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Soldiering Through Trauma with Kelly Nenezian · The Trauma Therapist

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
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Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
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Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this show.
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Speaker 1: So five, four, three, two and one are folks. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have a meg
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Speaker 1: guests today. Kelly Nnizian Kelly Welcome.
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Speaker 2: Hi, nice to be here.
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Speaker 1: Thank you, you are welcome. Kelly is a licensed mental
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Speaker 1: health counselor EMDR, certified therapist and bio energetic trainer who
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Speaker 1: helps clients move beyond surface level coping into deep embodied healing.
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Speaker 1: She's a founder and president of Gainesville Healing House, a
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Speaker 1: thriving somatic psychotherapy practice where she also supervisors and mentors
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Speaker 1: merging clinicians. Kelly integrates EMDR, dialectical behavioral therapy, and bio
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Speaker 1: energetic analysis in her work with adolescents, adults, and seniors.
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Speaker 1: She also serves as a trainer and director with the
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Speaker 1: Florida Society of bio Energetic Analysis. Author of Raised to
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Speaker 1: Be a Soldier, she explores how childhood trauma can armor
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Speaker 1: us for survival and how we can learn to live, feel,
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Speaker 1: and connect again. All right, Kelly, obviously, just a little
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Speaker 1: bit about you before we going share with our listeners
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Speaker 1: where you're from originally and where you are currently.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. So currently I'm in Gainesville, Florida, I have.
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Speaker 3: I was born and raised partially in Broward County, Florida,
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Speaker 3: and then Polk County, Florida.
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Speaker 2: Okay, very different places.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, okay, all right, So how does this start
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Speaker 1: for you? This this interest and all this other work
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Speaker 1: you've got going on. Where does it begin?
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Speaker 2: Yeah?
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Speaker 3: So that's always such a complex question, but I guess
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Speaker 3: I'll just start where I really feel it begins and
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Speaker 3: move through that. So you know, in my book, I
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Speaker 3: discuss intergenerational trauma and somatic work very uniquely we can
2:13
Speaker 3: address intergenerational trauma. So my story, I always say, begins
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Speaker 3: before my story.
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Speaker 2: It begins with my ancestors.
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Speaker 3: My dad's side of the family was Armenian, so they
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Speaker 3: went through the Armenian Genocide before coming here to the
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Speaker 3: United States.
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Speaker 2: And I always say that's part of my origin story.
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Speaker 3: And then my mom endured a lot of trauma growing
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Speaker 3: up through her childhood, and so that's all in there.
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Speaker 2: As well.
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Speaker 3: So fast forward, my mom and dad meet, fall in love,
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Speaker 3: have me and my sisters, and everything's going okay. They're
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Speaker 3: living their life, and my dad gets diagnosed with osteosarcoma
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Speaker 3: at thirty years old. So the next ten years my
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Speaker 3: dad fought for his life. My mom was with him,
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Speaker 3: my sisters and I were with him. It all, you know,
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Speaker 3: kind of ended when he passed away. I was with
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Speaker 3: him when he passed away at seven years old. So
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Speaker 3: that's where kind of my trauma started.
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Speaker 2: And yeah, and so.
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Speaker 3: From there I went on a long journey of mental health. Right,
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Speaker 3: So as an adolescent really struggled. My mom never recovered
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Speaker 3: from his death, I you know, truly never recovered.
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Speaker 2: Became what she's actually who inspired the.
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Speaker 3: Book that I wrote, Right, She was a trauma soldier.
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Speaker 3: She soldiered up, She raised three girls. She did the
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Speaker 3: absolute best. She kid my grandparents from my dad's side,
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Speaker 3: they had already endured obviously so much trauma and directly
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Speaker 3: from the genocide. It because of the trauma they had
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Speaker 3: pre existing. This is my belief through all my work.
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Speaker 3: My dad's just just death just broke everything, right, There
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Speaker 3: was just not enough foundation to stand on and everybody struggled.
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Speaker 3: After that, I started to do somatic work after graduate
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Speaker 3: school back in Gosh, twenty fifteen, and that is truly
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Speaker 3: what changed my life. I had done some therapy before that,
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Speaker 3: cognitive behavioral therapy and things like that, which was extremely beneficial,
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Speaker 3: but I was definitely soul drink. I was struggling, I
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Speaker 3: was not happy. I was in a not good relationship.
