Just Like Nana

Sarah Lindsey

• Amie Penny Sayler • Episode 2

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In this episode of Just Like Nana, host Amie (Elizabeth) Penny Sayler sits down with Sarah Lindsey, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who uses a trauma-informed and relational perspective in her work. Together, they unpack the concept of intergenerational trauma and, more importantly, intergenerational healing. 

They explore the profound idea that “pain runs through families until someone is resourced enough to feel it,” and so much more. If you’ve ever felt like the “cycle breaker” in your family, this conversation will provide you with the somatic tools and emotional validation you need to rewrite the story in your lineage–for you, your ancestors, and future generations. 



About Sarah

Sarah Lindsey is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) who operates from a trauma-informed and relational perspective in her work. With a deep passion for the mind-body connection, Sarah integrates mindfulness and somatics into her work to bring about deep healing for the whole person. She is the co-founder of As You Are Therapy in the Twin Cities and is dedicated to creating "Grandma-energy" spaces where people can co-regulate and find psychological safety.



In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

  • The heart-opening journal prompt, “who loved you into being,” to identify the person who provided your “relational template” for safety. 
  • Trauma isn’t just a “Big T” event; it’s often the result of a lack of a compassionate witness and can be passed down through DNA and epigenetics. 
  • How to co-regulate with your ancestors, regardless of whether you knew them or not. 
  • How to embrace the practice of asking the hard questions to uncover your own family history. 


Connect with Sarah Lindsey

As You Are Therapy: https://www.asyouaretherapymn.com/ 


Connect with the Show
Do you have a story of intergenerational trauma that you'd like to share on the podcast? We want to hear from you!

  • Website: justlikenana.com
  • Share Your Story: If you have a family story or trauma you’re exploring, reach out via our website for a chance to be interviewed.




Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Theme music by Carter Penny.

Amie Penny Sayler:

A welcome to just like Nana, so excited to have you here today. We're here today with Sarah. Lindsay, thrilled to be here with Sarah. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She works from a trauma informed and relational perspective. Sarah loves working with people from all cultural backgrounds, and is curious to understand and empower each unique cultural experience. She's passionate about understanding the mind body connection, and loves to integrate mindfulness into her work with clients to bring about deep healing and lasting change for the whole person. And we are lucky enough to talk with her today. Welcome Sarah. Thank you so Sarah, I'd love to start just by hearing what's one of your favorite memories of or stories of your grandma or nana.

Sarah Lindsey:

This one was so hard because there are so many, but my sensory memory, like my body memory, goes straight to being in her orchid room. My grandmother grew orchids my whole life, and when I smell them like when you go into the St Paul conservatory, yeah, that humid kind of tropical floral smell is what I think of, and it's what I associate with my safe place.

Unknown:

I love that. Do you grow orchids at all? I do. Oh, yeah.

Sarah Lindsey:

And it's a fun part of my therapeutic process with clients. Sometimes we repot them together, we learn about them together. And I always have them in my home, in my therapy office, yeah.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Oh, that's amazing. So your grandma's just right there with you always,

Sarah Lindsey:

whether I'm aware of it or not always.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Okay, has your grandma passed? She did about 10 years ago? Okay, well, I'm sorry for your loss, but I'm glad she's still here with you. And what did you call her?

Sarah Lindsey:

I called her grandma, okay, yeah. I was intrigued and curious about what other people call their grandmothers. Yeah, I love to ask about grandma's in my therapy work, okay? And I'm always curious what people call their grandmas. She was just grandma.

Amie Penny Sayler:

I love it still is. And for the listeners, she's actually here with us. So we will you tell the listeners your grandma's name, yeah, Cathie O'Rourke, Cathie. And we have a lovely picture of Cathie surrounded by her orchids here with us during the interview. So happy to have Cathie here as well. So welcome Sarah and Cathie. I do want to talk kind of more generally about intergenerational trauma, how you incorporate discussions about that in your work, but you said something that intrigued me, which is that you feel like your grandma's part of your work every day. Can you talk about that?

Sarah Lindsey:

Yeah, I think this starts with one of the most profound parts of my learning as a young therapist, which was a class I took where I had to journal about the prompt who loved you into being. Oh, and when I journaled, I surprised myself by writing about my grandma. I didn't consciously go into the field of therapy knowing I wanted to be like her, but really she influenced what I would call my relational template. She taught me so much about what it felt like to feel safe, to feel loved, to be really present in my body. And after doing that prompt, I set up my first therapy office with so many of her things, because being surrounded by things that reminded me of her

Unknown:

helped me feel present. Oh, wow, that is beautiful.

