Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Gaslighting & Cultural Relational Trauma

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Playing the victim role: Manipulator portrays him- or herself as a victim of circumstance or of someone else’s behavior in order to gain pity, sympathy or evoke compassion and thereby get something from another. Caring and conscientious people cannot stand to see anyone suffering and the manipulator often finds it easy to play on sympathy to get cooperation.
…
so often victims end up unnecessarily prolonging their abuse because they buy into the notion that their abuser must be coming from a wounded place and that only patient love and tolerance (and lots of misguided therapy) will help them heal.
~George K. Simon Jr., In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People

Gaslighting.  This is something most of us have experienced in our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not.  Because of what gaslighting is, it is highly likely it’s happening and you don’t realize it.

According to Wikipedia:

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.

Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to a 1938 play Gas Light and its 1944 film adaptation. The term has been used in clinical and research literature, as well as in political commentary.

Something to note about gaslighting is the manipulator doesn’t have to be intentionally doing it.  Anytime anyone questions your own experience or tells you what you remember isn’t true – that’s gaslighting.

Here’s a thing though – gaslighting doesn’t just happen in our personal relationships.  Gaslighting happens All The Time culturally.  It is a part of our patriarchal culture and wounding.

Gaslighting is part of our patriarchal wounding and cultural relational trauma.  It is traumatic and re-traumatizing for those of us who live in a patriarchal culture (all of us).  This gaslighting shows up in the form of telling us our Noes do not matter.  Our consent is irrelevant.  Our boundaries don’t need to be respected or even acknowledged.

This gas lighting, I find, is particularly insidious.  And that is of course intentional and by design.  Gas lighting has us believing that either our experience isn’t real or that our experience is our own fault and not the fault of the other person or our culture.

This shows up on a broader scale as victim blaming, slut shaming, or actually being told that what we saw or heard or experienced wasn’t real or that we “misunderstood.”

This also shows up in the statistics of violence of against women.  How every day, on average, three women are murdered by current or former intimate partners.  How one in six women experience rape or attempted rape (and these are only the numbers reported, we know from lived experience that this number is much closer to six in six women).  How 1 in 3 women have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime (again these are only the reported numbers).

This shows up when a man “mansplains” to us our own lived experience or what we meant to say or write.

This shows up when we say something, it is ignored, and then a (typically white) man states exactly the same thing and gets praise.

This shows up in Freudian psychology that blames the mother for all our problems and also tells us that as women we have sexual fantasies about our fathers (um, no.  No I do not.).

This shows up in all the parenting books that tell us what to do and how to do it instead of trusting ourselves.

This shows up in all those stories of how we are too much: too emotional, too loud, too reactionary.

This shows up in all those stories of how we aren’t enough, how we can’t do anything right, how we are broken and need to be fixed, how we have to keep trying harder and harder and striving more and more to become “perfect.”

This shows up in a thousand ways every single day of our lives.

We are gaslit by the media.  By our culture.  By our families and friends.

Some of it I believe is intentional.  And also, some of it, I believe, is not.

Regardless, it’s still gaslighting.

All this gaslighting, which is actually part of our lived reality, creates fear and terror and confusion.  Fear, terror and confusion keep us small and quiet and obedient and compliant. It keeps us chasing our own tails.  It keeps us pointing fingers at other women as The Problem.  It keeps us isolated.  It keeps us complicit.

When we are sitting in isolation, distrusting and judging other women, we are allowing the patriarchal culture to keep us leashed.Because our culture and the systems it propagates knows that when we are singular and isolated we can’t do a whole lot of harm.

Because it knows that if we come together in community and solidarity, it is fucked and will be burned down to the ground as we breathe fire in unison.

Because it knows the way to keep us leashed is to keep us distracted with the stories of how other women are bad and out to get us and how we ourselves are also not enough and too much and don’t deserve to exist.

One of the effects of gaslighting and other forms of patriarchal wounding that I find to be most harmful is the isolation and distrust of other women.

The reality that we are not in community.

The reality that mothers are to blame for everything that is wrong with their children, be they infants, adults, or anywhere in between.

The reality that we shame the hell out of other women for speaking up or demanding their boundaries be respected.

The reality that we completely disregard another woman’s No.

The reality that we, particularly white women, will claw and trample all over each other to get the crumbs of success (white) men deign to offer us.

This leashing runs deep.  It goes back thousands of years.  It is connected to the trauma inflicted on us as women, for generations. It lives in our blood and bones, muscle and being.

