#65: Marissa Ghavami: Trauma & Our Big Dreams

Soulful Ambition

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Episode Highlights:

• • How trauma can make it hard to go after big dreams

  • How our big dreams can inspire healing

  • What is trauma?

  • Brain- and Body-based healing modalities

  • The role of feeling our feelings

  • The stories we tell ourselves and how to rewrite them

  • Neuroplasticity and the science of memory

In this episode, Analisa invites Marissa Ghavami, Iranian-American, queer artist, advocate and creator to the podcast. This is a rich and vulnerable discussion about Marissa’s experience healing from trauma, and how it has been fundamentally intertwined with their journey towards big, ambitious dreams.

Marissa and Analisa share their thoughts and experiences with “getting comfortable with the discomfort of this business,” and they engage with a wide range of questions:

How can folks healing from trauma engage with their feelings and body sensations safely–something we’re asked to do every day as actors? What’s the difference between brain-based and body-based healing modalities and practices? How does having these skills show up in our daily lives and careers?

It’s a beautiful conversation between two smart and soulful creatives—listen as they marry the ideas of trauma-informed emotional resiliency with the neuroscience behind memory and grief, and share how diving deep into these ideas is further enriched by their spiritual practices. Come back to this episode anytime you need a reminder that the stories we tell ourselves about our feelings can be rewritten!

Topic Shift Time Stamps

0:00 Analisa’s intro and invite to a 1:1 session

4:27 Welcome, Marissa!

6:19 Acknowledging the role trauma plays in taking action towards our souls’ longings

10:22 Marissa’s journey (big dreams, what got in the way, coming back to themself)

17:59 Engaging with trauma and experiencing stress as an artist

20:00 Brain- and body-based healing modalities: going beyond “just change your mindset”

25:01 Fawn responses: your “survival-brain” is a protector

28:30 “What if we allowed ourselves to feel whatever we were feeling, fully?”

33:33 Our feelings vs the stories we tell about them (and what we make them mean)

36:24 “It’s not magical thinking – it’s neuroscience!!”

38:40 Having a spiritual practice

43:51 Brain science! Memory, grief, and trauma

50:26 An example: Marissa’s current process for managing a trauma response

54:40 Post-traumatic growth – being the author of your own story

56:16 “This skill is needed for the craft of acting” - feeling deeply and creating space for healing

Soul Nourishment mentioned in this episode:

Marissa Ghavami

Healing TREE

Marissa’s Healing Trauma Focused Coaching for Artists (Virtual; $75/hr or $75/mo for weekly, 1 hour group sessions): www.marissaghavami.com/coach Marissa will be playing Jessie in Divine Riot’s Cry It Out on 11/9 7PM (Invited Dress), 11/12 7PM and 11/18 2PM in NYC. Learn More & Tickets: www.divineriot.org/cryitout

Marissa’s Instagram

Healing Tree’s Instagram

A Balancing Act is hosted by Analisa Leaming, Broadway actor + soulful coach for creatives. This season is designed to inspire performers and creatives to journey towards their dreams with more soul and less attachment to outcomes and society's definitions of success.