Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Breaking the Cycle of Intergenerational Trauma with Dr. Mariel Buque

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

What if I told you that your ancestors' traumas could be actively influencing your life today? What if the pain they endured, generations ago, could still shape your relationships, behaviors, and even your DNA? It's a thought-provoking concept, isn't it? Welcome to the world of intergenerational trauma.  In this  Language of Love Conversation, I am excited to be joined by Dr. Mariel Buque, a Columbia-trained mystic psychologist, professor, sound bath meditation healer, and intergenerational trauma expert. Dr. Mariel brings a wealth of knowledge to our discussion, which centers around her new book, “Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma.” Together, we dive deep into the heart of what it means to carry emotional burdens from our past and how we can liberate ourselves and our future generations from these invisible chains. Here's a glimpse of what we discuss: The impact of healing from intergenerational trauma on family dynamics and relationships The energetic perspective and the impact of past family members on our lives How to handle family members who resist or deny their trauma The concept of “parenting back, parenting forward” and intergenerational re-parenting Seven key areas for fostering growth and healing from intergenerational trauma The potential consequences of anxious-attachment parenting How to impart legacies to future generations and learn to apologize to our kids Remember to check out Dr. Mariel’s book, Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma, for more tools, techniques, suggestions, and guidance on intergenerational trauma.  Also, if you are experiencing grief, know that you are not alone in this journey. Consider checking out my course, Good Grief: Healing from Loss with Love, on my website for additional support and guidance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love. Dr. Marielle Bouquet is a Columbia-trained holistic psychologist, professor, sound bath meditation healer, and intergenerational trauma expert. And her new book is called Break the Cycle, A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. Mariel, thank you so much. Do you like being called Dr. Bouquet, Dr. Mariel? What do you like?

I like Dr. Mariel. I think it's a little more tender. Yeah. So Dr. Mariel, thank you so much for joining us and talking about this topic that to me is probably one of the most crucial ones of our times. This idea of intergenerational trauma, which you came up a little bit later than I did in the therapeutic world. And we didn't talk about this at all when I was in graduate school. And then now it's starting to become, but not nearly frequent enough, as part of the lexicon and part of the discussions and understanding our psychology and the way that, you know, the lens through which we view the world and operate in the world.

But I loved the book. I think it's such an important book for any therapist to read, but I know you didn't write it for therapists. You wrote it for your average Joe or Jane or in between, right? And so let's just start at the beginning of how you define intergenerational trauma. Yeah. The way that I define it is as the only emotional trauma that can be handed down our family line. And that happens at the intersection of our biology. So our genetic expressions and our cellular memory, a lot of the biological imprints that we have that stem from having been a part of the families that we come from. And then our psychology, which is basically everything that happens thereafter,

after we're, you know, formed biologically. And we have the circumstances that we come upon, even at birth, right? Like we may be born into homes where maybe we have fighting parents or perhaps we have circumstances like not having shelter or other things that really make and create or perpetuate adversity within our lives, even in childhood, the same, you know, beyond the misattunement with parents, which can be something that some people find common in their lives. There can be bullying as you enter the school system. There can be the experience of having a relationship that has toxic qualities, maybe with someone who can be abusive.

There can be discrimination that you suffer based on any one of your identities. And so all of that, in addition to even like natural disasters, a pandemic even, can leave us in a very tender place. So if you have a parent or a set of parents who themselves were in a state of stress and trauma had some genetic markers and biological markers that reflected that. And that got translated forward at conception to us. We develop these emotional vulnerabilities that can't get triggered on or off depending on the circumstances that we encounter in life. If we encounter adversity and we now have trauma responses that surface for us, the trauma is thereby considered

intergenerational. Okay. So it's interesting to me because you can even, if any one of us can think about our families and, you know, as I was reading, I can tell you like to geek out on the science, like I do just from reading the book, because you, you do it, you make it very attainable, very understandable, but you lay out a lot of the science of epigenetics and the way that we now know, I mean, this has only been in the past couple of decades, understanding the way that trauma is actually passed on a cellular level. We always thought of it as something that was passed on a psychological level, like the classic example. If you were abused as a child or your parents abused you, when you have a child, unless that cycle is interrupted and healed,

