Intergenerational Trauma and Intergenerational Healing in Eating Disorders with Sam Dylan Finch

[Music] welcome to taking up space the podcast with conversations exploring what it means to inhabit our bodies fully without shame or apology and reconnect with our innate wisdom to find healing and body Liberation I'm your host Cassie keski a licensed clinical social worker and certified sex therapist for over 10 years I've worked with folks to reclaim their bodies their inner knowing and their lives in a world that often seeks to diminish their voices and experiences through personal stories expert interviews and candid discussions with guests will impact the societal norms and expectations that interrupt our embodiment like trauma oppression illness and pain and the social constructs of gender race sexuality Beauty health and weight My Hope Is that through this podcast we'll learn to drop into our bodies and occupy space physically emotionally relationally and intellectually with confidence and authenticity so join me as we challenge societal Norms explore what it means to find wholeness and reclaim our right to take up space as an act of resistance and body Liberation while this podcast might feel therapeutic it is not Psychotherapy and doesn't constitute a therapist client relationship this is a good time to mention too that this podcast will at times use adult language so listener discretion is advised hey there welcome to another episode of taking up space today's conversation is really special and important to me we're talking with Sam Dylan Finch about his body story The eating disorder he has recovered from and the impact of intergenerational trauma and intergenerational healing Sam Dylan Finch is a writer content strategist and Daydreamer leveraging the power of digital media to inspire hope and challenge stigma Sam is a recognized and trusted Voice Within mental health media having reached millions of readers worldwide after his first of many viral articles back in 2014 since then Sam's unique combination of lived experience and authenticity alongside his journalistic expertise has led to memorable culture shifting moments across the web his work has not only shifted attitudes around lgbtq plus identity and neuro Divergence but also has brought compassionate and necessary depth to so many stigmatized conversations and I think that's really evident and demonstrated in the conversation I'm going to share with you today so as I mentioned today's episode is going to focus on intergenerational trauma and I thought it would be helpful before we dive into the conversation to provide a bit of a baseline around what intergenerational trauma is so intergenerational trauma refers to the transfer of trauma from one generation to the next it happens when the effects of trauma experienced by individuals or communities are carried forward through family or social structures societal structures affecting the mental emotional and even physical well-being of future Generations this type of trauma can show up in various ways influencing behaviors beliefs coping mechanisms and physical health so Eating Disorders being one of those coping strategies which we're going to talk about in today's episode so for instance if a previous generation went through significant trauma like War genocide Force displacement or cultural oppression the psychological scars from those experiences can linger and impact the behavior and mental health of their descendants this trauma can be passed down directly through family Dynamics such as parenting Styles or communication patterns or indirectly through societal factors like discrimination poverty or systemic Injustice that disproportionately affects certain communities so recognizing intergenerational trauma is really critical for addressing the enduring effects of historical injustices and developing strategies for healing and resilience within affected communities so as I said Sam and I are talking about intergenerational trauma here specifically as it relates to his story and his unraveling and uncovering of what this looks like in his life and the relation ship with food and his body and his story has so many layers to it including how an eating disorder can be a form of cultural assimilation for immigrant communities and the way that it can help folks try to gain proximity to whiteness so thanks so much for listening and I really hope you enjoy my conversation with Sam hey Sam welcome to the show I am really excited that you're here and so Sam perhaps we could just start with you sharing a little bit more about who you are and what you do yeah so in I'd say this all kind of started for me in 2014 I had started a Blog called let squar things up I was fresh out of college I was kind of in an era of figuring out my own story but unexpectedly within a few months of launching a Blog that only like some of my friends were reading that blog went absurdly viral like six Mill views viral yes and then I kind of realized that there was something really healing about sharing my story being seen and navigating that story and so I've been telling little bits of myself ever since then yeah and we'll put your blog in the show notes I mean it's an incredible resource yeah I launched a new one too I'm trying to figure out what to do with that as as well oh okay great great could you share a little bit more about your body story to our listeners and how it informs the work that you do now yeah I mean there's been so many versions of my body story to be honest because I think it's just the onion that continues to unravel but yeah I think the simplest version of it is that probably for my entire life I've had some kind of conflict with food and body I think when I was really young that showed up as quote unquote picky eating very restrictive eating and then in my teen years that kind of morphed into something that looked more like anorexia and I think the thread throughout that too that I'm really coming to understand a lot better is that there's recent immigration in my family so on my mom's side my grandpa slash ancestral line goes very far back to an island called Malta which is in the Mediterranean Sea a lot of people will probably understand it as being kind of close to Sicily and that was just a part of my story that I really didn't appreciate until quite recently I knew that there were folks in my family that were just intensely fat phobic I knew because I'm embedded in a lot of Ed recovery spaces I understood fat phobia and its connection to white supremacy I didn't fully appreciate the function of my eating disorder as like assimilation into this particular culture that's been a thread where I look back and I'm like ah I was there the whole time wow uh so I really relate now to a lot of my eating disorder as being kind of an extension of the trauma that happens with immigration so that's been like something I'm coming to understand more