Your Therapist Needs Therapy 37 - Intergenerational Trauma and Decolonizing Mental Health with Emily Lapolice

This week Jeremy is joined for a wide-ranging chat by the incredibly insightful Emily Lapolice. Jeremy and Emily talk about trauma informed yoga and the Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga program where she is a mentor, facilitator, and trainer. We talk about intergenerational trauma, religious trauma, and decolonizing mental health spaces. We also talk about perinatal mental health, and the various, simultaneous roles we as helpers hold. 

You can find more information about Emily and her practice at her website Integrative Wellness Therapies, follow her on Instagram, and learn more about TCTSY at traumasensitiveyoga.com Emily offers training, consultation, and psychoeducation in addition to her therapy services. 

Jeremy has all his practice info at Wellness with Jer, and can be found on Instagram and YouTube under the wellnesswithjer moniker. 

Also, because capitalism is still a thing and it costs money to host a podcast, we’ve launched a merch store! And spoiler alert, keep your eyes peeled for a patreon page launching soon as well!

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Podcasts about therapy do not replace actual therapy, and listening to a podcast about therapy does not signify a therapeutic relationship. 

If you or someone you know is in crisis please call or text the nationwide crisis line at 988, or text HELLO to 741741. The Trevor Project has a crisis line for LGBTQ+ young people that can be reached by texting 678678.

Transcript

Your Therapist Needs Therapy - Emily Lapolice (2023-12-13 10:34 GMT-6) - Transcript

Attendees

Emily Lapolice, Jeremy Schumacher

Transcript

This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.

Jeremy Schumacher: Hello and welcome to another edition of your therapist needs therapy the podcast for mental health professionals talk about their own mental health Journeys and how they navigate mental Wellness while working in the mental health Fields. I'm your host Jeremy Schumacher licensed marriage and family therapist Lapolice Emily. Thanks for coming on and joining me today.

Emily Lapolice: Yeah, I'm really happy to be here.

Emily Lapolice: Thanks for inviting me.

Jeremy Schumacher: We had a roundabout journey to connecting. Yeah. Will probably get into that as we talk Emily.

Emily Lapolice: We did because we're both busy working parents of young children.

Jeremy Schumacher: I always like to start with kind of the same question, which is just how did you get into the field of mental health? What's kind of the background there and give us a little bit of that background story.

Emily Lapolice: Yeah happy too. yeah, thank you again for sharing space today. I'm coming today from the original homelands of the Massachusetts people and particularly the Pawtucket tribes. So I just want to name that as well also known as the Greater Boston area in Massachusetts. Yeah this wanted to land there and yeah, I'll give you the cliff notes version Jeremy and then If anything Peaks your interest you just draw an asterisk and back to it. but let's see so I believe let's say college. I majored in Psychology. So right away off the bad. I knew that I wanted to help people. I didn't know much more than that. I started working at a

Emily Lapolice: Shelter for abuse children and that was in. Yeah, so during my College spring breaks and summer breaks. I was, volunteering at a shelter are working rather at a shelter my hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts. so there was just always something there and

Emily Lapolice: after yeah, so I undergrad psych major ventured into social work got my Master's in social work at New York University. finish that up in 2006 and I worked in New York City public school system. I worked in inpatient and outpatient mental health a hospital in Harlem Metropolitan Hospital and primarily was working with Children First Children and Families refugees immigrants. And City was incredible in so many ways and I guess somewhere along that line too. I came to my own yoga practice probably right out of college. so about 20 years ago now.

Emily Lapolice: And found that just as a really lovely tool. For managing my own anxiety and just the distress of being a human being and so that kind of came organically.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah.

Emily Lapolice: And yeah around that time grad school, New York. working with kids in the school system and hospital setting I was kind of like yoga therapy cannot happen together. we feel things in our bodies and our bodies are part of this whole thing too. So that's kind of the dirt. That's where really things started to take a pretty.

Emily Lapolice: A pretty focused intentional shift. I moved to Boston worked in the Boston Public School Systems for a bit. I started Private Practice about 10 years ago and found Dave Emerson's In 20 trauma sensitive yoga and so we can talk, a ton about that. But basically that's kind of the intersection of…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: where embodiment practices and healing and All of it came into play I specialize in perinatal mental health particularly my own perinatal journey and have a special interest in working with indigenous impersonations populations. I carry ancestry with three indigenous tribal Nations, and that has been a

Emily Lapolice: Mind blowing aspect of my own personal journey and how it has informed my practice and my work as well.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. There's so much there.

Emily Lapolice: Yeah, if that was Cliff Notes version or not, but

Jeremy Schumacher: No, that was great. So I'm curious because as I interview a lot of therapist. needs the

00:05:00

Emily Lapolice: Yes.

Emily Lapolice: Yeah, incredible. Absolutely, and you think about two. clinicians or anyone in the mental health Fields, early on in their career my goodness, there is so much exposure to really complex trauma and again not a ton of awareness and These are also very high burnout jobs. So, there's a quick turnaround there. And so you're often maybe working with. not as I don't love the word but seasoned, of a clinician necessarily but my goodness, that's where the work is needed so

Emily Lapolice: My undergrad no, I did my whatever it was called back then independent study, my senior year as a major in psychological and emotional trauma and didn't quite know a ton about it.

