Category: Transforming Trauma Podcast

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Emily is joined by David J. Wallin, Phd. Dr. Wallin is a psychologist who has been practicing, writing, and teaching about psychotherapy for nearly four decades with an emphasis on attachment theory and research into an innovative framework that grounds adult psychotherapy in the facts of childhood development.

In talking about his highly respected book, Attachment in Psychotherapy, Dr. Wallin shares how it is a resource he wished he had when he was starting off as a psychotherapist. Wallin’s interest in relationships led him to explore deeper into the therapeutic relationship, which he says is a developmentally facilitative relationship where psychotherapy intersects with attachment theory.  He highlights the important clinical implications of attachment theory research and how it informs practitioners how they can be of maximum help to the people that come to them for help. A significant part of his work focuses on the idea that therapy heals by providing clients with a new attachment relationship. 

As Dr. Wallin reflects on his experience as a psychotherapist and the necessities of the person as therapist to show up with clients with presence.  He describes the challenges he experienced when he wasn’t fully present with his clients, as well as what he’s learned through his studies into attachment theory. Leaning on the research and influence by Peter Fonagy’s work on mentalization, Wallin came to the conclusion that for therapy to heal, it had to go beyond the therapists’ formal training and theoretical understanding; it must include who the therapist is as a person, and better yet include the therapist’s relationship to their own attachment history. In his words, “What we are able to provide as therapists really has to do with who we are as people as much as anything…”

We are grateful to learn from Dr. Wallin about the ways attachment theory supports depth of understanding and connection for therapists. We invite you to listen to the full episode to hear more about the importance of presence in psychotherapy.

About:

David Wallin is a psychologist who has been practicing, writing, and teaching about psychotherapy for nearly four decades. His most recent book, Attachment in Psychotherapy, has been translated into thirteen languages and he has presented his work to clinicians in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, Canada, and throughout the US. Near retirement, he is currently transitioning from psychotherapy to songwriting.

Learn More:

Book – Attachment in Psychotherapy by David J. Wallin

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Emily is joined by Iya Affo, culturalist and historical trauma specialist. Iya is an executive board member on the Arizona ACES Consortium, serves as the Chair of the Historical Trauma committee, and is the founder of Heal Historical Trauma. Heal Historical Trauma is an organization that offers interactive training in Cultural Competency, ACEs, trauma, and historical trauma, as well as Meditation & Healing. Iya’s work focuses on a cultural and neurobiological perspective of historical trauma. She presents the question, “What happened in the past, and how does that manifest in people today?” She has traveled to more than 25 countries and has lived a life dedicated to cultivating love and inclusivity and facilitating decolonization and subsequent healing of indigenous people.

Exploring cultural expressions historically used to manage adversity, Iya highlights a dance of the White Mountain Apache tribe that would be performed by warriors returning home as a debriefing. “That’s what they did to restore their neurological regulation before they rejoin the community because we know that if we are dysregulated, we have behaviors that are aggressive and abusive and hostile […] so there was a way of doing that through traditional dance and song before people were stripped of their cultural identity.” she says. Iya describes further exploring reconnection to traditional neurologically regulating activities such as the rhythmic healing sound of washing clothes by hand or walking a significant distance to get water during her time living in an ashram in India. 

She and Emily discuss how as society progressed over time, we’ve moved away from these practices and into habits that dysregulate us and start our days with stress. “We can leverage our knowledge of the neurological system to allow us to have more opportunities to have a flood of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins in our system. And when we do that, it gives us a larger window of tolerance with our stress response.” Iya points to the Cherry Blossom study, underscoring the beginning of one’s biological life as an egg in the womb of our grandmothers. Through the knowledge of epigenetics, we understand that the trauma can be imprinted on us before even the birth of our own mothers but we can also pass down positive experiences, benevolence, and love. “What you do today and how you change your life today has the potential to impact the next 14 generations.”

We are deeply grateful to have Iya discuss reconnecting to traditional ways of being as an act of healing and we invite you to listen to the full episode to hear more about Healing Historical Trauma with Iya Affo.

