There is a lot going on in the world and as someone who works with trauma recovery, I can see the nervous systems around me activated, buzzing in "fight, flight, freeze, and fawn".
Some people cower in their homes frozen under a blanket of self-medication, using anything to dull the weight of being “them” in an uncertain world. Others fight long and hard with a desperate conviction because they have felt the wall behind them, the hand over their mouth, the boot on their neck; they lash and crash through everything and everyone without nuance, seeing black and white and red all over. Right and wrong and red rage, revenge, survival, they are just fighting to survive.
And then there are those who flee, they take wings in dissociation and chaos, moving away always away never to-- too blind to see where they are except to know that it's away from the jaws that may or may not be there anymore.
Last, which I see more and more often coupled alongside fight, is fawn, the performative response to a threat. How do I survive this deluge of information? You fawn, “I'll say whatever you need me to so I survive. So I am not exorcised from the community.”
Will we teach through the methods brought to us by previous trauma? Scare you into repentance? Pressure you to recite and repost my infographics like ad reads to keep you on the air, keep you relevant and revered, insulated by superficial sanctimony?
When the truth is you need space to heal. Safety to cry and dig deeper, and just be.
I know you worry that to turn the focus inward you’ll neglect the world at large, that you will leave the defenseless unarmed, and unprotected, but you are not helping too many when you're bleeding on the battlefield.
There is a lot of work to be done, a lot of progress to be made, and this, the trauma reactions we see, are a part of revealing what has long been repressed and suppressed.
Yes, there is purpose in the light shown on trauma responses. There are ways to teach others how to be sensitive in their interactions with us. And yet still if you're not careful you’ll remain bare under that spotlight, wondering how long you have to show your wounds for others to learn the truth of them. But darling that isn’t your responsibility, once you have been honest you're allowed to heal before others have learned their lesson.
You are allowed to find peace when others are in torment because a steady hand is needed for the ones still unsure. You don’t have to halt your healing process to remain loved, to be seen.
A healed, whole you will change the world.
So what do you do next?
Set aside the time to focus on what it means to be socially active while finding eternal peace, They are not separate.
Just like the stages of grief, you cannot deny the process of trauma, but it is just that, a process you can move through when you are ready.
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