Grief, Trauma, and the Spiritual Journey: Suicide Loss & Healing with Dr. Alina Garbuz

Join us for a deeply moving and insightful conversation with Dr. Alina Garbuz, a trauma specialist and researcher with a unique perspective on grief and healing.

In this episode, Dr. Garbuz shares her personal and professional journey through the complex landscapes of grief and trauma, particularly around suicide loss. Drawing from her spiritual experiences and expertise in EMDR therapy, she offers a fresh perspective on:

• The Intersection of Spirituality and Mental Health: Discover how embracing the spiritual can enhance healing and provide comfort in the face of immense loss.
• Reframing Trauma: Learn how to differentiate between trauma and stress, and explore tools for building resilience in the face of life's challenges.
• The Power of Self-Love and Responsibility: Gain insights on how self-love, boundaries, and making good choices can lead to personal growth and healthier relationships.
• The Role of Playfulness in Healing: Explore how embracing childlike joy and wonder can help us navigate difficult experiences.
• Intensive Therapy as a Catalyst for Change: Understand the benefits of deep, focused work for transforming your relationship with grief and trauma.

Whether you've experienced the loss of a loved one to suicide or are simply seeking guidance on navigating life's inevitable hardships, this episode offers a message of hope, resilience, and the power of choosing love over fear.

Transcript

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um super excited today to be talking about grief trauma and trauma specifically around suicide and suicide loss I have Doctor Garbuz I'm sorry uh we call her Alina and um very excited about your professional education and how that brought you into kind of world research on grief and trauma and you were just telling me how um your specialty kind of picks you so let's start that I'd love to kind of hear that story I'll start with when I was in private practice in 2017 that is when I decided up like I'm ready to pursue my PhD I've always liked being in school since I was little I've been a bookie so I like books and I just I think education gave me order to my life and yeah so I pursued my doctorate in 2017 and that it ironically I started it then 2017 fall I started the Beautiful Minds Project nonprofit um then 2 and then it was around that time that I my practice started filling with people who lost loved ones to suicide and I actually remember talking to my professor Doctor Tafovin and I was like I do not know like there's not a lot of resources for working with suicidality let along suicide loss so long story short um as the program went on and life went on just doing my own reading and my own study when it was time to do my dissertation that is what I ended up picking it's not what I wanted to pick but it it like demanded to be picked um and so yeah so I feel like the dissertation almost like wrote itself like it took me on a journey um I had so many questions didn't know where it was gonna go and then it ended up turning into um essentially a program development um so I took all the the kind of the research the literature that is already there and put it together um into something that could be I guess edible for people that they and so but I actually turned that dissertation and the program into an online course it's free um it's on my website and so uh I think it's delightful it was the first kind of course I've ever done so I probably say too many ums but it is what it is my dog is in the background and that's all that matters haha he's sleeping well a little bit about your journey and and you've alluded to this a little bit but sounds like it's all it was also a spiritual journey of like universal energy universal decisions you know um a lot of people who follow me have lost a child um probably some to suicide and you know we talk a lot about how difficult processing that grief is and suicide seems to have like even an extra layer of like they made that choice can you talk a little bit about like your spiritual journey in um what you know how you've grown in that area and how you help absolutely I think this is my kind of experience but I think it chose me it chose me um probably because of my spiritual journey Donald I think his name is kled he writes um trauma in the soul and he says when you come when you're traumatized as a little kid um the spiritual kind of recruits you uh in and I I I think that that's been the strongest part of my life since I can remember uh and and so the reason for that is because you swim in mystery I think it's easier to swim in mystery than not you know that's just one of my perspectives and so with that said um I remember really wrestling with these ideas of like free will and choice and then like the complex world we live in how free are we and then how interconnected are we to the decisions of others and and you know there's a lot to say about that and so I think like since I was a little girl just reading being so curious about why always why like why this and why that why are people mean and um you know and watching my parents work through their own histories and their own childhoods and etc and so um so I think the the spiritual um and to define spiritual for me would be what we cannot see with our maybe five senses um so I don't think the spiritual is has its own play I think I think everything is spiritual and so with that said it was my kind of wrestling with these big questions of like what happens after we die and you know empirical natural sciences cannot give us an answer that that's not what they're there for right and that's why why we have theologies and philosophies and literature and the arts and music um and you when you put all these uh I like to call them sciences together they kind of start painting a picture for us if we're willing to look at it right um and so when I look at this picture what I see is that we are eternal beings in a physical body and um and I think you know I mean I guess we'll just go there and whatever um I remember this one night this was 2017 it knows 2018 half my like case load was people in therapy because they've lost a loved one to suicide and then who are struggling then with like do I wanna be here or do I wanna tap out and I remember there's no answers for this you know um for those who are asking and I remember waking up one night and just like feeling like the presence of God in my room um and I like it was like a sweetness just like a sweet presence and and what I got from that in my body was like I'm not alone we're not alone in all of this and I remember just having a sense of like no matter what happens what choices we make because our choices yes we do have free will and our free will is confined