Thomas Hübl: Welcome to Point of Relation. My name is Thomas Hübl and I am sitting here today with Tamala Floyd. Tamala, warm welcome. I’m happy to see you and speak to you again.
Tamala Floyd: Thank you, Thomas. Me too.
Thomas: Yeah, I remember we had a lovely conversation with Dick Schwartz together for a collective trauma summit and I really enjoyed our conversation and now you published your book and it’s
Tamala: Amazing. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Thomas: It’s been a journey. I was a journey before. I think everybody who published the book already knows it’s a lot of work. It looks at the beginning, it’s like an innocent project, but it turns out to be much more than that. Absolutely. And I think you went through the whole process now maybe you can speak a little bit, why did you want to write a book? Why to write a book. It’s a lot of work to do this and what motivated you to write it and a little bit the story that led up to it. It’s like giving birth to something that is obviously dear to us. So maybe you speak to that.
Tamala: I will. I’m going to say though, writing this book, “Listening When Parts Speak,” truly has been a labor of love. It all started with meditation, which is “Cabin With the Ancestor,” that was given to me by my ancestors to help folks connect with Buddhist meditation, connect with their ancestors to heal or at least connect with legacy burdens, which are those generational traumas handed down one generation to the next. And the ancestors, when they gave me this meditation, they said to me, this will become a book of multiple meditations IFS inspired, which IFS, Internal Family Systems Therapy, is the therapy that I use when working with clients. The reason that I wanted to write the book, in addition to my ancestors telling me that these meditations would become a book, is because I wanted to bring if IFS to folks who may not go to therapy or folks who prefer to do their own work in a self-led kind of self-discovery way so that… because so many folks need to work with trauma but may not go to therapy to do so. And it also is a support for folks who are in therapy. I really break down the if IFS concepts with meditations and exercises too.
Thomas: So you said it already now, your book’s called “Listening When Parts Speak.” And tell me a bit about, for our listeners that might not be familiar with IFS, what does it mean when parts speaks, parts speak, who is speaking and then we do the same thing for ancestors and legacy burdens. But let’s start with how does it work? What does it mean parts speak?
Tamala: Yeah. So first of all, let’s just talk about parts. So we as human beings are made up of all of these various different parts of ourselves. The mind itself is not one whole, it’s multiple parts within us. So when I’m speaking about our parts listening, when our parts speak is we want to come into relationship with these parts. We have parts within us that behave in certain ways, have certain ways of viewing the world and maybe all of these ways that our parts show up are not helpful or healthy or they may undermine us in certain ways. So one of the ways that we want to help parts come into relationship with us is to connect with them. And we want to listen when they’re speaking, not just let the parts take over and kind of run our lives. And who’s listening? I think that’s what you’re asking. So who’s listening to the parts? Well, we have a self. And the self is that innate part of us that has never been wounded, never harmed by anything that has happened to us. So we want to come into relationship with that wise, healthy, compassionate listener. So that’s who’s listening.
Thomas: Let me ask, so when you speak about these parts, does this mean that the self is more like the integrated aspect of us and parts are already part of our trauma fragmentation, that’s why we call it parts? Or are we simply composed out of parts? Maybe you speak a little bit to this tool.
Tamala: Yeah, so so parts aren’t a fragmentation. We are born with all of our parts and our parts have roles within the system, typically healthy, helpful roles within the system. What happens is when we experience trauma, these parts take on roles different from their innate roles. And these roles are to protect us from being harmed again.
Thomas: So basically can say that the integrated version of ourself is basically the core flow. And from that part also from that self, we can connect to the parts, but the fact that we have parts is already a sign of our internal fragmentation. So that’s basically there. How can we see this when we look at very early childhood fragmentation when it feels like maybe for some people they don’t even know where is myself, where do I already have enough ground to have an integrated self from which to look? Or does everybody have a self no matter how early these fragmentations are?
