Why Learning To Be With Grief is Crucial for Trauma Recovery

Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor.

An aspect of food recovery that I find is under-discussed is the amount of grief that often needs to be sat with and expressed. This could be grief about what happened to you in the past, grief that you ever had to create a food coping mechanism, grief that others could meet you and see you and listen to you the way you needed them to, grief that no matter how much food you eat that it will never support you in feeling long term safety. Yet, grief is not an emotional or embodied experience that is talked about very much unless you've lost something or someone. But to be alive is to grieve constantly. Grief is a natural part of life and not something that we're taught to acknowledge, honor, or process when it shows up. I often see grief like an Inside Out character that is going to show up from time to time and sit on a bench with you. It won't stick around forever, and you'll get used to its presence the more you welcome it when grief wants to spend some time with you.

Today I chat all about navigating grief with Syanna Wand. Syanna is the founder of Interpersonal Embodied Healing and is both a lifelong student and practitioner of relational and somatic healing. She began her work as a Certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and eventually expanded her focus to include trauma and grief work, recognizing its deep ties to her clients’ complex health challenges. Over the past decade, she has supported hundreds of clients in cultivating safety, connection, and ease in their bodies, after trauma and continues her work now training practitioners in the Institute for Interpersonal Embodied Healing. Syanna is trained as a Functional Nutritional Therapist and has completed NARM Level 1 training for working with Complex and Developmental Trauma, along with professional development in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Neuro-affective Touch, Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems and Structural Dissociation Theory. We chat about understanding grief in healing, the concept of armoring, navigating grief and relief, the importance of resourcing yourself, building capacity to be with your emotions, generational grief, and embracing grief and creating a relationship with it.

If you've been loving the Satiated Podcast and want to give back, click any of the links in the show notes for my affiliate links or join Satiated + to donate monthly to the show and be able to ask me anything each month. And as a reminder, the Somatic Eating® Intensive is still on sale for 30% off with code SEI30. Sign up and learn more at stephaniemara.com/learn. Now, welcome Syanna! I am thrilled you're here today just to be talking deeper about trauma and grief and all the intersections that we can get into there. And I'd first like to start out with you sharing a little bit in more detail, like your history and how you got into the work that you're doing today.

Syanna Wand 03:48

Oh gosh, it's kind of a winding web, but it really started, I think, as so many practitioners like with my own story. My own sort of falling apart and trying to make sense of what was happening, both in my body and my mind, and I really started out my journey with food, looking at food, and so that's how it all began. But kind of the way that how can I start to heal my own body? I'm not getting answers in the places that I'm looking that may be a little bit more conventional, and so could I start taking it into my own hands? And I did, and I started seeing a lot of progress with my own physical health, my mental health, my emotional health, and as I got further down that path, things kind of felt like they were, I don't know, still missing. There were still pieces that didn't feel fully embodied or holistic for me. And so from there, I kind of started stretching out like what other lifestyle changes can I make, and what other parts of me are in need? And at some point, I found a therapist and started learning about trauma, and was like, oh, there it is. That's that missing piece that I've been trying to make sense of. And so I went back to school and I got my functional nutritional therapy certification, started seeing clients. At some point, decided I also wanted to integrate some of the trauma work I personally had been doing, and so also went back and started getting getting some trainings and certifications around trauma, and now I work integratively with all of it to kind of help people understand their history and how it's impacting their current experience moment, including their relationships. That's a general story, but...

Stephanie Mara 05:28

Yeah, in a nutshell...

Syanna Wand 05:30

In a nutshell.

Stephanie Mara 05:32

Thank you for sharing all that. And you know, it's really interesting. I had a very similar experience as well of it all started for me in a focus of food. And I find that there's so much, you know, for those on a food recovery journey, like shame or guilt or judgment around that that's how things started. But I find that that was the safest entry way into my body. Because of past trauma, it didn't feel safe to connect with my body in any other way, unless it was through food. And so, you know, I just heard something similar in there, of like, first starting with looking at the food piece because sometimes it feels like maybe the most safest or manageable, like inlet into ourselves. And I'm wondering if you experienced anything similar.

Syanna Wand 06:24

Yeah, that's a really beautiful point. You know, I think we can sometimes even talk about it from like, interoceptive experience versus exteroceptive experience, right? And you're like, yes, those things outside of me make sense as a way to- to anchor into something that still feels like it's about me, but is not in me, for starters. Until I'm able to build up a little bit of a deeper capacity to be with myself and to feel safe in my body, this does feel like a safe starting point, for sure. I think I absolutely looking back, as you're saying that, probably experienced that and needed a little bit of relational support to feel safer, bringing that awareness even closer to me.

Stephanie Mara 07:02

Yeah, yeah. There's something that I talk a lot about in my programs and with those I work with, and I call it food grief, in that you know sometimes, as you are starting to come into deeper relationship with yourself and your food, that you realize like, oh, there is no amount of food that I could eat that is going to make things better. And there can be a lot of grief in that kind of coming into contact with the experience that there's no right way of eating, or no food, or no amount of food that I could eat that's going to kind of make how I feel in my body feel better, and that's a moment that there's can be a lot of grief in that of wow, this pattern that I've been leaning on for like decades of my life actually is never going to give me what I'm looking for. And I know you talk a lot about grief, and so I wanted to kind of hear a little bit your perspective on why grief is so important on any kind of healing journey that anyone could be on. I know we talk a lot about, like, food and body image here, but like, grief in general is an important part. And you were even saying, before we press record of like, you know how much we avoid grief when it's so pivotal to being a part of kind of changing things for ourselves is to move through that.

