This is not a podcast for the mainstream. This is for the silenced, the cast out, and those whose stories never made the headlines. A Groundbreaking Trauma Justice Podcast from a Genocide Survivor and Somatic Therapist.
Deeply embodied, politically urgent, and spiritually grounded space led by a therapist who survived war and genocide herself. Ana Mael is not just talking about trauma—she has lived it, survived it, and now guides others through it with radical clarity and compassion.
This podcast is a revolution in trauma conversations: it moves beyond mindset tips and breathwork into trauma justice, relational repair, and systemic truth-telling. Each episode invites listeners to stop healing in isolation—and to begin naming, reclaiming, and rising from what hurt them.
Exiled and Rising is for survivors of war, systemic injustice, and complex trauma—especially those living in exile from land, identity, or community.
With raw truth and radical tenderness, Ana Mael offers unfiltered guidance on how to heal when you’ve been cut off—literally or metaphorically—from your home, safety, or sense of self and how to raise up and call for justice.
“This podcast is not about surface-level healing. We are not fluffing the feathers or shaking the crystals here.”
No glamour edits. No AI voices. Just real voice, lived experience, and trauma-focused truth.
Social and Cultural Relevance:
Ana’s work is a mirror for our time. In a global climate of rising authoritarianism, censorship, and the silencing of marginalized voices, this podcast becomes both a somatic protest and a innate act of resistance.
“If you have been silenced… Welcome.”
Ana gives voice to the body in a time when speech itself is policed. This is especially potent for:
Activists and whistleblowers
Immigrants and undocumented individuals
Survivors of trauma who were never given words for what they endured
A deep-dive podcast blending somatic healing expertise, micro-teachings, and lived survivor experience. Each episode distills trauma recovery, nervous system insights, and political consciousness into guidance that helps you reclaim power, safety, and self.
This Podcast Is a Home For:
Overfunctioning Immigrants, Exiled & Displaced – Those who overwork to prove worth
Survivors of War, Genocide, & Systemic Oppression – Healing from identity loss and rebuilding life
Refugees, Stateless, Undocumented People – Navigating erasure and exile
Children of Exiled or Immigrant Parents – Carrying generational wounds
Those Ostracized from Family or Church – For who they are, what they believe, or how they love
Those Seeking Somatic Recovery – Learning to regulate and reconnect with the body
Anyone Ready to Resist Spiritual Bypassing – And choose embodied, justice-based healing
What It Offers:
Real Stories of Survival & Healing – From Ana’s own war journals to survivor interviews
Expert Somatic & Trauma Recovery Insights – Practical tools for regulation and healing
Space for the Cast Out – Centering those excluded from mainstream healing narratives
Healing as Activism – Moving from survival to embodiment, from harm to advocacy
Radical Human Truth – With no scripts, no glamour edits, no “fixing”—only truth
Premium Membership – What You Get in the Private Community
Take your healing deeper with exclusive, high-value content:
Extended, Deep-Dive Episodes – Personal stories and expert somatic breakdowns
Therapy-Based Takeaways – Direct applications for therapy, journaling, and integration
Keynotes & Summaries – Distilled insights to anchor your healing
Full Transcripts – For reflection, accessibility, and in-depth study
Bite-Sized Somatic Lessons – Micro-practices for nervous system healing
Science of Trauma – Research-backed techniques to help reset your body’s stress response
Listener Q&A + Expert Sessions – Ask Ana your questions and receive trauma-informed answers
Ad-Free Listening – No filler, no distractions, just healing and clarity
Meet Your Host: Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her life’s work to helping survivors of war, forced displacement, systemic oppression, and complex trauma reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust.
As a bestselling author, Ana’s book, The Trauma We Don’t Talk About, became a #1 bestseller in over 10 categories, including Mental Health, Personal Testimonies, and Memoirs.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Ana works directly with clients and educates mental health professionals and counselors on the complexities of displacement, exile, and war trauma recovery. She leads training programs, provides trauma-informed therapy, and conducts pioneering research to bridge the gap between somatic therapy and global crisis trauma care.
"From Trauma to Resilience. From Wounds to Resistance."
Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for mental health treatment or doctor care and advise. Please consult your mental health and/or medical care provider for individualized care.
All content for Exiled & Rising: Trauma Recovery & Somatic Healing is the property of Ana Mael and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
This is not a podcast for the mainstream. This is for the silenced, the cast out, and those whose stories never made the headlines. A Groundbreaking Trauma Justice Podcast from a Genocide Survivor and Somatic Therapist.
Deeply embodied, politically urgent, and spiritually grounded space led by a therapist who survived war and genocide herself. Ana Mael is not just talking about trauma—she has lived it, survived it, and now guides others through it with radical clarity and compassion.
This podcast is a revolution in trauma conversations: it moves beyond mindset tips and breathwork into trauma justice, relational repair, and systemic truth-telling. Each episode invites listeners to stop healing in isolation—and to begin naming, reclaiming, and rising from what hurt them.
Exiled and Rising is for survivors of war, systemic injustice, and complex trauma—especially those living in exile from land, identity, or community.
With raw truth and radical tenderness, Ana Mael offers unfiltered guidance on how to heal when you’ve been cut off—literally or metaphorically—from your home, safety, or sense of self and how to raise up and call for justice.
“This podcast is not about surface-level healing. We are not fluffing the feathers or shaking the crystals here.”
No glamour edits. No AI voices. Just real voice, lived experience, and trauma-focused truth.
Social and Cultural Relevance:
Ana’s work is a mirror for our time. In a global climate of rising authoritarianism, censorship, and the silencing of marginalized voices, this podcast becomes both a somatic protest and a innate act of resistance.
“If you have been silenced… Welcome.”
Ana gives voice to the body in a time when speech itself is policed. This is especially potent for:
Activists and whistleblowers
Immigrants and undocumented individuals
Survivors of trauma who were never given words for what they endured
A deep-dive podcast blending somatic healing expertise, micro-teachings, and lived survivor experience. Each episode distills trauma recovery, nervous system insights, and political consciousness into guidance that helps you reclaim power, safety, and self.
This Podcast Is a Home For:
Overfunctioning Immigrants, Exiled & Displaced – Those who overwork to prove worth
Survivors of War, Genocide, & Systemic Oppression – Healing from identity loss and rebuilding life
Refugees, Stateless, Undocumented People – Navigating erasure and exile
Children of Exiled or Immigrant Parents – Carrying generational wounds
Those Ostracized from Family or Church – For who they are, what they believe, or how they love
Those Seeking Somatic Recovery – Learning to regulate and reconnect with the body
Anyone Ready to Resist Spiritual Bypassing – And choose embodied, justice-based healing
What It Offers:
Real Stories of Survival & Healing – From Ana’s own war journals to survivor interviews
Expert Somatic & Trauma Recovery Insights – Practical tools for regulation and healing
Space for the Cast Out – Centering those excluded from mainstream healing narratives
Healing as Activism – Moving from survival to embodiment, from harm to advocacy
Radical Human Truth – With no scripts, no glamour edits, no “fixing”—only truth
Premium Membership – What You Get in the Private Community
Take your healing deeper with exclusive, high-value content:
Extended, Deep-Dive Episodes – Personal stories and expert somatic breakdowns
Therapy-Based Takeaways – Direct applications for therapy, journaling, and integration
Keynotes & Summaries – Distilled insights to anchor your healing
Full Transcripts – For reflection, accessibility, and in-depth study
Bite-Sized Somatic Lessons – Micro-practices for nervous system healing
Science of Trauma – Research-backed techniques to help reset your body’s stress response
Listener Q&A + Expert Sessions – Ask Ana your questions and receive trauma-informed answers
Ad-Free Listening – No filler, no distractions, just healing and clarity
Meet Your Host: Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her life’s work to helping survivors of war, forced displacement, systemic oppression, and complex trauma reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust.
