gwynn

On being an adult in relationship

June 17, 2019 By gwynn

Our work, then, is not to abolish our connection to the past but to take it into account without being at its mercy. The question is how much the past interferes with our chances at healthy relating and living in accord with our deepest needs, values, and wishes. ~David Richo, How To Be An Adult In Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving

David Richo states in How To Be An Adult In Relationships, that in order to be an adult, we need to be self-aware and mindful in our actions.

In other words, self-awareness is vital on it’s own, but until it is coupled with mindful and intentional action (or inaction), we still aren’t fully acting in our frontal lobe, or “adult” brain.

Those of us who experienced chronic trauma in childhood have a lot to be angry about. We have a lot to be sad about. We have a lot to rage and scream and wail about. I don’t believe anyone would deny that. The atrocities that were done to too many of us as children are horrifying and all of it is held in our body and mind memory.

The trauma doesn’t want to stay trapped within us however, it wants to get out. This is great news if we are in therapy and doing a combination of talk and somatic therapies to help move that trauma on out of our systems and being. It’s not so great news if we aren’t and so we try to stuff it down and eventually it bubbles up and out and we spew it all over an unsuspecting passer-by.

That passer-by could be our children, our intimate partner(s), our friends, other family members. It could even be ourselves.

It is understandable that we have so much hurt and torment living within us. I makes sense that it all needs to get out. It is not okay for us to lash out at others.

Even when they cause us harm.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Even when a person causes us harm, it is not acceptable for us to lash out and cause them harm.

The whole “two wrongs doesn’t make a right” thing.

Here’s a thing, though. For most of us, I don’t think our “eruptions” or “lashing out” are intentional. I know for me it mostly certainly isn’t mindful. It comes from a primal place within that only cares about our survival. And so when we are already wounded, like any animal, if we get poked or prodded we go into fight/flight/freeze because we see any hurt as an attack and we need to protect and defend ourselves.

Rollo May wrote: “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.“

The work of self-awareness is to be able to grow that capacity to pause and allow space for us to mindfully choose the response we want to to actually have.

This is not to say there isn’t a part of us that wants our response to be screaming at the top of our lungs and stomping our feet.

It is to say however, that we need to take the moment to consider the longer term impacts of us screaming and stomping our feet. And if the longer term impacts actually cause us and other (more) harm, then perhaps we could consider a different response.

Shifting from a space of automatic, mindless, response to one where there has been space created between being activated and actually responding, is no simple task. We cannot undo the habit of a lifetime of automatic, mindless responding simply because we decide we want to do so.

It takes time.

AND.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, learning to regulate our systems: calm our sympathetic nervous system, activate our parasympathetic nervous system, move the stored up cortisol out of our system.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, connecting to our boundaries and coming into our bodies. Learning to truly understand, on a very visceral level, where we end and another begins, physically, psychically, emotionally.

It takes practice, a LOT of practice, finding our ways to ground and our own center, being able to find our way to not only be in but stay in, the present moment, despite any and all the discomfort we may be feeling.

And after all of that, it takes practice, a LOT of practice, to break the patterns and cycles that we have become so accustomed to. To actually not engage in an argument even though we may be being provoked, to walk away, to calm ourselves in the moment, to bite our tongues, to actually feel empathy for the person causing harm.

None of this comes easy. Or at least, none of it has come easy to me.

Changing life long, if not generations old, patterns and cycles takes effort. It requires compassion. And we will all screw it up along the way, slipping back into old ways of being because that is what is known.

And.

It can be done. With practice.

What is interesting about changing these patterns and cycles is that as we begin to do so on our end, the person(s) on the other side may try to up their game. When this happens it can be so tempting to engage. Believe me, I know! And, it is all the more important for us to continue practicing our own work, to continue growing that “pause”, to continue our own work of breaking harmful patterns and cycles.

Eventually those who try to engage us will change too. Either they will simply go out of our lives because they aren’t getting the emotional charge from us anymore, or they too will begin to create space, to cultivate and grown that pause, to break their own patterns and cycles.

We can’t do any of that for them though. We can only do our own work. Even in those moments when, right then, we really just want to scream and stomp, and perhaps, especially in those moments.

In rebellious solidarity, always.

/../

This essay was originally written in May 2018 for my weekly newsletter and has been updated and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my newsletter here.

The pursuit of pleasure while living with Complex Trauma

June 5, 2019 By gwynn

Pleasure is the point. Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom. ~Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy. ~Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

Trauma victims cannot recover until they become familiar with and befriend the sensations in their bodies. Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard. Angry people live in angry bodies. The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past. ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Living with complex trauma in our bodies is not an easy or fun experience. Many of us dissociate from our bodies entirely, not feeling the various sensations that are part of every day life. Some of us dissociate and live with chronic pain or anxiety (or both) and only are able to feel painful and uncomfortable sensations. Living in a state of constant pain and anxiety, or not being present at all in our bodies, is a cage many of us have felt, or still do feel, trapped in. We can feel there is no escape from the discomfort and so will find even more ways to numb, to escape.

