Resilience Development in Action
Discover practical resilience strategies that transform lives. Join Steve Bisson, licensed mental health counselor, as he guides first responders, leaders, and trauma survivors through actionable insights for mental wellness and professional growth.
Each week, dive deep into real conversations about grief processing, trauma recovery, and leadership development. Whether you're a first responder facing daily challenges, a leader navigating high-pressure situations, or someone on their healing journey, this podcast delivers the tools and strategies you need to build lasting resilience.
With over 20 years of mental health counseling experience, Steve brings authentic, professional expertise to every episode, making complex mental health concepts accessible and applicable to real-world situations.
Featured topics include:
• Practical resilience building strategies
• First responder mental wellness
• Trauma recovery and healing
• Leadership development
• Grief processing
• Professional growth
• Mental health insights
• Help you on your healing journey
Each week, join our community towards better mental health and turn your challenges into opportunities for growth with Resilience Development in Action.
Resilience Development in Action
E.113 Delving into the Depths of Grief with Gina Moffa
Who says learning can't be made insightful, gripping, and transformative? That's what we aim to embody in every episode, and this particular conversation with Gina Moffa, a New York-based grief and trauma-informed therapist, is no exception. Gina's journey, evolving from a keen interest in international relations and human behavior to becoming a grief therapy specialist, is as fascinating as it is inspiring. She explains the intertwined nature of trauma and grief work, and how therapy can become our mirror, revealing more about ourselves, our misconceptions, and our potential for growth.
Gina's recent venture, a book about grief therapy called "Moving on Doesn’t Mean Letting Go", is creating waves in the mental health world. She aims to provide a resource that acts as a frontline of therapy and grief-informed treatment, granting people a sense of relief and control. She shares her desire to bridge the access gap to grief therapy for people who may be unable to avail it due to financial or geographical constraints. In an era still grappling with a post-pandemic grief, her insights are a timely, much-needed lifeline.
In the latter part of our discussion, Gina demystifies the complexity of grief, its various forms, and the critical role our brain and nervous system play in processing losses. She underscores the need for a safe space in therapy sessions, emphasizing the importance of client comfort and control. Wrapping up on a positive note, Gina emphasizes the power of gratitude and community-building in facilitating healing and growth. If you've ever wondered about the layers of grief and the path to healing, our conversation with Gina Moffa is a must-listen. You're guaranteed to walk away feeling enlightened and enriched.
Get Gina's book on Amazon, Bookshop, B&N, BAM, and other major retailers.
You.
Speaker 2:It is always like coming to visit an old friend hanging out with you. So thank you so so much. I'm grateful.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Never, but it feels like we're. I mean, it's been years, so it feels like we're old friends by now. We are old friends by now, covid, yeah for sure. When you find your people, you stick with them. I'm like great. But when you say, tell me about yourself, I'm like I don't know. Um, my name is Gina, anyway, my name is Gina Mafa. I am a. I am a grief and trauma informed and I love and we're gonna talk about that Therapist in private practice in New York City. I work with people enduring losses of all kinds. Life transitions, changes even good changes can be hard and traumatizing, and right now I am promoting a book that's coming out on August 22nd, as Steve just mentioned, and it is a book on grief and navigating loss in this fast-paced society that we're in. So this is where I'm at right now and what a whirlwind.
Speaker 1:I I Know that's kind yeah, Strategy yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness, I would never say that. So I'm really, really. I mean, I don't even know what to say. Thank you, thank you for that. I just love that. We're on the same wavelength. And I think, you know, just because we're trained and just because we have extra education and specializations, and all of that doesn't mean that we're not still being taught and being students and we still have to show up. You know, I learn so much every day from my work and you know, for me, if I didn't have a sense of humility and openness to always learning and being flexible, I don't know that I could do this work personally. You know, we're not. We're more than the sum of our degrees and our education.
Speaker 1:So right, I love that yeah.
