Creating Presence

Humor can transform trauma on individual and social scales - and has even been found to be a crucial part of the process.

The use of humor among oppressed and traumatized groups has long been a way to overcome powerlessness and create unity, using laughter to dissolve fear and comedy to subvert the powerful.

Emotions are contagious!

Relationships are fundamental to human survival, so emotions play a huge role in our everyday lives.

Emotions connect us to other people. Because we live to connect to others, we pick up on how others are feeling, may even feel it along with them, and even act on those feelings all without realizing that we’re doing it.

We like to believe that we’re primarily governed by logic, but this simply is not the case.

Trauma is fundamentally a sensory experience, not a cognitive one.

When a person experiences a trauma, their left hemisphere activity decreases while their right hemisphere is very active. This means that a person impacted by trauma may not have words for their experience, making integration of the trauma into their life narrative very difficult.

This doesn’t mean they don’t speak about it at all – the body uses behavior to tell its story. But when we don’t understand where it’s coming from or why, it can leave us feeling confused and alienated, furthering the impact of the trauma.

This is why an understanding of nonverbal messages is such a crucial part of the healing and recovery process.

Perpetrators were once victims of the same ab*se of power they now wield over others.

If we want to end the cycles of v!olence that rule our world, we have to spend time helping perpetrators overcome the helplessness they were once subjected to.

This doesn’t mean we tolerate ab*sive behavior or dismiss its impact on others, but we do make an effort to understand where it’s coming from – from a systemic perspective. This is what makes prevention possible.

We’re all human. We all have a story. Some of the most troubled among us used to be the most helpless.

Perpetration is not a symbol of power – it’s a cry for help.