Psychedelic Lessons: Why we’re afraid to ask for help and how to start
In the years I’ve spent in integration circles listening to what people are working on in psychedelic spaces, I’ve listened to a share repeated many times: “I’m unable to ask for help.”
The story typically goes like this, “I needed help, I wanted to say help, and so I sat there for what felt like hours forming and feeling the shape of the word ‘help’ in my mouth, and in the end, I didn’t ask for help.” I see a sea of heads nod in the room in agreement and understanding.
I was one of those heads nodding emphatically. Even being someone who has spent thousands of hours bringing people tissues, buckets, blankets, water, sat with people, sang with people, carried people, I was unable to ask for it myself. I’d be freezing, or have snot coming out of my nose, or be so thirsty, and couldn’t say the words I’ve told people hundreds of times to say, “blanket, tissue, water…help.” Why?
Source: Power of Positivity
After sitting in this loop and turmoil during many journeys and talking to others, here’s what I’ve found. I share this in the hope that it reaches others who also relate to the difficulty of asking for help and hope to invite them to start making the journey across the bridge as it’s imperative to having a healthy, nourishing, connected life and healthy, nourishing, connected relationships.
So what’s the block? Fear. Fear of what? Fear of the feeling of your need not being met. That is vulnerable and scary. Does this feel like you?
Here’s a question — what is the earliest memory you have where you had a need and it wasn’t met? I’d bet everyone’s answer is sometime in childhood. This is par for the course of being human. You’ll have needs and they won’t always be able to be met. So what is the difference between typical life experiences versus experiences that shift your internal help asking mechanism?
The question is, were your needs chronically not being met? Or when you had needs, did you feel like you were attuned to? It’s not about did you get everything you ever wanted but when you needed something, was someone there and present to it? If not, some core functions for survival start to shift including the ability to co-regulate, feel safe in your body and environment, access play and creativity, and attune to and express your needs.
So what happens? Babies and children are needy. They need help eating, sleeping, and pooping. They start forming words on average between 12–18 months. Their entire life in that phase of development is shaped by eliciting some signal they have a need and someone caring for them. They wouldn’t survive without this.
The healthy path of development is for a child’s expression of need cause a response in the caregiver to provide care, mainly in the form of presence. This foundational equation of I signal to my caregivers that I need something = they acknowledge it and I am soothed is primal, encoded in our DNA. This equation is the start to our understanding of communication, relating, trust, and safety. It reinforces within us that having and asking for things is safe and leads to our most basic needs being met and therefore our life continuing. This very mechanism is deeply entwined with our sense of life and death.
There are a number of scenarios where a child’s needs are not met.
The caregivers are simply unable to meet their needs for various reasons
The needs of the caregivers override the needs of the child
The needs of the caregivers are in direct opposition to the needs of the child
In all three of these environments, when this happens over and over, the mechanisms of need attunement and communication are directly impacted.
What happens internally?
A child feels a need
The child communicates they have a need
The need is not met
Overtime, the child associates their feeling of having a need with the pain of it not being met
This pain compounds until unbearable
To cope with this pain, the child moves away from it and the thing they perceive to cause it — their own need. They could do this by numbing or disassociating.
The child learns overtime to suppress that need
In the process of doing so, they can tell themselves a number of stories including: I’m wrong or bad for having this need, I don’t deserve to have needs, I don’t actually have this need, no one can meet my needs so I must soothe myself.
In the case where caregivers needs chronically override that of the child or are in direct opposition, for example in cases of narcissistic caregivers or instances of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, the child is placed in a complex predicament where their own need is in contrast to what they see as a need of their caregiver. This creates a typical dynamic where the child has to decide between their own need and that of their caregiver. Gabor Mate calls this “authenticity versus attachment.” Authenticity is what is true to their own authentic experience and need. Attachment is the attachment to a caregiver and anything that threatens their relationship with their caregiver is a threat to their own survival. What happens time and time again is the child will always choose the relationship to their caregiver over themselves, they choose attachment over authenticity. This disavowal of themselves becomes a maladaptive behavior that causes serious problems later in life.
Overtime, these dynamics lead to levels of misattunement with oneself. It becomes the less painful option to detach from the need instead of actually having it, asking for it, and having it unmet. Over time this pattern becomes ingrained, automatic, and fades into the background as normal operating.
What then does someone look like after years of this adjusted behavior?
An inability to know what one needs. You do not know what you need because from a young age it was unsafe and painful to feel your own needs
A fear of expressing ones needs. You fear expressing your needs because it previously led to them being unmet, shame, guilt, punishment, or abuse
A diversion of attention from one’s own needs to others. Focusing on others needs was the safer option as it was the way to enact control on a situation, like caretaking your caregivers
At the deepest level, when needs are unmet, an aspect of humanity feels denied. Hardening to needs overtime can feel like an emptying, a deadening, a losing of hope and connection, a place of non-love. It’s no wonder this can feel like annihilation of the self and death itself.
