Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome, I am Anna Mael. This is Exile and Rising.
[00:00:04] This episode is for everyone who has done the trauma work, the therapy, the workshops, retreats, breath work, the nervous system regulation, the journaling, the apps, the podcasts, and who still feels stuck, who feels exhausted by all the healing, not resistant to healing, but stuck.
[00:00:33] So let's begin in trauma and PTSD recovery, survival strategies will only carry you so far.
[00:00:46] There is a limit to them, a barrier, a full stop.
[00:00:52] And when we hit that plateau with urgency, with anger or with desperation, we add more strategies, more biohacking, more retreats, more workshops, more podcasts, more apps, more discipline, more optimizing because we cannot get how come with all the work, we are still not recovering from our trauma and ptsd.
[00:01:30] And then we keep stacking more and more onto already exhausted and trauma deprived body.
[00:01:42] And this is exactly what trauma does, does not need and what will, uh, never heal it.
[00:01:50] And what is missing in this culture of grind and hustle, in the endless broadcasting of social media, in the noise of influencers and optimization system, is the knowledge and practice of trauma recovery, which includes grieving.
[00:02:17] And in a culture of strategists and optimizers, they become lost.
[00:02:26] They become lost when it's time to grieve.
[00:02:31] We are very, very helpless and powerless when we need to grieve and when it's time to give our body, our heart, our soul and our community, the space and process to mourn.
[00:02:51] And no hugs works here. You cannot optimize grieving process and you cannot run away from it.
[00:03:03] And every motivational speaker, every productivity expert, every wellness influencer goes silent when it comes to helping you grieve.
[00:03:20] They have no answer for it.
[00:03:23] They never did.
[00:03:26] And survival strategies are very, very powerful, necessary when we are in active trauma. We wanted things figured out as soon as possible.
[00:03:39] We want all those apps to work, all those retreats to work, all this therapy to work.
[00:03:46] So help books, podcasts to work by Monday.
[00:03:51] But in recovery, what once was adaptive becomes maladaptive.
[00:04:02] So let me repeat this.
[00:04:04] Survival strategies are very powerful and necessary when they are living in active trauma.
[00:04:14] And what was adaptive becomes maladaptive.
[00:04:23] What kept you alive now keeps you from healing.
[00:04:31] So what your trauma, torn and exhausted body, brain, heart and soul truly need is rest and space.
[00:04:45] So even when I'm saying this, notice if your body just got triggered, if you just dismiss this.
[00:04:56] So that's a sign. That's a sign recovery is not kicking in because primal brain is in hyper arousal, is active and just when it hears, you need space and time, which Means you need to slow down.
[00:05:20] It alerts you, it alerts you into hypervigilant, uh, state, because how dare you to rest and take time and space when you need to survive.
[00:05:34] And this can go 10, 15, 20 years after trauma happened, right? So that's why I'm saying once adaptive and so precious, now is maladaptive.
[00:05:52] And that is the opposite of everything the survival mind demands. The survival mind wants you to keep going, to keep doing, to keep producing proof that you're okay, that there is a meaning to it.
[00:06:10] And your body, your nervous system is not okay, your body knows it.
[00:06:17] And creating a safe contained space to sit with what has been done to you, to do nothing except process it, is the most important thing you can do in recovery.
[00:06:38] When we do this processing of experiences, when we sit with a grief, when we build enough capacities to contain inside of us the impact of what happened in our lives, survival brain will be less on alert.
[00:07:06] You will find more and more moments of rest, of ease, of peace.
[00:07:14] And then when we restore this inner body, that quality of safety and less intensity of trauma, then we can move into optimizing our life using all apps, fully absorbing workshops, fully absorbing whatever you need to. But there is no sense of urgency.
[00:07:41] So what needs to be done in this first process of healing? What is missing after the trauma? We need to stabilize our nervous system, we need to find regulation, but we immediately jump on overdoing without doing a grieving process.
[00:08:07] And what was done to you needs to be grieved.
[00:08:13] So I want you to ask yourself, what experience in me remains unwept?
[00:08:25] What remains unmourned.
[00:08:32] Is my lost land.
[00:08:34] Unwept is my lost innocence.
[00:08:39] Unwept are the people, my people and communities I belong to and no longer have.
[00:08:52] Ah, still unmourned. Um, is my beloved unmourned are ah, the memories and friendships robbed from me still unwed?
[00:09:10] And this is a vast, a necessary space to land, to observe, to hold, to be with it, to unweep and unmourn.
[00:09:28] And your body will know, your heart will know when you are complete.
[00:09:36] And it's not that it will be full stop on your grief, but intensity will be less.
[00:09:47] And your capacities to hold the experience will not be so threatening for your primal survival brain, because those capacities now will feel safe inside you. You will build confidence, you will build this window of tolerance or window, what I call the holding of your wisdom earned in painful way.
[00:10:25] But it's there inside of you.
[00:10:34] And this grieving process refuses grief, refuses everything optimization culture offers trauma recovery is rejecting everything optimization Culture offers as well.
[00:11:04] No agenda, no reward system, no timeline, no 10 step program. It rejects.
[00:11:12] It doesn't want to bend to another hacking, to another optimization, to another transformation.
[00:11:28] Be very careful when you sign up for any workshop retreats where you will be transformed, and usually over the weekend, it's not working.
[00:11:54] There is a wisdom behind this trauma.
[00:11:57] There is a wisdom inside of your system, inside of your body, which requires own process, own cycle.
[00:12:12] The unwept soul rejects the urgency of the survival brain.
[00:12:28] Your body carries wisdom greater than any agile, optimizing mind.
[00:12:37] It refuses to be rushed.
[00:12:40] It demands time, holding, tending, witnessing.
