#85 “Why Am I Like That?” – convert Pain to Power – Natalia Rachel

A candid and inspiring conversation with Natalia Rachel, a trauma expert and survivor. Witness the transformative power of healing as Natalia shares her journey of overcoming trauma and finding empowerment. Through heartwarming insights and vulnerability, we explore the impact of trauma on relationships, the importance of supportive connections, and the liberating realisation that healing is a lifelong, empowering journey.

Discussion Topics: Why Am I Like That?” – convert Pain to Power

• Today’s Topic – Trauma
• Natalia’s Story
• What is Trauma?
• Relationships and Trauma
• What is Natalia’s Biggest Realisation in Trauma?
• Unresolved Traumas
• What is the Best Way To Look at Traumas?
• Boundaries – Right or Wrong?
• Healing from Generational Trauma
• Sharing a Message to the Children

Transcript: Why Am I Like That?” – convert Pain to Power

Yana Fry: Natalia, thank you so much for joining us today at Timeless Teachings.

Natalia Rachel: Thank you for having me. I’m so pleased to be here.

Today’s Topic – Trauma

Yana Fry: And I’m looking at you and I see a gorgeous, glowing, very happy woman, and it’s very interesting because the topic for today is trauma. And I feel that you’re such a wonderful example of someone who has had a direct experience with that. And so you live through this yourself and also professionally you work with people helping them to deal with that.

And you walk the talk, right? So when I look at you, you look to me as just a very content, very joyful, very fulfilled person and a woman. And I think this is what we wanna see at the end of the result when we work with traumas. So maybe let’s just dive into the subject and I also wanna give a very short warning to our audience. So every time we talk about trauma, if you are going through something really traumatic right now, it could trigger you because then it might ask you to look deeper at things. And if it is you right now, then I’m just asking please be gentle with yourself. Take it step by step.

Ask for support and for help. And at any time of our conversation today, if Natalia or myself share something that you feel maybe is too much for you to hear at the moment, it’s okay to pause and come back later. So with this kind of journey of healing, we always want to make sure that we are ready, that we are strong enough and that we are fully supported.

And so with that, I just would like you Natalia to share with us a little bit about your story.

Natalia’s Story

Natalia Rachel: What a beautiful trauma-informed introduction. Thank you for setting the safe space for this conversation and the listeners. My journey has been a complex, non-linear, messy one, and it continues. I believe I will always be healing. So even though you’ve reflected back to me where I am, which is in a really good embodied place, I do believe that healing is a lifelong, endless journey.

I grew up with a lot of trauma. I’ve lived through many difficult things and the trauma that I experienced then went on to decontextualize through my mind, my body, and my relationships. At age 17, I experienced mental health misdiagnosis but actually what was happening for me was I was having a reaction to living within really abusive dynamics.

And at age 24, my trauma started to speak through my body. It started as whispers and it became screens, and I became very unwell. And the doctors didn’t know what was going on, so they continued to medicate me and try many different things. And so for about 17 years, I was lost in the medical system first in the framework of a mental health condition, and then under the framework of a non-diagnostic, Physical health condition, and there were periods where I didn’t have use of my legs.

I was not able to use my hands. It really was manifesting through every system in my body. And I was told that if the illness didn’t kill me, that the medication and the treatments that are on would kill me. And so to be told that, As a young woman in my early twenties was pretty devastating and I’ve always had a really strong spirit, so I always tried to make the best of it and find ways to cope and live as happily as I could within the context of what was my current reality.

But when I looked through the lens of trauma, I started to make sense and when I started exploring somatics and the story of my body, I was finally able to come home to myself and begin the process of healing.

And then when I looked through the lens of relationship dynamics and systems, everything made sense on a deeper level, and I was able to unearth the systems and the dynamics that were perpetuating my pain. So it’s been a really long journey and after sorting through many layers of healing, I ended up studying and working in the field and now my focus is on speaking and writing and creating content and experience that empower as many of us as possible to heal.

Yana Fry: Thank you for sharing. It’s so beautiful and so honest and so deep, and I thank that we can all relate to trauma to some extent. We all had it or maybe still have it. It’s just part of human existence and our experience, and I don’t think there is a single human being in the past, present or future, who was able to live through entire life without ever going through trauma. I don’t even think it’s possible.