deeply and then also I am transgender and I won't say that I always knew I won't say that I was born this way I don't always feel the urge to explain where it even came from that's something that just kind of came to the Forefront when I was probably like 19 or 20 so yeah lots of different threads there but I think that ultimately the one that is really alive for me right now is really understanding that assimilation piece and understanding the function of the eating disorder not just for myself as an individual but just seeing remnants of it all over my family system and I think there's an age piece too because when I look look at my great-grandmother for example who was constantly like eat versus some of the folks who are younger and maybe have generational differences that pressure to assimilate looks different who pretty much were scared to eat so there is that like tension too that I think is woven in but yeah super casual body story nothing deeper serious yeah right I would love to hear more about eating disorder as assimilation in this immigration story of your family can you share a bit more about that yeah I mean I feel so silly sometimes when I think about it because I think this is just like my theory I think for white people in particular who are often like very divorced from a sense of culture and ancestry that's not always the first explanation we go to even those of us who are really embedded in social justice spaces who know logically that like white supremacy is woven into the ho of it I don't think I fully appreciated immigration and its function in my story and in my eating disorder until I worked with a therapist who kind of slowed me down and was like wait a minute there's immigration recent in your family can we linger there for a minute I was like oh why right wasn't on your radar yeah when you looked at it some other things started to come through for you yeah and I think it's interesting because Malta as a place is like really hard to understand at least from my perspective because growing up I was in this big maltes family hearing the language spoken all the time like eating the foods being connected to the local maltes club in Detroit malt people generally when they immigrate somewhere else they tend to move in groups which I'm sure is true of a lot of immigration but especially because Malta is such a small country comparatively right we like tend to form these really tight-knit communities wherever we go and so that was kind of the environment in some ways it felt like I was in this bubble on the weekends growing up where I was like this is the maltes bubble that I'm in and I grew up in Leonia Michigan which one of its only claims to fame really is that at different points in US history was one of the whitest cities in the country right and a lot of my family was in Southwest Detroit when white flight happened I mean that's the basis Bonia as a place yes and so when I look back at this family history it's all baked in right is that I have recent immigration my family from Malta Malta in and of itself from my perspective I can't speak for like all males people but it has a very complex history with respect to maltes people being racialized or not so kind of a little bit of a history lesson I'm not like a history buff but I think it's helpful context Malta at different points has been considered part of the Middle East and North Africa Mina but I think about 20 years ago it was lumped into the European Union it's considered a European country and what's interesting about Malta too is that maltes is a Semitic language so when most people hear it and when most people see a maltes person speaking maltes sometimes it gets associated with Arabic and Arabic speakers and so in my experience I think there's been this interesting song and dance of malti folks not necessarily wanting to be racialized there's a tension there yeah and it's interesting too because I've spoken to folks who have been to Malta like as students who were outside of like maltes culture who often talk about the fact that sometimes when they would speak to a malti person about Middle Eastern ancestry the individual that they were speaking to jump out of their skin there was like this tension of not wanting to be associated with anything Mina like we don't want that there's like a disowning that kind of happened and obviously you can't speak this way about every malti person but there's a tension there that I think is important and the reason I bring this up in the context of eating disorder and body story is that as I started to explore like what was at play for me I started doing a little bit of like Research into not just my family history but Malta as a place and I learned that for example one of the quote unquote jokes that are sometimes made about multis men is that they are short brown and round and right in there is baked all of this tension around racialization body size wow masculinity it's all baked into it right there and that's at the surface and it's interesting because a lot clicked into place when I heard that phrase yeah the ways in which like my mom said at one point when I was a kid there was like a I guess like a beauty pageant at the local malt club and I think it was my mom that said something like oh you should totally enter like you have blue eyes little comment oh wow H yeah and then I think fat phobia is such an interesting thing at play here too because I looked into some of the public health information about Malta and it really says so much there was was something that I was reading where there was this individual who's not maltes but they're analyzing Malta as a European country and there was this commentary it was like it's weird because and I'm paraphrasing obviously they're like it's weird because they're supposed to have a Mediterranean diet but they're the fattest country in the European Union and then speculating on why and they were saying things like it seems like maltes people like don't seem to understand that being fat is bad oh wow and that right there I was like that's the whole thing for me because I can remember great-grandmother being like eat food is connection food is like what brings us all to the table food is culture food is all of these things and then you would have more recent Generations more quote unquote Americanized folks in my family who were terrified to eat who are constantly warning me don't eat too much don't get fat you don't want to be fat like us like all of this kind of language so yeah zooming out I'm just like it's all right there so much of this fear of fatness so much of even this clinging to whiteness and proximity to whiteness all in this effort to assimilate to the US it feels so there that it makes me kind of chuckle of like how long it took to get there but also it kind of makes sense that it took a while to come into that knowing both because I think again for white folks especially