Transforming Trauma Episode 195: Corazonada: Migration, Memory and Heartfulness with Dr. Annecy Báez
A podcast brought to you by the Complex Trauma Training Center
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“In Spanish, there’s a word, corazonada, which means heartfelt. There was a heartfelt feeling, an intuition that I was on the right track. Healing…begins when we become curious enough to listen to ourselves.” ~ Annecy Báez Healing doesn’t happen separate from life. It’s made more meaningful by those practices that support our journey to connection. One practitioner invites us to listen more deeply to our inner wisdom and move toward those pursuits––creativity, mindfulness, spirituality––that bring us joy. On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth speaks with Dr. Annecy Báez, a Dominican American writer, psychotherapist, educator, and artist, about her career path and the deep connection she’s fostered to NARM®, The NeuroAffective Relational Model®, and the CTTC professional community. “Every part of our journey has something to teach us,” says Annecy, reflecting on how the natural cycles of heartbreak and happiness shape our lives. “Even when that chapter is still being worked out, I really feel that there’s something in us that’s moving us towards life, towards the light, towards connection.” Annecy’s faith in the human desire for connection will resonate with those familiar with the NARM framework. “What struck me as I started to study NARM,” she recalls, “was this shift from how do we adapt to survive? Like, there was such compassion to me and such respect in that question.” NARM, says Annecy, created a structure for self-inquiry that integrated many of the psychodynamic, somatic, and cognitive therapies she had practiced in her professional career. It provided a language that she could put to her innate knowing. The Spanish word corazonada captures this intuitive, heartfelt feeling that guides people into deeper connection. Annecy found that in NARM, even beginning with how the NARM modality starts by inviting the client to reflect on their intention for change. Annecy, born in the Dominican Republic under a dictatorship, migrated to the Bronx with her family when she was three years old. Growing up, she absorbed both the sorrow of her family’s displacement and their hope for a new life. She credits storytelling, poetry, and Latino spirituality as early teachers. These rich cultural touchstones shaped her lifelong appreciation for the duality of human suffering and intergenerational connection. Service to the community would inform Annecy’s academic and professional trajectory. She studied psychology and human relations in college. By the time she turned 28, Annecy had become director of a children’s trauma center in Yonkers. Subsequent positions at prestigious community-based institutions followed doctoral training at NYU. A significant turning point came after her husband died in 2011. “It was in 2013 that I bought Healing Developmental Trauma. I won’t forget it,” says Annecy, who was moved by NARM’s empathetic reframing of trauma symptoms as creative adaptations for survival. Inspired by her corazonada in relation to NARM, she joined the NARM Therapist Training. Now, as a NARM Therapist, Annecy reflects, “NARM isn’t just what I do in therapy, NARM has become part of how I see things.” Annecy’s broader creative and community work, including her Substack, monthly dream circles, and her long-standing Zen practice, also benefits from and align with NARM’s emphasis on returning to oneself. “Healing isn’t about perfection,” says Annecy. “It’s more about reconnection. And I think that reconnecting to our bodies, to our imagination, to our creativity, to our community, to parts of us that we’ve set aside, that’s the heart of transforming trauma.” Transforming Trauma thanks Annecy for sharing NARM with her students, patients, and artistic communities. She embodies what it means to connect to our authenticity and each other. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE NARM® – The NeuroAffective Relational Model® |
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Annecy Báez, PhD, is a Dominican American writer, educator, psychotherapist, and mixed media and digital collage artist whose work explores the intersections of trauma, creativity, relational healing, and inner life. She is the author of My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories, winner of the 2007 Mármol Prize for First Latina Fiction, and her poetry and fiction have appeared in journals and anthologies including Callaloo, Riverine, Vinyl Donuts, Brújula/Compass, and Quislaona: A Dominican Fantasy Anthology. Several of her works have
also been translated into Spanish and published in the Dominican Republic.
Alongside her writing life, Annecy has over thirty years of experience as a psychotherapist and is a professor at Touro University Graduate School of Social Work, where she teaches in the clinical practice sequence, including couples and family therapy, expressive arts, existential-humanistic practice, and social work practice in schools. Her work is trauma-informed, grounded in extensive training in Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy, Schema Therapy, and Internal Family Systems (IFS), and enriched by mindfulness and expressive arts approaches. She is currently completing the Master’s Level Training in the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) through the Complex Trauma Training Center.
Deeply interested in how storytelling, dreams, spirituality, and the creative process support healing, Annecy’s current work explores the relationship between trauma, imagination, identity, and presence through integrative, trauma-informed approaches that weave together psychotherapy, expressive arts, mindfulness, dreamwork, and contemplative practice.
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