Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Reclamation, Resistance, Self-Compassion, & It isn’t all ours to shift

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Knowing yourself is first step towards self reclamation. ~Amit Gupta

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end. ~Jiddu Krishnamurti

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. ~H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

I believe it is important for us to acknowledge that any trauma processing work that we do, is all about unlearning old survival patterns, cycles, and instincts that no longer serve us well.  Most of us have been using these old survival tools for decades.  We know them.  We know them likely better than we know any other part of ourselves.  And even though they no longer serve us, they are still what is known and therefore what is comfortable for us.

Doing this work of calming our nervous systems, connecting to our boundaries, reclaiming our bodies, and coming into the present moment by finding our center and ground is all the work of the unknown.  Unknown because it was never modeled for us as kids (in fact I am guessing the opposite is what we learned).  Unknown because we have unprocessed trauma living within us.  Unknown because we live in a culture that doesn’t make space for such things.  

And what is unknown, we often interpret as scary, terrifying even, especially those of us living with relational or betrayal trauma (trauma that we experienced due to the actions of a caregiver or trusted loved one against us). The unknown can be full of all kinds of horrible things, and often we think the “devil we know is better than the devil we don’t.”

All of this spills over into our relationships with others: our partners, our kids, our friends, other family members.  Those of us who have experienced relational or betrayal trauma don’t know how or who to trust, or how to be vulnerable (or who to be vulnerable with).  We don’t know what it is to express our emotions or boundaries in a way that doesn’t cause harm (to ourselves or others).  We don’t know how to be able to tolerate other’s uncomfortable emotions, let alone our own, and become quickly overwhelmed and agitated by “big feelings” of grief, sadness, anger, etc that another person is expressing. 

All this avoidance of emotions and sensations and vulnerability and expression makes it pretty tough to have deep, authentic, relationships, with anyone, including ourselves.

Of course we all carry our own stuff around with us: our histories, our trauma, our biases, our skewed lenses and view of the world.  All of us.

And.

Those of us who are able to become more and more self aware, who are able to become more and more at home within our own skin (literally and figuratively), are also able to see, at least sometimes, what stuff that is coming up in relationship or in our interactions is ours and what is the other person’s.  (This is boundary work, y’all.) And that then allows us to begin to have deeper and more authentic relationships with other people, as well as with ourselves.

Yes, this work is challenging.  And yes, I have many moments of “I don’t wanna” or worse, that deep feeling of overwhelm of just having So Freaking Much to unlearn, unravel, dislodge, and process.  It is exhausting when we think of all the harm that has been done to us and all the ways it impacts our lives.

And with every moment that we are able to be present, each time we catch ourselves before we go into overwhelm and soothe our systems, with every intentional and mindful yes and no we utter (and honor), we are shifting generations old – that’s hundreds if not thousands of years old – patterns, cycles, and ways of being.

That’s pretty freaking huge. 

To be able change a family or cultural pattern that has been being passed down for hundreds, possibly thousands, of years?  That makes us all super heroes and heroines in my book.

I believe is important to mention: it isn’t all our work to process or shift or heal.  We are individuals and as such we each can only do so much within our own family systems in bringing about change.  Of course we will pass some things on to the next generation that we wished we didn’t.  And. Let us for a moment (at least) consider all that we have stopped, shifted, and outright changed.

We are all in the process of learning.  All of us.  We are all in the process of unlearning.  All of us.

We are all in the process of breaking generations old cycles and patterns.

We are all in the process of healing our own wounding.

We are all in the process of trying to provide salve to those we unintentionally wounded.

Well, at least, I believe most of us are.  

And for those of us who are in this process, I believe it is vital that we learn self-compassion. 

Not that we give ourselves a pass, or make excuses for harm we have caused.  Rather to acknowledge that we are human, fallible.  That we will make mistakes.  That the wounding we carry is not our fault, that we didn’t ask for it, that it isn’t fair we have to carry it.  That we are doing the best we can with the tools we have and we are in the process of seeking new and different tools to continue this work.

This work of reclaiming our bodies, of reclaiming our whole Self, of feeling good in our skin, of being present even when we are in uncomfortable emotions, sensations, and situations, of trying to find our ways to deeper and more meaningful relationships with others and with ourselves… it is not something we know.  It is not something we grew up learning or witnessing.  It is not something that feels normal (yet).  It is different.

It is unknown.  And so we fear it, we have a resistance to it, we try to avoid it, we shy away from it.  We sit in that space of “I don’t wanna!” 

This is all okay.  This, I believe, is a normal reaction.  It is of course so much easier to remain as we are than it is to do this work of processing and shifting and reclaiming.

