Generational Trauma—Overcoming Inherited Dysfunction & Legacy Burdens with therapist Gina Birkemeier
Episode Notes
Are you carrying burdens that aren't entirely your own? Could understanding your family's past be the key to unlocking a healthier future?
In this powerful episode, we dive into the concept of generational trauma with my guest, Gina Birkemeier, therapist and author of the book & workbook, “Generations Deep”. Gina shares her personal and professional insights on how deep-seated family issues can affect us and how both faith and therapy play pivotal roles in healing and breaking these cycles.
You'll learn. . .
* What generational trauma is and how it subtly influences our lives
* Why Gina realized that she needed therapy and Jesus
* What epigenetics is and how our genes remember & sometimes inherit the trauma of previous generations
* How to understand cycle breaking & to end the cycle of dysfunction
* About the legacy burdens we carry from our family's past.
Resources:
- The Best of You Podcast question form
- DrAlisonCook.com/podcast
- Generations Deep: Unmasking Inherited Dysfunction and Trauma to Rewrite Our Stories Through Faith and Therapy by Gina Birkemeier
- Deuteronomy 5:9
- Boundaries For Your Soul by Dr. Alison Cook and Kimberly Miller
- GinaBirkemeier.com
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 101: I Shouldn’t Feel Angry—Exploring the Violence that Shapes Our Family Stories & How to Heal with Lisa Jo Baker
- Episode 127: Healing Childhood Wounds—The Enmeshed Family & 5 Toxic Patterns that Affect Your Ability to Thrive in Adult Relationships
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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so delighted that you're here today for this week's episode. We are going to be diving even deeper into the theme of healing childhood wounds. We're going to focus today on an especially powerful area, and that's the area of generational trauma.
Please don't forget to leave me your questions or ideas for any future episodes on The Best of You Podcast question form. You can find that link in today's episode show notes or on my website, podcast, DrAlisonCook.com/podcast. So In last week's episode, we explored themes of enmeshment and individuation, and we went through five toxic patterns of behavior that can thwart the process of secure attachment and make it challenging for us to develop healthy relationships in adulthood.
Today, I wanted to explore how these wounds sometimes run deeper than our individual experiences. They're formed as part of a larger story passed down through generations. That's why I'm thrilled to have Gina Birkemeier with us. Gina is a licensed professional counselor with a master's degree in both psychology and theology, along with advanced training in trauma and therapeutic techniques.
She's the author of Generations Deep: Unmasking Inherited Dysfunction and Trauma to Rewrite Our Stories Through Faith and Therapy, and she brings invaluable insights into what it means to be a cycle breaker, someone who identifies, confronts, and heals generational trauma within their family.
Gina also facilitates Generations Deep Story Groups to support people in their healing journeys. Today's episode is a fascinating deep dive. We discuss a couple of really new topics to the podcast. One is the topic of epigenetics, which is this idea that external factors in life experiences can influence how our DNA is expressed. It's a really incredible field of study.
We also discuss the related concept of legacy burdens. For those of you familiar with internal family systems, the IFS model of therapy, these are those beliefs or fears or emotional patterns that are passed down through our family, sometimes through numerous generations without us even realizing it or even having direct experience of the painful events. These are really important concepts to understand because they can affect us.
They can feel like these invisible weights that we carry that keep us stuck in the past. But when you begin to identify and address these generational patterns, we can begin to break cycles of pain and create a healthier legacy, not only for ourselves, but for future generations. Please enjoy my conversation with Gina Birkemeier.
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I'm so glad you're here today, Gina, I've known about your work for a little while and I'm so thrilled to have this conversation with you today about generational trauma and what you call “inherited dysfunction”. I think that's such an interesting way to look at it. Welcome.
Gina: Thank you. It's great to be with you today.
Alison Cook: I know your work comes from a very personal place. I'd love for you to share with us, what do you mean? By inherited dysfunction, by generational trauma. And if you're willing, I'd love to hear a little bit about that in the context of your own personal story.
