What is resourcing? Why is it essential?
My journey with with somatic resourcing, nervous system healing and trauma work
Trauma work basics
I first was exposed to the term and approach of “resourcing” during my grad school training for somatic psychotherapy at the California Institute of Integral Studies - the place where I started to re-member my magic and heal my chronically hyper activated autonomic nervous system (ANS) that I tend to override for what my brain deems survival reasons. Resourcing is a trauma work term especially taught in the tradition of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. In my last year of grad school was trauma class (a class we all agreed needed to be throughout all three years its so important and expansive). Our teacher and department head at the time was Theresa Silow who helped us to experientially understand through our own bodies and experiences the necessity of resourcing ourselves before going near what she called “the red."
The red is the place where the body becomes overwhelmed and flooded with traumatic memories, sensations and feelings. When the body becomes overwhelmed - unable to essentially process or handle the toxic stress being pumped through our veins, it becomes “traumatic.” This is honestly what I love most about trauma (yes, I really wrote that). The reality that what is “traumatic” is completely subjective to the human experiencing it. That’s why trauma comparing is so so not the thing, and dismissing, minimizing or judging someone else’s is way way not cool.
The other thing that happens in the red zone is all that toxic stress that can’t be processed and/or discharged in the moment gets quite literally stuck or imprinted in the body and brain. This is what The Body Keeps the Score teaches us, -a somatic classic that also deserves some healthy critique and reflection with the allegations of workplace abuse by its author Bessel Van Der Kolk. His work is all about how these stuck energies and lost memories may be recovered and reintegrated back to create a felt sense of wholeness and physiological ANS regulation. This is where the power of somatic modalities lies.
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The blue zone is where we want to be. It’s where the experiences we are having are tolerable to our whole self (body, mind, spirit). When we are existing in what’s called our Window of Tolerance, our pre-frontal cortex is online and able to help us think things through, be self reflective and make conscious choices for our highest and best. When our ANS is overwhelmed with toxic stress, that part of our brain shuts off and we go into survival mode where our fight, flight, freeze, submit and attach parts push our authentic self out of the drivers seat. When this happens over and over and over again our bodies adapt to the hostile conditions and just stay activated all. the time. (cough cough systemic oppression has serious effects). This is what the ACES study demonstrates - that chronic toxic stress is what makes us sick. This is why I personally focus on therapeutic modalities and dealing with my personal shit, rather than pursuing “health” in the way the medical industrial complex scares us into.
Somatic Resourcing
The blue, red and purple zones
That blue zone we’ve been talking about is where the bulk of trauma, or healing work is. It is quite literally unethical to bring people into the shadows without any kind of resources or too quickly. Like ancestral healing work, somatic trauma healing is slow slow work. AND so rich. The majority of trauma class was us slowly over time in dyads guiding each other through simple interventions that help build up someones internal resources (more on the kinds of resources - like internal vs. external soon). Orienting was another big first step in resourcing.
For example, we would gently invite our partner to slowly gaze around the room and just really take it in. Then we would ask, “as you look around, let your eyes land on an object that you really like.” So cute and simple! I love finding things I like (says my lively inner child). Once the object is found, I would ask the person to share what it is they like, what they like about, and how it makes them feel, all while reflecting back their answers to them to ensure I’m receiving their experience accurately. The sort “twist” of the exercise is to then ask, “can you feel into the part of you that is also [insert characteristic that this person identified in the object, like beautiful]?”
This is where the key information then comes - do they stay in the blue or do they move into the purple (still tolerance but uncomfortable - the place of change), or move in the red (overwhelmed). For example, if someone has a lot of painful beliefs and experience around their body, beauty and “attractiveness” their survival parts might feel scared/challenged/activated and take the person into the purple or red zones. If this happens, its time to go even slower and go back to orienting to neutral to positive objects. Over time, the work is to help clients discover and remember internal resources (vs. a beautiful picture on the wall - external resource) that provide them safety, security, joy and ease in their body. Resources they can then access whenever they need them without any other tools beyond the body they exist in.
