Childhood Trauma and How to Learn Self-Love with Dr. Shainna Ali [Episode #629]

This week’s topic is: Childhood Trauma and How to Learn Self-Love with Dr. Shainna Ali

I am so excited to have my very special guest, Dr. Shainna Ali, who is a best-selling author, mental health clinician, educator, and advocate who is dedicated to highlighting the important role of mental health in fostering happiness, fulfillment, and overall wellness. Listen in as Dr. Shainna shares the connection between our childhood trauma and adulthood, tips to create healthy safety within yourself, and parent teaching practices you can start using today! 

[BULLETS]

• Healing our trauma as adults…
• How trauma actually encapsulates…
• The connection between our childhood and trauma…
• Tangible tips to establish healthy safety within yourself…
• Dr. Shainna and I discuss parent teaching practices…
• Bubble breathing and how to incorporate this in your daily life…
• Tantrums and holding space…

[FEATURED GUESTS]

About Dr. Shainna Ali

Dr. Shainna Ali is a mental health clinician, educator, and advocate who is dedicated to highlighting the important role of mental health in fostering happiness, fulfillment, and overall wellness. She lives with her partner and her son in central Florida, where she owns Integrated Counseling Solutions, a counseling and consulting practice.

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• Additional resources in transcript

Dr. Shainna Ali’s Interview

• Dr. Shainna’s Website
• Dr. Shainna’s Book

Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• How to Use Your Anxiety for Good with Dr. Wendy A. Suzuki
• How to Find Meaning and Purpose in Your Life
• A Healthy Approach to When Feelings Are Uncomfortable with Dr. Karol Darsa
• The 3-Part Process for Getting Past Comparison

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:01 Hi Beauties and welcome back to our Monday interview podcast, where I’m so excited for our very special guest today. Her name is Dr. Shainna Ali and she’s a mental health clinician and educator, and she focuses on the importance of mental health in fostering happiness and overall wellness. So this of course aligns very much with our community where one of our cornerstones here at Solluna is emotional wellbeing and mental health. The others, of course, our food body and spiritual growth. And together, these cornerstones help us to really nourish our whole selves and feel our best and feel our most connected to ourselves. And so that we live our most fulfilling lives. So Dr. Shainna Ali and I are going to talk about that more today. She also wrote a book called Luna, finds love everywhere, and it’s, it was sent to me and I, you know, I pulled it out of the package and, um, Bubby, my older son was like, oh, what’s that book mama.

Fan of the Week

Kimberly: 01:03 And so we’ve been reading it. It’s really beautiful book about, um, children anchoring into self love. So I have, you know, a bit of a personal experience with Dr. Shainna, Dr. Shainna’s work that, um, that really resonated with me. So I am very excited to get into our show today, but before we do let’s, please give a shout out to our fan of the week. Her name is Alyssa Coopers, and she writes there aren’t many podcasts that I can listen to every single episode without skipping over some, every time I see a new podcast title, my reaction is yes, so relatable and necessary. It just feels good. Well, Alyssa, Cooper’s my love. Thank you so much for your kind words. Thank you so much for being part of our community. It truly means the world. I appreciate you so much. And thank you again. My love so much sending you a big virtual hug wherever you are.

Leave a Review on iTunes

Kimberly: 02:05 And remember Beauties. If you take a screenshot of your review and you email it to us@reviewsatmysoluna.com, we will send you our seven self-love affirmation series to help change negative beliefs and emotional blocks that you may have that are holding you back from living your highest potential. So it’s amazing little mini course workshop program, and we’ll get that right over to you. If you leave a review today, please be sure to subscribe to our show. And that way you don’t miss out on any of these interview podcasts or any of our Q&A podcasts, which are on Thursdays, which are also amazing questions that come right from our community. And my last little shout out is that hopefully by now you may be aware. I hope you’re aware that our new book, our new amazing community book is now pre-selling, you are more than you think you are practical enlightenment for everyday life.

