Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 831: People Want To Be Heard with Zina Ortiz

Transcript

Episode 831: People Want To Be Heard with Zina Ortiz · The Trauma Therapist

• 0:00
  Trauma Therapist Podcast. Plus listeners can listen to episodes early and ad free right
• 0:04
  now. Become a Plus listener by going to Apple Podcasts searching for the Trauma
• 0:09
  Therapist Podcast and signing up today. All right, welcome back to the Trauma
• 0:24
  Thepist podcast. My name is Gamiferson. My mission is to help Trauma therapist
• 0:29
  be their incredible selves, to be human, to be real, not just
• 0:33
  a clinician. I'm a big believer in who we are is more important than
• 0:37
  what we know, and this requires cultivating authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability,
• 0:42
  and that requires intention. Can learn more about my courses and workshops by going
• 0:47
  to the Trauma Therapist project dot com. That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com.
• 0:53
  Let's get started, here we go. Ready, five four, three,
• 0:57
  two and one. Welcome back to the podcast. Very excited to have
• 1:02
  as my guest today, Zena Ortiz, Xena welcome. Thank you, Thank
• 1:06
  you guys for having me. You are very well for this, Thank you
• 1:11
  for this opportunity. You're welcome. Glad you're here. So. Xena Ortiz
• 1:15
  is a childhood trauma survivor. Her experiences of chronic neglect, physical, mental,
• 1:19
  and sexual abuse have provided her with a unique opportunity to embark on a
• 1:23
  personal journey of healing. Sina is the founder of Elephant in the Room group
• 1:30
  psychotherapy practice. Through her healing and her transformative process, She's gained a profound
• 1:34
  understanding of the complexities and far reaching impacts of trauma, as well as the
• 1:40
  incredible power of healing. She specializes in the treatment of complex trauma, anxiety,
• 1:45
  and depression without shaming, blaming, or minimizing the main challenge. Xena's
• 1:49
  goals as a psychotherapist are based on the belief that people want to be happy,
• 1:55
  effective, and successful in their lives, and they have within themselves the
• 1:59
  resources to achieve these goals. Xena, welcome, Thank you. It's an
• 2:04
  honor. So before we get going, Xena share with the listeners where you're
• 2:08
  from originally and where you are currently. I am originally from Mexico. I
• 2:14
  was born and raised in a small town close to Cabosa Lucas in Mexico,
• 2:19
  and I immigrated to the US when I was nineteen years old, many many
• 2:25
  many months ago and have been living in the States for over thirty years.
• 2:30
  I completed my education in my training here in the US, and I now
• 2:37
  have situated myself in the beautiful state of Colorado, and that's where I have
• 2:44
  founded my practice. Elephant in the room LLC nice nice all right. So
• 2:50
  in the bio, obviously we touched upon some things. How did all this
• 2:53
  start? For you? What take us to scareer story? It is a
• 2:58
  marvelous story. I was. I was chronically the great. I have experienced
• 3:07
  a great deal of neglect in my early childhood and uh my parents were and
• 3:13
  equipped to raise children. And was left on my crypt to cry for a
• 3:19
  whole day, and my mother went to work and left me home alone with
• 3:22
  my Crevi was a newborn, and so I wasn't properly socialized. And it's
• 3:27
  sometimes very evident and obvious in my conversations with people, and so some things
• 3:32
  have remained even though I have done tremendous deal of work. But I was
• 3:38
  always fascinated, and I always been fascinated by people and attracted me how they
• 3:45
  interact and how we respond and react. And I was actually very curious about
• 3:50
  my peers and how they interacted with each other, because I felt like an
• 3:53
  outsider, like I don't have that skill. I want to learn, and
• 3:57
  so I became the little see in my neighborhood, and I will invite my
• 4:01
  friends to come and tell me their stories. And I was I have been
• 4:05
  in I got therapist since I was eight years old, so I can say
• 4:10
  that I've been in practice most of my life. And so that's how my
• 4:15
  interest in people and the way the communicate and the way that they play the
• 4:20
  dance with one another, and there's this beautiful interaction between one person and the
• 4:27
  other, even doing conflict. It's amazing. I'm fascinated by it. So
• 4:32
  then later on I knew that I wasn't I just knew that I wasn't going
• 4:38
  to stay where I lived in my town in Mexico. And I kept thinking
• 4:42
  to myself, I have to get out of here. And I thought I
• 4:46
  was fooled by the idea that once I left, I was going to be
• 4:49
  okay from the after effects of neglect and childhood abuse. But boy, I
• 4:57
  was wrong with that. I was escaping my own on trauma. And let
• 5:01
