Resilience

From the front page

Even with the increased consciousness of trauma and abuse in our culture, it is still really common for people to struggle, with seeing what they have personally gone through, as traumatic or abusive.

 

This is partly due to a lack of understanding of what researchers call “complex trauma”.

This form of traumatic experience is based more on longer term adversity, as opposed to being rooted in a single traumatic incident.

Unfortunately, when you begin to look at this issue from the perspective of what children and adults actually need to thrive emotionally and spiritually, you begin to see that this form of traumatic experience is deeply embedded in all aspects of our culture.

Yet, we still tend to downplay what we have each been through, particularly compared to what others have experienced.

But traumatic experiences are cumulative not comparative.

The body only knows when it is overwhelmed – not how that experience compares to someone else’s experience.

The simple truth is that as a culture we need to support each other to bring all levels of traumatic experiences into consciousness. It is the absolute base level of what is needed for healing to happen individually and as a society. Sharing about our actual experience helps everybody in this process.

Those that face acute experiences of trauma also face “complex trauma”.

Almost noone including those that have experinced acute trauma are spared this other experince of trauma. 

One of the more hearbreaking things about the research that is being done on trauma and abuse, has to do with how endemic it is in our society. This was of course sadly confirmed again, by how commonplace stories of abuse are for women of the US and in so many other countries as revealed in the revelations that have come out of the #MeToo movement.

I say that to emphasize that acknowledging our experiences supports everyone. 

Whereas listening to the voices that diminish traumatic experiences on a comparative level makes it hard for all of us and for the broader culture itself to heal.

One of the key things to remember in this regard, is that facing into traumatic experience in a safe way, particularly in relationship and community, is part of moving through the larger healing cycle, in relationship to traumatic experience.

A healing cycle that is hardwired into our bodies.

We are by our nature resilient, regenerative beings. Our capacity to be with the overwhelm of traumatic experience is in some evolutionary ways, one of the greatest gifts of the human body in that dissociation protects us from some of the most extreme aspects of traumatic experiences. 

Isolation, denial and/or continued abuse is what blocks us.

With community, with consciousness, with safe space – the gifts that we used to survive traumatic experience will begin to flourish again.

Not just in the service of surviving but in order to begin to fully live.

Instead of blaming ourselves for what we went through or pathologizing the experience of trauma itself, we see more clearly the beauty and brilliance of how we survived adversity. Of who we are, regardless of the traumatic experience. 

I don’t say that to negate whatever mistakes we have also made along the way. I am just saying that we can see those mistakes without so much judgment. We can see those mistakes in a way, that makes it possible to have space to grow. Instead of continuing the cycle of unprocessed trauma which just feeds into shame.  Shame that itself actually perpetuates self destructive behavior.

The research on traumatic experience is clear about the body’s capacity to heal.

We just need the space to allow that capacity to flourish – apart from the isolation, denial and shame that is embedded in our culture. 

With love and respect,

Bill St.Cyr

PS

If you would like to explore this further, please know that you are welcome to be part of a three month exploration of “Healing Complex Trauma, Dreams and Community” that is beginning in February (Pricing variable dependant on ability to pay).

This program is designed to help us come together in a healing process. It is designed to hold open the possibility that we can come together and support each other with honesty and tenderness.

The program is not meant to replace the need for clinical or psychotherapeutic work, for those that need that form of support. It is instead about making space in our world, for us to remember what it is to be fully human. To cultivate each of our own capacity to be in community and in that process, learn to create a culture of healing, of resilience and of regeneration.

Either way, thanks for reading and I hope this in some way helps you in your own journey…