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Locating Myself with Dr. Arielle Schwartz · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Thepist podcast. My name is got Macpherson.
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Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
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Speaker 1: those who have been impacted by trauma. Here we go
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Speaker 1: five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm very excited to have us my
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Speaker 1: guest today, Doctor Ariel Schwartz. Ariel, welcome, Thank you guy
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Speaker 1: to Doctor Schwartz is a licensed psychologist and leading voice
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Speaker 1: in the healing of trauma. She's an internationally sought out
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Speaker 1: teacher and author of eight books, including the Post Traumatic
0:32
Speaker 1: Growth Guidebook, Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma, and Applied Polyvegel Theory
0:37
Speaker 1: in Yoga.
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Speaker 2: As the founder of.
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Speaker 1: The Center for Resilience and Informed Therapy, doctor Schwartz offers
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Speaker 1: a mind body approach to therapy for trauma and informational
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Speaker 1: mental health and wellness updates through her writing, public speaking,
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Speaker 1: social media presence, and blog. She believes that the journey
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Speaker 1: of trauma recovery is an awakening of the spiritual heart.
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Speaker 1: All right, Ariel, before we get go in here, share
0:59
Speaker 1: with our listeners where you're from originally and where you
1:01
Speaker 1: are currently.
1:02
Speaker 3: All right, that's that's a lovely place to start. I'm
1:05
Speaker 3: originally from Stonybrook, New York, on Long Island.
1:09
Speaker 2: Yeah know it, well, do you?
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Speaker 3: Yeah? And you know, spent spent my first eighteen years
1:17
Speaker 3: on Long Island, just outside the city, and a lot
1:20
Speaker 3: of time in the city as well, and slowly made
1:24
Speaker 3: my way out west. I went to college in Ohio,
1:27
Speaker 3: moved out to Colorado, which is where I am now,
1:31
Speaker 3: and I've been here for thirty years.
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Speaker 2: Oh my god.
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Speaker 1: All right, So look, you've got so much going on,
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Speaker 1: You're all over the place, You're you have this incredible reputation,
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Speaker 1: You've written these books.
1:46
Speaker 2: How did this start for you?
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Speaker 3: Yeah? I think that so often our journeys as therapists,
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Speaker 3: and especially trauma treatment specialists, begins with a bit of
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Speaker 3: our own journey, right and navigating how we come through
2:02
Speaker 3: our own childhood and our own developmental experiences. I think
2:06
Speaker 3: one of the things for me around that journey, and
2:10
Speaker 3: I've spoken pretty openly about it over the years in
2:13
Speaker 3: various places, and I'm always looking for, like, what's a
2:15
Speaker 3: different piece to share so that I'm not just repeating
2:18
Speaker 3: myself and people don't get tired of my story. But
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Speaker 3: I think that the piece that stands out for me
2:25
Speaker 3: is that there is a certain way in which we
2:28
Speaker 3: also come in somewhat primed to become who we are,
2:34
Speaker 3: right Like, there's a way in which I think I
2:37
Speaker 3: came into the world as one of those very sensitive
2:41
Speaker 3: people that has that feels a lot, And in fact,
2:46
Speaker 3: I know that's true about me, and I also when
2:49
Speaker 3: you look at kind of the combination of elements, not
2:53
Speaker 3: only did I come in with my sensitivity, but there
2:56
Speaker 3: was a lot going on in my really early life.
2:59
Speaker 3: My parents were in high strife and they separated by
3:04
Speaker 3: the time I was three. They were divorced when I
3:06
Speaker 3: was four. I had, you know, blended families and complexities
3:10
Speaker 3: around me, and as someone who took in a lot
3:15
Speaker 3: of information, processed a lot, felt a lot. I think
3:19
Speaker 3: I started to kind of carry a lot on behalf
3:22
Speaker 3: of all of the people around me, or at least
3:25
Speaker 3: that's how it felt inside of me, Like I felt
3:29
Speaker 3: so deeply the emotions of my mother, of my father,
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Speaker 3: of their conflict, of what was happening, and I think
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Speaker 3: that very kind of you know, kind nature really wanted
3:42
Speaker 3: to help, just wanted to relieve their suffering.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, for a second, if I so you're talking about
3:54
Speaker 1: your childhood here? What age are we talking about around?
