Podcast Highlight: Dr. Rachel Greenberg
“The awareness leads to clarity, clarity leads to empowered choices, and choosing differently from our past experiences and allow us to live into "authentic congruence" which Dr. Rachel Greenberg defines as "identifying our own reality, our own core essence, we let it emanate, we let it exude from every part of our lives in every area of our lives."
Dr. Rachel Greenberg is a Clinical Psychologist committed to a new form a healing, that integrates the spiritual. She meets her clients where their beliefs are to ensure that the soul and spirit are cared for as much as the body and mind.
Dr. Greenberg's work is heavily focused on healing trauma, creating congruent authenticity and an embodied human experience. Dr. Greenberg uses a variety of integrated healing modalities from both Eastern and Western traditions like Attachment Theory and Science, Intersectional Feminist Theory, Internal Family Systems, Buddhist Psychology, Nonviolent Communication, Mindfulness and Depth Psychology.
In our interview Dr. Greenberg defines trauma for the audience and the many forms it can take and addition the severity. She encourages the listeners to create awareness around their own lived experiences to discern if they have an encountered a traumatic event, but maybe have not realized it as such. Trauma can be a spectrum, Dr. Greenberg talks about trauma that is more insidious, less obvious but just as impactful as big "T" trauma like veterans of war.
This insidious trauma can present as: "emotional invalidation, being overly criticized, caretaking that was unstable, distant or chaotic, or [an environment]that required you to abandon your sense of self. Then there is all these complexities that happen at a societal level, like cultural trauma, historical trauma that we have inherited, and there is intergenerational trauma, and relational trauma.
“Many of these overlap and dance together, ultimately its this experience that some part of the system on some level (or all, or multiple) is unsafe or threatened in some way and that confronts it with its own mortality."
Dr. Greenberg continues to say, "that the practice of cultivating awareness is the first step and being a gentle loving observer of your past, and that in and of itself is spiritual." The awareness leads to clarity, clarity leads to empowered choices, and choosing differently from our past experiences and allow us to live into "authentic congruence" which she defines as "identifying our own reality, our own core essence, we let it emanate, we let it exude from every part of our lives in every area of our lives."
“Living from that place, creates a beautiful byproduct of being an empowered individual in a society that does not encourage or celebrate that.” Dr. Greenberg goes onto to say “if we live from that place, we can create radical self-obligation.”
Dr. Greenberg doesn't shy away from the fact that addressing old wounds and trauma can be messy, difficult, and even challenging at times. There is also the shadow and parts work one might tackle in their healing. Our shadow being the parts of ourselves we do not want to look at, like the part of us that binge eats, or drinks in excess, or sabotages relationships. Then there are the parts of ourselves that are wounded and exiled.
The parts we reject about us or the parts we think are not worthy of love. (Dr. Greenberg defines parts work in the interview, also know as Internal Family Systems). But what Dr. Greenberg wants you know, amid the weight of the healing process is that if you listen to yourself, invite honest compassion in, honor your your journey and your inner resilience you will find resolution, integration, and be able to live in an empowered state of being.
Healing and spirituality go hand and hand--our awakening is inextricably tied to awareness that allows the light of compassion to look at past wounding and trauma and seek the healing we need in order to fully integrate and become a full expression of who we are.
