Reblogged from Trauma, Violence, and Human Rights:

Robert E. Murphy describes his own experience with social isolation after becoming a paraplegic in this selection, titled, “The Damaged Self.” He uses words like “stranger,” “aliens,” and “exiles,” to describe a new condition of being in the world. There is much trauma attached to disability. Murphy describes an “us vs. them” mentality when he speaks of being “one of ‘them’… somewhat apart from American culture, making in many ways a stranger” (Murphy, pg. 323, 329). Disability and low self-esteem …

The below link brings you her article which I found especially apropos to what’s happening in the mental health field and why it limits total healing, especially for those who are survivors of trauma.

Mental health deals with the mind and emotions. Trauma affects the whole body, something that some of those in the field are just starting to discover.

As I’ve written before,  trauma changes the body chemistry because there is a very physical reaction to it. The part of the brain that registers trauma is the instinctual part – the amygdala – our flight/fight cycle. What happens  is that survivors are not able to complete this cycle, so they stay stuck in the feeling of powerlessness. The physical/emotional release that comes with its completion, bringing the physical and mental body back to stasis, remains unfinished.

After working with a multitude of survivors, I have observed that when they are able to complete that cycle in my office, there is such a release, and, then, that particular memory does not reappear. That has led me to believe that  the flashbacks and nightmares, ergo the post-traumatic syndrome disorder (ptsd),  might be a way the body is trying to get back to completing the cycle.

However, when this happens, the survivor experiences the same physical/psychological symptoms and doesn’t know what is happening. Therefore, the cycle again does not get completed and he/she is frozen in those all too familiar feelings of helplessness.

It is only healing methods that integrate both mind and body that are realizing success in helping the survivor complete the cycle, thereby reducing and/or eliminating ptsd.

In using qigong to bring the survivor into a meditative state, that somehow accesses the subconscious, relaxing the survivor enough to go through and complete the process. In that state, the survivor simultaneously gets in touch with the psychological and physical symptoms to complete the cycle.  The mental health field must merge with the physical health field to find the answers to healing trauma.

On a personal note, Adele helped me to heal from ptsd when I didn’t even know I had it, since my symptom shows up as the “immobility or freeze response”, rather than the ones more commonly known – flashbacks and nightmares depicting the all too real scenes from past trauma, most of which one wants desperately to forget.

I am speaking from a client and professional perspective when I say that survivors can do a lot in helping themselves through meditation, qigong, etc. However, there comes a point when one needs professional help.

I am fortunate to have found Adele to help me.  She lives and works in Connecticut, but also takes phone appointments. I cannot recommend her enough.

My dear friend, Adele, this post is for you. Thank you for sharing your work with me and so many others.

http://theheraldedpenguin.com/mental-health-needs-a-booster-shot/

But, what does it really mean to forgive?

What I’ve learned for myself and working with others as a qigong healer/psychotherapist is that “forgiveness” is one of the most difficult things to do. Yet, it is ABSOLUTELY necessary in the healing of trauma – whether it is to forgive another, forgive your “God”, or forgive yourself.

In fact, forgiveness is essential to our overall health and well-being, whether or not we’ve been traumatized.

Forgiveness, first and foremost, is a process – an often times lengthy one at that. It is NOT a one-shot deal! Sometimes, it takes doing it over and over, each time letting go of a little more anger, pain, and sadness.

It’s also not about just saying the words, “I forgive you”.  Forgiveness does not come from the mind. It comes from the heart. The heart is the entry way into our souls.

However, our hearts can harbor the angst for a long time, a sharp or dull ache that we keep close inside us.

The first thing we need to understand about forgiveness is that it’s NOT about excusing another for whatever pain they caused or you think they’ve caused.  It is about releasing the toxic emotions that will make you or keep you sick because you’ve somehow stuffed all the pain in your heart.

You need to let your heart break .  It is in the breaking that begins the process of healing. When your heart breaks, it opens the floodgates for the emotions to flow out.

