Natalie Hanson

A Perspective on Social Justice

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I thought this was so powerful and wanted to share; emphasis mine. 

Kai Cheng Thom writes:

“I think the major difference between a social justice and a white/colonial lens on trauma is the assumption that trauma recovery is the reclamation of safety—that safety is a resource that is simply ‘out there’ for the taking and all we need to do is work hard enough at therapy.  I was once at a training seminar in Toronto led by a famous & beloved somatic psychologist. She spoke brilliantly. I asked her how healing from trauma was possible for people for whom violence & danger are part of everyday life. She said it was not.  Colonial psychology & psychiatry reveal their allegiance to the status quo in their approach to trauma: That resourcing must come from within oneself rather than from the collective. That trauma recovery is feeling safe in society, when in fact society is the source of trauma.  

“Colonial somatics & psychotherapies teach that the body must relearn to perceive safety. But the bodies of the oppressed are rightly interpreting danger. Our triggers & explosive rage, our dissociation & perfect submission are in fact skills that have kept us alive.  The somatics of social justice cannot (i believe) be a somatics rooted in the colonial frameworks of psychology, psychiatry, or other models linked to the dominance of the nation-state (psychology was not always this way, but has become increasingly so over time).  The somatics of social justice cannot be aimed at restoring the body to a state of homeostasis/neutrality. We must be careful of popular languaging such as the ‘regulation’ of nervous system & emotion, which implies the control and domination of mind over emotion & sensation.

“Because we are not, in the end, preparing the body to ‘return’ to the general safety of society (this would be gaslighting). we are preparing the body, essentially for struggle—training for better survival & the ability to experience joy in the midst of great danger.  In the cauldron of social justice healing praxis, we must aim for relationality that has the potential to generate social change, to generate insurrection. we must be prepared to challenge norms. acknowledge danger. embrace struggle. take risks.  & above all, we must not overemphasize the importance of individual work (which is important indeed) to the detriment of a somatics that also prepares us, essentially, for war. somatics that allow us to organize together. fight together. live together. love each other.

—Kai Cheng Thom

You can learn more about her work in this Collectively Rooted video, on Medium, or on her website – Arise Embodiment, or her author site. And this Sephora ad, where she talks about how marginalized people are leaders of change.

Comments

2 responses to “A Perspective on Social Justice”

  1. Emma Arbogast Avatar
    Emma Arbogast

    I’m autistic, so “society” was definitely the primary source of my trauma (along with my family), plus I spent 7 years married to someone in prison going into the visiting room several times a week, plus being on the front line of his rage at how he was treated (many prison wives serve this function unfortunately). I have no illusions of society being “safe”, despite my relative privilege at this point in my life.

    So I think I’m getting your general point, but I think there are some misconceptions about the nature of trauma and how to heal it and why to heal it.

    ‘Regulation’ of nervous system & emotion does not imply “the control and domination of mind over emotion & sensation”. It is more akin to “regular” than “regulated”. It just means “steady”. I accomplished this through self-validation and self-intimacy, turning toward the pain when I was triggered and crying/moving through it rather than trying to cope by suppressing it. These skills are things anyone can learn anywhere they are, and they don’t depend on permanent circumstantial safety (which does not exist for anyone).

    The point of trauma work is not to imagine you’ll always be safe, it’s to return to the state that animals occupy when they are not actively in danger. Nobody thinks a wild animal is ever really safe unless it is at the top of the food chain. But animals don’t walk around with dysregulated nervous systems, because once the immediate danger has passed, they shake off the adrenaline and return to homeostasis. That’s all healing from trauma means. It means undoing the peculiar human trait of holding onto memories of being endangered within the limbic system, and thus staying in a chronic state of sympathetic nervous system activation, which messes up a lot of other bodily systems (like our ability to sleep and digest properly). It has nothing to do with attaining permanent safety.

    Temporary safety is necessary to actually do the work (just so you can focus on your body and not the environment)—it doesn’t have to mean undoing the entire project of colonialism. In prison, you can do it in your cell at night. In a violent neighborhood, you can do it in any quiet corner you can find—violence is rarely 24/7 unless you are in a literal war zone. And the point of it is just to help your body return to a state where its activation is proportional to actual events occurring, rather than being over-activated based on unprocessed memories. I recommend the book Waking the Tiger if you haven’t read it as it lays this out pretty clearly.

    Reply
    1. Natalie Hanson Avatar
      Natalie Hanson

      Hi Emma – thanks for sharing your perspective. The blog post is a quote from the work of a trans scholar by the name of Kai Cheng Thom. She believes that sweeping change to the colonial project is needed – though, like you, I think she also celebrates finding peace where we can – https://kaichengthom.com/journalism/. Warmly, Natalie

      Reply

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