On This Walk

Moving Past Trauma to Unlock Intimacy & Fulfillment

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Have you ever felt like your trauma is keeping you frozen in time, unable to move forward? What if this also holds the possibility for serving as a pathway to greater relational intimacy and fulfillment?

Amilya Antonetti is my walking partner on today’s episode of On This Walk to break down these very questions. As the creator and CEO of Designing Genius and a world-renowned human behavior expert, she helps individuals and leaders in and out of workplaces move through challenging moments in their lives, find their purpose, and unpack their trauma. 

Amilya is also full of fire, passion and personal experience. 

In today’s episode, we’re discussing how to move past trauma and into fulfillment, how her trauma informed her perspective on the world, our tendency toward “sloppiness” in our relationships, why isolation is a trauma response, the importance of restoring harmony after a trigger, and the moments in her life that acted as turning points. 


In This Episode

  • (4:43) Amilya shares how trauma has played a role in her everyday life
  • (8:54) Why empathy and care in our relationships are so critical
  • (13:14) Beware of the impact of minimizing our own pain in our healing journey
  • (17:50) How a lack of safety as a child shows up decades later
  • (25:32) Amilya uncovers the trauma that’s at the heart of isolation
  • (28:17) The turning point that changed everything for Amilya
  • (33:58) How to find your way back to the present and verbalize triggers
  • (37:23) Important anchor points: communicate, develop trust, and ground yourself 
  • (43:07) Trust is like tree rings
  • (50:42) The truth about introverts and extroverts
  • (55:43) How trauma allows us to balance our masculine and feminine energy
  • (59:20) The role of intimacy in pain and trauma 


    • Notable Quotes

    • “For me, I follow a tree… Inside of a tree and then there’s rings… You have to demonstrate to me my ability to trust you based on your ability to take responsibility for it. And so my inside ring of a tree has very few people in there, and then I have a next layer and a next layer and a next layer. And those layers are based on my comfortability of how they can or cannot trigger me and work through that. So not everybody is invited into the inside circle. And they shouldn't be because there’s a lot of responsibility there. And then I loosen the responsibility as I move out, and then I’m always gauging where somebody really should live to honor them and honor myself.” – Amilya (43:59)
    • “We’re holding onto certainty because that’s our house of cards. That’s the way that we believe that we feel and hold onto safety. I can tell you right now, regardless of whatever the trauma is that you've been through in your life, if you’re listening, this is true for you. And I know that this wrestling match that we have with uncertainty is at the core of so much of the struggle and so much of the dance where we’d rather put up the illusion. We’d rather believe that we’re in this house of cards but it’s built with brick. Even though it’s NOT.” – Luke (24:58)


      • Our Guest

      Amilya Antonetti is the creator and CEO of Designing Genius and a world-renowned human behavior expert that has been featured on Oprah, The Steve Harvey Show, Dr. Phil, and more. Her mission is to help individuals and leaders in and out of workplaces move through obstacles and come out the other side with greater insight on their purpose.


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          On This WalkBy Luke Iorio