September 15, 2025 • 52 mins
Today's podcast is dedicated to providing insights, tools, and stories of resilience for those navigating the journey of trauma recovery. Let’s begin by debunking Myths and Misconceptions. When trying to analyze trauma we need to understand how the brain and the body respond. There is a thing called Cultural Trauma. As a society we need an Understanding of Collective Wounds. That includes listening and exploring how historical and societal events can impact entire communities and generations.
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ASharpe Outlook is broadcast live Mondays at 8AM PT on K4HD Radio - Hollywood Talk Radio (www.k4hd.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). ASharpe Outlook TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
ASharpe Outlook Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/asharpe-outlook--6643730/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This program is designed to provide general information with regards
to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
(00:22):
the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
suggested ideas.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, and thank you for tuning in to a Sharp
Outlook on pay for HD radio and Talk or TV.
I am Angela Sharp, your host. Our arm chair discussions
with industry experts will give you the steps, tools and
information to be successful in business and to prepare you
to be your best self. Hello, I'm Angela Sharp, and
(00:56):
welcome to a Sharp Outlook. I'm very excited about this
program today and I believe you will learn a lot
about trauma and how to recover from trauma and just
how to understand others that are going through trauma. So
welcome to our show, Trauma and Healing Forward. We're dedicated
(01:16):
to providing insights, tools and stories of resilience for those
navigating a journey of trauma recovery. Today, we have a
leading expert in trauma informed care. We will discuss the
different facets of trauma, from understanding its impact on the
brain and body to practical strategies for healing and growth.
(01:40):
We're going to talk about also different types of trauma. Specifically,
we want to also begin to talk about trauma that
is cultural trauma that is historical and how it can
have impacts even on future generations. What is trauma? Let's
(02:00):
begin by debunking myths and misconceptions by explaining the definition
of trauma, which differentiates between different types. There's acute, chronic
complex and when trying to unanalyze trauma, we need to
understand how the brain and body responds, understanding the fight, flight, freeze,
(02:21):
and fawn responses that take us to the physiological responses
to trauma and how they manifest in daily life. There's
a thing called cultural trauma. As a society, we need
an understanding of collective wounds that includes exploring how historical
(02:42):
and societal events can impact entire communities and generations. Learning
some of the key steps to healing, like retraining the
brain or community support someone you can call when you're
in need of help. Prioritize your well being and your
self care, including setting boundaries, managing your triggers and practicing
(03:08):
self compassion, identifying and coping with trauma reminders, and as
you're identifying these triggers, developing coping mechanisms. Staying present in
the moment and not revisiting the trauma is probably a
very important thing to consider. Managing your nutrition. Sometimes just
(03:30):
fueling your body with the right amount of the right
and appropriate nutrition can help with the mental health. And
get assistance from dietary you know, doctors or whomever who
can give you the recommendations of what things that you
should avoid if you're going or while you're going through trauma.
(03:51):
One of the biggest things is forgiveness. Forgive yourself and
forgive others. It sets you're free on to it. And
then those that are around students, supporting those students who
have experienced trauma, and getting guidance for educators as how
(04:12):
to create a trauma informed classroom, a trauma informed school,
a trauma informed society, a drama informed community, so that
we're all healing together. If one is hurting, we're all hurting.
And that's how we should look at situations that people
are going through. My guest today, Huda Summitur is a
(04:36):
solution focused coach. She is the owner of Begin to
Heal Counseling and Consulting Services I Begin to Heal Counseling
and Consulting Services. The mission is to support individuals, couples,
and families on their healing journey. They believe in providing
(04:57):
a safe and nurturing environment where everyone can explore their
challenges and find paths to wellness. Hudha received a Master
of Social Work degree and Social Justice and Diversity. She
has designed over twenty training sessions on alternative healing strategies
(05:17):
using indigenous and effrocentric frameworks. Hudah is the author, is
an author and is a compassionate and experienced trauma therapist
and speaker with over fifteen years of experience. She recognizes
and integrates the practice of mental health, capacity building and
(05:39):
harm reduction. Hudah has helped countless individuals heal from various
forms of trauma. She is passionate about empowering others to
reclaim their lives after trauma. Houdah's approach is rooted in empathy, culture, sensitivity,
(06:01):
and evidence based practices. I would like to ask who
to join me right now so we can begin our
conversation about how do we recover from trauma? So many
people are out there that are suffering from various types
of trauma. So thank you for joining.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Me, Thank you Angela for having me, thank you for
summarizing trauma for us, and thank you for inviting me
to this platform to speak about the solutions as people
who are of indigenous histories, right, people, how can they
(06:49):
survive without their indigenous ways of knowing?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (06:55):
And I feel like when we talk about trauma, we
focus specifically on the trauma, but there's more to the
trauma than just focusing on the trauma because looking back
in history, we all struggle from trauma symptoms, and trauma
(07:16):
is a spectrum of different experiences, so not one trauma
experience can actually generalize how we all feel. We all
go through different stages of trauma and it could happen
during your childhood or it can happen in your adulthood,
(07:39):
but it's self identified. And that's where I start the
healing process from, is from that individual. But recently I've
looked at the way we support people who are clinicians,
how we support clients who are of racial lies. The
(08:00):
set clients who actually focus in on the Indigenous ways
of knowing. How do we support them? And I realized
that we, as the clinicians, are the center of this
healing journey. It's not the person, it's the clinician who's
(08:23):
the center. Yes, what you provide to your clients determines
the outcome of their healing journey. If you are not
versed in the way they think and feel, how can
you support these individuals?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yes, yes, I agree. You know, I when I was
preparing for this show, it brought took me back to
the time when I was a foster parent and when
I first you know, prepared to be a foster parent.
We went through different classes and a different train and
things like that. Well, the children that we were going
(09:05):
to be caring for were indigenous Native Indigenous children, but
everything that we were learning did not include their background,
or their traditions or the culture. So me knowing how
I am, I began to the conversation and I said,
(09:26):
you know, we're missing a big subject here, We're missing
a big issue here, and we need to consider these
different things that are going on in their homes, in
their lives, and even in society as how they're treated
by society. Also we need to think about all that
when we're talking about trying to care for these children,
(09:49):
and you have to under have an understanding or we're
going to fail at what we're doing. And so they
all sounded like they appreciated, but we had to have
a few more conversations because when I finally had children
assigned to me, I looked at the file that had
been put together by the social worker and the things
(10:10):
that were written down. I thought to myself, I can't
handle these children. Oh my goodness, this is terrible. So
I said, ah, I better give it a chance, because
you know, I know, sometimes people just write things and
they don't really understand what's going on. I got three
of the most wonderful children. They were all siblings. They
(10:32):
were wonderful, they were beautiful, and so I had to
go back. I went back to the social work agency
and we had a strong conversation. I said, do you
know what you just did in this file? Do you
know these things that you wrote This is not the
(10:52):
children that are in my home. I don't know who
this is that you wrote about, but they're not the
children in my home. And you have to understand you're
giving this to strangers. Who don't know the children or
what they're doing, and you're giving them, you know, perceptions
that are going to make it very difficult for that
child to heal, for this child to be comfortable, or
(11:16):
for this child to want to be in that home.