Syanna Wand 08:28

You know, to your point at the bottom, there's grief, right? But we do live in a grief phobic culture, especially in Western culture, there's a lot of concern about grief. There's a lot of pathology around grief. There's a lot of avoidance of grief, right? Both our own and in others. And so what that does, or disallows inside of us is this ability to emotionally complete our processes. And so if we're talking about emotional completion, what that really essentially means is we're able to move through each and every emotion that comes up around an experience to its end, where we feel more resourced, calm and resolved. But if we aren't able to look at a certain emotion, in this case, grief, then we get stuck in that cycle where we exit a little early, or we suppress a little early, and then we're left with this, unresolved tension in our body, right? From a somatic perspective, and eventually that leads to armoring, both in our body and behaviorally. And so that's that's where we see these behaviors come through, and they make sense, like if we see them as this really beautiful adaptation of, I'm trying to complete something here, then actually the moment that we get to that food grief, if that is what we want to name that experience, then we are finally in a space of completion. And so it can be both relieving, Oh, I don't have to keep doing this thing that hurts and feels icky for me. And there's a lot of grief, right? It's like, sometimes I've heard it called grief of relief, where the moment that the relief comes, or the armor softens, or we -we find that completion. There's that rush of grief too, and it's hard and it's painful, and it's usually that first step on, Oh, I can let go a little bit like I can rearrange, I can renegotiate, something can shift now, because I was able to do what I've been seeking to do, potentially my entire life. So that's kind of how I think about those moments. Yeah, does that make sense?

Stephanie Mara 10:32

Absolutely, it does. And I love that you're bringing in the concept of armoring, and I've talked about it a little bit here, but for those who maybe are unaware of what when you reference the concept, because they know it comes from somatic psychology of what armoring is and like, why we do it, how that happens, just for anyone who feels unclear because they think it's an important conversation about like, there are so many different ways that we can armor ourselves.

Syanna Wand 11:00

So, from a somatic perspective, armoring is essentially what happens in the muscular system and the fascial system and all of these different parts of our body that create a sense of tension and holding around something that feels threatening, dangerous, incomplete, right? And that that threat could be coming from the outside. Meaning, I feel unsafe in my environment, but it could also be coming from the inside. So, there's a feeling that feels overwhelming, or there's a part of me I don't want to express or get out or right? So, we see it show up in relational dynamics a lot, but essentially it is the body's way of intramuscularly and intrafacially protecting itself from something that feels scary or dangerous or threatening. And so if you think about the way that the nervous system is responding in every moment to our experiences, internally and externally, and if we are in a place of working really hard to avoid some of these felt sensations, we probably have a lot of armor, and that can show up in all kinds of ways, from literal pain intention to behavioral experiences to yeah, you name it.

Stephanie Mara 12:11

Yeah. Thanks for going into more detail about that. You know, just to bring this around to kind of the food piece for a second, because I know that's what a lot of people listening here are navigating is also that like patterns of restricting our binge eating can be a way to armor because if we are undernourished, where we can't really be in our bodies, like that is a way to armor yourself to not feel. Like, if all of our focus is just constantly thinking about food, we can't really feel what's underneath. And the same thing with binge eating, that like when we kind of over nourish or over nutrition the body more than it maybe needs in a particular moment, that the only sensation that we can feel is how full we feel eating that much food. And then again, it's really hard to get like, like you're talking about, if grief is the root, like, it's at the core, it's at the bottom, that it's like, it's hard to get there and to feel that and to make space for it and move through it, if these other sensations are kind of protecting you from that. So I'm glad that you're bringing in this experience of armoring.

Syanna Wand 13:21

Yeah, you're making such a good point. And I think something important to maybe bring in, into the room in this moment, is the concept of attachment too. You know, if we're working with attachment and relationships like food and attachment, are - they go hand in hand, right? That was our first experience with love and safety and warmth, and so it can mean so many different things to our body and so many different things to our psyche and our nervous system. And you know, so you're right. Like as an example, let's say that I didn't receive the kind of security and safety I needed inside of my relationships, to feel safe with my grief, to feel safe with my feelings, my felt experience. Not only is there my own avoidance of that because I just haven't built up that capacity, but there's also the grief that I didn't get what I needed to be able to move through my experiences. And so I have this pattern, potentially, let's say, restricting, and I could focus there. And also, I think when we look at, well, what does this mean to my body? Why has this been the right choice? Why has this been the helpful, supportive, resourcing choice for me? We get to go just a little bit deeper with that, and we really start to get to see the parts of us that survived like that. This was the best choice for me. It may no longer be that, but it is or was, and when I can start to meet those deeper needs, maybe I don't even need that thing anymore as much. Maybe I don't need it to armor, to build capacity to feel safe in my body. Whatever it was doing for me, which is likely many things, but.