it's possible that, you know, we see that, right? We knew that's possible that you're that person who was abused as a child then abuses their own children as a form of discipline because that's what they were raised with, right? And without questioning it. But what we're talking about also is this idea of the genetic, the cellular transmission of trauma. And then we can really geek out, at least I can, on the quantum stuff in that when we are healing our traumas, whether it's intergenerational trauma or trauma from this current life experience, we are actually, as we heal ourselves, we are healing everyone who comes after us. That makes sense, right? But we're also simultaneously healing our whole lineage. And I think that's a really, really

beautiful concept that's hard for people to understand when we think about time as a linear thing, right? My great-grandmother's no longer on the planet. How am I healing her? So I was wondering if you can speak to that a little bit. I'm just curious what your perspective is on the ways in which as we, and we're going to get into the ideas of healing and how it happens, but I just want to kind of set the stage here of how impactful this can be for your whole history backwards and forwards. Yeah. You know, it is a powerful thing and it is one that can happen for sure. You know, from the perspective of how, how we show up to the world, like when we show up as a more healed self, we show up as someone who is no longer feeding the cycles that are

a part of our families. And as a result, some of those cycles are cut off because we're not actually continuing the process. Whatever it is that we contribute to it is no longer there if we're no longer pouring that behavior into our families and into our relationships. And so there is a very tangible way in which we can see the cycles being broken. But in addition to that, whenever we are not feeding those cycles, people in our families, parents, grandparents, whomever might be proximal to us are also not getting that exacerbated stress that then really kind of like triggers their own cellular memory and makes it so that they're experiencing their own trauma symptoms as they engage with you. They no longer would be having that trigger

effect kick up to the extent that they would have because the cycles are being disrupted. So there's a very tangible way. Yeah. Yeah. Even a non-metaphysical way, I guess I'm thinking of the metaphysical way or energetic way, but you know, it's interesting because I even saw this in my own life as my parents were dying. They died at different times, I think about three or four years apart, but I was there at the end for both of them. And by the time my mom dying was really the beginning of my reawakening and some of my massive massive healing by the time my dad was dying or was getting ill and he was you know he was the main traumatizer in the family system it was fascinating to me to see in action how as I healed and no longer fell into those

narcissistic codependent patterns with him, he couldn't play anymore. And he started shifting. And I saw the same thing with my, I have three sons, but my oldest was going through a really, has gone in and out of really hard, depressive episodes and difficult times since he was a little boy. And I noticed as well, as I started healing, not that I hadn't done a lifetime of healing by the time my mother died, for God's sake, but it was a whole new level, right? when this happened. And I saw him start to get better in different ways. Not necessarily even in our dynamics, because our dynamics were the same. And I think we had really good dynamics, but that there's something about the way that he was energetically entrained to me or matching me

or tethered to me beyond words and actions that seemed to show up differently. Maybe it was only my lens was different, right? Maybe I was only seeing his behavior differently because I was different, but it really felt like and has continued to feel that way throughout his adult life. And as my others get older too, I will say that I had a similar experience reading your book, which like I said, is wonderful. But reading your book as I did in this one way, as I did reading Gabor Mate's book, The Myth of Normal, in that among the many aha moments and epiphanies and write-ons, I found myself feeling unbelievably guilty about all the ways that I've fucked up my kids with all my best intentions. And what's even more, when I became a mother, I was already a

therapist. I'd studied. I understood my own trauma. I had studied child development. I was going to do this right. I knew what I wanted to do differently. I knew what I wanted to change from the way that I was raised, but I hadn't healed the trauma that had created in me my codependency. I understood it all. I had the plan. I even carried out the plans, but it wasn't until my mother died in my forties and my oldest was almost in college. And the youngest was pretty much baked by the time I started to really do that healing. And that's when the healing that really, really matters. And I think that's really important. I wonder if you can comment on that, because we can read every parent. And I think we should, obviously, the more educated we are,

the better of a job we're going to do and the less trauma we're going to put on our kids. but that was really powerful. That was a really powerful moment for me reading your book. I was like, oh yeah, I can see this. I can see the ways that I, despite all my conscious intentions, couldn't deliver. Yeah. And you know, for parents across the globe, like I try to aim for helping to illustrate the examples that I offer and the understanding around a lot of these parental connections that could have caused adversity for our children in a way to also help us not only build self-compassion, but other compassion, like compassion for other folks who are in the parenting process. And what I mean by that is that you cannot heal what you