As an outsider, one might believe the solution is so simple as asking, “What do you want?”
It’s not easy after years of firing the opposite neural networks. The blocking of needs can be deeply tethered to primal systems of life and death. The wise nervous system will take over for better or worse in its attempt to protect, even if this means having a panic attack before voicing an answer.
So what next? Three main sequences include healing, updating, and integrating.
Healing: This is the sequence that I find true for all healing. It includes awareness, presence, understanding, compassion, and gratitude, sometimes linear, sometimes now. With the light of awareness comes a presence to the inner experience. Then there is understanding of why the mechanism developed. The a-ha! moment comes to see how that mechanism was developed to protect, how wise! That usually leads to an important part of grief, sadness, or anger for what wasn’t attuned to in the past. Which then unlocks compassion and eventually gratitude. Rinse and repeat this many times.
Updating: The second sequence is to catch ourselves up to the present. This technique is done often in Internal Family Systems, created by Richard Schwartz. When you’ve internally located the part of you that might be afraid to ask for help, try this:
Ask that part that is unable to speak the need, “how old are you?” Wait for an answer. You’ll be surprised at how quick and exact the answer is. Then you can follow up with a couple of questions:
“What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t do this (block the asking for help)?
“Do you know how old we are now?” ← Wait for a moment to feel the part and then answer from your current self with your current age. Tune into any internal sensations of this information.
“Would you like to come with me out from where you are to someplace different?” Wait for any answer
If yes, use your imaginal powers to bring that part to somewhere else they’d like to go. Their favorite field, or even to where you are now.
Then say, “ it is safe now for you to have needs. I am here to listen to your needs. I will do my best to meet your needs.”
Integrating: How can you create the new behaviors, patterns, and actions to integrate? Set up a daily ritual, even if it’s for 5 minutes, to attune to this part and ask what it needs. You can place your hand on your heart or belly, take a couple of breaths and ask either out loud or silently, “What do you need?” Listen, with compassion for the answer. If you can meet that need, make sure you do it that day. If you can’t meet that need, let it know you can’t meet that need in the moment and why. Offer another suggestion.
This is also called reparenting. Check out this article on reparenting from the Holistic Psychologist. “Reparenting is the act of giving yourself what you didn’t receive as a child.” It is establishing a new relationship of trust between your Self (adult you) and that part. This is important to practice repeatedly until that trust is developed. As you develop this internal capability, it will start extending out to others. Start with people you trust. Let them know you are working on this and ask them for their support in it. Guess what? Asking people to support you on your ability to ask for help, is asking for help.
Reparenting by The Holistic Psychologist
A note on watching out for old parts and patterns. If you’ve been carrying these behaviors for a lifetime, it won’t be surprising that the old patterns are still there. But now that you are aware of them and you can practice the healing sequence. Know that what IFS calls, “managers”or “firefighters” are parts that may show up on the scene again to play the roles they know best. Dialogue internally, remind them how old you are now, that it is safe to express needs, and you are there to listen.
As adults, who are no longer in scenarios where we rely on others for survival, it is our now own responsibility to be attuned to our own needs and meet them and ask others to meet them. This is what makes relationships so juicy, the dance in between the vulnerable and connection and resilience. It is in our responsibility to inquire into, meet and heal old patterns that prevent that. In psychedelic journeys we really emphasize the importance of asking for help. After reading the book Radical Responsibility by Fleet Maul, I’ve experienced how asking yourself, “what can I do” enables you to make the shift from victim to empowerment and is then accompanied by liberation. Especially for those who have previously been victimized or experienced any sort of disempowerment, exercising your choice and sovereignty is going to be key to changing your life. And this can start by learning how to say “help.”
In closing, i’ll share the hack I use in psychedelic journeys. I go to the helpers before hand and tell them that I was working on my ability to ask for help. I asked if they would come check on me at some point in the journey and ask if I needed help. First, It was much easier to ask for this when before entering a psychedelic state. Second, it was easier to say yes to help when the invitation was there. Third, this helped to prime the new neural synaptic firings that were previously not firing and get them going again, especially in a psychedelic state where windows of neuroflexibilty are wide open. I’m happy to report that I have since then said the words, “tissue,” and “blanket.”
Next up, “help.”
Need help? You can find me here and I’ll be happy to attune to your needs in whatever way I can.
How We Became A Care Constipated Society
When you have a broken bone, you get a cast. You may have crutches or a little walker to help you get around. If you have a cut, a gash, a blister, you put a bandaid over it. Sometimes, the government even offers you a blue handicapped sign to hang in your car to get you easier parking. These remind you and others that you are hurt and healing. There’s a constant reminder to be careful around it, to wash it, and rebandage it until it heals. People offer condolences, ask what happened, share their own stories or offer their help.
