In this episode of the Empowered Through Compassion podcast, David Polidi speaks with Pastor Michael Neely about domestic abuse, faith, and the responsibility of religious communities to protect those who are suffering.

Pastor Neely is the author of Black Eyes and Sweet Talk: A Biblical Perspective on Domestic Violence. Drawing from years of pastoral counseling, he challenges harmful messages that survivors sometimes hear within faith communities, including the belief that God expects people to remain in abusive marriages. Instead, Pastor Neely offers a clear and compassionate perspective: abuse has no place in a healthy relationship, and faith communities must prioritize safety, dignity, and truth.

During the conversation, Pastor Neely shares powerful stories from his ministry, including a woman who came to him in such deep distress that she was considering ending her life. These moments highlight how critical it is for pastors, counselors, and communities to recognize abuse and respond in ways that support safety rather than spiritualizing suffering.

David and Pastor Neely also explore the relationship between therapy and faith. Rather than existing in opposition, both pastoral care and trauma-informed therapy can work together to help people heal and reclaim their sense of worth and freedom.

Pastor Neely also discusses themes from his developing work examining generational trauma, including how patterns of violence in the Black community may trace back to the historical legacy of slavery and corporal punishment.

This conversation invites both therapists and faith leaders to consider how compassion, honesty, and trauma awareness can create communities where survivors are protected and healing becomes possible.

• Domestic violence within faith communities

Pastor Michael Neely is a pastor, counselor, and author focused on addressing domestic violence within faith communities. He is the author of Black Eyes and Sweet Talk: A Biblical Perspective on Domestic Violence, which challenges harmful theological messages that can keep survivors trapped in abusive relationships and encourages churches to respond with truth, protection, and compassion.

Black Eyes and Sweet Talk: A Biblical Perspective on Domestic Violence

Website

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The Empowered Through Compassion podcast explores trauma healing, compassionate leadership, and the integration of therapeutic approaches such as Internal Family Systems, EMDR, and Motivational Interviewing. Hosted by trauma therapist David Polidi, the podcast brings together therapists, authors, educators, and community leaders who are working to create spaces of safety, dignity, and healing in the world.

Each conversation invites listeners to explore the intersection of psychology, relationships, and compassionate systems change.

In this special episode of Empowered Through Compassion, I am joined by my wife and partner in life and work, Heather Polidi, LICSW. After graduating from Boston University's School of Social Work in different years, we both began our careers at Wayside Youth and Family in different departments. Heather served as Program Director of the Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative and CSA program, while I worked as an In-Home Therapist within CBHI. Today, we are co-owners of Empowered Through Compassion, a practice specializing in trauma healing and IFS-informed EMDR work.

This episode marks the beginning of something new. We are launching a free monthly Livestream series, held on the second Tuesday of each month from 12:00 to 1:00 PM EST. Our first session is March 10. This kickoff will introduce the series and our recently released book, IFS-Informed EMDR: Creative and Collaborative Approaches. Our hope is to create a thoughtful and compassionate space for meaningful conversation. In the months ahead, contributing authors from the book will join us for deeper discussions.

In this conversation, Heather takes an important step into the public side of our shared work. We talk about how Internal Family Systems has shaped not only our clinical practice, but also our marriage, communication, and shared vision for healing in community.

IFS has given us language to understand our internal worlds and how they interact. It has helped us cultivate compassion for our protector parts and develop a steadier way to stay connected during stress and conflict. Heather speaks openly about the parts that surfaced as she chose to step more visibly into this next chapter of ETC.

We would truly love for you to join us on our Livestream. Registration information for the Livestream series will be available soon on our website:

EmpoweredThroughCompassion.com

We are so appreciative of you being a part of this next chapter, in whatever way feels right for your system.

In this episode of Empowered Through Compassion, I speak with Brooke Kekos, trauma recovery mentor, clinical hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner, and author of Shattered, Broken, & Beautiful: Losing My Religion and Finding Faith. Brooke was raised in a third-generation Jehovah’s Witness family and shares her courageous journey of leaving a high-control religious environment and breaking free from patterns of emotional and relational abuse.

Our conversation explores religious trauma, identity loss, nervous system dysregulation, and the long, layered process of reclaiming self-trust. Brooke reflects on moving from indoctrination and shame toward autonomy, integration, and spiritual awakening on her own terms.

What makes this conversation so powerful is Brooke’s authenticity. She holds a deep honesty and a profound hope. We talk about how high-control systems shape belief and how healing begins with trusting your inner wisdom.

Brooke beautifully describes change as “planting seeds,” in others to help them have space for their own inner truth. In this way, we can help others reclaim their radical and beautiful authenticity.

Divorce can feel like the shattering of a world. In this episode, I sit down with Oona Mertz, a psychotherapist with over 30 years of experience, to explore what truly helps people navigate the emotional and relational complexity of divorce.

