This is not a podcast for the mainstream. This is for the silenced, the cast out, and those whose stories never made the headlines. A Groundbreaking Trauma Justice Podcast from a Genocide Survivor and Somatic Therapist.
Deeply embodied, politically urgent, and spiritually grounded space led by a therapist who survived war and genocide herself. Ana Mael is not just talking about trauma—she has lived it, survived it, and now guides others through it with radical clarity and compassion.
This podcast is a revolution in trauma conversations: it moves beyond mindset tips and breathwork into trauma justice, relational repair, and systemic truth-telling. Each episode invites listeners to stop healing in isolation—and to begin naming, reclaiming, and rising from what hurt them.
Exiled and Rising is for survivors of war, systemic injustice, and complex trauma—especially those living in exile from land, identity, or community.
With raw truth and radical tenderness, Ana Mael offers unfiltered guidance on how to heal when you’ve been cut off—literally or metaphorically—from your home, safety, or sense of self and how to raise up and call for justice.
“This podcast is not about surface-level healing. We are not fluffing the feathers or shaking the crystals here.”
No glamour edits. No AI voices. Just real voice, lived experience, and trauma-focused truth.
Social and Cultural Relevance:
Ana’s work is a mirror for our time. In a global climate of rising authoritarianism, censorship, and the silencing of marginalized voices, this podcast becomes both a somatic protest and a innate act of resistance.
“If you have been silenced… Welcome.”
Ana gives voice to the body in a time when speech itself is policed. This is especially potent for:
Activists and whistleblowers
Immigrants and undocumented individuals
Survivors of trauma who were never given words for what they endured
A deep-dive podcast blending somatic healing expertise, micro-teachings, and lived survivor experience. Each episode distills trauma recovery, nervous system insights, and political consciousness into guidance that helps you reclaim power, safety, and self.
This Podcast Is a Home For:
Overfunctioning Immigrants, Exiled & Displaced – Those who overwork to prove worth
Survivors of War, Genocide, & Systemic Oppression – Healing from identity loss and rebuilding life
Refugees, Stateless, Undocumented People – Navigating erasure and exile
Children of Exiled or Immigrant Parents – Carrying generational wounds
Those Ostracized from Family or Church – For who they are, what they believe, or how they love
Those Seeking Somatic Recovery – Learning to regulate and reconnect with the body
Anyone Ready to Resist Spiritual Bypassing – And choose embodied, justice-based healing
What It Offers:
Real Stories of Survival & Healing – From Ana’s own war journals to survivor interviews
Expert Somatic & Trauma Recovery Insights – Practical tools for regulation and healing
Space for the Cast Out – Centering those excluded from mainstream healing narratives
Healing as Activism – Moving from survival to embodiment, from harm to advocacy
Radical Human Truth – With no scripts, no glamour edits, no “fixing”—only truth
Premium Membership – What You Get in the Private Community
Take your healing deeper with exclusive, high-value content:
Extended, Deep-Dive Episodes – Personal stories and expert somatic breakdowns
Therapy-Based Takeaways – Direct applications for therapy, journaling, and integration
Keynotes & Summaries – Distilled insights to anchor your healing
Full Transcripts – For reflection, accessibility, and in-depth study
Bite-Sized Somatic Lessons – Micro-practices for nervous system healing
Science of Trauma – Research-backed techniques to help reset your body’s stress response
Listener Q&A + Expert Sessions – Ask Ana your questions and receive trauma-informed answers
Ad-Free Listening – No filler, no distractions, just healing and clarity
Meet Your Host: Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her life’s work to helping survivors of war, forced displacement, systemic oppression, and complex trauma reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust.
As a bestselling author, Ana’s book, The Trauma We Don’t Talk About, became a #1 bestseller in over 10 categories, including Mental Health, Personal Testimonies, and Memoirs.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Ana works directly with clients and educates mental health professionals and counselors on the complexities of displacement, exile, and war trauma recovery. She leads training programs, provides trauma-informed therapy, and conducts pioneering research to bridge the gap between somatic therapy and global crisis trauma care.
"From Trauma to Resilience. From Wounds to Resistance."
Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for mental health treatment or doctor care and advise. Please consult your mental health and/or medical care provider for individualized care.
All content for Exiled & Rising: Trauma Recovery & Somatic Healing is the property of Ana Mael and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
This is not a podcast for the mainstream. This is for the silenced, the cast out, and those whose stories never made the headlines. A Groundbreaking Trauma Justice Podcast from a Genocide Survivor and Somatic Therapist.
Deeply embodied, politically urgent, and spiritually grounded space led by a therapist who survived war and genocide herself. Ana Mael is not just talking about trauma—she has lived it, survived it, and now guides others through it with radical clarity and compassion.
This podcast is a revolution in trauma conversations: it moves beyond mindset tips and breathwork into trauma justice, relational repair, and systemic truth-telling. Each episode invites listeners to stop healing in isolation—and to begin naming, reclaiming, and rising from what hurt them.
Exiled and Rising is for survivors of war, systemic injustice, and complex trauma—especially those living in exile from land, identity, or community.
With raw truth and radical tenderness, Ana Mael offers unfiltered guidance on how to heal when you’ve been cut off—literally or metaphorically—from your home, safety, or sense of self and how to raise up and call for justice.
“This podcast is not about surface-level healing. We are not fluffing the feathers or shaking the crystals here.”
No glamour edits. No AI voices. Just real voice, lived experience, and trauma-focused truth.
Social and Cultural Relevance:
Ana’s work is a mirror for our time. In a global climate of rising authoritarianism, censorship, and the silencing of marginalized voices, this podcast becomes both a somatic protest and a innate act of resistance.
“If you have been silenced… Welcome.”
Ana gives voice to the body in a time when speech itself is policed. This is especially potent for:
Activists and whistleblowers
Immigrants and undocumented individuals
Survivors of trauma who were never given words for what they endured
A deep-dive podcast blending somatic healing expertise, micro-teachings, and lived survivor experience. Each episode distills trauma recovery, nervous system insights, and political consciousness into guidance that helps you reclaim power, safety, and self.