to I believe uh the transformation of our mind that is dependent on the things that we pursue but also the things that have been the cards that have been quote unquote dealt Frederick Bunch but generally says your dealt cards in life and it's about how you play with the world right so I I can't control who I'm gonna lose what disease I'm gonna get what what the things that are gonna happen to me but I get to play with the world but I think our playing with the world taking these cards and trading with the world um is dependent on well like the expansion of the ideas then teach us how to play out world right when this is why I went straight into that question with you because I could feel the spiritual maturity just in the little yeah conversations that we've had and this is a pet peeve of mine and professional psychiatry and psychology is that we say spiritual your spiritual health is not part of your mental health and it is so intertimetwined like you said everything is spiritual yes and I remember and people who follow me know kind of the story of like when I lost Reggie prior to losing Reggie I had a pretty strong theology right and I did have a relationship with what I call god right but the first thing the first encounter I had with my son after his passing he said to me Mama you think you're so smart you have no idea and just of that magnitude of the universe and the contentment and that there is so much that we can't experience with our five senses right um but if we're open to it we we can um to some extent uh work on that ability to to do that and so that's why I don't right into that spiritual question because um I think we have to talk about it when we talk about grief right and this is in no way the same as someone who has experienced grief as a result of suicide but I do believe the night my daughter died she chose to go you know and there's this you know kind of spiritual you know universal uh energy and um context that we don't quite understand um and in our fear of people proselytizing their specific belief system we don't explore this our spiritual health so that is my challenge to everyone who follows me especially people who have lost a child like you have to part of the healing is opening your heart up to eternity and whatever that you know however you get to experience that absolutely absolutely I mean I love that most of our education here in the western world is like a like a post you know cortesian education where when they split like the spirit the mind and the body really with the spirit and the body and originally for I think good good intentions um and and then our field largely is dominated by a mostly materialistic humanist world view and humanist humanism believes that like we are the ultimate say and I think somewhere along my journey I realized like I definitely have no old haha no let's talk about that journey everybody kind of gets into mental health you know for a specific reason or you know going through some things tell us a little bit about um your life and um I know that you are from Ukraine there are and we could even kind of talk about cultural grief and trauma world grief and trauma collective grief and trauma that we are all still holding on to yeah I I was born in Ukraine and Smila Ukraine which isn't Cassio but oblist so for now that most of the world knows where Ukraine is when I first started college when I was 17 and I remember during college weekend one of the students is just like is that five Washington state and like nobody knew Ukraine Ukraine just like a little I think a humble kind of villagey you know country with a heavy collectivist history and we moved to America in 1995 so after the Soviet Union collapsed and then um but at that time you know the doors were open for any form of religious persecuted persons politically persecuted persons um and so we came to America then I was almost eight and um yeah I grew up in an interesting culture where individual the Soviet Union in the way that it was it was not very pro individual so it was it was very pro collective like it's all about the collective and it's all about the collective mission and etc and so moving to America which is the land of the free of pursuing your and everybody gets to be an individual everybody gets to be an individual you know like of course that was like ah you know um and so I think a lot of our living here was figuring that out like you get to make choices you get to choose your doctors you get to choose where you go you get you get to choose like and so um but my parents always told us like they didn't get to have an education they didn't get to they didn't get to choose um and so they encouraged us all I have five siblings so there's six of us born in seven years so we're pretty close in age um and close in general and so they they just encouraged us like learn learn learn learn just learn like everything else is pop just but learn go to school and we did we went to school and so I think the learning I grew up in a culture where yeah like you just didn't know you were confined to what you thought you knew and um are they all yeah and right I've Learned I've Learned not to judge when I was young uh I I had so many negative feelings towards everything I came from and then I as I matured I was able to see people do what they know what they think they know what they think is true so uh the one thing we get control over is the mind our our conscious self and and then this body that we get we don't ask for it and this body has thousands of years of genetic imprint and our DNA and and so this is what I get and the question is what am I gonna do with it you know like um and so I think when I finally started learning that like I don't get another history I don't get another people I don't get another set of parents like this is what I get what am I gonna do with it how am I going to play with this um you know again trading with the world and education reading getting curious about how things work um really helped me with that I fell in love with neurobiology and the sciences pretty um pretty early on in my career um when I when I pursued my masters I had a really wonderful mentor who's now my friend Doctor Kelly James and I remember working in an inpatient um um hospital for kids we called them Rad units right now now we know that those kids did not have Rad they all had developmental trauma but then it was called Rad Reactive Attachment disorder and I remember just not knowing I'm just like overwhelmed what is happening and Doctor Kelly introduced me to the world of trauma and she said there's therapy and then there's the world of trauma cause I told I remember telling her nothing that we've Learned in Masters helps me here um and so that was kind of my little door so I feel like the world has always opened