It is this very out pouring of feelings that leads to forgiveness.I am writing this blog because I had an “aha” moment recently, several months after I forgave my father.

Before my daughter visited me in Singapore, she told me it is time to organize, repair and re-frame my father’s artwork. I had the sense decades ago that she would undertake this project; however, over the years, she never mentioned it, and I actually forgot about it.

To give you some background, my father was a child prodigy in art. At age 8, without any training, he was already drawing portraits that looked like they came from an adult who had undergone years of training. Because of this gift, and because his father was very wealthy, my father spent 9 years in Paris studying art, architecture and interior design.

Upon return to China, he established 3 branches of his architectural firm and displayed his Chinese landscape art all over China. He also became chief architect to Chiang Kai Shek, then President of the Republic of China. Because of this position, he was placed on Mao Tse Tung’s execution list, and so we escaped  to the United States.

He became embittered and depressed, at times feeling suicidal, all at the same time struggling to make a living for his family in a country that looked down on him because he was Chinese.  He went from wealth to poverty. He went from being highly regarded to a laundryman.   He also became abusive, feeling powerless and living in the past.

As a child, I watched him paint, his only escape from the harsh realities of survival in a new country. I know now it was his way of coping with all that he had lost. But, I didn’t know that then. What I knew then was a father who was either in a rage or distant.

His dying wish at the age of 92 was that his work be brought back to China, knowing that he would never set foot on the land he so loved, his birthplace and mine.

All these years, when I made some feeble attempts to organize his work, nothing fell into place. This time,through a friend, my daughter made contact with a prestigious university that is interested in possibly collaborating with us. In addition, they found my father’s name in a Chinese art history textbook that sites his interest in integrating Western with Chinese art.

Why am I telling you this story? My point is that I finally forgave my father while I was in Bali this past Christmas, 2010.

My “aha” moment came when I realized why organizing his work never took off before. I had to forgive him first before I could represent him and his work.

Forgiveness in and of itself feels like a “coming home to the self”, a feeling of completeness – at once, a sadness that whatever transpired is over, and a release of long-held pain.

Because it is my father, it is fully accepting him as well as myself. A coming home of many sorts. And, once one comes home, there is a feeling of safety, of grounding deep within one’s ancestral roots. I know where I come from, which gives me direction and courage to know where I am going.

Going home after a year away, for me, is more than spending the holiday with my family. It is a returning to soul roots, a deep knowing of who I am because I’ve accepted where I belong.

And, I can be more assured of taking more leaps of faith to build for my and my family’s present and future.

Of course, I didn’t know this before forgiving. It is shown only afterwards.

Sounds like a match made in heaven.

Click the link below to see what Andrew Harvey has to say about how this is the critical time for us to  take back our country our POWER and how we can do it.

http://www.liloumace.com/Occupy-Wall-street-facing-the-crising-Sacred-Activism-Andrew-Harvey_a1671.html.

I for one am grateful that someone is giving us a plan to combine the spiritual with action, that it’s not enough for us to simply meditate, that we must also do something. And, that we must do it together, for that is where the power comes from – ALL OF US!

Right after I finished blogging about “survival of the fittest” and the mind-set of competition that it sets up worldwide, I receive a link from Lisa Garr’s The Aware Radio Talk show in which she interviews Gregg Braden who speaks to this very concept in his new book, Deep Truth.

Gregg is a spiritual teacher who is also a trained scientist. He, therefore, bridges for us the gap between science and spirituality.

Dec. 2011, Winter Solstice, has become very frightening to many people all over world. Science, through archeological findings, has recently uncovered that 2012 is NOT the end of the world. In fact, it is only the:

1. End of world as we know it
2. End of what’s no longer sustainable – our political, economic, educational, health and social  institutions
3. End of cycle changing – triggering unsustainable choices we’ve made in life­ – this cycle lasted 5126 years
4. Fact that we are living with a number of  and frequency of crisis never before  experienced in one generation, all converging in the window of time and with the same magnitude
5. The fact that we have only 5-8 yrs to solve these problem, or we will perish, and there is reluctance in mainstream media, science, classrooms, textbooks to change

In the earlier blog, Dalai Lama – What Does It Mean to Live?, I speak about the need to change our age-old belief that life is built around “survival of the fittest”, a concept that has pitted one against another – individuals vs. individuals, teams vs. teams, nations vs. nations.