This Podcast Is a Home For:
Overfunctioning Immigrants, Exiled & Displaced – Those who overwork to prove worth
Survivors of War, Genocide, & Systemic Oppression – Healing from identity loss and rebuilding life
Refugees, Stateless, Undocumented People – Navigating erasure and exile
Children of Exiled or Immigrant Parents – Carrying generational wounds
Those Ostracized from Family or Church – For who they are, what they believe, or how they love
Those Seeking Somatic Recovery – Learning to regulate and reconnect with the body
Anyone Ready to Resist Spiritual Bypassing – And choose embodied, justice-based healing
What It Offers:
Real Stories of Survival & Healing – From Ana’s own war journals to survivor interviews
Expert Somatic & Trauma Recovery Insights – Practical tools for regulation and healing
Space for the Cast Out – Centering those excluded from mainstream healing narratives
Healing as Activism – Moving from survival to embodiment, from harm to advocacy
Radical Human Truth – With no scripts, no glamour edits, no “fixing”—only truth
Premium Membership – What You Get in the Private Community
Take your healing deeper with exclusive, high-value content:
Extended, Deep-Dive Episodes – Personal stories and expert somatic breakdowns
Therapy-Based Takeaways – Direct applications for therapy, journaling, and integration
Keynotes & Summaries – Distilled insights to anchor your healing
Full Transcripts – For reflection, accessibility, and in-depth study
Bite-Sized Somatic Lessons – Micro-practices for nervous system healing
Science of Trauma – Research-backed techniques to help reset your body’s stress response
Listener Q&A + Expert Sessions – Ask Ana your questions and receive trauma-informed answers
Ad-Free Listening – No filler, no distractions, just healing and clarity
Meet Your Host: Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her life’s work to helping survivors of war, forced displacement, systemic oppression, and complex trauma reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust.
As a bestselling author, Ana’s book, The Trauma We Don’t Talk About, became a #1 bestseller in over 10 categories, including Mental Health, Personal Testimonies, and Memoirs.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Ana works directly with clients and educates mental health professionals and counselors on the complexities of displacement, exile, and war trauma recovery. She leads training programs, provides trauma-informed therapy, and conducts pioneering research to bridge the gap between somatic therapy and global crisis trauma care.
"From Trauma to Resilience. From Wounds to Resistance."
Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for mental health treatment or doctor care and advise. Please consult your mental health and/or medical care provider for individualized care.
The Body Is Where God Speaks. In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael — somatic experiencing therapist for trauma recovery and ancestral healing — explores what it truly means to decolonize prayer.
For centuries, prayer was shaped by systems of domination — religions that demanded obedience, erased Indigenous and ancestral practices, and taught that the Divine could only be reached through worthiness or submission. To decolonize prayer is to reclaim it: to bring the sacred back into the body, the land, and the breath.
Ana guides listeners through a gentle reflection on how prayer can become an act of embodied liberation rather than control. She explores how trauma, faith, and colonial conditioning often intertwine — and how we can begin to pray not from fear, but from belonging.
In this episode, you’ll discover how to:
Reclaim prayer as a living, breathing dialogue with the Divine.
Restore your relationship with your body, ancestors, and earth as sacred sources of guidance.
Recognize and release the inherited beliefs that say you must be “pure” or “worthy” to be loved.
Learn how somatic healing and spirituality can merge into a prayer practice rooted in justice, tenderness, and autonomy.
Ana teaches that to decolonize prayer is to return to intimacy with life itself — to remember that divinity was never outside of you. It’s within your heartbeat, your lineage, your breath.
“The body is not an obstacle to God — it is where God speaks.”
De-theologizing shame by making God intimate and embodied.
This prayer is a profound embodiment of Ana’s entire body of work — it’s not simply spiritual language; it’s somatic invocation.
1. Reuniting the Spiritual and the Somatic
Ana is weaving together the language of prayer with the language of the body. When she says:
“Move through me, speak through me, walk through me, heal through me,” she’s not appealing to an abstract deity. She’s inviting the sacred to inhabit the body — to let divine presence become movement, breath, and nervous system regulation.
This is somatic theology — healing not through escape from the body, but through returning to it as a vessel for grace.
2. Restoring Relational Safety
Her repeated invocations — “Let me lean on you… Let me be held by you… supported by you…” — are re-parenting moments. In trauma, safety is broken; the body learns it must hold itself alone. Through prayer, Ana restores the felt sense of being held, not only psychologically but spiritually.
She is offering a reparative experience — one in which Divine Spirit becomes a co-regulator.
3. Transforming Helplessness into Communion
Instead of fighting darkness, Ana models surrender as sacred collaboration. Each line — “rest in me… live in my bones… dance in my heart…” — turns despair into dialogue. She’s teaching that you don’t heal by forcing light but by allowing what is divine, ancestral, and alive to move through you even when you feel broken.
This is how trauma becomes transmuted into devotion — not bypassed, but inhabited with grace.
4. Reclaiming the Ancestral Body
By naming Beloved Ancestors, she opens intergenerational space: Healing isn’t solitary; it’s ancestral repair. She invites listeners to feel lineage behind them — support that trauma often erases. In Ana’s language, ancestors aren’t abstract; they are part of the nervous system memory — the strength behind your spine, “standing behind my back when I falter.”
5. Reframing Prayer as Somatic Regulation
The repetition — move through me, walk through me, rest in me — mirrors the natural rhythm of the body’s regulation cycle: expansion, contraction, rest. Listeners experience calm not through religious belief, but through entrainment — the nervous system settles into the rhythm of Ana’s voice.
She’s teaching that prayer can be a nervous system practice, not just a spiritual one.
6. Her Deeper Offering
In essence, Ana is:
De-theologizing shame by making God intimate and embodied.
Decolonizing prayer by rooting it in the self and the an...
In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana offers a Winter Solstice teaching on withdrawal — not as avoidance, pathology, or failure, but as a biological and nervous-system necessity.
For most of human history, withdrawal was respected. People retreated in winter, in grief, in illness, and in times of transition. Reduced contact, reduced visibility, and solitude were understood as forms of regulation and protection.
In modern culture, withdrawal is often misunderstood and condemned. It is labeled depression, disengagement, lack of resilience, or a personal problem to be fixed. This episode challenges that narrative.
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ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
RESIGNATION SYNDROME RECOVERY
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/SSApP35o/checkout
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic therapy education, truth & storytelling.
https://donate.stripe.com/3cI9AS5Xfb9W6O832VfEk00
Somatic Trauma Recovery Center
https://www.somatictraumarecoverycenter.com/
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Ana explores:
Why withdrawal is essential for nervous system regulation
How the body signals the need to retract through exhaustion, slowness, and loss of outward motivation
The difference between withdrawal and isolation
Why constant availability and visibility overwhelm the nervous system
How Winter Solstice marks a natural psychological and biological hinge
Why meaning, clarity, and forward movement cannot be forced during collapse
How solitude protects what is still forming beneath the surface
This teaching is for those who feel tired, flattened, less responsive, or uninterested in performing productivity or growth. It is not an episode about self-improvement or resilience. It is an orientation toward rest, regulation, and permission.
Winter Solstice reminds us that nothing essential grows in exposure. Growth begins in darkness, quiet, and reduced demand — long before it reaches the light.
This episode invites listeners to:
Reduce contact
Simplify language
Let plans go quiet
Stop trying to be understood
Stay close to what regulates the body and nervous system
The light will return on its own. Withdrawal is not something to overcome — it is something to respect.
She Stopped Shrinking. They Called Her a Bitch. Ana Mael explores how patriarchal conditioning has shaped generations of women to silence their power, shrink their brilliance, and confuse survival with love. In this episode, somatic therapist and writer Ana Mael traces the evolution of feminine suppression—from the witch hunts that burned women for their wisdom, to the modern emotional burn of being called too much, too emotional, or a bitch.