  me let me pause here for a second. So you kind of started talking
• 5:04
  about your idea of kind of getting out of town. But before that,
• 5:11
  as a young kid, how were you having experienced all this stuff? I
• 5:17
  mean, as a twelve year old kid thirteen fourteen, fifteen sixteen. How
• 5:23
  did you show up in the world dissociated? I was not aware that I
• 5:28
  was dissociated. Although I knew that there was something that was disturbing inside me,
• 5:33
  I didn't know how to deal with it. So I did like any
• 5:38
  other trauma survivor or any other trauma victim at the time, I thought,
• 5:43
  I can just shove it down. I can shove my feelings down the shoot
• 5:46
  and I just need to think. And that's the only valuable thing about me
• 5:50
  I was. I almost felt like a robot, and I talked about it
• 5:54
  in my blog on posted on my website. I felt like a robot with
• 6:00
  set of thoughts but no emotions. Is I didn't see that that the need
• 6:03
  for emotions not none of it was helping me in a moment as was I
• 6:08
  was barely barely surviving as a child, and so I did I do I
• 6:15
  do? And so as the oldest child, uh, I was the one
• 6:21
  responsible for them. So as a parent, a fight child on top of
• 6:26
  that, and it was it was a stressful environment I knew, and it
• 6:30
  wasn't disturbing me in any positive way. And I didn't know what I was
• 6:33
  gonna do with all the suffering and then disturbing emotions. Just because I shopped
• 6:39
  them down doesn't mean that I didn't experience. Of course I did. But
• 6:43
  my only resource and my only way of resolving them was to dissociate from them
• 6:49
  or to disconnect. And so one of the things that my experiences with dissociation.
• 6:58
  We go far back, way way back. We're very good friends,
• 7:01
  and because I understand the mechanics of dissociation and well equipped to help people and
• 7:08
  support them in a healing becaustrument and association, they're like very good amigos,
• 7:14
  and they played together well. Okay, so you at some point decided that
• 7:23
  you wanted to leave right before this, I mean, at any time along
• 7:28
  this journey as a young kid, did you seek did you get therapy?
• 7:31
  Did you get any kind of help? I did receive therapy when I was
• 7:35
  in my late adolescents adolessent years, but I didn't understand it. I didn't
• 7:44
  see the point, and talking about these things, I didn't find relief.
• 7:48
  It was nice to talk about this thing, but I thought, well,
• 7:50
  I can talk about it with my friends, even though did these stories were
• 7:57
  horrifying to them and I saw the reaction. So that was another way in
• 8:03
  which I had this idea that shoving them down was best. And later in
• 8:07
  my life, in my mid twenties, I decided, I can't live with
• 8:13
  this. Just because I'm not in it doesn't mean they're not in me.
• 8:20
  And so then I started to pursue psychotherapy and getting help for myself because these
• 8:26
  things were overwhelming me. They were in my every pervasive, in my everyday
• 8:31
  experience, and anxiety was the way in which my neurobiology was letting me know
• 8:39
  that there was something in me that wasn't resolved, that needed my attention.
• 8:45
  And so during the course of treatment, and I always wanted to be a
• 8:50
  psychotherapist by the way, that was my dream, and I knew I couldn't
• 8:52
  accomplish them in Mexico. My parents weren't supportive of this idea, and so
• 8:58
  my plan was that once I emigrate to the States, that I will pursue
• 9:03
  the education, and I did in my mid twenties. As I was completing
• 9:07
  my education, I also pursued psychotherapy. Little did I know that during my
• 9:18
  graduate studies. In the beginning of my graduate studies, my first child passed
• 9:24
  away and then I'm a piece with it, and it was a horrific experience.
• 9:31
  It was a victim of a murder, and so that was an additional
• 9:39
  That was an event that prompted for me to pursue psychotherapy on be more consistent
• 9:48
  about psychotherapy. It prompt me to accelerate my own treatment. How old was
• 9:54
  your daughter? She was eighteen when she died. Yeah, oh my god,
• 10:01
  Sina. Let me just pause here. You know you're incredible. I
• 10:07
  mean, Jesus Christ, you know, you come on here and and you
• 10:13
  have this horrific background, but look at you. I mean, you've got
• 10:20
  this amazing presence, genuineness about you. You know, and I say genuine
• 10:26
  because it's clear that you know, you're you're not trying to sugarcoat anything.
• 10:35
  You know, you're you're feeling what's happened, and you know it's it's really
• 10:41
  something to be able to have a podcast where you come on, someone like
• 10:48
  you comes on, You come on and are able and willing to share this
• 10:52
  your story, and you've you're helping other people, which we will get to,
• 10:58
  but I just want to say that, thank you, yeah for that.