Stephanie Mara 14:59

Yeah, yeah. I completely 100% agree with you there that for me, in just my lens of my work of somatic eating, that I feel like, if we're talking about food, it's really hard not to talk about attachment, because it's just like, it is to me like, so intertwined that it's just like, Yeah, you know, like our first form of love sometimes did come from being breast or bottle fed, and for the rest of our lives, you know, those correlations and connections get so integrated into, like you were talking about, like the muscles of our being in our fascial tissue, and just, Oh, if I don't feel okay, if I don't feel safe in the world, I know food could be there for me. Just another layer of as adults when we realize, Oh wow, this pattern isn't helping me anymore. You know, I find that it's not just grief for the present moment. And I've seen this a lot with those that I work with, that even you were referencing it earlier, of like, when there starts to be relief in your life, like, Oh, I'm not engaging in the coping mechanisms that aren't supporting me anymore, and I'm realizing they're not actually helping me. That there's such a layer of grief that gets to start to come in, because as you start to maybe I'm gonna say, like, quote, unquote, feel better. Or like, maybe feel safer or more regulated, like in your body now that it does kind of open up memories of all the times that that didn't get to happen, of all the times that you weren't met and you weren't seen. I'm wondering if you've seen that in your trauma, grief work.

Syanna Wand 16:34

Absolutely it happens almost every time. You know, I kind of equate it to that feeling of, Oh, gosh, I've been wandering around in the desert with no water, and holding, holding, holding, surviving, surviving, surviving. And then the minute that I know I'm safe, I can really see how hard that was. I can really let in the emotional experience of it where before I had to push it away to get through and that's okay, that's survival. That's brilliant. But now I don't have to. I'm not in survival. And so the minute those survival strategies come down, and that survival armor comes down, like, I'm gonna be hit with grief, and so, so many times, my clients are like, I don't I don't understand, like, what's happening? I feel better. Why am I sad at the same time? Like, yeah, no, that makes sense. You are so grateful for the relief, and you can really see yourself right now. And that's the healing. That's the healing, too. As much as anything, having that compassion and that self-understanding is as much a part of the healing process, I think, as anything. So it can be a really beautiful connection, if we can feel safe to hold it, and if there's somebody, I think, around us supporting us to say, this is confusing, but it's okay, it makes sense, and you're still safe, right, to just kind of nurture us and midwife us through that experience. Yeah, it can be really beautiful, and it does happen literally every time.

Stephanie Mara 18:00

Yeah, it's very common. And just for anyone even listening right now, maybe in that confusing spot, like, just to hear your words, of like, this is normal. This doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong. Like, this is a normal part of the recovery process. And I'm wondering when you've noticed people get to that space, what have you seen be supportive, to move through that, to meet that, to welcome that, because sometimes that can also be hard. Like you can see it. You're like, I'm feeling better, and I'm feeling immense grief. And then what do I do here?

Syanna Wand 18:33

Yeah, how do I literally resource through this versus just see it? I think it's important to name that grief work is slow work. Healing work is slow work, ideally. Because if we run into things too quickly that we have felt before, that have been overwhelming, or we have experienced before that, we risk that sense of like, I'm just going to close right back up. Which would make sense, because, right, that's why we did it in the first place, because it was overwhelming. So, you know, when it comes to trauma, work, I like to work very, very slowly. I like to help people slowly, what we call dip a toe in and then come right back out. And that could look like, you know, resourcing through the body, like, Hey, I'm learning how to notice my internal experience, but I'm also learning how to simultaneously notice something strong, soft, comforting outside of me at the exact same time, right? And we may play there for many, many, many months, before we ever touch something really big in our own experience. Or I'm learning how to take in relational resourcing, like I'm learning how to trust that somebody could be there for me, that somebody could actually hold this silence, this grief, this anger, and not turn away from me. You know so, maybe we have to work that for a while. Potentially we're learning to work with resources like my own inner relationship with myself and my own secure attachment. Can I trust that if I run into something big, I'm going to love myself through it and be kind to myself through it, because maybe I don't yet, right? So those are just some examples of what it looks like to resource. But essentially, when we're working with grief, it's like we need to make your resource belt bigger than the grief. And right now it might not be. And so if we keep running into that, we're - we kind of risk retraumatizing it, and we want to come at it from a new place, which is, it is big, and I'm bigger. I can hold it now. So that's like, how I like to work with grief and trauma is tons and tons of resourcing and learning how to do that literally in real time, so that when I get hit with it, whether I'm with my practitioner or not, I know how to, like, stop, drop and roll, right? Like I know, I've been here so many times, that my body remembers, Okay, I'm going to curl up in a blanket, I'm going to rock myself, I'm going to breathe, I'm going to remind myself it's going to pass. That's how I'm going to get through this wave, right? So and again, those are examples, but...