Sarah Lindsey:

And then it became conscious as I learned about generational trauma, but also generational healing. Now I intentionally surround myself with things that remind me of her or that are hers, and talk to clients about grandma energy all the time.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Oh, that's amazing. Grandma energy. I love that, and I loved that prompt. Will you say it one more time?

Sarah Lindsey:

Yeah, everyone should do it. I

Unknown:

know it was immediately like, this is my journaling tonight, and write

Sarah Lindsey:

it at the top of your paper. Who loved you into being. Wow, that's beautiful.

Amie Penny Sayler:

You know, sometimes we talk about ancestral trauma, intergenerational trauma, generational trauma, and we kind of focus on the nuts and bolts of energetically. Here's how it gets passed down or through what's triggered in your DNA line. Here's what gets passed down. But I really love the idea of also talking about ancestral healing and what that means, and it. Few believe that healing kind of goes back and forth to descendants and to ancestors, and talking more about that today, so I'd love to talk about that. So let's start though with what do you call it? Do you call it ancestral trauma? Do you call it intergenerational trauma? To use those terms interchangeably, and what does it mean to you as a therapist?

Sarah Lindsey:

Great question. I usually refer to it as intergenerational trauma, and I recognize that most times I'm talking about this, I am introducing it to someone, some people I find are very in touch with their lineage, and I might use the term ancestral trauma, although I notice myself more often using intergenerational trauma and then using the word ancestor as a word that reminds them that people are at their back and support word. So when I'm educating about this, I use intergenerational trauma, okay, it's also easy for people to learn more about it using that term, searching, finding books.

Amie Penny Sayler:

This is Amy just intervening after my conversation with Sarah to call out this important note that she mentioned, searching for intergenerational trauma often brings more research results than other types of searches.

Sarah Lindsey:

I think what it means to me as a therapist, it's a deeper layer of trauma work. The first stage of trauma work is about resourcing clients. It's about making sure that before we dive in and go to the really hurt places. We're supported enough. What are

Amie Penny Sayler:

examples of when you talk about resourcing? What are you looking for in the resourcing process?

Sarah Lindsey:

Yeah, resourcing can be so different for each person, but resourcing, I think of first and foremost as relationally being resourced. So who are our safe people? The therapist is one, but I'm always curious who else they're in relationship with that is a resource to them, okay, especially when they're struggling, building some skills around vulnerability, being able to access our relational resources, right? Something I'm passionate about teaching is that CO regulation, or regulating off of another person's regulated nervous system is by far the most efficient and effective way to regulate.

Amie Penny Sayler:

There will actually be someone on here whose life's focus in her work is, you know, nervous system and regulation and CO regulation, but if you don't mind talking about it just a little bit, because I'm just learning how as humans. I think I always understood, okay, we need social connections, we need love, you know, just as much as we need food, water and air. But I did not understand how, actually, our nervous systems co regulate with others. Can you just talk about that a little bit and sort of explain that for the listener who maybe hasn't

Sarah Lindsey:

heard about that? Yep, you know how you can feel someone's mood when they walk into a room, especially if you're highly sensitive. You know who you are, if you're listening, easily swayed by people's moods, maybe highly sensitive to your environment. The idea is that our nervous systems have something called mirror neurons, and this is below our conscious awareness. But our moods, our mirror neurons are mirroring back what other people's nervous systems are giving off. And our nervous system is this, you know, our brain and body's way of detecting threat in our environment. And so there's a concept called psychological safety, which is that our nervous systems are not always just looking for physical safety. They're exploring the environment for relational safety all the time. So why we're drawn to people who feel grounded, receptive, open? You know, people might say You're so easy to talk to, yeah. So as a therapist, so much of what's therapeutic about my work is focusing on my own regulations so clients can borrow my regulation when they're really overwhelmed. Okay, it might even allow them to process a really painful time or a really painful feeling and move through it for the first time. Wow.

Amie Penny Sayler:

That is a really powerful way to use some highly sensitive skills. So kudos to you. It can be tough, as a sensitive person to understand how to control access to you and your output and what goes out and the energy that takes on your part. So I'm sure you also need a lot of resourcing

Sarah Lindsey:

I do, and a lot of CO regulation, which is why I see myself not as you know, what's therapeutic about my work? You know, I'm co regulating off of my grandmother and her energy the whole time I'm working. It's really important for me as a therapist that I see myself as CO regulated with all of my safe people while I'm in the room. Yeah, and it is less of a burden on.

