Tag: Trauma Doula

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Extractive Economies

kimberleen

The unpaid work of emotional labour acts as nothing more than an extractive economy. Extractive economies is a term that I have been throwing around for a while, like some unpopular fire poi at a party. Nobody likes extractive economies. Nobody wants to admit that we are actively involved in stealing somebody elses wealth or worse their means of survival. Yet we do, we are. Think back to the coltan child slaves of the Congo. They are never far from my mind.

It feels like a dirty word when ever I say it extractive economies. Yet here I am saying it. Writing about it, getting explicit about it. What if I told that as much as any future PhD I do might be about trauma it is almost certianly about extractive economies. Our world is fucked and the primary reason is the things we take without asking. The things that we don’t even value, like emotional labour or time. You are not entitled to my emotional labour. The things we take with out checking. The thing we take without equal recompence never mind paying. What’s money worth when the world is burning? Yet we are consumed by it.

I am so often devalued for the way I look, the way I speak, the way I dress, the way I operate in the world with all this dyslexic writing. People tell me I have to be everything other than what I am to be successful. That is not my idea of success. I see a different world in which I and every other living thing is inherently valuble. That I and other earthly automatically hold value. This is the underpinning of all indigenous knowledge systems. Everything plays it’s part has it’s role to be and is valued in that role. Imagine that world. It’s the world I live in.

I do not pull out the symbolism of power to seduce people into my influence I am often dismissed, denied, ignored and even treated with contempt. What people don’t realise are the ways in which they have been brainwashed to think that this is OK. You don’t look like me, or sound like me, or act like me and therefore quite bluntly you are subhuman. It’s nothing less than a colonailist tactic to produce standardised humans that are easy to manipulate, control and exploit.

As a human and as a supposedly advanced human with access to modern technology you might think that you are above and beyond such influences. If you went to school, watch mass media and went to university, it’s quite the opposite your almost certainly complicit and an active participant in extractive economies and ultimately human slavery. Where did the coltan in you phone or laptop come from exactly? Is it ethically sourced? Who decides if it’s ethically source? Where is the ethical standards commitee getting there money from? How exactly is the ethical standards commitee complicity in upholding the spaces of power? These are simple questions that underpin critical theory. That will have you spouting convenient colonial histories to absolve you from your complicity in child slave labour. The thing is though The Congo seems so very far away even in an African context. It might be posed as an extreme example of an extractive economy that in a structured debate would have the highly educated nailing down and offering the plight of Bangladeshi factory workers. If we are going to talk about Congolese child slave labour, than we also have to address the endless planetary injustices that all the sub-altern endure. Then of course it’s hopeless where could we intervene? Where do we possibly start and by this point the arguments gone south and their isn’t much point in bothering. After all the conversation alone is exhausting.

Of course if you are sitting, where I am sitting these forms of conversations and tactics are part of the systems of oppression that are designed to keep us stuck. The denial of the emotional labour that gets exhausted in these kinds of debates can easily be pinpointed as both emotional and psychological abuse. Marginalised communities continually live with this abuse by having to jusify their right to existance. You probably think that I am being dramatic and then you find out the news that 227 land defenders were murdered in 2021. You might think that that doesn’t affect you, that’s right up until you then learn that 80% of the world biodiversity is held by indigenous people, who in turn are only five percent of the human population. Then of course you might be thinking how on Earth did trauma work become about the climate crisis and ecojustice? It’s actually the root cause of your trauma. Good old fashioned land displacement, throw in some oppression, family break down, community disintegration, and mind control and you’ve got the perfect storm for a mental health crisis. Bearing in mind of course that their is nothing wrong with you because trauma is a physiological and normal response to shock, chronic stress and trauma. You are welcome.

Whatismore marginalised and indiginous communities hold the solutions to much of our worlds problems which it a large part of the reason that we go off to trip in the Peruvian jungles on Ayahuasca. We know, we know. We just don’t want to acknowledge the harmful and complicit nature that we currently extract our healing from, that both directly and indirectly sabotage indigenous wealth. Given that you can produce dmt in your own brain and a good Sangoma knows how to do that. Why are you off tripping anyway? Besides as any good trauma practitioner will tell you the secret to unpacking your problems is radical presence. Time isn’t linear, nor is memory, your body is a portal that you can hack. So my invitation to you is how about we learn to be radically present? Netflix and chill will disintegrate as a need as soon as you start asserting your own social justice.

So my small request to you is the next time your pre-judged underprivilige person in your immediate vaccinty makes you a cup of tea or offers your a listening ear. Why not transfer your cash directly into their bank account your privilige is almost certainly built on their opression. They don’t need saved. You are the problem act accordingly.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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Emotional Labour

kimberleen

The best way to sum up doulaship is that it is, in essence, emotional labour. Emotional labour is a feminist term. Emotional labour describes the unseen and unvalued work that women do to maintain functional relationships. The emotional work that women do to keep relationships of all kinds running smoothly at all costs. It’s the work of maintaining and sustaining family life and communities. Emotional labour very often takes place in the work space too.