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Speaker 3: You know, all of this began literally from before I
4:02
Speaker 3: was even born. There was strife in their relationship in utero.
4:07
Speaker 3: I kind of pop out into the world into a
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Speaker 3: very mixed bag, right, like both parents who really wanted
4:15
Speaker 3: me and really loved me, and who didn't have enough
4:20
Speaker 3: of their own stability, especially my father, to really be
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Speaker 3: a grounded foundation. And so I think his what I
4:30
Speaker 3: would call fragmentation or unintegrated wounds were present and in
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Speaker 3: the room and informing the earliest experiences, the earliest imprints.
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Speaker 3: So you're asking what age, I'm going to say infancy
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Speaker 3: until eighteen, right, like the entire range.
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Speaker 2: Right right, right?
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Speaker 1: So were you, I mean, to what degree were you
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Speaker 1: aware of all of this that you were carrying or
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Speaker 1: were you even aware of it? And was there a
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Speaker 1: point where you're like, oh my god.
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Speaker 3: You know right, I don't think that I had the
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Speaker 3: words for it, despite the fact that my mom's a psychologist,
5:10
Speaker 3: right like, she was doing her best, and my stepdad,
5:13
Speaker 3: who eventually came into a family, a social worker. So
5:16
Speaker 3: they tried, I think, to help find language. But in
5:20
Speaker 3: a sense, when you're still swimming in that particular ocean.
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Speaker 3: You can't see it for what it is until you
5:27
Speaker 3: start to come out of it. And for me, that
5:30
Speaker 3: tipping point was when initially when I went to college
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Speaker 3: and I started to feel a lot of anxiety. I mean,
5:37
Speaker 3: I think I had it all the way through, but
5:39
Speaker 3: like that anxiety was blocking my ability to feel comfortable socially,
5:46
Speaker 3: to navigate the world around me, to be confident, to
5:51
Speaker 3: feel worthy. And I had a lot of depression, and
5:54
Speaker 3: so I was kind of going between anxiety, depression, lack
5:59
Speaker 3: of self work and so forth, carrying a lot of shame.
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Speaker 3: And I started therapy thankfully right like that that was
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Speaker 3: part of the journey. I also was going to yoga classes,
6:10
Speaker 3: and like like, I had a good amount of support.
6:13
Speaker 3: I had a lot of you know, kind of built
6:19
Speaker 3: in capacity and strengths within my background to be able
6:25
Speaker 3: to kind of navigate enough to start to look and
6:29
Speaker 3: see who I am and how I became that way.
6:33
Speaker 3: But I would say, like that those planted the seeds.
6:36
Speaker 3: I didn't really get a clear view of myself and
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Speaker 3: my own complex trauma, which I now know that's what
6:43
Speaker 3: it was, until I want to say, my thirties, Like
6:49
Speaker 3: at that point, and after many years of committed, being
6:53
Speaker 3: committed to my own therapy and then becoming a parent,
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Speaker 3: did I start to really see clearly like, oh there
7:02
Speaker 3: were some things that were really not okay.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. When did you start to Sarah?
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Speaker 1: When did you say, all right, I want to start
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Speaker 1: I want to help people, I want to whatever that
7:15
Speaker 1: language for you was such that you were like you
7:17
Speaker 1: went to school and started doing this.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. I when I graduated from my undergraduate program,
7:23
Speaker 3: and I was like, what am I doing next? And
7:25
Speaker 3: I and I go out into the world and I
7:27
Speaker 3: started working with adjudicated youth and I loved it. Loved
7:34
Speaker 3: it is intense, right, I loved it, and I was
7:37
Speaker 3: good at it, and the kids connected to me and
7:41
Speaker 3: I connected to them, and there was some feeling of
7:44
Speaker 3: like like that. You know, sometimes people say we have
7:47
Speaker 3: kind of natural therapeutic traits, right, and we also train
7:51
Speaker 3: and we build those skills. But I think I was
7:53
Speaker 3: naturally therapeutic by nature, and I was just always one
7:57
Speaker 3: that was paying attention to what people were feeling around me, right,
8:01
Speaker 3: And like some of that really trained in my early childhood,
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Speaker 3: Like you know, I came by it, honestly.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that is an intense position to start off working with.