Jeremy Schumacher: 

Emily Lapolice: I mean, where's good old Judith Herman her books up here somewhere, but Judith here, trauma and Recovery. That was the basis of one of my research papers so there was something there and now where I am in my own healing journey and being The clinician for over two decades, but about two decades now. Knowing my own family origin and energized intergenerational trauma that was experienced. And I don't think it's at all happenstance that I was deeply gravitated to the field of trauma.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, so kind of your own personal journey is what Drew you to yoga was that? Some burnout from the field was that the population you were working with? not that they traumatized you necessarily but was that, you said just to deal with life and stress.

Emily Lapolice: I mean, I think my first yoga class was just at a gym. So it was a pretty kind of standard more fitness-based yoga class and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.

Emily Lapolice: that is how certainly yoga here in the west has been very colonized and very sort of Taking on this fitness exercise Focus. I mean there's a million things we can talk about there for sure. But yeah, no, I think I went to the gym and saw this yoga class and however, it was advertised right like stress reduction or whatever. It may have been and it just kind of started as a physical practice. I got. Let's see. I was pretty deeply when I was in New York. So I was in my 20s in New York and

Emily Lapolice: started practicing under a guru and definitely fell into kind of Google culture as well as kind…

Jeremy Schumacher: Sure.

Emily Lapolice: if Dharma said that I should be a vegetarian then I should be a vegetarian if I want to be a true Yogi and that whole culture for sure which had a lot of harm baked in it for me and when I found that the trauma sensitive yoga approach it just Was profound changed my life changed to directory of my career.

Emily Lapolice: But yeah, I think I Came Upon it initially in the way that many people here in the west do

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I have ADHD. So all my specialties are wildly unrelated because that's just the way my brain works. But I have a strong Director of student athlete mental Wellness at a college as NCAA coach. I played Sports. So that's really my introduction to yoga as well that hey, this is good for your muscles. This is what we do on a recovery day, we're gonna end practice early and we're gonna do some yoga…

Emily Lapolice: Yep.

Jeremy Schumacher: because I think as a psychologist I had this background that said, this is good for people's Mental Health But that barrier especially with athletes to work on their mental health. It was kind of like this is a soft introduction of we're gonna treat it like a workout because I think it's really interesting that you bring up like that is kind…

Emily Lapolice: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: how Western culture has adopted yoga and I think for a lot of people that is the introduction to it.

Emily Lapolice: Yeah, absolutely. and it is now. Definitely sort of. I mean, what's the word commonplace or it's really worked its way in just to the general nomenclature of yoga is good for mental health. Yoga is good for stress. Yoga is good for anxiety. Yoga is good for trauma. Even that is becoming a little bit more, talked about and there's a big time buzzword around yoga and Trauma and what we have absolutely fine particular found particularly in the model that I'm certified in and…

00:10:00

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah.

Emily Lapolice: have been involved in So whatever that math is.

Emily Lapolice: this approach is an evidence-based treatment for complex trauma and based on 20 years of research and collaboration like feedback from participants. where are you touching me? you're saying that I have the choice if I want to lift my arms or not. But why are you touching me? that's not okay and it's based in neuroscience and attachment Theory and Trauma Theory, but It's really, an incredible model that. even when you hear yoga is good for trauma or this is a trauma sensitive class or trauma-informed class, should be some caution there or some inquiry around if that's the case and there's a lot more to say there as well.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I think it's one of those things where trauma-informed is even a buzzword in our field. And so I think for a lot of people there's an awareness that trauma exists and there's a

Emily Lapolice: Yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: It's different to have an entire structure that you're drawing from rather than just being aware that it exists.

Emily Lapolice: Absolutely, and there's a difference between trauma informed and Trauma sensitivity. For how I've come to sort of understand it and describe it to folks that I work with and I offer trainings around the country as well. That being informed even if you think about it on a neurological level and I can definitely geek out on the neuroscience and neurobiology of all of this. but being informed is sort of the prefrontal cortex. So there's some information. you've informed yourself. Maybe you have some awareness or that XYZ about trauma. it's more knowledge base.

Emily Lapolice: I'm a sensitivity is truly an embodiment practice when you can embody promise sensitivity when that actually comes out in action and in lived experience and through safe relationship through non-coersion. all of that and that is Much different thing than being informed anyone could take a three-hour continuing education, trauma inform how to be, a trauma informed clinician and watch Powerpoints and it's all well and good. I mean We need the knowledge. We need the awareness but really putting into action is a different thing or maybe completely different but it's an offshoot of that.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, and I think I own my own growth as a therapist needs.

Emily Lapolice: absolutely, and even just stepping out on the macro aspect of that too. And yes breath can be incredibly triggering. it can often be a visceral reminder of experiences of trauma, but even just stepping back a bit from the breath Dynamic that's just one example It's the telling someone what to do. It's the sort of and I'm not saying you did that Jeremy. I

Jeremy Schumacher: I absolutely did as a younger that

Emily Lapolice: But it's making that directive position authority position of the expert and saying this will help you I do this and…

Jeremy Schumacher: hey.

