Jenn Turner
Jenn, welcome to on trauma and power. I'm your host. Jenn Turner, co founder of the Center for trauma and embodiment. I'm so glad you're here with us. You each episode, I sit down with different experts, educators, authors, survivors and practitioners sharing different trauma informed experiences across various fields, join us as we explore the complex intersections of trauma and power through embodied healing and diverse perspectives in both our Personal and collective healing journeys. Let's dive on in.
All right. Welcome, Dr haisley, so wonderful to be with you. Thank you for having me. Great to see you, Jenn, it's always great to see you. Great to have these conversations. I'm going to start with a brief just, you know, introduction of who you are, or a little bit about who you are, I suppose. And then if you want to guide us through that kind of mindfulness practice or soft landing, that'd be wonderful. So Dr desmonette hazely is an integrative health specialist in Los Angeles with over 15 years of experience. She develops trauma, informed, culturally inclusive wellness programs for underserved communities, focusing on mind, body and spirit health. Her work spans local, national and global collaborations with organizations like UNICEF, the Red Cross the United Nations, and is a long time deeply appreciated partner of the Center for trauma and embodiment. So thank you again for being here, and I'll kind of hand it over to you if you want to guide us through a little practice. Okay, thank you so
Speaker 1
my mindful soft landing practice today is what I call the soft landing for interesting times. So what we're going to do is first take a deep breath and gently breathe out. Get comfortably situated wherever you are, whatever comfort is for you, that's what it's going to be, and you're welcome to close your eyes as we go through our mindful, soft landing. So let's start again with a deep breath. Gently breathe out, and as we breathe in, just let the air just fill your whole body and just fill you up. Breathe in and
Unknown Speaker
to breathe out, and if you like, you can start to rotate your head in any direction, slowly as you're breathing in and gently breathing out. And as you're breathing in and breathing out, and rotating your head, give yourself an affirmation for how wonderful and great you are
Speaker 1
when you're ready, you can circle your neck and your head in another direction and Breathe in, breathe out and in this affirmation. Name, three wonderful things that you love about yourself. Breathe in, name the first one, breathe out, breathe in name, the second thing Breathe out. Breathe in name, the third thing, breathe out. Now if you're comfortable, gently roll your shoulders back while you're breathing in, gently and breathing out, gently roll the shoulders and if you might be feeling tension in your shoulder. Fingers. Give it a little tense. Shrug up as you're going up with your shoulders, relax them as you go down. Little tension up, relax them as you go down. You can also try going forward with your shoulders and gently tensing as you go up, and letting the tension go as you go down, go up, little bit of tension, let it go. And we might be feeling tension all throughout our body. So we're going to give ourselves a little contract and release exercise, and we're going to start with our feet. And as you're tensing up and contracting your muscles and gently letting go, you're going to be breathing in gently and breathing out slowly. So let's start with our feet. Gently contract your feet, scratch your toes. Gently be kind to yourself. Breathe in,
Unknown Speaker
breathe out. Release the tension. Let's see if we can tight, move and contract the muscles in our leg a bit. Breathe in,
Speaker 1
breathe out, let it go. Let's see if we can contract our thighs and lower body all together, breathe in, breathe out, let it go. You can tense up your shoulders and your abdominals, breathe in, breathe out.
Jenn Turner
We'll let it go.
