Relationships bring out our unhealed wounds. My guest today shares how painful relationships used to be for her, and a big moment that helped her start healing.

Lawanda Jackson is a licensed somatic therapist and the co-founder of Light Heart Therapy along with her wife Phoenix Jackson. She's passionate about creative expression, embodiment, and joy. She lives her life directing her attention and energy toward things she's naturally drawn to, where she feels an internal yes.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• The desperation she used to feel in her relationships
• Realizing she felt hatred for her little one inside and then healing that wound
• How she made a huge shift, put her foot down, and decided to BE the one she was waiting for
• Connecting to her spirituality
• Finding her path as a somatic therapist
• Advice for people wanting to connect to self-love and self-compassion
• How she finds the right practitioners

Show notes at https://anniezam.com/podcast/259

Every time I've talked to Mercedes Samudio, something has happened to my nervous system that was just total trust. I feel her integrity and vulnerability and I walk away feeling inspired.

After this particular interview, I felt like everyone I know should hire her and get trauma healing from her.

I also feel grateful for this interview because I am a Brainspotting practitioner and I believe so deeply in the power of Brainspotting. Mercedes explains it in a way that will help you really get why it is so effective. And she talks about how receiving Brainspotting changed her healing trajectory.

Dr. Mercedes Samudio (she/her), DSW, LCSW, AfroNerd, author, and mental health advocate, empowers Black families through trauma-informed care, pop culture scholarship, and innovative healing frameworks. Founder of Shame Proof Parenting®, she integrates geek culture and social justice into culturally responsive practices, mentorship, and clinician supervision, championing mental wellness, resilience, and representation.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Her wakeup around her own unhealed trauma in 2020
• Using EMDR and also identifying its limits
• Why the process of Brainspotting can hold marginalized identities and bodies particularly well (in the hands of the right practitioner)
• Discovering Brainspotting and then diving all the way in
• How Brainspotting works
• Convincing her therapist to learn Brainspotting
• Recovering young parts of herself in her trauma healing journey
• Integrating new boundaries into her work to prevent burnout

Show notes at https://anniezam.com/podcast/258

New Workshop! Feel More Regulated In Your Relationship

For folks who sometimes feel crazy or dysregulated in our relationships. April 17th, 2026

—> Get on the waitlist.

Emily got into therapy at age 27 when everything on the outside was looking good, but she was feeling miserable. Her therapist welcomed her big emotions and tears, and a new path opened up. She realized that she wanted to be a therapist herself.

She also wrote her first poem, and tapped into a way of healing that she still engages in decades later. In our conversation today, you'll hear about how she used poetry and other things to heal depression, misery and other constraints.

Emily G Barrett is a queer radical mystic poet and psychologist tossing seeds in the Long Dark*. She is in love with grief, healing and embodiment and wants to live in the culture created through them. For maintenance, her life requires deep crying and dancing at least every few days, often at the same time.

I know her as an Internal Family Systems therapist colleague. I love the way she thinks and expresses herself, so wasn't surprised to find out she's a poet. We first met when we were both in The Free Joy Experience hosted by Thea Monyee and Ebony Janice Moore.

*thank you, Francis Weller for this language

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Getting into therapy at age 27 and a whole new path opening up (including a career as a therapist!)
• Working through a crisis of her sister's and the line between codependency and loving support
• Writing that first poem that described depression "some days are like ice" and bringing it to therapy
• Writing a manifesto / poem for living her life
• Starting SSRIs and experiencing profound difference in the way she feels about time
• Engaging in Authentic Movement
• How her poems describe and deepen her dreams

Show notes at https://anniezam.com/podcast/257

In this conversation, my guest talks about two MDMA assisted therapy journeys in which he engaged in healing childhood wounds, fear of death, and opening up to more aliveness.

You're going to love his playfulness, his depth, and his expansiveness.