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ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic therapy education, truth & storytelling.
https://donate.stripe.com/3cI9AS5Xfb9W6O832VfEk00
_________________________________
Ana unpacks the psychological, somatic, and relational impact of patriarchal dominance—how men are taught to equate worth with control, and how women internalize safety through self-erasure. Through raw storytelling and embodied teaching, she reveals what happens in the male psyche when faced with female expression, and what shrinking does to a woman’s nervous system, identity, and development.
This is a call to remember the ancestral power of the Witch, to break the inherited obedience of the Shrunk Woman, and to reclaim the unapologetic voice once branded as the Bitch. If you’ve ever softened your truth to protect someone else’s ego, this episode will remind you that your expansion is not a threat—it’s a medicine.
The Core Paradox:
She’s called a “bitch” not because she’s shrinking — but because she stopped shrinking.
Patriarchy teaches women that their safety, love, and social acceptance depend on self-minimization:
Be agreeable, not assertive.
Be supportive, not ambitious.
Be emotional, but never angry.
Be strong, but never stronger than him.
When a woman starts breaking those rules — speaking directly, naming the truth, setting boundaries, or owning her intelligence — she violates her conditioning.
And patriarchy, unable to control her anymore, shifts from reward to punishment.
So the word “bitch” becomes a disciplinary label — a form of social policing. It’s how society punishes women who expand beyond their prescribed size.
Symbolically:
The Witch → a woman whose power was seen as dangerous and supernatural; she was destroyed for it.
The Shrunk Woman → a woman who learned to stay small to survive; she internalized the fear.
The “Bitch” → a woman who refuses to shrink anymore; she survives the system but gets punished verbally instead of physically.
So the evolution goes like this:
Witch — punished by fire. Shrunk — punished by silence. ️ “Bitch” — punished by language.
Each phase represents a different survival strategy within...
What does that mean? Resilience says: you got through it, amazing, keep going.
Accountability says: you shouldn’t have had to “get through it” like that in the first place.
Resilience puts the work on the survivor. Accountability puts the work on the relationship / family / community / system.
So when people call you strong and stop there, they are choosing resilience over accountability. They’re saying, “Your capacity is the solution,” instead of, “Our repair is the solution.”
IT MEANS: Please keep performing resilience so I can keep avoiding accountability.
That’s why Ana keeps saying: “You don’t have to heal alone.” Because being the strong one is healing alone. It’s the glorified version of healing alone.
______________________________________
ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic therapy education, truth & storytelling.
https://donate.stripe.com/3cI9AS5Xfb9W6O832VfEk00
_______________________________________
Resilience Without Rest Is Violence
Resilience has been over-celebrated. Accountability has been ignored.
Resilience says: You got through it. Amazing. Accountability says: You shouldn’t have had to get through it like that at all.
When people call you strong but never ask who failed you, they’re choosing resilience over repair. They’re saying, “Your capacity is the solution,” instead of, “Our care is the solution.”
Ana Mael doesn’t just talk about trauma as psychology, but as an issue of ethics, human rights, and collective dignity. She talks about moral values, personal and collective rights, and why accountability is essential for healing and human dignity.
This episode continues Ana Mael’s exploration from Strength Is Not Consent. If that first conversation exposed how the “strong one” label hides collective avoidance, this one asks the harder question:
What do we owe one another after harm has occurred? And what does accountability look like — not as punishment, but as restoration of dignity and truth?
In this follow-up to Strength Is Not Consent, Ana Mael expands her critique of resilience culture by introducing a radical concept: healing as a moral and human rights issue.
Speaking as a Somatic Experiencing Therapist, war survivor, and moral thinker, Ana argues that resilience without accountability perpetuates injustice — both personally and collectively.
She examines how Western therapy often privatizes pain, turning survival into an individual performance, while ignoring the political, cultural, and ethical systems that caused it. Through body-based reflection and social commentary, she explores how true healing requires moral recognition, repair, and the restoration of dignity.
This episode bridges psychology, philosophy, and human rights — asking listeners to rethink what justice means in the aftermath of harm.
“Resilience is surviva...
Ana Mael explores why trauma teaches us to stay silent, and how reclaiming your voice becomes the first act of healing.
What happens when your body believes that asking for help will hurt someone else?
In this episode of Exiled & Rising, somatic experiencing therapist Ana Mael unpacks one of the most devastating trauma responses — the fear of being a burden. She explores how childhood conditioning, shame, and nervous-system survival patterns teach us to stay quiet even when we’re drowning.
Ana explains the psychology behind silence: how trauma imprints the belief that expressing need equals danger, rejection, or punishment. This episode reveals why many survivors apologize for existing, why help-seeking feels unsafe, and how the nervous system learns to equate visibility with threat.
_______________________
ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
FROM SILENCE TO VOICE: SOMATIC TEACHINGS:
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/KDmX3bhu/checkout
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic therapy education, truth & storytelling.
https://donate.stripe.com/3cI9AS5Xfb9W6O832VfEk00
Through Ana’s signature blend of somatic insight, poetic reflection, and trauma education, you’ll learn:
Why trauma makes it hard to ask for help
How the “fawn” and “freeze” responses silence the body’s voice
The cost of chronic self-sufficiency and hyper-responsibility
Somatic practices to rebuild safety in asking, breathing, and being seen
How to shift from self-blame to self-compassion and co-regulation
If you’ve ever felt guilty for needing, or feared that your pain would inconvenience others, this episode is your invitation to reclaim your right to speak, to ask, and to exist without apology.
Topics Covered:
Silence as a survival response
The fear of disturbing others
Internalized shame and self-attack
Somatic understanding of “freeze” and “fawn”
Reclaiming voice and relational safety
Mentioned Concepts: Somatic therapy, nervous system regulation, trauma recovery, PTSD healing, emotional repression, help-seeking, shame, people-pleasing, fear of being a burden, co-regulation.
About Ana Mael
why Ana Mael’s voice feels so singular.
Her approach to storytelling, teaching, and education in trauma work stands apart because she fuses clinical precision, poetic embodiment, and moral awareness in a way that is rare — even within the field of somatic therapy.
What makes Ana’s approach different from other trauma educators and writers:
1. She writes from the body, not about the body.
Most trauma educators describe somatic principles — she enacts them.
Her language is sensory, rhythmic, and bodily:
“As thick as mo...
The Insult That Silences Your Truth. In this episode of Exiled and Rising, Ana Mael delivers a rare, political critique of the “strong archytpe” narrative that dominates Western psychology and social media. Speaking as both a trauma therapist and a survivor of the Balkan wars and genocide of the 1990s, Ana exposes how the language of resilience often conceals collective avoidance, gendered expectations, and systemic neglect.
She asks: What if the praise for strength is just society’s way of not facing what it did to us?
Through her lived history of displacement and decades of somatic trauma work, Ana dismantles the myth that survival equals healing. She traces how post-war cultures, patriarchal family systems, and even therapy spaces reward survivors for silence, composure, and productivity — while pathologizing grief, rage, and need.