The thing about trauma wounds and conditions like PTSD and C-PTSD, is that there are no exact visible signs of injury. No cast worn externally over the heart, no crutches to help you move through life, no bandaid to elicit comfort and sympathy, and no blue sign that gets you better parking.
And yet, the injuries sustained from trauma run deep. They are more debilitating and last longer than a broken foot or a couple of stitches. They impact every aspect of living, mental, physical, and spiritual. Unfortunately, these wounds are on the inside where no one can see them and therefore don’t evoke the same sequences and sentiments that are so vital when it comes to healing.
Just the opposite happens, we forget or even judge ourselves. When the wound gets touched the “owwie, that hurt’’ response look like reactions, triggers, or unexpected emotions. The inner critic arrives and says, “Why am I having such a hard time? Look, this person is moving through the world so easily.” Or the all too common “it must be me” dialogue comes thundering in. People around us are also confused, “Whoa, that’s intense” or “where’d that come from?” Or it might trigger other people’s unseen wounds and then we’re off to the races.
When a wound or hurt is uncared for, unseen or unacknowledged, it festers.
Now at this point in time, after a global pandemic together, we’ve all experienced some sort of hurt, difficulty, and tragedy. Quarantine, fear for the health of our family and friends, and for many, loved ones passing away. We’ve experienced all sorts of little and big T traumas.
Imagine if you could see this — If people had bandaids, crutches, casts, and blue signs on their car dashboards for all the wounds they’ve experienced through life. How might we see or treat each other?
Try this, close your eyes and imagine an abandoned puppy, a sick kid, or someone hurting. Something inside you moves, an emotional chord is struck, the “aww” is automatically elicited. This feature is not random, it is a purposeful evolutionary design to help our species survive and is shared in all humans. The amygdala which processes emotions like empathy is activated. Mirror neurons in the brain fire that contribute to our ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Our prefrontal cortex evaluates and weighs the emotional and moral significance of helping. Sometimes when we witness distress oxytocin, the bonding hormone is released which enhances our desire to connect and help. Our brain’s reward system can be activated when we anticipate positive outcomes or fulfillment associated with doing something caring or compassionate. This combination of emotional empathy, cognitive processing, and activation of our social brain regions creates a motivational drive to care for others. We are designed to care.
So where is that in the world today?
What’s hard these days is there is suffering everywhere. You spend one day walking through any major city where homelessness is an issue and see the ever extended hungry hand reaching toward you every couple of minutes. The inherent inner parts of us that want to give, connect, share, and help are exhausted and worn out. So to survive while existing amidst the brutal cultural forces of individualism, capitalism, productivity and urgency, you build some sort of wall to preserve yourself. Eyes cast downward or the repeated nothing to offer headshake time and time again. The anger and aggravation at the whole thing, towards yourself, them, the system, stews with nowhere to be directed. We wall off and numb to get through. This is called compassion fatigue or empathy burnout.
The same processes in our brain that elicit caring and connection go into protective mode. The amygdala initiates a protective response by reducing emotional sensitivity to prevent emotional exhaustion. The constant exposure to distressing information leads to a decrease in the brain’s ability to generate strong empathic responses. The prefrontal cortex employs cognitive coping strategies to shield from distress and leads to detachment or numbing as a defense mechanism. The high exposure to distress leads to desensitization and feelings of overwhelm, powerlessness, and helplessness. The prolonged exposure of distressing information can also trigger a chronic stress response, leading to elevated cortisol levels which affect emotional processing and regulation. And the most interesting part is the brian can develop an attentional bias that focuses on negative or distressing information while neglecting positive or uplifting aspects. This can contribute to a skewed perception of the world.
What doesn’t help is that technology that has been designed to help us also has an unaccounted externality. Think about the interstitial life care moments that we once had — basic acts like lending your neighbor sugar, inviting people in for a meal, or stoop hang conversations with strangers — things that used to connect us with our neighbors and communities. These have turned into rants on Next Door, deliveries from Post Mates, and endless scrolling to a faceless audience around the world. These little moments of care have been replaced with services and technologies whose sole purpose is profit. The relationship of care has turned into a relationship of profit.
Is this how we want to live and is that the world we want to live in?
We are born with these crazy intelligent systems, capable of operating in either protective mode or the connective care mode and one is continually being hyper-stimulated over the other, I’d argue to a great detriment and with great cost. How do we tilt back towards balance? In this current care dilemma, what is so natural and lifegiving to humans is all backed up and we are care constipated.
Why does this matter? Care is vital to our health, vitality, and perhaps even the core aspect of what it is to be human. It also plays a fundamental role in strengthening communities by fostering a sense of connection, support, and cooperation. What are some things that come from care?
Trust and Relationships: Care builds trust and promotes positive relationships within communities. When people feel cared for, they are more likely to open up, communicate, and collaborate. Trust forms the foundation for cooperation and collective action.