Wil Fisher is the host of the podcast Queerly Beloved, founder of Willfully Living, his life coach practice, and facilitator of Awakened Hearts, a retreat for GBTQ men. Wil is on a mission to empower GBTQ men to lead lives of unwavering authenticity, unbridled freedom, and boundless joy!

After you listen to this one, I invite you to go over to Wil's podcast Queerly Beloved where he's dropping an episode this week in which he interviewed me about trauma, spirituality and family estrangement.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• We each describe the drag avatars that best describe our spirit at the moment of our conversation
• looking for pockets of possibility in creating our podcasts and doing our work
• Annie's dream the night before, and Wil's help analyzing it.
• How before a psychedelic assisted therapy session, his unconscious begins to bring things forward
• How he was taught to disown his brightest light: his queerness and openness to his femininity
• Healing the messages he received as a kid that he was broken, not enough, and that he needed to show up in perfectionism to be worthy of love
• Loving on himself and healing the little boy version of himself
• Practicing emotional release techniques in advance of the psychedelic assisted therapy sessions
• Exploring death through theatrical therapy techniques and then experiencing life differently

Show notes at anniezam.com/podcast/256

Tonya Lester, LCSW, is the author of Push Back: Live, Love, and Work with Others Without Losing Yourself and a Brooklyn-based psychotherapist and writer. Her essay, "Couples Therapist, Heal Thyself" was published in the Modern Love column in The New York Times, and she has been writing the popular Staying Sane Inside Insanity blog for Psychology Today since 2020.

Tonya is a well known couples therapist, so it's particularly juicy and important that we're going to talk about struggles Tonya faced in her own marriage, and how she and her husband worked through them in couples therapy.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• The conflict that landed them in couples therapy
• Being challenged by their couples therapist
• How Tonya and her husband changed their pattern
• The difference between a deal-breaker issue and a grappling issue
• Tonya's thoughts on secure attachment and attachment bonds
• How her own work as a couples therapist changed after being a client

Show notes at https://anniezam.com/podcast/255

My guest today did some significant healing at a psilocybin ceremony at a retreat center in Mexico. She takes us there and explains why she was able to heal in that environment in ways she hadn't before. You'll also hear how and why she does psychedelic work as a therapist.

Dr. Cheryl Tien, PsyD, is a licensed clinical psychologist who helps individuals navigate grief, identity, and life transitions with a culturally attuned, trauma-informed approach. She specializes in psychedelic integration—supporting clients in making meaning of experiences with medicines like MDMA and psilocybin in a grounded, evidence-based way. Her work centers on safety, ethics, and translating profound experiences into sustainable change in everyday life.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Deciding to get licensed, and the pros and cons of that as a psychedelic facilitator
• Advocating for psychedelic medicine accessibility
• Grieving the loss of a former client to suicide
• Getting racially assaulted
• Having fears, visuals and nightmares as a result of stressful events
• Hitting the limits of talk therapy in her own healing
• Choosing to attend a psilocybin ceremony retreat in Mexico
• Why the medicine is 10% of the experience
• Her internal experience during the ceremony
• Doing a sweat lodge the following day
• How she decides when to do a psychedelic journey and what medicine she needs
• Being "spiritually hopeful"
• Her advice to people new to psychedelics
• healing generational trauma

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/254

Deb Benfield has helped hundreds of women heal their relationship with food, eating, and their bodies in her 35-year career as a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.

She is a needed expert at the cross section of pro-aging and body liberation. Her new book, Unapologetic Aging, teaches us to navigate anti-aging and diet and wellness culture so we can enjoy our lives. As women enter perimenopause and menopause, we become more vulnerable to risk of disordered eating. This book is an antidote.

I got an early copy of this book so I could prep for this interview. I want to get more copies for people I love.

As I talk to a few friends about my conversation with Deb, they've admitted to me how much they struggle with their body image and how much they need to hear this conversation.

This is a personal conversation about Deb's own journey with her body.