Stephanie Mara 21:02

So beautifully said. I loved every piece of that. And one, I just really appreciate you reminding everyone how slow this work needs to be. And I completely agree with you on that, that I like to say we can't approach the trauma healing the same way the trauma happened. So if the trauma happened too much too fast, we can't approach it the same way of too much too fast, because, like you're saying, we will retraumatize ourselves. We will get knocked outside of what we can tolerate, and then we will go lean on our coping mechanisms, whether that's food or something else, to support ourselves in feeling safe and secure again. So it does really need to be slow work, and I find that's really hard, especially when there's so much struggle, and you just want to be out of the pattern that you're in as fast as possible, because it's really hard to be here. And so I also really appreciate what you're naming is how resourced we need to be through this experience that I find that usually our sense of resources is, like, really small. Like, I know, for those that I work with, it's like, it's food and it's like physical movement. It's like two things that you get to lean on, and there's nothing wrong with either of those things, like food and physical movement always gets to be a part of your resources, but like you're naming we need, like, an abundant amount, because there's going to be different things that meet us at different moments at different times.

Syanna Wand 22:29

Yeah, and maybe you can also speak to this, but I have found that that means, you know, right? Because that that desire to move quickly is so normal and so understandable. I've been in pain for so long, like, come on, give me - give me something. I find that as a practitioner, what can help my clients feel safer is my trust in that process. Like, I know you want to move fast, and I know we can't, and I know that you're going to learn how to hold this and it's going to be okay. And so feeling someone else's trust in that process can also be a resource, right? Just noticing, Okay I want there's urgency in me, but there's not urgency in my practitioner, and they seem to feel safe with my process. Therefore I can resource off of that level of calm and groundedness and internalize that, and that can be helpful, too. So I don't do have you ever noticed that with your clients?

Stephanie Mara 23:25

Oh, absolutely. I think, because I've seen it so many times and been a witness and a guide through it, and that I've experienced it myself, of working through trauma, that I know that it is a process and that it's not always going to be the same. It's not like the struggle that you're in right now that feels so intense, is going to feel that intense every step of the way. And so I completely agree with you that I often find it's not another somatic practice, not another mindfulness tool, sometimes it literally is the co-regulation and the therapeutic relationships that you bring into your life that start to shift things in a different direction, because your body is getting a different message of like, Hey, it's safe to be here where you are. I get that it's uncomfortable, but you are not in danger being here.

Syanna Wand 24:18

Yeah, which, and to your point that might feel foreign for a lot of us. We are so still. I mean, I know, you know, you can see kind of in the current change of language and Zeitgeist that we're moving toward, or trying to move toward more relationality, but we have this huge history of hyper independence and independence, and the idea that you can apply enough practices and heal yourself, and that is still embedded deeply in our our collective psyche, I think. And so that idea of like, Oh, it might just be someone else's nervous system that could offer me that safety I'm looking for that's still new for a lot of us. You know, and so it makes sense that we would keep trying to apply different practices or different modalities, or whatever it might be, and they're not wrong. I don't want to say they don't have their place. They absolutely do, but they might not be the whole picture.

Stephanie Mara 25:11

Yeah, I agree with you, and I want to go back for a second, because you were talking about retraumatizing, and I find that this piece is kind of confusing for a lot of people, of, how do I know when I'm kind of gently pushing myself outside of my comfort zone to like grow in my window of tolerance, and how do I know when I'm retraumatizing? And I'm wondering, if you've been able to kind of like navigate the difference, how have you been able to like feel into the difference of like, when are we riding our edge of growth, and when is it like I'm actually overwhelming myself?

Syanna Wand 25:45

Yeah, no, it's such a good question, and I think there's sometimes a very subtle distinction. So, you know, it's important to talk about what, what I have found, both in myself and my clients, is that, you know, if we have forgotten where we are, literally, where am I in space and time? Can I locate myself in my current environment and remember the people, experiences, resources that I currently have at my disposal? If I have forgotten those, right? If I just feel perhaps little small, overwhelmed, terrified, if I'm only in touch with the internal experience, I may be falling into that retraumatizing category, or at least re-experiencing category. If I have kind of disconnected in some way and the obvious, I'm outside of my window, meaning I'm so hyper aroused I can't find any sense of safety around me. Or conversely, I'm so hypo aroused that I can't connect with anything, then I am potentially in that re-experiencing category again too, right? So these are kind of some of the things we're tracking. I like to again call it one foot in and one foot out, if I can stay present to the fact that I am experiencing a traumatic trigger in my body, while also noticing where am I? Who am I with? What are my current resources? And have a felt sense that this is really intense, but I'm not in danger, then, great, let's keep going. Let's keep pushing that edge. But if at some point my body forgets that I'm not in danger right now, yeah, that might be time to back off. Which is very hard for trauma survivors, because the danger signals can be very big and very loud and very hard to delineate. Which why, again, it can be really helpful to have another body there with us, who we trust, that can say, Hey, like, I'm right here. Stay with me. You can anchor here.

Stephanie Mara 27:39

Yeah, thank you for sharing that distinction, because isn't it an important one. And I love the description that you gave there of, if you are starting to feel like living outside of yourself, dissociating, not being able to like, know where you are even what time you are in. When trauma is in, it's like, do I feel like I'm my present day self, or do I feel like I'm five? You know, just to even be like I am not here right now and then, like that can all be information. I find that also the moment that you're even feeling the urge to engage in your coping mechanisms is also body communication and information. Of, oh, we might be pushing ourselves too much too fast here that our body is remembering what it used to lean on back then, and it's going towards its familiar self-soothing behaviors.

