How Generational Trauma Is Secretly Running Your Life | Dr. Mariel Buqué

Dr. Mariel Buqué opens with a revelation that stops you in your tracks: trauma isn't just something that happened to you, it is something that was passed down to you at the genetic level, beginning at conception. Most people move through life in a low-grade survival state, reacting to triggers they cannot explain, carrying the emotional weight of ancestors who never got the chance to heal. This is why depression, anxiety, and a persistent sense of not being enough feel so impossible to shake, they were wired in long before you had any say. Dr. Buqué walks you through how to regulate your nervous system daily, how to challenge the limiting beliefs that run your life, and why healing your body first unlocks your ability to think, create, and finally thrive. The work is hard and it bends you into uncomfortable shapes, but today is always a good day to start breaking the cycle. Dr. Buqué’s book Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma Dr. Buqué's website and newsletter Dr. Buqué's course BTC™ Generational Trauma Therapy Training Dr. Buqué on TikTok Dr. Buqué on Instagram In this episode you will: Understand how generational trauma is passed down biologically and why you may be carrying wounds that were never yours to begin with Learn three accessible nervous system regulation practices you can use anywhere to interrupt stress responses in real time Recognize the difference between managing mental health symptoms and actually healing the trauma underneath them Discover how to challenge limiting beliefs about yourself by tracing them back to their root and doing the body-centered work alongside the mental work Shift from survival mode into a state where creativity, abundance, and meaningful connection become genuinely possible For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1904 For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960 Follow The Daily Motivation for essential highlights from The School of Greatness More SOG episodes we think you’ll love: Gabor Maté Jerry Wise Dr. Daniel Amen Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Lewis Howes?

  A lot of people are afraid to go back into the stories of their past. They're afraid to face the pain, the traumas that they're aware of, and also to face the things they're unaware of, the generational traumas. Why is it so hard for us to face these past traumas and pains?

• 0:22Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's hard for a number of reasons. I mean, I think that a lot of what makes it hard is that people start feeling really unsafe in their own bodies whenever they're talking about trauma. Trauma is like that area of mental health that we're still a little bit tentative about touching in conversation. And so it makes it so that people, you know, don't necessarily want to get into the nitty gritty of not only trauma and understanding what trauma is, but also like how trauma impacts their own lives, how trauma transcends down their lineage, how trauma has been a part of their lives. Because people will exist in trauma, but then have a tough time even acknowledging that it even is a thing.

• 1:03Lewis Howes?

  So what would you say is the percentage of people that exist in trauma in the US?

• 1:08Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Oh goodness, well, I mean, I saw not too long ago like this statistic. I think it can be variable because we got to acknowledge the fact that some people won't actually acknowledge that they're in trauma or know that they're in trauma, right? So, but the statistic says somewhere around like 65 or so percent in a lifetime. So we, like, someone will, 65% of the population in the US will experience trauma in their lifetime, some element of trauma. Now you layer in a pandemic.

• 1:37Lewis Howes?

  Oh, right. How many people actually face their trauma of the 65%, you know?

• 1:42Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Now we're talking like really, really tiny numbers, like...

• 1:45Lewis Howes?

  Little mountain.

• 1:47Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Because we have to acknowledge that people are also not in the know that they're existing in trauma. People believe that the way that they're experiencing their emotions is status quo.

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  This is the way it's supposed to be, it's the way I am.

• 1:59Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  That's all they know. They've never been taught otherwise. What they've seen in their families has been a representation of trauma responses, and it's never been anything unlike what they experience in their day to day. So for them to actually even get to the point of saying, "I have trauma in my life, or I have something to work on, or I can like commit to actually working on this, I don't have to exist in trauma", is really unheard of for a lot of people.

• 2:26Lewis Howes?

  What are the levels of trauma? You know, is it like low level trauma versus a high level trauma? What are the differences? And how can we identify, oh, I think I'm experiencing trauma in my body right now?

• 2:41Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, you know, I think it we have to like define trauma, right? So, trauma is basically an acute emotional response to a life event that is extremely stressful. Sometimes that life event is threatening to your physical safety. Sometimes it's threatening to your psychological safety, sometimes both. And so we can understand, okay, this is what trauma is.

• 3:04Lewis Howes?

  It's an emotional response.

• 3:05Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's an emotional response to an event that is extremely stressful.

• 3:10Lewis Howes?

  So it's like, um, so it's a trigger. You know, it's like if someone says something in your space and you're like, oh, that triggered me, I don't like that feeling. I don't like what they said, I don't like what they did or their actions. There's an event happening in the world. Your response to it is emotionally charged. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

• 3:29Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Correct, it's emotionally charged and it's correct. It's also directly connected to your nervous system. So when people say I'm triggered, what they're saying is some aspect of my experience is in fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 3:42Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  That's what they're saying. And if I'm in a trauma response, it's your behavioral response to being in fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

• 3:49Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh, yeah, you could be reactive or screaming and you'd be like, and

• 3:53Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Avoiding.

• 3:54Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 3:55Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  That's the feeling. The freeze is like dissociating, disconnecting from your environment and really being in that protective like mental space. And then collapsing completely is the fawn response.

• 4:06Lewis Howes?

  Or numbing, right? It's like people do a lot of numbing with drugs, alcohol or addictions of any site.

• 4:12Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  All of it.

• 4:15Lewis Howes?

  My, over the last few years, I've really said to myself, I would love to be able to be in the world and look at every event as a neutral event. As there are things happening, I may not like it or agree with it. I, or I may like it or agree with it. Kind of looking at it as a neutral event and seeing how can I consciously communicate?

• 4:37Lewis Howes?

  Something about the event to get a result. My goal has been in the last few years is to figure out how can I look at the world as events are happening, but not letting them affect me emotionally. Yes, I'm going to be affected by things, but not letting me, hold me back, let's say, from taking action in my life, from being a good partner, my relationships, from taking care of my health. That's been kind of my goal.

• 5:03Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's a great goal.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  Because I used to grow up feeling very triggered by so many things. And then I would be, you know, stuck in bed, or I wouldn't take action on the things I wanted. Events would consume me. Events would hurt me. Events would trigger me. Or people would do those things. If someone would cut me off, I would scream in the car, right? I would be so triggered.

• 5:23Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Fight mode.

• 5:24Lewis Howes?

  It was like, I have to beat this person or something. And I tell you what, by practicing this, and it's been doing a lot of self reflecting, a lot of therapy, and a lot of work on myself, by practicing this, the world is neutral mindset, even though it's not, there's a lot of bad things that are happening, it's allowing me to look at and say, I don't like this. I don't want this to happen in the world. But I'm not going to let it consume me and hold me back from living a peaceful, harmonious life. And that's been kind of my goal. It's been very challenging. But I've never felt this much peace in my life.

• 5:59Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I love that for you.

• 6:00Lewis Howes?

  And I, and I, and I wonder, is that something we should be thinking about? Or is that ignorant of me? And I should be triggered more by all the life's events and all the people that are around me and just be so emotionally charged and reactive as opposed to, okay, I see this for what it is, how can I respond from a conscious way?

• 6:19Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah. I mean, I think that it's a, it's a goal that we should all aim to strive for. Like, I think it's a goal that I definitely share with you.

• 6:27Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 6:28Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, the, the only thing, the caveat there, right, is that because we're human, because we're designed.

• 6:35Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 6:36Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  A certain way. It's not very feasible.

• 6:39Lewis Howes?

  To protect ourselves.