Speaker 1
As your body is releasing the tension and you're breathing in and you're breathing out. I would like you all to set the intentions of what you would like the world to be, breathe in, breathe out, and once you set that intention for what you would like the world to be, I would like you all to set the intention of who you would like to be to make that world happen. Breathe in, breathe out, one more deep cleansing breath. Breathe in, breathe out, let it all glow. You can open your eyes when you're ready. Thank you. Thank
Jenn Turner
you so much. That was beautiful. What a nice way to start our conversation, too, definitely, you know. And part of part of that is that so that we can both be in a place of like having this conversation from an embodied and maybe more holistic perspective, which is always the the hope, but sometimes hard to achieve without those practices. Exactly. I
Speaker 1
think the practices are needed to give us the tools and the foundation to feel capable of doing the work that needs to be done. Yes,
Jenn Turner
yes. So I wonder if you might even like to kind of start this conversation share with us a little bit about how you got into this work, you know, sort of like how you found, and you can go as far back as you like, but how you kind of found your way into doing this work. And then we can kind of dive in more, if that's all right with you. That's
Speaker 1
perfect. I got into this work because I live in Los Angeles, South LA particularly, and I live in a community that has seen a lot of trauma and trauma from a community level and a family level. It has very lifelong implications, and I have was always very interested in seeing how I could help not just family members, but also community. And from what my perspective gave me, from just observing what I was seeing was that trauma is multi layered. It's not just emotional, it's not just physical, it impacts every aspect of the human experience. And I wanted to be. Able to be an instrument of change, but I understood, in order to do that, I had to look at trauma from all aspects, and I started with the physical, because before people really understand what's going on with them mentally, the physical is giving signals that something's wrong, which is why I became a medical social worker. And I realized that people who have been exposed to lots of trauma, a lot of different types of traumatic events, their physical health was always going to be at the forefront of being the manifestation of what has happened to them or what is happening to them, and in order for me to do my job, I realized I had to figure out how to help people, specifically in underserved communities that have no real trust of The Medical medical care field for many reasons. How do you reach people who are afraid to ask for help for physical health and are stigmatized about accessing mental health care? So I entered integrative health, which allows me to have many tools at my disposal. So I use everything from culinary medicine, medical arts, studies, prescriptive exercises, anything that any person can access very easily that doesn't provide a feeling of stigma or mistrust. And that's what I wanted to be able. I wanted to help people without making them feel uncomfortable or afraid to seek help because they were afraid of judgment or being harmed by a system that didn't understand them. So this is the work I've been doing for over almost 20 years now.
Jenn Turner
It's brilliant. I feel like it's choose your own adventure a little bit right now. You have so many curiosities, but I'm wondering if you might share a little bit more about that stigma, just to you know, kind of paint a picture of the things that folks that you're in community with face when they seek out care in these systems, medical, mental health.
Speaker 1
I think it's it's in many ways. I think the stigma is not just with marginalized communities or oppressed communities. I think it's across the board with various groups, like for women, LGBTQ, just different types of groups who often are looked at as other, and it's important to understand that when people are identified as other, they are treated in many ways less than there's inequity in treatment and In resources and availability of services. So when you have a person who already feels a little apprehensive about going into getting either medical care or mental health services, it's the presumptions or assumptions about the people that the health care or mental health system have like, for example, let's say you are a person who come from a very traumatic history. You have a traumatic history, and you are fearful of sharing your information on what has happened to you, because you're just not ready, and you may be holding information back, and you may not be able to actually take care of yourself because of the trauma, and a medical care worker will basically label you as being uncooperative, that you're not being helpful in your own treatment, non compliant, not understanding that you're dealing with a lot of other things that have nothing to do with that doctor visit. But they're not asking you, what's going on in your life. They're not saying, How can we help you help yourself? And that's the thing. It's just there's many aspects of what's happening with an individual that will impact how they enter the healthcare or mental health service system and how we perceive them as healthcare providers. It's the person that's sitting in front of you. How do you see them before they even begin talking to you? If they're a person with high blood pressure, and they're 250 pounds, you know? And they're basically, they look like someone that is not trying to take care of themselves. How is that healthcare provider going to treat that person if they're not being very vocal about or being forthcoming about everything? That has happened in their past, about trauma and they're a little bit afraid to open up to you. You may feel, as a mental health provider, that this person doesn't want your help. There's many things that a person who has been treated as other or marginalized brings with them when they're sitting in front of you, and we miss those cues because we would like to have the perfect patient client sitting in front of us all the time at the ready to give us what we want. That makes us comfortable in helping them. But that's not how it goes. And I think when you're looking at different groups, the complications are compounded, because there is a level of not trusting people because of past experiences, and we don't really take that in consideration when we're trying to help people. You may not be the first time that this person reached out, there might be a history of a person trying to reach out and getting help, and they weren't treated very well because of who they are or who people think they are, and we're thinking, Okay, I don't think I can help this person. They don't want help because they're not working with me, and the onus is on the healthcare provider or the mental health service provider to really put them themselves in check, because it's not about you.
Jenn Turner
Hey, and here we talk about power, right? We're right into it.