cannot see. If you do not know that it is intergenerational trauma and that there's a thread that ties you to your parents, your grandparents, the other people that exist within you that you're carrying as an emotional burden of the past, it is not going to be likely that you will have, one, the capacity for acknowledgement that that is something that you need to work on, and two, the actual tools, because that's step three. The acknowledgement is first, then grounding yourself is second, and then engaging in the tools to actually like excavate the wounds and work with them is step three. So to not have that information means that you also don't have opportunity to parent from a legacy building perspective,

from a cycle breakers perspective. So part of my goal with this book and part of the reason, like you said that I made it attainable accessible and readable by all is because I wanted more people to have an understanding of what is happening through our families and even you know in energetic experiences what is happening how are our family members that are in the past and maybe no longer with us still present in our lives from an energetic perspective how is it that we're connecting with them or lack thereof, right? Like how can we connect with them more in a way that builds the recipe for healing that we're going to need to also disentangle from the wounds that continue to bind us, right? And so like all of that was a part of

my very, very intentional like writing in trying to help us to understand that things could have happened already. And that if your heart is in the place where you're thinking, but I want to do different because the one qualifier to being able to do different is there, which is that I am alive and so is my child, then let me go ahead and decide to break these cycles and start the healing process. Yeah. And I think this is interesting too for you, I guess, or for all of us is that for me, I had that same thought, right? But my middle child is no longer here. And when your child dies, the first thing any parent does is go through every moment of their child's life and look for all the reasons it's your fault or the things that, not even your

fault, but the things you could have, would have, should have, might have, could have, any kind of domino that was the first to fall that you can identify, right? But I do think it's like with our ancestors, and you alluded to this, you can still do that healing. I mean, he doesn't have his life to live and he's not passing on any trauma I helped give him to his kids in the physical, right? But I do feel and have had many healing conversations with him energetically. And I think we can do that with our ancestors as well as our children if they aren't here. And I think that's important to say. Absolutely.

I wanted to see if you can kind of take us through a thread just so that people can, you know, because you explain what intergenerational trauma is in theory, and we're talking about the ways in which we kind of continue these legacies where we get lost in triggers or where we have these trauma responses that we may not even fully understand that aren't even ours from this, from our particular lifetime, but have been kind of imprinted on us accidentally environmentally and even cellularly. But I was wondering if you can kind of, you give so many beautiful examples in the book. And by the way, guys, there's tons of tools and techniques and guided meditations and sound baths. And I love all the holistic,

multi-dimensional approaches you take, but can you just kind of lay out a thread, an example of how intergenerational trauma may show up? Kind of one of your more classic examples that someone may recognize themselves. When I understand something, I don't always make it clear to everyone else. So I just want to make sure we're making it clear. Absolutely. I think that's super important. If I may, I'd just like to take a moment to just honor your experience as a mother who has a child who's no longer with us. And I thank you for that orientation around that being an important part of histories that exist within our families as well, that we have an opportunity to connect with those who we've

lost, who have been little minds. And I have the same history within my nuclear family. And we also do healing work that is centered on how we connect to my nephew who is no longer with us and not my 16-year-old nephew who is, but our littlest one. And it reminded me actually of the fact that we also write to him and have been writing to him for years as a part of a family ritual. And when I talk about writing to ancestors, which is a part of what you've read within the book, is a part of that connection or spiritual healing that we also do in the process of trying to disentangle these linear ties that tie us to burdens. We also embrace the generational resilience and the guidance and the care that we're offered from the people that are no longer with us. And interestingly enough, you know, I always think of the ancestors past, but I didn't kind of contextualize the fact that we also have a little one that we send letters to.

And that also is ancestral letter writing. So thank you for that. Yeah, it is. It is. And it's a lot of these practices are, you know, reflected in my therapeutic space. And some my my family and I have remixed and we have like made our own. And that's one of the ones that has definitely stuck. But from an understanding of intergenerational trauma in terms of how it show ups in our day to day lives, I will say that it is incredibly variable from person to person. But there are some things that tend to be very much common among individuals that come from these lines and inheritances of pain.