Emily Lapolice: this approach to yoga and it's so much more than just yoga. This is really a way of being it's informed my life and how to my parents my parenting and my relationships, but it really is that just sharing of power and seeing

00:15:00

Emily Lapolice: all the Myriad of ways that can happen where can we share power and I think as clinicians inherently no matter what we're in a position of power doesn't matter, then you layer on. cultural dynamics race gender ethnicity sexual orientation, but all of our identities, and then there's layers of power differentials in there as well.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. yeah, and there's so much in that you…

Emily Lapolice: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: I

Jeremy Schumacher: If I'm forced to choose a style of therapy, I generally say collaborative language, which is very post-modern very social constructionists and it is because of my neurodivergence. I think I really was drawn to something where I did not have to be the expert. Because I think my brain was I don't know. It's so contradictory all the time that I didn't want that and then sometimes clients wanted that and I wouldn't do it because I was like, I'm not supposed to be the expert and finding a way where again you're creating a space that's safe for people and that connection can actually be truly collaborative. Not just what every therapist.

Emily Lapolice: And truly being in relationship with our clients. We're stepping into a relationship. the shared authentic experience of I'm a human too. I

Emily Lapolice: And I have struggles. I'm a mom. I have anxiety I have or I don't even like I have but we navigate so much just The Human Condition is distressing at minimum and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: traumatizing in many ways as well so having that shared authenticity and that also helps deep pathologize all of this to deep pathologize healing to decolonize healing and to kind of say yeah, we're kind of all hearing healing there's individual and Collective healing in so many layers of this work. so that shared

Emily Lapolice: place of doing it together kind of healing.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, do you mind speaking a little bit about kind of the Not sure what word I want to use here. Some of the pitfalls are traps that can exist in the Wellness Community. I work as a religious trauma therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: needs

Emily Lapolice: Not at all and I can certainly reference some of my own religious trauma growing up as well that absolutely played into so much. Yeah, I think it comes down to Dogma Taking a dogmatic stance in Dogma I think when we first hear the word initially we immediately go to religion and it's not the case. I think if I looked it up one day I was just curious. what Miriam Webster had to say about it and I forget off the top of my head, but it was sort of having a Undisputed belief just this notion that this is truth and there's no other alternative than this truth this way.

Emily Lapolice: This one right way of doing things is one right way of being a human being a therapist need when we really start looking at it with that lens you see how dogmatic

Emily Lapolice: human existences right now in the modern world and I can definitely speak to some personal lived experiences in this landscape. And I also just want to Overlay. my journey in the past handful of years around retrieving and reclaiming my indigenous Heritage and learning so much more about indigenous ways of being and seeing and knowing and doing and how for the most part and I'm still learning big time, but it's sort of the antithesis of Dogma. and that has just landed in my body and in my cellular fabric as this sort of visceral sigh of relief of right.

00:20:00

Emily Lapolice: That's how it could be and ways that I integrate that into my work regardless of what your heritage is if you have indigenous Heritage or any whatever your heritage may be. But just kind of opening that door of inquiry to folks around. Yeah, not non-dogmatic ways of being so To go back to your other question as far as the health and wellness field and certainly yoga. I gave that one example of very very well known yoga Guru in New York City and there was

Emily Lapolice: and I was really curious about Indian philosophy and learning more about the sacred practice of yoga. I mean, it's own indigenous practice. 500 however, many years old and based in India and Southeast Asia and

Emily Lapolice: again our vert what we see here is After 500, it's a byproduct of 500 years of colonization. so I was curious and I saw people standing on their heads and I kind of wanted to do that. that looks neat is that wow a body can do that a human body can do that? I would To do that and I'm mastered the headstand. I can't do that now, but too much the vertigo would not know they would be here this point in my life, but Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: Okay.

Emily Lapolice: Just we would gather around him. if it felt very, sort of like we were disciples and so I came from a Catholic upbringing and

Emily Lapolice: Experience as a child educationally as well in a Catholic School growing up and it did kind of have this. we were kind of gathering around him and he was telling us, the right way to be.

Emily Lapolice: the best way to be and we absolutely mirror that in the health and wellness field where there is this. Adoption of I'm an expert I have now because I did X Y and Z or I have however many degrees hanging on my wall or alphabet soup behind game,…

Jeremy Schumacher: right

Emily Lapolice: I know about your experience. I know the best way I know. How to help you and again right off the bat too. There's that power differential of even like you need help you need help and I need less help maybe so I can help you more…

Jeremy Schumacher: M.

Emily Lapolice: because I need less help and you need more help.

Emily Lapolice: But we all need help who support we need community. And so there's so many layers of just how consumerism and Materialism and all of that has just factored into all of it. If you buy this you'll feel better. If we want quick results,…

Jeremy Schumacher: right

Emily Lapolice: enter into the room Pharma which has its place but also causes significant harm just in the Western Medical model is inherently.

Emily Lapolice: inherently has that sort of expert

Emily Lapolice: position to the wellness

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, and inherently pathologizing someone needs to be broken or bad or wrong or ill in some specific way.

00:25:00

Emily Lapolice: Yes, yes. Absolutely, and it is based in. Its own cultures of supremacists ways of patriarchy just the medical model itself and in pathologizing again conditions. What's the diagnosis the DSM? I really only use the DSM to prop up my laptop when I'm doing a zoom call or something. So

Jeremy Schumacher: It is a good thick book for that. I also use mine for that. and it's so interesting too. I think I'm coming up on 15 years of doing therapy. It seems like a long time to me and I look back at even just pract owning my own practice and creating space differently because I don't have to deal with insurance companies or I don't have to do some of those things. But again,…

Emily Lapolice: yes.

Jeremy Schumacher: that's a position. I'm at 15 years into this career not something that I felt like I could or new how to do a year or two out of grad school.

