Getting Off the Generational-Trauma Bus

[Upbeat Guitar Music]

Mike: Welcome everybody. This is Avoiding the Addiction Affliction, brought to you by Westwords Consulting, the Kenosha County Substance Use Disorder Coalition, and by a grant from the state of Wisconsin's Dose of Reality. Real talks reminding you that opioids are powerful drugs and that one pill can kill. I'm Mike McGowan.

Mike: A while back, I had the privilege of having a conversation with our guest today, Dr. Ghazaleh Bailey. We talked about toxic trauma, shame and boundaries during that conversation. Wanna continue that conversation today, extending it to multi-generational messaging and behavioral patterns and even genetic patterns.

Mike: Ghazaleh is a certified therapist, couple therapist, supervisor and trainer with a PhD in psychology. She's based in Berlin, Germany, and has a unique multicultural and approach that she uses to help people overcome childhood and generational trauma. Her work and research is focused on healing power of emotion, transformation, and self-compassion.

Mike: Welcome back, Ghazaleh.

Ghazaleh: Hi Mike. Good to see you again.

Mike: Well, I'm thrilled to talk to you again. Let's catch people up just a little. The last time we talked about the many children who get shaming messages from their primary caregivers, just to refresh it, parents can bully and belittle their children and pass on those messages.

Ghazaleh: Yeah. Yeah, I remember that conversation and we were talking about those subtle messages parents can send through comparison, comparison of siblings, comparison with other children. Oh, look at the other one. In many different kind of ways, but also in direct ways of actually being critical.

Ghazaleh: Actually, you know, not acknowledging needs. And not acknowledging emotions, making fun of children, talking badly about them in front of others. So there are so many different kind of ways. Sometimes, you know, intentionally, but many times actually subconsciously parents can leave children feeling there is something wrong with you.

Ghazaleh: And that's the core emotion that comes to life when I'm bullied. It's this deep feeling of, so there must be something wrong with me. I mean, we know meanwhile, when children get bullied by other children and peers. The first question they ask themselves is, what's wrong with me that they don't like me?

Mike: Yep.

Ghazaleh: So it's the same question that comes to life that makes them feel ashamed about themselves. When parents belittle them or leave them feeling your needs don't matter, or leave them feeling, oh, you are the child. How could you know? And I'm the parent and I know better than you. Or, you know, you should just be quiet or actually let them know you're not good enough.

Ghazaleh: And unfortunately, some parents do that. I mean, I'm sure I always believe parents give their best as much as they can, and sometimes they don't understand how the language they use can make children feel awful about themselves. And that sticks with us, and we carry that inside our adulthood, and then we feel worthless and ashamed and then we act on it in many different ways.

Mike: I was at the grocery store last week and there's a couple of parents with their kids there, and right in the middle of the aisle, in front of strangers one of the parents threatened to whoop their kid if they continue behavior. And I thought, okay, one, the first thing the kid does is cry and look around.

Mike: So that's a shaming experience. And I then I thought about our conversation. I thought, well. I bet that parent just passed along something that they got when they were kids as well.

Ghazaleh: Yeah, absolutely. I had a similar situation with a grandma, so I was in a public transport with my 4-year-old daughter.

Ghazaleh: And then the bus stopped and the little one, there was a little girl with a grandmother. The grandmother kind of said to her, we need to get off. And the little girl didn't hear her. You could really see like she was in her own world. She didn't hear the grandma. And then the grandma started really shouting at her.

Ghazaleh: Grabbed and pulled her out of the bus and told her, are you deaf? And in a really bad tone. And my daughter was like, oh my God, what's happening here? Right. And so I was like, so if this is the grandma, how does her mother talk to her? Because you know, if this is a grandma talking to her, I guess that's how she talked to her daughter.

Mike: Yep.

Ghazaleh: And her daughter being her mom. I guess this is what the little girl is used to, because I think if the mother would've been a cycle breaker and aware of those pattern, she would have probably not let the girls spend time with the grandma like that. (laughs)

Mike: Yeah.