After her own divorce and healing journey, Oona began leading open-ended divorce groups for women, which she has facilitated for over 12 years. Out of this work, she has authored a new book: Unhitched: The Essential Divorce Guide for Women, a resource grounded in the lived wisdom of her clients and the stages of divorce they navigate.

We discuss why the traditional Kübler-Ross stages of grief do not fully capture this process and how Oona’s framework moves from heartbreak, through emotional turbulence, toward mending, letting go, and ultimately moving on. We also explore the loneliness of divorce, the mixed feelings that arise internally, its impact on children, and the powerful role group support can play in healing and growth.

Topics Discussed

• Why the Kübler-Ross DABDA model does not fully fit divorce

About Our Guest

Oona Mertz is a psychotherapist with over 30 years of clinical experience. After navigating her own divorce and healing process, she began facilitating divorce groups for women — a practice she has continued for more than a decade. Her newest book, Unhitched: The Essential Divorce Guide for Women, offers insight, guidance, and lived wisdom from her extensive group work and clinical experience.

Learn more about Oona and her work here:

Reflection

Divorce can be one of the most isolating human experiences, but it does not have to be endured alone. Oona reminds us that healing begins with acknowledging the heartbreak and finding connection with others who truly understand. Through this work, many discover unexpected resilience and even renewal. As Oona shares, some even go through this work and end up saying, “I can’t believe this, but my divorce became the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Episode Summary:

In this conversation, we explore what it really means to understand IFS as a relational therapy. Alyce and I discuss how attention itself is relational, how Self-energy becomes an internal secure base. Everything happening inside our system shapes how we show up in our external relationships.

We talk about titrating small changes, noticing shifts in Self-energy, and reframing “triggers” as trailheads into deeper awareness and healing. This episode invites you to see IFS not simply as a model of parts, but as a pathway toward secure internal attachment and relational integration with ourselves and others. 

If you’re interested in how IFS and attachment theory deepen trauma work and everyday relationships, this episode offers both clinical clarity and practical insight.

Topics Discussed:

How attention itself is relational

About Our Guest:

Alyce Messer, LCSW-S, is an EMDRIA-Approved Consultant and IFS Level 2-trained therapist specializing in complex trauma and therapist wellness. She integrates EMDR and IFS to help clinicians and clients cultivate differentiation, Self-leadership, and healing through secure internal attachment.

At its core, this conversation is about how the core of healing is really cultivating relationship, both with ourselves and others. 

In this episode, David speaks with Tina Taylor, a Syzygy trainer, IFS Institute assistant trainer, and contributor to IFS Informed EMDR. Together, they explore the intersection of IFS, EMDR, pain, dissociation, and safety in trauma healing.

Tina shares how EMDR was instrumental in addressing her social anxiety, and how IFS later helped her heal legacy burdens connected to that anxiety. This layered healing highlights how different models can work together to address both symptoms and deeper roots.

Tina offers a powerful theme when working with pain: 

The conversation also explores dissociation and Dissociative Identity Disorder. Tina reflects on how IFS can look different when working with highly dissociative systems and why goals and pacing matter deeply in this work. While there are clinicians integrating IFS with dissociation, there is currently no dedicated IFS Institute training focused specifically on DID, beyond the Level 2 trauma track.

David and Tina discuss how dissociation itself can be understood as a meaningful communication from the system. The work begins not with pushing toward exiles, but with safety, stability, and strengthening managers so the system can regulate more evenly.

A key takeaway is the importance of cultivating Self energy as a form of resourcing. Tina notes that the amount of Self needed, the “critical mass of Self,” is relative to the intensity of the burden being held. Protectors often know what the system is ready for, and IFS invites us to trust them.

As Tina emphasizes, IFS gives us a simple but profound instruction:

In this episode we sit down with Dr. Kendhal Hart, clinician, educator, author and trauma expert who has spent years refining how Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be brought together in a structured, relational, and highly usable way. Dr. Hart’s work helps therapists move beyond seeing these models as separate tools and toward an integration that honors both clinical structure and the lived experience of clients.

A central theme of our conversation is how couples therapy can be relational, safety-focused, and bring in elements of trauma and parts. We also reflect on making therapy more accessible for people with diverse nervous systems and learning styles — specifically how clinicians can be taught more specific about strategies in IFS to help them understand concepts of direct access and Self.

Dr. Hart is the author of Treating Trauma with EMDR and IFS: A Clinician’s Guide to Integrating Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy with Internal Family Systems, the first full-length book dedicated to this integration. This guide offers clear, practical steps for integrating IFS across all eight phases of EMDR, and it has become one of our favorite resources, together with my book, for clinicians seeking depth, coherence, and compassion in trauma work.