It comes with the belief that there is scarcity in the world of opportunities, goods, and services. So, we must fight to grab these diminishing resources, or we will not survive.

This concept has caused the world to run amuck!

In our scare that we “won’t have”, we fight to make more money to buy more useless things, to send our children to the best schools with the idea that they’ll do better in life, work 60+ hours/week so that we will be the ones to move up “the corporate ladder”.

Nations fight for territory and economic “one ups-manship” to annex to sustain their resources.

And, all this has brought us violence, terrorism, wars, the threat of nuclear bomb leading to annihilation!

What Gregg Braden states in his interview that some of what science has proven in the past are assumptions. These assumptions are being proven false in the scientific field today.  The problem, however, is that mainstream scientists as well as the public, don’t want to see this, just as our ancestors denied that the world was round thousands of years ago.

Is this history repeating itself AGAIN?

Gregg claims it doesn’t have to be that way. We can save our planet, but we do need to change our belief that only the fittest deserve to survive.

We need to change our mind-set from competition COOPERATION!  And, it is because of the five” deep truths” listed above that we must do so, or our species will not survive.

I, and Gregg, say this not to preach gloom and doom. It is a forewarning to all of us.

And, what’s more, it is a HOPE that we can get ourselves out of this crisis.

However, the biggest question is “are we willing to make the necessary changes to save ourselves and the planet”?

I don’t have the answer to that question, nor does really anyone. Teachers like Gregg can only offer the guidance and some tools to help us along the way. If we don’t choose to do so, we are lost.

We are the generation that stands between two worlds – walking the material and spiritual path. And, there are no hard and fast set rules. It is scary because we are being asked to make things up as we go along. Yet, it is exciting because we are breaking new ground.

Again, it is how we choose to see it. And, in seeing it, if we choose to make the changes that will take us through this critical time?

One more thing I want to bring forth here – it is not simply a change of mind-set. Any change of mind-set changes who we are, or more aptly put, changes who we know ourselves to be.

We are letting go of one personal identity for another. The scary part is that we don’t know what the “other” will be because who we have been has worked for us.

It’s just that, for past decade or so, that identity has crumbled, as we are even seeing on the world stage.

So, my question is: What will it take for us to wake up and do what needs to be done for all of us to make it through to the next cycle?

Now, that is a very interesting question. I find that particularly so after reading what the Dalai Lama says about humanity.

We are taught to survive, but is that living?

Don’t think we can answer that question until we look at the concept from which our society is built – SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST – Herbert Spencer coined this phrase following Charles Darwin’s work on “natural selection” of the species, stating “let the strongest live and the weakest die”.   Although Darwin was referring to those w ho could adapt best to the local environment, “survival of the fittest” came to mean “survival of the most physically fit”.

Now that we are more advanced, it doesn’t seem to mean the most physically fit, but to mean the ones who excel in competition, who supposedly start out with a “silver spoon” in their mouth – family money and connections which means the best education, health care, transportation, etc.  With this wealth and these connections, they learn from an early age that they are entitled, that money buys status and power, even the power to sidestep laws that bind the masses.

Inadvertently, this concept has produced a culture of competitiveness carried to extremes – a society based on exclusivity (if one is not seen as one of the fittest), a society built on the belief that we must fight for our survival, so when one is not part of the “fittest”, one is seen as “the other” or those who are the dredges of society and, therefore, not fit to receive the benefits of those who are fit.

It sets us up to fight – something that violence and wars have shown throughout history.

We, in short, don’t know what living means, let alone know how to live.

