Jenn Turner- CFTE (00:51)
Hello and welcome. Thank you so much for being here with me, Linda.
Linda Thai (00:56)
It's such an absolute pleasure. Like I was raised in Australia. I am full of piss and vinegar and I just need to let people know that at the start, like I am a fart in a tea kettle today. And I've been this way for the last few weeks. And I know that, that this is different to how I normally turn up on podcasts and hey, we're here.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (01:14)
I love
it. You're welcome with all of that energy. It really sparks for me as well. So I'm so glad you're bringing that and sharing that with us. So Linda Tai, LMSW, also an ERYT 200, is a somatic therapist and integrative trauma therapist.
who deeply understands the wounds of war, refugitude, and immigration. The rising stranglehold of authoritarianism lives as body echoes alongside ancestral reverberations of military occupation and colonialism. Regarded as a trauma expert who speaks internationally and hosts workshops and trainings for therapists, Linda is passionate about breaking the cycle of historical
and intergenerational trauma at the individual and community levels. Thank you for being here, Linda.
Linda Thai (02:09)
I feel that from you, Jen. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. So, a practice to start with and maybe my nervous system will shift in the process of this practice.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (02:23)
Let's experiment, right? Let's experiment.
Linda Thai (02:25)
Yes,
yes. So I've noticed lately that, and this started well into last year, and there was something that heightened for me as someone who was a child refugee into Australia and an adult immigrant into the US, and I live here and I am a non-citizen. And so things have been shifting for me in my nervous system in terms of self-protective armouring.
And yet, you know, January, saw George Floyd's murder. God, I just did a PTSD flashback in time. We had Minneapolis happening with the immigration raids there that were very much in the news and in social media. And then the Epstein files and now the weekend just passed with more, more.
more invasion of other people's sovereignty to self-determine their own future, to not negate the terrible things that have been happening in Iran, right? But it's all like, ugh, ugh, like up here. And my head has been coming forward and pulling back. it's the turtleneck, right? It's the turtleneck of I need to be in the world and peer out, but I really want to pull my head back in, yeah?
And so if you like, I invite you to actually intentionally inhabit this little turtleneck and to bring your shoulders up and let your little turtleneck be nice and small and close to the edge of your turtle shell. And then squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. And then easy does it.
Lengthening, taking up space, nice and slowly. Nice and slowly. So the expansion naturally follows the contraction rather than forcing the expansion to happen.
And then we just pause here. I'm noticing for you Jen, there's a rocking that emerged. There's some color that's returning to your face. I get the sense that your navel has come forward and down, similar to mine.
Mm.
Yes, and now naturally your neck and your head is starting to move around. Some natural orienting beginning to emerge. Our periphery is expanding. That practice is one of the practices that has really helped me lately, is to actually complete the shock trauma response. Yeah, because the shock trauma response is, it's all here, it's at the occipital crest.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (04:56)
Thank you.
Linda Thai (05:21)
And if that crick in the neck, if we hold that tension for long enough, what happens is it takes out the blood flow to the brain. Yeah, then we are knocked out. So that is our survival architecture. And yet we're like, no, but it's not like I don't need to be knocked out. So then we have another set of muscles that says, keep looking, keep looking, gotta keep looking. Yeah, and then we create that tension there. And so if we can intentionally inhabit that turtleneck.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (05:28)
Mm. Yep.
and we can actually change that. Yeah,
Linda Thai (05:49)
and then release. Yes. Right. yeah.
From here, let your chin come forward and back. Yeah. And find that place where your head sits nicely on your neck and on your shoulders.
And yes, you can turn your head from side to side and yet there's this nice lengthening that is stabilised through the diaphragm, through the solar plexus.
And then from here, you can do this in your chair or you can do this standing up. Imagine your head, neck, shoulders and torso as one unit and hinging forward at the hip crease, the hip thigh crease and coming back up. And this will actually cause your deep core muscles as well as your solar plexus to come online.
then if you like you can try out at say a 45 degree angle and to allow your arms to dangle forward. Yeah so that you're letting the tractioning of the weight of your arms release any tension that may be there in the neck and in the shoulders.
perhaps a figure eights with the arms, which is actually quite a lot of fun if you're standing up. So you can choose to say seated or you can stand up and let the arms sway from side to side as you experiment with your head, neck, shoulders, torso being one unit.