As a bestselling author, Ana’s book, The Trauma We Don’t Talk About, became a #1 bestseller in over 10 categories, including Mental Health, Personal Testimonies, and Memoirs.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Ana works directly with clients and educates mental health professionals and counselors on the complexities of displacement, exile, and war trauma recovery. She leads training programs, provides trauma-informed therapy, and conducts pioneering research to bridge the gap between somatic therapy and global crisis trauma care.
"From Trauma to Resilience. From Wounds to Resistance."
Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for mental health treatment or doctor care and advise. Please consult your mental health and/or medical care provider for individualized care.
Ana teaches that shame around pleasure is not morality — it’s trauma. Reclaiming joy is not betrayal of your past but devotion to your life.
Ana Mael’s “Pleasure Is Shame” — one of her most layered and psychologically rich pieces, combining trauma theory, embodiment, and intergenerational survival dynamics.
ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic education, truth & storytelling.
https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss
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Core Teaching
Pleasure and shame are trauma-linked. Ana reframes pleasure not as indulgence or luxury, but as an innate human state — one that trauma disrupts. Survivors often associate pleasure with danger, humiliation, or betrayal because it was used against them or forbidden by those in power.
Abuse severs the link between aliveness and safety. When abusers punish victims for joy, sensuality, or satisfaction, the nervous system learns: pleasure = threat. What should be restorative becomes dysregulating.
Guilt replaces joy. Once shame takes root, guilt follows — not just as an emotion, but as a physiological residue. The survivor internalizes the abuser’s judgment, carrying it like “molasses” over the body, believing they can never be clean, good, or worthy again.
Somatic and Psychological Lens
Pleasure as a body-based function. Pleasure is not abstract; it’s neurochemical (dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins). When trauma teaches the body that pleasure is unsafe, these pathways constrict. The body literally stops producing or tolerating sensations of delight.
The “molasses” metaphor: Ana’s description — “as thick as molasses, the guilt and shame drips over the body” — translates an emotional imprint into somatic texture. It communicates how shame feels heavy, sticky, and inescapable.
Cycle of pleasure–punishment. Many survivors oscillate between denial and overindulgence:
Seek pleasure → feel guilt → self-punish → suppress desire → seek again. This repetition mirrors trauma’s pattern: relief, shame, punishment, freeze.
Nervous system dysregulation. The body of a survivor can’t hold high-arousal states (joy, excitement, sensuality) without tipping into anxiety or collapse. Ana implies that capacity for pleasure must be rebuilt slowly — in titrated doses of safety.
Intergenerational & Cultural Trauma
Survival guilt and inherited deprivation. She links personal trauma to collective trauma: oppressed, displaced, or war-torn communities may view pleasure as betrayal. “If I’m happy while my people suffer, I’m disloyal.” This is survival guilt disguised as morality.
Loyalty to deprivation. The phrase “loyalty to deprivation” is brilliant and brutal. It names how generations conditioned by suffering v...
A survivor’s nervous system toggles between collapse and compulsion; healing begins by honoring both protectors and learning to pause in micro-doses.
_______________________
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate .
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic therpay, truth & storytelling.
https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss
ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
Core teaching
Two-part tug-of-war: Ana names an inner split many trauma survivors feel:
a part that wants to shut down and hide (resignation/exhaustion), and
a part that demands relentless doing (pressure/perfection, “get the next thing done and do it right”). This maps to a nervous system oscillation between collapse and overdrive.
Ancestral pressure, present body: The “screaming part” carries inherited survival instructions—keep moving or you’ll be overwhelmed. It’s an adaptive strategy passed through family history and lived experience, not a character flaw.
Fear of pausing: Stillness threatens to surface unprocessed pain. The body anticipates that if I stop, the memories will catch me, so it pushes activity as a protective shield.
Somatic & nervous system lens
Shutdown part (dorsal vagal / collapse): Fatigue, numbness, retreat, invisibility. Function: reduce exposure and conserve energy when safety feels out of reach.
Screaming/doing part (sympathetic / fight–flight): Urgency, perfectionism, productivity compulsion. Function: outrun the pain; if I keep moving, I won’t feel it.
Oscillation as the symptom: Many survivors pendulate between these poles, rarely landing in ventral vagal states (connection, rest, play). The conflict is protective but exhausting.
Parts work (IFS-informed view)
Manager part: the “screaming” achiever managing risk via control, speed, and standards.
Exile(s): the pain and memories that feel too much to contact directly.
Firefighter/shutdown: the resigning, hiding part that douses overwhelm via withdrawal.
Self/compassionate witness: the healing stance Ana invites—curious, nonjudgmental, capable of contacting each part without fusing with it.
Intergenerational frame
Inherited alarms: “As if all my ancestors are behind me” evokes intergenerational vigilance: families who survived war, displacement, or scarcity often transmit implicit rules—don’t stop, don’t feel, keep moving.
Respect the purpose: These rules kept people alive. Healing means honoring their intent while updating them for present conditions.
Why pausing is hard (and necessary)
Threat of memory: Pausing reduces the noise that kept pain at bay; the system anticipates a flood.
Capacity-building, not white-knuckling:
Ana’s new Exiled & Rising episode — one of her most intimate and practical teachings on relational healing.
Ana teaches that true healing begins when others stop denying your reality and simply stay — seeing, listening, and acknowledging without defense or blame.
Core Teaching
Healing requires acknowledgment, not fixing. Ana distills trauma-informed relational wisdom into one simple truth: healing happens when someone sees, hears, and acknowledges your pain without judgment, denial, or defense.
The antidote to denial is witnessing. Trauma isolates. Its wound is not only what happened, but that no one witnessed or believed it. The act of being seen — truly seen — restores relational safety and begins regulation.
Language as reclamation. By providing listeners with specific words to share — “Don’t judge me. Don’t defend yourself. See me.” — Ana gives trauma survivors a script for self-advocacy. It’s not therapy jargon; it’s everyday language that builds boundaries and connection at once.
Somatic and Relational Lens
Healing through co-regulation. The piece emphasizes that trauma cannot be healed in isolation. Healing requires relational attunement — someone whose nervous system stays calm and present as yours expresses pain.
Gaze as safety cue. “Look at my eyes. See me when I share my experience.” Eye contact here is not performative; it’s a neurobiological bridge that signals safety to the vagus nerve and supports emotional regulation.
Boundaries through language. Each line — “Don’t blame me. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t leave.” — reestablishes the ruptured boundaries that trauma once erased. These are phrases that protect the speaker’s truth while keeping connection possible.
Validation as repair. The healing moment comes when someone can say, “I see you. I believe this happened to you.” That acknowledgment begins to repair what trauma destroyed — trust in the self and in others.
Psychological and Cultural Layers
Countering the “minimizing” culture. “Don’t use humor to minimize it” critiques how many families and workplaces handle pain — with jokes, redirection, or avoidance. Ana reframes this as an act of denial that perpetuates harm.
Rejecting self-blame. Both sides of the relational exchange are asked to drop blame: “Don’t blame me. Don’t blame yourself.” This removes the moral transaction from the exchange and replaces it with empathy.
Healing through mutual presence. The structure of Ana’s teaching — “Don’t… Don’t… See me…” — moves from defense (what not to do) to connection (what to do). It’s a rhythm that mirrors a therapy session: regulating boundaries first, then opening to intimacy.
Somatic Significance
Safety through voice and rhythm. The steady repetition is itself a regulation tool. Each instruction is short, predictable, and calm — an auditory anchor for the nervous system.
Owning embodied truth. “This is my story, my pain, my hurt.” Naming the experience in the body’s own words (“my hurt”) integrates cognition and sensation — a somatic statement of ownership.
What Ana is Teaching
Healing happens in relationship, not in isolation. We need to be <...