Emily Lapolice: Yeah, absolutely. And that's a whole thing too. I remember, being in my social work, grad program. having come from some experience prior as I mentioned working in shelters with youth and kind of really quote unquote being on the ground and working in substance abuse treatment centers and in Brooklyn and the hospital setting in Harlem and this notion of being in private practice was something that I felt. I didn't want to touch with a ten foot pole. There was this. snootiness to it or

Jeremy Schumacher: Those people are just in it for the money.

Emily Lapolice: yeah, yeah, selling out so I had to Grapple with some of that and I think it's something that we all need to continue to Grapple with. the more and we're just navigating the systems that we're operating in and insurance is I can't even the amount of stress and PTSD I have from being on the phone with Medicare for hours and the amount of money that I've lost revenue and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yep.

Emily Lapolice: I didn't submit it on time and all of those aspects of how the system is just not supporting us and certainly as consumers but as practitioners as well.

Emily Lapolice: but then when we get tired of navigating that system, which understandably it's understandable why so many of us do We're also blocking access. We're also creating these Pockets where healing is only available to some. I struggle to pay my own therapist needs the

Jeremy Schumacher: right

Emily Lapolice: huge wave across the field where therapist

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: And I think doing this podcast I get to talk to a lot of therapist needs therapy make you engage in with diagnosis and other things or…

Emily Lapolice: Yep.

Jeremy Schumacher: are you limiting who has access to you? And when we have a specialty or…

Emily Lapolice: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: we're trained in a specific way that can really help a vulnerable population. There is no easy answer as far as I know. I'm the only religious trauma therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: I don't know it's easy for your hands up and be like capitalism, but that doesn't really inform what we do on our day-to-day basis then.

Emily Lapolice: I know. Yeah, It's a deep issue Yeah, and you know what we mentioned to circling back to that beginning the beginning of our careers. certainly being 20 years old and going up to the Bronx to work in a substance abuse treatment center and not knowing what I was doing All right, and so many times working with the most vulnerable populations and then the clinicians or the quality of care not just quality, but the level of training and lived experience. I mean training is one thing continuing education again the alphabet soup. That's one thing but having lived experience of

00:30:00

Emily Lapolice: Certainly personal lived experience, but also just working in the field for x amount of time. and so that those populations are oftentimes the populations who need support most are working 20 year olds, out of school and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yep.

Emily Lapolice: So yeah, there's a lot there.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yes, I've told that story before of my own experience. I interned at a homeless shelter and I was doing mindfulness with these clients who were homeless because that's what I had knew how to do that was my fault tool get at that point of 20 year old and grad school who knew…

Emily Lapolice: yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: how to do my first two sessions and after that bit of a question mark and working with this really highly traumatized lots of high level of need face load and right the burnout that happens. Sorry. I'm gonna pause for one second because I got a barking dog. I gotta go. outside

Emily Lapolice: right Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: No problem.

Jeremy Schumacher: Speaking of trauma you get Rescue dogs and they come with their own special brand of attachment sometimes

Emily Lapolice: Sure, they have needs to.

Emily Lapolice: We're all animals doing the best we can.

Jeremy Schumacher: So if you don't mind pivoting a little bit, can we talk about some of the work you've done and…

Emily Lapolice: Sure.

Jeremy Schumacher: kind of? It sounds like a journey to learn about your indigenous Heritage and then reclaim it What was going on there?

Emily Lapolice: Yeah, on you press the record button. You already did that fancy thing.

Jeremy Schumacher: I just didn't stop.

Jeremy Schumacher: We're still recording. I'll cut it at the end.

Emily Lapolice: Nice.

Emily Lapolice: It's all good. Sometimes technology still amazes yeah, so, yes, my indigenous Heritage. Yeah, so my father is a complex trauma Survivor, and it's his own story to tell but had a challenging up bringing for sure and he knew that. He had. indigenous Heritage. I don't think they called it that at the time. He remember seeing pictures of great grandmothers and sort of full regalia the tribes that He has and that I have origin with are mostly in the Eastern Canada.

Emily Lapolice: What we now call Eastern Canada. So the mick Mac tribe kind of around Nova Scotia the Huron tribe and Ontario and interestingly enough. My mother also has indigenous Heritage on her father's side with the Seminole Tribe of Florida. And so it was something that we knew about as kids the word Indian was used not Native American or indigenous, but that we had Indian blood. And I think because of my father's trauma history and the challenging family Dynamics. They're in with his family of origin. We just didn't know enough about it. It wasn't part of our culture. It wasn't part of our upbringing my mother.

Emily Lapolice: Has some indigenous Heritage but mostly Italian. So that was sort of our dominant culture as a family and detailing culture is a strong one. And also the Catholic culture is a strong one. My father was raised Catholic as well. So there was this kind of part of our history that we were almost. kind of denying shunning, that's the quote unquote bad part of your lineage. We don't talk about that. So it was definitely just something that wasn't really well known to us and

00:35:00

Emily Lapolice: it was through the work that I'm doing with the center for trauman embodiment and many of my colleagues because this program and this model is an international one, we have connections with so many folks and thinking The pandemic For Better or Worse, we've been able to be connected to folks outside our own small orbits in ways that we never have been able to before so with a colleague of mine Lila Johnson. She's in the Vancouver area and has worked with First Nations communities in

Emily Lapolice: In Canada has an incredible working relationship with a Canadian artist Roy Henry Vickers who kind of became an elder that I learned from through our collaboration. We have some different projects going on with bringing trauma sensitive yoga to indigenous populations. And how do you do so, appropriately and in a collaborative way and that is culturally centered and accessible and all those aspects. So there's some exciting collaborations and some beautiful work that's happening and It was a door and in talking with Roy and some other indigenous colleagues and folks that we came across or, just cross my path.

