Meg-John Barker's Blog, page 9

Plural selves, queer and comics

I’m so excited that my second article about my relationship with comics is out in the world, in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics special issue on mental health and sex. The first one on feminist comics I shared about here. And the Graphic Medicine talk that kicked this all off is here.

This article is all about plurality, how it relates to queerness, and how comics can be a helpful way of exploring it and articulating it to others.

This is the abstract:

This article explores how comics and other graphic formats constitute a useful means for people to explore and articulate experiences of plurality. First the literature on plural selves is presented, drawing from therapeutic and self-help work around exploring and embracing one’s inner parts (children, critics, parents, alter egos, etc). This is linked with mad pride movements to reclaim pathologising psychiatric diagnosis like Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously Multiple Personality Disorder). This is then linked to queer theoretical and activist perspectives by considering how depathologising plurality follows similar endeavours in relation to (homo)sexuality, kink, and (trans)gender. Plurality of self is related to the wider queer endeavour of challenging stable, fixed identities and critiquing neoliberal capitalist individualistic ways of comprehending the self. Finally, comics and graphic formats are reflected upon as one key potential way for people to explore their own plurality and to articulate their plural experiences to close others and wider audiences. Examples are provided of the author’s own comics and zines in this area.

You can read the full article here, or contact me for a copy if they run out of e-prints.

The post Plural selves, queer and comics appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Chronic Shame

Lately the focus of my learning has shifted from trauma in general to one element specifically: shame. As I’ve mentioned here before, toxic levels of shame are a key element of developmental trauma and/or post-traumatic stress for many people – often combined with incapacitating fear. I’ve noticed that – as I’ve shifted from survival strategies which involve people-pleasing and keeping busy, to trying to hold my boundaries and stay present with myself – shame has come up big time.

I have a whole post coming on what we can do about shame when it hits, how it operates at multiple levels (cultural, systemic, interpersonal, and embodied), and how we can relate with ourselves, others, and our communities in ways that minimise the potential for crashing into toxic shame, or triggering it in others. I want to read a bit more on the subject to ensure I cover all the bases before sharing that.

Meanwhile I thought I’d share my notes on one book that I’ve found particularly helpful. The book is Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame, by Pat DeYoung. The book is aimed at therapists, and some parts are pretty theoretically dense, weaving together relational psychoanalysis and neurobiology. For that reason I imagine that most folks who struggle with chronic shame would be unlikely to pick up this book. Hopefully my summary here will be helpful if that’s you. 

The full book is definitely worth checking out if you do enjoy grappling with big ideas, and I found Pat’s descriptions of her client-work some of the most generous, caring, and open that I’ve read. She demonstrates huge compassion for all those struggling with chronic shame, whether it manifests in ways that are easy to spot and work with, or a great deal harder as in cases where people attack others or shut down in the face of shame.

What is chronic shame?

Pat points out that most of us struggle to describe shame because it’s so unbearable that we generally don’t tolerate it. We push it down or cover it over with feelings that we can handle, and often these are all we know of shame. 

‘The classic shame response is hyperarousal and a desperate struggle to contain it: blushing, sweating, trying to shrink, slumping the shoulders, dropping the head, averting the eyes, covering the face. This state of shame is excruciating’.

Pat locates most mental health struggles in the strategies we use to repel and avoid further harm – and shame – after experiencing relational trauma as kids. These struggles include depression, anxiety, relationship difficulties, and numbing addictions that ‘fill-in’ for deeper unmet needs or offer some sense of emotional regulation.

When something comes up which is beyond these tactics, we probably experience shame as utter fragmentation or disintegration or ourselves. It feels like we are totally falling apart, and we are utterly desperate for anything to get rid of it. Shame is related to self-loathing, to the emotion of disgust aimed at ourselves, and to having a vicious and noisy inner critic, but it ‘is fundamentally non-verbal and visceral, a “sickness of the soul”, as Silvan Tomkins put it.’

The definition of shame throughout the book is: 

‘the disintegration of the self in relation to a dysregulating other’.

Shame is relational not individual

A major message of the book is that we tend to experience shame as individual but it’s actually relational. 

When shame hits we individualise: believing that we are a bad person, that there is something terribly wrong with us, and that we’re personally responsible for harming others. We tend to withdraw into ourselves to address this and/or to protect others from ourselves. ‘Shame feels like solitary pain, and chronic shame seems like a personal failing caused by one’s own negative thinking and low self-esteem.’

However, Pat insists that shame in all its forms is relational. It is forged in relationships – the dysregulating others mentioned in the above definition. It is generally triggered by relational situations, such as being blamed or shamed by others. And it needs connection with others in order to be addressed.

This point is vital to keep ahold of: while shame feels like it’s happening in our self because we are bad, it is really happening in relation with others – past and present, and it needs to be addressed in relationship too.

Why do we have chronic shame?

So shame comes from the impact of ‘dysregulating others’. What does dysregulation mean? As children we require regulation of our feelings by those close to us in order to learn how to regulate them ourselves. That means that we need those around us to be attuned to our feelings – to pick up on them, and to help us to hold them, to tolerate them, and to understand them. If we don’t experience this then our emotions will end up feeling overwhelming and terrifying, and we’ll fragment or fall apart in the face of them. 

‘People who struggle with chronic shame usually report that emotions were either shut down or out of control in their family.’

‘Acceptance was missing, too; the family system didn’t create space where the kid could be confident of an unconditional welcome for his unique being, including his wants, feelings, and failings.’

‘A child has to have at least one caregiver who is able to respond in an attuned, consistent way to what the child feels. If this is missing in a major way, the child will translate the distress of the mismatch into a feeling like, “I can’t make happen what I need…so there’s something wrong with me.”’

Like other authors, Pat explains that – as a child – when faced with a choice between:

Believing that we are bad but at least that the world makes sense and that we might have some control over it (e.g. by becoming good), and Believing that we are not bad but that the world is chaotic, that our caregivers can’t contain us, and that we have no control

We will choose the former as the far safer option.

‘It’s so much easier to understand, “I’m bad and disgusting” than it is to understand, “Something happened outside of my control and I feel like I’m falling apart”.’ 

Because we’re not familiar with others responding to our feelings with empathy and compassion, we don’t develop the capacity for self-empathy and self-compassion. Because others do not meet the whole of us – in all emotional states – in regulating ways, we don’t develop a coherent sense of ourselves and there is always the sense of threat that we might disintegrate or be annihilated. Shame makes people:

‘feel blank, “vaporized” or incoherent, even to themselves. In moments of feeling humiliated, they can’t speak, or even think. They feel shattered, or as if they are falling apart.’

Dysregulating others

I was particularly struck by the links between shame and the gaze of others that Pat discusses in her chapter on shame theories. This dysregulation does not just happen verbally, but often non-verbally through mismatches between children’s cues and the facial responsiveness of the caregiver. 

‘When a child fails to elicit a gaze that supports his intentionality, excitement, and indwelling sense of self, he will experience something else: being looked at in a way that objectifies him.’

This leads to us objectifying ourselves: evaluating ourselves from the outside as bad, assuming that others are always looking at us, and judging ourselves through others’ imagined eyes. I’m struck by how we can feel visceral shame when others won’t look at us, or drop their responsive expression when they look towards us.

Another thing that I appreciated about this book is that Pat demonstrates vast compassion for the ‘dysregulating others’ as well as for the children they meet in that way. Clearly she locates our relational trauma in the similar trauma that resulted in our caregivers being fragile, needy, wounded, or otherwise unable to regulate our emotional states. There’s a real sense of the intergenerational trauma that’s in play here: shame passed down through the generations.

‘I’m never surprised when, after a while, a shamed client tells me that her mom, or dad, or both, “had a really crappy childhood too.” For their own reasons, they just didn’t have the selfhood they needed to attune to their children…. Shame was everyone’s lonely secret, managed however possible. No one talked about all that pain, or even tried to make it any better, even though no-one wanted it.’

Guilt vs. shame

Like many authors, Pat delineates between guilt (I’m a worthwhile person who did a bad thing) and shame (I’m a bad person). Guilt can be painful but it doesn’t affect your core identity, whereas shame is acutely painful, often incapacitating, and feels as if you’ve been ‘exposed as a fundamentally defective or worthless being’. 

Shame makes good relationships extremely difficult because we experience everyone as potentially threatening – they could so easily disintegrate us. Collapsing into shame makes it virtually impossible to empathise with others, or to accurately discern what is ours and what is theirs. Guilt is a relational strength because it helps us to express regret, empathise with others, and take responsibility for any harm we have caused. Pat describes shame therapy as all about helping clients to move from shame to guilt.

When caregiving is good-enough there may be momentary shame when a child misbehaves or makes a mistake – felt as a danger of shattering – but there is a quick return after the caregiver’s displeasure or discipline to relational connection, so the child gets the message ‘I did a bad thing, but it’s over, and I’m still a good kid’. In later life presumably such children will be able to feel guilt when they have hurt others or made mistakes, take accountability, and forgive themselves.

However, if a child frequently experiences such disintegrating moments which are not repaired, with no quick return to connection, they’re left struggling alone with wondering who they are in relation to the other. This might happen, for example:

If there’s unclear distinctions between having done deliberate wrong or having made innocent mistakes – responses to both give the message that you are bad and stupid, If caregivers show that they can’t tolerate emotional distress or there is a ‘no emotions in my house’ rule in the family,If it takes too long to reconnect after a conflict or drop in connection,If a caregiver’s care and attention often drops unpredictably – or blows up into anger, If a child’s moments of delight and excitement tend to be squashed or deflated by a caregiver – this is felt as a painful and sudden fall.

‘When I am feeling a rush of emotion, the other’s response fails to help me manage what I’m feeling. Instead of feeling connected to someone strong and calm, I feel alone. Instead of feeling contained, I feel out of control. Instead of feeling energetically focused, I feel overwhelmed. Instead of feeling that I’ll be okay, I feel like I’m falling apart.’

Instead of learning that we can do something bad and survive, in shame we learn that our emotional self – who feels those ‘bad’ feelings – is bad, and we try to disconnect from them. We often learn to perfect a ‘good kid’ performance, and block out any sense of badness – and the ‘out of control’ feelings we associate with that. As we grow through adolescence we often attach our shame to challenging parts of experience like our bodies, sexualities, emotions, and competence. By the time we’re adults we may have perfected ways to cover up our shame, but those will tragically alienate us from ourselves, and make it very hard to forge genuine connections with others.

‘A person with chronically unresolved shame can’t be “a good person who did a bad thing.” The idea of having done harm may be unthinkable – it just couldn’t/didn’t happen. Or it may feel like the excruciating exposure of a despicable self. In neither case can good and bad aspects of self coexist in a coherent experience of doing one’s best to live up to certain chosen ideals.’

The neurobiology of shame

The big message from the neurobiological understanding of shame is that it is all happening in the non-verbal relational/emotional parts of the body/brain/mind but that we generally tend to deal with it in the more verbal, rational, analytic parts. 

This understanding makes sense because our emotional experience hasn’t been met, recognised, or regulated growing up. We have little experience of good body-to-body non-verbal emotional connection. Therefore our rational brain has had to do all the work of trying to deal with frightening emotional experiences. This explains why people with chronic shame attack themselves with self-denigrating ideas (to at least give them some sense of control), or try to ‘think themselves better’. Neither approach helps because the sense of being terrible, disgusting or despicable is non-verbal and visceral, out of reach of this rational, logical, language-based approach.

These ideas relate back to what I wrote, previously, about trauma and the body. If we are met with caregivers who are dysregulated themselves – or reactive – and who can’t regulate us, then our own nervous system will go into energy-expending hyperarousal (fight or flight), and then into energy-conserving hypoarousal (freeze or dissociation). If dysregulating interactions happen frequently, our self-protective habit will become dissociating from emotional connection and our emotional brain development will suffer.

‘From a neurobiological perspective it seems that someone could live in a chronic state of low-arousal shame that is chronically dysregulated because, although she’s always somewhat conscious of shame, it is well hidden from others. At the same time this shame-prone person could use various forms of dissociation to keep memories and experience of acute emotional pain completely out of her conscious awareness, and also to protect herself against any further shame-assaults on her self-cohesion.’

Of course what we know now of neuroplasticity suggests that we should be able to address this way in which the nervous system has become set up. This is why Pat puts so much emphasis on emotion-to-emotion attuned, regulating connection with a therapist as an important part of working with chronic shame. I’ve certainly found this to be gold myself and now tend to focus, in therapy, on finding and expressing my feelings – and having them met – rather than on talk or figuring things out. Having my emotions met and welcomed, and also having any moments of disconnection or misunderstanding repaired, are extremely valuable.

What is also needed is better emotional-rational brain integration so that the emotional brain self comes to make sense to us again. In chronic shame these connections are often poor. We can tell rational stories that make sense of our experience, but when we can’t connect the emotional and rational brain it can feel – to us and others – like there’s a disconnect between what we’re saying and the experience of our being. This can even feel gaslighting to others as we say one thing but they feel something very different from us.

How does chronic shame manifest

Very few people approach a therapist directly to help with shame because we tend to avoid and cover over shame so well. We might well not realise that shame is at the heart of what’s going on for us. 

Pat details clients who manifest shame in a range of different ways, depending on their particular childhoods and dispositions. 

One client could avoid shame so long as she was performing well and being a competent self, but the inevitable failures along the way felt intolerable. Performance became a way of life, hiding some disgusting or demeaning truth about who she was. Another client kept a double life where he could be a happy enough family man, but on the side he kept engaging in risky sexual activities. He felt split between being a hero who he liked and a total jerk who he hated. A further client only felt able to survive if she was utterly extraordinary, and could never meet that standard so spent much of her time melting down and feeling worthless, but she still strived to eventually pull off something extraordinary.

Another client felt hopeless despair much of the time, exacerbated by deep loneliness when those around her misunderstood her. A final one kept herself separate from other people because nobody noticed her struggles as a kid and she’d learnt she was safer without others, fearing that any friends would – of course – eventually see what was defective about her.

Shame in relationships

Pat also describes an example of how relationships often play out when more than one person carries chronic shame:

‘Both shame partners bring to the relationship the hope that true love will erase their vulnerabilities and undo the deprivation of their childhood attachments. But of course, each partner has moments of failing to understand and appreciate the other. And then, for that other partner, the original trauma of not mattering seems to happen all over again. The vulnerability of wanting to be loved becomes shame and then rage that lashes out in counter-shaming attacks.’

Pat explains that early shaming relationships become internalised – in the form of voices within us that replicate key people in our lives. For example, our internal voices may directly shame us with attacks. They may indirectly shame us with disappointment in our ‘failings’. They may neglect to give us care or pride. They may require us to be high-performing. They may transfer the shame that really belongs to others for their abusive behaviour onto us. Internally we have both an inner critic part who shames us, and other parts who are shamed by them. 

