Category: intergenerational trauma

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Feeling our feelings

We try so hard to hide everything we’re really feeling from those who probably need to know our true feelings the most. People try to bottle up their emotions, as if it’s somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life. ~Colleen Hoover, Maybe Someday

To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the trademark of the truly alive and compassionate. It is not the empath who is broken, it is society that has become dysfunctional and emotionally disabled. There is no shame in expressing your authentic feelings. Those who are at times described as being a ‘hot mess’ or having ‘too many issues’ are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more caring, humane world. Never be ashamed to let your tears shine a light in this world. ~Anthon St. Maarten

For those of us living with trauma, we have spent a majority of our lives dissociated.  Meaning, we didn’t really feel our feelings (until perhaps we had no choice and couldn’t ignore or stuff down anymore).  We weren’t aware of our bodies.  We lived in our heads and outside of ourselves.  

And when we did feel our feelings, we never, ever, under any circumstances shared them or expressed them (except maybe anger).  Those of us living with complex trauma learned early on not to express our emotions, or at least we never learned how to express them in any sort of constructive or helpful way.

So when we start to come to this work of coming into our bodies and processing the traumas that live within us, we all have so much to learn and unlearn.

It is a painstakingly slow process that generally involves many almost imperceptible baby steps mixed with a lot of falling back into old patterns and cycles and finding our ways back out again.

I can say that it does get… less challenging… in time.  With practice, with patience, with self compassion.

Learning to sit in our uncomfortable feelings (and really for those of us who dissociate, all our emotions are uncomfortable, all body sensations can feel like too much) is not easy or fun.  And once we have learned how to tolerate our own feelings, well, now we get to actually feel those feelings and let me tell you I wouldn’t exactly call that fun either.

So if this embodiment stuff isn’t easy and isn’t fun and has us sitting in our uncomfortable stuff, what the heck is the point to it??

I actually used to ask myself this question at least once a week.  I’m not even kidding.

I have many answers for myself (and for you!).  Ultimately, for me, it is all about relationships, and having real, deep, meaningful ones; with myself, with those I’m intimate with, both sexually and not, with my children, with my friends and family.

If we not attuned to our feelings (emotions and bodily sensations), then it is very unlikely we are present in the moment, in our environment, or with the person we are interacting with.  If we are unable to be present with another person, then we are unable to connect with them on a more than a superficial level.  If we are only connecting with folks on a superficial level we feel lonely and isolated and we are also unable to tune into what is happening with the other person on a deeper level.

If we can’t tolerate to feel our own feelings then how can we tolerate to feel another’s?  And isn’t part of being in deep and meaningful relationship being able to hold space and be supportive of and to those who matter most to us?

That’s part one of my answer.

Part two of my answer has to do with our reactions and actions, which also impact our relationships. If we aren’t noticing our little “tells” that we are at the very early states of feeling overwhelmed, flooded, or triggered, then we are unable to do anything to soothe ourselves in those early moments.  If we are unable to soothe ourselves in those early moments, then those feelings build and build.  They may build over weeks, but still with every interaction that activates our sympathetic nervous system that we are unable to reset our system from, then the next trigger feels more intense.  This build up continues until we explode in one way or another.

That explosion can look like yelling and screaming and “losing our shit.”  Generally speaking when this happens we aren’t our best selves and have a tendency to lash out and cause harm to the other person (be that actual physical harm, or emotional or psychological harm may depend on any number of factors).  

That explosion can also look like illness.  Chronic infections, chronic pain, autoimmune issues, chronic colds or flus.  

That explosion can look like self harm, which includes over spending for “retail therapy,” over eating foods that ultimately don’t make us feel good, using drugs or alcohol to numb, and of course what we usually think of as self harm: cutting, binging and purging, suicide attempts, etc.

That explosion can also look like self isolation coupled with extreme amounts of shame and shoulding on ourselves (which can then lead to self harm or illness or “losing our shit”).

