Accompanying: Healing Through Liberation Psychology

[@rabbitwho]

31:30 I read that book "Choice Theory" by what's his face, homophobic racist Reality Therapy guy, and there is nothing in the book about "you made a choice so..." but yet people who believe in Choice Theory often say that: that we get traumatized because of choices that we make, that we bring on all forms of unhappiness through choices we make, which isn't anywhere in the book! Does anyone know if that's from wider Choice Theory literature or if it's a misinterpretation of the book? It seems like he wanted to reform Reality Therapy and take the abusive aspect of it out? I asked some Choice Theory therapists and they just told me to go get a Choice Theory qualification if I was interested in it Part of trauma is losing a sense of agency, and people who keep their sense of agency seem to have far less trauma symptoms (cause or effect though? unclear). I think this attitude is that if we can make people think they had agency and caused their own suffering then they will have less suffering, but it's simplistic (maybe solipsistic? in a very literal sense, as if the whole world existed just to teach us lessons) and ignores the world we actually live in. I've heard it said so much (mostly by cishet white men, but not always) that we hurt ourselves by noticing that we have been victimized. If we can just ignore and live in hiding and avoidance then we'll be happy and calm. If we think of Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel when they were imprisoned, they didn't seem to be traumatized by it, they seemed to grow stronger and more and more stable in fact, and they knew it was a choice they were making and it was worthwhile and important, maybe the supervisor was trying to superimpose that attitude onto this victim of torture? I think some transparency and tentativeness would go a long way. I am thinking now about bereavement, we feel grief because of love, so it's a meaningful pain. The more authentic a marginalized person is the more they are victimized, so that victimization is a price they pay for authenticity. It's painful, like grief, but it comes from something important and beautiful... but that's ignoring the wider world again, the fact that others are inflicting this on you, the fact that the world is so cruel to you, that is so isolating and frustrating and constant and so different. That's the problem, the pain isn't coming from the authenticity it's coming from that wider world that is oppressive. There is no choice in that part, and that's the traumatizing part.

[@artmeditationvista1526]

Thank you very much for posting this! I'm interested in these ideas in the context of domestic poverty and violence and oppression here in the US. I don't have a background in psychology. Can you suggest some resources I can use to learn Liberation Psychology?

[@highlightmunich1960]

Very interesting and informative session.Thank you so much for uploading.#highlightmunich