I'll follow the sun...

I knew that the clouds blocked the sun, but in my childish brain as a kid, I pictured the clouds going all the way up to the sun. I believed that a cloudy day or a cloudy night was some sort of darkened state. I think I believed that on a cloudy day even the sun thought it was a cloudy day.

It wasn’t until I flew in a plane and had that moment when you break through the clouds of a rainy day into blinding sunlight that I realized that there is a constancy to the sun –or the stars.  A constancy that is unimaginable. From the ground, life is cloudy. But above those clouds the sun never stops.

Weather is really just that: whether. It’s this or that. It’s here and it’s gone. But that’s not how it feels. A cloudy day can bring you down and you can completely forget that above those clouds the sun always shines. Mood and weather have so much in common, both blow through and yet when you are in them—they can feel so permanent.

There is something miraculous in knowing that the light of the sky is never actually gone. Yes, it is hidden from your view, but it isn’t gone. And there are so many days I have wished for the same faith in my own light—when I have felt cloudy and dark--and I have forgotten that the light doesn’t leave, even if it is hidden from view.

That’s why you have to write yourself notes on your good days, on your sunny and starry, full moon days. You have to write notes to your cloudy day self. You have to write notes and have pictures to remind you that the light is still there and to help you have faith that the light will return. You have to make lists of things to do that work for you and put it in an easy place to find: on the fridge, or a post-it on your computer monitor. You have to put notes and quotes in places that you use all the time. You have to make it easy for you to have moments where you can take off and rise 30,000 feet and break through your clouds and catch a glimpse of your unending sun. Yes, tomorrow may rain, but you can follow the sun. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014

Let's call community violence what it is: Trauma

“One in three black male children born in the United States is expected to go to jail or prison at some point in his lifetime…. I work in very poor communities and one of the hardest things for me to see is children who are clearly traumatized, so clearly disrupted by a level of trauma and violence that it makes it impossible for them to conform to the behavioral expectations of institutions that refuse to see that disability,” he said. While most of these children live in violent communities, go to violent schools, routinely see and experience acts of violence, “when they act violently, we call them violent offenders as if somehow they are the aberration,” he said. To change the narrative, the word “trauma” needs to be applied more frequently, he said. “If we don’t use that word, we don’t use all of these resources and skills and interventions we know and have that can help people suffering from trauma recover,” he said.”

— Public interest lawyer and Equal Justice Initiative Executive Director Bryan Stevenson, JD

Changing the conversation about trauma means naming it--calling it what it is: living in violence is trauma, community violence, school violence, domestic violence. A basic definition of trauma is that it is an experience or event that overwhelms your capacities to depend upon or protect yourself. The hallmarks of trauma are feelings of terror, horror and helplessness. Community violence is understood to include direct personal exposure (happened to you), it also includes exposure through witnessing (saw it happen to someone else) and vicarious (know it happened to someone else). Community violence has been linked to PTSD in children and adolescents. This isn’t just a research statistic—this is a serious blow to the developmental process of  thousands of our young people. Trauma and PTSD affects our memory, our self-regulation, our relationships. It affects our ability to learn, to make decisions, to calm down, to seek out support. Trauma shatters trust and social fabrics—the two things most needed for healing and growth. While most people associate community violence with cities, there are many rural communities who also struggle with community violence and domestic violence.

 We need to change the conversation—change the narrative as Stevenson says—to trauma. Living everyday in a violent community, witnessing, experiencing, fearing, violence is repeated trauma. Trauma can be healed. Trauma can be understood. There are ways back from trauma—and the responses to trauma are universally human.

 Changing the conversation isn’t semantic. It is a radical act because if you acknowledge the trauma you will need to acknowledge the context. It is the complexity of this issue that makes it so hard to slow down and call it what it is: trauma. Trauma makes us feel the responsibility that we have. Trauma reminds us that this is a problem of people—people who are getting hurt. It will require us all to see the impact of historical trauma and how it still plays out, and it will require us to see how current structures are supporting the continuation of violence and trauma. It will require us to start where we are wherever violence is present—and that can feel like a daunting task. It is a daunting task because we can’t heal the trauma simply by healing one child at a time: we have to heal our communities—and we need to see that all communities who struggle with violence and trauma are OUR communities.  Changing the conversation is brave. Healing from trauma is brave.  This week --instead of saying 'violence'-- say 'trauma.' Let's change the conversation one word at a time and honor their struggle.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014