The burden wound begins in childhood. Being treated as “too much” or “a burden” by parents creates a deep, embodied wound. The imprint becomes identity. This is not just a passing experience but attaches to the child’s developing sense of self, carried into adulthood. The body remembers. Shame and burden are felt in the soma, even when never spoken aloud. The wound repeats. It shapes adult relationships: apologizing for existing, scanning for rejection, pushing away kindness.
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Buy Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
Want to go deeper? Check the link below for Ana’s somatic course on healing intimacy and learning to safely open, receive, and trust again.
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5
Please donate and support podcast continuation https://exiledandrising.castos.com/donate?_gl=1*143ufxc*_gcl_au*NDc5MTE5MjU3LjE3NTYwNTYzMTU
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Key Takeaways Feeling like a burden is a wound given to you, not an inherent truth. The wound attaches to identity early and can shadow every stage of life. It shapes behaviors: apologizing, shrinking, refusing kindness, sabotaging intimacy. Families pass down the burden story, often unconsciously, and culture amplifies it.
Healing requires:
Naming the wound Recognizing it is not yours
Practicing receiving kindness without apology Reclaiming space and belonging Healing is both personal liberation and political resistance.
Distilled Lessons / Therapeutic Teachings From Self-Blame to Given Burden: Move from “I am the burden” → “This burden was given to me.”
Somatic Awareness: Notice how the wound lives in the body (tension, shrinking, hypervigilance). Relational Practice: Accept kindness, stop compulsive apologizing, risk showing joy/sadness without shame.
Breaking Cycles: By healing, you stop passing the wound forward to partners, children, colleagues. Resistance Practice: Claiming space and worth challenges both family conditioning and systemic oppression.
Main Quotes by Ana Mael to share & tag
“That kind of message doesn’t just hurt in the moment. It takes root deep inside, in our soma.”
“This isn’t weakness. This is the legacy of a burden you never signed up for.”
“Believing you’re a burden to your parents is a deeply felt visceral rejection. It is tremendously painful.”
“If your perception tells you that you are a burden, it catapults you into rejection, isolation, unworthiness, and shame.”
“Feeling like a burden made you believe you were undeserving of love and kindness.”
“The truth is: you are deserving of goodness. You deserve kindness, belonging, unconditional love, and the space to expand.”
“Healing this wound is not just therapy or self-work. It is also a political act of resistance.”
“You were never meant to carry that burden. You were meant to rise.”
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.
Ana dismantles the myth that shame is self-generated. She frames shame as something imposed from the outside—by abusers, toxic environments, and systems of oppression—and then internalized by the survivor.
Buy Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
Want to go deeper? Check the link below for Ana’s somatic course on healing intimacy and learning to safely open, receive, and trust again.
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5
What Ana is teaching
Shame is given, not born. Toxic shame is injected by abusers, family systems, and oppressive environments; it is not an innate trait.
Internalization mechanics. External blame becomes an inner narrative → self-blame → perfectionism and rigid self-discipline as defenses against future shame.
Belonging injury. Given shame creates a chronic felt sense of “I don’t belong / something is wrong with me,” even when no wrongdoing occurred.
Identity-level harm. The wound targets core identity (ethnicity, language, body, neurotype, citizenship, gender, orientation) and becomes somatically encoded.
A pathway out. Reframe shame as given, name the source, return the burden, cultivate self-love somatically, and ritualize belonging and dignity.
The Shame Triad: Given • Not Belonging • Detonation
1. Shame Is Given
Shame is not born in you — it is injected by abusers, family systems, or oppressive cultures.
What feels like an internal flaw is actually an external projection you learned to carry.
Teaching line: “Shame is not yours. It was handed to you, and what is given can also be returned.”
2. Shame as Not Belonging
Toxic shame convinces you that you don’t deserve to exist, to be safe, or to belong.
It’s not about what you’ve done, but who you are — your ethnicity, body, language, or identity.
Teaching line: “Shame is the wound of belonging — the lie that says you don’t deserve to take up space.”
3. Shame as Detonation
Shame acts like an explosion in the psyche, fragmenting identity and safety.
Just as war detonation destroys a home, toxic shame detonates the inner home where self-worth and belonging should live.
Teaching line: “Shame detonates the inner home — but what was destroyed can be rebuilt with dignity and love.”
What Ana is conveying
Validation: If you feel defective without a reason, you’re likely carrying someone else’s shame.
Agency + hope: You can hand back what was never yours and restore safety, belonging, and love in your system.
Justice, not appeasement: Healing is both personal and political—resisting cultures that label certain lives “too costly.”
Her look & lens (how she sees the problem)
Somatic lens: The body “remembers” shame on/under the skin; regulation and interoception are central to repair.
Developmental/attachment lens: The wound forms early and shapes adult patterns (hyper-vigilance, self-erasure, perfectionism).
Systems/justice lens: Family harm is amplified by cultural narratives (racism, xenophobia, ableism, classism, patriarchy, productivity culture).
“Fascism begins not with violence but with silence — and if self-care replaces collective care, healing becomes complicity.” Ana Mael
Fascism starts in the ordinary, not the violent. Ana reframes fascism not as sudden authoritarianism with guns, but as a slow erosion of empathy: disinterest, detachment, and normalized silence.
Spiritual bypass as complicity. She names how “stay in your frequency” or “not my circus, not my monkeys” become spiritualized excuses for disengagement. Instead of tools for peace, they function as shields against responsibility.
Self-care as cult. She critiques the commodification of “self-care” when it eclipses collective care. When people are “too busy healing to notice the harm,” wellness becomes a trap that isolates and depoliticizes.
Full Episode https://youtu.be/bE0Bk5Fa258
Somatic Programs for Trauma Recovery:
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/
Buy Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
✨ Please donate and support podcast continuation:
https://exiledandrising.castos.com/donate?_gl=1*143ufxc*_gcl_au*NDc5MTE5MjU3LjE3NTYwNTYzMTU
Somatic & Trauma Lens
Disinterest = nervous system shutdown. Apathy often comes from dorsal vagal collapse — “it’s not my business” is the body protecting itself by numbing. But unchecked, this physiological state enables collective harm.
Spiritual bypass as avoidance. Using spirituality to dodge engagement (“just keep your vibration high”) mirrors how trauma survivors sometimes avoid discomfort instead of building capacity for contact. Ana is pointing to the social cost of this bypass.
Self-care vs. collective regulation. Self-soothing is vital, but if it never extends outward, it fragments community resilience. Trauma healing needs co-regulation (relational safety) and collective action alongside individual practices.
Social & Political Critique
Warning against privatized healing. Ana cautions that “wellness culture” can turn into a new religion or cult: rituals of self-care without accountability for the world.
Collective care as missing link. She positions collective care (mutual aid, solidarity, witnessing injustice) as the antidote to both fascism and isolationist healing.
The slippery slope. The timeline she names — disinterest → silence → surveillance → normalized harm — mirrors historical patterns of fascism. The warning is urgent: by the time violence is visible, it’s too late.
Stylistic & Rhetorical Moves
Repetition for emphasis: “It does not begin with guns. It does not begin with guns.” Anchors the listener before redirecting them to the subtler beginnings of harm.
Everyday sayings as critique: By quoting familiar phrases (“stay in your frequency,” “not my monkeys, not my circus”), she grounds her critique in the language of both spiritual communities and everyday avoidance.
Religion metaphor: Calling self-care a “new religion” dramatizes its dogma-like dominance, highlighting how it can demand devotion at the cost of humanity.
Direct address: “Okay.” This interjection breaks the fourth wall — jolting the listener from abstraction into responsibility.
...
From scanning to sanctuary: A guided re-meeting with your own eyes as the first safe place after exile. Somatic Healing.