• 6:40Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly. So, you know, and the thing about that design is that anything that actually looks like a potential threat, or even catapults you back into time, like actually reminds you of something that has actually already like threatened your existence in some way, your safety in some way, that that's already going to be something that's going to Revamp that emotional energy. And so you're not necessarily gonna be in that neutral place. We're not meant to be neutral. We're just not designed that way.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. It's not being neutral. It's, here's the thing, I tell my girlfriend this, I say, I'm always aware. She's like, how did you know this was happening or this was happening? I'm like, cuz I'm looking and I'm scanning the world for threats.

• 7:23Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Lewis Howes?

  Right? Like, it's my natural state to look for threats. But it's trying to not react from a fearful place.

• 7:30Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  That's it.

• 7:31Lewis Howes?

  So I wanna be aware and present of like, not just walk around the street and get hit by a car. I wanna look around and be aware and reactive. But then come back to a centered place of peace is the goal.

• 7:42Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah. And I think a lot of what you're talking about is having, there is like this space between when your nervous system says there's a potential.

• 7:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 7:50Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Right? And then there's the space where there's mindful thought and conscious thought. And then conscious action that happens thereafter. And I think that's where you're talking about.

• 7:58Lewis Howes?

  That's what I'm looking to create. That's what I'm looking to create.

• 8:00Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  That's very, very doable, very feasible for anybody, even individuals that have undergone trauma and especially generational trauma.

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  But the psych, it's more of like the psychological threats and the nervous system threats is what I'm hearing you say is what are challenging for a lot of people is like, something happens, an event happens and it triggers our memory. Right? A memory from a traumatic experience.

• 8:22Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yes.

• 8:24Lewis Howes?

  But what if we remove the memory? What would happen then? Would we be reactive and triggered?

• 8:29Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, you know, I think you're talking a bit about how we can reconfigure even like our cellular memory to actually respond less to what could have been triggering in the past. Because you, you know, we have so many different variations of memory. We have olfactory memory, like the scent memory, right? There's so many ways in which our senses can produce triggers for us.

• 8:53Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, yeah.

• 8:53Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Right? So we have the

• 8:55Lewis Howes?

  Sound memory.

• 8:56Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Sound memory.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  Music.

• 8:57Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, there's a familiar taste and just like brings you right back into childhood and you're like, wait, something, something's up. Something's like bringing me back into a place that isn't now. Right? And so we have to talk about the ways in which, you know, you reprogram your mind. You reprogram your nervous system to be steady, to feel like it's in a safe place. Even if a memory gets re-triggered by way of any of your senses.

• 9:21Lewis Howes?

  I think a lot of people can relate to this with Friends, family members, relatives, you know, where like something from childhood triggers them as an adult and they haven't figured out how to either heal the memory of the trauma or just be in the environment with people that triggered them so much as a kid growing up. If someone has a relative or someone that's in their environment, in their space, that triggers them so much, how do they not kick them out of their life completely, but also create a boundary so that it doesn't affect them? With the words they say, with the actions they have, things like that.

• 10:02Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  There are different variations of how people do that. And that's why, like, you know, why I love this work so much. Because you can be really creative with a client as to what will work for you, right? Where can you create some elements of a boundary that can also keep you at close proximity to the people that you love because you still want to be?

• 10:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you want to be in their life.

• 10:22Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Right. And you want to be able to still be unified in some way, but still preserve your energy, right? In the psychological world, especially in like dialectical behavioral therapy, we call environments that still embody some of the trauma responses or the chaos a strong environment. So you're going back into that strong environment that's like immobile, it's inflexible. The trauma responses are embedded in that environment and have been for generations. People just operate that way at home, right? So the biggest thing that we have to do is not only to train the nervous system to be able to be well in the strong environment, right? But to train people to hold on to that because eventually, even if it's microscopic changes, the environment will shift.

• 11:07Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Because you'll be showing up differently in your environment. So the environment is going to shift accordingly.

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  What are a few strategies someone can do to, I guess, work with their nervous system around people that trigger them?

• 11:18Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  You're talking my jam. This is stuff I love so much.

• 11:21Lewis Howes?

  How can they shift so that the environment shifts?

• 11:24Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And I'll preface it this way. This has to be a daily practice. People have to get into the practice of nervous system regulation on a daily basis, especially if they come from a lineage of trauma or if they've experienced trauma just in their lifetime. And the three practices that I like the most, I like them because they're accessible, because you can do them anywhere, and because they actually work. And the three are like breath work. I think people like The saying, "Take a breath," has been so widely popularized. "Look at you taking a breath." I love that.

• 11:56Lewis Howes?

  I do it all the time in my interviews.

• 11:58Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  That's one of my favorite things that I've been able to acquire as, you know, I've kind of like undergone my own journey that now by default I do that too.

• 12:06Lewis Howes?

  Throughout the day.

• 12:07Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, you know, because it's almost like your body is taking care of you now, right? Like you've done all the work to like, "I gotta take care of this body, I gotta take care of this mind." And now it's by default. And that is building mastery. It's like you have mastery over the task of actually doing deep breaths whenever your body needs it.

• 12:26Lewis Howes?

  It's supposed to holding it in all the time. Yeah, or short breaths or holding it in. It's interesting. Okay, so number one is breath work.

• 12:32Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, and breath work that is at least for five minutes. So the nervous system needs at least that amount of time to actually catch up. And it's important to value breath work even though, you know, we have so many like ways in which it's been, I think, overdone or people just like discounted because it's, you know, it's been talked about so much. But the thing about breath work is that eventually your nervous system can't operate in the stress response and in the breathing response simultaneously.

• 13:01Lewis Howes?

  It has to relax.

• 13:03Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's gonna have to. And so you keep it going until you feel that. For trauma survivors, you know, it can take a little bit longer because there's a lot of undoing, a lot of decades, right? And so the breath work is gonna be key. One of my other favorites are like humming. Humming also is-

• 13:19Lewis Howes?

  So powerful. Breathing and humming at the same time. This is what they teach in yoga and, you know, deep meditation practices.

• 13:26Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, a lot of chanting practices utilized, yeah. And the om sound, right? Like really bringing that out actually triggers the parasympathetic nervous response, which is the part of the nervous system that initiates, it's also called like a ventral vagal response, which initiates a relaxation process, a rest and recovery for the nervous system. So it's really essential for people to actually do humming. And the same rule applies. Do it until you feel like, "Okay, I'm in a steady place." One client one time like did so much of the humming after I prescribed it that they were hoarse.

• 14:04Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  But you know, like I think, you know, that also is a testament to commitment, right? Like if you can commit to it, like do it and do what works. And the third one that I like is rocking.

• 14:14Lewis Howes?

  Rocking, back and forth?

• 14:15Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, cuz if you think about the rhythmic element of rocking, it actually like, it's almost like, you know,

• 14:23Lewis Howes?

  Soothing, yeah.

• 14:24Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's soothing, it's like, like a baby in the womb, you know, you're like rocking back and forth.

• 14:28Lewis Howes?

  So funny. I naturally rock, you know, pretty much my whole life, especially when I'm standing, I've never been good at sitting still or standing still, so I naturally just kinda like rock forth when I'm standing, cuz otherwise I'll just, it's hard for me to just stand still.

• 14:42Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:46Lewis Howes?

  So breathing at least five minutes a day, but I think just trying to remind yourself throughout the day to take deep, slow, intentional breaths, humming, and then rocking your body. This could be sitting down, it could be standing, it could be laying down as well.

• 15:01Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, and I think for the busy minds and busy, I'm a busy mind, so I think it works for me to do all three.