Social Cohesion: Care contributes to the sense of belonging and unity within a community. When individuals know that they have a support system in place, they are more likely to identify with a actively participate in community activities.
Resilience: A caring community tends to be more resilient in the face of challenges. When people feel cared for, they are better equipped to cope with difficulties, adapt to changes, and bounce back from setbacks.
Inclusion and Diversity: When care if a central value, community members are more likely to embrace diversity and include individuals from different backgrounds. This creates a richer and more inclusive environment when different perspectives are represented, heard and respected.
Sense of positivity and wellbeing: When people feel valued and supported, they are more likely to contribute positively to the community and work toward its overall improvement.
Interpersonal relationship building and growth: Caring communities offer opportunities for members to learn from each other’s experiences and skills which enhances personal growth and collective knowledge.
Reduced Conflict: When care is present, conflicts are often resolved more peacefully. With deeper personal relationships and histories, people are more willing to listen and understand each other’s perspectives and find a common ground.
Longevity and Sustainability: A caring community is more likely to endure over time. When individuals feel a strong sense of connection and care for their community, they are more motivated to invest their time and effort into its future.
So how do we get back to a caring society? These are some lessons I’ve learned in trauma work.
First, we must remember. In trauma work, a long-lasting impact happens when we remember the care we have for ourselves, especially the parts of us that didn’t receive care at times of pain and hurt. When we learn to turn towards the hurt, our natural sense of care is elicited. The evolutionary evolved functions in our brain are activated to help us thrive. You see it in the flower growing between the cement cracks, the sourdough starters taped on telephone polls, stenciled graffiti reminding you that magic exists, random poems typed by strangers on typewriters, and community refrigerators throughout cities. Like the flower sticking up through cracks there is an inherent force within that pushes through and continues to be ever reaching towards the sun. That strength sits in all of us if we remember.
Second, relationships. We need to value the role of ourselves and the role of relationships in the thriving of our future. In trauma work, you learn that when trauma happens, the too-much nature of it leads us to 1) disconnect from our experience in order to survive and 2) disconnect from other humans because we become afraid of another human’s ability to hurt us. Healing involves healing the disconnected relationship with ourselves and the disconnected relationship with others. And a critical part of this healing equation is that it needs to happen in relationships. It cannot happen alone, with a device, or with AI. Human relationships are irreplaceable.
Third, recognize and celebrate each other’s inner resources. In trauma work, successful healing happens when the individual’s innate resources are strengthened and restored. The role that therapists, counselors, and coaches lend is their presence, regulated systems and they reflect qualities like kindness, compassion, and courage. Over time, the individual’s own blueprint is remembered and strengthened within themselves and their capacity to move through life, thrive, be in relationships, show up for oneself, and regulate through hard times is revitalized. The nuanced Jedi move here starts with seeing, bringing attention to, and celebrating the inner resources that are already there within ourselves and each other. This involves going against the mainstream attention sucking efforts of negative fear-mongering news that keeps you in sympathetic fight and flight all the time and asks you to go out and experience life for yourself, look for the flower in the crack, look for the glimmer in fellow humans, and be discerning in where you place your attention, strengthen the inner systems of care.
Fourth, resilience. Caring for others calls for emotional resiliency. In trauma work, I’ve learned that when people have the mental, emotional, and behavior tools to respond to the internal and external demands today’s world brings, they are more able to keep showing up to life’s happenings for themselves and their loved ones. For many of the generations before us they were strapped, stressed, and exhausted after starting from scratch from a new country, pushing through poverty, racism, classism, and sexism. Their tools of resilience were to be strong, push through, not speak up, and just get on. These tools of resilience helped them succeed with their time and are outdated for the generations today. Resilience in these days includes the lesser acknowledged world of emotions — regulation, mindfulness, presence, awareness, communication, healthy coping, relationship and conflict resolution.
Navigating the intricacies of being human in today’s world is complex. We face issues like climate change, inequality and social justice, political instability, rapid technology advancements, unreliable healthcare access, food insecurity, economic inequality, and education disparities. The problems can seem insurmountable and overwhelming and working through trauma can become an endless marry-go-around. The off ramp is to celebrate the glimmers, look for and orient toward the light, and ask how we can better incorporate care into all levels of society, community, environment, and business and economic models.
Trauma Work Empowers Women and Changes the World
Trauma Work Empowers Woman and Changes the World
Trauma healing and women’s empowerment have always been one and the same battlefield for me. Both of them light a fire that burns deep in my belly, a mix of fury, rage, and passion alongside compassion, hope, and love. They are the causes that I devote my life to and have cried many tears at both the beautiful vision of what’s possible and the current version of reality. I’ve walked these path’s as both an individual who has experienced trauma, as a woman who has experienced disempowerment for being a woman, and as an activist who sees the possibility of massive systems change and a different future.