Gina: I can't ever think of a time when, for some reason or another, those dots weren’t connected for me that there was something happening generationally. When I talk about that, I'm talking about the trauma and the dysfunction. A lot of times we think of trauma as these really big things, and that is true, but then also there are these identity wounds, these core wounds, that hit us in such a way that it really forms and informs what we believe about ourselves, other people, the world, and even God.
The story that I tell in the book is my personal journey and my professional journey combined . I start back with my great grandparents who immigrated over from Italy. Some of the relational trauma and dysfunction that had happened all the way back then with my great grandmother and her first marriage, how that ended, and how she ended up with my great grandfather.
And then what that perpetuated in terms of a cycle of abandonment issues with regard to the children that she had before she met my great-grandfather. And then moving into my grandparents. The story of my grandparents and how that sort of molded some things. My grandmother had some identity issues that then led her to get involved with my grandfather at a very young age, 14, and having my mom at 15.
And then the great grandparents tried to interject and how terribly wrong that went. As my mom grew up, things that she began to believe about herself that were impacted by the generation before her. And then how my mother then perpetuated that cycle once again and got pregnant with me at a very young age and was not able to roll into that parenting, nurturing role.
She ended up giving me up for adoption twice. She gave me up for adoption, took me back, then gave me up again. All before the age of two. It stayed in the family. So that complicated a lot of things as I grew up. There were a lot of secrets around me and the energy that created around me, the tones of voice that I felt directed at me, and then my adopted parents separating…there was a lot of dysfunction there.
Throughout this, there was fatherlessness, neglect, emotional neglect, emotional immaturity. There were some borderline tendencies that we can see woven through a couple of the generations, some deep heart wounds particularly in the women in my family.
That came over into my life and with me not knowing who my biological father was, my adopted father being somewhat distant, and my adopted mother having a lot of issues with prescription drugs and alcohol. There had also been a history of that in the family as well.
In my life, as I got older, I started to perpetuate some of the same exact cycles. I had an issue of sexual abuse in two occurrences, one with some kids my age and a couple instances when I was older as well in the family. One outside the family, one in the family, and how all of these things, this dysfunction, affects our sense of self, sense of others, how we connect, how we nurture, how we protect.
All of those things passed down from one generation to the next, culminating in my life and coming to a point where–I can't take any credit, I have to give God all the credit for it–it became, it has to end here.
I have this line in the book that says, it's like telling the raging trauma of the past, “You cannot come beyond this point”. It's like building a dam against those rapids, saying, you cannot rage beyond here. It ends here. And then going into that journey of what does that even look like? To first uncover what they are.
I think it was a lot of cutting the heads off of dandelions for a while, but not really pulling them up by the root, because I didn't understand what the root was. It took a lot of therapy and a lot of Jesus to get me there. Yeah.
Alison Cook: We hear this word “cycle-breaker”. What does it mean to you? You're saying in your story that this ends here. I hear that cycle-breaking. And that word is really powerful. It also can put a lot of pressure on a person. What do you mean by I'm a cycle breaker? And what does that look like in your life?
Gina: Yes, so I would say it can look like pressure, if it's coming externally. It can really feel like pressure. But what I teach in my Generations Deep Groups is that it isn't about putting pressure on yourself. It's actually about releasing a pressure valve, because there's a lot of pressure when we're carrying all the things that have been passed down to us.
We're holding on to them, and we're absorbing them. But if we can release them and let them go, there is a freedom in that. And it's a very empowering position to be in, to say, I'm breaking the cycle. Now, remember, ideally, we want to break it for the generations that come after us.
But as they grow, that's their responsibility. We can only take so much responsibility for the generations that come after us. And there's room to talk about what we need to own, and how maybe we have perpetuated some cycles with them, and how we want to do better. We may need to own some things, apologize for some things, leave room for them to tell us how things we've done have impacted them.
But really, cycle breaking is about saying, I recognize what I missed. I recognize the harm that was done to me. Thank you. I recognize the harm that maybe I did to myself, and I'm moving into a place now where I'm healing from those things. And I'm moving forward in a space of wisdom and discernment with Holy Spirit led relationships and actions.
And it feels like this big heavy term, but often it's really in the little details. It's in the little things that you do differently. I point this out in my groups a lot. I'll have participants in the group say, this is what I'm doing. And I'll say, let's slow that down. That's a cycle breaking that's going on right there.