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Speaker 1: What agere you talking about right now, Gosh?
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Speaker 3: So yeah, So I ended up going starting therapy at
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Speaker 3: fourteen after being Baker acted right because I was just
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Speaker 3: I don't know what to do. My family didn't know
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Speaker 3: what to do. We didn't talk about my dad. We
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Speaker 3: had no idea how to function after that trauma. Like
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Speaker 3: I said, when I say it broke everybody, it truly
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Speaker 3: did everybody. Again, they were all successful, which is part
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Speaker 3: of my book. Right, My mom was a successful veterinarian
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Speaker 3: ramparts were extremely successful. But everybody was struggling on the inside.
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Speaker 3: And as a child, I felt that right, I knew
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Speaker 3: that they were not okay, and I started to feel
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Speaker 3: not okay. So I got BA corrected at fourteen, went
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Speaker 3: into cognitive behavioral therapy that helped me, you know, kind
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Speaker 3: of soldier on.
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Speaker 2: Right, I started.
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Speaker 3: I went to graduate or I went to undergrad at
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Speaker 3: University of Florida, went to graduate school.
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Speaker 2: And then started somatic healing through graduate school. So I
5:28
Speaker 2: went to.
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Speaker 3: And this is like where my life really changed. So
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Speaker 3: after for my internship, I worked at a substance abuse
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Speaker 3: facility and I started to realize, Wow, these people are
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Speaker 3: really not that different from me. Right, they're struggling. I've struggled.
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Speaker 3: They're coping in a different way. They're trying to figure
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Speaker 3: out how to live life with all of this trauma
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Speaker 3: and their bodies. And a mentor of mine there, his
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Speaker 3: name was Randy, sent me to the bio Energetic Society
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Speaker 3: in Alachua.
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Speaker 2: I went. I was probably the youngest person there. I
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Speaker 2: think it was twenty.
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Speaker 3: I would think I was the youngest in history to
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Speaker 3: ever walk through that door. And I just broke as
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Speaker 3: soon as I walked through the door, the energy of
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Speaker 3: the space. I just started crying on the floor. People
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Speaker 3: held me and then changed My life changed.
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Speaker 1: Okay, hang on, hang on a second. A couple things here.
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Speaker 1: Let our listeners know a couple of things. What when
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Speaker 1: you said I got baker acted, what does that mean?
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Speaker 2: Yeah?
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Speaker 3: So I was depressed to the point where I was
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Speaker 3: having suicidal ideation at fourteen years old. So my mom
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Speaker 3: didn't know what to do. She was so scared and
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Speaker 3: took me to a hospital. They baker acted me and
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Speaker 3: they kept me in a facility for seventy two hours,
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Speaker 3: gave me medications, and that's where I got into therapy
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Speaker 3: from that moment.
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Speaker 1: Okay, and when you you said you went to college,
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Speaker 1: you went to graduate school, you were thinking, I want
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Speaker 1: to what I want to be a therapist. I want
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Speaker 1: to quote unquote help people. What were your thoughts at
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Speaker 1: that time.
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Speaker 3: So it's hilarious because I don't know. So my undergrad
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Speaker 3: was just that's what you do right? Like again, through
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Speaker 3: my CBT work, I kind of learned that, hey, people
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Speaker 3: want you to function, they want you to like go
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Speaker 3: and do.
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Speaker 2: Things right like so, and part of that is going
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Speaker 2: to college. So I went to University of Florida.
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Speaker 3: I got a degree in microbiology and cell science, which
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Speaker 3: I actually used later because now I'm very into genetics
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Speaker 3: and intergenerational trauma and stuff.
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Speaker 2: But I didn't know what I was doing.
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Speaker 3: I was eighteen years old. No, I was I was
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Speaker 3: less than eighteen years old. I was seventeen years old
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Speaker 3: at that point. So when I was going to University
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Speaker 3: of Florida and declaring a major, so.
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Speaker 2: I graduate, I start working in a lab and I
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Speaker 2: hated it.
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Speaker 3: I was miserable. But I was doing the things you
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Speaker 3: know what I mean. I was functioning. I was doing
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Speaker 3: the things I was taught to do.
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Speaker 1: I was touching the box. Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yes.