Resourcing, Coping Skills and Selfcare
The difference between the three and why I prefer resourcing
Coping Skills Shmoping Skills - a taught submit response to capitalism
I first learned about coping skills when I went through treatment for an eating disorder that had taken over my life by my early twenties. It was such an empowering concept for me at the time because it gave me a variety of options to use instead of the “behavior” (or survival impulse and resource). This was massively life-changing as it provided me an embodied experience of choice - agency - power, which is everything. However, what it also did, was further entrench my “do-er” tendencies. The survival parts in me that
Still don’t reeallllly want to feel the uncomfortable overwhelming emotions
Want me to just keep going and going and going - what Janina Fisher calls the “going on with normal life part.” This part might also be called the caretaker, the hardworker or the social butterfly extrovert.
I was all of these and coping skills helped me move beyond an intense degree of self-destruction to a more manageable but still slow death by toxic stress - namely workaholism. This is not a coincidence as coping skills are a behavioral health approach and behavior health’s goal is to make us functioning citizens in the cogs of white supremacist capitalism sooo does it really have our full-bodied healing in mind?
3. It did not teach me at all about the healing magic of my body and the wisdom that lay inside of it for me to use when I get overwhelmed or scared.
4. It’s rooted in pathologizing people - meaning making them and their desires, emotions, actions out to be “bad”, “broken”, “wrong” or “outside the norm.” [spoiler alert: there’s nothing wrong with “emotional eating”]
Selfcare - a tool for empowerment or gaslighting
I gotta be real with it. I am very over the term and approach of selfcare. Again, it was something I believed in for awhile and felt as though was helping me stay resourced. However, it also:
Further entrenched the survival part of me that believes they need to do it all on their own
Kicked up perfectionism and overachiever (again, the “do-er”) parts of me wanting to show myself and the world that I have everything under control, am so awesome and definitely don’t need any kind of psychiatric medication to make my life easier. That’s what the yoga, meditation, and crystals were for (right? …shakes head no).
Has been used by a variety of professors, supervisors, and bosses to gaslight me and my peers whenever we would provide feedback of class/working conditions and the intense realities of our burnout. We were made to feel we just weren’t “doing enough” selfcare. Friends, this. is. bullshit. Institutions are meant to take care of the people, not shame people into working even harder to feel better and on their own.
Doesn’t center (or really even acknowledge) community care. The way our ancestors took care of each other. The reality that many people don’t even have the motivation or belief (due to chronic persistent trauma) that they deserve to take care of themselves. But they might be more able to take in the care or at least show up for care if it’s for/by other people (hellooo caretakers). Even more so, community care is how marginalized communities have survived and yes thrived too, so why is it not celebrated or preached like selfcare? (#itsnotasprofitable)
Pre-pandemic I was very able to self care and really do it “on my own”. Post-pandemic (though of course its ongoing) this is not the case and is not something I need to be ashamed of or worried about. It’s called interdependence and authentic vulnerable relationships where our scary emotions and child-like episodes can be seen, held and loved by community. As my neurodivergence and it’s co-occurring challenges, like ARFID, have presented themselves so much more during pandemic, I have had to accept my limitations, build reciprocal relational webs and reaaallly practice resourcing in its fullest and widest expressions in order to thrive through survival.
The felt experience of resourcing vs. selfcare or coping skills
Coping Skills
When I close my eyes and imagine myself using coping skills I feel a half-heartedness that doesn’t feel abundant. I see an image of myself doing things pulled randomly out of a box with the desperate hope of feeling better. I notice compassion for my past selves doing the best they could and pride in their fervor for change and growth. When I hear the phrase coping skills my shoulders immediately crunch up towards my ears and I hear the voices of so many clients of mine sharing their own frustrations about coping skills and it feeling like a band aid that just won’t stay on and doesn’t feel cute.
Self Care
When I close my eyes and imagine myself doing self care I feel a calmness that also feels more like numbness, though not in full. I see an image of me making to do lists and journaling about the routine I want to implement that maybe lasts a few days at best during pandemic. I see myself taking a luxurious bath and then feeling guilty for enjoying something many of my colleagues have used as an example of what selfcare isn’t or to build rapport with clients who have an aversion to femme venus empress indulgent pleasure things. When I hear the phrase self care, I feel slightly angry and resentful. That I know how to selfcare, but it’s not helping. That I need more community that directly takes care of one another and trades our gifts to benefit the whole.
