8-31-20 SOURCES OF HELP: SELF-HELP AND BYPASSING

These seem to be the times of self-help as illustrated by all

 the books presently available in bookstores and the popularity of the genre in our culture. But what do we make of it and is it a useful category for us in navigating what we encounter on a daily basis in our lives? There is a certain allure to the beckonings of the self-helpers. We think we can attach ourselves to the methodologies someone else has worked out for themselves, assuming that what ails us and in need of help is identical to what ails the author of the book we are reading. Our hopes are predicated on a close match-up of their lives and ours. Yet, experience reveals that all of us are in need of help in some form and that our challenges are not identical to everyone else's. But there may be some processes by which we can begin to understand our own needs and challenges and that is where sources of help might be valuable. There are aspects of our behavior that are universally human and so we hope that we might gain some insights into and even some solutions for our own problems.

I am presently observing protest movements around the world but especially here in the United States and from a comfortable distance. My environment is of a rural nature in a state of a very homogeneous white race with the exception of many indigenous tribes scattered throughout. The protests have the character of “other,” of “over there” and not here. I am separated from what the protesters shout and their placards and posters say. I am sympathetic to many of their causes and yet puzzled by what their noise and violence achieve. I have these questions about protest movements throughout human history and especially my own lifespan that includes the protests of the 60s. Is it possible to draw a straight line between the vehemence of the protest, its apparent basis, and a defined outcome or result? Were the people who were drawn into the protest movement as sympathizers aware of the genesis of the movement itself? Were the energies of the protest shared by all?

When I look closer at protest movements in general and the specific ones we are witnessing today (BlackLivesMatter, police brutality, racial injustice) and try to answer some of the questions that arise for me, I am challenged to look closer at what universal elements they might contain that would help me understand why they exist in the first place. And I wonder, too, if the protests are expressions of a clear motive or if they might be bypasses for what is more fundamental and complex. What I mean by bypassing is to avoid either overtly or covertly the root conditions that lead to the eruption of a protest with all its noise and demands. In these situations I wonder what hard work is being bypassed.

Hard work is a concept that applies to just about everything we think and do. It implies that we engage the brain in ways that interrupt its comfortable default to a low energy state. It seems to prefer to languish in this low energy state unless called upon to do hard work, to think, to calculate, to discern. This is a natural state for the brain as it prefers to let its energy store up in preference to the needs of other vital organ systems that will probably require energy for metabolism in more immediate conditions, perhaps those of fight, flight, or freeze. Hard work is a conscious demand on the brain and awakens it to a condition of being available to dissect and deconstruct and reorder. This applies to solving mathematical puzzles as well as to understanding the causes and conditions of white supremacy and racial injustice.

Resmaa Menakem, in his book My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies (2017), explores what it is to act on implicit biases and how overt and covert oppression is stored in the body. This implicates Whites and Blacks, police and security officers and their victims, historical transmission, and the epigenetics of trauma. Epigenetics is a new frontier in genetic science and is opening up new avenues to the exploration of how the experiences of trauma are passed down in generations and how they affect genetic transmission but don't seem to change the underlying DNA codes. For instance, studies on Holocaust victims and their offspring indicate that the traumas directly experienced can be transmitted to their offspring and expressed in such conditions as chronic depression and social dysfunction in numbers higher than predicted based on the general population. There is growing biochemical evidence that this is a real phenomenon and one directly related to how traumas are embedded in the body. Menakem highlights this with the issue of race as it surfaces in the Black community, among Whites as White Supremacy/White fragility, and among the police forces and security forces originally configured to maintain peace and order but now heavily militarized to resemble an armed contingent. While his focus is on these elements of society, his expanded theme is on how trauma of any cause can create the conditions in our bodies that lead to chronic physical and mental diseases. He also offers some specific psychological and behavioral methodologies that can assist us in managing traumatic situations of any cause. In this regard, he echoes many of the same methodologies attached to spiritual traditions, where cultivation of bodily responses is the source of calming, settling, and grounding—the methodologies Menakem recommends for those confronting hostility, stress, and even violence in traumatic situations.