Somatic Programs for Trauma Recovery: https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/
Buy Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
✨ Please donate and support podcast continuation:
https://exiledandrising.castos.com/donate?_gl=1*143ufxc*_gcl_au*NDc5MTE5MjU3LjE3NTYwNTYzMTU
Core thesis
Hypervigilance as love’s residue: The “tired eyes” are a metaphor for a nervous system trained by harm to scan for danger, even in safety. Vigilance began as protection but has become exhausting maintenance
Receiving care is risky: When warmth arrives, the eyes “quickly look away” — a precise depiction of how praise, intimacy, or compliments can feel dysregulating to trauma survivors
From outer surveillance to inner witnessing: The pivot line — “Can they see the beam of genuine care coming from inside of yourself?” — moves the locus of safety from others’ eyes to one’s own compassionate gaze
Ritual of re-sacralization: Repeated naming — “your sacred eyes, your precious eyes” — performs a restorative rite, reassigning dignity to organs conscripted by fear
Somatic & attachment lens
Neuroception in the eyes: The piece captures neuroception (automatic threat detection) expressed through gaze behaviors — scanning, averting, contracting — classic signs of sympathetic arousal and dorsal shutdown
Gaze aversion ≠ rejection: Looking away from kindness is framed as a survival reflex, not pathology, lowering shame and inviting curiosity
Release vs collapse: Eyes that “contract with unease” dramatize the difference between protective bracing and softening into support. The invitation to “let them rest” hints at ventral vagal settling and capacity-building rather than forced relaxation
Internal secure base: “Meet them with love and pride” models reparenting — building an inner witness whose steady gaze can gradually replace the compulsion to search for safety in others
Craft choices that land
Second-person address: “Do you think about your eyes… Can you let them rest?” keeps the listener in gentle contact with their own interoception, not just the idea of it
Rhetorical questions: The cadence of questions mirrors scanning itself, then slowly decelerates into rest — form enacts function
Repetition as regulation: Recurring phrases (“tired eyes,” “sacred eyes,” “precious eyes”) anchor attention, offering a verbal rocking that invites down-shift
Naming exiled identities: The closing bow to those “exiled from your country, family, community” widens the circle from personal symptom to collective wound, aligning with the show’s trauma-justice frame
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the sy...
Da li tražiš način da olakšaš teret traume bez godina terapije? Ana Mael, somatska terapeutkinja za PTSP, deli jednostavne i praktične alate koje možeš primeniti odmah. Nauči kako da izgradiš kapacitet svog tela za otpuštanje, poverenje i otpornost.
U ovoj epizodi Exiled and Rising, Ana Mael, somatska terapeutkinja specijalizirana za PTSP i oporavak od traume, vodi te kroz jedno od najvažnijih pitanja u procesu isceljenja: šta znači otpuštanje, a šta znači kolaps – i zašto razlika između njih može promeniti sve.
Ana objašnjava da trauma nije nešto što se samo “dogodilo u prošlosti”. Ona ostaje u telu, u mišićima, fasciji, disanju i načinu na koji zauzimamo prostor. Zato se istinsko isceljenje ne može pronaći samo spolja – u tehnikama, teorijama ili u tuđem priznanju – već u povratku u telo.
Kroz ovu epizodu:
Naučićeš zašto je trauma uvek telesna i kako naše telo čuva sećanja na izdaju, napuštanje i bol.
Razumećeš razliku između kolapsa (osećaj bespomoćnosti, izolacije i odustajanja) i otpuštanja (polje poverenja i oslobađanja).
Otkrićeš praktične vežbe za stvaranje „relacijskog polja“ – poverenja između tebe i zemlje, stolice, daha ili čak povetarca na tvom licu – koje telo može da prepozna kao sigurno i podržavajuće.
Dobićeš alate za samopomoć koji ti omogućavaju da počneš isceljenje odmah, bez potrebe da čekaš godine terapije.
Ana naglašava da je put isceljenja često prepun nestrpljenja i očaja, ali da je snaga u mikro-koracima i mikro-iskustvima. Upravo ta mala iskustva vraćanja u telo grade kapacitete za veća oslobađanja, a time i za otpornost.
Ova epizoda je poziv da prestaneš bežati od sopstvenog tela i da ga umesto toga počneš posmatrati kao sveto mesto isceljenja. Jer upravo tu – između leđa i stolice, između stopala i zemlje, između daha i neba – počinje tvoja transformacija.
Za koga je epizoda:
Za sve koji žive s PTSP-om, traumom ili osećajem trajnog egzila iz sopstvenog tela.
Za one koji traže konkretne i primenljive alate za samopomoć.
Za imigrante, izbeglice, preživele ratova i sistemskog nasilja – ali i za svakoga ko želi da vrati poverenje u svoje telo.
✨ Glavna poruka epizode: Tvoja rana je tvoj lek. Isceljenje se ne događa u teoriji – ono se događa u tvom telu, u trenutku kada naučiš da razlikuješ kolaps od otpuštanja i da se osloniš na relacijsko polje poverenja.
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.
Practical grounding tools for acute panic – She offers listeners two simple, repeatable practices to interrupt spirals of panic in high-stakes moments:
Naming the external disruption (“It is okay if the mad one disengages or leaves”).
Asking, “Who is doing my job right now?” to anchor in the adult self.
Parts work meets somatic awareness – Ana bridges inner child work and somatic experiencing. She teaches how to identify when a younger, scared part of the self has “taken over” and how to step back into the adult self.
Reframing the trigger – Instead of personalizing someone else’s anger or chaos, she normalizes seeing them as “the mad one.” This creates emotional distance and protects self-worth in the moment.
Embodiment through concrete cues – She suggests writing your age on your palm or sticky note. This somatic anchor interrupts regression and reminds you: I’m an adult now. I have wisdom and capacity.
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ANA OFFERS, PROGRAMMS. ENROLL NOW:
From Panic and Anxiety At Workplace To Authority and Calm Program:
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Somatic Programs for Trauma Recovery:
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️ Ana’s Lens
Trauma-aware professionalism – She shows that trauma recovery isn’t just about the therapy room; it’s about real-life tools people can use in boardrooms, dates, and daily life.
Empowerment in power dynamics – She teaches listeners how to reclaim their ground when someone else tries to dominate or destabilize them.
Gentleness with activated parts – Her language (“your little one is safe”) honors the scared child without shaming it, modeling compassionate self-dialogue.
Key Takeaways for the Audience
You can externalize panic. Panic is not your essence—it’s a part. When you place it outside your body, you gain space and clarity.
Not all reactions are “you.” Sometimes it’s a younger self showing up. Naming “who is doing my job” helps you step into your adult authority.
It is okay to let the “mad one” go. You don’t have to manage or fix them. Your role is to stay grounded and do your task.
Simple anchors matter. Writing your age on your hand is a radical yet accessible act of self-reminder: I’m safe. I’m not a child anymore.
Therapeutic Lessons for Other Practitioners
Blend cognitive inquiry with somatic anchors – Ana shows how to integrate inner dialogue (“Who is doing my job?”) with physical reminders (age on palm). This combination strengthens nervous system regulation.
Normalize regression – Instead of pathologizing panic, Ana frames it as a child part taking over, which can be met with compassion and reorientation.
Trauma-informed workplace tools – Therapists can adapt this method for clients navigating professional or relational stress, showing healing practices can live outside therapy sess...
Anxiety and Panic Attacks are not weakness — it is the body’s way of remembering. Trembling, shaking, racing heart, panic attacks — these are survival responses held in the nervous system, resurfacing when something reminds your body of old fear. Wind, a suitcase, even an innocent comment can awaken memories of exile, neglect, abuse, or violence.
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Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
PRE-SALE MASTER CLASS OPEN: PTSD & HYPERVIGILANCE SOMATIC RECOVERY thought by Ana Mael
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As a somatic experiencing therapist, Ana explains how anxiety lives in the body and how survivors can meet it with care. You will learn why triggers don’t need to make sense to others, how to recognize anxiety as unprocessed trauma, and simple ways to anchor yourself when panic arises.