Speaker 1
Yes, it's about and that's and we we further traumatize a person seeking assistance when we make it about ourselves and what we want them to be in that interaction, and they're not giving it to us the way we would like it to be, and that's the that's a power play. But I don't think we realize that, because we're thinking, Okay, if they only give me what I need, how I need it, I can help them, and then at the end of the day, we're there not to help them. We're helping them help themselves. Because we don't go home with them every day. We don't. We're not in their lives 24 hours there. You might see them once a week for an hour, if that right, they're helping themselves. The rest of the time. Our job is not to judge or to put our desire of what helping looks like from our point of view on them. It's basically taking in how they would like to help themselves and try to figure out how to give them what they need from what they tell you so they can do that,
Jenn Turner
right? And so much is in there that I just love and and resonate with. And part of what's coming up for me as you're talking is this thing that I've been really curious about lately, that it feels like we are as providers, we're sort of taught and trained that we are entitled to people's trust, like from the jump, that rather than it being something that is earned. And also, I think the point that you make is that we're stepping into a role, whether it's a doctor, a therapist, a psychiatrist, we're stepping into a role that someone may have already experienced harm at the hands of right? Someone may have already been belittled or shamed by their doctor, their therapist. They may have had consequences that impacted their lives in a really negative or, you know, counter healing kind of way. And I think that's something that we're not always taught to hold when we're building a relationship with someone, or we don't have the structures to support us, to give us the time and space to do that. So we have to push back against those structures. You know, we have to get creative,
Speaker 1
and I appreciate you seeing negative consequences. In general, people have this idea that going to see a professional in the field of health care or mental health, nothing but good things happen for as outcomes, depending on who you are and where you live, going to see a mental health provider can lead to you possibly losing your children because someone has labeled you to be a person who is mentally unfit to take care of your children simply because you felt the need to see someone because you were feeling depressed. You may have someone who goes to the doctor and they are in need of care for diabetes, but they're living in a very stressful environment at home, and they're they're taking their meds and they're doing everything correctly, but their their diabetes is still out of control, and their doctor refuses to continue. To treat them because they feel you're not doing anything I'm telling you to do, so you're being non compliant. I'm going to ask you to see somebody else, because you're obviously not working with me. We're not looking at the bigger picture of what's happening to people. Because I think going back to your statement about being entitled to someone's trust. People don't go in thinking that I'm going to give a doctor or physician or a therapist, I'm going to tell them my life story the first time I get there, especially if you're somebody from a group that historically has been oppressed or marginalized harm in the everyday environment. And I think when we think about harm, we think about maybe things happening in the home, things happening a random stranger, you know. But when it's systematic, when your environment, when your community, when even just the setup of of society is built around making you feel less than you're not readily open to talking to people about yourself because you don't know what the outcome is going to be, yes, you may be seeking help, but you're going to if you're feeling like you are, I want to say you are a target in in a society, even when seeking help, you're cautious because you don't know who's sitting in front of you asking these Questions and what they're going to do with your answers,
Jenn Turner
absolutely and and so that, to me, is like, that's trust. That's also, you know, the sense of, do we have a an entitlement to people's history, to their story, to their information? I think a lot about that in terms of, what are the intakes we do with mental health, and sometimes it's like in the name of safety. But is it, is it, or is it invasive? Is it overly presumptuous to get in there and ask all of this information with someone we don't even know and doesn't know us? I'm wondering too, as you're talking about about the word trauma, right? You know that for so many, I think people who have lived in have experienced trauma at multiple levels, particularly when there is this systemic or othering that has happened that they may not look at their lives and think of it that way as well. And so how do you talk about trauma? Could be one thing, also curiosity of like, then, how do you you coach or work with other professionals to see their clients or patients from a more of a sort of a 360 view, even if their client may not be able to articulate or think of what they've been through as trauma, or they may not use that word.