• 15:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 15:08Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, I just integrate it, I do my own thing, you know? I rock, I breathe, I hum, and it's, you know, it allows me to really integrate the practices, to get the full effect, and to also, you know, just like, my mind is so preoccupied also with making sure that I'm on the technique, that it adds a bit of mindfulness in there because I'm very present centered.

• 15:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's good. What's the difference between the traumas that happened to us and the generational trauma that happened to our ancestors?

• 15:38Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  So the major difference is placed in biology. So there's a genetic component to intergenerational trauma. And so intergenerational trauma has this

• 15:49Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  way in which there is a genetic transmission that happens from parent to child.

• 15:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 15:54Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And so it creates a predisposition to vulnerability to stress.

• 15:58Lewis Howes?

  Give me an example. What's a common example you see in your practice that is a generational story?

• 16:06Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, I mean, you know, there are people that will come in and say, you know, ever since I was a child, it was like difficult to soothe. And I was, you know, I I had like this hyperactivity. There's a lot of trauma survivors that also like believe that their symptoms are coincide with ADHD. Because there's a lot of overlap in in the experience in the in the symptomatology. So there's a there's a lot of that. There's like people that, you know, reflect back to their childhood. And they say like, I've I've always had like this experience that felt like I was always anxious. When we dig into the layers and we dig deep, we start noticing, okay. Especially because I do a lot of like family tree work and like really going down the lineage to know like,

• 16:49Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  well, what are some of the trauma responses or what are some of the responses around also like inflammatory responses? Like depression or anxiety or other kind of like mental illness, you know, kind of experiences that were held in the family. And when we start going down the family line and we start exploring not only their childhood and how they responded in their childhood, what their attachment patterns were in their childhood, but also how perhaps like their mother had an inner child wound. And their mother's mother had an inner child.

• 17:18Lewis Howes?

  And they never healed it.

• 17:20Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Never healed it, expressed it as a trauma response, yelled and screamed in the home. You know, had like emotional outbursts. What did that do? That actually created a disruption in the attachment that you could have had like in your childhood. It created an insecure attachment. You then went out into the world and experienced bullying, a pandemic, like all kinds of things. And then that trauma, that trauma, you know, propensity or or vulnerability got triggered out. And so now you are continuing the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Because it was modeled to you genetically, it was passed down and then, you know.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Now, is it is it genetic or is it, let's say, the mother breaks the cycle before she heals her trauma, the generational trauma before she has her child?

• 18:09Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  She can.

• 18:09Lewis Howes?

  And. And she creates an environment of peace. You know?

• 18:15Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Lewis Howes?

  Is it the environment? Or is it the biology, the genetic code that is passed down? Because it's like these environments are kind of passed down. You witness your parents doing it. You just follow the pattern. And you follow the environment pattern.

• 18:30Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Lewis Howes?

  Is that genetic? Is that environment? What is both or?

• 18:35Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's both. It's like, you know, for as long as psychology has existed, we've had like theories on nature and nurture. Darwinism also kind of just started that, right? Like way back when. So nature being like the biological aspects of our experiences. And then nurture being like the social aspects of our experiences. And intergenerational trauma is really the only trauma that is situated at the intersection of both. So we have the nature side. Yeah, so you know, on the nature side, the genetic expression, like we're getting a lot of information from like the field of epigenetics, which helps us understand how behavior like impacts genes. And so basically what happens is that, let's say a mother. A mother has stress and depression in her life.

• 19:18Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Let's say that this mother is actually pregnant at five months gestation. So she's pregnant, she has a baby in utero. And because she's at five months gestation, that baby also has all the precursors sex cells that they're gonna have for their lifetime, regardless of the, whether it's male or female. They already have those. So the mother, she experienced chronic trauma her entire life. And so because that became the status quo, her genes re-expressed. So her genes said, okay, this is the way that things are. We are a stressed body. And so because her genes are now saying, we are predisposed to stress, that's being handed down to the baby in utero, actually at conception.

• 20:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:01Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  So the baby is conceived into genes that are predisposed to stress. And because she is already still stressed while she's having this baby, all those stress hormones, namely cortisol, those are being passed down to the baby in utero. And what's happening to the precursor cells? Those are also ingesting a lot of that stress environment. So you have three generations in one body.

• 20:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:23Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Genetically being passed down, the stress vulnerability.

• 20:28Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  But also the social piece, the mother stress, you know, like she has all her things going on. She's predisposed to trauma. She's got all these things going while she's, you know, still pregnant.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  Her environment is still stressful, yeah.

• 20:38Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah. And so everybody in that lineage of three generations in one body is experiencing stress.

• 20:45Lewis Howes?

  Is it just three generations or is it like every generation that's had it?

• 20:49Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, you know, like, I mean, I, I'm, I think it's, it's a little bit of a chicken and egg kind of phenomenon when it comes into generational trauma, right? Like, it's like, where, who, who started it, right? But I think I illustrate that because it's, I think, a little bit easier to see, like, oh, well, maybe it started with mom. Maybe she was, you know, the person that...

• 21:08Lewis Howes?

  Maybe she had an extreme trauma and there was a reaction response, yeah.

• 21:11Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly, right? And so now we at least get to see where the genetic line started from the, from the trauma perspective.

• 21:18Lewis Howes?

  When you think about it that way, you're like, man, I'm carrying the weight of, you know, multiple generations of trauma in my genes, like physical weight, actual weight. That could, that could get a little dark and heavy if you really put the emphasis on that. So how do we actually break that cycle once and for all where none of that trauma stays with us? And we don't pass it down to our kids?

• 21:41Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It definitely has to be a very, like, whole system overhaul for most folks. Like, it has to be, you know, an, an integration of holistic practices in our day to day lives. Every single day.

• 21:52Lewis Howes?

  Like a daily practice.

• 21:54Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Every day. Can't waver on it because we gotta think about what we're undoing. We're not just undoing the decades of trauma that...

• 22:02Lewis Howes?

  That you experienced, yeah.

• 22:03Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  You're doing, you're undoing all the...

• 22:05Lewis Howes?

  You really need to have a rebirth. It's like a spiritual, psychological, emotional, nervous system rebirth, in my opinion. I feel like I've had a couple of them in the last decade. Um, ten years ago, kind of opening up about my sexual abuse trauma. And then in the last few years, just dealing with all relationships in general, like all intimate relationships that I've had. I've never really faced them until a couple of years ago. And I feel like I had to re, I had to emotionally, spiritually die in a sense. Psychologically, I guess.

• 22:37Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Allow it to burn and then, and then build from the ashes, kind of psychologically. And it's a process. I'm not saying I've finished it or whatever, but it's like a constant journey of going back to the different stages of childhood. Healing each stage and integrating that age with my current self. So there's full integration and healing of every different memory from my life that was a traumatic response.

• 23:09Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:10Lewis Howes?

  And it's been a beautiful journey that has allowed me to have peace and harmony on the inside, which I never had that until, really 10 years ago, I didn't start feeling it, but until a couple of years ago, when I started feeling more and more peace on the inside. And it allows me to, again, see the world differently. I'm not saying I'm like, not triggered by things, but allows me to see it. And I say, okay, this sucks. How can I consciously communicate what I want to change? Not from a reactive, overwhelmed, stressed, traumatic state, which I feel like you can't really get much done from that state.

• 23:46Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  No, I mean, you can, you know, you can push things down and numb and, and still operate, you know, fairly well, but

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  You can survive.

• 23:57Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  All of that will come back because you're in survival mode still, because numbing is still survival mode.

• 24:01Lewis Howes?