And for some folks, you know, it may be that they have a short fuse when they're stressed or perhaps they shut down at the slightest sense of stress. Or maybe it is that they don't have a really good connection with their emotions, how their emotions show up in their lives, what emotions they're actually feeling at the moment. They can't name them. They can't feel into them. Some people have difficulty with showing vulnerability in relationships. Some have difficulty with taking care of themselves and they behave in self-destructive ways and sometimes sabotage their relationships. Some people are chronically pessimistic or have a negative outlook on life. And that's just like, it's the general way in which they see everything and you kind of hear it in their tone and the words that they utilize. And other people have

symptoms that look a lot like depression or a lot like anxiety. But when we start getting into the root of what really is happening here, we're seeing that there is something that's feeding that depression and feeding that anxiety. And it could be that trauma. And there's so many others. I mean, some of the general kind of like relationship-based recycling that happens in families is that you'll have someone who self-identifies now in their own understanding of how they navigate relationships as codependent. But when you start digging through the family tree, you start seeing that, oh, that was codependent. And so was my grandma. And so, you know, it's like we start really seeing, oh, my cousin was also codependent, probably learned that from, you know, my aunt, who also learned it from grandma. And there's like these threads of people that absorb these relational dynamics, integrated them into being their own because they just were, again, we cannot heal what we cannot see.

We just ingest the modeling of the adults around us. And so that cycle continued to perpetuate around codependency. Yeah, I do this. I've done this thing with my clients and students for years where I have them build, and this is what it's reminding me of, I have them build what I call a worthiness killing story timeline because we talk about, you know, how we all carry these worthiness killing stories about ourselves and what we're capable of and what we are worthy of and whether or not we're worthy of love. And if you look at those stories, you can almost always see the same story in your ancestors. Let's make your timeline of when you first remember feeling like love never stays, right? And then you go up and you look at the mother's timeline and it's almost identical. Different circumstances, but almost identical. And so I can see how, like I was saying in my own life, I could see that healing occur within me and then ways I could kind of bring that into my family. And you speak so beautifully. I'm jealous of your family. You know, you speak so beautifully about all the healing work that you've done within your family and that you all continue to do together.

But what happens, and I have this situation, I mean, I'm pretty open about the fact that I'm estranged from my sister. And I know you speak to this in the book, but it's not always possible to heal those relationships. You can come to terms with it. You can come to clarity. You can come to your own healing. But what happens when those family members or those people in the system that you've been part of who are perpetuating this are resistant to your healing, A, or B, you can't necessarily bring them along. They're unwilling. They're unwilling to face their own intergenerational trauma. We have to be willing to allow people to come to their own healing themselves. For some people, estrangement hasn't happened, but they are very, very separated in

that they're holding a lot of barriers with these individuals. And when that's the case, there's, you know, sometimes opportunity to offer a book, a podcast, right? You know, there's at the very least, like just sending that their way, you know, in order to let them come to their own conclusion as to whether or not they need the tool and the healing. When we are no longer in a process where communication is there, what I find to be important for us to have to do, and trust me, I think that this is also of utility whenever we are still in contact with family members, is to have, as I mentioned in the book, almost like a mental funeral for the people that we wish they could have been, for the relationship that we wish we could have had,

for the conversations that we wish would have been there. And we have to grieve. We have to do intentional grieving, not the grieving that's passive and just happens because you feel the loss, but the grieving that almost kind of lays out all of the things that you wished for, all of the things that are missed. And you can actually look at that list and attend almost a funeral of the person that you wish they could have been in the relationship. And it offers some element of healing and closure when there's no recipe, there's no actual... Think about it, like in society, do we have a recipe for how you deal with the aftermath of no contact? No. And I've heard from, since I deal with so many grieving mothers whose children have died,

I mean, that's a big area of my work now. I hear from so many mothers whose children are still alive, but who have a no contact with them. The mother doesn't want the no contact, the child does. And that just destroys, I mean, that's really hard to hold. like to imagine holding that would be in some ways, I mean, I don't think it's worse than your child not being on the planet anymore, but it's pretty bad, you know? And so that makes total sense to me that there needs to be that closure, right? And I think part of it, even for me with my sister, she's just unwilling to get the help she needs to be well enough to be safe and to be in relationship with. And she does and did so many horrifically harmful things to the point where I couldn't open the door because I'm not, I have to be so guarded and so careful and not say any, even the most innocent thing that I'm not even aware I'm saying will then be manipulated,

changed utilized to do me like it's the craziest thing but it's also there is and I'm and I'm feeling it inside me as I listen to you talk about putting that closure on it like I know that there's a 99.999% chance that nothing is ever going to change with her almost 60 like it's not change I don't see maybe who knows but I can't see anything changing but there's also a part of me that doesn't want to, as I'm trying on what you're saying, that doesn't want to have that closure because somehow that means the possibility is gone. And I know that's not the point, right? And that's not true. You can have closure and the door can open again. But I'm realizing as we speak that that's part of my resistance to creating that closure is that

