Category: trauma

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Acting from fear or from love?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Almost.

We can do it however. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

/../

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

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

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You can be right or you can be in relationship

Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness. ~Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

You are not always right. It’s not always about being right. The best thing you can offer others is understanding. Being an active listener is about more than just listening, it is about reciprocating and being receptive to somebody else. Everybody has woes. Nobody is safe from pain. However, we all suffer in different ways. So learn to adapt to each person, know your audience and reserve yourself for people who have earned the depths of you. ~Mohadesa Najumi

Many of us who live with complex trauma from childhood have a deep need and want to be heard.  To be seen.  To be acknowledged.  To be noticed. To be understood. Many of us as children weren’t seen or heard or acknowledged.  Or worse, we were gaslit: being told our experiences weren’t “that” bad, or even worse than that, they never happened at all, that we were making it all up.

Our need for belonging, for being seen, for being heard, was not met when we were young.  Most of us learned to become silent.  But that silence was only on the surface, only the mask we wore on the outside.  Our internal experience was loud, it was screaming and howling, whether we consciously acknowledged it or not (and likely, we did not because of dissociation and our need to survive).

We were never taught how to express our emotions in a non-harmful way.  We were never taught how to have disagreements that don’t turn into screaming matches.  We didn’t learn how to listen to others, only to shut down or to argue.  Most likely as children we shut down.  So, as adults, we argue.  Loudly.  Harshly.  Cruelly. 

Our need to be seen and heard and acknowledged and accepted comes out all sideways as we grow older.  We need to be right.  We need to be understood.  But our desperate need to be seen and be right overshadows the other people we are in relationship with.  It overshadows their own needs to be seen and heard and it tramples over our empathy for this.  It actually keeps us out of relationship and getting those needs met for ourselves.

Not our fault.  We were never taught different.  

However.

We have a responsibility to stop causing harm to others, and in turn to stop causing harm to ourselves. To do the work of breaking life-long patterns and disrupting generations-old cycles. To process the trauma within us. To shift.  To do different.

This is not an easy feat.  We typically have generations of trauma and training ingrained in our bodies and being.  We have our own lived experience and those wounds and hurts.  We don’t know other ways of being, and even if we can get a glimmer of how to do something different, we have limited resources to make the internal and external shifts to make that happen. 

This is where our work is.  With our therapists, with our coaches, with ourselves.  It is the slowing down.  Learning to regulate our nervous systems, to understand boundaries, to be able to find our own center and ground.  It is coming home to our bodies and becoming more and more self aware. It is in processing the many traumas that live within us. 

It is a messy and hard road.  We will make mistakes.  We will need to be accountable for those mistakes, apologize, repair, and learn how to not make the same mistakes again.  It will be incredibly uncomfortable as we step into the unknown, as we shed the layers of our own and our ancestors traumas and woundings.  It will be terrifying as we unravel and dislodge those parts of us that aren’t really us, those parts of us that we carry around that were our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents.  It will be discombobulating as we seek out who we are and who we want to be and untangle that from all the hurt and pain.

It will not be a straight journey.  It will go in all directions. 

It is important to acknowledge the unfairness of needing to go on this journey at all.  Of needing to unravel the generations of trauma and wounding.  Of needing to process and heal our own traumas and woundings.  It is not fair.  It is not our fault.  We didn’t ask for it.

 And.

If we want to live our lives in a place of thriving instead of surviving, in a place of connection instead of isolation and dissociation, a place of joy, contentment, and or peace instead of constant pain, hurt, and suffering, we need to make the decision to enter into this work, to do this work, to create the change within ourselves so that we can begin to see the change and shifts in our outer world and in our relationships.

And we need to keep making that choice every day. To break the patterns.  To disrupt the cycles.  To come home to ourselves.  To feel good in our own skin.  To have nourishing, loving, and authentic relationships with our Self and with those around us. 