How do they overlap for me?
Trauma and sexism…
are disempowering and impact your sense of self worth
can put you in a freeze, fight, flight, fawn response in an instant
impact your ability to live and thrive
perpetuate inequality and discrimination
are both rooted in systemic oppression and discrimination
Healing trauma and fighting for women’s rights…
leads to empowerment and courage as well as compassion and forgiveness
leads to stronger relationships, organizations and societies
require national awareness, advocacy, and policy and cultural changes to create lasting change
They are inextricably linked in that they can both be the root cause of the other; some root causes of trauma are gender based violence and some gender based violence can be rooted in trauma. It’s hard to address one without running into the other.
A Culture That Needs Changing
Though women’s rights seem to have come in strides from Seneca Falls, the Suffrage movement, the right to vote, and fight for reproductive rights and against domestic violence, I find today’s statistics and underlying cultural acceptance of violence (emotional, physical or sexual) against women (and children) totally archaic.
According to the UN, 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. In some countries, up to 70% of women have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Only 40% of women who experience violence seek help or report the abuse due to various reasons.
The prevailing attitudes and culture of acceptance of abuse and violence towards women is something we must work to change together as a society. It is a necessary shift in consciousness in order to reach greater global health, education, peace, and well-being.
Healing Trauma Empower Women and Changes the World
Working to heal trauma is the way I have chosen to empower women and change the world. As I witness women heal themselves, I see them become advocates for others. When they speak out for themselves, they help others recognize their own strength. Once a woman recognizes the path of healing trauma is inextricably linked to fighting systemic oppression, discrimination, and gender based violence, we cannot help but start feeling the fire to change the whole damn thing.
How does this happen on micro and macro levels?
Empowering others: We recognize healing trauma means empowerment, regaining control back over our lives, and the enablement of creating the lives we want to live. We become living proof of change and take on the role of helping others escape violence and oppression
Creating a more just society: We recognize that there are societal conditions that continue to perpetuate trauma and harm to women. We become advocates for change in our families, households, communities, organizations, and in policy
Awareness and education: As we heal, we bring awareness to the problems we’ve seen and experienced, we call for more education, better mental health treatment, and more resources to be focused on solutions
These outcomes are non-linear and happen on all levels simultaneously.
And this work of healing trauma and fighting for women’s rights is also for the world. Women, men, people who have experienced trauma, non-abled bodies, LGBTQIA+, all have differing perspectives, voices, opinions, and experiences. Standing for the values of a inclusive world where all voices can be heard instead of one dominant voice allows us to be a more representative society. This creates more compassion, collaboration, and social cohesion instead of the non-sustainable competitive and conflict ridden ways. This also extends into the treatment of our planet. The way we harm each other, the way we treat women, is a mirror to how we value the earth, our great mother.
For this Woman’s Day, I celebrate and honor the deep work that has happened so far in the field of trauma healing and women’s rights, all of the efforts of those who have come before us, and all of the efforts of those who are fighting, healing, growing, changing, and holding the vision for a more just, peaceful, and non-violent future and a thriving planet.
And for today, let’s work to help those who have been victimized to have opportunities for healing, health, thriving, connection, opportunities and loving relationships. And a tomorrow where being victimized is no longer the norm but a fading past.
A Trauma Informed Lens on Social Media and Mental Health (Part 1)
A Trauma Informed Lens on Social Media
We are in a time where many straddle the lines of being both avid users of social media and swearing them off for life, between worlds of deleting the apps entirely or downloading new apps with self imposed timers. We live in a time where we hear the phrase, “more connected than ever and yet more alone.” The global mental health crisis is felt through the month long waiting lists for a therapist appointment, the burn out of mental health workers as the ratio of clients per therapists increase, and the 20 years “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk has remained on the New York Times Best-Selling List. People all around the world are continually coming online (for better or for worse) and its inverse relationship to health is becoming direly apparent.
The impact of social media’s role on global mental health is a headlining topic these days, coming across the tables of top state officials and frequent in conversations around global safety. As someone who works in the field of trauma, there is a lens that I take to this topic that I’d like to share.
My opinions come from a combination of years of trauma study, plant medicines, and my own lived experience through healing. For this exploration, we’ll stroll through a three part series on 1) the beginnings of our sympathetic nervous system and its technological manifestation into social media, 2) exploring trauma perspectives and seeing media through its lens and 3) where we are now and a path to better times.
Part 1: The Beginning and The Dilemma
Since our early days, our systems have been wired to pay closer attention to potential threats over the mundane, to pick up on the scary over the beautiful. This feature helped the human race survive. For example, pay attention to the lion coming at you before a pretty rainbow in the sky. Makes sense, you’ll want to avoid the lion before enjoying the rainbow, lest you are eaten and cease to enjoy the beauties of life.