Syanna Wand 28:32

Yeah, absolutely. And that can be a marker and a trigger that, or a cue that, you know as a practitioner, like, Hey, if I'm working with somebody and all of a sudden they're having a resurgence of symptoms or coping strategies or right ways of staying safe. Oh, we might be, like we need to back off a little bit. You know, these parts are communicating to us, Hey, I have now reached a threshold where the current resources I have are no longer cutting it, and they need to go back to that old way of resourcing. And so that immediately tells me, all right, we got to pull back a little bit, spend a little more time building our sense of resourcing, and then we can go forward. And that can be really frustrating, you know? I just want to name that too, like in your healing journey, I think, Well, number one, frustration is normal and a part of it, but also to be told, Hey, we don't yet have this capacity. Even though we want to have this capacity can be deeply frustrating, and that's okay too. You know, hopefully we have people around us who can make space for that, so...

Stephanie Mara 28:32

Yeah, I find it so important, and you've done this many times already, of how important it is to just normalize your experience, because it can be really confusing when you are looking at past trauma, whatever that might be, in whatever intensity, and that there is so much that can arise and it's very layered. And I find that if we see it more as every layer that you peel back, or we're talking about like growing in your window of tolerance. The more capacity you're going to be able to hold for more, which means more gets to show up, which can also be really confusing, because it's like, Wait a second, I'm doing the work. Why do things feel worse? It's just like, well, this is kind of what your body has always been holding on to, that has been kind of undigested or unprocessed, but because we are building your capacity to hold more, more gets to arise to start to look at that and you're laughing. So I'm curious if you've experienced something similar?

Syanna Wand 30:33

I have. I have experienced it both personally and professionally, with my clients. Often there's a sense of I didn't used to be this way, or I used to be able to handle more, I can I feel like I can handle less. Now I'm like, yeah, no, I know. I know we're really starting to see what you've been holding and how much you had to disconnect from yourself to be able to hold it. And so when we come back into connection, it can feel like, all of a sudden I have all these feelings, and all of a sudden I'm insecure in ways I wasn't before, or, you know, things feel worse, and it's like, yeah, to your point that was always there. And how brilliant of your brain and your body to disconnect from it. Like we're so glad you did, because you wouldn't be here today with us if you didn't but now we really get to see you. We really get to see your body, your mind, your heart, your parts, and they've been in a lot of pain, you know? And so it's interesting, because on one level, it feels worse, and on another level, I find that we all of a sudden, some of these, like organic homeostatic processes, start to come back online, where we're like, Oh, I don't have as much chronic pain. Like I have this other thing, I feel more insecure in my relationships, but I don't have as much chronic pain or interesting, like I feel like all these emotions in my body that are really intense and it's hard because of function and be this emotional, but I don't have the same, you know, addiction that I was dealing with earlier. So we can kind of watch that happen as well, where, like, there's a shift toward the organic experience and less of the coping experience. Maybe that's something you've noticed too, but I see that a lot.

Stephanie Mara 32:15

Yeah, oh my gosh. Thank you so much for naming that. Because I find there's there can be one, because our body is so primed sometimes to pick up all those cues of threat. There can be so much focus on now what wasn't there before, or how you're feeling things more intensely, or what you weren't experiencing previously. And I love that you're bringing in to also pay attention to what's changing, that there are things, very subtle things that are not there anymore. And it could be like, Oh, I'm sleeping easier, or Oh, that urge to actually reach for food, it's still there, but it's less and I'm not doing that as often, and these tiny little things that it's like, yeah, you may be feeling more and like your body is kind of coming back online, that it's safe to feel and it's safe to emote and it's safe to move through these things, but also these other things are happening less.

Syanna Wand 33:10

Yeah. It can be so important to have someone who can reflect that back. I think so many times my clients and I have felt this. So, you know, my therapist does this for me too. Like, we're like, I'm not I'm not changing, I'm not growing. Like, because they're like, you said there's Okay, well, our body's gonna give us more as we build our capacity. There can be a felt sense of, I'm not doing anything, and that's frustrating. But to have someone go back and say, Oh, but remember, like, hey, this thing and actually look what you're doing, and to be able to point out the - I call it the rightness, like, what is right here, what is actually even when it seems quote, unquote wrong, what is right here can be also a deeply nourishing experience for our body, especially if threat detection has been so high and or, you know, we live in environments that have consistently pointed out what's wrong with us, because that's real, right? That happens so to have someone say, No, you're right, and this is why, and even when it seems wrong, it's still right, that in and of itself, I find can just soften everything. Oh, I can. I can trust myself. I can trust my body in ways that I didn't think I could because I had been trained to disconnect from that.

Stephanie Mara 34:25

Yeah, and, you know, I hear that that's also important for the grief piece as well, for someone to, like, hold space in that. And I'm wondering, as you've worked with people like in normalizing the grief and reflecting back to them like this grief means also that things are changing. More things are coming up. What have you seen, be supportive to, like, create a relationship with grief? Because, like, what you were saying earlier, and I've seen this too, because we're so, as you call it, like, grief phobic (I love that) as a society, that we kind of say, Oh, no one can hold this grief for me, because a lot of people do struggle with that for all sorts of different reasons. But then it's like, how do we create a relationship with grief within ourselves that I always like to think of, you know, kind of the movies of, like, Inside Out, that it's just like, it's a part of us, and it's gonna, like, sit on the bench with us sometimes, and like, sometimes it's going to show up, and it doesn't mean that it's wrong, that it's like being there as a friend in a moment. But I'm wondering what you've seen of starting to kind of have more of a an intimate relationship with grief, that it's actually safe and okay for it to be present.