When these internal dynamics are highly familiar to us, shaming relationships easily get replicated again and again in our lives. ‘Shaming and being shamed is just what they know how to do. It’s no surprise that the drama gets played out in the world when it’s what they are negotiating internally, unconsciously, all the time.’

‘Karen Horney speaks of three ways to manage shame anxiety: moving toward people, moving against people, and moving away from people. Each is useful, with a downside. If we move towards people with compliance and self-effacement, we won’t lose their love; however our self-worth comes to depend on being liked, needed, or wanted. Moving against people feels powerful, but we have to keep winning to stay superior and invulnerable. Moving away from people liberates us from needing approval or success. What can shame us then? A small life seems a small price to pay for such freedom.’ 

These paragraphs about shame in relationships really hit home for me:

‘People who struggle with chronic shame are deeply lonely, and they have trouble with love. Most of all they have trouble believing that anyone actually loves them. But usually they keep trying to love and be loved. Something tells them that what they so desperately need is hidden there in “love”. They are profoundly right about that, even when they go about it all wrong, hiding their longing behind performance… On the one hand, this is the truth: what they have missed and continue to miss is genuine connection with somebody who understands and accepts who they are and what they feel. On the other hand, it can be a very dangerous enterprise to try to get that connection while feeling so vulnerable to exposure, so sensitive to slight, so damaged and defective, or so extraordinarily misunderstood and angry.’

‘What they know in their bones (their neural wiring) is that bad things that happened before will happen again: their need to connect will only cause them pain; a regulating other will become dysregulating – will turn away or turn mean – and the awfulness of disintegrating shame will happen. It makes sense that they protect themselves from this kind of repetition – even though they also want to trust.’

‘A chronically shamed person knows in a visceral way that what happened before in moments like this – dysregulation, rupture, or misunderstanding – is too painful to repeat. And so he repeats disconnection instead.’

Addressing chronic shame

Because this book is aimed at therapists, the focus in the chapters on how to address chronic shame is on the therapeutic relationship. Engaging in therapy is certainly a great idea – if possible – for chronic shame because a good therapist can provide the kind of emotional regulation that was lost or lacking in childhood. Given that shame is relational, it probably does require experiencing a relationship like that in order to address it. 

Therapy

Pat suggests that this importance of a regulating relationship might be one reason for the well known finding that it doesn’t much matter which type of therapy a therapist practices, it is the quality of the relationship that is vital, particularly the presence of  what Daniel Hughes calls PACE: playfulness, acceptance, curiosity, and empathy.

Certainly it is vital to shop around for a therapist and find one who you have this kind of rapport with, and who has worked on their own shame. I found these ideas about shame and becoming a therapist/healer very interesting:

‘Why might excellent therapists also be shame-prone therapists? First of all, it’s a matter of innate emotional sensitivity. Some babies are born needing extra regulation for an emotional response system easily over stimulated. They become emotionally sensitive children, alert to the interpersonal dynamics that surround them. 

Second, it’s a matter of family history. If there’s emotional trouble in the family, these sensitive children try to manage it as best they can. They feel responsible for the well-being of fragile parents and vulnerable siblings. They spend their childhood offering emotional attunement beyond their years and doing without the emotional understanding they need. It’s no wonder that some of them would one day make a career out of their attunement skills and their deep desire to see emotional hurts eased and relational brokenness repaired.’

Pat suggests that a therapist who has worked on – and continues to work on – their own shame has more capacity to help those who are burdened and silenced by shame, knowing what they are up against. Also, if you – as a client – have a lot of shame – the therapist is bound to pick up on it, and probably feel it too. They’ll need to be familiar with shame in order to work through such moments well with you, as well as to tolerate the times they make mistakes and to model the capacity to own these honestly, and make amends rather than being incapactated by shame. A good question for any potential therapist would be whether – and how – they have worked on their own shame. 

Working with a therapist in this way helps us to learn what it is like:

To experience emotional connection, To be accepted and accurately mirrored, To be with somebody who can tolerate and contain our emotional states, To navigate inevitable ruptures and repair them rather than being left in that disintegrated fallen apart state,To be recognised and treasured in all that we are by somebody who can welcome and enjoy the energy of our passion, excitement and joy when it is present.

All of these things should help us to develop a relationship with ourselves which is more emotionally regulating, and relationships with others which are more genuine and mutual, and less grounded in the avoidance of shame. This is akin to Pete Walker’s idea that we need to reparent ourselves and be reparented by committee.

It’s important to recognise, however, that therapy isn’t available to all. I would think that process/sharing groups, spiritual mentorship, peer-support, and other forms of relationship should be able to have a similar impact, so long as those involved are trauma-informed, are working on their own shame, and have enough of their own support around them.

Mindfulness and compassion practices

Given that a problem for folks with chronic shame is that others have not been able to accept their own inner states, or to accurately hold their subjective experience in mind, something vital here is learning how to be able to do that for ourselves. Again we can learn this through therapy – through having a relationship where somebody is able to do that with us. However, developing our own capacities – through mindfulness and self-compassion practices – can also be helpful here. 

Check out my staying with feelings zine, and recent posts on ‘the gap’, for more about how we can practice being with ourselves in a regulating way through all of our emotional states. Again through such practices we’re developing PACE. Mindfulness can help us to hold things lightly, see the bigger picture, and not take ourselves so seriously (playfulness). It can help with self-acceptance as we get to know ourselves deeply in all our states. It encourages us to get curious about our relationships with ourselves, others, and the world. Mindfulness also develops empathy for ourselves – instead of the confusion and abandonment of ourselves that comes with deep shame.

Regarding curiosity, Pat talks about constantly asking ourselves questions like ‘what’s going on for me?’ and ‘why?’, or ‘what happened?’ and ‘how do I feel about what happened. We often avoid such questions because we fear our usual shame-filled responses (because I’m a bad person). ‘Consistently wondering about “what happened?” suggests the possibility again and again that maybe feelings don’t just come from weird, wrong places inside… Maybe they are understandable responses to real events!’ 

Mindfulness of emotions, and other feeling practices like focusing, can also help us in experiencing all our emotions: both what they are (becoming more able to identify mad, glad, sad, and afraid, for example), and what intensity they are at. It can help us to both expand our emotional range and to bring ourselves back from high intensity experiences.

Pat also particularly recommends the self-compassion practices of mindfulness therapists like Paul Gilbert as helpful in shifting away from shame and self-criticism.

Telling our story: giving shame light and air

Pat emphasises telling our stories as a vital part of integrating emotional and rational brains: bringing the emotional brain stuff of autobiographical memory – linked with feelings, relationships and context – together with the linear organisation, cause/effect understanding, and logical interpretation of the rational brain. With shame we may be able to tell logical narratives of our lives, but there can be a sense of something missing or it not all hanging together: it is cohesive but not coherent.

Depending on our specific experiences it may be that we tell our self-story repeatedly but that it lacks something – particularly that depth of feeling. It might be that we can only bear certain self-stories and try to avoid others. It could be that there are big gaps in our story, or that lots of stories spill out of us full of chaotic and intense feelings. It’s not about finding the ‘true’ story, or a ‘happy’ story, but telling a story where we – and our intentions, emotions, and self – are expressed clearly and compassionately, where we can ‘integrate pain and joy, pride and regret, relief and resignation’.

Through telling these stories, we’re connecting up our understanding of ourselves with the emotional experience and memories that hold our sense of self together – the opposite of the kind of disintegration of self that we experience in shame.

Obviously therapy can be a great place to learn to tell such stories, with somebody who has expertise in facilitating that. But we might also consider, here, the value of journaling, memoiring in various forms, sharing circles, spoken word nights, anything where we get to tell our stories, particularly anything that enables us to access the embodied, relational, and emotional aspects of our experience. Pat suggests that we might usefully tell our stories about how the following things were dealt with in our upbringings: communication, emotions, needs, mistakes, difference, achievements.

Pat emphasizes that a key antidote to shame is ‘giving it light and air’, given that we usually keep it – and the things that we feel it about – hidden and secret in the shadows. Telling our stories to safe-enough others can be extremely valuable in this way, although certainly we should be careful to develop trusting and mutual relationships for this to happen in. Sharing stories is also another way to get the kind of connection that we often struggle with when we hide parts of ourselves due to shame.

Playing with plurality

You can imagine how delighted I was to see that Pat’s book includes two long sections on working with plurality around shame. She explores how the idea of being different parts can work with clients in general, and she then talks specifically about working with somebody who had a vivid experience of being a plural system. 

This latter section completely undid me and I cried through my whole reading of it. Pat describes how a client of hers began to realise how they had fragmented into separate selves, and had started to bring those selves to therapy. One self – who had previously been quite hidden – fell in love and went through a relationship and breakup, which was blamed upon them.

‘That’s when a lifetime of dissociated shame broke through, self-hatred wrapped around the core implicit knowing “I’ll never get what I need from the other person. It’s my fault. I’m wrong, bad, disgusting”. A flood of shame shut the system down’.

But eventually, this time of emergency meant that something could change, the excruciating emotional experience could be shared. It meant that Pat and the client could finally work through the ways each part of them had held shame for their whole lives. 

I love the way that Pat presents plurality as a potentially positive way in for all clients to talk about shame (‘a part of me feels…’ often being safer to express than ‘I feel’). I also love how she suggests that those with vividly plural experience may have an easier task than those who cover over ‘unacceptable’ parts of themselves completely. ‘It’s no different, essentially, than attuning to any client’s different states of self, and in fact easier since here each “self” is so clearly delineated from the others.’ 

Pat goes on to discuss clients who might fall under the category of ‘narcissistic injury’ because they completely split off parts of themselves as unbearably shameful and bad and therefore ‘not-me’. They then don’t have any  conscious awareness when they are acting/communicating from those split off parts, for example with defensive attacking, grandiosity, idealization, intense neediness, etc. Recognising these as just as much parts of the self as the named parts of plural people – and having just as much compassion for them – is very helpful for the therapist here.

Pat draws on Internal Family Systems Theory and Bonnie Badenoch’s idea of ‘internal community’. Both of these encourage befriending all parts of yourself – particularly those who are disowned or split off, and developing dialogue and compassion between different parts. It’s vital that we stop trying to eradicate shame-filled parts of ourselves, but instead learn how to turn towards them and befriend them. This is something I’ve covered in my plural selves zine and FAQ, and will certainly be writing more about in relation to shame.

Education

Learning about shame – how it operates, where it comes from, how we tend to react to it, and how we can address it – can certainly be helpful here. Hence me writing these blog posts. Pat says

‘It often helps to hear that shame is probably the most painful emotion human beings can feel, and that not only does it feel excruciating, it’s so disconnecting and isolating that it can go on for a very long time without anyone noticing – except for the person feeling the shame.’

She teaches clients the ‘core story of shame’:

‘When you’re little and you need to be seen and understood, when you need to matter to someone and it seems you don’t, that hurts. Even the hurt is invisible. That’s how it feels – you feel bad, and nobody cares how you feel. So you decide that those needy feelings are useless and having them makes you stupid. You tell yourself “What’s wrong with you anyway, to feel this? Get over it!” That’s how shame takes over when emotional needs are ignored or denied. The needs themselves become something wrong with you. And then your hurt feelings about not having your needs met cause you even more shame.’

Pat concludes the book saying that she doesn’t think that chronic shame can ever be completely cured, but that ‘shame reduction’ is possible.

‘Long-term relational trauma leaves our psyches indelibly marked… We don’t just get over a lifetime of wondering whether we really matter to those closest to us or whether we can be enough for those to whom we do matter. We don’t radically reconfigure a personality built around anxious self protection.’

However she believes that coming to terms with chronic shame can make life a lot more bearable than soldiering on oblivious.

Again Pat emphasises the need for both empathic, real relationships with ourselves, and with others, so that we keep reinforcing the new neural connections through sharing openly with ourselves and others, being met by them, and – when hurt happens – taking responsibility for our actions without taking all the blame for how the other feels (guilt, not shame). 

‘The dark emotional convictions of chronic shame will feel like truth until they are brought out into brighter spaces where compassionate acceptance is the rule.’

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.

Plural tag: This post was by James and Beastie.

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Best Pride Book: Non-Binary Lives

I’m so stoked that a book collection that I co-edited with Jos Twist, Kat Gupta, and Ben Vincent has been chosen as The Independent‘s best buy for LGBTQ+ books to read for Pride month and beyond. Non-Binary Lives was such an important project for us all, and includes pieces by some of my favourite people talking about how being non-binary intersects with other aspects of their lives and being.

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Joanna Whitehead, in her piece for The Independent article said:

This beautifully curated collection of essays is a welcome tonic in a cultural climate that seems hellbent on misunderstanding and misrepresenting those who do not fall into gender binaries. With a focus on intersections, this anthology specifically aims to examine the ways in which a person’s other identities – such as being a parent, having a faith, being black or having a disability – intersect with their non-binary identity.

Some writing on gender can often be inaccessible and academic, so it was a pleasure to read a collection of essays that were highly personal, thoughtful and immensely insightful. From “gender euphoria” to “radical softness”, working through each contribution felt like having an illuminating conversation with the most informed and thoughtful person you know.

This diverse group of individuals have done the work in picking apart the norms that prevail in many societies and discovered how prescriptive and stifling these can be. The overriding message is that non-binary people exist in multiple forms – that there is no “right way” to be non-binary – but there is plenty more to learn besides. Essential reading for anyone wishing to learn more about the wonderful diversity of humans. Furthermore, profits from the sale of this book will go to organisations supporting marginalised trans and non-binary folks.

Read the full article here.

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Mind the gap 2: The (micro and macro) gap as a radical act

This post is all about the value of making gaps – micro to macro – in our everyday lives for self-consent, for relating well with others, and for resisting wider non-consensual cultures.

Click here if you want to read an accompanying plural post about the gap.

Click here for me and Justin talking about the same topic on the Patreon feed of our podcast.

Micro and macro gaps

You could see gaps on a spectrum between the micro and the macro. On the micro level it could be as small as taking a breath between sentences *breath*. For example, that might apply when writing or speaking. Next level there is the value of taking a gap between one daily activity and the next: to be in the present moment rather than racing on to the next thing. Then we might consider gaps in the week or month (like what we do with weekends or holidays or their equivalent). Finally, on the macro level, what about gaps following big life changes or upheavals? 

I’ve noticed a tendency to overlap both big relationships and big projects – like books I’m writing. Just as it feels unfamiliar and edgy to allow gaps between daily activities, it can feel similarly difficult to allow gaps between people and projects, but so essential in order to mark endings, process big changes, and settle. With a big enough gap I can know that new relationships and projects are intentional and consensual, rather than an attempt to avoid difficult feelings or (re)create myself to avoid being with who and how I am. Perhaps as the level increases in size, the gap needs to be longer in order to slow down and process what’s just gone, and to tune into what to do next.