And so the diaphragm, the thoracic diaphragm is more than a breathing muscle. It's also a core stabilizer. And that is first part of the body that blows out or that loses its structural integrity when we are in a state of horror and a state of acute shock.
And then from here, if you're standing, you can try busting out a half moon with this.
with this through the core that is now online.
Yeah. And this here, this is the container for our grief and for our rage.
And so when this is here, I'm able to titrate, you know, some grief and rage moving through. I'm also able to pendulate between activation and resource.
And this right here, those two exercises, like the turtle neck and then the neck shoulders, torso, head, one unit like that. That is how I have gotten through the last couple of months. And to the point where I now walk up and I pick up things and I notice how easy it is for there to be a crick in the back of my neck when I go to reach for something. Right, because I lead with my face, I lead with my nose, I lead with my mouth. And it's like, no, it just...
I keep this as a unit and then reach so that now the reach comes from the core.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (09:27)
thank
you so much. I even that planting that seed for me around how much I'm kind of leading with that, you know, with my chin and my neck, rather than this kind of full embodied kind of channel here. And that's like, that's such a different experience, even even to lean forward to the microphone, right? Like to cut.
Linda Thai (09:49)
Yes. Uh-huh.
And I love it because as you lean forward to the microphone with your head with everything as one unit, you're still with yourself as you're with me. Yeah.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (10:01)
That's right. And
so this is less with myself and more reaching for you or responding to you.
Linda Thai (10:07)
Yes, yes, that's the
truncated attachment cry.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (10:11)
Hmm.
Linda Thai (10:12)
Like, right. Yeah, and that naturally emerges when there's acute shock and horror. Yeah, is, yeah, is we get the crick in the neck is the truncated attachment cry, but then that can be, that is underpinned by terror. Yeah, every time, you know, if a child actually reaches out is in a place of, really need help right now, there's terror that's underneath that.
Yeah, and so that's part of the shock trauma and the horror. Yeah, and then we lose that girdle through the center.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (10:52)
I love that you named terror because I think that gets lost a lot in the attachment conversation, that that is what is beneath it. It is not.
Linda Thai (10:53)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (11:04)
It becomes an intellectualized and heady kind of thing like attachment style and how you're responding to it. It's like, what is in there is terror.
Linda Thai (11:14)
Yes, and therefore those attachment styles are actually an adaptation for a child that was put into an impossible situation. And that attachment style adaptation is then in service of helping them to not feel the feeling that they do anything to not feel ever again.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (11:35)
Yeah.
Linda Thai (11:38)
And that's terror. Inconsolable terror.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (11:47)
practices. I think you kind of got us there, but I wonder if there's more to say just on your mind about.
Linda Thai (11:50)
Yeah.
Like if I slow it down for us all, I'm a former child refugee and so I understand the trauma of war from the perspective of civilians. And war trauma is the over exposure to death and to violence and it's the over exposure to senseless death and senseless violence. And Minneapolis is a militarized zone.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (12:04)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Linda Thai (12:20)
So
therefore, people are experiencing war trauma and war trauma is a combination of shock trauma, acute shock trauma and horror at the overexposure to senseless violence and death. that's what I was seeing in people's bodies. Like I was reaching out to therapists in the Twin Cities area to do, just to offer emotional support and emotional support groups. And I'm looking through the space and I'm
I'm seeing the, whites of people's eyes, right? Just the little bits of horror that are moving through and then the bracing and then the head forward, right? And like that's where completing the turtleneck can be really helpful. And then helping to reinstate a sense of center so that we can continue to turn up in such a way that's more solid.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (13:19)
That's a beautiful component of the work too to show up for those that are holding the space, right?
Linda Thai (13:18)
you
Yeah.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (13:29)
can be forgotten sometimes when there's crisis.
