5% Similarity

During the last three years my partner Teresa Posakony has been studying the impact of trauma. So as to create trauma-informed education. Trauma-informed group process design. She tells me that for many people, following an experience of trauma, in which there is a full reaction (shock, fear, physical and emotional wound, etc.) it takes something similar to the initial trauma by only five percent to trigger a significant amount the full and initial emotion. Yikes!

Teresa further tells me that for many people, the body has a way of storing the experience. The shock. The fear. The hurt. They all become stored in one’s body and mind, and often in a way that is not visible to us. Most of us tend to want to avoid feeling those things again, so we create, quite naturally, behaviors that will prevent it. Barriers. Protectors. Limits. And sometimes unhelpful or harmful actions.

Here is a simple example that I have lived.
When I was in my young teens, I was on a trip with my mom and several of her friends, a group of about a dozen. On this trip we were all staying overnight in a hotel. I had brought with me a cribbage board so that we could play. The cribbage board was a present given to me for my Crib Boardbirthday a few months prior. On a coffee table in the middle of the room, sat my cribbage board. Along with a plate of cheese and crackers and some sliced sausage. Fun snacks that we were all enjoying. Most of our group was gathered around that table enjoying each others’ company. One of my mom’s friends, my friend too, had a knife on the table and pretended to stab my new cribbage board. I didn’t like that idea, though he was only joking. “Hey, that’s my crib board. Don’t!” I said as I impulsively reached to grab my board. Unfortunately, I reached right into the path of the knife. This friend sliced the top of my finger, nearly cutting off the tip.

Nobody meant harm. My finger was stitched and healed soon. There remains only a slight scar.

Now, however, forty years later, I remain noticeably fearful of knives. Butcher knives in particular, just like the one my mom’s friend held in that hotel room. Not debilitating. I use knives. I cook. I chop. I whittle sticks. I pare using my wonderful opposable thumb. None of that is the problem. But when I recall that experience with my cribbage board, to this day, I wince with pain and a kind of fear and avoidance. My shoulders become very tight. I can’t seem to help gritting my teeth, and turning my head away so that I might not see that memory.

Five percent similarity. Lots of trigger.

I shared this story on the weekend while working with a team of a dozen good leaders at Grinnell, Iowa’s United Church of Christ Congregational. My point of sharing the story, though I winced through the telling of it, was to point to the five percent similarity required to trigger reactions. This church’s really fantastic pastor, Cameron Barr, had just facilitated the group in creating and mapping a twenty year history of their congregation. Those twenty years included some trauma and significant difficulty including a serious accident for a pastor, needing to dismiss several previous pastors, a period of significant debt recovery, and confusingly diminished set of church programs. Cameron was pointing out that though the current circumstances resemble past circumstances they are not at all the same. Be aware of the trigger. There isn’t need to respond with the same 100% that occurred at various points in those twenty years.

Groups also have trauma. Groups also protect, naturally. Groups also trigger.

Bringing awareness to that dynamic — five percent similarity that creates a fully triggered emotional trauma — is a really helpful step of leadership.

 

 

 

On Longing

Much of my thinking lately has been about belonging as fundamental need in human beings. We need it like we need air, water, food. No doubt, there is need for differentiation also. But there remains longing for belonging. Belonging amidst differentiation is a home run.

From my files which I perused this morning, below is a piece on longing sent to me by a friend. It’s attribution is Starhawk. Though I don’t know Starhawk, I’m appreciative of these words.

We are all longing to go home to some place we have never been — a place half-remembered and half-envisioned we can only catch glimpse of form time to time. Community. Somewhere, there are people to whom we can speak with passion without having the words catch in our throats. Somewhere a circle of hands will open to receive us, eyes will light up as we enter, voices will celebrate with us whenever we come into our own power. Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.

The Noise of Numbers

In graduate school twenty-five years ago, one of my professors shared this: “If it can’t be measured it doesn’t count.” I remember as students we laughed when hearing it. A bit nervously. That professor was not a guy obsessed with measuring. He was just astute enough to name a societal pattern. At the time he was pointing to essential qualities like love and kindness, and to essential practices like collaboration and innovation.

That same professor also taught about what he called the inverse relationship between ease of measurement and meaningfulness of data. “The easier it is to measure, the less valuable is the measurement. The most valuable and meaningful something is, the harder it is to measure.”

A colleague in Amsterdam recently sent this video, “The Numbers” (5 minutes) that is a great call to change the story of measurement and numbers. It’s a call to change the course. “The market ideology isn’t a law of nature. It was created by humans. And humans can change it.”

There are several compelling questions and invitations in the video that make it a good watch. For me,

  • Are we not worth what we used to be? (challenging the absurdity of numerical rankings that are so prevalent in contemporary society)
  • A system that sees everything as money will never bring us to a humane and sustainable world.
  • Dare to Question (reminded me of a poster I saw recently at The University of Washington in Seattle, saying “Question the Answer” rather than the old school message that would have been “answer the question.”)
  • Ignite Debate (or engagement, or curiosity, or a more open encounter with one another.)

Take a peek. It’s worth it.

About Time: An Inquiry

Dave Pollard is a person I’ve met a few times over the last ten years. I’ve enjoyed it each time. Dave writes rather epic blogs under the heading “How To Save The World.” They are long, as is the one I’m referencing here on time. But they are also very thoughtful and articulate. Dave knows stuff. I love his honesty about who he is and what he sees, as is highlighted on his site:

“…chronicle of civilization’s collapse, creative works and essays on our culture. A trail of crumbs, runes and exclamations along my path in search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.”

Here’s a snippet from a recent post, About Time: An Inquiry. I love his thinking that meditation is “simply being in the presence of awareness,” which helps me empty just a bit more when my mind takes over.

“We normally consider that meditation is some kind of an activity of the mind. It’s a focusing of the mind, usually on a mantra or a flame or on the breath or just on the current situation. In other words meditation is normally conceived as an activity. What we understand here by meditation is something very different from that. Meditation is not an activity that is undertaken by a mind. Meditation here we understand as simply being in the presence of awareness…”

The full post is a good read, with a cup of tea to settle in.