And those other ways of numbing may work for a while. I’m all for pain relief. I’m also fully aware that some pain is more about trapped trauma than anything else and no amount of medication is going to help in the short or long runs.

When our only experience with our body and its sensations is that of discomfort or pain or not feeling it at all, it’s challenging to imagine what pleasure is, what it could possibly feel like.

We also assume that pleasure should actually be pleasurable. It’s a relatively reasonable expectation, right? Except when we’ve lived a good portion of our lives outside our bodies, feeling any type of body sensation is strange and uncomfortable at first. This includes pleasure.

So, if pleasure initially is uncomfortable, why bother?

Well, because with patience, intention, and practice, pleasure can become pleasurable – and a life without pleasure is not us living our best lives, it is not thriving, it is merely surviving.

To feel pleasure we need to come back home into our bodies. Or for some of us be in our bodies for essentially the first time in our lives. And this means feeling all the sensations of our body – pain, anxiety, discomfort and pleasure, peace, and comfort. We can’t experience one without the other. We can’t pick and choose which sensations we are going to allow ourselves to feel and which we aren’t. It’s an all or nothing type of deal.

And in order to really feel pleasure, peace, and comfort in our bodies, we need to first go through the initial discomfort of beginning to feel them. This may seem like an oxymoron, and yet it is part of the process.

Complex trauma impacts our whole body. It impacts our nervous systems; our brain and the neuro pathways within it; our sensory receptors and how we notice sensations. When trauma occurs at a young age it sets our minds and bodies on a course of constant survival. Being aware of pain is an important part of our survival as a species.

Feeling pleasure on the other hand, is not necessary for our survival as a species nor as individuals.

I would argue however that feeling pleasure is necessary for us to thrive in our lives, to find joy, to live and enjoy our lives to fullest. I’m not only talking about sexual pleasure here. I’m also talking about the pleasure of eating certain foods, of wearing certain fabrics, of being hugged by and hugging those we love, of appreciating art in its many forms, listening to and feeling music and how it lights us up.

Moving from a place of surviving, where many of us have lived most of our lives, to a place of thriving, a place that is wholly unknown and foreign, is a process in an of itself. It is a part of our trauma processing work, in fact I believe it is the entire point of our trauma processing work.

Of course it takes time, patience, intention, and most importantly practice.

And as I have said many a time before, and will say many more times in the future, I believe all the work involved to move from surviving to thriving is totally worth it.

Not settling & discovering our wants

June 3, 2019 By gwynn

As a child you received messages from your family to keep your mouth shut and remain invisible. You also learned to become invisible in order to protect yourself. You no longer need to be invisible to survive. If people do not notice you, they may not abuse you, but they also will not love you or attend to your needs. Make yourself and your needs known. ~Beverly Engel, The Right to Innocence

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

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves. ~Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves. ~Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

Be you, love you. All ways, always. ~Alexandra Elle

There is a truth, that often in life we settle. We settle for things that don’t fill our souls, that don’t make us feel alive, that don’t spark in us a sense of joy or wonder or peace. We settle for things that are mediocre, okay, fine (we guess). And sometimes, even worse, we settle for things that make us unhappy, that break our hearts in a thousand different ways, that make us sacrifice our own values, wants, our very Self.

We may do this for any number of reasons, and I know for me in the past I have often done it because it was just easier.

It was easier to settle for less than to actually admit I was settling for less and doing something about it.

Hindsight is almost always 20/20. We can look back at choices, at relationships, at events, and see all the things we did “wrong”. We can see clearly how we would have, could have, should have, done things differently from the perspective of being on the other side of it all.

With this hindsight and clarity we have the opportunity to do one of three things: spiral into shame or regret; nothing; or learn and grow.

I have been looking back over the twenty plus years I spent with my ex-husband. There was a time when looking back on it all filled me with regret or overwhelming grief or deep seated rage. I could only see all the bad choices. I could only see all the ways I sold myself short, I sold myself out. I could only see the harm that came from that relationship.

With time, I’ve been able to see the good times too. And the truth that without those twenty plus years with him, I would not be the woman I am today. And for better or worse, I really like the woman I am and the woman I am becoming now.

And with all that I can also say that while I no longer regret in any way that relationship or our twenty plus years together, and actually in many ways am grateful and glad for it, I can also very clearly see how we never should have been together in the first place.

Both and.