However much we have raised the standard of living so that we can give our families more opportunities than we had, Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” keeps us stuck in the mind-set that we must always be vigilant of not letting anyone else get ahead of us. So, for many whose living conditions are better than their parents, they are still afraid to enjoy what they have. They have to keep pushing themselves for more.

And, of course, this mind-set helps to feed the consumer society that we’ve become. It promotes instant gratification and inhibits development of character with perseverance, endurance, and patience. We’ve forgotten simple pleasures – connecting without television, family outings to the park, eating dinner with the family, spending quiet time at home, reading, etc.

So much so that, some of us believe that survival means being able to send their children to expensive prep schools, as an example. When I consulted with AT&T, I was amazed to hear one of the managers  say that survival for him was keeping his children in expensive schools, designer clothes, 5 star resort vacations.

Seems like our mind-set of survival has not changed even with all the modern and many times luxurious conveniences.

How sad!

I believe the reason for this is because we’ve lost our spirit in the rush to acquire all these material benefits.

We don’t trust that, if we take time for ourselves away from work, we’ll not keep up with our peers. We will not receive the respect, which then impacts on how we view ourselves – as winners or losers.

We don’t trust that, if we can’t give our children  the “right” education, the “right” clothes, live in the “right” neighborhood, they will be deprived of the opportunities to make a better life than we have.

We’ve forgotten that, in the final analysis, we haven’t learned to have faith in the Divine that we will be okay, even if it’s not the way we want or expect.

Yet, our fear in not being in control of everything in our lives keeps us in exactly the cycle that the Dalai Lama presents.

I’m not suggesting that we sit back and do nothing. However, one would do well to remember the Serenity Prayer that has become well-known in addiction support groups:

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen. –Reinhold Niebuhr

It is indeed the wisdom to know the difference. Our mind-set remains on either extreme – we either keep trying to change even with evidence that what we’re doing doesn’t work, or we don’t try at all, relying on blind faith.

Wisdom is the middle ground – when is it time to stop fixing  and let go to God, and when is it time to keep going because there’s still more we can do?

I don’t know the answer for everyone. For me, when I’ve tried over and over with no results, I pray, “God, I’ve done all I know how to do. I leave it in your hands”.

Now, do I come to the prayer soon enough? At times. Other times, not so much. Yet, when I do come to this juncture and say this prayer, I feel that I’m not alone in this.

It is then that I remember all the things and people for whom I am grateful, and I no longer worry or try to figure it all out on my own.

It is a gradual faith that develops over time, one that tests our commitment to our spiritual journey, and one that gives us permission to live in the present!

While I’m sure that the film only touched on the atrocities perpetrated against African-Americans, I felt that the personal portrayals of emotions were poignant and heartbreaking.

I am not reviewing the film, but blogging about what the film brought up for me in terms of the racism I faced growing up Chinese-American in NYC, starting in the late ’40′s. It was the time after WWII where Americans were still smarting from the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor. One of the first stereotypes I faced is that all Asians look alike – “Jap” is what they hurtled at me! Then, in the early ’50′s with the advent of McCarthyism, Americans believed I was Communist.

I view racism as a trauma. Trauma is any incident that renders a person powerless. Racism is systematic trauma perpetrated on people who  did not ask to be born into a minority race,  and there is nothing a person can do to change the color of his/her skin.

While abuse in the family is demeaning and affects the individual’s sense of self, racism is consistent and institutionalized prejudice. It is:

when one group in society has the power to limit resources, supplies and opportunities over another group due to race.

While the white race has had, and still has, the power to limit my job, my place of residence, and thereby also limits my ability to provide for the best education, the best health care services, etc.

However, I as an Asian woman may be prejudiced against a white male, and it may hurt his feelings, but I have no power to affect his standard of living.

My father’s hard-earned architectural credentials and experience in being chief architect to President Chiang Kai Shek of the Republic of China fell by the wayside when we escaped from Communism to the United States. Not only did my father lose his meaning in life, this country lost the talents of  an architectural and artistic genius.