Speaker 2:I didn't. I was always interested in international affairs and international studies and really interested in humanitarian crises and the way that people were treated during war and a lot of this is, as I'm saying this, you can imagine trauma, trauma, trauma. So I was introduced to trauma really through international relations studies and was always really fascinated on the idea of resiliency and how people in different cultures really got through the most horrific life events. You know genocide we're talking about. You know families being slaughtered and taken away, children being drugged and used as soldiers I mean really human atrocities at the highest level and just really wanting to understand more about how we survived that. And so as I realized that I was more and more interested in the human behavior part of international relations and less about the law, I fell into, you know, fell into therapy and social work school at NYU and wanted to 100% knew that I wanted to be in trauma and a trauma therapist. So, and interestingly at the time there weren't classes specifically on trauma. It was 2001. And it was very, you know, it was just after September 11, where I did my thesis on terrorism and the psychological aftermath. So I was already sort of starting this journey into trauma work, just not really understanding which road would I take in this way? Would I wind up being a lawyer, or would I wind up going into human behavior of some kind? And I didn't know, and you know. But more and more it just felt like I was home, the more that I read about people recovering from things and finding life and beauty again and reading books on trauma. And this was really early on, you know, when we didn't understand what trauma was. You know we thought it was war syndrome. You know, after Vietnam and thank God that you know, judith Herman was there also to really start this and really, you know, she was one of the first books that I read on trauma. And yeah, and so for me, I was really just fascinated with trauma itself and being a therapist sort of fell into that idea of how I would use it and how I would study it and how I would go move, how I would move forward.
Speaker 2:But interestingly, in all of my trauma work, you know, there was something that I always saw missing and it was the understanding of grief. And you know, we talk about healing and integration and all of that, but we don't talk about the things that we have to mourn as part of that process and it seems obvious, or it seemed obvious a lot of my career but working with Holocaust survivors really kind of brought it home is when I started doing grief work and having grief specific groups in here in New York City and it just felt like, wow, this is a missing link to a lot of things, that we need to talk and come together and feel connected. And it's really this that's the overlap in a lot of ways with trauma work and grief work is the idea of connection again and safety and connection. So I just gave you the country roads on how I became a therapist, but it was really interesting for me to kind of come from this place where I was looking at human behavior from a place of, you know, diplomacy and theory and now, you know, looking at feelings and emotions behind war.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's how it all came to be. It's always a clumsy answer, you know, but it is not always a not always a linear like grief, not always a linear path to where we land in our lives that have the most meaning for us. So a little bit of a messy journey, but the right one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, Good teacher. I'm not currently in therapy, but I've been in therapy, sort of on and off as needed. It's been a minute. I think therapy for me has made me a better therapist. I love the idea that we can really take time to self reflect with another person. In a way that I don't know. It just airs out the wounds I didn't always choose the best therapist for me also and how much we learn just from that what things not to do, Ways not to act. Yeah, it's so true. It's so true.
Speaker 2:I remember being young, before I was going to be a therapist, just wanting to be liked by my therapist and wanting to do therapy right and wanted to, you know, be well behaved and very neat and all of that. And it took some time for me to realize. You know, this is what is. What am I paying for? This is crazy. You know I would never want someone to come into my office and try to behave or want to do something right. You know I would. I would be so, oh my God, I'd be so upset if that, if that was something that they felt. But um, yeah, it's funny. It's funny the things we learned from doing things wrong.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah, sounds like me too. Best of luck to you. Yeah, and that's what I think is so hard also about, like the new age that we live in, where society wants very quick fixes and you know where people now would almost prefer to go to coaches because they're advertising like for easy steps to get through your trauma. You know five ways to heal your childhood abuse and go, and so it definitely feels harder to be a therapist these days, but the journey is life changing. Life changing Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't ever promise X amount of weeks. I promise that I don't want to keep them there forever. That's, that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, same.
Speaker 2:Yep, I call it the tune up. I call it the tune up. I even write about it in my book too. It's so true, it's wonderful they come back. I love it. I mean, we need to have that. I talk about it at the end of my book really. You know, even when we think we're doing well, you know and or and or we terminate that the relationship still continues. And whether or not we decide to go back for the tune up or the maintenance, you know that that relationship lives inside of you and continues to evolve. So a lot like grief, absolutely.