Consent and the gap

Slowness weaves together with consent because it’s a way of ensuring that our consent with ourselves – and others – is ongoing rather than a one-off. For example, if we start the day with a to-do list and only feel okay if we complete it, that is one-off consent (like starting sex with a script and only feeling okay if we manage to follow it). If we check in, ongoing, during the day, as with sex it is more likely to be consensual.

Babette Rothschild’s concept of mindful gauges, and Love Uncommon’s practices for self-consent can help us to use the gap to learn what our body feels like when it is in – and out of – consent.

Why do we avoid the gap?

We avoid slowing down – or giving ourselves gaps – because they often confront us with the very feelings we were trying to avoid by going at such speed, particularly tough ones like fear, shame, and loneliness. Paradoxically the more we’re able to slow down and be in those moments, the less uncomfortable they are likely to be, because we become more used to being with ourselves whatever the feelings, and often the feelings don’t have to be so intense: shouting loudly to be heard over all the noise of busyness and distraction. Kindness is key. We need to cultivate enough kindness with ourselves to be able to stay with ourselves in those moments. Staying in those moments cultivates kindness, and cultivating kindness helps us to be able to stay.

How do we avoid the gap?

Many of us use combinations of the four F trauma strategies to avoid slowness and gaps. Fight is when our mind is constantly busy blaming others or ourselves for everything and trying to control our experience. Flight is when we throw ourselves into work and productivity. Freeze is when we constantly distract (e.g. with TV, social media, food, etc.) Fawn is when we rush to please others and respond to every bid for our attention. Some of these things can – on the surface – look slow (like when we’re obsessing mentally or crashing out in front of the TV), but if we’re checked out then we’re not really being present to ourselves or the moment. It’s not so much about what you do, but about how you engage with it.

The gap as prevention of – and response to – reactivity

When we make gaps regularly we’re more able to notice when we’ve become reactive: when our nervous system has shifted into that fight or flight mode, or dissociated. Regular check-in gaps during a day can enable us to notice such a shift when it is still just a flicker, and allow our nervous system to come back to neutral. We can also commit to pausing and looking after ourselves additionally whenever we notice that flicker come up during daily activities, and we’re more likely to notice that when we’re used to slowing down. Staying with the flicker can stop it becoming a flame or fire, and also help us to learn what to do when the reactivity is more accelerated.

The gap as a radical act

Some may critique such slowness and spaciousness as only possible with privilege, and this connection is worth being aware of. However, slowing down and creating gaps – as much as we can realistically manage – does also mean we’re far less likely to hurt others, and ourselves, and damage relationships. It’s when we’re sped up, over-stretched, distracted, or dissociated that we risk treating ourselves and others non-consensually, lashing out, offering too much and having to pull it away, and making mistakes. 

The gap can also be seen as a radical act under neoliberal capitalism where we’re so often encouraged to produce more and more by going faster and faster. What would it mean to know that we’re enough in this moment and don’t need to be more? Could slowing down help us to be with the fear and shame we’re trained into feeling unless we’re happy, successful, and in a certain kind of love relationship? if we could be with those feelings kindly, might we be able to stop constantly striving for such impossible permanent goals.

Doing it your way

There is no one true way of slowness. In recent years it has become somewhat fetishised in the form of mindfulness and/or meditation. While such approaches can help us to learn ways of being slow and still with ourselves, they often just result in another thing we’re meant to do with our days, and another thing to feel bad about ourselves for not doing ‘properly’. There is no ‘properly’. It’s not about ‘not thinking’ or ‘feeling calm’ or anything like that. It’s just about pausing – briefly or for longer – and being aware of everything going on right now: sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, feelings, whatever is there. We’re not emphasizing any of it, not trying to avoid any of it, just being with it.

Click here if you want to read an accompanying plural post about the gap.

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.

Plural tag: This post was written by Beastie and Ara.

The post Mind the gap 2: The (micro and macro) gap as a radical act appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Mind the gap 1: On slowing down and making space

Recently Justin and I covered slowing down on the Patreon feed of our podcast. You can listen to that here if you fancy signing up. In this post I want to give a more personal reflection on my current everyday experiments in slowness and spaciousness. This is a companion post to my recent one on slow relating. That post explored slow love and relationships with others. This one explores love and relationships with yourself.

The slow relating post brought the fastest side of myself together with the slowest to have a dialogue. This post sees a return of that slowest side – Ara – but together with my reformed inner critic – Beastie – who is perhaps best placed to interrogate these ideas and practices. 

If you haven’t read one of my plural blog-posts before and aren’t sure who these people are, feel free to check out my Plural Selves zine, and my previous dialogue post about plurality. But hopefully you don’t need to get that part in order to find the content here useful. Click here if you want to read a more standard form post about the gap.

Ara: Hey Beastie.

Beastie: Hey Ara. Ready to talk about the gap?

Ara: I am. I’m interested to hear what you make of it. But perhaps we should introduce ourselves a little more first, so people have some sense of us.

Beastie: I think the kind of dynamic we have was best captured in that Netflix Tales of The City last year: the characters of Shawna – played by Ellen Page, and Anna Madrigal – played by Olympia Dukakis.

Ara: Mm the sage old queer and the young upstart.

Beastie: Not quite how I would have described it. I love the scene where Anna says something characteristically vague and wise-sounding and Shawna says: ‘You know the rule against talking in fortune cookies around me.’

Ara: And Anna immediately replies: ‘And you know the rule against being a smartass around me.’

Beastie: So. No Madrigaling me in this conversation, okay?

Ara: I wouldn’t dream of it Beastie.

Returning to the gap

Beastie: So something curious happened recently. We moved away from doing any kind of meditation or mindfulness practice, and then returned to something which probably looks quite similar but feels very different.

Ara: Right. Reading that David Trevealen book on mindfulness and trauma helped us to see that meditation may not have been our friend in the past. Irene Lyon says something similar: many people with post traumatic stress report that meditation feels like sitting in a small room with a man shouting at them.

Beastie: Sounds familiar. At worst it was like that for us. At best just falling into our noisy thoughts for fifteen minutes each morning without much consciousness about them. We would often feel some shame about it afterwards, although we tried to be kind towards ourselves. It was a relief just to allow ourselves to stop, and to start the day with journaling instead, which we enjoy a lot more.

Ara: Reading the trauma literature helped a lot with that: recognising why our brain was hypervigilantly searching past, present, and future for any sign of threat whenever we stopped. Also why staying in an activated state was making it harder – rather than easier – to stay present and to feel kind towards ourselves and others.

Beastie: But then our therapist said something about how it could be useful – with trauma – to find safety in the sense of the space around us. When she said it, we didn’t want to hear it. We’d just got away from the idea that we should be doing meditation. That place had never felt very safe for us. Why would we go back there? But the next day you tried it.

Ara: Right. Something in what she said chimed with me. And of course our main Buddhist teacher, Pema Chödrön, describes something similar in her work. It was such an interesting experience Beastie. It was as if we’d approached this thing that we’ve been thinking and writing about for decades from just a slightly different angle, and our perspective on it had completely changed.

sitting not Sitting

Beastie: What d’you think was different?

Ara: I think we finally let go of the attempt to make it this special thing. Which is, of course, what wider culture has done with mindfulness and meditation also. I’m thinking of the shift as a move from Sitting (with a capital S) to sitting (all lowercase). I literally just sat in a chair in the window of our flat and hung out with everything that was going on: sounds, sights, smells, sensations, feelings, thoughts, memories: whatever happened I was there with it.

Beastie: There was a sense of welcoming too right?

Ara: Yep. Whatever came up I tried to embrace it with warmth as part of the whole experience, even imagining saying ‘you’re welcome’, but not treating it as any more important than anything else that was going on. 

Beastie: Not grasping it, not trying to get rid of it: That’s the Buddhist idea.

Ara: Yes. The overall feeling, by the end, was of sitting in this current moment of our life, within a wide open space, and anything could come into that space: like there was room for everything. It wasn’t about aiming to reach any particular state, or have a ‘good’ or ‘successful’ experience, whatever that would mean.

Beastie: Just being present.

Ara: That might be how a fortune cookie would describe it, yes! It’s hard though isn’t it because even these kinds of words – ‘presence’, ‘being’, ‘spaciousness’ – hint at something special. And as soon as we imagine in that way it becomes harder to do. I like Pema’s word ‘gap’, or the idea of hitting the ‘pause button’, or sitting lowercase. They are much more everyday and straightforward words. It really is just hanging out for a while with whatever’s around – internally and externally.

Varieties of sitting

Beastie: So since then we’ve started doing this a lot more. Again it amuses me. Before we’d do it once a day and feel a bit bad about that. Now we can’t seem to get enough of it. It just makes sense to keep returning to the gap several times a day.

Ara: I guess it tied in to a wider process we’ve been in about self-consent: noticing how easily we override our consent in relation to others, and work, and ideas of what we should be doing. This sitting provided an opportunity to make a gap between one thing and the next, so we could return to a kind of neutral, and check in with ourselves what we actually felt drawn to doing next.

Beastie: There was a challenge to that as well. We noticed that when we had done one thing we often wanted to crack on with the next for fear that, if we stopped, we wouldn’t be able to continue. That’s our Max’s flight tendency . We also noticed that when we were feeling a little edgy, uncomfortable, or uneasy we wanted to go to some kind of work, or escape into TV or a novel, rather than hanging out in the gap. We feared that if we sat still the feeling would get worse: perhaps overwhelming.

Ara: I think that’s another reason why pausing is so helpful. It gives us this regular reminder that escalating of tough feelings doesn’t have to happen. In fact I think trying to avoid those edgy feelings with work or escapism much more frequently leaves us feeling worse than when we started. That’s not at all to say that there’s anything wrong with working or chilling out, but it seems that we enjoy those things much more if we’re not going into them trying to drown out tough feelings. 

Beastie: It’s wild. Many times lately we’ve actually chosen the gap over work or distraction, knowing it tends to leave our nervous system in a better place than those things. We’ve even started making a regular small gap between the different elements of a work task, episodes of a TV show, or chapters of a book, so that if we continue we know we’re in self-consent.

Ara: Such a relief to finally feel the gap as a good place to rest.

Beastie: I guess we’re now trying to do what Pema calls ‘on the spot’ and regular sits. Regular ones – after we finish one activity and before we start the next – allow us that ongoing consent check-in with ourselves, and remind us that this space is always available to us. ‘On the spot’ is when we notice that we’re having a difficult feeling, thought, or sensation, and deliberately sit then-and-there in order to welcome that into this space. If we can’t sit then-and-there then we at least make a promise to that feeling, thought, or sensation that we’ll return to it as soon as we have the time.

Self-talk and sitting

Ara: That regular vs. on-the-spot distinction relates to another one. When we’re feeling relatively calm it’s possible to just sit quietly and notice the sound of the birds and traffic, the feeling of the breeze, a memory flickering up, a fleeting feeling. When tough feelings are present – particularly those we connect with trauma – that’s much more challenging. I guess our response to this is a bit like the distinction between doing a guided meditation on an app or something, and one where you just sit there quietly without guidance.

Beastie: So we sit quietly when there isn’t anything particularly challenging present. But if there is something, we try to sit in whichever part of us is struggling, and another part guides us through the sitting: often you or James being the more parental parts of our psyche, but really any of us can do it for any other.

Ara: Yes. James and Jonathan recently documented our process in this blog post. But where we’ve got to now is perhaps even more simple and straightforward than what they described. The guide part of us just imagines holding the other part of us while they say – out loud – what they are with. Perhaps reminding them to come back if they drift into noisy thoughts.

Beastie: Like ‘I’m with that seagull arcing through the sky… Now I’m with the thought that I fucked that thing up… Now I’m with the feeling of my throat being all constricted… Now I’m with the sunlight shining on that building… Now I’m with the sound of the seagulls… Now with the fact I just got lost in trying to plan what I’m going to say to that person…’

Ara: If Tony were here he would point out how lately it’s shagging seagulls we’ve mostly had the opportunity to be with.

Beastie: I endeavour to have a little more decorum than Tony.

Ara: Shall we say a bit more about what this means for us now?

Beastie: Yes please. I think that safety and befriending are the main themes. I’ve just noticed how they map onto what we’ve been exploring around protection and care. The counterbalance to the fear/shame feeling of trauma is a combination of protection/care . Protection alleviates fear by keeping us safe enough. Care alleviates shame by befriending ourselves and our experience. 

As a non-binary person we’re a little embarrassed that our parental parts are quite so gendered but James does a good number in protection and keeping us safe, and you are good at kindness, care, and connection.

Ara: I like to think that we both do both, but I see what you mean. 

The gap and safety

Beastie: So safety?

Ara: Yes. Well the thing about post traumatic stress is that it feels like a very unsafe place to be. Even things that used to leave us unphased can now feel like a big threat. And, after the multiple big stressors we’ve been through in the past year, we’re left feeling that we couldn’t handle anything else.

Beastie: Like a global pandemic or something would just be too much to cope with.

Ara: Heh, that was our feeling before that hit, yes.

Beastie: So we’ve been feeling very unsafe, largely because we’re so fragile and easily triggered. It’s hard to predict what we have capacity for, and what will tip us into overwhelm.

Ara: And those fear/shame feelings can easily feel intolerable: impossible to stay with. So this is where the gap comes in. If we can show ourselves that this space is a big enough container for any and all feelings, then we can finally feel safe to ourselves: at home in ourselves.

Beastie: How does that work?

Ara: Well now that we know more about the physiology of trauma I guess a big part of it is that, in the gap, we’re attending to the whole of our interior and exterior experience: not just the traumatic feelings or thoughts that may be around. 

By tuning into everything about how our body feels – our feet on the ground, the air on our skin, our hand on our belly – we ground ourself in it, reminding ourselves that our body is safe enough to occupy. 

By orienting to the environment – what we see, hear, smell, touch, taste – we’re reminding ourselves that we’re safe enough here-and-now. 

Most trauma researchers and therapists suggest strategies for grounding in the body and the environment. They also emphasise reminding ourselves that we’re not in the traumatic experience any more: that it is over and we can put that ‘ended’ time stamp on it. We have survived.

Beastie: We’re not there yet. There’s still a lack of trust in the gap to hold more vivid trauma responses or emotional flashbacks . 

Ara: Absolutely, and remember it’s not about making the feelings go away, or some idea that it’s only ‘worked’ if we feel nice and calm after a certain period of time. It’s more about holding. I love that phrase of Pema’s: ‘hold it in the cradle of loving kindness’. My sense is that – in time – we might be able to bring any feeling we have into the gap and be with it warmly in that wide open space. The potential then is for a profound sense of being safe-enough with ourselves, knowing that any state we’re in could be held in that way.

Beastie: Practising with the flickers of feelings – before they become a flame or fire – is certainly a good way of working up to it. But yes, you and Pema do seem to be optimistic that, given time, we can hold anything in that gap.