Syanna Wand 35:35

Oh, I think there's so many layers to that. I'll try to speak to the ones that I've seen, you know. Again, I think first off, relationally, having someone who can say, you know, no, not only is your grief not bad, it's actually beautiful. It is actually how we heal. It is a part of the if you want to call it the restorative cleaning process, like your nervous system cleaning itself out, like it that is like, kind of more visual language than, like, literal science.

Stephanie Mara 36:01

I love it.

Syanna Wand 36:01

Yeah, right, but that's kind of how it feels. There's this sense of I am releasing stress hormones. I'm clearing out this armor. I'm helping my body move through something, you know, and so having someone normalize that is really helpful. I also really like to tell my clients, Hey, grief is how we grow. It's actually how, it's part of how you develop. It's not a detour to your development. It is not a problem standing in the way of your development. It's actually the through line. And so just relationally making it safe for people can feel really good, I think just offering a reframe. But then, you know, in terms of our own relationship with it, like we're working with a part, but I think I also encourage my clients to like, Hey, let's, let's listen for a minute to grief. Like it's got its own energy, right? If we want to use that language. It's got its own intention here, and can we start to be curious about it? Right? Bringing in that curiosity muscle is huge when it comes to being able to accept something like, if fear tells us somatically, move away. Curiosity is like, Huh? Like, what's over there? I'm gonna, I'm gonna get closer to that thing. So if we can put on a really curious lens and a zooming out to see all right, like, hey, if I was curious about this thing that I didn't already have preconceived ideas about, what would it show me? What would it tell me? And so curiosity can be a huge internal resource as well for like, learning specifically about our own grief. Like, I carry this idea that grief is universal and grief is very individual. The way that I relate to it and experience it and move with it is going to be different than how you do and if we can think of it as a relationship that we're building over time, we all start to feel a sense of like, Hey, this is my grief. Like it's there's an ownership there. There's like, I want to protect it, I want to soothe it, I want to love it, I want to care for it, which can be really, really helpful and just helping us feel safe with it.

Stephanie Mara 37:55

Yeah, that was so well said. And I love the reframe of starting to see grief as actually the thing that is going to move you towards what you ultimately want. Which is what you ultimately want is you want to feel more connected, you want to feel more alive, you want to feel more present. And then actually allowing grief to be here and welcoming it to the table is going to lead you towards what you're looking for. And, you know, there's one more question I want to explore today, because you just recently wrote about this was also about, like, generational grief. Like, we hear a lot about generational trauma, but you were even saying, like, Hey, I get to own this grief. This is my grief. And that made me think of that post that you did that it's just like, yeah, like, this is your grief that you get to own and you get to move through. And sometimes that grief is something that has been passed down to you. So I'm curious if you can talk more to that.

Syanna Wand 38:51

For sure, yeah. I think there's two maybe perspectives that I'd like to talk about that from. So one of them is a little bit more clinical and maybe outside of me. And then one of them, if it's okay, is a little more personal. So one time, I was taking a course on sort of working with eating responses, right from a somatic lens, and I heard this, just these beautiful practitioners. They were like, hey, a lot of times what we notice is that the people who are coming to us, they're what we call like the truth tellers in the family, right? So if we're looking at it from like a family systems perspective, they're the ones whose bodies can't ignore it in the same way. They're the ones who can't dissociate from it in the same way that everybody else has been able to or can't pretend that the story that's happening isn't happening. They're feeling the story under the story, right? And I loved that because I thought it was A so compassionate and B, a different way of looking at what is often scapegoated, right? When we're looking at sort of behavioral responses, like eating responses can be very scapegoated, very pathologized. And so instead, we're saying like, Oh, you, you're carrying something here. Your body is talking to us, and if we can listen, you're going to tell us a truth that may have been traveling through your family, that nobody has spoken to yet. Which I thought was just like - I remember getting chills at the time and being like that is that is such a beautiful way of talking about this thing that brings so many of us so much pain. And so when I'm kind of thinking about generational grief, what comes up is, is that. Like, you are carrying something that is yours and is not yours likely. And that is both frustrating sometimes. If we are at a certain place in our journey, we may feel really rejecting of that story. And that's okay, and there is something meaningful and tender about that we can make meaning inside of that. Like, I don't know why my body is the one to hold it, but it is. And what can I do to support myself in that process? Because the likelihood is it's not going to go away in the way that I will maybe want it to. And so that kind of brings me around to, you know, maybe a little bit more of a personal anecdote, but like, I kind of am that person sometimes in my family, and, you know, my family and I, we've healed a lot, and so everyone else is kind of able to hold that story a little differently, too. But in the beginning, like it was just me, and I was the one with all the symptoms and, you know, so forth. And for a long time, there was this, I would like to escape this story because it's too painful, it's too much. I don't want it. I want to write a different story. And that made sense, of course. Why wouldn't you want to when you have this history of trauma? But more interestingly, I've kind of come to this experience. You could say, of like, I don't know that I would have been able to feel and therefore heal some of this grief. Had I not had similar experiences? Had I not, quote, unquote, repeated some of these things that I had been trying to escape so there was a little bit more of a softening and an acceptance around I don't have to stay in this forever, like I'm not doomed to repeat it. But I also don't have to escape it and rewrite an entirely different story. I'm safe enough to walk a similar path, the kind that would bring up this grief that's been here inside my family line, to feel it, but then also be done with it, transmute it, get it out and right? In some way, kind of move through it in a way that the ones who came before me just didn't have those resources to do. So I want to be very careful not to say everybody has to feel that way about it. And if you're in a place of feeling frustrated with your family story, like great, find that. Of course. I don't want to be dismissive about that. And at some point, I think when we feel safe enough with grief. We can, we can say, Okay, what's mine, what might not fully be mine, and can I move through it while still feeling resourced and safe? Then that's beautiful work too.