That's a cycle breaking. Yes. And then to literally watch their posture and countenance change–oh, I can do this. I'm already doing it. I didn't even realize. I tell people often, you picked up the book, you're working through it, and looking at what the next step is. That alone makes you a cycle breaker.
Alison Cook: You're naming things. Just that very step of naming what happened. Yeah, that's really good, Gina. I want to back up a little bit, back into your story. You get into your twenties, you're becoming a young adult. Is there a moment when it occurred to you that whatever it was that you were doing, maybe it's when you become a parent yourself, where you realize, oh my gosh, this is something I've got to deal with.
Was there a moment or a couple of moments that really began to be a cycle breaking moment for you, before you even knew all of the language?
Gina: Yeah. Oh for sure before I knew the language. Absolutely. I appreciate this question. There were a couple of them. I had my daughter very young. Like I said, I started to perpetuate the same cycles that had happened before me, and it was with her. I was in so much pain and so much dysfunction.
I was actually also in a couple of abusive relationships at the time, and things were not going well in my life. I could not be the mom that she needed. I could not be present for her. And then not too long after that, I started to get my feet underneath me and then ended up pregnant with my son.
Alison Cook: How old were you at this time?
Gina: When I was pregnant with my son, I was 23 and able to say, okay, I can't do this anymore. I was in an abusive relationship and I remember this moment where I was on my knees on the bed after a night of drinking to try to numb everything in my world. I shook my fist at God and said, either you kill me, or you take over my life, because I cannot do this anymore.
Thank God that he decided in his mercy to take over instead of the alternative. That's not a formula that I'm giving. It's what happened in my life. And I will, in all transparency, admit that the next morning I woke up and said, I didn't mean it. Let me take that back. I want to take that prayer back. It was too late. He knew that I really did mean it. That in that moment of desperation, that was the most real, raw, true me. And that is who he began to minister to.
Alison Cook: There was a turning point there, when you started to reach out for help, because maybe you became aware, okay, something's got to change. Did you go to a therapist? At this point, did you go to a church community? And what kind of help did you receive at that time that was both helpful and maybe not so helpful?
Gina: Yes. I appreciate the both-and of that. So I first went to a church. It was in me to say, that's where I need to go. I went and found this church, and I will say there were a lot of really sweet, kind things about the church, but the church was very much an, okay, you had all those things in your past. You need to hurry up and clean them up and come be a part of this.
The struggle is over. You're here now. And it was a name it and claim it, no room for the process church. I came from this super chaotic, dysfunctional life, and I'm still carrying all these wounds. I use this term often–triage discharge. Now you're here and you're good to go.
I was not good to go.
Alison Cook: Zap of the wand theology.
Gina: Zap of the wand. Yeah. A lot of spiritual bypassing, a lot of hyper-spiritualization. Well-intentioned, don't get me wrong. But it was another place where I felt like I didn't fit in. I can't do this. Quite frankly, it was just, I suck at this. What is wrong with me? Why can't I do this the right way?
Alison Cook: It becomes shaming that you can't get it together enough, because you should be good now. Yeah. So you turned on yourself.
Gina: The tendency particularly for women is, they turn it on themselves. I definitely turned it on myself and slowly backed out of that church. I wouldn't say I dove back into my old ways, but I did a little bit because it was too much.
It was too much pain and I was looking for a way to numb it. And I thought, no, you can't go back to where you were. What about counseling? What does that look like? And something within me knew even then. I didn't really know what it was, I didn't know how you did it, I didn't know what it looked like, but I started looking in the phone book.
By the way, phone books used to be books with phone numbers.
Alison Cook: I remember them well.
Gina: So I started this therapy journey and I learned a lot. And it was really good. I started changing my lens and rewriting my story. I found the stones, as we say in narrative therapy, or the parts of me that I was trying to lock away, those vulnerable parts from IFS, those exiles. I was like, nope, you go away, you're too vulnerable, you're going to get us hurt. Stay over there, stay away.