Kimberly: 03:06 And this book of all of my books is the one that I know will help you the most in your life. These are the teachings that will help you create an epic life across the board from abundance to creativity, vitality, love, and peace, and many other topics. So pre-ordering is very important as well, because you will have access to these bonuses that are only around for a limited time, including our beyond fear course, which we will be selling after the book launch. And it’s an amazing course with video and practices and techniques. I teach part of it with hubby John for the first time. And if you pre-order, you’ll also be invited to a, you know, to a live looped event where we will be sitting in meditation. There’ll be a chance for live Q&A. It’s going to be amazing. And if you pre-order, you’ll also be able to start reading some of the chapters today. So I encourage you to head over to my Sol luna.com and check out the information on our pre-order campaign. All right. All that being said, let’s get right into our interview today with the wonderful Dr. Shainna Ali.

Interview with Dr. Shainna Ali

Kimberly:                      01:23               Dr. Shainna, I’m so excited to have you here today. Thank you for being with us. And I have to say, first of all, I, I came to know your work because your book Luna finds a love is something that I’ve been reading a lot to my older son, Emerson, who is five and the main character Luna is five. And it’s just this wonderful book about self-love and there’s questions, I guess, get asked back to the child. So, first of all, I just want to acknowledge that it’s a, it’s a really a wonderful children’s book.

Dr. Shainna:                  02:01                That is really so kind of you to say, thanks for sharing a little bit about what your experience has been with Emerson too. I love that that they’re both five and he must have that relate-ability with her. So I really, really appreciate hearing that. And thanks for chatting with me.

Kimberly:                      02:15                Great. So I know that you are, you know, you talk about mental health. You talk about, um, you know, trauma work in your health condition and all of this. So what’s interesting is, you know, one of the things Dr. Shainna, that I found in being a parent and I share this quite a bit is that I didn’t know that being a parent with all the love and all the fulfillment, also in many ways is helping me heal my own childhood. And as I’m reading this book, which is about giving tools for feeling your feelings, there’s the bubble breathing technique it’s about going in and calming yourself down. And that love is inside. Um, you know, it’s all wonderful, and these are all the things that I’m sharing with my son, you know, as we, as we grow in awareness, but I guess, you know, question starts with, um, and I’m so interested in this now, as I grow in my own self-awareness and I’ve had different neuroscientists and on the podcast, I asked this question, can we really heal our own trauma as adults?

If we can heal our trauma as adults

Kimberly:                      03:16                You know, let’s say I certainly was not raised in a way. I, my parents did their best. I had amazing parents, but I didn’t come from a family where it was encouraged to feel your feelings and that it’s okay to let them go through you. And that love comes from the inside. It was more, you know, achievement oriented, externally oriented. So, you know, I’m reading this book and I’m like, this is amazing, but I didn’t get this. So now I’m an adult. Can I, you know, and I’ve done so much work and, you know, connection and, and meditating. And I feel like I’ve made so much progress, but, you know, from your standpoint as a, as a clinician, you know, I guess, you know, basic question, do we, do we really, can we fully really heal? Or is it what we always kind of just re correcting along the way?

Dr. Shainna:                  04:01                Oh, that’s such a deep and profound question. It’s so funny that you say basic question. I’m like, woof, that is a question that will say it’s so profound. And I love this question because that’s really why I have this avenue of self-love work. So to step back a moment, I think it’s important for me to acknowledge my positionality as a mental health counselor, educator and advocate. I recognize that I have had the privilege and working with so many courageous souls in trying to heal their past trauma. That my view is so biased that I do believe you can heal. Now, I also recognize, especially from the way you describe, you know, your own journey and how far you’ve come, the idea of are, we kind of tweaking it along as we go. Where can we get there? And really in my work, both personally and professionally, when it comes to healing, I don’t really believe in that destination approach anymore for just about anything, the destination of happiness, the destination of fulfillness, the destination of healing. I see it all more as a journey now, and that has really helped me to adjust my expectations, my intentions. So it is based on that, that I believe that we can heal because we’re healing every day. If you wake up and you commit to your healing journey, you are healing,

