I made this dog-story art-song video to represent that living creatures, including people, can only thrive when they have environments to live in that are permanent, safe, secure, predictable and nourishing as well as in their control. This is also a segway to a mural I am starting that represents some insights around the experience of homelessness that the typical stereotypes don’t capture. I’ll be posting the progress of that mural, with photos, and there will be a charitable auction for ownership of it when it is completed. Thank you for your time, your energy, and motivation to upgrade our city neighbors who do not have secure, safe, predictable homes in which to grow and thrive as persons. And their dogs.
‘the dandelions bloom at midnight’
this was the secret password my son and i used when he was young, used in cases when we were not able to communicate directly but a change of plans needed to be made, for example, if someone else was to pick him up after school at the last minute. the password was used to let him know the situation had my permisssion, my knowledge, and was safe.
but the phrase is more than a secret code — it is true that some flowers and plants bloom in the night hours.
this is also a metapor, that some persons bloom in adversity. in times of our greatest despair, we can choose to act out our troubles, or do something extraordinary with them.
we are all children of creation – creativity is innate within ourselves. we are capable of innovating solutions, finding new ways, summoning up coping skills we have not thought of before.
trauma changes us, but we get to say how.
if you find yourself in a spot in life when everything has crashed around you, the things you normally hang onto for sanity have abandoned you, you feel frightened and alone and shaking in your boots — but yet you are still standing — shout out loud in celebration, ‘i’m still standing.’
the one hidden blesing of trauma is that it clears the decks. when everything is lost or damaged, everything becomes a new blank canvas upon which to paint something new and different — perhaps this is the opportunity for you to become a version 2.0 of yourself — a self you always imagined you might want to become someday – and since all is lost and theree’s nothing left to do but re-create yourself, perhaps you can strategically create that self you had previously only imagined, but now you can make it real.
trauma is mesy, it is unpredictable, it will sneak up and bite you from behind when you least expect it. but truma is not an illness. it’s an event that has caused great pain and fear. the side order that comes in tow with that is shame, guilt, rage — even though you have nothing to feel shame or guilt about, we do anyway.
that’s where restorative justice comes in. ‘putting the monkey back on the back of to whom it belongs.’ within lawful limits, a person must make some justice happen in order to be whole again.
trauma can make us feel as though we’ve gone dead inside. that is why it is so important to fill up our lives with life-affirming actions. things that are creative — you are a child of creation, remember — so fill your days with creative things — anything of your choosing, it does not mean artsy or crafty things although those are great too – it can be anything — making up a new song or joke, walking through the library and picking books at random off shelves you haven’t been to before, and reading one paragraph out of the page the book opens to. it can be creating your own coffee specialty item at your local coffee shop — you might want to tip them for this. making a friend froma different culture and listeinging to their family stories. throw yourself into anything and everything that is life-affirming and validates your sense of self, safety, and sanity.
the self, our personality — is a trememdous gift. trauma will try to rob you of that. but remember there is only one person who owns your self, only one person who can make the decisisons for the development and healing and thriving of that self — you.
you’ll need someone to talk to about the pain, the awfulness, the horrors, the ‘world has caved in on me’ experience. one who can use life-affirming strategies to help you re-connect with your sense of self and esteem in a manner of your own choosing, finding a center of joy that you can trust.
find a trauma-skilled therapist. not everyone has the training and expertise to this field. i happen to be a therapist who is, and my trauma project workshops will provide you with a knowlege structure around three types of trauma — the trauma of abuse and violence, the trauma of abandonment and neglect, and the trauma of dehumanization. i’ll also teach you five specific masteries that will help you grow through and even thrive after trauma and throughout your life development.
so call or email me and let’s talk and set up a trauma workshop for you, or individual therapy sessions to addres more personal needs. i want you to be well, mentally and physically, and i’m here to help you do that. thanks for listenting, and let’s talk soon — bye for now..
Are you a health care professional? Work in social or human services? Legal services or law enforcement? Sales? Are you in a management or executive position where you train, supervise, organize and motivate employees or departments of the business? Teacher or educator or in childcare? Do you work in non-profit or philanthropic organizations including churches or are you thinking of starting one?
everybody has a story. there are many types of traumas, and they show in up in the workplace, classroom, sales calls, and in patient/client/congregational care. the more you understand how trauma affects a person’s way of relating to their environment, the people and stressors around their environment, the more effective you will be in helping them, and your organization, achieve their goals..
let’s start with the basics. empathy and perspective.
sense of security, personality structure, and esteem are damaged by trauma in invisible ways.
except they are not invisible to the person of trauma. a person of trauma goes to great lengths to hide their dysfunctions so as to appear as normal as can be, because for all intents and purposes, they are normal. they want to work, play and love just as much as everybody else and most persons of trauma are just regular, average people who are skilled, educated/trained, available for relationships and hobbies and life adventures. normal.
except that we know now that the more trauma children and adolescents are exposed to, the more problems they will have in later life with rocky relationships, trouble with the law, with homelessness, domestic violence, unemployment, substance abuse, and mental illness.
we now know that in adulthood as well as childhood, trauma alters the structure of nuerons in the brain that are not reversable. these nuerons are responsible for the chemicals that produce anxiety, depression, impulsivity, low frustration tolerance, poor decision-making.
as a professional, you may have more contact with these individuals struggling with these risk factors than what you see on the outside.
trauma survivors live in a world invisible to most. it is a lonely, isolated world of fears and needs and a sense of being so very different from everyone else sometimes that alone-ness itself is a barrier.
the cure is to be able to connect deeply in life – affirming ways with other people, meaningful work, making the world better for others, but the symptoms of traumatic stress handicap people right at that point — it can be a sensation of living in a tupperware box, almost able to reach out and touch what they see others doing – not being afraid, not over-reacting, not withdrawing or being aggressively controlling but able to really honestly enjoy being with each other, engaged in the moment and find find joy in the day without self-punishment. but they can’t get past the fuzzy tupperware wall. how to live like that is just too foreign a concept for trauma sufferers.
you can begin to assist your people move past those barriers by deepening your empathy for what is happening inside a person of trauma — in a world you are not experiencing. a world which is invisible to you. the following chart will show two columns that may help you see and hear the invisible reality of the person your chosen profession has given you stewardship.
to set up a workshop for professionals, or a private consultation on how being more trauma-informed can help you be more effective in your work, email me at dog.hotel.hansen@gmail.com, or call me at 360-600-8745. thanks, and be well — heidi
please take advantage of this coupon to upgrade your acumen on trauma and how that can help you and your work be more successful. I accept payments made to ally online bank, via western union money transfer services, or by money order.
the trauma project 