I really started that journey. I was like, okay, but this isn't enough either. This all-in church thing, ignore everything that happened, that didn't do it. And then this all-in therapy thing, buy all the self-help books, do all of the things, that's not really doing it either.
I still feel like something's not right. Something's missing. It was really the intersection of the two, and finding another church, finding someone who actually became a mentor and is now a lifelong friend who was faith-informed and trauma-informed. To be able to bring the two journeys together, that was really where I was like okay, this is how you do it.
Alison Cook: That integration piece of bringing God's power and God's presence into the therapeutic process…wow. Wow. So really a journey there. One more question about your story, because what I'm hearing is, there were lots of phases, lots of trial and error, lots of reaching out for. Two steps forward, one step back, maybe another step forward, three more steps back.
That is the nature of healing. I want the listener to hear that, especially when there's a lot going on there. That's really normal. And that's what is sometimes so devastating, is when you take those steps forward and then you find yourself taking this step back, it could be tempting to give up altogether.
What I hear there is a real persistence to keep going. Okay, I got to get back up and try. As you kept doing that and as you got to that therapist that really was able to help you integrate, what was a breakthrough moment where maybe you really saw some truths? Or there was a naming that, again, it doesn't come in a moment, we'll say it was a miracle.
Yes, it was a miracle. Also, it came as a result of all of that persistence through the two steps forward, one step back. Did you have a moment like that when you got to that integrated piece?
Gina: Yeah, so I will say I think it was a lot of little moments that came together. And I also want to say something else about that whole idea of the forward and the back and the forward and the back. It took me a little while to realize that what felt like backwards wasn't really backwards.
It actually was, I have all these things that are really painful, and it feels like I'm back there again, but I have a new level of awareness. I have a new level of accountability, a new level of recognition, a new level of ability to grieve. It isn't always backward.
Sometimes it's because you've stepped forward and now, something else has been revealed to you and that can sometimes feel like backward, but that doesn't mean it is.
Alison Cook: That’s good. That's really powerful. That's a huge breakthrough right there.
Gina: Yeah. And that was a huge piece for me. And even realizing some of those things in the moment and being like, okay, but no, you're not actually doing what you used to do. You're not having that old response, or at least not at that level. You're not actually where you were and you have new tools.
One of the things that kept empowering the journey forward was how I did begin to see how things we’re talking about in therapy go really well with what scripture says. Oh, my emotions are actually not the enemy. We’re created in the image of an emotional God. We see it in scripture, the whole gamut of emotion, and that's part of our image-bearing.
Then to be able to say, now I recognize the top-down and the bottom-up of it all. And how we can even see that in scripture. The integration was the fuel, and grace. I don't want to leave that out of the conversation. Yes, embracing God's grace, believing in his grace for me, but also learning how to have some grace for myself.
One of the most effective ways that came was in learning how to have grace for the generations before me. And I don't mean letting them off the hook, or minimizing what happened, or how it impacted me. But about having that grace.
Alison Cook: Yeah, that's what I was curious about. In that journey, I'm sure boundaries became a part of it. And forgiveness, which is always a really challenging word when we are recognizing and naming really hard things that happen to us, especially with our families.
That both-and of naming really honestly, because we have to see the truth in order to be set free, and also figuring out the boundaries. I imagine that was also a huge part of this journey.
Gina: As far as boundaries are concerned, I talk about this one a lot because this can be really hard. I want to say a couple of really important things about boundaries from my perspective. What I walk through with clients and what we talk about in Generations Deep groups is that boundaries are important, but the way you make the boundaries might even be more important.
We don't make them out of anger. We don't make them out of fear. Because when we're no longer afraid and we're no longer angry, we have a tendency to then not hold the boundary. And then we teach people that we don't mean what we say. We open ourselves up to these boundary violations all the time.
I think that's something to be careful of. The other thing is that you get pressure from family. Blood is thicker than water. Blood is thicker than water. You are supposed to keep this tie, no matter what. And I'm laughing a little bit because every time in group, I will say, that was told to me too. Blood is thicker than water, blood is thicker than water.
And then typically I will say, do you know what that whole phrase is? Do you know where blood is thicker than water comes from? It's, “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”.
