Gwynn Raimondi, MA

When the media activates us

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There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.  ~Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.  ~Elie Wiesel

Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion… Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being “just like” the past and “emergency” emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.  ~Suzette Boon, Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists

A couple weeks ago there was a tragic helicopter crash in which eleven people were killed.  One of the deceased happened to be a celebrity.  A celebrity that was accused of a very brutal sexual assault in 2003.

Images of him and him and his daughter (who was also killed) were all over social media for a couple of days as well as all over the more “traditional” media outlets.  It seemed no matter where you looked, there was his face.

This was hard on many people, especially those who had experienced sexual trauma of their own.  Seeing not only the image of a sexual perpetrator all over the media, but also seeing him exalted and all his good deeds repeated with no to very little comment on the rape accusations, was retraumatizing, painful, and activating of our fight/flight/freeze responses.

Many people had similar responses during the Brock Turner trial in 2016.  Or during the presidential election of same year.  Or any other number of instances when a sexual offender is praised and their image is all over the media. When regard to a sexual predators future or career is given more credence than the future and trauma of their victims.

Our autonomic responses, our fight/flight/freeze, are understandable given our histories.  Our histories where we weren’t believed.  Where we were blamed for what happened to us.  Where the future of the perpetrator was more important than our present or future.  Where we were the one in the wrong for breaking the family apart, causing problems by speaking up. All of that contributes to why when events like this occur we go into an activated state.  We are reminded again and again why our stories don’t matter, why what happened to us was our fault, and why we aren’t important, weren’t important, aren’t relevant.

These responses are so completely understandable.  And to a great degree out of our control. 

So what do we do when the media is filled with images that are activating for us?

We do what we need to do to care for ourselves.  That is going to look different for each of us.  For some it is putting down our phones/going off social media.  For others it is curating our social media so it is only our close friends/family or others who “get it”. It could look like requesting an extra session with our therapist.  It could look like writing our own pieces from a survivor/victims point of view.  It could look like going out in nature.  Drinking lots of water. Eating comfort food.  Asking our friends or intimate partner to hold us or conversely to not touch us.  Telling our close people that we are activated and asking for some grace and support.  It could look like hermiting and having our own space binging on Netflix (or whatever streaming service).  

Most importantly, we need to have compassion for ourselves.  We need to recognize and acknowledge that we are activated and remind ourselves that it makes sense why we are.  We allow the space for the rage, the grief, the frustration.  We let ourselves feel the emotions and sensations that are coursing through our minds, bodies, and being.  

The event a couple weeks agao will not be the last time a sexual predator will be honored and exalted in the media.  It won’t be the last that victims were brushed under the rug, disregarded, or disrespected.  It will, unfortunately happen again.

It is true that tides are changing and we are starting to hold some perpetrators accountable.  It is also true that it is a slow process to change rape culture and there are those who are fighting like hell to keep it alive and well.

So it is vital that we develop the resources and tools to care for ourselves in these times.  To let those close to us know that these kinds of events can be activating for us and ask they check in on us or let them know how they can support us.  

I wish the world were different.  I wish we didn’t put the lives and futures of sexual perpetrators above that of their victims.  I wish that we could accept the complexities of humans and not try to put all people in either “good” or “bad” categories.  I wish that victims were believed, supported, and cared for by our culture as a whole.

And.

We are moving in that direction.  I believe that with all my being.  In the meantime though, we have to take care of ourselves.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weeklyish newsletter on February 3, 2020. To receive my most recent essays and more, you can subscribe right here.

Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Sexual Trauma Survivors (TIE STS) begins on March 2. Part of the program is support during times like these when the outside world is activating our own trauma experiences. To learn more, click here.

Learning and relearning to trust our Self

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The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.  ~Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.  ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Within you is a fountain of wisdom. And you sell yourself short every time you allow some authority to define your limitations and cage your potential. Even if that authority lives in your head.  ~Vironika Tugaleva, The Art of Talking to Yourself

Sometimes there are things we know.  What our next steps are.  Decisions that need to be made.  Changes that need to happen.  We know, deep down in our bones and being.  

And yet.  We don’t listen.  Or we don’t want to listen.  

Because the change feels to big.  Because the process feels too painful.  Because there is a part of us that doesn’t want the change, wants things to go back to the way they were.  

Also because we were taught, from a very young age not to trust ourselves.  Not to trust our own inner knowing.  

So we look for ways out.

We look to signs from the Universe, the cards, the songs on the radio, the grocery store clerk.  We ask everyone under the sun what they would do.

We talk ourselves in circles trying to find any way we can to not do the thing we know we need to do.  

We do all this in an effort to avoid doing what we know we need to do. 
We don’t listen to our own inner truth.
We seek answers outside of us when they are screaming at us from within.

We do this to avoid pain, discomfort, the unknown.
We do this out of fear.

