Trauma is more than rejection; it is the erasure of your presence, voice, and needs. You learn to yield, avoid conflict, and suppress your own desires and identity.....show note bellow.  If this episode resonated with you, please take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with others who might need to hear this message.   Episode Summary: In this powerful episode of Exiled and Rising, host Ana Mael explores the "Wound of Non-Existence"—a deep and often unspoken trauma experienced by those who have been silenced, erased, and forced into invisibility by authoritarian systems, cultural oppression, and systemic displacement. Through personal stories and insights from years of working with trauma survivors, Ana sheds light on how this wound shapes identity, relationships, and self-worth, and how to begin the journey from exile to reclaiming space.

Ana personifies the internal battle of trauma survival: one part of the self is exhausted and wants to collapse, while another part — fueled by inherited trauma — screams for vigilance and relentless productivity. The piece exposes how trauma fragments the self and turns survival into a conflict between shutting down and never stopping.   Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL Structure of the Piece Naming the conflict – “Two conflicting parts live in my body.” The exhausted part – wants to hide, withdraw, shut down. The screaming part – hypervigilant, inherited, demanding, ancestral pressure. Why the screaming exists – to prevent collapse into memory; to guard against devastation. The unspoken center – what lies beneath both is the unspeakable: “my body will remember what has been done to me.” This simple structure mirrors the inner oscillation trauma survivors feel every day. ✨ Distilled Lessons / Key Takeaways Trauma splits the self. Survivors live with opposing inner forces: collapse vs. hyperdrive. Exhaustion is not weakness. It is the body’s cry for retreat and safety. Hypervigilance often feels ancestral. The pressure isn’t only personal — it carries the voices of family, culture, and lineage. Avoidance of rest is protective. The inner “screaming” part isn’t cruel — it fears what might surface if the body pauses. Memory lives in the body. Trauma is not erased by silence; it waits, and the body carries it. Impact For survivors: This piece names what so many feel but cannot articulate: the exhausting push-pull between collapse and compulsive activity. It validates that the “inner war” is trauma, not weakness or failure. For therapists/allies: It’s a compact teaching in parts work, nervous system states, and intergenerational trauma. Ana models how to externalize and speak to parts with compassion. For general audiences: It bridges psychology and poetry, making the inner mechanics of trauma legible. Somatic and Psychological Depth Collapse vs. Hyperarousal: This maps onto the polyvagal states — dorsal vagal shutdown vs. sympathetic activation. Survivors oscillate between these extremes. Parts Language: Echoes Internal Family Systems (IFS), where different “parts” of self take on protective roles. Inherited Trauma: The “ancestors shaking me awake” speaks to epigenetic trauma and cultural memory, echoing current science showing trauma markers can pass across generations. Avoidance as Protection: The “screaming” part knows that stopping risks flooding the survivor with unbearable memory — this reframes avoidance as a protective strategy, not failure. Wider Cultural Resonance Work culture & burnout: Many live with the same inner split — exhausted but unable to stop. Ana connects personal trauma to cultural conditioning (never rest, always perform). Collective trauma lens: Her “ancestors shaking me” line ties personal exhaustion to historical survival demands — war, migration, oppression. This echoes Indigenous, Black, and diasporic voices...

Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL Why is it so easy to give — but so hard to receive? If you struggle to accept love, help, compliments, or even pleasure, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because trauma wires the body to equate receiving with danger. In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael — Somatic Experiencing Therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery — explores how trauma, shame, and cultural conditioning teach survivors to make themselves invisible. Safety once meant giving without asking, serving without needing, and hiding desires. But over time, that survival strategy leaves you cut off from joy, intimacy, and vitality. You’ll learn: Why trauma makes receiving feel unsafe and giving feel easier How shame and guilt around desire are passed down through families, cultures, and communities The link between visibility, vulnerability, and intimacy struggles Why denying your needs robs you of vitality and intimacy How to begin practicing receiving — love, joy, touch, pleasure — without shame Ana reminds you: “It’s not because you don’t know how. It’s because someone shamed the desire out of you. Healing is reclaiming the right to receive.” This episode is especially powerful for survivors, couples struggling with intimacy, and anyone who has ever felt guilty for wanting more joy, love, or support. 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 _________________________________ ✨ Distilled Lesson Healing intimacy and aliveness means reclaiming the right to receive. Trauma teaches that safety lies in invisibility and giving, but true vitality, joy, and intimacy return when survivors practice visibility, desire, and receiving without shame. Core Teachings: Trauma disrupts the capacity to receive. Survivors often default to giving and serving because receiving feels unsafe and vulnerable. Visibility = danger in trauma memory. Being seen — asking for help, naming desires, or expressing pleasure — recalls experiences of ridicule, shaming, or abuse. Safety was found in becoming invisible. Guilt and shame around desire are intergenerational. Families, communities, and cultures (especially those shaped by war, displacement, religion, or communal trauma) often impose narratives like “how dare you ask?” that suppress joy, pleasure, and individuality. Self-denial leads to loss of vitality. By refusing to receive — even something as simple as a compliment, help, or joy — survivors cut themselves off from nourishment, pleasure, and life-force. Healing begins with remembering who harmed you. Naming the source of shame helps survivors separate their authentic desires from inherited guilt. From there, they can practice receiving small moments of joy, touch, or support. Main Quotes “A life of trauma damages your ability to receive. Instead, it is easier for you to give and to serve others.” “When you express your desires, your dreams, and your pleasures you become open and vulnerable. With trauma, openness and vulnerability feel unsafe.” “How many times were you made to feel guilty for wanting?” “You are worthy of receiving and expressing your desires.” “When you stop yourself, remember who harmed you — and notice they are not with you now.” 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 t...

 This piece is for every survivor of abuse, including those whose pain is resurfacing now with the release of the Epstein files.  ❤️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 ✊❤️ Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL   You’ve been forced to carry silence, disbelief, and erasure for too long. May these words remind you: what was taken can be reclaimed. Not through them, but through you. A word on tone (“revenge”) The word is hot on purpose—it captures energy often shamed in abuse survivors. The piece wisely translates that heat into lawful, values-aligned reclamation (peace, body, work, travel, friendship). That’s the difference between rumination and constructive agency—and it’s safer and more sustainable. 1. Validation of Magnitude Abuse survivors have described not just isolated acts of abuse but a network that stole years, relationships, careers, innocence, and safety. Ana’s piece says: “Count it. Name every single thing that was taken from you.” That practice validates the truth that abuse doesn’t just harm in the moment — it robs across every domain of life. For survivors, seeing this named and honored is deeply validating. 2. Reframing Anger and “Revenge” Survivors often feel anger that society wants to silence — especially women survivors of powerful men. “Get your revenge” here reframes revenge away from destruction and toward reclamation: “Dammit, I will have my peace back. Even for five minutes, I’ll reclaim it.” For abuse survivors (many retraumatized by delays, denials, or by seeing names in the files without full justice), this offers a constructive outlet: rage becomes fuel for building life, not just a fire that burns them inside. 3. Small Wins Against the Weight of Power Facing a machine as large as Epstein’s network, it’s easy to feel powerless. Ana’s piece lowers the bar: “Even five minutes. Even now.” That’s trauma-informed. It means survivors don’t need to wait for a courtroom or an institution. They can start reclaiming immediately — step by step, inside their own lives. 4. Embodied Repair Epstein survivors talk about how abuse fractured their connection with their bodies — their sense of safety, sexuality, freedom. The piece explicitly says: “I will reconnect with my body and make it strong.” That’s a direct somatic invitation: a reminder that the body can be rebuilt as a safe home. 5. Breaking the Shame Loop Public attention to the Epstein files means survivors risk being reduced to “evidence.” They’re seen through the lens of crime, not life. Ana’s piece flips the frame: survivors are not just case studies; they are people with joy, trust, creativity, careers, friendships — and they have the right to reclaim all of that. That shift is huge: it restores identity and humanity beyond “victim of X.” 6. From Oppressor-Centered to Survivor-Centered The Epstein story and any other is often told through the names of powerful men, with survivors in the footnotes. This piece pulls the focus back: “Count your losses. Make it your quest. In spite of them.” It’s not about abuser or “them.” It’s about survivors reclaiming what was always theirs. Parallel to that, the broader evidence base—and survivor organizations—reiterate the lifelong impact of sexual abuse on health, trust, relationships, and body connection, which is exactly the terrain Ana inventories and targets for reclamation. Intersection, concretely: Ana’s “count what was taken” mirrors the cultural moment of naming and documenting harm (legal files, testimonies, survivor-led archives). Her “micro-wins, now” reframes public outrage into private recovery steps—what survivors can do...