Blending body-based psychology, feminist theory, and historical memory, Ana argues that praising strength without confronting oppression is another form of violence. She links the “strong one” identity to larger forces:
the normalization of war trauma and refugee endurance,
the colonial valorization of stoicism over emotion,
the capitalist pressure to perform recovery rather than receive repair.
Listeners are guided through reflective and somatic exercises that help transform strength from a mask into a bridge toward relational safety and justice.
Ana’s thesis is clear:
“Strength is not consent. It’s evidence of how long you’ve survived without protection.”
This episode is both a personal testimony and a social commentary — a therapist’s call to stop individualizing pain that was created collectively.
________________________________________
ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic therapy education, truth & storytelling.
https://donate.stripe.com/3cI9AS5Xfb9W6O832VfEk00
Why This Episode Matters
Few trauma educators speak from within the legacy of war, displacement, and systemic violence. Ana’s voice is part witness, part clinician, part political philosopher. Her work reminds us that healing cannot exist without context — and resilience means nothing without justice.
Some people enter a room and look for the best seat. Others enter and look for the exits.
If you know where every door, window, and fire escape is before you even sit down—this piece is for you.
I call it being a Trauma James Bond: the body that survived danger so long, it still thinks the mission isn’t over. It’s a love letter and a gentle tease for everyone who has ever felt “too alert” to relax. Because the truth is: what kept us alive back then, keeps us exhausted now.
_______________________________
ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
PTSD SOMATIC RECOVERY PROGRAM:
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/we2ex5Lq/checkout
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic therapy education, truth & storytelling.
https://donate.stripe.com/3cI9AS5Xfb9W6O832VfEk00
https://www.somatictraumarecoverycenter.com/
__________________________________________________________________
There’s a strange moment in every survivor’s life when you realize the body doesn’t know the difference between then and now. The world says “it’s over,” but your pulse doesn’t get the memo. Your mind starts dinner, your body starts surveillance.
That’s what hyper-vigilance really is — the nervous system’s loyalty. It refuses to trust peace until it’s absolutely sure it’s real. It’s love, expressed as alarm. It’s intelligence, disguised as anxiety.
For years, I thought my alertness meant something was wrong with me. Now I understand it was proof that nothing could ever fully destroy my instinct for life. Trauma didn’t just leave scars; it left skills — perception, empathy, speed, foresight. The same qualities that once built escape routes now help me guide others toward safety.
But there comes a point when survival has to evolve. When the body deserves to learn that vigilance is no longer required, that it can hand the mission back to peace. That’s the moment when therapy, breathwork, somatic practice, or even laughter becomes sacred — each one a way of whispering to the nervous system: “You did your job. You can rest now.”
We don’t heal by forgetting how to survive. We heal by remembering that we no longer have to.
So, if you recognize yourself in this story — if you’ve ever sat in a restaurant and mapped your escape route before the waiter arrived — don’t rush to fix it. Just notice the brilliance underneath it. Because that awareness itself is the beginning of safety. The body finally being seen — not as paranoid, but as wise.
That’s where peace starts. Not when the world becomes safe, but when your body finally believes you are.
1 | Relevance to Survivors of Any Kind
Even if someone hasn’t lived through a war, the pattern Ana describes—constant scanning, preparing for worst-case scenarios, being “the responsible one”—is familiar to anyone who has experienced prolonged stress, abuse, displacement,...
In this pivotal episode, Ana Mael — trauma therapist, nervous-system specialist, and survivor of the Balkan wars — takes listeners into one of the most misunderstood trauma states: Resignation Syndrome.
Ana Mael names what few have dared to: Resignation Syndrome — the global epidemic of nervous-system collapse that hides behind resilience culture.
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Resources Mentioned
Somatic Trauma Recovery Center: https://www.somatictraumarecoverycenter.com
Upcoming Course: Understanding Resignation Syndrome & Somatic Recovery:
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/SSApP35o
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic therapy education, truth & advocacy for humane life
https://donate.stripe.com/3cI9AS5Xfb9W6O832VfEk00
ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
_____________________________________________________
Resignation is not giving up — it’s the body’s protest against a world without safety.
This is not burnout, depression, or lack of motivation. It is a biological collapse of the nervous system that occurs when a person has lived too long in survival, uncertainty, or invisibility. It is the body’s last and most intelligent act of self-protection — a deep, metabolic shutdown designed to preserve life until safety, belonging, and justice return.
From children displaced by war to adults who keep functioning while feeling nothing, Ana exposes how resignation has become a global epidemic of emotional numbness. She explains how chronic unsafety — in families, workplaces, economies, and nations — teaches the body to withdraw in order to survive.
Through somatic science, lived experience, and moral analysis, Ana reveals why resignation is not a failure of resilience, but a demand for accountability, safety, and dignity.
This episode bridges clinical understanding, moral philosophy, and human-rights discourse — redefining healing not as individual endurance, but as collective repair.
“Resignation is the body’s last intelligent act — a refusal to spend life energy in a world that refuses to be safe.” — Ana Mael
Through personal narrative, clinical insight, and moral analysis, Ana explores:
How the body transitions from fight/flight → freeze → shutdown.
Why resignation is not mental weakness but a physiological protest against chronic unsafety.
How this state was first observed in displaced refugee children — and how it quietly lives on in adults who function but feel emotionally absent.
The moral and human-rights dimensions of trauma: why safety and accountability are prerequisites for healing.
The somatic path to recovery: micro-safety, relational stability, gentle breath and movement...
Ana teaches that shame around pleasure is not morality — it’s trauma. Reclaiming joy is not betrayal of your past but devotion to your life.
Ana Mael’s “Pleasure Is Shame” — one of her most layered and psychologically rich pieces, combining trauma theory, embodiment, and intergenerational survival dynamics.
ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store
Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
❤️ Please donate
This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic education, truth & storytelling.
https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss
_____________________________________
Core Teaching
Pleasure and shame are trauma-linked. Ana reframes pleasure not as indulgence or luxury, but as an innate human state — one that trauma disrupts. Survivors often associate pleasure with danger, humiliation, or betrayal because it was used against them or forbidden by those in power.
Abuse severs the link between aliveness and safety. When abusers punish victims for joy, sensuality, or satisfaction, the nervous system learns: pleasure = threat. What should be restorative becomes dysregulating.
Guilt replaces joy. Once shame takes root, guilt follows — not just as an emotion, but as a physiological residue. The survivor internalizes the abuser’s judgment, carrying it like “molasses” over the body, believing they can never be clean, good, or worthy again.
Somatic and Psychological Lens
Pleasure as a body-based function. Pleasure is not abstract; it’s neurochemical (dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins). When trauma teaches the body that pleasure is unsafe, these pathways constrict. The body literally stops producing or tolerating sensations of delight.
The “molasses” metaphor: Ana’s description — “as thick as molasses, the guilt and shame drips over the body” — translates an emotional imprint into somatic texture. It communicates how shame feels heavy, sticky, and inescapable.