Ghazaleh: So, you start protecting the next generation when you have the awareness of what happened to you.

Mike: Well, okay, to use your story. At some point, some parent has gotta get off the bus. For this multi-generational messaging and trauma, we have to make the decision. Right. I'm stopping it here.

Ghazaleh: Mm-hmm. And you know what? It starts with that decision.

Mike: Yeah.

Ghazaleh: This is the most powerful decision.

Ghazaleh: Acknowledging there is something wrong in my family system. And I need to change this and I'm gonna do something different. Right?

Mike: Yeah.

Ghazaleh: And it's impossible to break all patterns and not repeat anything and be the perfect parent and caregiver. But making that intentional decision and being so mindful about it shift so much inside our bodies, inside our nervous system, because we just act on things in a different way.

Ghazaleh: We see things in a different way. We realize things in a different way. So that intention to say, I am gonna do something different, and it starts with me and the past ends with me.

Mike: Awesome. The reason that I called you to do another one is that I was looking at a study of Holocaust survivors, veterans and trauma victims, and the incidents of post-traumatic stress.

Mike: My first thought is, it's not surprising that the incidence of PTSD is higher among those groups, right?

Ghazaleh: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know what Mike, maybe it makes sense to explain to our listeners what PTSD actually is, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, because it's also one of those terms. It's been used a lot, but not many people know really what it is right?

Mike: But everybody uses it, right?

Ghazaleh: Yeah. It's like I'm depressed, but what does that mean?

Mike: Yeah.

Ghazaleh: Then you're depressed. And so, you know, PTSD symptoms usually develop when somebody is exposed to situations that leaves them feeling incredibly powerless and helpless and makes it impossible for the human being to cope with that situation. So that could be a life threatening situation through, you know, accidents, natural disasters or war or, you know any kind of situation.

Ghazaleh: Even watching somebody else being traumatized, that leaves the human being feeling powerless and in threat. It's a life-threatening situation and I feel powerless and I don't know how to cope with that.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Ghazaleh: And so when people are in these situations, it doesn't mean that those stress symptoms, the PTSD symptoms come alive immediately after the trauma.

Ghazaleh: Sometimes they actually show up weeks later, a month later, or even years later. And they can show up in so many different kind of ways because sometimes they show up with hypervigilance, other times they show up with emotional avoidance and numbing. Sometimes they show up in form of chronic pain and autoimmune diseases or other illnesses.

Ghazaleh: Sometimes they show up because I have anxiety or depression. So the symptoms vary a lot. So it's sometimes really hard to say what PTSD is, especially because it rarely comes alone. It comes in combination with other mental health issues such as addiction or, you know, self harm or you know, depression or anxiety.

Ghazaleh: So it's important to really get an understanding of what PTSD can look like and feel like. And so oftentimes when people are in immense stress situation like Holocaust or like there is another study about pregnant women during 9/11 or people [inaudible], right? This is like, there are a lot of studies around that event and when we are in stress responses where we feel powerless and we don't know how to respond to that, and we are in survival because it's a prolonged traumatic experience and not only one incident that happens at once.

Ghazaleh: Then our bodies are in survival. So what we do first is we try to survive. We try to kind of go through this traumatic experience, and that means that the trauma is more internalized by the body because it's happening repetitively, right? So it's like when the child. Has gone through one traumatic experience is different than when it goes through complex childhood trauma, which means like there is constant fear at the house, right?

Ghazaleh: A constant, angry, drunk father, for example, because then the child goes through extended traumatic experiences where it feels powerless and it feels threatened and unsafe. So the more intense the trauma is, the more difficult it is actually to recognize that this is trauma. And yes, the more intense it is, the more it shapes us and the more it shapes our soul, our bodies in a biological way, and then we can, we definitely pass it along faster or more than in, you know, if I go through a situation like a car accident, which is also a trauma and a traumatic experience, but it might not shape my identity and my sense of self so much because I had a sense of self and an identity before that.

Mike: Well, okay. Let's talk about the body since you brought that up.