It is an act of bravery, of rebellion, of self-care, to do this work.  Doing this work is breaking possibly hundreds, if not more, years of wounding, of harm, of trauma.  

And that is enormous.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter in April 2018. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent newsletters you can subscribe here.

From connection to relationship

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We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness. ~Albert Schweitzer

To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous. ~Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

When I began my business/private practice almost eight years ago, my main value, intention, and driving force was connection.  I wanted to connect with others.  I wanted to connect with myself.  I wanted to guide others to connect with their own whole self – body, mind, spirit, and soul.  I wanted us to connect to our breath.  To connect to the present moment. I wanted to connect more with my own family, my community, the greater world.  I wanted the same for others.  Connection.  

Connection was my word for the last part of 2012, all of 2013, and then stayed with me from there on after as a base, a foundation of my work and being in the world.

Connection pushed me out of my comfort zone.  It had me reaching out to people I never would have before.  Connection expanded me in so many good and glorious ways.  The friendships that grew from my own drive for connection are some of the most important in my, and my family’s, life.  

Connection also brought me closer to me.  Connecting with my body, connecting with my mind, connecting with my spirit.  Unearthing and understanding some of the connections within me.  The connections of my traumatic past and the my ways of being in the present.  

And of course the intellectual connections: personal and political, social and self, individual and collective.  The connections between trauma, grief, and embodiment.  The deeper still understanding of systems and our inter-connected-ness as humans on this planet.

So much connection.

And even with all this connection happening, within and outside of me, to my body, to my intellect, to my Self, to my world, I still felt lonely.

Sometimes deeply lonely.

And not only lonely, but also alone.

A thing about trauma, is that it has us self-isolate.  It also impacts our attachment styles and relationships.  If we experienced trauma young enough, and the trauma was inflicted by primary or even secondary care-givers, our ability to trust others is deeply impacted.

In other words, it affects our willingness and ability to form deep, vulnerable, emotionally intimate relationships.

Which then, leaves us feeling lonely and alone, even if we are connected in some or many ways to other people.  Because, if we haven’t processed our trauma, we are still in an activated state; we are weary of allowing others in; we “know better” than to allow ourselves to be vulnerable by stating our wants and needs. And deep, intimate, relationships cannot form. Because we are still in survival mode.

Until we can feel a sense of safeness in our body, a sense of physical safeness, we can’t move on into the work of emotional safeness and vulnerability.  Our brain stems and nervous and lymbic systems need to be soothed and calmed and feel like we are physically okay before we can move into the next level work of emotions, compassion, and empathy, which includes vulnerability and the ability to state our wants and needs and then (more than not) have them met.

Our brains literally will not allow us to do the emotional work until it is convinced we are physically safe.  If we have trauma living within us that we have not processed, our brain does not believe we are physically safe (because trauma, and our fight/flight/freeze response in our amygdala is concerned about actual physical safety and literal physical survival) – even if our frontal lobe, the logic part of our brain, knows that actually we are physically safe. 

When we are in an activated state, we are not connected to our frontal lobe, we are living back in the survival response state of our amygdala.  

Living in that survival state has varying degrees.  Sometimes it shows up as full on panic attacks, other times it appears as a relatively low-grade anxiety or depression.  And even if we are in a relatively low grade state of anxiety or depression, even if we can partially connect to logic in our frontal lobe, our brain stem and amygdala are running the show and will over-ride our frontal lobe and logic brain.

What all that can look like in our personal lives is that we have many important connections.  We have friendships and relationships that mean the world to us.  There are people in our life who have literally saved us and who we love dearly and deeply.

Even so, moving to a deeper level of intimacy with other humans is really hard.  It is something that terrifies us in a way that is non- and pre-verbal.  In a way that we know stems from trauma and has no logic in relation to the present moment and or person.

Part of our own personal trauma work is in calming our brain stem and limbic and nervous systems enough for them to understand that we are actually physically safe in this present moment, so that we can move into the next level territory of exploring what exactly emotional safeness is and how even in times we put our trust in a person we perhaps shouldn’t, we will survive it.  Now is the work of moving beyond connection into relationship.  Intentional, deep, vulnerable, intimate relationship that takes work and bravery on our end.

Relationship, attachment, belonging – these are also basic human needs.  But they come after our physiological needs of food, water, shelter and the ability to use the bathroom; they also come after our need for physical safeness and safety.  Until we have been able to (correctly) convince our activated systems that we are indeed physically safe, moving into relationship and emotional safe-enough-ness is nearly impossible.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly-ish newsletter in January 2018. It has been updated and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

We will be exploring our relationships, how complex trauma impacts them, and how we can begin to shift that, in the six month Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Relationship that begins September 1. You can learn more here.

