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The Traumas that live within us

June 26, 2018 By gwynn

(This is a revision of a post originally published in December 2017)

The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

~Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

~Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

Let’s talk about trauma.  Because it lives within all of us.  Whether it is trauma from our own lived experiences, trauma from our ancestors, or trauma from our oppressive culture, we each carry trauma in our bodies and psyches and spirits.  So let’s explore the different types of trauma that we each have within us to better understand what I mean when I say “we all have trauma” and so we can all better understand our own Self.

TYPES OF TRAUMA

Lived Experience Trauma.  This is the trauma that lives within us as a result of the traumatic events we personally experienced in our lives.  It can be chronic (multiple events, like ongoing childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse by a caregiver or later in life an intimate partner, neglect, living in poverty, etc) or acute (one time events like a surgery, car accident, a one time assault like a rape or mugging).  This trauma is based in our own personal history and story.  We may remember or not remember events consciously, and either way they occurred during our lifetime, and our body very clearly remembers them.

Ancestral and Inter-generational Traumas.  These are the traumas that are passed down to us from our family.  Ancestral trauma, in my definition, is what is passed down through our bloodline – it appears in the epigenetic markers of our DNA and our cellular memory.  Inter-generational trauma is passed down by our family too, however it is passed down through actions.  The impacts of a trauma experienced by a mother for example would include how she was able to care for her children, and could impact attachment bonds.  Additionally inter-generational trauma can also be passed down through language (we all have specific “trigger” words that either we don’t want to be associated with or we desperately do want to be associated with and our reactions to these words influence our own actions and thoughts; these words are often passed down through generations).

Cultural Relational Trauma.  This is the trauma of living in a white-supremicist, misogynist, ablist, homophobic, capitalist, patriarchal culture.  It is a trauma that lives in all of us, but to varying degrees.  It is the trauma we need to explore when considering intersectionality and remembering that not all of us are having the same experience in our world.

All of us carry at least two of the three traumas in our own bodies and being : inter-generational and ancestral trauma and cultural trauma.  Most of us also have our own lived experience traumas coursing through us too.

Having an understanding of these different types of trauma allows us to begin to understand what is impacting us, what our triggers are, how some of the ways we view world are from our own experiences and also much of how we view the world is from those who came before us.

As we are able to unravel and decipher our traumas, we are able to dismantle and process them out of our bodies and being.  This is intense work and cannot be done alone in a vacuum.  It is work that needs to be done in community, with some parts worked through in settings with only one other person and others in larger groups.

We are relational beings and trauma impacts our ability to relate with each other.  As we learn more about trauma and our own trauma we can also begin to understand how others are also impacted and influenced by trauma.

I talk more about this in the 7-minute video below.

This essay is the first of a four part series I have written exploring trauma, what it is, how it impacts us, and how we can begin to process it.  I hope you find it helpful and informative.

This essay series is also to introduce the topics we will be exploring in my new six month program Trauma Focused Embodiment Level 1.  We begin August 1.  You can learn more here.

Also the main focus of my individual work is trauma and utilizing trauma informed embodiment with my clients.  If you are looking for an individual therapist, you can learn more about me and my individual therapy work here.

And finally, I facilitate a free online group on Facebook where we explore trauma, grief, embodiment,and their intersections.  It is called Trauma Informed Embodiment and you can join us right here.

Links to the other essays in this series:

The Traumas Living Within Us (This Essay)

The Physiological Impacts of Trauma

The Psychological & Emotional Impacts

Processing or Healing Trauma

Filed Under: ancestral trauma, being & becoming, collective trauma, Complex Trauma, cPTSD, Cultural Relational Trauma, Embodiment, inter-generational trauma, intergenerational trauma, Nervous System, personal trauma, processing trauma, Programs offered, PTSD, self regulation, Soothing the nervous system, trauma, trauma healing, Trauma Informed Embodiment

Blessing for the Unleashing Ourselves Circle & for all of us

March 31, 2018 By gwynn

On the eve of each of my circles and online programs I offer a blessing to the participants and to all of us.  This is the blessing for the Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny circle, and truly, for each and every one of us.