That explosion can look like any combination of the above.

None of these explosions are ultimately helpful for us or for our relationships.  

As a species, we humans need each other.  We were never meant to live in isolation or do this thing called Life alone, without any support or help. We are meant to live in community and in relationship.  We are meant to have deep and meaningful relationships where we are accepted by each other (even our uncomfortable feelings), supported by each other, held by each other, and lovingly pushed by each other.

Trauma, and specifically being dissociated, prevents us from being in community and in relationships.

And so.

Becoming embodied helps us relearn what to experience being fully human.

Being fully human has some very messy and uncomfortable parts to it, as well as some amazing and joyous parts, and everything in-between.

So, my short answer to my question above of why I do this whole embodiment thing, and why I support others in their own journeys to embodiment, is so I can be in deep and meaningful relationships with others and with myself and so I can experience all that living as a human has to offer.

It is a conscious choice.  It is made multiple times a day.  It is not a one and done.  

I am so much more embodied and present in my environment, relationships, and Self than I have been at any other point in my life.  Even so, I still fall into those old no longer needed survival skills of dissociation and isolation.  Even so sometimes my feelings sneak up on me when I’m not paying attention.  Even so I cause harm in my relationships, even though that is the last thing I ever want to do.

And.  I am also able to express my emotions to others, often without exploding.  My relationships have grown deeper and more meaningful.  Those closest to me see more of me than they have before.  I am able to get past defensive anger and get to some of the deeper emotions that are bringing up my armor relatively quickly.  I am able to laugh more freely and also cry more freely.  I understand myself so much more.  

I am able to receive love. To be seen. To see that others accept and adore me as I am.

And I have developed a deep compassion for myself and others that wasn’t there five years ago.

This work is not easy.  It is not generally speaking fun.  

And even so, I believe it is so deeply worth it.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on April 15, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To read my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

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Dysregulation, compassion, & finding equilibrium

When you have a persistent sense of heartbreak and gutwrench, the physical sensations become intolerable and we will do anything to make those feelings disappear. And that is really the origin of what happens in human pathology. People take drugs to make it disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.
~Bessel A. van der Kolk

The only consistent thing about living as a human being is that change is inevitable.

Sometimes the changes that come our way are out of our control.  

Sometimes the changes that come our way we do not consent to.

Sometimes the changes that come our way stem from our own choices.

Sometimes the changes that come our way are our own choice, and still we may wish they didn’t happen.

Life is complex and rarely stagnant.

When big changes come our way, they can throw us off kilter.  Our systems may become dysregulated. Our old traumas may be triggered.  The change itself could be traumatic in its own way. This can happen even when a change is of our own conscious choosing.  

I have witnessed that basic human response to change, sometimes even to changes of our own choosing, is to fight like hell to return to the status quo – the way things were before the change.  This fight is almost always a losing battle.

The dysregulation our systems experience when change happens is inevitable.  Systems theory confirms that when a change happens within a system, the parts of the system will do all they can to find equilibrium again.  Sometimes we call this “finding our new normal” when it comes to the changes that come into our lives.  Until we find this equilibrium however, our systems, including our nervous systems, will be agitated. 

Change happens.  Dysregulation happens.  It is how we move through the changes, how we find our ways back to equilibrium, or our new normals, that matters.  How we do this is up to us and frankly is unique to each person and each situation.

And.

What I would love all of us to remember, including myself, is to have some compassion for the dysregulation that is an inevitable part of being human.  To have compassion for ourselves as we find our ways to the new normal of each new change in our lives.  To have some compassion for trying things and feeling like failing and trying different things until we are able to figure out what works for us. 

This is true even when the changes we experience are of our own choosing, are welcome, perhaps even wanted. It will still take time for us to find our feet again, to find that “new normal,” to get back to our equilibrium. 