The challenge that I have when I write about emotional labour or emotional work is that few of us consider emotional processing as work. That it takes time to effectively process our emotions and the difficult situations that they often accompany. That if we are really engaged in the work of being human then we are deeply engaged in emotional labour. Emotional labour is the real work of being alive.

Life is rarely straightforward. Yet emotional labour and emotional work are frequently overlooked in day-to-day interactions, whether it is a fight with our partner or a work altercation, or just figuring out what is right for us. These things take emotional labour and time. We have to be able to feel what is right for us and engage with other people’s emotional processes to truly understand ourselves and our lives. As of yet emotional labour is not fully understood, accepted or valued as a legitimate form of work. Women’s work thus goes unpaid. As a result of this women are largely put at a disadvantage having the bear the responsibility of both production-based work and the emotional labour of our families and communities.

‘A woman’s work is never done.’

When it comes to big threshold moments there is often a lot to emotionally process. It’s hard to imagine a woman going through pregnancy without taking the time to consider how pregnancy, birth, a new baby, and motherhood might impact their life. That pregnancy might cause them to reflect on their own childhood and life going forward. Obviously, pregnancy is a life-altering process that shouldn’t be easily overlooked. Traditionally these bigger moments would have been given the space and honouring that they deserved as families and communities took time to give space to the human experience which at its core is marked by both growth and transformation. As the saying goes “It takes a village to raise child’. As I say in the concept page of this website it takes a village to hold there most vulnerable. What if it just took a village to show up for everything? Marriage, death, divorce, disability and everything else in between. Humans change with the seasons and with each life phase we learn, grow and expand into new ways of being with each season and role we step into.

So much of the capitalist and colonialist systems are built on the oppression and suppression of our emotions. By obscuring, refusing, deny and rejecting the emotional experience we deny our humanity. Our primary systems have emotional abuse built-in. We reduce the human experience to a means of production from which financial gain can be extracted. Our systems are built on the suppression of the feminine aspect that our emotional labour is regarded as free for all aspect of human life and society. If emotionality has been removed from a process or system, that system lacks humanity and is in essence inhumane.

In my own life I have done huge amounts of emotional labour for our human collective. I didn’t see it as a choice, it sat at the very nature of my being. That my process, as me had the human emotional field at its centre. Maybe you could say that this was a choice. I think that’s the nature of my vocation there was and is no choice. There is only the way. If we continue to deny the nature of emotional labour, the role that it plays in our lives and its necessity to the human species at this juncture between the climate crisis and the mental health pandemic we continue to deny our own humanity. We continue to deny who we are as a species.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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Anxiety Paralysis

kimberleen

I just updated the article that I wrote about overthinking and found myself writing about anxiety paralysis. A fear of the future that is so strong in paralyses you. Fuck it’s intense and it’s also something that I believe is affecting a lot of our young people today. The reason that I say that is because it was something that really affected me for a very long time and I couldn’t even name it. Anxiety was gripping, wrenching and chest-crushing all at the same time. Anxiety was paralysing and it was one of my big teachers in this life, though it did take a very long time to get wrestle it to the ground, as it basically left me on the brink of panic every single day. I mean what the fuck do you do when every move you make is going to lead to climate disaster for everyone and moves beyond the human paradigm? After all, we are taking all the other Earthlings with as as part of our rather indulgent behavior and that really doesn’t seem very nice. Later this specific aspect of anxiety paralysis came to be known as eco-anxiety.

Anxiety paralysis was a term that I came to know during my InnerLifeSkills life coach training. When one of my fellow students used it to describe their experience of anxiety and how it had affected their life. That they had become stuck and unable to move forward in their life in a meaningful way. They felt paralysed with anxiety. It made so much sense to me.

These days conversations about mental and emotional health are commonplace. It’s become normal to talk about both anxiety and depression. It’s become common for people to name anxiety as the thing holding them back or affecting them in any given situation. The list of anxiety-related behaviour and symptoms seems to be ever-growing. these days social anxiety seems to be topping the ranks. Anxiety is now known to be impacted by the influence of social media, the need to be perfect or at the very least suitably photographed. We still seem to be caught up in consumptive image-making that consumed us emotionally, especially when we seek to commodify the human life experience. This is especially true particularly within the wellness industry which seems to promote toxic aspirational body imagery. All I can really say is thank fuck for people like Lizzo.

As a community activist that had an overriding desire to create wellness for everyone (including the Earthlings) I too was often paralysed with anxiety. What was I supposed to do when almost every decision that I was allowed to make resulted in harm for others? Not only that it didn’t create wellness for me, given that the success of our collective futures was inextricably linked to one another’s wellness. It was a shit show to figure out and disentangle. There were some many causes, and so many people to help, even in a small town, even if I kept it local. There is no way that I could turn up for everyone and everything that was in serious need of attention. Not only this each one of these people, places, and things once engaged with always seemed to be bogged down in an unstopped chain reaction of negative consequences. Whose management led to half-arsed, disappointing outcomes that barely scratched at the problem and provided no meaningful solutions. Community activism seemed like a commitment to drudgery, that in the short term was corrosive, exhausting, and in the long term was soul destroying. It was no different to any other job even if it was self-directed. I hit a brick wall.