If you are a clinician interested in thoughtful, grounded, and relational trauma therapy, this conversation is for you!

Check out Dr. Hart's website here: kendhalhart.com

Check out her book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Treating-Trauma-EMDR-IFS-Desensitization/dp/1648487076/ref=sr_1_1?crid=19GPVFUYOZ2X2&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.dJHFPN7PsVEdJS-txTB1OIkvKCpE3Iuhazeep5zeOOU.w0xvDgDGUIJTPgbsiBETYStLgdw2mwHSESa00afmi8o&dib_tag=se&keywords=kendall+hart&qid=1768189580&sprefix=kendhal+hart%2Caps%2C161&sr=8-1

What happens when military service, racial trauma, profound loss, and EMDR converge into a path of healing, purpose, and compassion?

In this powerful episode of Empowered Through Compassion, I had the honor of speaking with Dr. Arielle Jordan. She is an army veteran, trauma therapist, EMDR consultant and trainer, author, and advocate whose work sits at the intersection of lived experience and evidence-based healing.

Dr. Jordan shared her experience serving in the military as a Black woman and mother, naming both the strength she developed through service and the racism she endured within military systems, and her devastating loss of her daughter and father in a short period of time. Her story is an inspirational one, where she was able to move through adversary with grace and determination.

Dr. Jordan spoke with honesty about how EMDR became not just a professional modality, but a deeply personal pathway for healing. We explored how trauma lives in the body and how compassionate, attuned therapy can help people metabolize pain that feels unbearable. Her work brings a vital racial trauma lens to EMDR, reminding clinicians and clients alike that trauma is often both personal and systemic, and must be treated with humility, cultural awareness, and care.

Her incredible books are:

Holding Space: My Story of Grief, Remembering, and Thriving After Traumatic Loss

United We Serve, United We Heal.

Find out more about Dr. Jordan here:

https://www.ariellenjordan.com/

#EmpoweredThroughCompassion #TraumaHealing #TherapyPodcast #HealingConversations #CompassionCentered #EMDRTherapy

Welcome to this latest episode. I am so thrilled to welcome back Jamie Marich to the podcast. In this episode we returned to Wicked and dove into a discussion about how Wicked: For Good can connect to therapy, trauma, parts, and of course politics.

Jamie is a leader in trauma treatment, EMDR, dissociation, queer-affirming healing, and expressive arts therapy. They are also the author of many important books and a powerful voice in the trauma community.

So, Jamie was a perfect guest to speak about how deeply Wicked has touched both of our systems, and how we can connect this powerful story to our work in the field. We explored some of the symbolic language of the movie, and how the narrative could be integrated into trauma work.

Wicked offers a story about oppression, identity, longing, courage, and hope. We can also see our political climate of fear and manipulation reflected in this story. The resistance to this, we learn, is friendship. 

A powerful message of this movie was how we can see things from multiple perspectives. It was great riffing on this with Jamie in this episode. We explored how Glinda was able to step outside of her "bubble" and observe some of the ways she was adding to the evil of the universe.

For my system it was also so interesting to see the multi-dimensional aspects of Glinda, and how she had a lot of sadness that was being exiled in her system.

It was so much fun to speak with Jamie about the magic in this movie, and about the magic of being a part of multiple worlds (such as Elphaba). Stepping out of our perspective, and being able to hold the multiplicity really does seem to enable magic! 

We even got a chance to speak about Jamie's new book, Queering EMDR, which is such a gift to the therapy community! I hope you enjoy this special episode!

You can learn more about Jamie's work at:

jamiemarich.com

Jamie's newest published book:

jamiemarich.substack.com

David's Substack:

empoweredthroughcompassion.substack.com.

In this episode of Empowered Through Compassion, I sit down with psychologist Dr. Tori Olds to explore the simple and profound act of slowing down. Tori is known for her clarity, depth, and ability to translate complex emotional processes into something the body can feel. Our conversation centers on what becomes possible when we pause long enough to listen to the quiet truths living inside us.

Together we explore Coherence Therapy and the idea that symptoms are not random. They are expressions of implicit emotional learning. These learnings often formed early in life, outside of conscious awareness, and continue to shape how we protect ourselves. Coherence Therapy gives us a way to bring these emotional truths into the light, making the implicit explicit. When people can see the juxtapositions or mismatches between what they consciously believe and what their inner emotional world holds as true, real transformation becomes possible.

Tori and I also talk about the elegance in the language and pacing of Internal Family Systems. Both of us have found that integration of models invites a more complete picture to understand how our inner systems are structured, and how we can heal trauma. 

If you have ever felt stuck in the same emotional patterns, or sensed that something deeper is guiding your reactions, this conversation offers insight into what is going on in your mind and how it connects to your emotional history. This episode is an invitation to turn toward all of it with compassion.

#EmpoweredThroughCompassion