Amie Penny Sayler:

System, right? That that's amazing. I do think too, you know, there's sort of a little bit of an American way of, you know, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and just get over it and those types of kind of sayings. And I think it's clear, but just to say it out loud, just like Nana, is not about, you know, wallowing or blaming or anything like that, but it is about seeing, acknowledging, learning and figuring out how you as an individual move on from there with that information.

Sarah Lindsey:

I really appreciate you naming that, because people might ask me, Why should I care about intergenerational trauma or the past stuff that'll just make me feel worse. And what I like to explain is a definition of trauma that not everyone understands or has heard, which is that trauma is often not the capital T,

Unknown:

big T event, right? Like an airplane crash, right?

Sarah Lindsey:

Or an assault, or something you know, maybe that we know happened, right? It's not the one bad thing that happened. The trauma usually occurs because there's a lack of a compassionate witness. Oh, yeah, we are so resilient as a species, including psychologically and relationally, but past generations often didn't talk about it or weren't regulated around it. It's why two people who go through the same experience, one can leave traumatized and the other not

Amie Penny Sayler:

okay, because the other has the compassionate witness.

Sarah Lindsey:

If someone has a compassionate witness, for example, a child has a regulated adult who is saying to them, The divorce was so painful. This has been so painful. This is so hard for you. I might hear who's regulated enough to be attuned to the child's experience right then the child might be able to process the trauma while it's happening, and that is kind of an unburdening where trauma sticks in the body right when it is too much, too big, too scary, too confusing, to process the information while it's happening. Okay?

Amie Penny Sayler:

And then you don't have that regulated, safe person to process with afterwards,

Sarah Lindsey:

exactly, ideally, we have a compassionate witness during Okay, so ideally, for example, you know, a divorce might be a trauma, right? Yeah, that's not a single event. Takes a long time if we have someone telling the truth about how hard it is while it's happening, yeah, that helps us digest it. It helps us process. You've probably heard the term unprocessed trauma, right? Or I am processing my trauma in therapy, yeah. What does that mean? It doesn't just mean talking about it. It means talking about it while somebody is attuned enough to be mirroring back the emotions. Okay? You can imagine that a child goes through a divorce, and both parents are very dysregulated, and the child feels very emotionally alone that their feelings aren't invited. No one is saying, Honey, how is this for you? This has felt so chaotic. There's so much change. You must feel so sad and confused, right? If no one's doing that, that you know, the person might come to me for therapy as an adult and they're struggling in their relationships or their depression, could show up so many ways, right? Yeah, and what we do is they get to tell the story, and we pace it. We go slow. So when my nervous system detects that, they activate. They get stressed, they get scared. I pause them, and we slow down with the feeling together. Okay, they might realize I felt so lonely, and then we slow down with loneliness. And my system mirrors that back to them, yeah. And all of a sudden, we're digesting the loneliness in a safe enough way, because there's someone there with them in the lonely Wow.

Amie Penny Sayler:

That is so powerful. And I want to be clear, and I don't think you're saying this, but just to be clear to listeners, no one's bashing divorce. Sometimes it's the best option or anything else that might happen. Life happens, and I think it's not so much the event itself as how the event is processed. Is that fair, exactly?

Sarah Lindsey:

And I'm glad you said it, because I have many clients who maybe went through their parents divorcing, who that's not a trauma at all. It could be a protective factor. So divorce is just a change in the family, right? It's a change in the family that can, for some people, yeah, certainly be what's best, especially if we're talking about it, right? And it's a really good example of how changes in families can again, yeah, either be traumatizing not traumatizing. It really isn't about the content,

Unknown:

okay, it's really about the process. Yeah, we feel seen. Okay, wow.