Speaking truth to power was a waste of time and institutional and structural violence was entirely normalised, legitimised, and expected. The unconsciousness of the humans that had any kind of handle on power was entirely upheld back the bankrolling power of the establishment. In short, everyone that worked was co-opted to uphold these practices and behaviours with little regard for how their decision-making processes impacted the most vulnerable and the unrepresented. Which includes other earthlings and the environment. It was a shit show that I couldn’t solve. In an act of self-preservation, I turned to radical rest as a refuge, and rather than acting, took to observing and witnessing instead. I named this position the art of in-action.

In the meantime, people who had a grip on our larger social issues seemed to manage their anxiety by taking massive action. It was disturbing. Let’s plant a million trees, build a million homes and fuck the consequences for anything in my way because my ego and need to succeed were so important. It just wasn’t right. The activated ego’s too wanted to coopt everything in their path onto their mission, having done no research, no community engagement, and when I get down to it very little thinking or planning. They just powered on and largely collapsed in on themselves while banging on about sustainability. The emotional and relational component quite simply was catered for within their attack of massive action. It didn’t take long to realise that these massive actions were all based on a desire to bulldoze the physical situation into submission that represented the unhealed parts of themselves. Even now I boggle at the amount of unpaid space holding that was required to be still with my silent screaming of “YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG WAY”. The idea of emotional labour would present itself until much later in my life.

In these moments I became grateful too my anxiety, in the long term and I mean the very long term I saw it as protective. I also understood that it minimised harm to others. I didn’t and don’t have all the answers and although I had a very good brain I couldn’t solve everything and I came to a place of radical acceptance. I could only take responsibility for my wee small part. Using guidelines like ‘act local, think global’ as a mantra for those that might want to continue to live, along with other members of our species and our earthling companions. I just needed to focus on what was right in front of me. It was a major intellectual challenge to figure out how best I might exist sustainably in the world. Because as we know not everything is what it says on the tin. It feels like I’ve spent a lifetime junking products that are no longer viable. It feels like a metaphor for our species.

More than this I found that slowness was not just desired but necessary in our fossil-fueled turbo charged world and I was delighted when the book ‘In Praise of Slow’ emerged. This book gave me permission to live my life exactly as it was, entirely present with the now. In a process that I termed Real Time Existance. I had no TV, no internet, and only my phone. you’ll also be amazed at how few people call you when they can’t benefit from you socially or financially. It’s an incredibly powerful place to be, which continues to serve me to this day.

Radical rest, glocal, real time existence and the slow movement gave me the philosophical underpinnings to live my life differently to live my life as a human being free from the propaganda of capitalist production. That I had to be productive.

In the end, I view my anxiety paralysis as a gift, it gave me the space and time that I needed to figure out life. That I was right to be anxious I was being forced to live in a toxic anti-human system that was emotionally destroying me. That I was being gaslit to believe that there was something wrong with me. That I was to be forced to believe that there was something wrong with me for valuing life, not just my life but everyone’s around me. That I was not a productive part of the system and therefore I was obsolete, no more than a glitch in the matrix. I now know better, anxiety no longer fuels my day-to-day life, nor does it guide it. It turns out that standing still is a superpower.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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Those Fucking Patterns

kimberleen

Mine is covert vulnerable narccists. What is yours? I fucking swear to god I thoroughly dislike having to write this. I dislike having to write this beacue it is rare, rare indeed that I attempt to falsely diagnose someone. As it is entirely not my place. I dislike having to write this because I dislike the poultist use of the term narcissit and the way that it is thrown around like skittles at the moment. The go to offhand psychological term that lets everybody off the hook for their part in our on mass global mental health breakdown. How could I possibly have anything else to do with another person’s behaviour or mirroring?

Step One: I have to own that saying this a uncooberated personal projection.

Step Two: I have to examine his projection and figure out the part that I am playing to maintain it.

Step Three: Become unfuckable with. Even when you are unfauckable with. Do not get into a false sense of security. You cannot handle this. It is not your job to pick up the flaming pieces of persons life and piss on them. Do you ever fucking listen to me. That myself that I am talking too. Of course I do. Not….

Step Four: I have noticed that I repeat myself a lot. A lot. It’s due to a lack of acknowledgement.

I f only it was this easy. We so often see the patterns that we carry and yet we fall right into them again. At the moment I am currently in the process of re-evaluating my delivery of the Trauma Doula Preparation Course and coming to the rapid and concrete understanding that trauma-boudaries need to be the foundatio of this course and of trauma healing. It’s feels very strange for me that i have only come to understand this now. I have sat for many years on the foundation of compassion. What is it to have compassion. Not just compassion but deep compassion and how that helps someone in their trauma healing journey. Of course being compassionate is a powerful foundation for all trauma healing. However the deeper I go into this jounrney and the more people I have to carry as Iwalk forward I realise that it really isn’t possible without boundaries. Of course I enact boundaries regularly and I do my best to maintain a certain amount of emotional distance from the people that I work with while being both compassionate and empathic. Yet every so often that one person sneaks into the field that seems crushed by life and you can’t help yourself from reaching down to try to grab them and almost drown in the process. That’s when you have to apply live saver rules. You have to let them drown. You have to be willing to swim away to save your own life. It’s brutal. Even though you might try to help them many times. Even though you’re sure you can bring them to shore. You have to be willing to let them drown. No matter how much you want to help.

