I appreciate your expression of the whole, how it expresses itself in parts, how information from the past is storied in the body, and the unwinding of this twine, is a multi-dimensional process that at its core, requires relating and relational competencies to heal, which you mention are part of the TWT experience. A beautiful glimpse of your inner world, your vulnerability, and your commitment to practice! Thank you so much for recommending our article.
Thank you one more time first of all for generously offering your self and body to ground and channel all that shared energy that's asking to be manifested and tended to by an embodied voice.
Thank you again, too, for openly and honestly choosing to share your experience by pouring your heart and your mind in these lines.
The knight of swords energy, indeed (and the king of cups...)
This post has actually been lingering in my mind since I first read it and I felt a need to come visit and go a few times. I kept thinking about what you said about 'social media' and overall digital communication as a tool for healing and for creating connective tissue.
I've got some strongly mixed feelings about that.
I'd say the digital landscape offers a really potent medium that nevertheless demands a wise and respectful use of its properties (more so for healing purposes). And from what I've seen and experienced the current mainstream digital technologies as we know them now don't grant respect for some basic human (and healing) principles by the very conceptual foundation and praxis of the current set-up.
Healing requires among others, a grounded, careful and exquisite balance between what in gestalt therapy is called 'contact' and 'withdrawal', which requires a sine qua non foundation: a trustworthy agreement around safety, which is based on a non-negotiable respect for boundaries.
Respecting privacy is the quintessential way in which respect for boundaries manifests in the digital realm: THIS is my space and THIS is the space I choose to share. This is what I share WITH such and such NoW, and THIS is what I DON'T share.
That's certainly not what's happening in this fucked up current technological set-up. What we have now entails a very serious break into people's intimate spaces beyond their boundaries whether some people are aware of it now or they might be in the future.
Thus, it entails a serious hazard for safe healing processes and for the healthy milieu we're intending to foster.
Maybe we need to start wisely selecting the digital platforms we use and the interaction codes we handle in them if digital spaces are going to be real tools for healthy connective tissue that grants respectful and healing processes.
You raise some very pertinent points. From my limited experience in this realm, chat groups (on Whatsapp or Telegram) have proved to be a valuable container to allow processes to continue after online/in-person meetings have ended. That said, there are clear limits and risks: There is no easy or obvious way for whoever is administering the group to know if people leave because they have been triggered by something. So even while there may be a lot of healthy interaction, there may be unresolved issues that simply go unobserved and unaddressed. I've often wondered whether there might be some protocols or other guidelines to help make such online chat groups serve their highest purpose -- a conversation still to be had, in my experience. All that said, I've found my interactions in these groups very rich and rewarding, so I'm generally in favour of exploring and refining what works. I really appreciate the considered feedback -- it's very powerful fuel for my own process, and I'm sure for other readers. Thank you!
Yeah, right, I hear you, and I'm glad you're finding those social networks useful and enriching so far, but I was raising an entirely different point precisely about the highest purpose of a healing group as a safe space and hence about the real safety or lack thereof that those (and other) platform-networks you mention actually and really grant to ALL by the very nature of their workings, regardless of personal choice and social participation protocols.
Maybe some people actually quit or refrain from participating in groups because they don't feel safe and respected. And I say: rightly so. In fact, it may not be about the groups themselves but it certainly IS and will be about the platforms and digital spaces that the groups choose to use that actually leak and publicly share private and intimate data.
And THAT'S not on in a safe healing space. It's not on in ANY respectful and healthy space. Internal use social protocols are of little use if the very platform they're based on doesn't respect users' privacy, users' boundaries and users' right to choose what they share and what they don't share about their intimacy now and in the future.
Thank you for that clarification. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you're concern is that platforms such as Whatsapp are -- by their very nature -- unsuitable for use in any kind of healing context? If that's your position, seems like a very legitimate concern to raise. I'll confess I hadn't thought much about the points you raise above. I appreciate you bringing them.
Ok, I tried to make my personal stand clear so let's try another approach, then, to frame your question about what would constitute (or not) a 'suitable healing context':
1.- Does a healing context/space need to ensure or at least try to ensure safety when it comes to vulnerability, privacy, intimacy and boundary keeping for people involved in a healing process?
2.- Do platforms and digital systems that actually make their money by deceptively appropriating and trading personal and intimate information they deceptively collect, leak and sell through deceptive and deliberately blurry processes that deceptively and unknowingly but surely trespass personal boundaries, invade and rape personal intimacy in order to basically appropriate and sell people ('s life) through digital means... [do these digital contexts-structures] allow for the protection of people's right to safety and respect in a healing context (respect for themselves, their boundaries, their vulnerability and in this case even their wounds?)
Then, does such milieu constitute a suitable foundation/context for healing? And for trauma healing??
(Does it constitute a healthy and respectful context at all?)
I appreciate you laying this all out with such clarity. All your comments, and in particular points 1 and 2, have certainly prompted me to reflect more deeply on the issues and obstacles involved in any attempt to harness digital platforms for positive purposes. Thank you for being so generous in elaborating your concerns. Receiving this kind of considered feedback to broaden my understanding of issues related to collective trauma (and hopefully some readers too) is one of the reasons I created Resonant World.
Thank you, Matthew. I enjoy Resonant World, your work has sparked a lot of meaningful material on this end and I'm glad to contribute with some insights back -in addition, this whole digital issue particularly bugs me, in all fairness.
I appreciate your expression of the whole, how it expresses itself in parts, how information from the past is storied in the body, and the unwinding of this twine, is a multi-dimensional process that at its core, requires relating and relational competencies to heal, which you mention are part of the TWT experience. A beautiful glimpse of your inner world, your vulnerability, and your commitment to practice! Thank you so much for recommending our article.