Amie Penny Sayler:

I did, too, just getting back to kind of that American way of, you know, pull yourself up and those sorts of things, what I'm really starting to appreciate, and my listeners know I am not, I'm not you. I'm not a professional. I am not a mental health professional. This is, you know, what I've learned is just through my own reading, my own processes. And so I'm not offering advice, but just reflecting on my own experience. What I really appreciate about understanding the nervous system more is to appreciate its awesome power. The entire purpose of your nervous system is to keep you alive and safe. And so to think, gee, I'm going to fight against that, it just helps put in perspective so much how incredibly powerful and skilled our nervous system is at taking care of us. And I don't know if that resonates with you, if you want to speak to that,

Sarah Lindsey:

it's so powerful, right? Yeah, it's amazing. One note I'll say on this is that the nervous system has so many functions, right? It's like when you go to touch a hot stove, your hand pulls away before you can think it. A nervous system is always working for us, right, trying to protect us from threats, and it remembers if there was a threat before. Yeah. It doesn't forget. It does it for us, yeah, which sometimes, you know, is usually it's adaptive, meaning that it keeps us alive. And then sometimes it becomes maladaptive. If we find safety, our nervous system, you know, might say, Oh, that person's in a bad mood and it thinks it's the hot stove, pull away. That's scary. Not okay, yeah, when, in fact, you know, we might be in a safe, secure relationship and our partners just in a bad mood, right? Right? You know it's not, yeah, the really neglectful parent or something who never attuned to us, yeah. And so understanding the nervous system is really powerful for helping us orient to our environment. Now, okay, it's so protective, it's so smart, and sometimes a little too good,

Amie Penny Sayler:

okay, yeah. And I think how we sort of, I don't want to say, get around that. But what's important for us is to see what's happening, to acknowledge it, to appreciate, you know, instead of fighting against That's so stupid, you know that's not happening now, just acknowledge, wow, you're trying to keep me safe. Thank you for that. And here's kind of working through. Here's why I feel resourced enough for this, or here's why it's not a threat.

Sarah Lindsey:

You're describing self soothing. Yeah, that's right, our nervous system is our friend. Befriend it when I say that, I imagine you know putting a hand on your chest. Thank you, right. Thank you body for keeping me alive. Thank you for protecting me. Our nervous system and tending to that is a great way to practice self soothing, okay, appreciating our body, right, how much it's working for us when we resist it, right, the patterns persist, yeah, when we resist it, our body feels like it needs to keep on guard, right? Protecting us. Okay, okay.

Amie Penny Sayler:

So this seems like a really good way to transition into, let's talk about intergenerational trauma and how just sort of how you perceive it. I mean, does it live in our body? Is it energetic? You talked about, like unprocessed trauma? Can that pass down a familial line. Just all of the questions, how do you see it?

Sarah Lindsey:

Yeah, well, I think it's epigenetic, so genes can get turned on or off, expressed or not, and so trauma changes the brain, and it changes. It lives in our nervous systems, right? It's very clear to me as someone who's trained as a marriage and family therapist and who has studied systemic, well, everything's systemic, so the way family systems work, how trauma is systemic, okay, that you'll see we parent the way we were parented, unless we actively disrupt it, right, right? That's what our body knows this is one of the ways that trauma is passed down, right? If you think about neurons and neural connections in the brain, we are always learning, and the way we are parented becomes our template for how we parent. Okay, very in the brain, right? Unless we do some active rewiring, and it's hardly but you can see in marriage and family therapy, sometimes we say it takes three generations to break a family cycle. Wow. I like repeating that to clients because it helps us be kind to ourselves. Some people might say I'm a cycle breaker. You know, I was abused. I really don't want to abuse my children, and I will remind. Them that they are in charge of breaking what is possible to break in one generation, right? We can't heal it all at once. And yeah, our parents broke some cycles too, right? Interesting to look back and see. You know, maybe they passed on some trauma. Hey, maybe they also broke a few cycles.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yeah, exactly. I see that just even so, I have triplets, and they're now 25 years old, and it's so interesting to think about how much I wanted to be absolutely the best mom they could have. And I can look back right 25 years and see I was not in the same place with my healing that I am now. And in fact, when they were three years old is when I really started to appreciate, wait a minute, maybe I have some value as a person, because I could see things in them that I just loved and adored, and I realized, hang on, I'm their mom. I'm their primary caregiver. Maybe some of this is a little bit of a reflection on me. I don't want to take away from you know, they had their own shining spirits and everything. Wait a minute.

Sarah Lindsey:

You get to give yourself some credit, and it's important that's part of breaking generational cycles is celebrating. Celebrating is as important, if not more important, than grieving, yeah, oh, wow. Please do celebrate. Okay, you parented. Yes. Do celebrate what you noticed you enjoyed in them,

Amie Penny Sayler:

right, right? Well, thank you for that. I love that. And the point is, you know, so, so we fast forward, and it turns out, potentially, there is still some issues to work through, and that's okay, because I always think you know what, they're farther along than I was at that same time. So I just, I so appreciate the idea of it takes a while, and sort of that compassion for yourself doing the best you can as a parent, and recognizing that those before you probably did the best they could as well. That doesn't excuse some behavior, but you can kind of breathe a little bit when you just recognize they were a human doing the best they could, right?