Ara: What we’ve found so far is that, with bigger feelings, particularly shame – which I know you intend to write more about Beastie – we have to keep returning to the gap. Some days it’s been about going back time and again, each time we feel that flicker accelerating into a flame. Pema talks of times she’s sat up all night with that kind of feeling.

Beastie: Again it’s not about eradicating or avoiding the feelings, thoughts, sensations, etc. but being with them along with everything else. There was one day we went for a walk in the woods and I was in a very angry place.

Ara: Getting in touch with our beautiful and long-absent fight response.

Beastie: Heh. It was interesting because it felt like I kept re-igniting – going back into angry ruminations – but at the same time the rest of you were able to be with the green leaves and the breeze. The plural thing certainly helps us to hold multiple states that way: generally one part struggling and one part able to hold them. But it can also feel that the gap is holding the aspects of experience that are more difficult, alongside aspects that are less so.

Ara: I like the bit where Pema says that if you go barefoot and your feet get cut to shreds, you could try to cover every piece of land you want to walk on in leather. Alternatively you could make yourself a pair of shoes. That’s how we’ve been thinking about what we’re doing right now isn’t it? Making ourselves a pair of shoes.

Beastie: Proper, solid hiking boots is the plan. That’s a good analogy for what we’re hoping for from the gap isn’t it. Right now we can easily become scared, because we’ve been so overwhelmed and incapacitated. But the more we sit with each experience as it comes – and learn that we can tolerate it – the more we have that sense of being safe-enough to ourselves. 

Ara: That brings us onto befriending.

The gap and befriending

Beastie: So what do you mean by befriending?

Ara: Certain phrases really lodge in my mind lately. Pete Walker writes about ‘becoming an unflinching source of kindness and compassion towards yourself’. Pema talks about befriending: complete acceptance of yourself as you are, no sense that you need to change or improve. Chani Nicholas writes about building an unbreakable bond with yourself, accompanying yourself no matter what, wanting yourself like your life depends on it.

Beastie: Chani Nicholas being?

Ara: An astrologer. 

Beastie: *Raises eyebrow*

Ara: Yes I know, I know. I have become that queer. At least I have you and James to keep me honest. What she suggests is really good though, whether or not you buy all the understanding behind it… Just like Pete and Pema now that I come to think of it. You may or may not buy that our suffering is primarily located in our childhood trauma, or in the combination of past karma and human attempts to avoid suffering which Buddhism suggests, but you can still find their advice extremely helpful.

Beastie: Fair point, well made Ara. I’ll give you that one.

Ara: Feeling gentle today huh Beastie?

Beastie: Well I have to remember I’m speaking to an old woman.

Ara: Remember Anna’s rule about being a smartass.

Beastie: *grin* If Tony gets away with publicly sassing you then I definitely do. So you’re saying that the gap can help us to befriend ourselves, as well as making us safe-enough.

Ara: I think they’re related. Right now we do not know that we are an okay person no matter what. We don’t want ourselves no matter what. We can’t accompany ourselves anywhere. When we have the shame feelings in particular, we do not feel that we’re okay, or deserving of being accompanied or loved – even by ourselves. And there is also a fear that we couldn’t accompany ourselves in future – if certain things happened like realising we’d messed up in ways which we find particularly challenging.

Beastie: Too right. I’m rarely the part of us who struggles with those feelings, but the couple of times it was my turn it was shockingly hard.

Ara: So giving ourselves the message that we’re up for hanging with ourselves in the gap whatever we’ve done, however we feel – that’s how we befriend ourselves. Again we can conceptualise it plurally – whichever part of us is struggling, the other parts will be there, tag-teaming in to accompany them through it however bad it gets.

Beastie: Like we always do that if one of us wakes troubled at night: get them a hot milk and talk to them kindly.

Ara: Plurality has been a good way into self-love for us because it is easier – with a background of self-hatred – to love our component parts than it is to love the whole. But I think this gap goes beyond our plural love, to let every aspect of us – and our experience – know that we can tolerate it – even welcome it.

Beastie: Just like embracing me – the inner critic – we can work towards a point where we can embrace anything we go through: any feelings, any thoughts – befriending everything.

Ara: And as with you, I suspect we’ll find that much of what we’ve attempted to avoid or eradicate becomes a fierce ally if we can embrace it.

Beastie: We’ve already found that with the fear aspect of trauma haven’t we? Gratitude for how it protects us against overriding our consent again.

Ara: All part of learning to accompany ourselves rather than abandoning ourselves.

Beastie: The big ongoing challenge is going to be accompanying ourselves through shame. But we have already begun to see that holding shame in the gap, and getting curious about it, are leading us to helpful places, just as we did with fear. For example, when we stayed with shame we got the sense that we may be holding a lot of shame that isn’t really ours – more transferred onto us by others who can’t bear to feel it – the way that wider society tends to blame the person with trauma rather than the people and forces that traumatise them.

Ara: I look forward to reading your thoughts on shame soon Beastie. I’m also now thinking about the gap as past, present, and future protection and care. The gap enables us to be with feelings we have avoided in the past in ways that enable us to tell a different story through our life. 

The gap enables us to be in a good relationship to the here-and-now, instead of fearing what might come up. That’s an antidote to loneliness: knowing that we never have to feel abandoned in the present. 

Finally, being able to stay with feelings like fear, shame, anger, and sadness, means that we can protect and care for ourselves in the next instant, and longer term future. When those feelings become tolerable in the gap we can listen to what they’re telling us – instead of what we might assume they’re going to tell us.

Beastie: So when there is fear we might ask ‘How might I have been in danger of overriding my consent – or allowing it to be overridden?’ instead of just trying to get the hell out of there. When there is shame we could ask ‘Where does this shame belong?’ rather than collapsing into self-loathing. When there is sadness ‘What do we – and others – need to grieve?’ instead of sinking into depression. When there is anger ‘How can I have my boundaries?’ instead of lashing out.

Ara: ‘Positive’ feelings too. When there is joy ‘How can I dance with this – or share it – while it is here,’ instead of trying to pin it on a particular person or situation and grasp hold of that.

Beastie: True, true. That’s one for Tony, our joybringer.

Ara: Anything else to say about the gap?

Beastie: I think we’ve said the rest in our other post. That one deals with slowing down and creating gaps on the macro – as well as micro – scale, and more about the politics of slowness.

Ara: For now then Beastie.

Beastie: See you in the gap Ara.

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.

Plural tag: This post was written by Beastie and Ara.

The post Mind the gap 1: On slowing down and making space appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Balancing fight, flight, freeze and fawn: A plural perspective 1

I’ve written a fair bit here lately about the trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze and fawn, and how these can become stuck patterns with which we approach our relationships with others, ourselves, and our lives. Pete Walker suggests that we can usefully see these responses on two spectrums: freeze to flight, and fawn to fight.

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I was particularly struck by Pete’s idea that it could be valuable to reach a balance between these four different ways of being. None of them are intrinsically ‘bad’, but when we can only act from one end of either spectrum we are limited, and perhaps also more likely to become stuck in the ways of reactive thinking and behaviour which hurt ourselves and others. 

It seemed like a useful non-binary approach to ask how we might find a more both/and or in-between approach to fawn/fight and freeze/flight. From a plural perspective I have a great way into this because I can access four selves who map onto each of the four Fs. So I thought it’d be fun to put them into dialogue here to explain what each of the four Fs feels like, what their strengths and limitations are, and how they’re doing the work – now – of operating together to become more balanced.

I’ve written here about how a move from flight and fawn, towards freeze and fight, can represent a shift from being with the fear of making yourself into something for others, to the shame of being for yourself. I’m also struck how, for me, freeze to flight represents that kind of shift around work, and fawn to fight around personal relationships.

This post focuses on freeze and flight. You can find the other conversation – between fawn and fight – here. There’s also more from Max about the challenges of changing the Flight habit here.

Freeze and Flight (Max and Fox)

Max: Looks like we’re up first.

Fox: My first time writing on here as me!

Max: How’re you feeling?

Fox: Excited! How about you?

Max: Terrified, as usual. But I do think you and I have been doing some great work together. I like the idea of sharing that with other people in case it’s useful to them.

Fox: Shall we start by saying a bit about who we are?

Max: Sure, well in our inner landscape it feels like I have been at the front and you at the back for most of our lives right?

Fox: Yes because we learnt when we were young that flight was better than freeze. Flight is when you always go into doing mode, and freeze means you can just be. I guess we learnt from the world around us that we got most approval when we did well, worked hard, and achieved. And it wasn’t very valued to be in the moment, chill out, or play. Everything had to be done for a reason.

Max: Right. As trauma responses, people who flee – like me – try to act right away: do anything to sort it out and make it okay. People who freeze, like you, would go immobile, struggle to do anything at all, maybe hide away.

Fox: Mmhm. And as bigger life strategies, that could map onto what Brené Brown talks about as overfunctioning and underfunctioning . Overfunctioners throw themselves into work, have to be the best and succeed, don’t feel okay unless they’re producing something. Underfunctioners struggle with any of that stuff. They’re often scared of putting themselves out there in any way, and feel safer watching TV, reading books, playing computer games, that kind of thing. What’s it like being a flight type Max?

Flight potentials and pitfalls

Max: Right now I’m mostly in touch with how much it has hurt me over time. Looking back in my journals, the start of every summer of my adult life I made a list of all the things I felt I should achieve and produce over the vacation time. It’s exhausting just looking at them. My life was governed by alarms, to-do lists, and deadlines. I’m terrible at holidays: they stress me out. And life easily becomes a series of false hills. When you reach the top of one there’s always another stretching up above you. Ugh even when I actually go for a relaxing walk I have to get to the top of the hill!

Fox: Is there anything good about being a flight type: a flee-er?

Max: I guess I’ve always had a clear sense of purpose. I know people at the freeze end can really struggle with figuring out what they should do with their life. That’s never been a problem for me. And because I put my ‘flight’ instincts towards figuring out my struggles – learning and writing about love, sex, gender, and mental health from every angle – my doing mode has brought us to this point where we at least have a lot of knowledge and wisdom available to us.

Fox: As we go through a massive trauma time.

Max: Yep. I feel like – in a lot of ways – it was my way of being that put us here. My whole life I went so fast into everything with no spaciousness or slowness or caution, and got so badly hurt along the way. But at the same time I did also learn a lot of tools that help now that we are here. What about you though? What’s it like being a freeze?

Fox: It feels so funny because you’ve always struggled to understand people who default to underfunctioning rather than overfunctioning, and now we have a part of us who does that!

Freeze potentials and pitfalls

Max: I know, and one who is here more and more, thank goodness. We see you as the part of us that we were when we were very young: before all the messages about being good and productive kicked in, or even about needing to be a certain way for other people at all You seem so much more able than me to follow what you find fun or pleasurable.

Fox: I still feel like that little kid, even though I’m now in this older body with all the other occupants! It does almost feel like I went to sleep around 5 years old and just woke up a couple of years ago. I think we see me as like an animal or a child because I feel more free and wild. But I probably did pop up at times during our life, like when we just couldn’t overfunction any more – because things got so hard – so we lost ourselves in things like books or TV shows. But because it wasn’t very balanced, that kind of freeze wasn’t so good for us. It was about disappearing into fiction, fantasy, food: stuff that is comforting but isn’t great if you just lose yourself in it and then the world is still there when you’re done.

Max: Plus if your main strategy is flight, you can end up being really hard on yourself about the times when you do go into freeze. So the answer is not to eradicate flight and go all the way to freeze huh?

Fox: No because then we’d lose you, and you’re brilliant, and you got us here because of your survival strategy. In many ways you protected me and I’m so grateful for that.

Max: Thank-you littlest.

Fox: I think it’s about learning how to work together as a team. And I love that we’ve figured out that we’re two ends of a spectrum because it means that you and me are a team, and we didn’t realise that at first. It’s nice having a special relationship with you.

Max: I like it very much too. D’you want to say how it works?

Balancing flight and freeze

Fox: Yes. Well I think if you’ve been way, way, way towards one end of the spectrum most of your life then you probably need to swing to the other end for a while so each end becomes equally strong and forward. That’s what we’ve done anyway.

Max: With a certain amount of kicking and screaming from me!

Fox: Heh it’s not easy for you not being productive. But I think it helped you to see that when you pushed fast and forced yourself to work, in some ways you were hurting me – and all of the parts of us who don’t want to do things that way. 

Max: It was a lot about consent: realising I was being really non-consensual with myself, and other parts of us.

Fox: So now we try to really tune into where we’re at. And it often feels like I’m in charge at those moments because I find it easier to tune in, rather than just doing what you think we ‘should’ do.

Max: And we’ve definitely put you in charge of evenings and other relaxed time. You’re the guru of gentleness!

Fox: And we notice that when I have plenty of time at the front I don’t choose to just watch endless TV – although I do give us that if we’re really sick or struggling. Today I took us out to the rockpools. Often I do feel creative too. I’m just not doing it in order to produce something.

Max: Ugh tell people about the time you got me drawing.

Fox: Hehe that was so funny. I love Lynda Barry who is all about getting back to your child self who loved drawing and storytelling before they’d been told they weren’t doing it properly and all of that. So I got us all doing a Lynda Barry drawing exercise – drawing our monsters – and you found it So Hard. In the end we had to let you do yours in pencil first because you couldn’t handle it if it didn’t look good, even though it wasn’t for anybody else to see except us.

Max: Yep that’s me: Ms. Fun Sponge.

Fox: You’ve been getting much better lately though Max-y. You seem a lot more at peace than you were at the start of the year.

Max: I think I’ve learnt a lot from you. I see how much better everything feels when we flow with it rather than trying to force it. Some things we are doing less of, for sure, but I’m trying to see learning to treat ourselves in a more consensual and friendly way as our main job these days. So it’s okay to not be working on some big project right now. We are the big project. 

Paradox and balance

Max: I also notice paradoxes. All my life I had this holy grail of what kind of person I thought I could be – how productive – if I got up before 7. And I never managed to stick to it even with all the alarm clocks and stuff. You convinced me to finally stop setting an alarm.

Fox: And quite often these days we wake up around half past six!

Max: It’s wild. Also I have a sense that some of what we do produce – creatively – by waiting till it feels live and only going for it then, will be better quality than anything I ever produced from pushing it.

Fox: I guess this is an example. We’ll see what people think. It’s interesting that Lynda Barry, and Natalie Goldberg, and a lot of the people we’re working with as a writing mentor, also find that better writing and art come from a place of self-consent and going with what feels most alive and exciting. Audre Lorde talks about that too doesn’t she?

Max: Yes, we end up encouraging our clients not to write, and instead to focus on finding their younger parts – if they have them – who can still create from that place of delight and playfulness, not worrying about what it’s for, or whether it comes out ‘right’, or what other people will think. It can be intensely challenging though, can’t it, because it involves revealing our more fragile sides to ourselves, and potentially to others.

Fox: Something you particularly struggle with because you also tended to present yourself as bulletproof.