8:15
Speaker 1: But what do you think besides that feelingness or in
8:19
Speaker 1: addition to that, what do you think allowed you to
8:21
Speaker 1: do that well? Do that work well or get in
8:24
Speaker 1: there and appreciate that.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and that might speak to the resilient side of
8:29
Speaker 3: the story, right, Like, there was some way in which, again,
8:32
Speaker 3: growing up with my mom a psychologist, my stepdad a
8:35
Speaker 3: social worker, we had an orientation towards feelings and those
8:40
Speaker 3: conversations in our household, and so I think I came
8:44
Speaker 3: also came out with a pretty good somatic and emotional
8:49
Speaker 3: intelligence that endowed me to feel pretty comfortable in myself
8:56
Speaker 3: as I sat with other people who were suffering, and
9:00
Speaker 3: that Like, after a few years of working between my
9:04
Speaker 3: undergrad and graduate I kind of hit an edge where
9:06
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, I like doing this, but I need
9:08
Speaker 3: more skills. And so I went back to school and
9:12
Speaker 3: I studied sematic psychology, Like I had such a strong
9:17
Speaker 3: desire to understand why so much of my anxiety showed
9:20
Speaker 3: up in my body and showed up as my own
9:24
Speaker 3: kind of health consequences and brain fog and things that
9:27
Speaker 3: I was I was suffering, and so sematics felt like
9:32
Speaker 3: the wisest next choice. I also because I had a
9:37
Speaker 3: lot of brain fog and a lot of my own dissociation,
9:40
Speaker 3: a lot of struggles. I really didn't know I was smart. Like,
9:45
Speaker 3: I know it sounds kind.
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Speaker 1: Of like, but yeah, I get it, I keep going.
9:51
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to interrupt you.
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Speaker 3: But that it's such a heartbreak to say it. That's
9:56
Speaker 3: so true, And it wasn't. And I went into ROW
10:00
Speaker 3: and I love neuropa, and don't get me wrong, like
10:02
Speaker 3: it was the right choice for me, And I think
10:05
Speaker 3: I also chose it because it felt safe, like I
10:08
Speaker 3: could learn through my body, I could learn kinesthetically and
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Speaker 3: I didn't trust my intellectual mind because I couldn't hold
10:16
Speaker 3: concepts well enough. Yet it wasn't until I did a
10:21
Speaker 3: lot of what we'll call bottom appealing of really continuing
10:24
Speaker 3: to unwind my complex trauma that I actually realized I
10:31
Speaker 3: was also intellectual. I also loved and could grasp concepts,
10:39
Speaker 3: and so that was a really tremendous turning point for me.
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Speaker 1: Wow, the way you just articulated that those experiences in
10:50
Speaker 1: your life is pretty profound.
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Speaker 2: I think.
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Speaker 1: You know when you said you were really kind of
10:58
Speaker 1: pull to understanding somatics and getting more into that. I
11:02
Speaker 1: was thinking, that seems kind of a little bit before
11:07
Speaker 1: it's taught. A lot of people weren't doing that. Yeah,
11:11
Speaker 1: And certainly when I started getting into this, I was
11:14
Speaker 1: not like when people were like, fill into your body, like.
11:17
Speaker 2: What are you talking about? I was not that at all.
11:21
Speaker 1: But you also said you kind of felt home there
11:27
Speaker 1: because you felt you weren't smart intellectually. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, a lot in there. You know. For me,
11:36
Speaker 3: one of the ways in which I'll say kind of
11:39
Speaker 3: dissociation manifested for me, if that's the right framing of this,
11:45
Speaker 3: is that I would go into such profound freeze states,
11:50
Speaker 3: and in the freeze state, my mind couldn't think, I
11:56
Speaker 3: couldn't verbalize, I would just all of this would shut down.
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Speaker 3: But what I did feel was a lot of intensity
12:05
Speaker 3: inside that couldn't come out, that got kind of stuck.