This piece is for trauma survivors of war, displacement, abuse, and neglect — and for anyone who wants to understand why anxiety is not failure but survival wisdom.
Core Teachings in “Trembling Anxiety”
Anxiety is not failure.
Tremors, shivers, racing heart — these are not betrayals of the body but survival intelligence surfacing. Triggers are subtle. Something as ordinary as wind, a suitcase, or an offhand comment can awaken old terror because the nervous system remembers what the mind has tried to forget.
The nervous system is timeless. It doesn’t know past from present; it only knows sensations of safety or unsafety. Your body honors your story. Trembling is not weakness — it is memory and resilience at work, a reminder of what you endured. Repair is possible. What was missing in the past (comfort, safety, tenderness) can be given to yourself now in the present.
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.
Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
Key Takeaways Your roots may be wounded, but you are not only your wounds. Naming what has been done is an act of truth-telling, not shame. You carry both beauty and sorrow — both are true and both are yours. Belonging is not limited to family: you are from survivors, from humanity itself. Even when violence is part of your origin, your presence today is proof of resistance.
❤️PLEASE: share it on your own platforms — socials, Substack, WhatsApp, group chats. There are survivors who may never find me directly, but they can find this through you. Every share helps someone remember they are not alone ❤️
Distilled Lessons Lesson 1: To heal, you must be willing to name where you are from — even if those places are dark. Lesson 2: Survival is not silence. Rising includes crying, grieving, and witnessing harm. Lesson 3: Your origin story can hold paradox — beauty, sorrow, violence, and resilience can live side by side. Impact When spoken aloud, this piece does not only tell my story — it opens the listener to their own. It creates resonance for anyone who has ever come from neglect, abuse, or violence, while reminding them they also come from life, beauty, and survivors. Its impact is an invitation: to claim truth without shame to see survival as a form of brilliance to recognize that tears and rising can exist together. This piece, “Where Am I From?”, is for trauma survivors who carry stories of neglect, abuse, silence, and survival. In these words, Ana names both the wounds and the beauty she comes from — reminding you that trauma may shape us, but it does not erase our capacity to heal, rise, and reclaim our lives. About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.
Ana personifies the internal battle of trauma survival: one part of the self is exhausted and wants to collapse, while another part — fueled by inherited trauma — screams for vigilance and relentless productivity. The piece exposes how trauma fragments the self and turns survival into a conflict between shutting down and never stopping.
Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
Structure of the Piece
Naming the conflict – “Two conflicting parts live in my body.”
The exhausted part – wants to hide, withdraw, shut down.
The screaming part – hypervigilant, inherited, demanding, ancestral pressure.
Why the screaming exists – to prevent collapse into memory; to guard against devastation.
The unspoken center – what lies beneath both is the unspeakable: “my body will remember what has been done to me.”
This simple structure mirrors the inner oscillation trauma survivors feel every day.
✨ Distilled Lessons / Key Takeaways
Trauma splits the self. Survivors live with opposing inner forces: collapse vs. hyperdrive.
Exhaustion is not weakness. It is the body’s cry for retreat and safety.
Hypervigilance often feels ancestral. The pressure isn’t only personal — it carries the voices of family, culture, and lineage.
Avoidance of rest is protective. The inner “screaming” part isn’t cruel — it fears what might surface if the body pauses.
Memory lives in the body. Trauma is not erased by silence; it waits, and the body carries it.
Impact
For survivors: This piece names what so many feel but cannot articulate: the exhausting push-pull between collapse and compulsive activity. It validates that the “inner war” is trauma, not weakness or failure.
For therapists/allies: It’s a compact teaching in parts work, nervous system states, and intergenerational trauma. Ana models how to externalize and speak to parts with compassion.
For general audiences: It bridges psychology and poetry, making the inner mechanics of trauma legible.
Somatic and Psychological Depth
Collapse vs. Hyperarousal: This maps onto the polyvagal states — dorsal vagal shutdown vs. sympathetic activation. Survivors oscillate between these extremes.
Parts Language: Echoes Internal Family Systems (IFS), where different “parts” of self take on protective roles.
Inherited Trauma: The “ancestors shaking me awake” speaks to epigenetic trauma and cultural memory, echoing current science showing trauma markers can pass across generations.
Avoidance as Protection: The “screaming” part knows that stopping risks flooding the survivor with unbearable memory — this reframes avoidance as a protective strategy, not failure.
Wider Cultural Resonance
Work culture & burnout: Many live with the same inner split — exhausted but unable to stop. Ana connects personal trauma to cultural conditioning (never rest, always perform).
Collective trauma lens: Her “ancestors shaking me” line ties personal exhaustion to historical survival demands — war, migration, oppression. This echoes Indigenous, Black, and diasporic voices...
Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
Why is it so easy to give — but so hard to receive? If you struggle to accept love, help, compliments, or even pleasure, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because trauma wires the body to equate receiving with danger.
In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael — Somatic Experiencing Therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery — explores how trauma, shame, and cultural conditioning teach survivors to make themselves invisible. Safety once meant giving without asking, serving without needing, and hiding desires. But over time, that survival strategy leaves you cut off from joy, intimacy, and vitality. You’ll learn: Why trauma makes receiving feel unsafe and giving feel easier
How shame and guilt around desire are passed down through families, cultures, and communities
The link between visibility, vulnerability, and intimacy struggles Why denying your needs robs you of vitality and intimacy How to begin practicing receiving — love, joy, touch, pleasure — without shame Ana reminds you: “It’s not because you don’t know how. It’s because someone shamed the desire out of you. Healing is reclaiming the right to receive.”
This episode is especially powerful for survivors, couples struggling with intimacy, and anyone who has ever felt guilty for wanting more joy, love, or support.
Want to go deeper? Check the link below for Ana’s somatic course on healing intimacy and learning to safely open, receive, and trust again.
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5
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✨ Distilled Lesson Healing intimacy and aliveness means reclaiming the right to receive. Trauma teaches that safety lies in invisibility and giving, but true vitality, joy, and intimacy return when survivors practice visibility, desire, and receiving without shame.
Core Teachings:
Trauma disrupts the capacity to receive. Survivors often default to giving and serving because receiving feels unsafe and vulnerable.
Visibility = danger in trauma memory. Being seen — asking for help, naming desires, or expressing pleasure — recalls experiences of ridicule, shaming, or abuse. Safety was found in becoming invisible.
Guilt and shame around desire are intergenerational. Families, communities, and cultures (especially those shaped by war, displacement, religion, or communal trauma) often impose narratives like “how dare you ask?” that suppress joy, pleasure, and individuality. Self-denial leads to loss of vitality.
By refusing to receive — even something as simple as a compliment, help, or joy — survivors cut themselves off from nourishment, pleasure, and life-force. Healing begins with remembering who harmed you.
Naming the source of shame helps survivors separate their authentic desires from inherited guilt. From there, they can practice receiving small moments of joy, touch, or support.
Main Quotes
“A life of trauma damages your ability to receive. Instead, it is easier for you to give and to serve others.”
“When you express your desires, your dreams, and your pleasures you become open and vulnerable. With trauma, openness and vulnerability feel unsafe.”
“How many times were you made to feel guilty for wanting?”
“You are worthy of receiving and expressing your desires.”
“When you stop yourself, remember who harmed you — and notice they are not with you now.”
About Ana Mael:
Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing t...
This piece is for every survivor of abuse, including those whose pain is resurfacing now with the release of the Epstein files. ❤️PLEASE: share it on your own platforms — socials, Substack, WhatsApp, group chats. There are survivors who may never find me directly, but they can find this through you. Every share helps someone remember they are not alone ✊❤️
Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
You’ve been forced to carry silence, disbelief, and erasure for too long. May these words remind you: what was taken can be reclaimed. Not through them, but through you.