Kimberly:                      05:22                Right. Moment to

Dr. Shainna:                  05:23                Moment, moment to moment in the here and now not looking back at what you could have healed. If you did something differently or what you need to do tomorrow or next year to heal. It is only in this present moment because that’s only the moment that we have, right? So if thing that has really helped a lot and infusing self-love, I mean, I hear the wheels turning, and I really appreciate you transparently sharing what it’s like as you go through a parent, reading this, your son and beautiful gifts, you’re giving him to learn it early. I didn’t have that gift just like you. And I think about what a beautiful thing as I share it with my son now, who has, how old is he? He’s eight months. Oh my God, you can just reading it to him, you know, just, and I wrote it while he, while I was pregnant. Um, and before I knew I was pregnant, which is fun. But anyway, but the fact is that I wrote it throughout the journey, being able to read it to him. Now, I feel like what a privilege to be able to share this with him, but it isn’t lost on me, how much I’m also reading it to myself.

Kimberly:                      06:27                Oh my gosh.

Dr. Shainna:                  06:29                Amazing.

Kimberly:                      06:30                Yeah, I do believe, you know, there is, there is a belief in, in the yoga tradition that we, we choose our mothers, right. And the souls match up and they choose. And so I don’t have any sort of feeling anymore. I know, I think at different points we may present our parents, but I don’t have this feeling like, oh, I wish it was different. I wish I had this parent that understood this because I know from this vantage point now where I am, that everything that I went through, kind of coming back into myself, it’s given me this, um, really deep sense of compassion, empathy, this, um, grittiness, you know, I’ve been through a lot in my life. And I think that makes us who we are today. And so, you know, my son Emerson chose me as his mom where I am in my journey and I chose my mom.

Kimberly:                      07:16                So it’s, it’s more about, you know, where we are, like you said, this journey embracing where we are. So for me, a big part of, of healing, first of all, is, is getting, or sort of dissipating that idea like, oh, I wish this, it wasn’t this way. I wish I had this, you know, kind of situation or whatever. So it’s more of that acceptance. And the second thing Dr. Shana that’s been really impactful for me is even embracing the word trauma, because I think that, you know, it’s, it was a stigma a couple years ago is as, as recently, as a few years ago. And I think now mental health and emotional wellbeing is such a big part of what we’re talking about in the collective conversation. It’s one of our cornerstones at Soluna is there’s food, body, emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth. And so I’d love for you to share a little bit more about trauma because I used to think, oh, I wasn’t traumatized, you know, thankfully I’m grateful. I didn’t go through, you know, I wasn’t physically hit, I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t, you know, these specific things we think of as trauma, but then I started to understand more like, oh, it can be different forms of neglect or external validation. So can you talk a little bit about the, the, the breadth of which, you know, trauma actually encapsulates?

How trauma actually encapsulates

Dr. Shainna:                  08:30                Absolutely. And I think that’s so profound of how you recognize the transition between recognizing this is something that happened to me and what if, and what could I change and trying to grasp at straws for things that we can’t control versus that shift of orientation to looking at this is my life and what can I do to heal through this, recognizing that I can’t change it. So, first of all, I want to acknowledge that in terms of trauma, I’m really glad that you’re also spending some time to recognize that trauma is not the stereotypical definition that we’ve thought about is we all want, like, I would encourage all listeners to kind of think about when you hear the word trauma, what is the visual? What is the one example comes to mind that usually gets ingrained in us early? It’s usually something that’s physical.

Kimberly:                      09:16                Yeah. Like a car accident. When you said that, I thought of like being hit in your neck.

Dr. Shainna:                  09:23                Yeah. And don’t get me wrong. That is absolutely trauma. But widening the spectrum from that, like really expand that accordion to include different realms of wellness. Right? So that’s different for every person. But if you think about your mental health, then not having your emotions seen and heard chronically over time, becoming a parent figure to an adult, being in meshed with a partner’s emotions. Those over time also can be trauma too, not to mention of course, big arguments, fights, intimate partner violence, all of those examples. So usually when I’m trying to expand the view of trauma, I think about start from where you think you start from and then expand into all dimensions of wellness. Trauma can occur across that spectrum, right? Financial wellness, like losing a home so it can occur in different forms. And I find it in my practice to be very subjective. And that’s really important for me to not say these are the 20 things that capsulate trauma, because someone’s lived experience will exist beyond that. And I would never want to deny their reality and the difficulty they have injured and the challenges and how far they’ve come by trying to make sure we fit that into a box. But,

