About Lydiana
I’m Dr. Lydiana Garcia, the Founder, and Owner of The Beyond Resilience Life. It is my honor to welcome you to the community.
After working as a psychologist for over 10 years of healing trauma with children, adolescents, adults and families, and taking a great amount of extra training to help me better my skills, I learned that healing trauma can also have a beautiful meaningful side that when we tap into it, we not only heal, but also transform our lives.
Working one-on-one with my clients has been an amazing humbled and honored experience; yet, I was feeling the need to expand my knowledge and experience with a larger community. Also, I was completely unaware of how my traumas and life adversities were impacting my health and overall life.
When I decided to study a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology I knew that it was going to take me 9 years (4 undergrad and 5 grad). But I didn’t know that it was going to spotlight my persistence that so often is linked to an intergenerational trauma pattern of the hustle mentality as a way to keep you “safe” from danger.
From my maternal side, I come from a strong lineage of women that have challenged the status quo and have pursued big dreams and great professions. However, these women have also struggled significantly with self-care and with anxiety, allergies, and other chronic illnesses (including cancer). My maternal grandmother is a perfect example of this: she obtained a BA degree during a time that it was kind of equivalent to a Ph.D., pursued a teaching career, raised 6 children, tutored and helped raise me and my cousins.
On my paternal side, I have a lineage of strong people that have endured horrendous acts of violence, slavery, prejudice, colorism, racism and many other related cumulative trauma. .
From this combo, I got my persistence and getting-things-done perspective, but I also inherited feelings of shame, internal racism and colonization.
In my teens, I struggled with allergies and stomach issues. These got worse in my late twenties/early twenties; I gained over 20lbs in less than a year, I was soooo stressed and experienced some mild panic attacks, I couldn’t sleep well, was diagnosed with IBS, developed many food sensitivities, my anxiety was off the roof.
After having my son, 4 years ago, the sh*t hit the fan, because I was experiencing post-partum anxiety and the blues. I also felt numbed and wanting to escape my reality by the demands of motherhood, and felt super guilty and shame for even wanting that. As a psychologist I’ve learned about the importance of attachment in the early years and yet I felt so triggered and “out of control” of not being able to fully connect with my son. There was a lot of tears and questioning if I was even being a “good enough mom.” Whenever I tried to share my experience with others, they would somehow dismiss it by reiterating how good of a mom I was, and how my knowledge of psychology “should” make me a good mom. These comments would only heighten my anxiety and shame, and also made me feel so lonely.
The healing started to happen after I started somatic therapy and reflecting on the intergenerational trauma that was passed on to me by my parents… and then, I started getting the calling to start a podcast and a community to help people become aware of their intergenerational trauma, especially the ones that creep in and people have a hard time figuring out where that pattern, thoughts, feelings come from, and to apply somatic based coping skills to help regulate ourselves and then be able to re-write our stories filled with intergenerational wisdom.
I am so looking forward to embarking on this journey with you. And yes, it is still a journey for me, but that is what life is all about, right?