• 11:01
  Man. Okay, so you've decided to become a therapist, your your
• 11:07
  head on what happens, what do you do? So during the course of
• 11:11
  treatment in my psychotherapist at the time was all about cognitive behavioral and it was
• 11:20
  about sharing the story and those things help. But I thought something was missing.
• 11:24
  It was something that I wasn't being included, and there was the things
• 11:28
  that I was associated from that were being included in treatment. So during my
• 11:35
  I I decided I have to change this for myself and for you know,
• 11:43
  my own practice, a subclination that I needed to learn a new way of
• 11:48
  resolving this internal discomforts, resolving the anxiety, resolving these things that were haunting
• 11:54
  me, because it it did feel like a haunting, It did feel like
• 11:58
  an as salt at me in the middle of the day when nothing was going
• 12:03
  on. And so then I pursued trainings. Even after my graduation, I
• 12:11
  continued to pursue trainings, emdrs and s more psychotherapy. So many modalities.
• 12:16
  I think I have a whole list of them on my website. I think
• 12:20
  I learned them all because I wanted to find a solution for me. Said
• 12:26
  you felt something with the cognitive behavioral therapy, you felt something wasn't being addressed.
• 12:33
  What was that thing element that you felt wasn't being addressed. The sensations,
• 12:37
  the things in my body that bubbled to the surface and exploded like volcat
• 12:43
  in the middle of a place that didn't render. It wasn't asking for that
• 12:48
  reaction. I felt the feelings were so exaggerated, My reactions were out of
• 12:54
  control that I needed to find a way to result them because what I was
• 12:58
  doing wasn't working. Disconnecting from them wasn't resolving them. It was I felt
• 13:05
  this accumulation of sensations bubbling up inside of me, and they exploded in the
• 13:13
  most inappropriate way and the most unopportunity time. And so I made it my
• 13:20
  personal mission and my career and my profession and in my personal treatment to pursue
• 13:28
  trainings that effectively addressed these symptoms. And so I tried one, and it
• 13:35
  wasn't just a training, It was also the treatment that I pursued because I
• 13:39
  wanted to feel what it was like and what it was going to feel for
• 13:43
  the other person as I worked with them. So it was a whole holistic
• 13:48
  with the w healing myself, healing the other and also learning. So it
• 13:54
  was that combined experience that I think I got the whole thing, you started
• 14:01
  seeking uh smatic treatment, somatic therapies, and did they help you? Did
• 14:09
  you did you find some resolve there, some healing. Yes, And and
• 14:13
  of course, guys, you know there's no such thing as being done.
• 14:20
  We can be ninety years sold and we can still be and we are constantly
• 14:26
  in a place of evolution, in a state of evolution, in a state
• 14:31
  of becoming. I don't believe that we're ever done. And that has been
• 14:35
  my journey so far as that I continue to work, I still continue with
• 14:41
  therapy, to continue with my own treatment, as there's always something to work
• 14:46
  on. And you know, there's one thing that I do practice with my
• 14:52
  clients and I don't. I don't practice, I don't teach. The management
• 14:56
  of sensations are center and my clients certainly are not a cluster of symptoms.
• 15:03
  There are real people with real stories, such as myself, and it is
• 15:07
  the resolution of things. It is the resolution of trauma experiences one at a
• 15:15
  time, and of course, as mine heals, there also happens that we
• 15:20
  have this experience like dominoes where one falls and if it drops the other and
• 15:26
  then sometimes these experiences, the just traumatic experiences are, so they're in their
• 15:31
  own discrete experience that only that one is here. So it's both. But
• 15:37
  the psyche you see unconsciousness, so I like to describe it as big and
• 15:43
  wide and deep. There's so many things to do, So let's talk about
• 15:48
  the genesis of Elephant in the Room. And I love that name. So
• 15:54
  Elephant in the Room is a group psychotherapy practice that you founded. At what
• 15:58
  point did you found this and why? When I moved to Colorado And I
• 16:07
  moved to Colorado, I think it was twenty twelve. Back in that day,
• 16:11
  I was looking for a state that got a good enough economy to develop
• 16:18
  a new business, to grow a business from scratch. I was living on
• 16:22
  the West Coast and I'd been a gypsy for most of my life. And
• 16:29
  when as soon as I obtained my licensure back in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen,
• 16:36
  I had this vision, this goal of one day teaching clinations how to
• 16:41
  work with trauma. Because I had been working on it for myself, I
• 16:47
  thought, geek, I got to share this, and I'm only one and
• 16:52
  I like healing people. I love to see breakthroughs. I like to see
• 16:55
  the faces and people as they have their own breakthrough in their own resolutions resolution
• 17:03
  experiences, and so Elephant in the Room was an idea that was developed back
• 17:10
  in twenty fourteen with the goal and division to one day open a group practice,
• 17:15
  which I just started last year. By the way, I'm very excited
• 17:18
  about that. My clinicians are directly being trained by me, and they are
• 17:25
  odd by me, and they can see that, you know, you can
• 17:30
  achieve one can achieve a good enough sense of healing the experience that is not
• 17:34
  overwhelming that I'm okay in spite of everything that happened in the past, it's
• 17:41
  okay. I can still make it. It doesn't And just because those things
• 17:48
  happen, it hasn't killed my spirit and it doesn't have to kill anyone's spirit.