Reminding ourselves that we are trying to find our way back to a “steady state” as we shift through a major or even minor life change is important, and is part of where our self-compassion comes in.  Giving ourselves the grace of knowing we are doing the best we can with the resources we have.  Slowing down to allow ourselves to feel the myriad of emotions that may be coming forward, some possibly expected and some probably not.  

We are all complex beings, and our life experiences are complex.  Sometimes change is welcome, and even in this welcoming for a short period the change will cause some amount of chaos and dysregulation.  Remember to be gentle with you.  Remember to give yourself time and space to breathe and feel all the feelings you are having.  Remember to be patient with yourself.  And most importantly remember to have compassion for yourself as you stumble along finding your ways to your own new normal. 

/../

This was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on July 15, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

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The space between stimulus & response

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

Creating that space between stimulus and response is not an easy feat.  It takes practice and intention.  Those of us who live with trauma and highly activated sympathetic nervous systems (fight/flight), have a very clear understanding of how challenging it can be to create that space.  To shift our ways of being from a wounded animal who simply lashes out at anyone or thing that comes near them to a more self aware and thoughtful response that is not fully based on our triggered emotional state. 

Creating this space isn’t about not feeling our emotions and sensations.  Instead it is about slowing down how we react to these emotions and sensations.  It is slowing down when we are in a state of overwhelm and considering what all is contributing to those feelings, what we actually have control of, and how we want to be in these moments.

Most of us living with complex trauma not only have activated nervous systems that are either on extra high or extra low alert (or alternate between the two at rapid pace), we also have a visceral sense of not being heard.  Those of us who experienced childhood trauma either were convinced to keep the “secret” by our abuser, or we told people and either they didn’t believe us, told us we were making it up, or told us to not complain and that it ‘wasn’t that bad’. 

So not only do we have activated systems that see almost everything as a threat, we don’t know how to express our feelings – emotions and sensations – in a way that can be received by another.  We either snap and yell or we totally shut down and “cut off” by not speaking or interacting with the person who we feel caused us harm.  These reactions are automatic in some ways and they can be slowed down, we can slow ourselves down, and shift from the automatic reaction to a more intentional response. 

It takes time and a willingness to practice self-regulation skills to come into your body.  It won’t happen over night.  We will all fall back on old habits from time to time.  And these shifts in being can happen.

The shifts in our ways of being in the world aren’t always neat or easy or even pleasant.  Sometimes the slowing down process can be incredibly uncomfortable.  

We need to be willing to sit a bit in the unknown of shifting and transforming.  To have the courage to move from the comfort of what we know into the possibilities of what is unknown to us outside of our imagination. 

We were all raised in environments that taught us how to interact with others, either by example of how the adults treated each other or by how the adults treated us as children.  These patterns and ways of being were likely passed down through generations.  These cycles are entrenched in our psyches as well as our cellular memories.  They run deep.

And.

We can break the patterns and cycles that have been passed down to us.  We can shift our ways of being.  We do not need to allow what has happened to us to define us or how we are in the world.

Yes, there are things we cannot change.  Yes, this is not easy work.  

And.

We can learn to calm and regulate our nervous system.  We can learn to create that space between stimulus and response.  We can learn to experience our feelings and to express them without causing harm to ourselves or to others.

It takes time, intention, and practice.  It requires a willingness to live in that unknown in-between space that is so uncomfortable.  We need to develop our self compassion.  

Because at the end of the day we all need each other.  So learning how to be in relationship with others, while maintaining boundaries, is an important part of our work.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on July 8, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

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We need each other

The world of intimate bonds is the world of emotions—a field of reactions and hidden desires for safety and acceptance that we all long for.  All of us. ~Joseph Schaub, Divorce (or not): A guide

One of the things that trauma does is encourage us to isolate.  It encourages us to be away from our family, friends, intimate partners, and communities.  How this looks for each of us is different.  It may look like us actually appearing to be a hermit and not interacting with people or it may look like we are incredibly social, with many friends and connections, yet all of those relationships are only surface level and we never reveal (much of) who we truly are, our fears, our wants, our needs.