So understandably with the advent of technology, we have designed systems outside of us to do that very thing — alert us of threats, and with the rapidity that technology enables. Now we have as many media outlets as there are iPhones and social media platforms like twitter broadcasting to us at every moment.
These days, the threats look a bit different. We are no longer tracking the lion and instead criminals down the street (or across the world), viruses in your local preschool to ones crossing species lines, and any and everything Donald Trump says. Social media has become the global loudspeaker for the human race to track everything that might pose a threat, all at once, coming at you in your living room, bedroom, bathroom, and pocket, whether you’re eating dinner, having sex, or sleeping. Ideally, this would be in hopes that it may serve us so when there isn’t a threat we can go about and look at the rainbows. However, that moment never seems to come. The feature has become a bug.
To take a meander into the spiritual philosophy of Deepak Chopra,
“The physical universe is nothing other than the Self curving back within Itself to experience Itself as spirit, mind, and physical matter.”
We have created our very own Plato’s cave upon which we watch all the shadows we cast upon the wall and magnify. And now, instead of wandering outside of the cave to breathe in the fresh air, we are transfixed on the living nightmares that become what we perceive to be all of life. Social media has become the reflection of our psyche’s greatest fears (and everything else you might find exploring the abyss of the human collective mind). The incessant, pinging, ringing, lighting up our phones, follows us to the bathrooms and furthest corners of the world, we can’t escape it. We are seeped in the dangers and trauma of every human being that can tweet and our nervous systems are fried.
The complication lies here: The very systems we created to alert us to danger have become the very lion we are trying to escape. So it makes sense the stuckness of the predicament we are in. We feed the machine the very things we are afraid of to better alert the masses which then perpetuates the story that haunts us. We lose sight of where one ends and one begins. We don’t know what to choose, ourselves or the system. We can’t get rid of it because we’ve relied on it to live. And it is killing us.
Part 2: Laying the Land
A Trauma Informed Lens on Social Media and Mental Health (Part 2)
A Trauma Informed Lens on Social Media Part 2
Part 2: Laying the Land from a Trauma Informed Lens
Looking at this through a trauma informed lens is a multi step process so I’ll lay out the map before we take the journey. First, a bit of colloquial trauma defining and parts theory by Dick Schwartz. We think about how trauma happens in the exact moment and then how we cope with it in the times to come. Then, a number of nuances specific to trauma as to how and why one might get stuck.
There are many definitions of trauma but one way I explain it at dinner table conversations is it is something that happens and in that moment, it is too much for our system to process. It is stored in the body and its adjacent systems, to tell the tale over and over again until we are able to be present with it fully. And just like how if we have a splinter in our foot, we will walk all sorts of funny to not touch the pain, so is true internally with trauma. To cope with the unprocessed material, we develop different parts to help protect or manage feeling that pain. Dick Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems, has brought this “parts” language to therapy offices around the world and to the collective consciousness. Parts language has helped millions recognize we are not just one part, but have many parts with different feelings, motives, and behaviors. For example, it is possible for one part of me to be happy and another part of me to be sad.
How do we cope with trauma? Humans develop ways of being, thoughts, and behaviors in order to help us navigate life and survive. There are some behaviors that were developed, especially in times of trauma, that though were once helpful, may eventually become non-serving. For example, you were abused when you were young and it was dangerous to object and speak up. Now as an adult, you have learned to repress your voice and not speak up for your needs. How do parts fold into this? There are a couple of parts present; one part that has a need and wants to speak up. Another protector part prevents it because it was taught that it was dangerous. On a very basic level, it becomes an issue of updating a file. There is a part that has not yet been updated to realize you are no longer in the old abusive scenario when you were young. You are now a full grown adult with your friends who love and care for your needs and it is no longer dangerous to speak. However without healing, these parts conflict.
How can we heal? These once important and life saving behaviors usually can’t be shifted until the things they were once serving are seen, cared for and a different way set forth to guide us to new and better behaviors. This can be a painful process because it requires us to let go of something that we built to help us live, it requires us to be with the difficult experience and confront the thing we were protecting ourselves from, it requires us to let go of the identities and attachments we formed. This, I would say, is at the core of trauma healing.
So, let’s now apply that lens to social media and global health. We’ll explore what part media plays in our survival, and why, from a trauma perspective, we are stuck in this never ending cycle and can’t seem to get ourselves out.
Media and social media plays a part in the global family constellation. It plays the role we have asked it to play for us, a protector part warning us of all possible dangers. It has learned to be hypervigilant, always on watch, to catch any possible danger coming our way, our neighbors way, our country’s way, our planet’s way.
The global loudspeaker on blast 24/7 of all the things we need to be fearful of is never ending and it is no wonder our global psyche is continually in a sympathetic response. And the question is, why are we so hijacked and stuck? 1) Our own biology, 2) it’s ingrained in our survival instinct, and 3) a nuanced trauma response
Our own biology keeps us in this loop. This loudspeaker appeals to the oldest structure in our brain, the reptilian brain, responsible for instinct and survival, it’s main focus is avoiding pain.