Tamala: Yeah, excellent question Thomas. So just like we’re born with our parts, we’re also born with that self. So what happens though in trauma is that we lose contact with the self. The parts end up taking center stage of our consciousness. So the self is hidden by the roles that these parts are now taking on. And so that’s probably that fragmentation that you’re speaking of is that it’s these parts taking on the roles that then make it very hard for us to be in connection with that self.
Thomas: Exactly. Right. So I think that’s a very good kind of also framing for our listeners because some of our listeners for sure familiar with IFS, but maybe some are not. And so it’s great to see this. So when you say we come into life and we were born with certain parts, but if parts are already part of the fragmentation, so then the next question that comes up in me when I listen to you, so how come that we are born already with parts? So where does that fragmentation come from when we come into life and we carry this and how is that related to maybe legacy burdens? And maybe you can speak a little bit also about the concept of ancestors, I mean.
Tamala: Yeah, definitely. So this is the thing for a very long time, can’t put a time period on, but for a very long time in psychology we thought about the minus one. And if we thought if there was any multiples or multiple minds, then that was seen as dysfunctional and a problem that we needed to address within therapy. Now we realize that the multiple mind is the norm. This is the way that we come into the world. So it’s not like something bad has happened and the mind has now become fragmented. However, with the traumas that we experience, we may have parts that become more extreme in their behaviors. And so that might also be kind of how we’re thinking about the fragmentation. But the multiple mind is the norm. So that is the way that we come into the world. However, we don’t necessarily come into the world with the traumas that the parts are experiencing that then cause them to need to protect us in some way from some harm or hurt or abuse that has occurred. And typically these occurrences are in childhood and so that’s why we’ll see these behaviors occur very early on.
Thomas: And that’s what I love about IFS also. And that’s very close to how we work with defense mechanisms, that defense mechanisms are not bad things or dysfunctional things that we want to get rid of, but we want to learn to collaborate with that intelligence and see how that helps us to re-own and integrate some of that information and make it become more vitality. So maybe since that’s the self seems to me when I listen to you like an important place inside of all of us, it is in a way kind of the core energy from which we integrate or relate to parts. So what is strengthening the sense of self when you say what can we do to feel or strengthen self in us?
Tamala: Interesting. It is strengthening the experience of self because how self becomes strengthened so to speak, is in relationship with the parts, healing the parts so that they can then go back to their innate roles that they were born to be in, whether it’s joyous or happy or a part that supports us or helps us to get things done. But perhaps this part is taken on the role of maybe rager and so it’s not in its natural role, but by coming into relationship with self, self coming into relationship with the part, we can understand why this part took on the role of rager, what traumas it’s holding or covering up because of that and helping that part to relax back and allow self to be with that young one that was originally harmed. And by healing the one that the rager is protecting, then we have access to more self energy, then we’ll see self being expressed more because the rager does not have to come in and be in the seat of consciousness.
Thomas: Yeah, yeah. That’s beautiful. And so it also sounds to me like with other words we could say there is an interdependence of self and the parts and they’re not just separate things. So there’s an interdependence to self and its parts. And then you said something else very beautiful that the rager is a part and is not that that’s how a person is because sometimes when people express that behavior, we might say the person is a rager…
Tamala: That’s right.
Thomas: …who is raging and then we fix that person in a certain way in life versus seeing, oh, there is a function that is raging and the more we seed that we have more space. But I think that’s also a function of resting in self to be able to see that deeper in other people and not to put those people into a box and say their personalities like that.
Tamala: Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for underscoring that distinction because that’s important with looking at our system as a whole because inequality, any personality trait, any behavior, we don’t want to say that is the person, whether it’s perfectionism, people pleasing, raging, no matter what it is, it’s still a part of the person. And one of the distinctions around parts is, is the person raging all the time, is the person a people pleaser all the time? And the answer’s going to be no, that’s just one part of them, and something like people pleasing, we need to look at what function does it serve within the system or any of the parts, what function does it serve? Why is the person people pleasing? And we find out the whys and how it came to be by being in relationship with self.