Linda Thai (13:33)
Yes. Yes.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (13:35)
and when there's trauma, active trauma happening.
Linda Thai (13:40)
Yeah, not that there's anything wrong with letting yourself collapse or letting yourself be held or letting yourself be supported. And it's that both end, right? If I can help you at the somatic level, then you're going to have more containment for yourself as well as for your clients. And that containment is what then actually gives rise to coherence in terms of what we're feeling, why we're feeling it, and then sense making.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (13:45)
Love that.
You talk about coherent rage and I wonder if we could kind of move toward that if you might share more about kind of how you understand that or what that means to you.
Linda Thai (14:16)
Yes. In the attachment world, we often talk about coherence in terms of that being something that emerges in terms of one sense of self as a result of having had a supportive, witnessing, attuned other. Where all parts of us are welcome. Yeah. And as all parts of me are welcome, as my needs are attuned to and as my needs are then scaffolded.
terms of my developmental needs over the course of my childhood, I then develop a coherent sense of self. So how I see myself matches how other people see me and how other people see me matches how I see myself and and I can turn up in the world as I am knowing that there are loving limits placed upon certain behaviours. Yeah. And
that coherence also happens in reciprocity, meaning that our parents also role model and elicit from us what they feel are coherent expressions of various emotions. And so a child who doesn't get coherent experiences of healthy aggression, healthy assertion, being protected, then that child can move through the world not knowing what to do with their anger.
And so we can pendulate back and forth between impotent rage and righteous rage, despairing rage and helpless rage and inconsolable rage, which is actually the inconsolable attachment cry, because underneath every fight part is a vulnerable young attached part. And
Jenn Turner- CFTE (15:47)
So.
Mm, go ahead.
Mm.
Linda Thai (16:09)
There is dignity involved in having your developmentally natural upsets be recognised, to be attuned to. Yeah. There is dignity in your oopsies and ouchies and injustices be validated.
And so the that two year old period is when that protest, right? That's the protest. Yeah, anger is really honest. Anger is so truthful. Anger says, this is fucked up. I don't like this. Yeah. And we also go through a period in our development in our teenage years where there's a lot of that protest energy and we need loving limits.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (16:41)
Hmm.
Linda Thai (17:02)
We need role models that offer coherence around what we're feeling and then offer us a way in which to channel that energy because it is creative energy. Yeah, when I don't like how something is, I want it to be different. That could turn into a binary. However, that can also be transmuted into creative energy, life force energy, the energy of change that if we can channel it, then
Jenn Turner- CFTE (17:12)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Mmm.
Linda Thai (17:31)
becomes sustainable. It becomes life force.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (17:37)
That's amazing. And so true when I think in particular about adolescents, mostly because I have two kids in that space right now and how much creative force, how awake they are to the way that the world works and the ways that it is folding in on itself or full of hypocrisy or setting them up to fail.
Linda Thai (18:04)
you
Jenn Turner- CFTE (18:06)
And I'm thinking a lot about how, you know, when we're talking about coherent rage, or even even being in a position where rage is held, so much of that is based around identity too, and who is allowed to or the space is given to be angry about something, voice something, have a different idea of how something should be.
Linda Thai (18:23)
Mm-hmm.
Mm hmm. Yes, and then that adds a texture, right, a texture in terms of, like there's sacred outrage, right. Now we're getting into the dynamics of oppression, right, where my sacred outrage, there is an element of righteousness to it. However, in my righteousness, am I engaging in power over dynamics, right, because I feel so right about
about this rage. Right. And so that's that's that the the invitation, the opportunity for discernment oftentimes only arises after after we have been given the the place and the space for our sacred outrage to be expressed and to be witnessed. And as you said so clearly Jen like like
Jenn Turner- CFTE (19:03)
Yeah.
Linda Thai (19:29)
Certain bodies are not allowed to be angry. Yeah, and the bodies of the oppressed have never been allowed to be angry because that gets us institutionalized or medicated or pathologized.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (19:41)
That's right.
Linda Thai (19:46)
or unalived.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (19:52)
Yeah, so the cost is incredibly high.