Kimberly:                      10:40                You know, and thank you for that. And you also said something really interesting, which was getting in meshed in, you know, your partner’s emotions, which sounds like something that, you know, can happen as an adult. And so do you find in your work that that lack of boundaries is reflective of some sort of childhood trauma where maybe the boundaries weren’t set or do you think you can have a really healthy sense of self and still trauma can come later in life? Or, you know what I’m saying? Is there a connection between childhood?

Connection between childhood and trauma

Dr. Shainna:                  11:10                So I think trauma can happen to anyone at any time throughout the lifespan, because sometimes there are things that just like he used the example of the car accident, right. That just happens randomly. Right? And then there’s trauma that is repeated over time. So if we think about using the childhood example, if someone had poor parental love modeled to them and didn’t have healthy love in their world, then they’re not going to know what healthy love is. And in many ways they may gravitate to what’s on healthy merely because it feels familiar, which mean as normal, which gets seen as safe, even though they know that’s not the truth, it feels familiar and common. So patterns do get repeated. And there’s a lot with attachment and early childhood. That’s been researched time and time again, that shows that, however, I do think it’s important to acknowledge the opposite side.

Dr. Shainna:                  12:07                And this goes back to your original question about healing. We all have things in our past that can mean if we let our hands go off the wheel and just live our lives, you know, not paying any attention, no self-awareness and no, self-reflection no intentionality of growth. We might just become, you know, victims of our own paths, repeating and cycling again. But the beauty is no matter what you have encountered, we all have that potential to grow. It’s hard, but we all do have that. And I I’m really privileged to have been able to see folks who have been really challenged, but really gritty and resilient. Like you mentioned,

Kimberly:                      12:48                You mentioned a word that really caught my attention, which is the word safe, you know? And like you said, like, even though this is not healthy and so level, we know it’s not healthy, it feels familiar. So it feels safe. Are there some tangible, I know you work one-on-one with clients and you have this wonderful children’s book and so on and so forth, but are there some tangible tips you can, um, share with us about establishing real safety, like healthy safety, like within yourself instead of, you know, in unhealthy partnership or, um, you know, what’s familiar, but obviously skewed. How do we establish that real, you know, root chakra, deep safety here and now.

Dr. Shainna:                  13:28                Yeah. Very similar to the pathway that we took into kind of exploring trauma. I would encourage folks to start with the same idea of looking at your personal semantics and conceptualization. And you hear the word safety, what comes to mind experiencing that first? Right. Like, I think of like a home, for some reason, I get like this warm home there’s food on the table. Right. I still, if I stepped back from that example, I do still agree with that, but I want to build on that. Right. So it’s also a home that the environment is peaceful and I speak my truth and be myself. Right. So there’s these layers that I build on. It will look different from person to person. Now I will say, I like for it to mirror Maslow’s hierarchy of needs a little bit, and looking at some of those rudimentary things, that doesn’t mean that it’s unimportant, but it is essential.

Tangible tips to establish healthy safety within yourself

Dr. Shainna:                  14:24                Like are our needs being met, right. So are we fed, are we kept safe from the outside elements that could be literally a roof over your head? Um, is there financial security? It will look different for everyone, but I do think we all have those consistent elements. Yeah. But I always find there’s so much power in just looking at how you define and see things and then stepping back and saying, okay, wait, do I, do I stand by what that is? Or is that just my impulsive definition that comes from what has been ingrained in me? And do I want to add or modify that in any way?

Kimberly:                      15:00                Well, and then what if you recognize that maybe you are engaged? Like the, the physical part, I think is a bit easier to define, like we need shelter, we need to have, you know, a certain amount of money in the bank so we can eat each day, you know, but then beyond like, what if you’re saying, oh, well, you know, I, I am, I do engage in unhealthy friendships or, you know, whatever there’s unhealthy emotional turbulence. What’s the, what’s the way out of that. Once you recognize you have this awareness, like this doesn’t match up to what I want to safety. This doesn’t feel stable. Yeah.