Sarah Lindsey:

And the extent to which we humanize ourselves is the extent to which we humanize other people. Yeah, we have to humanize ourselves, right? Yes, there's still issues to work through. We're human. Every generation has issues that the loss didn't. There is this illusion of control in parenting. You know, my kids are three and five, and I'm a therapist, so I thought, Oh, I've got it. Everyone listening is laughing, right? Because they're like, Yeah, you have all these grand hopes for parenting, and then so much of your own stuff is brought to the surface, right? And behavior change is not the way we heal trauma. It actually can make it worse. That's why doing cognitive behavioral therapy, or therapies that are solely focused on top down processing or about like learning and intellectualizing and making change behavior Right? Can make it worse because we're not tending to our nervous system, and that can create more dissonance and more shame when we don't behave the way we had hoped.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Okay, so we have an idea in our head, but it's not happening, and now we've got a bigger gap there.

Sarah Lindsey:

That's right. And yeah, we feel worse about ourselves, don't we? Yeah, harder on ourselves.

Amie Penny Sayler:

So let's talk about that. Let's talk about the trauma in the body. How, how that sort of you started to talk about epigenetics, the behavior, the sort of parenting modes. How does that live in your body, and what do you do to start to heal?

Sarah Lindsey:

I've been using the language lately, sensory memory. So sensory memory, I would describe as the felt knowing in the body and how much felt safety you feel, yeah. Or, that's the way I'm utilizing it. Sensory memory, everybody can relate to having a smell like the first day of school, sure, or grandma's perfume, for me, it's the orchid room. There's a smell that can make you feel calm and safe inside or nervous, our bodies are always taking in information, yeah, and utilizing that information to find psychological safety or detect threat. And so when I think about trauma in the body and how it lives there, a lot of it lives there as sensory memory. Okay, we might not be conscious of it, but what we can work on without even knowing what the content of the trauma is. For example, you know, there's plenty of trauma that's passed down that we've never heard the story about. We don't always know what lives in our body Exactly. You know, the gift is that we don't have to know the content. What we can do is tend to the body, tend to the triggers, tend to the areas of stress and find psychological safety, or engage the senses to find safety. Now, okay? Yeah, one of my favorite ways to do that is a very good friend and colleague introduced this to me. She brings giant rocks back from Lake Superior. Oh, by giant, I mean, just like a large rock you could put in your lap. Yeah, right. Wow. And when a client is starting to dissociate, her nervous system is highly attuned to this, and might pick up that the person is starting to get a little floaty, yeah? Or go into their head. I've done a lot of energy work on myself, and I can tell, because I start not feeling my legs as much when a client is beginning to dissociate, sure, because of an uncomfortable experience. Okay? And I'll hand them a rock, a giant rock that they put on their lap, yeah, and we will slow down with whatever the content is and help the body anchor in safety again.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Okay, wow, that is powerful. I so appreciate knowing that you don't need to know every detail to foster healing for yourself and for future generations, you can work through the senses in the body,

Sarah Lindsey:

absolutely especially with a skilled practitioner. When I think about how people could access healing, I think having a therapist who is trauma informed, especially someone who understands somatics. Every trauma informed practitioner should understand somatics, but somebody who feels, you know, really grounded in their skills with that, yeah, can really help. Because, from my perspective, the most important thing about healing trauma two things. One is the somatic embodied work, okay? And then the other one is the relational container. It is having someone guide you, because we can know all these things, right? I still go to my own therapist, yeah, for support with my own trauma work. Okay, right? Because I still need to co regulate. You know, when you get really skilled, you might build a relationship to for me, it's a willow tree or another willow tree and I co regulate with the trees now, which is cool, yeah, that is amazing. You know, nature is a powerful regulator. Yeah. You know, we have in Western society, really lost some of our relationship to nature. Yes, my grandma taught me a lot about that, but I find that if you can't access that, starting with a really attuned therapist, I'll

