Category: Transforming Trauma Podcast

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, we welcome Julie Brown Yau, Ph.D. Julie specializes in developmental trauma, intergenerational trauma, and acute trauma, and has a unique perspective on integrating spirituality into trauma healing. She’s an author, speaker, and the Trauma and Spiritual Care consultant for Compassionate Care ALS. Her background in psychological, somatic, and spiritual traditions provides a rich combination of knowledge. She has a private practice in Laguna Beach, California, and sees clients virtually from all around the world.

Julie is also a NARM Therapist and was in the first North American NARM training with Dr. Laurence Heller. She integrates NARM into her work to support clients in healing from complex trauma. Julie is also an authorized teacher of Shri Vidya, which combines the resolution of trauma with spiritual practice. Julie integrates Shri Vidya into her work with her clients. Julie explains that Shri Vidya are embodied teachings, and that a lot of spiritual teachings do not include embodiment, at least not in an explicit way.

Julie shares about how she weaves together spirituality and trauma healing and how they support one another. “Healing trauma begins to look spiritual as we open up and go beyond our ordinary sense of self.” Julie distinguishes spiritual healing as “waking up to our true nature and being with expanded states of consciousness. Whereas trauma healing is about grounded and embodied states of being.”

Julie shares her perspective on the collective consciousness around healing from trauma. “Spirituality is about awakening or recognizing our wholeness and trauma is about reclaiming our wholeness,” Julie shares. Healing trauma is about compassion and love which also comes through these spiritual practices. Shri Vidya is predominantly focused on the feminine principles and energies that have been missing inside ourselves and within our culture. “We begin to heal the trauma of the patriarch in subtle and not so subtle ways and there is profound strength in embodying the feminine,” Julie states.

Julie shares with the listeners deep experiences she has had with people she’s been working with. “What comes forward right now is people having an experience of their heart opening, to feeling not only love, but grief or pain or sadness, and directly in a field in which they’re more able to be with it because both in these teachings of awakening and in healing trauma, we want to be able to feel more.” This is very aligned with the NARM Emotional Completion Model, which teaches that as individuals connect to their unresolved emotions, they are connecting to themselves; they are connecting to that which tey had to split off from in order to survive. This is a reclaiming of one’s wholeness, which is what Julie supports in working with trauma healing and spirituality.

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, we are joined by Ken Seeley, CIP, CCMI–M, CTP-4, CATC. Ken has been professionally and personally involved in recovery since his sobriety date of July 14th, 1989. His experience with recovery and boundless enthusiasm helps him support changes in the lives of people suffering from the disease of addiction. Ken is also an author and founder of Ken Seeley Communities and Intervention 911 in Palm Springs, California. He’s been a featured interventionist on the Emmy award winning television series, Intervention, since 2005.

At one time, Ken wasn’t aware of how trauma played a role in his own struggles with addiction. Ken shares, “I have the gene, you know, my grandfather’s brother died in the streets of alcoholism in Puerto Rico, years and years and years ago. And then my cousins, I have relatives that are alcoholics that went through treatment numerous times, so it’s always been in my family genes.” Because of this focus Ken had on genetics, he didn’t see the connection between unresolved trauma and addiction until he explored trauma in a deeper way. Ken hopes listeners will look deeper into their own unaddressed or unprocessed trauma and emphasizes that even though some people might not think they are impacted by trauma, many find that if they dig deeper within themselves and expand their understanding of trauma, they can become aware of how they have been impacted.

Through learning about complex trauma, specifically through NARM, Ken started to understand what trauma was and how he was impacted by it. His understanding of what trauma can look like broadened beyond the more common ways it’s often viewed, such as physical, sexual, and verbal abuse. Ken shares some of the personal experiences he endured from being bullied by his peers in grade school and how this impacted him. “It was more of not just one instance that was traumatic, but more repetitive traumatic experiences” 

Ken reflects on the ways he survived his trauma by remaining invisible and not talking about his experiences. Ken appreciates how NARM focuses on asking questions in a curious, nonthreatening, and relational way. He found how supportive it can be to have the space of openness and curiosity that the NARM framework provides for healing. As the episode comes to a close Sarah and Ken reflect on how trauma is really about disconnection and Ken states, “We gave up on ourselves. We stopped loving ourselves, you know, and NARM is about connecting back to ourselves.”

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, we are joined by Deb Dana, LCSW, founding member of the Polyvagal Institute and Coordinator of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University. Deb shares with our host, Sarah, about her work with the Polyvagal Theory, a clinical theory developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, and how she has translated the theory into clinical application, including everyday application. Deb describes the Polyvagal framework that views the nervous system as a common denominator of human experience, and shares, “It’s my belief we should all learn how to operate our nervous systems in some way.”