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Speaker 3: And then how I got into actually becoming a therapist
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Speaker 3: is comical because I was once again desperate, miserable, didn't
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Speaker 3: know what to do.
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Speaker 2: I was like, I don't like this job.
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Speaker 3: I hate it, you know, And I was looking up
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Speaker 3: things I could do, graduate schools I could go to.
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Speaker 3: I saw that I could apply to this graduate school
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Speaker 3: for the counseling a counseling program. I applied to that
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Speaker 3: one program, got in and went and I didn't know
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Speaker 3: I wanted to be a therapist. I just knew I
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Speaker 3: didn't want to do what I was doing. And that again,
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Speaker 3: that moment changed my life. And it was so just
8:25
Speaker 3: like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if something
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Speaker 3: would stick.
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Speaker 2: And it stuck.
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Speaker 1: So so you you went into this bio energetics facility,
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Speaker 1: and bio energetics, what do define that what are we
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Speaker 1: talk we're talking about like.
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Speaker 2: Reiki no, you know, so.
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Speaker 1: You were shaking your head like and then you said no, no.
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Speaker 3: No, yeah, because you know, it's it's just funny to
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Speaker 3: me to try to define it, right, because there is
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Speaker 3: some kind of like energy work like reiki in it,
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Speaker 3: but it's a little different. So bio Energetics was created
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Speaker 3: by a psychiatrist, doctor Alexander Lowen, who studied under a
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Speaker 3: man named William Reich, who studied under Freud.
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Speaker 2: So it's the lineage goes back to Freud.
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Speaker 3: So there's some psychoanalysis components to it, but it's body
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Speaker 3: oriented psychotherapy.
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Speaker 2: So basically it talks about how.
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Speaker 3: Trauma is stored in our body, not only you know,
9:26
Speaker 3: talking about our emotional responses, but actually how our body
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Speaker 3: is held. So like people with for instance, like maybe
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Speaker 3: a lot of fear anger might have.
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Speaker 2: Their shoulders up to hear or their eyes very wide.
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Speaker 3: And we believe that you process the trauma through the
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Speaker 3: body and that will integrate into the mind, rather than
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Speaker 3: you process the trauma through the mind and it hopefully
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Speaker 3: will integrate.
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Speaker 2: Into the body.
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Speaker 3: So a lot of emotional processing, like I said, when
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Speaker 3: I walked in there it was kind of like walking
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Speaker 3: into a Reyky office where the energy is so powerful.
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Speaker 3: I walked in and I just my arm came down
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Speaker 3: right and I just like was a puddle on the floor.
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Speaker 1: So yes, wow, So okay, let me just remind everyone
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Speaker 1: speaking with Kelly Nanisian. She's a founder and president of
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Speaker 1: Gainesville Healing House, also the author of Raised to Be
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Speaker 1: a Soldier. Before we get into the book, I just
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Speaker 1: want to pause and say, I really appreciate the way
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Speaker 1: you're describing kind of you're seeing soldiering on soldiering on
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Speaker 1: being a trauma soldier. And I don't know if I've
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Speaker 1: heard that process that so many people who've experienced trauma
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Speaker 1: go through, or their response is very similar to just
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Speaker 1: like kind of like soldier up. But let's go back
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Speaker 1: for a second here. So you get into this facility,
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Speaker 1: you break down, your armor falls down on how do
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Speaker 1: things unfold for you?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? So the next it was a it's a four
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Speaker 2: year training program.
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Speaker 3: It's extremely intense, and it was you know, obviously you're
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Speaker 3: learning right how to do this with people, but it's
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Speaker 3: very experiential, so you are required to do your own work.
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Speaker 3: So I always say, like they want to make sure
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Speaker 3: that you can be broken and come back right before
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Speaker 3: you go and help clients like break themselves down and
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Speaker 3: come back. So the process looked like a lot of Honestly,
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Speaker 3: for the first two years, I think a lot of
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Speaker 3: crying on the floor, grieving for my father, grieving for
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Speaker 3: my mother, grieving for my grandparents.
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Speaker 2: Again. In somatic work, it's so unique because I think you're.
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Speaker 3: Processing your own trauma through your body, but you also
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Speaker 3: are processing intergenerational trauma. So I processed the things carried
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Speaker 3: by those you know in front of me as well.
