Complex Trauma

Learning to feel pleasure after trauma

April 4, 2019 By gwynn

…as a survivor and a bystander of family violence, desire was hard to trust. … So all of my erotic self was wrapped in ‘how do I associate with pleasure and desire without fear, without losing control, without being harmed?’ I really had to walk out of a space that allowed for me to unravel and unpack those things as separate so I could define my sexuality and my erotic self in relationship to something that did not have to be violent, to understand that desire to be loved and to love your family wasn’t always mired with violent pasts but could begin again with new, healing destinies.

…

…This is about structural violence too and about how I relate to myself through desire when I am deeply undesirable, I am expendable, and I am only here for labor or reproduction? And… then what is my erotic self in that, when you’re devoid of being able to define yourself outside of capitalism and white supremacy? ~Cara Page, in adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism

There once was a time in my life when I considered myself to be relatively asexual. I mean, I liked to dress up and look sexy, but a truth was, I don’t know that I ever actually felt sexy and I definitely know that I didn’t really care one way or the other about the act of sex itself; it was nice and fun and all and also eh.

Looking back at the me of my teens, twenties, and even thirties, I can say that was pretty much my attitude towards any type of pleasure: I could dress the part, even enjoyed dressing the part to an extent, but when it came right down to it I had no interest or strong feelings about it either way. Wearing my clothes wasn’t exactly pleasurable, I didn’t really enjoy food or eating (though I did eat plenty), I generally hated my homes and didn’t take a lot of pleasure being in them. I would zone out on TV, not really paying attention or enjoying what I watching. I didn’t read a lot, and what I did I don’t know that I really paid attention either.

I lived life through the motions. Not really being present, definitely not being in my body. I could “take or leave” pleasure, because frankly, I couldn’t actually feel it. I didn’t cry a lot, but I didn’t laugh a lot either.

I don’t know how young I was the first time I left my body, and it was definitely by the age of four and may have been younger. Between the physical violence of my mother and the sexual abuse from various family members and friends, I learned very early on that being in my body was not safe, and was not a place I wanted to be. To be in my body was to be in pain, in fear, confused.

When we add to this being told for as long as I can remember by my father that he wished I was a boy, which was compounded over the years by our culture stating quite clearly that women and girls were less than, of course I didn’t want to be in my body. Of course I hated my body and being it.

Not being in my body meant that I could avoid pain, or so I thought. But what I didn’t understand then was that while I was doing all I could to not feel the painful sensations and emotions of my body and life experience, I was also missing out on any type of pleasure that came my way.

After the birth of my daughter, almost 12 years ago now, I started on a journey of being the mother, the parent, I always wished I had. This lead to me truly beginning my own trauma work, which eventually led me to somatic and body-centered mindfulness practices. I entered into this work, not to feel pleasure, or even to be in my body, or for any reason for myself. I entered into this work for my daughter, so she could have a different childhood and life than mine.

Here’s the thing though, at the end of the day it doesn’t actually matter why I entered into this work. It doesn’t matter if it was for her or for me, if I had any intentions of actually being in my body or not, or feeling pleasure or not. I entered into the work, and the rest, as they say, is history.

While it is true that I experienced physical abuse as a child, and that definitely impacted my relationship with my body and being in it, I know that the sexual trauma I experienced, both in childhood and young adulthood, also has its impact, and perhaps a greater impact on my relationship with my sexuality and with pleasure (sexual and non) itself.

When we don’t feel safe within our own bodies, when “sex” is used as a weapon against us, especially at a very young age when our brains and neuropaths are beginning to develop, it only follows that we would have a very complex relationship with our sexuality and with pleasure.

Sexual trauma impacts us in many ways. It can cause anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation. It can have us live in a dissociate state, outside of our bodies, outside of the present moment. It can have us feeling unsafe in our bodies, in our surroundings, and in our relationships. Because of all this it can prevent us feeling happiness, joy, and pleasure. Which I now believe to be perhaps the most devastating impact of all.