A wise survival instinct. To parallel this to trauma, I’ll share a core yet key understanding of developmental trauma, specifically that which happens between a child and a caregiver. When a caregiver is the one abusing a child, the child must choose between their own real lived experience (harm) and their caregiver. This puts them in the ultimate dilemma. The caregiver is responsible for their life, shelter, food, and love. At some point, the child must disavow themself and choose the caregiver. It is actually an intelligent survival mechanism. However, the consequence from this is learning behaviors to shut down their own experience, their body, their needs, their voice, etc. To bring this to the role of social media — they have played a protector role for us, we have depended on it and tied its presence in our lives to some sense of safety. Now that it is causing more harm than good, it is hard for us to know how to stop choosing it.
Another discovery within trauma shows that those who grew up in a traumatic environment with abusive relationships, coming into a calm, secure, and loving relationship can actually be quite dysregulating. It can feel scary to do something that our system is not used to. So, as current generations are born into the world of the always on global loudspeaker, our brains are saturated with the mix of dopamine, oxytocin, adrenalin, cortisol to cope with the continual onslaught of information and fear. And it may feel dysregulating and uncomfortable to some to go into anything other than that. Paint scene, all the people in nature still tethered to their phones. This is just the beginning of a trailhead to inquire into why we can’t get unhooked. But let us return back to the main discussion.
Part 3. Coming to Terms With Our Current Situation and a Path Through
A Trauma Informed Lens on Social Media and Mental Health (Part 3)
A Trauma Informed Lens on Social Media
Part 3. Coming to Terms With Our Current Situation and a Path Through
We’ve explored the system being built out into a piece of technology and that piece of technology taking over our perception of reality. Then a look into what is trauma, what happens when it happens, how we design systems to survive, how those systems sometimes stop serving us, and what keeps us stuck. Do you see the parallel?
A note on our relationship to advertisers, media and social media platforms.
Having our reptilian brains taken advantage of isn’t necessarily new news. Marketers are as blunt as to publish ‘how to’ articles for others to use the understanding of our reptilian brains to get us to click and purchase by appealing to our pain points, innate selfishness, and striking an emotional chord. There is a difference between solving for your customers’ pain points and taking advantage of them. Some relationship therapists might even call this manipulation, emotional abuse, or even sociopathic tendencies.
And as we see these days the revelations of social media companies knowingly driving towards the sentiments of anger to elicit more responses so their platforms can remain active, relevant, and the billions in ad budgets can keep flowing.
We are in an abusive relationship with media and social media. There is an important distinction here that is also important when considering relationships — intent, impact, and consent.
When did we go from knowing participants, being a part of the creation of tools and technology to provide us news that would be helpful to our lives to being non consenting participants where our human physiology is being used against us to drive the profits of organizations. It seems a classical example of technology designed for good, bred with the underlying incentives of profit in a capitalist system, gone awry. We have entered into an abusive, non-consenting relationship.
The intention may have been good, the impact, not so good. We may have once consented, and now, I guess that’s to tell.
What now? Now is a time where we are coming to acknowledge the reality we are in. We are becoming aware, we are starting to speak up, and we are starting to draw boundaries. Values, integrity, and a healthy dose of therapy is what I call for.
Below is a process found after years of therapy, medicine work, and deep inner inquiry. It is a tried and true approach to healing trauma, to healthy relationships… and its application to our current quandary with social media.
Step 1: Acknowledge and take responsibility for what is ours and what is not ours
See reality for what it is and accept it. Understand why this started, how it came to be, and what it is now. All parties must recognize their role and responsibility in it. Some media outlets and social media platforms must see where it has become an abuser. The consumers and users must see their role and complacency.
Step 2: Forgiveness of self, forgiveness of other
Realize the media is playing the part that we’ve asked them to. They are the protector and will go to all ends in order to serve its purpose. Then systems and AI were built in to more intelligently tell the systems what we want. Our deep reptilian brain responds with never-ending scrolling and likes. Social media platforms are confused because they are doing the things they were told to do.
Forgive ourselves for creating a system to protect us and forgive ourselves for being a vulnerable human species that is trying to survive this chaotic world. Forgive the resulting organizations for doing the bidding and falling to their own vulnerabilities of greed, chasing the promises of riches whilst sacrificing the collective health.
Step 3: Presence and Compassion
Be present with ourselves. In the process, at some point, we must come to face the very human part of it all. We come to face all of our shared vulnerabilities. Our fragility, fear, loneliness, scarcity, anger, resentment, sadness. You will likely find in this process your own traumas, what lay underneath the root of your actions. Did something happen early in life that made you promise to yourself, you will never let anyone hurt you and your family. So you created something to help prevent that from happening. This is a sweeping generalization though I state it as I’m confident the majority of people have something unseen and are not asking the questions or looking. As we come to what truly sits underneath and bring to it presence, we will learn what it is to extend compassion to ourselves. And only then, do we learn to extend compassion to others. The pain composts back into the universe instead of Twitter and we are lighter.