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Speaker 2: It was amazing and I always go back to this
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Speaker 2: moment that I knew this work worked.
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Speaker 3: I went home and again, and I was not in
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Speaker 3: a good relationship at the time, so it wasn't for
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Speaker 3: my partner, but it was. I went home and saw
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Speaker 3: my dogs after a bio energetics workshop.
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Speaker 2: It was the end of the workshop.
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Speaker 3: I went home and I saw my dogs and I
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Speaker 3: felt love in my body for the first time ever
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Speaker 3: in my life.
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Speaker 2: I had never felt love right.
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Speaker 3: I had this idea of what love was, and I
12:19
Speaker 3: knew I was loved by people, but this feeling in
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Speaker 3: my body, I could feel it, and I remember thinking
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Speaker 3: in that moment like, whoa, what is that?
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Speaker 1: Right from your dogs?
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Speaker 2: And that was one of.
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Speaker 3: Those moments where I'm like this work from my dogs
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Speaker 3: and for my dogs. Yeah wow, that moment they met
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Speaker 3: me at the door and I was flooding and I
12:38
Speaker 3: had no idea.
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Speaker 2: I was like, whoa, that's what love feels like.
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Speaker 1: Yeah wow yeah wow. So for your program, wow, very intense.
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Speaker 1: So what happens after talked to us about the founding
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Speaker 1: of Gainsfield Healing House.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: So after the program again I mentioned not in a
13:05
Speaker 3: good relationship. That relationship ended. I think with help of
13:08
Speaker 3: the program, I realized that I was. I was in
13:11
Speaker 3: a relationship re enacting trauma again. I was functional, but
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Speaker 3: I was not happy. Right, So that relationship ends. I
13:18
Speaker 3: find my wonderful husband now, Brian, and him and I
13:21
Speaker 3: start the practice.
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Speaker 2: I would not have done it without him.
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Speaker 3: Him and I started the practice in twenty seventeen and
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Speaker 3: it was just me, and then slowly people started kind
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Speaker 3: of joining and I started bringing more people on and
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Speaker 3: somehow that we all you know, kind of ended up
13:37
Speaker 3: being a part of somatic work. And so the practice
13:40
Speaker 3: is primarily built upon this idea that the body is
13:43
Speaker 3: the true healer and us as the therapist. We're just
13:46
Speaker 3: there to try to encourage people's body to help them heal, right,
13:50
Speaker 3: to get to take their armor off. Yeah, and I
13:56
Speaker 3: after I started the practice, I went through a whole
13:59
Speaker 3: nother round of learning through experiential you know, life experiences
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Speaker 3: that actually, you know, led to me writing the book.
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Speaker 1: Okay, that's a perfect segue there, But I just want
14:11
Speaker 1: to ask you, you know, starting founding a clinic like that,
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Speaker 1: I mean, that's no small task. Not everyone does it.
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Speaker 1: What were your thoughts, what was your what was pulling
14:26
Speaker 1: you or calling you to do that? And why did
14:29
Speaker 1: you want to do that?
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Speaker 2: I think it was kind of what we're talking about.
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Speaker 3: I wanted to create a space that felt safe for people,
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Speaker 3: and that's why it's called Gainsvielle Healing House. I wanted
14:42
Speaker 3: to feel like a home because I tell people I
14:44
Speaker 3: didn't grow up in my home that I grew up
14:47
Speaker 3: in right with when I was a child. I grew
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Speaker 3: up in the bio Energetics farmhouse where this, yeah, where
14:54
Speaker 3: the Florida Society bio Energetics was.
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Speaker 2: That's where I grew up.
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Speaker 3: And so I wanted to create that for people, a
15:00
Speaker 3: place for people to grow up, right, if they were
15:03
Speaker 3: in a traumatic household, they didn't get a chance to
15:06
Speaker 3: really grow up. We grow up, you know, maybe like physically,
15:09
Speaker 3: but emotionally, we don't get a chance to actually grow
15:12
Speaker 3: And so that was kind of the driving force to
15:15
Speaker 3: starting it. And again why I called it a gainsbille
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Speaker 3: Hilling House because of that, I wanted to be a home.
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Speaker 1: Yeah that is awesome. All right, let's talk about the book.
