LEAVING IS NOT ALWAYS THE SAFEST OPTION + WHY WE STAY

LEAVING IS NOT ALWAYS THE SAFEST OPTION and I wish more people understood that.

Our nervous system is always reaching for our safety and survival. By any means necessary. Sometimes that’s fleeing. Sometimes it’s fighting. Sometimes it’s collapsing.

However you survived is brilliant, and I am sorry if you have experienced people questioning your survival.

Questions like: why didn’t you just leave? if it was that bad, why did you stay so long? . . .

. . . they’re just not helpful.

I get why people ask them; often want to find the rhyme or reason in an awful and hard-to-digest or fathom experience.

But they’re not the most supportive questions.

And. The more we know about the nervous system, the more we’ll realize that there are better questions to ask. And that, what’s more, there might be other WORDS we can offer. Not questions, just validation and support.

Because when we learn more about how our physiology is always taking the actions that help us to survive, is always doing its absolute best to get us through a challenging situation (sometimes we can get out, sometimes we find ways to stay until it ends because we can’t flee yet) . . . we know that some of the choices are a bit choiceless, and not a reflection of someone’s lack of willpower (ew, not a great take, right?), but relative to circumstance.

Seeing you in your survival, whatever it looked or looks like.

Jess

Resource, resilience and collective trauma

Resourcing is about what is outside of us, too.

It’s about the systems we live in.

It’s about the people in our lives.

It’s about .. what or who or where can we turn to when shit is hard?

It’s about .. are the helpers actually helping or retraumatizing or further oppressing us?

Resourcing can be this beautiful piece of nervous system regulation where we hold our own hearts or sway back and forth or tune into our breath and feel more grounded and present.

Yes. And.

Resourcing can also be about OUR RESOURCES.

Affluence. Proximity. Access. Privilege. Support. And/or lack thereof.

It can also be about the protective factors that help us to be resilient through traumatic experiences.

In this world, not everyone is resourced equally.

And not all resources come from the inside (although yes, those practices are powerful, too, and if they feel supportive please keep doing them!).

I hope that as we heal, as we hold our own hearts and nourish our own nervous systems, we can also hold that our systems need healing, too.

More to come on nervous system nourishment that doesn’t erase trauma (and healing) as a systemic and collective phenomenon soon.

XO Jess

Image description: an open window into a lush dark green forest and a tweet that reads: Nervous system regulation happens when we’re resourced. THIS is why healing is collective and trauma is systemic. THIS is why as we heal I hope we heal these systems that leave so many underresourced. 

The healing binary is a falsehood

THE HEALING BINARY IS A FALSEHOOD //

Sure, there are healing practitioners and survivors, but they’re not always mutually exclusive.

We can be in a process of healing and also offer that to others.

We can offer care and also deeply need to fill our own cup.
We can help folks and we can also harm them.

Healing, life, humans —> it’s all complex. Perhaps it’s complicated than a binary. Perhaps we can be more than one thing at once.

Sometimes, our brain likes boxes and rubrics and categorization (we’ll touch on the wise reasons for this in the mini course!), but often, they fall short.

In How To Talk: how to talk about trauma with invalidating our clients, we’ll explore:

🐝 the ways we think and talk about trauma and why (including the Big T/little t framework!)

🌻 approaches for connecting with clients through trauma informed language

💛 compassionate practices for tending to our self and our “stuff”

Because the binary is a lie. If you’re a healing practitioner, you are also a whole human, and you might need care too.

If you feel like two incompatible things, maybe you’re not.

If you feel like a box or binary can’t contain you, maybe it can’t.

And what if, in healing and in life, that’s not a problem?

Spots are still open in the free mini course which begins on Wednesday November 3rd! Three daily trauma informed lessons will land in your inbox, and I’d love to have you if it sounds like your cup of tea. Click here to join, if you’d like.

Talk soon,

Jess

P.S. Of course there are times we are so deep in a process it ends up clouding our client care and/or causing harm. Just wanted to name that because I imagine many of us have experienced it as either a client or a practitioner, or both.

What do doorways have to do with trauma recovery?

One key component of a traumatic experience is that we are often stripped of choice. We don’t choose traumatic events, they are things that happen to us. And we often don’t get to make many choices throughout the experience. Of course our nervous system is always making the best choice that it can for our survival and well-being, but more often that not, those are limited too.

So what does this have to do with doorways and trauma recovery?

A trauma-informed approach to healing supports clients in acting from a place of agency. In making the choices that best take care of themselves. In choosing the pace that feels right, choosing what to share and what to hold close for the timebeing.

Part of this approach can be about illuminating doorways. Something many trauma survivors have in common is wanting to know where the exit is. We also might want to know where a door that leads us to connection and belonging exists. So part of our work (whether this is through self-care or with our clients) might be to find these doorways.

This isn't about knowing the best door for our clients, because we likely don’t. (Though we might have some great ideas, and those are so welcome!) This isn't about pushing them through the doorway or pressuring them to choose a certain doorway that we think is the right one.

This is about letting clients know that there are pathways that can take them deeper into the work and help them face their sensations, and pathways that can take them out of the intensity of the experience and back and to safety and resourcing.