Speaker 2:This all came about really just during COVID and I was seeing clients. I see people you know, in college, you know, all the way through, you know, beginning of college, through graduate school. People are, you know, emerging adults, so to speak, and really high functioning people who want to do the work. And I came to a place during COVID where, you know, like we spoke earlier, there were so many phone calls coming my way, so many people calling from all over the country, all over the world, and, you know, in a state of loss, not just death losses, but you know divorce breakups, loss of a pet, you know fertility challenges, livelihood changes. You know, they opened a business, you know, took everything they had, put it into a business and lost it during COVID. And there was. There was such a sense of helplessness.
Speaker 2:And so I remember working with some clients who were like, okay, I'm so anxious about what I'm going through. This is my first experience with loss and understanding that I'm grieving. What books do you have for me? So I would name some books and I would give some suggestions and they would go out and they would read them and they would come back and say, okay, it was good, but it wasn't for me, it didn't speak to me. And I started to get this again and again. And one of my clients lesser heart this was the therapy I got that day. She said you know, you give such good, you're here giving me the most helpful tidbits and tools and you send me home with reflections. And I feel like every week I'm doing something and I'm making my way towards something. That's the kind of book I need and I want you to write it.
Speaker 2:And I was like, oh, I was like laughing, you know, thinking why would I write a book? I'm just, you know, I'm just me, I'm just a therapist in the trenches doing the work. And you know, it kind of struck me that the thought stayed with me for a while and I thought, okay, what could I do? That's not about just me writing a book that makes me look good, and you know thinking about it and it was how do I provide access to as close to grief therapy with me as one could get in a book for people who do not have access to therapy, either access through financial reasons or location reasons, or maybe they're, you know, nervous because they've never been to therapy and don't know what to expect.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to write a book that was almost like the front line to going to therapy. So this is what it would be like if you had a grief and trauma informed therapist and you were going through a loss of any kind. And that was my mission in writing the book. What would that be like for somebody who had no idea or just couldn't do it for many different reasons, and that's really where it all started. So I wrote a proposal and I thought, if it's meant to be in, the world almost took a spiritual bend, you know, and having lost my mother, I wanted to also share that I've. I'm not just a trained therapist, but I've been around the block, I've experienced this myself and I learned what didn't work for me also, and so that was sort of my pledge to put it out in the world in a way that felt like it had a mission and a higher good for people and somehow miraculously got a literary agent and a book deal and off I went to the races, and so I think it's a really interesting experience of writing the book and wanting it to speak to so many different losses that we've experienced now since COVID and and I understand COVID is still actually happening, but the initial trauma of COVID was very, very hard.
Speaker 2:I really do try to speak to that period of time. But also since then and I know you probably understand, social media has taken off. Oh, you know, reels have to be seven seconds. The world is so much faster than it was pre COVID, and so you know you and I talked about this earlier, but I was like, okay, well, what do I do when I have clients coming to me and I'm saying you know, grief is messy. You're going to feel what you feel and you're going to feel it for as long as you feel it.