Deb breaks down the Polyvagal Theory for listeners, stating that although it is a complex and layered model, there is also a simplicity to it. In order to create simplicity, Deb shares three organizing principles: hierarchy, neuroception, and co-regulation.The Polyvagal Theory identifies a hierarchy of three nervous system states that people move through: a regulated ventral vagal state, a sympathetic energized fight-or-flight state, and a disconnected dorsal vagal state. Neuroception describes how the nervous system takes in information below the level of our conscious awareness via three pathways: inside our body, outside our body, and in-between our body systems. Deb shares how she uses neuroception as a therapist to support her clients’ awareness of their nervous system. When she is anchored and regulated in her own experience, she’s able to notice dysregulation within herself and her client and reflect it back to her client when appropriate. Lastly, Deb describes co-regulation as a biological imperative — it is a state that all people need in order to survive — nervous systems seek to co-regulate with other nervous systems.

With these three principles in mind, Deb talks further about how different life experiences, including developmental trauma, result in nervous systems moving in and out of regulation and dysregulation in different ways. Deb says, “It’s not so much what happened to you, it’s how your nervous system responds to what happens to you.” This understanding is aligned with the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) and highlights how different people experience and adapt to the same traumatic experience in different ways.

Deb describes a “safety-danger equation” that people unconsciously calculate in order to determine what feels safe for them at any given moment. Sarah shares how this orientation aligns with what is referred to in NARM as Adaptive Survival Styles, the ways that children learn to adapt to developmental trauma and which gets carried into adulthood as filters for viewing Self, others and one’s life.

Deb highlights that dysregulation is a natural process, and it is an unrealistic and unattainable goal to be regulated and in a ventral state all the time. What is important is to be able to find our way back to an open, safe, connected state after dysregulation and disconnection. Deb says, “The job is not to never have a rupture, but to notice when there are ruptures and to be able to repair them.”

Deb and Sarah both emphasize the importance of curiosity and being able to sit with the unknown, and how that leads to a greater awareness of our nervous system states. In NARM, the process of inquiry invites curiosity and compassion for the clients’ experience and nervous system states, which supports what in NARM is called an “Embodied Adult Consciousness”.

Deb adds that she sees inquiry as a way of taking a look at the stories we tell ourselves about our nervous system states — often self-blame, self- shame, and self-criticism. The conversation concludes with Deb and Sarah sharing the powerful outcomes of having more awareness of our nervous system states, more curiosity, and more compassion for ourselves.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino is joined by Marjorie Florestal. Marjorie is a trauma-informed law professor, storyteller, and fiction writer. Marjorie trained in the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) and shares how she is incorporating her understanding of complex trauma and NARM into her work as a law professor. Throughout the episode, Sarah and Marjorie discuss the integration of trauma, law, storytelling, and ways to support healing through a trauma-informed lens.

Marjorie describes her journey from studying law, working as an international trade lawyer, to becoming trauma-informed. Her journey was fueled by curiosity about her own trauma. “[At first,] I wanted to get as far away from the emotions as I could possibly get”, she says. While serving as a trade lawyer for the Clinton administration, she realized how much emotions play into negotiations. She decided to become a law professor as a way to still be in the field without having to deal with emotions – that is, until she was impacted by a student who was tearful in her classroom. “After the student left, I thought, oh, something has to change within me.” She realized she was ready to learn more about her relationship to her profession, as well as herself. This led her to study psychology.

While still a law professor, Marjorie completed a Masters’ degree in Jungian Psychology where she met Brad Kammer, NARM Senior Faculty. Marjorie shares how she was greatly impacted by Brad’s teaching, not only professionally but also personally. She followed her intuition that learning the NeuroAffective Relational Model would somehow benefit her in better supporting her law students.

Marjorie and Sarah discuss the struggles many law students have with their mental health, specifically in their last year of school. Marjorie states, “40% of our students are clinically depressed and then it just snowballs from there into the profession.” Marjorie shares that she is currently writing her dissertation on the intersection of learning law and complex trauma. “There is some aspect of trauma going on, and there’s also some aspect of a kind of a developmental stage going on.” She postulates that students’ ongoing struggles with mental health come from the convergence of the trauma and the developmental stages they’re experiencing. She further explains that law school is highly stressful and when students have been taught that there is no place for emotions, it can result in high levels of anxiety and depression.

Marjorie excitedly shares with Sarah that she plans to utilize what she’s learned in her NARM training and incorporate that into her class that she’s developing called “Trauma-Informed Lawyering”. Marjorie hopes that if we can help law students with trauma, we can change the culture of the whole profession.