The article is a great contribution to communicating the mechanisms underlying the work, and I'm glad it's getting widely read!
what can be challenging is finding the willingness to stay with the unwinding of the string.
but then, easily picked up again when ready to move on :)
Yes, the ball never goes away! Even if we can't always find the dexterity to work with it!
Matthew, I'm loving your blog - the way you are writing about healing, and also the beauty of what's happening within the TWT.
Rhonda, so glad to hear it's landing with you. Motivation to continue!
Love the inclusion of the 'what I'm reading section'. Delving into the article you shared and finding it very valuable.
Jacob
Thank you one more time first of all for generously offering your self and body to ground and channel all that shared energy that's asking to be manifested and tended to by an embodied voice.
Thank you again, too, for openly and honestly choosing to share your experience by pouring your heart and your mind in these lines.
The knight of swords energy, indeed (and the king of cups...)
This post has actually been lingering in my mind since I first read it and I felt a need to come visit and go a few times. I kept thinking about what you said about 'social media' and overall digital communication as a tool for healing and for creating connective tissue.
I've got some strongly mixed feelings about that.
I'd say the digital landscape offers a really potent medium that nevertheless demands a wise and respectful use of its properties (more so for healing purposes). And from what I've seen and experienced the current mainstream digital technologies as we know them now don't grant respect for some basic human (and healing) principles by the very conceptual foundation and praxis of the current set-up.
Healing requires among others, a grounded, careful and exquisite balance between what in gestalt therapy is called 'contact' and 'withdrawal', which requires a sine qua non foundation: a trustworthy agreement around safety, which is based on a non-negotiable respect for boundaries.
Respecting privacy is the quintessential way in which respect for boundaries manifests in the digital realm: THIS is my space and THIS is the space I choose to share. This is what I share WITH such and such NoW, and THIS is what I DON'T share.
That's certainly not what's happening in this fucked up current technological set-up. What we have now entails a very serious break into people's intimate spaces beyond their boundaries whether some people are aware of it now or they might be in the future.
Thus, it entails a serious hazard for safe healing processes and for the healthy milieu we're intending to foster.
Maybe we need to start wisely selecting the digital platforms we use and the interaction codes we handle in them if digital spaces are going to be real tools for healthy connective tissue that grants respectful and healing processes.
You raise some very pertinent points. From my limited experience in this realm, chat groups (on Whatsapp or Telegram) have proved to be a valuable container to allow processes to continue after online/in-person meetings have ended. That said, there are clear limits and risks: There is no easy or obvious way for whoever is administering the group to know if people leave because they have been triggered by something. So even while there may be a lot of healthy interaction, there may be unresolved issues that simply go unobserved and unaddressed. I've often wondered whether there might be some protocols or other guidelines to help make such online chat groups serve their highest purpose -- a conversation still to be had, in my experience. All that said, I've found my interactions in these groups very rich and rewarding, so I'm generally in favour of exploring and refining what works. I really appreciate the considered feedback -- it's very powerful fuel for my own process, and I'm sure for other readers. Thank you!
Yeah, right, I hear you, and I'm glad you're finding those social networks useful and enriching so far, but I was raising an entirely different point precisely about the highest purpose of a healing group as a safe space and hence about the real safety or lack thereof that those (and other) platform-networks you mention actually and really grant to ALL by the very nature of their workings, regardless of personal choice and social participation protocols.
Maybe some people actually quit or refrain from participating in groups because they don't feel safe and respected. And I say: rightly so. In fact, it may not be about the groups themselves but it certainly IS and will be about the platforms and digital spaces that the groups choose to use that actually leak and publicly share private and intimate data.
And THAT'S not on in a safe healing space. It's not on in ANY respectful and healthy space. Internal use social protocols are of little use if the very platform they're based on doesn't respect users' privacy, users' boundaries and users' right to choose what they share and what they don't share about their intimacy now and in the future.
Thank you for that clarification. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you're concern is that platforms such as Whatsapp are -- by their very nature -- unsuitable for use in any kind of healing context? If that's your position, seems like a very legitimate concern to raise. I'll confess I hadn't thought much about the points you raise above. I appreciate you bringing them.
Ok, I tried to make my personal stand clear so let's try another approach, then, to frame your question about what would constitute (or not) a 'suitable healing context':
1.- Does a healing context/space need to ensure or at least try to ensure safety when it comes to vulnerability, privacy, intimacy and boundary keeping for people involved in a healing process?
2.- Do platforms and digital systems that actually make their money by deceptively appropriating and trading personal and intimate information they deceptively collect, leak and sell through deceptive and deliberately blurry processes that deceptively and unknowingly but surely trespass personal boundaries, invade and rape personal intimacy in order to basically appropriate and sell people ('s life) through digital means... [do these digital contexts-structures] allow for the protection of people's right to safety and respect in a healing context (respect for themselves, their boundaries, their vulnerability and in this case even their wounds?)
Then, does such milieu constitute a suitable foundation/context for healing? And for trauma healing??
(Does it constitute a healthy and respectful context at all?)
I appreciate you laying this all out with such clarity. All your comments, and in particular points 1 and 2, have certainly prompted me to reflect more deeply on the issues and obstacles involved in any attempt to harness digital platforms for positive purposes. Thank you for being so generous in elaborating your concerns. Receiving this kind of considered feedback to broaden my understanding of issues related to collective trauma (and hopefully some readers too) is one of the reasons I created Resonant World.
Thank you, Matthew. I enjoy Resonant World, your work has sparked a lot of meaningful material on this end and I'm glad to contribute with some insights back -in addition, this whole digital issue particularly bugs me, in all fairness.
Keep up the great work :-)!