Mike: 'Cause that was part of the study that one of the ladies who was a co-author of the study said that her mom survived the Holocaust, and even though they moved to America where she always felt safe, her parents did not. And so they passed that fear onto their daughter. And I was thinking about the parents, like you said, 9/11, the Great Depression, any war that's gonna happen any time.

Mike: And what they found in the study is that there's epigenetic, there's changes in some of the gene messages that go forward into the next generation as well.

Ghazaleh: Yeah. Well, you know, I'm not a monoculture biologist, but from what I understand so far, because it's in a very interesting field and because, you know, I'm kind of.

Ghazaleh: I have a lot of clients going through generational trauma. I also have a lot of Jewish clients whose parents and their grandparents. The topic of Holocaust and what they've been through is a life, and I remember especially one client of mine many years ago who always had this fear in her eyes, and it was not like that her life was threatened, but her father was in such an anxious state because his parents were going through Holocaust. That whenever she wanted to leave the house, even go to school, he would say like, you have to keep your eyes open and watch out. So she felt from the beginning of her life, the world is not a safe place.

Ghazaleh: And when you know, parents carry that anxiety inside of them and it's not about blaming fault, okay? Then they act on that and then they give messages. That leave the child feel okay, watch out. The world is not safe. So I grew up with this anxiousness inside of me. That's one way through the how parents respond, you know, and how they behave and how this shapes, it's the environment.

Ghazaleh: The other one is that there are studies showing that extended long stressful situations like traumatic experiences, shape, you know, can change our gene expression. That doesn't mean they actually change anything in our genetic code, in our DNA sequence. That's not what's happening.

Ghazaleh: But there is this wording that we call epigenetic modification that has to do with how trauma shapes, how our genes are expressed through the concept of DNA modulation and the research also with the pregnant woman during 9/11 shows that, you know, different kind of traumatic stresses on our body.

Ghazaleh: Have a great impact on how this mutilation is being kind of going up or down, and that's what we can also pass along to the children. And so the longer the trauma is, the more impact it has on our body. And there is also, you know, this methation, especially related to a specific receptor, the glucocorticoid receptor that is kind of connected with our cortisol.

Ghazaleh: So that, that, you know, the [inaudible] receptor. Kind of has influence on our cortisol level and cortisol is the stress hormone.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Ghazaleh: And what, meanwhile for many different kind of, you know studies is that trauma has a great response on cortisol. And I like to bring up an example, which is myself.

Mike: Please.

Ghazaleh: 'Cause I have a very unique experience many years ago.

Ghazaleh: So my mom was pregnant right after the Iran Revolution and during the first Gulf War, and my mom is a nurse and she worked in the biggest hospital in Teran. So she sometimes, you know. She was telling me that she was highly pregnant and she would see these soldiers losing arms and you know, she had to select which arm belongs to which soldier while her own brother was in war.

Ghazaleh: And then I was kinda in this, probably in her stomach and this stress response. And then I was born and then, you know, my parents decided to leave Germany and I was going through this traumatic experience of leaving Iran and coming to Germany. So I noticed that sometimes it's hard for me to find calmness inside myself, though I've been through many years, you know, my own therapeutic journey.

Ghazaleh: And then a very good friend of mine who specialized in chronic diseases, he's a doctor, medical doctor, and he was like, you know what? Let's do a cortisol test with you. So I did over weeks. You know, at different times of my life, I tested my cortisol level. Mornings when I would wake up, during the day, in the evening, and then he gave me the response that Ghazaleh, your cortisol level is early in the morning, though there's nothing specifically going on in your life that is stressful, higher than somebody actually in a stressful situation.

Ghazaleh: So I guess my baseline, my cortisol baseline is already higher than other people whose mothers were not going through war and who didn't flee, you know, their home country when they were three years old. And I guess I have to live with that. (laughs) But what I do is, I'm aware of it. I try, I kind of learn to soothe my anxiety.

