Trauma Skills Summit till 26 Aug.

[Blueberry]

There's a free Trauma Skills Summit running till tomorrow. Idk if you can still join up. Today was the 9th day and I've only just listened to a session now. It was one of the sessions for today on shame, presented by Bret Lyon, PhD, and Sheila Rubin, LMFT Founders of the Center for Healing Shame

I found it really useful. Made a number of things in my life suddenly make sense. Maybe I'll type up my notes and put them on here somewhere.

The summit is being organised by sounds true.com

[Blueberry]

Surprisingly enough, I was able to access the conferences from the final day about an hour ago.

There was one on healing collective trauma by Thomas Hübl. He emphasised the importance of as many people as possible being trauma-informed. Maybe I'll type up my notes on it, maybe not. 

[Blueberry]

Thomas Hübl, Unlocking Our Capacity for Collective Healing:

-does group healing especially Holocaust and World War 2

People are born into a trauma landscape. There are huge scars all over Europe: East-West divide; Holocaust... Equally there are scars in the US and in other countries too.

There's a difference between one person traumatised but born in a fairly stable environment versus one person traumatised and born amid systemic racism or when bombs are dropping all around.

In epigenetic research done by Isabelle Mansuy at the University of Zurich the sperm cells of traumatised mice express traumatic behaviours into the 5th and 6th generations without these future generations of mice having been traumatised.

Feeling numb, distanced, alone are symptoms of trauma. If you grow up in a world that normalises trauma, you normalise what you are born into. So if you sense something's not right about your parent but your parent claims "I'm fine" then you'll grow up with this disconnection. In an aware environment, I cannot remain unconscious of my trauma. So trauma-informed competence building is important. Inherited trauma traits come either from collective or from intergenerational trauma.

Trauma is the split between body, feelings and thought. The healed state is a coherence of body, emotions, mind. There is an intelligence process that cuts off the overwhelmed part during traumatisation. Intellectualisation is good IF you are connected to body and feeling, but if intellectualisation is not connected very bad decisions will be made. (At this point the speaker was talking globally, politics etc. I think, though obviously the same will apply to an individual person's decisions.)

When you have embodiment, there's a connection. Data streaming goes up and down within you.

Towards healing: practise finding your inner landscape (check Thomas Huebl on YouTube). Speaker mentioned polyvagal theory - I listen to somebody in distress and I feel it and then... In group healing, the person 'working' transmits energy to the whole group. A high group coherence elevates all of us. It's a power that can integrate fragmented trauma. Some traumatised people need very skilled individual healing (probably most of us on here, thinks Blueberry). In collective healing, highly skilled work goes on too. There might be 1000 people in a group.

Remedy: presence and relation.
Our 'friend' in healing is: our breath. Because it has always been there, since the day of our birth. Breath takes us to the foundation of our heart.

With individual coherence, there's a good flow through your own systems and you feel like an integral part of the world. When you're traumatised you tend to have the opposite feeling. With group coherence, there is strong data flow within the group. The person working directly on their trauma is being witnessed and this helps heal the collective trauma. Thomas Hübl works with groups who were born into same trauma landscape, e.g. 1943 Germany group. These people's nervous systems hold the setting of 1943 Germany, frozen in them. Trauma is wired in the nervous system, wired at the age where it happened.

Thomas Hübl says when he's talking to somebody, he listens with this whole body. When you're in an integrated state, you don't need your mind to tell you what you feel. Attunement: tune in with self and with others. What do you feel when others speak? You feel the other person, it's not just projection. I provide space whether or not I agree with the other person. In group coherence, I speak and 20 other people feel it, they all feel the processing. In a group, the trauma can resurface in all (or most) of them. Or you can have attunement with parents, grandparents etc. It does need training and properly qualified people running it!

Containments for trauma e.g. USA, Europe, Middle East conflict, dictatorships... (Blueberry assumes there are sub-groups in all of these) In group healing, there is often collective denial at the beginning which then evolves into collective opening.

A feeling of "I'm on my own and have to manage by myself" is a trauma symptom. Presumably healing in a group can go some way to combat this.

[Blueberry]

I couldn't really think where on the board to place the topic, so leaving it here. I hope it's interesting for some people on here. If nothing else, it helps me to write it out, though it would be better to do it right away so I could decipher my own notes!

I actually had a bit of an optimistic feeling when I was listening to this talk. The speaker did mention all the traumatising going on right now due to Covid because of people isolating, also that Covid is bringing up past trauma in people. So I thought to myself: undoubtedly for therapists who can heal groups, these methods can be used to heal frontline workers and general population who are getting (re-)traumatised atm. So that at least some of these people don't pass things on genetically and/or behaviour-wise to future generations.

It was interesting for me too because I have been in various forms of mostly well-managed large-group therapy and have experienced the benefits but also the limitations. I live in a European country where there's quite a good level of awareness about cptsd, even though it's often erroneously just called ptsd. More awareness due to trauma in the civilian population than in the veteran population. Though it has taken 2 generations beyond World War 2 for things to evolve this way.

This quotation: A feeling of "I'm on my own and have to manage by myself" struck me personally, particularly, because that's what I feel in the building where I'm living. No wonder it's all kind of triggering for me. Any little or big problem to be dealt with, initiative to be taken for the whole group - it's me who takes it in hand, or nobody. That's not quite, always true, but it's my feeling. Recently somebody replaced one of the door stops (for keeping a door open while things are carried in or out e.g.) with a better, more visible one. Most likely either my business neighbour or my apartment neighbour - probably the latter. Although the latter does come to me and moan about the one who's a bit problematic in the garden and in other people's space, I've got him as far as dealing with it on his own, eventually. I certainly don't do it for him and I cut him short if he moans too much. So yeah, not always true, but still mostly unfortunately.

I'm fine with anybody discussing or highlighting any of the topics raised by what I wrote of Thomas Hübl's talk.

[Hope67]

Intellectualisation is good IF you are connected to body and feeling, but if intellectualisation is not connected very bad decisions will be made. (At this point the speaker was talking globally, politics etc. I think, though obviously the same will apply to an individual person's decisions.)

When you have embodiment, there's a connection. Data streaming goes up and down within you.

Hi Blueberry,
I found your notes very helpful, thank you for sharing them.  I especially liked this part (highlighted).
Hope