Stephanie Mara 42:51

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that personal experience. I deeply resonated with that of my own experience as well, of just being like, I can't live this way, and like I feel like, now I can - I can feel lies. I can spot lies. I can't tell a lie. I just said, like, truth here, authenticity, like, what is like actually going on here? Like, I don't want to sweep literally anything under the rug. So I think that it's an opportunity to also of what I've experienced. So I totally hear you. This does not need to be anyone else's experience, but what I got to experience was an opportunity to discover my own personal morals and values as a human being and what I wanted to live by, and then kind of discover what was not my responsibility. And I think you were pointing to that too, of just like, Okay, I can, like, assimilate, digest, integrate, excrete, whatever words you want to use the grief that has maybe been passed down to me. But at some point it's also like, this isn't mine to hold anymore. Like this may always be in my family lineage, but there's nothing more that I need to do with it.

Syanna Wand 44:09

Yeah, it's done with me, like we did it. And now it gets to rest outside of my body, and it gets to rest in some other space that maybe they have to hold, or maybe they don't like, maybe nobody has to hold anymore, because we've integrated what was useful and what it wanted to show us and then given back the rest. It's similar to literal digestion, right? Like we're taking in nutrients, we're taking in what we need, and we're excreting the rest. It's no longer necessary for our body to have that piece of that food that we just took in, or whatever it may be. So I do think of grief as a digestion process. And to your point, like, I took it in, I got it, I assimilated it, I got what I needed, and like, the rest gets to go and now we get to move forward.

Stephanie Mara 44:50

Yeah, I'm curious if you have any identifiers, and it might not honestly matter, but I'm wondering if you have noticed any identifiers of when it's like, this is my grief, or this is some piece of grief that's been passed down to me. Have you felt like there's a felt difference to that? Or, you know, differences you've been able to notice, to maybe identify if there is a difference?

Syanna Wand 45:15

Yeah, you know, hmm yes and no. Like, I would say it's tricky because, again, we're like in this subtlety of the felt experience, which is slower than the cognitive experience, right? Like we know that the nerve pathway is going up. They just, they're not myelinated. They're running a little more slowly. So sometimes coming to that clarity can be a little slower. But one thing I have noticed that does seem to come up consistently is when people will say to me, like clients will say, I don't get where this story comes from. I don't I don't really understand why I have this terror or why I have this sadness or why, like, I kind of get it. I could kind of apply it to some experiences in my life, and at the same time, it doesn't really make sense to me, right? And that can just be traumatic material sometimes, but it can also mean there's something generational here, where you're like, I don't think I ever actually experienced the intensity of the grief that I'm carrying right now. We're like, might be yours and many other people's, and so it's just bigger than this moment calls for, right? And that's not to dismiss the intensity of it. It's just to say when we can cognitively, kind of see where this matches inside of me, that could be one of those cues.

Stephanie Mara 46:28

Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking too. That if it doesn't feel like you could pinpoint it on an exact experience, this might be something generational. And I agree with you that it also doesn't really matter. That's why it was like, Do I even want to ask this question? I think it was interesting to kind of play with it, of being like, Oh, you know, if it feels supportive to anyone to identify this isn't actually mine, like, this has been passed down to me. Sometimes that can be helpful. But like you were naming, the intensity is still real. We're still working with the sensations that are inside your body, whether it's your lived experience or a lived experience of your ancestors.

Syanna Wand 47:11

Right. Right. And naming that doesn't necessarily make that felt experience different. It can be resourcing again, to like, use our cognition to Okay, I'm safe. This is- right? But if we can't, I find, you know, so to the to the next point, it's like, what I have noticed is that sometimes somatic experiences, they speak slowly, they require us to move through the experience, and then all of a sudden, this clarity can start to bubble up. I call it a little like it's when feeling is bottom up and thought is bottom up versus top down, right? We're not thinking our way through an experience or feeling it. And as we do, there's cognitive association that starts to come in, and then all of a sudden it clicks where you're like, oh, as I get to the other side of this thing, I can actually see that's how my mom felt. Got it! Or, Oh, that is how things were when I was younger, that feeling that I couldn't name, but I always felt safe, unsafe in inside of family gatherings. Oh, that's what that was, right? So I have found that the body will give us clarity, calm completion, which is hard sometimes, because our mind seeks that clarity before completion. But if we can trust the process, often, we're like, Oh, there it is. Got it. It just comes a little in a different order than we're used to.