A word on tone (“revenge”) The word is hot on purpose—it captures energy often shamed in abuse survivors. The piece wisely translates that heat into lawful, values-aligned reclamation (peace, body, work, travel, friendship). That’s the difference between rumination and constructive agency—and it’s safer and more sustainable.
1. Validation of Magnitude
Abuse survivors have described not just isolated acts of abuse but a network that stole years, relationships, careers, innocence, and safety. Ana’s piece says: “Count it. Name every single thing that was taken from you.” That practice validates the truth that abuse doesn’t just harm in the moment — it robs across every domain of life. For survivors, seeing this named and honored is deeply validating.
2. Reframing Anger and “Revenge”
Survivors often feel anger that society wants to silence — especially women survivors of powerful men. “Get your revenge” here reframes revenge away from destruction and toward reclamation: “Dammit, I will have my peace back. Even for five minutes, I’ll reclaim it.” For abuse survivors (many retraumatized by delays, denials, or by seeing names in the files without full justice), this offers a constructive outlet: rage becomes fuel for building life, not just a fire that burns them inside.
3. Small Wins Against the Weight of Power
Facing a machine as large as Epstein’s network, it’s easy to feel powerless. Ana’s piece lowers the bar: “Even five minutes. Even now.” That’s trauma-informed. It means survivors don’t need to wait for a courtroom or an institution. They can start reclaiming immediately — step by step, inside their own lives.
4. Embodied Repair
Epstein survivors talk about how abuse fractured their connection with their bodies — their sense of safety, sexuality, freedom. The piece explicitly says: “I will reconnect with my body and make it strong.” That’s a direct somatic invitation: a reminder that the body can be rebuilt as a safe home.
5. Breaking the Shame Loop
Public attention to the Epstein files means survivors risk being reduced to “evidence.” They’re seen through the lens of crime, not life. Ana’s piece flips the frame: survivors are not just case studies; they are people with joy, trust, creativity, careers, friendships — and they have the right to reclaim all of that. That shift is huge: it restores identity and humanity beyond “victim of X.”
6. From Oppressor-Centered to Survivor-Centered
The Epstein story and any other is often told through the names of powerful men, with survivors in the footnotes. This piece pulls the focus back: “Count your losses. Make it your quest. In spite of them.”
It’s not about abuser or “them.” It’s about survivors reclaiming what was always theirs. Parallel to that, the broader evidence base—and survivor organizations—reiterate the lifelong impact of sexual abuse on health, trust, relationships, and body connection, which is exactly the terrain Ana inventories and targets for reclamation.
Intersection, concretely: Ana’s “count what was taken” mirrors the cultural moment of naming and documenting harm (legal files, testimonies, survivor-led archives).
Her “micro-wins, now” reframes public outrage into private recovery steps—what survivors can do...
We live in pandemic of injustic and injustice doesn’t disappear when ignored. It embeds itself in the body — in exhaustion, in sickness, in silence.
Ana Mael wrote "With Smirk, Injustice Spoke Back" to give Injustice a voice. Not an abstract idea, but a force that grows when denied, minimized, or dismissed. Injustice speaks through our nervous systems, through our relationships, and through the systems that profit when we turn away from each other. T
his is a spoken word poem and somatic monologue about what happens when Injustice finally answers back. It is raw, embodied, and prophetic — a reminder that healing cannot happen without truth, and justice cannot be ignored without consequence.
If you’ve ever felt ignored, denied, dismissed, minimized — this piece speaks for you. If you’re drawn to spoken word poetry that confronts truth, this performance will resonate. If you’re interested in trauma healing, somatics, embodiment, or social justice, this is for you.
⚡ If this piece speaks to you, please share it widely. Someone who needs to hear these words will find them through you. Second part will be released soon. Subscribe and you will be notified.
Poem ( please link back to this video if you are using it on your platforms ).
With Smirk, Injustice Spoke Back ( by Ana Mael )
You said: Ignore it. Deny it. Withdraw. Dismiss it. Walk around it. Justify it. Minimize it. Just don’t deal with it.
And Injustice said back: The more you ignore me, the more you deny me, the more you withdraw from me, the more you dismiss me, the more you minimize me—
the more I will grow. I will rise. I will scream louder into your vanishing face. As if you haven’t sickened already.
And then I will catch you. I will suffocate you and whisper in your face:
You ignored me. You denied me. You walked around me. You dismissed me. You justified me. You minimized me. You refused me.
As you hover in that place of almost-death, I will stop time so you can feel what it means to live forever in the “about to die” state of life.
For every hour, every day, every week, every year you witnessed me and still ignored me, denied me, withdrew from me, dismissed me, justified me, minimized me—
I will make you feel it back.
I will destroy you with your own poison— not with fury, not with speed, but with waiting terror.
The same waiting I endured as you ignored me, denied me, withdrew from me, dismissed me, justified me, minimized me.
You refused to face me. Now I face you.
Every hour. Every day. Every week. Every year.
You will remember. You will recall your life.
And you know— better than anyone— what it feels like:
to be ignored, to be denied, to be withdrawn from, to be dismissed, to be walked around, to be minimized, to be left undealt with.
I will do to you what you did to me— as it was once done to you.
And the cycle will never end until you see me, stand with me, hold me, act with me, for me.
Only then will you realize: It is not me. It is not you.
It is them.
Those who allowed us one thing: to ignore each other, to deny each other, to withdraw from each other, to dismiss each other, to walk away from each other, so we never face each other.
As long as we scrutinize each other, as long as our gaze is not on them, as long as we are not united— they will keep their smirk.
We release the pain of injustice done by them upon...
When Hugs Feel Awkward, Intimacy Feels Impossible. Why does intimacy feel so hard — even with someone you love? Why do hugs feel stiff, awkward, or unsafe? Why do some couples avoid touch altogether? It’s not weakness. It’s not that you’re “broken.” It’s your trauma body remembering.
In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael — Somatic Experiencing Therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery — reveals the hidden link between trauma, hugging, and intimacy struggles. Whether you’re someone who can’t stand to be hugged, or a couple struggling to connect emotionally or sexually, Ana explains how unresolved trauma interrupts the most basic cycle of trust in the body.
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PRE SALE FOR ANA TEACHINGS STARTS NOW : When Hugs Feel Awkward, Intimacy Feels Impossible Heal the trauma imprint in your body and learn to open, receive, and trust again — in love, in touch, and in intimacy. https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate . This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss
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Key Teaching: Trauma Intimacy At birth, we all have the Moro reflex (also called the startle or embrace reflex). It’s simple: open → be held → safely close. When trauma, neglect, or abandonment interrupts this cycle, the nervous system wires in a different lesson: opening is dangerous because no one will catch me.
That incomplete cycle shows up later as: Stiffness and robotic posture (the body saying better stiff than abandoned) Awkward hugs and difficulty receiving love or comfort Shutdown in sexual intimacy and the inability to orgasm Couples who can’t surrender to one another because safety is missing
Somatic Principles of Intimacy
Ana teaches that the front body = nourishment (receiving love, warmth, intimacy) and the back body = protection (safety, “I’ve got you”).
Healthy intimacy happens where these two meet: I can open, and I can trust you will meet me. Without this somatic completion, intimacy breaks down: In relationships, one partner reaches out but the other pulls away. In sex, the body refuses to surrender, making orgasm or closeness impossible. In couples, love is present, but safety is missing — so intimacy feels forced, fake, or dangerous.
Core Lesson Intimacy is not just about romance or sex — it is about the nervous system’s ability to open and safely close, to be visible and still feel protected. Trauma freezes this cycle. Healing means retraining the body to trust that it can expand, be embraced, and condense back into safety. Takeaways from This Episode Awkward hugs are not random — they are trauma imprints. Intimacy struggles in couples are rooted in the same incomplete reflex.