[00:12:49] And if you're a therapist, you know that you observe that in your office many times. You can see with our clients, the biggest, uh, work is done in a place when we hold the space.
[00:13:15] For grief.
[00:13:19] And usually in that space, nothing is done.
[00:13:28] And everything is done by being fully present with that human who is sitting next to you.
[00:13:40] M.
[00:13:45] And this is precisely what our society labels as underperformance, as not enough.
[00:13:58] There is no roi.
[00:14:04] Return of investment needs to be this big transformational change.
[00:14:12] After you do this and that, you're just not working in trauma and PTSD recovery.
[00:14:21] We therapists know that.
[00:14:23] So the trauma body, the ptsd, the broken heart, the crushed soul will not bend forever.
[00:14:34] Eventually they stop.
[00:14:40] They withdraw consent from the relentless doing so. There is a great wisdom in it.
[00:14:48] That's why we can see now more and more people being completely exhausted by trauma healing.
[00:14:59] And then when that happens, many people call it collapse, depression, or, oh, I'm feeling my own healing. And it's none of those things.
[00:15:12] It's your body finally insisting on its, uh, right to slow down so it can grieve.
[00:15:23] It doesn't want to be optimized because now we brought this startup corporate venture culture into a healing space. It's ridiculous.
[00:15:40] And when your body needs to grieve, and you need to grieve, this space is terrifying for many because it offers nothing.
[00:15:53] It's nothingness.
[00:15:56] Grief is nothingness.
[00:16:00] No control, no measurable progress, no guru to follow, no app to track your healing, no AI system to reward your consistency.
[00:16:20] And it's nothingness, uh, because it's a very naked space of surrender.
[00:16:31] And in that surrender, something older than strategy begins to move. I witnessed that so many times.
[00:16:45] So what it moves is a wisdom passed down through generation, held in your bones.
[00:17:00] Who did grieving for thousands and thousands of years.
[00:17:07] It sits inside you, who recovered through quietness and tears and a slow work of mourning.
[00:17:21] And that's a place where time is not measured.
[00:17:25] Their time becomes timeless.
[00:17:30] And in our Western culture, we completely lost that.
[00:17:38] You bury your beloved one on Sunday, and you have to reply to your work emails on Monday.
[00:17:49] They told you to take your time off, but you're so much needed.
[00:17:59] You cannot let your team down.
[00:18:02] Right?
[00:18:03] This is how they are groomed. And many people believe their fear that grief will destroy them, that crying, heartbreak, devastation, and mourning are the end of existence.
[00:18:19] They truly feel if they start to grieve, it will end them. Um, and it will not.
[00:18:31] It will not.
[00:18:34] We were never destroyed by a grief. It's so hard. It's so hard to grieve.
[00:18:44] But we were never destroyed by a grief.
[00:18:49] We are destroyed by being denied the right to have it.
[00:18:57] And we were never taught how to grieve.
[00:19:01] Not in schools, not in families, not in any system designed to produce functioning, optimizing human beings.
[00:19:17] And so instead, we reached for tools and products and strategies, treating our suffering like a corporate project, something to be managed, completed, and cleared from the calendar.
[00:19:34] But the body is not a project. You are not a project. Your experience is not a project.
[00:19:43] Your trauma you experience. Your life cannot submit to timelines, goals, or performance reviews.
[00:19:53] It can only submit to your truth, to what you went through.
[00:20:02] And the truth is this.
[00:20:06] You are not broken by a grief.
[00:20:11] You can only be broken by the years of not being allowed to have it.
[00:20:20] The weeping cannot destroy you.
[00:20:23] Silence can.
[00:20:28] So give yourself with a safe person. Find a trained therapist.
[00:20:36] Support groups are one of the best ways to grieve.
[00:20:45] Contained safe space of support groups. And ask yourself, what in my life is unwept?
[00:20:59] But what in my life is unwept?
[00:21:07] Be with that.
[00:21:10] Your loss is only your loss.
[00:21:13] And for someone can be small and for you can be the biggest loss of your life.
[00:21:26] It's yours.
[00:21:33] What in my life, I left unwed.
[00:21:40] And many of us, we are living with unresolved trauma.
[00:21:48] And unresolved trauma is often not only fear, it is unresolved mourning, unresolved grief.
[00:22:02] What we didn't weep.
[00:22:07] And we can mourn what happened, what never happened, who you never became.
[00:22:25] You can mourn your innocence, your homeland.
[00:22:31] This podcast is called Exile and Rising.
[00:22:36] All of us who were exiled, displaced, who survived war and genocide, we were never allowed to weep. Our lost land, our ancestors, our rituals robbed from us, our relationships, our identity, dignity.
[00:23:07] That's something. Um, we also need to know that we need to grieve.
[00:23:14] We own our own dignity to grieve.
[00:23:21] Our loss of safety, belonging, time lost. Uh, time in exile, in displacement lost. Time at jobs.
[00:23:38] We didn't like relationships we deeply suffered.
[00:23:48] So what have been unwept in my life?
[00:24:00] What remains unwept?
[00:24:04] And instead of asking yourself, how do I stop symptoms? How do I function? How do I perform better?
[00:24:14] Ask yourself, what has not been metabolized emotionally? Can I give myself permission to stop surviving, to stop optimizing before my grieving process?
[00:24:39] And, uh, remember, grief cannot be hacked.
[00:24:46] No hacks works here.
[00:24:53] And you're unwrapped heart rejects the urgency of the survival brain. To be optimized, to high perform, to be even more disciplined, to be even more informed, to do even more work.
[00:25:17] So the way out of trauma, huh?
[00:25:22] Is allowing to breathe.
[00:25:35] I'm Anna Mayo. This is excellent Rising.
[00:25:40] Please check all the links in the show notes below.
[00:25:44] Review share and as always, much care, much career.