Speaker 2:Now, if you come in with a history of anxiety or high adrenaline or trauma, hearing that is going to completely upend you and, as a therapist, that felt really irresponsible, though true that I would then have to, it doesn't fly, and so, for me, I wanted to provide something that would give a sense of agency, right that we can do something and work towards something and still be connected to the endlessness of grief, which is that it will always be with us, but it transforms, and it should lessen an intensity and you should find relief and we allow life in again. But nobody knows how to do it. It sounds good, but how do we do it? Where do we start? So that's kind of what I tried to put in this book and I hope you're you're somewhat through it, so I'm hoping that that came across. Well, now you'll, when you, when you read it, you'll be like oh, there she is, there's a tune up.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's hard yeah.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:No, it doesn't, and actually it's. It's really much harder for people who have an overactive, hyper, hyper alert nervous system and it's. You know, all you're going to do is compound the feeling of failure and anxiety. And yeah, I'm glad you pointed out that my exercises are simple, because I do struggle with are they too simple? But then I think of a grieving brain, and a grieving brain it really can't take in a lot of information that feels too dense. I know I couldn't when I was grieving, and so I wanted to be able to still meet somebody where they were and at least introduce them to these ideas in a way that they can easily metabolize, and so that was my hope with that. So thanks for pointing that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I know it's so true. It's true, you know, and I think sometimes people write things and they're you know, they're dense and they're made for whoever they're made for. But my book wasn't made to impress my colleagues. My book was made to bolster the work that people do with clients, and that's the most important mission of this, you know, and our clients need things that they can easily digest and learn about. So well, I mean, I'm you're a little biased because you are my dear friend, but I do appreciate it. You have no idea, and I would actually need you to tell me if you thought it was really crap. So that is the truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, best of luck.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it Very complex. No, you know, grief is quite simply a natural response to a loss of any kind that feels significant to you, and I think we forget that it can be so much more than death losses and you know, it could even be an old loss that comes up. You know, I was thinking of my childhood home and missing that, or I was missing this. You know keychain that I got from my mom who passed, and now I'm grieving a couple of things, you know, and it's very, very layered and very nuanced and very individual. So nobody will ever really be able to tell you that what you're grieving is not significant or meaningful to you. It is any loss and it is a full body experience.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:That one is. That's a tender story. I think that it's. I think I do encounter it. I do encounter it, not necessarily about competition, but I think we're always looking for a point of reference and I think people look especially to social media on how people are grieving and how or how they're coping with things. A lot of people go to Instagram and create these beautiful reels that talk about their heartache. You know, and you know, and it will go on and on, and if some people feel better, even they're kind of like oh, now I'm looking at this person who's still making these heartbreaking reels Am, am I doing this wrong?
Speaker 2:For by feeling better, and you know, I think that it's a dangerous territory when we compare, but it's also very human, I think, because grief is such a mystery even to us as professionals. I think we look for structure, which is why I always say, despite the fact that Elizabeth Kubler Ross is five stages of grief, that is not helpful for the modern grieving, the modern grieving paradigm. You know, it was really helpful at the time for people to adopt that as gravers, because it gave them a sense of something to expect. You know, they knew that they would expect these feelings and they would go through these cycles and you know, unfortunately, you know it was made for people who were terminally ill, so there was an end point and I think you know that's kind of where it then falls short for sure, because it's messy, it's cyclical and there's no end date, and it's more than just these five things. But I think that at the beginning we're, our human brain, needs something to guide us, and when we're left to our own devices in a sticky tar pit of and void of nothingness and an overwhelm and you know, and uncertainty on where we're headed next in this new foreign landscape, I just think it's it can be really dangerous for our mental health.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so that's. I mean, I think that's why it's really important that we don't compare. But I think it's so human of us to compare just because we do need a point of reference. But I always say like it's dangerous when you start saying you're doing it wrong or that you're stuck because somebody else isn't. And that's why I think therapy is good or, you know, support groups are good. But even in support groups people compare themselves. You know, I think it's just so normal for us to do that and I think it's okay to do that. But I think when we start to judge ourselves based on that, that's where it goes down a slippery slope. I mean, we can joke about it, right, and no, it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2:And yet I do think you know more and more, as I learned from my own clients is that and I, you know, I was telling you earlier I just participated in an article in Well and Good on scheduling our grief. I'm also kind of a component and a champion of people grieving however they can, and so if scheduling it allows them that sense of safety that they may not feel in their otherwise chaotic busy life, I will take it. You know, as long as that, as long as there's something set aside for you to feel and feel in a safe way. But yeah, I mean, if I were planning it three weeks ahead of time, like I would probably say there's going to be some leakage, but yeah, I mean, I think it can feel like we really need to control it and and all of that. But you know, grief is an involuntary response and you know it's a natural involuntary response, so it will come out in some way, shape or form before you you've scheduled it. You know, between three and six. Oh right, right, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah 100%.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that we don't talk enough about is all of the secondary losses that come up over time, and I talk a lot about how grief is in the layers. You know the first month or so, even the first two months is, you know practical stuff and the state of shock. Even if you're expecting a loss, there's still. The loss has now happened and there still can be a state of shock Once all that wears off. You know and you're also busy with either you know doing a state work, or you know planning a funeral, or you know giving casserole dishes back to people and fielding phone calls. Once that wears off and you're left looking at your life again, at your life as a whole and also what's in front of you.