Linda Thai (19:54)
Absolutely.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (19:59)
So some of what I guess the invitation could be if we have to bury it or shove it into the eaves of our awareness because of being in a body or an identity where there's not space for rage or dissent.
Linda Thai (20:15)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (20:25)
One of the things I think too that you and I have spoken about that I think is so powerful is when we look at how in the therapeutic world, the wellness world, like.
either pathologized or not as healthy, and then it becomes this good, bad binary piece. And I wonder if we can talk a little bit about that too.
Linda Thai (20:53)
You know that feelings wheel where there's like three layers of feeling in the middle, there's mad, sad, bad and glad. And then you get the next layer out and then the next layer out. And when I worked in addiction recovery, I remember throwing out that addiction wheel for us to have a look at. most people could, they connected to the primary emotions, right? Mad, sad, bad and glad. And...
you know, the path unfolds and it's the recognition of my parents weren't able to hold space for my emotions beyond mad, sad, bad and glad. That's what I got stuck there. Yeah. And, and then I find a solution to all my problems, which is through the addictions and compulsive behaviors. Yeah. That, then also developmentally keeps me at that age. And over time as a therapist, I put out that, that feelings wheel with other clients and
and asked, you know, what is your relationship to these feelings? What were you taught in regards to these feelings? And I found it so absolutely fascinating where my clients who are raised within more religious fundamentalist homes were taught that certain emotions are good and other emotions are bad. Yeah. That if I'm anxious, it means I don't believe in God enough. Right? Like I don't trust God enough.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (22:14)
Hmm.
Linda Thai (22:17)
me I wasn't raised within a Christian theology and so it was really fascinating for me to actually learn about the ways in which religion also indoctrinates us into the perception that certain feelings are good and bad based upon a morality.
therefore,
if you have these feelings, you're not a believer. And yeah, yeah. And then that seeps its way into the macrosphere here in the United States. And as an immigrant into the United States, I have a slightly different perspective than someone who was raised within this Petri dish.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (22:47)
Mmm. Mmm.
Linda Thai (23:08)
In Australia, we have a term called the fuckers. Like I'm having the fuckers, right? And we, we are totally okay with being a bit pissy, a bit irritable, a bit, you know, like it's fine. And at the same time, we also don't feel the need to smile all the time and be happy all the time. And people who are doing their jobs in customer service jobs don't need to have the smile.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (23:15)
You
Mm.
Linda Thai (23:36)
the how are you and did you find everything and blah blah like you know like they're just they're doing their job they're scanning your groceries like you know there isn't that thing as well and so the good bad thing in terms of emotions also expresses itself socioculturally in ways that that are normalized for people who live here.
people who live here. Yes. And so then, then we get back to the the human development dynamics of the need for belonging and affiliation and identity and purpose and meaning. And how within cult environments, right, which the United States, like you can talk about patriarchy
Jenn Turner- CFTE (24:01)
fascinating.
Linda Thai (24:25)
White supremacy and capitalism. Like they're all cults. Right? Like and we've become so indoctrinated in terms of this is how we operate in this world. Right? In this world here that we don't see it as as high demand coercive needing to needing to be in the in group otherwise you're in the out group and then over time the out group becomes the new in group. Right? It it just
recycling itself. And within those dynamics compliance in order to survive, in order to have some proximity to affiliation, belonging, identity, meaning, purpose.
Yeah. The compliance in order to not be a target, right? The needing to participate in your own humiliation in order to survive.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (25:23)
Yes.
Mmm. Fuck, that's powerful.
Linda Thai (25:31)
Yeah, it becomes so heightened. And so then we weaponise calm. Calm then becomes gentrified. It then becomes spiritualised. Right? We talk about spiritual materialism and spiritual narcissism and spiritual authoritarianism.
spiritual materialism and yet we also see that in the psychedelic world with psychedelic authoritarianism and psychedelic bypass just like the spiritual bypass, psychedelic authoritarianism. And it's that case of wherever you go, there you are.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (26:08)
Isn't that the truth? Yes. Yes.