doors and I just chose to walk through them um and part of that was curiosity all wonder and a little piece of my story wanting to make itself wanting to be made sense of through the doors that were open and I think a lot of doors were open and I could have chosen any of them but I chose the ones I chose and then they took me here and so so I'm a big believer in not trying not to control life too much and instead of being possessive of life instead we're we're invited into life and I need a little more of that I try to identify and fix a problem which you know I realize as I'm getting older you can't fix most things right you have to and so I'm trying to learn the art of just being president and accepting but let's talk about trauma right this is in the US I think it's this you know now is everybody has trauma and that's true I mean we talked about you know generational trauma and these imprints that do impact you in some ways yeah but then you know on the other side are we you know like creating a victim mentality of oh now we you know I have we have trauma you know it's impacting us we can't I I see kind of some of both I have a maybe controversial opinion okay perspective I don't believe everybody has trauma okay being a traumatologist I think we've gotten a little confused about the difference thank you about a traumatized nervous system and then distress and shock and difficulty and stress and pain and suffering and etc I teach my clients that a traumatized nervous system is a nervous system that has experienced experiences that were not taken care of and they overwhelmed the nervous system's ability to optimally function and the nervous system stuck there so when you're doing trauma work you're essentially trying to reset the nervous system that is not the same thing as going through distress and stress and chronic stress acute stress and then we have the good stress which is you know um say that again cause people don't know that there's such thing as good stress like well if there's no stress we cease to exist um I think most people don't know that we live in a world of invisible viruses there's probably millions of them that are constantly stressing out the system that is the universe and the function of stress is to actually shock the system so that it could kind of like strengthen the stress and rest create growth we understand this when we go to the gym nobody like shows up at the gym and takes a nap there and expects have muscles right like you show up at the gym and you know that you have to pick you have to choose weights that are appropriate for you now and then the more stress you put on your muscle then you rest then it grows now if you show up to the gym and you you know pick up a weight that is too much or weight falls on you and it crushes you that would be kind of like the trauma the drama on your body and so I'm a big believer in moderating and choosing stress so that I expand myself ability yeah so that when life does happen wars and losses and deaths that my nervous system doesn't collapse under that and I believe collectively we are responsible to create space for each other to be able to go through stressors as in help each other instead of we live in a society generally speaking the God forbid you feel any pain and that you're triggered and that you know and because we so control that now we have these fragile nervous systems that crumble but stress is gonna have the whole universe works with this is like right law right we have to stress ourselves out so there's when there is no stress we cease to exist we die cells need to stress to grow so therapy I always tell people we put you the the trauma reprocessing process is to stress out yourselves so that they can quote unquote be reborn um you know in and then find their new bandwidth you know bandwidth yeah yeah and um and so I tell people you either choose your stressors or they will choose you right there is no like neutral you don't get to just sit out like if you're a human being you're called to participate you can't be like nope like I'm just gonna like that's not an option yeah you will choose your stressors or they will come after you because that's how to be living that's what to be living means every living thing is stressed out yeah I really like what you're saying you're saying it very differently than I say it but it's just it's definitely um in line with what I try to treat in a lot of my frustrations professionally is some of this you know um everything is trauma and I you know I can't and dependency on therapists and this kind of stuff and so I'd love to dive a little deeper into trauma and I know you are certified in EMDR more like a master level correct and as a professional who refers to EMDR I've seen two things happen I'd love for you to explain it from from a professional perspective 1 someone is so dysregulated that the I think they're not ready for MDR and then they just kind of open this Pandora's box and don't have time to put it back together um on the other end of the spectrum I have had people who have had great results with EMDR and then the therapist keeps kind of trying to go deeper and oh well you know let's now let's work on your relationship with your mother um or let's you know and then it kind of micro going deeper and deeper and I kind of think it's not necessary like those were not big t trauma I don't know how how you um what verbage you use but and so again I feel like it's creating this dependency on oh well you're never gonna be fixed right you just have to keep working on the next thing and the next thing um and so you seem to have a really good handle on trauma so talk to me about those two scenarios that I see clinically yeah well I think it starts with how we see ourselves and I like to tell my clients we are not robots to be fixed we are universes to be explored and that's not just like poetry that that's um I I don't know how they figure this out but we have more sub atomic connections and possibilities within our neural states than the universe um which when you just meditate on that you become like the right so what does that mean like I'm a universe to explore not a universe to control or dominate um like like we try to do with a lot of things so I like to start there like let let's fix how I see myself um and so I become a student of myself right and um I can't learn everything in a four year degree is so I see therapy as if I'm really stuck if my nervous system is not functioning if I am ceasing to optimally or even a little you know moderately optimally respond to the world then I go see a guide right someone who can help me get unstuck so I like to see as you know we have these blood clots and sometimes you just gotta remove these big blood clots in the system will just keep doing what it needs to be