there's a little one in me, an inner child in me who just still so desperately wants her sister's love and wants a sister, you know, that doesn't want to accept that that's the way it is. Yeah. And it's understandable. The thing about suffering is that, and I'm borrowing a little bit from dialectical behavioral therapy and the concept of radical acceptance and what the ways that radical acceptance was in essence, kind of like created, or this part of the premise was If you continue to want to change the circumstance and want to like push in the direction of tension, it's going to increase your suffering. If you engage in radical acceptance, which in part, you know, one might say is leaning into the grief of all the things that we've mentioned, then you offer yourself an opportunity for respite and some of the suffering does unload. And so it's kind of in the vein of that a bit.

Yeah, of unloading it. That makes sense. Most of us have no idea how to move through loss. There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief. And I realized this when I lost my son three years ago. As a therapist who understood grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way, but in a way that has transformed me for the better.

We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course, Good Grief, Healing from Loss with Love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com, right there on the homepage, as well as free resources letting you know how to support others who are going through loss. None of us has to do this alone.

So you talk about all sorts of techniques for kind of moving beyond your trigger and building self-awareness and even recognizing what your intergenerational traumas are that you may be carrying. And you talk about asking questions like what was modeled for me, what was done to me, what have I never received, you know, that those sort of entry points. But I want to spend a little time, since lots of my peeps here

are raising families, talking about this idea of becoming the ancestor that you needed. And I love this concept of what you call parenting back, parenting forward, because I think I could, I was thinking of times even in my life and certainly in so many of my clients' lives where I could see that and even cultivate that in action. But let's hear your description of it. I would love to. Yes. So I'll start with the parenting back, parenting forward, which is a way of looking at the ways that we parent as cycle breakers that also holds a little bit of space for us. It holds some space for the parts that are still tender and wounded and still need a bit of care because think about it when it comes to parenting, the world has encircled

the idea of parenting around it being almost kind of self-abandoning. And then you just mostly take care of the little ones in your life. Right. And so it, in part, it's, you know, just globally kind of an unfair concept, but, but, you know, to think about it from a more clinical lens, it is also something that doesn't really work. Because if you have a wounded parent who is not being attended to, that wound is going to come out time and again, time and again, in ways that are unprecedented and can be invisibilized in the home because they can look like other things. So when we can actually focus on how we can also attend to the tender inner child that's present in that home with the actual children that are also present in that home, it offers an

opportunity for there to be a caring for all. And so the Parenting Back, Parenting Forward is a process of intergenerational reparenting. It is the parenting from the perspective of a cycle breaker, someone who is attending to the needs of their children in ways that they hadn't had, someone who is being mindful of the fact that they must apologize to their children. Someone who is being mindful of vetting the people that they surround their children with and vetting them in a very explicit way so as to attempt to minimize harm because not every parent is able to 100% place their kid in a bubble. But doing some of those, you know, cycle breaking practices that can be helpful to their child,

inviting them into a holistic journey of health building, right? Like maybe mindful walks with their child and anything that can be like very child-centered but has an element of health baked in so that these children would eventually be the adults that don't have to go and be in search of their emotions in ways that us adults are doing right now. And then the parenting back aspect of it

is an aspect that's really critical because there are times when we're giving children what we didn't have and that can actually be triggering because a parent could experience that as, wow, I wish I had that. I wish it, you know, so it opens up that wound. And so it's going to be really critical to in those moments say, well, what do you need right now to yourself? What do you need right now? What can I offer you? okay you wish that you could have hung around in that children's park and like swung on that swing but you were being berated and weren't being offered an opportunity to just be a child well guess what your kid's still eight maybe your kid might be 19 right and there's an opportunity

here maybe there's you know a time when they visit home they're coming from college and there's still a park somewhere around here, head over to the park, give yourself what you needed or go yourself and give it to yourself or maybe include your, your child. Right. And there's an opportunity to, to almost kind of fill the gaps and the voids that remain, and then also give some of that forward to your child. So it's a, it's a process that is very intergenerational. it's very loaded. It's very full of care. Yeah. And a lot, and you're basically doing your own inner child work healing while you are raising a child, sometimes at the exact same moment. Yeah. Yeah. And also realizing how interconnected those things are, because we