Linda Thai (26:13)
Yeah, and so we keep replicating the same dynamics.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (26:17)
Can you concretize in some way around the ways that calm and being obedient and compliant is weaponized.
Linda Thai (26:27)
Look, if we talk about it in terms of the dynamics of race, right, little white kids, right, lots of energy running around being mischievous. yeah, that's normal childhood development, right? Kids are supposed to be curious and kids who are loved, right, they're mischievous. They get into trouble. They want to explore the world. Yeah. But when a child of color is having a moment or a series of moments,
Jenn Turner- CFTE (26:53)
Hmm.
Linda Thai (26:54)
Yeah, then that becomes a parenting issue. Yeah, that becomes like ADHD medication. That becomes putting them in a different class, then separating them from all their classmates. Yeah. It then becomes part of the school to prison pipeline for children of color. Yeah. Yeah. And this is like separate to the conversation around rage. But if we add the dynamics of
Jenn Turner- CFTE (27:13)
Yep. Yep.
Linda Thai (27:24)
when your needs are unmet and you get upset, there's only a certain degree of upset that a body of colour is allowed to express or inhabit and then I need to use my words in order to maybe get my needs heard or met. Right, so I have to then self-snuff my...
my anger. I have to self snuff my needs. I have to self snuff the charge that's underneath and then I have to teach my kids how to do that.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (28:00)
be extra calm, be extra logical or...
Linda Thai (28:00)
Yeah, yeah, be extra nice. Yes,
yes, yes. It makes me think about a story that Dr Kenneth Hardy actually talks about at his teaching lab. He's an African-American psychologist, has a teaching lab at a university the one by Muir.
And you know, get white kids in there with their parents and the kids are running around and picking up things and going, I know this, there's a microphone in here. And they go running up to the mirror and they, the one way mirror, they can't see you, but they're like banging on it going, I know that you're behind there. And all the researchers laugh and then people of color come in, children of color and the child wants to explore the space. And the parents like, no, no, no, like, sit down, be still. Someone will tell us what to do. Yeah. And
And in Ken Hardy's book, he talks about how his white psychologist colleagues would come up to him and say, you need to psychoeducate your clients, your people of color, that it's natural for children to explore the world. And in that moment, in that moment, there was so much fury in him because these people really didn't get it. They didn't get that these parents are trying to help their children survive. Yeah.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (29:13)
Hmm.
the world. Yes.
Linda Thai (29:23)
And so that right there, like that fury that he felt that couldn't find words for, like that happens like so many times throughout the day. And I mean, it becomes taxing, metabolically taxing on the nervous system to try and navigate all of that charge so much. And I know that so many folks are doing this now with the Epstein files.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (29:43)
Thank you.
Linda Thai (29:52)
I have been loving that many of us and it's it's mostly white women right and I get it and we also need you a fucking furious
Yeah.
And...
you know, there's information and then there's confirmation.
Yeah and for so like you can apply that those metrics across all social issues. For some of us we are furious because what is happening is confirmation of something that we know whereas someone else will just relate to this as information.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (30:26)
you
or as an outlier.
Linda Thai (30:39)
Yeah, yes. And you just want to punch me in face.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (30:46)
Absolutely. The
amount of times that people are like, well, Jen, you would think that because you work in the trauma field. So you just think everyone has trauma. Like, no, I'm actually awake, somewhat awake.
to what's happening and what exists.
Linda Thai (31:02)
Yeah. Yes. I haven't read the EPCN files, but my Instagram algorithm has changed. people are sharing things and I'm like, yeah, this is everything that I've seen in practice for the last 10 years. Yeah. And now it's actually coming into the public sphere. Yeah. It's confirmation. It's not information.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (31:30)
we have to wait to see this to have confirmation of what we already knew. then when will we forget it? That for me is what is so painful. It's like the collective forgetting that Judith Herman talks about and writes about. It's like the waking up and then how do we bury this because we can't possibly as a collective seem to bear
Linda Thai (31:38)
So.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (31:50)
It's like part of the healing that would have to happen would also be welcoming perpetrators into healing and understanding that they're also suffering. that's something certainly I've struggled with in my career.
