LEAVING IS NOT ALWAYS THE SAFEST OPTION + WHY WE STAY

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

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

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

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

. . . they’re just not helpful.

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

But they’re not the most supportive questions.

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

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

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

Jess

Corrective experiences can bring up so much grief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jess

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

It is brave to stay in my body, it is wise sometimes to leave it

If you are someone who struggles to stay in your body.
If you are someone who has leaned into dissociation as a survival strategy.
If you are someone who struggles to connect with the sensations and language of your body.
If you are someone who encounters deep pain when you touch into your bodyscape so it’s like: okay, why the heck would I even go there?
If you are someone who has been should on to stay with your body as if it’s easy.
If you are someone who has been admonished and shamed for shutting down, numbing out or disconnecting from parts of your body.

This love note is for you.

There is wisdom in living in our body. In embodying the skin and bones, the muscle and cells - the nervous system that works towards equilibrium and survival in any way possible.

There is wisdom in leaving our body. In disconnection, in dissociation, in numbness and avoidance and not being ready to go there.

If you are someone who has experienced or experiences chronic pain, chronic illness, or traumatic experiences, the body might not always feel like a safe place to be. It might not feel like a thing we can trust. It might be a place that betrayal has happened, or is happening. We might feel or have felt this from the hands of someone/thing else, or in the disappointment we may feel about our own body and its processes and how they impact us and our lives.

I want to say that this (this being whatever you feel, whether I have named it or not) is so fucking valid.

It makes sense if connecting with our bodies is hard. It can be wise to move slowly. It can be helpful to work with someone who gets that bodybased approaches might be super challenging and that it’s not a one-and-done deal. It can be affirming for someone to say:

Look at you. Look at the ways you have survived.
Look at the ways you are surviving.
And before we try to change a thing —
Let’s start with honoring the hell out of that.

Shall we?
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
Jess

P.S. I am over the moon to be sharing so much about bodies, embodiment, pain, the nervous system and trauma with y’all! Like, really and truly. ❀ Tending to Chronic Pain, a 4 week journey for meeting our pain & our selves with growing compassion is opening soon. Click here to join the waitlist!

Sometimes the things that happened to us are unspeakable but often our body knows the words

Sometimes the things that happened to us are unspeakable but often our body knows the words, holds the experience, makes muscle memory of the truth. Somatic knowing and memories are valid, even without the traditional narrative that so many expect.

In a world that doesn’t make space for survivors’ stories and truth, the body can be testament. The body can be holy ground of hot knowing and surefire knowledge.

And as humans with brains in a society that gaslights, dismisses, minimizes and pathologizes, even the brilliance of our body might come into question from our brain from time to time.

Perhaps our body has a knowing that doesn’t pour itself into 26 letters and words. Perhaps our body speaks to us through symptoms, symbols and dreams, whatever it takes to unleash the truth and dare (or hope) to be heard. However your body expresses its held experiences, this truth, your truth, is believed and held here. So are you.

It is not trauma informed to tell survivors to “stop playing the victim”

I understand why we say the things we do. And still, I’m going to call us in about it. Here’s one:

It is not trauma informed to tell survivors to “stop playing the victim”.

⋒ Stop playing the victim

⋒ Drop the victim card

⋒ Stop victimizing yourself

How many of us have heard this?

How many of us have said this?

We might say this because we have heard this before (this is common for so many spiritual bypassing phrases- we repeat the lines we have heard), or we have needed to believe this in order to survive a situation in which we were harmed (another super smart-wise-brilliant [and okay yeah when it comes to spiritual bypassing, harmful] survival strategy).

Today I’m here to tell you that:

⋒ IT’S UNDERSTANDABLE

to want control, agency, or empowerment in a disempowering, violent or harmful situation.

⋒ & YET, IT’S STILL NOT

trauma-informed, kind or appropriate to say to someone. It implies someone chose the harm they suffered. And they didn’t! I repeat: and they didn’t! This is gravely offensive & insensitive. May we watch our language.

I have so much compassion for the reasons we say the things we do, and so much compassion for folks who are harmed by the things we sometimes say. If you’d like to explore with someone (me!) who holds both empathy and accountability, and will invite you into a somatic journaling process of unlearning spiritual bypassing and discovering kind and just language — you might just love the guide I made for you! If this calls to you, you can find It’s Not All Good here.

With the boths & the ands but none of the bullshit,

Jess