Both scenarios (and a million in-between) are isolation.  When we do not allow ourselves to deeply connect with others, that is one way our trauma shows up.  Our not allowing this deep connection is a signal for our desperate need for a sense of safeness and acceptance, our need for love and a sense of belonging.

When we have unprocessed trauma living within us, it means our ability to have a sense of safeness — with others or with ourselves — is stilted.  For many of us living with trauma, the traumatic events we experienced were perpetrated by people we trusted, people we possibly literally depended on for our actual literal survival.  These types of betrayals, especially when perpetrated over and over throughout our childhoods teach us that we can’t rely on another, that the world isn’t safe, that those who claim to love you will only cause harm. 

We internalize these lessons and they form the development of our neural pathways that then inform us as adults, once we are far from the harm, how to be in relationship with others.

David Richo, in his book How To Be An Adult in Relationships, talks about the “5 A’s” that make up our emotional needs as humans.  These are: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.

We all need someone to pay attention to us in a way that builds us up.

We all need to feel accepted, just as we are, in all our messy and complicated human glory.

We all need to feel appreciated for our contributions to our families, our friendships, our communities, our world.

We all need affection, be that loving words or begin physically held.

We all need allowing, to be allowed to shift and change and grow, allowed to be complex, complicated, and even contradictory.

All humans have these needs.  For those us who did not have most or any of these needs met as children, we have that much more of a desperation to have these needs met as an adult.

But even though we have this requirement to have these basic human needs met, we don’t trust that anyone will ever meet them.  

Trauma is a complex and contradictory thing in and of itself.  As a survival mechanism we isolate and yet isolation can literally kill us.  Without the love and support of our community (be that chosen family, blood relatives, competent trauma informed professionals or hopefully a bit of all of the above), we slowly or sometimes quickly will bring about physical disease, intense loneliness and hopelessness,  and sometimes a depression so deep there feels like there is no way out.

But our early life experiences have formed the ideas that we cannot trust other humans to have our basic human emotional needs met. And it takes a great act of courage and strength to reach out and ask for help.  And frankly, some days we don’t have that courage or strength.

So how do we shift this?  How do we find the resources to move through and past the fears of betrayal?  How do we develop our own sense of safeness and trust?

It takes work.  Patience.  Time. Intention.  Mostly, it takes work.

I deeply believe that we need to do the work of calming our nervous systems, connecting deeply to our boundaries and reclaiming our bodies as our own, finding our ways to our own center and ground.  And then we need to continue this work through deep embodiment and trauma processing work.

Then slowly that sense of safeness, and our ability to trust others and ourselves, will grow.

We are not meant to do this processing and healing work in isolation.  In fact, we actually cannot successfully do it in isolation.  We need others, we need to do this work in relationship.  This is the point of therapy, to help a person heal in a safe relationship so they then can take what they learn (and the ways they have shifted) out into the world and apply it to their other relationships.

Of course, therapy is not for everyone and frankly not all therapists (sadly) are competent.  

However, that does not change the reality that we need to do this work of healing, of developing our sense of safeness, of cultivating trust, within relationships.

It does not make us weak to need other people, it makes us human.  It does not mean we have a character flaw when we yearn for deep connections with others, it makes us human.  It does not make us “less than” or “too much” to ask another for support, it makes us human.

Where this is tricky perhaps, is that we can’t rely on any singular person to fill all our emotional (or any other kind of) needs.  No one person will ever be able to do that. We need a community of people and we need to be able to rely on ourselves in way that is helpful for us and not harmful.

Stephanie Bennett-Henry wrote :
No one is going to love you exactly like you imagine.  No on is ever going to read your mind and take every star from the sky at the perfect time and hand it to you.  No one is going to show up at your door on a horse, with a shoe you lost.  Do you understand?
That’s why you have to love yourself enough, so that any other love just adds more candles to the cake you’ve already iced.