May we…

Release the narratives of who, how, and what we should be

Heal the generations of wounding that has been passed down through the millenia

Process the inter-generational trauma that impacts our daily lives

Bring our unconscious motivations into our consciousness

Embrace our female lineage

Unearth the power, strength and daring of the women who came before and live within

Acknowledge our own innate, embodied wisdom

Connect to our true, authentic, whole Self: body, mind, spirit, and soul

Live mindfully and consciously into our interconnected futures

Amen.

******************************************************

If you’d like to learn more about the upcoming spring circle,  Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny that begins to gather April 1, you can click here. There are still a few spaces left and we’d be thrilled to have you join us.  xoox

If you missed the educational essay and video series I wrote introducing the ideas and concepts we’ll be exploring and examining in the spring circle, you can find them at the links below:

Defining Ancestral, Inter-generational, & Cultural Relational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny

Connecting the Dots

Connecting Individual & Collective Traumas

Ending Cycles: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

I also wrote these essay to give more detail about the circle and our work together:

The importance of processing ancestral trauma & dislodging internalized misogyny

More About Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

Filed Under: ancestral trauma, Circles, Community, Connection, Cultural Relational Trauma, embodied wisdom, Embodiment, inter-generational trauma, intergenerational trauma, Internalized Misogyny, processing trauma, Programs offered, secular blessing, trauma, trauma healing

Ending Cycles: Processing the Past & Changing the Future

March 15, 2018 By gwynn

No one is innocent in the tide of history. Everyone has kings and slaves in his past. Everyone has saints and sinners. We are not to blame for the actions of our ancestors. We can only try to be the best we can, no matter what our heritage, to strive for a better future for all.

~Diana Peterfreund, Across a Star-Swept Sea

When we look at cycles of trauma, it is important to remember that often there may not have been a choice to not pass the pain forward.  Talking about trauma at all is a relatively new development in our human (western) history, and in the early days of recognizing and trying to find ways to process trauma, we only looked at the trauma soldiers experienced and lived with.

It has only been in the last forty to fifty years that we began to acknowledge the trauma that comes with abuse and assault.  And it has only been about twenty to thirty years that we began to recognize the impacts things like poverty, being witness to abuse, or living in a family where one or more members had addictions issue has on us.

Add to this that the somatic (body-centered) trauma therapies are also a relatively new thing. It wasn’t until 1997 that Levine’s first book Waking the Tiger introduced the wider public to the ways that trauma lives inside our bodies and how we humans prevent ourselves from processing it.  That was only twenty years ago.

The amount of research and acknowledgment around trauma just within my own lifetime (46 years) is amazing.  We have come so far since the early 1970s, and I believe we likely still have a long way to go.  And I also believe we are getting there.

I share all that to remind us that we couldn’t know what we didn’t know.  I don’t  know how many times I have heard clients say “I wish I would have started this work earlier/years ago/when I was much younger.”  But the truth is that this work, body-centered trauma processing work, is a very new phenomena and likely you actually could not have started this work earlier, because it didn’t exist.

And yet.  While it is not our fault that information was not available before it was available, it is our responsibility now to do the work to create change, within ourselves, within our families, and in our greater communities and world.

Breaking cycles of abuse is something that has only been talked about for the last fifty or so years.  And then it was only spoken of quietly.  Greater social conversations didn’t begin to happen until the 1980s, in part thanks to Alice Miller and her body of work.  We didn’t even consider that beating children would or could have long term, life-long, impacts on them. And it wasn’t until the Adverse Childhood Experiences study (ACEs) which was initiated in 1995 but then not really talked about until twenty years later, that we knew those impacts were beyond psychological and spilled into our actual physical health.

And even so, I know my maternal grandfather talked about his abusive step-mother and how he swore he would never treat his child the way she treated him (now I have no idea if he actually kept this promise to himself, but evidence says he probably did).