  But you're not thriving. You're not creating an abundant life for yourself when you're in a traumatic response, are we?

• 24:07Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  No, not at all. I mean, I think, you know, abundance comes from being able to get into the depths of your soul, right? So I love that you're talking about the more like psycho-spiritual angle, because that is definitely, I operate from a holistic angle. And so like, a lot of the work that I do is very mind, body, spirit. And the spiritual peace is really essential, because it's not You know, just your your connection to higher power is really just also your connection to yourself. When you're like really disconnected from your true authentic self, you're not living abundantly.

• 24:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 24:38Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And if we want generational abundance, then we have to get into the depths of everything that's there, into the the mud, if you may.

• 24:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I think if you're if you're triggered or have a nervous system response to a lot of things, you're constantly in a survival mode, right?

• 24:52Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Lewis Howes?

  And it's hard to create an abundant, it's hard to dream from a place of survival. It's hard to create something beautiful from that place.

• 25:01Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I mean, it makes a lot of sense, even like, you know, from a biological perspective. Like when we're in a nervous system response and that's, you know, survival mode, you're in a chronic nervous system overhaul, right? So our nervous system is designed to actually make it so that whenever we are in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, any non-essential functions, any non-essential like organ functions, bodily functions, our brain even, like the cortical region of our brain, all of that is mildly shut down. So if you're talking about like alchemizing and creativity and like all these things, those things require a lot of cortical, you know, structure, like manifestation of like, you know,

• 25:43Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  all the things that you want, like really requires for you to get into your creative mind. And if your cortical brain is not fully functioning in the ways that it, because it's in survival mode, then you're not really going to get into that actualization.

• 25:55Lewis Howes?

  It's so interesting because I was I was in a relationship once where it's a couple of years of stress, right? I was, it's all my responsibility. I should have gotten out, but I stayed in and I wanted to make it work and all these different things. And I remember for like a year before the relationship, I was like getting ready to create a book, write a book. And I was excited about it. And then in the relationship, I had no energy to create because a lot of it was survival in this relationship. It was kind of like, come back home, is she gonna yell at me? And, you know, what are we managing today? What's the stress level? All these different things.

• 26:30Lewis Howes?

  And I kept wanting to try to create this book, but I had zero energy or creative thinking to make it happen. And I kept being like shaming myself, it's like, why do I not have the energy for this? But I was putting all my energy in kind of survival mode and just make this one environment work out. The moment things ended, it's like I finished the book in a few months. You know, it's like I had all this energy and creativity. Cause I wasn't in that survival mode state. I want to ask you a question about, you mentioned mental health for a moment. What are the main, I guess, I don't know all the terminology perfectly. So what are the main

• 27:07Lewis Howes?

  mental health challenges that people face today? Is it depression? Is it anxiety? Is it ADHD? What are the, what are the terminologies of mental health that are prominent today?

• 27:17Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Those are primary ones, but actually depression is on a worldwide scale. Happens to be one of the leading causes of disability. One of the leading causes of just global unwellness. It's very debilitating kind of condition because it's not just a mental health condition. It's also like a bodily condition.

• 27:38Lewis Howes?

  Physically.

• 27:38Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's an inflammatory condition. So we, we know a lot of, you know, I think some of the initial studies that came out that coincided with, you know, psychotropics, like, you know, some of the medications, you know, from like the eighties, nineties and all of that, like helped us to understand some of the ways in which

• 27:58Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  the brain, you know, it operates a certain way to facilitate depression. But we weren't necessarily talking about other studies that were happening, which we're talking about more of the immunology that's implicated, like all those, anything that's inflammatory, that's implicated in depression as well. Diet that's implicated in depression as well. A lot of

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  So many factors, yeah.

• 28:21Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, so many things. So depression is like A big one, but whenever someone comes to me with depression, I always like to look at the the full picture, right? So I look at all those.

• 28:29Lewis Howes?

  Their whole life.

• 28:30Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Everything, yeah. I look at all those pieces. And depression is one of those mental health conditions that has, there are a number of them, but this one has like a way to identify it and classify it as either a single episode or multiple episode. When a person is in a single episode, I usually look for an environmental trigger. What happened? What happened, right? But when there is a multiple episode, I wonder a lot more.

• 28:55Lewis Howes?

  Meaning what? Relationship, food, environment.

• 28:58Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Loss of a job.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, divorce.

• 29:01Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  The small t traumas, if you may, like some of the things that are like your day to day, everyday traumas, but nothing that really compromises your safety in any way.

• 29:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 29:09Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  But whenever we're talking about multiple episode depression, I I get very curious about a person's history, their family history, what happened to them, what happened within their family, and I really start digging. Because when when you're talking about lifelong depression, you've been depressed your entire life, we have to really start wondering, is trauma implicated in your history in some way? And is that what's keeping the undercurrent of depression running?

• 29:40Lewis Howes?

  Depression is the main one you hear about?

• 29:42Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Anxiety, there's psychosis, which we don't talk a lot about. Psychosis is, you know, a just extreme version of dissociation. There's some genetic loading there too, especially with schizophrenia. There's genetic loading to some extent with depression and anxiety. There's trauma, trauma is a whole separate category. You have conflict trauma, you have developmental trauma, you have reactive attachment disorder, which is mostly for children. And it's like the very first sign of like, oh, they're acting a certain way that is different. Maybe something happened.

• 30:13Lewis Howes?

  Something happened, yeah. So I'm curious, these, I just want to understand the terminology of these things. So. In the term of a mental health illness, would depression, ADHD, psychosis, would these be considered illnesses? What would be the terminology?

• 30:30Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  These, I would say illnesses because...

• 30:32Lewis Howes?

  Conditions, what is it?

• 30:34Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I know there's, you know, there are a number of us, especially the holistic psychologists of the world, like, we, we look at illness and disorder. You know, just, we, we like to not look at it as that. In some ways, we like to really kind of like, look at the global picture. But if we're talking about the diagnostic...

• 30:55Lewis Howes?

  Of an individual, yeah.

• 30:57Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, and, and really the manual that we,

• 30:59Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 30:59Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  as psychologists and psychiatrists have to basically abide by when we're creating diagnostic codes, then, you know, these are considered mental disorders.

• 31:08Lewis Howes?

  Disorders, okay.

• 31:09Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Disorders or illnesses, it's actually the same.

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  Now, is this disorder, is it a symptom?

• 31:16Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I hate that word.

• 31:16Lewis Howes?

  I know. Is this...

• 31:20Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  But that's what it's called.

• 31:21Lewis Howes?

  This disorder, this challenge?

• 31:22Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  Is it a symptom? Or is it a disorder? Is it a symptom of trauma or unresolved healing that causes this disorder? And if we heal the trauma, will we be able to eliminate these symptoms? Or these disorders?

• 31:42Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I think we'll be able to get rid of a lot of stuff. A lot of it. Some of it, as I mentioned, because there is that genetic loading and we gotta think of the genetics that we talked about already, right? Like, we're talking about lineages of genetic loadings. So, you know, if we start doing the work now, maybe we'll see a lot less of these disorders happening within our families and our communities. So there is a lot that we can do to actually rectify the abundance of mental illness that's out there, right? I believe that there is a lot of the mental illness that exists in the world that has an undercurrent of trauma and we just haven't talked about that undercurrent or that possibility as much.

• 32:25Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  But I don't know if we'll be able to absolve ourselves of 100% of the mental illness in the world, but I think that we can do a really good job in this generation to break cycles.

• 32:35Lewis Howes?

  Because an individual...

• 32:39Lewis Howes?