Learning to come into our bodies is not easy and frankly I don’t even think it’s “fun.” It is hard work, requiring intention, patience, and self compassion.

And, in order for us to learn to experience pleasure, we need to come into our bodies. Pleasure, including happiness, including joy, including truly savoring the food we eat, feeling the softness of our clothes, sheets, blankets, smelling the complexities of flowers. Pleasure including being present in the moment, enjoying our loved ones and the beautiful experiences life has to offer us. And yes, pleasure including our sexuality and the acts of sex itself.

But coming into our bodies is only part of this work. An important and large part, yes, but only a part all the same.

There is a deeper aspect of pleasure that we seem to associate with only sex and our sexuality, and that is the pleasure of relationship: deep, vulnerable, honest, relationship. To have these types of relationships, be they sexual or not, we need to trust, ourselves and others. Trauma, and especially childhood trauma, destroys our ability to trust those we love, those who love us because as children those who were supposed to care for us, to protect us, betrayed us instead.

This betrayal is not an easy thing to undo. This betrayal prevents us from allowing ourselves to deeply love and be deeply loved. It stops us from trusting others with our darkest shadows as well as our brightest lights. It keeps us hiding, putting on the appearance of happiness or connection or joy while we are only going through the motions. It keeps us disconnected, feeling alone, and stuck in patterns and cycles that are ultimate harmful to ourselves.

Learning to come into our bodies, learning to trust the messages it is giving us as well as to trust that we can experience all the sensations and emotions in our bodies without harm coming to us, helps us learn to trust other aspects of ourselves which in turn helps us to learn to trust other people (and to learn to know who to trust and who not to).

Humans are social creatures. We are wired for connection, for belonging, for love. To experience the pleasure of being in an honest, vulnerable relationship may be one of the greatest experiences our lives as humans has to offer. It can also be one of the most terrifying experiences as we learn what it means to be ourselves, to be comfortable with who we are, to be present in time, space, and relationship, and to allow ourselves to be truly seen as we also learn to truly see others.

That fear though, that is our trauma being in control and keeping us in those harmful patterns and cycles. Being brave isn’t easy, and in the end, I do believe it is worth it.

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To learn about my six month Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors go here. The next cohort begins April 15.

Authoritarian culture, trauma, & our sense of belonging

April 1, 2019 By gwynn

I’ve also been thinking about how Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is connected to our trauma work and processing. As a reminder:

When we consider how this pyramid connects with authoritarian culture, we can see the ways our oppressive culture and the status quo stays in place. Authoritarian culture hones in on our need for a sense of belonging. This is how cults work. This is how many online “spiritual” groups work. This is how our government works. This is how white supremacy works.

In authoritarian culture, when we follow the rules we get to be in the “inner circle”. The cost of being in this circle, and having our need for a sense of belonging met, is that we need to follow the rules, to not question authority, to not listen to our own inner knowing and no and sense of something not being right. When we do this, we are almost always a guaranteed that sense of belonging.

When we break out of that, start to question authority, break the rules, listen to our own inner knowing, we are pushed out of the “inner circle” and we lose our community and therefore our sense of belonging. This can also impact our sense of safeness, as we know that in groups we are stronger and as individuals we are more vulnerable. Which then leaves us in a space of scrambling for that sense of safety and sense of belonging.

This is why people who are physically abused by their intimate partners stay: Their basic needs of food and shelter are being met. Yet they have no sense of real safety, or the abuser provides a sense of false safety and protection. The one who is abused is typically isolated from any other form of community and so their only sense of belonging is with the abuser. Because their sense of safeness and belonging is precarious, it is almost impossible to move into a space of questioning or leaving. First they must find another place of safeness and sense of belonging and this takes time and energy and patience from those outside the abusive relationship who are trying to help the abused.

And.