• 17:52
  Did it take you? Just if I may interject, and I want
• 17:56
  to continue talking about alt in the room, but did it how long did
• 18:00
  it take you to get to that point where you could say, you know
• 18:03
  what, despite all this horrible stuff that happened, I'm okay, I'm okay,
• 18:10
  I'm okay, and believe that because that's a tough that's a that's a
• 18:14
  I mean hard place to get to. I think for a lot of us.
• 18:18
  Yes, yes, well, and and and the kind of work that
• 18:22
  I have done, Boy, I have done a great deal of treatments.
• 18:26
  I can say that it's been on and off. It took me five years.
• 18:32
  I have as attending therapy weekly. I was on a mission. I
• 18:36
  have to if this is my life's mission to get this things addressed. Hey,
• 18:41
  this is this is not bad, this is pretty good. I'm in
• 18:44
  the field and that the the advantage that I have is that I am exposed
• 18:49
  to other professionals who also look for the same thing, to also look to
• 18:53
  heal others. Yeah, and we share those experiences and we share noll and
• 19:00
  and following on the steps of bigger professionals. Then that's that's that's what I
• 19:08
  have been enjoying so far. And it's not it hasn't been just a healing.
• 19:12
  It has been the experience of learning all of a great deal of skill
• 19:18
  sets, if that makes sense. So you get to Colorado, you decide
• 19:23
  you wanted to found elephant in the room, and the initial goal there was
• 19:29
  what to create an individual practice or did you want to create a group practice?
• 19:33
  A group practice I wanted to share and sharing the knowledge, sharing the
• 19:41
  experience of achieving a good enough healing experience. That was my goal and that
• 19:45
  continues to be my goal into the present. I'm excited about that. And
• 19:51
  you folks focus on what specifically to walk us through specifically and complex trauma and
• 19:59
  attachment and these things can only be healed in the relationship and within the context
• 20:04
  of a healthy relationship, and that I believe it. It can exist between
• 20:11
  a patient and a psychotherapist. So let's if we can here. And I
• 20:22
  realize everyone's different, every situation is different. But when you start to when
• 20:27
  you begin working with a client, what do you do? You know?
• 20:33
  And I want to kind of get out here because you're a unique person.
• 20:37
  We're all unique. What do you what do you what do you bring to
• 20:41
  that relationship? Do you feel from your experience presence? I think the number
• 20:48
  one the secret sauce to helping people heal is relationship. It's very simple,
• 20:57
  and we utilize so many techniques, but without the relationship, these things don't
• 21:03
  work. And what does that mean. Let's break that down a little bit.
• 21:07
  What does that mean the relationship? I know how we define that,
• 21:10
  but for you in that context, what does that mean? That's a very
• 21:15
  good question because I didn't know that when I was a kid. I believe
• 21:21
  that it's active listening in hearing stories. One of the things that I adore
• 21:27
  by my profession is hearing stories. And people really want to be heard.
• 21:33
  It's very simple, it's not complicated. People want to be heard, they
• 21:38
  want to be validated, they want to they want to hear that one is
• 21:42
  being listened and the other is hearing their experiences. And it's about being human
• 21:52
  with an in the company of another human being who has come so far,
• 21:57
  in troubled miles just to get to where we are here in my humble office.