Speaker 1
And my practice within mental health and health care, I do not use the word trauma initially with clients, because in certain communities, trauma is a is a word that causes even more trauma simply by the label, and I'll give you an example. Let's say a youth in high school is going through some things at home and was told to see a therapist because they're having some traumatic events happening at home, and they are going they're reluctant to see a therapist, simply because if you go see a therapist and you're quote, unquote, traumatized by things that are happening in your life, you are seen as weak. And if you're weak in the eyes of your peers, you become a target on so many levels. So that person will never say, if you say, Well, isn't you're traumatized by these they're like, I'm not traumatized. I'm not traumatized. Or I will say something like, you've seen to be going through some traumatizing events, and these traumatizing events can be very stressful, and yeah, I'm very stressed out. They will never use the word I am traumatized, because that's a loaded word that could cause a lot of internal issues within family and community and just being seen are labeled as someone who is weak, and it's almost like the child that cries when their bully is always the child that gets bullied because they are seen as weak, they become targets of more bullying and. And if you're from a marginalized community, you don't want to make yourself a target of any more stressful or traumatic events if you don't have to, so you will suck it up and say, you know, I'm good no matter what's happening to you. For example, let's say a mother is experiencing domestic violence in the home, and I've had this experience before, and I had someone coming to the, um, a doctor's office, and I'm saying, your blood pressure's up, what's going on? And, oh, I had a fight with my boyfriend, and he threw me down the stairs. And I'm like, are you okay? That's, you know, that's, you know, that's very violent behavior that could be very traumatizing. Oh, I'm not traumatized. I'm distressed. And I if that's the word that they're going to use, that's the word I'm going to use, if they're stressed, I will say that's a very stressful event that happened to you. What can I do to help you. Do these stressful events happen all the time, so I'm I'm basically adapting my language to what they're saying. Because in the end, it's not about me trying to make them confess their trauma. It's about me helping them in the way they need to be helped. From their point of view, when we sit down with people, we have in our minds of how we want to help them. But do we ever ask the client or patient, how would you like me to help you? And that's the question I ask. I'll ask questions, and they'll give me sometimes a little more information, if I'm not pushing them with words that they don't want to hear, like traumatized or victimized, that's another word a lot of people don't want to be seen as a victim, because I'm strong. I'm not a victim. I'm not a victim of anything. So when I'm talking to either patients or clients, I'm using those words and it's whatever they're giving me, I'll say, thanks for sharing everything about what's going on in your life. What? And I say, what do you need from me? What do you need me to do? How do you want this to work? Because this is about what you need to help yourself that usually changes the conversation, because I'm taking the power that I perceive to have, and it's perception, and basically allowing myself to be humble enough to understand they're in control of what happens to them their lives, and I'm only there as a conduit to some resources or information to help them do what they need to do. And I think that's that's the difference that I had to come to in regarding providing services. It's not about me empowering somebody, it's them empowering themselves. I think in the helping professions, we'd like to feel good about ourselves, that we've helped somebody, but in reality, they're helping themselves, and we're just there to watch and be like a support as they're doing it. It's it's important to make people understand that they are the ones in control. They are the ones in power in their lives. When we come to circumstances where someone's asking for assistance, they're asking advice of how they can help themselves, that's what it comes down to. And then sometimes we seem like, okay, just do this, and everything's going to be fine. Just do what I tell you to do. Just it's like a child, do what I tell you to do, and everything will be fine. But if you're trying to make real impact, you have to figure out what the person really is coming to you to talk about and what they need, and have them tell you that's just what I would like to do. What do you have in regards to skills and information to support me in that it's the collaboration. It's not a unilateral power play.
Jenn Turner
And, you know, it's interesting too to bring up children. I think the same is true with children as well, right? It's like it. It isn't actually that we're gonna like, disseminate the knowledge they have to learn and discover and know themselves, and so do adults, right? I think what strikes me, or a couple of things about what, when you're talking there, it's one is the piece around when we're talking about trauma, we're talking about we're like, implicating our ecosystem potentially, right? So if I come to you and I say I've got high blood pressure, or I have. If even something like bipolar disorder, it that is kind of understood as something that comes from within me. Maybe it's something that was genetically passed down. There's something in my body when we're talking about trauma, then we're looking to our communities, our family members, our partners. And I think that is also really scary for a lot of us to think about, not only that, but to your point of, is there something wrong with me, because I am impacted by these things that seemingly everyone around me is fine with or is okay with or is resilient to. And I think about that a lot with the word trauma, and how that's not just like, let's look with it. It's like now that means we have to look outside of ourselves and confront the realities of our communities, of our relationships, of the systems that might oppress and marginalize us. But so much of what you're talking about in what I hear is about consent. It's like consent to if someone comes in to see you for stress, what? What are they actually wanting and and do? And how can you show up in a way that best serves what they need, what they're looking for, what's realistic for them and their lives and their bodies.
