I’ve been watching a show on YouTube. Dr. Rangan Chatterjee interviewing Bessel Van Der Kolk on different methods for healing trauma. I found it very exciting and personally helpful. I’m going to share some of my notes and my experiences, and I recommend seeing it yourself.
BVDK: “Doing something to overcome your helplessness is tremendously important.” People helping each other in natural disasters.
Need to process the stress energy through movement.
Trauma — “your identity becomes one of defeat.”
I always felt better after an evening of teaching circle dance at Neskaya.
The summer after I realized I had been traumatized, but hadn’t begun the somatic experiencing work, I went to the festival of music, song and dance at Findhorn. I was sitting in the benches during an intermission. When they started dancing, I began to feel terrified. I remember BVDK saying “what helps is touch, rhythm, and movement.” I force myself to go down and join the dance, moving in between dancers in the line, holding hands on both sides. Terrified, I focus on the steps. I begin to feel calmer, and finally human again.
C: how about using music instead of EMDR?
BVDK: I’m not interested in listening to a tape. Trauma is about shame and disconnecting from other people — I want to help people in the context of a relationship with someone where you feel no shame. They need to reestablish the capacity to connect with people around them.
C: Is it a good idea to encourage people to do yoga as part of a group?
BVDK: YES
Personally I find dancing with a group of people, especially holding hands, helps a lot. The reason why we need other people, in their bodies, not too far away, is because it’s a good way to regulate your nervous system. Especially for people like me, dealing with complex trauma, who have trouble staying regulated.
C. what can we learn, as members of society, from the victims of trauma?
BVDK: people generally do the best they can to survive. That might be addiction if nothing else is available.
Being nasty to people whose behavior we don’t like is not the best way to help.
Being heard and being in connection with people is important at every stage in our lives.
My life here at Kendal has gone through stages. At first I was new and learning the ropes. My therapist said I would begin to find the support of the ordinary. I reacted “Ordinary! That’s boring.” Living with the constant stress of PTSD, I needed things to be deeply interesting. Gradually, I began to feel safe enough to feel OK with ordinary conversation. I realized that was what “comfort zone” meant. I had never had a comfort zone. Alas, COVID ruined all that. I went through a really bad time of terror, and having to raise my medication, and a lot of work with Erica to deal with my parts. Because I was traumatized by being left alone too much as a baby, the social distancing of COVID was triggering. I am still having trouble. I know that I need to spend more time with people, but don’t know what to do.
BVDK: most really innovative things in our world are invented by traumatized people because they live in a world that’s unbearable.
They have no choice but to find new ways of coping with things, ways that are different from where they live, because if they keep doing the same thing they will die.
Great example: Isaac Newton — worst possible childhood, hid himself in mathematics, created a safe space for himself.
J.K.Rowling — she was traumatized — created an imaginary world — imagined new possibilities.
New ways of pointing things out to people.C: What would you say to a person who’s stuck in hopelessness?
BVDK: When was a time in your life that you felt good. What were you doing?
What made you feel whole, and safe, and happy?
This reminds me of the shaman’s question to a sick person in the tribe: when did you stop dancing?
What makes me feel whole, safe and happy is dancing folk dances while holding hands in a circle.