Looking back at the beginning of that relationship, I rushed. I didn’t slow down and take the time to determine what I actually wanted. I mean, I knew what I wanted: I wanted to get married and have babies and have that fairytale romance with my soulmate that everyone was envious of.

The first two things, totally doable. That last one though… tricky. Because I didn’t know what I actually meant. I didn’t actually know what I wanted out of an intimate relationship beyond the exterior appearance. I never stopped to think about how I wanted to feel within the relationship. I never slowed down enough to consider if I could be fully myself with this person, if I would feel at home within myself and within the relationship at once; if he would grow and shift and change with me or we would grow, shift, and change in the same general direction.

My clock was ticking, I wanted babies, he wanted babies eventually and bam, that was was good enough; he was it. I stopped looking, not only for other partners, but I also stopped looking within to determine if I was happy, if I was fulfilled, if my own wants and desires were being met, if I was still connected to me as our relationship grew.

It wasn’t just in that relationship that I stopped looking or questioning. I also fell into a career that in many ways I loved, but in so many other ways was soul crushing. I rarely questioned my career choice, I stayed with that job because it was easier than trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. Until it wasn’t anymore.

There have also been friendships over the years that I stayed in because it was easier. Because I was lonely. Because I would tell myself that they didn’t really mean this thing or that no one is perfect. And while no one is perfect, it is also true that I settled for people in my life who’s values and life choices were in direct opposition to mine, and at the end of the day it simply wasn’t good for my own mental health. So I settled until I couldn’t anymore.

When we look back we can see all the ways we settled, because frankly it was just easier. We were doing the best we could at the time to get through our days relatively unscathed.

And there often comes a point in our lives when we do awaken a bit, when we suddenly (or very slowly) stop, look around, and see how unhappy we actually are. We feel how unsatisfied and unfulfilled we are. We notice all the overwhelm, all the frustration, all the non-right in our lives, within ourselves.

In those moments we see all was don’t want. And sometimes we then want to take a torch to it all, to break all the relationships, to throw out all the things, be they people or stuff or jobs.

But the problem is that while it is very clear what we don’t want, we still perhaps aren’t clear on what we do actually want. What we actually desire. What would actually fulfill us.

We know what we don’t want, but we have no clarity around what we do want.

This is not to say that there aren’t times when we do need to burn it all down; to make swift and dramatic change in our relationships and surroundings. It is absolutely true that this is sometimes a necessary part of our own shifting and growth and frankly discovering of what we do want.

And it is also true, that perhaps slowing down and truly examining the not-wants and then taking the time to discover our true wants and to consciously choose what to keep in our lives and what to set free may sometimes be better for us in the long run. Not always. But sometimes.

I am in a space of unearthing my own wants, my own desires, and even some of my needs. I am in a space of learning that pleasure has so many forms, and that acknowledging and embracing my true wants in my life is a form of intense and radical self care. That pleasure, enjoyment, satisfaction, are not selfish or wrong or unnecessary, but in fact are loving, right, and absolutely necessary and important parts of thriving in this life.

To be in a space of not settling, or learning not to settle, has it’s own ups and downs. This is an unknown space, an in-between space. These liminal spaces are often full of discomfort, sometimes fear, and a lot of two steps forward, two steps back cha-cha movements before we are able to make that third step forward and then only two, or maybe only one, back, making progress with our own shifting and transformation.

It is also a space of noticing, of learning, of curiosity, of discovery. It is a time of not only discovering what I actually want – in my relationships, work, life – but also learning to speak up and have those wants and desires met. Learning to become vulnerable and open in the asking, instead of demanding. Learning to allow for the reality that the response from others may be a “no” for any number of reasons, and that those reasons often have nothing to actually do with me.

This is all new territory. Exciting and terrifying. And a truth is, that it has taken a lot of work, intentional mindful work, to get here. Work that wasn’t fun or easy by any means, experiences that shook me to my core and also put me in the crucible of change and transformation whether I wanted it or not.

I believe it is true that most of us, in parts of our lives, settle because it’s simply the path of least resistance. That we continue to settle until, for whatever reasons, we can’t anymore. When we come to this crossroads, I hope that we all have people, or meet people, who are willing to go on this wild ride of discovery and transformation with us, people who want to push outside their own comfort zones, who also want to explore and examine all life has to offer.

We don’t need to carpe diem every day. Sometimes what we want is quiet and peaceful and still. It is important to recognize this too. To allow for the both and, the multitudes of our own Self.

/../

In Embodied Writing :: Pleasure Edition we will spend some time unearthing our own wants and desires and looking at how to shift in our own ways from settling into a way of being that is more fulfilling. We begin in two weeks, on June 10. To learn more click here.

If you’d like to subscribe to my weekly newsletter, you can do that here.