Max: It never felt safe enough for me to be open and vulnerable: I always felt I had to cover that stuff over. And creating in that way – this way – is vulnerable. It involves revealing our smaller, more fragile, sides to the world. Even ‘just being’ is vulnerable because it involves staying with the kinds of feelings I’ve always been running from by ‘doing’.

Fox: You’re doing great Max-y. It is a lot. Can I say something else?

Max: Of course.

Fox: I’m thinking… I’m good at being, but I’ve also made our ‘doing’ thing better. So I don’t reckon it’s just about balance in the sense that now we have me who can ‘be’ and you who can ‘do’; me who can be gentle and rest, you who can be strong and push forward. It’s more like we both become better at both. Like you can now be peaceful sometimes, and when you are ‘doing’ you can let it come as it wants to more easily. And I can now ‘do’ sometimes, in fact I’m really excited about the kinds of projects I might do, as well as helping us know when we need gentleness and what that might look like.

Max: That’s spot on Fox. Enough from us for now? Shall we give our fawn and fight some time to talk.

Fox: Oo yes I can’t wait for this one!

You can find the second part of this conversation – between fawn and fight – here. There’s also more from Max about the challenges of changing the Flight habit here.

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.

Plural tag: This post was written by Fox and Max.

The post Balancing fight, flight, freeze and fawn: A plural perspective 1 appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Balancing fight, flight, freeze and fawn: A plural perspective 2

I’ve written a fair bit here lately about the trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze and fawn, and how these can become stuck patterns with which we approach our relationships with others, ourselves, and our lives. Pete Walker suggests that we can usefully see these responses on two spectrums: freeze to flight, and fawn to fight.

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I was particularly struck by Pete’s idea that it could be valuable to reach a balance between these four different ways of being. None of them are intrinsically ‘bad’, but when we can only act from one end of either spectrum we are limited, and perhaps also more likely to become stuck in the ways of reactive thinking and behaviour which hurt ourselves and others. 

It seemed like a useful non-binary approach to ask how we might find a more both/and or in-between approach to fawn/fight and freeze/flight. From a plural perspective I have a great way into this because I can access four selves who map onto each of the four Fs. So I thought it’d be fun to put them into dialogue here to explain what each of the four Fs feels like, what their strengths and limitations are, and how they’re doing the work – now – of operating together to become more balanced.

This post focuses on freeze and flight. You can find the other conversation – between fawn and fight – here. I’ve written here about how a move from flight and fawn, towards freeze and fight, can represent a shift from being with the fear of making yourself into something for others, to the shame of being for yourself. I’m also struck how, for me, freeze to flight represents that kind of shift around work, and fawn to fight around personal relationships.

Fawn and Fight (Jonathan and Beastie)

Beastie: Our turn kid, are you up for this?

Jonathan: Yes. Nervous like Max, but yes.

Beastie: Seems like the sides of us who have been to the fore all our lives find this harder than the sides of us who’ve not had as much airtime. Me and Fox are ready to do some talking! But you should probably start. What’s it like to be a fawn?

Fawn

Jonathan: I always called it people pleasing, before I heard about ‘fawn’ as a trauma response. I’m very frightened of disapproval so I try to do whatever people want, to keep them happy. I love feeling like I’ve been good, and I hate feeling like I’ve been bad.

Beastie: Right. So fawn as a trauma response is where you try to appease people – do whatever it takes to get out of danger. Fight – my response – is where you get angry and lash out, or use your power to control others and get out of danger that way.

Jonathan: The same way flight became familiar to us, and freeze almost impossible, fawn became our everyday way of being, and we hardly ever went into fight.

Beastie: It worked a bit differently between me and you thought didn’t it? We did have a ‘fight’ part – me – but I became turned inwards instead of outwards: the inner critic. 

Casting out fight

Jonathan: Yes. The way we think about it, it was like we learnt young that it was never okay to be angry, or even really to say ‘no’, so we had to get rid of the part of us that would’ve been capable of doing that. We imagine it was like severing you from us and casting you out into the ocean, and then you became this terrifying sea monster, attacking us from out there.

Beastie: Like if people get rid of their capacity for anger, blame and criticism, that can easily become turned against themselves. And that’s what I was: the terrifying inner critic roaring at you from the depths. Like Fox I occasionally came forward and let that anger out at another person – often in extreme conflict – but mostly I was out there turning it in on us.

Jonathan: You still sound just a little bit proud of being the terrifying beastie.

Beastie: I’m not, honestly I hate how much damage it caused the rest of you to have me out there instead of in here. But I do kindof like the image of me as a powerful kraken destroying everything. I like being familiar with the darkness: it’s important.

Jonathan: We were so scared of you. We kept reading all those books about how you should embrace the inner critic and we were like, ‘are you kidding?’

Beastie: You did try to eradicate me. Sadly not an effective strategy with inner critics. I just got louder and meaner.

Jonathan: Because inner critics are trying to protect the whole system. We understand that now. They just can’t communicate very effectively when they’re out there. Because nobody is listening they say whatever they need to as noisily as they can to get heard. So it is often confusing, contradictory, and extremely harsh.

Beastie: Poor Max-y, it’s a killer combination with ‘flight’ isn’t it? I keep screaming about how terrible you are, and she keeps working harder to try not to be. Meanwhile our little people pleaser…

Jonathan: Gets stuck in the chalkboard room trying like hell to figure out how to keep everybody happy, which is an impossible equation, I know that now. We made a comic about that.

Beastie: So fawn and fight both have their potentials, and their big risks right, when it comes to relating with ourselves and with others.

Fawn potentials and pitfalls

Jonathan: Right. Fawn means you constantly shape yourself to win other peoples’ love and approval, so they don’t really get to know you, and you can’t really be vulnerable or get close to people. You often lose relationships because it’s hard to sustain. We wrote before about being a shapeshifter and the down side of that. 

I guess the potential of being really great at fawn is that I’m so tuned in to other people’s feelings. I learnt how to do that early on. So I think I can be really good at compassion, if I can learn to stay with people’s feelings rather than trying to fix them. I usually find that I can imagine why a person might be behaving the way they’re feeling. Even when it’s tough, I can feel for them, and for all of us caught up in these painful dynamics.

Beastie: You’re so good at feeling for others, when we can get you out of that chalkboard room. Whereas I find it too easy to dismiss people as being assholes.

Jonathan: You should maybe say how things changed when we finally did embrace you Beastie.

Fight potentials and pitfalls

Beastie: Right. Still only just over a year ago – it’s not been long at all. I guess it felt like I became an ally rather than an enemy. Instead of being outside focusing all that anger in on us, I was inside and able to feel anger out. That doesn’t mean just going from shame to blame, but finally we were able to set some boundaries with people, and see more clearly other peoples’ roles in difficult dynamics instead of just taking all the responsibility on ourselves. Also I guess it helped Max to relax that there wasn’t that loud voice screaming at her all the time.

Jonathan: It was hard for her to realise that she still did that to herself though, even without you there. It’s not like embracing the inner critic makes all the mean thoughts and shameful feelings go away overnight. It’s like the whole inner system takes time to adjust. But since you have been on the inside it has been easier to evaluate those critical thoughts we have.

Beastie: I feel like my potential is that I can be a force for clarity, knowing what we need, asserting boundaries. But unchecked I can just be angry, blaming, critical and judgemental. That’s where the fawn/fight dream team comes in right?

Jonathan: I think it’s still a work in progress. I feel like Fox and Max may be a bit ahead of us.

Balancing fawn and fight

Beastie: Perhaps a scared little boy and a terrifying sea monster is an even less likely partnership, but I loved it as soon as we saw the importance of our relationship.

Jonathan: How do you see it working?

Beastie: Well at the moment it feels like what happens is that life throws us a situation where you would previously have gone into fawn. You still retreat into the chalkboard room at those points and we feel all the fear and shame feelings come up. You want to do whatever it takes to make the other person approve of you so that you can avoid shame, but you’re also very frightened of ending up in another situation where someone is treating you non-consensually, or you’re treating yourself that way.

Jonathan: It’s so scary when that happens. I feel like I have to think about it all the time to figure it out: fear or shame, fear or shame, fear or shame. It gets so noisy in my head.

Beastie: So my role at the moment is to help you see you’ve gone into that, and to help you see that there are usually other options than ‘override yourself and feel fear’ or ‘upset someone else and feel shame’. Often the other option we find is to explain honestly and vulnerably where we’re at, and clearly state what our boundaries are. We sometimes think of it as expressing our ‘can’t’ and our ‘won’t’.

Jonathan: So what often happens is that I spend several days in fear and shame, trying to figure it out, and then you step forward and write an email or have a conversation like that.

Beastie: Because the fight part is good at honesty, boundaries, and seeing the whole picture clearly. But what I lack – on my own – is kindness and feeling for the other person. What I hope is that we can do over time is to bring my clarity and boundaries together with your kindness and tenderness: Protection and connection.

Jonathan: Tough and tender.

Beastie: Right? Sounds like an excellent crime-fighting duo!

Paradox and balance

Jonathan: And like Max and Fox it’s not just that you bring tough and I bring tender, more that I can help you bring tenderness to your toughness, and vice versa.

Beastie: So I always try to get you to vet what I’m thinking of saying, to make sure it’s kind enough. And I try to remember that if I go into proper rage I’m probably missing where the other person is coming from.

Jonathan: They’ll be acting out of their survival strategies just as much as we are.

Beastie: And now we have an inner experience of all four of these strategies – the four Fs – that could mean: far greater capacity to notice when other people have gone into theirs, far greater empathy for the harm that causes them, and far better ability to be clear what we can and can’t offer, depending on how much people are up for looking at this stuff themselves.

Jonathan: That’s the team we could be, I hope: having the compassion and tenderness to understand why other people are acting the way they are and feel for them, and the clarity and toughness to let them know what we will, and won’t, accept.

Beastie: Or maybe the clarity and toughness to understand why other people are acting the way they are and feel for them, and the compassion and tenderness to let them know what we will, and won’t, accept. I’m just thinking that it takes both of us for both parts really. It’s like what we once wrote that kindness without honesty isn’t really kindness, and honesty without kindness isn’t really honesty. You always need both the kind tenderness and the honest toughness I think.

Jonathan: Like when I’m people pleasing I’m not really being kind however much they might like it. It hurts people long term. And when you’re angry-critical you’re not really being honest because you’re missing so much of what’s actually going on.

Beastie: Looks like we’re stuck with each other. Neither of us works without the other one.

Jonathan: Which means I’m safe from the chalkboard room and you’re safe from the ocean. We need us both for either of us to be what we really want to be: kind for me, and honest for you.

Beastie: I’ll come get you out of the chalkboard room and you come get me out of the ocean, if we slip back. Deal?

Jonathan: Deal.

You can find the first part of this conversation here.

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.

Plural tag: This post was written by Jonathan and Beastie.

The post Balancing fight, flight, freeze and fawn: A plural perspective 2 appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Fear/Shame and the Anatomy of a Trauma Response

In this post I want to share some connections I’ve made as I experience the kinds of trauma response that I’ve been writing about here lately: the flicker, flame, and fire of post traumatic stress. Specifically I want to write about the combination of fear and shame which seem to occur when we’re triggered or reactive, and how that relates to the existential tension between self and other. 

Lately I’ve been writing blog posts in two different formats: the regular style, like this one, and a plural style, where I work things through in conversation between two different sides of myself. This time, as an experiment, I’ve tried writing on the same theme in both formats. You can read the plural conversation version here. Feel free to pick just the format that works best for you. Or, if you like, you can read them both. I’m fascinated by the different potentials opened up by the different formats, and how they compare for readers, so feel free to give me any feedback about that.

One of the big ideas in Pete Walker’s book on cPTSD is the sense of trauma response as a combination of fear and shame. That’s very much how it is for me. When something triggers me I tend to feel somewhere on the spectrum from worry to utter panic, combined with somewhere on the spectrum from self-doubt to self-loathing. In emotional flashback I’m convinced that I’m in huge danger and that I’m a terrible person.

Understanding that this combination of feelings probably underlies most of my stuck patterns in how I relate to myself, others, my work, and the world. I’ve tried to get curious about them and to make it my business to understand the anatomy of my trauma response. Of course my experience and understanding may not resonate for everybody, but I expect these conclusions apply beyond just me.

Fear/shame and other/self

As I’ve mentioned before it’s not always possible – or advisable – to sit in the overwhelm of an emotional flashback. But what I have been doing is to pause when I feel the flicker or flame of fear/shame coming up and to ask myself what might be happening. I’ve also been reflecting after a period of flashback about what might’ve been going on for me.

Where I’ve got to is that nearly always a triggering situation had occurred which I felt required to make a choice between myself and somebody else: either I could choose the other person and hurt myself, or I could choose myself and hurt somebody else. Sometimes it’s more that a memory of a previous such time has come up, or that I’m imagining a future situation which might put me in that predicament.

This self/other dilemma is something I’ve had a sense of for years. The new piece is to map this onto the fear/shame element of trauma. I feel the combination of fear and shame in those moments because choosing the other person over myself equals fear, and choosing myself over the other person equals shame. This makes it feel an unbearable choice.

The fear(others)/shame(self) spectrum

It seems extraordinary how this simple binary – fear(others)/shame(self) – underlies practically everything I struggle with: from something as massive as a break-up to something as tiny as deciding what task to do next today.

Big fear(others)/shame(self) moments

When I’m deciding whether to walk away from a relationship which is hurting me, it generally manifests as a sense of terror at the possibility of remaining in such pain in order to avoid hurting the other person and a sense of debilitating shame at imagining being the person who walks away and hurts the person they love. A similarly huge fear/shame response generally accompanies finding out that something I did in my work hurt somebody.

Small fear(others)/shame(self) moments

When I’m trying to figure out what task to do next today, sometimes the choice of doing something ‘productive’ like writing a blog post or answering emails can be accompanied by an almost imperceptible frisson of fear that I’m falling into my old habit of overriding my self-consent in order to do something for others. The choice of doing something ‘unproductive’ and gentle for myself – like watching TV or going for a walk – can be accompanied by a similarly tiny frisson of shame that this behaviour – and therefore I – am somehow bad, or at least less good than the alternative. A similarly small fear/shame response might flicker up, for example, when deciding which book to read next: one I think I should read or a ‘guilty pleasure’.

I could probably map pretty much every situation I struggle with on a spectrum between these big and small examples.

Where does the fear(others)/shame(self) binary come from?

I think there are many strands which come together to create – and reinforce – this fear(others)/shame(self) binary. 

In one sense it is a human tension, which existential philosophers in particular have written a good deal about. Sartre’s famous quote ‘hell is other people’ is all about his notion that we’re constantly forced to choose between objectifying ourselves for other people, and/or objectifying other people for ourselves. This is something I’ve written about a lot in my work on conflict. I love Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax quote for this: ‘Sin is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’

In another sense this fear(others)/shame(self) binary is a product of – at least exacerbated by – neoliberal capitalism, because within this system we are trained to experience ourselves as atomised individuals in competition with others. More from me and Justin about how that works here.