Ghazaleh: I learn to calm myself down. I learn to slow things down in my life, so I can be a calmer parent for my daughter, right, and kind of help her to feel safer in the world and help her to feel calmer within herself. So I think it has a great impact. You know, trauma, we know meanwhile has a great biological impact as well.

Ghazaleh: Not only environmental or relationship impact.

Mike: Do you think you pass some of that on to your daughter?

Ghazaleh: I don't know. She's a very highly active person who, you know, likes to kind of enjoy life and she was never a good sleeper. So there was a time in my life where I was wondering why is she so restless?

Ghazaleh: Yes, I could start, blaming myself or my history or whatever. But I think, you know, what I did was I found compassion within myself that this is not about my fault or my mother's fault or anybody's fault, but the question is, how can I be there for her in a way that her nervous system grows up in a calmer environment.

Ghazaleh: And so it might be that her restlessness connected to my higher cortisol level. And you know, to be honest, I was pregnant during the first lockdown, which was quite stressful for everyone, for us.

Mike: Oh, absolutely.

Ghazaleh: Who knows? So what kind of impact that had on her, right? I mean, being pregnant during pandemic, I think many women can relate to that.

Ghazaleh: It was not the less, I mean it was a kind of a stressful period for us. Right.

Mike: Absolutely.

Ghazaleh: Though, you know, I tried my best to meditate and stay calm and find rest and soothe myself and all these kind of ways. I'm sure in some way it impacted her.

Mike: What's fascinating about listening to you tell that is that you come across, and I know you know this, as a very composed, settled, calming influence. I feel that even when talking to you, but nobody really knows right. What's brewing underneath the surface in any of us.

Ghazaleh: Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know how I am right now cost me 20 years of therapy.

Mike: (laughs)

Ghazaleh: And a lot of self awareness. A lot of self work. Okay. There's a good reason why I'm a therapist.

Ghazaleh: You always talk about the therapist's own wound. The healer's wound, right? And so I started my therapeutic journey at the beginning of my twenties. That I noticed that, okay, there seems to be something that I haven't processed in my life. So what I did was I started, you know, wondering how did my past actually shape me?

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Ghazaleh: And this is something that my parents never talked about it with me. So it was not that my parents were like, oh, you know, we wondering how all of that might have shaped you. (laughs) And so I was like, started talking about this with my parents and I started kind of open up a topic that was silenced within my family.

Ghazaleh: And I think this is often the case in families. And once you bring up the awareness, then something shifts inside of you. And if you know, if you in your journey and you're wondering why you are anxious and you know, how come that you find it difficult to trust in yourself, to trust others in your life, that there is a part of yours that constantly makes you feel worry or over a thing.

Ghazaleh: Then I can highly invite people, be curious, be curious, start asking questions, question your family patterns, because often when you grow up in a traumatic, traumatized family. You think that that is normal. You think emotional avoidance is normal. You don't know anything else, so you assume that's normal.

Ghazaleh: So most of my clients then, when they're then in their first romantic relationship and they get to know other families all through friendships, they wonder like, oh wow, this family. People show emotions, right?

Mike: Yep.

Ghazaleh: Or they cuddle and they hug and they gave kisses, or you know, there's a calmness in their home.

Ghazaleh: I have a client who was saying that if he would go to his friend, he would just feel so calm and when he would come home, he would already get stressed up. Right? And creating that awareness and being curious and questioning certain family patterns and wondering why it is the way it is, can help you to soften something inside of you.

Ghazaleh: But if you not aware of that, then you kind of feel anxious and that anxiety does come out in some ways. Sometimes in a more extreme way because people are anxious. Sometimes, as you said, you don't really notice that because it's inside of you, but it does come out in certain ways. So it's, you know, especially anxiety is something that people also can, it's something that comes to life sometimes, even physically, right?

Ghazaleh: People feel like their heart is beating and they can be, they're restless and they always have to do something, and there is this part that is make them worry or overthink a lot. They can't sleep. So if you have all of that, then I would, you know, start to start. Just open up the silence topic. Ask your parents, what did you go through in life?