With every authoritarian culture there are the dissenters and resisters. Those who protest. BUT it is only as these people are able to find each other, and therefore have their need for a sense of safeness and belonging met, that each individual is able to speak out more and more.

Bottom line: We need our people. This is a basic human need. It is only slightly less important than our need for food and shelter and is directly tied to our sense of safeness. Without these needs met, humans can not survive. (Also note that our need for belonging is directly tied to our attachment needs – which are our sense of belonging and being loved).

As a species, we actually do not need to obtain the two higher levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy. We need neither self-esteem nor self-actualization to literally survive.

And authoritarian cultures count on that. As long as one has a sense of belonging, that basic attachment need met, then the one is likely to remain compliant and complicit.

How does this tie into trauma?

I have written before about cultural relational trauma. The culture we live in traumatizes us. Particularly if we don’t fit the “norm” of white, thin, able-bodied, male, upper-middle class (or highter), heterosexual, CIS gendered, etc. Depending on where we fall on the spectrum of meeting or not meeting the “norm” we are more or less traumatized by our culture.

This trauma then lives within us, in our bodies, minds, and spirits.

It is important to note that trauma wants us to isolate. How this typically shows up for us is not that we all go and live in caves and become hermits, but rather that, in order to fit in and have our need for a sense of belonging met, we hide our trauma. We don’t discuss it. We stuff it down. We try to act and be “normal”. We cover up the ways we are different, the ways we have been harmed, and try to pretend there is nothing wrong.

Again, our authoritarian culture counts on this. It can abuse and traumatize us as much as it likes and we won’t speak up because we need our people, even if those people are abusive, even if our connections are not deep, even if it is all surface level. There is safety in numbers. We do not want to be pushed outside that safety.

When we look at chronic trauma – those who have been repeatedly abused sexually, physically, psychologically, or emotionally – we see the hows and whys that they don’t report or tell on the abuser. Doing so would again jeopardize our sense of safeness and belonging.

Look at how we treat victims of rape. Look at how we slut shame. Look at how we victim blame. Look at how we question the experiences of others.

That is authoritarian culture at play. (Note, rape culture is a part of authoritarian culture. It is another tool to be utilized by those in power).

So, how do we move past all this? How do we process trauma and move towards an anti-authoritarian and pro-consent culture? How do we burn down the status quo, knowing that we may be putting our basic human needs in jeopardy by doing so?

We find the dissenters. We find the resisters. We find our true people. We find those communities where it is safe to question the authority of the community itself, not just the greater community and culture outside of it.

This is not easy. It is made somewhat easier by the internet. It also makes us more open for targeting by those who feel their own basic needs being threatened.

And.

As we find more of our true people, the dissenters and resisters and rebels, the ones saying No More and Not On My Watch, we satisfy our need for a sense of belonging (and also our need for a sense of safeness). We find our strength in numbers. We find those who will have our backs and who’s backs we will also protect.

And then, we will rise up together, and burn this all down. Together.

Not one individual can do this work alone, in a bubble. We need our people to do this work. We need our people to fight along side us for justice. We need our people so we can have our basic human need for a sense of belonging to be met. So we can change the world together.

Together, is the only way we will rise.

Loving or hating our bodies

March 25, 2019 By gwynn

I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls
with clean blood
and organized drawers.
I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests
at night when no one else is alive
or awake
however you choose to see it
and I live in my own flames
sometimes burning too bright and too wild
to make things last
or handle
myself or anyone else
and so I run.
run run run
far and wide
until my bones ache and lungs split
and it feels good.
Hear that people? It feels good
because I am the slave and ruler of my own body
and I wish to do with it exactly as I please
~Charlotte Eriksson, You’re Doing Just Fine

There is a lot of talk about body love and body acceptance out in the social media world. It would seem that we are supposed to love our bodies no matter what, no matter how we feel they betray us, no matter what has been done to them.