Speaker 2:All of these other losses come up in different ways through time and also you know the idea of being over it. There are triggers and grief reminders all the time. That will come up, just as trauma does and, you know, can really feel like it's set us back. But I think one of the things to remember is that it will happen. If we know it will happen, once it happens we can then prepare for it. But I think just the idea that knowing that you know it's not just a one and done later on you know you will be in a supermarket or down the street, or even sitting on your couch or getting a smell of something or picking up the phone, just thinking that your dad or your mom is still alive, is just, by default, your brain forgot that they're dead, you know, and so, yeah, I think one of the biggest things to remember is that it never goes away, and you know the intensity of the feeling changes, but those reminders are in your body.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can't. I mean, that's the most important part is just allowing it to be what it is. You know, and I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but you know, since my mom died, to like every every year, I don't know what to expect. And you know, I may have a good year one year and think, oh, wow, this is really shifted, and then the next year I'm flat on my ass in a state of grief and I'm shocked. Even being a grief therapist, I'm like, oh, this one hit me off guard. You know, and that's kind of the sometimes they call it the cruel nature of grief and trauma is that every year, from year to year, it still can be different if it's an anniversary or a milestone or all of that. So just to continue to not judge and be gentle with it every year and plan the best you can to be gentle.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the only thing you can do is plan.
Speaker 2:And I always say and this is also in my book, I don't know if you've got this far, but sort of like the ABC, like really simplifying, kind of like your plan a, your plan B and your plan C, so that you don't feel so overwhelmed that now you feel like you have to do what you planned for, that you know fourth or sixth year, and you can plan accordingly, like well, you know it may be hard, but I don't know, so I'll, I'll try to go to this party, or maybe I'll go to work, or maybe I'll go to dinner, and that's my plan.
Speaker 2:And if I wake up that day and it's not feeling it and I feel really bombarded by that grief and that loss, like nope, we're, we got a plan B, and if that plan B doesn't feel good, let's have something on the horizon after that. Because I think, just knowing that you've already planned something, it it'll fall a little bit more gentler a little bit. A little bit gentler in that way, because, because you're giving it thought and you're sort of preparing, so that sense of anxiety is lessened. But absolutely, if we could predict how we would feel tend years from now, I mean you and I would be in a different business.
Speaker 1:But sure Okay.