Alison Cook: Whoa.
Gina: It's actually the reverse. It actually means something completely different. So as people are telling you, blood is thicker than water, blood is thicker than water. It's actually that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
It is saying in those covenantal relationships, whether they're genetic or not, that is the strong bond. That is where the strength is. It isn't about the DNA imprints.
Alison Cook: It's the new family you've created.
Gina: That God has given us. Absolutely.
Alison Cook: Yeah, that's powerful. That's really powerful. So tell us a little bit, you've clearly at some point decided to become a therapist and to go into the work of helping others heal. How did you make that decision? And now you're doing all this amazing work to help others.
How did you make that decision? And what was that like for you to become a guide for others through their healing journeys?
Gina: It started in pastoral care. I started there, and then pretty quickly realized I wanted to do more. I wanted to walk further along with people than what pastoral care afforded me the opportunity to do. I did a lot of crisis things with women in domestic violence situations, women coming out of prison, single moms, homeless moms.
I did a lot of that work initially, a lot of outreach, and then my mentor who had been a part of my life that I met through church said, I think you need to move forward and go formally get educated and go do this. I was like, okay, sure. It was not really going to happen.
I'll do it because this person I respect is asking me to do it. I thought, I'll figure it out. But the more I learned about it, I was like, no, I actually could do more. I actually could do more. And God opened the door for me to do that pretty quickly. I started to have the idea for the book while I was in my Master's program.
Because like I had said, for some reason, my brain always connected those dots of transgenerational dysfunction and trauma. I knew I wanted to write a book about it. So in getting my education as a therapist and also getting educated on epigenetic influences and what that has to do with trauma, and then bringing those things together eventually led me to do the book.
I was doing the generational trauma work long before the book came out. But then the book came out and God has been so kind and ridiculously generous with how he has allowed me to help other people and walk with other people.
He has allowed, not nationally, but internationally, for the book to be used in Guatemala and Nicaragua and Zimbabwe, and across the US. It has been amazing. Pretty quickly from there, I had people asking, because there's questions in the book, but I would get a lot of feedback.
Are you going to do a separate workbook where we can put the answers to the questions? That's when the workbook was born along with the Audible version of the book. And then I guess it was maybe not even a whole year after that, that we had Generations Deep groups that were launched.
We do those, and I train other therapists on how to run the Generations Deep groups as well. It's been really incredible.
Alison Cook: That's amazing. What do we mean by this term, epigenetics? It's really fascinating. Can you expand on that a little bit?
Gina: For a long time we believed that our DNA was it. You get what you get and that's it. If you have fill in the blank, whatever you have, if you get diabetes, if you have. Alcoholism, depression, it could be whatever. Those were things that were passed to you genetically and you would have to deal with that genetic soup that we're all given.
What we now know is that it's far less about genetics and it's more about epigenetics. So epi, think above. Above the DNA, the thing that influences the DNA. We all have these epigenetic influencers in our lives. They can be anything from our nutrition, our environment, what we're consuming holistically, how we are raised, what has formed and informed us.
There are some interesting twin studies out there where two twins are separated and one's raised one way and one's raised another and they come back together. While they have the same DNA, they have completely different lives. And we've seen this in research they did in Emory, where that cortical response to fear of a negative stimuli can be passed down from the mice in this generation to the next without even introducing them to that negative stimuli.
They're born afraid of these certain things because of that. But the really cool and fascinating thing is that we also know from epigenetics that it doesn't have to be that way. God, in his infinite wisdom, did not give us a trauma box. There's not this place in our brain where the trauma has to always live there and we carry it around like this boulder on our back.
We're actually wired for healing. We're not wired for the harm that comes. Epigenetically, we have this power to influence our lives, the lives of our children, the lives of our grandchildren, our great grandchildren, to afford something different for the generations to come.
Alison Cook: Yeah, that's so good. There's always been biblically this idea of the sins of the generations being passed down. There's a way in which now, science is almost upholding that. Sometimes sin doesn't feel like the right word for it, but the trauma of the generations is passed down.
