“Everyone in this culture is in a trauma state.” A practitioner of Chinese medicine told me this recently. Meaning that we are exhausted from always being ready for fight or flight. Or freeze.
Let’s talk about fight. You lookin’ at me? you lookin’ at me? you lookin’ at me? Motion sensor booby-trap. Choking around the neck until the last light is gone from the eyes. Paranoia and bruised knuckles. Don’t you EVER talk to me like that.
“Flight.” Just move away. Quietly. Quickly. As soon as possible without making a scene. Run. NOW. Drink 84 drinks. Smoke 296 pipes. Run. Anywhere.
And when our brains’ survival systems figure that we can’t make it out alive by fight or flight, we have another card left: “freeze”. Don’t move. Don’t notice. Play dead. “I won’t care what happens to me and because I won’t care I won’t hurt.” Mute. View our paralyzed body from above.
These three can help us survive in a sudden storm, but they were never meant to be our societal normal.
We have trouble coming to terms with sexualized violence as a community because we are in a habit of fight, flight, freeze in responding to each other’s pain and to bad news.
Victim-blaming, victim-mocking, victim-shunning: fight.
“That doesn’t happen here,” “He is a really sweet guy, otherwise,” “Take this and try to forget it.” : flight
“This is normal,” “This has always been and always will be,” “It doesn’t matter” : freeze
Instead, what would happen if we allow ourselves to feel? If we allow ourselves to feel the weight, the force of the river of underground pain that is sexual violence? We may be very afraid because we know its big. But we can dip our hand in the water, just touch in a little bit, and this will still help us and our community enormously.
When a friend tells us about an experience of abuse, we can just gently let that soak in a bit before responding. Notice our deep true feelings.
If we look around a little more, we can also feel the texture and quality of a community that is hiding or normalizing sexual abuse and misogyny – we can feel the tension, the fear, the hopelessness that is an undercurrent in many lives. We can feel the lost potential, the dimming, the scar that’s formed around the sore points. By allowing ourselves to feel even a small part of the true emotions caused by sexualized abuses, the sadness, pain and loss, without jumping into fight, flight or freeze, we will start to connect with reality. It is from that starting point that we can begin to turn a community around.
A good resource on trauma-informed peer support: http://www.nasmhpd.org/docs/
Photo: Gabriele Negri