So you need to be careful about this because this
here is inappropriate. Yeah, they had to. They had to
accept that. And I said, and stop the medication, wouldn't
you because I'm not medicating them. Yes, we're going to
change their diet, we're going to do some exercise, we're
(11:39):
going to do and have some love in the home,
but we're not putting them to sleep every night.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yes, So you know, I understand you know the social
workers' perspective that person who wrote that document, because guess what,
we're trained to do that, right as social workers. We're
trained to write these reports from the medical perspective. Right,
(12:06):
So when you write things from the medicals perspective, you
dehumanize these individuals. Yes, you depersonalize and you individualize, right,
So what are you taking out? You're taking out the
humanity from this report, right, And this is how we're
(12:27):
trained and our training. I'm not saying it's it's something
negative I'm saying, this is how we're trained in terms
of how to do the reports. And it's good because
now our brain is structured in a way that we
see things from an inclusive perspective as clinicians, but the
humanity is missing. Yes, sometimes with our mainstream clients, we
(12:53):
want to go beyond a certain barrier, but we can't
because we're obliged to stay within the frame. The framework, Right,
So you want to go beyond, you want to you
want to kind of focus in on that person's you know,
other aspects of healing, but you can't with a lot
(13:16):
of the mainstream clients because this is not how they function,
and so you're restricted. But people who are of racialize
the set, people who practice the indigenous ways of knowing,
Now there's more clinicians available to practice from their perspective,
(13:38):
from their understanding, and so I am really excited about
the change and how people are now able to access
clinicians who can provide a holistic approach to supporting right
(14:00):
and provide them with the coping strategies that they need
rather than just focusing on the mainstream's ways of knowing.
There was this guy. He was of racialized descent, and
I always remember him. It's been years since I supported him.
But he was obsessed with this individual that worked at McDonald's,
(14:26):
like completely upset, so that individual would call the police,
he would get arrested, and then he would do the
same thing over and over again. So I advocated for
him because he needed more clinical support rather than being
just in the criminal system. And so what I see
(14:49):
is that a lot of mainstream organizations don't understand the
cultural aspects of why individuals are doing what they're doing.
So this guy felt like these, he was connected spiritually
with these, with this specific individual that worked at McDonald's.
(15:11):
So if he got the right person, it would have
the situation would have been different, right, because they would
have understood him from his cultural ways of knowing. Yes,
But they didn't, so they criminalized him. And that's what
I see a lot is that people are criminalized instead
(15:35):
of providing with the right solution.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yes, yes, and especially you know, like you said, we're
talking about indigenous you know individuals, and you have you know,
a clinician that does not know anything about that particular lifestyle,
what their spiritual beliefs are, even the structure of their
(15:58):
their home. Know, what do they call their parents, and
what do they call their grandparents? Like I said, they
were Native Indigenous, and I didn't bring them in and
have them call me mom. I'm not her mom. You
have a mom, and I didn't want to make them
feel I didn't respect that they did have a mom.
(16:19):
I said, call me grandma because I know in Native
culture everybody can be auntie and grandma any elder that
is helping or caring or something like that. So they
called me grandma and we just got along beautifully. And
I explained it to the group of foster parents when
(16:40):
we would have our meetings. Stop trying to afford because
they were, you know, complain that they're not calling me mom,
You're not their mother. Stop treating them. It's just disrespectful
for you to make these children call you mom when
they have a mother, as if you have just tossed
their parents away. Yes, their parents going through some issues. Yes,
(17:05):
those parents, you know, need some counseling, need some treatment,
but they still exist, so don't you know, and especially
when you're trying to force them. If it comes naturally,
that's one thing, but if it doesn't, then stop doing that.
It's so wrong and you don't understand the culture and
what you're doing to them when you are just trying
(17:26):
to toss away family members, you know, like they don't exist.
And so you know, there's just you know, little things
like that that they you know, they need, they need
to understand. If you're going to be taking indigenous people in,
you need to get some books or have someone go
(17:47):
and be involved and see what's going on, you know,
in their communities, because you know, you can't call things
evil when you don't understand it. You can't call things
bad when you don't even.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Know what it is.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
These things are. You know, you're bringing on your perspective,
but you haven't been exposed to anything else but your backyard. Yes,
now you're trying to force them to be that and
you can't. And yes, you're going to end up a
conflict because they're still fighting to keep their identity. Yes,
and so it's yeah, it's.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, and it's not. Sometimes we forget right, we think
about the mind and we think about the heart, yes,
but we forget about our genes, our genetics. Our genes
are connected to our ancestors. So how we heal is
(18:47):
also connected to our ancestors. Yes, and so if we
heal in the wrong way, it actually can cause a
negative effect on our body, on our mind. Yes, so
anything that goes against our healing, any anything that is
(19:10):
of something that where you're not used to can impact
how we holistically heal as human beings. So if we
disconnect from that, and a lot of a lot of
like new immigrants, a lot of people who are second
(19:31):
sorry first generation immigrants, feel that they sometimes have to
abide by the ways of this country, and so they
lose that connection with their ancestors, with their with their
knowledge base from from their tradition, culture and religion. They
(19:52):
disconnect from that. So you see a lot of people
who are having trauma symptoms not because they've been impacted
in certain ways, but because they've disconnected from what they
know what their body needs. There's a term called a
(20:17):
culturation that was introduced to me by a professor, a
Somali professor who teaches in the University of Minnesota. So
she introduced me to this term called a culturation, and
a culturation is having two different perspectives in the household.
(20:41):
So one that's connected to the mainstream ways of knowing
and one that's connected to the indigenous ways of knowing,
and so those two are clashing. No one's teaching them
to unite based on the indigenous ways of knowing, right,
based on their ways of knowing. So these these children
(21:04):
disconnected from their roots, from their ways, and then you
see them not being functional, functional in society. They can't
function in mainstream because they don't know who they are.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yes, yes, yes, that's really true. And it's and that's
a that's an internal struggle that they're fighting besides anything
else that might be impacting them, because you know, everyone
even now is still trying to figure out who am I?
Where did I come from? Who are my ancestors, especially
(21:44):
those that you know were brought here you know, historically
we're brought here on ships to become slaves. They're still
trying to identify who am I? But yet there's something
in the DNA that's still calling you have a family,
you have ancestors, you have this and that is that
(22:05):
causes a lot of confusion inside, you know, when you
have been taught so many other things about that society
and now you're trying to connect to it. Now you
I mean, you don't know where your allegiance is. I mean,
I don't I'm not sure if they can merge. I
(22:26):
think they could probably merge, but it has to be
something that's acceptable to merge the cultures together. Why not
respect both of them. I mean, why do we have
to say you have to be like me. I don't
think so. I think when the Creator created humans, he
made them different. Look at everything that's out there. If
(22:47):
he wanted everything that's saying, we'd have one type of bird,
one type of tree, one type of fish, we would
get bored with life. Variety is the spice of life,
and he made things so there's variety, and we are
considered a variety of what he has created and accepting
(23:08):
you know that we have. We all are different, and
learning from each other's differences is really important and it's
very special. I mean, I enjoy learning about other cultures,
and I think just sharing all of that information in fact,
be on us. If we related more with each other,
(23:29):
we would have any diseases in the world. Because there's
so many indigenous that have so many things that they
already have passed through in their culture and in their
teachings and in their healing teachings. That a tea here,
a root, there are fruit here, and I'll tell you,
(23:51):
we wouldn't have diseases. But because we challenge one another
instead of communicating with one another, no one sharing and
so guess what the rest everybody else is suffering the
things that don't need because we can't talk. That doesn't
make sense to me.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah. So another aspect of trauma, right, it's it's an
ongoing trauma experience that only people have racialized the set understand,
So that ongoing battle that we have that is that
(24:31):
has caused us trauma is not spoken about in in
in therapeutic settings, right, So you as a as a clinician,
will be focused on that individual, but there's other factors
(24:51):
influencing that individual. That individual has a lot of societal
issues that they're going through. So you might have somebody
who's experiencing racism for example, somebody who is being marginalized
(25:18):
because they can't speak the language, the English language. Somebody
who you know is has family abroad and is isolated here.