So, even though the greater social conversation was not there, I do believe we have within us the “moral” (for lack of a better word) compass to know abuse, domination, authoritarianism, and othering are not right, okay, or humane (or for that matter actually human).

We are in the infancy of truly understanding how the traumatic experiences of our ancestors are passed down to future generations.  We are in the infancy of learning how to examine and process these traumas – especially the ones we don’t actually know about. There is still so much that is unknown, and frankly there is so much that cannot be known for several more decades as studies continue to watch families move through more and more generations.

And.

Even with this being true, I believe we all know deep within ourselves that the past impacts us.  Historical past, ancestral past, and our own lived experience past.  We may not have all the data and research to back this up (yet), and still we know.

And this is where our own responsibility comes in.  It is not our fault what was done to us or our ancestors.  It is absolutely our responsibility to make the change within ourselves so that change out in the world can occur, so we can end the cycles of abuse, oppression, and domination.

So we can all find our ways to freedom.

So we can all be a part of creating a world where all of us are free.

I believe part of that work is for us to look at our ancestral, historical, and personal pasts and to unearth what we have internalized; to examine it; to unlearn what we know is not right or just; and to create space for change and doing different for ourselves and for the world moving into our futures.

I talk more about all of this in the 10-minute video below:

This essay is the fourth and final in a four part series I have written exploring ancestral, inter-generational, historical and cultural relational trauma and internalized misogyny.  I hope you found the series helpful and informative.

This essay series is also to introduce the themes we will be exploring in the spring circle I facilitate: Unleashing Ourselves: Processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny. We begin April 1.  You can learn more here.

To read the other essays in the series, go to the links below

Defining Ancestral & Intergenerational Traumas and Internalized Misogyny

Connecting the Dots

Connecting Individual and Collective Traumas 

Ending Cycles :: Processing the Past & Changing the Future (this essay)

The importance of processing Ancestral Trauma & Dislodging Internalized Misogyny

More About the Unleashing Ourselves Circle

You can find the FAQ for this circle here.

Filed Under: ancestors, ancestral trauma, Circles, collective trauma, Community, Cultural Relational Trauma, embodied wisdom, Fuck the patrirachy, inter-generational trauma, intergenerational trauma, Internalized Misogyny, mother wound, patriarchal wounding, Personal growth, personal trauma, processing trauma, Programs offered, Self-Care, Smash the patriarchy, trauma, trauma healing

Consent, Boundaries, & Trauma :: Trauma

January 26, 2017 By gwynn

Trauma is a messy beast.  And not only do we have the trauma of our own lived experience swirling within our bodies, we also, in our very DNA, have the trauma of our ancestors.

None of this we asked for.  None of this we consented to. None of this we said yes to.  None of this we were ever given a choice about.

Regardless, it’s there, within us.

And it our choice, and I believe our sacred responsibility, to process, to heal, to dislodge it from our bodies and being.

I have my own experiences with trauma.  As a young child I was abused physically and sexually and psychologically.  In my teens and again in my 20s I was raped. I have been in physically abusive relationships.  I have been gaslighted by people who were supposed to love me, from parents and grandparents to partners to mentors I trusted.

Many of you have had similar yet unique experiences to mine.  Sadly, these experiences are not uncommon, they are not rare.  Sadly, these experiences are the norm.  The statistics tell us this. Our lived experience tells us this.

I share with you that I’ve had these experiences to also share with you that I have done my own share of trauma work.  And am still in the process of doing it.

At the beginning of every single appointment with my therapist I tell her that I don’t want to do this work.  I have told her over and over that I am tired of my trigger responses.  That I am sick of living with PTSD.  That I want all this shit to simply go away.  Because I am D.O.N.E.

Processing our trauma is difficult and uncomfortable and messy.  It is the complete opposite of fun or enjoyable.  It is something I personally had avoided doing most of my life. Because, seriously, who wants to do with this shit?  Certainly not me.

