Conscious Relationships: Mama Healing Trauma

A Richer Life

During this episode of A Richer Life, host Rich Weingart speaks with Cassandra Solano, who works to impact people’s lives by addressing hidden trauma that could be holding them back from their potential.

Cassandra is a licensed clinical social worker in California and a conscious relationship coach helping people get unstuck in love via online coaching in the US and Internationally. She has been counseling since 2006 in various settings from drug treatment to mental health clinics. She's been in private practice for over a year helping people identify how their childhood trauma is impacting their adult relationships, break unhealthy patterns and heal. She is sober over 15 years, a survivor of childhood emotional abuse, sexual abuse, domestic violence, narcissistic abuse and uses her personal and professional experience along with spiritual tools to help clients transform their lives. You can find her hanging out on instagram @cassandra_solano

Cassandra dives into her first-hand experience of how damaging a chaotic childhood can be to the latter parts of your life, herself growing up in an unhealthy household. Self-development is a lifelong process, so the best time to start is now!

Episode Highlights:

• Cassandra has quite the background story that led her to make an impact in people’s lives
• Growing up in a bicultural home played a large part in who Cassandra is today
• Micro-direct trauma shapes our nervous system which lays roots into every other part of life
• A faulty blueprint exists in the world of what a real man should look and act like
• Cassandra’s parents both experienced their own individual traumas that were brought about by their upbringings
• Trauma extends between generations as the caregiver naturally imprints on their children
• Every individual has the right to decide whether or not they want to forgive the trauma that their parents have bestowed upon them
• Recognizing that childhood trauma can be hard to wrap your head around but can also explain so much
• The ACES study showed the links between parental conditions and health problems later in life for the children
• Emotional abuse and neglect show their head in different forms for everyone
• Childhood trauma will show itself in relationships later on in life
• Children and adolescents will turn to stressful strategies as a method to overcompensate for what they are missing at home
• Drugs and alcohol are an easy escape from the pain of a traumatic reality
• Trauma is inherited by younger generations at both a relational and biological manner
• Cassandra went through an emotionally abusive relationship that ended in a necessary divorce, for her children’s sake
• Different seasons of life require different forms of self-development and foundational elements
• Self-development is a lifelong process that affects you and those in your life
• If your nervous system is in a disruptive mode, it will show up in your perceptions and behavior
• A bottom-up approach, nervous system to thoughts, will allow you to set the right foundation for a change in your life
• Learn to listen to what your body is trying to tell you before your brain messes it all up
• Self-awareness is vital to successful communication in a relationship
• Many people go into shut-down mode, which leads to poor decision-making and blurs the thought process
• Moving from the dorsal state to the sympathetic state to the ventral state
• Life happens every single day, so be aware that - you will change states as your deal with it
• To be vulnerable and share your feelings means you must learn how to be safe

3 Key Points:

1. The World puts pressure on both men and women to behave and conduct themselves in certain ways, and that pressure can turn into damaging trauma if not dealt with in the correct way.
2. Intergenerational trauma is the reason that so many children experience the same emotional problems that they went through. At both a relational and biological level, trauma is imprinted on children and affects them as they grow older.
3. Self-development is a lifelong process, If you can find a way to change the relationship between your nervous system and your perceptions of relationships, the world, and life in general, you can begin to live in harmony of both body and mind.

Tweetable Quotes:

• “Understanding what our parents went through and their trauma doesn’t mean we have to give them a pass or excuse them for not doing better...it is every individual’s right to decide to forgive their parents or not.” - Cassandra Solano
• “Just because I was born to these parents that had PTSD in their bodies, that it had affected them biologically at a cellular level, I already came out the shoot, kind of, wound tight.” - Cassandra Solano
• “The normal thing for humans to do is to repeat patterns without much consciousness of why they’re doing it.” - Rich Weingart
• No matter how much you struggled in relationships, you can heal, find clarity, and learn the skills to have a healthy relationship.” - Cassandra Solano

Resources Mentioned:

• The Grinch - Movie
• Cassandra Solano’s: Website | Instagram