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Speaker 1: How did that come about? When did it come about?
15:26
Speaker 1: And why did you want to write it?
15:30
Speaker 4: Yeah?
15:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mentioned earlier my my mom, you know,
15:36
Speaker 3: and my grandparents, and so this is where it kind
15:39
Speaker 3: of all comes together. So my grandparents and my mom
15:46
Speaker 3: all passed away within like a year of each other.
15:48
Speaker 2: Okay, so my grand yes, So like it was a
15:51
Speaker 2: really rough years.
15:52
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three my husband also ended up having to
15:56
Speaker 3: have like an open.
15:56
Speaker 2: Heart surgery at thirty nine years old.
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Speaker 3: Like it was just twenty twenty three was the year
16:02
Speaker 3: of just everything fell apart right in my life. And
16:08
Speaker 3: I was sitting there thinking, here I am and a
16:11
Speaker 3: very similar position to my mother, right, because my mother
16:14
Speaker 3: went through with my father these health concerns and it
16:18
Speaker 3: broke her right, and I was very humbled. I was
16:21
Speaker 3: like thinking to myself, Okay, so I've endured all this trauma,
16:25
Speaker 3: but somehow I'm still able to do this. I'm still
16:27
Speaker 3: able to go through the death of my mother, my grandparents,
16:31
Speaker 3: these major figures in my life and deal with I
16:33
Speaker 3: had a newborn at the time as well, a one
16:36
Speaker 3: month old, and my husband having open heart surgery, all
16:38
Speaker 3: of this stuff happening all at once, literally within like
16:42
Speaker 3: a month of each other.
16:43
Speaker 2: Most has happened. And I was humbled, thinking.
16:46
Speaker 3: Like I'm having a hard time right, and I'm like,
16:49
Speaker 3: how am I doing this?
16:50
Speaker 2: How am I staying in my body right? How am
16:52
Speaker 2: I not armoring up?
16:53
Speaker 3: Because I noticed I wasn't like my mother when she
16:56
Speaker 3: went through all this. She was very hard, if that
16:58
Speaker 3: makes sense. She was very You couldn't connect with her.
17:01
Speaker 3: She was busy all the time. She was running a
17:03
Speaker 3: million miles an hour again being successful. She was soldiering,
17:07
Speaker 3: and I was moving slow and I was moving mostly
17:10
Speaker 3: gentle and graceful. I had my moments, but I sat
17:13
Speaker 3: there and reflected and I said, this is because the
17:15
Speaker 3: somatic work right, I'm able to stay in my body.
17:18
Speaker 3: I'm able to cry as these things are happening. I'm
17:20
Speaker 3: able to be angry. I'm able to do all this
17:23
Speaker 3: safely and not have to disconnect from my body in
17:26
Speaker 3: order to endure it. So I was processing kind of
17:29
Speaker 3: all that, and then as I hugged my mother the
17:32
Speaker 3: very last time before she passed away, I could feel
17:35
Speaker 3: the armor on her body, and I remember hugging her
17:37
Speaker 3: with again just an open heart compassion like never before
17:40
Speaker 3: for my mother, and I remember thinking to myself, gosh,
17:44
Speaker 3: no wonder she could not receive comfort from me, my sisters,
17:47
Speaker 3: No wonder I couldn't receive comfort from her.
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Speaker 2: She has armor.
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Speaker 3: I could feel it as I hugged her, her in
17:53
Speaker 3: her body, Yes, the tension and that in my head,
17:57
Speaker 3: I said, gosh, she's a soldier. In that moment, as
18:00
Speaker 3: she's passing away, I was like, she's been a soldier
18:02
Speaker 3: her whole life. She's never she's never not been a soldier.
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Speaker 3: She's been fighting her whole life. And that's what kind
18:07
Speaker 3: of led to writing the book, is that moment because
18:09
Speaker 3: I kind of started to reflect.
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Speaker 1: That's very interesting what metaphor soldiering because it does have
18:19
Speaker 1: positive connotations to it, but here it's definitely a double
18:23
Speaker 1: edged sword, right, there are two sides to it. Talk about,
18:27
Speaker 1: if you will, how that can work for someone, but
18:32
Speaker 1: also how maybe there are some detriments and downsides to
18:38
Speaker 1: soldiering up.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, I can use like my mom's the
18:46
Speaker 3: best example, and again since she inspired it all and
18:48
Speaker 3: go with her. She was a successful veterinarian right like
18:51
Speaker 3: on National Geographic. She was amazing as a human. Her
18:56
Speaker 3: clients loved her. She was like so caring and nurturing towards.