  Eliminate these mental health issues on an individual level. If they're willing to do the deep healing work. Because essentially, because I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong. Are these, these are like symptoms of trauma. You didn't grow up depressed. Certain things happened, an event happened, an environment continued to foster the feelings of depression.

• 33:00Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Lewis Howes?

  The state of depression.

• 33:02Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  And if we can heal the memory, the trauma, the event, and, and reconnect to our purest self.

• 33:11Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  Our whole human self. One of those things start to go away.

• 33:16Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  That's precisely the goal. So, you know, where we started off with psychology and psychiatry is we started off with symptom management. A lot of psychiatry, you know, we're still kind of there a little bit.

• 33:27Lewis Howes?

  Which is like, here's the drug to manage the symptoms.

• 33:30Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Band-aid.

• 33:31Lewis Howes?

  But that's not healing.

• 33:32Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 33:33Lewis Howes?

  That's not resolving, that's just managing it.

• 33:36Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Precisely.

• 33:37Lewis Howes?

  But that doesn't

• 33:38Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It doesn't.

• 33:38Lewis Howes?

  Do anything to bring back to wholeness.

• 33:41Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yes, and integrate the person.

• 33:42Lewis Howes?

  Integrating the healing, right?

• 33:44Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly, and that's the goal. That's the goal for me, that's the goal in my practice. I want full integration of that person. I want them to see, really see their authentic self. Some people have, have never even had an opportunity to see like who they could be at their true core self. Because it's been masked by so much of the trauma and the symptomatology that's associated with the trauma, like the depression.

• 34:07Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you believe that people can heal these mental health challenges as well? If they integrate fully?

• 34:15Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Many of them, especially the ones that, you know, because I think we have like bipolar disorder and we have, you know, schizophrenia that have a, a different mechanism to them. But many of them, absolutely.

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  But many of the ones that a lot of people are facing, depression, A D.

• 34:29Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  The big ones.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  A D D, A D H D.

• 34:31Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Depression especially, yeah.

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:35Lewis Howes?

  How important is finding a meaningful purpose in life supports you in overcoming feeling depressed or depression?

• 34:43Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's like so critical.

• 34:45Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 34:45Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, 100%. I mean, like when we're talking about what happens after trauma, meaning making is at the center. It's like one of the biggest things because you have, you have to see your life having some sort of value and that there's meaning associated with your life and with everything that's within your life in order to actually like even feel motivated to do the, the heavy lifting that is the healing work to get yourself to the other side. So you have to have meaning in that journey. Meaning making, it's alchemized in that journey. It's created in that journey, right? But I, I think at the very least, you have to have hope that meaning can, meaning making can be possible.

• 35:28Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. Because what it sounds like to me is a lot of people attach meaning in a more negative, harmful state to events, to words, to actions that happen around them.

• 35:44Lewis Howes?

  And therefore that meaning causes more depression, ADHD, or you know, negative thoughts, all these different things that hurt us.

• 35:51Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 35:51Lewis Howes?

  But if we created a different meaning around the event with the words or the event, uh, the breakup with a loss of a career, created a new meaning around it and had a different intention, different purpose moving forward, we wouldn't have those mental challenges as much.

• 36:06Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, I mean, I think people, you know, just haven't been trained to ask themselves the right questions around meaning making, right? And so.

• 36:13Lewis Howes?

  What's the right questions?

• 36:14Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, the right questions are, you know, well.

• 36:16Lewis Howes?

  Somebody, somebody experiences a traumatic event or big T or little t. What questions should we ask?

• 36:22Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, we should be asking, you know, um. So, questions around, well, let's talk about what was learned in that circumstance. That's a really hard question to ask because sometimes people will be like, you really, you think that that needed to happen? No, it didn't need to happen.

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  It did happen.

• 36:39Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It happened.

• 36:40Lewis Howes?

  Can't change it.

• 36:40Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  You can't. That's, that's in your history now. But what can we take from that experience? And it doesn't even need to be the traumatic event itself, but your response, your reaction. What can we take from that to learn how to now create a healing protocol for you? And it's, it's about, you know, being able to ask questions that get people thinking outside of the box because what happens when you're in a state of trauma is that you're, you're frozen in many ways. Your thoughts are frozen. You, you start thinking a lot of the same things, right? Like, it's a lot of protective functions. Your, your feelings are frozen in time, like, people like constantly feel worry, anxiety, like, a lot of things that are, you know, just them being in a protective state.

• 37:24Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And so, if we can start asking questions to freeze some of that up, that's, that's gonna be like really key. But I, I like that question even though, you know, I, I think it can veer us in different directions, but I'm open to that whenever it comes to work with a client, right? Because wherever we go, I'm with them. I'm going with you and we're following that path.

• 37:43Lewis Howes?

  If someone stays committed to their story of, of meaning, that it was this horrible event and it ruined my life. The divorce, the job loss, the injury, whatever it might be. What happens if they hold on to the meaning in a negative way as opposed to, that was a traumatic event. I don't wish it upon anyone, but here's what I learned from it, here's what I gained from it, here's what I'm gonna do with it in a positive way. What happens to those?

• 38:14Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, the way that I interpret that is that that person is, one, still in a state of fear. They're not ready to, to really get curious about what other definitions meaning can have in their life. They're just... Really stuck on the one definition that it tarnished their lives, that they, you know, it got in the way and they're just stuck there, right? And so if that's the case, then my role as a clinician or their role as a person that wants to get out of it, hopefully, is to work on the fear. You gotta work on where is fear trapped? How is the nervous system operating around fear, right? Like where can we free them up in a bodily sense?

• 38:57Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Because the nervous system requires a lot of that body-based work. And so we have to like really get curious about that and like go in that direction versus, you know, the questions are very mind-focused, right? But we need the body-based practices in order to create safety in the body.

• 39:14Lewis Howes?

  To release also, right? To release the fear, the pain, the trauma and reconnect to the safety of your body. Is that right?

• 39:21Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly. And so that when a person can feel that there is safety in their body, they can feel that they can actually go into the depths of their minds in a way that doesn't feel scary and existential.

• 39:33Lewis Howes?

  Right. Speaking of fear, I saw somewhere recently, I don't know if this is true, but I saw somewhere recently that we are, that human beings are born with three fears. The fear of loud noises, the fear of falling and the fear of abandonment. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, we tend to build, add more fears as time go on. I don't know if that's true, if those are the only three or we don't have fears at all, but, but it seems like we gather, we collect more fears through childhood and adulthood. Why do you think we gather so many fears and collect them?

• 40:10Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, I think you're talking about like primary fears, right? Like those feel like primary fears to me. Like they're like what you start off with. As a baby, you're gonna have that startle response. As a baby, you're gonna need to feel deeply connected and attuned to a caregiver.

• 40:26Lewis Howes?

  Otherwise you don't live, yeah.

• 40:28Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Basically, right? And so like it's basically a fear of losing life or a fear of losing safety. So it makes a lot of sense, but the accumulation of it also makes sense because we operate in mental representations and categories, basically. So we have specific categories in our minds that are primarily created in our childhood and then everything else that happens in life, we put in the different categories and the buckets of our minds and they just start accumulating and growing. So if you have a big fear bucket, then you're gonna have a lot of.

• 40:59Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  fears that are gonna, you know, like, come into your life and stay there because your fear bucket is just, you know, so enormous.

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest fear you've had to overcome?

• 41:10Lewis Howes?

  Thing that held you back the most?

