Show Notes
Withdrawal is a deep somatic adaptation to chronic unsafety, invisibility, and social erasure. Ana identifies withdrawal not as a symptom to be “fixed,” but as a brilliant survival strategy when someone has never felt safe, welcomed, or truly allowed to exist as they are. Welcome to Exiled and Rising. Please follow and rate and always share to others who need to hear this.
Social and Cultural Relevance
Ana’s work becomes a mirror for our time. In 2025, with rising political authoritarianism, cultural censorship, and the silencing of minority and independent voices, this episode is a somatic protest.
“If you have been silenced… Welcome.”
She provides language for the body in a time when language is being censored, surveilled, and politicized. This is particularly potent for:
- Activists and whistleblowers
- Immigrants and undocumented people
- Trauma survivors who were never given words for what they endured
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SOMATIC IMPACT OF WITHDRAWAL
Withdrawal is not avoidance or passivity—it’s a nervous system shutdown in response to:
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Chronic unsafety (home, society, or internal landscape)
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Unwelcome identity (race, body, accent, orientation)
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Invisible pain (displacement, exile, suppression)
Types of Trauma Addressed
This episode implicitly and explicitly names multiple intersecting traumas:
- Attachment trauma: lack of welcome and relational safety in early development.
- Complex PTSD: from systemic oppression, long-term abuse, or exile.
- Social trauma: caused by racism, xenophobia, colonialism, ableism, etc.
- Intergenerational trauma: observing parents or ancestors living in submission, silence, or fear.
- Political trauma: living under surveillance, censorship, or erasure.
Ana Mael connects each of these to somatic responses—specifically the state of withdrawal—which becomes the body’s last defense in the face of repeated invisibility or harm.
Ana’s reference to “pleasurable contact” is deeply significant.
“There is no contact, there is no pleasure. There is only threat.”
This suggests a complete loss of social engagement and safe sensory input—essential components for neurobiological repair.
Without pleasure, safe touch, or welcome, the nervous system cannot down-regulate. Over time, this can lead to:
- Low vagal tone
- Suppressed immunity
- Digestive and hormonal dysregulation
- Chronic fatigue and inflammation
Psychological and Somatic Framework
“We withdraw when nothing around us is safe.”
Ana reframes withdrawal as a biological response to terror, not a flaw. This is aligned with polyvagal theory (Dr. Stephen Porges), which describes how the dorsal vagal shutdown leads to freeze, collapse, and dissociation when safety is chronically unavailable.
The Somatic Roots of Withdrawal:
- Disconnection from engagement is a protective mechanism, not avoidance.
- The body learns: “It’s not safe to speak. It’s not safe to be seen.”
- Over time, withdrawal becomes the only stable state a traumatized nervous system can maintain.
“No one withdraws by default. We are social beings.”
This is a profound truth grounded in developmental neurobiology: humans are born wired for co-regulation and connection. When this is not available—due to war, displacement, abuse, or systemic marginalization—withdrawal is not only expected, it is necessary to survive.
Why This Episode Will Resonate Now
In the U.S., Canada and around the world, increasing censorship, anti-immigrant sentiment, and retraumatization of marginalized bodies and individual thinkers make Ana Mael’s insights not only healing—but urgent.
This episode doesn’t just offer hope. It offers a body-centered, justice-rooted framework for transformation.
“You do heal. In this moment, right here, right now.”
CORE FRAMEWORK: "The Experience That Wants to Happen"
Ana identifies 5 essential somatic experiences that trauma disrupts—and healing must restore:
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From Wounds to Resistance, from Trauma to Resilience.
Meet Your Host – Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic trauma therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her life’s work to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust after war, displacement, systemic oppression, and complex trauma.
Her podcast, Exiled and Rising, is not about surface-level healing. There are no platitudes, no quick fixes—only deep, uncompromising truth about what it takes to move from wound to resistance, from trauma to resilience, from exile to rising. Ana’s voice is a powerful force in the trauma field, bridging somatic therapy with real-world survival.
She is also the bestselling author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About, a book that has reached #1 in over 10 mental health and personal development categories. Through her research, clinical work, and lived experience, Ana is redefining what it means to heal from trauma—not just intellectually, but in the nervous system, in the body, and in the very essence of self.
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