Being in the present

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I’ll never try to keep you
But I’ll try to be
The kind of place
That makes you 
Always want to stay.
~J. Warren Welch

Never expect
Never assume
Never demand.
Just let it be,
If it’s meant to be,
It will happen.
~Unknown

Never chase what doesn’t want to be caught.  People leave and we want them back but what we really need, is to love ourselves more than they every could.  You are worth more than a love that didn’t stay.
~Ventum

When we live with unprocessed complex trauma, we have a very low tolerance for the unknown, for liminal space, for chaos (and we view chaos as anything unknown or unforseen). We like to have plans.  We like to know what is coming.  We like to have the future all mapped out.  

We struggle with last minute changes.  We are challenged when letting things unfold in their own time.  

We have a need for our lives to go a certain way, for our plans to work out exactly as we planned them.  We have our futures fully mapped out and deviations from that cause us overwhelming stress and anxiety.  

We feel uncomfortable in the present, in the here and now.  We are constantly doing-doing-doing, looking for the next thing, planning the next event, the next project, the next stage of a relationship, next promotion, next, next, next.

This discomfort in the here and now can be overwhelming.  With our sympathetic nervous system activated and constantly on high alert our “normal” way of being in the world is looking for escape from the present. It has us looking to the future to try to avoid harm.  

We struggle with staying present in the now because our systems don’t feel safe.  They don’t feel safe in the now, they don’t feel safe in the future, because they weren’t actually safe in the past. 

Learning to teach our activated sympathetic nervous system that we are actually safe in the moment, this moment now, is the only way we can move away from always being in the future and come back to the here and now.

Self regulation and co-regulation are important parts of learning how to feel a sense of safeness in the present.  Helping our nervous systems slow down, to not always be on high alert is a skill that most of us weren’t taught or modeled in our childhood or adolescence.  These skills don’t come naturally for us, and so as we begin to learn them, they may feel strange, uncomfortable, even wrong.  

The reason they feel so strange is that we are doing something new and different.  We are beginning to grow new neural pathways, which can be a slow process.  Learning new ways of being can be awkward, and there will be times we just don’t want to do it.  Being present can simply feel too much, too overwhelming, the work too hard.  There will be those days.  

And.

Being able to be present, be in the now, can be an amazing experience.  To not have the pressure of needing something to turn out a certain way, to not have an endgame, to allow things to be as they are, to unfold as they will, can be freeing.  

Once we move through the discomfort of the new and different, once we have taken the time to grow the new neural pathways and practiced new ways of being, our sense of safeness in the present moment allows us to enjoy the now, as it is, without needing to escape into the future.  It allows us to let situations unfold, in their own time, without needing to micromanage them or try to dictate every moment or the final outcome.  

It allows us to feel good in our own skin.  In this now.  As it is.  To enjoy our life, and yes to feel the depths of the sad moments too – the difference being we are feeling it all in the moment, instead of stuffing things down to leak out at a later time.  

Being present, allowing the now to be Enough, is tricky business.  It asks us to face our demons, to process our trauma, to be accountable for our own actions, to do the work of learning to self-regulate in helpful ways, to connect to and re-integrate the lost or hidden parts of our Self.  This is intense work, it is hard work.

And it is work that I believe is so very worth it. 

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly-ish newsletter on August 8, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

We will be exploring these ideas, and how to change the ways we are in our relationships with others and with ourselves in my new six month group Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Relationship.  You can learn more about it here. 

Curiosity and honoring our own wants and needs

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Darling girl,
follow that white rabbit
and fuck what they say.
~Ann Marie Eleazer

We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit. ~audre Lorde

say yes
to new
adventures.
~unknown

There will be people in our lives who when we meet them, we know that we are going down a rabbit hole and when we come back up, we will be forever changed.  People who we know will break us further open, who will gently guide us back to our Self, who will inspire so much feeling within us that at times we feel we might burst.

If we are lucky we get to meet multiple people like this in our lifetimes.  People who push us lovingly outside our comfort zones, people who, when we are around them, we want  to push ourselves outside our comfort zones.  People who, simply knowing them is truly an adventure.  People who we feel alive with, free with, connected with, at peace with.

Sometimes these people will be in our lives for a very long time, decades, maybe even most of our lives.  Sometimes these people will be in our lives for a very short time: a few hours, a day, a couple months.  Sometimes it seems like these people show up exactly when we need them to, to get us through a very specific phase in our lives.