doing um you know and so I see therapy I see him Dr is a really great laxative okay yes yes yes yes I love it for everyone who's ever worked with me like you are you are yeah I like to talk about poop and so right when we're constipated and because we have consumed things that our body doesn't know how to process or our lifestyle sleep lack of water this and that keeps us from processing we just need like a good laxative like a good senile tea you know you drink it and so what do we know about that you drink a good tea and it kind of unlocks things inside of you and you go to the bathroom and you know like things come out and then you feel better but as you feel better you can't just go back eating to the things that you were eating to get you to that place like you have to learn how to eat healthy so good therapy for me is um so EMDR EMDR is a full psychotherapy where people get stuck as they think EMDR is just a bilateral stimulation and reprocessing piece but that's only one piece then you have to prepare people for so for example if someone comes in they say and they say to a doctor like hey I haven't been to the bathroom in a while and I just feel awful and so so before you give a person a laxative a laxative is something that gets things going right um you gotta prep them uh you have to prep their body to be able to handle to process the food that's inside of them before we activate and reprocess trauma memories we need to prep the nervous system um you know like prep it to be able to handle the activation of the um the neural states that hold the cortisol in the adrenaline of these original experiences otherwise what happens is we're sitting on the toilet for hours and we're in pain and it's just like not this is not what I wanted or the worst part is you take your laxatives but your body is like I don't know what to do with this so it does not process and so I think a lot of people go to therapy or they hear about these modalities and they're like oh like there's a quick fix nothing's a quick fix because we're not fixable and nothing's quick nothing good is quick and and so we have to prep people to be able to handle activating states that are holding on the cortisal adrenaline of these original shocking experiences and to process them with a regulated body and so that takes time and then when that happens you have a good poop you have a good dump you don't need to be taking more laxatives you need to go live life and create new experiences and start eating a healthy balanced diet and sleeping working out and then as you do that life itself will say hey I feel stuck here I feel stuck here and so I tell my clients this is like a forever accompanyment journey we company accompany each other let's do some work go live you need new experiences experiences changes whenever you feel stuck and the tools that you've Learned are not helping you come back and let's give you new tools right and then go live and then so that way I think we should see our professionals doctors clinicians as people who accompany us on a long journey not someone we come in for a fix and we leave and it's like you know think of cars um if you're not maintaining your car you're gonna you're gonna need to go go back and get it fixed over and over but if you maintain your car like I have a Toyota they have a long life and so I'm a big fan of maintaining maintaining it so that I can pass it on to hopefully my nephew or whomever in in good shape and form so I think we live in a world where going back to earlier question I can do whatever I want and then our bodies are struggling so then we're like great well I have thousands of counselors I can go to fix me fix me now yeah fix me tomorrow I say that 90% of the people that walk in the door yeah that is the mentality and our vision here is to revolutionize the culture of mental health and I feel like there's this constant resistance from clients other professionals um you know politicians you know the way that the system is um everyone has choices you know you can just use the entire medical system this is everything is built on intervention not prevention I am a big believer giving everybody like Grace and the benefit of the doubt if we've been conditioned to see things as intervention not prevention we're gonna live like that so for myself part of my my job is to teach people how to live preventively so that you need less intervention and knowing that when you do need intervention is there for you right and um but we do live in in in our society at least here very intervention focus like we're not you know young people in my life get sick and they go to doctors they're giving them things to like to take care of the symptoms but they're not teaching them how to like change the lifestyle so they don't have those symptoms so in your studies and just you know personally this this journey that you've been on um how much do you think of these decisions the poor decisions that people continue to make I mean even in basic things that we know about diabetes like stop eating sugar and they still keep eating sugar right um and then there's some people that talk about this is you know uh generational things and you know that they say generational trauma but I know we've already defined that not everything is trauma how much do you think is kind of this collective that we are experiencing and how do we make that shift or how do people that are listening make that shift if they feel like I'm kind of stuck in that well I mean we're social creatures so we prime for one another we're also like our minds work on ideas right so that's important um and then uh like our nervous system is constantly paying attention to every other nervous system and so in in our eyes like we are creatures who move in the direction of what we see so if we're constantly scrolling and looking at how the world ideas that TV and binge watching TV and social media is presenting even if we intellectually may know these ideas are not good we're still consuming them so I slip it a little bit like map still creates a way we see things so I think that there's a lot of contributing factors um I think we are all this is the I like to think the balanced individual part of me um I think we're all responsible for each other not worried that we're gonna go to like some you know hell if we don't but I think part of having a happy life is taking a proper responsibility for one another not be a control and manipulation but via how I live and if I live well people are going to look and say oh like I like what I'm seeing what are you doing and then and then we join together on this journey that is life but I think that goes deeper to the spiritual part of things is I don't think we as humans understand how wonderful we are we live in a world that's constant like people