You’re Not Healing Because You’re Fleeing: Somatic PTSD & Trauma Recovery Truth Telling

Exiled & Rising: Trauma Recovery & Somatic Healing

Ana is fierce, compassionate, and unyieldingly grounded in truth-telling. She speaks directly to those living with trauma and PTSD—not with pity, not with patronizing wellness clichés—but with deep integrity, lived experience, and clinical authority.

Here's what she's saying at a deeper level:

Core Message “There is no running toward” encapsulates Ana’s thesis: The trauma body doesn’t move toward love, safety, or connection—it only runs away from danger. Why? Because it never had a safe person or safe place to run toward. That reality lives not just in memory, but in nervous system patterning, deeply somatic and biological.

️ What She’s Disrupting Ana is calling out the wellness industry, especially influencers who commodify trauma with overused terms like “resilience” or “self-care” without understanding the raw, body-level truth of trauma.

She is also critiquing meditation teachers who tell trauma survivors to “close their eyes” without grasping how that is unsafe and re-traumatizing for someone hypervigilant after war, genocide, or childhood abuse.

She exposes: Buzzword inflation (“resilience,” “trauma” used as branding) Spiritual bypassing (the “run toward light” narrative) Toxic self-help culture (that glamorizes growth while ignoring structural, historical, and somatic realities)

Her Distinct Teaching Ana brings forward a radically embodied truth:

“You are not running toward safety. You are running from pain. And that’s why you’re exhausted.”

This is not metaphor—it is a biological pattern, a trauma-loop. And she doesn’t shame her listeners. Instead, she offers a path: micro-moments of safety. A flicker of light. A breath. A safe person. A safe location. She makes it real: You don’t need a perfect safe place, just a molecular one. You don’t need to run harder—you need to pause without collapsing. Safety is not an idea—it’s a body-state.

Why She Stands Out Ana is not like other podcasters in the trauma, wellness, or psychology space because: She refuses performance. No polished branding, no spiritual ego, no detached “expertise.”

She speaks from the body, not just about it. She centers structural trauma (genocide, war, poverty, exile) rather than minimizing trauma into lifestyle language. She is somatically precise. She gives experiential steps, not vague inspiration. She brings accountability and love together—there’s no self-soothing without collective care, and no healing without reckoning.

Powerful Takeaways “Start with one pleasant thought in your mind.” “Keep your eyes open if that’s safer.” “Find one safe person and one safe place. That’s the beginning.” “You are not broken for not trusting. You never had a safe place to trust from.”

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Ana Mael’s Unique Approach to Trauma Healing: Ana Mael offers a trauma-informed, justice-centered approach to healing. As a somatic therapist and genocide survivor, Ana’s unique insights stem from lived experience. She doesn’t just teach healing in the traditional sense; she advocates for truth, accountability, and dignity as core components of trauma recovery. Her work speaks to marginalized communities—those who have been forced to suppress their emotions and voices in the face of violence and oppression. She helps them reconnect with their authenticity and emotional sovereignty.

Ana challenges harmful practices that disregard the systemic nature of trauma and promotes trauma justice as the important path to healing. By weaving in somatic techniques, Ana empowers individuals to release the weight of their past and move toward personal empowerment. Ana has unique ability to blend compassionate understanding of trauma with empowerment and advocacy for those who are often marginalized.

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 that combines trauma justice, somatic therapy, and spiritual integrity. She advocates for vulnerability, accountability, and collective healing to dismantle the systems that perpetuate oppression and harm. Ana’s work provides a critical lens into the trauma of marginalized communities and offers a roadmap for healing that is both deeply personal and collectively transformative.