Thomas: Exactly. And that’s why it’s not helpful when somebody says, you are a people pleaser or this is a people pleaser. That’s not a relevant language. If you want to support, be supportive within our environment that we all can grow together and develop. So that’s a kind of an outdated language, but I think that’s also important to say and to learn that we often judge people by their appearance or by certain behaviors and that we can say, oh, that’s a part that already creates a different relationship to the wholeness of who somebody is and not just their behavior becomes them.
Tamala: That’s right.
Thomas: Yeah. So that’s beautiful. I think that’s beautiful. And so when we, because I think a big part of your work is also working with ancestors. Can you speak a little bit about the nature of ancestors? Because for some people that might be clear and for some people might say, what does that mean? Ancestors?
Tamala: What does that mean? Yeah, mean, what are we talking about? What are
Thomas: We talking about here?
Tamala: Yeah, so one of the things I do want to clarify is that when I’m inviting ancestors into the work and who these ancestors are, they are your well ancestors. So these are the ancestors that are not holding any of the burdens maybe of their lifetime. So they show up very differently than they may have shown up because some folks have known their grandparents and typically the ancestors we’re connecting with maybe even further back in your lineage than those ancestors that you actually knew and also ancestors that you may not even know their names anymore. However, the ancestors know us, so they’re willing to come into the work when invited in order to help support us releasing generational traumas. And that’s where I really invite the ancestors into the healing work.
Thomas: So how do you do that? How do, for some people it might seem as, okay, when part of my ancestry passed away and is not here, how can we invite, where are they? Are they coming in from and are they in me? Am I imagining this? Are they really coming? Or if yes, where are they coming from? So there are lots of questions that can come up about this topic. Maybe you can speak a little bit to how you experience then.
Tamala: Yeah. So with the legacy burden work, the generational trauma work, because this is a trauma that’s been handed down your ancestral line, I want to have the ancestors come in and they’re coming in from wherever they are. I’m going to be honest, I don’t pretend to know completely the workings of the spiritual world, but what I do know is when we invite those well ancestors in to help us release these burdens in whatever way the ancestors know to help us to release the burden, sometimes it’s to one of the elements. Sometimes the ancestors have a particular way, like the ancestors say of your mother’s mother’s line may have a particular way to release this burden from the line. We also, because when we carry burdens, we don’t have access to those gifts. Remember I said that each part is born with their own innate gifts. Those gifts get covered up by that burden. So the ancestors also know the burdens of that ancestral line and can invite those, I mean, I’m sorry, wrong word. They know the gifts of the ancestral line and can invite those gifts in so that we now can have access to those gifts as we move forward in our lives after the burdens have been released.
Thomas: Beautiful. So basically you’re speaking also of when you say, and then I will ask you about the unwell ancestors. So the well ancestors seem to be the resources, the ancestral resources that we have available that we can ground ourselves in from which we work with the legacy burdens. And when you say, well ancestors, so there are unwell ancestors obviously, I assume
Tamala: Ancestors,
Thomas: Yes. What happens with the unwell ancestors?
Tamala: Well, the unwell ancestors are not the ones that are going to want to come in and do the work. They’re those ancestors that are still carrying whatever burdens that they had in this lifetime. And sometimes we even speak, some people even make the distinction of whether or not what we’re calling an unwell ancestor really is an ancestor. Some folks I hear give even the title of ancestor to those who are well. But I kind of make the distinction between those that are well and those that are unwell and we really want to invite in, well first of all we want to ask for a well ancestor and an ancestor who can help us with this particular burden. What I also find is that sometimes the ancestor who comes in to help us with the particular burden that we’re needing to release is also an ancestor who held this burden or has helped many other folks along that particular lineage release this burden and heal from this burden. So that’s who we’re asking to come forward. So it’s really specific in who we want to help release the burden from the person that I’m working with.