So there's so many factors that are not spoken about
in terms of trauma. Right. Trauma is not only impact,
(25:43):
it's also experienced, and so these individuals are in crisis
all the time in terms of how they think and
how they function, and then this whole thing about you know, finance.
You know, Franz Fenanen was a psychiatrist, and he was
(26:04):
also racially profiled as a clinician as somebody who was
a psychiatrist back in the day. And so france Fan
talks about dehumanizing, depersonalizing, and individualizing. And when he wrote
about these three things, these three frameworks, he understood that
(26:26):
the colonizer's work was not only in terms of huge
like countries and settings, but it also impacted the individual. Yes,
So all of these different entities that we are under,
which is for example, the social work, the hospitals, the
(26:51):
prison systems, you know, all of these systems are a
descendants from the colonizer. So they function in the same
way to dehumanize, to depersonalize to individuals. That's their function.
So how are these systems able to help.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Us heal.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Unless we formulate something parallel.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yes, to these systems.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
So that is what the indigenous ways of knowing is.
It's a parallel system to the your centric.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
System, right, and even though it's hard for them for
us to merge the two, we.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Do it in a way that we find that your
centric system structure. We can use that structure, but use
this framework to help our clients heal. And now, like
in Canada the United States, more and more people are
(28:02):
understanding that we need to heal our people or racialized
people using a different ways, different ways of knowing. So
it's hard, Angela.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Oh, you know, I'm There's a movie out called Sugarcane.
It's a documentary and I watched it last night and
it was a story about the residential schools in Canada
and the abuses and different things that went on for
(28:37):
all of those children. And I had like three generations
that we're talking about that had gone to the schools,
or they were birthed at the schools, or you know,
their parents had gone, grandparents had been there or whatever.
And just even going to the point of even trying
to do reconciliation, it was so hard because the trauma
(29:01):
was so deep and had had been ignored for such
a long time. One word I'm sorry wasn't going to
be enough. There was too much that had had gone on.
And unless we understand, like you said, put the humanity back.
I don't know what happened that we just take we're
(29:23):
human beings. Why are we trying to treat people like
we would our animals. We are human beings, and so
when we take that out, we just lose the whole
concept of actually reaching their inner being, which is what
we should be doing. And I watched that. I cried
almost through the whole documentary because it was to see
(29:46):
these older people still struggling to be whole, still struggling
to be free. That was heartbreaking. Yeah, and so.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, it is worth breaking. And I'm going to share
a secret with you. I feel like all clinicians should
start out working in crisis first before they're clinicians. I
feel like when you work as a crisis responder, you
(30:23):
see a lot. You see a lot of trauma. You
see people that can't afford you know, counseling or therapy.
You see people who are struggling with alcoholism. You see
people who have fine family dynamics that are unhealthy. You
see a lot of rape victims. And most of these
(30:46):
people now that access crisis are racialized people. Yes, they're
the same people you're talking about, actually, and because they've
been dehumanized at a very young age, they're you. They're
looking for other ways to heal, negative ways to heal.
(31:09):
So alcoholism is part of those that negative ways. They
gravitate towards that. Yes, right, and so what do we
do with these type of people that are struggling. Oh,
go to rehab, right, go to detox, you know, go
(31:30):
and access counseling. But what they really need is to
find themselves. Yeah, we're trying to gain some sort of
happiness satisfaction through these negative hoping strategies.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah, but they don't know themselves. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I had uncles that they had gone to the military.
I don't I know. Being in war, was in World
War two. Being in war is very difficult. But then
there were a lot of things they were coping with.
I didn't find out until I was much older, and
(32:13):
I'm sadden because they became alcoholics. Brilliant men, mathematicians and
one worked at Nassau, I mean brilliant, intelligent, but they drank.
And I think it was to cope with the war.
And then what happened when they came back from the
(32:33):
war and the broken promises that they did not get
the benefits that they were promised because they were indigenous.
And I watched them not be who I knew they
could be, and I didn't understand it because I was
the baby of the family, so I didn't understand. I
just saw them. But my mother was always loving, never judgmental,
(32:57):
very understanding. You just needed to clean up before you came,
but she would all they would come by the house
and she would feed them a warm meal and make
sure that they were taken care of. But I watched
that and it made me go to the alcohol drug
treatment centers and counsel and work with them and talk
(33:19):
with them and share with them and learn more so
that I had a better understanding about my own family
members and helping them understand. And it is a coping
method of their trying to deaden the pain, is what
they're trying to do. And I'm not a therapist. I
just have watched this for numerous years as being a child,
(33:44):
growing up and then even working at the treatment centers.
They're coping with pain and they don't know any other
way because they don't have no one to go to
that understands what's happening and how to reach them and
reach the heart of them and help them understand, Okay,
(34:05):
you made a bad choice, but now you get to
make a different choice and you forget about that one
that made the bad choice and start spending your energy
on the one that on the good choices that you've made.
And watched the changes and I saw different ones their
lives change. They ended up going to college and just
(34:27):
I mean, some good things happen, but you have to
really dig deep to get past the wall that's there,
and then the guilt that they keep putting on themselves,
and just understanding, you know, the fact that they have
hurt people and they don't know how to say I'm sorry,
(34:51):
and they don't know how to feel that that person
will receive them back forgiveness. This forgiveness, if you say
I'm sorry, goes away. Don't carry it along with you
because when the person says I receive your you know, apology,
it's done. It's gone. Don't go back there anymore. Let
(35:14):
it go. But yeah, how important is it for self
care and trauma recovery process?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Big time? So it's it's uh, my language. When I'm
speaking to individuals and I'm doing counseling with them, it's emotional.
It's okay, So we have cognition and then we have
emotional intelligence. So I use a lot of my emotional
(35:47):
intelligence during counseling sessions because I feel like that's, first
of all, that's who I am, and I feel like
I can get a lot of people to understan where
I'm coming from when I use my emotional intelligence than
when I just focusing on my cognition. And so I
(36:09):
came up with three strategies when I'm providing support to people,
and this is across the board, this is what people
are missing. Number one is self care. Anybody who is
struggling to heal is lacking in self care. Number two
(36:30):
is journaling. Number three is setting healthy boundaries. Right. So,
when I was young, I watched a lot of Disney movies.
Disney so I'm one of those people I like to
get down to the nitty gritty, like why did Disney
(36:53):
come up with Happily Ever After? Endings? Right? And I
was like, what what is the satisfaction people get from
Happily ever After? Endings? Right? And so I thought about
it and I said, the reason why is that the
brain needs to close that toxic conversation that it's having
(37:16):
in its head. So remember Disney talks about a lot
of like struggles in needs kids' movies. And then towards
the end, he gives us happily ever after, and this
is what our brain needs. It needs happily ever after.
(37:37):
Journaling is good for that. So even though it's not real,
the brain can't understand real from unreal. So you close
that conversation that's happening in your head by writing down
a happily ever after ending. So let's say you blame
(37:57):
your mom for all this toxicity that happened you, and
your mom is no longer here, like she passed away,
and you still live with that pain. Right, you give
yourself that happily ever after ending, and the brain closes
that conversation because that's what the brain knows too. Self care.