Finally the trauma component of the fear(others)/shame(self) binary is important. Pete Walker – and others – locate the starting points of developmental trauma in the lack – or loss – of protection and care. This is another binary that we could see as mapping onto fear(others)/shame(self). When we are protected we are safe enough and have no need to fear others. When we are cared for we know that we are okay in who we are and have no need to feel shame.

Personally I have a memory of a pivotal moment when I became locked into this fear/shame binary way of thinking, feeling, and relating. At nine I moved to a school where it seemed that I was being taught, daily, by my peers that everything about me was unacceptable. My struggles with this were hard for people at home so I felt increasingly unacceptable there too. 

I realised that either I could hide this unacceptable person that I was and shape myself into what others said I should be, in order to belong and be approved of. Or I could ‘be myself’ and continue to feel isolated, unwelcome, and disliked. I chose the former: fear(others) over shame(self). Interestingly I’ve since had conversations with people who felt faced with the same choice and went the other way. At that age it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to find options beyond the binary.

The four Fs and the fear(others)/shame(self) binary

If we see the four F trauma responses – fight, flight, freeze and fawn – as habitual styles of relating to ourselves, others, and the world, then we can also see them as four different ways of trying to avoid those horrible fear/shame feelings. Of course most of us employ a combination of these different strategies.

In fight we blame others, attack out, and attempt to control others so we don’t risk anyone overriding us (fear) and don’t have to feel at all responsible ourselves (shame).In flight we keep busy doing things. This means we don’t have to slow down and feel the fear that we may be prioritising winning other’s approval over our own needs. It means we avoid addressing the shame that means no amount of ‘success’ will ever mean we’re good enough.In freeze we distract ourselves constantly from having to face the fear that we might not be protecting ourselves well enough, and the shame that we might not be okay. That may be with social media, TV, food, alcohol, or whatever our mode of avoidance is.In fawn we become what we think we need to be in order to please others. We hope this will mean we can avoid the shame of realising we’re not really acceptable. We hope that if we are ‘good enough’ then other people won’t hurt us and we won’t have to feel that fear.

But none of these strategies work. In fact they all fetch us right back in the horrendous fear/shame place that we were trying so hard to avoid.

Fighters will probably hear more and more from others that we hurt people and are ‘bad’ (shame). The more we defend against hearing this, the louder and more attacking and intrusive those voices are likely to get (fear).Fleers are going to have to go faster and faster, overriding ourselves more and more, in an attempt to outrun our feelings. We may well start to feel the underlying fear of what we’re doing to ourselves. We risk overstretching, burnout and the accompanying shame of not being able to do anything any more.With freeze, the fear tends to get louder and louder the more we distract ourselves because we’re not listening to what it’s telling us about how we’re failing to protect ourselves. We may also face the shame of realising that we haven’t been there for others.Fawn folks are going to keep fetching back up in fear/shame because we can’t sustain turning ourselves into something for others long term. However hard we try to be good, others will hurt us, indeed we may be particularly drawn to relationships in which that’s likely to happen. And however much we try to be something pleasing and good for others it will be unsustainable and they will see what we’ve been trying to hide.

You could also see it that in the forced binary choice between fear(others) and shame(self), flight and fawn choose fear(others) over shame(self), and fight and freeze choose shame(self) over fear(others). Flight and fawn are both more about being-for-others in order to get approval, recognition, love, or belonging. Fight and freeze are both more about being-for-yourself either by blaming, attacking or controlling others, or by disappearing into self distraction or avoidance. 

So perhaps fight and fawn get used to managing the fear which comes when overriding themselves for others. They find the shame which comes with standing up for themselves intolerable. For fight and freeze it’s the other way round. Certainly as I’ve moved towards balancing my go-to strategies of flight with freeze, and fawn with fight, I’ve noticed a tip towards more shame and less fear, rather than the other way around.

So what can we do?

So far so bleak right?! There’s already a lot in my other posts about how we can notice the flicker, flame, and fire of the fear/shame response, work with emotional flashbacks, and shift our stuck patterns. Here I want to focus on two things which I haven’t written so much about yet, but which have been hugely helpful to me recently: welcoming fear/shame with gratitude, and shifting out of fear/shame logic.

Welcoming fear/shame with gratitude

This week it dawned on me that pretty much everything I’d been doing till this point was still with the aim of stopping the fear/shame response. This is pretty understandable given that the feeling feels utterly horrendous to me. When the flicker of fear/shame arises, a previously pleasant day becomes tinged with doom. There is an additional layer of fear that it might get worse, and shame that that could mean I won’t be able do the things I had promised to others. When a full flashback hits I feel small and incapable, terrible about myself, and under huge threat. Who would want to feel like that?

Of course I’m also an advocate of staying with feelings, but the trauma literature has helped me to see that this is not always the best strategy with trauma responses. Staying with intense trauma feelings can be retraumatizing and keep your body and brain locked in trauma responses, making it more – rather than less – likely that it will keep happening.

However, trying to avoid these feelings, freaking out at the first sign of them, and attempting to get rid of them was not working for me either, to say the least! Conversations with my therapist and listening to a new Pema Chödrön audio got me thinking about whether there might be another way. When the feelings were up I decided to try to welcome them warmly as part of the full experience that I was having in that moment. I guess it’s that idea that I’ve written about before of holding everything in an open hand rather than grasping hold of it or hurling it away.

What this looked like for me was pausing the moment I felt the flicker, flame, or fire of fear/shame and sitting – often in my window – trying to be with the whole moment that I was in (the sounds, the sensations, the thoughts, the feelings). This moment included – but wasn’t restricted to – the fear/shame element which often manifested as churning compulsive thoughts, a tight chest, an adrenaline lump in the throat, a sense of contraction, and feelings of anxiety and being a bad person. I tried to welcome those aspects of my experience – while not making them the entirety of my experience. I even said ‘you’re welcome here’ and tried to hold them with warmth.

What surprised me was a sense of gratitude that started to come up. I realised that previously in my life I have managed to cover over this fear/shame feeling with my four F strategies, stuck patterns, etc. Now the feeling is so strong that it’s having none of it! Also it seems to have flipped from a preference for fear(others) over shame(self) to the opposite. The fear I feel every time I risk overriding myself – even in small ways – is so intense that I can’t do it to myself any more. This means that I can’t abandon myself, even if it does mean feeling a lot of shame when I set boundaries or walk away from a situation that is hurting me. 

It feels like this fear/shame feeling is protecting me: warning me when a situation has arisen where I risk hurting myself. Maybe it has always been trying to protect me. I can feel grief for the times I haven’t listened to it in the past, and gratitude for its continued presence and the fact that I am listening to it now.

So now I can – sometimes – sit with fear/shame and say ‘thank-you’ as well as ‘you’re welcome here’. I know that the feeling is probably trying to tell me that I’m risking overriding myself in some way, even if it does feel like an overreaction to a small situation – or even to a memory or an imagined event. Paradoxically, of course, when I listen to fear/shame in this way it doesn’t have to shout quite so loudly.

Shifting out of fear/shame logic

The other thing I’ve been doing is recognising that fear/shame is rooted in binary logic. Some of my favourite thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir and bell hooks have challenged the self/other binary, suggesting that there are ways to engage mutually with others, supporting each others’ projects reciprocally, and valuing ourselves and others equally. It’s not a matter of pendulum swinging from others-over-self (fear) to self-over-others (shame). It’s about how we can hold all lives, bodies, and labour as equally valuable, and understand ourselves as inevitably interdependent and interconnected. 

This is partly why I make such a big project of exploring how we can treat ourselves and others consensually. Fear(other)/shame(self) logic is inevitably non-consensual: either we override our own consent or another’s consent. For me the consent project is all about finding alternative – mutual and ethical – ways of relating to ourselves and others in all aspects of life.

I read an interesting idea in Jessica Fern’s forthcoming book Polysecure from the attachment and trauma literature. This is that for good relationships with ourselves and others we need both protection and connection. Protection requires keeping ourselves safe-enough, having boundaries, not allowing others to hurt us, etc. Connection requires being open, vulnerable, and real with others.

It struck me that being stuck in fear/shame logic doesn’t allow for either of these things. In fear we override ourselves for others and don’t give ourselves protection. In shame we cover over our vulnerability in case others see how ‘bad’ we are, so we don’t allow ourselves real connection. 

Instead of choosing fear(other) or shame(self) it’s about choosing protection and connection. This moves us from an either/or binary to a both/and. Also it neatly maps onto Pete’s sense that we fetch up in fear/shame trauma responses because we lost or lacked protection and/or care, and that finding protection and care within – and from our team of outer relationships – is the way forward.

What shifting out of fear/shame logic looks like – for me – is, again, pausing when I feel the flicker, flame, or fire of fear/shame. I sit with myself and often try to talk from a kind, wise voice to a more vulnerable child voice: the one who is stuck in the fear/shame response. I invite that child side to reflect on how whatever has triggered me is a fear/shame thing. 

Usually it’s fairly easy to see how this situation feels like a choice between others (fear) or myself (shame). Generally naming this, in itself, results in feeling a bit more space or expansiveness around it. I usually try not to rush to any decision right then, but I remind the part of myself who is caught in fear/shame that there are always other options beyond choosing other or self: that this is a false binary, albeit one that is very understandable to fall into.

In exploring how this fear/shame logic works I’ve also realised that it’s understandable to obsess over past memories as I can find myself doing. It’s an attempt to prove to myself that the situation was bad enough to warrant hurting another person, in order to avoid shame. But it’s also retraumatizing to keep going over these memories, putting me back in fear. It similarly makes sense to hypervigilently go over situations where I might have fucked up, or to imagine future scenarios playing out in order to figure out how to avoid fucking up. This is all about trying to prevent shame. But again I can recognise that it’s triggering to do this, which puts me back in fear. 

Generally when I feel any flame or fire of fear/shame I park any decision-making until a time when I’m feeling clear and calm again, perhaps promising myself that I’ll check in about it over morning coffee which is often a good time for me. Once I get to that point I try to expand out to consider all options, and aim at a choice that combines protection and connection. For example, lately the eventual choice has often involved openly explaining my vulnerability to others (connection) and clearly stating my boundaries (protection). If clearness and calmness do not feel possible around this situation yet, I try to commit to going slow and refraining until I feel ready, perhaps explaining that this is what I’m doing to anyone else involved if a response is required.

I’m not saying here that any of this is easy. Believe me the last year or so of my life is living proof that it is not! This approach towards fear/shame goes against the grain of all our habits of avoidance and attempts at eradication. I know it’ll be super easy to slip back into trying to avoid recognising when fear/shame comes up, pretending it’s not really happening, distracting myself, and/or acting quickly to avoid the pain – usually in ways that override myself and give others what I think they want. I’m hoping – as with all of these blog posts – that writing it down will help new ways of being to bed in, as well as hopefully helping others who’re grappling with similar stuff. I see you!

What you can do when fear(others)/shame(self) hits:

Notice the flicker, flame, or fire feeling (however it manifests for you: familiar bodily sensations, thoughts, feelings, habits, etc.). Name this as a fear/shame trauma response, remember how these work in the body and brain. Everything that is happening makes sense and isn’t your fault. Try to reframe it from something bad that has happened to an opportunity to get curious, understand it better, and practice new – kinder – habits.Pause and find somewhere you can be with it safely for some time (if this is impossible, promise yourself that you will do so as soon as you can, and do whatever you need to survive in the meantime). Slow down your breathing and talk to yourself kindly. Give yourself as long as you need. Try to spaciously feel the whole of what you’re experiencing in the moment, including all your senses, not just focusing on the fear/shame. Refrain from going into a fight, flight, freeze or fawn strategy to avoid it or act out of it.Welcome the fear/shame feeling with warmth and gratitude, recognising how it has helped you in the past and may well be trying to help you now if you can listen to it gently and curiously instead of grasping it or hurling it away.Soothe (if intense): If the feeling is too intense to stay with in this way, thank it and promise to return to it once you’re in a calmer, clearer place. Then go to activities which soothe your nervous system, or wait to address it when you can be supported through it, by a therapist or support group for example.Recognise (if possible): If you can stay with it, recognise how the trigger was about fear(others)/shame(self). Remember that it can be a fleeting memory or response to internal sensation as much as an external situation. No worries if you can’t identify the trigger this time. Allow any feelings that come up to be released.Explore once you are in a calmer, clearer place. Step out of binary fear(others)/shame(self) logic and consider all the options in relation to the triggering situation, perhaps prioritising those which combine protection and connection. 

I have also found it useful to do this as a preventative activity – just checking in with myself at several points during the day, perhaps whenever one task ends before beginning the next. I ask whether there is any fear/shame feeling around, and apply this process if there is. I keep this list on my phone to remind me of the process during the fear/shame feelings when it can be hard to access.

If you want to read about I do this stuff in real time, check out the plural version of this blog post, here.

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.

Plural tag: This post was written by Beastie, with vital input from Jonathan.

The post Fear/Shame and the Anatomy of a Trauma Response appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Plural conversation about fear(others)/shame(self)

This post is a plural conversation about how I’m understanding and working with the trauma response of fear/shame, and how it relates to the existential dilemma of being-for-others versus being-for-yourself.

Lately I’ve been writing blog posts in two different formats: the regular style, and a plural style, like this one, where I work things through in conversation between two different sides of myself. This time, as an experiment, I’ve tried writing on the same theme in both formats. You can read the regular version here. Feel free to pick just the format that works best for you. Or, if you like, you can read them both. I’m fascinated by the different potentials opened up by the different formats, and how they compare for readers, so feel free to give me any feedback about that.

James: So it’s you and me for this one kid.

Jonathan: I think it’s right, because I’m the one who seems to hold the fear/shame the most. We see me as the vulnerable child part of ourself: the one who learnt that it wasn’t safe to express feelings. When we feel that plunge into fear/shame now it feels like it’s me who is panicking: sending out the alarm.

James: Why is it me you want to talk with about it, d’you think?

Jonathan: In our inner world you are the protector. You keep us safe. When I was little I read the James Bond books and I became kind of obsessed with them. I used to imagine James Bond training me to be more like him.

James: And what’s that like?

Jonathan: Fearless and shameless I guess. Bond is so brave. He never lets fear stop him. As a kid I felt like such a coward: always frightened of everything and bursting into tears. Bond always knows the right thing to do. He’s never plagued by self-doubt or guilt or all of the things that I feel so much of the time. He just gets on and does what needs to be done. I guess he knows that he’s okay, whereas I’m pretty sure that I’m not.

James: That’s also why you love that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the character of Jonathan who you’re named after. In that episode the frightened, bullied, self-doubting kid puts all of his fear and shame into a monster – separate from him – and that leaves him as this amazing superhero type: brave and confident.