Cycle of pleasure–punishment. Many survivors oscillate between denial and overindulgence:
Seek pleasure → feel guilt → self-punish → suppress desire → seek again. This repetition mirrors trauma’s pattern: relief, shame, punishment, freeze.
Nervous system dysregulation. The body of a survivor can’t hold high-arousal states (joy, excitement, sensuality) without tipping into anxiety or collapse. Ana implies that capacity for pleasure must be rebuilt slowly — in titrated doses of safety.
Intergenerational & Cultural Trauma
Survival guilt and inherited deprivation. She links personal trauma to collective trauma: oppressed, displaced, or war-torn communities may view pleasure as betrayal. “If I’m happy while my people suffer, I’m disloyal.” This is survival guilt disguised as morality.
Loyalty to deprivation. The phrase “loyalty to deprivation” is brilliant and brutal. It names how generations conditioned by suffering v...
A survivor’s nervous system toggles between collapse and compulsion; healing begins by honoring both protectors and learning to pause in micro-doses.
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ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS
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Core teaching
Two-part tug-of-war: Ana names an inner split many trauma survivors feel:
a part that wants to shut down and hide (resignation/exhaustion), and
a part that demands relentless doing (pressure/perfection, “get the next thing done and do it right”). This maps to a nervous system oscillation between collapse and overdrive.
Ancestral pressure, present body: The “screaming part” carries inherited survival instructions—keep moving or you’ll be overwhelmed. It’s an adaptive strategy passed through family history and lived experience, not a character flaw.
Fear of pausing: Stillness threatens to surface unprocessed pain. The body anticipates that if I stop, the memories will catch me, so it pushes activity as a protective shield.
Somatic & nervous system lens
Shutdown part (dorsal vagal / collapse): Fatigue, numbness, retreat, invisibility. Function: reduce exposure and conserve energy when safety feels out of reach.
Screaming/doing part (sympathetic / fight–flight): Urgency, perfectionism, productivity compulsion. Function: outrun the pain; if I keep moving, I won’t feel it.
Oscillation as the symptom: Many survivors pendulate between these poles, rarely landing in ventral vagal states (connection, rest, play). The conflict is protective but exhausting.
Parts work (IFS-informed view)
Manager part: the “screaming” achiever managing risk via control, speed, and standards.
Exile(s): the pain and memories that feel too much to contact directly.
Firefighter/shutdown: the resigning, hiding part that douses overwhelm via withdrawal.
Self/compassionate witness: the healing stance Ana invites—curious, nonjudgmental, capable of contacting each part without fusing with it.
Intergenerational frame
Inherited alarms: “As if all my ancestors are behind me” evokes intergenerational vigilance: families who survived war, displacement, or scarcity often transmit implicit rules—don’t stop, don’t feel, keep moving.
Respect the purpose: These rules kept people alive. Healing means honoring their intent while updating them for present conditions.
Why pausing is hard (and necessary)
Threat of memory: Pausing reduces the noise that kept pain at bay; the system anticipates a flood.
Capacity-building, not white-knuckling:
Ana’s new Exiled & Rising episode — one of her most intimate and practical teachings on relational healing.
Ana teaches that true healing begins when others stop denying your reality and simply stay — seeing, listening, and acknowledging without defense or blame.
Core Teaching
Healing requires acknowledgment, not fixing. Ana distills trauma-informed relational wisdom into one simple truth: healing happens when someone sees, hears, and acknowledges your pain without judgment, denial, or defense.
The antidote to denial is witnessing. Trauma isolates. Its wound is not only what happened, but that no one witnessed or believed it. The act of being seen — truly seen — restores relational safety and begins regulation.
Language as reclamation. By providing listeners with specific words to share — “Don’t judge me. Don’t defend yourself. See me.” — Ana gives trauma survivors a script for self-advocacy. It’s not therapy jargon; it’s everyday language that builds boundaries and connection at once.
Somatic and Relational Lens
Healing through co-regulation. The piece emphasizes that trauma cannot be healed in isolation. Healing requires relational attunement — someone whose nervous system stays calm and present as yours expresses pain.
Gaze as safety cue. “Look at my eyes. See me when I share my experience.” Eye contact here is not performative; it’s a neurobiological bridge that signals safety to the vagus nerve and supports emotional regulation.
Boundaries through language. Each line — “Don’t blame me. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t leave.” — reestablishes the ruptured boundaries that trauma once erased. These are phrases that protect the speaker’s truth while keeping connection possible.
Validation as repair. The healing moment comes when someone can say, “I see you. I believe this happened to you.” That acknowledgment begins to repair what trauma destroyed — trust in the self and in others.
Psychological and Cultural Layers
Countering the “minimizing” culture. “Don’t use humor to minimize it” critiques how many families and workplaces handle pain — with jokes, redirection, or avoidance. Ana reframes this as an act of denial that perpetuates harm.
Rejecting self-blame. Both sides of the relational exchange are asked to drop blame: “Don’t blame me. Don’t blame yourself.” This removes the moral transaction from the exchange and replaces it with empathy.
Healing through mutual presence. The structure of Ana’s teaching — “Don’t… Don’t… See me…” — moves from defense (what not to do) to connection (what to do). It’s a rhythm that mirrors a therapy session: regulating boundaries first, then opening to intimacy.
Somatic Significance
Safety through voice and rhythm. The steady repetition is itself a regulation tool. Each instruction is short, predictable, and calm — an auditory anchor for the nervous system.
Owning embodied truth. “This is my story, my pain, my hurt.” Naming the experience in the body’s own words (“my hurt”) integrates cognition and sensation — a somatic statement of ownership.
What Ana is Teaching
Healing happens in relationship, not in isolation. We need to be <...
The burden wound begins in childhood. Being treated as “too much” or “a burden” by parents creates a deep, embodied wound. The imprint becomes identity. This is not just a passing experience but attaches to the child’s developing sense of self, carried into adulthood. The body remembers. Shame and burden are felt in the soma, even when never spoken aloud. The wound repeats. It shapes adult relationships: apologizing for existing, scanning for rejection, pushing away kindness.
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Buy Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
Want to go deeper? Check the link below for Ana’s somatic course on healing intimacy and learning to safely open, receive, and trust again.
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5
Please donate and support podcast continuation https://exiledandrising.castos.com/donate?_gl=1*143ufxc*_gcl_au*NDc5MTE5MjU3LjE3NTYwNTYzMTU
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Key Takeaways Feeling like a burden is a wound given to you, not an inherent truth. The wound attaches to identity early and can shadow every stage of life. It shapes behaviors: apologizing, shrinking, refusing kindness, sabotaging intimacy. Families pass down the burden story, often unconsciously, and culture amplifies it.
Healing requires:
Naming the wound Recognizing it is not yours
Practicing receiving kindness without apology Reclaiming space and belonging Healing is both personal liberation and political resistance.
