Category: Trauma

I am a total sucker for songs with visceral lyrics; particularly those that appeal to my vocational field of mental health. One of the songs I've been listening to on repeat, is called "You're Somebody Else" by: flora cash. I love the chorus:

Well, you look like yourself

But you're somebody else

Only it ain't on the surface

Well, you talk like yourself

No, I hear someone else though

Now you're making me nervous 

From what I can gather the song is a farewell ode to a close friend and/or lover. It's in the framework of the song that I find so much affin ...

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Spaghetti and Hurt Feelings

I am a pretty clumsy person. Like a keep-an-eye-on-me-around-closed-sliding-glass-doors, probably-should-never-eat-spaghetti-without-a-full-apron-on kind of person. Suffice it to say, my childhood nickname lauded my propensity to accumulate minor bumps and scrapes through incredible feats of un-coordination. I won’t tell you how old I was when I nearly broke my glasses walking into the corner of a doorway instead of through the doorway - although, to be perfectly clear, it was part of the transparent wall of a racquetball court…and that was the problem: it was perfectly clear.

 

Anyway, as my luck would have it, I’m also a pretty relationally-clumsy person. At times I completely miss that I have caused emotional discomfort or harm. I put my foot in my mouth routinely enough that I< ...

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It’s abundantly clear the world does not look or feel the same as it did two years ago. I’ve noticed that people tend to refer to time as “before 2020” and “after 2020”. With my clients, I have referred to the pandemic and quarantine as a global trauma. I don’t know if anyone has coined that term yet, but I have seen some reference to it as a “global mass trauma”. I would describe a global trauma as a catastrophic event that has affected the entire population of the planet in some way, shape or form. It’s something that has transformed life as we once knew it. 

I think it’s fair to say the pandemic in 2020 has done just that. It’s easy to say “well, it’s over. Just let it go”. When the reality is, it’s not over. And the repercussions aren’t over. If we take what we know about trauma and apply it on a global level, what do we know? 

We kn ...

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