It is real.  We are not making it up.

Epigenetics shows us how trauma is passed down through our DNA from our ancestors.  And when each generations experiences trauma of one form or another or many forms, that gets added to what is passed down.  It becomes cumulative and maybe even exponential.

We all carry this unprocessed trauma of our ancestors.  Add to it the trauma of our lived experience be that physical or sexual violence (or both) or the trauma of living in a culture that considers us Less Than.

It’s no wonder we in-fight with other women.  It’s no wonder we question our sanity.  It’s no wonder we often stay quiet and isolated and small.  It is no wonder the leash stays on and the current president is in power and are left feeling lost and confused.

This is all by design. This is all intentional. This is how oppressors keep the oppressed from fighting back against them.

One of ways we can take off the patriarchal leash, one of the ways we can start to shift, one of the ways we can begin to tear all this shit down, is by noticing.

Noticing the ways we allow others to tell us what our lived experience is.

As we notice and acknowledge we can also begin to unravel all the wounding and trauma and stories that lives with us.  We can become curious about our whys and hows and whos.  We can begin to say No and I will do better and I will do different next time and then actually do better and different.

It will be a slow process.  It will be messy.  We will make mistakes. We will fuck it up.

We will need to learn to sincerely apologize.

We will need to learn to tolerate being wrong.

We will need to learn to tolerate making mistakes and being imperfect.

We will need to learn to listen.

We will need to learn when it is important to speak our truth and share our voice and when it is important to move aside and allow others to be in the center.

We will need to learn to trust other women.

We will need to learn to be trustworthy to other women.

We will need to learn to be build each other up, to support each other.

We will need to learn what it is to be in true community, to understand we all have this leash around our necks, we all have our own unlearning to do.

And that we can do this all together.

In community.

Unearthing and examining and dismantling and dislodging our own wounds and wounding behaviors.

As we come together, as we act in rebellious solidarity in community, we will see how our stories and experiences are similar and yet unique.  How we weren’t making it all up.  How it wasn’t just in our heads.

As we share our stories and experiences in community we will see how we have all been gas lit by our culture.  By the myth of the Perfect Woman.  By the myth that women are sinful and evil.

This is an act of resistance.  This is an act of rebellion.  This is an act of defiance.

And it is how we will burn it all down to ground with our fiery breathe.
It is how we will rise from the ashes, together.
In community.  United.  Together.

/../
This essay was originally shared as my weekly newsletter in August 2017. It has been edited and revise for publication here.

To read my latest newsletter you can subscribe here.

Trust, needs, vulnerability, & Complex Trauma

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What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful. ~Brene Brown

What happens when people open their hearts?
They get better. ~Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

She was a wicked thing sometimes. All full of want. As if the shape of the world depended on her mood. As if she were important. ~Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

We’re never so vulnerable than when we trust someone – but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy. ~Frank Crane

I’ve been feeling a lot lately. Emotions and sensations swirling around in me, creating chaos, or perhaps expressing the chaos, within. They have been happy, joyful, pleasurable feelings on the one hand. And completely terrifying on the other.

Terrifying because they are new and different.
And.
Terrifying because I am actually feeling them. 

And terrifying because I am beginning to be emotionally vulnerable with another person. I am learning what that actually looks and feels like. I am doing it in small steps and most certainly keeping much still to myself, and also with each little step of expressing my emotions to them, I am finding new, not harmful ways, of caring for myself and the overwhelming feelings of all the experiences I am having.

I’m trying on adulting.
Clearly stating boundaries.
Telling the person how I feel around them.
Not running and hiding or putting all my armor on with extra reinforcements.

It has not been easy. I have probably misstepped. I know I have gotten caught up in conversations in my own head that didn’t go well and lead me to tears (hello INFJ).

And still. I am doing things differently. Which is new and different and feels strange and yes, is terrifying in moments.

As humans we have very real needs of attachment and belonging. We actually need to feel loved, adored. We need to be respected in having our autonomy and our autonomy needs to be not only respected and accepted but also rejoiced and celebrated. We need to be physically safe, and also we need to feel emotionally and psychologically safe. We need to feel connected, understood by another, and to feel they feel connected to and understood by us. 

Having these needs met, to even a minimal degree, allows us to survive as infants and children. They are absolutely necessary for survival. In some ways it doesn’t matter who meets these needs. Ideally it would be our primary caregivers, but it can be secondary, or even tertiary caregivers. And we only require these needs be met just enough for our actual survival.

