This is from Deirdre Fay (@dfaypics).
About trauma and reconnection to joy. Hoping that you’ll like her approach as much as I do.
"I got into trouble ...
It’s true. I once got in trouble talking about joy to trauma survivors – and trauma therapists. [...]
I was a bit startled.
Yes, I was putting forward something many wouldn’t think about.
When there’s trauma, when we’re hurting, we tend to put joy and trauma on opposite ends of the spectrum. [...]
That when I slowed down my pain, when I made contact with granular elements of the pain I was in, when I dropped the story I had about the pain.
[…] I consistently connected to a flow of joy that refreshed and revitalized me.
Pointing out the joy that is there is not to diminish or discount the pain.
It’s not to deny the trauma. Or prematurely transcend it.
Not at all.
Rather, being able to contact the joy that exists in and through and around the trauma can actually help us be with the pain, the horror, and distress.
[...] Why not be with both so that the joy can buffer the pain, making life more bearable in the midst of healing ?
Why do we get upset hearing that joy is the essence ? Why do we fight for our traumas and seem to want our pain to be the dominant discussion ?
At the time these two events happened I was chagrined. Ashamed that I dared to suggest something so … so "unemphatic" ?
I learned to shut my own knowing, my own experience. Shut my inner wisdom down. Stop sharing about what was possible.
I learned there’s a "right" way to talk about trauma. A "right" way to help people heal.
I didn’t realize how much I shut out possibilities of helping people by toeing the politically correct path to heal trauma.
Over the years (decades) there have been many periods where I made my own healing harder.[...] Being relevant in a certain sphere encouraged losing my own wisdom, severing the connection I had spent decades accessing. In orienting horizontally to others I lost, or ruptured connection vertically."
Her video - Entering the transformational cycle - is good. Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f6pu1mTyPc