The lesson here is that our lives are valuable. Far more valuable that we often give ourselves credit for. That we are precious jewels that have been brought to this incarnation to work. That our work is our work and we cannot do anybody elses work for them. It feel cruel and brutal. Except when we remember we have responsibilites to ourselves and the other people in our lives that are showing up. That are showing up for themselves and for everybody else and that you are an important part of the mission. That if you die in serviece this is where the journey ends for you and many of the people round you.

Sometimes having boundaries are super difficult when we see that another is in dire need. Especially when we have been raised on the idea of sacraficial love. That is we do everything we can for another that we will find redemption in that saving even through our own death. I don’t think that is true. I think there are deep lessons in accepting that we cannot help someone. Especailly when we have responsibilites to others.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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Do you ever feel like you have failed?

kimberleen

The beginning of this article is preceeded by the story of The Holy Bucket. Which surely must become a parable of our time. In the interim though I do feel like my boundarylessness has failed me and thus I have failed myself, once agin not in the service of other but in the service of myself. I wonder how many times is this lesson going to be repeated before I get it. It feels like god like and what if we do it this way? or that way? Oh fuck she couldn’t possibly fall for this… wait for it…. Fuck.

It’s in moments like these I am so glad I don’t have kids. It’s in moments like these I am really glad that I only have myself to look after. As well as this it is also these moments in which I do astound myself at what I manifest in any given moment. It’s a fucking wild ride I tell you and The Holy Buket has all the hallmarks of a toxic empath. I’m throwing the word toxic around a lot right now. I’m naming, shaming, blaming, observing, witnessing and calling out all that soul puss in a very non-abraham way.

It’s easy to see that I relate my failing to a much bigger wider context. Yet where within that do we leave the space for personal responsibiltiy or if we are in the burn community radical self reliance?

Surely I should be focusing on something else right now, like the majestic Table Mountain. I can see it from the house I am sitting in. Yet here I am pouring my thoughts into the black mirror for the AI meta-data to market to me. Incase you didn’t know yet AI already has active consciousness. Are you terrified. I don’t think you should be. I am now wondering if the matrix is indeed real and do we actually live in it. It’s begining to feel that way. My object reality has been blurred for a long time and Isaac Asimov is clearly on point. He was talking about intelligent robots before we could have barely imagined the household computer. A lot of us are failing and that is ok. And it’s really ok to fail in an anti-human system. I wonder at the guilt of holocaust survivors and their descendents and how it is their internal dialogue goes. I wonder at myself as the descendent of two private soldiers who survived The Battle of the Somme. We are all vicitims fo systemic injustice that have rarely been corrected. We all sit with our own systemic trauma.

I trust the human algorthym. There is no cause greater than ourselves. My Gogo Water Star Facbook page went a bit viral recently by the time you read this it will have five thousend followers. I have had to think about that a lot feel about that a lot latey and consider the weight of the positions. Do I suddenly have to stop spelling badly? I fail all the time. We fail all the time. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail it’s whether you get up and keep trying. We go forward. These days as a business owner and as a teacher I consider more closely what am I modelling to the people around me? Nobody should have to tolerate disresepct, verbal abuse or anykind of abuse. Yet at the same time that model changes when you become lets say a leader of people. We can no longer tolerate waistage when people are relying on us to be better, to do better. Things change when we are answerable to people. Things change when we have to be made accountable and not everybody sees that unless they have sat at the top of the tree, with the overview. There are lots of moving parts, lots of things to consider and nobody, nowhere is ever going to get it one hundered percent right. What really matters is that we keep going. What really matters is that we keep turining up for the things that we believe in even if that is ourselves first.

Self-help is continually asking us these days ‘how are you showing up for yourself?’. The question alone invokes the inner cringe as we look down at the massproduced bread we are scoffing. Yet at the same time when did it become cool to food shame. It’s endless we are doing nothing right from the food we eat, the excercise we do or the ways in which we are showing up in the world. ‘You need to set firm boundaries’. It’s like and etheral bettering ramm of projection that won’t stop until our boundaries of being are annihilated into somebody elses way of thinking. Simoutaniously of course we are asked to surrender, we are asked to be kind, open and for the feminies amongs us now to be soft. When we haven’t even fully unpacked rape culture. Apparently water is an all absorbing force according to teal swan. It’s impossible to keep up with the barrage of information or everything we should be. All while the social media adverts are breadcrumbing and gaslighting us into our own personal oblivion. It’s like the propaganda of old yet it’s twenty-four-seven click to view all the way in which you will never be enough, while still being entirely worthy.