Stephanie Mara 48:35

Yeah, and I appreciate just that distinction around somatic work, that it is slower, and it does come at a different pace, and that while our minds might move a little bit faster, that our bodies do integrate and process things a little bit more slowly. And so we sometimes have to go at the pace of the body when we're doing somatic work, and you know, trauma work, that is more body based than rather, always going to the mind and trying to, like, understand the stories or reshape the thoughts or the beliefs that, you know, like we started with, like this all does take time. And, you know, usually at the end of the episodes here, I like to kind of offer people a baby step. And so for anyone, we kind of traversed a lot of different things today, but for anyone kind of exploring, maybe building a relationship with their grief, or feeling like they have a hard time feeling grief, is there any kind of baby step that you would offer someone as an initial baby step that they could start to take towards having a different relationship with grief?

Syanna Wand 49:42

If we're in that space of like, I don't want to feel this. This is not I don't want to do this work. It's not what I want to orient toward. You know, I think it can be really helpful just to start with finding your comfort resources. Like, comfort and grief go hand in hand, right? So sometimes, like, stability will go hand in hand with fear, or pressure will go hand in hand with anger. For grief, I find that comfort goes a really long way. So finding things outside of your body, including your own touch, that feel comforting. That could be a pillow, it could be a favorite spot in your house. It could be a soft, soothing touch on your own body. It could be hear of a voice that feels really soothing to you, but finding comfort resources and learning how to tune into those even when you're not hurting actively, so that you're creating a relationship of I know where to get comfort when I'm in distress, because that is an attachment need that so many of us have, that unfortunately, often goes unmet. So starting to build that attachment need can be a really great place to start like we're not even going to look directly at my grief. We're not going to go directly toward the pain, we're not going to look at the thing. We're just going to start looking at what brings me comfort? Can I integrate that so that when I'm ready, or when it happens to come up in a trigger or a moment, I already have something that I can pull from? So I would say that's a really good step, you know? And then relationally within ourself, maybe we start with some reframing. Maybe it is a little more cognitive. Hey, it's okay to be sad. Hey, it makes sense. It always is important just starting to gently shift our relationship from wrong to right. And I don't mean that in a moral sense. I mean in like, a accepting kind of sense, like, Hey, can I just start reframing cognitively what grief means to me? And maybe we do all that before we ever start to touch that felt experience. I would say, start, start wide, like you're saying in the very beginning, we started with food because it was wide, it was out there. So let's start wide and gently work our way in. And that would be a good step for somebody who's trying to maybe navigate it on their own.

Stephanie Mara 51:56

I love those baby steps and just feel like they're spot on to slowly come into relationship with self. And for starting with like external resources, you know, I find that there's so much pressure to lean on self for that self-regulation, those internal resources. And sure, those are there, and we get to build those up, but starting there is going to feel really, really hard. So I actually love that you went external resources of co-regulation, with other people or sights or sounds or smells or touch that then can slowly make me feel a little bit more comfortable or safer to come internal with the experience of grief.

Syanna Wand 52:37

Yeah, well, and if it's okay, just to kind of wrap that thought up.

Stephanie Mara 52:41

Yeah.

Syanna Wand 52:41

I think it's important for us to remember if you have a hard time self-regulating, that is because you didn't get enough co-regulation when you needed it. So your nervous system didn't learn how to come down when it goes up and how to come up when it went down through someone else's nervous system. So of course, you're going to need to go external before you go internal. And it's not a failure, it's not a it's not something wrong with you. It's just, I don't know how to do this yet on a somatic level. So I think just offering people grace inside of that can be really helpful. Because you're right, there's a lot of emphasis on self-regulation, and it's it is a huge piece of the puzzle. If we don't know what it feels like in our body, we can't do it, and then that can start a shame spiral. And shame spirals obviously take us into some really dark places. So yeah, I just want to kind of offer a little bit of grace inside of that. That's, that's why we start there, because we have to.

Stephanie Mara 53:35

Yeah, thank you for that addition. Like so well said, I absolutely loved this conversation. Can't wait to share it, and I'm wondering how individuals listening to this can keep in touch with you and your work.

Syanna Wand 53:46

Yeah, so I mean, at this moment in time, I'm actually getting ready to have a baby, so I'm a little pulled back from some of my normal platforms. However, I am on Instagram, not there every day, but I am there. I occasionally will do a podcast, and then I have a website as well. I'm not seeing clients or new clients at the moment, but I do have ways of working with me and other practitioners in my practice as well. So there's a couple different ways of finding me in this moment.

Stephanie Mara 54:14

Awesome. Well, I will leave all of those links in the show notes and just thank you so much for being here and for your time today.

Syanna Wand 54:20

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. That was a really fun conversation.

Stephanie Mara 54:24

Yeah, well, to everyone listening as always, if you have any questions, email me at support, at stephaniemara.com anytime, and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of the day. Bye!

Keep in touch with Syanna:

Website: www.syannawand.com
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Email: sy@syannawand.com