12 Years a Slave?
MINDFUL MOMENTS # 157
This week marked 12 years since my dad died. It’s always an uncomfortable time of year, with birthdays and Father’s Day around the corner, and I found this year particularly difficult.
12 years seems like an excessively long time, doesn’t it? And yet the timeline when it comes to loss is neither linear nor particularly rational. Loss is something which, I think, evolves, rather than disappears. Like a swirling mist, it curls and rounds and drifts, and takes on different shapes - all at once both beautiful and sad. On the brightest day, the mist rises and seems less present - and may almost seem at the point of evaporation - but then you may just become aware of its presence in the peripheries of your vision. It’s difficult to hear “12 years” without hearing “12 years a slave” because of the Oscar-winning film. It made me consider: have I been “a slave” to grief for all this time?
We love a story. Humans have been telling stories since the beginning of their evolution. But are we too addicted to the narrative? Trauma loves a story. Eminent psychiatrist, Bessel van der Kolk, writes early on in The Body Keeps The Score about trying to understand the veterans’ fascination with retelling war stories. He describes how the traumatised victims of war “immediately came to life, speaking with great intensity about their traumatic experiences” in a way that amazed him. He realises, then, that a hallmark of trauma is that you feel most alive when you are revisiting the experience. Bessel van der Kolk writes that “Somehow the very event that caused them so much pain had also become their sole source of meaning”. I think we have to be careful for that not to become the case when we consider the events in our own lives which have caused us suffering and pain. (Of course, the concept of being unwilling vs. being unable is an important to distinction to make within polyvagal-informed care and may be worth revisiting another time…)
In this way, I think, we have to be careful not to become addicted to our story. Unfortunately, within the NHS (though I suspect more nationally), ‘talking therapy’ is what you are likely to be offered. Something that is perhaps hard to get your head round, though, is that it doesn’t actually matter what the story is. In the case of pre-verbal trauma (i.e. trauma that occurred at a very young age), telling the story is not possible. Crucially, however, healing can still take place because the nervous system holds the story. We may be hungry to understand ourselves through words and narrative, but the nervous system knows the story and that is what matters.
It may be that when we retell the story, we feel most alive. But when we consider the story held in the nervous system - one that is always determining safety and threat - our own cerebral retelling of the story does not change the state of our nervous system. What has changed physiologically when we retell the story? Often, within the context of PTSD, an individual may move from the numb, dissociation of dorsal shutdown to a sympathetic, fight-flight response. They may suddenly, therefore, feel flooded with energy and notice things within their surroundings that they weren’t before; perhaps this makes them feel alive.
Healing takes place in ventral. Within trauma-therapy, the focus then would be on travelling safely between the different autonomic states (you may recall the ladder) and disrupting the old story, by offering moments of ventral when things start to feel difficult. Much like you may have heard the concept of “rewiring your brain” it is possible, then, to rewrite the story held within the nervous system. In this way, holding too tightly to story, is unhelpful.
As usual, it seems now, I have drifted into celebrating the benefits of polyvagal theory in understanding trauma. (But perhaps in this way I am not focussing so much on my own story anymore?)
On reflection, perhaps in some of the 12 years that have passed I was a slave to the grief I felt; shackled, perhaps, by the feelings of loss. I certainly don’t feel a “slave” to it now; it has long since evolved from it being something which had so much power over me into something which I have learnt to manage. However, I have felt some of its heaviness this week. It presents in me like a heaviness and a fatigue, that I recognise now to be emotionally-driven. I suppose what I am describing is my nervous system resting more in dorsal; a state that brings about feelings of hopelessness and depression. What my nervous system needs, then, is to feel the world to be a safe place and is searching for cues of safety. We can derive these cues of safety from within us, by using mindfulness and breathwork; outside of us, by noticing ourselves to be safe in our surroundings (e.g. spending time in nature); and between ourselves and others, by spending time with the people that make us feel safe and loved.
Mindful moment: Do you have a story that you keep retelling? Perhaps you notice that when you retell it you feel somewhat more alive or more invigorated? How much importance do you give to the story of your life? How much power does the narrative you tell yourself hold over you and your understanding of who you are? Through movement and connection, we can rewrite the story within the nervous system so that day-to-day we feel ourselves to be in our ventral state of safety; our happy place. In writing this today, I have come to appreciate the distinction between grief and loss. For me, then, the story is no longer one of the intensity of grief as an active and powerful emotion, but of acknowledging loss.
YOGA | Mindful Movement
Next class: June 15th
Join us every Saturday from 11am-12.15 at the Cornerstone Community Centre in Hove for an all-levels vinyasa yoga flow class, meditation and mindfulness (mats provided or bring your own).
£6 per class or £24 for 5.
Upcoming classes for your diary until August 2024:
June 15th, 22nd, 29th;
July 6th, 13th, 27th.
No classes in August
P.S. I am looking for a new venue to teach in after the summer break… if you have any ideas, please get in touch!
REFLECT
“Earth will be safe when we feel in us enough safety.”
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I'm Laura, a yoga teacher and NHS doctor. With this weekly newsletter I aim to help you incorporate mindful moments into your week. I want you to feel inspired, empowered and creative. I promise to always be authentic; to only include content that speaks to me and which, therefore, I hope will do the same for you.
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