Thomas: So we’ll come to the burden in a moment. So when we invite the ancestor that we are inviting, how do I know that the ancestor is coming in? Are there any signs how or notice or how a client or you notice in me when I do it, what’s the sense or how do we know that it happened?
Tamala: So lots of different ways because different ancestors present differently. Sometimes a client will see the ancestor in physical form. Sometimes they’ll just get a sense that a presence is there over their shoulder in front of them. Sometimes they’ll hear the ancestor, they may not see them, but they’ll hear them. Sometimes there’s just the color. The other thing about ancestors is ancestors don’t always present as people. They may present as animals. They may present as some form in nature. I have ancestors on my father’s father’s line that presents tree-like people, it’s almost like you take a tree, a person and brought them together. So what I ask my clients is, what are you noticing? Let me know when the ancestor is present. If you notice any shift in your space, let me know about that because it may not be in a person in a human form that you see them. You may, like I said, and also somatically, sometimes something’s happening within us, within our bodies as the presence of the ancestor being there. So it really is very unique to the person and that lineage.
Thomas: And that also points out that we are really open because if you have a too narrow view how it should be, then we might cancel the information that actually arises and that some openness to pay attention to subtle changes and not immediately need to know what it means because it keeps the space open to stay curious. So that’s lovely.
Tamala: Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s why it’s just a simple, what are you noticing? And I’ll say, do you notice any shift no matter how small you’re saying that because if we expect it to be a particular way, I’m going to see my grandmother in physical form and she shows up as a wisp of smoke or that’s what I notice in my visual feel. I may like you say, dismiss that. I don’t know what that was, but that wasn’t grandma
Thomas: Or I feel body sensations or I feel subtle sensations and not like a form. So yes, so that we stay open. I think that’s very important because otherwise we cancel a lot of information that shows up and then we miss and say it doesn’t work. Right.
Tamala: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Thomas: Yeah.
Tamala: Or we hold that. The other thing I’m glad that you said the piece about it doesn’t work. The other thing that I noticed is that sometimes folks will feel that there isn’t a well ancestor on my line or I don’t even know my ancestors. I’ve had, my family’s had cutoffs, I don’t even know. I never knew grandparents. So all of these reasons that keep them, or at least they believe will keep them from connecting to an ancestor. And so with IFS, one of the things we want to do is be with those parts of ourselves that believe they cannot connect to ancestors. So that might be the first part of the work before we can actually connect to ancestors.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s beautiful. So I want to highlight this because that’s important when people think they cannot do it. So there’s a part that is active in us, the things that it cannot happen, and so we need to work with that first. We cannot go through bump against that wall. We need to soften it so that the wall opens and it becomes a gate, right?
Tamala: Yes, yes. I love that. Yeah.
Thomas: Right. So now let’s turn a bit to legacy burdens. So how can we imagine, what’s a legacy burden? Where does it come from? How does it show up and then how can we work with it?
Tamala: So a legacy burden, I kind of been using these terms, interchangeable, legacy burden and generational trauma. A legacy burden is a burden that we hold that does not come from our lived experience. It is a burden that has been handed down our generational lineage, whether it’s mother’s lineage, father’s lineage, and some of them may come from both, but we didn’t get this burden because we experienced hardship or abuse or something within our families. It’s handed down the generational line.
Thomas: So when it has been handed down, so we could say, for example, in science, we can say, okay, we know that there are of course psychological or whatever attachment processes through trauma is being transmitted and those have something to do with the trauma history of our parents or their parents or their parents. So we can imagine it that way or we can say epigenetic changes. Transmit changes. So there are different ways to describe a similar phenomenon. So when you speak about legacy burdens, do you mean that the trauma of former generations is now active somehow through certain processes in us? Is that what it means?
Tamala: Absolutely. The trauma or what we made previous generations, what they made the trauma mean about them. So it may be the actual trauma, but it also may be the meaning making that they made of the trauma which caused them to behave in a certain way. And so that behavior or that way of thinking is what also may be passed down.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s very important.