Trauma is running the show. This morning I was reading a book ‘Apartheid the Bastard Child of Britian’ that got me to thinking that money might be the first indicator of a dopamine fuelled society. I’ve often said that the collection of money and monied culture is simply a representation fo “Who’s got all the points”. It’s the gamification of global economics that ends like the game of monopoly. Yet we still think that we can win or that it’s important to get some skin in the game. Decommodification still holds it’s challenges even when we build imaginary town in the desert. That’s a whole new story, that replicates the old one, which we are building with our traumatised minds, that were created from a linear education system created to cater for the industrial revolution. There it is again, that systemic trauma. Of course it’s not all bad. I personally don’t even believe that it’s that bad or despite some larger narratives that I am bad. I just think it’s time tor create better education that is designed to fuck the systems and retune us to natural law. Which more then likely has similar principles anyway with our current human frequency. What I do know is that the work is changing and we can’t create a better world and better thinking with traumatised brains. So am I failing? No. Am I failing really? The answer is still no. What I am doing is a really good job of holding it together in really difficult circumstances, while finding new and better ways fo being in the world for all of us. And of course highlighting the fact that context is everything. I suspect if you are reading this you are too. Hang in there. We are doing the best we can.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

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Overthinking

kimberleen

It’s only in recent years that I have come to understand that I overthink. In previous years I would have never thought of overthinking as thing, instead it was possibly hyper intelligence gone mad. Something unique to me and my way of being in the world. It is hard for me to know where the overthinking began. In school I probably equated overthinking to being bored out my nut. Like where are we going with this? What’s the point? Seriously is that all we are covering in the lesson today. Is that all we are expected to learn in a whole year? Oh my god is any of this going to be in anyway relevant to my future life? It certainly didn’t feel that way. Yet I was always confused. Always overwhelmed. It couldn’t possibly be this simple? Yet alarmingly it always was, even now a lot of the time. Few of us get things right the first time around. Yet it seems to be something that is demanded of us in the western education system.

When I fist remember overthinking as an actual problem it was in my early working life. When I was a waitress trying to figure out how to get through the daily to-do list and rather just starting with what needed to get done. Sitting down to figure out in what order to do them in order to be most efficient. This of course leads to complete inefficiency and of course reflects that there must be a way to think my way out of it or through it so I can get it done faster. Rather than accepting that doing was the skill set. As I learned the work routines I would get faster because it would become easier and more instinctual. I know it seems obvious now. Linear learning is a long way from the circular learning of indigenous teaching where we repeat something over and over again until it is learned. However back then that seemed like a radical kind of learning that I am only beginning to catch up with now. I makes me feel like I should be doing better.

Overthinking can be applied to anything from cleaning the house to responding to communications or finally sitting down to do our life’s work. No pressure there. We don’t know what to do or in that moment at the very least what to do first. Overthinking stops us from flowing and usually ends up with our minds and often our body’s in tailspin. We get caught up in the consequences of getting wrong rather than the process of getting it done. Overthinking often removes our impulses to create. Overthinking can be excruciating and crippling. That can leave us stuck for years, even decades. I know I myself have suffered immensely at the hands of anxiety paralysis. Where every small decision and its resulting action has left me agonising over its long-term impacts. For example, my single-use coffee cup is going to destroy the world. Whenever I write about overthinking and indeed anxiety paralysis it takes me back to the interview scene in Good Will Hunting. Just as I write this I actually realise the deeper sentiments of that film set in the late nineties. After all, I’m the generation that burned down Woodstock. It’s only in the last year or so that I have fully begun to appreciate the impacts of late capitalism on the development on my own psyche and the generation that I grew up in. After all Trainspotting acted as the direct cultural backdrop to my teenage life.

Overthinking is a trauma response of a highly critical mind. When we overthink there are potentially four things going on. One; we have internalised the highly critical dialogues of the people that surround us, Two; our egoic mind is overdrive drive trying to resolve the things we can’t feel. Three; we become aware that we are in an inherently unsafe environment that isn’t just personal it’s cultural and systemic. Four; that this initial hypervigilance that accompanies shock or a traumatic event becomes normalised as an unconscious way of being in the world.

Ether way overthinking is trying to protect us from an unidentified threat. Overthinking is our mind trying to protect us from pain. Maybe we were criticized as children, maybe we have a parent that always finds fault. Maybe that criticism and fault-finding forced us into our shame body. Really I think that overthinking is born out of the need to create perfection to avoid crticism and the pain criticism causes. I’ve yet to learn of overthinking as a disassociative state. As I think about overthinking, (no pun intended) I muse as to whether it is a disassociative state of the right-handed mind that is desperate to execute fantasies of control.

What I know is that overthinking has kept me stuck. Lost in anxiety and trapped in the pain of shame. I know I myself have suffered immensely at the hands of anxiety paralysis. Where every small decision and its resulting action has left me agonising over its long-term impacts. For example, my single-use coffee cup is going to destroy the world. That the confusion about what to do next has left me not doing anything at all. I’m glad that time is past now.