Dr. Shainna:                  15:34                I think even in the moment of recognizing that misalignment to sit with that recognition, because that’s a big recognition, right? One takes that moment and realized, wait a second, many of my relationships have this unhealthy trait. And now I realize my relationships are not as healthy as I thought, therefore, these are not as safe as I thought that’s a big revelation. So I would first say to like, sit with them in that moment, go to your key essential self care to make sure you ground yourself before you do anything else, because that’s a big thing and you don’t want to operate from that chaotic state of whoa. My world has now just shaken as I had this big revelation, I think it’s important to reflect, but also seeking help in this process, having that individual reflection doesn’t mean you have to go through it alone.

Dr. Shainna:                  16:23                So for example, you realize this in a friendship that is there another friend that you can go to recognize that this is a history that you have with your parents. Can you talk to a partner? Can you talk to a therapist? Is there a social support group or a spiritual group that you can go to and said, so looking for the support system to help that in that way, the methods will be so different from person to person. So it was really hard for me to give specific tangible things in that regard. But I will say for everyone, if you’re recognizing mental health symptoms, right, rumination on unstable emotional regulation or all of those signs that can go on and on about science. But if those are really coming up for you in that way, recognizing that something is unsafe around you. So using that as the red flag, is that your work environment, is it your home environment? Is it your intra personal environment? And is it within you and your spirit? The red flag can be helpful.

Kimberly:                      17:30                You know, it was helpful for me, um, Dr. Shayna, as you’re talking and I’m reflecting on myself, feeling my own safety from, you know, not safety in the sense like, oh, you know, the house is gonna burn down, but safety that I can soothe myself. I can be here from myself from my feelings, because there was that level of, you know, I’ll say it in a non accusatory way, but there was this level of emotional neglect, a bit growing up, just, you know, really busy working parents working to provide doing their best, but I was left on my own a lot. And so as an adult, what started to help me was first of all, really reconnecting with my body. So just like, you know, sitting in meditation and doing breath work, but really just feeling my hips on the ground and feeling a no, I think it’s Peter Levine that has some of those trauma healing books where he talks about, you know, hugging yourself, creating the container of your body.

Kimberly:                      18:26                Because I realized that I was so much in my thoughts and the thoughts are not grounded. They’re just like moving and shifting. So once I started to really feel my own physicality and I would sit on the floor and I would do some of these practices and feel my knees and like actually connect to my belly, I started to feel more here and now, and that started to make me feel more safe in and of myself. So some of those somatic body practices, which feel, you know, physicality may feel a little bit more basic, but wow, they were really powerful for me just grounding in the body.

Dr. Shainna:                  18:59                Absolutely. And I love you mentioning that because it also highlights the aspect of when things are off around you, right? Like there’s, I feel unsafe where I am finding safety in yourself. That is the ultimate self-love right. So looking inward, you can start with your body. There’s really understandable things for compression and parasympathetic nervous system that got triggered there. That’s wonderful breath work, as you mentioned, is always key. Especially if, when we’re unsafe, we tend to feel hypervigilant and anxious. Are we go into not breathing that shallow breath, therefore we’re not getting oxygen to our brain, into our body and we’re not going to think clearly then. Right. And it’s a cascade. So I encourage folks to think about what is it that you can do to practice self love. So you can foster a sense of safety within yourself. And that’s usually a very empowering take. I will acknowledge with that though, that it often seems easier than it is to actually do.

We discuss parent teaching practices you can incorporate today

Kimberly:                      20:02                Well. That’s why I think it’s so great. Going back to, you know, Luna finds love to the book. If it’s positive, anyone’s listening to this. That is a parent teaching some of these practices early on, and there’s a part in the story where, you know, she wants to play with her ball and then the storm comes and then she has this, you know, this big tantrum. And I’m sort of going through that myself, Dr. Shana with my son who’s five now. So he was, you know, people talk about the terrible twos or the threes. I didn’t really experience that. Like, you know, I know every child is different. He’s just been this like very sweet child. Um, he’s still sweet child, but I’m starting to see these big emotional outbursts for the first time. And, you know, if he doesn’t get a treat, you know, and he doesn’t get tweets every time.