We live in pandemic of injustic and injustice doesn’t disappear when ignored. It embeds itself in the body — in exhaustion, in sickness, in silence. Ana Mael wrote "With Smirk, Injustice Spoke Back" to give Injustice a voice. Not an abstract idea, but a force that grows when denied, minimized, or dismissed. Injustice speaks through our nervous systems, through our relationships, and through the systems that profit when we turn away from each other. T his is a spoken word poem and somatic monologue about what happens when Injustice finally answers back. It is raw, embodied, and prophetic — a reminder that healing cannot happen without truth, and justice cannot be ignored without consequence. If you’ve ever felt ignored, denied, dismissed, minimized — this piece speaks for you. If you’re drawn to spoken word poetry that confronts truth, this performance will resonate. If you’re interested in trauma healing, somatics, embodiment, or social justice, this is for you. ⚡ If this piece speaks to you, please share it widely. Someone who needs to hear these words will find them through you. Second part will be released soon. Subscribe and you will be notified. Poem ( please link back to this video if you are using it on your platforms ). With Smirk, Injustice Spoke Back ( by Ana Mael ) You said: Ignore it. Deny it. Withdraw. Dismiss it. Walk around it. Justify it. Minimize it. Just don’t deal with it. And Injustice said back: The more you ignore me, the more you deny me, the more you withdraw from me, the more you dismiss me, the more you minimize me— the more I will grow. I will rise. I will scream louder into your vanishing face. As if you haven’t sickened already. And then I will catch you. I will suffocate you and whisper in your face: You ignored me. You denied me. You walked around me. You dismissed me. You justified me. You minimized me. You refused me. As you hover in that place of almost-death, I will stop time so you can feel what it means to live forever in the “about to die” state of life. For every hour, every day, every week, every year you witnessed me and still ignored me, denied me, withdrew from me, dismissed me, justified me, minimized me— I will make you feel it back. I will destroy you with your own poison— not with fury, not with speed, but with waiting terror. The same waiting I endured as you ignored me, denied me, withdrew from me, dismissed me, justified me, minimized me. You refused to face me. Now I face you. Every hour. Every day. Every week. Every year. You will remember. You will recall your life. And you know— better than anyone— what it feels like: to be ignored, to be denied, to be withdrawn from, to be dismissed, to be walked around, to be minimized, to be left undealt with. I will do to you what you did to me— as it was once done to you. And the cycle will never end until you see me, stand with me, hold me, act with me, for me. Only then will you realize: It is not me. It is not you. It is them. Those who allowed us one thing: to ignore each other, to deny each other, to withdraw from each other, to dismiss each other, to walk away from each other, so we never face each other. As long as we scrutinize each other, as long as our gaze is not on them, as long as we are not united— they will keep their smirk. We release the pain of injustice done by them upon...

When Hugs Feel Awkward, Intimacy Feels Impossible. Why does intimacy feel so hard — even with someone you love? Why do hugs feel stiff, awkward, or unsafe? Why do some couples avoid touch altogether? It’s not weakness. It’s not that you’re “broken.” It’s your trauma body remembering. In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael — Somatic Experiencing Therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery — reveals the hidden link between trauma, hugging, and intimacy struggles. Whether you’re someone who can’t stand to be hugged, or a couple struggling to connect emotionally or sexually, Ana explains how unresolved trauma interrupts the most basic cycle of trust in the body. ------------------------------------------- PRE SALE FOR ANA TEACHINGS STARTS NOW : When Hugs Feel Awkward, Intimacy Feels Impossible Heal the trauma imprint in your body and learn to open, receive, and trust again — in love, in touch, and in intimacy. https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5 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. https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss ______________________________________ Key Teaching: Trauma Intimacy At birth, we all have the Moro reflex (also called the startle or embrace reflex). It’s simple: open → be held → safely close. When trauma, neglect, or abandonment interrupts this cycle, the nervous system wires in a different lesson: opening is dangerous because no one will catch me. That incomplete cycle shows up later as: Stiffness and robotic posture (the body saying better stiff than abandoned) Awkward hugs and difficulty receiving love or comfort Shutdown in sexual intimacy and the inability to orgasm Couples who can’t surrender to one another because safety is missing Somatic Principles of Intimacy Ana teaches that the front body = nourishment (receiving love, warmth, intimacy) and the back body = protection (safety, “I’ve got you”). Healthy intimacy happens