For the past few months i’ve been reflecting heavily, and probably obsessively, on my role as a trauma therapist and its co-existence with my spiritual value of standing up for the oppressed. Especially in today's time, (I really hate the phrase ‘todays time), we as a people have accessed generations of knowledge in such a short amount of time thanks to technology and being able to find information about places across the world in seconds. We’re also witnessing and experiencing the most ignorant, logically absent, and narcissistic political administration in our lifetime. For a lot of us, we grew up learning about the holocaust, world war 1, internment camps and more, and so much of that education in the K-12 years involved reading books and media from those who had lived experiences in those time. I find myself often asking “for what did we spend time reviewing all that if there is such an obvious and blatant choice to repeat the same harms?” As a trauma therapist, i’ve worked with the most deep and layered grief, pain, vicarious trauma coming from watching nations be obliterated in the most inhumane and dystopian methods, all while going to 9-5 jobs, co-existing with people who don’t see you as a person, and meeting productivity quote. We’ve watched massacres be turned into comedy skits instead of humanitarian aid packages, we’ve watched systemic oppression be used as empty slogan lines, and we’ve also witnessed the continual chose to dehumanize a population for 2 years.
I’ve come to an intersection where can’t help but looking at the limitation of therapy. Therapy is not helpful with these issues. Therapy is not going to stop the existence of these things. Action will. Resistance will. Escalation will. There is no combination of dbt skill, childhood exploration, resource giving I can do with my clients that will give them the long term relief. As a trauma therapist, it has literally felt like slapping bandages on roaring waterfalls. I hate it. As a trauma therapist, I am battling my own reflection of feeling so ineffective. As a person of the diaspora, I am entrenched and suffocated by rage within my body. Rage of the extent that colonization has removed me from the ancestral strengths that had generations of my ancestors displaced across the south asian and middle eastern lands. The thought of action makes me feel frozen in my body.
For the state of the nation, the death of education and scholasticide, and the level that the West has truly weaken us as people, therapy cannot offer much to these specific issues. We hold space, yes; we practice somatic movement in session, yes. However it feels like the same cycle repeating as we do that on a weekly basis due to the lack of progress in the bigger view of finding relief and changes to the violence against us here and abroad. Students are kidnapped off the street, UCLA was attacked for hours on live news almost a year ago with ‘security’ chilling to the side. How do we therapize that? I sit with the deeply uncomfortable reality that I am an enabler of oppression. This field i’ve invested my education, life, and wisdom into is an enabler of oppression.
I’ve found myself seeking information and wanting to learn about the times in history right after a regime of oppression ended. Post closing of the concentration camps, immediately after civil rights laws were passed, the end of world war 1. I find myself longing for that sense of collective relief and joy, something that my community specifically have been stripped up for too long. I reflect on how that experience can do so much for the mental health of the people I serve that 9475948594 dollars in therapy cannot provide right now. The “post” of PTSD is holding heavier and more intentional meaning compared to ever before. I lean into the wisdom and education Dr. Samah Jabr, head of Palestinian Psychology, when she shares how a lot of the diaspora who are living through the holocaust there have no post. This is ongoing. This is what they have been born into and died because of for generations now. The luxury we in the west have of being able to have a ‘post’. I think about the times in sessions i’ve told clients that same thing, and added that we cannot compared what we’re experiencing to them. We have the privilege and pain of this “post” and thinking about what happens afterwards. The community in Gaza have a faith and steadfastness that is labeled, stigmatized, and victimized here.
It’s difficult being in this field with the awareness of its complete lack of efficacy in current issues, and also witnessing their lack of drive to address the gap. Where do I go from here as a trauma therapist? How do I continue to support my clients watching their family be systematically eliminated? How do I exist with the fact that I feel like my skills cannot do what we need for humanity. The answer I give myself, I do it the same way I have been doing it. I continue, I hold strong, I hold space. I continue decolonizing my practice. I continue planting the seeds. My probono work with people in the region keeps me going. It is so difficult and has shrunken my overall capacity, but for my soul and spirit, it gives me the sense of I can actually do something. How do I translate and give my clients a glimpse of that? I wish I can just hand it them. My clients who are experiencing fear, traumatic events, and even familial/relational conflict, we are going to keep processing that. My skills are enough and competent for that. I continue planting the seeds. Full circle, the limits of western therapy were always there, which is why I commit to decolonizing my practice. The place we are at in the world truly is the ultimate litmus test.