We became exiles in this strange land because once Mao Tse Tung took over the government, my father’s return would have ensured his execution. My father had a choice of 2 jobs in the U.S. that were open to those of Chinese descent.

As for me, at 4 years old, I started to experience the devastating effects of racism. I became shy and introverted, afraid to step out of the house. Every time I went out, I faced constant and frequent spitting, being called derogatory names, pushing and shoving, and shouting for me to return from whence I came.

The film brought all this up, where it reminded me that when one is continually degraded for something that cannot be changed. One is forced to adapt – to survive.

The film shows how the employers treat the workers as though they are not human. They don’t allow them to use the same bathroom, don’t let them come in the front door, and speak about them as if they aren’t present. Yet, they raise white children like their own, even as they leave their own children for others to raise.

And, I’m sure that these behaviors become the nor. Yet, I doubt that  has shown the worst of these behaviors.

So, what happens in institutionalized racism is that both sides follow a set of rules that ensures the continuation of this process. That is shown clearly in the film, when an African-American maid goes into a home of a white woman who doesn’t follow the rules. When she sits at the same table to eat lunch, the maid is very worried that the rule had been broken and that she will lose another job.

Growing up in the north and not being African-American, I didn’t face that kind of racism. However, what I did face was my parents teaching me to say in public that I’m not Chinese, that I’m American. With all the harassment I received from others, my parent’s teaching compounded my feelings of shame of being Chinese.

And, eventually, shamed of who I am, and eventually seeing  Chinese as second class citizens, just like the majority sees us.

I didn’t realize until much much later that my parents taught me to say those things to keep me safe. There was no such thing as ethnic pride in those days. And my parents feared we’d be deported back to China where it would mean sure death for my father.

I understand now the reason why they told me to say those phrases; however, looking at it objectively, I see that, like what happened in the film when one or both sides crossed that racial divide, we all are taught to collude with the system.

Of course, it is for our survival, albeit based on fear. We feared deportation. The African-Americans feared imprisonment or worse.

Yet,what we are not taught in following these kinds of inhumane rules, is that we are all part of keeping the system in place.

I am certainly not blaming the minority, or what one might call “the victim”. We do what we do to survive, to keep ourselves and our families safe.

As a child, I didn’t fight back. I was the smallest and youngest in my class. And, Chinese are usually smaller in stature than Westerners. I had the added disadvantage of not knowing the language, always struggling to keep up in school, and not understanding the culture.

Through no fault of theirs, my parents were of no help. Their world turned completely upside down, it was all they could do to feed us. They certainly weren’t able to help me with school work.

Eventually, I became more knowledgeable of the language and culture than they. Unfortunately, that caused a rift between us, for Chinese children are not supposed to know more than their parents. This is a generic bi-cultural conflict between first and second generation immigrants.

And, while my situation wasn’t nearly as bad as my African-American brothers and sisters, I want people to understand that it was devastating nonetheless.

My mother tells me I was very sociable and outgoing in China. I became shy and introverted, afraid to speak up, to ask questions, to get whatever help I needed in school, etc. When I see children coming down the same street, staring at me, I would cross to the other side. I would not raise my hand to answer questions in class, and when called upon by the teacher, my mind went blank even when I knew the answer.

I hated recess time because that’s when classmates would gang up on me, surrounding me, taunting me, making “Chinese” faces, speaking in sing-song Chinese – and the teachers did nothing!

There was not a day that passed that wasn’t terrified!

It’s taken me most of my life to speak to strangers at a party, to make phone calls, to face adversarial situations, to speak up when someone is belittling me. All I hear are the taunts, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.  All Chinese are stupid!” My face and entire body burns red with shame.  And, as my mind goes blank, I feel as stupid as I’ve been told over and over.

My body and my face actually turn red, and I feel like I’m running a fever. My mind goes blank so that I don’t have to speak back, afraid that it will be worse with me if I do. I learned early on not to fight back, because the one time I did, I got it even worse!