This blog could be a mile long, because these topics are complex. I imagine you have experienced some of these things before. Maybe feeling overwhelmed by a tidal wave of feelings and frantically looking for an exit.

Perhaps feeling a readiness to spend time with feelings or unresolved trauma and not knowing where to turn for support as you do that work.

One way that we can shine a light on the doorways and illuminate choices is with our words. We can give clients and in and out. We can remind our clients (or ourselves) that yes, these feelings are here, and also there is a choice about how to engage with them. We have a choice about if we even want to engage with them.

And sometimes for survivors of trauma, choices can be overwhelming. So we might strive to be really gentle with ourselves and our clients. To make the choices small. What’s the best choice in this moment? We don’t have to solve everything in one session or one breath. But what might we need right now? An entrance, or an exit? To dial back the intensity or to turn up the volume?

Just a few things to think about. In a few days, I'll be inviting you to explore trauma informed language with me through a free mini course. At that time, I'll invite you to consider if this is a choice that serves you, or something you want to say no to. I celebrate your decision either way!

Trusting your choices and looking forward to connecting soon,

Jess

New Healing, Big Feelings

Have you ever started therapy/healing with a new person and felt some big feelings and thoughts about it?

We’ve been chatting about this over on instagram, and these are The Big Two that come up for people:

The “I feel like too much!!!!!” experience

The “this is moving so slowly is anything even happening???” experience

Have you been here? Maybe as a client, maybe as a practitioner, maybe even in both roles?


Beginnings are tender. This much I know is true.

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Maybe we feel like too much, like we’re too intense and we’re going to scare the therapist away. Maybe we don’t have enough of a container or trust built up (yet!) to put the things down. The Things we showed up to therapy in order to have some help holding.

Maybe it feels unbearably mindnumbingly slow. It doesn’t feel like any Real Work is happening. It’s glacial. It’s itchy and uncomfortable. It feels futile or frustrating or surface level.

Either way, underneath these two experiences (or whichever experience you’re having), there might be another feeling.

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The sense that we’re doing something wrong.

We’re showing up wrong.

Our feelings are too big.

We’re too chatty.

We’re too quiet.

We’re going to burden our therapist by sharing our truth.

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Today, I want to offer that maybe you’re not doing anything wrong.

What if The Thing that is happening, the experience you’re having, can offer you more information?

Does the information point to you needing more time, needing to pick up the pace, needing some patience and gentleness, or needing a different practitioner?

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I can’t know that, but I can trust that the answer that feels true to you is The Right Answer For You.

And hopefully, your practitioner will trust that (trust YOU), too.

Just something to chew on today, if it feels helpful.

Because what a relief it can be when having room to grow and shift in a therapeutic relationship doesn’t mean we are Bad and Doing Everything Wrong.

And I don’t know about you, but lately I will take all of the relief and comfort I can alongside the hard work and growth I’m doing.

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In care and in nerdiness (because intake forms + therapeutic relationships + trauma-informed language + somatic happenings are all I think about lately),

Jess

P.S. I’m sharing a lot about the beginning of a therapeutic relationship because I’m writing a lot about it for a new course that’s coming out! All about a trauma informed intake process. Beginning Magic opens next week — eeeee! If this material is landing somewhere deep in your bones and stirring your mind, stay tuned.

Corrective experiences can bring up so much grief

If you receive the very thing you’ve always needed, the very thing you didn’t get that is inextricably linked to a traumatic experience, and this corrective experience brings you to your knees, you are not alone.

If you witness someone being treated the way you’ve always needed to be treated on a television show or in a book or a passing conversation with a friend, and this opens the griefy floodgates, you are not alone.

If you have experienced sexual assault, and someone lovingly and respectfully checks in with you for consent, this can be a corrective experience.

If you have lived through abuse and manipulation, and someone is kind to you, this can be a corrective experience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you if these experiences bring up big emotions and overwhelming grief.

If you were not protected, and someone offers you protection - this can be a corrective experience and it can bring up so much grief, resentment, anger, and sadness. Because the protection might be hard to receive. For the times you needed it and didn't have it.

Sometimes waves of grief and sadness emerge when we experience hurts similar to our past experiences. Sometimes pain and sorrow visit when we directly experience or witness a corrective experience. Corrective experiences can include receiving kindness, love, validation, attentiveness, and consent when we haven’t previously.

If you are treated with kindness and it moves you to tears, you are not alone.

If what “should” be a healing experience brings you grief, you are not alone.

Healing can be complex and layered, just like we are.

Jess

Even if we can’t get the apology or acknowledgement or accountability from the person who harmed us, we might get those things from other folks in different situations. And while it’s not like the math works out where that makes it all okay that we didn’t get it from the person who we really needed it from, it might still feel really healing to receive it. Corrective experiences can be really tender, they can bring up a lot of grief and resentment - and they can touch into the parts of us that have been desiring and deserving a certain response or way of showing up. It can be healing to know that this sometimes can happen. It can be tender to be with the grief of the times we really needed it to happen and it didn’t.