Tag: Trauma Work

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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. Which of course lead to complete inefficiency and of course reflecting 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. That 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.

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.

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 tail spin. We get caught up in the consequences of getting wrong rather than the process of getting in done. Overthinking often removes our impulses to create. Overthinking can be excrutiating and crippling.

Overthinking is a trauma response of a highly critical mind. When we overthink there are two things going on. One; we have internalised the highly critical dialogues of the people that surround us or Two; our egoic mind is overdrive drive trying to resolve the things we can’t feel. 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 critisise as childran, 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 hear 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. That the confusion about what to do next has left me not doing anything at all. I’m glad that time is past now.

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 in 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 hear 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 instincts, 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 interal gripping that held me back for 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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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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The Great Reset

kimberleen

Happy Chinese New Year, where does the time go? And the years only run faster as you get older. After all time is not linear as I sit here on this particular upward spiral of the current Kimberley incarnation.

The good news is that I am back in Observatory, Cape Town the bad news is that I don’t know how long for. There is no doubt it has been and interesting few years and my achievements far outway my misadventures, which seem to have been rather few for an unconsensual nomad. Except of course that I ended up in entirely the wrong country one early morning last year; it all worked out in the end, with surprising ease.

This year it seems I have come back to the start of my journey in an unexpected and complete full circle moment, living only three streets away from my old address. It’s been interesting to be back with some old faces and new venues, the pandemic certainly seems to have taken it’s toll here. So many businesses shut down it makes me glad of all the photos I have of the old Observatory that I first knew. Observatory now seems more transient that I first considered, then I ask the question; where in the world hasn’t undergone a radical shift in the last three years? Who in the world hasn’t undergone a radical change? The world is changing and we change with it. Life is change.

This year I start in the aftermath of my life choices trying to find a clear way forward. All I really know for sure is that I have four Trauma Doula Preparation Courses to run this year and whole load of admin to catch up on. The nomadic lifestyle probably seems fantabulous, exciting and liberating if you believe the social media slide show. The truth is I am exhausted and desperately in need of some radical rest combined with some high speed digital decluttering.

Of course I am supposed to be a source of wild inspirations and deep insight that going to get yout through the next twelve months cycle of everything that you ever wanted. You can achieve anything that you want to. You can be anything that you want to and as somebody who has managed to do ten years of work during a pandemic I can assure you that all things are possible. I’ve seen things that I could never have imagined and had experiences that have moved me beyond my wildest fantasies. When it all comes down to it I am still just me. I still have the same dreams and aspirations I always have. To have a good life, near the beach. It’s simple. Keep it simple. There is magic everywhere. Especially in Cape Town. It’s good to be home in the Mother City.

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