• 41:14Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I think for me, you know, I grew up in

• 41:18Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  in poverty and that for me, the thing about growing up in poverty is that it's not only the fear of do we have enough? It's also that that mental expression that that narrative stays with you throughout life and it creates that and now we call it like deficit mentality, right, or other kinds of things.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  Scarcity.

• 41:44Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  scarcity mindset, all those things, right, like, and so not having enough, not being able to survive in that way is definitely like been an enormous fear for me for like throughout life because that's I was born into such poverty that I remember like with my grandmother, like she carried like a bucket of water to bring to her home, right, like from like this tiny little spring, you know, like not having outdoor plumbing, like indoor plumbing. In the Dominican Republic.

• 42:15Lewis Howes?

  Did you grow up there?

• 42:17Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I I was there until I was five.

• 42:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:19Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, and then I came to the US and so like, you know, I mean, like you you see that growing up, right, like, and there's like that much scarcity that to ever go back to anything like that feels like it can happen at any time.

• 42:33Lewis Howes?

  It's like you don't want to go back there. I remember when I was twenty, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, that range, I was living on my sister's couch. I had no money and I was in student loan debt at the time, living off three credit cards. So two thousand eight, when kind of the economy crashed that time. And I remember thinking like, This is not fun, you know, this is not fun, like eating my sister's leftovers and like not being able to pay for rent and just figuring out how we're gonna get food for the next couple of days, right? Like where's the money gonna come from?

• 43:03Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Lewis Howes?

  Now, I had a roof over my head, but I wasn't providing for myself, right? It was like my sister was, even though I'm a twenty something year old man, right? And I remember thinking to myself, after I started to make money for, I don't know, probably five years, I remember thinking, I just never wanna go back there. So I was still kind of in a survival mode, even though I had money, like I had enough money in the bank for six months and then a year to like live off of. I was still kind of operating off of scarcity and not enough, and I need more to feel safe and secure. And I never wanna go back to that place.

• 43:39Lewis Howes?

  And it's, it's challenging to break that physically, the nervous system, and also mentally, psychologically, and just knowing you'll be able to generate and create enough. It's a challenge to break through.

• 43:51Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It is, and, and you know, like, the, the actual logistical challenge, I mean, that was there for sure, right? Like, I had, I had to do a lot to be able to break away from that, right? And, and to, to help my family, like, navigate out of, you know, that, that position of working class poverty, right? Like, but, um, the, the psychological piece, that takes serious work. That takes serious work, right? Cause you, you know, like, it's about money management, it's about, you know, like, um, things that I may desire and wanna purchase, but that's always in the back of my mind. You know, and so like, it's like really kind of finding that.

• 44:30Lewis Howes?

  You gotta learn a whole new set of skills.

• 44:31Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Lewis Howes?

  I learned with money, it was like, I'm still educating myself today, you know? I'm still learning and teaching myself different things about money, from saving to investing, to tax strategies, to managing it, all these different things. I don't think you ever stop learning.

• 44:46Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  And because I'm learning, I feel more and more confident with it, I feel more and more. Okay with it, but if I don't understand it, how am I gonna feel okay with it?

• 44:55Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 44:56Lewis Howes?

  And most of us were never taught this as kids. You know, we're never taught this, we're not taught this in schools, how to manage money, so. And if we grew up in lower income houses, we probably weren't taught how to manage it either.

• 45:06Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Lewis Howes?

  So it's like you've really got to self educate yourself on so many areas of life if you didn't learn.

• 45:12Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  Money, healing, relationships, how to deal with failure, all these things. That's why I created this school of greatest, because it's everything I wished I had when I was growing up.

• 45:20Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 45:20Lewis Howes?

  There are some people that I've met who can't remember their childhood.

• 45:27Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Super common.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  I met this one girl, I don't know, about 10 years ago. She's like, I don't remember anything before 17. I go, what? It just didn't make sense to me, right? I know have, you know, I don't remember every year of my childhood and I don't remember everything, but if I can go back to that place or I see a photo, I'm like, yeah, I remember this. But when I met someone for the first time and said they didn't remember before 17, I go, that's interesting. I later realized there was a lot of trauma.

• 45:54Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Lewis Howes?

  So if someone isn't able to recall childhood memories in general and they just have it blocked, is that because of trauma or is that something else?

• 46:04Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  So, trauma can be very much implicated. I mean, like, you know, humans were so variable that, you know, there can be other things. But when it comes to this type of experience that you're talking about and people saying, I don't remember a whole chunk of my life, I don't remember my childhood, it is incredibly common for trauma survivors, especially individuals that are, that have undergone either complex trauma or chronic trauma or just have been in that trauma response and that survival mode for almost a lifetime. And, I mean, there is a bit of a biological, psychological explanation for that. And I think we gotta like really get into memory and how it operates. Like, what is memory, right? So we have short term memory, we have long term memory.

• 46:49Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And short term memory really operates at this like 30 second interval. And anything that isn't encoded into long term memory dissolves with short term memory. You no longer remember it. Now, when we're talking about the nervous system, remember we have like a dissociative process. That dissociative process makes it so that also like you're in, you're operating only with the essential functions that you need. Which means that that memory encoding, that's compromised too. So when you're in constant survival mode and your memory isn't shifting into long-term memory, you're not encoding that. You can't later retrieve it. So retrieval isn't gonna be possible later in life. You're not gonna remember what happened when you were eight years old.

• 47:34Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Because there was a compromising of your, of your memory process.

• 47:38Lewis Howes?

  Is there a way to remember things if you've blocked it for so long? Or is it kind of you've lost these memories?

• 47:44Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I mean, you know, especially in childhood, like some of it we're supposed to lose, right? Pruning away, it's, it's, we're not designed to remember everything. But, you know, if, if memories weren't encoded into long-term memory, it's gonna be hard to remember them because they're just not there. However, I mean, I think we have to, you know, further break down memory because we have implicit and explicit memory.

• 48:09Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference?

• 48:10Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  So explicit memory is more of those like, you know, you remember, you know, that childhood girlfriend that you had, right? Like, and like you remember moments of that, like it's, you remember what you had for breakfast. It's like very concrete conscious details of your memory. Implicit memory is more like sensory memory. So the body still remembers.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  Smell, the sight, the experience, the music.

• 48:34Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  The touch, like, we remember in, in a more implicit way, right? And so like people, when they're talking about not remembering, they're talking about explicit memory, not implicit. Because implicit, they're remembering a lot because they're living in that body that's constantly reminding them through triggers that there's a memory there.

• 48:56Lewis Howes?

  Let's say someone has got out all the things, you know, depression, all the stress, nervous system is broken down, they're just in a low state, all these things. Everything triggers them, right? If you wipe their memory off and they woke up without having the memory, cellular memory, or the mental memory of the trauma, the little t, big T, the chronic trauma, all these different things, what would happen? This is a hypothetical scenario. But if you were able to eliminate these memories,

• 49:31Lewis Howes?

  wouldn't you essentially be more positive or have like a more, a better outlook on life?

• 49:36Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I mean, I think that you, you know, could have more of like what we talked about earlier, that neutrality, for sure, right?

• 49:43Lewis Howes?

  Just observing it.

• 49:44Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, yeah, you know, like, because everything will be new, right? And so you won't have something that, that actually is attached to emotion. Like, an event is not attached to emotion. And, you know, a scent is not attached to emotion. So you won't have the trigger response. You'll just be looking at something with, with a new set of eyes.

• 50:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes. I just feel like a lot of people doubt themselves. And they have a lot of self doubt tied to previous events, right? I failed, this person made fun of me, I was laughed at, I was bullied, they broke up with me, I lost the job. Whatever it is, all these events, then attach their self-worth, their identity, and they doubt themselves because of a series of events. How do we break that so people can learn to believe in themselves more, even if they had different events happen that didn't go their way?

