In "Circle" with Trauma Coach Marisa Wandeler on Decolonizing Healing Practices, Resilience and Consent

Marisa Wandeler is a trauma Coach in the somatic mind-body realm with a heavy emphasis on decolonized Psychology. She leans on indigenous practices and meets virtually one-on-one with clients from all over the world to experience their stories as an empathetic witness.

Marisa says that COVID has shown that in America we have not been equipped to process or handle this current level of suffering. She names it’s been hard because pre-COVID she was already doing difficult work with her clients in terms of story work and trauma work... Now it’s at a whole new level with totally different layers of coping, resilience and equipping ourselves and one another to move forward in what will be impacting us emotionally for decades to come.

Maggie recalls a post from Marisa’s Instagram (@Latina_heals) about resilience: “The goal of building resilience is not strength or toughness. The goal of resilience is increasing the flexibility and adaptability of the body and brain in navigating the inconsistencies and unexpected of life.”

Marisa says the conversation around resilience starts first with identity and how our bodies are storied in society. “The notion that resilience is really about toughing things out, or being strong enough, or mentally positive enough, isn’t for everyone.” She says that depending on your story, you’ll have different resiliency skills. For People of Color and people who are continually marginalized, positivity isn’t enough. What does it look like in the body and brain to be under stress? Resilience is about how the body experiences stress and when that same stress comes up again in our lives, are we able to cope with it in healthy ways? “Resilience is not about effort so much as it is about equipping.” Marisa says that it doesn’t put us all on an level playing field but it does give us the mutuality of humanity—we all have a nervous systems and a brain and the way we are designed to react to stress has mutuality within everyone’s bodies.

Danielle mentions that her clients have been asking questions around resilience because the struggle keeps going: Is this resilience? Am I actually making it?

Marisa approaches these questions with validation. It’s not just COVID; It’s not just someone’s daily stress. She was raised in El Paso, TX: “a border Latina.” COVID has brought a different dimension of worry and awareness in her body. When someone asks her about COVID, whether that be politically or related to health, she’s not just thinking about her body. That is not the way she was raised, that is not her culture. She is thinking about how the border is impacted. She’s thinking about the kids at the border. And then you add COVID on top of it. It’s so multilayered in her own body so when she works with her clients they try to name the layers in their body. Even if they can’t get to them all, they name the layers that feel present and the whispers of narratives that are attached. All that noise can feel like overwhelming static in the body. “Sometimes the best we can do with what we have is just lament.” We can be resilient and in lament at the same time if the emotions that we are feeling are being validated for our body.

Marisa says one of the hallmarks of the decolonized approach to trauma healing is to start with consent. The assumption is that we are to go to therapy and automatically offer vulnerability and disclosure when very often the body is not ready for that. Clients need to “feel into” where they are at. It’s about allowing the client to sink into their own body; she asks clients, "is that what your body needs tended to today?” We cannot just assume that we can go to the new place without permission and consent. She says, “I’m not going to push you into disclosure and so what does it look like for you to actually take my offering for care … in a way that can be received.”

1. Consent
2. Exchange of offering and receiving (vs. fixing and doing)

She brings a "be with" and "tend to" mentality. I will only give offerings if you are willing to receive it

Danielle said this isn’t counter-cultural to her, but it is counter-cultural to some people and most of the current educational systems.

Maggie names it is a beautiful way of existence to always enter into spaces by asking for permission or consent. And in the realm of trauma healing / coaching she suggests this may also create some “buy in” from clients. To give consent feels disarming and it allows the client to relax into themselves. Additionally, Maggie agrees that majority culture has not viewed therapy or coaching through the lens of offerings and receiving but instead through fixing and doing.

Marisa says it is a kindness to the trauma work because people who are seeking to do trauma healing already have trust issues; Their bodies, minds and identities have been forced or co-opted in trauma. "Trauma is a taking.” So by allowing people to experience what it looks like to choose what you’re giving and to choose what you give, it is doing the healing work.

Marisa says the one-on-one work will transcend into the communal thought.

She believes this way of living shouldn’t be counter-cultural and asks "what does it look like to be a community of consent, a community that offers and receives rather than takes and owns?" It is disarming and yet empowering: There is nothing in this interaction that makes me better, or higher or have more than what you bring. It says, I want to receive your offering, do you want to receive mine? To use indigenous language, she says, it puts us “in circle.” Time is sacred rather than transactional.

Danielle says the idea of a circle is so much a space of collaboration. Community, like a round table, where we can exchange ideas, not like a transaction, but a place of mutuality, respect and reverence for others that a