Episode 7: Holding The Good

Welcome to My Mother's Trauma, a podcast exploring feelings about families, what to do with what's passed down to us, and how to break the cycle for more justice and liberation. I am your host, Kim Loliya. Let's take a moment to breathe.

Hi everyone, it's great to be here with you. We're gathered in this time and space to explore holding the good. And this is pretty much a constant aspiration in my life and something that I find really hard at the same time.

it's the question of whether I can really fully embody and sense the goodness in my life

This podcast is an example of that goodness, it's a real privilege to be able to share these thoughts with you and have these conversations but if I think about it in too much detail it starts to feel really overwhelming and the goodness starts to fade

or I get worried that I've missed something or perhaps that I haven't shared something the way I wanted to and that's the journey of holding the good and that's okay I'm trying to hold as much good as I can around the podcast but also in life and being okay with the imperfections as well

and I'm so grateful to everyone who's been in touch and has shared their support and enthusiasm for the podcast so thank you so much I really appreciate you also wanting to hold the good as well and doing that alongside me. A starting point for holding the good

is the understanding that it's a practice. It's like a muscle that needs exercising and in this episode we'll be exploring how to grow this muscle, how to grow this capacity and manage our trauma response around it so that we can hold even more of the good in our lives.

Last year while teaching our program on intergenerational and ancestral trauma, I was probably talking about holding the good at least once a week across the entire syllabus. It was such a recurring topic because often we come from a family context where it's really hard to hold the good.

And as we move towards doing intergenerational trauma work, ancestral trauma work.

This is a recurring theme that we often need to confront in lots of different ways.

So let's start from the beginning, what do we mean by goodness? It doesn't need to be your best day, it's not about having to win the lottery or for a big dream to suddenly come true, it can be that but it can also be really mundane, anything

that's even slightly generative, empowering, moments where you feel playful or curious, anything that can free up your imagination, all of that is good.

It could be something that reduces your stress even if it's just by 5 % or 10 % or something that brings you a tiny sense of relief or a bit of space within your thoughts.

and for some people the good might be more neutral rather than good. If you really struggle with your mental health it might be hard to imagine a really good day or even a good moment but you might have a moment that's slightly less bad or a moment that's slightly more neutral and that can be really really good.

In terms of who we hold the good with, there's this idea that we need to hold the good with someone else, that another human is necessary for this process to happen, but it's possible and even profound to enjoy the goodness within ourselves and by ourselves.

you can invite someone to join you and witness you in holding the good and depending on where their nervous system is at that could be great in amplifying the experience but it's not a prerequisite and sometimes being alone can be really sacred as well growing our capacity for goodness is

primarily an act of self-love and if someone can support us in that process that's really great but it's also about remembering that you are the main event and it's about you, your relationship with yourself and with your nervous system.

And if someone around you is in trauma or they're really agitated or stressed and you invite them to hold the good with you that could be really hard for the other person and for you. So before you include other people take a moment to check in with yourself and make sure that

it feels like it's the right thing for you and for the other person.

So on the face of it, holding the good feels like it's the easiest thing in the world, almost like it's effortless, like breathing and I guess it can be very intuitive but there's one thing that gets in the way of holding the good and that's trauma. Trauma is like a cloak that makes goodness

disappear even if it's still there we can't quite see it and it's hard to feel it as well and it's so difficult that in my practice when I point to the good people tend to be really surprised and I can tell that it's because they struggle to see the good in front of them

The good is literally invisible in that moment and that can be something that therapy can support with is the noticing, the acknowledgement and the amplification of the good.

and over time with trauma work you can get to a stage where you don't need a therapist to point out the good because that cloak of trauma starts to lift and it becomes more possible to see the good literally to see the flowers when you're in the park or notice how tasty a meal was

And the more we notice, the more becomes available to notice. And the good can become a positive reinforcement loop.

In addition to trauma it might be hard to hold the good because we just don't know how to do it. We haven't got that down as a practice because we don't have any reference points for holding the good within our family or our wider community.

We usually learn how to hold the good as babies and young children through mirroring from our primary caregivers. But if they couldn't hold the good because they were in trauma, they can't offer us a roadmap to be able to do that work.

It's also hard because in these times of capitalism and productivity culture,

In reality we don't really have a lot of time for the good. If you stop for a moment in order to feel good this fear might show up that you're letting someone down.

These fears are what keep productivity culture alive and kicking so that we all suffer.

Another aspect of culture is where we grow up.

In a UK context it feels much easier to complain than it does to honestly celebrate the good.

Complaining is a mechanism to socially bond but when you publicly talk about good things it's actually quite vulnerable. It can feel really exposing especially if you don't feel very close to the people around you.

and in other cultural and religious contexts just noticing the good can be a form of idleness if we're expected to be working to help the whole family survive but even if you manage to get past capitalism and family conditioning

Holding the good might still feel like a mountain that's so impossible to climb because of self-worth.

When we get to self-worth, we've usually descended a few layers within ourselves and we're working with deep stuff.

If we don't feel worthy of goodness we might start to self-sabotage when we try to hold the good for an extended period of time.

So if you've had a bunch of unhealthy relationships and suddenly you feel safe in a relationship that can be really terrifying even if everything is going great and you're enjoying spending time with that person.