think of the inner child with so many parents out here doing inner child work, and they're not realizing that some of that inner child work is very intimately connected with the way that they're parenting and that there are, yeah. Right. Like there's so many ways in which these little souls offer a mirror to our soul. And we're just like looking at them as this like replication of us, but having a different life because we're structuring a different life for them. And so it's really important to really start being mindful of, okay, well, how's that impacting me? How am I holding this? What do I need? Those questions are valid. I think they're so important. And I really am curious what you think about this. You're the

perfect person to ask because I watch on social media, you know, a lot of the young women that I follow who are healers or teachers or what, you know, people who I think are interesting and have beautiful wisdom to share. All of a sudden, it seems like a lot of them, I guess, are at this stage where they're having babies, which is great. But it seems like all of a sudden everywhere, I'm seeing this whole kind of trend, let's say, you know, in their content. And maybe this is just what the algorithm is pushing, but around like attachment, they call it attachment parenting is their term for it. I mean, it is a term, but this idea of I am 100% my child. She sleeps with me. She's on top of me 24 seven. I chose to have a child. So I am not going to be selfish and have

my own needs. My needs are not important. She's completely dependent. So I will feed her on demand. I will comfort her on demand. I will let her sleep in my arms for as many years as she wants to. I will get no sleep or nutrition or respite. This is what a good mother does, basically. And I'm having a reaction to that, which, you know, to me, it seems like it could create a whole other brand of problems. But I'm wondering, before I comment, I'm wondering what you think. Yeah, you know, I think that we can lean on our clinical understanding and saying that that probably wouldn't be able to develop healthy interdependence. And the reason why I say that is because if, well, first of all, you know,

the concept of attachment and what we know about it is that there needs to be good enough and consistent support, attunement, care, and presence. Not that there needs to be a hundred percent of that. And the possible consequence that can come from that kind of attachment is that it can also build an almost kind of like an anxious connection. Yeah. So what happens when mom is not there? What happens if mom, let's say, hopefully it doesn't happen, but mom suffers from a debilitating condition where now mom needs to be attended to and no longer has that continuity of care? What happens if there's a divorce and mom's the one to leave? What happens when mom is not there because it's a school day and you now have to be around other adults and there's no easy access to

that constant supply and you are not being taught how to soothe yourself, which is a very healthy thing for a child to learn well into adult life. And so there's, I think that it could inadvertently create the very attachment wounds that are trying to compensate for, But more globalized towards other relationships. We don't have any science that says if you are a 100% devoted mother that does not attend to herself and attends to her child only, your child is going to be this glorious superhuman that doesn't have emotional outbursts or moments where they need comforting and they need to be human. there's nothing that corroborates that. Yeah. And it also feels like really dangerous to the mother. I mean, it feels like it's a recipe for disassociation and burnout. Like how can you even function at that level? And obviously first and foremost, all the ways it's a disservice to the child, but it's interesting. And I talk a lot about in these

people are talking a lot about this concept, which I think is a beautiful and important one. we used to talk about helping our kids self-regulate, right? Now it's about co-regulation. I let my child lie on top of me and feel me breathing, and then they synchronize their breath. I basically co-regulate them. It's like being the blanket. I don't know. It's spooky to me. It's very human. It's very human and very evolutionary. So back in the day when we didn't have like, you know, modern technology in the modern world, we would synchronize to each other in those ways. And we're still formulated that way because we're not that removed from our ancestors. They used to, you know, be hunters and gatherers and like actually do these things.

So that in part, we're just going back to our natural state of being. We're going back to our natural physiology and understanding that we have mirror neurons and our bodies mirror each other. And there are ways in which there's this interconnectedness among human beings. No, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, that's what my whole book, Quantum Love, was about. I wrote that in large part out of desperation over what was happening with my kids who were all struggling with ADD and depression and anxiety. And I kind of, it's a long story, which I won't tell here, but I stumbled into the world of quantum physics and started realizing that if I just pay really close attention to what's going on inside me energetically in my body, and I move

myself into a state of calm and homeostasis, not just externally. So I never would have shown my pain or sadness or whatever to my, you know, when my kids are coming home from school, I would put a calm smile on my face. Hi, how was your day? You know, I wouldn't show them, but they could energetically feel it, obviously. So as I started really moving myself, even before I would even go into the room with them, or if one of them was having trouble coming down, or if one of them wouldn't fall asleep, I very quickly started realizing, oh, holy crap. Like if I just move my system into calm, they immediately match me there. And so I totally get that. I just don't know that it's in the child's best service to be there. I mean, when they're babies, of course,