That means as children we can be neglected, abused, disregarded most of the time, but as long as there are moments of feeling like a person, even our abusers, actually care for us, we will survive.

As adults, the needs are the same, but the requirement to have them met for our survival isn’t as dire. As adults having these needs met means the difference between simply surviving and beautifully thriving in our lives.

We all have these needs, and yet expressing them can be incredibly delicate and feel overwhelmingly vulnerable. 

And vulnerability in our culture is considered a weakness.

And when we have had childhoods where there was abuse and or neglect, expressing our vulnerability could have literally meant our deaths.

So. What are we to do, as adults, with our wounding, our pain, our fear, our trauma, to have our needs actually met?

First I want to note that it is important that others meet our attachment needs, yes. That is part of thriving in our lives and being in a loving relationship. However, it is equally important that we know how to meet these needs for ourselves too. That we are able to build our resilience when those we love inevitably hurt us in some way.

I say inevitably because we are all human. We all cause unintentional harm. We all have our own “stuff” that we need to work through. And so, part of being open to a loving relationship where another meets many of our attachment needs also means that we are open to them sometimes hurting us. It also means that we will inevitably hurt them also. What matters here is how we come back into relationship through repair.

When we are able to process the traumas we have experienced as children and are able to come back into our bodies, we learn what it actually means to fully experience our emotions and their correlating bodily sensations. We begin to learn how to titrate so we don’t go into overwhelm. We learn how to hear our bodies long before they are screaming at us. 

And.

We learn to trust ourselves. To have compassion for the people we’ve been and the person we are today. As we learn to trust ourselves, we can also begin to trust others. 

Learning to trust another is yet another piece of our trauma processing. So many of us were abused and or neglected by our primary and or secondary caregivers, starting at such early ages. These experiences train us to distrust those we love and those who express that they love and or care for us. Part of our trauma processing is also allowing these old distrusting neural pathways to atrophy while we build new paths that allow for us to trust, and know who to trust in the first place.

It is important to note we need to be connected to the feelings – emotions and sensations – of our body to move into deeply trusting relationships. Being embodied means we can actually hear the appropriate alarms, and trust that they are correct and act accordingly when it comes to relationships. It also means that we can trust another when those alarms don’t go off.

And once we can trust another, then we can begin to be vulnerable with them.

Being vulnerable with another person is terrifying. We are opening ourselves up to being hurt by them. We are also opening ourselves up to being loved by them and see what it feels like to be truly respected and adored. 

It’s not easy. We will have many missteps. We will dip our toes in and share something deeply vulnerable and then immediately pull our toes back out and maybe even take several steps back or run away and hide for a bit. With practice this sharing of ourselves, the more raw and vulnerable pieces, becomes easier, but perhaps never totally easy (I have no idea actually, I’m still in the dip my toes in and try not to run away and hide stage!). 

And before we can share our feelings, we actually need to be able to feel them. 

/…/

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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.

Wanting

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I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.~Stanley Kubrick

The problem for a lot of people is that they don’t really know what they want. They have vague desire: to ‘do something creative’ or to earn more money or ‘to be free’, but they can’t really pin down what it is precisely that they want. So they drift from one thing to another, enjoying some moments and hating others, but never really finding fulfillment or success. (..)This is why it’s hard to lead a successful life ( whatever that means to you) when you don’t know what you want.~John C. Parkin, F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way

Over the last year plus I’ve been exploring the idea of want, and specifically what I want. What I want in my family life, in my friendships, in a lover and partner, for my work, for me and how I am in the world.

I’ve been trying to tease out what makes me feel good, what fulfills me, what satiates me, what satisfies me, what is pleasurable. What some would say makes me “happy.”

It’s been a challenge, to say the least. I know what I do NOT want.  That is easy.  The list can go on and on. But what I want?  Actually want? I don’t know.  Not consciously. At times it feels almost impossible to connect to.

We are taught in our puritanical patriarchal culture that wanting, particularly female wanting, is bad. Evil in fact.

Good Girls™ don’t want. And well, we all need to be Good Girls™, right?
Because Good Girls™ get husbands who protect them and provide for them and their children. (There was a little bit of vomit that came up in my mouth as I was typing that there.)

