Category: intergenerational trauma

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

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.

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Grief, trauma, resilience

No one ever told me how sorrow traumatizes your heart, making you think it will never beat exactly the same way again. No one ever told me how grief feels like a wet sock in my mouth. One I’m forced to breathe through, thinking that with each breath I’ll come up short and suffocate. ~Sarah Noffke, Awoken

Grief is its own beast.  It comes and goes in waves, in blasts, in trickles.  In the early days of a loss or trauma, the grief can be erratic, unpredictable, and seemingly constant all at once.  With time, and processing, the sensations of grief become less pronounced; in some cases and ways we can predict when it will crop up.  And even with the growing ability to predict, it will still come out of nowhere, shocking us, and sometimes bringing us back down to our knees.

We can grieve many things.  The obvious death of someone we love(d). The death of a relationship, be it a sexually intimate one or a friendship.  The endings that come with changing jobs, or moving homes, or starting or graduating from school.  The endings that are also associated with beginnings – marriage, birth of a child.

We often don’t acknowledge all the things we need to grieve.  Especially when we are told that we should be happy all. the. time.  Especially when perhaps we are actually happy about the change. Like the birth of a child.

And yet, beginnings mean endings.  And those endings, even if joyous, carry some amount of grief.

When we start to look at the ways trauma affects us, and our grieving process, things can become even more complex.  Our grief can be around a mixture of events.  A new traumatic event can trigger any or all of our old ones.  Loss can also trigger those older traumatic experiences, whether the loss itself could be classified as traumatic or not.

Our nervous systems get hijacked. Our emotions seem to run rampant.  We can’t find a sense of ground or stability or perhaps even reality.

What also often happens with loss and traumatic events is a deep wanting for things to be different.  A resistance if you will to what now is.  This wanting different, this wanting events beyond our control (or even within our control) to not have happened, can be helpful.  It can be information for how to move forward.

It also has the potential of keeping us stuck in that wanting and not finding ways to, slowly, gently, delicately, take those next steps in moving forward.

I don’t like the word “acceptance.”  There is much that is implied in that word, that our culture has put on that word, that I do not like, that I believe is actually harmful.

In our current culture the idea of “acceptance” is used to silence.  If we would just accept that life is the way it is, then we’d shut the hell up about it.  We’d just accept and become compliant.  We’d just accept and stop feeling about it and going on about it already.

That’s not really what acceptance, in mindfulness terms, is supposed to be about.  And it’s definitely not what it is about for me.

Acceptance is about perhaps wanting things to be different, and also acknowledging that they aren’t.  It is wishing we would have done something different, or someone hadn’t done something to us, and also knowing that those events did in fact happen.  In this acknowledging and knowing, we can make decisions on how to proceed instead of remaining stuck in the wishing and wanting only.

Perhaps that means offering an apology and doing the work of repair and making amends.  Perhaps that means going into therapy.  Perhaps that means unraveling some of our own story and moving forward.  Perhaps that means setting boundaries.

Regardless of how we proceed, there is a moving forward.  A letting go in some ways, an embracing in others.  An acknowledgement that things are not what we may want them to be, and even so we will find a way to move forth.

This is what we also call resilience.

Those of us with any type of trauma history, and perhaps especially those with complex trauma, have often had our resilience taken from us.  That is part of the definition of trauma in fact, that inability to let go and move forward.  That stuckness.

This is not to say that those of us with trauma histories should just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get over it already.  Because we all know that doesn’t work.

Instead, to develop our resilience, we need to process our trauma.  We need to find ways to help release it from our bodies.  To soothe our nervous systems.  To connect to our boundaries and reclaim our bodies as our own.  To find ground and our sense of center.  To acknowledge and utilize our resources.  To come into our bodies and listen, deeply, to the stories they have to share and to allow them move out in such a way that while the story is never truly gone from our memory, it is no longer living in our body.

As we process the trauma that lives in our bodies, we build our resilience.  As we build resilience we are able to respond to new traumatic events in a different way, so that they do not impact us in the same, often debilitating, ways of past traumas.  As we process old trauma, we learn how to process new events.