So it is something, it’s inevitably part of our existence and our experience, and it is how we deal with that. And how we process is, but actually determines the quality of our life and the direction of our life. But you are a wonderful example who is healed enough to actually hold space for others and do your beautiful work. And I can also. Remember myself, like you shared little bit about your upbringing, and I think I’m also one of those people who just went through a very difficult time, especially in my childhood informing, yes, there were all abusive and traumatic things were happening, and it took me, I think on average it was maybe about 12 years of like really deep work leaving no stone unturned travelling around the world, studying with whoever promised any kind of liberation and ease of pain. And and then eventually I find yes, if we put in the work like you did, then we all arrive in this space where life finally seems to be happening for us and not to us.

Natalia Rachel: I think when we do enough healing work, we move into a space where we can access agency and choice. And the moment we can access agency and choice, we are no longer at the mercy of our trauma or the world around us. We become creators. But the difficult thing is when we have trauma coursing through our nervous system and shaping our psyche.

We fundamentally are experiencing this deep sense of disempowerment. So if somebody comes along and says, just choose it. Just choose your healing. Just change your life. It feels impossible. And it can actually also be received as re-traumatizing because it can feel like no one really understands. I can’t, I want it, but I can’t, and so I can’t. Is this direct?

Kind of an organising principle that goes with this sense of powerlessness that is synonymous with trauma. And as we learn to show up as people that support others through their healing, we can understand this and that every time we offer agency and choice within a dynamic or relationship, we are providing an invitation to heal and to that emancipation.

What is Trauma?

Yana Fry: And this is a beautiful description and how about we give a definition of trauma, so to make sure that we all understand what we’re talking here about.

Natalia Rachel: Trauma is when a past experience of threat that’s over is living and breathing in us now, and it can affect us physiologically, mentally, emotionally, and relationally or dynamically. It’s largely unconscious, nonverbal. And it’s felt, so it’s somatic in nature and it speaks through sensations, emotions, and relating patterns, and it travels through relationships, communities, and cultures.

I think it’s also important to understand trauma is not the past event itself, it’s how it’s left unmetabolized inside us and how it alters the way we perceive, express, and relate. People could go through the same experience, but have different levels of trauma or potentially no trauma at all.

Yana Fry: It’s a very interesting observation and it brings to my memory even examples from my own family. Like I have a brother who is 10 years older than myself, and even trauma like your parents separating, which many children go through these days, and it’s like one of those early days. Many experiences, and this was very interesting.

So here we are coming from the same family, two siblings, going through exactly the same life scenario and having an entirely different response to it. That pretty much until now determined the course of our life. Where I guess in my case, just maybe how I was very young at the time, but maybe just how my mind was wired.

I use this as a fuel to figure out what’s happening and how can I master this and what can I do about it? And my brother went in the entirely opposite direction blaming, complaining. It’s always someone else’s fault. And that’s impacted just as you said, not only him and his physiology, but also relationships with people around him and now he’s in his third marriage, it’s amazing how it actually has less to do with what is happening or has happened, but more how we react or respond to it.

Relationships and Trauma

Natalia Rachel: Absolutely, and our ability to process and metabolise and integrate trauma is very complex and unique, but it’s all about resources. So we can consider our physical health and mental health baseline at the time of the trauma and shortly after the trauma. But the most important thing that we need to consider is the quality of our relationships.

So when we are able to move through, Difficult experiences or be met after difficult experiences with kind, caring, compassionate people, we’ll be more likely able to metabolise them cuz we share a capacity for the healing, whereas if we go through difficult experiences and don’t have anybody there to be with us, to hear us, and to validate and share that capacity, we’re more likely to end up with more severe, unresolved complex trauma. So the relationship piece is key.

What is Natalia’s Biggest Realisation in Trauma?

Yana Fry: So all this journey that you went to in your own healing, what were some of your biggest realisations for yourself?

Natalia Rachel: For me, the biggest initial realisation was that in the context of trauma, I make sense. So I was always wondering from a very young age, why am I like this? What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel like something’s different or not as it should? Why am I not like everybody else? So I was cloaked in shame for most of my life, wondering what was wrong.

But once I started to understand myself in the context of trauma, it made more sense. I could let go of shame, which was one of the biggest things that was blocking me, from moving forward with my healing and learning to love myself, and also allowing others to love me. Another really big piece for me was around understanding and healing my nervous system.

Unresolved Traumas

Yana Fry: And there’s a common belief in a society that when we talk about trauma, then often people say first of all it’s largely for women, maybe for younger women even, and definitely not for men. So you know, guys are strong and trauma, what kind of trauma do you have? Trauma. I don’t have any trauma.