Jonathan: But that episode also shows that it isn’t the right approach doesn’t it? If we try and eradicate our fear and shame we create a monster. We end up hurting people.

James: Including ourselves. Personally I love that Jonathan character far more when he is the vulnerable, sensitive kid than when he’s the superstar. And that goes for our own internal Jonathan too.

Jonathan: *blush*

James: So that’s us introduced then: the protector and the vulnerable child. Shall we talk a bit about what we’re learning about fear/shame as a trauma response?

Trauma and fear/shame

Jonathan: Okay so I guess it was super helpful for us when we read Pete Walker’s book on cPTSD. He describes emotional flashbacks as a plunge into fear and shame. That really connected for us. It’s the combination of fear and shame that we find so horrendous. We hadn’t heard them put together like that before. Trauma response as fear/shame.

James: Do you want to say a bit about what it feels like for you? If that feels okay, describing something so hard.

Jonathan: I can. I suppose that’s part of what we’re learning: that the fear/shame feeling was always something we tried to get away from because it feels so horrific. But actually trying to escape it only makes it worse. We need to turn towards it to understand it, and to learn how to be with it given that we do have it.

James: But gently, slowly, with a huge amount of compassion for how hard that is.

Jonathan: Right. So you talked a bit about the different zones of fear/shame in that blog post you wrote recently. We call them flicker, flame, and fire. For me flicker feels like a slight uneasy underlying feeling, like something isn’t quite right. It’s hard to put your finger on but things are not flowing easily, it can feel a bit jagged, or scattered. 

Flame is more obvious. Something is wrong. There is fear: my chest is tight and constricted, there’s an adrenaline lump in my throat. My thoughts are noisy and clamouring, often leaping from one thing to another. And intertwined with all the fear is the sense that I am bad. I’ve done something wrong or am about to do so. The external world feels dangerous and so does the internal world because I’m not okay.

James: And fire? Again, go easy if you can.

Jonathan: That’s the overwhelm feeling, what Pete calls the emotional flashback. With flicker we can carry on with what we’re doing and override the feeling. With flame it’s harder, but we can manage it. With fire there’s no chance.

James: How does it feel?

Jonathan: It’s the worst. I feel like, locked back into me I guess, this side of me: the vulnerable little boy. It’s total panic. I feel incredibly small and fragile, incapable of anything. I couldn’t hide my emotions if I tried. I’m abject. And I also know that it’s not okay. I feel like other people would be disgusted with me if they saw me. I feel like I have ruined everything. Like I should give up. It would be safer for everyone that way. It’s physically painful too. The tight chest is like a vice. And it feels permanent: like this is all there’s ever been and all there’ll ever be. I’m desperate to escape and everything I do locks me in more.

James: I’m so sorry Jonathan. It’s so cruel that you have to go to that place: that you’ve spent so much of your life there.

Jonathan: Thank-you James. It’s helped to read that other people have that experience too. And what you wrote about trauma in the body. That makes a lot of sense of why it feels so desperate and permanent. Exploring this plurality is big because it mostly feels like only part of us is in that place now – not all of us – so we can access another part of us to help talk us through it with kindness.

Trauma and consent: Fear/shame and others/self

James: Can you tell us what you figured out, about how fear/shame maps onto relationships with others and with ourself?

Jonathan: Yes. We’re not sure whether this is how it is for everyone who experiences this, but this seems to be how it is for us. I made that chalkboard comic a while back. It imagines me as a little kid always desperately trying to figure out complex equations about how to relate to others. I realised that most of those equations are basically the same double bind. It’s always felt like either I can override myself and please others, or I can stand up for myself and upset others.

I remember this pivotal moment so clearly from schooldays. When I went to middle school I got a clear message from everybody there that everything about me was wrong. And I felt that way at home too. I realised it was a simple choice. Either I could turn myself into what they said I should be and belong. Or I could stay being ‘myself’ and be outcast, hated.

James: It felt like a choice between yourself and others: a binary either/or.

Jonathan: Right, and I chose others: I chose belonging. It felt like I constructed this person – almost like those nerdy kids in that eighties movie Weird Science. I created this Frankenstein’s monster of everything I heard that I should be, and she was the side of us who operated in the world. We call her Max. It was like I was hidden away in the chalkboard room figuring out the equations and sending her information about how she should be to win love and approval, and then she would follow the programs.

James: That describes it really well. And how does it relate to fear and shame?

Jonathan: The choice of others over self is fear, and the choice of self over others is shame.

James: And that feels like the choice you have to make over and over again?

Jonathan: Exactly. So we repeatedly get faced with that choice: either be who you are and get rejected, or be who they want you to be and get love and approval. We can’t choose to be who we are because that shame feeling is horrendous – it’s what we’re running from. But choosing to be what others want you to be is treating yourself non-consensually, or allowing others to treat you non-consensually. And the more we’ve done that, the more we feel this fear around it. It used to be that we could manage to ignore that fear, but now it is so intense we just can’t.

James: And this particularly played out in relationships and work for us I think. Having felt that you lost love and approval – at home and at school – as a kid because something was wrong with you, you imagined that if you could find somebody to love you, and if you could do well at work, then maybe it would prove you were okay after all.

Jonathan: But it’s so impossible James because if you turn yourself into what you think partners would want you to be – or if you work in the ways that play the game – then it’s never really you who is getting the love or approval, even if you do manage it.

James: So you never entirely lose the shame: the imposter syndrome sense that you’ll be ‘found out’ at work, or the belief that if a partner saw the ‘real you’ they would reject you.

Jonathan: And meanwhile the fear feeling can intensify because – on some level – you know you’re treating yourself non-consensually: making yourself into something for others, or working way beyond what you have capacity for.

James: So it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t: Fear if you’re for-others, and shame if you’re for-yourself. And this seems to be how our understanding of trauma maps onto our previous – more existential – understanding of relationships. The existentialists like de Beauvoir and Sartre wrote a lot about how people felt they had to choose self-over-others (freedom), or others-over-self (belonging): either objectifying yourself for others, or others for self. We wrote about it in the conflict chapter of Rewriting the Rules , and this blog post .

Jonathan: And that’s what the chalkboard room – where I’ve been stuck all my life – feels like: a series of impossible equations. Do I choose incapacitating panic or do I choose horrible shame? Now it seems that every time anything comes up in our life which triggers such a choice I instantly find myself in the flicker, flame, or fire of fear/shame.

What we do now

James: Do you want to go through an example of what we try to do now, when we feel those feelings? We thought it might be helpful for people to read the kind of conversation that we have.

Jonathan: Yes. So what we try to do is to pause whenever we notice those feelings. We also check in a few times a day whether any of these feelings are up, because otherwise we can easily just keep busy or distracting ourself without noticing it. We’ve started trying to pause between activities and have this kind of conversation before moving onto the next thing.

James: And how do we actually have the conversation?

Jonathan: It used to be like this – written down in our journal – between whichever side of ourself was feeling the feelings – often me – and a side who could support them through it – often you or Ara. Now we start the day with journaling like that, but we can also do it as an out loud conversation. When we do that we sit by the window and talk between us. And – often at night – we do it more as an imaginary conversation. We picture two parts of us in a room in a house we all share, sitting and talking together.

James: Let’s do it then kid. We start with noticing . How’re you feeling right now?

Jonathan: I feel, um, some nervousness, some feeling like I might not be okay.

James: What does it feel like in your body?

Jonathan: It’s not huge: not that super scary vice adrenaline feeling. But my thoughts are a bit scattered. My breathing is definitely shallow: a bit fast. That’s familiar.

James: So we’re going to pause and give it some room now – this feeling. You’re safe here with me. I’m going to be with you through it. And we can take as long as you need.

Jonathan: I remember just before we sat down I felt bad for having this feeling. We’d been excited about returning to this blog post before, but the tough feeling was starting to dull that excitement. It’s often hard to be creative when this feeling is here. I was scared it might get worse.

James: That makes all kinds of sense doesn’t it? It’s tough to be with fear/shame and you’ve been feeling it so much lately. No wonder you feel relieved when it’s not around, and don’t want it to come back.

Jonathan: I guess this time it helped to remember that we were going to write this conversation. So in a way it was good to have the feeling here so we could do it for real.

James: Right, and one of the useful things to remember is that each time we feel this way it’s an opportunity to understand it better: how it works for us; what helps.

Jonathan: I’m not bad for having this feeling?

James: Not bad at all baby boy. This is just how trauma works in the body remember? Something triggers us and the sympathetic nervous system kicks in, so we start to feel speeded up and constricted. And the emotional part of our brain is sounding alarm bells.

Jonathan: Okay.

James: Can you try breathing a little slower?

Jonathan: Mmhm. Oh my shoulders were all tensed up.

James: We can relax those too. Tell me what else you’re experiencing right now as well as those fear/shame feelings.

Jonathan: Well… I can feel the breeze, on my bare legs. That feels nice. The sun is making geometric shapes on the floor of the room. The colours of the rug look really bright in the sun. I can hear jackdaws calling, a car going by.

James: You’re doing so well. Breathing a little deeper again.

Jonathan: *breathing*

James: So can we welcome this feeling: the fear/shame? Extend a little warmth towards it?

Jonathan: *swallows* I feel it mostly on my forehead now, like a furrow. It feels like I want to scan for trouble you know? Like what if something’s wrong? What if I’ve done something wrong?

James: Mm that makes so much sense doesn’t it?

Jonathan: It does?

James: So many hard things have hit this last year, one after another, and now a pandemic. It’s so understandable to be worrying what the next thing might be, whether you’ll be able to cope.

Jonathan: It’s the hypervigilance feeling isn’t it? If I can just keep scanning everything then I won’t mess up and get something wrong. I’m trying to avoid shame, but it throws me into fear because I think about all the things I might get wrong, and that’s overwhelming and scary.

James: Can you be with that furrowed forehead scanning feeling and feel the rest of this moment again? Not trying to change anything, just being with it.

Jonathan: I’ll try. Okay. I’m breathing. The air feels cool and soothing, almost like I can feel the sea in the air: the moisture. The sky is this faded denim blue. I can hear seagulls. There’s a feeling in my chest now. Sinking. I’m worried I’m getting this wrong. That it won’t be a good blog post: won’t make sense to anyone. That I’m ruining it for you.

James: You can’t ruin anything here Jonathan, not with me. But can we welcome that feeling?

Jonathan: I’ve felt it so much of my life. It’s so hard to stay with, not to just want it to go away.

James: We don’t have to stay with it right now. If it feels too intense we can just focus on soothing you, come back to it when you’re calmer.

Jonathan: No I can. I want to.

James: Sure?

Jonathan: Sure.

James: We’re not aiming at anything here, just hanging out with this feeling, trying letting it be part of our whole experience.

Jonathan: Okay. There’s me and you talking, and there’s this room and the sea and sky beyond, and there’s a feeling like I might not be okay; wanting to think over everything that happened today in case I did anything wrong. My body twitched when I thought of that.

James: Another trauma response. It’s welcome too.

Jonathan: It is… because… I know this feeling has been trying to help me. I know it comes up when I’m in danger of overriding myself. It’s only so loud and confusing because I ignore it so much.

James: That’s right.

Jonathan: I keep remembering this thing that happened earlier. Is this okay? I don’t know if I’m doing this right?

James: It’s just fine Jonathan. What did you remember?

Jonathan: How I was hurrying in the kitchen, and I shut my finger in a door, and it hurt but I just carried on doing what I was doing – putting the dishes away. I didn’t even stop to feel the pain or to see how badly I had hurt it. I had an immediate thought that I was stupid for not getting my hand out of the way, and then I, like, automatically tightened my chest and sucked my breath in so I wouldn’t feel it and kept going. It was only because we’ve been doing this that I even noticed that it had happened. And then we paused and let me feel the pain in the finger, and feel sorry for myself for having got hurt and for being so mean to myself about it.

James: And that was a fear/shame feeling you had immediately? It can be useful to recognise that right?

Jonathan: Yes. Shame for being careless and getting upset about it. Fear at how I automatically override myself to avoid inconveniencing anyone else. Like even when there’s nobody else around to inconvenience that’s still my go-to.

James: It’s so sad to think of you doing that over and over again through your life: in physical and emotional pain. It’s no wonder the fear/shame trauma responses come up so much now.

Jonathan: It is sad isn’t it?

James: We’re finding another way now aren’t we? Gratitude for the tough feelings because they have finally stopped us in our tracks and made us see how we override ourselves. Now they come up whenever we’re in danger of doing that and make it impossible to do so. And that is scary, and it’s messy and confusing at times, but it has fetched us up here, committed to doing it differently, to learning about this experience deeply, and befriending ourselves through it.

Jonathan: I’m thinking about that move from the either/or of fear/shame to the both/and of protection and connection. You know we’re trying to explore in these situations how we might move out of binary fear/shame logic.

James: What are you thinking?

Jonathan: In those situations I feel I have to choose between shame if I acknowledge the pain and express it, or fear if I override myself and keep going. Maybe if I slowed down I could have protection and connection instead. Like the protection of you – or one of the others – speaking kindly to me about the fact I got hurt and said mean things to myself about it. The connection could be – like – letting other people know what happened. Or feeling for other people who this happens to.

James: Like this right now.

Jonathan: I guess so. 

James: You’re doing so well kid.

Jonathan: Really?

James: Absolutely. You just did it. How brave was that?

Jonathan: You helped me.

James: I’m so glad I got to. But this isn’t one-way you know?

Jonathan: No?

James: No way. It’s really not a great thing to be incapable of feeling fear and shame Jonathan, however you might imagine that it is. Remember how we’ve written about the importance of being able to feel all feelings. I love how full of feeling you are. I see how it enables you to feel for others, and connect with them. I’d like more of that: to learn from you as we continue to explore this plurality.

Jonathan: You learn from me?!

James: Yep. And I’d also like to remind you that it’s not brave to do things when they don’t scare you. The real bravery comes when you’re frightened and still do them – like you’re doing.

Jonathan: Thank-you James.

James: Any time, really.

If you liked this you can read the more standard blogpost on the same theme here.

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.

Plural tag: This post was written by Jonathan and James.

The post Plural conversation about fear(others)/shame(self) appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Trauma and the Body Basics

As part of my deep dive into trauma I wanted to write a post about the way trauma works in the body and brain, and the implications of this when we’re working with trauma personally. I want to understand which kinds of practices are likely to be helpful, and which risk retraumatizing us.

This is important given that many of the standard things that we ourselves – and even therapeutic professionals who are not trauma trained – may well assume are a great idea, are actually pretty risky. Particularly that applies to anything that involves staying with our experience – like mindfulness, the cathartic expression of emotions, or tuning into the body. We can think we’re doing something helpful when actually it can be keeping us locked into trauma responses.