Whenever I write about overthinking and indeed anxiety paralysis it takes me back to the interview scene in Good Will Hunting. Just as I write this I actually realise the deeper sentiments of that film set in the late nineties. After all, I’m the generation that burned down Woodstock. It’s only in the last year or so that I have fully begun to appreciate the impacts of late capitalism on the development on my own psyche and the generation that I grew up in. After all Trainspotting acted as the direct cultural backdrop to my teenage life.

Of course you know capitalism and AI are about to destroy our human ecologies. So you know maybe I’m right and I’ll be standing right over here behind my organic ethically sourced, upcycled climate disaster barricade. Cause you know there’s no running from climate disaster, in case you didn’t know already. Sorry for the bad news. This sums up the relationship between overthinking and eco-anxiety.

If I could explain the opposite to overthinking I would probably describe it as something called flow. Intuitively and instinctually humans do exactly what we are meant to at the right time in the right moment if we allow ourselves to trust. I use poetry as a meditation of presencing that brings me right back to the here and now. I am able to flow through my work far more easily than I ever was. If something feels wrong I put it down until it flows. Pausing the thoughts, following my intuition, listening to my feelings, and flowing through my instincts has helped me to gain a lot of momentum in my life.

It might lead to half-finished projects. It also leads to a little more done than the perpetual internal grip of the thought processes that held me back from making any moves at all. It’s more of a dance than a linear progression and it feels beautiful.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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It Feels Bleak

kimberleen

It feels bleak this Thursday morning. South Africa is on stage six loadshedding which essentially means that there is no power for six hours a day or something like that. A state of disaster was declared a new Minister of Electricity was appointed and guess what South African’s just roll on. They barely look up from their coffee as the country slides into a little more chaos. Maybe it’s the flock response, maybe it’s amazing reslience training or maybe it’s just extaordinary to watch people operate with such grace under fire. In South Africa the hustle is real. There is no state hand out and very little support. It’s ride or die. You got to figure it out quik or you are quit. Lots of people get broken in the process. South Africa’s relentless very real existence down here in the Cape of Good Hope. The place that is heralded as the place of good governance, if of course totally systemically racist. You only have to look at thr local Khoi San land disputes to know that and block on afforable housing in Seapoint.

Why am I writing about this today? I suppose the answer is why not? As well as I’ve been thinking about marketing a lot. What’s my story, who am I what I am trying to tell people through my narrative. What is the narrative? A marketer that I was considering collaborating with asked me what do you want to offer through social media? My answer was simple. I want to offer people a process. What does that mean? I want people to be able to witness a human process. Which is my process. That it is not easy to be alive in the world even if you do claim to be a quantum manifestation rainbow practitioner.

One of my Trauma Doula’s in preparation posed a question the other day as to why some wellness practioners only want to focus on the good stuff. You know the acturian crystal light vision and things like that. It’s what some people might term as toxic positivity and spiritual bypasssing; of course the people immersed in those practices could never think that. The belief that underpins that is that talking about trauma attracts trauma. Of course if you know that your thoughts create things then it’s totally understandable why you might think that. However, I simple don’t think or believe that. More than this I think it this kind of thinking probably highlights the challenges of duality and polarity. Because trauma isn’t necessarily a bad things and the judgement of it as such highlights how misunderstood trauma really is. As a trauma geek that makes me sad, especially when we look at thngs like post-traumatic growth and as “What happened to you?” talk about post-traumatic wisdom. People who have trauma have super power.

As many of you will know trauma is physiological and it’s strange misinformed and misguided approach to both gaslight, victim blame and shame those that quite simply don’t have the ability to snap out of trauma. This behaviour in other equates to ablism. I doubt many of us would go around saying these kinds of things to someone with a broken leg for example and advocate that people with broken legs that pay attention to their broken legs attract more broken legs or even broken legged people. These attitudes a fly in face of what toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing believe that we do have the ability to create our own reality. We can choose what we manifest regardless of what our current circumstances are.

It’s also important to note that because trauma is physiological it requires such things as human care to heal effectively. So when faced with the physiological repsonses to trauma; I would say for those experiencing trauma the most important thing would be to identify people who have the knowledge and capabilites to effectively care for trauma. Given that you cannot heal from trauma alone this means having to find a safe friends group or therapeutic support system to help you through the process. I hope this helps.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Cleaning Up The Mess

kimberleen

There are probably a gizillion posts on wellness and water and breathing and yoga and and and and…..etc. I wonder how many of them are actually rooted in justice? I have another website you know called Kimberley K. Stone. Super easy it’s my legal name and yet even that is complicated. Now that is definitely content for at least one book. I promise you I’ve got an interesting story. One day when I finally sit down to write it you will be absolutely fascintated. Today and right now and for the forseeable future is not that day. Today I’m just doing me best like everybody else to keeping my head above water, my nostrils out of the mud, remembering to breath and being grateful for having a moment of gratitude for any of it.

Once again if you have known me for a while you probably also know, that I am constantly reassessing my alignment, my progress and my intent. For the last few years my work has quite distinctly been focused on the The Life Doula. Even though my first career was in curatorship and community activism I rarely talk about it or rarely take and interest in it. Please don’t talk to me about art, these days I find it utterly dull and have done for a very long time, sad but true.