Linda Thai (32:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. And I think, clinicians, we're trained to engage with clinical nuance. And so I always check in with myself that if I'm unable to hold clinical nuance around this, then there might be my own personal trauma history that's involved here in some way. Yeah. And then you go and do that work, right? You go and do that work. Yeah. Like the whole Minneapolis stuff, it actually, and the immigration stuff over the last year.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (32:25)
Yep. Yep.
Linda Thai (32:37)
it's actually brought up my own personal history of being hunted. Yeah. And, and right, three weekends ago, I went and did that work for myself. And it is so important that we do that. And that then allows us to engage with the nuance and the complexity.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (32:40)
Mm.
I love what you also kind of just said around like when we can't hold the clinical nuance or when it's hard to even grasp it, that that's an invitation for us to do another round of or layer of our work. But to me, that's also what you said earlier, which I thought was so important around how there's nothing wrong with collapse. I think sometimes
Linda Thai (33:06)
Mm-hmm.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (33:27)
Right? It's like we collapse because that's too much, because we're overwhelmed, because we're activated, and that's really powerful information for us. Right? We have this, we have rage that might be really despairing. And that is also really, really important information.
Linda Thai (33:35)
That is such powerful information.
Yes, and that's the texture, right? That's the, like, that is actually moving towards that activation with some capacity for mindfulness and some capacity for pulling apart the texture of this rage in this moment. And how different is it to my rage in regards to other things? Because I promise you, I spent 15 years of my life being all out fucking furious, right? Could not speak a single sentence without a cuss word in it. And then, you know, then things shifted.
And I've noticed that in recent times, like I'm back to every sentence I've been in, I'm laughing now because that is now also my way of discharging some of this nervous system activation. Yeah. And yet, there was collapse for me after the murder of Alex Preti, right? There was some collapse and yeah. And then I'm using my somatic skills.
create containment and coherence which then gives rise to discernment and then I'm able to like I notice when I'm not here right and then some of the grief and collapse moves through and then I can bring myself back right so now I'm titrating it yeah and that titration allows for me with each repetition to go in there and and and feel feel the texture of things and
Jenn Turner- CFTE (34:43)
Mm.
Linda Thai (35:11)
After I did my work around my history of being hunted, which you can read about on my website in the newsletter archives, right, the end of February newsletter, I noticed for me there was a return of healthy aggression and healthy assertion. Because now I look at the news or I watch things and it doesn't ping the terror that I didn't even
My history of being hunted, I didn't even know that that was there until all of these things in our country, right, until those things started happening. Yeah. And as a trauma therapist, it's like, well, I'm going to do something about that. I'm going to go do something about that. And yet, yes, collapses information and what you choose to do with that information.
That's the open-ended invitation to continue to create resources for yourself over time so that you can incorporate sustainability and longevity and collective capacity in your life, in your life, because none of this shit is going away.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (36:23)
Mmm.
I love how open you are about your kind of coming to this work and your history and experiences. I'd love to hear just a bit more about how you found your way to being a practitioner, because I think there can still be such a heavy stigma around that, you know, almost all of my colleagues myself, I come to this work because I have a history.
And yet it continues to be that lived experience is put second, third to data or studies. And so I think the more we can give voice to it, there's an impact.
Linda Thai (37:15)
It's actually really neat. As you said all of that, I could feel a belch starting to emerge in me, which is a good thing. That's like my nervous system is releasing and relaxing. Yeah. So if a belch comes out in my response, please forgive me. yeah. And when we talk about decolonizing our practices, how much of that do we extend towards ourselves? How can we center ourselves in the decolonization?
Jenn Turner- CFTE (37:22)
Truth.
It's all welcome here, Linda.
Linda Thai (37:46)
so that we can decenter ourselves even further. Yeah. Right. It's that paradox. And and for me a paradox is a dynamic polarity. Right. There's richness, there's juiciness, there's aliveness there when there's dynamism in the polarity. And yet if we don't attend to it, it becomes polarization. And where there's polarization, it's an indication of trauma.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (38:04)
Yeah.