Ghazaleh: What did all my grandparents go through in life? Let's talk, let's talk about some, the elephant in the room that has been avoided. (laughs)

Mike: Yeah, it's, there's, oh boy. There's about five streets we could go on from there. First it's really understandable why so much of this goes undiagnosed and untalked about, 'cause it feels normal, right?

Mike: But if you do bring it up to your parents, this goes back to our first conversation. That doesn't always go well because of the families. A lot of people's wanting to just keep everything buried and live under that myth that we're okay. So don't expect if you bring it up, I would think you would say, right.

Mike: Don't expect if you bring it up that it's gonna be greeted with open arms. You might be shamed again.

Ghazaleh: Absolutely. I would even say expect your parents not wanting to talk about it.

Mike: Yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep.

Ghazaleh: I would say even the majority of times families don't like to face their issues. Because you know, there's really sometimes a lot connected to that.

Ghazaleh: You know, your parents might not be able to function if they open up certain stories, they might really get re-traumatized. And so, you know, certain defense mechanisms Mike are necessary for some people, especially, you know, when you are a bit older and you lived like that almost your whole life and you don't have this safe network and the support system.

Ghazaleh: So if your parents don't have therapists or other supporters in their life, then it might shake up a lot inside of them. So be prepared or reject. Yeah, they get rejected or prepared that your family doesn't want to talk about it. But what you could do is just keep, be being curious. Talk with, you know, I don't know, other family members, cousins, aunts, or read, you know, about other families.

Ghazaleh: You know, there are a lot of books on adult children of emotionally immature parents, for example. This is one of those classic books that helped people to understand.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Ghazaleh: Okay, why do I feel so lonely in the world? Why do I feel so ashamed? Why do I feel so anxious? So there are a lot of resources, meanwhile, that people can reach out to, to get a better understanding of their own family system and wonder what was different.

Ghazaleh: What did, I mean a good question is, what did I miss? What were my unmet needs? And you can start just understanding what are specific needs that children, you know, basic emotional needs of children. Because, you know, most of my clients say like, oh, I had, you know, my physical needs were met. I had a house, I had food.

Ghazaleh: But then they never thought about emotional needs. So wondering about your own needs and you know, wondering about how your family coped with emotions and et cetera, et cetera. It's a great place to start and I can highly recommend anyone who wants to do that. I mean, thankfully we have a lot going on around that on social media, online, there are networks and different kind of groups you can join where people start sharing their stories and maybe you see yourself in that story.

Mike: Yeah. You mentioned anxiety a minute ago, and one of the things that you read in these studies is that people who experience PTSD or trauma oftentimes before depression, suffer from general anxiety disorder more frequently. So it manifests itself as anxiety, not necessarily depression.

Ghazaleh: Yeah. Well, you know what? When in a threatening situation and your life is threatened. There is real danger.

Mike: Yeah.

Ghazaleh: Right. So you are in a real dangerous situation and so what happens, even the danger is gone. We call it, you know, Bessel van der Kolk talks about this in his book. The Body Keeps the Score. He talks about the faulty alarm system.

Ghazaleh: So our brain keeps up faulty alarm system. So though the alarm is not really there anymore. Your body feels in danger and feels that there is a faulty alarm. And so your body responds to that with anxiety, with anxiousness, because the first thing anxiety tells us is Watch out. The world is not a safe place.

Mike: Mm-hmm.

Ghazaleh: And so it comes alive in form of anxiety, what used to be real danger and fear. So fear, you know, is kind of like a primary adaptive emotion when I am in danger. But if that fear is gone and my body is still in that fear system, then that can become, you know, primary maladaptive. Like it's not helpful anymore.

Ghazaleh: It's sticking from the past and that's what leaves me feeling anxious because you know, I learned to worry a lot. I learned to overthink a lot. I don't trust myself in my own inner world. I can't trust others, and then I get hypervigilant, right?

Mike: Okay. So it's not just the world is unsafe, but then that would transfer to let's say relationships are unsafe and you began interpreting messages that are maybe innocuous as uhhuh.