we're not encouraged to do that investigation amongst ourselves or in some ways I think that I've talked to a lot of white folks who will talk about their ancestry I'm such a mud I have so much everywhere and I'm like follow the thread though it's interesting that it's all just quote unquote exotic lumped together not examined I feel like in a lot of ways it makes sense that it wasn't a threat that I pulled out very much because I think I had the same kind of almost like dissociative relationship to ancestry where it's I knew it was there but I think it doesn't help to that in adulthood I moved away from my family and was essentially like removed from my culture at the same time because I was not in close proximity to like the malti club and I wasn't in close proximity to malti people or malti food and so in a lot of ways there's also this like diasporic tension of like just being plucked from that I think as a survival strategy too like I had to treat that part of my identity like it wasn't important to me because I felt like I couldn't access it anymore there are so many layers of H it's all right there it's just taken a long time to come home to that knowing and to really appreciate that and this is obvious to me on a logical level but on a felt sense it's very different to me now of just yeah the the function of the eating disorder and its relationship to white supremacy I mean folks of color say this all the time of you have stake in this you have skin in the game you just don't realize it yes and I just am continually relearning that over and over again of I am not separate from this and in fact like when I think about this in the context of my eating disorder I'm like oh this is life or death not just for people of color not just for it's that othering that actually was not only not helping me in terms of allyship or being an accomplice but it also just wasn't helping me as a human on the earth trying to heal from these wounds the function of that othering is so real um and that's kind of been the process of unra uning um particularly I think one of the hardest parts of it is just I feel that because Malta is a smaller country I can't learn maltes on du lingo there are just certain things where I'm like I can't access certain parts of this just because of the ways in which I've been disconnected from these things there's just an added layer of almost alienation of I have to try my best to learn these things on my own there's that tension there and also this is just this tells you probably everything you need to know about that tension is that that when I try to Google certain things about being multi I get the dog breed and not like the people oh like wow yeah and that's a thread too I think is just again that sense of like disconnect of not having access to my lineage culture like having that disconnect because I don't want to frame it as oh because I moved this is what happened uhuh yeah I moved reason too but yeah I just think that that kind of like alienated Lial sense of to be a part of something and outside of something at the same time is also like a piece of wrestling with this and how much can I claim to know or how much can I claim certain parts of this when I also feel so disconnected this is also why I'm so grateful to have a therapist who really emphasizes like holding Multicultural experiences because she's the one who really ushered me into looking at this because again I felt disconnected and almost was almost traumatic in and of itself to realize how much I had to disconnect from these parts of myself yeah right I just think this is such a I love when you said follow the thread I think this for everyone right and Sabrina strings workor did such a beautiful job and laying the framework for us to think about how anti- fatness is antiblackness and seeing how white supremacy operates in our relationship with food and body and like finding yourself within your own your locate yourself in your own ancestry your own lineage and what was your proximity to this like this conversation is really missing from so many aspects of disordered eating treatment and body story and I think as you said specifically for white folks who have just been so divorced and have separated and disconnected from so much of that but to really lean in and look in that there's I hear profound opportunity for not just individual healing but there's that Collective healing right and like how we all have our Liberation caught up in each other yeah yeah and that's stuff that I really appreciated again in the cognitive way of oh that tracks that makes sense but I think I was still relating to that as an outsider and I think that was such a big part of following that thread was realizing like oh I'm right at the heart of this yeah always' been there and in fact it is a function of white supremacy for me to continue to view this as me being on the outskirts of something that is by Design yes yes and what ways was I not showing up and I say this without judgment with total neutrality of in what ways was I not like showing up and what ways was I not stepping up in the sense of relating to this as Outsider inherently let me off the hook in some ways or in some ways too I think it shows up as disconnection in relationship too like when you have this dichotomy of I am Ally you are marginalized person I'm like rarely is it that dichotomus actually and in fact I think that's what's so interesting about the history of Malta and maltes people is that in some ways like we're bumping right against the edge of whiteness like in for a lot of folks I mean like I I know that for some malti people I should add this disclaimer because I think it's important not all malti people are white not all malti people consider themselves white there are malti people who really struggle with knowing where they occupy these kinds of spaces I personally consider myself white for a multitude of reasons but I think the best way that I can kind of help people appreciate the distinction at least as it exists in my experience is that for my older brother I have a brother who's two years older than me and we've jokingly said like he got a lot of the malti jeans like he has the darker hair the slightly darker complexion but I've often told folks I think it's interesting that when he is pulled aside at the airport for example which happens often yeah laughs about it I think he doesn't and I can't speak for his experience obviously but as like a person who has witnessed this I think for him when he laughs about it it's because the situation there's almost this idea it shouldn't be happening to me like ha he the wrong guy like there's just not like a stake in it there's like a disconnect from it there's a privilege in it of like I don't know that he's experiencing the kind of fear that other folks in that situation are experiencing based on how they've been racialized and so I feel like there's a