Speaker 1
First of all, I think that they're looking for someone to listen to them. Just hear them and without the judgment, without the reactions that they've usually have gotten from other people, it's just and especially if you're looking at trauma from a cultural point of view, trauma in many cultures, there's no word for trauma because it's it's a word that we relate to only as like for a lot of us in the field, as a mental, an emotional, a negative emotional impact on somebody. But trauma is so, so comprehensive for a person. It means all parts of the person's being, their their mind, body, F, spirit, all of that. And when someone comes to you from a different culture or just different background, telling you these things have happened to me, and they're describing not just how they feel emotionally, but physically, spiritually, all of these things all at once, and they don't call it trauma, whatever they're telling you what this is, that's what they want you to to recognize it As if someone's saying, I'm stressed because I got beaten up by my boyfriend. My reaction is not to say, Oh, you, you're in a traumatizing domestic violence situation. I'm not going to put the labels there. I'm there to listen and get the verbiage that the person in front of me is using, and use those words to communicate my my support and find out more information of what they want me to do so this is happening to you. What is it that you need from me to help you not be in that situation where this is happening? I didn't use any clinical words, anything overbearing or saying you're depressed, you're this, or that they want me to see them. They want me to hear them. When a person is traumatized, or someone who's been through very traumatic experiences, and that's that's how I phrase them. You've been through many traumatic events. I don't put the label on them. I put the label on the event. I basically say, so you've gone through these things, what do you think you need to rise above those things? Because people who've gone through traumatic events feel very small. Their humanity has been taken away, and then when they come to someone they're looking to for help, we treat them as if they don't have the power within themselves. We we're going to give them something we further dehumanize them and disenfranchise them because they've already been made to feel like they are not in control of anything, and someone else is in the driver's seat, and we continue that behavior by telling them just do what I tell you. This is what's wrong with you. This is what you have to do. This is all these different things, and they're taking it in, and they're like, I must be really, really messed up, because I can't seem to make any decisions for myself. I have all these labels that are negative, and so I'm just going to basically, hopefully try to do what people tell me to do, but all this time, you're feeling that you are totally devalued, and. You're not feeling as if you can do anything for yourself, and that's that's where I think services for trauma needs to really look at how to support the person dealing with traumatic events without making them feel like they have failed themselves,
Jenn Turner
right? I feel like sometimes the the work begins with normalizing the way that someone's brain and body responds and and emotions and and spiritual life responds to overwhelming, traumatic events, and rather than it being a pathology or a disease, but an adaptation and a way of survival, what I'm thinking about, as well as you're talking this idea that within us, we hold a great capacity, it's making me also think about some of the traditional practices that you have supported folks, you've worked with, in reconnecting to in maybe learning for the first time, or relearning or awakening. If we can kind of integrate that into this conversation too, I'd be curious.
Speaker 1
Yes, I think it's important that trauma and traumatic events is part of the human experience, and it's been around since we've been around and the label of trauma is fairly new, considering the history of the human experience along we've been in existence. Traumatic experiences have always been in a part of who we are, and we've dealt with it in our own ways as human beings throughout the millennia, but we we seem to miss the point that we've have always had tools To deal with trauma, but at this point in time, we have basically narrowed our view how trauma should be treated, and we think it's, oh, the best way is for someone to go see a therapist. But what was happening before a therapist? What did people do? And the things that we have put on the back burner, such as things like arts and humanities and different types of physical activities that help with trauma. We've we've put those as secondary and conventional therapy, talk therapy as the most accessible and most accepted way of dealing with trauma and not seeing the other ways that people in other cultures deal with trauma more legitimate. So if a person from a different culture, if as a collective group, people have to experience trauma, they might hold a community event where there's dance, where there's music, where there's literature and reading of different types of poetry. It's a collective type of healing that's not individualized many ways that we see dealing with trauma from a more modern mental health and medical care perspective, is very individualized. A person goes to see someone and sits in front of them and talks about what has happened to them, and there's no other interaction except someone talking about what has happened to them, but for many people, many communities dealing with traumatic events, the remedy is communal. You're not going to be by yourself with just another person. You're going to be embraced as a group, because you're there as a person of one of many who's there to support each other, and that's the norm in many parts of the world, that and I think that's what we we fail to understand that dealing with traumatic events, there's been a constant remedy throughout history of what People do. It's a communal remedy. It's people not just talking about something that has happened to them, it's talking, in general, about how to actually heal. And I think that's the thing that we in modern mental health services. When was the last time someone actually talk about growth from something dramatic that has happened to you. We think about, Okay, let's keep talking about this thing that has happened to you and how it's impacted you, and we never talk about growth. There's something called post traumatic