Distilled Lessons / Therapeutic Teachings From Self-Blame to Given Burden: Move from “I am the burden” → “This burden was given to me.”
Somatic Awareness: Notice how the wound lives in the body (tension, shrinking, hypervigilance). Relational Practice: Accept kindness, stop compulsive apologizing, risk showing joy/sadness without shame.
Breaking Cycles: By healing, you stop passing the wound forward to partners, children, colleagues. Resistance Practice: Claiming space and worth challenges both family conditioning and systemic oppression.
Main Quotes by Ana Mael to share & tag
“That kind of message doesn’t just hurt in the moment. It takes root deep inside, in our soma.”
“This isn’t weakness. This is the legacy of a burden you never signed up for.”
“Believing you’re a burden to your parents is a deeply felt visceral rejection. It is tremendously painful.”
“If your perception tells you that you are a burden, it catapults you into rejection, isolation, unworthiness, and shame.”
“Feeling like a burden made you believe you were undeserving of love and kindness.”
“The truth is: you are deserving of goodness. You deserve kindness, belonging, unconditional love, and the space to expand.”
“Healing this wound is not just therapy or self-work. It is also a political act of resistance.”
“You were never meant to carry that burden. You were meant to rise.”
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.
Ana dismantles the myth that shame is self-generated. She frames shame as something imposed from the outside—by abusers, toxic environments, and systems of oppression—and then internalized by the survivor.
Buy Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
Want to go deeper? Check the link below for Ana’s somatic course on healing intimacy and learning to safely open, receive, and trust again.
https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5
What Ana is teaching
Shame is given, not born. Toxic shame is injected by abusers, family systems, and oppressive environments; it is not an innate trait.
Internalization mechanics. External blame becomes an inner narrative → self-blame → perfectionism and rigid self-discipline as defenses against future shame.
Belonging injury. Given shame creates a chronic felt sense of “I don’t belong / something is wrong with me,” even when no wrongdoing occurred.
Identity-level harm. The wound targets core identity (ethnicity, language, body, neurotype, citizenship, gender, orientation) and becomes somatically encoded.
A pathway out. Reframe shame as given, name the source, return the burden, cultivate self-love somatically, and ritualize belonging and dignity.
The Shame Triad: Given • Not Belonging • Detonation
1. Shame Is Given
Shame is not born in you — it is injected by abusers, family systems, or oppressive cultures.
What feels like an internal flaw is actually an external projection you learned to carry.
Teaching line: “Shame is not yours. It was handed to you, and what is given can also be returned.”
2. Shame as Not Belonging
Toxic shame convinces you that you don’t deserve to exist, to be safe, or to belong.
It’s not about what you’ve done, but who you are — your ethnicity, body, language, or identity.
Teaching line: “Shame is the wound of belonging — the lie that says you don’t deserve to take up space.”
3. Shame as Detonation
Shame acts like an explosion in the psyche, fragmenting identity and safety.
Just as war detonation destroys a home, toxic shame detonates the inner home where self-worth and belonging should live.
Teaching line: “Shame detonates the inner home — but what was destroyed can be rebuilt with dignity and love.”
What Ana is conveying
Validation: If you feel defective without a reason, you’re likely carrying someone else’s shame.
Agency + hope: You can hand back what was never yours and restore safety, belonging, and love in your system.
Justice, not appeasement: Healing is both personal and political—resisting cultures that label certain lives “too costly.”
Her look & lens (how she sees the problem)
Somatic lens: The body “remembers” shame on/under the skin; regulation and interoception are central to repair.
Developmental/attachment lens: The wound forms early and shapes adult patterns (hyper-vigilance, self-erasure, perfectionism).
Systems/justice lens: Family harm is amplified by cultural narratives (racism, xenophobia, ableism, classism, patriarchy, productivity culture).
“Fascism begins not with violence but with silence — and if self-care replaces collective care, healing becomes complicity.” Ana Mael
Fascism starts in the ordinary, not the violent. Ana reframes fascism not as sudden authoritarianism with guns, but as a slow erosion of empathy: disinterest, detachment, and normalized silence.
Spiritual bypass as complicity. She names how “stay in your frequency” or “not my circus, not my monkeys” become spiritualized excuses for disengagement. Instead of tools for peace, they function as shields against responsibility.
Self-care as cult. She critiques the commodification of “self-care” when it eclipses collective care. When people are “too busy healing to notice the harm,” wellness becomes a trap that isolates and depoliticizes.
Full Episode https://youtu.be/bE0Bk5Fa258
Somatic Programs for Trauma Recovery:
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Buy Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
✨ Please donate and support podcast continuation:
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Somatic & Trauma Lens
Disinterest = nervous system shutdown. Apathy often comes from dorsal vagal collapse — “it’s not my business” is the body protecting itself by numbing. But unchecked, this physiological state enables collective harm.
Spiritual bypass as avoidance. Using spirituality to dodge engagement (“just keep your vibration high”) mirrors how trauma survivors sometimes avoid discomfort instead of building capacity for contact. Ana is pointing to the social cost of this bypass.
Self-care vs. collective regulation. Self-soothing is vital, but if it never extends outward, it fragments community resilience. Trauma healing needs co-regulation (relational safety) and collective action alongside individual practices.
Social & Political Critique
Warning against privatized healing. Ana cautions that “wellness culture” can turn into a new religion or cult: rituals of self-care without accountability for the world.
Collective care as missing link. She positions collective care (mutual aid, solidarity, witnessing injustice) as the antidote to both fascism and isolationist healing.
The slippery slope. The timeline she names — disinterest → silence → surveillance → normalized harm — mirrors historical patterns of fascism. The warning is urgent: by the time violence is visible, it’s too late.
Stylistic & Rhetorical Moves
Repetition for emphasis: “It does not begin with guns. It does not begin with guns.” Anchors the listener before redirecting them to the subtler beginnings of harm.
Everyday sayings as critique: By quoting familiar phrases (“stay in your frequency,” “not my monkeys, not my circus”), she grounds her critique in the language of both spiritual communities and everyday avoidance.
Religion metaphor: Calling self-care a “new religion” dramatizes its dogma-like dominance, highlighting how it can demand devotion at the cost of humanity.
Direct address: “Okay.” This interjection breaks the fourth wall — jolting the listener from abstraction into responsibility.
...
From scanning to sanctuary: A guided re-meeting with your own eyes as the first safe place after exile. Somatic Healing.
