Tag: Trauma Informed

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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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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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Self-Betrayal

kimberleen

Several years ago now I wrote a blog post called self-sabotage. That it wasn’t possible to self-sabotage as the sabotage was a deliberate way in which to protect some unconsious part of ourself. Knowlingly or unknowlingly we all have pattern that we play out and repeat some deeper than others. Self-sabotage could be considered as small scale undermining and diminishing of self that can be accompanied by shame and unworthiness. That we don’t think that we are good enough to have what we want to value what we offer or show up for ourselves in the way that we want to. Self-sabotage can arise in response to dysfunctional family relationships, that require us to stay small to stay safe. Sometimes require us to be something entirely other to who we are in order to be cared for or loved. It sucks when we grow up in familes like this. Often it takes a life time of self-sabotage and some really good therapy to figure out wha tis really going on for us.

Self-betrayal differs slightly from self-sabotage. Self-betrayal is like designing the path, laying the path, sign posting the path and then letting someone take you on a wee detour because they convinced you that they knew the path better, that they were better able to guide you. Which is impossible you built the path. The truth it everything that we make for and of ourselves is entirely from and for us. We ignore our own internal compass and self-naivigations system thinking that someone knows better than us, has deeper insights, or access to better information. In essence we delegate and allocate our own journey to someone else.

There are numerous reasons as to why this might do this. Sometimes it’s an attachment issue, that we to be more connected to other people than our own journey. Letting someone take you on a wee detour because there way or path is better, that they know the way. When people make us feel good it’s easy to get distracted. Sometimes we’ve been actively persuaded and then convinced. That somehow we believe that sombody else has the keys to our health, wealth or happiness. Self-betrayal has a sting in it’s tail is when we incrementally wander off the path in order to be amiable, connected or in services to others. Sometimes we wonder off of our path in the promise that eventually another way will take us where we are going. We often don’t even notice that we are doing it. It’s one small misstep after the other that can go on for years and we find ourselves in a very differnt place than we had hoped to end up. When we know the way ourselves. When our path keeps calling ‘Over here, over here, over here’.

I sit here writing this having become brutally aware of my own pattern of self-betrayal. It’s an interesting one I trust to much in other people, rather than trusting in myself. My own wellbeing. My own priorites. My own process. My own judgement. Sometimes I wonder at all the ways I might have fucked myself over too. Then I consider what I have also gained from trusting others. I’ve gained a lot. You can’t get very far without trust. In fact trust is the key ingredient that allows me to live my life the way that I do and faith is it’s ascended master. Everything is always working out for me.

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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Safe Space Circle

kimberleen

The safe space circle came to me as a concept sometime last year. As a trauma specialist people often come to me with a lot of questions about self-destructive behaviours, toxic patterns and dysfunctional families and they want to know how to fix those things. The sad thing is that even in that moment when someone enquires it’s actually super difficult to start at the very base level; what is actually needed for that person, to even start to consider a healing journey. When people ask me about all of those things the first thing that I have to do is to help people figure out if they are safe.

At first glance it sounds both ridiculous and patronising to have to walk a grown adult through the concept of saftey. However I can tell you straight off that this process is not straightforward nor is it simple. When I talk about saftey in the context of trauma I am actually talking about two different forms of safety, physical safety and emotional safety and one cannot happen without the other. You see when trauma strikes whether it has been as a result of a one off traumatic incident or years of uncertaintly and life disruption; there is very little I can do for a person if they do not feel safe whether that is physically or emotionally and the two a intrinsically linked.

More than this people often speak to me about traumatised people they know and care for that often do not have either the capacity or resources to attend therapy. More than this the person who’s looking for some free advice that might get them through a tough challenge with a good friend I often talk about safety. The challenge is in a highly traumatised society safety in all forms these days is rare. There are very few of us that feel safe in our own skins, never mind at work or even at home. These conversations that are guided by care for another often demonstrate that the person who wants to help is also at capacity. That they simply don’t have the ability to look after another in the most basic ways and are too often struggling to cope with the stresses of modern life.

These days the stresses of modern life sounds like a convenient excuse for not being able to show up. However growing scientific research is clarifying how stressful modern life really is for humans and the traumatising impact that is having on human life and child development. The stresses of modern human life are a very real aspect of what is causing both personal and systemic trauma. That unless we turn back the dial on the way that human life is rolling out and how we are living there is not much that we can do in the growing epidemic of trauma and global mental health crisis.