Kimberly:                      20:46                But th you know, he’s like my friend at school said she got a tree. I didn’t get a tree. And so, um, you know, what, what I try to do is, you know, hold the space. I let the big feelings calm. I say, it’s okay to feel this. I do mention that the taking deep breaths, and sometimes in the moment Dr. Shannon he’s, he’s not ready for it. Right. So as a clinician, you’ll guide us as parents for the big tantrums. You know, what, what do we do? Do we, do we, do we, do we weather the storm for them? Do we just hold the space? Do we try to talk them down? Is it better not to talk during the tantrums? Like what, what is the best, best thing to do?

Dr. Shainna:                  21:22                I’m going to go onto three different phases of time here talking about what’s proactive to do. What’s important to do in the moment. And what’s important to do after what I hear you already doing is proactive. So we’re not going to wait for the tantrum to say, let’s go ahead and read. Luna finds love everywhere right now, right? That’s not going to work. I know everyone probably recognizes that, but instilling these skills earlier and becoming routine and pattern, go-to not waiting. So the skills, you know, utilizes in the book is called a bubble, breathing, not waiting until a tantrum to use bubble breathing. So there’s that go-to rope memory that they know when anytime I’m feeling off, it doesn’t have to be a tantrum. I can go to this five is such a tricky age because you mentioned tower, terrible twos. First of all, every, every child is different. Every human is different, right? So what I hear from that is that there was regulation off of the parent in a younger age, because that’s, what’s appropriate for a toddler is to still regulate based on the parent. And five is that age that they’re really starting to see the world in a very different way. And that attachment to the parent, it’s still there of course, but very different from two, right? So that is where a lot of the big emotions come up at five. And that’s why we want it to be five. So

Kimberly:                      22:41                Power struggled time, because he wants the tree and suddenly mama doesn’t have, you know, not giving him the tree. And he’s like, but there’s me Emerson. And then there’s mama. Whereas before we were like this United front,

Dr. Shainna:                  22:53                And it’s, it’s really hard to think about in that moment. But as you step back, it’s like, what a beautiful developmental phase he’s going through to like, see himself, doesn’t look or feel good in the tantrum, but it’s a really beautiful step in finding his identity as you becomes, you know, as he grows. Right. So proactivity again, that’s just really key in the moment. And I’m, I want to clarify here, we’re talking about big emotions in the moment. Not just, he’s feeling a little frustrated, I’m talking about big feelings, the tantrum, that Luna experiences in the book. That’s when, from my belief, and especially when we infuse self-love and mental health, the parents’ responsibility is to be as grounded and sturdy and whole, as you can, to hold space for that emotion to ride, of course, making sure that they are safe physically, right? So things are being thrown up, always ensuring their safety.

Dr. Shainna:                  23:49                That is not the time to come in and say, bubble, breathing, bubble, breathing. Like let’s go right now right now. So, and that’s something that I hope gets conveyed in the book is that the mom tries a little bit and realizes like, oh no, we’re in tantra mode here. So let’s just hold some space. I’m just going to be here and let you know, I’m here with you. And it isn’t until she starts to get that window of time, that’s going into the reactivity. Like, can we try this now together? And you can guide and model, but in that heat of the moment, they’re not going to hear you. And you inserting to try to help. There was like a frustration that you, you need to be the grounded force boys that hard. Right? But that, that is, that is what you can offer as a parent in that moment when that window starts to open, right?