12:10
Speaker 3: And so I was very prone to either not feeling
12:14
Speaker 3: or flooding. And so the experience of where so much
12:21
Speaker 3: sematically for me got stuck or bogged down, I think
12:26
Speaker 3: because of that it almost amplified my relating to my
12:30
Speaker 3: felt sense. And then I had some early experiences of
12:36
Speaker 3: introductions to sematics, both through yoga, and I became a
12:40
Speaker 3: yoga teacher in nineteen ninety six when I was twenty two.
12:43
Speaker 3: I was like, I want to do that. And then
12:46
Speaker 3: I had some experiences with body mind centering and movement
12:50
Speaker 3: practices that gave me this felt sense of like home
12:55
Speaker 3: or wholeness, and I was like, I want that. And
12:58
Speaker 3: so a friend of mine told me about neuropis sematic
13:01
Speaker 3: program well before semantics was popular.
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Speaker 1: So you go there, and are you thinking about becoming
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Speaker 1: a therapist or psychologist and what does that journey look like.
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Speaker 3: I'm sure that at some level I was thinking of
13:16
Speaker 3: that because obviously my mom modeled is in a sense
13:20
Speaker 3: my mom's psychologist and my stepdad, and so I knew
13:23
Speaker 3: that was a professional trajectory that I could take, and
13:26
Speaker 3: it again felt safe and that I think I was
13:31
Speaker 3: still in survival in that initial graduate program. I know
13:36
Speaker 3: I was still in survival. I was still trying to
13:39
Speaker 3: locate myself and come out of these kind of extreme
13:45
Speaker 3: states that I was pretty stuck in. And then it
13:48
Speaker 3: wasn't until and thankfully we were required to be in therapy.
13:52
Speaker 3: Like hallelujah, right, So again like just going every week
13:58
Speaker 3: and unpacking and winding and making sense and collecting recollecting myself.
14:08
Speaker 3: And there's a tipping point that I think can happen
14:13
Speaker 3: when we have complex trauma and we are just walking
14:16
Speaker 3: that healing path and we go again and again and again,
14:19
Speaker 3: and we sit in the discomfort, and there was a
14:22
Speaker 3: tipping point in which IES just started to feel like
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Speaker 3: I had a self.
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Speaker 1: You know.
14:28
Speaker 3: I mean, that's like an amazing thing to cultivate when
14:34
Speaker 3: at some point we feel like we've lost that like
14:37
Speaker 3: to or never got to build it in the first place.
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Speaker 3: And I don't think that was one hundred percent true
14:42
Speaker 3: for me. I think I had a lot of self
14:45
Speaker 3: in there that was just very, very layered upon and
14:49
Speaker 3: covered up for me from a lot of trauma.
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Speaker 1: And that tipping point was what happened as a result
14:56
Speaker 1: of that.
14:56
Speaker 2: We're out to that.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, tipping point that changed I think things for me
15:01
Speaker 3: both personally and professionally. I felt like I could maintain
15:09
Speaker 3: enough of a self to build a relationship with now
15:13
Speaker 3: my husband, we've been married for almost, you know, twenty
15:15
Speaker 3: five years, we've been together for longer. I was able
15:19
Speaker 3: to have enough self to actually trust that I wanted
15:23
Speaker 3: to go back to school again and go get a
15:26
Speaker 3: doctorate in clinical psychology at a APA accredited program and
15:31
Speaker 3: kind of like, go this much more traditional route and
15:34
Speaker 3: that I wasn't going to feel like I was floundering
15:38
Speaker 3: because I couldn't think, you know, so I was able
15:41
Speaker 3: to really integrate that intellectual curiosity with my embodied sense,
15:49
Speaker 3: with a social relational capacity, like those are all things
15:53
Speaker 3: that I had to really strengthen and cultivate and trust
15:58
Speaker 3: within myself. I think all of those, you know, were
16:02
Speaker 3: part of that tipping point of health and well being.