Amie Penny Sayler:

just freely confess I love trees. When I'm on hikes, I will not every tree because it's not possible, but I will stop and just sometimes spend 30 seconds to a minute just touching a tree and being appreciative for its existence. It is unbelievably calming. I also think I realize that access to nature is different for everyone, but one piece that I think is accessible to most anyone is just being barefoot on the earth. Yes, it's amazing

Sarah Lindsey:

Well, and that's sensory memory. I wonder how long that goes back.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yeah, right. Wow. That really, felt really powerful to me. I got a huge show when you said that of I just thought I enjoyed it. But, yeah,

Sarah Lindsey:

no, your body remembers, right, that it belongs there when our feet touch the earth, okay? And in our world, there's so much of the time our feet touch socks, yes, and shoes and carpets,

Unknown:

yeah, concrete,

Sarah Lindsey:

right, but it is a powerful reminder of belonging.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yeah, that's beautiful. So when you're talking about, you know, I'll just use myself in it as an example. I might be experiencing something in my body that is related to a trauma that my great grandma experienced. Why is it in my body? Like, why am I feeling it? Why is it hurting me? Why is it there?

Sarah Lindsey:

Yeah, so in our field, we say pain runs through families until someone is ready to feel it. I would actually shift that now to maybe say, pain runs through families until someone is resourced enough to feel it. Yeah, because someone might be ready and under resourced, right? Someone might want to and can't. And so that's why it's such a gift and a privilege to do my work, to co regulate with people, you know, where we are creating the safety to feel it, yeah, through the pain it's in your body, because maybe there was so much else happening, right, that that pain didn't get resolved before that person passed, their body did not find safety and confusion. Wow, with that suffering, okay?

Amie Penny Sayler:

And it could have been, I mean, with my mom, but she wasn't resourced enough, and, you know, so it just kind of keeps traveling,

Sarah Lindsey:

yeah, and we don't have to know where it began, right? There are so many pains that I don't think we. I ever will know when they begin. You know when we look into our ancestry? I'm Irish, very Irish, and yeah, I think about genocide or famine, these huge collective like large traumas to a people, yes, and how some of that, right? Of course, it can't be digested in one generation, right? And that part of my work, to honor my ancestors is to continue, right? Yeah, some of the healing, yeah,

Amie Penny Sayler:

it's really powerful. It's beautiful. I am sure they appreciate it,

Sarah Lindsey:

yeah, to connect with them. And, you know, to think about still being in relationship, right? Yeah, ancestors also forward thinking, thinking about my children and my children's children, right? And this is also a reason that I heal.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yeah, absolutely. I do a lot for grandbabies that I don't yet have. I don't have any, yeah, relationship with them, right? Right?

Sarah Lindsey:

Yes. May we all be in relationship to the future children, right, that are ours and not ours. Yeah, all be in relationship to the future children of the world in a way that we would heal for them.

Amie Penny Sayler:

I'm about to cry, because how much better would the world be?

Sarah Lindsey:

Yeah, this feels like a really important time to slow down with that, right? There's a lot of tears, yeah, about how much collective grief there is and how we need to really recenter our children.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yeah, thank you for that. I'm gonna ask you to go back just, you know, I think we all hear a lot about somatics, but what does that mean to you when you say that?

Sarah Lindsey:

Yeah, there's so many different somatic modalities. To me, what it means is being in touch with, it's something called interoception. It's our ability to be in touch with what's happening internally, okay, in our body. So somatics is not just about the act of doing something with our body, right, tapping or like tapping or yoga, or anything we could do to move our or stimulate our bodies, but it's really about noticing when we become dysregulated and then bringing our body to safety. Okay? Most people have heard of the fight, flight and freeze responses and body these primitive nervous system, you know, responses to threat and somatic work often starts with people who are having big dysregulations. You know, that might be their complaint when they come to therapy, I have panic attacks. Awesome. Sure, we can use somatic interventions like, you know, deep breathing is a really common one. I'm not advocating for that as the only tool to calm up. Sure, I would actually much prefer someone gets skin to skin in bed with their partner, Ashley and oh, wow, yeah, that's a really powerful somatic intervention. Okay, if you haven't slept naked with your sweetie lately, right bed and cuddle up with them, it can also look like, you know, yeah, being skin to skin with a child, even letting our body co regulate with a regulated being, yeah? But as we get deeper into somatic work, we're able to start noticing when our body is starting to leave. It's not just when we hit a panic attack. It might be, oh, I'm a little bit less grounded. I'm a little more floaty, I'm a little overwhelmed. I need to slow down, right? It's kind of like a light switch and turning it into a dimmer switch. So the last match of, you know, dysregulation, I'm on, I'm activated. I can't slow down. I'm not in my body, yeah? Or off, you know, I crash at the end of the day and I fall asleep and I'm totally gone, right? But it's learning that dimmer switch, okay? And how it feels in the body to be kind of all these different levels of grounded or dysregulated. That's amazing.