Sarah inquires more about how Marjorie plans to use NARM in her classroom. Marjorie shares that what NARM has helped her and her students with most is slowing down. She explains that when she supports her students to slow down, they can then notice their own internal experience. Marjorie shares that what most often comes up for students when they slow down is their struggle to trust. When students are moving fast and hyper focused on the context of the negotiation, they are less likely to be able to access their own internal awareness. By slowing down, the students support their connection to themselves. She acknowledges how impactful this is on their wellbeing, and their work.

Marjorie and Sarah also explore how the trauma-informed movement can be a way to raise awareness around vicarious trauma for lawyers. She shares with Sarah that those who are involved in the courts are often forced to see pictures or hear stories that are more harmful than helpful to a case or a negotiation. Marjories believes the more we can understand the impact of trauma, these practices will change and become trauma-informed. Marjorie then introduces Sarah and listeners to the notion of therapeutic jurisprudence. Which she defines as, “an approach to law that seeks to use law as a healing modality.” She further explains that this is a way of empowering judges to come up with solutions that aren’t about punishment and instead rehabilitation, such as offering assistance for addiction rather than jail.

Marjorie also shares her experience as being a woman of color in teaching law, and how she relates to the current state of criminal justice in the United States. She shares, “as a black woman I could not fathom being part of a system that wholesale channels people of color into cages.” Marjorie recently facilitated an hour-long session at her law school looking at racial trauma and the healing potential of myths and stories.

This episode concludes with Marjorie sharing a beautiful story called, The Stolen Mother Moon. She expresses that she has a personal connection to the story due to the loss of her mother when she was nine. She relates this story to collective trauma, symbolic of the stolen mothers from Africa who were abused and enslaved yet they persevered and demanded justice. She states, “there will always be darkness, and we can see that darkness as an opportunity for more work to be done.”

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah is joined by Dave Berger, MFT, PT, LCMHC, MA, SEP. Dave is a somatic psychotherapist, physical therapist, bodyworker and educator. He owns and runs a training program for trauma practitioners called BASE: Relational Bodywork and Somatic Education Training. Dave is also a Trainer for Somatic Experiencing International and Legacy Faculty for Dr. Peter Levine’s Ergos Institute of Somatic Education. Dave has over 40 years of experience working with trauma and chronic pain and integrates his knowledge of anatomy, physiology and function of the body, and of psychological and relational dynamics to help clients improve their physical well being and psychological health.

Dave’s intention for this episode is to educate and inform practitioners about the need to understand how the structures and systems in the physical body are involved with trauma and trauma healing. Throughout the episode, Sarah and Dave talk about the overlap between Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) and its impact on the organization of the physical body, and its correlation to chronic pain.

Dave states, “my area of interest and fascination is working with people who’ve had chronic distress.” Dave explains that the relationship between chronic stress and various medical syndromes, including pain syndromes, is not well understood. Dave shares that his experiences have helped him develop the understanding that “chronic distress patterns lead to and are part of medical syndromes.” He finds that these syndromes manifest in physical as well as psychological symptoms and disorders, and that it’s important to know and understand both.

As Sarah and Dave reflect on the field of trauma and specifically how to address complex trauma, Dave describes how he uses his personal experiences to inform his work. He explains that “the relationship is everything.” He defines this as the client feeling felt by the practitioner. He also describes this as the “safe container” that happens in the therapeutic process that can lead to healing. Dave explains that a person’s physiology will naturally shift as they continue to experience a safe attuned therapeutic process. Sarah and Dave reflect on the similarities between Dave’s perspective and the NARM perspective, and they both agree that to address complex trauma the interventions have to include the body, the mind and be embedded in relationship.

Dave and Sarah also talk about both social and cultural trauma and what that trauma looks like at the body-level. Dave talks about resolving trauma at the body level, and he names the importance of being in the moment and naming the lived experiences happening in the here and now in the body. The two reflect on the importance of doing personal healing work in order to be an effective practitioner, as well as create deeper connections in our society and culture. Dave believes that there is a very real need to connect with one another on a human level. He states, “How can we see each other as a human being first, how can I feel me as a human being and you feel you as a human being and connect on that level?” Dave believes that for this to happen we have to have the capacity to be in our own bodies if we want to be able to invite deeper relationships and hold complexity. Sarah reflects on how NARM invites therapists to explore their own relationship with themselves and how this impacts the therapeutic relationship.

As the conversation comes to a close Dave reflects on how his trainings have impacted his students and the ripple effect of how his students then impact their clients. Sarah and Dave reflect on transformative nature of somatic work. Dave ends with a quote by Peter Levine that trauma “is not a life sentence,” signifying the possibilities of transforming trauma. Sarah reminds us that this idea inspired the intention, and name, of the NARM podcast, Transforming Trauma.