So that it comes in, it has a whole narrative to itself. It has an intellectual narrative and emotional, physical, somatic narrative and altogether compose that experience. So that’s important.
Tamala: Absolutely.
Thomas: Yeah. How do I find out that I have a legacy burden?
Tamala: Yes. Okay. How do we find out? Some of the things I’m listening for when I’m working with clients are things around, every woman in my family does this, mom did it, grandma did it, my aunts or I’ve always been this way.
They don’t have any connection to as far back as I can remember. I believed this, the world isn’t safe. How did you come to this belief? So I’m listening for other people in the family have it, I’ve always been this way, or I don’t know why I believe this. They don’t have a connection to why they do things a certain way, but I just do it this way or I feel like something bad’s going to happen if I don’t do this. So these are some of the things that folks might say or feel or believe that would lead me to believe that there is a legacy burden or a legacy burden component to what it is that they’re saying.
Thomas: And then as you listen for those clues and for those hints, so then how do you work with the legacy burden?
Tamala: Yeah, I love doing legacy burden work, especially with folks of color because folks of color tend to hold legacy burdens very differently in their system in the sense of how much space a legacy burden takes on what’s also connected with legacy burdens with people of color, which this is a particular type of legacy burden, are the cultural burdens that they may hold because of the over culture. So because the legacy burden didn’t belong to us in the first place, I want to try to release that from the system first to have the person have greater access to their self, which is the healing resource within, so that when we do do personal work, we have more self energy or that healing resource to work with their personal content. So basically I just ask the person once we’re aware that, oh, does this feel like this part of this doesn’t belong to you? And they say yes, then I want to say without thinking whatever the first number is that comes up for you, what percentage of this burden does not belong to you? 75%. Okay. That’s the part of the burden that we’re going to release as a legacy burden.
Thomas: So when you say does not belong to me, can you say a little bit more? What does it mean does not belong?
Tamala: Yeah. The does not belong to me means that this burden was not created as a result of my lived experience. That this burden, and that’s why it doesn’t belong to me. The burdens that are firsthand experiences, we say that those burdens kind of belong to the person because they came from the person’s experience, but the burdens that are handed down don’t belong to them. They were literally handed down to them. They did. They have no connection to the initial, I’m sorry, the original trauma, but they are experiencing the results of that trauma.
Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. Beautifully said. That makes a lot of sense. So that it’s not connected to my biographical trauma story or histories that my mind cannot connect that to anything in my own biography. So I have been born into that. Right?
Tamala: Absolutely, absolutely. Even when someone’s experience of something is, I love what you said, that it’s not a part of my biographical trauma or history. When someone is sharing with me something from their life that seems out of proportion or doesn’t quite fit with their life experience, that’s another time that I’ll get curious whether or not this is a legacy burden. I had a client at one time who woman doing very well in her career financially solvent, travels. This really has a really good life. However, she was very fearful of losing that life. She was very fearful of becoming poor. She was saving every, I mean, she probably was saving more than 60% of her money for the other shoe to drop. And I’m like, this is interesting. What did, the other shoe to drop? What is this about? So then we started talking about her relationship to money and her mother’s relationship to money, her grandmother’s relationship to money.
And we found that generations before her were having a very difficult time with money. And her mother always told her, no matter how well you do financially, you always have to be prepared for the other shoe to drop. So not her personal experience, not even her experience growing up because she also grew up upper, upper middle class, but her grandmother’s experience was that which she handed down to the mother, married, well, my client had an upper middle class experience, but because of that trauma that came generations before she held on to, I’ve got to always be prepared for the other shoe to drop. I can’t completely enjoy the money that I make.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s beautiful. In our work, in our language, we would say that if from a certain generation there’s a strong upgrade in a certain development, let’s say financially, but we don’t integrate the ancestral gap, then this ancestral gap will show up in the next.
I love that. Not simply the ancestors. There’s a tension in the ancestry and it shows up in us as, oh, I’m afraid to lose it, or it won’t stick or it won’t last. So
Tamala: Exactly.
