Healing from trauma would be SO MUCH easier if anyone would be allowed to do it in an environment where they're safe from ongoing and future trauma and can be confident that they won't be exposed to avoidable trauma, neither now nor later.
Alas, capitalism enforces trauma on all of us all the time. Even rich fuckers are miserable. There's no way to fully escape it.
🧵
Like... there's a level of omnipresent, pervasive, and *seemingly* low-level trauma that I don't think many, if any people can escape. It might sound counterproductive to say "everyone is traumatised", but they are??? Like... objectively. Living on a planet that is being burned by members of your own species while not being allowed to stop them and getting gaslit about it is traumatising. Whether you try to ignore it or not. So is being forced to "earn a living" aka being literally threatened with death if you don't prove your worthiness to uncaring, inhumane authorities - usually by doing punishing tasks under torturous circumstances (sleep deprivation is torture) for abusers (aka bosses).
Ugh. It's just so much. And even if you have carved out a niche or were lucky or whatever, being surrounded by this shit is still traumatising. Like being the "favourite child" in an abusive family. That's still traumatising even if no overt abuse might be targeted at you, personally. It's still distorting your reality and your entire life circumstances and damaging everyone you interact with and therefore all your relationships. Which are what we need to be happy and to heal from trauma.
Like obviously I'm not suggesting that someone who is relatively privileged and cushioned and has buffers between them and any immediate violence or lifethreatening circumstances is equally traumatised as those who have the textbook definition of trauma.
But also, I am not content to "recover" from the worst/most obvious trauma and accept the "background noise" as normal. Because even if I can't change it, seeing it for what it is makes a huge difference. If I accept horror as normal and deny that "normalcy" is traumatising me, I'll be adding an ADDITIONAL layer of trauma: The gaslighting.
Arguably what trauma does to our perception of reality is one of the worst impacts. So I'm working under the assumption that learning to recognise dangers, harm and abuse is a game-changing amount of beneficial EVEN IF you can't escape them. At least you can escape the shame and guilt. At least you can escape the futile attempts at taking on responsibility for it and the waste of time and energy and money in trying to fix something that you didn't break and that you can't fix and that the abusers don't even WANT you to fix! At least you can keep your sense of self intact.
You can have your dignity and inner strength, even when others don't acknowledge it.
I believe it only takes one person who is on your side and validates your perceptions to achieve this. And that's not just guesswork, all this is what Dion and I have experienced and DONE and MADE HAPPEN for years. And we're making big breakthroughs all the time.
And what gets me the most is that even therapy is like... worse than the unavoidable level of trauma. In large part BECAUSE they refuse to acknowledge it or let you acknowledge it! They don't let you say that you're not safe. They don't let you face what truly traumatises and abuses you currently. For many people, they don't even let you face past traumas or cut off contact with people who have raped you in the past (if they are family).
It's so crazy-making. It's just an environment of gaslighting. Pretending like the status quo of society is non-traumatising and that if you are mentally ill, YOU need to get fixed is gaslighting and it is abuse. It's like telling an abused child they need to do better, instead of holding the abusers (whether that's peers, teachers, parents, whoever) accountable. But therapy exists as a buffer to protect those that make us crazy from our wrath by diverting our attention and energies into harmless outlets and self-improvement strategies. Harmless to the powers that be, that is. Not harmless to the patients.
And if that doesn't work, we get locked up.
Aurin (ki, ki, kis)