In this episode of the Get Loved Up Podcast, Koya Webb talks to Dr. Mariel Buqué. As a university-trained psychologist, Dr. Buqué talks about dealing with depression and trauma holistically. Besides treating these issues from a mental health point of view, Dr. Buqué also talks about treating the physical body as well as addressing the systemic ills that often directly or indirectly push oppressed and suppressed people to experience trauma.
Dr. Mariel Buqué is a Columbia University-trained Psychologist and sound bath meditation healer. Her work centers on healing wounds of intergenerational trauma, holistic mental wellness, and centering indigenous healing practices. She is also a wellness and antiracism consultant for Fortune 500 companies across the world and teaches the next generation of therapists as a professor at Columbia University. You may follow her on social media at @dr.marielbuque and find her work at www.drmarielbuque.com.
HIGHLIGHTS
03:28 Normalize therapy and healing
05:58 There are many aspects of depression that look like trauma
08:17 Defining trauma from the point of view of stress
16:49 The hardest thing about being a therapist
19:19 Make self care a lifestyle rather than a practice
26:17 On 'ghosting' and abandonment issues
35:04 It's officially healing season
38:46 Being alone but not lonely
42:07 Improve your relationship with yourself
45:01 Take care of your body first
49:55 The personal is political
56:28 Our favorite things
QUOTES
06:16: Dr. Buqué: "When we start seeing recurring depression beyond one single episode, we sart understanding that there is something beneath he level that we are working at that we need to get at, that is actually upholding the depression. More often than not, there's a history of trauma."
08:21: Dr. Buqué: "The way that I like to explain trauma, because I think it resonates more with who we are, human to human, is by explaining it as, the single experience that is very acute or an experience that is chronic, where a person would have experienced a level of stress that would have superseded their own internal capacity to cope. Basically, the stress was higher than the coping mechanisms that you had at the time to deal with that stressor."
17:18: Dr. Buqué: "There are times when I feel for my clients, and I think that one of the harder things is not being able to take the pain away right away. Like having to sit with the pain is a very hard thing to do especially when you deeply care for your clients and you want to see them well. But you know that their journey needs to look like what it looks like in order for them to be liberated from their pain."
19:18: Dr. Buqué: "The way that I do it is by making self care a lifestyle, rather than a practice. I make sure that everything I'm diving into has some element of caring myself within it. Every conversation, every project, everything that I do as I navigate through my work day has implemented within it something that honors me as a human."
42:11: Dr. Buqué: "The relationship that you have with yourself is one that could really benefit from the daily attention. The thing about having a relationship with urself is we have to get honest. I think that's what scares us, that we have to be honest about the things that are deep and dark. We have to get honest about the things that we'll find that we don't like, that will probably require us to shift and shifting is very hard for us. Change is very hard for humans."
45:33: Dr. Buqué: "We capture a lot of the stress that we experience in this world in our bodies. And so whenever it comes to helping people, especially in the outset of them wanting to establish a healthier routine, I always lean on body-based practices. So I would lean on trauma-informed yoga, I would lean on sound-bath mediation that can really create soundwaves and sound medicine in your life. I would go with something that is, some sort of a body scan but that has a body component like progressive muscle relaxation or emotional freedom techniques and tapping. I would go with the body-centered, more nervous system regulatory practices first, and then get at the mind. Because we need a body that is in safety in order to transition to mind-based work."
51:20: Dr. Buqué:"Even if you exist in a body that isn't suppressed and oppressed, you area existing in a body that holds privilege but as we all know, those privileges don't also exempt those humans from also being in bodies that are in high stress or in bodies that need to be liberated as well."
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