Emily Lapolice: there was this permission slip Sort of extended to me that I was so uncomfortable. I didn't even know how to talk about my Heritage or if I even had the right to On the white person. I don't identify as native or indigenous. I have no intention to claim status or Anything of the sort, but I just didn't think I was indigenous enough. to …

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: and everything around blood Quantum and that's a colonized Concept in of itself, but it was through my indigenous brothers and sisters who said You can this is a part of you. It's yours, and really kind of invited me.

Emily Lapolice: into just that way an entirely different way of seeing things and being so for me too in I

Emily Lapolice: consider myself a recovering Catholic As a young as a mom. My kids are eight and four. My husband is pretty raised agnostically his mother.

Emily Lapolice: was Catholic and his father was Jewish but they were very very, kind of open-minded and they had a Christmas tree and a menorah and it's very very open and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Okay.

Emily Lapolice: so when bringing our Lived experiences together my husband and I I definitely found myself fumbling a bit in the beginning What do we offer our kids? We don't want to do the Catholic thing. We don't even necessarily want to do the juice thing. We don't really want to do a capital D Dogma thing and…

Jeremy Schumacher: right

Emily Lapolice: once I was gifted this indigenous lens, it really was the sigh of relief of So much of what we were already doing just organically doing.

Emily Lapolice: showing respect and reciprocity with the land and with the Earth and with spirit in that larger sense, and so that really just gave our parenting a different kind of framework to land upon which is really useful, with young children and my own parents. They themselves have strayed from the Catholic faith or have a much much more, kind of open-minded stance on so much of it. and still honor their initial belief systems, but

00:40:00

Emily Lapolice: They only knew what they knew from their parents and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: wanted to provide us some structure and there was something beautiful about going to mass every Sunday that was just expect that was expected and it was like it's what we did as a family and so there's no blame or shame or anyone doing anything wrong all doing the best that we can as clinicians as parents as human beings. but I have just found over and over again that this of kind of more innate organic indigenous way of being Just lines up. An intersects with so much my work as a clinician a mother all of it. It's definitely changed my life.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, that's so fascinating all the deconstruction and then reconstruction work. I do with clients who leave High control religion we talk about the importance of ritual and things that provide meaning for our life like religion doesn't

Emily Lapolice: Yes, yes.

Emily Lapolice: me what?

Emily Lapolice: and it's such a beautiful part of our human experience and existence ceremony and ritual and commute Gathering and Community. There is a indigenous Health researcher and educator and yoga teacher in the Vancouver area. I believe Jessica baruden, and I actually just attended one of her A webinar that she was offering earlier in the week or last week. And she described ga. So she's yoga instructor and really takes that indigenous lens and she described yoga. As a container for ceremony.

Emily Lapolice: A container for ceremony and I just love that, can the body be? A container for Ceremony, certainly being raised Catholic there was this sense that Needed to happen in the church you needed to genuflect on your way in front of the Tabernacle because you were in front of the body of Christ and there were so many. Things that This is where you ask for forgiveness. This is where a seven year old second grader has to go into a scary dark Booth with an older man and tell him all the bad things that they've done to do your First Holy reconciliation as a second grader and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: list all your sins. I'm sorry, that's pretty effing traumatizing if

Emily Lapolice: I'm just that set up that dine.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, I mean the power dynamic. Is so yucky there like the imbalance. Yeah. I'm having such a visceral response that I work with this stuff all the time.

Emily Lapolice: So that's such.

Emily Lapolice: It's so yucky and it's so shame-based. and if we link that back to the clinical field and all of us doesn't if you're in private practice or accepting Medicare, please any clinicians that are listening there. There is no judgment. We are all navigating the systems that we are operating in and hopefully we're all called to this work for reason. so whether your private pay or not or whatever populations you're working with.

Emily Lapolice: Can we be aware or just a little more sensitive to experiences of guilt and shame or at the core at least of my own personal experience of religious trauma and so much work that I am only just recently in many ways kind of healing and unpacking an integrating myself. And when we take a framework of pathology or I got this training and I know this or I'm trained in trauma sensitive yoga or trauman from practices, right this certification and I'm a CBT blah blah cognitive base PST blah therapist.

Emily Lapolice: a lot of that framework centers pathology. There's something wrong. I can help you fix it.

00:45:00

Emily Lapolice: when we feel like something's wrong with ourselves. The shame how can there not be they're shame so.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah.

Emily Lapolice: yeah, so I don't know what you initially asked me but

Jeremy Schumacher: And I think that the other piece of your work that you focus on is the perinatal health and it's fascinating. I think this overlap and the Reconstruction and kind of how parenting made you view things differently that's very much my experience where I deconstructed and was kind. of like a happy contented atheist, and then I was like Wait, but what do I do with our kids? we don't want to do the Christian holidays,…

Emily Lapolice: first

Jeremy Schumacher: but what? We should do something. And so it was kind of like that was the impetus to rebuild some things of right?