So, this becomes a physical and chemical reaction, in conjunction with any psychological impact I may feel.  It is now known in trauma circles as the Immobility of Freeze Response, when the mind and body shuts down to protect oneself from acknowledging the severity of the abuse.

It is a form of post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd), something I did not learn until recently from Belleruth Naparstek in her “Invisible Heroes”.

I believed what others told me, that I was stupid, that Chinese are stupid, that they can only be laundryman or work in restaurants.

I also watched my parents do nothing when they were taunted. They did nothing to help themselves. I even watched others take advantage of them in their laundry, and they took it.

So, when my father stands up for me one time, I am afraid he will get into trouble.

I am physically assaulted by a boy older than me. He happens to be a neighborhood boy, so my father marches me to his home. And, tells off his parents, that they must be very proud that their 10-year-old son hit a small 6-year-old girl, showing them my bruises.

I am in such shock that my father stood up for me. I don’t  realize ’til much later what a risk he was taking to do that. The white father could have turned the story around, and the police would have believed him.

Racism, therefore, is a life of consistent non-stop degrading one as a human being,so that one begins to buy into what everyone says, that one does not deserves to be in this world.

Does it still exist? Yes.

Fast forward to the time my husband and I are looking for our first home in 1965.. The real estate agent immediately brings  us to a minority neighborhood, all African-American.

My daughter experiences it walking home from school when all the neighborhood children start calling her racial names, “Chink!” . This is 1971. The difference is that, once she tells me about it and is afraid of walking to and from school alone, I accompany her. I also speak to the parents.

My son experiences racism from a cafeteria helper who reprimands him when he’s done nothing wrong. She overlooks other white children doing the same thing. This is more subtle, hard to pinpoint racism. In some ways, there is more consequence because the child doesn’t know what he’s done wrong and ends up believing that he is a “bad” person.

Again, fast forward to 1990 when my son is looking for an apartment in NYC. He callsd me to ask what a green card is. A green card is actually one  carried by Permanent Residents of the United States. Since he is a naturalized citizen, it never even occurs to me to tell him what that is. Yet, the landlord immediately assumes he isn’t  American.

This is how debilitating racism can be – even though my son speaks perfect English, the landlord only sees his face and stereotypes him as a foreigner.

I came name others, some more overt, some more covert. I don’t know what’s worse – with overt racism, I know where I stand and can brace against it. With covert racism, I’m not sure what is going on, and causes confusion, leaving the recipient unable to prepare for the behaviors.

Can an individual overcome the effects of racism? Yes, he/she can.

Is it hard to do? You bet it is! Especially when it’s always prevalent.

I didn’t start to overcome the effects until I started to see a psychotherapist in the late ’70′s. I was already 35 years old.

I am grateful to find a white therapist who never discounts my perceptions about racism. She never assumes that I am making it up, or over sensitive. After 35 years of “sucking up” what I am told I  have to live with, I begin to understand that it isn’t my fault., but that I am  part of a system that degrades anyone different.

As we continue to work together, I learn how I unconsciously collude with the system, keeping myself as second class citizen. I become more assertive, speaking out against injustice.

Am I completely over the effects of racism? No. I still get scared when I have to face the situation. However, I screw up my courage and say it anyway.

Just like the women in the film who tells “Skeeter” their story, it frees them within themselves. Once they stand up for themselves, they find their voice. The voice is freed from a self-imposed prison, no matter what other voices say.

And, once they find that voice for the first time, they know they can do it again.

It is a process. Every time I speak up,I shake all over.  And, every time I do it, I congratulate myself. Every time I cannot, I learn to forgive myself, knowing there’s always a next time.

Forgiveness leads to compassion, two of the essential concepts of spirituality.  In being able to feel these for myself, I am in touch with my heart and soul, something that is easily lost in the day-to-day harshness of dealing with racism.

I urge any of you who has, and are still, living through this situation, to find support – professional and personal.

You must always remind yourself that you deserve to have all the opportunities that others have.

Please share this article with as many people as you can. I believe that we need to cooperate with each other. Our very survival is at stake.

Thank you!