Sometimes these people are our Forever People and sometimes they aren’t.

Just because a person isn’t a Forever Person doesn’t make them a “bad” person.  Sometimes relationships end not because harm has been done, rather because it is simply time for it to end.  Because one person has grown into needing something different than what the other in the relationship can give and to stay would be to keep both people stuck and stagnant.

Letting go of these people who touch us so deeply, so intensely, who forever change us, is not an easy task.  It is understandable that we want these people to stay forever.  It makes sense that we try to cling to them, that we lose our minds a bit in the trying to somehow backtrack and change course “soon enough” for the inevitable to be avoided just a bit more.

It makes sense because our attachment wounds and complex trauma run deep.  Because learning new ways of being, which includes new ways of grieving, can feel so uncomfortable and even at times overwhelming.  Because we want the stability and relative safeness of things staying the same.  Because while change is unavoidable, we humans sure do try to keep it at bay as long as possible.

All relationships have their ebbs and flows.  Their expansions and contractions.  Their beginnings and endings. Being able to move with these shifts is an act of courage and love.  It is brave and loving to do differently, to break patterns and cycles that inevitably cause harm, to allow for the autonomy of the people in the relationship and that of the relationship itself.  

What is most important, always, in all ways, is that we are able to stay true to who we are, to stay in our own integrity, to do our best to not cause harm and when we do to be accountable and do the work of repair.

Sometimes that looks like walking away or staying still while the other person walks away.  

And whoa can that hurt like hell.

A thing is, when we try to force a relationship, any relationship, to be something it can’t be, we begin to lose our Self.  We become so focused on the relationship and the other person that we lose sight of us.  We allow fear of being alone, of having to meet new people, of change, to be in charge instead of sitting in the discomfort of grief and change and allowing space and time to consider how we, ourselves want to move forward.

Staying in relationships, or trying to keep a relationship, where both people aren’t fulfilled, aren’t having their wants and needs for the relationship met and respected, ultimately causes harm to ourselves and to the other person.  It may not be intentional, and any time we to twist ourselves into someone we aren’t, anytime we comprise what is most important to us, anytime we expect the same of another person, we are causing harm.  We are not allowing for growth, expansion. We are acting from fear and not from love.

And.

When we are in the place of not having our needs or wants met in a relationship, I invite us to be curious.  Have we asked for what we want or need?  Have we communicated in a way the other person understands how important these things are for us?  Have we checked in with the other person to see if their wants and needs are also being met?  Have we heard the other person when they expressed their own wants and needs?

Have we stepped into our own vulnerability, sharing parts of our Self that feel scary to share?  Have we allowed space for the other person to do so, without our judgement or comment?

Have we made assumptions without actually confirming with the other person?  Have we set expectations that are unreachable?  Have we made demands, trying to “force” the other person to our own will?  Have they done similar?

It is true relationships ebb and flow, expand and contract, begin and end.  

And endings don’t have to mean something is over completely.  Endings can mean a new beginning, a shift, an opportunity for honest, open communication.  More intimacy, more vulnerability.  

And also, sometimes, endings do mean a thing is completely over. 

The important thing, I believe, is that we remain curious.  We remain honest, with ourselves and with the other person(s).  We ask questions and we state our needs and wants and ask if the other person can meet them.  We need to honor ourselves, recognize our wants and needs are valid, and not try to shrink ourselves in the name of not being alone.

And we need to allow space for those we are in relationship with to do the same.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weeklyish newsletter on August 2, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

We will be exploring these ideas, and how to change the ways we are in our relationships with others and with ourselves in my new six month group Trauma Informed Embodiment™ for Relationship.  You can learn more about it here. 

Acting from fear or from love?

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Despair, self-doubt, and desire cripple human beings.  ~Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.  Frank Herbert, Dune (Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear)

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.  ~John Lennon

Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds — justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.  ~Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

Learning how to actually ask for what we want, what we need, is not an easy task.  We all have our ways of being “passive-aggressive” or “manipulative.” Of “hinting” at what we want instead of stating it clearly.  We’ve all had times of being angry and hurt that someone didn’t pick up on our “hints” or read our minds.   Attempting to relate with others is in these ways is much less vulnerable than actually asking for what we want, less risky, but ultimately more harmful to our relationships.

Another pattern in avoiding asking for what we want is what I call “playing detective: : We ask all the questions around the thing to try to deduce what the response will be so we can ascertain if asking is worth the risk.  An example : Say you want to spend time with someone.  Instead of asking if they are free to hang out or would like to spend time together, we instead ask if they have other plans, feel out if they are available, try to gather information to determine what their response will be and decide if we “should” ask or not. 