Emily Lapolice: Sure.

Jeremy Schumacher: I don't want to teach Noah's Ark but stories are still important. So what are we doing instead? So yeah,…

Emily Lapolice: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: I think that just ties in with what else we've been talking about parenting and kind of how you're in these dual roles of your experience as a parent while your parenting and also probably doing your own work and healing and reconceptualizing of this isn't what I got when I was a kid.

Emily Lapolice: totally totally. Absolutely, so I think for me.

Emily Lapolice: the Have so that with the birth of my first son. I did all the quote unquote right things now granted. This is from a place of Deep. Privilege access to resources. I did all the prenatal yoga classes all the prenatal vitamins all the stuff, drinking this juice or not drinking that juice or doing all the things and preparing myself and taking a hypnobirthing course.

Emily Lapolice: And I had significant postpartum depression and anxiety with my firstborn really really challenging and had such denial about it. I had a doula too. I had a doula in Massachusetts. I think it was just last week possibly. we passed a bill that folks who have Medicaid are public Insurance here having access to Doula services.

Jeremy Schumacher: he thanks.

Emily Lapolice: Part of their Healthcare That's huge. So I had the Doula I had all the things and even my dual who's I think this is a little bit more than the baby blues. I was like no. No, I'm a trauma therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: beliefs that we have I didn't know what postpartum depression was until I experienced it and the huge amount of intersections of trauma therein, so, I think in the best of circumstances with access to resources and support and all of that. Becoming a parent and I would say a mother in particular if you're birthing person. there is just by such a cycle of destruction transformation And maybe renewal a rebirth just in. the gestation period and of creating a life within your own body the amount of

Emily Lapolice: physical change that we undergo there is no other experience like it as a birthing person where your chemicals your ligaments your hormones Everything Changes completely changes and so there is this almost naturally baked in possibility for kind of this destruction element breaking down or transformation and then what can come after that?

Emily Lapolice: And certainly supports and healing and it just depends on what your access to any of that is but there is a vast potential to kind of rebuild from a place of empowerment for but from a place of agency from a place of choice from a place of intention. Where you're already going through a transformation, you're already in it or you like it or not like you are in the midst of a transformation.

00:50:00

Emily Lapolice: So I think that again, I'm forgetting your initial question, but just That experience as a woman and as a mother as a parent. Kind of broke me in the literal sense of the word broke down and then I had to decide how I wanted to rebuild.

Jeremy Schumacher: And and talk about shame how much shame is parenting but specifically motherhood of you're not breastfeeding you're using formula or you had to see some of the silliest things of again that dogmatic that black and white fundamentalist thinking of there is a right and a wrong way to do this.

Emily Lapolice: yes, and the Western Medical model and where that plays into all of it as well in how we support birthing people and if someone has experiences or has a trauma history and again we all navigate that Spectrum in our own ways as far as where we fall on the spectrum of lived experiences of trauma or oppression. What is just baked into our own personal histories? So we all were on that Spectrum. Then you step into this period of your life as a birthing person. and there's all this fodder along the way is that the word even before you have a child right there. Could you might again have your own experiences of trauma then in the prenatal period

Emily Lapolice: There's all this fodder for more trauma paradigms of I remember going to this was a preconception meeting with a midwife. So we're over here in a very blue state in Massachusetts and Cambridge. And I went with the midwives and was looking for more of a holistic journey and birth journey, and I hadn't even pregnant yet. And I guess it was in my chart. that I had experienced sexual assault In my 20s and she looked at my chart we were just talking about okay, so when should I get off birth control? I kind of want to have a child sorry due to support my system or…

Jeremy Schumacher: he

Emily Lapolice: and she looked at some point and said I see that you're a victim of sexual assault and I just want to let you know.

Emily Lapolice: You might have flashbacks during your labor.

Emily Lapolice: there are so many things wrong with that. I venture to say that she probably took, an hour 30 minute long trauma sensitivity trauma awareness something informed something that Sure victims of assault and a myriad of other things flashbacks might have difficulty, but you're assuming the expert role right away. And you're telling me you're defining my experience before it has even happened. I just want to let you know that this might happen is what she said and so I know luckily I had.

Emily Lapolice: My own inner resources to Advocate and say I don't want to work with this Midwife. I don't want her to be part of my birth. I started working with another Midwife who was incredible. She offered a corrective emotional experience for me where I told her. I'm a trauma therapist. Even really know if that needs to be on my chart. Can we change that or can I reword it in a way and she scooted me up right next to the computer and she said you tell me you write these notes enough. What do you want it? and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: I said, yeah, I have it. I forget even what I thought of a history of the salt or I don't even know if I said that it's resolved. It's been worked. it's not part of my presentation or my story at this moment. So

Emily Lapolice: That ability to kind of rewrite my story and take some ownership back. So There are just so many places along the way. Before conception prenatally especially if you're navigating the Western Medical model. Intrapartum trauma, here's a word for you, postnatal trauma intrapartum trauma is trauma that can happen during the birthing experience. So obstetric violence is Staggering and…

00:55:00

Jeremy Schumacher: Thank you.

Emily Lapolice: other opportunity other places where you might have a traumatic birthing experience, so there's just all these intersections along the way so it's kind of just this ripe tender time. Where There's quite a lot happening.