(38:18):
Self care is our emotional fuel. If you survive your
day to day activities, you need to give yourself self care.
So I prescribe myself three self cares a day, meaning
that I would do random things like watch Netflix or
go for a walk. There's these group of Italian elders
(38:45):
at the mall and I'm like, they're the typical example
of self care. They come with their desserts and their
coffee and they start talking. They talk for two hours
and then they pick up their garbage and they go home.
That's their self care. Every day. If I ever go
(39:06):
to the mall, I will see them. It's twenty folks
have sit at one corner the other half, so Angela,
they the men sit at one corner and then the
women's so because the conversations are not the same, right, right,
So self care, whatever self care that you are doing,
(39:33):
is the self care that's work for you, right. Healthcare
is guess what. When a child is young, they understand
self care. They automatically gravitate towards self care. They go
bike riding, they do all kinds of activities. But we
grow up, we forget about self care. In order for
(39:56):
you to heal holistically, you need to engage in self care.
People who don't engage in self care are the ones
you see crying chronically, sporadically, crying all the time, having
chronic illnesses as a result of lack of self care.
(40:17):
All these chronic illnesses that we struggle with is as
a result of lack of self care. And the last
boundaries and you know, I won't get into boundaries because
boundaries are you know, they're they're self identified and individual
based on the person's needs. But the other two very important.
(40:42):
You want to get rid of toxic conversations happening in
your head. Journal. You want to gain emotional fuel, just
like a car needs fuel. Engage in self care.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Okay, I'm going to pick up some of those I
can see where I can just drive myself and I'm
not taking that time out for me, and I do,
I do end up feeling the body react and start
fighting me back, and it's like, uh uh, nope, I'm
(41:14):
going to do nothing this whole day. It's my day
because I just need to take care of me and
nothing else.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
And so even spraying a perfume on yourself, like just
that care Yeah, just just something that weren't planning that
day and just saying I'm going to take this time
out just for me.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
I'm going to do that more. Yeah, I like that.
How what role does community and social support play in
healing a lot?
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Remember what's the opposite of individualization, right, it's community. So
everything that Frantz Flann talked about, do the opposite, because
that's what the eurocentric system is trying to disconnect you from.
Its disconnecting you from community, is disconnecting from you from
(42:10):
you know, helping each other in a communal way. So
for example, when you go to your doctor's office, and
let's say you have a family of five, that doctor,
if that child is above a certain age, that doctor
will suggest for that child to go into the room
individually and not go with the parent. But maybe the
(42:31):
parent knows more about the child than the child, than
the child himself or herself. Why don't you allow that?
Why don't you allow this child to go in there
with the parent even though he's he's he or she
is twenty or nineteen or eighteen. Right, But communal healing
(42:53):
is very important because that is the indigenous ways, right.
And so I've seen women and I call it the
the Cinderella transformation people in our community. When they're going
to weddings, it's like everybody transforms into this like beautiful
(43:21):
lavish like you know, I don't know, like just they're
so beautiful. They're so beautiful, like the way they're dressed,
the makeup, and and then they go home and that
dress is off again. But when they go to these functions,
it's all about dance, it's about it's all about communication,
(43:44):
it's all about energy, positive energy. And some of these
females go to weddings like once a week or twice
a week. But there are those that don't go anywhere
that you can tell that there's struggling, right, part of
(44:04):
my journey, So begin to heal. People think it's an
organization or it's a name that I gave my organization, right,
but begin to heal is my journey. Is my journey
to give back. And so when you're working as a clinician,
(44:27):
a lot of energy is taken away from you. So
what I do is I organize community events, free community events,
and that's for people to benefit from my knowledge, but
as well as to come together and heal together. The
only way for us to completely heal is through communal settings.
(44:52):
That is what our body knows. That is our ancestral
ways of knowing. I don't know if you know, but
even like with the indigenous people right back in the
day when they were practicing, like let's say they were practicing,
did you see them like they were always in a circle.
(45:16):
And the circle means that nobody is above nobody, right,
everybody is.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Equal mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
And so and they don't interrupt each other. They speak
every when when one person speaks, everybody is listening mm hmm.
And I see that as a non existent practice in
this day and age, right, right, I feel like children
(45:47):
are not listened to mm hmm, even though they have so.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Much to share with us when they're young, because their
heart is so clean. Mm hmmm. I feel like teenager
who do the wrong thing are criminalized. Like if they
go and steal from a local, let's say, store, should
they be criminalized at the age of thirteen or should
(46:15):
they be supported? Right? So, there's a lot of like
activities happening to dehumanize us more than to dehumanize us.
I don't know if you've seen this on social media,
but there's this guy that gives away cards with things
(46:37):
written on them, like randomly in like to people outside,
and he writes these notes, and these notes are for
him to make a connection, and so he writes like
empowering words or like motivations on those cards and he
gives them away, and the trend information in people's facial
(47:02):
expressions when he get when they read that note is amazing. Yeah,
so I think we're missing the connection, like.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
You to connect. Yeah, the spirituality too. Sometimes you do
see someone and they just they just want to They
just say a specific word and it can change that
person that's on the bus, just sitting there across for them.
And and we were not tuned in to that that
(47:30):
spiritual part of us, that that receives that that message,
and that message isn't always for us, it's to pass
on to somebody else. But because we haven't, we're not
a society that is community. Then we we think everything
is me me.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Me me me me me.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Mey me, And I'm sorry that was not the thought
pattern when creation was made. It was never me me,
me me me. It was always we we we we.
And that's the one thing about even some tribal peoples.
There's no word for me. It's all we because we
(48:14):
are in this together, not a me me me. And
when we stop understanding that we are a community and
just want to be individuals, that's when it becomes dangerous
because you can have all kinds of thoughts and anything
can be happening when you isolate yourself. Isolation is just
so dangerous. What advice would you give to someone who's
(48:36):
just starting their trauma healing journey.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
That's a good question and a very difficult question because
it's so self identified, like everybody's healing journey is so unique.
Different people start in different like for different reasons. A
lot of times it's when people hit rock bottom, meaning
(49:05):
they've lost a loved one, right, or they've just separated
from their partner of twenty years, or they've lost children,
or they're isolated and nobody to talk to, or they
lost their jobs, right, And so there's a lot of
(49:26):
losses that happen when when trauma healing begins, right. But
I always start from scratch, like I always go way
back to their childhood because past behavior predicts future behavior. Yeah, meaning, yeah,
(49:50):
go ahead.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Oh I was gonna say, we're coming up to town. Okay, Okay,
give the the email or website where people can connect
with you or reach you.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
Yes, so I think you've included my website, but I
have I have an email. My email is begin to
Heal at gmail dot com and that's where people can
reach me. Yeah, so thank you for having me. It
(50:28):
was a really nice discussion. And it's so hard to
sum up seventeen years of practice right into like one hour.
But I enjoy what I do. There's you know, I
really do love what I do because it's making a difference.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
And that's the that's the greatest thing is just being
out there trying to make a difference, one person at
a time. I really do. Thank you for joining me
this morning, and thank you audience for joining us on
a Sharp Outlook. We're here every Monday at eleven am
Eastern time, eight a m. Pacific time, and please join
(51:13):
us again next week. And whatever you do this week,
think about yourself, do some self loving, and stay informed.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
I want to thank you for joining us on a
Sharp Outlook. We have been informed and energized to take
the next steps. We have posted links to websites and
videos to learn more on today's topic. Please join us
again next week or another thought provoking conversation right here
on key for HD radio and Talk for TV. Listen
(51:51):
to the podcast on all the podcast apps, and until
next week, stay informed.
