Dr. Jean on healing (part 6)

Dr. Jean has sat with many people in the midst of hard and painful times, and people who have survived trauma and carry the weight years later.

As a social worker and psychotherapist, in her 30 years of clinical practice in trauma recovery, resilience and mental wellness, she has talked with people not only about finding immediate stability and persevering day to day, but finding paths to healing.

Kate: We've been talking a lot about ways to identify and understand the pain, which is vitally important, but then also how do you help someone? What is the healing? 

Dr. Jean: How does the healing begin? 

Kate: Yes. It seems to me that it is very common, from what I understand, for one thing, that somebody who has been in an abusive relationship will have ... They'll have been gaslit. They will have been convinced that their understanding of their own experiences is wrong, often. 

Or they will, for a lot of reasons, have very little confidence in themselves. Or even if they've done enough work to have gotten to the point where they've gotten out, there's a lot of fear, a lot of mistrust of other people and themselves. (53:00)

Dr. Jean: Yeah. (a thoughtful beat) I think one of the things about people being told, the psychological effect of people being told that this never happened to you — ‘you should be over it by now. Why are you making a big deal about this?’ 

Those sort of things are people who don't want to take accountability. So whether it's the parents who didn't look out for the child, or it's the abusive person who continues and wants to keep abusing that person so they say, "This never happened." 

So you know your feelings, and you know the emotions that you get from having memories of having had these things happen to you. 

So then you have to seek that support. You have to seek that help. You have to seek that counseling. you have to seek that safe space where you can begin to talk about … (An aside, recognizing that Rosi has quietly left the room and the conversation — Dr. Jean checks in, did she leave? Rosa and Gabriela and Laura say yes.)

You have to seek out that place where you can have that safe space, to begin to process and talk about some of the things that happen to you, with someone who understands and doesn't blame you, doesn't make you feel shame for staying or being in a relationship like that. 

So the journey begins with you seeking that help and then others helping and supporting you, for you to understand what happens to you. 

Kate: Even when someone is seeking that help, I know it can be a long journey. And somebody who is very actively trying to do the work of figuring out how to heal can still need help, in trying to figure out what they can do that will help them. 

Dr. Jean: Yes. And that brings me back to the long-term effects of trauma. It's not just domestic violence or sexual assault, but trauma in particular. And when the years go by and you still sometimes feel that you're depressed, that the sadness is always around you, or comes to you, or the fear. 

A lot people have anxiety because of post-traumatic stress disorder, I was listening to something at NPR about postpartum, is that anxiety is always around you're never feeling safe, you know, is this place safe enough for me, something going to happen. What's behind that? You know, you're always curious about that, looking to make sure you're safe. 

And that has to come with the work of processing through recognizing maybe in this moment, this is something to be concerned about, but in that next moment, it's not something, it's not real. Because a lot of times people who've been traumatized tend to see that danger everywhere. It's always present for them. 

So does it take you having a therapist or some form a support group or something, for five, 10, 15 years? There are people who still do that, and they need it. But it's not just about therapy. It’s about taking care of your body, it's about making friends, having a group of people to talk to. It’s about so many things, other than just having a space. 

Because you may meet with a therapist or a counselor once a week, and that's it. What do you do the rest of the time when you're feeling anxious, when you're feeling sad, when you're feeling, you know, what are the sort of things that you could do to bring in your life a sense of joy, a sense of having natural chemicals, you know, dopamine, serotonin, flowing through your body and lifting you up? 

What are some of the things that you could do? That's usually cooking, eating, visiting family, friends, watching a favorite movie, talking to (people), you know, having a life, having a job that you enjoy. All of those things are gonna help bring you back to a place where you feel more healed from what happened to you. 

Kate: (pausing to recognize that Rosi has left and check in with the group) Is Rosi ok?

Dr. Jean goes on to reflect on healing from a perspective of cultural humility.