18:59
Speaker 2: Those the pets.
19:01
Speaker 3: She started a not for profit God's Helping Hands, which
19:05
Speaker 3: was designed to help animals and help people like with
19:08
Speaker 3: special needs. She after my dad died, she moved us
19:12
Speaker 3: from Miami to Pole County, got a fifty two acre
19:15
Speaker 3: farm with probably upwards of two hundred animals that we
19:18
Speaker 3: rescued and took care of. So she's a soldier, right.
19:21
Speaker 3: She was doing all these amazing things. People would look
19:23
Speaker 3: at her and be like, wow, look at this woman, right, Yeah,
19:27
Speaker 3: they didn't know that at night she would drink herself
19:29
Speaker 3: to sleep, right, And she would drink herself to sleep
19:31
Speaker 3: every night, and she was she didn't want to live.
19:34
Speaker 2: She when she found out she was dying. She was relieved.
19:38
Speaker 3: She was not happy, right, And we knew this, my
19:41
Speaker 3: sisters and I we it was to the point if
19:43
Speaker 3: she didn't answer the phone, we would be worried that
19:45
Speaker 3: some you know, that she had harmed herself, right, so like,
19:47
Speaker 3: but again from an outside perspective, for those that didn't
19:50
Speaker 3: know her, they just saw this woman who was doing
19:53
Speaker 3: all these amazing things, right, and that's again, she was
19:57
Speaker 3: a she was a trauma soldier.
20:00
Speaker 4: So.
20:02
Speaker 1: Successful professionally from people looking out side, she was successful.
20:10
Speaker 1: But what does it mean when someone goes through life
20:17
Speaker 1: that way? I mean you talked about her not being
20:22
Speaker 1: able to absorb the love or the compassion you were
20:26
Speaker 1: getting because the walls were up, the armor was up.
20:29
Speaker 1: How does that negatively impact someone?
20:34
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh my gosh, yeah, so I think in many ways, right,
20:38
Speaker 3: like primarily in relationships. And you know we are hardwired
20:42
Speaker 3: from birth to death to need connection, right. We know
20:44
Speaker 3: those neurobiologically and trauma's soldiers, people that are living in
20:48
Speaker 3: that armor, they can't fully connect with people, right. They
20:50
Speaker 3: might be able to connect to some sort of extent,
20:53
Speaker 3: but they can't fully connect. My mom never got married again,
20:57
Speaker 3: She never really dated. She dated one person, but never
21:01
Speaker 3: really was able to open her heart.
21:03
Speaker 2: That ended horribly.
21:05
Speaker 3: With us, her children, right, like, we knew she loved us,
21:08
Speaker 3: but there she had extreme anger reactions randomly. She was
21:12
Speaker 3: extremely emotionally dysregulated. She her tolerance for.
21:16
Speaker 2: Life was about, like, you know, ten percent.
21:19
Speaker 3: She she just her her body was already full of
21:22
Speaker 3: so much trauma from the initial trauma and then losing
21:25
Speaker 3: my dad. I always describe it to my clients It's
21:27
Speaker 3: like a pressure cooker, right, and so like your body
21:29
Speaker 3: can only hold so much, and eventually, if the pressure cooker,
21:33
Speaker 3: you know, gets too full, the lid pops off. And
21:36
Speaker 3: then maybe the lid pops off just for a second,
21:38
Speaker 3: and then you work real hard to put it back on.
21:40
Speaker 2: That was my mom, right Like.
21:41
Speaker 3: So her lid would pop off, and she'd put it
21:43
Speaker 3: back on as quickly as possible. But the saddest part
21:46
Speaker 3: is again, you know, and we read her journals after
21:50
Speaker 3: she passed away, and she really struggled to feel connected
21:53
Speaker 3: to people. She struggled to feel accepted. She felt like
21:56
Speaker 3: she was always being judged things like that, right that
22:00
Speaker 3: she never felt safe, And that's the primary thing that
22:03
Speaker 3: I would say to find the trauma soldiers, like, You've
22:06
Speaker 3: built this life that should be so safe, right, but
22:09
Speaker 3: you never truly can.