This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
(00:22):
the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
suggested ideas.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, and thank you for tuning in to a Sharp
Outlook on pay for HD radio and Talk or TV.
I am Angela Sharp, your host. Our arm chair discussions
with industry experts will give you the steps, tools and
information to be successful in business and to prepare you
to be your best self. Hello, I'm Angela Sharp, and
(00:56):
welcome to a Sharp Outlook. I'm very excited about this
program today and I believe you will learn a lot
about trauma and how to recover from trauma and just
how to understand others that are going through trauma. So
welcome to our show, Trauma and Healing Forward. We're dedicated
(01:16):
to providing insights, tools and stories of resilience for those
navigating a journey of trauma recovery. Today, we have a
leading expert in trauma informed care. We will discuss the
different facets of trauma, from understanding its impact on the
brain and body to practical strategies for healing and growth.
(01:40):
We're going to talk about also different types of trauma. Specifically,
we want to also begin to talk about trauma that
is cultural trauma that is historical and how it can
have impacts even on future generations. What is trauma? Let's
(02:00):
begin by debunking myths and misconceptions by explaining the definition
of trauma, which differentiates between different types. There's acute, chronic
complex and when trying to unanalyze trauma, we need to
understand how the brain and body responds, understanding the fight, flight, freeze,
(02:21):
and fawn responses that take us to the physiological responses
to trauma and how they manifest in daily life. There's
a thing called cultural trauma. As a society, we need
an understanding of collective wounds that includes exploring how historical
(02:42):
and societal events can impact entire communities and generations. Learning
some of the key steps to healing, like retraining the
brain or community support someone you can call when you're
in need of help. Prioritize your well being and your
self care, including setting boundaries, managing your triggers and practicing
(03:08):
self compassion, identifying and coping with trauma reminders, and as
you're identifying these triggers, developing coping mechanisms. Staying present in
the moment and not revisiting the trauma is probably a
very important thing to consider. Managing your nutrition. Sometimes just
(03:30):
fueling your body with the right amount of the right
and appropriate nutrition can help with the mental health. And
get assistance from dietary you know, doctors or whomever who
can give you the recommendations of what things that you
should avoid if you're going or while you're going through trauma.
(03:51):
One of the biggest things is forgiveness. Forgive yourself and
forgive others. It sets you're free on to it. And
then those that are around students, supporting those students who
have experienced trauma, and getting guidance for educators as how
(04:12):
to create a trauma informed classroom, a trauma informed school,
a trauma informed society, a drama informed community, so that
we're all healing together. If one is hurting, we're all hurting.
And that's how we should look at situations that people
are going through. My guest today, Huda Summitur is a
(04:36):
solution focused coach. She is the owner of Begin to
Heal Counseling and Consulting Services I Begin to Heal Counseling
and Consulting Services. The mission is to support individuals, couples,
and families on their healing journey. They believe in providing
(04:57):
a safe and nurturing environment where everyone can explore their
challenges and find paths to wellness. Hudha received a Master
of Social Work degree and Social Justice and Diversity. She
has designed over twenty training sessions on alternative healing strategies
(05:17):
using indigenous and effrocentric frameworks. Hudah is the author, is
an author and is a compassionate and experienced trauma therapist
and speaker with over fifteen years of experience. She recognizes
and integrates the practice of mental health, capacity building and
(05:39):
harm reduction. Hudah has helped countless individuals heal from various
forms of trauma. She is passionate about empowering others to
reclaim their lives after trauma. Houdah's approach is rooted in empathy, culture, sensitivity,
(06:01):
and evidence based practices. I would like to ask who
to join me right now so we can begin our
conversation about how do we recover from trauma? So many
people are out there that are suffering from various types
of trauma. So thank you for joining.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Me, Thank you Angela for having me, thank you for
summarizing trauma for us, and thank you for inviting me
to this platform to speak about the solutions as people
who are of indigenous histories, right, people, how can they
(06:49):
survive without their indigenous ways of knowing?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (06:55):
And I feel like when we talk about trauma, we
focus specifically on the trauma, but there's more to the
trauma than just focusing on the trauma because looking back
in history, we all struggle from trauma symptoms, and trauma
(07:16):
is a spectrum of different experiences, so not one trauma
experience can actually generalize how we all feel. We all
go through different stages of trauma and it could happen
during your childhood or it can happen in your adulthood,
(07:39):
but it's self identified. And that's where I start the
healing process from, is from that individual. But recently I've
looked at the way we support people who are clinicians,
how we support clients who are of racial lies. The
(08:00):
set clients who actually focus in on the Indigenous ways
of knowing. How do we support them? And I realized
that we, as the clinicians, are the center of this
healing journey. It's not the person, it's the clinician who's
(08:23):
the center. Yes, what you provide to your clients determines
the outcome of their healing journey. If you are not
versed in the way they think and feel, how can
you support these individuals?
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yes, yes, I agree. You know, I when I was
preparing for this show, it brought took me back to
the time when I was a foster parent and when
I first you know, prepared to be a foster parent.
We went through different classes and a different train and
things like that. Well, the children that we were going
(09:05):
to be caring for were indigenous Native Indigenous children, but
everything that we were learning did not include their background,
or their traditions or the culture. So me knowing how
I am, I began to the conversation and I said,
(09:26):
you know, we're missing a big subject here, We're missing
a big issue here, and we need to consider these
different things that are going on in their homes, in
their lives, and even in society as how they're treated
by society. Also we need to think about all that
when we're talking about trying to care for these children,
(09:49):
and you have to under have an understanding or we're
going to fail at what we're doing. And so they
all sounded like they appreciated, but we had to have
a few more conversations because when I finally had children
assigned to me, I looked at the file that had
been put together by the social worker and the things
(10:10):
that were written down. I thought to myself, I can't
handle these children. Oh my goodness, this is terrible. So
I said, ah, I better give it a chance, because
you know, I know, sometimes people just write things and
they don't really understand what's going on. I got three
of the most wonderful children. They were all siblings. They
(10:32):
were wonderful, they were beautiful, and so I had to
go back. I went back to the social work agency
and we had a strong conversation. I said, do you
know what you just did in this file? Do you
know these things that you wrote This is not the
(10:52):
children that are in my home. I don't know who
this is that you wrote about, but they're not the
children in my home. And you have to understand you're
giving this to strangers. Who don't know the children or
what they're doing, and you're giving them, you know, perceptions
that are going to make it very difficult for that
child to heal, for this child to be comfortable, or
(11:16):
for this child to want to be in that home.