Speaker 2:I think the resources are probably one of the most important things, I think being able to continue the relationship in some way through people, to be able to talk about him, to talk about their relationship. You know we relationships are complicated, especially parent child right. So I find that even with my mom being gone, that, you know, new things come up every so often that I think about and I'm like, ooh, you know, I need to talk about that or I need to process that. And it's sometimes a real comfort to hear it from her friends to keep her going or to even I'll talk to her myself, now that I'm hearing back, necessarily, but you know the idea that I can, I can actually have that conversation, but I think, without talking about her, with people and processing my feelings with other people at times, when they come up with whether it's her friends or, you know, whether it's honoring her or creating rituals. You know, a lot of my friends sort of know the anniversary of my mom's death, so we'll go and raise a glass of prosecco which my mom didn't drink often but would celebrate with, and you know. So it's something like that and those moments bring me so much comfort. And you know, if I just were to go out on my own and get a glass of prosecco, it just wouldn't. I think I would be sitting in the sense of loss and avoid, as opposed to celebrating and remembering the love. But but also yeah, I mean grief can feel really complicated. So I think, when things come up and they will through the years, you know, as relationships continue to evolve, or you miss them more, or your life is progressed I mean there's a lot of introspection. When it comes to loss, you know, I think it's important to not just process it on your own and to really do whatever you can to make sure that you've got an army of people there for you that feel safe and don't judge you.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, I just have to say this as a side note because it's so crazy, as we were talking about this, I have a balcony right outside of my apartment here and about six pigeons just landed on my table and are looking in at me right now, as you said, people around you, and I'm like huh, there's your, you're naming Frank and you're naming all the people and they started landing. I had to tell you this real life moment because they're still looking at me. It feels like I have an audience. It's a little bit off-putting. I'm getting staged right now, steve. It's never happened before. It's hilarious, and they're really looking in at me, so it's a. So anyway, I had, I just had to, sorry, sorry listeners, I had to share that with Steve because it's really really something. I'm like look at all these pigeons just looking at them. They're really it's a little bit invasive, but anyway, oh my God, that's true, that's true. All right, I'll, I'll, I'll sign some autographs later. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, look at the end of the day, you know, our nervous system is there for survival. Our brain has one purpose and it's to keep us alive. And you know, our nervous system, I see, is the smoke alarm. It's always looking out for a fire for us, and loss is a fire, and you know. And so one of the things that I always say this is how I actually compare grief and trauma. This is where they overlap is in these moments of our nervous system, and this is where a lot of things can feel traumatic about loss, even if you haven't necessarily had a traumatic loss. And I say that with quotations, because there's a frighteningly big definition of what traumatic loss is, and it is really just circumstances that feel traumatic Great, and that is according to the Journal of Traumatology, european Journal of Traumatology, and so for me, you know, I think the nervous system is the key element when it comes to how a grief or a loss can feel traumatizing. But it may not just be that you had a traumatic loss, such as a violent loss, a suicide, a sudden, unexpected loss, even, or an ambiguous loss, which is a loss without any closure, but our nervous systems called anxiety and high adrenaline. If you are somebody with a history of anxiety, this will be a very traumatizing period of time for you. If you are somebody who, just physically, you know, has a higher, is always on high alert with your nervous system, if you go into fight or flight easily, this will be something that feels traumatizing. If you have a history of trauma or you know traumatic losses, your nervous system will kick right into high gear because the body remembers, as they say. So there's a lot that happens within the nervous system. Your brain is trying to reorient itself. Right. The brain is used to predictable information for its survival. Something that I really appreciated about the Huberman lab was really the way that he broke down grief within the nervous system and the brain, which was right on, and it's really that the idea has this, that the brain has this idea of what's predictable, and that predictability is our sense of safety. Right. So I always know where you are, steve. I always know where you are in space and time. It's predictable. You are there, you're alive, you're present and I know basically that you're going to be where you are when that is taken away from us now the brain has a lot of work to do because now you're not there where it's in its predictable place. You're not there and there's no idea where you actually are in space and time.
Speaker 2:Right, we can, even if we're religious, we can say, okay, well, steve is in heaven or Steve is wherever Steve is in my religious belief system, but for the majority of people you're really just in an unpredictable place. You're in an unknown place, and the way that we have to contend with that is that we actually have to hold on to the relationship, but let go of the other two aspects, and that can be really really traumatizing for people. How do I hold on to the fact that Steve is still in my heart and in my mind without the idea that I don't know where Steve is? And even with divorces where people don't talk to each other anymore, it's sort of kind of the same idea where we're holding on to something. But so for a lot of people who have poor coping skills or a history of trauma or the relationship was based on survival.