And.

As I have slowly, so slowly, and quickly, oh so quickly, come home to my own body, connected to her sensations and whispers and screams, listened to her stories and memories, I came to know that truly, I need to work through the fear and terror and avoidance and process through the things that were done to me, that I never once consented to, that I never once asked for, so that I can be present and available in my own life, with my children and husband and sister and friends and greater community and world.

That while I never once asked for any of these things that were done to me I have a responsibility to those I love, including myself, to find ways to process and heal.

And in this processing and healing, I connect even more fully to my consent; I connect even more fully to my boundaries; I connect even more fully to my body and her knowing and her sensations, pleasurable, painful and everything in between and beyond.

Even if you are one of the very fortunate (and rare) people who have never experienced trauma in your own life, my guess is that you still carry within you the markers of trauma passed down to you by your ancestors in your DNA.

Trauma is unavoidable in our culture and time.

And while unavoidable, we can process it and heal it and not pass it on to the next generations.

I talk even more about trauma and it’s relation to consent and boundaries in the video below.

This essay and video are part of my new series Consent, Boundaries, & Trauma.  There are three essays total and you can read the essay on consent (with the embedded video) here and the essay on boundaries (with its video) here.

These essays and video series are in part to share with you the topics we’ll be unearthing, examining, dislodging and embracing in the six month circle Body of Consent.  We begin on March 1 (the video says February, we changed the start date to March).  If you are interested, you can learn more and register right over here. xoxo

If you enjoyed this essay, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly love letter right over here.

Filed Under: Becoming Unleashed, boundaries, Consent, Programs offered, trauma, Unleashed Woman

Not our fault, still our responsibility

January 24, 2017 By gwynn

We are told, particularly as young girls and then it just continues the rest of our life, to be kind. To be polite. To not argue. To take what we are given and be happy with it. To not be rude. To not be loud. To never, ever, be a bitch.

These messages find their way into our skin. Into our bones. Into our being.

And so we don’t learn how to say no. Ever.

And so we don’t learn what a healthy boundary is. And we learn when we put up our own boundaries it’s a Bad Thing and so we learn to criticize others for having boundaries.

And never learn about consent. Or choice. Or options.

Our never learning these things isn’t our fault. It is the fault of our culture. It is fault of the training of our parents and grandparents. It is the fault of unresolved trauma. It is the fault of patriarchy and misogyny and racism and ablism and homophobia and transphobia.

We never asked for the messages we were given. The messages we received. The messages we internalized.

AND.

Even though how all this lives within us is not our fault, I deeply believe it is absolutely our responsibility to disrupt these messages. To unravel them. To dislodge them from our muscle and sinew and blood and being.

It is not our fault, no. And still we are adults. And as adults we DO have the choice to explore how these messages live within us and to kick them the fuck out. The choice, and I believe absolutely, the responsibility.

And in this exploration and unraveling and disrupting and dislodging we will be uncomfortable. We will feel, physically, psychologically, spiritually, the dissonance of this shifting and rebelling and learning.

And learn we will.

And.

We truly cannot do this alone. In a vacuum. By ourselves.

We need community.

We need brave spaces.

We need to both be accepted where we are and pushed outside our comfort zones.

Because that is how change happens. This is how healing happens. This is how liberation happens.

xoxo

Isabel Faith Abbott and I have come together, locked arms and joined minds and hearts. For six months we will be facilitating, guiding, holding brave space. We will dig into the consent and all it means and doesn’t mean. We will explore what boundaries are and when ours matter more than someone else’s and when they don’t. We will offer tools and conversation and community.

We begin on February 1. And we would be honored if you joined us.

http://gwynnraimondi.com/bodyofconsent

If you enjoyed reading this essay, w00h00!  And I’d like to invite you to sign up for my weekly love letters.  You can do so right here.

Filed Under: Becoming Unleashed, boundaries, Consent, Programs offered, Unleashed Woman

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