So you need to be careful about this because this
here is inappropriate. Yeah, they had to. They had to
accept that. And I said, and stop the medication, wouldn't
you because I'm not medicating them. Yes, we're going to
change their diet, we're going to do some exercise, we're
(11:39):
going to do and have some love in the home,
but we're not putting them to sleep every night.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yes, So you know, I understand you know the social
workers' perspective that person who wrote that document, because guess what,
we're trained to do that, right as social workers. We're
trained to write these reports from the medical perspective. Right,
(12:06):
So when you write things from the medicals perspective, you
dehumanize these individuals. Yes, you depersonalize and you individualize, right,
So what are you taking out? You're taking out the
humanity from this report, right, And this is how we're
(12:27):
trained and our training. I'm not saying it's it's something
negative I'm saying, this is how we're trained in terms
of how to do the reports. And it's good because
now our brain is structured in a way that we
see things from an inclusive perspective as clinicians, but the
humanity is missing. Yes, sometimes with our mainstream clients, we
(12:53):
want to go beyond a certain barrier, but we can't
because we're obliged to stay within the frame. The framework, Right,
So you want to go beyond, you want to you
want to kind of focus in on that person's you know,
other aspects of healing, but you can't with a lot
(13:16):
of the mainstream clients because this is not how they function,
and so you're restricted. But people who are of racialize
the set, people who practice the indigenous ways of knowing,
Now there's more clinicians available to practice from their perspective,
(13:38):
from their understanding, and so I am really excited about
the change and how people are now able to access
clinicians who can provide a holistic approach to supporting right
(14:00):
and provide them with the coping strategies that they need
rather than just focusing on the mainstream's ways of knowing.
There was this guy. He was of racialized descent, and
I always remember him. It's been years since I supported him.
But he was obsessed with this individual that worked at McDonald's,
(14:26):
like completely upset, so that individual would call the police,
he would get arrested, and then he would do the
same thing over and over again. So I advocated for
him because he needed more clinical support rather than being
just in the criminal system. And so what I see
(14:49):
is that a lot of mainstream organizations don't understand the
cultural aspects of why individuals are doing what they're doing.
So this guy felt like these, he was connected spiritually
with these, with this specific individual that worked at McDonald's.
(15:11):
So if he got the right person, it would have
the situation would have been different, right, because they would
have understood him from his cultural ways of knowing. Yes,
But they didn't, so they criminalized him. And that's what
I see a lot is that people are criminalized instead
(15:35):
of providing with the right solution.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yes, yes, and especially you know, like you said, we're
talking about indigenous you know individuals, and you have you know,
a clinician that does not know anything about that particular lifestyle,
what their spiritual beliefs are, even the structure of their
(15:58):
their home. Know, what do they call their parents, and
what do they call their grandparents? Like I said, they
were Native Indigenous, and I didn't bring them in and
have them call me mom. I'm not her mom. You
have a mom, and I didn't want to make them
feel I didn't respect that they did have a mom.
(16:19):
I said, call me grandma because I know in Native
culture everybody can be auntie and grandma any elder that
is helping or caring or something like that. So they
called me grandma and we just got along beautifully. And
I explained it to the group of foster parents when
(16:40):
we would have our meetings. Stop trying to afford because
they were, you know, complain that they're not calling me mom,
You're not their mother. Stop treating them. It's just disrespectful
for you to make these children call you mom when
they have a mother, as if you have just tossed
their parents away. Yes, their parents going through some issues. Yes,
(17:05):
those parents, you know, need some counseling, need some treatment,
but they still exist, so don't you know, and especially
when you're trying to force them. If it comes naturally,
that's one thing, but if it doesn't, then stop doing that.
It's so wrong and you don't understand the culture and
what you're doing to them when you are just trying
(17:26):
to toss away family members, you know, like they don't exist.
And so you know, there's just you know, little things
like that that they you know, they need, they need
to understand. If you're going to be taking indigenous people in,
you need to get some books or have someone go
(17:47):
and be involved and see what's going on, you know,
in their communities, because you know, you can't call things
evil when you don't understand it. You can't call things
bad when you don't even.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Know what it is.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
These things are. You know, you're bringing on your perspective,
but you haven't been exposed to anything else but your backyard. Yes,
now you're trying to force them to be that and
you can't. And yes, you're going to end up a
conflict because they're still fighting to keep their identity. Yes,
and so it's yeah, it's.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, and it's not. Sometimes we forget right, we think
about the mind and we think about the heart, yes,
but we forget about our genes, our genetics. Our genes
are connected to our ancestors. So how we heal is
(18:47):
also connected to our ancestors. Yes, and so if we
heal in the wrong way, it actually can cause a
negative effect on our body, on our mind. Yes, so
anything that goes against our healing, any anything that is
(19:10):
of something that where you're not used to can impact
how we holistically heal as human beings. So if we
disconnect from that, and a lot of a lot of
like new immigrants, a lot of people who are second
(19:31):
sorry first generation immigrants, feel that they sometimes have to
abide by the ways of this country, and so they
lose that connection with their ancestors, with their with their
knowledge base from from their tradition, culture and religion. They
(19:52):
disconnect from that. So you see a lot of people
who are having trauma symptoms not because they've been impacted
in certain ways, but because they've disconnected from what they
know what their body needs. There's a term called a
(20:17):
culturation that was introduced to me by a professor, a
Somali professor who teaches in the University of Minnesota. So
she introduced me to this term called a culturation, and
a culturation is having two different perspectives in the household.
(20:41):
So one that's connected to the mainstream ways of knowing
and one that's connected to the indigenous ways of knowing,
and so those two are clashing. No one's teaching them
to unite based on the indigenous ways of knowing, right,
based on their ways of knowing. So these these children
(21:04):
disconnected from their roots, from their ways, and then you
see them not being functional, functional in society. They can't
function in mainstream because they don't know who they are.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Yes, yes, yes, that's really true. And it's and that's
a that's an internal struggle that they're fighting besides anything
else that might be impacting them, because you know, everyone
even now is still trying to figure out who am I?
Where did I come from? Who are my ancestors, especially
(21:44):
those that you know were brought here you know, historically
we're brought here on ships to become slaves. They're still
trying to identify who am I? But yet there's something
in the DNA that's still calling you have a family,
you have ancestors, you have this and that is that
(22:05):
causes a lot of confusion inside, you know, when you
have been taught so many other things about that society
and now you're trying to connect to it. Now you
I mean, you don't know where your allegiance is. I mean,
I don't I'm not sure if they can merge. I
(22:26):
think they could probably merge, but it has to be
something that's acceptable to merge the cultures together. Why not
respect both of them. I mean, why do we have
to say you have to be like me. I don't
think so. I think when the Creator created humans, he
made them different. Look at everything that's out there. If
(22:47):
he wanted everything that's saying, we'd have one type of bird,
one type of tree, one type of fish, we would
get bored with life. Variety is the spice of life,
and he made things so there's variety, and we are
considered a variety of what he has created and accepting
(23:08):
you know that we have. We all are different, and
learning from each other's differences is really important and it's
very special. I mean, I enjoy learning about other cultures,
and I think just sharing all of that information in fact,
be on us. If we related more with each other,
(23:29):
we would have any diseases in the world. Because there's
so many indigenous that have so many things that they
already have passed through in their culture and in their
teachings and in their healing teachings. That a tea here,
a root, there are fruit here, and I'll tell you,
(23:51):
we wouldn't have diseases. But because we challenge one another
instead of communicating with one another, no one sharing and
so guess what the rest everybody else is suffering the
things that don't need because we can't talk. That doesn't
make sense to me.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah. So another aspect of trauma, right, it's it's an
ongoing trauma experience that only people have racialized the set understand,
So that ongoing battle that we have that is that
(24:31):
has caused us trauma is not spoken about in in
in therapeutic settings, right, So you as a as a clinician,
will be focused on that individual, but there's other factors
(24:51):
influencing that individual. That individual has a lot of societal
issues that they're going through. So you might have somebody
who's experiencing racism for example, somebody who is being marginalized
(25:18):
because they can't speak the language, the English language. Somebody
who you know is has family abroad and is isolated here.