are bad and the world's going to hell everything so bad but humans are amazing like go to a war zone and watch how people take care of each other and and yes there is evil but but there's a lot more good and so I think the problem I think there's many Loki problems but I think the more problems we don't understand our worth and value as a human and that me being healthy isn't just not to have diabetes but there's like a destiny inside of me Robert Green he's a neuroscientist and he talks about this in mastery that in our DNA are our prince to a destiny and how can we listen to that and tune into that if we are so busy being fatigued stressed out burdened with all this stuff you know um you know like the rat race that is life and so I think the the symptom is you know diabetes and whatever all this stuff but I think the rude issue is we we don't value ourselves therefore we don't value one another yeah and how can we get we can't give something we don't have right yeah and I I've been on my little self love journey midlife crisis after losing my children and and I realized when I teach this like you have to know yourself and then like yourself before you can love yourself I think we talked about oh self love and you know it being some sort of getting what you want and you know going on vacation and getting your nails done and things like that and those have not um there's been very specific things that fill my cup that if I wasn't looking for it I wouldn't have known you know um and so yeah learning to to love ourselves and I think love we I see on our society we think love is fluffy things but love is actually the hard things loving myself is actually saying no to staying up late loving myself is actually going to the gym when I really just want to not yeah loving myself is saying um that I got little humans who are watching me into the degree that I'm tired or fatigued or Moody or have an attitude or whatever is to the degree I cannot give them proper love and attention that's loving of myself you know and in our society I think a lot of what I hear is oh self love is that glass of wine and that bat like no that glass of wine is killing you know and um and so I think self love is actually synonymous with a lot of discipline and choosing the stressor of saying no and doing the hard things and essentially walking that narrow path that most people will not walk on because because it's not easy but I think when you do it it becomes the right path because you create habits then help you float yeah in in life a flow in life yeah instead of and this is one of the downfalls of living in a culture where yes you have a choice for everything you do um but that also means you can make a lot of bad choices uh huh so our job is to live making good choices so that the little humans in our life can learn through us how to make good choices how to choose right um and I think I think in our society where I'm a big believer and I need to take responsibility for my own self before I try to fix the world and to the degree that I'm responsible here is to the degree that I can handle being responsible somewhere out there and um but I think it's flop sometimes in a world like ours where we want to control everything on the outside you know and but really it's always an inside out job yeah it will always be an inside out job and it's a it's a lifetime journey that's why we call this podcast embrace the journey because you're on it you might as well embrace it and you're not going to just fix yourself like yes you know yeah the whole life span and we're supposed to be doing something and that thing like you get to be here like you get to you are a scientific miracle they have no idea how you know they see how when the negative sperm come together and the light comes on like they don't know how like we don't you know and it's just like how do we start with I'm a miracle haha hello and yeah I get to be here in this time in this age in this world with the things happening and then I get to play with that like how can I play with that uh huh you know I don't have to but I can and um and so I think that's the child likeness in us children play with what they have when we were in Ukraine earlier this year watching the kids so our colleagues they bring their kids to wherever we went like kids were part they were part of what we did and so it was fun to watch them you know like like there's bomb sirens going off and you know just shenanigans and the kids are just playing sticks and stones and right and like because the adults are there and the adults are regulated and and and so when the adults are are safe when the world feel safe via the adult no matter what's actually going on what do kids do they play they explore they make things happen and I think our job is mental health clinicians or I like to like to call myself and my friends in this field as doctors of the soul our job is to turn on light up the soul again so that we can be childlike and instead of freaking out with all these terrible things going on the world we say ah how am I gonna play with this what am I gonna do here um it's an invitation to come and create some change via the motivation of play you know and and that isn't in no way dismissing the hard stuff that's actually how you keep yourself regulated hmm I have a choice yeah to play with what is happening in the world yeah I'm not I'm not living somewhere this is where I am yeah and um so kids I feel like are my actually greatest teachers in life cause they teach you that they remind you what you're here for and um and so the kids in my life have taught me that well you get to choose to play you get to choose your tribe um and then you just like how do I have how do I have fun in a world that has a lot of dark we live in a world with a lot of evil I know a lot of people don't want to believe that but we do well you know what's interesting is as you're talking I'm always digesting you know personally and how that impacts my life and um I actually had an experience this morning my grandfather woke me up at 4 a m and my grandfather's passed right he clearly called my name at 4 a m and I'm sitting there asking him like what you know what you got to tell me like what is going on here and he was a very safe presence right but I would not say the same for my grandmother she was very emotional reactive my mother the same um my biological father died when I was young so he was the only man in my life and again I've always thought of him as kind of this stable and all he really told me this morning is like that be more like me basically right and which I'm not a more like my grandmother and my mother and as you're talking you know I realized like that is the safety that I didn't absorb I absorbed the chaos rather than than the safety so you just help me