piece of this where I want to acknowledge I can't speak for all multis people but I think in terms of unpacking what does whiteness even mean in this context yeah I think a lot about it in terms of just stakes and fear and what's been imposed on you and the sense of threat and I move through the world without that sense of threat which I think is Meaningful but it's interesting because I think that Malta as a place there's so much baked into its history both in terms of it has been colonized and occupied over and over again as an island as a place and part of why maltes is a Semitic language is because there was like Arab rule during a period of maltes history and what's interesting is that most of my family is from rabot and I didn't know for the longest time that rabot like as a word is MTI or multi SL Arabic for suburb it was like established when quote unquote Arab occupiers were driven out of the capital city and it became a suburb like that's my understanding of that history which again not a history buff but as I like do my own in investigating yeah it's been fascinating to have the story that I knew versus the history that I'm learning and putting those side by side and looking at again that like distancing from racialization that clinging to whiteness as it functions and how the story was told versus the history that's there and even then trying to access that history in and of itself can be challenging when a lot of websites I'm finding are in multis that I can't read and all of that but yeah I just I think that when I think about the ways that I show up differently now just like in the work that I do in the world I think it's like breaking down those dichotomies of Ally versus marginalized and realizing that in terms of the different Stakes that we have and different struggles like you were saying in terms of like our Liberation being bound I understood that logically but I'm really feeling it like on a body level when I look at oh even my own like ancestry and history and looking at like this push and pole of are we or aren't we who are we what is our relationship to our history what parts of our history do we claim what parts of our history do we bury all baked into it and I think it's what makes like Malta uniquely interesting to look at because it's like a lot more at the surface than I think it is for other parts of my ancestry where that history just looks different because of powers at b or not Powers at B Powers at play and in particular just the repeated colonizing of this particular place it just calls into question what does it even mean to be multis when it's been yeah yeah Tak over so many times yeah and yeah it's just interesting I think to kind of try to sort through that and in some ways to do that somewhat alone right now because of who I have access to and yes where people are in their own Journeys and understanding these things yeah I mean where my mind is going is in a lot of eating disorder spaces we talk about an eating disorder as a strategy a survival strategy and that's really been an individual kind of process in the micro environment which is still valid and true and this opens it up I think for the broader intergenerational significance that this survival strategy has had for your lineage for your people and I'm curious for you as you kind of sink into your own eating disorder process and Recovery like how this knowledge has shifted things for you whether it's in your own personal story within your family context I mean what does that look like for you I think a big part of it I even get chills thinking about it of just being like this isn't mine this didn't come from me this didn't come from my family this is not mine I think reading some of the like public health quote unquote information that was out there about folks outside of Malta trying to understand why we eat the way that we do or why we relate to food the way that we do it was all right there of finally appreciating and understanding yeah they're convinced that people just don't get it we just don't know that it's bad to be fat clearly if someone just educated us we would know and I was just like where have I heard that before yeah yeah right yes and realizing oh this doesn't belong to us this was put on us and in fact it is clearer now when you see Malta which at different times has been thought of as being part of mina now that we're a quote unquote European country now that's put on us looking at that tension point of oh they just don't know they don't get that it's bad to be fat they don't get that what they're eating is wrong and watching that in real time really as like a quote unquote Public Health campaign when really all I can see it as is just like white supremacy in action like really and truly and seeing that more clearly was like both a call the action of oh unacceptable but also just personally healing because I could separate out what belonged to me and what didn't what belonged to my family and what didn't and I could look at for example members of my family who have really struggled in a fat body and often said things to me as a child that were quite ominous about you never want to be fat you don't want to get like this don't want this as constant tension and warning and I've had different stages of relating to that initially I think not unlike a a cycle of grief of just initially just being like H why would they say that to a child that's horrible then kind of coming around and being like being in a fat body is incredibly traumatic so of course that anxiety is spilling over all over the place yeah it's kind of like that Meme of the brain gradually becoming more expanded or Cosmic I've finally come around seeing the even more present layer to this of look at where they came from and look at what's happening to how multi people are being told they should feel about their bodies about food and where that comes from yes go Upstream yeah and realizing that's all inherited and realizing like where it came from for them it's not even theirs it's not even that they're in a fat body in the United States and that means something it's all those other layers it's all of those other layers that are there and it's been really important for my ability to just process those experiences to understand like this isn't ours and that also opens up the possibility of okay then what is and so remembering my great grandmother and how important it was that we had these big potlucks all the time for any and all reasons of everyone bringing food and everyone gathering around like the longest table you can imagine because it was a huge family remembering that there was something so delightful about when I was younger you would see this stretch of all the different foods that people brought and that moment before I knew to be self-conscious before that came in and just being excited for all of the possibilities the tasting that process knowing that there other