Trauma & Art

Quotes from Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brene Brown

True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.

Dehumanizing and holding people accountable are mutually exclusive. Humiliation and dehumanizing are not accountability or social justice tools, they’re emotional off-loading at best, emotional self-indulgence at worst.

Pain is unrelenting. It will get our attention. Despite our attempts to drown it in addiction, to physically beat it out of one another, to suffocate it with success and material trappings, or to strangle it with our hate, pain will find a way to make itself known.

You are only free when you realize you belong no place—you belong every place—no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great (Maya Angelou cited in Brene Brown)

Sharing

The brain, the mind, parenting, education and adolescent anxiety…

1. A lot of material has come my way this autumn on trauma and its impact, psychotherapy and sensorimotor or/and somatic approaches and spirituality, etc., and I have shared bits. However, today, I am sharing a podcast on the brain, the mind and adolescent anxiety by Dr Dan Siegel. In a nutshell, parenting is viewed as a relational, and thus, biological process, which as a result stimulates or hinders the growth of the child’s brain and its regulatory functions. D. Siegel refers to a present parenting approach, which can assist the development of a growth mindset or grit, curiosity and resilience in children. This is referred to as a YES brain approach. Mindsight is required of the caregivers, a capacity to see and listen to the child’s experience and inner world, in order to cultivate a YES brain stance of receptivity instead of a NO brain state of reactivity. He talks of the need to raise children that are not product focused, but process focused, and of the need of repair experiences from parents, which of course requires of them to have access to their own receptive brain state. The discussion is situated in the broader context of our current world climate of uncertainty, anxiety and violence, and the need for both education and parenting to be built on a less superficial or even cannibalistic competitive attitude and on the notion for collaboration and togetherness instead of competition against each other. The need for a discussion of the true essence of Self or of our true more expansive nature is also highlighted, as well as, the need for both healthy differentiation and linkage to be fostered in order to activate healthy empathy, compassion and action. Finally, D. Siegel notes that parents should be the guardians of their children’s natural curiosity, connectedness and creativity, which can easily be squashed by contemporary society.

You may listen to the discussion at: http://theotherfwordpodcast.com/ep-54-dr-dan-siegel-brain-mind-adolescent-anxiety/?utm_source=Mindsight+Institute+Master+List&utm_campaign=7288a05c1f-Nov_2017_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_562796b3c8-7288a05c1f-300847…..

2. Also, providing a link to an article Why are more American teenagers then ever suffering from severe anxiety? (11/10/2017) by Benoit Denizet Lewis in The New York Times Magazine.

You can read the article at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/magazine/why-are-more-american-teenagers-than-ever-suffering-from-severe-anxiety.html