About:

Iya Affo is a Culturalist and Historical Trauma Specialist. She earned Western certification as a Trauma Specialist and is a descendant of a long line of traditional healers from Benin Republic, West Africa. Iya has visited more than 25 countries around the world and has resided in Native American, Yoruba, Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist communities in various countries. While on pilgramage to Benin Republic, she lived among Medicine Men and Women to learn the ways of the Shaman and understand the truth about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. In China, she lived in the Shaolin Temple, the cradle of Zen Buddhism, and immersed herself in Chinese culture. After a spiritual calling to India, Iya sojourned in a Hindu spiritual community and lived a minimal lifestyle while imbuing Hindu customs and ideology. Serving Navajo Nation and the Gila River Indian Community, Iya found a home among the egalitarian, indigenous people of North America.

After living abroad for several years, Iya returned to the United States and in December 2018. She debuted her presentation of The Symphony of Traditional Medicine and Western Medicine to Heal ACES and Historical Trauma at the 2018 National ACES Conference in San Francisco, California. Iya is the founder of Heal Historical Trauma and the International Historical Trauma Association. 

Learn More:

healhistoricaltrauma.com 

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Emily is joined by Kirsten Timmer and Jens Heidegger. Kirsten Timmer is a licensed psychologist, psychotherapist, co-founder, and CEO of TransParents and Jens Bode is a licensed doctor, lead course facilitator, trainer, and supervisor at TransParents. TransParents is a platform for parents and professionals who are committed to creating meaningful relationships with children while respecting and preserving life processes. With a focus on the importance of the parent-child relationship, their work lies in strengthening that connection by utilizing a trauma-informed approach. 

In their training, they invite curiosity by employing tools like puppets and roleplay for parents to see how they can relate to their children in a more supportive, playful way. As Jens shares, “We have them play themselves and another participant plays their children. And then we have them swap roles so they can step into the shoes of their own children and feel how it feels on the inside. What the needs may be, what the deeper reasons may be, and what the parenting styles feel like.” In this act of playful discovery, there is a heartfelt openness that can strengthen parent-child connections.

In reconnecting to her own childhood and raising a son, Kirsten came to understand the importance of how attachment impacts how we relate to ourselves and others. She describes becoming a parent for the first time as “an invitation to life, to grow.” She reflects on how we want to parent versus how our baggage and the “old identifications” from our childhood disrupt the connection to our children. Kirsten and Jens support parents in a shift from shaming themselves to developing deep curiosity for themselves and their children. Jens says, “The cause of it is that you develop more freedom, more possibilities, more agency, that are then helpful for the kids.”

We hope you will enjoy this episode with Kirsten Timmer and Jens Heidegger. We deeply are grateful to be joined by members of the international NARM community and for the pair sharing about their work and how they use NARM to enrich their organization, TransParents.

We invite you to listen to the full episode and follow Transforming Trauma in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

About:

Kirsten Timmer is one of the founders and CEO of TransParents. She is a psychologist, psychotherapist, and parenting advisor. She was trained in Client-Centered Therapy by Carl Rogers and in NARM® by Dr. L. Heller and has her own practice. She is also a senior student of Thomas Hübl, a contemporary spiritual teacher and mystic. Jens is a specialist in psychosomatics and psychotherapy trained in Behavioral Therapy at IVB Berlin and trained in NARM® by Dr. L. Heller. Jens is one of TransParents’ lead course facilitators, trainer, and supervisor of the mentor team.

Learn More:

www.TransParents.net

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Emily is joined by Crystle Lampitt, LMSW.  Crystle owns her own private practice, CL Wellness LLC, and is a former TV Journalist and model that has lived all over the world. Crystle has a unique perspective of coming into the field of trauma from a background in media and modeling, and bringing a wealth of lived experience from her international experiences and biracial background.