Learning and relearning to trust our Self

May 27, 2019 By gwynn

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.

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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.

Legislation of sexuality & pleasure

May 22, 2019 By gwynn

No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body. ~Margaret Sanger
No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor.
~Betty Friedan
A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.
~Marilyn Monroe
Pleasure is the point. Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom. ~Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good

It has been an intense few weeks/months for people with a uterus here in the United States. Alabama and Missouri most recently passing abortion bans and Louisana about to sign theirs into law. Recently Georgia and Ohio also passed bans. In the past few years the following states have passed heavy restrictions on abortion: Arkansas (2013, vetoed by Governor), Iowa (2018), Kentucky (2019), Mississippi (2019), and North Dakota (2013).

There are lawsuits pending as to the legality of these laws in Arkansas (struck down in Federal court), Iowa (struck down by State court), North Dakota (struck down by Federal court), and Kentucky (temporarily blocked by Federal court).

Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, have introduced bills to ban abortions.

Wyoming (2013) and Pennsylvania (2018) tried to introduce laws, however they died in committee. *

The attack on women and femmes is generations old. Having the right to our own bodies has been a battle since feudal times, at the least, and really since long before that in some parts of the world.

The attack on our bodily autonomy isn’t only about our rights to abortion. It is also our rights to our own sexuality, to pleasure, to our very humanity.
The idea that women aren’t supposed to experience pleasure is perhaps older than the story of Eve. Our pleasure is a sin at worst, and unnecessary at best. We are taught this from such a young age. And it’s not just the pleasure of sex and sexuality that we are taught to avoid, it is any type of pleasure.

As women we are raised to be of service to others. To care for others. To work ourselves to the bone in order to please others.

The idea of our own pleasure, of caring for ourselves, is not part of our upbringing. It is not part of our cultural training.

As women we are supposed to sacrifice.
As women we are supposed to serve and care for others.
As women we are supposed to only ever think of others.
As women we aren’t allowed to have emotions beyond happiness. And if we have them, we are certainly not supposed to express them.

Rage doesn’t become us.
Anger doesn’t become us.
Grief doesn’t become us.

We are not supposed to be human. We are not supposed to explore the whole of our humanity. We are not supposed to know what it means to rest. To feel good in our own skin. To experience pleasure, on any level.

To take back our bodies, our lives, as our own, is an act of rebellion in our current culture. To speak up and out defending our own boundaries. Learning to come home into our bodies. Allowing ourselves to rest. Experiencing pleasure on any level, from cozy sheets, to art on our walls that makes us smile, to eating foods we enjoy, and yes, to sexual satisfaction and gratification.

Because as they try to take our reproductive rights, we can fight back.

Yes, in the public and political realm. That is absolutely necessary.

But also in the privacy of our own intimate lives.

By taking naps.
By saying no.
By creating from our souls in the ways that feel good to us.
By learning to tolerate and then enjoy our own sexuality.

The personal is political and the political is personal. It is vital, I believe, that we create change not only in the outer world, but also in our inner worlds. In fact I would argue that in order for there to be lasting change in our outer world, in our culture, we each need to be doing the work of unraveling the ways we have internalized our indoctrination of shame and repression of pleasure, of taking full ownership over our own bodies and lives.

This internal investigation is not a linear nor easy path, and there will be layers and layers to explore. Finding all the ways that we have had our bodies controlled, taken from us, from young ages; all the ways we have been shamed into believing life is not for us to enjoy for ourselves, but to only provide service for others; all the ways we continue to oppress ourselves, allowing culture to maintain its stronghold on our lives…. this all takes time, patience, curiosity, and self compassion.

Learning to savor life, to enjoy the small and big pleasures that are part of being human, is an important part of our individual and collective evolution.

It is also an act of defiance, of rebellion.

Reclaiming our bodies as our own, reclaiming pleasure as a birthright, is another way we can fight back against this current onslaught of the basic human rights of people who are born with a uterus. While we fight for our basic rights and freedoms in the political realm, remember to continue to fight for the same rights within your own home and your own mind and body.

The political is personal. The social is individual. Breaking ourselves from the leashes our oppressive, authoritarian culture is how we become free, how we reclaim our bodies, our very lives.

It is true that the abortions bans are about our reproductive rights, and it is also true that they are about so much more than that. They are about our very humanity.

It is time for each of us to rise up, to reclaim our bodies, our voices, our very lives.

* Information regarding abortions bans found on Wikipedia.

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Embodied Writing :: Pleasure Edition will begin in a little under three weeks. In it we will spend seven weeks exploring different aspects of pleasure, our internalized narratives about pleasure, and learning to reclaim pleasure as a part of our lives through stream of conscious writing and embodiment practices. To learn more click here.

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