4000 Really Difficult Steps to Change

4000 Really Difficult Steps to Change was always my fantasy title for a book on healing from long term trauma. This would at least more accurately describe the experience of healing. Our world, especially the internet blog and the self help world , while trying to be helpful, has made it seem like the path to growth and healing is easy; everything is just 3 Easy Steps, or 7 Simple Slogans away from total cure or complete happiness. If it doesn’t work, well, that’s because you did it wrong, you didn’t try hard enough, or you don’t have enough willpower. 

First ‘3 easy steps’ model implies that the process can be done alone in the do-it-yourself model so popular nowadays. But, healing from long term trauma is not a solitary activity. No one heals alone. Trauma shatters. And much of what it shatters are the connections in our world—between people and within communities. Trauma shatters trust and trust must be healed through relationship. In fact, for most things that we need to learn to truly grow, we need supportive relationships as learning environments. I’m not entirely sure where our love affair for ‘self-help’ came from, but there is an irony in the views we have of self help for medical problems and mental health problems. If you broke your leg, refused medical care and a cast, and opted, instead, to hop around and walk on the broken leg anyway—you would get called ‘crazy.’ Your ability to make sound judgments would be questioned. You would, ironically, get hauled in for psychological help. 

    Yet when you are psychologically run over by a car—breaking multiple psychic bones, and ‘walk on the broken bones anyway’ – you will get a pat on the back and told that you have “a strong character.” Yet in most cases, this is exactly what happened. In situations of long term trauma, you were hurt badly, and not taken care of. You had to let everything heal as it was and work around it, trying to hide your limp. Now its time to go back and do the work of healing. This is difficult work. 

    This brings us to the second and most difficult part of the ‘3 easy steps’ view of healing— it’s not 3 steps and it’s not easy. Healing from long term trauma, like developmental growth, happens in cycles over time. No one likes to hear that things take a long time, it feels virtually ‘un-American’ to say that—but really, if it really was 3 easy steps—wouldn’t most people have done it already? But here’s the thing: it’s not that there’s no way forward, it’s just that it is a long way forward. But it is often made more difficult for people who are trying to heal when they are told the entire time that it should be going faster, or should be less difficult. But it is a very worthwhile journey, these 4000 steps…

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014

Take two poems and call me in the morning

As a psychologist I don't get to write prescriptions, but if I could, I would most often write them for poems. The language of healing is the language of emotions. And the language of emotions is a hard one for most people to learn. As someone who teaches emotional intelligence in the corporate world, I can tell you that being able to sense your emotion, name it, and then be able to talk about it —and manage it—is a skill that everyone is working on. And when you have lived through long term trauma, this skill is even harder. 

But once you can identify the feeling and want to talk about it, words can fail. I have found that the words often just feel too small for the feeling you are having—or somehow the words don’t connect to the feeling—it feels hollow. But one place that feelings learn to connect to words, and images and stories is poems. Poetry is the intersection of all things emotional. Poems allow your brain to begin to hold the images, feelings, and words in one place, at the same time, without the pressure of a full narrative. 

Poetry?! I hear you saying…I know poems may not seem macho enough for some of you, but that’s because you haven’t met the right poets. You need to meet David Whyte. He’s a poet who, if you saw him, you could say: Man, that guy could kick my ass. Actually, he doesn't need to lay a hand on you-- the blows come anyway. His words help lost parts of yourself find each other. His words can give you the capacity to capture your courage to heal again. In this blog I will often bring in poems and pieces of poems—they are the often the best first start to the language of healing and the practice of living. Poems are invitations to the journey that so many have dared to make—the journey of loss and the journey of reconnecting with life. When you read a poem you join an immense group of fellow pilgrims. You are not alone in your work, in your healing. So in order to heal you can start with this poem—an invitation to start, to find your voice and your courage. David Whyte’s poem Start Close In ~ Here's the first stanza, and the poem read by the author below.

Start close in,

don’t take the second step

or the third,

start with the first

thing

close in,

the step

you don’t want to take.

David's books are available here: Most are available on kindle as well. 

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2014