Amie Penny Sayler:

As the owner of a dog and six cats, I assume animals help us co regulate. I shouldn't even say I know they do.

Sarah Lindsey:

There is this great video. It's this video of this person who is going to give this other very sad person a hug, and you watch all the sadness kind of visually enter the person who has hugged, yeah, and then it's kind of goes along, you know, this person is now sad, and someone else cares for them. And then you end up with a person who's just full of sadness, right? They go home to their dog, and all the sadness drains away from both of them, yeah, because I love it. Definitely co regulate with animals,

Amie Penny Sayler:

yeah, and they're good at not taking on our junk. They just sort of disseminate it for better, higher use.

Sarah Lindsey:

Yeah, we are so lucky to have them. Yeah, you know, they're not stuck. In the past or the future, like humans are, right, which can make it so hard to find people who are a safe place to co regulate with, yes, because maybe their stuff gets triggered.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I even think of, you know, when you talk about partners, there's just, there's so much history there, and so, yeah, it can be difficult for that partner to stay anchored. And then now they're either thinking of, you know, well, what's the stemming from, did I do something, that sort of thing, or they're thinking of the future and your relationship.

Sarah Lindsey:

So, you know, in this vein, one thing I would say is that we can also co regulate with someone who has passed. So I am co regulated with my grandmother right now. That's really nice. I am most well when I am co regulated to her energy. Okay, so I think about spiritual practices, yeah, connected to Spirit also, yeah, right, and that helps unburden our marriages, our close relationships. I sometimes think of it like a stool. The more legs, the sturdier It is, yeah, partner can't be the only person we co regulate with, right? It's too much right? Yeah, too much pressure, yes. And so our children even are healthier when we are co regulated with more people that we experience relational safety with.

Amie Penny Sayler:

And I will say for the listeners, you know, Sarah started with telling us about her grandma, Cathie, and how close they were. And it it's beautiful that you can co regulate with with her. And some people think, well, might think, well, that kind of makes sense. You know, that was your safe person. I will say I've told the story of my Nana, Betha, who was my fifth great grandmother. So never knew her, and I often as I'm meditating, she's a safe kind of higher self for me, a mother figure that is very real and present to me. And it's a relationship that I didn't have here on this earth, but that I still found a way to connect to. So I just, I think there's a lot of richness there and a lot of variety in CO regulating with people who have passed.

Sarah Lindsey:

I'll often ask people to imagine who's behind them, right your back, yeah, and it sounds like Beth. Is that your back?

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yeah. It's been fun getting to know her. I'm curious about, you know, some of our listeners might want to learn more about their family and more about their ancestral stories and their family stories. It sounds like that's not maybe totally necessary to generate healing for yourself and moving forward. But if someone wants that, I guess do you see any drawbacks to that? And what approaches do you recommend with older family members if you want to hear,

Sarah Lindsey:

as you were saying that I was thinking about how important it is for me to tell people that you don't always have to know the content. And on the other side of that same coin is sometimes there's so much happening in the body that having some content and knowing some of what's going on is really helpful for healing, right? Yeah, I would never tell somebody that has no family alive that we couldn't heal because they don't have anyone to ask. And I also frequently recommend that people talk to their family, yeah, right, and ask them for questions. Well, one thing I would say I recommend is having a relational session with a therapist. This is accessible to everyone, and it is not necessary, and it can be really powerful, yeah, to have a container, a place where somebody else is guiding the questions. I as a therapist, I frame it relationally. So I say, Hey, you're here talk to me about your relationship with each other. Yeah, it's hard. Often it's very intimate to talk about your relationship, especially when it hasn't always been smooth, right? And can be very healing to reflect on the relationship.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yeah, I can also see that as feeling a little bit safer to the person of whom the questions are being asked. Because even if you have a really soft approach with someone in an older generation in your family, I can understand how to them it might feel. I don't want to use the word attack, but maybe even, you know, as extreme as an attack or they might have their own pain and shame around that story and feel like you're kind of agitating it. There's just a lot going on. So I can see how helping that person feel as safe as they can could be really conducive to a conversation that gives you information