ways to relate to food other ways to relate to connecting over food there's something else and I think that realizing that I could reclaim those things opened up so much possibility for not just like recovery but just for healing as a human in the world yeah and also coming back to like cultural Foods too I mean like I was a kid with arid and some of that came out in these sideways ways of I'm terrified to try this cultural food because none of my friends were eating it and I just had this idea of oh it must be really weird and so also now that I'm in a different place both with arfid but also just my journey in disordered eating I've been able to come around to the idea of what if I made these Foods myself what if I tried to do that what if I start with the foods that were kind of okay and then try some other ones because ultimately con with those Foods is a way of connecting with my family and my history and that's one of the things where there I think there's a a tension sometimes of like really wanting to honor some of the more arid like things of there's nothing wrong inherently with my nervous system and my body saying not this not now I don't want to push where it doesn't make sense to push but this is a really good example for me of where I wanted to challenge some of the aridness in that yeah this is actually going to open up hopefully a way of connecting with family and culture again that I was not able to before and knowing when I want to dip my toes into that and when I don't obviously centering my autonomy not doing exposure for exposure sake but being really clear when something is in service of my healing and connectedness versus when something is just like in this medical Paradigm of you should eat that or you should be able to eat that just chke it down and try there's a world of difference between from a centered place I want to connect with this part of myself versus the medical Paradigm says that you should eat this kind of food so get on it world of difference yeah I think as we talk about intergenerational trauma like this is right hear the intergenerational healing that you're exploring here too and this Reclamation of your ancestry and your culture and like how do I want to reconnect with that I'm curious one of the things that you have written about is just how you've befriended your eating disorder and I feel like this is kind of like right next to what we're talking about here and I wondering if you could speak a little bit more to your thoughts around how you have a shift in your relationship with the eating disorder itself yeah I mean I've been through many eras of like how I relate to the eating disorder and I think in the initial stages of just realizing I had an eating disorder it was important to me at the time to to treat the eating disorder as this discreet other that like I needed to get rid of I think there was a function to that story I think I needed to better understand what was authentic to me and what wasn't and I needed to look at the things that were harmful about quote unquote disordered eating and not necessarily disown that but really distance I don't want this and I didn't understand for a long time that I could identify the things that I wanted to shift or change without treating them as bad I think that was like a different step in the process I think initially the eating disorder was Edward the eating disorder was like this kniv jerk who was trying to trick me into doing things I didn't actually want to do was like waiting in the wings for me to like [ __ ] up in recovery so he could swoop in and bring me back into chaos land and oh my gosh I feel that so deeply yes yeah it's just the way that it was presented to me which was often in treatment settings like formal treatment settings was that like my eating disorder was an enemy that I needed to be battling and that it almost implied like you can't rest you have to be constantly Vigilant this is going to get you if you don't fight yeah and in some ways again creating that distance between what is me and what are parts of this that I no longer want to carry into the next part of my life like creating some spaciousness there as a function but I think for me it went too far because particularly as a trauma Survivor I think the last thing I needed was to be told you need to be vigilant hello that's what I was living totally yes yes and so basically telling me Oh there's an abuser that lives in your brain or however it was like positioned at different points in some ways it just stoked this paranoia and this fear and most importantly a lack of self trust and for me I just I don't see a lack of self trust as being like tenable for the types of healing that I want to do because so much of being a a Survivor so much of being a human in the world like so much of the harm that I experienced related to not having self trust and not grounding into like my own knowing my own authority like my own being like thinking that I had to find the answers from someone else thinking that the entire like world around me was unsafe unless someone dictated what I would do or where I would go like a lot of the abuse I experienced growing up was like high control environment of what you are and aren't allowed to do where you are and aren't allowed to be who you can talk to who you can go to like high levels of control and so to have the eating disorder kind of framed as a part of me that couldn't be trusted was essentially taking my power and putting it in the hands of the clinicians and the treatment team and the care team because they became the ultimate Authority on what could be trustedid instead of placing that trust back in me and saying what is authentic to you and what isn't and if you don't know yet that's also okay we can investigate that can be found that can be reclaimed that was the healing that I needed and I think initially especially early in recovery so much of it was framed as this battle between the untrustworthy unsavory eating disorder lurking in the shadows and then there was me trying to fight it and it also just didn't give me permission to ever rest or just say I've fought and I can't right now yeah the idea underlying that was like if you lapse if you pause if you take a beat like Edward's going to come in and ruin everything you can't rest you can't pause you can't question you have to keep fighting you can't let even like the tiniest bit of slack come into play and ironically like one of the things my parents said to me growing up as justification for some of the like really outrageous ways they behaved was this idea that we give you an inch and you take a mile there was never flexibility there was never spaciousness there was never room to mess up there was never room and knowing how many of us with eating disorders struggle with perfectionism yeah this essentially is a narrative of perfectionism I'm like how many of us are being held back in