growth. And I just. There's not just post traumatic disorder. There's something called post traumatic growth. And when I talk about post traumatic growth, people are like, What are you talking about? It's the idea that you can come out of something that has happened to you, a traumatic event, and you could be even stronger than you were before it happened in many cultures. That is actually the goal post traumatic growth, to get someone, or a people who have been wounded to not just come out of that event whole, but even better than what they were before. And that's done through many ways, through many ways. And we're looking at dance. We're looking at even foods, certain foods that you're given to eat, to heal the soul, heal the whole a broken heart, prayers, music, all these things. How many people do you know that when they're having a bad day, they'll put in their earbuds and listen to a favorite song to make themselves feel better. That's just therapeutic is sowing to see a therapist. How many people do you know that may have had a very rough week, and they go out with their friends to a dance to basically let all of that negative energy that they've been tolted with throughout the week, they let it go. They feel as good as anybody would if they would have gone to a therapist. We don't value the things in our humanity, those experiences that bring us joy and brings us empowerment and makes us connect as people, as humans, we devalue those things as tools for healing, mentally and physically, but those are the very tools that have helped us throughout the history of being human,
Jenn Turner
absolutely. And I think it is interesting as thinking about some conversations I've had with some clinical interns and I'm working with right now talking about the evolution of our kind of yoga approach, TC, TS, why and how it really it started as it has to be adjunct to therapy. It has to be done in tandem with this thing that for many people, is not the way that they're going to heal from a traumatic event and experiences. And so what for us to have that reflection and through study and research, to learn that this is something that can stand alone. And for some people, we're causing harm by mandating them to be in talk therapy, which may really not be effective, but it has somehow become and I think we can talk about power dynamics, we can talk about kind of the European centric piece around that, but that have have become centralized as the gold standard or the effective way, when, in fact, we have these other resources that like to your point, we have been doing for 1000s of years. I mean how powerful that is. And I think our charge in doing this work and offering yoga in the world in this way is to be attuned to the fact that we're not discovering this is something that we're just unearthing, right, that has been and has been a resource, but was forgotten or buried?
Speaker 1
Yes, yes, and I'm glad you brought up TCTs. Why? Because if you look at TC, TS, why, and at the model, it is community healing. It's communal. Yes, you're doing you're doing various types of motion that speaks to the body, the mind and the spirit of a person, and you're doing it in a group, a supportive group that's there not just support you through your traumatic events that you've experienced, but to move you forward. It's empowerment. It's not just healing from something. It's empowering you to move beyond it, to grow from it. And it's it's interesting that we do not encourage people to talk about growth as part of the therapeutic process. Healing is basically getting back to what you were. Growth is being able to become something more because of what has happened. I think when you look at TC, TS, why, and other types of modalities that are rooted in the human experience, like music, dance, art, all of those things, it's not just healing, it's hope and growth. And that makes all the difference when you're looking at having someone become the person they need to be for themselves after traumatic events have happened when you see someone, for instance, you go to a therapist and they give you a diagnosis of PTSD post traumatic disorder, and you work on coping with the symptoms of PTSD. When do you talk about the hope of your life, all these other parts that are actually there for you to have and enjoy, but your therapeutic sessions are basically focused on your disorder, and there has to be a way to yes things. You're going to have symptoms when you have experienced traumatic events, but you are not your life and yourself. You are not those symptoms forever,
Jenn Turner
or that is not all that you are exactly
Speaker 1
and I think that's when we talk about mental health and helping people who have had traumatic events. We seem to focus solely on the trauma and not the person there, yeah, and it's like, before these things happen, this person had dreams, goals, aspirations, they had all of these things that were their own, and now their lives revolves around this word called trauma. It's almost all encompassing for them. It's like, that's their that's their existence. They don't get to think about anything outside of that, because we put that word that those traumatic as the center of their of their identity. And when that that it, it strips people of, again, of their humanity. You you identify as someone who's been traumatized. You've been identified as a victim, and those words have certain, certain activities and assumptions that are put onto the person that wears those labels says, I've been a victim all my life. Okay, so what else? If you ask someone like ask someone so if you've been a victim all your life, is there anything else? Have you have you been anything else? Have you had any dream? Yeah, What? What? What type of life that you want before these things happen to you. Who were you before this? And they had to, they had to think about it for a while. I'm like, tell me who you were before these traumatic events happened. And a lot of times, people can't remember because they've been so focused on this. These, yes, what's wrong with them. This is what's wrong and like, tell me something right about you. Tell me something great about you. Tell me what you love. Tell me what you always wanted to be, what you wanted to do. I do this exercise in my group, classes for Integrative Health. I say, Okay, I gave you 10 seconds to name seven things that are wrong with you, and they give me 10. In 10 seconds, I give you 10 seconds to tell me something great about yourselves. It takes them 10 seconds to get at least give me one right, right?
