We need to sleep to grow, and in this country we don't get much sleep. Can women who gather to protest violence and are subjected to violence grow, revive and flourish? Part of me says that in this barren country, most of us are withering away before we can even crack our seeds. A part of me also pins hope on the social reflexes that can sprout from our resistance, rejection, and rising voices.
Everything that becomes popular becomes empty in this era. I guess this is the way to cope with adult life, which is getting harder day by day; identifying with objects, patterns, clichés. When a concept is emptied of its essence and shaken by everyone, it is carried more easily. People feel more equipped and stronger as they carry empty concepts with them. One of these diluted and weakened psychological concepts is "spiritual flexibility" or, in its original name, "resilience". This concept comes from natural sciences, especially physics, and refers to the ability of matter to return to its original state without being deformed in the face of a force or effect. For humans, we can define psychological flexibility as being able to return to one's former self after negative and traumatic experiences. At this point, there is a definitional problem for us psychologists. Because, while the concept of trauma used in daily language can even be used for a broken nail or shoe heel, we understand life events that are much more challenging and shocking than trauma. Technically speaking, trauma is life events that threaten mental or physical integrity and have serious consequences. In this sense, it is not a standard divorce event, but a divorce that carries economic, social and physical costs has the characteristics of trauma.
Despite this definitional framework, I do not find it strange that people call the unpleasant life events they experience trauma. Because if a person says, "It was a trauma for me that my thesis was not accepted," there really is a threat he perceives there: Anxiety about the future. Likewise, isn't there a threat to a person whose nail is broken while going to a job interview? Yes, there is: the broken defense of someone who has built himself with the expectation of perfection. In short, I care when people point out their trauma, no matter what it is.
Spiritual flexibility is not a very new concept, it has been around for a quarter of a century at most. min in the psychology literature. The subject of trauma has always interested me, and when I had just graduated from undergraduate psychology, I participated in a study group called "Post-Traumatic Growth" at a psychology congress. In this study, clinician Richard Tedeschi explained that people are not only negatively affected by trauma and develop mental and medical disorders, on the contrary, some people who have gone through traumatic life events mature spiritually and gain a different perspective on life. In the following years, while I was attending my master's program at Boğaziçi University, I conducted a study with the victims of the HSBC bank and synagogue attacks in 2003. Indeed, rather than cursing the terrible terrorist attacks they experienced, some people said that they had experienced positive changes in their perspectives on life, people and death. Of course, this study is not statistically significant, but there are findings in the literature showing that this may be possible. The following question immediately comes to mind: After the dozens of man-made attacks, bombings and violent events we have experienced in the last 15 years, have we "grown up?" I'm not so sure because we need to sleep to grow and we don't get much sleep in this country. Can women who gather to protest violence and are subjected to violence grow, revive and flourish? Part of me says that in this barren country, most of us are withering away before we can even crack our seeds. Part of me also pins hope on the social reflexes that can sprout from our resistances, rejections, and rising voices. Are we prohibited from "spiritual flexibility" and hope because we are a society of trauma?
Of course, our individual stories are read and ended in these barren lands. We are going through this life with our very difficult, burning and shocking stories. In this country, being a child, being a Kurd, being LGBTI, being a woman, being an Alevi is as difficult as being many other things. Is it possible to reach middle age without getting injured? We can see how even those who live and are kept alive in the bowl are affected by this poisonous climate. The number of people who have not been subjected to harassment, violence, economic crisis or neglect at least at some point in their lives is so small. At this point, the logic is as if you fell into water and you will get wet. Once in this life Once you are born, you will be bruised. If your father does not beat your mother, the neighbor uncle will harass you, if you do not suffer from poverty, you will be defrauded by those you call your friend, if your voice does not rise in your peaceful home, you will be subjected to mobbing at work. So this life will definitely break you, bruise you and sometimes make you crack. But what's important is the aftermath! Spiritual flexibility does not mean preserving one's personal integrity without compromising; is to take brokenness as the essence of life. Look, I'm broken here and there, but it means I can continue on my way with the strength I get from the other side, without putting too much pressure on it. In an Arabesque style, it means falling down and rising again. In fact, how difficult it is to stand on your feet while your fractures ache finely. But if you do it once, you can always do it, like a foal that comes out hot from its mother's chest. I'm not sure if standing is survival, but you have to live and see. There are people whose life stories are like a monument of resistance. Your ears are buzzing while listening to their experiences, but when you look at their faces, you find all the signs of "flexibility, ability to change and transform". They are the ones who hold on, the ones who resist and the winners. If possible, listen to such stories when you feel good, and refer to the autobiographies of those resistance heroes when you can stand up. Because people inevitably compare themselves with the heroes of these extraordinary resistance stories. Unfortunately, most of the time, because the Germans are defeated, they also feel defeated. However, everyone has their own unique ways to cope with this life, to stretch, to resist, to get over it and move on. Everyone covers their wounds with their own ointment. The most important difference that separates those who hold on from those who cannot, as Freud pointed out, is the ability to love and work. Here, just as love is not only love as we understand it, work is not only work as we understand it. The essence of dealing with trauma is to feel whole and hold on. In societies like ours, there is a slippery slope that is so intrusive that you cannot fully feel it. Only the person who can see himself and his environment from the outside, stretch and then hold on to life by fixing it again is the one who resists and wins.
In summary, what we call spiritual flexibility is actually "living". It is already impossible to live without yawning. At this point, the old version of the definition of spiritual flexibility I don't agree with the emphasis on returning to what. The person who experienced the trauma can never be the same person. As Heraclitus said, you cannot step into the same river twice, you become a new person. When you look at his face, an unnoticeable line has been added or a strand of white hair on his head. The pain that keeps you awake until the morning does not give a person the chance to stay the same. It's a good thing he doesn't. Otherwise, we would not be able to shake, stretch and engage in the cultural and physical movements of life... If pain were experienced like the increase of a part after repairing a broken machine, if we always had a small, loaded story left in our pocket....
Read: 0