Mike: See? See?

Ghazaleh: Yeah. I mean this is one of those things, for example, that over the last years people were discovering about adult attachment. So, you know, the different kind of attachment styles and one of the mainly anxious attachment is the one that never trust the partner

Ghazaleh: Because you always wonder if you're good enough, if you're worthy, if you can trust your partner.

Ghazaleh: So there's a lot of anxiety in that and you respond to that, especially in your relationships because you know, we know meanwhile, especially complex trauma is trauma that has been created within relationships. And so something that has been kind of developed within relationships, comes out within relationships, and also heals within relationships.

Ghazaleh: So trauma, a complex childhood trauma, for example, can be very relational, is very relational. And yes, if I can't trust myself because I'm not in touch with my emotions, I'm not in touch with my needs, how can I trust somebody else in my life, like my partner or my friends? And so I'm suspicious, and then it's really hard to have meaningful relationships and feel connected to others.

Mike: I remember going as a a teenager to somebody else's house for dinner. And because of, of the nature of our house, our dinner was chaotic and tense, right? And they had this wonderful family dinner where they shared jokes and stories, and I remember thinking, well, they're weird. You know, that was because it was something outside the normal.

Mike: So given a relationship, if you're used to abuse and belittling, you come across somebody who's healthy and maybe the reaction is the same. Well, they're weird.

Ghazaleh: Yeah. I mean, there is some truth in it that we say we attract partners that trigger our childhood wounds, right?

Ghazaleh: And we choose partners that remind us of our parents until we heal or until we healing, because there's not, there's nothing such a healed process, right?

Ghazaleh: Or final state. And so. I mean, it says that if you kind of grew up in such a household, you probably. Yeah, feel attracted to people similar to your parents. And if then you're dating someone who's calmer, that doesn't really feel good to you because that's actually then threatening to your nervous system and you don't know how to respond to that because you used to something else, but.

Ghazaleh: Other is also not good for you because it triggers your wounds and it makes you, you know, respond in a way that you used to do in your childhood. It brings up your survival mechanisms in a very strong way sometimes, and there is a truth. What I've been experiencing with my clients is throughout the process the choices on relationships change.

Ghazaleh: Even friendships, they often grieve a lot of friendships because they let go of friendships. They were not good for them,

Mike: Right.

Ghazaleh: And also they changed their partners. They noticed that I've been trapped in this relationship. And because I'm in this relationship, it's been my trauma response, you know?

Ghazaleh: And then I notice, oh my God, what am I doing here? I deserve something better. I am worthy. I am lovable. Right. I can express my needs, I can be vulnerable. And then they take that risk and notice, okay, this is not the kind of relationship that I really want and can give me what I need. And often the healing process involved saying goodbye to many of your relationships because you notice they were not good for you.

Mike: And you were hanging around with them because of who you were.

Ghazaleh: Yeah, absolutely. And because of, probably you were people pleasing because you were kind of, you know, putting your needs aside. You were not communicating your emotions and you were not good at setting boundaries. And so when you learn all of that, because you process your trauma, your own trauma, and those trauma.

Ghazaleh: The way you felt about yourself through that, and you learn to set boundaries and you express your needs and you share your inner world, and you're much more aware of your inner world and what you want in life. Not everybody likes that then.

Mike: This whole conversation has reminded me. I know this is gonna sound dumb, of my cat, right?

Mike: So I was feeding her the other day and I did, there was a plastic bag next to her. And as she's about to eat, I just grab the plastic bag and it crinkled. Well, forget about eating. She jumped. Now she's been around me for years. She knows I'm about as least threatening as possible, right? She jumped and walked underneath a table until I cleared the room so she could go back to eating.

Mike: I suppose some people try to train their cats Ghazaleh, but I'm not among them. For people. I'll let you have this as your getaway. Summarize for us again how and and my cat. That's generational. Multi, multi, multi-generational fear response, right? Anxiety response to loud noise. How do people get off this?