Our work in processing our trauma is loving ourselves, it is the cake and the icing of our making.  But we don’t need to, and I would argue can’t, do this work alone.  We build ourselves up as we build our relationships, our relationships grow as we do, we learn to trust others as we learn to trust ourselves.

It’s a bit of a chicken and egg conundrum, honestly.  The point being however, we need both.  Both our own willingness to do the work, and people to support us and or guide us in this work.  

It is true that no one person is ever going to meet all our emotional needs.  Knowing this is part of our own maturation process.  However, we can have a community of people, even a relatively small community of a handful of folks, who together can help us get our needs met.

That’s how we are supposed to be.  In community.  Serving each other and ourselves.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly newsletter on June 10, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe to my weekly(ish) newsletter here.

*Now posted on substack

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The importance of grief work in our trauma processing

Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you. ~John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

I’ve been thinking a lot about grief.  How grief can be present at the same time as excitement and anticipation.  How in our culture we don’t have ways of grieving that are helpful.  How we try to put a time limit on our grief. How we, in my profession, often don’t include grief work in our trauma work with clients.

Here’s some things.  There are no time limits on our grief.  Ever.  And grief work is a vital part of our trauma work.

A vital part.  An essential part.  A necessary part.  A required part.

Those of us living with trauma in our bodies have had horrible things happen to us, done to us.  For those of us who experienced trauma in our childhood, those events literally shaped our brains and the ways we are able to see and be in the world.  These childhood experiences also impacted our physical health, specifically our nervous systems and autoimmune systems.  Those events have life long impacts.

It is hard for me to imagine who I would be if all the trauma I experienced as a child hadn’t occurred. If I have been raised in a household where the ACEs score was under 4.  If I had never been touched inappropriately.  I would be a totally different person, of that I am sure.  

It is heartbreaking to know all the damage that was done, and to know that we have survived (and some of us are learning to thrive) DESPITE all those experiences.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could simply be thriving?  If we didn’t have to learn how to do that.  

Yes. Yes it would.

What happened to us as children is not our fault.  Those events took so much away from us.  Some of which will never be recovered, and some of which may be.  Because of those childhood events, we have, as part of the trauma, experienced great loss.  Loss of innocence.  Loss of trust.  Loss of resilience.  Loss of “normal” neuropathways. Loss of an ability to relate and connect to others in a healthy way.  Loss of feeling comfortable in our own skin.   Loss of a sense of safeness. Sometimes even loss of hope.

We have experienced a lot of loss.

When we experience loss, grieving is a natural process.  Yet we don’t talk about the losses we experienced because of the trauma events in our lives.  We don’t acknowledge all those losses, let alone grieve them.  And this I believe is a disservice to ourselves, and our greater culture. 

How do we grieve these things we (perhaps) never had?  How do we grieve these losses that feel totally theoretical?

We slow down.  We acknowledge the losses.  The things we never had.  The things we wanted so desperately.  The things that will never be.  

We acknowledge the struggles.  The difficulties being in intimate relationships.  The challenges being present in our bodies.  The extra work we’ve had to do to try to break (generations old) cycles and patterns.

We allow the tears.  The anger.  The deep sadness.  

We allow ourselves to acknowledge and feel the unfairness and injustice of it all. 

We grieve.  In community. In ritual. In our own hearts and bodies.

I believe when grief is not a part of our trauma work, that we are missing a huge piece of the work.  Grieving what we have lost, what never was, and perhaps what never will be, is vital to our ability to move the trauma out of our bodies and systems and to learn to shift from simply surviving into a place of actually thriving.  

We need to acknowledge these losses and create space for our own grief process along with our trauma work.  This is part of building our own self-compassion.  This is truly part of our life long healing work.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on June 4, 2018. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.