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on May 20, 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 Discomfort of Slowing Down

A huge part of recovery and life -is slowing down and accepting the unKNOWN. This is how you get to KNOW –yourself.  ~Brittany Burgunder

A mind that is racing over worries about the future or recycling resentments from the past is ill equipped to handle the challenges of the moment. By slowing down, we can train the mind to focus completely in the present. Then we will find that we can function well whatever the difficulties. That is what it means to be stress-proof: not avoiding stress but being at our best under pressure, calm, cool, and creative in the midst of the storm.  ~Eknath Easwaran, Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.  ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

I created a ritual/meditation practice for myself around Venus retrograde.  There are four questions I’m exploring over the forty-two days of the retrograde cycle.  

My intention is to move slowly through these questions and spend ten full days on each.  Meditating on the cards that came up for each question.  Writing stream of conscious about the themes of the cards and what else comes up for me around the questions.  

Ten days.

After day two of the first question I wanted to move on to the next one.

I told myself I felt “bored.” That I had explored that question enough. That I was fine and could move on to the next thing. I didn’t need to spend a full ten days on that first question.

But that wasn’t totally accurate.  

I know the feeling I was having.  It was akin to anxiety.

It was definitely uncomfortable.

I wanted to get to the next thing.  I didn’t want to stay in the thing I was in.  It was starting to stress me out.

I had the same feeling in therapy a few days before.  A feeling that tells me I’m on the edge of something big, a break through, a release, a deeper understanding, healing.  It’s a feeling I want to run away from.  I don’t like it.  I don’t like being in that quiet, in that stillness, in the here and now present moment, allowing what needs to bubble up to bubble.  

It is so uncomfortable. I want it to stop and go away. I don’t want to stay in it. I don’t want to let it run its course. I want it to just stop.

When we have complex trauma living in our bodies and minds, slowing down, being still, staying in the moment – all this can be incredibly uncomfortable.  Staying focused on one thing, digging into one theme, going down into the depths of our own wounding…  Being in our body, present to it, to the discomfort, to the visceral shifting that happens when we slow down and stay in this moment now.

It is uncomfortable as fuck.

And.

When we can sit in that discomfort, when we can stay present to it, allowing it to flow as it needs to… that is where our healing happens.  That is where breaking patterns happens.  That is where disrupting harmful cycles happens.

That’s why we do this work, right?  To break the patterns and disrupt the cycles.  To do differently than what was done before, what was done to us, what was done around us.  To create relationships and a life and world that aren’t centered around our attachment wounds and trauma, but rather around liberation and mature love.

We are living in a world that has been in slow motion for the past few months.  Our usual distractions unavailable.  Needing to stay home, to not be in the doing-doing-doing of “normal” life.  It has meant slowing down.  Not being distracted and instead learning how to be present, in this moment, right now.  

And for many, this has been highly activating.

Anxiety spiked.  Feeling even less comfortable in your own skin.  Being “antsy,” irritable.  

Wanting so desperately for things to get back to “normal” while also knowing it won’t soon – and having this being that much more activating.  

I invite us all to have compassion for ourselves.  To acknowledge this time can be challenging and stirring up our “stuff”.  To accept that the traumatic events we experienced in the past may be being activated in the present, and while that is not our fault, it is our responsibility to not perpetuate harm. 

I invite us to explore the idea that this discomfort you are feeling can have benefits.  It can be an opportunity to learn how to be be in it, with it, to allow it to flow.  To do a little neural rewiring.  To find ways of being in the quiet.  

This isn’t easy.  It’s not what I would call fun.  It is intense work.  

It asks us to learn self-compassion.  It asks us to be gentle with ourselves.  It asks us to take one moment at a time.  It asks us to move outside our own comfort zone.  

I’m finding myself pushing my own edges.  Expanding.  Finding the places where the next stage in my own growth and healing can happen.

I’m not enjoying it.  And I know this work is important.  When we are able to break patterns and disrupt cycles of harm in ourselves, that ripples out into the world.  It ripples out in our relationships.  We find ourselves being more gentle, with our Self and those in our lives.  We soften, shedding the armor that once kept us safe but now keeps us isolated.  

Learning to be still, to be present, to stop distracting ourselves from the discomfort of processing trauma and healing our wounds, is revolutionary work.  As we shift and change ourselves we also shift and change the world.  Doing this work, of being present, in the here and now, is anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-oppression work. It is work that encourages relationship with our Self and helps us to learn to become more intimate with others.