The body says “better stiff than abandoned” — until it learns a new pattern. Trauma healing = relearning to open, to close, and to be safely embraced. Hugging is not just a gesture — it’s a blueprint for nourishment, trust, and intimacy. For many, this is the missing piece: you don’t need more affirmations or “trying harder” in your relationship. You need to heal the somatic foundation of intimacy. If intimacy has felt impossible for you or your partner — whether through avoidance, shutdown, or the inability to surrender — this episode is your starting point.
Who This Helps Survivors of neglect, shock trauma, war, abuse, public shaming/bullying. First responders, veterans, activists living with chronic hypervigilance. Couples struggling with affection, receiving, or sexual surrender. Impact Ana normalizes a widely misunderstood experience, gives a clear somatic mechanism, and o...
When Hugs Feel Awkward, Intimacy Feels Impossible. Why does intimacy feel so hard — even with someone you love?
Why do hugs feel stiff, awkward, or unsafe? Why do some couples avoid touch altogether? It’s not weakness. It’s not that you’re “broken.” It’s your trauma body remembering. In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael — Somatic Experiencing Therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery — reveals the hidden link between trauma, hugging, and intimacy struggles. Whether you’re someone who can’t stand to be hugged, or a couple struggling to connect emotionally or sexually, Ana explains how unresolved trauma interrupts the most basic cycle of trust in the body.
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PRE SALE FOR ANA TEACHINGS STARTS NOW :
When Hugs Feel Awkward, Intimacy Feels Impossible Heal the trauma imprint in your body and learn to open, receive, and trust again — in love, in touch, and in intimacy. https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate . This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss
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Key Teaching:
Trauma Intimacy At birth, we all have the Moro reflex (also called the startle or embrace reflex).
It’s simple: open → be held → safely close. When trauma, neglect, or abandonment interrupts this cycle, the nervous system wires in a different lesson: opening is dangerous because no one will catch me.
That incomplete cycle shows up later as: Stiffness and robotic posture (the body saying better stiff than abandoned)
Awkward hugs and difficulty receiving love or comfort Shutdown in sexual intimacy and the inability to orgasm Couples who can’t surrender to one another because safety is missing
Somatic Principles of Intimacy Ana teaches that the front body = nourishment (receiving love, warmth, intimacy) and the back body = protection (safety, “I’ve got you”).
Healthy intimacy happens where these two meet: I can open, and I can trust you will meet me.
Without this somatic completion, intimacy breaks down: In relationships, one partner reaches out but the other pulls away.
In sex, the body refuses to surrender, making orgasm or closeness impossible. In couples, love is present, but safety is missing — so intimacy feels forced, fake, or dangerous.
Core Lesson Intimacy is not just about romance or sex — it is about the nervous system’s ability to open and safely close, to be visible and still feel protected. Trauma freezes this cycle. Healing means retraining the body to trust that it can expand, be embraced, and condense back into safety.
Takeaways from This Episode:
Awkward hugs are not random — they are trauma imprints. Intimacy struggles in couples are rooted in the same incomplete reflex.
The body says “better stiff than abandoned” — until it learns a new pattern.
Trauma healing = relearning to open, to close, and to be safely embraced. Hugging is not just a gesture — it’s a blueprint for nourishment, trust, and intimacy. For many, this is the missing piece: you don’t need more affirmations or “trying harder” in your relationship. You need to heal the somatic foundation of intimacy.
If intimacy has felt impossible for you or your partner — whether through avoidance, shutdown, or the inability to surrender — this episode is your starting point.
Who This Helps :
Survivors of neglect, shock trauma, war, abuse, public shaming/bullying.
First responders, veterans, activists living with chronic hypervigilance.
Couples struggling with affection, receiving, or sexual surrender.
I...
Your body remembers what your mind tries to forget. Posture, voice, and eyes all carry the hidden signs of abuse — and once you know how to read them, you’ll never miss them again. Ana Mael, Somatic therapist, delivers embodied truth-telling — showing how trauma is carved into the body, validating survivors, and teaching others to read the signs so healing can begin.
Full video: https://youtu.be/9llsotH96K4
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Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate . This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss
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Key Learnings
Emotional abuse leaves physical evidence – posture, face, voice, skin, and breath all carry signs of trauma. Voice as frequency of abuse – tremors, high pitch, unsettled tone signal chronic emotional strain. Eyes reflect despair, shame, and fear – gaze patterns (downcast, unfocused, pleading, or avoiding) reveal inner states. Somatic collapse – curled shoulders, muted skin tone, shallow breath, and loss of vitality are markers of long-term abuse.
Facial trauma expression – chronic muscle tension in jaw, neck, and forehead creates visible and energetic imprints of trauma. Key Takeaways Trauma is not abstract—it etches itself into the body. What looks like “aging” may often be trauma carving itself into identity. Posture, tone, and gaze are diagnostic clues that can be observed in real time.
Expiration date on suffering – Ana emphasizes survivors must set boundaries on enduring emotional decay. Impact
Raises awareness that emotional abuse is not invisible but embodied. Validates survivors’ experiences by showing their symptoms are not “just in their head” but biologically and physically real.
Empowers practitioners and friends to recognize early somatic warning signs of abuse. Shifts healing lens – from purely psychological narratives to a body-based, somatic perspective.
Influence Reframes trauma not as personal weakness but as visible consequence of external harm. Counters cultural minimization of abuse by demonstrating how it literally shapes faces, bodies, and breath. Encourages both survivors and supporters to notice the nonverbal cues of collapse, shame, and fear. Core Lessons Emotional decay is visible and measurable in the soma.
Chronic abuse alters life force – posture tone, facial tone, and breath collapse. Shame and fear are embodied, especially in gaze and breath. This is not love but trauma carving identity. Healing requires not only awareness but also choosing a boundary—an “expiration date” for suffering.
Ana’s Role & Delivery Somatic Interpreter – She translates invisible emotional abuse into visible, physical signs (posture, eyes, breath, skin, voice).
Embodied Teacher – She delivers lessons not as abstract psychology but through real, embodied observation — things anyone can see and feel.
Witness of Pain – She validates survivors by naming what their body already knows but others may have ignored or minimized.
Boundary Setter – She emphasizes the need for an “expiration date” on emotional decay, delivering empowerment instead of endless endurance.
Truth Teller – She strips away illusions (like confusing trauma effects with aging or love) and calls it what it is:...
An activist is not defined by having a megaphone, a protest sign, or a nonprofit behind them. An activist is defined by what they choose to do with their awareness of harm.
full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHKJ-6KHOH0&t=2s
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PRE SALE FOR ANA TEACHINGS STARTS: How to Become An Activist https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/d2UK9ZdH/checkout
Sing up for Activists community support group. Activists in live online meetings. https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/forms/2149235414
❤️ Please donate This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a truth & storytelling. https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss ___________________________________________________
Core Definition of Activist An activist is: One who refuses silence in the face of injustice. One who acts — in word, body, or deed — to disrupt harm and push toward justice. What Makes Someone an Activist
Awareness → Action Everyone sees injustice; not everyone moves. An activist moves.
Risk → Courage Activism means taking risks — social, relational, financial, even physical. The presence of fear doesn’t cancel activism; the act of moving anyway defines it.
Witness → Voice Activists bear witness (they see clearly). But they also voice — they refuse erasure by naming what others won’t.
Personal + Collective An activist doesn’t only fight for “me.” They know personal survival and collective freedom are intertwined.
What Activism Is Not
It’s not just posting online. That can be part of it, but activism means risk + persistence. It’s not agreeing quietly. Agreement without disruption is still obedience.
It’s not being liked. Activists are often rejected before they’re remembered.