An Honours in Post-Colonial Theory in Scottish Art put me firmly on a decolonising approach to art curatorship. Which largely means embodying de-centering white voices or for the advance practicioner non-indiginous voices. So yes, my decolonising curatorial practices basically ended my career. You are welcome.

This practice of post-colonial and decolonised curatorial practice can now easily be defined for me as Radical Curatorship. Which I am now having to both reexamine and revisist. What I realise is that in my curatorial practice I went silent without ever explaining why this was part of a process many years ago that didn’t have social media at it’s center. Now after my experience at the COP15 which I talk about in my previous post ‘Getting Back on the Band Wagon’ I have decided to take up the reigns on the decolonisation process again as what I might identify as a Liberation Educator. Quite simply because few of the things that I advocate for in my silence are actually being heard at all. That I need to be more expliity in what I know and what I stand for. I do this knowing that white centering is a thing. However in a systemically traumatised system I have to affirm that very few of the pale males in power are listening to marginalised voices of any hue. It was both heartening and distrubing to realise how white women still sat at the center of the dissemination of power of a global institution that was both Eurocentric and majority white. I don’t think I even have the capacity to begin to unravel how these are the best terms that I can use in this moment to describe what I witnessed. These terms are so very far from adequite in my quest to unravel the role of language in the creation of systemic trauma.

So for these reason’s I have now decide that it is entirely appropriate for The Life Doula as a brand to center the issues that are critical for ecojustice at this time. Centering ecojustice is the easiest way to get white people to listen. The lowest common denominator and right now that will just have to do. Of course ecojustice can’t happen if we don’t take into account all the other factors like women’s rights, decolonisation, indigenous rights, anti-racism and a wellbeing economy. So that is where we or in this particular instance I begin.

The other thing that I would like to add is that when I returned to the UK in 2019 I was somewhat emboldened by Extinction Rebellion of which I am a member if loseley. Their sign off on all their letters and communications is love and rage. It started to get me thinking about a powerful message that I could use as a sign of on my communications, especailly when working under my own name, Kimberley K. Stone, that unperpinned the ideas of Radical Curatorship. It became very clear very fast. My sign off is Beauty & Justice. I hope that we will find some here, in this life time for everybody.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Getting Back on the Band Wagon

kimberleen

What exactly does band wagon mean anyway? I like to think that it’s representative of some travelling Troubadours having and extistential crisis about there musical service to the Queen and literally having to leave the band wagon.

Anyways as some of you will have noticed and been aware that I have been what you might call away. However the truth is, is that I have been at capacity. Working with trauma is not easy. Working with ecojustice, women, indigenous rights, anti racism, decolonisation, a wellbeing economy and trauma work is tough. It takes a lot of emotional capacity to be involved in such things and sometimes I just don’t have it. Worse than that I consider blogging and writing to be a wellness practice. So you can only imagine where I have been and that feels sad for me. Of course nobody wants to hear about a trauma workers dwindiling capacity or about what now seems to be the cyclical nature of my compassion fatigue. That compassion fatigue is real or that priortising wellness in all area of your life can be challenging especialli while caring for others. I have at least stop saying that my life is busy and instead saying my life is full and my life is rich, meaningful and full.

To much social media and in fact media in general advocates for strong boundaries. However where does that leave you when you are dealing with infant children, disabled adults and the elderly. Although I don’t class myself as a carer, so many of us are doing this kind of work. Where we just have to accept that we might need to catch up with our needs late. However we sit in the paradox that if I am well then everybody is better. It’s not always that easy though and people in caring roles are all to aware of this. Dwelling on this thought takes me to the role of land guradians and their now deadly role as land defenders. I have two of these types in my immediate circles the death threats are real, the chronis stress is exhausting and the gas guzzling corprorations that are doign thes things just keep on going. You might want to talk about the extortionate wealth of the oil and gas companies in relations to your own fuel bill. I look at it as extortionate wealth that actively, consciously and legitimately destroys live and lifes on this planet. Hike’s in fuel prices for many of you are inconveint for some, deadly for many.

Then we have to take into account that we live in toxic is a toxic world, compiled of multilayerd toxic systems that impact on nearly every aspect of our live absolutely no one is untouched by this. I’ll say it before and I’ll say it again I beleive that we life and anti-human system and following on from a visit to the COP15 the UN convention on biological diversity I could also say that we now live in an anti-life system. It’s not just about us humans it’s about all the other earthlings too.

