If I had a talent when I was young, it was going away. Retreating deeper into that space that doesn’t have a name. If I have any talents now, they have grown from what I learned by being alert and … Continue reading Unwanted Embodiment
That Which Doesn’t Kills Us, Makes Us Stronger –Nietzsche In our age of growing trauma awareness, the resilience movement has a core conceptual problem. Resilience, when it comes to someone who has been traumatized, arrives as a functioning of healing. … Continue reading “That Which Does Not Kill Us” And Related Lies
When my son was six years old, he realized rather abruptly that we all have to die. I had a similar realization at about his age and I remember how suddenly and deeply that panic rolled through me. This realization … Continue reading “It Wasn’t That Bad:” Trauma and Invisibility
All memory is individual, unreproducible – it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that … Continue reading Regarding the Trauma of Others
Traditional talk therapy is a mess. Everyone pretty much knows it, especially therapists. We sit in small rooms all day with people who need to make deep and lasting changes. They rarely do. We hope that our attentive listening and … Continue reading If Therapy is Slowly Killing You, Maybe You Should Do it Differently
I transit the underworld every day in the work I do with severely traumatized clients. If you do this work, it’s helpful to be personally familiar with the terrain. It’s equally important that you have–for the most part–found your own … Continue reading Underworld Railroad
Go With That 