Linda Thai (38:12)
Yeah. Yeah. And that very necessary compartmentalization that many of us have learned how to do in childhood is what makes us so good when we turn up into our clinical spaces. And yet there comes a point for all of us as clinicians where that compartmentalization just isn't working anymore. And can we bring some more coherence to who we are and how we turn up through, you know, through doing our own work?
Mmm. Yes. Yes.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (38:40)
and being transparent about that or allowing that to be in the space.
Linda Thai (38:49)
Yes. And there's always that clinical piece there about with this client I can allow this to be in this space and with this client, mm mm mm. Right, there's still always that responsibility. Yeah, but responsibility is very different to the bifurcations that we have been taught in graduate school about who we are at work and then who we are outside of work. Yeah.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (39:22)
different clients are going to interact with our presence and our history and our complexity in different ways. if we're building
genuine authentic trust and practicing being in a relationship with another human. You know, if we're just putting on our kind of professional gloss, how is that possible?
Linda Thai (39:45)
And like I do have clients where they know nothing about me and my identities and my history and that's okay. And there are other clients for whom that's a real game changer. Sitting with a veteran. And he chose to see me because I was I'm I'm in network with the VA.
He wanted to see me because I'm a civilian, but he knew from the first few sessions that I understood war.
and that helped him to feel safe with me because I understood war and I didn't understand it from his institutional, like his own lived experience. Yeah, and I'd done enough of my own work that I could help him name moral injury, systemic betrayal, ways in which
know, the military were not, were absolutely not going to help him name. that allows the fullness of who you are to be present in such a way that is in service of your client. And one of the things I think about is sharing from the scar and not the wound. And yet, you know, we're in a parallel process with so many of our clients,
Jenn Turner- CFTE (40:53)
Hmm.
what about when you have that wound reopened or a fresh one?
Linda Thai (41:06)
Yes, yes, I openly acknowledge it and I say, I don't know if this is something that I could be helpful with you at the moment because this is so alive for me right now. Yeah. And for some clients, they're like, tell me about how you're working with this or tell me about what you are. And I can actually see that there's a there's a relationality that's here that exists in mutuality that that that
Jenn Turner- CFTE (41:17)
Yeah.
Linda Thai (41:34)
that really I'm not free until you are free. And we are grokking that in our relationship that they will then take into their relationships. That this what we're all modeling right now as a parallel process, like they will take this with them into their other conversations in their other relationships in their lives. Yeah. And so it's...
It's welcoming all of the above. And I often say to folks very openly that I'm a therapist, that for me being a therapist is a byproduct of my own healing journey. there is so much that I love about what I've learned about trauma and attachment trauma.
And yet for me, my symptoms did not match my history. I went looking into my history for perhaps more history that would help make sense of my symptoms as a young adult. And I found out some more awesome things, awesome echoes, like awesome things that I had shoved off right into the recesses of the echoes of not knowing.
And yet when I came across the work of Dr. Kenneth Hardy, of Dr. Ruth Mennicombe, that really, and Dr. Joy DeGruy really helped me to make sense of racialized trauma, the trauma of repeated assaults to me and to people who look like me.
and needing to participate in my own humiliation in order to maybe survive.
see how my parents had to do that to a larger degree than what I need to and yet a part of me still is very young and small.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (43:32)
Yes.
I'm so grateful that your healing has brought you here to share all of this. And I wonder too, if you might share a bit about how...
like the somatic thread was pulled through for you and what that was like in terms of either your own process or how that you found your way to that as a practitioner
Linda Thai (44:03)
You know, before I became a mental health clinician, I was a yoga instructor and a meditation instructor. And running parallel to that as well as before that, I'd come to Alaska to hide out from the world. I was like done with modernity. I was done with the model minority myth. Like I was fucking done and I was going to do something about it. Like there are people who talk about it and then there are the people who do it. And I had enough.
uh, juice. had enough rage. I had enough whatever, like all the ways in which my parents weren't able to turn up for me. There was something they did right because I was just going to live my life. And that led me to Alaska. That led me to a reconnection with the land. That led me to re-inhabiting my body because how you dress when it is zero Fahrenheit versus when it's 20 below Fahrenheit versus when it's 40 below or
55 below Fahrenheit is vastly different and it is a life or death situation. And push, pull, lift, carry from the world of occupational therapy. And we also know from the world of trauma and for weightlifting, right? The connection to the deep core muscles, getting them online helps to build emotional resilience.
