Trauma-Informed Reframe for "close your eyes"

I got an email today that told me to close my eyes. It reminded me that many folks just don’t know that this can be re-traumatizing and an unsafe invitation. This is especially true when we are telling people: close your eyes. It sounds a bit commanding. Demanding. I don’t hear any choice in it. I don’t hear other options. I don’t hear that someone has the knowledge or awareness to know that this might not be a safe choice for me.

So today, I want to offer a reframe. There are so many ways to reframe this; this is just one option on one instagram square.

This phrasing can be more trauma-informed because it offers choice, options, and for the listener to tune in to their needs. It says: “if it feels right to you.” These words don’t assume that we know this person, their body, their nervous system, and their experiences better than they do. These words communicate: I trust your experience. I invite you to do what feels good and safe (or neutral) to you in this moment with your eyes and gaze. I invite you to check in with your own needs, desires and agency.

For some folx, closing their eyes can be relaxing and soothing. And that’s valid. For others, it can be re-traumatizing, panic inducing, and agitating. And that’s valid.

Here’s the thing: we don’t know, and we don’t always need or get to. But knowing what we might not know, we can offer options. Here’s to doing that.

Healing Can Be Destabilizing, Too

In the beginning, healing can be so destabilizing. It can exacerbate symptoms, heighten anxiety, make space for big overwhelming emotions.

So if you feel like you’re going backwards, know that this can be part of the process.

It can feel unfair to be met with shaky intensity when we’re trying to recover from a traumatic event that destabilized us. But healing can be cyclical, spiralic, a swirl of beginnings, middles, and ends that aren’t even ends. So the intensity isn’t strictly the stuff of beginnings.

You might periodically feel destabilized, sucker-punched by waves of grief that take the breath from your lungs and drop you to your creaky knees. These dips and rises might not change, but our ability to be with the dips and rises, our ability to be gentle with ourselves, to turn to our tools and ask for support - this might change, and can make a hard process a little easier.

Keep going. Keep resting. You’re doing great and it’s so normal to feel like you’re not.

jess

Touch is a Relationship

it’s not nothing, to receive bodywork. especially from new hands and a new practitioner. especially if we have a history that includes harm and violation via touch. especially if our nervous system is keyed up, our muscles guarded.
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for some people, this isn’t a big deal. it’s no thing, to be massaged by someone, anyone. but for a lot of us, it’s the biggest dang deal. because our body and our skin and our nervous system remember things that have happened to us before. we bring those experiences with us into the session, onto the table, on our skin and under the sheets.
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often i remind first-time clients that we’re in a new relationship. trust doesn’t need to come right away. clients can decide how much touch (if any - somatic work can happen without touch, and same goes for energetics), what kind of touch, what pressure, all of that. clients might want to remain clothed, or keep more clothing on. this is all okay. accepted. allowed.
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often for the first massage we don’t do super deep work. it’s more of a hello. here i am, a therapist who is engaging in a relationship and negotiation with you around touch. i am gentle. i am always gentle (though potent) but especially gentle for the first session.
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touch is a relationship and there can be a lot to navigate within that therapeutic relationship. a lot is happening. more than touch is happening, because our physical contact touches deeper layers and because an alchemy exists between the client and practitioner. because, ideally the client and the bodyworker are co-regulating, a safe hum of the nervous systems syncing and connecting. and a safe container needs to be built to hold this hum.
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If touch is a lot for you, i see you. i am you. and in my role as a somatic practitioner and trauma-informed bodyworker, i honor the hell out of that.

are your hobbies joyful or triggering?

Are your hobbies joyful or triggering?

Here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Some things that I️ love to do (meditative/ecstatic dance, for example) send me to deep and dark&twisty places.

I️ spend a lot of time willingly exploring those places (somatic processing, bodywork, therapy, journaling) and it’s come to me lately that I️ need something I️ love that is just FUN.

If complex trauma has lived through you (and you it) you’re familiar with this very layered life. Rarely is anything simple, and everything touches something else.

At an ecstatic dance class a few weeks ago I️ felt safe, which made me cry. Ya know? It just goes that way sometimes.

So I’m not saying to avoid triggers all of the time, I’m just saying: do you have any hobbies that mostly bring you joy and mostly don’t dredge deep things up for you? I’m still looking for one. Let me know what brings you JOY. Let me know what brings you space to hold pain and process. I’m so curious.

There are many ways to take care. ❤️