Sarah Lindsey:

well, and sometimes we're regulated enough to do that, right, to accommodate their nervous system. Yeah, right? Because if they do feel attacked, they haven't healed, right? And that's so common, yeah, our course, generation is doing a lot more therapy than the past generation, right? You know more, I suppose. Specifically think about people who've been disconnected from culture because of colonization, or I think about a lot of white bodies, you know, people I work with who don't feel any connection to culture, sure, and without therapy, this kind of like Western healing modality that I try to practice, a decolonized version of, without that, and also without connection to your culture and some of these somatic or sensory practices of being in community, being in nature, doing ritual, without these things accessible to us. How are we supposed to heal? Yeah, so there's a lot of people I'm talking to Now who's the last two generations didn't get to heal. It's a lot of pain, right? A lot of surviving, yes, and if we're regulated enough, if we've done enough of our own therapy and we decide, or our own healing and have decided, you know, I'm going to have this conversation coming from a place of curiosity. That's one really good way to know. If you're regulated, can I be curious? And if we can't, I recommend having another person in the room, yeah, your spouse, a sibling, someone who you can co regulate with to slow yourself down while you ask the questions from a place of curiosity.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Okay, well, I could talk to you for hours, but I just want to be respectful of your time, so everything we discuss, we will link in the show notes. There's a lot here, and hopefully people have some ideas. What are some first steps that you would recommend if someone's interested in further exploring this intergenerational trauma, how it might relate to their own sort of well being at this point

Sarah Lindsey:

doing some journaling is one really nice place to start. Sometimes just slowing down with our intuition and what our body already knows, yeah, be a great lead. Start with the journal prompt who loved you into being, and go from there that I also have found that energy work has been really powerful for me. And so any kind of body based energy work, like craniosacral work, intuitive, energetics, Reiki, any of these somatic kind of our energy modalities can be really helpful to get us into our body. Okay? And I find that once we start getting into our body. There's a lot of good questions that emerge or knowings Yeah, that emerge right? And the better we can know ourself, you know, the better we can find the right people to support us.

Amie Penny Sayler:

Yes, yeah. I love that. That is all amazing. How can people find out more about you? Follow, you work with you tell us about that on

Sarah Lindsey:

my website, which is as you are therapy. Mn.com, my business partner Adam and I do a lot of work with relationships and individuals in the Twin Cities. Books are currently full, but starting to keep a wait list for folks who really want to hang around until there's an opening to do the work. But also I have a different role that I play, which is helping connect people with the right therapist. This has become a passion area for me, because I love it when people have experiences that feel really attuned and healing for them. And can't you spread myself, you know, too thin, sure. So my business partner and I host events about once a month called therapy on tap. We show up at local breweries with therapists with openings. Oh, fun, just as an accessible kind of community gathering place for people to come and meet therapists and interview people to see could be a good fit? There's a tab on my website about that. Okay, my business partner and I share some content on our Instagram and Facebook as you are therapy. And my dear colleague, salaha of cattail therapy, her and I also just opened a new space in Minneapolis by Lake Hiawatha, and it is full of grandma energy. It is also the place that I did a decade of mentorship with my first therapist and mentor who is now retired. Oh, wow, but lots of elder energy and ancestral energy in that space, and we, yeah, we'll have some openings for new clients, but also we're piloting kind of a new model right now where people can come and use our therapeutic art and sensory room. Oh, wow. Way to co regulate to the healing work between sessions. So another three space where people can come and be and do their art or journal or sit and have a cup of tea. Yeah, you know, I my place was grandma's living room, and so now I've done my best to create that for everybody to come use.

Unknown:

Oh, wonderful. Well, I am absolutely going to check that out, because that

Amie Penny Sayler:

sounds amazing. You know, when you talk about the grandma energy and the elder energy and. And, and sometimes we're talking about, you know, there was a focus on survival, because there had to be, and maybe some unresolved trauma. But I always like to be really clear at just like Nana, that doesn't mean they were weak or somehow doing less than we're doing because we're exploring it. It really were able to explore it because of what they did for us, and their energy, wisdom, power, just based on what they've been through, can just be an incredible resource. So kudos to the grandmas.

Sarah Lindsey:

Kudos to the grandmas Yes, and all of the generational gifts, yeah, that we have also inherited

Amie Penny Sayler:

absolutely All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Bye.

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Sarah Lindsey

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