Free Virtual Advanced Training on Secondary Traumatic Stress

General critique on why demand to "stay inside the window" is sometimes just a new form of oppression. Not always, but sometimes. As one suggested source of reading material...

Beyond Adaptation: Decolonizing Approaches to Coping With Oppression

How should one respond to racial oppression? Conventional prescriptions of mainstream social psychological science emphasize the idea of coping with oppression—whether via emotional management strategies that emphasize denial or disengagement; problem-focused strategies that emphasize compensation, self-efficacy, or skills training; or collective strategies that emphasize emotional support—in ways that promote adaptation to, rather than transformation of, oppressive social structures. Following a brief review of the literature on coping with racism and oppression, we present an alternative model rooted in perspectives of liberation psychology (Martín-Baró, 1994). This decolonial approach emphasizes critical consciousness (rather than cultivated ignorance) of racial oppression, a focus on de-ideologization (rather than legitimation) of status quo realities, and illumination of models of identification conducive to collective action. Whereas the standard approach to coping with oppression may ultimately both reinforce and reproduce systems of domination, we propose a decolonial approach to racism perception as a more effective strategy for enduring prosperity and well-being

All wounding happens from the outside in and this includes racism. So two realms. Outside you and Inside you. Healing happens from the inside out. Unfortunately what was done to you stick to you and then you carry or do this to yourself ( inside ). Mother feeds a baby with a spoon. The baby grows and takes the spoon and feeds herself from then on. The same thing happens when the baby is abused or denied. The child learns and thus abuse or deny themselves. In the case of racism once it is felt and experienced it is also kept alive as an inner influence and force in our inner world. Just like an abused child will not stop loving the parent but will stop loving themselves. This trauma called racism is an internal movie inside the conscious and subconscious mind, feelings, memory and imagination. So what to do is rewrite the story with a different ending. If the story of Little Red Riding Hood was about racism then the wolf is the racist and you are Little Red. Note the wolf eats the grandmother ( generational trauma). Ok and in the end Little Red get the wood cutter to kill dead the racist wolf. Now there are many many ways of writing a new story but if death of the bad one is the result then this new movie will over write the trauma of the remembered and relived racism. So in short as Captan Hook once said " Kill them- Kill them all ".  It is pretty easy. The response inside if this is done well is that when racism is seen or experienced in the real outer world, is dead and death. Inside they are already dead. Goners for good.  This process is detailed in the 4th video of this playlist. Fall 2022 Full Workshop
https://www.youtube.com/playli...w4FsUo4FFrIVvyFtxpGA

@Michael Harrell posted:

All wounding happens from the outside in and this includes racism. So two realms. Outside you and Inside you. Healing happens from the inside out. Unfortunately what was done to you stick to you and then you carry or do this to yourself ( inside ). Mother feeds a baby with a spoon. The baby grows and takes the spoon and feeds herself from then on. The same thing happens when the baby is abused or denied. The child learns and thus abuse or deny themselves. In the case of racism once it is felt and experienced it is also kept alive as an inner influence and force in our inner world. Just like an abused child will not stop loving the parent but will stop loving themselves. This trauma called racism is an internal movie inside the conscious and subconscious mind, feelings, memory and imagination. So what to do is rewrite the story with a different ending. If the story of Little Red Riding Hood was about racism then the wolf is the racist and you are Little Red. Note the wolf eats the grandmother ( generational trauma). Ok and in the end Little Red get the wood cutter to kill dead the racist wolf. Now there are many many ways of writing a new story but if death of the bad one is the result then this new movie will over write the trauma of the remembered and relived racism. So in short as Captan Hook once said " Kill them- Kill them all ".  It is pretty easy. The response inside if this is done well is that when racism is seen or experienced in the real outer world, is dead and death. Inside they are already dead. Goners for good.  This process is detailed in the 4th video of this playlist. Fall 2022 Full Workshop
https://www.youtube.com/playli...w4FsUo4FFrIVvyFtxpGA

Healing happens in a great variety of ways, and centering it solely on the individual is deeply troubling and oppressive. It supports that narrative that individuals are responsible for themselves and that society and others aren't responsible for their effects on individuals. That non-accountability is disempowerment. It's oppression. It's ongoing abuse and trauma.

People need safe environments to feel and be safe. Much of trauma response, not all but some, is not "learned helplessness", it's actual helplessness.

The sooner your side of mental health gets that, the better off we'll all be. We cannot agree to disagree on this point. The debate needs to be had. Telling people they have the power to save themselves can be a dangerous misrepresentation of certain brutal, ugly realities about the world.

What you say is true about learned helplessness and actual helplessness. However you have to add in the time of the event.  It is brutally true that as a child being forced to face actual abuse that you are in FACT helpless. But you are not forever helpless or hopeless. It is true that we have NO CHOICE until we install the ability to chose.  When we were six years old we could not drive a car. We grow into an adult and can in fact now drive a car and this applies to many things we could not do as a child. When we learn to drive a car then we have a choice to drive or not. It is a process of learning that empowers us to have a choice.  Inside us we have a wide range of feelings available. Love or hate and gratitude or joy. This is a big list of our emotional range. None of our emotions need to be tied to the outside at all. We can chose to feel what we wish or want. This include feeling empowered and self assured or feeling victorious and powerful . We never feel our feeling outside our skin. And we can control or chose what we feel and when we feel it. This is a power we all have that by trauma we were conditioned to deny in favor of being forced to feel the victim and the powerlessness as a child. We are responsible for only what we feel and do and can not take responsibility for what events unfold in the world. We can control and guide our reaction to what is being done out in the world. I promote ranting and raging at the unfairness, judgment and cruelty of this world as an armor to keep from being traumatized again. The opposite of being a  victim.

Watch my videos and tell me what you feel of the process.