our healing because we're now relating to recovery as this perfectionistic I can't waver kind of thing and so often in treatment I would see other clients saying things like I just don't have the motivation right now what am I supposed to do I just don't have it in me right now what do I do and they became so singularly focused on like finding their motivation again and I was just like wait a minute do you feel safe never mind if was asking that question yeah it's like the wrong question in my mind I'm like do you feel safe do you feel heal do you feel carried you can't be like high energy motivated driven all the time especially if you're malnourished forget it who among us but I just kept thinking I'm like is that the right question I don't know and I think it's taken a really long time to realize oh there needs to be something else for me here and I'm grateful to have found that and to have had people around me supporting me and figuring out what that narrative looked like and was but sometimes like it is like quite unsettling when I think about how the quote unquote recovery narrative was harming me like really and truly like feeding into a lot of the same stories and fears and anxieties that I had trauma like it's just so rooted in that yeah yeah you know my experience with that too and my own treatment was with the other side of perfectionism was is okay I know the rules of treatment so I'm going to perfect those rules like I'm going to just click right into that this other outside Authority which was just misplacing it outside of myself again so I see like all the sides of how it can be really damaging it really limited my ability to move through like the healing that I really needed to do and I know one of the Frameworks that I think you've referenced in your writing is internal family systems or looking at your parts of self how that has been such a transformational lens to support your own process can you share a bit more about that for you yeah I mean I love talking about Parts work in part because I didn't get it when I first encountered it made no sense to me yeah he asked like how old is that part and I'm just like what do you mean yeah and for a while the conclusion that I drew was like I'm too autistic for parts where I'm like I'm being too literal about this that's why it's not making sense but in actuality I think I came back around to Parts work I think some of what needed to happen for me I did the safe and sound protocol which is like a poly vagel music based Intervention which really locked in a bridge between mind and body that I didn't have before oh wow that's and so Parts work prior to SSP was like bewildering to me I was like I don't understand this after SSP I was like showing up to therapy and I was talking about Parts work without talking about Parts work like it integrated without me even noticing and I remember my therapist at the time was like we haven't done Parts work and I was like yeah I did that with my last therapist and she was like you told me you didn't like it and I was like yeah I didn't and she was like but you're describing it to me right now and so some of it I I realized I was like I think some things needed to shift internally before this really sunk in for me like integrating what I knew was such a big struggle in my healing and the safe and sound protocol was a big part of integration for me so I never want to leave that part out because I think that I know a lot of autistic folks are like Parts work isn't for me I take it too literally it's too hard to understand that may very well be true and also I would get curious about what parts are you getting stuck on if you're treating it as this intellectual exercise still how present are you to the work that you're doing which is not your fault it just may mean you need a different tool yeah it's a good need a different entry point but Parts work became really powerful because once I had the integration piece where I wasn't showing up to it as like an analytical exercise I was actually showing up in a more embodied way it made all the sense in the world to me I was like oh every part of me makes sense that was like the most profound realization one of like probably top five in terms of things that have changed things for me is every part of you makes sense because for such a long time I was like when I would look at instances of self harm or look at instances of big feelings or emotions I always had this Frame around it of yeah I was just being really irrational I just kept coming back to I'm just being irrational I had this belief that if I reached a certain threshold with my emotions I just became irrational and again I'm like where have we heard this before I can hear a few different threads in there not the least of which is like this Mass totally and so I had this belief that being too emotional makes you do crazy things and that is not a self-loving self-compassionate way to look at these different parts of myself but I thought it was like the only way but I think Parts work helped me arrive at an understanding that every part of me was trying to survive whether or not the things that I was doing or engaging with ended up being like the most helpful the most supportive debatable but at least in their Origins they were an Earnest attempt to protect me and in some ways I don't always immediately know how that is functioning but it has been incredibly healing to start to go back in time and look at okay if I'm giving myself the benefit of the doubt here that I'm not just a crazy irrational over emotional too much human being and that what I was doing was genuinely in service of my survival then I can get curious about okay how did that serve me what was the function and I think there's like the perfectionistic part of me that was like why didn't optimize for the best way to do this and it's I think I think it's like human nature that when we're in distress we're not optimizing our coping strategies in fact we're reaching for what is most reachable in that moment accessible yeah and so I think like understanding that just so much fell into place where I was just like oh I don't need to be ashamed I don't need to be self-hating I I can actually just honor that all of these parts of me were really and truly doing the best that they could with what was available and again a couple years ago I could have told you that logically but the felt belief conviction I it really comes back to a combination of having really good therapy to kind of make sense of the story and I think the safe and sound protocol helped me integrate it in a felt way it was almost like i' planted all of these seeds in therapy and SSP was like this rain cloud that came in and was like you just need like a gentle rain for things to break to break ground and I think that for some people that's SSP for some people that'll be like sematics there's some embodiment piece that I think is so