16:07
Speaker 3: And then I just started to write like NonStop once
16:11
Speaker 3: I found that love for writing and that it helped
16:14
Speaker 3: me heal. My first book, The Complex PTSD Workbook, was
16:19
Speaker 3: a book that I was writing in just as much
16:22
Speaker 3: because those were the tools that helped me put myself
16:25
Speaker 3: back together right. And that book has still remained a
16:30
Speaker 3: best seller. It's you know, just done incredibly well. And
16:34
Speaker 3: the feedback that I continue to get over It's been
16:38
Speaker 3: almost ten years since I wrote that book, and the
16:41
Speaker 3: feedback that I receive over these years is extraordinary, Like,
16:45
Speaker 3: you know what it's like to be me? This helped
16:47
Speaker 3: me beyond measure.
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Speaker 2: That's so amazing.
16:49
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so inspiring and so beautiful because as
16:52
Speaker 1: you're talking, you can you can feel your experience and
16:59
Speaker 1: how that has manifested in the books you've done and
17:02
Speaker 1: the work you do, which is which is amazing. I
17:06
Speaker 1: just want tomind everyone I'm speaking with doctor Eric Schwartz.
17:10
Speaker 1: One of the things you had mentioned, you know, I
17:14
Speaker 1: asked about what one of the things you want to
17:17
Speaker 1: talk about, and you'd mentioned intricative trauma treatment and modalities
17:24
Speaker 1: and stuff. And it's so you can from everything, from
17:28
Speaker 1: what little you've said and how much you've said, you
17:29
Speaker 1: can feel how all these pieces fit together in the
17:33
Speaker 1: work you do. As we sit here now. I mean,
17:38
Speaker 1: obviously there's so much out there now, so much happening
17:40
Speaker 1: in terms of trauma treatment modalities. When when I when
17:47
Speaker 1: I say to you, what is that? What does intricative
17:50
Speaker 1: trauma treatment mean? What do you say? Yeah, go go
17:56
Speaker 1: for it.
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Speaker 3: So for me, integrative trauma treatment is the recognition that
18:03
Speaker 3: just one modality, especially for complex trauma, is typically not enough,
18:08
Speaker 3: and that if we are too wetted to the lane
18:11
Speaker 3: of just one modality, we might be more wetted to
18:14
Speaker 3: our protocols than to the people that are sitting in
18:18
Speaker 3: front of us. And so the integrative approach is really
18:22
Speaker 3: about having enough of a ground in. It's all rooted
18:26
Speaker 3: in relationship. Like nothing. None of the modalities that we
18:30
Speaker 3: might integrate, whether it's somatics or EMDR or parts work
18:34
Speaker 3: therapies or applied polyvagal theory, and all of those are
18:37
Speaker 3: part of the model, but none of them really hold
18:40
Speaker 3: water if we don't know how to really sit with
18:43
Speaker 3: ourselves and sit with another person. So it starts there, yeah,
18:48
Speaker 3: and then from there we can start to recognize, Wow,
18:53
Speaker 3: I think that this person that I'm sitting with has
18:56
Speaker 3: some dissociative fragmentation. I feel comfortable working with that because
19:01
Speaker 3: I know how to be with that and to do
19:05
Speaker 3: compassion work and do parts work and really attend to
19:09
Speaker 3: the parts that got lost in trauma time. And I
19:11
Speaker 3: have that depth of understanding. I know how to bring
19:15
Speaker 3: in EMDR and how EMDR can be helpful both for
19:20
Speaker 3: like a single incident trauma, but also for the kind
19:24
Speaker 3: of messiness of complex PTSD fanatic sits at the heart
19:29
Speaker 3: of all of this, right, Like, we're going to keep
19:32
Speaker 3: back to that felt sense.
19:35
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about an early clinical error
19:39
Speaker 1: and before I do, I mean you talked about the
19:41
Speaker 1: importance of the relationship as a starting point, and from
19:45
Speaker 1: what you said about your early work with educated youth,
19:52
Speaker 1: you sound like you might be one of those incredible
19:54
Speaker 1: people who just developing the relationship was just purely natural.
20:00
Speaker 2: Was that is that true for you?
20:02
Speaker 1: Sure?
20:03
Speaker 2: Yes?
20:03
Speaker 3: And right like, like you know, that doesn't mean I
20:06
Speaker 3: can't think of clinical errors.