So there's so many factors that are not spoken about
in terms of trauma. Right. Trauma is not only impact,
(25:43):
it's also experienced, and so these individuals are in crisis
all the time in terms of how they think and
how they function, and then this whole thing about you know, finance.
You know, Franz Fenanen was a psychiatrist, and he was
(26:04):
also racially profiled as a clinician as somebody who was
a psychiatrist back in the day. And so france Fan
talks about dehumanizing, depersonalizing, and individualizing. And when he wrote
about these three things, these three frameworks, he understood that
(26:26):
the colonizer's work was not only in terms of huge
like countries and settings, but it also impacted the individual. Yes,
So all of these different entities that we are under,
which is for example, the social work, the hospitals, the
(26:51):
prison systems, you know, all of these systems are a
descendants from the colonizer. So they function in the same
way to dehumanize, to depersonalize to individuals. That's their function.
So how are these systems able to help.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Us heal.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Unless we formulate something parallel.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yes, to these systems.
Speaker 3 (27:23):
So that is what the indigenous ways of knowing is.
It's a parallel system to the your centric.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
System, right, and even though it's hard for them for
us to merge the two, we.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Do it in a way that we find that your
centric system structure. We can use that structure, but use
this framework to help our clients heal. And now, like
in Canada the United States, more and more people are
(28:02):
understanding that we need to heal our people or racialized
people using a different ways, different ways of knowing. So
it's hard, Angela.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Oh, you know, I'm There's a movie out called Sugarcane.
It's a documentary and I watched it last night and
it was a story about the residential schools in Canada
and the abuses and different things that went on for
(28:37):
all of those children. And I had like three generations
that we're talking about that had gone to the schools,
or they were birthed at the schools, or you know,
their parents had gone, grandparents had been there or whatever.
And just even going to the point of even trying
to do reconciliation, it was so hard because the trauma
(29:01):
was so deep and had had been ignored for such
a long time. One word I'm sorry wasn't going to
be enough. There was too much that had had gone on.
And unless we understand, like you said, put the humanity back.
I don't know what happened that we just take we're
(29:23):
human beings. Why are we trying to treat people like
we would our animals. We are human beings, and so
when we take that out, we just lose the whole
concept of actually reaching their inner being, which is what
we should be doing. And I watched that. I cried
almost through the whole documentary because it was to see
(29:46):
these older people still struggling to be whole, still struggling
to be free. That was heartbreaking. Yeah, and so.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, it is worth breaking. And I'm going to share
a secret with you. I feel like all clinicians should
start out working in crisis first before they're clinicians. I
feel like when you work as a crisis responder, you
(30:23):
see a lot. You see a lot of trauma. You
see people that can't afford you know, counseling or therapy.
You see people who are struggling with alcoholism. You see
people who have fine family dynamics that are unhealthy. You
see a lot of rape victims. And most of these
(30:46):
people now that access crisis are racialized people. Yes, they're
the same people you're talking about, actually, and because they've
been dehumanized at a very young age, they're you. They're
looking for other ways to heal, negative ways to heal.
(31:09):
So alcoholism is part of those that negative ways. They
gravitate towards that. Yes, right, and so what do we
do with these type of people that are struggling. Oh,
go to rehab, right, go to detox, you know, go
(31:30):
and access counseling. But what they really need is to
find themselves. Yeah, we're trying to gain some sort of
happiness satisfaction through these negative hoping strategies.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yeah, but they don't know themselves. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I had uncles that they had gone to the military.
I don't I know. Being in war, was in World
War two. Being in war is very difficult. But then
there were a lot of things they were coping with.
I didn't find out until I was much older, and
(32:13):
I'm sadden because they became alcoholics. Brilliant men, mathematicians and
one worked at Nassau, I mean brilliant, intelligent, but they drank.
And I think it was to cope with the war.
And then what happened when they came back from the
(32:33):
war and the broken promises that they did not get
the benefits that they were promised because they were indigenous.
And I watched them not be who I knew they
could be, and I didn't understand it because I was
the baby of the family, so I didn't understand. I
just saw them. But my mother was always loving, never judgmental,
(32:57):
very understanding. You just needed to clean up before you came,
but she would all they would come by the house
and she would feed them a warm meal and make
sure that they were taken care of. But I watched
that and it made me go to the alcohol drug
treatment centers and counsel and work with them and talk
(33:19):
with them and share with them and learn more so
that I had a better understanding about my own family
members and helping them understand. And it is a coping
method of their trying to deaden the pain, is what
they're trying to do. And I'm not a therapist. I
just have watched this for numerous years as being a child,
(33:44):
growing up and then even working at the treatment centers.
They're coping with pain and they don't know any other
way because they don't have no one to go to
that understands what's happening and how to reach them and
reach the heart of them and help them understand, Okay,
(34:05):
you made a bad choice, but now you get to
make a different choice and you forget about that one
that made the bad choice and start spending your energy
on the one that on the good choices that you've made.
And watched the changes and I saw different ones their
lives change. They ended up going to college and just
(34:27):
I mean, some good things happen, but you have to
really dig deep to get past the wall that's there,
and then the guilt that they keep putting on themselves,
and just understanding, you know, the fact that they have
hurt people and they don't know how to say I'm sorry,
(34:51):
and they don't know how to feel that that person
will receive them back forgiveness. This forgiveness, if you say
I'm sorry, goes away. Don't carry it along with you
because when the person says I receive your you know, apology,
it's done. It's gone. Don't go back there anymore. Let
(35:14):
it go. But yeah, how important is it for self
care and trauma recovery process?
Speaker 3 (35:24):
Big time? So it's it's uh, my language. When I'm
speaking to individuals and I'm doing counseling with them, it's emotional.
It's okay, So we have cognition and then we have
emotional intelligence. So I use a lot of my emotional
(35:47):
intelligence during counseling sessions because I feel like that's, first
of all, that's who I am, and I feel like
I can get a lot of people to understan where
I'm coming from when I use my emotional intelligence than
when I just focusing on my cognition. And so I
(36:09):
came up with three strategies when I'm providing support to people,
and this is across the board, this is what people
are missing. Number one is self care. Anybody who is
struggling to heal is lacking in self care. Number two
(36:30):
is journaling. Number three is setting healthy boundaries. Right. So,
when I was young, I watched a lot of Disney movies.
Disney so I'm one of those people I like to
get down to the nitty gritty, like why did Disney
(36:53):
come up with Happily Ever After? Endings? Right? And I
was like, what what is the satisfaction people get from
Happily ever After? Endings? Right? And so I thought about
it and I said, the reason why is that the
brain needs to close that toxic conversation that it's having
(37:16):
in its head. So remember Disney talks about a lot
of like struggles in needs kids' movies. And then towards
the end, he gives us happily ever after, and this
is what our brain needs. It needs happily ever after.
(37:37):
Journaling is good for that. So even though it's not real,
the brain can't understand real from unreal. So you close
that conversation that's happening in your head by writing down
a happily ever after ending. So let's say you blame
(37:57):
your mom for all this toxicity that happened you, and
your mom is no longer here, like she passed away,
and you still live with that pain. Right, you give
yourself that happily ever after ending, and the brain closes
that conversation because that's what the brain knows too. Self care.
(38:18):
Self care is our emotional fuel. If you survive your
day to day activities, you need to give yourself self care.