Emily Lapolice: for a birthing person in this parenting Journey where you lose agency over your body whether you like it or not, something is happening to your body and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: I think the Western Medical model in general Is kind of that happening to you. I'm going to deliver your baby. I'm going to use forceps to remove your baby this thing that's happening to you versus this thing that

Emily Lapolice: Are going through you you have agency and I think that's the stance that we can take on healing in general. we step out of that position of power and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: expert of this is what's going to heal you versus Yeah healing is that something that's it that interests you you want to heal? What would that be? for you? What? I don't know. Let's do this. Do you want to do this together? I'd be honored to walk alongside you. And that's just a whole different ballgame.

Jeremy Schumacher: And there's so much there we could do five more sessions by more episodes on each of these topics. How are you doing for time? I didn't check before we recorded. Okay.

Emily Lapolice: What I got my lumbar supports here and water. I'm never a hard stop.

Jeremy Schumacher: Okay, so I don't want to put you on the spot. I'm going to though for therapist needs therapy or want to seek their own support or maybe want to be an ally not that you need to explain it to everyone but where some of the places you direct people.

Emily Lapolice: not sure if they're curious about Trauma healing or indigenous being or…

Jeremy Schumacher: I know that was such a big question.

Emily Lapolice: you are staring at a mental health.

Jeremy Schumacher: I guess because I've had a lot of trauma therapist needs therapy for people.

Emily Lapolice: Mmm, yeah, great. Great. I don't have my resource list available. But no, this is an excellent question. And this is how We support each other as a community. We are a community of clinicians or the community of folks who listen to Jeremy Schumacher's podcast or whatever like there are pockets of community everywhere that we look we have been so conditioned in our sort of individualistic productivity success driven culture.

Emily Lapolice: to kind of operate in silos not just clinically but as people, we're just kind of walking around these little silos like this is my s*** and I just got to deal with it or have shame around it. I didn't do something well enough or I'm too little of this or too much of that and I'm just gonna have to suffer in silence. and one of the core tenets of any trauma work and this is from Judith that recovery can only take In relationship, you can't take place in isolation. you can't take us a CBT worksheet and sure it might be useful at different times in your life to kind of think about your ways of thinking and your cognitions, but you can't take a CBT worksheet sheet go in the corner and heal.

Emily Lapolice: Can't do that. Healing has to happen in relationship in community. And that's how we used to be no matter what your cultural or ancestral heritage may be. I have indigen I have Italian Heritage German heritage. as you'd like to go back. for the most part there was certainly in indigenous impersonations cup communities but in so many others There was a commune there was a tribe we're doing this together. So I love your question in sort of how can we support each other as clinicians and for folks who? again hopefully are doing this for a reason so

01:00:00

Emily Lapolice: I can absolutely my dinosaur of a website. It is such a dinosaur Jeremy. I feel so old lately I just recently changed my photo because I couldn't even look at it anymore. But I was like, who is that person? so it's in process it's being revamped, but I definitely want to load it up with resources and so many things so I mean I don't think I can rattle it off this that my tongue right now.

Jeremy Schumacher: Good. Yes.

Emily Lapolice: I mean trauma sensitive yoga.com. There you go is really a place to start that is.

Jeremy Schumacher: We will have that in the show notes. We talked we carry Fillion was a guest on and she's a graduate of that program and does trauma informed yoga and her practice. So talks about it a little bit already,…

Emily Lapolice: cool Yeah,…

Jeremy Schumacher: but we'll link to that as a great starting point.

Emily Lapolice: yeah, it's a nice place to start. please drop my website in there. I'll keep working on it and…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. It fine,…

Emily Lapolice: keeping it more user friendly and there are

Jeremy Schumacher: you call it a dinosaur. It's

Emily Lapolice: man is I don't even know if the WordPress thing exists anymore. I have the old template. I don't know.

Jeremy Schumacher: I worked at higher ed for so many years. There's nothing worse than a college website. So, you…

Emily Lapolice: Okay, okay.

Jeremy Schumacher: you're ahead of the game.

Emily Lapolice: But there is an incredible. indigenous woman researcher educator mom fantastic human being that I Worked and studied with I don't know her personally, but

Emily Lapolice: I don't have her stuff right here. And I'm actually embarrassingly forgetting her name but she has touched wonderful online resources for folks who are like, this Landing management thing. What is it? Where do I start? and the fact of the matter is too. Yeah. It's kind of become this thing that is expected and is the right thing to do but could we even be non-dogmatic about a land acknowledgment? Because a lot of times folks just rattle it off. I'm speaking to you today from the original homelands of the Massachusetts people in the Pawtucket tribe. That's great to know that that is so great to know that and that's another distinguishing factor of being trauma informed or culturally informed or indigenously informed or indigenously curious or indigenously respectful. I think most of us certainly

Emily Lapolice: not all but most of us, have some respect for the land that weren't really ours to begin with and want to pay homage homage To who is here first, but there are very personal ways that you can do that. Even when I lead trainings and all different folks come to my trainings. you don't have to be a clinician anyone who's interested in sort of decolonizing the pathologizing practices and…

Jeremy Schumacher: me

Emily Lapolice: I start with a landing knowledgement and I also say something along the lines of feel free In This Moment. if you'd like as a verb to land where you are. planned in your body

Emily Lapolice: and the space that you're in the room that you're in maybe you notice where your body is connecting with the ground, some of that is how I offer invitations toward embodiment. But then there could be if you have a relationship to the land if you have a relationship to the land. or if anything about the lands that you're on feel free to acknowledge or reference or pay respect to the lands, Etc. there's so many ways that we can kind of come upon in a very different way that Quote unquote lands for people I think without just reading something off a sheet of paper.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: yeah, and I think it's hard I mean for Our hearts maybe the wrong word so much of the imperialistic and colonizing culture is what I'm a millennial a lot of people in my age range grew up with and so trying to learn but feeling bad about not knowing and feeling that shame and trying to set that up I'm a marriage therapist the language on my license,…

01:05:00

Emily Lapolice: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: so I call myself a marriage therapist.

