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  • 🤲#17: The Politics of Trauma | Part 1 | by Staci K. Haines - Book Summary & Key Takeaways

🤲#17: The Politics of Trauma | Part 1 | by Staci K. Haines - Book Summary & Key Takeaways

What is Somatics and how does it provide a foundation for individual and systemic healing? What's the difference between individual vs collective trauma? What do survivors of trauma really want?

Hello courageous people! 👋 Welcome to Edition 17.

This week, our featured book is 📚 The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice 🖋 by Staci K. Haines.

This is another book which has soooo much in it, that I have decided to make it a two parter. This week we are focussing on understanding the junction between individual healing versus at a community and social justice level, with next week’s newsletter focussing on how we make change and progress.

Let’s jump in! All text in italics are quotes taken directly from the book.

👊 What is the take home message of The Politics Of Trauma?

This book really speaks to the entire breadth of healing from trauma. In fact, I would say it is the most perhaps the most well informed and holistic view I have come across so far. This section sums it up well:

“I have heard healers and therapists say that the world would be different if people would do their deep healing work so as to not pass on their wounding to their kids and coworkers. I have heard meditation practitioners say that if we all meditated, we could bring about peace. I have also heard social change leaders say that if we change the economic conditions, the rest will take care of itself. To me, each of these holds a partial truth, yet is incomplete on its own.” - page 53

We cannot fully heal without taking into account both our individual needs as well as the wider systems in which we all exist.

A further framing of this (and one that is even more confronting, but necessary) is:

“An individual may experience deep healing personally, while continuing to perpetuate oppressive behaviour and uphold harmful systems at the expense of others. That’s not healing.” - page 54

Wow. That packs a punch. 😳

✋ What is Somatics and how does it work to provide a foundation for individual and systemic healing?

Before reading this book, I had heard the word Somatics used in different books or by psychologists and I had some sense of what it was, but if I had to explain it aloud to another person I wouldn’t have been able to.

Understanding Somatics better has been one of the key pillars to this book and this body of work:

“Somatics is a holistic way to transform. It engages our thinking, feeling, sensing, and actions. Transformation, from a somatic view, means that the way we are, relate, and act become aligned with our visions and values—even under pressure.

More than understanding and insight, it supports us in embodying new ways of being, aligned with a broader vision. Somatics is very effective in both healing trauma and embodying new skills for leadership, organization building, and social change.” - page 17 

If it can be boiled down to a single word, Somatics is about embodiment.

It is about learning to feel things across the entire spectrum of emotion, it is about being honest with ourselves, it is about feeling and being completely in alignment:

“Through somatics practices and bodywork—the same processes I would later study—experiences of abuse, violation, grief, and fear fell off and out of me. I faced a level of loss, shame, rage, and the isolation that comes with things you have to keep secret—that I didn’t think I’d survive facing.

The deep self-reliance I had developed was sometimes at odds with the sheer vulnerability that emerged through this healing work. Yet, I was amazed at what my body had held for me, and when given the chance and the somatic support, my body/mind/emotions/being knew how to heal.” - page 4 

Acting from this place also means that we are able to choose differently:

“Embodied healing means we can make choices based on what we care about, rather than react from survival strategies, even under the pressures of living, loving, and social justice work.” - page 11 

🤔 Is it individual trauma or collective trauma?

This is a really interesting question that is posed and mulled over throughout the book. What is the difference between the two? Where do they converge and where do they diverge?

The answer is … complicated:

“What we tend to think of as individual traumas, such as intimate partner violence, child abuse, harmful drug and alcohol use, and more, are not so individual when we look at the numbers and the social conditions in which they are happening. Intergenerational traumas can be best understood within this broader view as well.” - page 57

For example:

“How can a woman heal from child sexual abuse without addressing sexism and gendered targeting, sexualization, and violence toward girls, women, and transgender people?

How can a young Black man organize for social justice for his peoples without also addressing the intergenerational trauma of slavery and racism? Where is his space to heal?

How can an immigrant domestic worker organize for equal pay without having an accessible and relevant place to heal from the pain of leaving her family in order to provide for them?” - page 57

Everything happens to a person is both individual AND part of a wider system. The thing is, we are so deeply embedded within these systems that they can be difficult to even see them at play around us. 🤯

🌎 How do the different Sites of our lives influence us?

There are (at least) 6 different Sites of our lives that impact each of us. They have influenced our beliefs, our thinking, our responses and our traumas.

🙋‍♀️ Individual: is our natural predisposition, how we were when we came into the world and before we took on external influences.

👨‍👩‍👦 Families and Intimate Networks: our families and the people we belong to most intimately, whether that be by genetics or life circumstances. This is where we learn our foundation of safety, belonging, dignity, resources and equity.

⚽️ Community: the region or place where we lived, as well as other communities we are part of (eg. related to a practice like sport, or related to an identity such as being queer). This is where beliefs around race, class and gender are often embedded.

🏙 Institutions: like educational institutions, banks, the military, healthcare, media, energy and transportation, social services, and many more. Institutions can help or harm, often doing both to different groups simultaneously.

📉 Social Norms & Historical Forces: the big things that have happened in history that are still shaping us. They perpetuate beliefs around which people are more deserving than others, or what is “normal” vs “not normal”.

🌳 Spirit & Landscape: our natural world.

As the circle gets bigger with how many people are encapsulated in each Site, the more difficult it becomes to understand the interactions and complexities.

“If we do not understand and integrate the shaping power of institutions, social norms, economic systems, oppression, and privilege alongside the profound influences of family and community, we will not fully understand trauma or how to heal from it. We will not understand how to prevent it.” - page 11 

🙏 What do survivors of trauma really want?

Given our new found ability to better recognise all of the systems at play in our trauma and healing journeys, it is an interesting moment to ask the question of what is it that survivors really want?

“All of the survivors did NOT want incarceration for the people who had violated and abused them. They also did NOT want to go through the criminal/legal system themselves, given how they’d be treated, and what evidentiary laws require.

They wanted healing, accountability, and social change so that we can end the abuse of children, and so that they could heal.” - page 8 

There is something about this that really resonates and hits home for me. Because even if I am able to heal fully from the trauma I have experienced, it feels somewhat hollow knowing that there are so many other people out there that are still hurting or that will one day be hurt.

So how do we go about re-constructing our society and our systems to not only heal, but to prevent trauma from happening to our future generations?

This is exactly the answer we are going to explore in next week’s newsletter, and I can’t wait to dive into it.

Until then,Eleanor ❤️🙏

🧠 Resources & Links

🖥 Generative Somatics - Resources including essays, articles, webinars, videos, and podcasts

📕 Next week’s book

Coming out next Friday 27th May 2022 is edition #18 featuring (can you guess 🤪)📚 The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice - PART 2 💥🖋 by Staci K. Haines

If you’re not already, subscribe now to get the next edition straight to your inbox! 📬