Crystle brings a first-hand understanding to living a multi-ethnic identity, facing significant life transitions, and being in a highly visible career – out in front of the world. Crystle shares her experience being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease during her career as a daytime news anchor.  She recalls questioning, “What is this toxic stress doing to me?” Through a deep dive into her health and identity questions, Crystle discovered the link between trauma and autoimmune illnesses, and the need for hope and validation for being fully human, which led her to pursue a graduate degree in social work. 

Crystle realized she was living deep in hustle culture, experiencing toxic stress that had become normalized. “The message we get is that if you’re not hustling then you’re doing something wrong or you’re not going to be successful.”  Crystle’s growing awareness of these objectifying social realities, and her own health challenges, led her to learn more about the body-mind effects of trauma.  “I see the emergence of my autoimmune illnesses as also a big signal, my body going, ‘You didn’t listen to me when I whispered, so now I’m going to scream!  And I’m going to make you pay attention! And what better way to do that than to make your hair fall out! Which is linked to your appearance, which is linked to your livelihood. Now you’re going to pay attention.’” 

During graduate school Crystle began studying NARM.  Crystle shares about her journey through learning NARM and eventually the NARM Therapist Training, and how she integrates NARM principles into her work with others and with herself.  She finds NARM to bring great hope, saying “I’ve given myself more permission to be a human by utilizing NARM and using its concepts. I think by doing that I’m also helping to reinforce the agency that my clients have.”  

We invite you to listen to the full episode and follow Transforming Trauma in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

About Crystle:

Crystle Lampitt is a former TV journalist, turned licensed therapist and speaker. After years of struggling with mysterious health issues, chaotic relationships, and job burnout, she decided to look inward, dig deep, and change everything about her life. She now has a therapy practice in Kansas City and enjoys supporting others on their journeys to heal trauma and lead more meaningful lives. As an Indonesian-American, she is particularly interested in supporting the BIPOC community during a time of great collective trauma and pain.

Learn More:
http://clwellnesskc.com
Crystle’s TEDx:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J7NGwnNgng
http://instagram.com/crystlelampitt
https://twitter.com/crystlelampitt
https://www.facebook.com/connectwithcrystle

In this episode of Transforming Trauma we connect with professor, author, and renowned psychoanalytic psychotherapist Nancy McWilliams, PhD. Nancy teaches psychoanalytic theory and therapy at the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers–The State University of New Jersey. Nancy is also a senior analyst with the Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy of New Jersey and the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis.

Nancy’s genuine curiosity for trying to understand and help people has led her to a rich 50-year career where she has become a pioneer in the psychoanalytic/psychodynamic field. Her influential book, Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, was created in response to the significant change of direction of the DSM IV and has become a standard text in many training programs for psychotherapists in the United States and abroad. She has also authored numerous articles, book chapters and books on personality, psychotherapy, psychodiagnosis, sexuality, feminism, and contemporary psychopathologies. 

In this conversation, Nancy shares some of what she has learned from not only her research in the field of complex trauma, but the profound lessons she has learned from the clients who have opened up their worlds to her. 

Nancy also shares her earnest observations and personal experience of what it means to her to be a psychotherapist, gracefully acknowledging the challenges that therapists face in modern psychology. Reflecting on the changing landscape of psychotherapeutic approaches, and her objections to the “so-called evidence-based treatments”, she highlights the humanity in the psychotherapeutic relationship that centers around meeting clients where they are. She says, “you can’t go in with a position that you know, you know what you to do, you understand this, you’re going to apply something. You have to tolerate uncertainty and not knowing – a kind of moral equality with the patient, where we’re figuring it out together.  I have to learn from you, I’m not here to apply something to you.”

We are so very grateful to this pioneer in the field of psychodynamic psychotherapy for joining us and for her sharing how she brings heart and humanity into psychotherapeutic work.  We hope you will enjoy this episode with Nancy McWilliams, PhD.  

We invite you to listen to the full episode and follow Transforming Trauma in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Learn More:

Nancy McWilliams, PhD., ABPP 

Psychoanalytic Diagnosis Text