Dr. Shainna:                  24:37                So the storm is not fully passed with the rain and the thunder is gone and the rain is still trickling. When you see that, that you can kind of test the waters of interview sort of regulations skill, right. Maybe you start to bubble breathe. And if you’ve already, if the child already knows how to observe that in the parent, they might follow suit and come in or give them their moment. And you do what you need to do in that space. And they might’ve joined you. It’s really interesting how that works sometimes, but yeah, the waters and even allowing the space to readdress it later on, right. Gosh,

Kimberly:                      25:14                Time to process. That is so powerful. Um, Dr. Shannon, thank you for that. I went through this experience last night and also checking in with ourselves, which is a big part of Dr. Shefali, his work. I don’t know if you’re familiar with her. She also came on the podcast. Um, but what happened last night was he had the tantrum about the treat. And then I checked in and I was holding the space and he was kind of like, you know, wanting to be by himself, not, not the time yet. So I kind of pulled back, check back in. He needed a little more time. And then I was giving, you know, baby brother a bath. And I said, you know, do your vote, you know, do your breathing. I’m going to breathe too. And it was just like, he needed that time. And then he came and I felt something behind me.

Kimberly:                      25:55                He came and he hugged me and he just put his head down and he was, he was ready. The storm passed, you know? So I do feel like this, you know, it’s this tendency to like rush through or like, everything’s okay, you’re fine. You’re fine. You’re fine. Like, pushing down is not allowing that energy to move through, which, you know, it’s not that we’re condoning it and he didn’t get the tree, right. So it’s not like this, this, I give this tantrum and I want to create that pattern. And then I get this, so you have to be farmed. But at the same time, hold that healthy boundary,

Dr. Shainna:                  26:25                Beautiful gift to say that this is a safe space for you to experience the big feelings that you were feeling that you don’t have to sublimate them and push them down and push them. So many of us as adults had the it’s okay, stop crying. Don’t do that. And you’re fine, fine or punishment for the big feeling. All of those examples. And all we learned was how to push down. And we lost track of how many things we pushed down and then figured left and right. And

Kimberly:                      26:57                We don’t know what we’re feeling.

Dr. Shainna:                  26:59                So it just gets more out of control. We can understand, especially right in the parent role. I understand it is uncomfortable to see a child going through that when, as the parent with right. Prefrontal cortex working for you and not for him in that moment, you’re like, oh man, if you just understood that beyond this tantrum, it gets better. It’s tempting. Right. But that’s not how emotions work. And as you mentioned, like it needs to flow through. So what a beautiful gift to have that, that space and give him the safety

Kimberly:                      27:31                And Dr. Shane, if anyone’s listening to this and they’re saying, my child has so many tantrums though, is there, you know, we keep reflecting back, we keep holding the space, but is it just in phases or do some children, you know, everybody’s different. So what would you say to that.

What is bubble breathing

Dr. Shainna:                  27:47                Exactly. That first is that everybody’s different. So making sure we assess holistically, could there be other things going on that are not being addressed? Right. So for example, if a child’s just starting to go to kindergarten, right. And I’m thinking about the phase of life that we’re in with the pandemic too, of maybe the child was home a lot and now is having a lot of outside exposure, right. Just using that arbitrary example, that’s a big shift, right? And sometimes as adults, we miss, what big shifts feel like for a little person still new in the world? So that’s an example. I also think it’s really important for parents to do their own work scribed as you know, holding space in that moment for a child experiencing big feelings. I want to acknowledge that, that sounds easier said than done. And when you are in that space, it can bring up a lot of your own junk.

Dr. Shainna:                  28:39                Right. Um, I’ve worked a lot with parents working on their self-love and trying to parent a child as best they can saying things like, I don’t know where it came from, but I said, stop crying. And I know that I hated when someone said stop crying. So why am I repeating that cycle? It brings us up if we’re not doing all of the work for ourselves proactively. So for example, for Luna, it’s wonderful to introduce self-love as to a child when they are in a really wonderful absorbent phase, but also it’s important that we use our adult counterparts. So like the self love workbook to do our work in tandem, try to help our child to,

Kimberly:                      29:23                Yes. I mean, I have, I have a friend and she was, you know, she had a second child and her, her older child was just like, you know, when bananas and she didn’t understand it. And then I was just witnessing, no, not judging because we’re all doing our best of course. And we all have our mama, you know, things were working out, but she was having a, you know, she’s feeling very frantic with two children and she was having a hard time giving the other one that very focused attention, which of course they need when another child comes as well. So it was just like, she was being more frantic. And I was, you know, just gently suggesting, you know, maybe you need to find stillness and do more meditating. And she started incorporating that and her older child just naturally started to calm down. It’s really beautiful when we see it in practice. And I’m sure you see it all the time in your actual clinic, in practice, Dr. Shana, that sometimes it’s like, what we see outside is, you know, affected so much so deeply by the energy inside of us because we’re all connected, it’s all vibration and it’s all happening. So I’m so powerful to, to self-reflect. I love that there’s, you know, the self love for the parent, for the partner, if you know, your partner is going through whatever, you know, in all different relationships in life.