Love is a strong word, a powerful emotion. And frankly, I don’t know that I will ever love my body. In early February Ijeoma Oluo wrote on IG about whether she could accept the love of another if she didn’t love her own body (you can see her post here). The post came at a time that I really needed to read it, as I was going through a particularly bad patch of hating my body.

I don’t know if it’s true that we are unable to truly accept the love of another if we don’t love our own bodies. I think there may be a bit of chicken and egg there, in that having someone love us, including loving our bodies, may help us to love our selves, including our bodies, a bit more.

But what I do know is that there are definitely times in my life when I hate my body. I hate it’s shape and size, I hate its stretch marks and cellulite, I hate how its aging, I hate how it aches and hurts and doesn’t seem to be able to move in ways I want it to, in the ways it was once able to. It’s not every day. And there are also days that I love certain parts of my body, but never the whole all at once.

While part of my complex relationship with my own body is due to our societies emphasis on what bodies “should” look and move and be like, it is also true that part of my hatred and anger stems from the abuse my body has endured, and how it has responded to this abuse.

I live with an “unspecified autoimmune disorder,” which means that I have several “markers” of various different autoimmune disorders, but not enough in any one particular one to state “Oh, you have X”. This translates to doctors sometimes don’t know what to do me, and any “treatment” I do is a lot of trial and error and mostly done on my own. This means that sometimes I have chronic pain, but sometimes I don’t. It means that I have a blood clotting disorder that I need to manage. It means my endocrine system needs a lot of support. And it means that what this managing and support looks like can literally need to change from day to day.

I know that my autoimmune issues stem from the abuse my body experienced, Iexperienced, as a child. I know that the sexual and physical and emotional abuse all have had their long lasting impacts. I know the whys and how my body is the way it is.

But that doesn’t mean I like it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t infuriate me. That doesn’t mean there aren’t times when I hate that my body feels the need to be impacted, to respond, to cry out about the pain it has endured.

And.

My body has survived horrible things. It has kept me alive for over 47 years. It has birthed two babies. It has run two half marathons. It goes on hikes, it snuggles my children, It functions in all the ways it needs to to not only keep me alive, but also so I can raise my children, do my work, and now enjoy my life.

So. There we are. The both-and of it all. Yes there are times that I hate my body and there are times when I am in awe of and grateful for it. But love, I don’t know that I’ll ever get there, and who knows, maybe I will.

In doing my own work of processing the trauma from my childhood, I have been able to come back into my body, to learn to tolerate the uncomfortable times as well as the pleasurable ones.

Because when we are dissociated, when we are disconnected from our bodies and from the here and now, it is true we are able to avoid the discomfort our bodies often express, but it is equally true that we don’t experience the pleasures that we can also have.

Coming back into our bodies, sounds so straight forward. In some ways it is, but in others it’s not. We are each complex beings and our journeys to trauma processing and being able to tolerate all the sensations and emotions we experience can be complex too. There is forward and back. There is progress and regression.

Coming back into our bodies is not the same as loving our bodies. We can be present in them and not love every part of them.

And.

With time, we can learn to be grateful for what our bodies have endured and still kept us alive. We can learn to be in awe of all our bodies have done and do. We might even begin to start to like certain aspects of our bodies, both its physicality and its functions.

And maybe, we learn to love our bodies as part of our whole Self, an integral and necessary part of who we are.

Maybe.

We’ll never know though until we begin the journey.

/…/

The next cohort of Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivorswill begin on April 14 and registration is currently open. This six month program is part support group, part practical coping and embodiment skills, and part psycho-education. During our time together we will utilize the first phase of the Trauma Informed Embodiment™ approach I have developed. There is a sliding scale fee, and alternate payment plans are also available. To learn more go to http://gwynnraimondi.com/tieforsexualtrauma

Complex Sexual Trauma

March 21, 2019 By gwynn

No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn’t even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them? ~Sierra D. Waters, Debbie

Over the last few years the term “complex trauma” has been used to describe the difference between the trauma experienced and lived with when it is chronic and typically happens during childhood, compared to “regular trauma” which refers to singular events which typically occur in adulthood. The corresponding diagnosis terms are “c-PTSD” or “CPTSD” and “PTSD”, where the “c” or “C” stands for complex and the PTSD is post traumatic stress disorder.