22:12
Speaker 2: Exhale into it and feel safe.
22:15
Speaker 1: M hm. So let's dive into the book a little
22:18
Speaker 1: bit more. How did you well, First of all, who's
22:21
Speaker 1: it for? And what did you want to say in it?
22:28
Speaker 2: Yeah? So the book is for everyone.
22:30
Speaker 3: It can be for you know, I thought about writing
22:33
Speaker 3: it towards clients, people that were going to do the work,
22:36
Speaker 3: and then also for therapists, people that were going to
22:39
Speaker 3: offer the work, and I think, honestly, those are the
22:41
Speaker 3: same thing.
22:42
Speaker 2: If you're offering the work as a therapist, you should have.
22:44
Speaker 3: Already done it because you know, it's one of those
22:47
Speaker 3: things you should experience before doing it.
22:50
Speaker 2: So it's for anyone, really, And what I wanted to kind.
22:54
Speaker 3: Of share in the book is that there's another way
22:57
Speaker 3: of living that a lot of people are are somehow
23:00
Speaker 3: soldering right through different extents. It might look different for
23:04
Speaker 3: different people, but many of us are soldering through life
23:08
Speaker 3: rather than truly living it. And I wanted to offer
23:10
Speaker 3: this different idea that we can live, we can actually
23:13
Speaker 3: live life right, that there is safety and security in
23:16
Speaker 3: life itself, right, and we can lean into it. We
23:20
Speaker 3: can trust our bodies, we can trust ourselves, we can
23:23
Speaker 3: trust what's around us.
23:26
Speaker 2: You can feel.
23:26
Speaker 1: Safe with you know.
23:29
Speaker 3: Usual.
23:30
Speaker 4: Going back to your mom, Mom, you know there was
23:35
Speaker 4: obviously she was, like you said, super successful, professionally, obviously
23:42
Speaker 4: very intelligent.
23:44
Speaker 1: But what was it that there was something she did
23:50
Speaker 1: not want to do? She didn't she did she seek help.
23:58
Speaker 1: What is it that when people are soldering in this way,
24:01
Speaker 1: what do they do they not want to feel? Is
24:07
Speaker 1: this the trauma preventing them? Okay, talk to us about that.
24:14
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so you know trauma soldiers so much of
24:17
Speaker 3: their armor, so much of their infrastructure, is built around survival.
24:22
Speaker 2: Right. It's about getting through life, right.
24:24
Speaker 3: It's that concept that once we get this better paying job,
24:28
Speaker 3: will finally be able to live. Once we get this right,
24:31
Speaker 3: it's always seeking safety externally. Safety is not external, it's internal.
24:36
Speaker 2: Right.
24:36
Speaker 3: So obviously there's the hierarchy of needs and we need
24:40
Speaker 3: certain resources and things like that, but it's that inability
24:44
Speaker 3: to feel safe enough to feel right. So I don't
24:47
Speaker 3: remember I remember maybe a handful of time seeing my
24:50
Speaker 3: mom break to the point where she cried, right, I
24:52
Speaker 3: remember her getting angry mostly right, like going to that
24:56
Speaker 3: fight response. But it's vulnerability, right, not being able to
25:01
Speaker 3: be vulnerable within your own life, right, And all the
25:04
Speaker 3: beautiful things are come from vulnerability, right, So like relationships,
25:08
Speaker 3: true authentic relationships come from vulnerability, both with yourself and
25:11
Speaker 3: with others.
25:12
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, she spent her whole life.
25:15
Speaker 3: Avoiding feeling, right, avoiding being, and spent her whole life
25:18
Speaker 3: doing and fighting.
25:23
Speaker 1: Had she ever sought out therapy?
25:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so so.
