A ritual of healing the trauma of war – Sunday of Memorial Day weekend – First Universalist Church, Minneapolis, MN.
Hi All, Here is the link some of you asked for to the service I led at my Unitarian Universalist Church last Sunday on “Healing the Collective Trauma of War.” It will be of particular interest, I think, to those of you who are therapists or healers as this is a variation of the emerging science on working with individual trauma, and it is adapted to work with a large group on collective trauma.
http://firstuniversalistchurch.org/…/veterans-memory-civi…/…
Here is a brief overview for those who don’t want to spend the 40 minutes listening to my entire remarks. If you do listen to the 40 minutes, be sure to listen to Rev. Ruth Mackenzie’s 4 minutes of reflection. She does a great job of deepening the healing and bringing everyone, veterans, their family members, and all other congregants together in a deep, embodied connection.
Section 1 – (about 10 minutes) – I taught the congregation the new understanding of the nervous system, the Polyvagel Theory. How the middle section, called the Window of Tolerance, is where we want to live whenever possible. And how all of us, when we get close to any unbearable feelings in unprocessed trauma, personal or collective, we react and go to the upper section or hyper-aroused state of fight or flight, or the lower section the hypo-aroused state of depression and hopelessness and emotional collapse, and both reactions lead us to dissociate from what the original feelings where, the feelings that became unbearable.
And then I explained how in psychotherapy we have learned to traverse the landscape of trauma by focusing not so much on the trauma that comes up but on our connection with others. That it is through the connection, in the midst of touching into the edges of the trauma, that heals us and increases in us the capacity to bear the unbearable. And it is the oscillating between the two, the trauma and the connection, that the nervous system literally gets rewired
Then I guided them in an embodied meditation, helping them to find the somatic experience of the sensations in their bodies of where they felt the connection with the others present in the congregation. And I emphasized that coming back again and again to this somatic experience of the connection was essential for us as individuals and the community to help heal us and to help us to weave a bond of connection that made the unbearable more bearable, and would help us have coherent thoughts, feelings and actions in response to the trauma of war.
Section 2 – ({about 30 minutes) – I shared a number of vignettes of my experience as a veteran, in war and back home, and frequently talked about how those places intersected with the public. Many of these memories were of what it was like to be forgotten, and some about my own forgetting about those serving in combat during the wars we were or are fighting in since I returned from Vietnam. I was very consciously inviting them to reflect on their own experience, whether as a veteran or family member or a civilian.
My last vignette was of sharing with a friend some years ago how hard and lonely Memorial Day was for me as a veteran, and how I knew that just about everyone was forgetting that Memorial Day was a day to honor the fallen in war, something I couldn’t do on that day, and that I knew if they were forgetting the fallen they certainly were forgetting those of us walking. He listened attentively, was clearly being there “for me”, and assured me as I left he would never forget me on future Memorial Days. And then I never heard from him again on Memorial Day, or about the issue, ever again.
How was it he forgot I reflected with the congregation? His intention and love for me were undeniable. I told them I believe it was the same reason all of us forget about the ongoing pain and trauma of war, including myself. Because it is just too emotionally and psychically overwhelming for anyone of us to face for long. And it continues because there is just too much of the trauma, personally and collectively, that is not and has never been processed.
I can see how my friend really wanted to continue to be there “for me,” but it didn’t work because to remember me he would have had to be there “with me” and he could only do that by being with his own experience of war as a civilian. When you are processing emotions in the midst of collective trauma everyone’s experience matters. When we try to be with another person in their trauma while avoiding our own we inevitably dissociate from our bigger self and we cannot stay in the Window of Tolerance and stay connected to others. And then we lose either the other person or ourselves, or both.
During this 30 minute reflection I stopped my narrative a couple of times and had us all come back to the awareness of the somatic connection with each other, and reminded everyone that it was staying conscious of the connection, while we all reflected on war, that was going to weave a deeper bond to each other and increase our capacity to have coherent thoughts, feelings and actions around the madness of war. And to be able to bear the unbearable, together.
What is not on the podcasts is the piano music, the beautiful song the minister sang, an Irish ballad lamenting the madness of war, and how she and the service called on Source, or the Divine, to be with us as we went through the service.
This ritual is the kind of work I am now focusing on, helping groups understand and work with the issues of collective trauma and its impact on them and also helping groups, like my church congregation, heal some of that trauma so they can have a more coherent response to it. It is very exciting for me to do this as I combine the newest science of neurobiology about how the body processes and heals from trauma, my years as a qigong teacher leading large group healing meditations, and my decades of doing rituals with various spiritual groups.
Patrick
This service/ritual took place on Memorial Weekend, May 29, 2016