Grief is part of this process. Both the process of grief that these things have happened, as well as the grief of change, of letting go and setting down old ways of being and creating space for new.

Grief, like trauma, lives in our bodies.  When we experience the death of a relationship, be that the other person actually died or we are no longer in contact with them, our bodies respond.  We physically miss them, whether we were sexually intimate or not. (There is science behind this).

So like trauma, the ways to process grief involves coming into our bodies, listening to them, finding ways to soothe them, learning where we end and another begins (i.e. boundaries and body reclaiming), connecting to ground and center and the present moment.

This process is not easy.  It is often not fun.  It is also often incredibly uncomfortable.  And in my personal opinion, it is so deeply worth it.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly newsletter in October 2017 and has been edited for publication here. If you’d like to read my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

If you are interested in working with me individually, you can learn more here and request a free 30-minute consultation here.

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On Anger

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. ~Joe Klaas, Twelve Steps to Happiness

Between stimulus and response lies a space. In that space lie our freedom and power to choose a response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness. ~Viktor Frankl

In the Unleashed Woman Book Club call a couple years ago we got to talking about the idea of “going with the flow”.  The conversation was inspired by a FB post by Toi Smith.  Toi wrote ::

“silence is beautiful.

not speaking up is sexy.
going with the flow makes you tolerable.
doing everything without complaint makes you loveable.
making yourself always available is the expectation.

-love letter to women from patriarchy”

We talked about all the ways we have been trained and conditioned to go with the flow.  To not speak up.  Eventually this led to a conversation about anger.

A couples therapist recommended a book to my now ex-husband and I about anger when we were trying to find ways to save our marriage.  It’s not really an anger management book per se, but it talks about all the ways anger is bad for us and how it “destroys our lives” (that’s a direct quote from the book).

I’m guessing you can imagine my response to this book. Wanting to throw it across the room was the most tame of my responses.

I did skim through it.  There were some interesting, and perhaps in the right context, valuable exercises.  But the premise that anger will ruin our lives had me rolling my eyes and wanting to burn the book.

In general my issues with the book, beyond this uninformed premise, are:

1. It does not come from a trauma-informed perspective
2. It does not come from a systems perspective
3. There is not discussion of the neuroscience or neurobiology of anger (it did talk about the physiological affects of anger)
4. Because it does not come from a systems perspective, it does not tie anger to social/political/institutional reasons for anger
5. There is zero discussion of epigenetics and how anger (or other unprocessed by our ancestors emotions) may be passed down
6. It did not offer any somatic-informed approaches (it only talked about the mind and thoughts)
7. It was written by three white middle aged men with PhDs who I am assuming are at least upper middle class in economic status and carry with them all the privilege that comes with this.

Again, admittedly I only skimmed the book, however the general sense I got was that anger is bad.  And there was no science to back up their claim.

(That said, again, the exercises in the book, which are mindfulness based, could be helpful for people in processing some anger and in helping to control their (potentially harmful) actions that stem from anger.  We can’t always throw the baby out with the bathwater, even if the baby is mostly made up of elitist and privileged bullshit).

I have become very weary of anyone who claims that anger is always a “bad” thing.  Or that is it always destructive (and in these cases destruction = bad.  My view is that often destruction = good, growth, change.  But that may be another conversation for another day). That we should move past anger as quickly as possible.  That anger will “destroy our relationships and our lives”.

Anger, as I have shared before, is an active emotion.  It needs movement.  It requires physical, emotional, and cognitive movement.

What this means, is that when we are in the height of anger, we do need to physically do something to help release it.  This could be going for a walk or run, screaming into a pillow, punching a pillow/punching bag/mattress/cushion, doing jumping jacks/pushups, running up and down stairs, etc.  Once enough adrenaline and cortisol (two chemicals that are produced by our bodies when we are stressed, which includes when we are angry) is burned off, we can then move into calming practices, like the nervous system soothing exercises I share with you each week.  But those chemicals have to be burned off and begin to flush out of our systems first otherwise our nervous system will stay activated and we won’t be able to fully connect to our frontal lobe (where logic and empathy live).