The DSM V ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) does not list C-PTSD as an official disorder, however within the trauma community we have adopted this diagnosis and term and have been working to better define the difference of impact between chronic and singular traumatic events as well as the difference of the impact as to when in a person’s life the event(s) occur.

This work is tied to the ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences study) criteria for chronic stress, and in our work of defining these impacts we must acknowledge and be grateful for the work of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, in bringing the ACEs to the forefront of the medical community and truly starting the conversation about being “trauma informed” outside the mental health community.

In our sussing out the differences between CPTSD and PTSD, we (the trauma community) have lumped all childhood traumatic experiences together – be they physical, emotional, psychological, or sexual abuse, neglect, poverty, domestic or intimate partner violence, etc. And while all of the items (as well as others, like experiencing racism, homophobia, etc) on the ACEs can and often do have traumatic impacts, I also believe it is important for us to begin to look at the ways each type of trauma has its own unique impacts.

As many of you know over the last couple of years I have begun to move my own professional focus to sexual trauma, and the majority of my clients have experienced chronic childhood sexual trauma. Exploring the unique and life changing impacts this type of trauma brings with it is part of my life’s work and helping us all have a better understand of these impacts for ourselves as survivors as well as for our friends, partners and loved ones, I believe is vital for our individual and collective growth and healing.

Complex trauma of any kind affects our abilities to have deep, emotionally intimate relationships. Sexual complex trauma can also affect our ability to have sexually intimate relationships. With many types of complex trauma we tend to be dissociated from our bodies and the present moment. This means that often when being sexually intimate we aren’t really “there,” and can only feel the (presumably) pleasurable sensations of physical intimacy as if through a “thick gauze”. It is also true for those who have experienced sexual trauma that the act of sex itself can be triggering, regardless of how consensual the present act is, and can send us into a state of fight, flight, or freeze.

There have also been studies where cancers of the female reproductive system (i.e. cervical, uterine, ovarian, etc cancers) seem to correlate with women who have experienced sexual trauma, as in there is a higher percentage of these cancers in women who have experienced sexual trauma, than those who have not.

An additional impact of sexual trauma that isn’t often talked about is the idea of feeling or being “tainted” in some way. Socially speaking there is more stigma associated with sexual trauma as well as victim blaming, even when the trauma occurs in childhood. This added social attitude only works to exacerbate the shame of those who have experienced sexual trauma, which then reverberates through and adds to the other emotional, psychological, and physical impacts of childhood trauma.

This social attitude, and its impacts, can be a particularly daunting thing for survivors to face and attempt to overcome. This attitude is tied directly to our misogynist culture which holds a woman’s sexuality and sexual experiences in a balance of what is “acceptable” and what is “not”.

I do not want to give the impression that I am somehow creating a “hierarchy” of types of complex trauma. And I feel it is important that we do acknowledge and discuss the differences in experiences of the different types of trauma and how the impacts vary. In doing this we are able to help those who experienced complex sexual trauma see how they are not alone in how they experience these impacts and can aid in our individual trauma processing journeys.

/…/

Registration for the next cohort of Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors is now open. This six month program is for women (CIS and Trans) and those AFAB who experienced childhood sexual trauma. It is part support group, part practical coping and embodiment skills, and part psycho-education. There is a sliding scale fee, and alternate payment plans are also available. To learn more go to http://gwynnraimondi.com/tieforsexualtrauma

Sitting in discomfort

March 18, 2019 By gwynn

Revolution and rebellion and disruption looks like many things. Sometimes its work out in the world and sometimes its that inner work of unearthing, examining, dismantling and dislodging.

