FRAME 1: Personal and individual aspect
As practitioners who aim to be trauma informed, we must first learn and understand our own relationship to resistance and the defense mechanisms that may be within us. Only then can we expand our understanding of resistance towards other populations that we may serve.
Once we have an understanding of our own triggers, we can expand to work with people who may have either histories of trauma and/or are marginalized. Resistance can be used as a doorway for authenticity, deepening, and ultimately transformation. Just as an empathic break in the therapeutic alliance can offer a chance for the clinician to model repair, forgiveness and healing, resistance offers similar opportunities. As the saying goes, “what’s in the way, is the way.”
In addition to this participants can learn from over a decades worth of Micah’s on-the-ground experience working with marginalized communities (incarcerated youth and adults, Muslim communities), with case-studies, storytelling, and plenty of room for real life scenarios. Tools and interventions will be given from a variety of perspectives including psychology (Hakomi, somatic experiencing, evidence-based practices), secular mindfulness, and various wisdom traditions.
We will also have a safe space and cohort to process and discuss real-time struggles with resistance whether professionally or personally. This, perhaps most importantly, will be a space to experientially practice rolling with resistance, together, in this community of practice.
FRAME 2: Systemic and Societal aspect
Often, when we resist what is either personal or professional, we can spiral into endless patterns of reactive behavior. If something systemic or societal is in the way, it can equally create reactive patterns with certain groups and society as a whole. Often we may e.g. think “how can we get rid of the environmental issues?”, but they exist so how do we now deal with this, how do we go through it?
On this note, we will incorporate some of the challenges we are facing in the world today (e.g. systemic racism, gender issues, climate change, war in Ukraine, pandemic trauma, etc.)
How do we move towards taking action on this collectively, rather than just ‘pushing through’ (at best) or ignoring (at worst). Let us discuss, build, and create a space where topic such as these are welcomed.