I love that example of that fear response–it can be part of your DNA. And that doesn't mean you're locked into it. That doesn't mean it can't change. We can also have these restorative experiences.
Gina: That's really how I opened the book. The sins of the father visited to the third and fourth generation. A couple of things about that. I used to hate that verse so much, because I thought, back when I was deep in my own wounding, how does a loving God crack a whip that leaves a mark three and four generations out?
Why is that a thing? As I started healing and learning about all of this, what I realized is no, that's not what's being said. What's being said is if you don't own it and do something with it, it has the potential to affect three and four generations. And I thought, wow that's so interesting, especially as I learned about epigenetics.
What we know is that if there is no intervention, like I talked about with that born trauma response, if there is no intervention, it will take three to four generations for that to naturally be evolved out of the generations.
It takes three to four generations for that to naturally subside. But with intervention, it can change rapidly. Which brings me to the other scripture that talks about the fathers having eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. That appears I think twice in scripture, and people will quote that as proof of oh, it's passed down, but actually the prophets around them were saying, stop saying that.
That's not true. That's not true. Stop saying that. even to know that there was that interjection of hope, even then, it's not true. It doesn't have to be true. We can do something else.
Alison Cook: I love that. I think you're saying something really important. Number one, those scriptural sayings, it's not God's punishment or declaration of, this is how I'm going to punish you. It's almost a warning, of fact. This is what's going to happen. If we don't deal with this, it will be passed down.
You're not only hurting yourself, you are hurting the next generations. It widens the lens and it can be a really helpful motivation to be a cycle breaker. To your point, it's not just about me. My life has ripple effects. It matters.
And that's not pressure in that sense of, you better get it right. It's a truth that can propel us to yearn to do the work because the work is hard and it can be frustrating. It's not easy. In IFS there's a term called legacy burdens. Are you familiar with that?
Gina: Very much. Yes.
Alison Cook: For the listener, a legacy burden in IFS terminology is basically that we have these burdens that we pick up from our past, the parts of us that have been wounded. They carry a deep pain that isn't in the present moment. So you might become aware that you have a burden if you completely lash out at a friend or at your sister or at your kids.
It's way disproportionate to the offense that occurred, and you might be tapping into a wounded part of you that's lashing out from decades of pain versus the pain of the present moment. Part of the work of IFS is going and finding these exiles that carry these burdens and unburdening them.
One of the things in IFS that Dick Schwartz and others began to notice is that sometimes, legacy burdens don't originate in your own story. They originate in your family history. You might have a legacy burden as it relates to alcoholism, even if you were not an alcoholic yourself. You might have a legacy burden as it relates to your ancestors who were slaves, even if you were not a slave yourself.
You might carry some of that pain inside of you, even if that specific thing didn't happen to you. Tell me a little bit about how you view legacy burdens and how that weaves into this conversation about epigenetics and generational trauma.
Gina: I would say a legacy burden is a really great example of epigenetics. That's something that's been passed down, not even so much in DNA, but what influenced the DNA. I say in the book that shame can be a legacy. Shame can be a legacy.
There's a part in the book where I say, some of this you might be wondering, is this connected to something in my past? Or I have this struggle that I can't really name. I know that this is how I feel when these things happen. And I don't really know where it came from and I don't think I had an experience like that.
That's probably time to think about how you're carrying something that most likely is from the generations before you. But what's beautiful is when we do the work, it's a past, present, future work. We do the work here and now, but the work is effective for the past, present, and future. What we've carried is what's being addressed, the past. We're doing it in the present of our life, and then we're passing that on to the future.
Alison Cook: That's so good. That's so good. What's one piece of wisdom, Gina, you would give to someone listening who's maybe in those early stages of healing, of recognizing some of these burdens. They’re maybe feeling discouraged because they're having that experience of getting a little help and then falling right back into old ways.
What's one piece of wisdom you would offer to that listener?
Gina: I would say that I understand that feeling, and just because it feels like you're falling back doesn't necessarily mean that you are. Take inventory of what you know to be true that you have learned, that is different from what you had then.
What you're doing now, we know from all of the science, from all of the research, that your brain is wired for that new capacity. You can do this, but have grace for yourself in the process and do not do it alone, because that isolation thing will feed the shame and the shame will feed the cycle of dysfunction.