So it is very interesting. Reality, how unresolved traumas in all kinds of people, including men showing up, for example, at work. And when we have leaders, who have never done any work because they may be perceived to be too soft. And too vulnerable and too threatening. And some cultures are more open, some less open to this kind of work also culturally.

But then, we end up having people who never actually looked at that. And just as you said, it impacts. Everything. It impacts how they run their businesses. It impacts how they run countries. It impacts what’s happening within the families. And I know that you have done a lot of work with people in different positions in social circles.

You are working with companies also currently. So could you just share with us. What are your observations about that and what it is that we can all do to help each other to heal that in a safe way?

Natalia Rachel: When a person in a position of power, such as a leader or an authority figure is holding unresolved trauma, it will decontextualize. Into the dynamics of the family, the community, or the system that they are leading. And so when someone in this position hasn’t done their healing work, they continue to recreate these cycles of oppression and bias and exclusion and in inequity that we are trying so hard to remedy.

And so what I see in the corporate landscape at the moment is there’s a lot of. Very good intentions. But because a lot of them aren’t focusing on the healing and integration and embodiment of leadership, they often don’t integrate. Or they might work for a short time, like a bandaid, but then the wound keeps weeping and there’s some other manifestation of the trauma.

And the longer this happens, the more diffuse and complicated. It begins to get and so this is a very big thing I see when it comes to D E I, diversity, equity, inclusion, and mental health initiatives in organisations. And I think if we really want to create systemic change, we need to come back to doing our own healing work.

So, heal your trauma, change the world. When leaders have reached a certain level of their own internal peace. To be able to own and master their power. They’re going to show up in ways where they can distribute power and where they can create equity and harmony through their own embodied examples.

And it’s been interesting stepping into this space in recent years. The organisations that I do work with all already have leadership that really wanna commit to this journey.

It’s at least a two year process and you’re gonna need to get vulnerable and be part of the process. And The organisations I work with, they’re all in. But there’s a lot of organisations who aren’t really up for that. And usually it comes down to not wanting to invest the resources, whether that be time or money.

And so when we look at traditional business models, it’s important for us to get really real and honest about it. Business is about money, it’s about profit, and that’s never going to change and nor should it. But if we want systemic change in healing through an organisation, we need to reimagine what a business model looks like and include different markers for success.

And when we heal, we move towards a state of sustainability. So there’s not gonna be any more. Let’s create a unicorn and let’s increase our profit by 400%. It’s gonna be about finding slow sustainable growth. And If we really wanna put our money where our mouth is when it comes to organisational culture, we are going to have to adopt that philosophy for business.

What is the Best Way To Look at Traumas?

Yana Fry: It is such a wonderful future that we can create if we only all do that.

How and what is the best way To maybe at least start looking at traumas for people who are listening to it right now and they go I feel there is something for me to look at. And so where do I begin?

Natalia Rachel: Beautiful way to begin is to explore our experience of safety versus threat, and also our experience of self-care versus self abandonment. So these are really two common threads for continued inquiry as we heal. So when we are feeling anxious or fearful or distressed, we can learn to check in with our nervous system and ask, am I experiencing safety or threat right now?

And in these instances, it will most likely be a sense of threat. The next question that we can ask ourselves is this threat needed? Right here now in the present. And if someone is actually threatening us, then yes it is. But in the case of trauma, we’re often experiencing the past threat in the present.

So the threat response may not be needed right now. And once we realise that our nervous system will automatically start to come out of a threat response. And when that happens, we can engage with a lot more conscious intention. So that’s number one. To unlink the past in the present by questioning or inquiring as to whether our sense of threat is needed right now when it comes to self-abandonment versus self-care.

I believe self-abandonment is the disease of our generation. We have learned to be people pleasers and overworked and benevolent to givers. And we do it at our own detriment. Then we’re burnt out, we’re cranky, we’re triggered, we’re sick and all of these things because we don’t have good boundaries and we don’t have good boundaries because somewhere along the line there’s been messaging, whether it’s through family, culture, community or social media that says your boundaries are bad and you’re a better person if you don’t have any. And so we can start to ask ourselves. Is what I’m doing now an act of self-care or self abandonment?

And we can begin to ask ourselves what would nourish me now? Most of us don’t ask that.

Yana Fry: What would nourish me now? I love this question. I remember how during my healing of those 12 years that I shared with you, one of those most impactful questions. That actually at the time it was a therapist that I was working with that she asked me was do you know what nourishes your soul?