process that yeah experience yeah but that's why when you say that I think of like how many others will find that safety via me that I'll never know about right and that's the fun part of life is we get to turn on the the light in other people's souls and a lot of times we don't know it you know and so how can we live in such a way that like like we're being watched not like watch but like we're all priming from each other we're all you know like the nervous system moves towards the safest nervous system and so how can I be the safest how can I be the most resilient in or you know just to use those terms nervous system in the room for those who are struggling in their nervous systems I like to use the word nervous system well because we are nervous system we're more than that but we have a nervous system because a lot of times in our society this is not a new thing we have Learned to moralize or demonize things I are struggling but really if we started seeing that we all possess a body and we all our bodies have different bandwids and and so if my body has the ability to you know maybe stay more regulated in a circumstance in your body does not I'm going to be I'm going to take on joyfully the responsibility to help your nervous system kind of rise to the occasion I'm a big Tolkien fan and one of my favorite um pieces of his Lord of the rings is where you know Sam how where Frodo is getting pretty burdened I'm assuming you know I do not but I'm sure that's laughing at me right now it's a beautiful story Lord of the rings but you know photos on this he's a hobby on this adventure this great adventure that he did not ask for he could have said no but if he said no to the to to throwing this ring that was going to destroy the world I'm gonna hmm Tolkien fans are gonna be like there's more than that but he life called him out of his safety and into a journey and he chose to say yes and he had a fellowship that supported him and then he had a friend on the journey and there's this one point on his journey where he was burdened by this ring he's carrying this ring he had to throw into the fires of mortar where it was created and it was a ring of a lot of evil and power and etc and there was one point that he's so burdened by this ring and Sam his friend says you know Mr Frodo like let me carry that ring for you cause part of carrying the ring is the rings evil wants to infiltrate you and so why Frodo was picked for this journey is cause he he was he was his let's just say his soul was so innocent in good that he was not as infiltrated by this ring and but he was feeling burdened by it and Sam wanted to carry it for him and he said this is my burden and Sam said okay Mr Frodo I cannot carry then your burden but I can carry you so he picks him up and he puts him on his shoulder and there's if you watch the movie such a beautiful scene as they're walking up this gloomy dark mountain and I love that scene because that to me is the representation of being human in this reality the reality of good and evil and etc and I believe that good will always win I believe there is evil and how can we instead of trying to control and manipulate each other's burdens that come along in our genetic imprints and all these other things and instead carry each other but to carry one another I need to go to the gym and lift some weights metaphorically right right and so if you know Doctor Keys who's the director of the Green Cross always says you know it is your you know ethical duty to take care of yourself as a clinician yeah because then you cannot be carrying others and so the goal is how do I live like that and then show that to other people and then we all have each other yeah and then there you go heaven comes and enjoy that yeah so one more dichotomy I want to have you flesh out here is this this nervous system that we you know trying to be the stronger person and um helping absorb maybe someone who is not and we also live in you know a culture where we can choose and we quit a lot of things and you hear a lot of counselors and mental health professionals saying get out of that toxic relationship you know in there some that are very toxic right but I think everything can be you know feeding you know you could have two well meaning people not wanting to be toxic that that are feeding off each other's chaos and um how do you take that step back or you know recognize when it's a real toxic relationship and it's not healthy for you versus relationships are difficult right and how how do we work through those um in that supportive piece of like strengthening ourselves so that you know um our energy is helping them as well no absolutely well first of all again back to language language is important right I think just like we overuse trauma we overuse toxic and toxic is something that is poisonous and will kill you so I think we call a lot of things toxic that are not toxic yeah right and so toxic is something that will kill you right that's why they have toxic poison do not enter it will kill you this is not this is not a choice of like whether you're strong or not this will kill you right and so I think first differentiating what is toxic and what is simply just like sub optimal not optimal then 2 I believe in the currency I believe in free will and I believe in love and I believe in yeses and noes and um and so I'm a big fan of relationships I I get to be in charge of this universe this is the only thing I have in this life like this is it this is my piece of land and this is what I'm in charge of that that's it and um and then I get to invite anyone over for tea on this piece of land you know and and if they're not going to help my piece of land and I'm not gonna help their piece of land then you know like maybe we shouldn't be having tea together right and so I'm a big believer in free will and so if and I'm a big believer in there's two great emotions fear and love so to answer that question is I think out of love we have great band with so if you see a relationship that is sub optimal and out of love I say I have band with for this I have great limit for this I'm gonna stay in this and I'm going to stay in this using yeses and noes yes and no meaning this is what I want this is what I don't want and I'm gonna respect your yeses and noes if the other person is on board with that and we can have tea together and figure out how to live an alliance and figure out how to live linked up and we like this dynamic then great right but if this person's like I don't like your yes and no I don't like the truth that you live with what you see if we're not seeing the same truth then then there's you can't be in a relation like like it's not you know yeah and more than intimate relationships but like all the parents right and their family members I hear but I mean I