You want to find that safe space of community. In terms of the generational piece, when you're trying to figure out, am I passing down something I don't want to pass down, or I think I am, and how do I change it? That's the time to say, even thinking about some of your work, Alison, in Boundaries For Your Soul, that's the time to think about, okay, what did I miss, or what harmed me as a child?
Have I been able to heal from that? And have I been able to give myself what I need to accept it from God, from the relationships around me? And if I haven't, then I need to go get some help in doing that. There's no shame in that. When I can say, yes, I've been able to name what I missed and name what harmed me and do this work of healing, you will naturally then pass something different onto your kids because you're different inside.
Alison Cook: I love that. That's so hopeful. Just that naming is so hopeful. I love that. Tell us a little bit more about your book, the workbook, and these groups and other things that you're doing to help people heal for those who want to learn more.
Gina: Generations Deep and the workbook are great for people to do with their therapist, one on one. Read the book, it's a great way to dip a toe in the water. I take a pretty gentle approach in the book, and the idea is bringing them through my story first.
I think that kind of feels like a fellow traveler thing. The feedback that we've received is that it really feels like walking with. The second half talks a little bit more about the therapy side of it. It talks about what it is, being with Jesus and being with a therapist and those two things integrated together. What does that even mean?
I think that it's appropriate for a lot of people who might not be ready, but also for people who are on the journey and they're looking for the next step. The groups, you can reach out through my website, GinaBirkemeier.com and find out about the groups. We have them online. We have them in person.
Also, I do training for therapists who want to either do the one on one work with my book and workbook, or if they want to actually do groups themselves. I train therapists on how to do that as well. And then there's an Audible version that has some extras, some interviews with people and those interviews have been helpful to a lot of listeners.
They’re some extra things to think about in terms of this journey of healing. In my practice, we have started something called the Collaborative Care Initiative, which has been a long term dream of mine to bring multiple practitioners under one roof to truly provide that holistic model of care. And to make it available to a broad socioeconomic base.
So we have all of our therapists, 43 therapists, and then we're bringing on spiritual directors, nurse practitioners, psychiatric nurse practitioners, trauma-informed somatic release and body practices. We have a whole variety of people that we're bringing on and are really excited about the growth.
We have neurofeedback, and it's been really great to bring all of these people under one roof. These adjunct practitioners, I bring them in to do educational pieces for our therapists. So it's really for the therapists to learn how to be holistically-minded as well.
It's been a little bit “ready fire aim” rather than “ready aim fire”, but it's been great. And our hope is that we'll be able to build a model that might be replicable for other practices around the country.
Alison Cook: Is it mostly online?
Gina: No, it's mostly in person, but there are online options.
Alison Cook: And where are you located?
Gina: We're in Missouri.
Alison Cook: That's incredible. What a vision. Wow. Where could people find you if they want to learn more about your work and about this collective?
Gina: Find me at GinaBirkemeier.com and I'm on the socials. They can find me @myoutloudvoice on the socials.
Alison Cook: Gina, what would you say to that younger you, 23, 24, 25, what would you want her to know from where you are now?
Gina: That makes me a little teary. I think I would want her to know not to give up. That she was worth more than what she realized. And not to do it alone, to stop trying to do it alone. That God had so much more for her, for us. That there would come a time when she could look back and say, the work was hard, but the work was good.
Alison Cook: I love that. I love that. And what's bringing out the best of you right now?
Gina: Oh gosh. Family things, new grandchildren, this collaborative care. I'm also working on my PhD right now. The doctoral program is incredible. It brings out, I would say, the good, the bad and the ugly, but in a great way.
I'm having the privilege of working with clinicians in Ukraine right now, and that has really been an incredible humbling experience. God is meeting me in ways that I had not anticipated through all of those things and I'm so grateful and I think it is bringing out the best in me and it is also calling me to refinement in other areas as well, which I hope He will continue to do while I'm here on this earth.
Alison Cook: That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us for all that you're doing. I'm so grateful to have this conversation with you today.
Gina: Thanks, Alison.