20:08
Speaker 2: Well let's go there.
20:09
Speaker 1: I'm interested in what those were like for you.
20:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would say, like the thematic piece around
20:17
Speaker 3: the clinical errors. And thankfully, like I've had great supervision
20:22
Speaker 3: over the years, I've had a phenomenal mentor that I've
20:24
Speaker 3: been able to really learn from and process process those
20:28
Speaker 3: places where we get stuck. And I would say that
20:30
Speaker 3: one of the biggest themes for me had to do
20:33
Speaker 3: not with the inability to form a relationship, but that
20:38
Speaker 3: I could form the relationship so well I could even
20:41
Speaker 3: sense what might be needed by the other person, but
20:45
Speaker 3: sometimes it would lead me to actually override some of
20:50
Speaker 3: my own boundary needs or my own recognition of like
20:55
Speaker 3: when actually to pull back. I think that I was
20:58
Speaker 3: one of those kind of like like give it all
21:01
Speaker 3: kind of people and so sometimes getting myself into situations
21:06
Speaker 3: where I was offering too much pro bono work, too
21:10
Speaker 3: much attending to the needs of the other person in
21:15
Speaker 3: ways that actually facilitated a little bit of their dependency
21:22
Speaker 3: on me, versus really staying kind of clinically separate enough,
21:28
Speaker 3: not that that open heart isn't a great gift to
21:31
Speaker 3: bring to therapy, but clinically separate enough to actually recognize
21:36
Speaker 3: when we were done, recognize when actually that kind of deep,
21:41
Speaker 3: well intentioned goodness in me wasn't enough to get someone
21:47
Speaker 3: to that next stage of their process. It's an interesting
21:54
Speaker 3: piece to think about, Like there's a lot that we
21:56
Speaker 3: bring is kind of naturally therapeutic, but sometimes I think
22:00
Speaker 3: I needed to pull back more and reflect on the
22:04
Speaker 3: fact that, like, maybe I'm actually not helping this person anymore.
22:08
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm hm. It reminds me of one of my
22:13
Speaker 1: early experiences when I was starting out and.
22:17
Speaker 2: I was so.
22:21
Speaker 1: Excited about showing my clients what I knew, you know,
22:26
Speaker 1: and and bringing in these new interventions, and I sat
22:30
Speaker 1: down with one of my first supervisors and I was
22:34
Speaker 1: so frustrated and because my client, this one particular client,
22:38
Speaker 1: wasn't listening to me and you're not doing what there's
22:41
Speaker 1: what I'm what I want.
22:42
Speaker 2: Them to do.
22:43
Speaker 1: And she looked at me and she's like, God, let
22:45
Speaker 1: me tell you something. Let me ask you something. What
22:47
Speaker 1: makes you think they need to listen to you?
22:50
Speaker 2: Yeah? Like and I was like, it just it kind
22:56
Speaker 2: of like was that was? That was that?
22:58
Speaker 1: It just stopped everything for me And that was a
23:01
Speaker 1: big learning point for me. It's so very interesting this
23:07
Speaker 1: concept of therapy. You know, what do you see your
23:12
Speaker 1: role as?
23:14
Speaker 3: Yeah? I love that story. Guy, It's a really powerful
23:18
Speaker 3: one because I think that, especially as someone who is
23:22
Speaker 3: a writer and a teacher and loves to teach about therapy,
23:26
Speaker 3: like I actually have to really remind myself to take
23:31
Speaker 3: off that hat so that when I'm showing up with
23:34
Speaker 3: another person and that beautiful, you know, perspective of like
23:39
Speaker 3: so much of what we do in that clinical seat
23:42
Speaker 3: is listen and listen deeply and listen meaningfully, and listen
23:48
Speaker 3: in a way that helps other people really find and
23:52
Speaker 3: feel themselves through that clear mirror that we can offer
23:58
Speaker 3: not because we have the right technique, the right information,
24:02
Speaker 3: the right psycho education, but because we see them right.
24:06
Speaker 3: And I think that in some ways that's answering your question.
24:09
Speaker 3: When I'm in that seat of the psychotherapist, it's to
24:14
Speaker 3: be that clear mirror.