When I’m talking about trauma responses here I’m following Steve Haines, whose book Trauma is Really Strange is a great overview of the research. He says that the body and brain respond in a pretty similar way whether the trauma we’re talking about is a sudden trauma (like surviving assault), developmental trauma (or cPTSD), and/or cumulative stress (like the marginalisation stress of ongoing discrimination, microaggressions, fear of hate crime, etc. that members of oppressed groups face).

Difficulties with including the body

Although I’ve read a few of the classic trauma books over the last few years, I find that the body/brain stuff is the part of it that’s most slippery for me and I struggle to hold onto it. This may be because neuroscience isn’t part of my everyday thinking and writing. That’s because many of the thinkers I follow tend to distance themselves from biological psychology. They do so because such approaches often attempt to explain everything at a biological level, reducing human experience to evolved patterns and neurons. Such approaches often essentialize complex human experiences like sexuality, gender, or mental health struggles, purely to the biological level. 

The recent writing on trauma – however – is more biopsychosocial. The book I’m drawing on most here – David Treleaven’s Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness – is an excellent example of how we might weave together understandings of body/brain, lived experience, and social injustice.

A more personal reason for my difficulty with the bodily – or somatic – aspects of trauma is that I haven’t generally found it easy to be in my body. This makes sense from a trauma-informed perspective because bodies often don’t feel very safe to occupy when you’ve experienced post traumatic stress. Many of us remain in our heads. My experiences of somatic experiences like yoga and body scan meditations is of a struggle to be present to physical sensations.

Why body knowledge is so vital here

These days my body is making it very difficult to continue this habit of detachment because it is telling me loud and clear that something is wrong. I’m experiencing things like full body twitches, a vice-like feeling across my chest when I get stuck in old patterns, panicked breathing during flashbacks, and disturbing pains in parts of my body that have been hurt in the past. 

Strange as it may sound, I’m grateful for these feelings because they make it virtually impossible for me to override myself and keep doing things that hurt me as I have previously. Also such feelings give me a sense that I’m legit in claiming post-traumatic stress, not that I should need that, but given the level of cultural and personal denial about trauma, it does help.

Understanding how the body and brain operate when we’ve been traumatised is useful because we can then remind ourselves of what is happening internally when a trauma response hits. Given the high level of victim blaming that trauma survivors of all kinds experience, it is very easy to internalise self-blame, becoming angry with ourselves when we have these experiences and assuming that we should be able to easily think our way out of it or fix ourselves.

Understanding the science of how the nervous system works will – hopefully – help us to see why figuring out and rationalising aren’t generally helpful reactions when we’re in a trauma response. It will also help us to avoid practices that actively harm us when traumatised, and point us towards ones which are more helpful. 

In his book, David Treleaven gives a nice overview of the literature on trauma and the body, and pulls out some good suggestions of what’s helpful given this. I’m going to summarise his material here which will inevitably be a big oversimplification of what is a hugely complex area and still a work in progress.

Trauma and the Nervous System

The autonomic nervous system is the part of the nervous system which supplies the internal organs. It regulates bodily processes like breathing and heart rate without our conscious effort. Once the autonomic nervous system has received information about the body (interoception) and the external environment (exteroception), it responds by stimulating body processes or inhibiting them. The sympathetic nervous system is the ‘accelerator’ which usually stimulates processes such as mobilising the fight/flight response to danger. The parasympathetic nervous system is the ‘brake’ which usually inhibits processes, promoting rest, digestion, etc. Together these systems regulate how we expend and/or conserve energy.

Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory explains trauma in relation to three subsystems of the autonomic nervous system which function in our involuntary responses to threat. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve of the autonomic nervous system. The three subsystems are the ventral vagal complex, the sympathetic nervous system, and the dorsal vagal system.

Ventral Vagal Complex

The ventral vagal complex is the front branch of the vagus nerve. When it is active we’re able to be open, connected and present, relaxed and calm. We can also access the social engagement system meaning that we’re able to tune into – and communicate well with – others.

Sympathetic Nervous System (Fight/Flight)

When trauma hits, the sympathetic nervous system kicks in. This is the fight/flight response where adrenaline and cortisol are released to give us the energy and quick reactions needed for a crisis. Blood flows to the muscles and the focus is only on processes vital for survival, rather than digestion, rest, etc. This explains why we may not be able to hear as well, salivate, or cry in this state.

Dorsal Vagal System (Freeze)

If we can act on the fight/flight response and get to safety then our arousal will go back to normal. If not, our dorsal vagal system kicks in. This is the most primitive of the autonomic nervous system subsystems at the back of the vagus nerve, which extends to the stomach and lower gut.

When this happens our heart rate plunges, we can’t breathe, and we become immobile or faint. This is the animal freeze response which happens when fight/flight aren’t possible. It makes it possible that a predator may leave the animal for dead, and the endorphins released also mean that there will be less pain and consciousness if the worst happens.

Peter Levine’s work on somatic experiencing suggests that we become stuck in trauma if we’re unable to discharge the sympathetic nervous system activity – as animals do – after we’ve been traumatised. This is why we tend to cry and tremble after something shocking or stressful: we need to discharge the fear. However, cultural norms against expressing emotion work against this. 

David gives a poignant example of a family crossing a road when a car comes towards them too fast. They run to get out of its way. On reaching the other side one little boy starts to cry and tremble, but his parent tells him off for doing so. The boy grips his jaw, holds his breath, and tightens his chest to prevent himself from sobbing. When this happens repeatedly, it isn’t possible to release the sympathetic response to trauma and it becomes lodged in the body, leading to post traumatic symptoms because we’ve been unable to integrate our experience.

Trauma and the Brain

Turning to the brain, again oversimplifying, we can understand this as being divided into three parts. The first two parts are what neuroscientist Joseph Le Doux calls the ‘emotional brain’: the parts that are responsible for survival and overall wellbeing. These are the early reptilian brain which controls all the things we can do when we’re born (e.g. sleeping, eating, cruing, breathing, urinating, defecating), and the limbic/mammalian brain which controls emotions and memory including the fight/flight/freeze response. 

The neocortex is the ‘rational brain’ which is the part humans have which controls language, abstract thought, empathy, and making choices towards an imagined future. The frontal lobes of the neocortex develop by the second year of life giving us executive control over our bodies, behaviour and emotions so that we can navigate the complex social world, for example making decisions that may be better for us long term even though they bring short term pain or lack of pleasure.

In post traumatic stress, the coordination between the emotional and rational brain becomes out of balance so that the rational brain can’t suppress the emotional brain even if you want it to: the emotional brain keeps signalling that you are in danger and must act urgently, and no amount of insight or rationalisation can override this.

Under normal conditions of potential danger the amygdala in the limbic system sounds the alarm that there may be a threat. The hippocampus registers this and tells the neocortex the time sequence of the event: the beginning, middle, and end. The prefrontal cortex in the neocortex assesses the situation, makes decisions, and calms us down if the amygdala gave a false response.

In post traumatic stress the integration between these three systems goes wrong, meaning that we keep responding as if a threat was taking place. The rational brain is bypassed, and the hippocampus is disabled so that no message comes to the neocortex that the stress is over. The stress hormones continue to circulate and the survival system keeps going indefinitely, explaining our continued high anxiety and hypervigilance as we keep scanning for danger.

Implications for Working with Trauma

So post traumatic stress occurs when events exceed our capacity for integration, and when we’re unable to release sympathetic nervous system activity. Therefore we need to help our nervous system to process trauma by realising that this is normal, by feeling safe enough in the present (connected to our body, environment, and/or other people), and by allowing the emotional and bodily response required for integration, such as grief, shaking, etc.

Staying in the window of tolerance

David describes the ventral vagal social engagement response as the window of tolerance between hypoarousal (the dorsal vagal immobilisation response) and hyperarousal (the sympathetic nervous system fight/flight response). In hypoarousal we might experience emotional numbness, absence of sensations, our cognitive processes dulled, and little physical movement. In hyperarousal we might experience heightened sensations, emotional reactivity, hypervigilance, intrusive thoughts and images, and distorted cognitive processes.

A big part of the work with trauma is learning how to tell when we’ve gone into hyperarousal and/or hypoarousal and bringing ourselves back into the window of tolerance. This is why Love Uncommon’s emotional intensity thermometre is so helpful. Practices which put us into hyperarousal or hypoarousal, or keep us there, aren’t helpful with trauma.

Learning how to shift attention 

David explains that people with post traumatic stress reflexively orient towards trauma relevant stimuli whether internally or externally: we’re tracking constantly for signs that something is wrong or that something bad is going to happen again. When we imagine we’ve experienced such a sign we go into a vicious cycle of fear and freeze, as the panic immobilizes us, everything constricts making us feel more frightened, and this constricts us all the more.

So it’s useful to learn to shift our attention, when we feel the flicker, flame, or fire of such experiences, back to a stable anchor. This reorientation will help us come back to a more regulated state. What the anchor is differs for different people. Some find that focusing on the breath is helpful, for others that can be retraumatising. The same is true for bodily sensations, self-touch, visualising something pleasant or calming, or focusing on what you can sense with one or more of the senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch). The vital thing is finding what works for you.

It can be very helpful to work with a trauma-informed practitioner because it can be hard indeed – at first – to unlearn old trauma habits. A practitioner can help us to notice when we’re drifting towards reactivity, or dissociating. They can slow us down, ground us, and the social engagement itself can help us to remain in the window of tolerance as we’re connected with another person.

Babette Rothschild talks about mindful gauges which can help us reestablish self-regulation, including bodily sensations, moods, feelings, and thoughts. This is about learning what the key signs are – for us – which tell us we’re going into a hyper- or hypo-aroused state. For me I’m noticing that my thoughts become noisy and churning, feelings of fear and shame come up, and I have a clenched, constricted, tight feeling across my chest making my breathing shallow. Things that can help me come back from that place include slowing my breathing, soothing self-touch, movement, kind self-talk, and bringing my attention gently to feelings and/or sensations, if that feels okay. 

Reflections



Feeling not figuring

Personally I found this material very helpful to understand quite what a profound impact being discouraged from expressing emotions has on kids. I was so struck by David’s description of the little boy gripping his jaw, holding his breath, and tightening his chest to prevent himself from sobbing. I’m also thinking about the link between this kind of reaction and shame around bodily functions: how clenched the entire body can become around tough feelings, physical sensations, and ‘embarrassing’ bodily functions like wind/gas, urination, defecation, and menstruation. 

Recently I caught myself automatically going into clenching and carrying on, having hurt my finger in a cupboard door. I deliberately slowed down to let myself feel the pain and feel my feelings – both for the physical pain and for the automatic self-blame and push to continue what I was doing that came up. I’m trying now to pause and notice both physical and emotional pain, allowing time to experience and express it, instead of continuing the old habit of pushing it down. I still think the Pixar movie Inside Out is one of the best depictions of the potentially profound psychological impact of disallowing certain emotional states.

I also found the trauma material helpful for the explanation of why we can’t just think our way out of a trauma response. That’s definitely been my go-to way of trying to cope in the past, and it just gets me caught up in endless loops of self-blame when I can’t seem to figure it out or think any differently. Now I’m trying to focus on strategies that ground me in the body and/or in the environment around me. ‘Feeling not figuring’ has become a mantra for when I’m in that place: gently being with the feelings rather than trying to make sense of anything at that moment.

Welcoming the trauma response and what it has to tell us

I found it useful to learn that trauma responses often involve us reacting to interior signals as if they were exterior. Our nervous system is sending us warning alarms and it feels like we’re in actual danger, but we may well not be right now. All triggers land with the same intensity whether there is physical threat or emotional threat, and whether that threat is large, small, or just a reminder of a threat that happened in the past. The body and brain are not making these distinctions.

It’s good to remind myself that I’m safe enough in this moment and that this is what’s going on in the body. I was left with the question, though, of how to know whether the trauma response was telling me something important or not. I mean obviously I wasn’t in life or death danger as it sometimes seemed to be suggesting, but had it come up because I was facing a situation which could be emotionally dangerous to me?

Here I find it helpful to return to Buddhist teachings which suggest being with all experiences that come up in a warm, welcoming way. I’m finding it helpful to try to embrace the trauma feelings warmly and tell them they are welcome, rather than trying to avoid them, get rid of them, or figure them out, as I once would have done. It helps with this to remember that I’m grateful to them for trying to protect me. They are enabling me to notice, now, situations which could be risky to me, which I might’ve ignored in the past. 

If the feelings are very overwhelming I recognise that having pushed this response down so much over the years means that it now has to scream to be heard. I promise the feeling that I will return to what it’s trying to tell me when I’m feeling clearer and calmer – once I can access the rational brain again – and I try to focus on soothing my nervous system for a while.

If the feeling is not so intense then I turn towards it and take it seriously. I try to be understanding of why whatever just triggered me might’ve done so, and I commit to putting some time into reflecting on that thing, rather than dismissing it or going to a habitual response (e.g fight, flight, freeze, or fawn).  

Kindness and creativity

I also found it very helpful to read about how trauma takes you out of the social engagement system. I often blame myself harshly for how hard – if not impossible – I find it to be kind and empathic when I’m in a trauma response. This exacerbates the response further with fear and shame about whether that means I’m really a ‘bad person’. Now I can remind myself that I’m unable to access the social engagement system in that place.

I think this also explains why it’s extremely hard to be creative when trauma is very live – something else I’ve given myself a hard time about in the past. Now I can see that the main key to returning to a place of kindness and creativity is moving out of the trauma response. I can focus on doing the things that help with that.

However, again, it’s not about pushing yourself to get out of the response – which can be counterproductive – but rather trying to be with it warmly, along with everything else that is here in this moment, until it has passed.

Finally, the understanding about how the hippocampus is bypassed during trauma felt useful. I like Sarah Peynton’s work where she suggests that we can usefully time-travel back to traumatic times in our lives and experience them in safety, releasing any feelings, and putting a time stamp on the memory.

Of course this needs to be done slowly and carefully, perhaps with external support, but it feels good to have a way of relating to past memories which have haunted me, or been hard to approach, previously. I enjoy this creative way of addressing trauma, and the plural emphasis in Sarah’s work on accessing a kind inner witness to accompany you back.

Further Resources

Here are some links to videos by some of the main trauma researchers – and others who touch on these themes – which I’m planning to watch in order to continue these explorations:

Peter Levine: How trauma gets stuck in the body and how to work with it, Somatic experiencing.Stephen Porges: Polyvagal theory.Bessel van der Kolk: How to detoxify the body from trauma, How to start feeling safe in your own body.Babette Rothschild: 8 Keys to Safe Trauma Recovery.David Treleaven: Trauma sensitive mindfulness.Sarah Peyton: Children, trauma, empathy, and neuroscience.Gabor Maté: The connection between stress and disease.Irene Lyon: Titration explained – never rush trauma healing.Rae Johnson: The embodiment of courage.Tada Hozumi: Cultural somatics & insecure cultural attachment.Alex Iantaffi: Somatic check-ins.David Berceli: Trauma Releasing Exercises.

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Plural tag: This post was written by James.

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