Sometimes, I believe we assign far greater authority to gurus of all stripes than they deserve. We are so eager to attach ourselves to anyone who offers us ways to bypass our suffering and to avoid the hard work of confronting the traumas that affect our daily behavior. Menakem could be one of those gurus, except he offers only the possibility of hard work to make progress on the underlying implicit biases that run us into trouble. His formulation of the difficulties with racialized trauma lead to strategies, exercises, and practices (he prefers “practices,” as that implies an ongoing commitment of intention) that depend on individuals doing the hard work of discernment of basic causes of trauma, whatever the source and whatever the manifestations. If one is intent on doing such intense work, then he says to begin with the body because that is where the trauma is stored. Anything less than that will be to invest in another layer of bypassing. And the trauma will continue to lie dormant and surface in myriad ways that are unhelpful at least and very harmful in full armor.

This work, this hard work, is a call to us to be awake to those aspects of our lives that cause us tension, stress, frustration, anger, and outright violence. Think of any corner of your life and look at it hard, asking the questions: “What is this? What do I notice? Am I bypassing the important elements to just feel better about a difficult situation?” Maybe there are stresses in a personal relationship, with impending retirement, with financial problems, with the loss of physical ability or the death of a loved one. We need to look deeper into our own personal sources of strength and abilities to find internal resources that will give us courage to do the hard work required. Any one of us, all of us, can do this. What it means is to first adopt an attitude of willingness to explore. Next comes the intention to go further and then the inquiry begins. Along with the nuanced questions there is a practice of somatic calming and grounding that prepares one for the hard work of discernment. This body work is a resource if practiced often enough to become a habit of self-care. Once a habit, it is available in situations of stress or conflict.

We begin to ask the questions that pry up the boards that have been hammered together to cover over the painful basic problem. With the adoption of this attitude and this intention, it is important to recognize that all of this comes without any assurance of success in getting answers to the questions we ask. And if we are fortunate to get some answers, there is no guarantee that the answers will translate into a successful outcome such as a promotion or marketable insight or enlightenment, such as a self-help guru might promise. At every opportunity in this excavation we refer to our bodies and what we are experiencing there. What comes up inside the body? What are you feeling just now? Is there constriction or relief? Is there some history that helps me understand how I feel? How does my body practice help me now?

Returning to the social protests that are now so present to all of us all around the country, what might be the hard work with them that could lead to a better understanding of their importance? It might be the approach Menakem takes in his examination of racialized trauma and to dig into the history of the idea of race itself. It might be to read the memoirs of those manacled in slavery or the details of the recent killings of Black men and boys to get a better understanding of how traumas are experienced by the victims. It might be to study what neuroscience tells us about how traumas are embedded in our bodies and then transmitted to other individuals and how they are inserted into social norms and habits over time. There is no doubt that we can learn from scientific experts and from people who have ideas about human behavior based on their own experiences. But the truth is that what hard work we do must begin in our own bodies. That is personal work to which we are all called.

Menakem has a number of quotations from James Baldwin, among others. James Baldwin was a public witness to issues of race many decades ago and wrote most eloquently about the Black experience. He was not taunting in his approach but certainly challenging. He called on both Blacks and Whites to do the hard work of reckoning with the trauma done to bodies, the trauma that we are now learning has a historical basis as well as a contemporary version we see in the protest actions in many major cities. He was aware that individuals as well as communities, societies, and nations were stuck in their progress for a healthier life of interdependence if they did not work through the trauma of racial oppression and its ideations. He was aware of the ease and comfort of bypassing, only to be haunted by the demon long kept dormant. Baldwin is also an eloquent and unsettling voice for the Black experience in America. Menakem, too, lets no one off the hard work hook and documents the White-on-White traumas inflicted over the centuries, long before race was a concept, as people of color were not part of the cultural make-up of early societies. So, traumas of oppression have existed as long as humans have been on the earth. Isn't it time to do the hard work of confronting such an ancient legacy? What could the future look like if we did? How could humans continue to flourish in their lives if we committed to hard work?

The confluence of individual, community, societal, and world wide traumas are part of our shared lives in the first century of this new millennium. The hard work of their realities is the call we can answer if our intention is to bring to light what ails us. Only in this way will we be able to work through and not bypass the most essential aspects of what it is to be a human being. It is to acknowledge the pains and suffering, the joys and sorrows that all of us experience. In this we are one.