Here we go.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Deb's journey from struggling with her body image to loving her aging body fully
• Seeing the harms of diet and "wellness" culture to her clients as a dietician
• Transitioning away from "body as project" thinking
• Perimenopause, Menopause and body-trust
• Why the mainstream messaging about belly fat is misleading
• Making body liberation her family legacy

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/253

Before I jump in I want to invite you to a couple of things.

If you've gone low contact or no contact with a parent or caregiver, this time of year can bring up a lot.

I'm hosting a workshop for folks who are estranged from a parent or caregiver and want tools and support in creating your most meaningful and beautiful life.

Every time I run this, folks experience belonging and a sense of hope.

We'll meet online on Friday, December 5th from 1pm to 4pm Pacific.

go to https://anniezam.com/estranged to register. No one will be turned away because of money.

And for everyone, I'm hosting a year-end ritual to clear space in your life for what isn't needed for the new year and setting intentions and creating more space for what matters to you.

We'll reflect on the year you've had and tap into the energy and values you want to make your next moves from.

If you like internal family systems and parts work, you'll probably resonate with this.

You'll have lots of time while we're together to reflect and feel into what's next.

If you've joined me in the past for this, you'll notice this one will be less productivity oriented and more about anchoring into yourself.

We'll gather online on Thursday, December 11th from 2 to 3:30 Pacific.

This is a free gathering. Go to https://anniezam.com/ritual to register and get the link.

My guest today went through a huge personal transformation when she learned Internal Family Systems, or IFS. For example, the ways that she was incredibly productive and excelled at pretty much everything? For the first time in her life, that was not as celebrated. In fact it was something she was encouraged to stop doing.

Alexis Roberson, licensed family therapist, provides psychotherapy and virtual parenting groups for families navigating the complexities of neurodivergent caregiving. As an IFS practitioner, she helps parents and children identify with their "parts" and become more of their true, authentic selves.

You'll hear about her own healing and the way her life and work and family continue to evolve in the direction of freedom.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Finding Internal Family Systems right before COVID lockdown
• Switching to an IFS therapist as she learned IFS
• How Alexis's personality has changed since learning this model
• Opening up to more not knowing and playfulness in parenting and other relationships
• Using her body to check in with her parts and release tension throughout the day
• How she uses somatics in sessions with clients
• Having 2 autistic kids and the shifts their family made to meet their needs
• Getting back to prioritizing fun and pleasure
• Why the chapter she's in now of getting older is gold

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/252

This podcast is about therapists and healers doing their own healing work. So now it's my turn to talk about some of my healing.

Sarah Buino, host and creator of the podcast Conversations with a Wounded Healer interviewed me recently, and I'm sharing that conversation with you. I love the questions Sarah asks me and I just love Sarah and I know you will too.

We talk about a pivotal psychedelic journey I went on, estrangement, authenticity, and how my own healing led to a recent career pivot.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• My pivotal psychedelic healing journey
• My personal experience with estrangement and how I also help estranged people
• Learning about Internal Family Systems
• What Sarah and Annie both have experienced with unconditional love from our spouses
• Sarah's reflections on how Annie has changed and healed more since our conversation in 2021!

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/251

Sonya Brewer is a trauma specialist and relationship expert who specializes in creative life and relationship design for overachieving trauma survivors and their partners. She helps trauma survivors feel more alive, connected and authentic so they can create the lives and relationships they truly want.

In this conversation Sonya shares vulnerably about doing her own deep work, including the processes she went through to heal her childhood emotional neglect and other traumas. She also talks about how her own healing has changed her work as a therapist and healer.

Here's some of what we talked about:

• Discovering Breath Work and somatics
• Finding the right therapist and sticking with her for decades!
• Becoming a healer and leaving corporate behind
• Healing and retrieving young parts of herself
• Understanding and healing from emotional neglect
• Feeling the help, love and healing of her ancestors
• The limits of talk therapy in accessing some of our deepest healing
• Insights on Couples and Complex PTSD (and an upcoming book!)

Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/250