think relationships are the only thing that's eternal right we're not taking anything else with us right and it's kind of it's my core values are the core value here that relationships are priority but I often you know have mental professional saying well you just need to cut off your mother and and there's definitely times for that right but part of that healing process and strengthening our spiritual growth our understanding of our purpose our relationships these were chosen for us right we didn't choose our mother and our father and so again that balance of strengthening yourself while maybe still maintaining some of those relationships that you know might have created some grief and trauma in your childhood well yeah first of all I'm not a big fan of anybody telling people what to do so I think anytime mental health professional and if I've ever done it you know like we all want to do that because we're like just cut that person off like that's like a self protective not a bad part of us but that's not how life works we don't learn like that and I'm a big believer in like okay like how can I guide you to make a decision out of a place of love love again not fluffy fluffy kind of whatever romcom Netflix love love is I have the band with and the limit to keep interacting with you based on yeses and noes hey mom I wanna keep this but here's my limit I don't wanna you know and the mom can then with free will say okay I will try my best to do that and then you are trying to dance together right if the mom says no then I am going to respect your no that's a place of love place of fear is I don't like that no so I'm gonna try to manipulate my ability and limit until you have a yes and so I think anytime we're functioning from a place of fear we've already lost right and so really how do I train myself to constantly be in a place of love love is free will choice respect and yeses and noes yeses and noes when I say that I mean like it's not manipulative hey I want you in my life because you're the only mom I'm gonna have and here's my limit when you do this my limit is it's just not it's not good it's not working my band with my window of tolerance whatever you want to call it right and so I want you to be in my life but here's my limit which means I need to know myself in order to communicate the limit to you right we use the word boundaries a lot that word like like trauma like toxic has been overused nobody knows what it means so Kathleen one of my um colleagues she says limit what is your limit my limit is I can't handle it when you yell at me my limit is I can't handle it when you call me at midnight and I can't handle it when you call me and complain about my dad I want you in my life but here's my limit you present the limit freely and the person can say well you should be able to handle it um who else am I gonna talk to and so if they say no I'm gonna respect you know and I'm gonna respect my limit not gonna judge you for your no and I'm not gonna judge me for my limit yeah and and that's what we do we judge ourselves for that limit and we feel guilty yeah and you know that we don't want to on that manipulation which is always going to be a function of fear so I think really the journey is always to we're teetering between fear and in love and how can I move myself into where I can flow in love and and then create a community of people that can help me stay in a flow of love which is again free will respect all of these things but that requires a lot that requires for me to honor myself and honor other people no matter what choices they make yeah even if they're evil choices I am called to that's your choice yeah and it's hard when the choice is you think wrong if you know yeah if there is right and wrong and I think a lot of people are doing things that I disagree with and you are in charge now now with that said there's a caveat to that as adults we are responsible to guard the little havens that are little that are kids because they don't have the bandwidth to do that I'm a big believer that all adults are responsible for all kids that's not my kid not my problem no no no you being an adult makes you responsible um it it to your limit obviously if this is beyond um but and so when we I believe when we take proper responsibility for ourselves and others what we see is more lights come on and the light always extinguishes extinguishes the darkness and I think in our society we're so obsessed with the darkness the darkness instead of turning on the lights and the light just does the work but then we don't need to focus on the darkness like all these bad things everything's bad religion's bad politic like bad things will always be there because choice will choice is a function of love but if we can keep our lights on have a lit up community around us and then invite others into a lit up community you know over time long period of time it's the slow game yeah the lights will turn on and you know and I think I don't know I think like not to be like a like a people calling like I like you utopian thinking or but I think that's the slow way of like turning on the lights in the world and creating the world we want to live in yeah I like the thing that you said about children and we've lost that community peace in our individual culture in America um and you know all the research says that a kids the majority of the influence that they receive is from other adults in their life not from their parents yeah Daniel Siegel calls it aloe parenting okay I just Learned this not too long ago and so it's like back in the day we had tribes tribes we were we were more in community I think than now and everyone raised everyone like the kids were part of a tribe and everybody was Auntie and uncle in in the Ukrainian world we call everybody dad in Georgia Dad in Georgia is uncle and Auntie uh huh and so every adult is a Dada Georgia Dada Georgia you know and um and so in the language right like uh huh the the the community is responsible yeah versus I see in our hyper individualistic and I'm all about you know like I love freedom choices I love freedom I love freedom I love freedom and I will always love freedom no matter what shenanigans comes along with freedom so freedom is good freedom is good um so with that said I think in our society we just don't want to see the things that we could be responsible because it demands effort and energy on our part but I also think we don't have it modeled well to how we can be more playful I think that's where joy is joy is showing up for each other and in a country where the pursuit of happiness is a value I'm all about it joy is really that the good stuff like it's the the stuff of the soul and so anyways blah no no no no I can go on and on so um let's end with kind of telling us what someone would get from an