and when they're little, they need someone to regulate them. But at some point, it seems like it might be healthy for them to, I'm not saying you leave them locked in their room screaming and crying, but like give them a chance to regulate sometimes. Well, we have to think about the concept of resilience, right? Resilience is built from having tolerable enough stress, not toxic stress, but tolerable enough stress, and then being able to overcome the circumstance. And what we know also about what tends to be a buffer for trauma when trauma has happened in childhood, like let's say like a, you know, a child maybe was a survivor, let's say of a school shooting, had nothing to do with the home environment, right? But like something happened

externally, it is traumatic and they come home and they experience a home in which they have an ability to talk about their feelings. They have an ability to remove the traditional schedule that they may have had for a day or two and just like really kind of feel more in control of their schedule. So that because that's something that makes you feel so out of control, like a school shooting or out of your body like that, being able to come back into the environments that you recognize and know and like have control in some way can be helpful in healing. And so like when you have like that and so many iterations of how family members can show up to really help create a solid emotional foundation and support system around experiences, those are the things that we

understand help us through life. It's having that emotional foundation that can be healthy enough. it's having the experiences of tolerable stress that we overcome and that builds the resilience that we then use for the next circumstance and so it's like we also have to go to what we know to have a better understanding of like what's really going to help and work out here for the long term yeah makes total sense so i could this this next topic that you write about in your book to me is one of the juiciest ones in my, not necessarily in the world of intergenerational trauma, although it's a fundamental part of it. But just for every single one of us in general, this idea of post-traumatic growth, the fact that out of every trauma there is, you know,

you can go through it or you can grow through it. And this is something that I have always been, never more than since losing my son become really, really passionate about. And I got to say, I loved this part of the book. I thought you did such a beautiful job of laying out the different variables or the different pieces of post-traumatic growth. You know, this idea of even what you were just talking about, generating new strength, like recognizing strength you didn't know you had to get through things and resilience you didn't know, building safer connections and building new relationships based on this new version of yourself, building a new ways of appreciating not only the world around you, but what happened to you. I could keep going, but I wonder if you

can speak to that a little bit in terms of what some of the keys are to post-traumatic growth and why it's important. Post-traumatic growth has been a concept that has been in the world of trauma for quite some time. And it is a way that we can see ourselves as still evolving, growing and healing through the process of trauma. So I thought it would be really integral to bring it into the intergenerational framework and healing protocol, because it offers a lot of nuggets of wisdom as to how we can carve a path for healing forward. In addition to that, I, Of course, trying to look at everything through an intergenerational lens, it was also critical for me to bring in an understanding of, well, how do we do this from an intergenerational perspective? How is it that growth can happen when we're talking about building legacies and impacting the next generation in ways that can be healing and helpful?

And so post-traumatic growth itself is like psychological change and endurance that happens to a person that's experienced trauma. The intergenerational post-traumatic growth is being able to grow through the process, but also bring in that ancestral wisdom and strength that we all have and really burgeoning that and also taking the time to impact the next generation in ways that can build on their generational strength as well. and like you mentioned there are seven areas and the seven areas are generating new strength which is building upon that resilience and intentionally doing so perhaps engaging in daily practices to actually increase our capacity for tolerating tolerable stress and not being thrown off kilter whenever we experience like anyone saying anything and you know this can be like something that people do once a day. It could be a lifestyle change, right? But it's about also increasing and being intentional about increasing that. Building safer social connections is really critical

because in trauma, we typically tend to hurt in relationships. It tends to be the type of traumatic experience that usually is centered around people or systems that are also relationships that we hold. So it's going to be really critical for us to be intentional about who we want to be around. Who are the people that tend to keep us feeling well while we're around them? And who are the people that perhaps spark triggers in us with too much frequency and kind of navigate those relationships accordingly? Building a different appreciation for life is opportunity for us to cultivate healthier, more nuanced ways of like living with a life that still has a trauma narrative, but a life that doesn't see the trauma narrative as everything. Yes, I've experienced

