Tamara Powell, LMHC is a licensed therapist, university psychology instructor, and spiritual empowerment coach who believes life should be lived as a journey that is “anything but ordinary.”
She opened Arya Therapy Services as a way to provide holistic health and healing for non-conformists. With specialties in gender, sexual, erotic, and relational diversity, Tamara is passionate about holding sacred space for the self-identified misfits and mystics of the world – the healers, the visionaries, and the creatives.
More recently, she began Tales from a Trapezoid with a goal of pushing the envelope around the more raw and edgier side of life, dedicated to those who may often feel like a “trapezoid in a world full of circles.”
In this episode:
- Helping non-conformists deal with their existential angst
- Tamara shares her upcoming book Radical Autonomy
- Why it is important to stay in your OWN LANE in life
- How staying true to yourself impacts parenting, partnerships, business and more
- She shares her personal self-care morning ritual and spiritual practices
- Her hopes for her adolescent daughters learn now vs waiting until they are adults
Some bits of our conversations…
Tamara: “I don’t any longer really vibe with certain circles and I have to be okay with that, and even more so, I have to realize what got me here and to be able to own it. So I’m not the Pinterest type mom, I love them I respect them, I pay them to do what I don’t want to do, but I have to be alright with owning that…
In order to be a great fulfilled Mom, I need to know my role and stay in my own lane. Because it’s like an aqueduct in that helps me maximize my success as a parent and that’s just one area so that would be me and motherhood…
So once I decided what are my core values as a mom, what am I trying to instill in my kiddos before they leave this house and what’s really not all that important to me. Oh my God girl, mommy guilt just fell by the wayside. I mean don’t get me wrong I still have my moments, but for the most part I am able to stay mindful and drop it.”
Nicole: “…Letting go of the attachment to the outcome. Letting go of what other people may think you need to do or so-called “should” do. That when you just really know yourself, which what you’re talking about is really going back to your core values. Really going back to the inner part of you. You really feel so much more joy. And to me that abundance part of life really starts to fall into place because you’re not doing, what we call in the psychology world, the external locus of control, but the internal locus of control.”
Tamara: “…Take that Radical Autonomy and bring it to my love relationship, then I’m able to look at what is he or she good at, what am I good at, and how can I not set up false expectations. Because false expectation, they’re going to frustrate the crap out of him and me…
I am attracted to alpha personalities. And so I love other dominant men and women, but that automatically brings with it a set of what alpha males and females may not be as great at. There are certain times, just speaking in stereotypes, that they may not always be as adept with emotional softness and availability. Doesn’t mean that they can’t, but may not be able to….
Now if I have been raised with, you know, Disney expectations or this idea that there’s a prince and knight in shining armor perhaps to come home to, and I don’t recognize the strength in my inherent partner, I’m not going to be able to give to him or her with their a path I’m going to be setting up false expectations. It’s almost like they’re walking through a landline that didn’t even know existed. Why aren’t you why aren’t you here for me? Why aren’t you holding me? Why aren’t you romantic? Why aren’t you writing me poetry?…
We get hurt because we take their behavior personally and it’s so unfair to do to ourselves and to them. So for example, the biggest and most stupid argument that happens in our household is. He is a night owl, I’m a morning person. I’m up by 4:50 a.m. and I know for it to work out, he’s not going to bed till like 2 a.m. often times that’s so when it comes time for me to wind down for the evening and if I want romance or sex, if I’m not being explicit about that and be like hey baby. I might become pissy and say look at all these other couples. ‘They go to bed at the same time’. Or begin to use psychological research if I really wanted to get manipulative… I’m not gifting him with his own path. I’m not respecting his autonomy that’s not the way he’s wired.”
Nicole: “Yeah it’s like that’s his path this is my path. And it’s okay for me to articulate to him what it is I want and need and then we go from there. Versus staying in our own head or thinking well I’m hoping they can read my mind and I’m hoping that they can understand this is what I’m wanting or needing.”
Tamara: “So I get couples that come into my office… But when they come in, it is so common for them to start to bring in these unmet expectations. That they may not even realize. That they have (these thoughts of) my parents did it this way, my culture does it this way, my religion says it this way. I ask how’s that working for you. It’s not. And we are so egocentric. We would hate that if our partner expected that of us. “
Nicole: “I also like how you can bring that up whether it’s a couple session or even an individual session. Where you get to challenge some of those old beliefs that come in and say let’s shine a little more light on that. Do you think you should? Where that’s what I was taught and is that really in alignment with who you are? And sometimes it is and that’s totally okay, and sometimes it’s not. But having that gentleness or that compassion, to really just kind of explore that. Stay curious with it… Then when you start to challenge it.. I can actually do something different. They can stay them and I get to stay me. This really works out much better… “
Tamara: “You know my personal favorite is the Enneagram. What that shows is that human beings are this really complex interaction between us and we have our natural preferences…Operant conditioning and what we mean by that is what you’ve gone through when you were born. What types of churches you went to …all of that laid on top of you might have naturally become anyway. Really says a lot about who you are. But if you’re not diving into the personal development work of who am I at a Soul Essence level versus what tendencies and preferences I get handed to me, that’s to me as well a lot of people run into trouble.”
For more of the delicious details of her spiritual practice, hopes for her daughters and more listen in.