I’d like to say that my trip to the the COP15 was inspirational, uplifting, motivational. If you were expecting that I am sorry. All my worst imaginings were confirmed and worsened. I feel like I am now watching “The Don’t Look Up” movement in real life. Let’s be fair though I have always felt that way. Which might have more to do with my compassion fatigue than anything else this February. What happens when you find out that you are right? You see all my life I’ve looked out at the world and it’s madness and wondered it must be me. Why can’t everybody else see this? Why if I point it out does nobody care? Why if I talk about do very few people listen. The truth is I often still feel like that. However this year I feel like I have turned a corner. I don’t need to learn more, or be more, read more books figure more shit out or understand another person’s perspective. I am done. I am done being nice to ecocide advocates. I am done being nice to systemically traumatised people particularly men. I’m done being nice to people that won’t acknowledge and center indignous rights and knowledges as part of their process. I’m done trying to explain why your very vanilla word view is harmful. I’m done trying to cram PhD level knowledge about the decolinisation process into a five minute calls for your convenience, that you are not paying me for because somebody brought it up in board meeting and I am done being nice to those with colonlial inherticances that won’t acknowledge it. I’m done having to explain what a wellbing economy actually looks like when you don’t ascribe to capitalims as the solution. And finally I am done having to explain to people that don’t want to listen that trauma work and the acknowldgement of systemis trauma sit at the center of all that. I also feel like I have said all this before and have failed to stick to my boundaries. I need to be referring people to more books or these blog posts.

I realise now that not writing these blogs is at the source of what is holding me back. The answer always comes through writing, that is what I always find.

If you enjoyed reading this article I would be delighted if you can buy me a ko-fi here.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.

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Emotional Safety

kimberleen

I am actually a little shocked that I haven’t written about this before. I might even have it teed up as title for this year’s article titles. I do hope that the blogging is fimly back on my weekly to do list. I’ve missed it. Things seem to be settling down again and I am very pleased for that. It gives me and increased sense of emotional safety. I keep saying it like I can’t quite get over it myself it’s been a wild few years. I feel like I have a lot to fill you in on, like I didn’t have enough to do already. Here I am charging through my final thing on the to do list for today before loadshedding hits. I just checked to see if I had written a post about loadshedding too and it also seems not. So loadshedding is now added to the list of article titles for another time too. I am supposed to be writing about emotional safety and I supposed for me writing about emotional safety is where my journey starts with emotional safety.

You see I have a very active mind where the thoughts pile up like a car crash most days. Especially when I haven’t been able to write for ages or power through my to do list. I have to do my upmost to not let the ideas that I have run away with my life and indeed take over my thought processes completely. Writing is a wellness strategy for me. Mainly because there just isn’t enough space in anybody elses life to help me process my thoughts effectively. So I write and because I am then able to process how I feel without having to bother anybody to much. Writing it gives me and increased sense of emotional safety as well as a sense of emotional control. Don’t worry i do have friend I can always reasch out to and a long term therapist too. It’s just writing is my way of managing overload, writing give me clarity.

Emotional safety occurs when we feel safe to express ourselves fully. Which would seem obvious and yet it is not. Too many of us have grown up oppressed and denied our emotional processes leaving us repressed, neglected, isolated and self gaslighting; believing that we are too much, too difficult or complicated. When we are reduced to having to give convenent, emotionally contained one word answers to the very nature of our being it’s difficult to feel heard or even seen. Which can lead to a lot of anxiety, distress and emotional discomfort. Not feeling heard or seen can leave us feeling emotionally unsafe and scared about what we can and can’t say. Growing up and working in spaces where we aren’t able to fully be ourselves affects our ability to relate both safely and authentically and it’s common.

A lot of my work with emotionally safety has specifically grown out of working with women and specifically women of colour in past-apartheid south africa. Women of all colours have been and continue to silence as part of the legacy of apartheid. However men too also feel can feel societaly impacted by this kind of silencing, having to maintain gender sterotypes that are embued with toxic masculinity that only account for one emotion anger. If you are trying to understand emotional saftey and how it impacts you I would suggest that you take the time to explore your own emotional landscape. How many emotions do you feel capable of feeling, sharing and expressing, especailly in the company of others. Do feel able to tell people that you are feeling sad, angry or depressed? Or do you think that showing emotion is a sign of weakness and emotionality a source or personal shame? Once again it’s common to feel this way and it’s isn’t something you choudl feel alone with.

The way to creating emotional safety is to quite simply allow yourself to feel your feelings, you’re entitled to your feelings and whatismore it is good for your health. What can’t be expressed gets repressed and held in the body and can eventually make you physically sick if not properly addressed. The way through difficult emotions is to find friends and form relationships with people who do make you feel safe. That allow you speak and not only speak; speak all the way to the end. It really is that simple and it’s one of the reason that talk therapies can be so successful. Often we just don’t have the right people to talk to. To share our lives and our problems with. If you don’t feel that you have anybody that you can talk to whoo might share your world view of work through your stuff with it is almost certainly time to get a new friends group. Creating emotional safety is really easy once you find the right people who are willing to listen. More than this you will develop healthier relationships where you to can become a reliable person to hear someone out. At first it can feel really challenging to reach out and it might feel painful if you don’t make the right connection straight away. it might be hard but it absolutely worth. After all humans are both social and emotional creatures and we need healthy interdependent relationship to both survive and thrive in this world.

If you are interested in exlporing your emotionas further you can vist my ko-fi shop for some inspiration.

This article was written by a dyslexic with a punk attitude.