Tag: Psychological trauma

  • In the Wake of the Epstein Files Release, Remember that Abuse Is Everywhere

    When I first came to Japan in 1989, a few Japanese actually told me that there was no child abuse in Japan. That shows that there was little consciousness of this social problem in those days. But I would guess that most people in the U.S. and Japan, of my generation at least, have been […]

  • Practicing Vulnerability: A Black Man’s Struggle toward Understanding and Belonging

    From an early age, most boys absorb the message—whether stated directly or modeled by the men and women in their lives—that to be a man is to be tough. I learned that early. In my household, crying got me grounded or spanked, or both. And, of course, I was expected not to cry about the […]

  • Small Town Politics Imbued with Arrested Development, Retrograde Thinking and a Whole Lotta MAGA

    Small Town Politics Imbued with Arrested Development, Retrograde Thinking and a Whole Lotta MAGA

    Listen here to our talk, airing on my radio show, Finding Fringe: Voices from the Edge. It is a microsm of AmeriKKKa’s large and small communities. Heidi Lambert was voted into Waldport, Oregon’s volunteer mayoral position but was fired, then had to file a state ethics complaint, and now those fifth graders are running a […]

  • In Gaza, the West Extols the Suffering of the Executioners

    In Gaza, the West Extols the Suffering of the Executioners

    A CNN article on the suicide of an Israeli soldier who served in Gaza laments the psychological toll of the horrors inflicted by the occupying army — but not from the victims’ perspective, only that of the perpetrators. It even goes so far as to pity the soldier’s inability to eat meat after bulldozing over […]

  • Can You Be a Man with Two Faces in America?

    Can You Be a Man with Two Faces in America?

    Serendipity, picking Viet Thanh Nyugen’s memoir, A Man with Two Faces as the main book for the memoir writing class I am teaching. Last time it was Liar’s Club and Wild and other things to haunt the student with other writers’ haunting memoirs. Mary Karr and Cheryl Strayed, and the students learned about all sorts […]

  • What It Means to Go Back-to-School in the American Police State

    What It Means to Go Back-to-School in the American Police State

    Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning. —Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes It’s not easy being a child in the American police state. Danger lurks around every corner and […]

  • The Oppressor Within

    The Oppressor Within

    The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships. — Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” 1970 It has […]

  • Coming to Terms with a Lifetime of Trauma While in Prison

    I am a Black man in prison, and I want to talk about trauma. I want us all to be able to talk about trauma. I’m here because when I was a teenager and young man, I made many bad life choices involving drugs and violence. Living with the consequences of my actions is not […]

  • Stages of Grief, Disempowering the Abuser, Healing

    Stages of Grief, Disempowering the Abuser, Healing

    When the bureaucratic well runs dry, you as survivor of DV are on your own, especially when family and friends are riding in their own Private Idaho. Preface: According to band member Kate Pierson, “Private Idaho” was inspired by the feeling of being trapped and isolated, like a prisoner in solitary confinement. The song originated […]

  • We Are in Collective Alexithymia

    We Are in Collective Alexithymia

    No words for emotions — alexithymia New psychology research shows maltreatment in childhood is linked to alexithymia in adulthood. Its etymology comes from Ancient Greek. The word is formed by combining the alpha privative prefix ἀ- (a-, meaning ‘not’) with λέξις (léxis, referring to ‘words’) and θῡμός (thȳmós, denoting ‘disposition,’ ‘feeling,’ or ‘rage’). The term can […]

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