Patriarchy Stress Disorder by Valerie Rein

Author:Valerie Rein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2019-10-21T20:22:38+00:00

How Individual Trauma Manifests

Our bodies store the original imprint of whatever event caused us to feel unsafe. Our minds rationalize and tell stories about what happened, but our body memories are beyond stories. These memories are the record of impact, when we had a natural emotional response—be it fear, anger, hopelessness, grief, or even joy—that was interrupted.

Bernadette Pleasant, founder of the Femme! movement, whom I interviewed for my podcast Her Success Radio described an experience she had as a girl when she won an award at school.19 The accolades were unexpected—she’d won against all odds—and she was bursting with joy and pride. She rushed home, excited to share the news with her mother.

Her mother suffered from depression, and this day was a bad day for her. When Bernadette walked in the door, it felt like all the air was sucked out of the room.

Instantly, without words, she got the message that there was no space for her joy.

There was no room for her accomplishment, no space for her bigness.

She swallowed her excitement, shut it down, and never shared about her award.

This is a traumatic experience of a different kind than what we have previously discussed: the trauma of frozen joy. I see this kind of trauma in every client, in every woman: Our big, expansive emotions are interrupted, we don’t feel safe to be who we truly are in the moment, and we shut down those parts of ourselves that don’t fit. We create adaptations that shape our lives to be smaller, quieter, less colorful, and less shiny than our authentic selves crave them to be.

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