• 50:35Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well, I think some of it has to be like a reconfiguration of their self-concept, like, it's, it's very self-oriented, right? Because like, now we're talking about when someone said something to them about their clothes, how now they like, you know, have this like, perception of themselves and how they dress that's negative, you know, or ill-fitted because of what was said. So now it's become a part of the self, right? So a lot of the work has to be central to the self. Like, how do we get you to a place where, you know, you're embodying either a more neutral or more positive sense of self? And that your core self isn't... You know, an amalgamation of like all of these negative experiences and how you then translated and internalized those into how you see yourself and how you see the world.

• 51:20Lewis Howes?

  How do you teach that to someone? What's something someone can do if they're listening or watching and they don't believe in themselves? They have a series of events that remind them, see, there I go, yeah, I'm not good enough for this, or I don't deserve this. What can they do to start having a different view of self?

• 51:36Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I like the idea of challenging, of challenging thoughts, right? But the thing about challenging thoughts is that the first step is that we have to write down the limiting thoughts that have been there. We have to write down the emotions that have been associated with those limiting thoughts. And then we have to challenge those thoughts, like actively challenge them. There's so many of us that are walking around this world not having challenged a lot of those initial ideas that we've created around ourselves, regardless of where they came from. They could have been from a parent who told you, you disappoint me, you're not good enough, right? And that manifested into a mental representation of themselves as not being good enough, right? But we have to look at the root and then challenge the root.

• 52:21Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  And then also like work on the emotional piece. And emotional piece, I like the work around emotions to be like very body-centered because emotions are very situated in the body. And so it's a mind practice in that we're writing all these things down, but it's also a body practice.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  It's an integration.

• 52:38Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It is.

• 52:39Lewis Howes?

  Mind and body. You've got to integrate it. You can't just be analytical around it. If your body's still reactive, you've got to integrate the two.

• 52:45Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, always.

• 52:46Lewis Howes?

  What do you think holds you back from your highest self right now?

• 52:51Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I definitely have had my fair share of imposter syndrome, of wondering if I, you know, if I meet the mark. If I've been in spaces where I've been the only person that looks like me, and so it's definitely made me wonder.

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

  Maybe he looks like you, kind, energetic.

• 53:08Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  You're so kind.

• 53:09Lewis Howes?

  Generous.

• 53:10Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Thank you, thank you. I receive all of it.

• 53:12Lewis Howes?

  Great smile.

• 53:13Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Thank you, thank you. I mean, you know, like, I'm, I'm a black Latina, right? I'm from the working class. I've entered a lot of elite spaces, you know, for, for education. You know, I got an Ivy League education for my doctorate and I was very much, you know, not seeing myself mirrored in a lot of these spaces. So it definitely like made me wonder a lot.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  You were standing out, as we were saying.

• 53:35Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I was, yeah. Yeah, and that, you know, it can be very isolated, that experience, you know? And so I think that it makes you wonder, like, do I belong here? Is my voice, you know, welcome, like, that sort of thing? So that definitely has been, you know, uh, it's something that has been a struggle for me. And I think it will forever be like something that I know has been there, but I work really, really hard on a daily basis.

• 53:59Lewis Howes?

  So if you're coaching someone else that's in a similar situation, they're, they stand out in their industry. They look different, they don't fit in, I guess, right? They're not mirrored, as you said.

• 54:14Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  What would you, how would you coach them if they said they, they feel like, I don't know if I belong, or I feel like an imposter? What would you, how would you coach them to interpret that differently?

• 54:23Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, I love that question. I would, you know, uh, I would start with the body always, right? So I would definitely like do some imagery exercises with them to like place them in their mind in that space and do some relaxation exercises with them around that, because that's always my thing.

• 54:37Lewis Howes?

  To get them relaxed first.

• 54:39Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 54:39Lewis Howes?

  To start creating from that space.

• 54:41Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Exactly. Like, I want safety.

• 54:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:43Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, always safety. However, I do always want to ask, like, who told you you don't belong? Because that's a question that we're not explicitly asking ourselves. Like, someone said that in the STEM field, like, women aren't, you know, there isn't open spaces for women, right? Like, something happened there, right? Who said that women don't belong in STEM? And so that's, you know, like, I always want to ask that question. Of course, we, you know, some of the answer. But, but I think societally, you know, like, there's been like ways in which we, um, we've created spaces that, that have been for specific populations. And so we have, we have to start asking, like, who said that there isn't a space that's open for you?

• 55:26Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  So I, I think that the, the reason why I ask that question is because I think that... You know, it opens up the mind to to really wonder about that. And I think it also offers like a little bit of empowerment to the person that's receiving that question. Like, yeah, who told me that I don't belong, you know? And like, really stepping into that. And I I've done that for myself, and it's been incredibly helpful.

• 55:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's good. What else would you say? After asking that question, how else would you coach that person?

• 55:51Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I would want them to, um, you know, like, really do some, like, heavy lifting around the emotional piece. I I think that that's always gonna be um, an an important aspect of doing work that's imposter syndrome centered, right? Because at the heart of it is fear, right? And so, fear of, there's a fear of a lot of things. But you know, like, fear of belonging is a big one, right? Like, do I belong, right? And so, if we're talking about fear of belonging, if we're talking about not feeling good enough, a lot of those, you know, areas are are what we really need to work on. So that's the depth work, right? The other stuff is a little bit more superficial. It's like where we start, but then we gotta get into the the emotion part.

• 56:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, interesting. What has been the thing you're most proud of that you've overcome?

• 56:44Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Um, you know, definitely getting to this level of education, I think, is something that um, I hold a lot of pride around because I've worked so hard. And I was able to overcome at least like the bigger pieces of imposter syndrome around that. And also, a lot of things, like, I wasn't taught to operate at this level, right? And and so, a lot of it was self-taught.

• 57:08Lewis Howes?

  At what level?

• 57:09Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  At this level of education, you know? I'm I'm definitely a first generation in in that regard. Um, to, there's a lot of bureaucracies that you gotta learn and know, like, when you're operating in, like, you know, educational spaces that are higher, higher, higher ed in this way. And so... The fact that I, my own like, I'm a very intuitive person. So my own intuition helped me to really scan environments in a way that helped me to to learn the environment in a very concrete way. And then learn to operate within it, but also just be myself, right? Like bring myself, I say I bring my sauce. Because I'm like, I'm gonna bring my whole Dominican self into whatever space that I'm like a part of. And you know, everybody like who's around me, you'll have to adjust, right?

• 57:53Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Like rather than me like adjusting to the environment and like reconfiguring myself. So that's been something that I've been like really proud of, just like stepping into spaces that where I've felt like before I don't belong and just proclaiming that I do.

• 58:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool. I love this stuff.

• 58:12Lewis Howes?

  You've got a, your, your social media is amazing. You've got a lot of great resources there. You're teaching, you're inspiring, you're entertaining, and you're connecting people to this work of healing generational trauma.

• 58:27Lewis Howes?

  You've also working on a book right now. You've got a course you're working on that's coming out soon. What is this course gonna be teaching people about specifically?

• 58:36Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's gonna really get into the depths of trauma and how we heal from trauma through a number of holistic practices. So my hope is that for individuals that are just hoping to really enhance their knowledge of how, how to really integrate practices that are gonna be very helpful in the trauma journey. Or for healer practitioners that are out there wanting to really enhance their own practice. Coaches, whomever, right? Like and be trauma informed, that this can be a really good hub and center for them to be able to acquire that knowledge. And access can be through my website, which is drmarielbouquet.com.