Speaker 2:If this was somebody that was their caretaker or someone they care took, you know, it can really complicate the brain's way of processing this loss and we can be thrust into a hyper alert, hyper arousal and a lot of people won't really understand that it's much more intense than, say, just normal fresh grief, quote unquote. You will really be in a state of hyper arousal to the point that you can't find relief, and that is one of the parts of grief that people don't talk enough about is really that overlap with a sense of trauma and all of the ways in which something can feel traumatizing to people. So I wanted to point that out in this book because it is important that we don't feel so isolated when we're having what could feel like an abnormal reaction to a loss, but based on our history, our attachment, you know, to that person and really how we can contend with the idea that they are no longer in their predictable place for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's true. I mean it's just there to protect you. It's just got the hormones racing out to keep you alive and all of your major you know other major systems functioning and and that's really basically it. But I don't know where you want to go with that one where we talk about it, but I think it is. It is important to to understand that it's your safety, it's responsible for your safety and your survival only.
Speaker 2:And so when we talk about, say, grounding and center in your central nervous system, it really is about sort of getting those hormones into check so that they're not racing around trying to keep you alive or figure out where the fire is in your body that's going off. You know, because that's really their only job. They don't feel anything, they're not feeling scared or you know they're just, they're like let's, hey, it's like the fire. You know the fire department sliding down the pole, you know, getting the hoses ready, getting their gear on and jumping into the truck and looking for that fire to put out. And it's not, you know, that's their only job. So when we talk about sort of grounding that nervous system, it's what can we do in order to provide a sense of safety to our body and our nervous system, so that we can then feel oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Sure does.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think we make it more complicated or think it's more complicated than it is. You know even the terms. We were talking about it earlier.
Speaker 2:Trauma informed feels like it's all about the education and the training.
Speaker 2:But if we really boil it down to its most important element, it is the idea that we create safety and in any kind of traumatic work that we do, we have to understand that people are coming in with their nervous system mostly unregulated or, you know, able to be, or going off in terms of regulation more often, and creating a state like creating that safe place, a place where they get to decide, where they're safe, where they can talk and feel free and feel what they have to feel or share whatever it is their experience is, is it?
Speaker 2:It is the most important part of trauma informed care. It is the central tenant of being a trauma informed therapist and how you do that is not necessarily something that you have to work towards in terms of building reports, something you actively work on with the client, engaging their sense of safety at all times and being incredibly present with them to what their needs are, not being somebody who needs to hear their story or hear their quote, unquote trauma or whatever it is that they've come in with. It's really most important that you focus on them feeling safe to be there.
Speaker 1:So okay, yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And also it's important to point out that even if you just tell people that you're a safe place, that is not trauma informed either. We can think that we're providing something safe. But the work really lies in making sure that we're engaging their sense of safety in all different types of ways and also checking in a lot and allowing them to be the captain of the ship, because if somebody is coming in with a history of trauma, they're used to feeling out of control and they're used to having their voice taken or they're used to, you know, having an experience that is outside of their resources to cope with it, and so the most important thing is not what you say is safe, but what they say is safe in your office. That's the least safe place, 100%. That's the most important thing, and I would, if you're somebody who's thinking about going to therapy for any of these things, I would talk about this. I couldn't agree more. I don't think we don't. The right therapist won't feel, won't take that personally, 100%. I wish I had left earlier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I always like to check in, sometimes like how, how's it all going? How are you feeling about all of this? You know people, you know I'm grateful that people you know stick with me or, if you know, my clients have been with me a long time. But I think you know you can't still be too comfortable. I think you have to say you know how is it all feeling, and I think it's important that people always feel safe enough to say you know what? This was great the first year and maybe now I'm not, I'm not feeling it so much or whatever it is. There's not, there's nothing that hurts me more than somebody you know stifling themselves in a setting for the sake of someone else. So please don't do that. You know you and I are built at the same cloth. So you know our ego is not in the game. It's really about the work and it's about being the traveling companion, but the right traveling companion.
Speaker 1:It goes so fast, correct yeah.