necessary to drop in yeah yeah I think that part was hard to access especially just given the amount of surrender that requires is so antithetical especially for trauma survivors who were in high control environments you're asking me to drop you're asking me to fall you're asking me to do this trusting work and that felt so impossible to do for such a long time but so necessary because I don't think that I could be in anything other than fight or flight until I learned how to trust myself in some ways I do think that's the big I don't know the big lift that I had to do in a lot of this I hate calling it work because it work kind of diminishes some of the joy and Mischief that I think is present kind of flattens it but yeah Mischief is yes so true yeah I think accessing self trust yeah has been continues to be so pivotal for everything that I want to be and do in the world yeah joy and Mischief I'm hanging out to that that's really Landing for me it's a good therapy screener if you're looking for a therapist to ask them like where's the joy that has been like more helpful than what modalities do you practice how long this client population like I love asking like where's the joy in this and even what about this is spiritual to you like how do you Orient to this like spiritually that has been way more in finding that attuned relationship yeah so Sam for folks who are listening and they're starting to have some curiosity around their own exploration and their own ancestry or how they're relating to even you know their families now and how they want to in Usher in some intergenerational healing I mean are there some places that you might recommend people to start and we can list up more in the show show notes I know you have a a whole bunch but just some things you might want to name here yeah I mean I struggle because so much of this for me came out of the right therapeutic relationship yeah and so much of this too I think stems from being in community with folks who were already doing this and I think I struggle I'll say this clumsily but I think it's important to acknowledge being in relationship with people of color who have reckoned with these things because they had to versus I didn't quote unquote have to it just hits different I think like there's like a credit where credit is due kind of thing and I say the same thing about my eating disorder recovery and fat activists who reckoned with these things because they had to yes and before I was in a fat body which I recovered into a fat body which is a really important piece of this for me is that I couldn't have even gone there without fat people being on the other side saying no really you can find safety here the world may not be safe for you but we can protect you and this as much as we can protect each other in community and similarly like when I was unraveling things around immigration and ancestry and racialization like that groundwork was already laid and so much of that groundwork was my therapist being like wait a minute how are you just casually mentioning this is in your family system but we've never talked about this and then also just like having close relationships with folks of color who were constantly pushing me and saying decolonize that hey wait a minute play that back say it again but look at it through this lens I also think that there's been a sort of magic in finding right community at right time rooted Global Village it's like an online community that I've learned so much from being in like digital spaces where a lot of this like work is just baked into the community yeah rooted in particular has been really amazing Kai Chang Tom recently did a series about Edge play as she describes it and really coming up against those edges of one's comfort zone yeah and I was able to do this work with so much more clarity because I was at the same time going these workshops about like Edge playay and realizing like oh I'm coming up against an edge how do I do that safely like Within Myself yeah and again it just comes back to the folks who had to do the work to survive laying that ground work and I think for anyone who's like how do I like figure this out it's who on the peripheral of your community already had two if there's nobody there go figure out why that's very yeah that's a good question too yeah if they're not in your orbit why um and if they are in your orbit obviously I'm not saying go DM your friend of color saying like how did you reckon with all of this please don't yeah yes right but for folks who have publicly shared pieces of their Journey for folks who have embodied the things that you're coming up against those edges that you're looking at that can be a really strong compass and I think that I feel very fortunate that what started as almost the logical thing to do of I need to expose myself to like diverse perspectives I don't think I appreciated how much that was going to save my life I think think I was viewing it through strictly like social justice lens of I need to educate myself I need to show up folks I think I underestimated it will save your [ __ ] life because like the folks who have to do this to save themselves obviously like that in and of itself makes it valuable important but it goes back to what you were saying earlier about if it's not all of us getting free it's none of us and this is exactly why like I could have recovered into a fat body if there hadn't been fat people saying no really you can and I couldn't have looked at not only like the parts of my ancestry that help me feel connected but the parts that make me feel ashamed I couldn't have taken in the whole of that without folks of color who laid the groundwork both like in a scholarly like theoretical way but also in an embodied way this is how you come right up against the edge of Shame this is how you come up right against the edge of whiteness or the edge of socialization like this is how it's done and to realize oh I had more of a stake in this than I really understood and I mean understood not just cognitively felt sense all the way to my toes like that kind of like grounding into that truth like credit to the like communities that had to do it so that those of us who have been waffling about trying to figure out our stake in it yeah yeah that path is already worn down that's them think the important thing and me kind of accessing that in a respectful way was to realize oh there's already a path here why yeah there's already a path here and not just being like oh great somebody already created path let me like Waltz through and walk it but really appreciate wow this is a really Worn Path why also why am I like at the tail end of walking this instead of being at the front like asking all of the like other dimensional questions to this cuz I think there's also a risk here of I think for white people in particular who are like coming into this who are like I want to know myself like great