Jenn Turner
I think what I struggle with around this is, and this is quite possibly, a reflection of my own privilege and how I want to attend to that, and the power dynamics I bring into the world in my work because of that. But I struggle sometimes with feeling kind of timid to go to the post traumatic growth or resilience, because I don't want to bypass the pain and hurt that, in fact, potentially in in my skin and in my body, that i i Hold those identities that potentially cause harm for someone. And so I'm It's a dance. But I sometimes find and wonder if I err too much on the side of, like, let's validate the like, the terrible shit that's happened. Like, let's get in there. And it's like, Yes, and I love what you're saying about, like, what are the threads you can pull through, of your dreams, the things you're passionate about? What? What? What does bring you joy, but it I struggle a little with that.
Speaker 1
It's I think we're we've been so trained as Mental health professionals to focus solely on the trauma that we forget that sitting in front of us is a person, is someone who had dreams and goals, and yes, you can focus on the. Things that have happened, but who wants, I think, from a point of view of a person who serves people who have been marginalized, who wants to sit with the idea that this is all your life is going to be for the rest of your life, there true who it's like? I don't want to keep talking about my trauma, because if this is how it's going to be for the rest of life, I don't I just, I just don't want to think about it anymore. Just let me do what I can and figure out how I'm going to deal with this, and just leave me alone. It comes to that, because if you're feeling like there's nothing else for me but pain, and all I get to talk about is my pain. It gets to be a point where it's a burden and I'm not going to do it anymore, right? When you I talk through, yeah, when I talk to people, when I'm like, Okay, this is where you are. And I ask, where do you want to be? Where do you want to be? This is what has happened now. This is how you feel like right now, but what do you want to be? Where do you want to be?
Jenn Turner
Right? And as you're talking and I'm thinking more and processing this, I think what I also hear in your language is that's different. You're not telling someone they are resilient. You're not telling someone, you're inviting them and creating a space for them to discover that, for them to reconnect with that. Because that, I think, to me, is that something I'm always afraid to be patronizing or like, what did you learn from this horrible, traumatic experience? It's like, but, but when we can discover that within our own bodies and our own felt sense, it's so different than someone from the outside saying that or prompting it if we're not ready or we're not there, so you're guiding people to that in a different sort of way.
Speaker 1
And I think what I what I've learned, is that even if we're telling someone they're resilient, resilient and they're strong, they don't believe us
Jenn Turner
true, we don't believe it until we feel it. Yeah,
Speaker 1
so it's like I have to have to be able to to connect with the idea that I'm there as a guide so they can see their own strength. Because I My words are hollow when you can't see yourself as being what I'm saying that you are.
Jenn Turner
That's it. That was like a mic drop right there. Yes, I could talk to you for hours. This is so wonderful. I hope that you'll have another conversation with me and we can continue this, because this is just spectacular to dive into all I
Speaker 1
really enjoy conversations. It's I learn so much from our conversations in regards to the bigger picture of how we can be of greater assistance. And that's the word. We are of assistance. We are not the know all and be all of someone's life and getting getting help, we are there as the assist. But how best assist? And that's always the question,
Jenn Turner
how can we be of service? How can we best assist? I love it. Well. Thank you so much for joining me and for sharing your wisdom, insight approach with us, and just so folks know, we'll have links to websites and more information if folks want to learn more about your work, and hopefully we'll get to do another one of these in the near future. Thank you for having
Speaker 1
I greatly enjoyed you. Thanks so much. You.
Jenn Turner
Thank you so much for being with us today to find out more about today's guest, head to heal with cfte.org/podcast follow us on Instagram at on trauma and power, to stay up to date on future episodes and be sure to like and subscribe to on trauma and power wherever you listen to Your Podcast, we'll see you next time. Take care you