Dr. Shainna:                  30:38                Absolutely. And I just, I think of this, you know, well, wonderful world of what it would be like if we all learned self-love really early on in life, right. So we wouldn’t have to go through that unlearning and relearning and adjusting. Right. If we all learned it early, and then we took self-love as serious as how serious as we take love for others in our world. You know, if we took the relationship with ourselves, just as important as our relationship with our children, with our parents, with our partners, you know, with our loved ones, we are our own loved ones too. And I think all too often, we neglect that.

Kimberly:                      31:14                Yeah. And like you said, you can repair that at any time. You can work on it at any time. If you didn’t get it as a child, you know, you’re listening to this, you’re like, oh, I’m, you know, 60 years old or 80 years older, 20 years old, or however old, you can always work on connecting back in now to the true self, to your unique, beautiful formless essence, who you are, and really learn to connect and love yourself.

Dr. Shainna:                  31:40                Absolutely. And I know that for folks, sometimes there is a helplessness and hopelessness that develops. If they find the concept of self-love later in life, it kind of shaped their system of wait a second. This actually makes a lot of sense. This might be the cornerstone of what I was missing, but I spent so much time in my life not having this. What will it look like if I incorporate this? Is it too late to incorporate those? I have heard that. And I hear that. I understand that because we become ingrained in who we are. Right. So it’s kind of like, we stuck our feet so deep down, how are we going to get out of there? I hear that I have empathy for that, but I will share that I have worked with clients in their eighties who are working on selves, and it’s really powerful to see how life unfolds as you infuse that.

Dr. Shainna:                  32:30                So I have a bias belief that I think that regardless of where you are in the lifespan, you can do it. And I do also have the biased belief that it is easier if we, it sooner. So that’s really where Luna came from because we had the self-love workbook first and the most consistent point of feedback that I would hear from people, whether it was folks I was working with in this office or folks who had purchased it independently was I wish I learned this sooner. And I, I feel the same way. So I hear that by that resonates within my soul as I hear that. And I feel that, and that’s why

Kimberly:                      33:05                Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Shainna, for all of your wisdom for coming on here with us today, I really do love the book. Luna finds love everywhere. And my loves, we will link directly to Dr. Shayna’s work, which is, um, Dr. Shea, oh, sorry. ShainnaAli.com with two N’s and two A’s it’s a little bit hard to spell, but we will link directly to it Beauties, at mysolluna.com. And again, please check out the book. We will also mention it directly in the show notes. So Dr. Shana, again, thank you so much. I think your work is really beautiful and important. And thank you again so much for being here with us today.

Dr. Shainna:                  33:46                Thank you so much for having me and letting me share a little bit of my perspective.

Kimberly:          33:49    Wonderful.

Kimberly: 04:19 All right. My loves, I hope you enjoyed our interview today with Dr. Shainna Ali, we will link in the show notes to more information about her and other podcasts that I think that you would enjoy very much mental health is going to be an ongoing conversation within our community because it influences our overall wellness. It influences our day to day enjoyment. It influences our hormones and our food choices and everything else because everything does work synergistically. It does work together. So please head over to mysolluna.com. You’ll get lots of other goodies like meditations and recipes and more. And you’ll also find more information out about the new book. You are more than you think you are, what you can pre-order today, sending you so much love and see you back here Thursday for our next Q&A podcast. Namaste on Shanti, peace and love.

The post Childhood Trauma and How to Learn Self-Love with Dr. Shainna Ali [Episode #629] appeared first on Solluna by Kimberly Snyder.