It also means that when we are angry, not in a rage, more that we are simmering, that we can use this anger as a motivator for action and change.
It means it can be an encouragement to have those difficult conversations with our partner about how they have hurt us, or those difficult conversations with our boss about how we aren’t compensated fairly, or to make difficult decisions that will change the trajectory of our lives.

Sometimes there are other emotions beneath our anger.  Sometimes there is sadness, grief, frustration, hurt, betrayal, or any other number of emotions. And it is important to be self-aware and to recognize when our anger is protecting us from some of those even more challenging emotions, particularly those of hurt, betrayal, and grief.

And it also is true that sometimes we are simply angry.

Angry because of any number of injustices that take place daily in the world and possibly even in our lives.

Our rage is valid.

Historically speaking and present day speaking.

When we take the opinion that anger is a “bad” or “negative” emotion or that it will “destroy our lives” then our tendency is to shut our anger down (or at least to try).  To stuff it.  To ignore it.  To pretend we aren’t really angry at all.

Let me tell you something, that doesn’t work out so well in the end.

Remember how I said anger is an active emotion?  It will come out, even if you (try to) stuff or shut it down.  It will show up as:
• stomach/gastrointestinal and/or digestive issues
• depression
• anxiety
• chronic pain
• chronic illness
• mood swings
• irritability

It will manifest itself, in one way or another.  And you can choose to try to ignore it, or you can meet it, shake its hand, and find ways to release, process, and be (positively) motivated by the anger.

Anger in and of itself is not bad.

Sometimes how we act when angry can be harmful to both ourselves and others.  And finding ways to release, process and be motivated to healthy action is important.  I am in no way condoning physical, emotional or psychological violence to ourselves or others using the excuse that we were angry.

We can all learn to find that space between “stimulus and response,” to expand it and find our ways to responding to and with our anger in appropriate ways.

And, because sometimes some people act inappropriately, or even in harmful ways, when angry, does not mean that anger itself is “bad” or will “destroy our lives.”

Anger can be our way of protesting the status quo.  It can be our way of saying we will no longer go with the flow.  We will no longer be compliant and complicit.  We will use our voice and our intelligence and our resources to promote justice, to demand justice.

So, remember::
Our rage is valid.  It is the culmination of generations of rage that has been suppressed and passed down.  What we choose to do with this rage, well, that is up to each of us, individually and collectively.

/../
This essay was originally written for my newsletter in September 2017 and has been edited for publication here.

If you would like to receive my weekly newsletter you can sign up here.

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Slowing into the pause & breaking harmful patterns

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the 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. ~Rollo May, The Courage to Create

she learned to walk away
from everything
that didn’t inspire her
toward greater things
~Mark Anthony

a successful life is created
with two words: yes and no
have the courage to say yes
only when it feels right
and no to the old patterns
that do not serve you
~yung pueblo

One way that complex trauma impacts us in our adult lives is in our relationships, be they with friends, family, or intimate partners. Many of us with complex trauma are not good at tolerating painful emotions, like sadness, frustration, or disappointment. 

In fact, most of us don’t have a lot of tolerance for the more “positive” emotions like happiness, joy, and pleasure either.

Any feeling – sensation and emotion – can feel too much and can trigger our fight/flight/freeze/fawn response. The feelings can be overwhelming and so we need a way to release them, to get them out of us, because actually feeling them is intolerable.

So, we start fights. Or turn away and cut people out of our lives. In the moment we may freeze and feel stuck or placate and people please and then later move into the space of either wanting to fight or flee. Depending on the situation we do one or the other of these or we do some in rapid succession. 

Our reaction is generally immediate and coming directly from our back (or reptile) brain. There is no thought that is going into it. We don’t slow down to engage our front brain and are fully in our survival instinct. Because feeling our feelings feels like our actual lives are in danger. It feels like they might consume us. It feels like we won’t survive the sensations and emotions that are swirling within us.

I know for me a go to reaction was always to flee. And by flee I mean turn my back and cut people out of my life. One disappointment, one time of feeling rejected or abandoned, and it was “proof” that the person wasn’t trustworthy and therefore I needed to shut them out of my life. My armor would go up and if need be I would start fights if they wouldn’t “let” me leave. 