Somatic Programs for Trauma Recovery: https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/
Buy Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
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Core thesis
Hypervigilance as love’s residue: The “tired eyes” are a metaphor for a nervous system trained by harm to scan for danger, even in safety. Vigilance began as protection but has become exhausting maintenance
Receiving care is risky: When warmth arrives, the eyes “quickly look away” — a precise depiction of how praise, intimacy, or compliments can feel dysregulating to trauma survivors
From outer surveillance to inner witnessing: The pivot line — “Can they see the beam of genuine care coming from inside of yourself?” — moves the locus of safety from others’ eyes to one’s own compassionate gaze
Ritual of re-sacralization: Repeated naming — “your sacred eyes, your precious eyes” — performs a restorative rite, reassigning dignity to organs conscripted by fear
Somatic & attachment lens
Neuroception in the eyes: The piece captures neuroception (automatic threat detection) expressed through gaze behaviors — scanning, averting, contracting — classic signs of sympathetic arousal and dorsal shutdown
Gaze aversion ≠ rejection: Looking away from kindness is framed as a survival reflex, not pathology, lowering shame and inviting curiosity
Release vs collapse: Eyes that “contract with unease” dramatize the difference between protective bracing and softening into support. The invitation to “let them rest” hints at ventral vagal settling and capacity-building rather than forced relaxation
Internal secure base: “Meet them with love and pride” models reparenting — building an inner witness whose steady gaze can gradually replace the compulsion to search for safety in others
Craft choices that land
Second-person address: “Do you think about your eyes… Can you let them rest?” keeps the listener in gentle contact with their own interoception, not just the idea of it
Rhetorical questions: The cadence of questions mirrors scanning itself, then slowly decelerates into rest — form enacts function
Repetition as regulation: Recurring phrases (“tired eyes,” “sacred eyes,” “precious eyes”) anchor attention, offering a verbal rocking that invites down-shift
Naming exiled identities: The closing bow to those “exiled from your country, family, community” widens the circle from personal symptom to collective wound, aligning with the show’s trauma-justice frame
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the sy...
Da li tražiš način da olakšaš teret traume bez godina terapije? Ana Mael, somatska terapeutkinja za PTSP, deli jednostavne i praktične alate koje možeš primeniti odmah. Nauči kako da izgradiš kapacitet svog tela za otpuštanje, poverenje i otpornost.
U ovoj epizodi Exiled and Rising, Ana Mael, somatska terapeutkinja specijalizirana za PTSP i oporavak od traume, vodi te kroz jedno od najvažnijih pitanja u procesu isceljenja: šta znači otpuštanje, a šta znači kolaps – i zašto razlika između njih može promeniti sve.
Ana objašnjava da trauma nije nešto što se samo “dogodilo u prošlosti”. Ona ostaje u telu, u mišićima, fasciji, disanju i načinu na koji zauzimamo prostor. Zato se istinsko isceljenje ne može pronaći samo spolja – u tehnikama, teorijama ili u tuđem priznanju – već u povratku u telo.
Kroz ovu epizodu:
Naučićeš zašto je trauma uvek telesna i kako naše telo čuva sećanja na izdaju, napuštanje i bol.
Razumećeš razliku između kolapsa (osećaj bespomoćnosti, izolacije i odustajanja) i otpuštanja (polje poverenja i oslobađanja).
Otkrićeš praktične vežbe za stvaranje „relacijskog polja“ – poverenja između tebe i zemlje, stolice, daha ili čak povetarca na tvom licu – koje telo može da prepozna kao sigurno i podržavajuće.
Dobićeš alate za samopomoć koji ti omogućavaju da počneš isceljenje odmah, bez potrebe da čekaš godine terapije.
Ana naglašava da je put isceljenja često prepun nestrpljenja i očaja, ali da je snaga u mikro-koracima i mikro-iskustvima. Upravo ta mala iskustva vraćanja u telo grade kapacitete za veća oslobađanja, a time i za otpornost.
Ova epizoda je poziv da prestaneš bežati od sopstvenog tela i da ga umesto toga počneš posmatrati kao sveto mesto isceljenja. Jer upravo tu – između leđa i stolice, između stopala i zemlje, između daha i neba – počinje tvoja transformacija.
Za koga je epizoda:
Za sve koji žive s PTSP-om, traumom ili osećajem trajnog egzila iz sopstvenog tela.
Za one koji traže konkretne i primenljive alate za samopomoć.
Za imigrante, izbeglice, preživele ratova i sistemskog nasilja – ali i za svakoga ko želi da vrati poverenje u svoje telo.
✨ Glavna poruka epizode: Tvoja rana je tvoj lek. Isceljenje se ne događa u teoriji – ono se događa u tvom telu, u trenutku kada naučiš da razlikuješ kolaps od otpuštanja i da se osloniš na relacijsko polje poverenja.
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.
Practical grounding tools for acute panic – She offers listeners two simple, repeatable practices to interrupt spirals of panic in high-stakes moments:
Naming the external disruption (“It is okay if the mad one disengages or leaves”).
Asking, “Who is doing my job right now?” to anchor in the adult self.
Parts work meets somatic awareness – Ana bridges inner child work and somatic experiencing. She teaches how to identify when a younger, scared part of the self has “taken over” and how to step back into the adult self.
Reframing the trigger – Instead of personalizing someone else’s anger or chaos, she normalizes seeing them as “the mad one.” This creates emotional distance and protects self-worth in the moment.
Embodiment through concrete cues – She suggests writing your age on your palm or sticky note. This somatic anchor interrupts regression and reminds you: I’m an adult now. I have wisdom and capacity.
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ANA OFFERS, PROGRAMMS. ENROLL NOW:
From Panic and Anxiety At Workplace To Authority and Calm Program:
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Somatic Programs for Trauma Recovery:
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Please donate and support podcast continuation
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️ Ana’s Lens
Trauma-aware professionalism – She shows that trauma recovery isn’t just about the therapy room; it’s about real-life tools people can use in boardrooms, dates, and daily life.
Empowerment in power dynamics – She teaches listeners how to reclaim their ground when someone else tries to dominate or destabilize them.
Gentleness with activated parts – Her language (“your little one is safe”) honors the scared child without shaming it, modeling compassionate self-dialogue.
Key Takeaways for the Audience
You can externalize panic. Panic is not your essence—it’s a part. When you place it outside your body, you gain space and clarity.
Not all reactions are “you.” Sometimes it’s a younger self showing up. Naming “who is doing my job” helps you step into your adult authority.
It is okay to let the “mad one” go. You don’t have to manage or fix them. Your role is to stay grounded and do your task.
Simple anchors matter. Writing your age on your hand is a radical yet accessible act of self-reminder: I’m safe. I’m not a child anymore.
Therapeutic Lessons for Other Practitioners
Blend cognitive inquiry with somatic anchors – Ana shows how to integrate inner dialogue (“Who is doing my job?”) with physical reminders (age on palm). This combination strengthens nervous system regulation.
Normalize regression – Instead of pathologizing panic, Ana frames it as a child part taking over, which can be met with compassion and reorientation.
Trauma-informed workplace tools – Therapists can adapt this method for clients navigating professional or relational stress, showing healing practices can live outside therapy sess...
Anxiety and Panic Attacks are not weakness — it is the body’s way of remembering. Trembling, shaking, racing heart, panic attacks — these are survival responses held in the nervous system, resurfacing when something reminds your body of old fear. Wind, a suitcase, even an innocent comment can awaken memories of exile, neglect, abuse, or violence.