Thomas: And then if we create that deeper awareness so that this can come into a synchronization, so then that next level as if our ancestors can get the similar information, our awareness, and then it creates an all flow, and then usually the symptoms disappear. That’s beautiful.
Tamala: I love that overlap there. And with that client, if we just use the money example, when she realized that these beliefs about money and not being safe financially were not hers and did not come from her lived experience, that’s the legacy burden that we’re unburdening. So in releasing that legacy burden, any ancestors along that line that also held that also get to release that burden when that well answered. So that same thing that you’re, yes. So everybody gets to release that because that, well, ancestor has come in to help with this process and this person on the lineage has identified this as a legacy burden that this line has held onto.
Thomas: Exactly. That’s pretty cool. And my language, I would say that the unconscious transmission of that trauma is subject object transcended. So suddenly we can see that it’s not just me feeling and see it, but I can see it. Wow. It’s also my grandmother had it, and then we create a bigger awareness and then the entire system can heal backwards in time. This is
Tamala: Absolutely.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. This is very beautiful because there’s suddenly more conscious awareness, so the stuck information can turn into a movement and then it releases life. That’s beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
Tamala: Yes. And I’m sure that this is true in your work also, Thomas is also the healing forward, right?
Thomas: Exactly.
Tamala: Because now that I am now the person in the lineage who is not going to hold money in that same way, future generations can also be healed and released from or not take that burden on. So yeah,
Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. Now a language you would say, because I am the soil and integrated life or self is the soil in which the next generations, the future lands and grows and sprouts. And so if we own and integrate that legacy burden, so we actually, we would even say we open up the future into more possibilities, suddenly
Tamala: The future is bigger. Absolutely. Literally
Thomas: Bigger for our children,
Tamala: Right? It is. I love that overlap. I love that. Yeah.
Thomas: Yeah, I love that too. It’s lovely. It’s just very resonant. It’s a different language.
Tamala: It’s a different language, but we’re doing the same work.
Thomas: It’s the same work. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah,
Tamala: I love that.
Thomas: That’s very beautiful. It’s also very refreshing. I feel very inspired in feeling the strong resonance. And I also felt this, by the way.
Tamala: Absolutely, yes. We had our conversation before.
Thomas: Most
Tamala: Definitely.
Thomas: So now first of all, let’s come back to your book. So listening when parts speak. So we covered a lot of things, and then I want to speak a little bit of a collective or cultural legacy burdens, because you mentioned it before also, especially for people of color, but I think for all of us, but for all of us, but the listening, when part speak, so when many of the things we touch now a little bit. So when readers get you book, so what can they expect? What is it? Maybe you can give us a little bit of a short run through that everybody who is interested in your book can get a bit of a sense what of our conversation they will find in your, they’ll find in there.
Tamala: Absolutely. Thank you for that. So yeah, so Listening When Parts Speak is going to help you, the reader connect with your own parts, come into relationship with them, like looking at behaviors that you have that are no longer serving you. This is typically when people come and look at want to explore. I’ve done everything I can possibly do. These behaviors still exist, this mindset still exists. This will help you connect with the parts that actually hold the mindset, the behaviors, the perspectives come into relationship with them and heal them. So the book literally takes you from the beginning stages of understanding what a part is, coming into relationship with a part, understanding how parts act and react within our system, understanding how parts came to be in the first place and why they’re doing what they’re doing. We need to have an understanding because they are serving a purpose within the system, and they believe that this is the way to keep you safe, to keep you alive, to keep you from being harmed.
So they believe what they’re doing is something good and useful. However, the strategies that they have undertaken are no longer working in your life. They may even be causing upset and relationship problems. So the book helps you to understand these parts, what they’re doing, find out why they’re doing it, who and what they’re protecting, because who and what they’re protecting is what needs to be healed. And self is helping you every step of the way with getting to the part that needs to be healed and working through that healing. So there are meditations in the book to help you connect with parts. There are also exercises to help you connect with parts and do some of the healing work. And you move through the book sequentially. It starts very simply understanding parts all the way to doing the healing work with your parts.