And in a way it's easier to self-sabotage around the good because you get to return to what's familiar. So even if you've had lots of painful relationships in the past, as uncomfortable as that feels, it can also feel familiar.

Self-worth issues can be inherited from parents and caregivers but they can also be a result of how we've been parented, the experiences that we had at school or our intimate relationships.

Feeling worthy of good things isn't an instant process. It might take a bunch of different approaches, both in the body and in the mind, to start to acclimatize to goodness gradually. But if it's a practice then there's also space for trial and error.

and to move towards more and more goodness without pressure and in your natural time.

You might be thinking that you'd like to hold more goodness in your life but you're just not sure of how to do it or where to start so I thought that I would outline some steps and as you listen to them have a think about how they apply to you and whether you need to tailor any so that they can be

useful to your life and if you need to you can also share these steps with someone you trust and do this practice together. The first step is to check for readiness, ask yourself whether you're ready to do something that might feel a bit weird or a bit uncomfortable and give yourself permission to say no.

If you're not in the mood or you're feeling really stressed then trying to hold the good is probably going to add to that stress so take some time to rest and recuperate and you can return to the good whenever you're ready in the future. Once you feel ready

Begin with noticing one or two good things when they naturally arise in your life It's not about forcing things to be good as that's probably counterproductive It's simply about being open to the possibility that over the course of a day or two something that's more neutral or good could happen

and the next step if you have capacity you can acknowledge the good as it's happening in the moment you can do it later as well if that's easier but in the moment it's really where it's at in terms of being able to regulate your nervous system and even if in the moment it doesn't seem like it's a hundred percent good

you could focus on the things that seem better or encouraging and emphasize those within your mind

So once you've noticed the goodness and you've acknowledged it, next take a moment to savor the goodness as much as you can.

savouring is a very useful tool that came up in my trauma therapy training I like to think of it as a meal you can acknowledge a meal that's good with a casual thought or you could really savor a good meal and that's a more embodied experience it's multi-sensorial

You're looking at your plate, at the people around you, feeling the atmosphere, enjoying the touch of the cutlery. It doesn't need to take long, but it's a moment where you're able to fully immerse yourself in the experience.

savouring is really soothing but again you don't have to do it if you're distressed because the body might not be open to savouring so it's something that you can put into your back pocket and take it out again whenever you can so if you do decide to savour enjoy the moment

This is your moment to feel good, to hold the good and whether it's a meal or anything else to really amplify your senses.

and then when you're done you can return to life, it doesn't need to be a big practice.

you can just go back to whatever it is that you were doing and return to the good whenever you'd like to. Something to be aware of if you're holding trauma is that you might do this practice and feel overwhelmed by the good, it might feel great for a bit and then

suddenly you might notice a feeling of panic or you might shut down because you don't feel safe. So in order to hold the good as much as possible we need to break it down into smaller chunks.

In that way we're less likely to trigger that feeling of overwhelm

and this could look like only sensing the good for a few seconds and then going back to life and doing something else

I invite you to take care of yourself as much as you can and to not be afraid to break things down into smaller chunks because from a small chunk we can always build up and hold more and more good over time. Smaller chunks are also great for folks who rebound out of the good straight into difficult feelings.

and the longer you spend holding the good the more energy you'll start to accumulate for rebounding if that's what you're prone to doing this comes up a lot when I hear clients tell me that they were having the best day and they were super productive lots of good things happened but then at some point

it tipped into burnout or mood issues for some days afterwards. Rebounding is also a trauma pattern that we need to normalise and look after ourselves around.

So again small chunks are good and we can build on those gradually so there's less energy in our rebound. It might not be fully possible to avoid rebounding completely but the less energy that we have in our rebound process the more possible it becomes to land softly.

If you're thinking about holding the good with other people we have lots of examples emerging from BIPOC communities all over the world who use the good as a way of building resistance as well as enjoyment in life. It could be as simple as cooking and eating in community or as part of a group action

to be able to share space together, whether we're occupying a building or we could simply rest and sleep in the same space and that is a form of organising and resistance in another self

In many indigenous communities we would also see folks moving together, singing and dreaming and engaging in lots of sacred practices that naturally grow our capacity for the good.

And in the past we would have lived on our land and tended to our land. We would have literally held the goodness of our land.

And the equivalent in the diaspora might mean being in nature together and being deliberate about holding the good in a natural space with each other.

Whether you're in nature right now at home, at work, moving between one location and another, the good is everywhere. If you're low on spoons or struggling with your mental health, it might feel like too much effort to imagine that this is the case. But maybe

you could be open to the good finding you today because as we're looking for goodness, goodness is also looking for us

Our ancestors used to sing when they were enslaved, not just to pass on messages of resistance, but because it also felt good.

and on some level they knew that they deserved to feel good no matter what was happening around them.

I hope goodness finds you today, wherever you are in time and space and I hope you can savour exactly the right amount for you so that you can enjoy your nourishment.

Feed well, be well, rest well. And thank you so much for joining.

If you'd like to learn more about intergenerational trauma, as well as decolonial and anti-oppressive ways to heal, check out blackpsychotherapy.org. We offer classes, programs and talking therapy for individuals, couples and groups. If you'd like journal prompts, decolonial musings and special discounts,

You can sign up to our newsletter via the link in the show notes, where you can also find a link to submit a question for me to answer in a future episode. I super look forward to connecting with you again and take care.