Speaker 2:It is complex and I think what people don't understand right now is that, especially post COVID, grief is the number one mental health burden people are carrying and so many people don't know that that's actually what their experiencing is grief. You know they may. They may see it manifested as anxiety or depression, but if you really dig down and you take a moment to think about what's going on in your life, you might realize that there was a loss somewhere along the way that you didn't either didn't check it off as a loss of any kind, or you you minimized it, because society is sometimes taught us to minimize certain losses. But even you know I had a client with a college rejection letter and there was a lot of grief around that. You know that he had planned, you know this was his dream, got all of the college paraphernalia for it and you know then was rejected and this is something really hard to work through and you know there's no judgment, or judgment. Anything that feels significant or meaningful to you is is really important and it runs. It runs the gamut and you know I do talk about that a lot in my book. People don't understand your experience, and how could they yours? It's just important that you respect your experience and honor it Absolutely. Every other person you are meeting is going through a grief currently. Yeah, that was the America speaks survey Absolutely, and it's. It was astonishing to me to read it, you know, because we we don't tend to think of that. You're like, wow, everybody every other person I've met is has lost a person.
Speaker 2:Of course, the statistics went up for sure after COVID because of how many deaths there were, but the loss itself has I mean, it's off the charts in terms of livelihood, houses, you know, sense of identity, sense of safety. We went through during COVID and I think we forget that that was a really traumatic time for us as humans in the world. We carry that in a way, you know, because life just sort of went back to normal and fast forwarded and we're just moving through things and news cycles, you know there's aliens landing here and we're like, okay, yeah, we got things to do, you know. So it's really interesting how the human brain is sort of just almost, in a way, we're training ourselves to just keep moving through things. But I think it's important to know that there's been a lot of loss and a lot of trauma and a lot that our DNA and our nervous systems are carrying. So just to give it some grace, you know if you're having a harder time than usual. That ask yourself is this loss, is this grief that I could be feeling?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah no.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. I think you know my hope is that there will come times in your life that you need to pick it up in different ways, to either look at rituals for carrying on or you know if you had a hard relationship with someone you've lost, how we retrace our steps and look back at things you know and how we've lost in context of our whole life and how we are. You know the, the strengths, the relationships, our support system, the way that we care for our body. You know how we cope with hard things in general. You know I talk about rhythms that we go, we get into during grief and really it's it's about the gentleness, it's about the presence, it's about the tenderness, but it's also about showing up for ourselves in the most honest way and not just putting grief on a pedestal. In a way.
Speaker 2:Right, we lose someone or we break up with someone and they're the best thing that's ever happened. And you know, it's really about looking honestly at our own lives as a whole and there will be things that you need at certain times of your life that you may not need right now, and so that's why I say, if you can, keep it on your shelf and come back to it, and if it feels simple, it's because it's meant to be something you can easily metabolize when you're feeling overwhelmed. I'm not something that you have to look up and you know, google, what the meaning of it is or feel like it has a density. So just know that it's coming from my heart and the hope is that it lands in yours, however you need it, whenever you need it or for someone else who might need it, and and that's it. It's just to really be there for one another and provide a safe and soft landing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness Amazing.
Speaker 2:Oh thank you so much. Really, you can get it anywhere books are sold. If you're somebody who wants you know a quick order, amazon, it's all over Amazon. If you want to support independent bookshops, it's on bookshoporg, it's on Barnes Noble and it is actually all over the world right now. It is coming soon. So if you're interested in what's available, you can find me on Instagram at Gina Maffa LCSW, or shoot me an email. I'm at from my website at GinaMaffacom. I really just want this to be something that brings people together and thank you so much for that. Thank you so much. And, and to my next question, I would like to know if you have any questions or comments on this. I would love to hear from you at GinaMafacom. I really just want this to be something that brings people together and where people feel less alone or they learn how to help people they love, and so really, to me, grief is about witnessing and connection, and the only way to do that is through authentic community. So please stay in touch with me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:My favorite podcast. So thank you. I'm biased, I'm biased, but you do amazing work and what you do for people and bringing honesty and realism to the therapy experience, you make it less scary for people and I'm just so grateful. I'm grateful to know you as a friend and I'm grateful to have you as a colleague. This world is better for people like you, because of people like you. So thank you, steve, so much, and thank you for having me here and allowing me to spend time with you and your audience, who's amazing, because I see their comments.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:All of it, all of it. Thank you so much, and yeah, I'm just grateful.