Mike: Because you just identified, the risk is losing friends, irritating family. The benefit is taking care of yourself. Where's the first steps? What do we need to do to get on the road towards better mental health?

Ghazaleh: Yeah. Well, the first step is facing the truth, which is the most painful step, and acknowledging that there was something going on in your family that was not normal, as I mentioned, the awareness.

Mike: Yep.

Ghazaleh: And then the awareness of, so how did it impact me? So, you know, that means how did it impact my inner world and our inner world is, you know, where our emotions are, it's where our needs are. So oftentimes when I start wanting to start the healing journey, the first thing I need to explore is what do I do with my emotions?

Ghazaleh: How do I express them? How do I avoid them? Because only when I'm truly in contact with my emotions, I realize that there are certain feelings that have a lot of power over me. I mentioned that in our first video. We know meanwhile in this approach that I were in emotion focus therapy, that there's three major feelings that we can bring into our adulthood, which is loneliness, shame, and fear.

Ghazaleh: So what was adaptive and primary? Because I was lonely in my childhood. I was scared. I was, you know, I felt ashamed. Can become maladaptive if I still always feel ashamed, always feel lonely, and always feel anxious even though I'm fearful. So it's starting to acknowledge those feelings and giving them some fresh air.

Ghazaleh: And learning how to find kindness for yourself and learning how to express healthy, adaptive anger and form of self-assertion and setting boundaries is a huge part of the journey. And yes, Mike, you're right. That journey can also be a very journey lonely journey because you lose people, you question decisions in your life.

Ghazaleh: You know, many of my clients even change their jobs because they notice they're actually doing this because it was expected from someone or because it feels safe, but they've been suppressing their authentic self. So the more you come in contact with your emotions and with your needs, the more you can come in contact with your authenticity.

Ghazaleh: And then you wonder, really what makes me happy, what is satisfying in my life? And then you notice that many of the decisions in your life are not satisfying. And that's why maybe you're looking for the purpose, or you're getting depressed, or you're drinking too much, or you're partying too much, or whatever you do, right?

Ghazaleh: And so, yeah, acknowledging that, okay, I'm gonna go through this path and it's going to be painful. It's not going to be easy. Not everyone will be on my side and I will lose people in my life. And knowing that you're doing, you know, that you kind of taking that decision for yourself can be already very empowering because when you do that, what you have on the other side.

Ghazaleh: Is more meaningful relationships.

Mike: Yes.

Ghazaleh: Feel more connected to yourself and to others. You feel more satisfied. You are more your authentic self, and that just feels good to be kind to yourself and to set boundaries and to assert yourself and know I can protect myself. It feels good to be the agent of your life.

Ghazaleh: So that's the other side of it, right?

Mike: And then you then you're less likely to pass it on to the next generation.

Ghazaleh: Absolutely. Actually last year, by the end of the last year, I launched an online course, which is called From Pain to Peace, Heal Your Parent Wound, which is exactly about that. How to start this journey by recognizing your unmet needs, recognizing family patterns, and how to do the first steps of healing.

Ghazaleh: And what I really say in that course is once you started this course, make sure you have at least one or two people in your life that you know you feel safe with. Because if you don't have anyone and you do go on this journey completely alone, it can be sometimes very exhausting. We are social animals, right?

Ghazaleh: And so knowing where to reach out to and having at least one person in your life that understands that and is also maybe in their healing journey or has been through this, can be very empowering.

Mike: I'm so glad you ended with that because now I have a reason to call you up for part three of this talk about your course. (laughs)

Ghazaleh: Yeah, definitely. Something we can talk about for hours.

Mike: That'd be great. Ghazaleh, thank you so much for being with us. You all know there are links to Dr. Bailey's socials and contact information. Here course you just mentioned attached to the podcast. Thanks so much for being with us today, sharing your work, your experience, especially your expertise.

Mike: For those of you listening, watching, we hope you find help, support wherever you are from whenever you choose to. As always, thanks for listening, be safe and choose your own road, or better yet, choose the stop you get off when you get on the bus.