This is how we create the world we want to live in, by starting with ourselves.  

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly-ish newsletter on May 17, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays and learn of my current online offerings, you can subscribe here.

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Communication & Complex Trauma

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity. The greatest problem with communication is we don’t listen to understand. We listen to reply. When we listen with curiosity, we don’t listen with the intent to reply. We listen for what’s behind the words. ~Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.  ~Fred Rogers

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems.
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped
from the George Washington Bridge
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”
~Andrea Gibson,The Madness Vase

One of the most important parts of any relationship is communication.  In order for there to be good communication, both people need to be able to express themselves verbally, in a relatively non-defensive and non-abusive or non-harmful manner.  Both parties need to be able to take the risk of being vulnerable, of expressing their wants and needs.  Both parties also need to be able to truly listen and hear what the other person is trying to communicate to us.

This of course makes sense.  I believe this is what most of us strive for.  

But it is so fucking hard in practice.

It’s challenging because we each have trauma coursing through our bodies, living in our nervous systems. We each received messaging, either overtly or subvertly, that our wants and needs don’t matter, that we should just be happy if someone loves us and not complain.

Many of us learned in one way or another that expressing our wants or needs is actually dangerous.  Perhaps we were physically abused for crying or “whining.”  Perhaps we witnessed siblings or one of our caregivers receiving violence for expressing themselves.  Perhaps our bids for affection were met with coldness or further isolation.  Perhaps we were ridiculed for being “sensitive” or “weak” or “soft.”

Regardless of the specific whys, we got the message loud and clear that expressing our wants and needs wasn’t okay, wasn’t acceptable, wasn’t safe.  

So, it makes sense that as adults we have a very challenging time expressing our wants and needs.  

It makes sense it is challenging.  

It doesn’t make sense that we may (unconsciously) expect others to be mind readers. 

How many times have you thought or said or heard “Well, if they loved me they’d know what’s wrong!”?  Or “I shouldn’t have to tell you why I’m upset, you should know!”  

This narrative is actually a cloak for our own hurt and fear that our own feelings don’t matter.  That we don’t matter to the other person (and look, there’s proof!  They can’t read our mind!).  That we aren’t actually lovable.

Learning to communicate in productive, connecting ways takes practice. Lots of practice. It requires us to look at and work through some of our own wounding.  It requires us to come into our bodies so we can have some felt sense around what is happening for us – if past wounds are being poked, if something new is growing, if it’s a combination of both (usually it’s a combination).  

It takes practice to become curious and ask questions instead of making assumptions about what another person is thinking or feeling.  

It takes practice to actually ask another person if they can meet a want or need of ours in that moments, instead of demanding it from them.

It takes practice communicating our desires and boundaries without expectations for how the other “should” respond.

This all takes practice.  It takes patience, from all parties.  It takes messing up and getting it all wrong.  It takes a willingness to be vulnerable, to take some risks in sharing something a bit more intimate about ourselves.

This is what it means to break patterns and cycles.  It requires us to actually do the very messy and challenging and uncomfortable work of disrupting these generations old ways of relating that cause harm, to the others, to our relationships, and ultimately to our Self.

It not glorious work.  It isn’t fun.  It can be painful.  As we disrupt these patterns, we will likely lose people.  There will be grief.  There will be days we just don’t want to do it anymore.  

And. 

There will be days when we realize we are in a situation where once we would have lost our shit and here we are, relatively calm, figuring it out.

There will be days we feel such intense joy and happiness that all we can do is cry.

There will be days where we know, deep in our bones, how cherished we are, how loved we are, how lovable we are.

Both and.

Yes it is intense work.  And in my personal experience, it is so intensely worth it. 

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly-ish newsletter on May 10, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays and learn about my online offerings, you can subscribe here.

