Opening Arms to Light

She could be anybody--oh, that we all had such strong experiences of daybreaking in our lives! I was just talking to a colleague of mine who asked me what my “aha” moment about healing was, my “daybreaking.”

Like many others, things that had happened in early childhood and all the way into adulthood--medical crises, natural disasters, deaths, betrayals, inappropriate contact, and more--had twisted me into pretzels. The invisible physical disability of unpredictable dislocations didn’t help.

I think I’ve had a number of daybreak moments. The first was when I refused to accept the defining gaze of society and any number of people. I had experienced others' defining me enough to know it was dangerous. Somehow, while not in my body, without my context, or my experiences, they knew what I felt, what I needed, and what I should avoid.

Another was when I realized that the skilled helpers I sought out for help and growth were only inches beyond (and sometimes behind) where I was. They too had histories, and they weren’t necessarily working on their own stuff.

The biggest one? When I realized that much of what I had was a “missing skills” issue long before the idea even gained a hint of recognition. This isn’t CBT time (I wrote the initial replication manuals for TF-CBT, PCIT, SPARCs, and more..). It was and is about the simple fact that learning stops in the face of fear. I didn’t have a “bad brain.” It wasn’t about medication (which never worked well for me). It wasn’t about an invisible illness. It was an “I don’t know what or how” issue.

Why was this the big daybreak for me? Because I come from a long line of educators, and I know that learning saves lives. Mine included. Yours included. The lives of the people you know who are stuck included.

That’s why I help people learn what they might have missed. Encourage testing in low-risk situations to see how it works. For me it wasn’t “psychiatric rehabilitation,” it was “life habilitation.” I strongly suspect that is true for any number of us. It’s why I believe in what I do. The Trauma Informed Academy helps people learn what trauma makes them miss. Sometimes we start with a different way of thinking, and sometimes a different way of being.