Well I’m sure somewhere in my badly executed media strategy I had a concept of all the issues that might revolve around the idea of Feral. My new Systemic Healing Circle for anybody that actually gives a shit about current world affairs. Where I was going to outline very intelligently all the ways in which the Feral concept came into being. About wildness, re-wilding, where in the meantime some of us (aka me) never managed to get fully sytemised in the first place. Like a feral cat that didn’t get exactly what they wanted out of system, that was supposedly designed to support them I was all and am still all too ready to tear the dysfunctional system apart if it didn’t serve me perfectly.
First of all this kind of approach and attitude to the system is highly indicative of personal trauma and second of all why the fuck is everyone else so compliant? There are more questions too that include: Is it just me? Why can’t you just get along? Accompanied by deeper musings… if the system doesn’t serve everybody does it serve anybody? You see that is the challenge with systems (speaking as somebody that just spent a week of her life scheduling emails for the year) they don’t work for everybody. As human components of the system when we meet people that don’t fit into our agenda, the trajectory of an organisation or the guiding principles of society we tend to ignore, overlook, dimiss, silence, reject, remove, exile and even kill the people that don’t agree. Fucking scary right? Why do we do that? Because its uncomfortable, inconvenient, disruptive, time consuming, difficult and ultimately embarassing to admit that we don’t have all the answers, nor are we capable of delivering all the solutions. That the rules, the law and ‘our’ procedures don’t work for everybody. That actually the system denies our humanity by denying many of the humans that belong to it. And you know what? We do this mainly all in the name of progress.
As I am sure that I have written this multiple times the micro informs the macro. The challenges that we have globally are relational. That the system rejects the interpersonal as significant and engrains, neglect, abuse and trauma into systemic relations. This is why I often tend to talk about the anti-human system. There is so much programming that fuels these kind of behaviours it’s hard to accept that for the most part we are contributing to the toxic systems that keep people at best stuck and at worst traumatised. The real trick is figuring out where we are perpetuting harm in a toxic system. And more than this where we are silently complicit. This week (tonight in fact) I start the Feral Systemic Healing Circle, which morphed and developed from a few approches that included the idea of a group called Complicit Anonoymous (that never got off the ground). The premis of Complicit Anonymous was that most of us with any ____________ (insert applicable word here) know that we cause harm and are contributing to societal collapse, the 6th mass extinction and climate change. Most of us are all operating in systems that largely refuse to ancknowldege the ways in which they cause harm. From the single mother that won’t receive a wellfare check to the petrochemical dependency of most companies and yet we choose to carry on buisness as usual. Where there are so many things to stand up for so many injustices to fight against it’s fucking exhasuting. Yet we carry these burdens as we too remain trapped in the cycle of perpetuating economic growth and maintain economic power by controlling resources, such as land access. Yet at the same time impacting basic resources such as air. The consumptive behaviour of the money classes and developed countries are having dire consequencies of the air quality of the systemically abused and ‘developing’ economies. Yet we carry on. Of course I am as guit as the next person. The challege is that all these behaviour are interconnected and intersectional as we try to build a way out of the Systemic Trauma Bomb that we have created.
Why is this artilce called Trauma Bomb I often write about how the personal informs the planetary. Last week I witnessed and experieinced what I can only be describe as a trauma bomb. It’s where two or more emotional triggers and thus unresolved trauma meets and blows up. It was an interpersonal relational masterpiece of destruction that threw most of if not all of my work schedule totally of schedule. It would have been great to ignore it. It would have been great to deny that my unrecognised trauma, the previously unseen shadow had anything to do with it, ignore the other persons issue and of course bythly carry on. That wasn’t possible. No matter how bad the circumstances. How dire the consequences of an emotional outburst, explosion or trauma bomb is we have to take the time to work with the trauma, acknowledge the pain and find new strategies. Nobody, not even a trauma doula is going to get it right all of the time, especially when we are working with our shadows, the things that we can’t see. You see shadow work gets complicated when we start to understand collective shadow work or even just the shadow of the companies organisations we work for or even run. You see what are the trauma bombs of thes organisations, companies and structures when their shadows meet. I think we are seeing these play out perfectly in the USA right now. Where corporate media fails to take repsonsibily for promoting and endorising very traumatised man and encouraging all his traumatised followers while denying the legitmacy of Black Lives Matter. Racism is systemic trauma. Yet the USA seems to be living a polarity of full scale systemic trauma denial that is engrained into most of it’s insitutions. Why won’t Mike Pence get rid of Trump?
That’s why my spelling is wobbly, I’m not trying to hide that I am dyslexic. I’m actively exposing my shadow. Why do I say I’m traumatised frequently? So it liberates you to say it too. Trauma is the real pandemic. In a society built on privilige, competion and capitalism Letting everyone know where all the gremlins are puts me at a major disadvantage. I’m absolutely fucking certain that numerous people have judged me for the quality of my output. Indeed totally bypassed it. I thank you. Language and presentation even though I have forgetten to mention it numerable times in my writing is a key componant of Systemic Trauma. Saying you could do better? If you just paid a bit more attention to your work? or the killer “Can you speak english please?” The answer to that question is no I can’t. Are you listening properly? Are you paying attention? Can you see where your biases, your prejudice and your biggotory yet? If I waited until I met your standards I would never have gotten started and indeed the terror of being judged for my seeming laziness or lack of attention has prevented me from flourishing far sooner in life. So yes here we are all complit in a toxic system, looking for a way out we can’t buy. If you are looking for solutions it’s time to sign-up to Feral Systemic Healing Circle.
This articel is the first in a year long series acompanying Feral Systemic Healing Circle