Thomas: Beautiful, beautiful. That was a lovely concentrated description of the flow, the arc to the, so it’s beautiful. One thing that it reminded me before, and maybe you can speak a little bit to that because when we talked about legacy burdens and biographical trauma, I think it’s an expansion of psychotherapy that when just looking at our biographical childhood development, I mean that’s very important obviously to integrate the parts of our development. We all know that. And at the same time, what you just said about your book, sometimes there are things that do not move. Even people go to therapy quite for a long time. Certain things develop and certain things
Tamala: Just don’t, right?
Thomas: And they just don’t because they don’t function on that level of therapeutic intervention. So it needs an expansion of the map so that we can see, wow, that there are legacy burdens and when they are kind of enmeshed with the childhood development. So part maybe can move, but part doesn’t because it belongs into a little bit another department, a bigger being. And so that’s why, and maybe you can speak a little bit to that in your experience, but that’s also how it shows up for me. Often when people in the groups or so work on inner processes that often then when we invite the ancestor and open up what you would call a legacy burden, then the entire process of healing for that person can. And often also some childhood development parts can then continue their healing process.
Tamala: Absolutely.
Thomas: Maybe you could speak a little bit to if that resonates with your experience or not.
Tamala: Absolutely does, because I know that when I’m doing work, I said earlier that I like to work with the legacy burden first. However, I’m not always aware, nor is my client that there is a legacy burden. So we might do that personal work first, get some relief within the system, some behavioral changes, some shifts, and then the person reverts back to some of the previous behaviors. That’s another time that I think, oh, maybe there was a legacy burden. So we’ve worked with the personal piece, but there was still more related to that same burden. And so then we would look at whether or not there was a legacy burden piece or generational trauma and then unburden that piece of it. And of course that can work in reverse. You do the legacy, you think that that’s all, but there still is part of it that did come from the person’s personal experience.
Thomas: Exactly.
Tamala: So either way, I’m always, I just feel like it’s kind of that teeter-totter, like, okay, if I started with personal, I might then need to shift and see if any piece is legacy. If I start with legacy, then I need to see is any of this burden part of this person’s lived experience?
Thomas: Exactly. That’s beautiful. And that also strengthens the interdependent thinking that we stop seeing individuals as separate particles, which I believe is a collective trauma symptom that we feel separate. And so that we learn to think in these boxes like mechanistic boxes, but that every person’s childhood trauma is embedded in their ancestral stream. Otherwise most of the trauma wouldn’t have happened. So the fact that they’re interdependent. So then there’s this beautiful pendulum that you described and that we need to be present again and again, how that pendulum plays out and that helps an organism to unfold and grow and release and heal and become more integrated. So I think you described this really well and that it underlines interdependence that we are not separate. Absolutely. And then maybe you can speak a little bit before we summarize our conversation, maybe you can speak a little bit, I know in Dick’s work, and I’m sure you’re doing this as well, so the individual, the ancestral, and then it’s the collective. So the collective legacy burdens. Maybe you can speak a little bit to the bigger cultural field and what kind of, how can we imagine, how do you experience cultural legacy burdens
And how can we work with those strong cultural fields that we grew up in, that we were conditioned by, that we carry, that are interwoven in our
Tamala: Absolutely. Yeah. So the cultural burdens that you were talking about us collective versus individual and how we have siloed ourselves, so to speak. Well, that’s one of the US cultural burdens anyway. And that’s patriarchy, right? That we do things ourselves and not looking at us as a collective. And the connectedness between humans. So these cultural burdens, whether we’re born in the US or outside of the us, there are burdens that are connected to the culture and society in which we are raised. And so four of the cultural burdens that Dick speaks of, Dick Schwartz speaks of in his work that I connect with is racism, patriarchy, materialism and individualism. So these are the burdens that we carry folks in the US Now, some of those burdens you’ll also see in other cultures, but you’ll also see culture burdens like famine and war and classism, colorism that may also be in US culture and cultures outside.
