You Are Not the Victim, You Are the Creator
Updated: 7 days ago
In May 2026 I sat down with Marina Tsaloupi, host of the After Trauma Podcast. We spoke for an hour about trauma from a shamanic point of view. Why the same pain returns with different faces. How trauma holds a power you can reclaim. How abuse breaks open your inner space, and how you rebuild it.
The full episode is below. Under it, I explain the core ideas in writing.
Episode chapters
2:17 What is a shaman? Working with energy, the bridge between soul and body.
5:25 Can religion block your spirituality? How inherited fear closes people to their gifts.
10:44 How to develop your spiritual gift. Hiding your gifts is a form of self-denial.
13:15 Nothing is external. The shamanic principle behind all trauma work.
13:55 Why trauma repeats with different faces. The cycle is a clue.
16:24 Trauma is a volcano of power. Feeling the charge before changing it.
23:17 You are not the victim, you are the creator.
25:12 Can a child create their own trauma? The soul's view and the adult's choice.
28:47 Healing generational trauma. Clearing what the lineage carries.
31:34 Energy healing and psychotherapy. Openness decides what works.
33:43 The biggest misconception about healing. Responsibility is shared.
35:02 Abuse, boundaries and personal power. A guided look at your inner space.
39:46 Walls and boundaries. Fear builds walls. The heart sets boundaries.
44:35 My turning point. Leaving survival mode.
48:34 The drama triangle. Victim, persecutor, savior.
51:17 Forgiveness and no contact.
1:01:20 Can an anemone bloom in the desert? The eye of the storm.
Nothing is external
A shaman bridges spirit and earth, soul and body. I work with consciousness and energy. Energy sits between the density of the body and the subtlety of spirit. It moves, and emotion is that movement. When you say you are moved or touched, you are describing energy.
The shamanic principle under all of my work is simple. Everything outside you reflects something inside you. Your fears, your relationships and your repeated situations all start from within. So when we work on trauma, we look only inside.
Why trauma repeats with different faces
Someone hurt early in life tends to meet the same dynamic again as an adult. The people change. The situation repeats. From inside the cycle, it looks like bad luck, or a curse, or a world that is against you.
The repetition is the clue. A pattern that returns again and again cannot be random. It lives in your inner structure and projects outward. Think of it as a house. You inherited the layout, and other people chose much of the furniture. Once you see it as your house, you can change it.
You are the creator
If you keep reproducing the same cycle, you are projecting it. That is hard to hear, and it is the most freeing idea in this work. A projector can change what it projects.
Most of us were taught the opposite. Religious culture teaches guilt before you have done anything. Western medicine places the power with the doctor and the pill. Both teach you to wait for rescue from outside. Ownership starts when you question that.
What about trauma in childhood?
A child depends on adults. A child cannot choose, and cannot leave. That is true, and nothing in this work denies it.
From the soul's perspective, the soul chose this life, these parents, these circumstances. Many cultures mark a rite of passage into adulthood, and that is where choice returns. As an adult you can detach from the story and the sequence of events. You are not your trauma. You can feel it, accept it, and respect yourself for having lived through it.
Trauma as a volcano of power
Unresolved trauma holds energy. Sadness or anger sits in the body like a dormant volcano. Most people try to get rid of it, and it stays.
The practice goes the other way. Feel it in the body. Step back and look at it as neutral, a charge rather than a verdict. Acknowledge its power. Once you stop labeling it negative, you start to recognize it as a resource. Befriend it. It is part of you, and power you befriend becomes power you can use.
Walls and boundaries
Abuse, at any level, is a violation of your space. Physical, emotional, sexual, mental or spiritual, the mechanism is the same. You learned early that others could decide what happens inside you.
The usual response is to build walls. Walls are made of fear. They keep danger out, and they keep connection out too. A boundary works differently. It is an energetic signal, invisible, sent from the heart. Just as you once projected the trauma dynamic, you can project a clear no.
Your body tells you which one you are using. Tension and contraction point to a wall. Openness points to a boundary. Many people who lived through trauma left their body so they would suffer less, and that disconnection is the next layer of suffering. Coming back to the body, and befriending your emotions, is how you rebuild trust with life. Emotions are the bridge between your consciousness and your body.
I wrote about this in more depth, with a practice to meet your own space, in Reclaiming Your Inner Space: A Path to Freedom from Abuse. How the heart closes to protect itself is explained in Heart Reconnection: Opening the Heart After Protection.
Leaving the drama triangle
Every drama has three roles. A victim, a persecutor, a savior. Most news and most series run on this triangle, and so do many lives. Living inside it drains your energy and your sense of authority over your life.
In a desert storm, the safest place is the eye. Presence is the eye of the storm. The drama can rage around you, and when you are fully present, nothing in it can move you.
Forgiveness and no contact
Forgiveness means leaving the past behind so it stops holding you. It does not require a relationship. You can forgive someone and still keep them out of your life, parents included. Forgiveness frees you from the weight of the story.
Becoming the source of love
When I was ten, my parents separated overnight. Soon after, my father told me I was either with him or against him. As a child, I chose the strategy that kept me safe. Children are intelligent. Every coping mechanism is a strategy.
As an adult, the strategy can retire. Love no longer has to come from your parents. You can become its source.
Work with me
This work is for you if the same situation keeps returning with new faces. If you protect yourself with walls and feel cut off from people. If you sense your history holds power you have not claimed.
I work online and in person in Ubud, Bali. A first session maps the pattern and where it sits in your energy. Lasting change comes through a container of sessions, where we restructure that pattern step by step, at your pace.
Thank you to Marina Tsaloupi and the There Is No Trauma channel for the conversation.