I was able to practice the tenets of positive youth development and experiential education in practice. And that helped to build my sense of competence and confidence in things unrelated to my trauma history that I didn't even know that I had.
Yeah. Build a sense of efficacy in the world. Build a sense of I can, I can. And I got to practice these distress tolerance skills through being uncomfortable in doing things that I wanted to do. I built a log cabin with my partner. A couple of years later, we built a stick frame cabin down a trail in the woods, so we had to schlep the entire cabin piece by piece down a trail.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (46:08)
Easy.
Linda Thai (46:10)
Yeah,
a couple of years after that, we built another log cabin. Yeah, I'm running chainsaws. I'm running chainsaws with rotary blades on the ends of them. I'm running like all manner of power tools and I'm measuring in feet and inches, which for me growing up with metric is like mind boggling. And so I get to stretch myself and I get to learn how I learn. And when you learn how you learn, you can learn how to do anything. Yeah.
And that led me into meditation and yoga, which actually then allowed me to see that how you do one thing is how you do everything. And if you can change the way in which you do one thing, you may change the ways in which you do other things. And through those embodied practices,
I was able to grow some new brain cells and you're on a pathways between the left and the right and the front and the back and the top and the bottom of my brain. I was able to engage in metacognition and expand of awareness. I got to develop an observing self.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (47:00)
you
Linda Thai (47:12)
And from there was when I got into becoming a trauma therapist. And I knew I wanted to be a trauma therapist before I started graduate school. And so I enrolled in all the trauma trainings parallel to graduate school. And I used those spaces to do my own work because living in Alaska, I couldn't access therapists who were trained in those modalities. And I didn't have insurance then anyway.
And so it's a case of you make do with what you've got and what you have access to. And so so much of my recovery was borrowing books from the public library, watching YouTube videos. This was before podcasts. And I got to just be let be. I got to be left alone. I got to re-engage with,
my agentic capacity. And by the time I got into these trauma trainings, we were asked to do our own work, had some, I had some competence at something else to leverage off of, and I had developed the capacity to be uncomfortable through yoga and through other things that I'd done. And I could discern between am I uncomfortable or am I unsafe?
I could discern between am I being inconvenienced or am I unsafe?
Yeah, is this uncertainty or is it unsafety? Yeah, and I could sit with the not knowing, being uncomfortable and not having to have things my way right now and it not be life or death.
And it's the grokking with those on a daily basis through the discipline of what it takes to live mostly off grid in remote Alaska.
that for me, yeah, was life-changing, was absolutely life-changing.
Hmm.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (49:14)
Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us.
Linda Thai (49:20)
People often ask me, like, what's the secret to trauma healing? Right? Like as if I'm some expert. And I look back at my own life and I look at the lives of clients as well as folks who are mostly on the other side. And the game changer is affordable, consistent, predictable, safe housing.
Yeah.
I was 29 when my partner and I built a cabin in the woods on five acres. And that costed me my life savings at the time, but it was $30,000 US. And that was 2006. I haven't paid rent or mortgage since then, and we've basically lived on the same property since then. That was our game changer. And I think people really underestimate.
affordable, consistent, predictable safe housing.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (50:25)
home. Because you're you're talking about home too. You're on land that is home for you. It's become home,
Linda Thai (50:27)
Yeah.
Yes,
it sure has. It sure has. And as Manachi says, grief is the way home when home itself is lost.
And yet some of us need a home first before we can then engage in the grief work.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (50:47)
That's right.
That's right.
Linda Thai (50:50)
And then at some point after that, our authentic rage can then emerge. Our healthy aggression and healthy assertion.
Mm.
Jenn Turner- CFTE (51:08)
Thank you Linda. This is great.
Linda Thai (51:09)
Thank you, Jenn.