• 59:13Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 59:13Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, and click on courses and there I am.

• 59:16Lewis Howes?

  There you are. Yeah, you have a newsletter too, we can subscribe to?

• 59:19Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I do, I do, and I actually offer one coping skill each week on my newsletter. Yeah. So one coping skill that people can integrate into their week. And, and then also, you know, all things my world, basically.

• 59:32Lewis Howes?

  That's cool, very cool. So if we go to drmarielbouquet.com, they can get the newsletter, they can find out about the course. See you on social media as well. What, Instagram's your main thing?

• 59:43Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Instagram and TikTok. I like TikTok, it's a lot of fun.

• 59:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:46Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, I, I like to, you know, like. Lighten the conversation on trauma a little bit because it is very heavy.

• 59:53Lewis Howes?

  It's heavy, it's dark.

• 59:54Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's very dark.

• 59:55Lewis Howes?

  A lot of people don't want to face it.

• 59:57Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  But that's the thing is that if I can open up just a little, you know, a small smidgen of like conversation in there, like people start getting really curious about trauma. And I think that, you know, on TikTok, I've been able to do that where I, you know, I infuse a little bit of humor and people are like, okay, it's not that scary to talk about. I can do this.

• 1:00:17Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is going to happen in the world over the next three to five years if people don't face their traumas?

• 1:00:22Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I think we're going to see a lot of, it's not just going to be on the personal end that we'll see the continuation of these generational cycles of trauma. I think it's going to be that we're going to continue to institute policies. We're going to continue to, you know, just operate in the world in a way that is driven by a lot of hostility and aggression. That is a representation of unhealed wounds.

• 1:00:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes. It's interesting, in 2017, I wrote a book called The Mask of Masculinity, which is about how men can start to heal, can start to drop the masks that are trying to protect them from the outside world and reveal themselves, be a little more vulnerable, open up, and really just show their authentic self from a healed place, not from a hurt place or defensive place. Because I believe that

• 1:01:15Lewis Howes?

  a lot of the problems that are happening in the world are caused by men who are, you know, wearing a mask, who are hurt, who are angry, who are traumatized. And there hasn't been a safe space specifically for men, until I think more recently, to start opening up about their traumas. I don't think it's been acceptable for men to talk about these things. And so I'm so glad you're doing this work. I'm so glad there's a lot of people doing this work because I just feel like people need resources to start the healing journey. My therapist says it's a journey, it's not a one-time event where you're just, I'm healed and it's all better, you know.

• 1:01:48Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:49Lewis Howes?

  It's an integration and healing process over time.

• 1:01:51Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:01:52Lewis Howes?

  But I feel like, More people like you need to be doing this type of work and teaching us how to heal. Because I think if we can all heal, men specifically, speaking from my point of view, it's like, you know, if men can learn to heal and be more loving and authentic, then I think it's just gonna be a lot more harmonious environment in the world in general.

• 1:02:14Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I couldn't agree more.

• 1:02:15Lewis Howes?

  But I also think that, you know, a lot of women need to heal too. There's a lot of traumas that if women can heal too, they can create a safe space for men to be their authentic selves. It's like working together more as opposed to, you know, arguing and fighting as much. So that's my intention, that's my mission here.

• 1:02:32Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I love it, I love it. It creates, you know, a lot more vulnerability from that place of vulnerability. We can, you know, bridge curiosity, safety. There's so much that comes from that place where the work is done. Vulnerability and courage, you know, takes root and it creates definitely more of that harmony you're speaking to.

• 1:02:50Lewis Howes?

  This is the challenge. I just wish people could have conversations consciously. You know, just like, maybe I don't agree with a lot of things that you do or other people do, or they don't agree with me, whatever. But to be able to question, and like you said, did you say question or did you say, challenge the thoughts, challenge the ideas, but not from a aggressive emotional state. It's like if we can question and have a conversation from a place of calm, then it's gonna be able to help us come together more in just a lot of different areas in life. So that's my intention.

• 1:03:24Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah, starts with the nervous system though. You know, like if we're like heavily triggered and, you know, the conversation that we're having is triggering because it's disrupting, you know, whatever is going on in our minds like or, or it's just, it's challenging us in a way where it's like pushing us out of our comfort zone.

• 1:03:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, makes us feel uncomfortable and we're like, I gotta protect myself. I'm gonna scream and react and call you an idiot or whatever.

• 1:03:49Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Go straight into fight mode.

• 1:03:51Lewis Howes?

  Right, but you can't solve anything that way, can you? It's really challenging to have.

• 1:03:55Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  You can't be creative and solution oriented in the ways that you would be if you were in more of that neutral state.

• 1:04:02Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I love that.

• 1:04:04Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Lewis Howes?

  It's a question I ask everyone at the end, it's called the three truths. So imagine hypothetically, it's your last day on earth, many years away. You live as long as you wanna live, but it's your last day, you know, as old as you wanna be. And you accomplish all your wildest dreams. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you to another place. Your books, your courses, your content. We don't have access anymore. But we have access to three things that you would leave behind with the world. Three lessons or three truths. What would you say are those three truths for you?

• 1:04:39Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  They would be that you are not just what happened to you. You are abundantly so much more.

• 1:04:48Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  I would let people know that healing is a lot of work. It sucks. It just bends you and twists you into different uncomfortable shapes, but it is incredibly worth it. And that no matter where you are in your healing journey today is always a good day to start to break the cycle.

• 1:05:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Lewis Howes?

  I want to acknowledge you, Marielle, for your journey, for stepping into this field of practice. You were telling me before about how you had another career in advertising in New York City.

• 1:05:23Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Lewis Howes?

  And then you were volunteering on the weekends.

• 1:05:26Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:27Lewis Howes?

  And you found more meaning and fulfillment in being of service to helping people with these different challenges in their life.

• 1:05:35Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Lewis Howes?

  And you said, I'm going to take on eight more years of school. I'm going to take on this, you know, college debt and student loans to follow a mission, a purpose that was more meaningful for you. It's really hard for a lot of people to do. And so I really acknowledge you for listening to your heart, for listening to your truth, for taking that step and continually adding value to so many people in the world by doing the individual practice, one-on-one that you do, the coaching you do, by sharing this content on social media, by working on books and courses. I really acknowledge you for stepping into this season of your life, which is adding a lot of value for you and to the world.

• 1:06:15Lewis Howes?

  It's really meaningful to witness and to see you overcome so much to get to where you're at.

• 1:06:21Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Thank you.

• 1:06:21Lewis Howes?

  I really acknowledge you for that, yeah.

• 1:06:23Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Thank you. I really appreciate that.

• 1:06:24Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course.

• 1:06:25Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  It's been a, it's been a journey I, I treasure and I'm grateful that I'm here. And thank you for highlighting my journey.

• 1:06:32Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah, of course. People can follow you. We'll have everything linked up. Your website, drmariellebouquet.com. Social media, drmariellebouquet.

• 1:06:44Lewis Howes?

  Final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:06:49Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Well greatness to me, you know, it's found in everyday people. The people that alchemize from the ashes, you know, and become cycle breakers, very much like you have. And I just think they're the bravest souls on this planet. And that to me is really great.

• 1:07:07Lewis Howes?

  Adios. Gracias. Thank you.

• 1:07:10Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Such a pleasure.

• 1:07:10Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it.

• 1:07:11Dr. Mariel Buqué?

  Thank you.

• 1:07:12Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

• 1:07:55Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.