It has taken a lot of time, therapy, practice, patience, and self compassion to find my way to pause between the action of an emotion being activated and responding.

Because for most of my life I reacted, immediately, and without thought. What I want for my life, for my relationships, is for me to be able to thoughtfully respond, to slow down and evaluate the facts of the situation and previous situations so that I can respond intentionally and mindfully.

This has meant coming into my body. This has meant learning to tolerate all those intolerable sensations and emotions. This has meant practicing keeping my front brain (where logic, reasoning, creativity, problem solving, and compassion live) online while also experiencing the sensations and emotions that live in my back brain.

It hasn’t meant stuffing my feelings down. 

It has meant allowing myself to experience them and learning to know they won’t actually kill me. They will be uncomfortable, I may not like it, but I certainly won’t die.

When we are able to engage our front brain while also experiencing our feelings, we can begin to look at situations more objectively. We can look for patterns, for habits, for cycles. We slow down not to make excuses for the other person, but to see if our own pain is actually stemming fully from something they did or said or if it also stems from a long ago wound that never healed. 

And then we can decide how we want to respond to the person. We can intentionally decide if this is an opportunity for our own personal growth and processing. We can decide if it is an opportunity for us to communicate our needs, to repair in relationship and to stay. Or to communicate our needs, set a boundary, and possibly leave.

It is true that when another person triggers our feelings of disappointment, frustration, abandonment, and or betrayal that it was indeed their action or words that did this. It is true that our hurt is in part due to the what the other person did or said.

And.

They don’t deserve the full force of our fury or rage or pain, most of which comes from past hurts from others we trusted.

Sometimes when another person triggers our painful feelings it isn’t intentional, or may be a matter of circumstance or what they did or said is actually a perfectly reasonable or normal thing, but it sets off our alarms anyhow. Sometimes these triggers are not an indication of who they are as a person.

And honestly, sometimes it is.

Which is why we need the pause. So we can slow ourselves down and determine what we actually know about the other person. What we actually know about ourselves. What patterns we have seen. What other actions and words we have witnessed or not. 

We need the pause so we can engage our frontal lobe and respond in a way that lets us stand in our own integrity and authenticity. Without needing to cause another pain. Without lashing out. Without cutting people out because in that moment we are hurting and find it unbearable.

The pause requires us to be in our bodies, to be able to tolerate uncomfortable even painful emotions and sensations. It also allows us to enjoy the fun and pleasurable emotions and sensations that can also a part of living as a human.

Learning to live embodied, to tolerate, experience, and sometimes even enjoy the sensations and emotions of our fully human lives is a life long process. There are not five easy steps and then you are done. It is not a one time thing we can check off. It is a constant practice that will have its own ebbs and flows.

The pause will not come to us quickly. It will take time. At first you will notice while you are reacting that you are indeed having an immediate response. With time you will be able to “bring yourself down” more smoothly and quickly. Then, you will begin to notice that you are about to lash out and eventually stop it. In more time, with more practice, you will be able to catch yourself at the very beginning of being triggered. You will be able to feel the sensations and emotions and also be able to explore them, analyze them and the situation logically. And then intentionally decide how we want to respond.

Having patience and compassion for ourselves during this process, while learning to come into our body and to tolerate all the different, varied, and nuanced sensations and feelings and learning how to find that breath, that pause, when some or all our old wounds are triggered is vital and part of the process.

It is true that what was done to us by others is not our fault, we are not to blame for their actions. And we are responsible to learn to respond to new hurts in ways that hold us in our own integrity, in a way that does not continue to pass on harmful patterns, in ways that allow us to break painful cycles for ourselves and the generations to come.

/…/

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Gaslighting & Cultural Relational Trauma

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

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

According to Wikipedia:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regardless, it’s still gaslighting.

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

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

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

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

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

The reality that we are not in community.

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

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

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

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

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

It is real.  We are not making it up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We will need to learn to sincerely apologize.

We will need to learn to tolerate being wrong.

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

We will need to learn to listen.

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

We will need to learn to trust other women.

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

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

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

And that we can do this all together.

In community.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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