zoom out though what is it for yeah and I think that again it's yeah the path is worn why and I think that has been important for me staying in my Integrity when I start to look at these things when I like follow folks on social media or I'm reading a book or an article like really appreciating what it took for that to come into being that knowledge being like not just oh I learned this cognitively which is again you can hear like the white supremacy inherent in that way of relating to it I think that's also why with rooted Global Village like this is where I learned about like sematic abolitionism which has been really huge in me kind of understanding like how do we embody politics really like when I feel that path worn underneath me not just being like cognitively oh it is because marginalized folks have had to come into knowing this way because of the violence enacted on them as if like I'm reading from a textbook it's feeling the path like feeling it physically and being like what did that cost and can you like tap into your own Humanity when you understand to The Limited extent that you can what that cost is and how do you go about honoring that in a felt way not just like a citation needed kind of way yeah I mean it makes me think about the honoring of fat ancestors that we all have right whether or not we're connected in a blood bloodline right like the folks who've gone before To Tread the path and honoring that so deeply it's beautiful do you have time for one more question yeah okay just wanted to check with you what does it mean to you now to take up space H it's funny I had an immediate answer to that which like I love when that happens it's not abandoning myself and I think for a long time I had this idea that self-abandonment was selfless and then taking up space was selfish or imposing but I think one of the things that has really helped me kind of understand why moving away from self-abandonment is so important is like this question of presence if I've abandoned the parts of myself that make me human desire wanting fear like all of it like when I abandon those parts of myself to kind of rehearse what I think people want from me how present am I and I think the world that we live in which is very much on fire like demands presence demands being in touch with everything that makes us human not losing our Humanity to these systems so how present am I in relationship with others if I've abandoned myself when I think about taking up space it's like being in touch with all that makes me human and not abandoning suppressing pushing disowning parts of me that are very human and I think it's possible to show up in relationship wholeheartedly not abandoning ourselves and still being kind and attuned and attentive and in fact I feel more love and more empathy and more Connection by showing up wholeheartedly than I ever did in a place of fawning and appeasement and I think that surprised me and sometimes still does and I think it just comes back to the world demands your presence the world demands it and that doesn't mean you owe the world a certain version of yourself yes I just think when we're for those of us who are constantly like circling around this question of like how do we make the world better how do we show up like how do we tend to the fires that continue to blaze I have to keep reminding myself like it it does require presence it does require direct contact with what makes us human and I think when we fall into narratives of like shame or we fall into like avoidance of certain parts of I don't want to feel that I don't want to need that I don't want to want that it becomes like really dangerous territory I think because we lose contact with the parts of us that are also connected to our integrity connected to our essence or the things of us that are true and uninjured I think that it's dangerous to abandon ourselves in a world that really needs us to be present and I think on a spiritual level too I'm like even if the world didn't need me wholeheartedly like I need me wholeheartedly all those past versions of me that fought for me to be here need me wholeheartedly and deserve me wholeheartedly and I think when I look at like the wounds of my parents or my family system or my ancestry it all just comes back to that question of what did we disown what did we stop claiming what did we forget what did we push away how do we come back into knowing how do we come back into contact I think that's like the essence of taking up space is like how do we come back into knowing and I mean knowing with capital K oh yeah yes yeah that's like a felt KN that's not just yeah right casual stuff Dam I have loved this conversation you're a bright light and I'm so grateful to you for being here and sharing from your own story and offering that to all of us and how it will Propel folks hoard in their own exploration and embodiment if folks want to find you and see what you're up to how can they do that where could they do that these days I'm mostly on Instagram under Sam Dylan Finch I do have the old blog let's queer things up.com I'm not sure what I'm doing with it now I haven't there's a new blog it's called from a brave shore.com where I'm hting like more of the I guess like I'd call it maybe a little more woo than what I've historically done but really and truly just Googling Sam Dylan Finch or whatever your preferred search engine will pull something up and as I've been saying follow the thread like whatever calls to you I'm in multiple places yeah thanks again Sam and to everyone listening I hope you find your own thread and take up a little bit more space this week yeah cheers to that thank you for listening to taking up space I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found it to be a resource for you in your own embodiment healing and body Liberation journey I hope you can continue the conversation with me over on social media by sharing your thoughts offering your ideas and suggestions for future episodes or just connecting you can find me on Instagram @in Atlas therapy if you liked this episode and want to support the show Please Subscribe rate and review the show in your preferred podcast platform and share this episode with a friend this ensures that more people can find the Pod and will amplify our message of body Liberation for all if you haven't checked it out yet I have a free taking up space workbook available this workbook will have you engage in self-reflection and embodied practices as you navigate your own journey of taking up space you can find this free resource on my website inner Atlas therapy.com I'll also Link in the show notes some additional resources I've developed in my online shop to help you deepen into your own embodiment healing and body Liberation work thanks again for being here and until next time I hope you join me in the resistance and find some ways to take up space this week I'll see you next time