Most Monday afternoons I go to see my therapist. She specializes in two particular modalities of trauma therapy, which is why I chose her. To process and dislodge both some relatively recent traumatic events with my kids, and to process my own various childhood traumas.

For the first year plus, every time I sat down on her couch she asked if I want to do one of the two modalities. I would invariably tell her, No. No I do not. Because this particular form of trauma work, while gentle in many many ways, is also intensely uncomfortable. I literally feel the trauma shifting in my body and it creates a type of dissonance under and on my skin that is… well, uncomfortable.

It isn’t icky feeling or unbearably painful. It is simply not a pleasant sensation. At all.

And so no, No I did not want to do that. Because really, who would intentionally sit there in this intentional physical, emotional and psychological discomfort for 20-40 minutes at a stretch.

Anyhow, I would say my no, we’d laugh, talk about the short game of avoidance and the long game of actually dislodging this shit from my body. We’d do some breath work, I would get present and then I say, okay, let’s do this work.

And we’d do the work and it’s uncomfortable and things would shift and sometimes I *felt* emotions and sometimes I cried and sometimes I’d get an intense pain in a particular part of my body and we;d get curious about it then sometimes I would feel even more emotions and so it goes until I would say it’s time to stop. And we check in with that No More and see if it’s short game saying “I’m uncomfortable and I DON’T WANNA” or if I really have reached my capacity of processing for the day. And so it goes.

In the last six months or so, this has shifted. Now when I walk in I state straight away “I want to do the trauma work” or “I need a lot of time to talk today.” We don’t need to have discussions about avoidance. The work, while uncomfortable, is now something I am more than willing to tolerate because I have seen for myself some of the short and long term benefits of the work.

My point however is that being uncomfortable isn’t fun. Not for me, and really probably not for anyone. By definition, being uncomfortable is NOT enjoyable. And for most of us, in our short game of fear or shoving it down or not wanting to deal or feel, we avoid discomfort like the plague.

Here’s a thing though: we need to remember our Long Game. What our real intentions for being in the world are. What do we have to do to make it happen.

I’m doing my own trauma processing and dislodging for a variety of reasons, many of them about other people (like my kids). But the real, the core reason I’m dealing with my own shit is because I don’t want to ever be frozen in front of a TV screen unable to move as a sexual predator stalks about ever again. I don’t want to ever be frozen in inaction again. I want to be able to move and act and roar and fight.

And, well, I also need to walk my talk. Because I invite all of you to sit in your uncomfortable feelings, to push outside your own comfort zone, to learn that even if we *feel* our our emotions and their physiological sensations or make mistakes or feel uncomfortable because we are challenging our racist uncle at the family feast or defending a boundary with our mother while visiting, we *will* survive. And we may even learn a little bit about selves in the process.

In the all the work I do, facilitating groups and individual work, I invite the participants to push themselves outside their own comfort zones. To become curious as to why they don’t want to “go there.” To expand, contract, then expand a bit more. I always offer tools to help titrate or process or soothe, as needed. And then, when ready enough, we bravely push out into discomfort again, get curious again, ask the whys and start to unravel all the stories that have kept us stuck and small and frozen.

Because I deeply believe that we have remained frozen for far too long. And I deeply believe all of us are carrying trauma in our bodies, be it the trauma of our own lived experience or the trauma passed down to us through our ancestors and in our DNA.

Our trauma impacts us in many ways. It impacts our ability to set boundaries and know our consent. It impact how we relate to other people, and especially as women how we relate to other women.

This is why I do the work I do.

This is why I offer the TIE™ for Sexual Trauma group each year.

Why I work with the individuals I do.

Why I continue to do my own work of unraveling and dislodging and learning.

Because while there is the macro work out in the world of tearing this shit down, we will never build something new and different until we do our own inner work of dismantling and dislodging.

In rebellious solidarity, always.
xoox

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