trauma or intergenerational trauma is a part of my family tree, but it isn't all of me. And it doesn't define me. It doesn't define me. It isn't what I need to embody as a legacy forward. i can actually create something different and that's where developing new possibilities comes in where you start engaging in practices and ideas that allow you to start developing the stuff that's different right now and i offer this as one of the the things that people can do i mean it's obviously you can do a ginormous amount of things but i i talk about like getting into pottery and ceramics. And it's something that I've been getting into. I love tea. I love tea. I love tea people. And so what I want to do is eventually when I get good enough is to build my own teapots

and like, you know, it's very, it's very regulating for me to do that. Very grounding to work with the clay. Yes. We can go and like, you know, take a walk outside and maybe just let our feet touch the grass, right? Like there's so many ways in which we can just engage in something that's new and really replenish our bodies and our minds and our spirits from the wounds that have been there. And that also kind of comes into, of course, being more spiritually grounded. And it doesn't mean that we have to lean on spirituality, but lean into at least a deeper connection with ourselves and with the people around us, maybe with the universal elements of life. Maybe we have more bonfires and fire is one of the elements, right? And those bonfires, we just sit and listen

to the crackling and just like really kind of commune under, you know, a bonfire and just allow ourselves to really have a moment that feels more spiritually connecting. And then, you know, we help the people in our lineage to heal, which is really critical, especially when we're integrating the intergenerational element, which means that we start showing them how they can break cycles. We start doing breathing exercises with them. We invite them to tea, right? Because I think that that's one thing that perhaps even with an older child can, can be very useful. Yeah. And sometimes they're not, you either have to get them when they're really little and, or once they're past adolescence. Yeah. That gap is like untouchable.

nothing mom could suggest that was even remotely cool yeah yeah and the final part is really you know just navigating how you can impart legacies for the future generations how you can teach them about their emotions so that they have a safe and helpful and healing connection to their emotions and to you and you know we're going to air it's going to happen we're human and the beautiful part about error is that when we can model what repair looks like, that's the moment when things get really powerful. Yeah. That's probably one of the most powerful things I've, and I've done a lot of powerful things as part of my mothering journey. But to have, you know, my oldest now 27 and over the past several years holding space for him to tell me all the ways that

I fucked up, not in an obnoxious way, but as he's doing his own healing work, you know, like ways in which I maybe wasn't attuned or was so caught up in my own codependence before I started healing. I mean, I was a baby when I had him and I was still so wounded. But for me to be able to hold that and really have grace for myself and not be defensive, but also to apologize and to take responsibility for places where despite all of my best efforts, I wasn't there enough or I didn't do the right thing or did the wrong thing or whatever. I can see how I mean it's healing for me, but I can see how profoundly healing it is for him And I never really had that the very end of his life my last conversation with my father He apologized for the first time in his life But otherwise never and so I think that yeah, I don't know It's it seems like a small thing when you say it but saying you're sorry

modeling apology for your children and and responsibility and acknowledgement that you're not perfect, but also that you take responsibility for things, I think is so healing. I mean, it's like the opposite of gaslighting, basically. So healing. Wow. That's beautiful. I love that framing in it. And it truly is, right? Like, it is affirming, grounding, and validating. Yeah. I mean, what else do you need as a kid? Like, right. And when you're 27, I mean, you need a lot more when you're younger, but you need like you're not crazy. I fucked up. And I'm really, really sorry. I'm so sorry that I did that. I wish I had known better. I would have done better. Yeah. And it's so human and it's so humanizing to you as the adult in the room. And it's also humanizing to them. And the beautiful legacy building process that happens from that is that they learn to now apologize to their kids. They learn to apologize to others when they have erred. And that actually gives them an opportunity to build better connections and better relationships because they have an opportunity or they have the capacity to actually take accountability when they have erred.

Yeah. Makes total sense. Well, it's a beautiful book, guys. It's called Break the Cycle, A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma. So many tools, techniques, suggestions, guidance. You can really just take the journey, which I think is really, really a beautiful gift you've given us. So thank you so, so much for being here and for the work that you're doing in the world for all of us. Thank you so much for being willing to just sit with my work

and be so appreciative of it. I, you know, from someone that, you know, is doing this work both on a personal and professional level, I can appreciate that so much.

I can't fall asleep without your arms around me I guess I'm falling in love Baby, you're my rockstar, smashing all my guitars One day I will charge you for breaking my heart You're just like my sport car, driving fast, you go fast When I'm sitting by you, we get high This song is about you and my love