We do this to try and escape the grief that is welling up inside of us.
Or the hurt.
Or the anger.
Or the frustration.
Or all of the above.

Regardless of the whats or whys, we don’t listen to our Self.  We don’t listen to our Truth.  

We stop our own metamorphosis.
We keep ourselves stuck.
We hide.
We put on fronts and masks.
We try to pretend everything is fine as it is.

But everything is not fine.

And if there is one thing that is constant and inevitable in our lives it is change.
Sometimes that means trying harder, trying different.
Sometimes that means letting go, surrendering, allowing.
It always means going outside our own comfort zones.
It means doing what we know we need to do.
Even if we don’t know what is on the other side.
Even if we are terrified of the process.
Even if it breaks our hearts that things need to be the way they need to be.

Trusting ourselves, trusting our own knowing, is no easy task.  It is not something we learn to do, in fact it is something we were born with knowing and then it was taught out of us.  We were conditioned to trust others over our own Self.  We were told we don’t know what is best for us or our own lives.  We were trained to seek answers outside of us and to never look within.

But here’s a thing: we were born knowing how to trust our Self.  We were born with the knowledge of how to connect with our own innate wisdom.  We were born listening to our own needs, wants and truths, and never, ever questioning them.

We were born with a blind faith in ourselves.

I don’t know that we can, or should, get back to that blind faith.  I am a deep believer in curiosity, questioning, analyzing, and understanding.  I believe we should always check in with ourselves and see if there are shadow pieces, hidden motivations, unconscious agitators, to what we see as our truth, as our knowing.

And all of that requires deeper looking within.  Not outside.  Within.

And a willingness to actually trust ourselves.  And then to honor that trust and do what we know we need to do.

/../
This was originally written for my weekly newsletter in September 2018 and was edited and updated for publication here. To receive my most current essays you can subscribe here.

*Post now on Substack

Admissions, “apologies,” & other patriarchal nonsense (aka I am furious)

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We have to constantly critique imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture because it is normalized by mass media and rendered unproblematic. ~bell hooks, Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism

In late 2017 I watched celebrity male after celebrity male come forward and admit to having assaulted or harassed women or other men.  And with each admission and pseudo-apology, my eyes rolled a little bit harder and wider. I had the same response to Joe Biden’s recent string of non-apologies to Anita Hill as well as the women who have come forward stating he had hugged or touched them without their consent.

My initial response to all these “admissions” is No shit.  No shit that a man in power wielded that power to get sexual gratification from those who couldn’t, for any number of reasons, say no.  No shit that these men didn’t think this was “bad.”  No shit that it would appear that every man in the world has done this.

Just like, #yesallwomen have been sexually assaulted or harassed, #yesallmen have at least harassed, if not assaulted women or other men.

(I know there are a few men who read this.  Please don’t write me and tell me #notallmen or #notme.  Yes all men and yes you.  I’m not open for a discussion on this particular point. Complicity is as bad as an actual act as far as I’m concerned.)

I don’t find it surprising or shocking that all these men have done what we all know they have done.  I do find it surprising that other people are shocked by these admissions.

I don’t even find it particularly shocking that they are coming forward.  Because what a great publicity stunt. What a great way to get yourself, the perpetrator, centered instead of those you assaulted.  What a great way to make this, again, all about the men and their power. Or worse, they twist the narrative in such a way as trying to appear to be the actual victim, like Biden seems to be trying to do by saying he won’t apologize for his “intentions” or making quips about how “times have changed”. This is all a re-centering of the perpetrator and pushing the actual victims out to the margins. Again.

I do find it irritating that now that the men are coming forward and saying “oh yeah, I did that” that now women are finally being believed.  Because lord knows we need a man to corroborate our story in order for it to be true.  (Please note the dripping sarcasm there.)

I also find it to be telling that now that these men are either coming forward or admitting guilt to allegations against them that they are losing their jobs and careers.  Because let’s be real honest and clear here, everyone knew this shit was going on.  All the studio and theater executives were crystal clear that this behavior was happening and they normalized it, “looked the other way” (at best), encouraged it (at almost worst), and participated in it themselves (at worst).

There is the term “casting couch” for a reason, folks.

So that now these executives are firing male perpetrators tells me a couple things.  The first is these executives are very smart.  The second that in their smartness they realize that at least 50% of their revenue comes from women.  The third is that they realize those women who make up about 50% or more of their revenue are pissed and are speaking up and out more and more and more and are beginning to no longer tolerate this behavior.

Let’s not think for one moment that these executives are firing folks out of any sense of ethical or moral outrage.

They are following the money.  End of story.

And.

As I am watching as some of these men make pseudo-apologies, I am also watching to see what their next step is.  How are they going to behave moving forward.  What are they going to do to make reparations, not only to their own victims, but also to women everywhere?