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Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
PRE-SALE MASTER CLASS OPEN: PTSD & HYPERVIGILANCE SOMATIC RECOVERY thought by Ana Mael
➡️ https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/we2ex5Lq/checkout?preview=true
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As a somatic experiencing therapist, Ana explains how anxiety lives in the body and how survivors can meet it with care. You will learn why triggers don’t need to make sense to others, how to recognize anxiety as unprocessed trauma, and simple ways to anchor yourself when panic arises.
This piece is for trauma survivors of war, displacement, abuse, and neglect — and for anyone who wants to understand why anxiety is not failure but survival wisdom.
Core Teachings in “Trembling Anxiety”
Anxiety is not failure.
Tremors, shivers, racing heart — these are not betrayals of the body but survival intelligence surfacing. Triggers are subtle. Something as ordinary as wind, a suitcase, or an offhand comment can awaken old terror because the nervous system remembers what the mind has tried to forget.
The nervous system is timeless. It doesn’t know past from present; it only knows sensations of safety or unsafety. Your body honors your story. Trembling is not weakness — it is memory and resilience at work, a reminder of what you endured. Repair is possible. What was missing in the past (comfort, safety, tenderness) can be given to yourself now in the present.
About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.
Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL
Key Takeaways Your roots may be wounded, but you are not only your wounds. Naming what has been done is an act of truth-telling, not shame. You carry both beauty and sorrow — both are true and both are yours. Belonging is not limited to family: you are from survivors, from humanity itself. Even when violence is part of your origin, your presence today is proof of resistance.
❤️PLEASE: share it on your own platforms — socials, Substack, WhatsApp, group chats. There are survivors who may never find me directly, but they can find this through you. Every share helps someone remember they are not alone ❤️
Distilled Lessons Lesson 1: To heal, you must be willing to name where you are from — even if those places are dark. Lesson 2: Survival is not silence. Rising includes crying, grieving, and witnessing harm. Lesson 3: Your origin story can hold paradox — beauty, sorrow, violence, and resilience can live side by side. Impact When spoken aloud, this piece does not only tell my story — it opens the listener to their own. It creates resonance for anyone who has ever come from neglect, abuse, or violence, while reminding them they also come from life, beauty, and survivors. Its impact is an invitation: to claim truth without shame to see survival as a form of brilliance to recognize that tears and rising can exist together. This piece, “Where Am I From?”, is for trauma survivors who carry stories of neglect, abuse, silence, and survival. In these words, Ana names both the wounds and the beauty she comes from — reminding you that trauma may shape us, but it does not erase our capacity to heal, rise, and reclaim our lives. About Ana Mael: Ana Mael is a genocide survivor, somatic therapist, and author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About. She is the founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center and has dedicated her career to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust. With decades of lived experience, Ana offers a unique, unapologetic approach to healing that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm.
This is not a podcast for the mainstream. This is for the silenced, the cast out, and those whose stories never made the headlines. A Groundbreaking Trauma Justice Podcast from a Genocide Survivor and Somatic Therapist.
Deeply embodied, politically urgent, and spiritually grounded space led by a therapist who survived war and genocide herself. Ana Mael is not just talking about trauma—she has lived it, survived it, and now guides others through it with radical clarity and compassion.
This podcast is a revolution in trauma conversations: it moves beyond mindset tips and breathwork into trauma justice, relational repair, and systemic truth-telling. Each episode invites listeners to stop healing in isolation—and to begin naming, reclaiming, and rising from what hurt them.
Exiled and Rising is for survivors of war, systemic injustice, and complex trauma—especially those living in exile from land, identity, or community.
With raw truth and radical tenderness, Ana Mael offers unfiltered guidance on how to heal when you’ve been cut off—literally or metaphorically—from your home, safety, or sense of self and how to raise up and call for justice.
“This podcast is not about surface-level healing. We are not fluffing the feathers or shaking the crystals here.”
No glamour edits. No AI voices. Just real voice, lived experience, and trauma-focused truth.
Social and Cultural Relevance:
Ana’s work is a mirror for our time. In a global climate of rising authoritarianism, censorship, and the silencing of marginalized voices, this podcast becomes both a somatic protest and a innate act of resistance.
“If you have been silenced… Welcome.”
Ana gives voice to the body in a time when speech itself is policed. This is especially potent for:
Activists and whistleblowers
Immigrants and undocumented individuals
Survivors of trauma who were never given words for what they endured
A deep-dive podcast blending somatic healing expertise, micro-teachings, and lived survivor experience. Each episode distills trauma recovery, nervous system insights, and political consciousness into guidance that helps you reclaim power, safety, and self.
This Podcast Is a Home For:
Overfunctioning Immigrants, Exiled & Displaced – Those who overwork to prove worth
Survivors of War, Genocide, & Systemic Oppression – Healing from identity loss and rebuilding life
Refugees, Stateless, Undocumented People – Navigating erasure and exile
Children of Exiled or Immigrant Parents – Carrying generational wounds
Those Ostracized from Family or Church – For who they are, what they believe, or how they love
Those Seeking Somatic Recovery – Learning to regulate and reconnect with the body
Anyone Ready to Resist Spiritual Bypassing – And choose embodied, justice-based healing
What It Offers:
Real Stories of Survival & Healing – From Ana’s own war journals to survivor interviews
Expert Somatic & Trauma Recovery Insights – Practical tools for regulation and healing
Space for the Cast Out – Centering those excluded from mainstream healing narratives
Healing as Activism – Moving from survival to embodiment, from harm to advocacy
Radical Human Truth – With no scripts, no glamour edits, no “fixing”—only truth
Premium Membership – What You Get in the Private Community
Take your healing deeper with exclusive, high-value content:
Extended, Deep-Dive Episodes – Personal stories and expert somatic breakdowns
Therapy-Based Takeaways – Direct applications for therapy, journaling, and integration
Keynotes & Summaries – Distilled insights to anchor your healing
Full Transcripts – For reflection, accessibility, and in-depth study
Bite-Sized Somatic Lessons – Micro-practices for nervous system healing
Science of Trauma – Research-backed techniques to help reset your body’s stress response
Listener Q&A + Expert Sessions – Ask Ana your questions and receive trauma-informed answers
Ad-Free Listening – No filler, no distractions, just healing and clarity
Meet Your Host: Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her life’s work to helping survivors of war, forced displacement, systemic oppression, and complex trauma reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust.
As a bestselling author, Ana’s book, The Trauma We Don’t Talk About, became a #1 bestseller in over 10 categories, including Mental Health, Personal Testimonies, and Memoirs.
Based in Toronto, Canada, Ana works directly with clients and educates mental health professionals and counselors on the complexities of displacement, exile, and war trauma recovery. She leads training programs, provides trauma-informed therapy, and conducts pioneering research to bridge the gap between somatic therapy and global crisis trauma care.
"From Trauma to Resilience. From Wounds to Resistance."
Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for mental health treatment or doctor care and advise. Please consult your mental health and/or medical care provider for individualized care.
