Just because something is helpful for you to hear does not mean it won’t harm others

If I could distill everything from It’s Not All Good, my digital guide unpacking spiritual bypassing, into one sentence: this would be it.

Just because something is helpful for you to hear does not mean it won’t harm others.

Something can be supportive to us in our process, and it can feel harmful to others at the same time. This doesn’t negate its value to us, and this doesn’t pardon its harmful impact others might feel. Both can (and often do) exist at the same time.

We might also find that the things that we need to hear change. I know I’ve found this (and am still discovering these shifts!) as life spirals its way through me and my healing journey. Feel free to let me know below if that rings true for you.

If you’re feeling curious, you’re invited to explore how spiritual bypassing phrases might have been a buoy on your journey and contributed to your survival, and make space for the possibility that they can also cause harm.

In this guide there are invitations to explore somatically, using your felt sense and journaling prompts, and together we unpack 13 phrases and discover new compassionate language to use.

Creating this workbook has been one of my greatest joys. I strive to be gentle, trauma-informed, and anti-oppressive. I also strove (strove? hm okay I dunno but we’re going with it.) to make it pretty cute. Did it work? Click here to find out.

🌈✨ Jess

I want a world we don't have to recover from

I want to world we don’t have to recover from.

I want a world where crying doesn’t only happen 50 minutes a week in therapy and in the middle of a sleepless night.

I want a world where caregivers are supported and children are safe and loved.

I want a world where we check on each other, not as a transaction but because we have the capacity to see a wilting sunflower in our neighbor’s garden, offer water.

I want a world with clear air and reparations.

I want a world where emotional literacy, anti-racism, and nervous system nourishment are core teachings.

I want a world where we have space to lick our wounds in every iteration our being deems necessary and tend gently to others’.

I want a world where we trust our bodies, and trust others not to trespass them.

I want a world where empathy and accountability hold hands; where we seek to understand why humans hurt one another and also hold ourselves accountable for the harm we cause.

A world where we are supported to grow and do better, and to repair after our very human mistakes.

I want a world where we can cry or dance or sing at a stoplight. Where we can pull over to absolutely lose it and not be afraid of who might come to call.

I want a world where we can knock on doors.

I want a world where emotions aren’t relegated to the knitting of eyebrows and banished to hip bones, the darkness of muscle swaddling tears and grief.

I want a world where we can live out in the open and be received like falling into ten different warm and outstretched arms.

I want a world that isn’t here yet, the one I hope we’re building.

What kind of world do you want?

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

May We Not Fastforward

Often in our own healing, we want to fast forward to an easier part. So doesn’t it make sense that we also want to fast forward other people to an easier part?

Can we have a bit of self compassion for ourselves that it might be difficult to sit with pain? Our pain, other people’s pain, worldly systemic pain, so many kinds of pain.

And from this place of compassionate awareness, can we be open to learning the skills we need, both internal and relational, to expanding our capacity to be with and navigate the pain that comes with aliveness?

To show up for the world and for people and ourselves knowing that this means showing up for pain, too?

To not hold too tightly either to finding silver linings nor despair. To be with what is there, and gently holding as if cradling a small bird, the possibility of transformation and truth along with the heartbeat of hope?

May we deeply listen. May we press pause if we need to. But let us not fast forward.

⋒ For more support in compassionate listening, check out my virtual guide, It’s Not All Good! ⋒

Childhood, Caretaking, & Feelings

If you were a child who expressed feelings in proportion to those around you. If you contorted your emotions into the shape and size that could be held. If you disappeared and squeezed and repressed what couldn’t.

If your role as a young person was to take care of other people’s feelings, to hold them in your small hands, to weave them into the fabric of your family, to make the unokay acceptable.

You might struggle to believe your feelings are worthy of care. You might struggle to believe there is space for you. You might struggle to believe that your feelings get to exist, regardless of another’s capacity to hold them.

If this is your work, know that it is not yours alone. So many of us are untangling and re-working and weaving these old threads. We are wilting before we remember it’s safe now to bloom. We are foresaking our feelings as a precious survival strategy. We are flashbacking deep in our bones to other times our whole selves weren’t held.

And still. We are showing up in these news ways, trembling. Be gentle in your ferocity: this takes time.