24:18
Speaker 1: I'm assuming a part of that came naturally to you. Yeah,
24:26
Speaker 1: what I mean? You shared some of your experiences growing up,
24:34
Speaker 1: you know, disclosing that to clients, sharing that with clients,
24:40
Speaker 1: revealing certain vulnerabilities to clients. What was that like for you?
24:45
Speaker 1: How did you learn to juggle that.
24:48
Speaker 2: In a sense?
24:51
Speaker 3: Right? And it's an interesting question too, because, like you know,
24:54
Speaker 3: this this interview being a perfect example of like, I'm
24:58
Speaker 3: pretty out there who I am in the world. It
25:01
Speaker 3: doesn't take much for someone who's working with me to
25:06
Speaker 3: find some of my stories out there. And sometimes I'll
25:10
Speaker 3: use self disclosure, right if it's if it's valuable to them,
25:15
Speaker 3: I'll put self disclosure in the mix. But I think
25:18
Speaker 3: that for the most part, the knowing of myself helps
25:24
Speaker 3: me be as aware, not perfect, but as aware as
25:29
Speaker 3: I can be about what I might be bringing into
25:32
Speaker 3: the room and how that might be part of the
25:37
Speaker 3: mix of the exchange, both on the healing side, what
25:41
Speaker 3: I might be bringing into the room that's beneficial, but
25:44
Speaker 3: also sometimes what I might be bringing into the room
25:47
Speaker 3: that might be interfering. And this is where you know,
25:50
Speaker 3: good clinical supervision and consultation can really come in. Is
25:54
Speaker 3: like what am I missing? What am I not seeing
25:57
Speaker 3: about myself and how I might be contributing to this
26:00
Speaker 3: dynamic or to where my client is not making progress.
26:05
Speaker 1: You know, obviously we have a lot of listeners who
26:10
Speaker 1: are therapists of all different kinds hearing you talk. You know,
26:15
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit about intrigative treatments and so forth,
26:17
Speaker 1: and you mentioned somatics and MDR and parts work for
26:22
Speaker 1: those listening, how the hell do you start?
26:26
Speaker 2: Where do you start?
26:27
Speaker 1: Maybe I should I need to do what doctor Eryel
26:29
Speaker 1: Schwartz is doing. Where do you what do you recommend
26:33
Speaker 1: to people? What do you suggest?
26:35
Speaker 3: Right? And I'm thinking that you're asking, like where do
26:38
Speaker 3: I start in regards to like my training, or like, yeah,
26:41
Speaker 3: how do I put this toolbox together?
26:44
Speaker 2: Thank you for clarifying my question.
26:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I, you know, start where it feels most
26:53
Speaker 3: natural and in the way that's going to best support
26:56
Speaker 3: your growth. Like if I were to name the various
26:59
Speaker 3: pieces of training that I've done over the years, I have,
27:05
Speaker 3: you know, years of training in sematics. I have a
27:08
Speaker 3: yoga teacher certification. That again, those go back thirty years.
27:13
Speaker 3: I did my EMDR training in two thousand and one,
27:16
Speaker 3: so again it's been a while. And then I've been
27:22
Speaker 3: in mentorship and in trainings in geshtalt work for sixteen
27:26
Speaker 3: seventeen years. So a lot of this was kind of
27:30
Speaker 3: following what lit me up, what helped me find more
27:38
Speaker 3: of an understanding about myself. Why did I do an
27:40
Speaker 3: EMDR training because it changed my life? Like EMDR was
27:45
Speaker 3: magic for my own personal development? Why did I go
27:50
Speaker 3: to sematics? We talked about that already, but also because
27:54
Speaker 3: I needed to find the ground underneath me. So like
27:59
Speaker 3: we get to keep being lifelong growers, learners, healers, healing
28:05
Speaker 3: themselves in a sense, right, so we get to follow
28:10
Speaker 3: I know so many people that are like, I'm going
28:12
Speaker 3: to go to this IFS program because it's helping me
28:14
Speaker 3: work with my own parts. Great, right, Like, get to
28:17
Speaker 3: know what helps you because that will also help you
28:21
Speaker 3: help others. How So, because if we don't have a self,
28:33
Speaker 3: how do we help someone else find that? And if
28:38
Speaker 3: we haven't done work on what we might call our
28:41
Speaker 3: own blind spots, we won't be able to see those
28:43
Speaker 3: places with others love it.