Because talk is cheap.

And actions speak louder than words. (As a note, since this was originally written over a year ago, the actions of apology and reparations have been sorely lacking.)

Isabel Abbot wrote this on her Facebook page in November 2017
just so it is made plainly clear.
here in this space #notallmen will not be tolerated. 
victim blaming will be shown the door. 
defending perpetrators and praise for shitty apologies and hand wringing over critique of apologies because “what about redemption” is not worth my time and will be asked to leave.
expressing fear over a perceived witch hunt of even the good ones and claiming men can’t even have a hug or say a word without the threat of being misunderstood and accused of assault is not welcome and if it shows up here it will be called out quickly and completely.
what is happening now is the truth coming into the light. we burn it all down together, all the idols made of our father’s house and false power. nothing spared. this is where the life lives.
and here in this space, i will not qualify my critique of patriarchy and mysogyny with professing i do still love men. i don’t have time for that bullshit.
here, in my spaces, women and femmes are trusted,
and when women speak of their experiences of harm, i believe them and link arms in solidarity with them.
and we keep our eyes on them, keep the attention on their voices and narratives and truth and do not center the frantic scrambling to keep men and patriarchal power forever our focus.
here, we continue to center the margins and celebrate the righteous rising up of those who say no more.

I am weary of the idea that women are on some sort of witch hunt and that “good men” are going to be persecuted and that we need to think about the trauma that the perpetrator endured as a child and well, she didn’t actually say no or stop lines of bullshit.

Even “good men” are complicit.  Even “good men” have looked the other way.  Even “good men” have not spoken up.  Even “good men” have harassed and assaulted. Even “good men” benefit from the fear that rape culture instills in women and femmes.

Because this isn’t about “good men” or “bad men”.

This is about living in a culture that normalizes and justifies the objectification and dehumanization of women.  And all men benefit from this.

I am neutral about these men coming forward.  I question their motives in doing so.  I question the executives and their motives in firing these men.  I really don’t care that these men are finally admitting their guilt and complicity in our culture. I don’t care that some men find it “confusing” or feel like the “rules have changed”.

I do care that up until now women have not been believed.

I do care that women have been told “oh it wasn’t that bad” or asked “well, what did you do to encourage him.”

I do care that dress codes are still focused on sexualizing girls instead of having a conduct code that punishes boys for objectifying these girls or even better yet creating and teaching and modeling a culture of consent.

I do care that these men have gotten away with this behavior for hundreds and thousands of years.  And that, frankly, they will continue to get away with it, because the old boys club is real.

Not only do I care about these things, I am also furious and filled with rage.

I am furious that women have been gaslit for millennia.

I am furious that 1 in 3 women have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime.

I’m furious that 1 in 5 women in the United States has been raped in their lifetime.

I am furious that these numbers are likely much higher because these are only the numbers that are reported and the entire process of reporting this type of assault is rife with victim blaming and actually discourages victims from reporting.

I am furious that 72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94% of the victims of these murder suicides are female.

I am furious that 1 in 15 children are exposed to intimate partner violence each year, and 90% of these children are eyewitnesses to this violence.

I am furious that between 21-60% of victims of intimate partner violence lose their jobs due to reasons stemming from the abuse.

I am furious that between 2003 and 2008, 142 women were murdered in their workplace by their abuser, which is 78% of women killed in the workplace during this time frame.

I am furious that men think they have a right to touch or talk about a woman’s body without her permission.

I am furious that some people seem to think the men who are finally coming forward and admitting their guilt deserve cookies and medals and praise for being “so brave.”

I am furious that in my circles I need to differentiate between a sense of safeness within our bodies and actual physical safety out in the world.

I am furious that I have to remind the women in my circles NOT to do any of the exercises and practices I offer them when they are not in a physically safe environment.

I am furious at the amount of trauma that lives in our bodies, because of the culture we live in and the normalization of rape, objectification of women, and victim blaming and silencing.

I am furious that women earn less than men yet are often more competent and do better at their jobs.

I am furious that reproductive rights is even a topic of conversation, let alone that “heartbeat” laws are being passed across the US, the Roe vs. Wade will be challenged at the Supreme Court level within the next decade and that the current Supreme Court will likely reverse RvWade.

I am furious that those who would take away my reproductive rights, also would take away my ability to care for and feed a child (by cutting funding to social services that benefit women and children).

I am furious and repulsed by the excuse making for pedophiles that crops up periodically.

I am furious that we have all suffered in relative silence for far too long.

I am furious that we have not been believed and need men to corroborate our stories.

I am furious, about all this and so much more.

Remember:: Our rage is valid.

And please, don’t ever forget that.

/../

This was originally published as one of my weekly newsletters in November 2017 and has been edited for publication here.

If you would like to read my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

Loving or hating our bodies

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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

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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 a 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