oh no, not letting* someone profit off my trauma? :(

*unknowingly

i’m going to mention trauma in this post, keeping it general on purpose. i am also going to talk about magick, energy, and fair pay.

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my purpose in sharing all of this is not to destroy capitalism. that is happening already and i don’t think anything i do or don’t do is going to change that. i just want to flick its forehead while it’s on the way down, okay?

so this past year i did a group therapy program for women who are survivors of childhood trauma. each member of the group completed learning modules every week for eight weeks and met virtually with the group on tuesdays to discuss. sometimes we talked about what we learned in the modules, sometimes we talked about life.

we learned about what a ‘window of tolerance’ is, concepts like hypoarousal, and hyperarousal, and we learned about coping techniques and mechanisms.

i avoided doing this work for a very long time. i didn’t want to do it. i found the secret and oprah and eventually tarot cards and it was just more fun to learn about magick and manifestation and such.

and it’s hilarious to me now because i thought i was avoiding the work when i was really just taking a different route to the same destination. the first module in the group therapy program was about grounding, which is also one of the first things i learned when i started to read about magick. so there’s that.

the ironic thing is i never really understood what being grounded meant until i learned it through the context of the program. being grounded i am safe to remember what happened or write about it, but stay aware that i am now in a quiet house, wearing comfortable clothes with Better Call Saul on in the background. being grounded i am both in remembering what happened and knowing i am safe now.

here’s what i learned about my trauma brain.

the feelings i had of shame, anger, and worthlessness didn’t come out of nowhere. i thought they were authentic, like there was a thread of truth to them because i did not understand (read: do the work to figure out) the source. while being grounded helped me to see these feelings without getting lost in them, it also helped me understand a kind of personal brand of victimhood, let’s call it: ‘broken little black bird’.

a result of trauma was that i used this identity to stay disconnected from being aware of my wants and needs.

at a young age i learned it was dangerous to ask for what i needed. even vocalizing the need for protection could make me a target. i learned if i stayed quiet or spoke of my wants or needs in more general terms, negotiated them in some way, i could protect myself.

it was better to ignore my needs overall than it was to admit i had them and then be ‘broken little black bird’ when those needs were not being met.

i could put myself in a perpetual victim mode by being unaware of all of these dynamics: i denied my own wants and needs, which hurt, and then because i refused to be aware of how i was denying my wants and needs i could say i didn’t know what the real issue was, putting myself back in a victimhood cycle and i could be angry or hurt or depressed or act out or or or.

the program ended last summer. the way it works is i can go back to group therapy but now in more specific ways. i was enrolled in another group for january of this year, but opted to go back on the waitlist because it would require taking off every thursday afternoon for nine weeks. group sessions only happen during business hours, and i did not want to talk to my manager about this at the time.

and i’m going to take this mention of my day job to detour us to the topic of corporations.

hmmm… what words do i put here to describe to you what my life is like, monday to friday nine am to five pm… [thinking thoughts] try and be honest but not too honest…

i could tell you it’s not going well. the topic of what i do for money has been, for just under twenty years, a troubled one in my life. it’s never calm, never settled, never easy. this latest chapter is no exception. i am trying to get better at not thinking about the job outside of work hours, but there was something in the whole dynamic that really stunk.

one sunday i wasn’t even really thinking about it that much, i had the tv on, not really paying attention and the question kinda just popped in my brain. it wasn’t even words really, it was more like a science experiment using energy; one energy was put beside another.

but the question sounded like: could it be possible that these large companies are in a position to benefit by underpaying someone like myself, who struggles to acknowledge and ask for what they need? and underpay not because they are demanding a potential employee accept less, but underpay because that potential employee asks for less out of fear?

like, if a person learned when they were a kid that it was dangerous to ask for what they needed, how likely would it be that when applying for a job at a multi-billion dollar corporation, that they would be able to ask for fair pay? and then what if that person is in a state of hypo or hyperarousal because they’ve been looking for a job for a long time and are really struggling financially, like how would they know what fair pay is and would they be able to ask for it?

i can remember specifically what was the running thought in the back of my mind when i was negotiating the salary for this job: if i undervalue myself, they’ll definitely hire me. it felt like a strategy. now i know it was a symptom.