So I prescribe myself three self cares a day, meaning
that I would do random things like watch Netflix or
go for a walk. There's these group of Italian elders
(38:45):
at the mall and I'm like, they're the typical example
of self care. They come with their desserts and their
coffee and they start talking. They talk for two hours
and then they pick up their garbage and they go home.
That's their self care. Every day. If I ever go
(39:06):
to the mall, I will see them. It's twenty folks
have sit at one corner the other half, so Angela,
they the men sit at one corner and then the
women's so because the conversations are not the same, right, right,
So self care, whatever self care that you are doing,
(39:33):
is the self care that's work for you, right. Healthcare
is guess what. When a child is young, they understand
self care. They automatically gravitate towards self care. They go
bike riding, they do all kinds of activities. But we
grow up, we forget about self care. In order for
(39:56):
you to heal holistically, you need to engage in self care.
People who don't engage in self care are the ones
you see crying chronically, sporadically, crying all the time, having
chronic illnesses as a result of lack of self care.
(40:17):
All these chronic illnesses that we struggle with is as
a result of lack of self care. And the last
boundaries and you know, I won't get into boundaries because
boundaries are you know, they're they're self identified and individual
based on the person's needs. But the other two very important.
(40:42):
You want to get rid of toxic conversations happening in
your head. Journal. You want to gain emotional fuel, just
like a car needs fuel. Engage in self care.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Okay, I'm going to pick up some of those I
can see where I can just drive myself and I'm
not taking that time out for me, and I do,
I do end up feeling the body react and start
fighting me back, and it's like, uh uh, nope, I'm
(41:14):
going to do nothing this whole day. It's my day
because I just need to take care of me and
nothing else.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
And so even spraying a perfume on yourself, like just
that care Yeah, just just something that weren't planning that
day and just saying I'm going to take this time
out just for me.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
I'm going to do that more. Yeah, I like that.
How what role does community and social support play in
healing a lot?
Speaker 3 (41:50):
Remember what's the opposite of individualization, right, it's community. So
everything that Frantz Flann talked about, do the opposite, because
that's what the eurocentric system is trying to disconnect you from.
Its disconnecting you from community, is disconnecting from you from
(42:10):
you know, helping each other in a communal way. So
for example, when you go to your doctor's office, and
let's say you have a family of five, that doctor,
if that child is above a certain age, that doctor
will suggest for that child to go into the room
individually and not go with the parent. But maybe the
(42:31):
parent knows more about the child than the child, than
the child himself or herself. Why don't you allow that?
Why don't you allow this child to go in there
with the parent even though he's he's he or she
is twenty or nineteen or eighteen. Right, But communal healing
(42:53):
is very important because that is the indigenous ways, right.
And so I've seen women and I call it the
the Cinderella transformation people in our community. When they're going
to weddings, it's like everybody transforms into this like beautiful
(43:21):
lavish like you know, I don't know, like just they're
so beautiful. They're so beautiful, like the way they're dressed,
the makeup, and and then they go home and that
dress is off again. But when they go to these functions,
it's all about dance, it's about it's all about communication,
(43:44):
it's all about energy, positive energy. And some of these
females go to weddings like once a week or twice
a week. But there are those that don't go anywhere
that you can tell that there's struggling, right, part of
(44:04):
my journey, So begin to heal. People think it's an
organization or it's a name that I gave my organization, right,
but begin to heal is my journey. Is my journey
to give back. And so when you're working as a clinician,
(44:27):
a lot of energy is taken away from you. So
what I do is I organize community events, free community events,
and that's for people to benefit from my knowledge, but
as well as to come together and heal together. The
only way for us to completely heal is through communal settings.
(44:52):
That is what our body knows. That is our ancestral
ways of knowing. I don't know if you know, but
even like with the indigenous people right back in the
day when they were practicing, like let's say they were practicing,
did you see them like they were always in a circle.
(45:16):
And the circle means that nobody is above nobody, right,
everybody is.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Equal mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
And so and they don't interrupt each other. They speak
every when when one person speaks, everybody is listening mm hmm.
And I see that as a non existent practice in
this day and age, right, right, I feel like children
(45:47):
are not listened to mm hmm, even though they have so.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Much to share with us when they're young, because their
heart is so clean. Mm hmmm. I feel like teenager
who do the wrong thing are criminalized. Like if they
go and steal from a local, let's say, store, should
they be criminalized at the age of thirteen or should
(46:15):
they be supported? Right? So, there's a lot of like
activities happening to dehumanize us more than to dehumanize us.
I don't know if you've seen this on social media,
but there's this guy that gives away cards with things
(46:37):
written on them, like randomly in like to people outside,
and he writes these notes, and these notes are for
him to make a connection, and so he writes like
empowering words or like motivations on those cards and he
gives them away, and the trend information in people's facial
(47:02):
expressions when he get when they read that note is amazing. Yeah,
so I think we're missing the connection, like.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
You to connect. Yeah, the spirituality too. Sometimes you do
see someone and they just they just want to They
just say a specific word and it can change that
person that's on the bus, just sitting there across for them.
And and we were not tuned in to that that
(47:30):
spiritual part of us, that that receives that that message,
and that message isn't always for us, it's to pass
on to somebody else. But because we haven't, we're not
a society that is community. Then we we think everything
is me me.
Speaker 3 (47:51):
Me me me me me.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Mey me, And I'm sorry that was not the thought
pattern when creation was made. It was never me me,
me me me. It was always we we we we.
And that's the one thing about even some tribal peoples.
There's no word for me. It's all we because we
(48:14):
are in this together, not a me me me. And
when we stop understanding that we are a community and
just want to be individuals, that's when it becomes dangerous
because you can have all kinds of thoughts and anything
can be happening when you isolate yourself. Isolation is just
so dangerous. What advice would you give to someone who's
(48:36):
just starting their trauma healing journey.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
That's a good question and a very difficult question because
it's so self identified, like everybody's healing journey is so unique.
Different people start in different like for different reasons. A
lot of times it's when people hit rock bottom, meaning
(49:05):
they've lost a loved one, right, or they've just separated
from their partner of twenty years, or they've lost children,
or they're isolated and nobody to talk to, or they
lost their jobs, right, And so there's a lot of
(49:26):
losses that happen when when trauma healing begins, right. But
I always start from scratch, like I always go way
back to their childhood because past behavior predicts future behavior. Yeah, meaning, yeah,
(49:50):
go ahead.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Oh I was gonna say, we're coming up to town. Okay, Okay,
give the the email or website where people can connect
with you or reach you.
Speaker 3 (50:05):
Yes, so I think you've included my website, but I
have I have an email. My email is begin to
Heal at gmail dot com and that's where people can
reach me. Yeah, so thank you for having me. It
(50:28):
was a really nice discussion. And it's so hard to
sum up seventeen years of practice right into like one hour.
But I enjoy what I do. There's you know, I
really do love what I do because it's making a difference.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
And that's the that's the greatest thing is just being
out there trying to make a difference, one person at
a time. I really do. Thank you for joining me
this morning, and thank you audience for joining us on
a Sharp Outlook. We're here every Monday at eleven am
Eastern time, eight a m. Pacific time, and please join
(51:13):
us again next week. And whatever you do this week,
think about yourself, do some self loving, and stay informed.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (51:28):
I want to thank you for joining us on a
Sharp Outlook. We have been informed and energized to take
the next steps. We have posted links to websites and
videos to learn more on today's topic. Please join us
again next week or another thought provoking conversation right here
on key for HD radio and Talk for TV. Listen
(51:51):
to the podcast on all the podcast apps, and until
next week, stay informed.
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