25:30
Speaker 3: My sisters and I all kind of struggled at different
25:33
Speaker 3: points in her upbringing, and she went to therapy maybe
25:36
Speaker 3: some with that, But and the sad thing is she
25:39
Speaker 3: was only sixty six years old when she passed away,
25:42
Speaker 3: and she had just started doing sematic therapy. My sister,
25:46
Speaker 3: my younger sister, had started doing some of it and
25:48
Speaker 3: convinced her and she had started doing EMDR, which is
25:50
Speaker 3: another form of sematic therapy, and she had just started
25:54
Speaker 3: doing it before she passed away. And I think that
25:57
Speaker 3: also helped us during her Although she didn't get to
26:01
Speaker 3: do much, right, she did have some just you know,
26:04
Speaker 3: she had started to take some of the armor off
26:07
Speaker 3: right before she passed away. And we got to talk
26:09
Speaker 3: a little bit about her experiences and her trauma and
26:11
Speaker 3: things like that.
26:14
Speaker 1: You know, Kelly, as I'm talking to you, I can
26:18
Speaker 1: feel your what the appreciation, the love you have for
26:28
Speaker 1: your history and your family and the generation is behind you,
26:33
Speaker 1: and how you've like taken that and ushered that into
26:36
Speaker 1: the work you do and as it's brought you to,
26:42
Speaker 1: you know, creating the Gainesville Healing House. As we kind
26:46
Speaker 1: of wind down here, you know, you talked about you
26:50
Speaker 1: wanted to create a space where people are feel safe,
26:52
Speaker 1: where they can heal. How do you do that in
26:57
Speaker 1: the Gainesville Healing House. What are some of the like
26:59
Speaker 1: tangible things you do.
27:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think first and foremost, we're everyone here has
27:11
Speaker 3: you know, done their own work, right. I think as
27:13
Speaker 3: a therapist, it's really really important that we do our
27:16
Speaker 3: own work. I like to tell people it's okay to
27:18
Speaker 3: show people your scars, but not your wounds.
27:20
Speaker 2: Right.
27:20
Speaker 3: So it's like I think therapists doing their own work
27:24
Speaker 3: to create a space for clients that they I think
27:27
Speaker 3: clients can just sense it. Clients come in the space
27:29
Speaker 3: and they sense that they're safe here because we have
27:32
Speaker 3: been to dark places, right, Like, we know that life
27:36
Speaker 3: is not always easy. We know that it's complicated. We
27:39
Speaker 3: know that there's so much pain and shame and fear
27:41
Speaker 3: and all of this, and I would say that is
27:44
Speaker 3: the primary thing that we do here, right, and we
27:47
Speaker 3: still do. So we meet as a group and if
27:50
Speaker 3: we're having a hard time or struggling, we will feel
27:53
Speaker 3: with each other, we'll talk to each other, We're authentic
27:55
Speaker 3: with each other. It all starts, I think through that
27:58
Speaker 3: modeling and then you know, we just meet the clients
28:02
Speaker 3: where they are right And I think also really putting
28:05
Speaker 3: into foundation this idea of getting into the body that
28:08
Speaker 3: we're not like some masters of anything. There's no big
28:11
Speaker 3: egos here. It's that the client's body is going to
28:14
Speaker 3: do the healing and we're just going to provide the environment,
28:17
Speaker 3: the education, the tools to help open them right to
28:21
Speaker 3: doing their healing.
28:23
Speaker 1: Love that all right, as we wind down here, what
28:28
Speaker 1: is the best way for people to learn more about you? Again?
28:30
Speaker 1: The book is called Raised to be a Soldier. How
28:32
Speaker 1: can people access that purchase that learn more about that?
28:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we have our website, Gainsville Healinghouse dot com
28:42
Speaker 3: that people are welcome to go to. I have Instagram.
28:46
Speaker 3: Of course I'm not the best at social media, but
28:48
Speaker 3: I am on it. I have Instagram, Facebook with my
28:52
Speaker 3: name Kelly Mineesi and that you can find. And yeah,
28:56
Speaker 3: the book is available Barnes and Noble, online, Amazon, things
29:01
Speaker 3: like that.
29:02
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll have all that linked up here at the
29:05
Speaker 1: show notes page at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. Kelly,
29:09
Speaker 1: super inspiring. Really appreciated the way you articulated a lot
29:15
Speaker 1: of issues around intergenerational trauma and people healing and not healing.
29:22
Speaker 1: Love to have you back a later date. Thanks so
29:24
Speaker 1: much for being here. Appreciate you.
29:28
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
29:29
Speaker 3: It's been fun.
29:29
Speaker 1: All right, We'll be in touch. Take care,