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Breaking patterns, disrupting cycles, & accountability

Healing can only happen when people are willing to shift.  ~Iyanla Vanzant

Much too often, our minds are used to somewhat efficiently excuse and justify old patterns, when the same energy and efforts could go towards the creating of new ones. Our society is, meanwhile, deeply enamored with technological creation, invention, and marvels. Many of these technological advancements assist with life as it is, however, the creation of new patterns of behavior and ways of life remains largely unexplored.  ~Sabina Nore, 22 Triggers

True accountability is not only apologizing, understanding the impact your actions have caused on yourself and others, making amends or reparations to the harmed parties; but most importantly, true accountability is changing your behavior so that the harm, violence, abuse does not happen again. ~Mia Mingus

Looking back on my thirteen years of motherhood, there is so much I would do different, if I could go back in time and start all over again.  There were so many mistakes.  So much I got wrong.  So many patterns and cycles that I continued.  So many I am still working on breaking.

And.

There is so much I got right, and I would do it the same way again.  There were patterns I have been able to break, cycles I have been able to disrupt.

It is the both and.

All our relationships are often like that.

There are moments we look back on and wish with every fiber of our being we had made another choice, done something different.  And then there are the moments that we look back on and breathe a sigh of yes, that one, that I got right.

Hindsight is nearly always 20/20.  Looking back we have a clearer view of those moments, the ones that mattered, the ones that didn’t.  The ones that were defining, the ones that weren’t.  The ones that didn’t feel significant at the time, but turned out to be.  Those moments we didn’t know would be the last, the times we thought we would always have another chance, more time, but it didn’t turn out that way.  

We all carry within us patterns and cycles passed on to us by our families of origin, by our genetic ancestors, and by our culture. We have a choice, to a certain degree, to break and disrupt those cycles, to create change, to do different than what was done to us, to do different than what was done before.

I say to a certain degree, because we can’t break a pattern unless we become aware of it.  This requires not only our ability to look back at past generations, but also an ability to look objectively at ourselves.

We need to be able to see the ways we have perpetuated these cycles.  The ways we have continued the patterns.  

This requires us to have a certain level of self-awareness.  I believe it also requires us to have the ability to give ourselves self-compassion, to not dive into shame spirals and defensiveness.  To be able to explain the whys of the harm we ourselves have participated in, but not make excuses for it.

There are no excuses for causing harm to others, or ourselves for that matter.  Regardless of what was done to us in the past.  Regardless of what was done to our ancestors.

In order to break these patterns and cycles we need to be willing to hold ourselves accountable.  

Accountability, has four basic components.**  These are:

  • Self reflection
  • Apology
  • Repair
  • Changed behavior 

**From Mia Mingus

We need to be willing, and able, to do all four.  It requires our ability to be wrong, and to actually change our behavior in the future. And in order to change behaviors, we need to do the work of unraveling, untangling, and processing the trauma that lives within us.  

It is not glamorous or fun work.

It is work most people avoid doing.  I get it.  I understand why.  It is hard and brutal to process the trauma that lives within us.  To do the accompanying grief work.  To move into liminal space and unknown territory of doing different.  Of making change.  

Of actually breaking and disrupting, and not repeating and perpetuating, old patterns and cycles of harm. 

Even in the this work of doing different, we will still get some things wrong.  Which is why self-compassion is so important.  Which is why accountability, and our own willingness to go deep within ourselves and look at our own shadows, is so important.  Which is why we need to remember that we are all only human, to make space for forgiveness when appropriate (and I do not believe it is always appropriate). 

I have spent the last thirteen years practicing accountability with my daughter. Believe me, there have been ample opportunities for me to practice! And almost daily there are more opportunities. I practice it with my son.  I am learning to practice it with my friends and lovers.

Accountability is vulnerable.  It is a vulnerable space to move into admitting we have caused harm and taking ownership of it.  It requires that we be able to hold the disappointment, hurt, and or frustration that we caused, of someone we love; and it requires that we process our own grief that comes with it.

It all takes intention, practice, and time.  Life will give us plenty of opportunities.  A vital piece is remembering the importance of doing our own work of breaking the patterns and cycles still alive in us, in between each new opportunity.  

This is how we create change in the world :: by doing our individual work and the work of healing and creating a loving relationships with those in our lives.  It means we will each be in the wrong, and this needs to be okay in the sense that we accept our responsibility and do the work of repair and change.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on April 12, 2020. It has been edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

We’ll be exploring these ideas in the seven week course Embodied Writing :: Relating, Relationships, & Trauma. You can learn more and register here.