So I always tell people to look at, I often speak to the US cultural burdens because I’m born in the us, most of my clients are from the us. However, when we’re working outside, we also need to be sensitive and aware of what burdens other cultures hold because they still show up in our systems very similarly. I have to do this. This is required. And there’s no thinking about it. You’re programmed from a very early age in these cultural burdens. And what it is, is we are absorbing as little people what is coming our way, and we’re taking things in and paying attention to what’s happening around us and what’s right and what’s wrong and how we need to show up. But much of that is part of our cultural programming.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s very beautiful. That’s very beautiful. And I think also that here, again, the conventional therapy model that needs to be opened up and the map needs to be opened up so that we include all these layers, not as separate things, but as an interdependent stream of what it means to be a human being. We are all context and we are all individuated, but it doesn’t mean that we are separate. And I think that separation is already a sign of the cultural fragmentation, and that’s different from being individuated. And so it’s beautiful. So how can we work with those cultural legacy burdens? Is it a similar process or how do you-
Hit it right on the head, Thomas. It is a similar process. Again, asking the person what doesn’t belong to them, what belong to the culture, and then we have a way that they can release this to the culture. Sometimes with cultural burdens, I also bring in the ancestor because some of the cultural burdens also run on ancestral lines, right? Every course. Exactly. So we may do the release with the ancestors and we may not, it just depends. But we can do it exactly the same way with the ancestors and IFS. Often we release our burdens to the elements. So we might bring in one of the elements as a way they want to release it to water or to air, and people can release burdens in any way that seems right for their system. So sometimes people come up with how they want to release the burden, and it may not have anything to relate it to their ancestors, nor one of the elements. There may be some other way that they come up with releasing their burdens.
And the other thing that’s really important after releasing burdens is to then connect with our parts are the ones who are holding the burdens, right? There are parts within our system that took on these beliefs and behaviors. So once we release the burdens, we always want to invite in the positive qualities or for the part to reconnect with the qualities that were obscured by the burdens that it was holding.
So then basically once the trauma releases, you feel deeper into the resource that is deeper like the river.
Tamala: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, yes. Because now we want to be able to have these resources and use them, right? Because those were the ones that the parts came into being with, and now they can connect back to those resources.
Thomas: That’s beautiful. That’s so beautiful. Tamala.
Tamala: Thank you.
Thomas: You. Such a lovely conversation and so resonant. And I love to decode a bit our language together and go deeper into these resonances. And I think for me, it sounds like there are many things that I hear from you that I have seen over and over and over again over many years, and it makes so much sense, and it also gives us this often individualized beings, especially in the western part of the world, gives us, again, more context and more fluidity that we are part of something greater. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that is important for you to share before we wrap up our conversation?
Tamala: What I want to share is that I too really appreciate the way that the work resonates, because what it says to me is there are many folks in the world doing the same work. So that’s what I’m really, really appreciating. There are folks that are invested and committed into the healing of the human race. And although we may use different words, we may do it in different ways, but it’s collective work. It’s a collective movement, and I’m appreciative of that and to be a part of it. Yeah,
Thomas: Exactly. So that’s so beautiful. So it’s a collective movement, and I think that’s what we all stand for, that we are a collective movement, a collective healing
Tamala: Movement. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Thomas: Yeah. So listening when parts speak is part of the collective healing movement. Thank you for writing book, and thank you for having this conversation. And I’m sure people resonate. Everybody who resonates can get interested in your book and learn more and heal more and spread the message.
Tamala: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
Thomas: Thank you, Tamela. It was really lovely. This conversation is very, very sparkly. Very,
Tamala: I love that. Sparkly. Yes. I’ve enjoyed our time together, Thomas. Thank you so much.