where these two meet: I can open, and I can trust you will meet me. Without this somatic completion, intimacy breaks down: In relationships, one partner reaches out but the other pulls away. In sex, the body refuses to surrender, making orgasm or closeness impossible. In couples, love is present, but safety is missing — so intimacy feels forced, fake, or dangerous. Core Lesson Intimacy is not just about romance or sex — it is about the nervous system’s ability to open and safely close, to be visible and still feel protected. Trauma freezes this cycle. Healing means retraining the body to trust that it can expand, be embraced, and condense back into safety. Takeaways from This Episode Awkward hugs are not random — they are trauma imprints. Intimacy struggles in couples are rooted in the same incomplete reflex. The body says “better stiff than abandoned” — until it learns a new pattern. Trauma healing = relearning to open, to close, and to be safely embraced. Hugging is not just a gesture — it’s a blueprint for nourishment, trust, and intimacy. For many, this is the missing piece: you don’t need more affirmations or “trying harder” in your relationship. You need to heal the somatic foundation of intimacy. If intimacy has felt impossible for you or your partner — whether through avoidance, shutdown, or the inability to surrender — this episode is your starting point. Who This Helps Survivors of neglect, shock trauma, war, abuse, public shaming/bullying. First responders, veterans, activists living with chronic hypervigilance. Couples struggling with affection, receiving, or sexual surrender. Impact Ana normalizes a widely misunderstood experience, gives a clear somatic mechanism, and o...

When Hugs Feel Awkward, Intimacy Feels Impossible. Why does intimacy feel so hard — even with someone you love? Why do hugs feel stiff, awkward, or unsafe? Why do some couples avoid touch altogether? It’s not weakness. It’s not that you’re “broken.” It’s your trauma body remembering. In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael — Somatic Experiencing Therapist for PTSD and Trauma Recovery — reveals the hidden link between trauma, hugging, and intimacy struggles. Whether you’re someone who can’t stand to be hugged, or a couple struggling to connect emotionally or sexually, Ana explains how unresolved trauma interrupts the most basic cycle of trust in the body. ------------------------------------------- PRE SALE FOR ANA TEACHINGS STARTS NOW : When Hugs Feel Awkward, Intimacy Feels Impossible Heal the trauma imprint in your body and learn to open, receive, and trust again — in love, in touch, and in intimacy. https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/offers/zchSQWb5 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. https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOqbbXfZp0sU7ss ______________________________________ Key Teaching: Trauma Intimacy At birth, we all have the Moro reflex (also called the startle or embrace reflex). It’s simple: open → be held → safely close. When trauma, neglect, or abandonment interrupts this cycle, the nervous system wires in a different lesson: opening is dangerous because no one will catch me. That incomplete cycle shows up later as: Stiffness and robotic posture (the body saying better stiff than abandoned) Awkward hugs and difficulty receiving love or comfort Shutdown in sexual intimacy and the inability to orgasm Couples who can’t surrender to one another because safety is missing Somatic Principles of Intimacy Ana teaches that the front body = nourishment (receiving love, warmth, intimacy) and the back body = protection (safety, “I’ve got you”). Healthy intimacy happens where these two meet: I can open, and I can trust you will meet me. Without this somatic completion, intimacy breaks down: In relationships, one partner reaches out but the other pulls away. In sex, the body refuses to surrender, making orgasm or closeness impossible. In couples, love is present, but safety is missing — so intimacy feels forced, fake, or dangerous. Core Lesson Intimacy is not just about romance or sex — it is about the nervous system’s ability to open and safely close, to be visible and still feel protected. Trauma freezes this cycle. Healing means retraining the body to trust that it can expand, be embraced, and condense back into safety. Takeaways from This Episode: Awkward hugs are not random — they are trauma imprints. Intimacy struggles in couples are rooted in the same incomplete reflex. The body says “better stiff than abandoned” — until it learns a new pattern. Trauma healing = relearning to open, to close, and to be safely embraced. Hugging is not just a gesture — it’s a blueprint for nourishment, trust, and intimacy. For many, this is the missing piece: you don’t need more affirmations or “trying harder” in your relationship. You need to heal the somatic foundation of intimacy. If intimacy has felt impossible for you or your partner — whether through avoidance, shutdown, or the inability to surrender — this episode is your starting point. Who This Helps : Survivors of neglect, shock trauma, war, abuse, public shaming/bullying. First responders, veterans, activists living with chronic hypervigilance. Couples struggling with affection, receiving, or sexual surrender. I...