Evidence is also growing that as a species not only are we completely out of sync with nature we are also totally out of sync with what were our natural family systems and how we should be living. Humans developed as part of intergenerational family groups where we were interdependent on one another. Now most of us live alone or isolated in small family groups with no immediate family or community to help us in our day to to day lives. This way of living is making us sick, creating additional stress that leads to emotional and mental health challenges. There is a growing need for humans to return to old ways of being in order to find wellness. The idea that a lone therapist or carer can fix and hold space exclusively for one person is an outdated one; that is impacting our ability to be well or create sustainable healing environments. We cannot heal in isolation. We need to be able to heal in community and work collectively in order to create greater wellness and turn the tide on personal and societal breakdown. We need to learn how to be in communtiy again.

Safe Space Circle is designed to create safety using the tools of community development to create equity practices that are based in diversity and inclusion. Creating equity is the very foundation of creating safety in groups unless we all feel seen, heard, understood and respected there is little that we can achieve collectively. Circling to is an ancient form of human communication that has been practiced through the ages. Creating safe space that we can share our deepest fears, show our true feelings and be who we really are and fully accpeted in this space.

If you you’d like to sign up for Safe Space Circle you can do so 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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Visa Anxiety

kimberleen

Honestly, there are a million and one things to be fucked up about and I really think that we need to be far more accepting of this. More than this I wish people would fuck off with their breathing exercises from time to time. Sometimes we really do have a million and one reasons why we feel stuck or brain dead and out of it or my personal favourite brain fog. If there is anything that the last few years has taught me is that my mind is in full working order. All that overthinking must demonstrate something. Except of course the mind, the brain and the body hold some very different properties. In Today one of my more recent blog posts I talked about being a COVID refugee. I literally ended up hanging out in Namibia for nine months. In case you didn’t know already nine months is three months short of a year. It’s really long time to end up somewhere that you didn’t expect, writing a master’s, watching the death toll rise and trying not to figure out what to do next; other than stay sane. It’s a funny thing all those insidious thoughts that turn into a backdrop of feeling. It’s quite a thing really the backdrop of feeling that makes up our emotional landscapes and how sometimes they seem to entrap us. When really it’s just a pushed down unspoken about thoughts that seem to be controlling our world. Needless to say, I’ve added COVID Refugee to the list of books that I need to write.

It was an intense yet homely time in the desert. That played out like a beautiful groundhog day tapestry that you really had to live through. You see life in many ways could not have been more simple, more straightforward or even better catered for, it’s just that for obvious reasons I was stressed under pressure and to my realisation now, quite freaked out. It turns out much to my surprise that certainty offers quite a remarkable toolset for wellbeing. One that I wasn’t sure that I needed until now. It will come as no surprise to many of you that I live with quite high levels of uncertainty and have done for years. At least now my work is legally allowed. You think I’m kidding when I say that. What if I told you I am not. What if you have been working covertly for years? Few people get to truly understand what it is to be an immigrant and even worse a refugee. Someone with no connections and nowhere else to be. And what do we do we put out big girl panties on and do our best to full adult. It’s nothing less than terrifying to live such precarious situations where just one thing has to go wrong and your whole way of life is under threat. More than this that your life is under threat.

We live in interesting times. A pandemic, The fall of occupied Afghanistan and now this whole thing with Russia. Borders are very important things for reasons that few people want to talk about. Borders are about control and thus adversely about certainty. You see I see the world differently. I see the world through the lens of trauma. There were no fences in Southern Africa before Jan Van Riebeek arrived. That’s what the oral history says. Yet modern humans spend their time policing and creating borders, boundary lines and systems of control. Systems of control that have nothing to do with nature. Systems that are alien. I wonder sometimes what have we learned? What is the climate emergency here to teach us? As I watched South African sand become Nambian sand through a wire border fence. Who gets to decide who it belongs to or indeed why it has to belong to anybody at all? It gets me to thinking about territories. How far we can walk? How far do we need to travel in order to survive? It feels like we should be thinking about land very differently. I’m feeling about land very differently and why we need those one hundred and ninety-five stamps in our passport. What is that separates us other than an arbitrary colonialist line drawn straight across the desert?

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