Jeremy Schumacher: Unfortunately, there's not a black and…

Emily Lapolice: Yeah.

Jeremy Schumacher: white answer for a lot of these things. It is really Chanel it is we build that together and so it can look different in different contexts.

Emily Lapolice: Absolutely, and I think at the heart of embodiment practices and I consider myself an embodiment therapist. that might be the one thing we all have if we're trying to find the common denominator of human existence. Our body has a myriad of different lived experiences and experiences of traum sociocultural and Justice trauma. and there's no diagnosis for that too. we can throw that out there.

Jeremy Schumacher: There's Vico that insurance will accept for that.

Emily Lapolice: Yeah for cultural and Justice trauma and that's part of complex trauma. we still don't even have a diagnosis for complex trauma technically, which is different from PTSD, but We all have a body and so for me in my work, certainly what trauma sensitive yoga.

Emily Lapolice: and as a embodiment therapist needs

Emily Lapolice: and there is this kind of coming back uncovering getting access to our bodies to self to solve with a spirit with mean what if whatever I call it my myself soil. that is touch unharmed uncolonized we all have that but it's been so blocked and barricaded and concrete has been poured over it. I mean if we really think about what's happened to our lands our homelands this Earth that used to be full of grass and sweet grass and Moss and Rich loan and

Emily Lapolice: Just Earth and literally in metaphorically, we've poured a lot of concrete over it. So, how do we get back to self-soil? How could we get back to?

Emily Lapolice: our quote unquote indigenous selves regardless of our origin but our sort of

Emily Lapolice: Where our inner origin? And I think that's something that is available to all of us. I've been doing a lot of parts work myself internal family system. That's absolutely also changed my life and transform my own healing Journey, but that self energy is how it's sort of referred to in the ifs framework. we all have ourself self like I call and I say this to my clients too, my Emily you say you're S Susan you're Linda that self self and there's so many other parts of us and parts of our history the narratives the Dogma that we've been sort of indoctrinated toward.

Emily Lapolice: And we just often don't have access to that self self or other parts are stepping in or kind of pulling us away or so. It's kind of about that. breaking down maybe even inviting or being curious about a sort of. creation destruction transformation rebirth cycle And for women we go through that about every 28 days. So to speak so we're pretty seasoned or…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: persons who have menstrual cycles

Emily Lapolice: so we know a little bit about that and be interesting if we all could be open to that or curious about that for us. And so

Jeremy Schumacher: and moving away from the dogma of right or wrong or everything needs to be good and positive and acknowledgment of these different seasons and these different Transitions and there's different aspects to them.

01:10:00

Emily Lapolice: yeah, I wrote an article with a dear colleague of mine on a coraz who's also certified in the tctsy model. What did we call it trauma and health The Human Condition? So that's a good little read too just around a lot of what we've talked about. the experience of being alive

Emily Lapolice: and what that entails and can we continue to depathologize that and come together in community and work toward individual and Collective healing? And it doesn't stop it after eight sessions or however many treatments. you're healed now, you're okay. you're trauma's done. No, it doesn't stop and can we be in the state of inquiry in curiosity? And kind of versus pathology shame blame. Something's wrong. We could be curious together.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds so much better.

Emily Lapolice: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: he

Jeremy Schumacher: Up as well.

Emily Lapolice: definitely and I'm so open and receptive to feedback and collaboration and Doing this whole thing together. I think there can also be this very sort of competitive Vibe going on of how we promote ourselves. And yes, I did kind of whatever that word is. knock myself and knock my dinosaur website blah blah. But there is this sort of like, I'm doing this special Niche and I'm doing this special needs and I don't want and could we be curious about or just kind of consider what if we're all doing this thing together and Some folks might have some ideas or…

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah.

Emily Lapolice: hey that really sparked my interest and I'm doing this and you're doing that and what do you think about doing something together It all can only happen.

Emily Lapolice: In community and in relationship and not in isolation and that goes for us too because clearly what is the name That's the name of your podcast. We all need support so.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, yes.

Emily Lapolice: Let's help you just know

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, mental Wellness is work for everyone even the professionals. Yeah, so thanks so much for coming on.

Emily Lapolice: Mm- Okay.

Jeremy Schumacher: This was great.

Emily Lapolice: Absolutely. I'm happy to know you and meet you and Really love the backdrop again deletions can't see it, but we got Star Wars.

Jeremy Schumacher: Lord of the Rings Pink Floyd

Emily Lapolice: Pink Floyd is a nice little vibe.

Jeremy Schumacher: Yeah, my foosball table sitting next to me for that added stress relief and…

Emily Lapolice: cool

Jeremy Schumacher: to all our wonderful listeners. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll be back next week with another new episode. Take care everyone.

Emily Lapolice: came by

Meeting ended after 01:13:38 👋