Category Archives: Uncategorized

We really need to pull back and consider what training is. A lot of the times we are drawn to the trainer and their thoughts. But then what is a training, and what is a glorified meet and greet? You have this experience too. Much too often, people come out of training and talk soContinue reading “Training vs. Glorified Meet-and-Greet”

Our relationship with medication is complex. Especially considering the system of multiple vulnerabilities (testing, approval, medical, diagnosis, and social) where any stigma and white-centric views can enter. But when we find one that works for us medically and contextually, I don’t see it as suppressing a part of me. I see it as giving usContinue reading “Thoughts on Medication”

There is this very strong trend right now. It is when people switch between two sets of language, pathos, moral, and ideology depending on how they position on that specific topic. When marginalized (eg a non-white person on the topic of racism), they have all the anti-oppressive lingo and analysis of systemic and personal complicity.Continue reading “Social location code switching”

Dysregulation refers to impaired or reduced ability to manage or modify responses, often to a perceived threat. It is related to how a human would react if the threats were real. A well-known ones are emotional dysregulation (uncontrollable anger, aggression, crying, shutdown) and physical or somatic dysregulation (high heart rate, dilated pupils, hot in theContinue reading “Importance of Recognizing Cognitive dysregulation”

The shared language used to signal safety. It used to identify the practice. We used to have to earn the anti-oppression education by demonstrating our ability to put it into practice. People used to have to show up at organizing meeting to learn these things. We had to make mistakes publicly and get called out.Continue reading “Academic vs. praxis of Anti-Oppression”

Love is unconditional. Conditional is a performative oxymoron, as in that people take credit for providing love without actually providing love. Conditional love farther marginalizes people by causing “gratitude problem” discourse and by sanctuary harm of betraying on expectations of love.

When we face someone in so so so much pain, we too dysregulate. Not vicarious trauma. No co-regulation. The situation itself is overwhelming to our human to face this amount of tremendous pain. So we go to our safe space. Often, we have a safe space inside of the mastery, the knowing we are doingContinue reading “Rolodex of therapy”

This is such a strange thing that people keep telling others “Don’t worry. It’s safe.” when they’re feeling unsafe. This tells them they’re wrong. This says you don’t believe them. This invalidates their instincts. And this demonstrates power imbalance of you being the expert. Here are some of what I think work. – Tell themContinue reading “You know what doesn’t feel safe? You telling me it’s safe.”

A lot of people associate doing things with healing. They read about exercises to stop the trauma reactions and work really hard at it. Let’s remember – for some people in certain stages of recovery, these trauma reactions are the reason they feel any level of safety at all. The healing starts by the slowContinue reading “Safety, then recovery. But really.”

Many exercises start by asking the participant to relax. This doesn’t work. If they can relax on demand, they won’t need these exercises. Relaxing is the end goal, but the first step. I’ve met just so many people who felt a great sense of failure or inadequacy from not being able to get past stepContinue reading ““Don’t tell me to relax””