Resourcing
When I close my eyes and imagine myself resourcing I feel a sacredness come over my body that feels abundant. It feels as though I am drawing in, calling in, pulling in something essential. I feel an embodied refilling - as though literally AM the cup in the Ace card with the water flowing out with plenty for others to take back in for themselves. When I hear the word resourcing I feel expansive - as broad as the ocean and as rooted and interconnected as a Redwood. I can quite literally feel the internal resources (the water, the drawing in, the cup, the ocean, the Redwood) that my colonizer mind wants me to believe exist outside of me - separate from my own divine infinite magic. Resourcing feels earthy with an infinite spectrum of options for me to choose from without shame, guilt or labels. It feels as though I am bathing my mind, body and spirit in the love of my ancestors, for they absolutely cherish when I allow myself this space. It heals us all.
The different kinds of resourcing
According to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy created by Pat Ogden, there are many kinds of resources:
Survival resources (the ones that help us in the moment, but keep us in old self destruction patterning or over-time lead to increased distress and pain, such as disordered eating and self harm)
Somatic resources (the ones that reside within the body such as physical functions, actions and capacities that provide a sense of well-being and competency on an embodied, physically felt level, which in turn positively impact how we feel, such as placing a hand on your heart or massaging your body)
Creative resources (the ones you developed strengths and competencies around that help you learn ne things, develop talents, integrate your experiences and grow from them, that in turn nurture your holistic development, such as knitting, writing, research or games)
Internal and external resources that span categories of relational, emotional, intellectual, artistic, material, psychological, spiritual and ecological
Why resourcing is essential
It helps us make deposits in our proverbial Wellness Bank - the account we are constantly taking withdrawal from that deeply impacts our ability to be present and in our authentic magic the lower the balance goes. By taking time - even just 1 minute! to resource ourselves, especially somatically, to calm down or reenergize, we are more supported in our day to day functioning and overall well-being
If we want to break intergenerational cycles like us Radical Witches do, we have to be resourced for that big big work. Adrienne Marie Brown’s book, Pleasure Activism exemplifies this wisdom by reminding us that when we take time for enjoyment, we are still doing movement work. Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde underscores the same call to play.
If we are wanting to re-wire our traumatized brains and bodies, we have to have enough deposits in our bank so we don’t drop below the minimum balance required before we step into the therapy room or a ceremonial space. If we go negative balance, we’ll just re-traumatize ourselves or the folks we’re holding therapeutic space for.
If we want to do allll the things and are super passionate about our work in the world (heck yes!) we HAVE to resource ourselves and embody the 9 of Wands. Lindsay Mack teaches this card as the “labor and rest, labor and rest,” card. Being in tune with your needs throughout the day and not overriding your body and brain to bust through more work, is how we practice resourcing ourselves on a consistent basis. Helloooo wellness bank account abundance!
If we’re overwhelmed or dis-embodied in some way, our prefrontal cortex isn’t going to be much use to us. We can’t be in our authentic magic if we’re not even in our bodies (spoiler alert: your body is magic!)
When we regularly and consistently resource ourselves we build trust with our body, and thus with our Self. Just like how caregivers are meant to show up consistently and in attuned ways, resourcing helps us to learn this for ourselves at whatever life stage we’re in. This actually helps us deepen more into our spiritual, creative, and embodiment practices, and thus live a more holistic present life amongst societal conditions that want us in a submit response.
If we’re resourced, that overflow can genuinely and powerfully pour back into our communities like the Ace of Cups illustrates for us. This is how we embody Full and Plenty Joy, the both/and, of thriving through surviving.
Note: Resourcing is especially essential for…
Chronically activated nervous systems
Hardworkers
Perfectionists
Overachievers
Workaholics
Caretakers
Over thinkers
Performers
Activists
Folks on the spectrum
Folks with marginalized identities especially Black and Indigenous folks
Folks of Germanic - Anglo Saxon descent
Descendants of immigrants
Parents
Small business owners
Service industry workers
Students
The nuanced take-away
Remember, the basics of resourcing are do follow what feels good, rather than trying to BE good. The way I resource myself is always shifting and there are ones that are always consistent. Right now bunny cuddles, lots of Netflix watching, working outside, baths, and working in the garden feel really resourcing. 6 months ago it was dancing a lot outside, allowing in crushes, and going down ancestral research rabbit holes. 2 years ago it was being in a choir, processing with my partner and getting new glasses for driving. It’s always changing, which can be annoying but is IMO more sustainable.
Most people want to be told a list of what to do in order to be "healthy" or "happy" or "successful" but really that journey is only experienced through the body and its unique journey of experimentation, play and reflection. The hardest part is when our survival parts who hold conditioned beliefs and activate difficult emotions inside of us block our access to resourcing. But more on this in my next post.