intensive with you um you know kind of how that starts how do you usually get um referrals for that and we're ready start with someone yeah I like I love intensives because man you can read flow psychology by a guy who has a very long name so just Google flow psychology I don't know which country he's from somewhere in Eastern Europe and then what is his name I remember his name Cal Newport and so they talk about how when we stay deep and long in a craft it transforms us any craft whether the craft is art or music the longer we stay in something it stresses us out and that's where this transformation happens intensives are the ability to stay longer and then titrate pendulate between stress and rest stress and rest stress and rest but for 3 to 6 hours a day in in therapeutic setting so what it does is it it helps us just say it simply just do more deeper work quicker right versus it's necessary cause it's what we have but this one hour session a week it's like hey how's it going 15 minutes and then how deep can you really go and your brain knows that well I only have 50 minutes 45 minutes so it naturally won't allow you to go as deep I do plenty of one hour sessions and we get the job done you know but the point is I don't think in our society we allow ourselves to just dive deep you know swim in the deep waters and then go home and and do your thing so one of my favorite things to do is I call them like many uh intensives which is I'd rather see a client once a month for 3 to 4 hours hmm so like instead of once a week uh huh come in for 3 to 4 hours once a month we'll do deep work and then you go do uh huh intakes 21 days for really um new pathways to be created in our brain and then uh huh and then strengthen and so that's kind of my favorite way of doing therapy some people will come in for two days three days a day and a half whatever um you know and then I see a lot of people for just your typical one hour a week the once a month intensive sounds yeah and so I think if insurance companies so is so insurance companies are not built on what works haha so so unfortunately I know that's the system but again that's an intervention system instead of prevention system so so I'm not I'm not a big fan of talking about how the system doesn't work like there is a system and we change it by changing the parts slowly at at a time right and so um with that said right like different practitioners get to play within the field that they choose right so if I'm in this field and it takes insurance like how am I going to maximize this like um you know again spending too much time on ah the system is ineffective is it's it's not very helpful it instead it's like okay well I'm choosing to be in a system what can I do right so part of what I do is I love my intensives I have a private practice I don't take insurance but I also started an academy um where we do trainings and what I like to do is I love teaching that was kind of the first thing I did before getting into therapy I love to teach cause I think when you teach people and you let them go with new ideas they start innovating and so one of the ways that I like to work within you know our world is to have trainings and um I do so I changed Beautiful Minds Project into Beautiful Minds Project Academy for Trauma Studies and Disaster Response and wear Green Cross site and Green Cross is um green Cross um Academy of Traumatology was um started by Charles Figley after the okayc bombings and the whole point of it is to simply um like educate and prepare the local community to respond to disasters and the trainings are very cheap they're very affordable most of my trainings are free and I tell people like hey like come join us I do full days of the neurobiology of trauma working with sexual abuse working with traumatized persons disaster response I have a small fee but if people want to come they can come for free and so I offer that to the community okay and that's how I'm choosing to innovate because what I love it gives me energy it doesn't take from me yeah and so and then that's what we do abroad when we go to Ukraine or Cameroon or we yeah and so um I guess that was like a weird way of answering your questions but um intense and I hope we can work together like right next door um and I definitely see the just the the spiritual maturity in your practice and obviously professional experience as well I'd love to to kind of work together on do some do some training and it's just fun and you bring in people into I like trainings because they're not a therapeutic setting so people can meet each other while talking about these things that society doesn't not just society but that we often do not make space and time for right and trainings are usually 6 to seven hours so that I call him little training intensives so we still go deep only as students and stuff as uh patience yeah right and it kind of balances us out yeah but um one of my hopes for the future is actually to have a retreat center uh huh and then create intensive retreats for different types of groups of people like first responders and yeah you know the retreat intensive retreat I created a specifically for traumatic bereavement and I love stuff like that and yeah the hope is to innovate with that yeah I can't believe you've been right next door for the last 5 years and I didn't know you were there but I'm glad we got connected I definitely I'm starting an intensive as well that is more CBT based but I would love to bring you in as kind of a guest to do maybe some group work on this trauma redefining trauma redefining stress yeah um I think mothers um in general not even mothers who have lost a child but mothers in general in this culture of it it seems to all be falling on them um are having a really hard time with um you know taking care of themselves in the midst of their children and raising their children yeah absolutely most of my friends are mothers and I have two sisters and three sister in laws and I watch them and I'm like oh like yes like it is it's a lot yeah it's a lot that we're trying to do and I think a lot of it we don't need to be doing and a lot of it we could be doing differently uh huh so but yeah this is yeah thank you so much and all of your information will be in the description so people can find you any last words for audience um I mean I guess the last word would be that like when you think of therapy or the journey it doesn't have to be miserable haha you know I think a lot of people think of therapy is like what's wrong with me ah finally it's like no like we all have to do the journey we all need to heal we I like to say we're all kind of wounded soldiers of love and we need to heal our wounds and we heal them together so um I guess that that would be my last yeah I love it it's beautiful thank you so much yes