Kate: (01:01:30) We were talking earlier about emotional languages and how there might be a cultural humility in trying to understand what someone thinks about consent, or about relationship, or about their own body. 

And I'm thinking that if you're talking with someone who comes from Pakistan or from Benin or from different parts of this country, they might have not just different language for their body, but very different ways of thinking about their own bodies, and of what would help someone to feel confident in their own body.  

And if somebody has survived some form of violence that makes them afraid, and one of the things that they're afraid of is that something happened that felt — (a gesture indicating that felt invasive, violating, frightening, internal.)

Dr. Jean: Yes. A lot of times when people have been violated, they don't feel like they have control over their bodies. So they have a mind-body separation. And that happened because they feel so violated, like my body was taken away from me. 

And the earlier in life that happens, that sets in. Because remember, it's experiences that help us to form our identity. And so when we're thinking, as a little child … 

She recalls conversations she has had with people who survived abuse as young children, sometimes for many years.

Dr. Jean: That person's perception of their body is not the person who did not experience something like that. It's going to be different. 

It's going to be like, it's not really my body. It's kind of like a third person thing that is happening with you, because you don't feel like you have that control because that autonomy was taken away from you. 

And so you can expect that people who've been traumatized don't feel they're in control. That's why safety is so important. You're in a space where you don't have to worry that this person will ever ill treat you or violate you in that way. And you can begin to trust them and tell them what happened to you. 

Kate: I wonder, can part of the healing be, not just safety but feeling like you can grow a healthier relationship with your body? Like Adrienne Marie Brown in Pleasure Activism, being able to to relax in your own body. 

Dr. Jean: The part of healing. That's what healing is, that will bring it back to that place where you're like — you don't forget, but it doesn't feel the same way. So you can put the mind and body back together. 

So it's okay to feel and say, "Oh, I have breasts. They're my breasts. They're beautiful breasts.” Or my legs, or whatever it is that I used to feel like, "I hate that. I can't stand that"  — because you have to reject it because of what happened to it.
 
It's not it, it's us. So that becomes integrated when the healing happens. We're one. 

Kate: (Looking to include Rosa and Gabriela and Laura) Other languages may do this better, but I’ve been part of some conversations about the way that in English, people talk about (our bodies), especially women's bodies — that English makes some of the words for intimate parts of women's bodies, some of the ugliest words in the language. And how people have tried to reclaim that. To change that. 

Dr. Jean: Because (parts of) the body — for females in particular, and it happens to males as well — have been objectified. (01:05:00) It's almost not like, it's a thing. 

You know, your legs, your breasts, your behind, whatever it is that the people who harm you — which is never your fault. Whichever way your body grows, or whatever it is they think, that's not your fault. That's their fault for thinking that way. And so you don't feel responsible. 

But in many cultures, you're made to feel responsible. (01:05:30) — that you did or your body did something wrong — because it's voluptuous, or it's whatever it may be that others see. 

So that's why a lot of times people want to reject their body, separated from the mind, because it's, my body gets me in trouble, or my body — that sort of stuff. 
So yeah, it's very acculturated in many ways, because how does a person from this country, like you say, from South Africa, from West Africa, from East Africa, from North Africa. They're all different, from the West Indies. Or from the South in this country. ...

And so we judge each other that way. We set each other up that way. It's all about the language, how we use the language. (01:06:30) And so it's very complex. But what I said about it — the healing, it has to be brought out. 

When you remember, you need to be in a safe space to be able to remember because a lot of times your triggers can create more problems for you. And it can overwhelm you, you become disregulated, if you're talking about something that creates that kind of memory for you. 

Just the same thing that our happy memories do for us, our sad memories can do bad for us. It could put us in a bad space, but we have to remember. 

So when we get to that space, we try to contain it and get it to that space where it's safe to remember, and then try to find other ways to figure out how we can take care of ourselves when we do remember. People call them triggers. You got triggered by something sad that happened to you.