So to me, that was what hit home at that time. And at the same time, now when I listen to you, I feel that when we talk about nourishment, it’s like what nourishes the body? What nourishes the mind, right? So all of those things, and it is so important to focus on that and still.

Like in our society, I’m not saying it is true for absolutely every family everywhere, but statistically, it is still largely true that women tend to be the glue in society and the force that either unites or destroys everything within the family one way or another. And that’s why the conversation around healthy boundaries and self nourishment is just so important because, So many others depend on our wellbeing.

Boundaries – Right or Wrong?

Yana Fry: Most of us have been taught that we don’t deserve our boundaries. Most of us don’t even know what boundaries are. So we walk around depleting ourselves or allowing others to take from us, and we might feel both shame and fear around our boundaries. So if we’ve been taught that boundaries are bad or wrong, we’ll feel ashamed the moment we even consider putting one in.

Natalia Rachel: And if we have a past where there’s been some kind of punishment or harm when we’ve tried to assert our boundaries, we might feel very fearful when we start to put them in. So the boundaries piece when it comes to healing is huge and will ask us to continue to meet our fear and shame again and again, and prove to ourselves that our boundaries are welcome and learn that if there is anybody in our lives that’s not welcoming our boundaries, that we need to say goodbye to them.

Yana Fry: And it happens very often. The interesting part, which is a very tricky conversation because these people could also end up being family members and like parents very often or could be siblings or like anyone else who is like in our close environment. And when I work with people, I usually say that if it is someone in your family that you can’t just close the door entirely you can buy some time off.

Until you learn within yourself how to establish your boundaries and how to maintain it, right? So you don’t have to exclude a person entirely from your life, but you’re probably not going to learn anything about your boundaries if someone constantly will be bridging and you will not have the space to figure out what it is actually.

Just recently I spoke with another therapist who actually happens to be, who specialises working with moms or women who are considering conception and pregnancy and are becoming a mom. And this of course, this is like a huge conversation about boundaries and.

So we were and that it’s not all on you. There are also other people who actually can and should support. we don’t put children in a position where they have to live their life for us. Or when we force them so we can live life through them, right?

So we want a child to live life with us. So we invite them into our life and therefore it’s so important that, especially things like traumas, Needs to be held, otherwise it becomes a generational trauma. And I’m sure even through your work, probably when you look deeper, you see patterns of your mom and your dad and maybe other people.

And we all carry that until one day someone stands up in the lineage, it says I’m gonna heal it. And regardless of whether people are listening right now, whether you wanna become a parent or not, it doesn’t matter. You do it for yourself first, that you are the one who just refuses to suffer any longer.

Healing from Generational Trauma

Natalia Rachel: I believe deeply that the task of our generation is to heal our trauma so that our children will not have to go through the level of searching and seeking and metabolising that we have had to do. And When I look at my two children, who are eight and 10, I know that the work I’ve done has been integrated because they are living completely different lives.

They are safe, they are able to be authentic. They’re able to speak up and set boundaries. They’re able to be curious and play. I wasn’t able to do any of those things. So I really see the proof that when we commit to our own healing, the next generation has an opportunity to use all of that freed up energy for good.

We are paving the way here.

Yana Fry: Absolutely. Look, even at the age of our children already, they will have to deal with climate change and AI, in a big way that we probably won’t. And of course if it wouldn’t be possible for them to fully deal with that in, in the most kind of congruent and deficient way, if we don’t do our part.

They’re just the same way our parents did the best they could and they created a life for us where we can look at our traumas. I mean our mothers and fathers. It was not even an option for most people because the standard of living was much lower and there was just much more danger going on the route, much more unrest in the world.

And so there was no time or space for this, as you said. So our generation has time in space, so absolutely we should do that so that our children can start creating this like the rise of a new society.

Natalia Rachel: I think every generation has done their piece, and this is ours to heal.

Sharing a Message to the Children

Yana Fry: Thank you so much Natalie, and since we’re speaking about children as the next generation, if I were to ask you to share a message with your children and everyone else who are like them, what would you say?

Natalia Rachel: Simply, you are valid. You are worthy, and I love you. That is all we really need to know.

Yana Fry: Thank you so much for joining us today. It was wonderful to have a conversation with you, and I wish you incredible success on your mission because you have a very powerful mission. And of course for everyone who has been listening to Natalia today, and if you wanna learn more, please read the description.

There will be all information there, how you can connect with your. And on this platform, we are just creating space for those authentic conversations. So I would personally appreciate your support with subscribing, leaving a review, sharing with a friend, and I see you next time with another guest.