It is ok to cry because a drop of tear can nurture the dull soul, which may have close to be died a long time ago, for a new life.
-Beeskit Social
It is easier to look at and talk about other’s pain, yet, it is difficult to get in touch with your own pain, isn’t it? The moment when you want to talk about what truly makes you painful, words simply get stuffed inside the mouth and there are no voices to be found, simply, because words can serve as a weapon to hurt people, and painful words can serve as a knife and stab people to death. But, the moment when you know someone has a similar living experience as you did, and you are also able to witness the harm and pain others have been living through, all of a sudden, you have found and discovered your way to relieve those tension in which you have been oppressed deep in you. You no longer keep those painful words stuffed inside your mouth, instead, you let those suffocating thoughts and feelings speak out loud in caring words. So the moment you care about the person who has similar experience as you did, you find the courage to start caring for you.
Deep down in me I believe people come into my life to inspire me, perhaps, some of the inspiration is a hard pill to swallow, however, the essence of life is about hardship, and that is what makes a person’s living experience valuable and meaningful. In return, I hope the engagement I have with people would enable them to see part of their truth. Simply, to witness and see part of themselves can make the healing they need possible. People say eyes are the window to the soul; to me, looking into someone’s eyes and see through the pain they have lived in their life, the engagement is not about “I am sorry to hear you experience what you have experienced”, instead, it is about “I witness what you have lived through, and now what would you like to do with that experience so to create a life you want it to be”.
Recently I have met a person, each time when I tried to ask him the reason why he approached me so attentively, right away he would dramatically look at me with a shocked face, and say when he was younger, his family had abandoned him, and his aunt is the one who was close to him and saved his life. I simply make a response with a gentle smile and said thank you, deep down I kind of sensing that, the social engagement the person had with me somehow may serve the healing for him to acknowledge the abandonment his family had done to him in which had caused him in deep pain; and by getting in touch with me, it provides a gateway for him to finally grieve for the loss he had experience in life long time ago. I am simply a reflection in part of his life. By getting in touch with the “reflection”, this person, who appears tough, all of a sudden allows himself to get emotional. He cried, finally, he gave himself permission to grieve for the sadness he had been burdened inside him, and by crying out, he released the sad part of himself from such burden. Moments like this deeply touches me, because I know even if I am a passerby or play a role of a reflection in someone else life, indeed, such engagement of seeing a reflection of the self can save life for people who had experienced emotional trauma and had been holding grudge for a long period of time without knowing they did.
There were times when people wondered why I did not keep in touch with people who I had met. Part of it is because I get used to living my life as a passerby, another part of it because I prefer to engage in deep conversation and make meanings with people by getting to the roots of pain. I am fond to the idea of passerby, imaging you are sitting in the bar and there is a stranger sit next to you staring at a half empty glass quietly, while you have no one to join, you greet to the stranger and ask a friendly question: “what is going on in your life?”, a simple question then would become a conversation, and you never know what you might ask or say would end up changing the way how a stranger live a life, sometimes such changes may even save the stranger’s life. I am not writing a fantasy script here, yet, scenarios like this have happened to me personally quite a few times. There were moments I was emotionally fallen apart and cried my hearts out, because of a heart break, as I sat on the corner of an street, a couple of strangers gently tapped on my shoulder and inquired me whether anything they could help, their kind engagement had communicated caring and thoughtfulness to me that, the gesture of tabbing on my shoulder gently had brought me back to the reality and it saved my life. There were time when people who I trusted the most turned their back on me and bullied me as a group, I felt so devastated and had nowhere to turn to, to the point, I have suicidal thought to kill myself to death. Somehow, there were strangers who I barely knew, yet they cared enough to talk to me, look after me and ensure my safety. These were moments of kindness that have saved my life.
You never know what you ask or what you say can change someone’s life. With the experience I had, deep down in me I have deep faith in a simple conversation and in a simple question that can save life. A little touch to someone’s life can make the person see beauty and possibility in their living condition, then walk away, to me, it is a very gentle and kind thing to do. Social engagement like this is like the dragonfly touches a drop of water. Dragonflies only come out to the public before or after the storm. By the time you are in touch with drops of water, you are able to see a reflection of yourself, at the same time, you are nurtured to feel a part of you is healed and no longer feel scared and uncertain. In Chinese context, a dragonfly touching a drop of water is often used in derogatory sense, as it describes doing a thing without looking into the depth that the person only does surfacing work. However, in the lens of trauma healing, if a trauma healer going into too much depth of their traumatic experience, it may results in the trauma healer reliving in the trauma, if a trauma healer doing healing work without acknowledging the traumatic experience they had lived through, there is no vision of healing to be taken in place for the trauma healer to accomplish. The approach of dragonfly touches a drop of water enable the trauma healer to meet different people, through making engagement with different people, it allows the trauma healer to further seeing the reflection of the different part of self; by simply getting in touch with the different part of the self in a nurturing environment, the trauma healer and the engagement of meeting different people make healing come alive organically and transformatively.
I hope, by the time you engaging in coaching, my words and my coaching question can provide you some new insights to step outside of victimhood, and engage your pain as you seeing life and experiencing life with a transformative perspective; at the same time I hope some of the questions I ask in the coaching space can motivate you to be mindfully think in a holistic manner as you engaging different part of you. I approach trauma healing in the aspect of coaching, and the engagement of coaching is meant to provide you with some guidelines and tools, so to support you to establish your own healing system and to build your own healing network. You are encouraged to take responsibility for your own healing in which you have made a commitment to your own healing as well as you consider the pace and approach of healing is appropriate to you. In my coaching practice, I have collected different healing tools that are created by different trauma healing professions, personally, I have worked with the tools during the time to heal my personal trauma, as a result, I find the tools are helpful and effective for my healing progress, so I would like to share those tools with you. Despite I am not a scientist or researcher, as an experiential educator and a trauma-informed coach, I may introduce you some healing concepts that I consider can be fundamental and useful for people who have made a decision to start their journey of trauma healing. In addition, as a trauma healer, I write part of my story in some of my blog post, and I hope my living and healing experience can give you courage to get in touch with your pain, so that you can give yourself permission to learn and achieve growth in your own story. My coaching practice invites you to take a look in your trauma and get some insight to learn from your traumatic experience so to better make establishment for your healing.
Feel free to make connection with me, and here I am inviting you to engage trauma healing in a non-medical lens where I see trauma healing as a living and learning experience, and I want to invite you and everybody to engage healing in a very basic and evolving way. I know dealing with trauma can be challenging and difficult, and there is complexity in each individual’s trauma, at the same time, I also agree healing trauma can be simple without complexity. I look forward to getting to know you, at the same time, I am grateful to have the opportunity to walk alongside you, provide support to you and give you insight to increase your capacity to build your own healing system that is effective to you.
Comments