If we grew up in any sort of conservative, or even liberal, religious community (be that family or neighbors or both) we have an added layer of what wanting means:
It means the destruction of the Garden of Eden.
It means chaos unleashed on the world.
It means our personal damnation and the destruction of the world.

And so.  We learn not to want. Or at least, to not really want. We learn to stuff our wants down. To ignore them.  To pretend they don’t exist. Maybe we learn to vaguely want vague things like the quote above states.  But to know, deeply and truly, what we want?  Well that is not something most of us know how to connect to.  Because we never learned how.

To acknowledge our wants, to connect to them, to know them deeply, is an act of rebellion, yes, and it is also an act of deep vulnerability.

Most of us can make a long list of all the things we don’t want.  It is easy to wrinkle our noses at things and to know our Noes, in many ways.  Knowing what we don’t want is a defensive act.  It is an act of connecting to our knowing, yes, but at a more surface level.  There typically isn’t a lot of vulnerability in saying No to something or someone.  When we say no, we aren’t in a place of needing or desiring something within us to be fulfilled. In fact when we say no, we are saying we don’t need that thing or person to fulfill us.

To want however, is to notice the lack.  To notice what is missing.  To know what could fulfill us on any type of level. It also means, typically, that we need to either rely on another in someway to fulfill that want, or we need to do something different for ourselves, to change a way of being, to break a pattern or cycle, to fulfill that want.

What does it mean to connect to that want, that desire, that need for fulfillment? Well, in our culture, it means we are Selfish. And NOT Good Girls™.  In fact, it means we are Bad Girls™.

And we all know what happens to Selfish Bad Girls, right?

Historically speaking they are ostracized. Or slaughtered. Or both. Bad Girls™ don’t receive safety, or protection, or security.  They are shamed. Used as a cautionary tale. Callously pushed out of the inner circle and community.

I’ve thought about my own social and familial conditioning in regard to wanting. In regard to knowing what I want. In knowing that my wants can change. That I can think I want something, try it out, and then decide I don’t. I’ve thought about all the ways I’ve been told to want is to sin.  That wanting is selfish. That I should be grateful for what I have.

Where I’m left is…
Curious.
Sad.
Frustrated.

In a space of…
Unearthing.
Unraveling.
Unlearning

I’m left in this space of connecting to the things I know I want.  Some may be very surface level (like I want a roof over my head and food in my fridge).  Some are a little deeper than that (like I want to feel good in my skin, to be resilient, to know deep my being that This Too Shall Pass).

Some of my wants, I’m finding, are deeply vulnerable.  I want to feel wanted.  I want to feel loved.  I want to feel connected. I want to be told I’m amazing, smart, funny, beautiful. I want time with the people who matter most to me, and those who are becoming to matter most to me. I want physical contact, sexual and non. I want quiet space to be with myself, both in the company of others and in solitude. I want to feel joy. To feel complete within myself while also being deeply connected with others.

I find myself in this unraveling what it means to want and what it to feel, viscerally, the things I want.

I find myself seeing that wanting isn’t always straight forward.  It isn’t always this or that.  It is sometimes a both and of wanting polar opposites. It is sometimes needing to rely on others to have my wants fulfilled.  It sometimes means looking deep within myself, at the hidden places, the forbidden places, and bringing them to light so I can see where the emptiness is and find ways to fill it, to fulfill it, to fulfill me.

It is not always easy.  It is not always fun.  It has been an adventure.  To figure out what I want through trial and error, exploring this and that.  Connecting to the wants that feel right, honoring them. And to knowing that this may be only what I want right now.

None of this makes me selfish. Or a Bad Girl™.

It makes me human, stumbling along her way, along side you, as we learn to unearth and unravel and unlearn.

Since I wrote the original of this essay, I have not only learned what my wants are, I’ve found them fulfilled in my life in the most unexpected ways. My own opening to possibilities, to understanding my own worth and deserving, to stop settling for less than because it’s easier. It has been an interesting and exciting journey, finding myself back to me, exploring my wants and seeing how some of them are actual needs. Finding connections with people I least expect, and learning how to express my wants in ways that are honest, but not demanding, vulnerable, while also knowing I am strong and resilient. It is a journey, and I’m still one it and may be for the rest of my life. And it’s a journey that is becoming more fun, more exciting, more filled with possibilities every day.

…

This was originally written for my weekly newsletter in July 2017 and has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent writing, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

Learning to feel pleasure after trauma

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…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

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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.