• 22:03
  It's pretty remarkable that people do make it. People do survive or horrific
• 22:10
  events, horrific experiences, and they make the time to be here to be
• 22:15
  heard, to be seen, to be witnessed. That's that's it. It's
• 22:21
  just being witnessed. Now. You talked about your experience, your lengthy experience
• 22:30
  with with therapy for yourself and all the work you've done both in learning and
• 22:37
  in treatment and healing for yourself. But when you first started seeing clients,
• 22:44
  right, I mean compared to now, there must have been some arc of
• 22:48
  learning for yourself, of experience. What was it like when you first started
• 22:52
  seeing clients, it was pretty nervous. It was that I had I had
• 23:03
  a lot of fears, and I think this is very common in newly licensed
• 23:10
  psychotherapists or people who are perceiving pursuing this career and the helping professions. And
• 23:17
  the fear is that we're going to cause damage, more damage than anything else,
• 23:22
  but that's not really true. And just learning the basic skills of connecting,
• 23:29
  and there's a rhythm, and I believe when one is sat in front
• 23:33
  of another individual there is delicate dance like the dance that I used to observe
• 23:38
  as a child. And seeing two human beings connecting with one another and playing
• 23:45
  that dance, this back and forward energy movement with words and casting spells over
• 23:52
  each other as we exchange ideas and cause visions to occur inside of us,
• 24:00
  it's pretty magical. That's that. That was my first th Those were my
• 24:06
  first fears, And of course i UH as I learned along the way that
• 24:11
  talk therapy wasn't working for me, then it was actively looking for ways to
• 24:18
  resolve it inside me so that I can then help somebody else also resolve these
• 24:25
  internal mechanisms. When you UH, you know among the therapists that you've seen.
• 24:34
  Can you talk about an experience you had, an initial experience you had
• 24:40
  where you were like, oh my god, this is different or you know
• 24:44
  this, this is what it's about. Okay, now I feel that I
• 24:48
  get it. Yeah. Yeah. There has been many, many breakthroughs,
• 24:55
  but the most significant one that I can recall at this time I was my
• 25:02
  training with such rusby which I believe you have had interviews with, and that
• 25:11
  was with the Psychedelic Medicine, which is a service that we also provided support.
• 25:17
  And so that was the most significant significant training and experience, healing experience
• 25:22
  that I had. Had a huge breakthrough I was I became aware that I
• 25:27
  was still dissociated in the the the high value of being a witness to oneself.
• 25:40
  I believe that was the most that that was the biggest learning experience I've
• 25:45
  had, as well as a learning learning experience and also breakthrough experience. That
• 25:52
  was the hugest sleep I've ever had. And also with other treatments like sensory
• 25:59
  mores therapy, somatic experiencing an EMDR, I had breakthrough too. Not to
• 26:04
  diminish the value of these of these trainings, but this one was different.
• 26:12
  It was something that was so deeply rooted that I couldn't reach without the medicine.
• 26:19
  There was something in me that I felt still needed addressing and needed my
• 26:25
  attention that I couldn't reach without the medicine. Once once I learned how to
• 26:30
  use a medicine, and then I get it, I understand it. I
• 26:33
  can I can almost describe it with images or I can paint it to convey
• 26:41
  the message. As a result of that experience, you then went on to
• 26:47
  learn how to implement that psychedelics yourself. Yes, yes, and I combined
• 26:52
  them with other other treatment modalities, support it with medicine. Not that,
• 27:00
  and I'm not It is not my intention to say that it's like reles Is
• 27:03
  the magic cure is not, because, of course, like I said,
• 27:08
  like I expressed to you earlier in this conversation, is that we're always with
• 27:14
  creatures that are in a constant state of becoming of evolution. So I don't
• 27:19
  I don't believe that I'm done, But I certainly became aware of more stuff
• 27:25
  and I was able to address more things in a shorter amount of time.
• 27:30
  Wow, all right, So elephant in the room, that's a elephant in
• 27:36
  the Room. I'll see dot com. I'll have that link top here at
• 27:40
  the show notes page at the Trauma Theapus podcast dot com. So do you
• 27:44
  offer uh what one on one therapy, group, therapy online? What do
• 27:48
  you offer both all three things? Oh? Wow, this time we are
• 27:55
  formulating circle groups using medicine too with micro dos KETA mean when the process of
• 28:03
  developing that program, but for now we offer one on one in person and
• 28:10
  one on one via telehealth. Awesome. Awesome. So as we kind of
• 28:15
  wind down here, you know, what is the best way aside from your
• 28:18
  website? What is the best way for people to contact you? Oh,
• 28:23
  you can contact us through our email address Zena at Elephant in the Room,
• 28:30
  ellc dot com or call us at our phone number seven to zero three one
• 28:36
  zero six seven one three, and we have available space. Clinicians are hungry
• 28:41
  for work as they are looking to implement the techniques that I teach. Awesome,
• 28:48
  Sina, You're so amazing. I really are inspiring. Love to have
• 28:52
  you back at a later date. And thank you so awesome, Thank you
• 28:56
  so much for being here. Thank you, bye, thank you, take
• 29:00
  care Bye.