Step 4: Gratitude
After the storm, comes the rainbow. I promise you, the sun will shine and the rainbows will glow and there is life with air worth breathing. With your eyes closed, tears will stream down your face in gratitude. Gratitude to feel joy, lightness, happiness. In these moments, we come together and connect as friends, family, and community.
With a new lens, free from distorted chips and jagged breaks, we can now see the gifts that technology has afforded us, the ability to know what is happening across the world, to communicate with our loved ones at any time, to learn the infinite knowledge of those who have came before us and living teachers around the world. We remember our agency and power and see the opportunity and privilege to carve a new path, a new system, new beliefs, that will be of greater service to ourselves and the whole.
Step 5: Spirituality
Holding the complexity of the human experience as well as seeing the bigger picture. As spirits in human form, we come from a place of unity and incarnate into being human, an experience of duality, with nothing but our emotions, thought, and language to help us, it is traumatic! And our journey here is to evolve beyond our self, our own needs, to transcend the self, to go from scarce and competitive to giving, abundant, collaborative. This is the path of human conscious evolution, and is the ride that we have all agreed to be on together. With that framing, our current situation, the ugly and all, is just another spirit in form and a reflection of what we are here to heal.
Step 6: Embodied Action
The most spiritual path is right here on earth. When you do your own work, you are led right back to your own body, your own breath, this one life you have the privilege to make your own. The shift after this work however, is you begin to embody the wisdom from our experiences. You live from a place of knowing you have a choice.
The choice we have here is intentionally knowing how to walk the bridge from our sympathetic nervous system to our parasympathetic nervous system. This bodied path we walk going forward is not to be lived entirely through the sympathetic nervous system, hijacked by advertisers and social media. Yes, there is a time and place for those responses and it is within our power to remember to restore, reset, and reside in our parasympathetic response. It is through our pause, our breath, our presence. We must look down at our ankles as we sit in the cave and see they are not actually bound. Remember, we are here to delight in the rainbow. Come out of the cave, breath in the air.
Step 7: Rinse and Repeat, it’s not linear, its not quick, its a lifetime journey
I’ll share one important piece of wisdom i’ve learned on my path of healing trauma. It’s slow and it’s lifelong. This goes against what modern society sells us — quick fixes and immediate results. This path is nothing short of miraculous and things can and do change in an instant. However, the promises of quick enlightenment, like what many people are turning towards psychedelics for, is a fear I have. We must refine the art of integration which is really just called life-ing.
We will all find ourselves falling back into old patterns — swiping through the ongoing profiles of people when you’re feeling lonely to never message a single person or rant over twitter with the protection you’ll never come face to face with them. Next time, try and witness what’s happening.
We have more agency here than we think. Instead of getting overly mad at yourself or the media, self regulate, be present with what is happening within ourselves. This will slowly develop the muscle overtime and leads to the ability to be present with others, which births compassion, connection, collaboration. Then sometimes, instead of falling in the unending scroll of loneliness and isolation, we come back to ourselves, we turn off the TV, we go into nature, we connect with our neighbors. We use those hours to invest into our local community, to share in music and culture together, we look at the rainbows.
To finally wrap up this three part exploration, I don’t mean this as a bypass to say the problem of social media would be solved by breathing. However, the immediate response that was required to escape the lion is no longer the same defense needed to figure out, let’s say, climate change. Engaging our quick twitch muscles kindred to a sprint reaction and firing off a quick tweet is not going to change the world.
It’s about becoming aware of what state we are in and changing the place from which we are trying to solve a problem. Pause. Turn towards. Talk to people in person. Listen. Gather in community. Parasympathetic nervous system. And all the meantime, we chill out and become more resilient.
From there we arrive to a totally different mindset. Most of us know by now that responding while we are agitated always leads to less than promising results. So reset ourselves first and from there we will be with a whole different set of situations to solve for and technology will still be there to be a better ally to help us. This is how we guide ourselves and each other into the next iteration of social media that will be of more service, to thriving communities, relationships, health, prosperity, balance, and love. As Einstein said…
And in parallel between now and then, while we do the work, bring balance to what we project on the cave wall from doom and gloom, with all else that is also out there — possibility, opportunity, change, smiles, laughter, hope, faith, connection. Because I’ll tell you, its happening everywhere. We have just yet to give it the place on the wall it deserves. Then we’ll realize, we don’t need to hide in the cave. We can go outside and experience it for ourselves. This is about observing how we live our lives, how we can live better lives, and how we can come back into the right relationship with technology to support us in that endeavor.