28:49
Speaker 1: Damn, why did it take you so long to get
28:54
Speaker 1: on this podcast?
28:56
Speaker 2: That's what I want to know.
28:57
Speaker 3: Thanks for bringing me in. I've really been looking forward
29:01
Speaker 3: to this.
29:02
Speaker 1: All right, Look, you've got so many books out. As
29:07
Speaker 1: we kind of wind down here, where are you at now?
29:11
Speaker 1: What's present for you? What's on the top of your
29:14
Speaker 1: mind or the forefront of your mind in terms of
29:17
Speaker 1: the work you're doing.
29:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, I really love teaching the integrative model, and I
29:23
Speaker 3: think that the experience in particular. One thing we didn't
29:28
Speaker 3: quite mention, and I'll bring it in here is that
29:30
Speaker 3: I call my work resilience informed therapy. Why resilience informed
29:35
Speaker 3: therapy because as someone who's trained so much in trauma
29:38
Speaker 3: treatment modalities, what it felt like was that putting all
29:42
Speaker 3: of our attention on what was wrong? What are the symptoms?
29:44
Speaker 3: What are the problems? It became all that I could
29:47
Speaker 3: see and all that my clients can see. And so
29:51
Speaker 3: I teach this resilience informed therapy approach, which is the
29:55
Speaker 3: integrative approach, because it also builds in how how are
30:00
Speaker 3: we identifying what's already working? What are the strengths, what
30:04
Speaker 3: is the beautifully endowed kind of spiritual nature of this
30:08
Speaker 3: person sitting in front of me. What are their gifts? What?
30:12
Speaker 3: What are they going to teach me?
30:13
Speaker 2: Right Like?
30:14
Speaker 3: It's so beautiful to have this opportunity to sit with
30:18
Speaker 3: someone else. It's such an honor and to actually discover
30:22
Speaker 3: the beauty that lives inside of you, right Like, That's
30:26
Speaker 3: what keeps me going in this work. And So if
30:29
Speaker 3: it's just about kind of like like checking off another
30:32
Speaker 3: box about a training, right if it's about another way
30:37
Speaker 3: to like feel inspired to sit with other people and
30:41
Speaker 3: be inspired by other people, beautiful follow that. So, you know,
30:46
Speaker 3: whether it's the trainings that I offer in you know,
30:49
Speaker 3: any one of those specific modalities somatic EMDR or the
30:54
Speaker 3: whole model, the resilience informed model, or the therapeutic yoga
30:58
Speaker 3: as we bring that into psychotherapy, or applied polyvagel theory
31:02
Speaker 3: as we bring that into places like those are the
31:05
Speaker 3: works that I put out there, but they're all essentially
31:07
Speaker 3: housed in this resilience informed approach that recognizes that not
31:12
Speaker 3: only can we heal trauma, but we can grow from it.
31:15
Speaker 1: Wow, Ariel, what is the best way for people to
31:20
Speaker 1: learn more about what you're doing?
31:22
Speaker 3: Here's the good news. I'm kind of easy to find.
31:25
Speaker 3: Look for doctor Ril Schwartz and you'll find me right.
31:29
Speaker 3: Whether it's doctor Oriol Schwartz on Facebook, whether that's my website,
31:33
Speaker 3: doctor Oriol Schwartz. You can look up Resilience Informed Therapy.
31:36
Speaker 3: Instagram's different because it's Aril Schwartz Boulder. The YouTube YouTube
31:41
Speaker 3: has a lot out there. Dr Oriol Schwartz again, you know.
31:44
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll have all this linked up here at the
31:47
Speaker 1: show notes page at the Trauma therapistpodcast dot com. Ariel,
31:50
Speaker 1: You're welcome back anytime. I mean that sincerely. You're freaking inspiring.
31:56
Speaker 1: My god, thank you so much for being here. Thank
31:59
Speaker 1: you to all Right club a