Of late, I’ve begun learning somatic experiencing which has the aim of healing unmetabolized trauma. It’s work I’ve become fascinated with in reading Resmaa Menakem’s “My Grandmother’s Hands.” Trauma is characterized by outsized reactions of fight, flight, or freeze. Overreaction or under-reaction.
What’s a place I find reactions which are out of proportion to the situation? Isn’t writing one, an area in which people react with fight, flight or freeze responses. Could it be the demons known as gremilins or Resistance merely be unacknowledged and activated trauma?
When a person is called on to write don’t they often fight by saying they can’t write. Don’t writers often freeze when “faced down” by a blank page? Many people also simply run away from writing, avoiding it entirely? Hasn’t trauma and shame been bestowed on us by critical teachers who hoped to engrain the rules of grammar, or good penmanship, but instead created a lifelong fear of doing or saying a thing in the wrong way? Couldn’t somatic experiencing help writers and would-be writers to heal their trauma around writing?
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