Trauma’s Dance

On vacation rereading Harriet Lerner’s The Dance of Anger. First found on a bookstore shelf during college years. Title speaking to me. Enough to buy a copy then and again now.

Reflect on how we lose ourselves in crisis, grief, and trauma’s afterlife. Seized by the past with future ceasing not in reality but in imagination. It’s a trauma induced de-selfing. Inflicted on our beings. Impacting our relationships.

Causing overfunction in flight or fight. Underfunction in freeze. Our relationships controlled by the remains of our battered selves. Spinning with trauma’s ongoing truths feeding past’s patterns even if thought eradicated. A rising fueling internal and external turbulence. Stepping toward us with sorrow, sadness. Leaving a wondering of how to stop the incorrigible dance pointing toward destruction within and around. Anger’s waltz keeping pain’s memory fed and alive. Each step minimizing compassion for me.

Lerner writes of shifting anger’s you to I. Blame belonging to you. Shame to I. Mine to heal with love leading to a knowing of where I begin and also end. You existing only outside the boundary of me.

So what if I said, “I want different music, a different dance?”

A new step. A beginning. The first in finding myself again.