I understand why those of us living with unprocessed complex trauma do this: We do this because of our fear of rejection, our fear of abandonment, our fear of not being wanted is so great, and is therefore influencing our decisions around how to relate with others.  

A thing is, when we do this, when we either try to manipulate or are passive aggressive or go into detective mode instead of “simply” asking for what we need or want, two things happen : 
1. We are letting fear be in charge and staying in well known and ultimately harmful patterns and cycles of relating; and
2. We are not giving the other person the opportunity to say yes to us, of their own free will, without guilt or feeling of obligation.  

When we operate from a place of fear, from a place of letting our wounding be in charge, we actually prevent ourselves from getting our needs and wants met.  When we make demands instead of asking another if they can fulfill our wants we cause harm to our relationship.  When we have unrealistic expectations (think “If they loved me they’d know“), we prevent true intimacy with those we want so desperately to have a deep connection with.

There are reasons we do this.  Our neural pathways that were grown during our early childhood, when we experienced abuse and or neglect, when we learned how to survive by doing whatever we had to do to get our needs met, direct us and our ways of being in the world.  When we are stuck in survival mode, in our trauma responses, it can be almost impossible to move out of that place of fear, 

Almost.

We can do it however. 

It’s not easy.  It is challenging.  It will feel counter-intuitive.  It will feel weird and wrong.  

And it will have moments of feeling scary as hell.  Downright terrifying even.

I don’t have a simple five step program for you to shift your ways of being, of relating with others.  I don’t have a recipe for how to “simply” ask for what you want.  And I will never, ever tell you that it’s simply a matter of mind over matter, to just do it, that if you really wanted to change you would already.  

Because it’s not simple.  It actually requires us to rewire our brains.  Literally.

This entails us finding a sense of safeness within our own body.  Within the present moment.  To feel all the uncomfortable emotions and their physiological sensations, to learn to tolerate them, to sit with them, to not run away from them.  To expand, and then expand some more, that pause between stimulus and response.  To stay connected to our frontal lobe while allowing ourselves to feel our feeling but not let them overwhelm us.

This is not fun work.  I don’t think any of us do it because we enjoy it.  I know I do it to have better relationships with my children, with my friends, with my lovers and partners and with myself.  I do it because I know the patterns and cycles that were passed down to me caused and continue to cause so much harm and that harm ripples out beyond my direct relationships.

And if the harm ripples out, then I also know the healing will ripple out too.  Every pattern we break, every cycle we disrupt, every new neural path we nurture and grow and every old one we let atrophy, that healing reaches past us, past our direct relationships with our children, family, friends, lovers, and partners, that healing reaches out into the world, into the collective.

Every time we let fear stay in charge, we reinforce and bolster those old neural pathways that tell us we are not deserving of love, we are not worthy of connection, that no one wants us.  We reinforce and remain complicit in our oppressive culture, in the status quo of harm, abuse, and disconnection.

And.

Every time we do the hard, sometimes excruciating, work of being in the fear and asking for what we want anyway, we nurture and bolster new neural pathways; ones that remind us we are deserving, we are worthy, we are wanted, we are lovable.  

This work, when we do it, the benefits of it, they don’t stop with us.  As we do this inner work and change the ways we are in the world, the ways we relate to ourselves and others, we have impacts.  We create space for others to shift too, to do their own inner work.  This ripples out and out and out.

Acting from a place of love, a place of seeking intimacy, a place of connection – with ourselves and others, is what will change this world.  We do this one relationship at a time.  We do this by coming back into our bodies.  We do this by acknowledging and feeling the fear, knowing where it stems from, and reminding ourselves we are safe in this moment and can do differently than what we, and the generations before us, have done in the past.

The work of the individual impacts the collective, in small ways that lead to big the ways the more of us who do this work.  

Let’s continue our work.  Let’s move out of acting from a place of fear and wounding and into acting from a place of love, compassion, and inter-dependency.

Because we need each other.  There is no shame in this.  It is a fact of being human.  We. Need. Each. Other.  Period. Full stop.

So, remember, act from love.  Always.  All ways. 

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly newsletter on June 28, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays and learn about my current offerings you can subscribe here.

We’ll be exploring the ways trauma impacts our relationships and learning new ways of relating, regulating and co-regulating our nervous systems, connecting to our boundaries and coming into our bodies in my new six month Trauma Informed Embodiment (TIE)™ for Relationship. You can learn more here.