Examples A woman leaving an abusive home and naming the abuse publicly → activism. Someone marching against police brutality → activism. A worker organizing colleagues for fair pay → activism. An exile writing truth about war crimes when silence is expected → activism.
In short: An activist is anyone who chooses resistance over silence, clarity over obedience, and action over numbness.
From Silent Observer to Activist: How to Find Your Voice Have you been watching injustice unfold — in your family, relationship, workplace, or country — but staying silent?
This episode of Exiled & Rising is for you. Ana Mael, war survivor, somatic therapist, and activist, shares how to move from being a quiet observer to becoming a powerful voice for change. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why speaking up feels like betrayal (and why it’s actually freedom)
How to trust your own thinking and question authority without losing yourself The role of your nervous system in building the courage to speak out How to find solidarity and create your own support circle Why backlash is proof you’re making an impact, not a failure How personal healing, relational truth-telling, and political action all connect Whether you’re standing up to an abusive partner, refusing silence in your family, or raising your voice against tyranny, this episode will guide you to embody your activism and sustain your voice for the long haul.
Remember: Silence breeds obedience. Obedience breeds tyranny. Your voice is medicine for the times we live in.
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach...
An activist is not defined by having a megaphone, a protest sign, or a nonprofit behind them. An activist is defined by what they choose to do with their awareness of harm.
------------------------------------------------------------
PRE SALE FOR ANA TEACHINGS STARTS: How to Become An Activist https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/d2UK9ZdH/checkout
Sing up for Activists community support group. Activists in live online meetings. https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/forms/2149235414
❤️ Please donate This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a truth & storytelling.
https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss
___________________________________________________
Core Definition of Activist An activist is: One who refuses silence in the face of injustice. One who acts — in word, body, or deed — to disrupt harm and push toward justice.
What Makes Someone an Activist Awareness → Action
Everyone sees injustice; not everyone moves.
An activist moves. Risk → Courage
Activism means taking risks — social, relational, financial, even physical. The presence of fear doesn’t cancel activism; the act of moving anyway defines it.
Witness → Voice Activists bear witness (they see clearly). But they also voice — they refuse erasure by naming what others won’t.
Personal + Collective An activist doesn’t only fight for “me.”
They know personal survival and collective freedom are intertwined.
What Activism Is Not It’s not just posting online. That can be part of it, but activism means risk + persistence. It’s not agreeing quietly. Agreement without disruption is still obedience. It’s not being liked. Activists are often rejected before they’re remembered.
Examples: A woman leaving an abusive home and naming the abuse publicly → activism. Someone marching against police brutality → activism. A worker organizing colleagues for fair pay → activism. An exile writing truth about war crimes when silence is expected → activism.
In short: An activist is anyone who chooses resistance over silence, clarity over obedience, and action over numbness. From Silent Observer to Activist: How to Find Your Voice Have you been watching injustice unfold — in your family, relationship, workplace, or country — but staying silent?
This episode of Exiled & Rising is for you. Ana Mael, war survivor, somatic therapist, and activist, shares how to move from being a quiet observer to becoming a powerful voice for change. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why speaking up feels like betrayal (and why it’s actually freedom) How to trust your own thinking and question authority without losing yourself The role of your nervous system in building the courage to speak out How to find solidarity and create your own support circle.
Why backlash is proof you’re making an impact, not a failure How personal healing, relational truth-telling, and political action all connect Whether you’re standing up to an abusive partner, refusing silence in your family, or raising your voice against tyranny, this episode will guide you to embody your activism and sustain your voice for the long haul.
Remember: Silence breeds obedience. Obedience breeds tyranny. Your voice is medicine for the times we live in.
About Ana Mael:
Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, an...
This is not a podcast for the mainstream. This is for the silenced, the cast out, and those whose stories never made the headlines. A Groundbreaking Trauma Justice Podcast from a Genocide Survivor and Somatic Therapist.
Deeply embodied, politically urgent, and spiritually grounded space led by a therapist who survived war and genocide herself. Ana Mael is not just talking about trauma—she has lived it, survived it, and now guides others through it with radical clarity and compassion.
This podcast is a revolution in trauma conversations: it moves beyond mindset tips and breathwork into trauma justice, relational repair, and systemic truth-telling. Each episode invites listeners to stop healing in isolation—and to begin naming, reclaiming, and rising from what hurt them.
Exiled and Rising is for survivors of war, systemic injustice, and complex trauma—especially those living in exile from land, identity, or community.
With raw truth and radical tenderness, Ana Mael offers unfiltered guidance on how to heal when you’ve been cut off—literally or metaphorically—from your home, safety, or sense of self and how to raise up and call for justice.
“This podcast is not about surface-level healing. We are not fluffing the feathers or shaking the crystals here.”
No glamour edits. No AI voices. Just real voice, lived experience, and trauma-focused truth.
Social and Cultural Relevance:
Ana’s work is a mirror for our time. In a global climate of rising authoritarianism, censorship, and the silencing of marginalized voices, this podcast becomes both a somatic protest and a innate act of resistance.
“If you have been silenced… Welcome.”
Ana gives voice to the body in a time when speech itself is policed. This is especially potent for:
Activists and whistleblowers
Immigrants and undocumented individuals
Survivors of trauma who were never given words for what they endured
A deep-dive podcast blending somatic healing expertise, micro-teachings, and lived survivor experience. Each episode distills trauma recovery, nervous system insights, and political consciousness into guidance that helps you reclaim power, safety, and self.
This Podcast Is a Home For:
Overfunctioning Immigrants, Exiled & Displaced – Those who overwork to prove worth
Survivors of War, Genocide, & Systemic Oppression – Healing from identity loss and rebuilding life
Refugees, Stateless, Undocumented People – Navigating erasure and exile
Children of Exiled or Immigrant Parents – Carrying generational wounds
Those Ostracized from Family or Church – For who they are, what they believe, or how they love
Those Seeking Somatic Recovery – Learning to regulate and reconnect with the body
Anyone Ready to Resist Spiritual Bypassing – And choose embodied, justice-based healing
What It Offers:
Real Stories of Survival & Healing – From Ana’s own war journals to survivor interviews
Expert Somatic & Trauma Recovery Insights – Practical tools for regulation and healing
Space for the Cast Out – Centering those excluded from mainstream healing narratives
Healing as Activism – Moving from survival to embodiment, from harm to advocacy
Radical Human Truth – With no scripts, no glamour edits, no “fixing”—only truth
Premium Membership – What You Get in the Private Community
Take your healing deeper with exclusive, high-value content:
Extended, Deep-Dive Episodes – Personal stories and expert somatic breakdowns
Therapy-Based Takeaways – Direct applications for therapy, journaling, and integration
Keynotes & Summaries – Distilled insights to anchor your healing
Full Transcripts – For reflection, accessibility, and in-depth study
Bite-Sized Somatic Lessons – Micro-practices for nervous system healing
Science of Trauma – Research-backed techniques to help reset your body’s stress response
Listener Q&A + Expert Sessions – Ask Ana your questions and receive trauma-informed answers
Ad-Free Listening – No filler, no distractions, just healing and clarity
Meet Your Host: Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her life’s work to helping survivors of war, forced displacement, systemic oppression, and complex trauma reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust.
As a bestselling author, Ana’s book, The Trauma We Don’t Talk About, became a #1 bestseller in over 10 categories, including Mental Health, Personal Testimonies, and Memoirs.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Ana works directly with clients and educates mental health professionals and counselors on the complexities of displacement, exile, and war trauma recovery. She leads training programs, provides trauma-informed therapy, and conducts pioneering research to bridge the gap between somatic therapy and global crisis trauma care.
"From Trauma to Resilience. From Wounds to Resistance."
Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for mental health treatment or doctor care and advise. Please consult your mental health and/or medical care provider for individualized care.
