you order your
books from, it'll be there.
Awesome. I'll make sure I get that included in the show notes as well.
So our listeners can be sure to check you out. But yeah, I super appreciate
you taking your time to join us today.
(47:03):
And I really appreciate your time. I think this will be a phenomenal episode for our listeners.
That's awesome. Yes. Thank you for having me, Thank you, Valerie.
Music.
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