Allowing yourself to be vulnerable!

Today we had a highly emotionally charged class about people who work in humanitarian projects, on dealing with trauma and how you can care for yourself and how you can care for others. People who have been traumatized feel isolated and feel that no one can understand what I am going through and that it is true for most people. We watched a video of journalists who were interviewed about the most traumatic incident that they had covered and how did they cope with it. It was very eye opening to see how people deal with trauma in different ways and how culture has a lot of influence on who can get post- traumatic stress syndrome (PTSS) and who cannot.

One of the classroom activity was to identify the most traumatic situation that we had gone through in our personal life and what were the coping mechanisms we used. However we had to express it in the form of a drawing and not words.  Each one of the 17 World Peace Fellows were given blank paper. I looked at my blank paper and before I could think about anything I found myself drawing with my pen. At the end of 10 minutes, I looked at the completed composition and here is what I drew: I drew a skyline of Los Angeles, showing the tallest U.S.Bank building along with several other skyscrapers. In the middle was my building Bunker Hill Towers. Around the skyline, I drew a maze of freeways, cris-crossing each other with a sea of cars. It was a night setting with a cresent moon right outside the window of my 13th floor apartment. Everything was brightly lit and glittered like millions of stars had just descended in downtown Los Angeles. I zoomed on my bedroom and drew the picture of my bed, surrounded by closets with mirrors and walls made of glass. I drew a picture of me lying sick in my bed and looking at the sky outside. I did not know why I drew that, until we were asked to get into groups and share with someone the story behind it.

I got together with Vicky (Vicky is a very intelligent, beautiful and a fantastic woman from Northern Ireland and who currently works for UNHCR and lives in Switzerland). I excused myself for a minute to get some coffee and by the time I came back to sit next to Vicky, I saw her crying. I ran outside again to get some tissues. I was holding Vicky's hand when she started telling her story (It is her personal story and so I cannot share it on my blog). However, I cried along with her while listening to her story. We both sobbed for a while and then it was my turn to tell my story. It was hard for me to put words to the picture I had drawn. I told her, that the picture I had drawn was of downtown Los Angeles where I live and it was me lying in the bed sick and in pain for 4 years. I told Vicky how I am dreading to go back there. The place where I went through one of the most traumatic event of my life. Vicky and I sobbed some more and were running out of tissues and also time. This sharing of experiences allowed me to be vulnerable and hence brought me closer to Vicky. It also gave me a perspective on how I want to see myself in future and what picture I want to draw in few months.

I started thinking about the coping mechanisms, I had used. It was praying and exercising.

The goal of the activity was to understand the importance of "Self-Care" when going through a trauma or working with people who have gone through the trauma. Sympathy is not very helpful. Feeling sorry for someone is not helpful. It is empathy that works. I want to be by your side and feel along with what you feel.

My head was hurting from all that crying and in few hours, I was supposed to do a presentation at the local rotary club in Bangkok. I was the key note speaker at the meeting where all the Thai rotary Members including the club President were going to be present. I come home after class, clean up my face, put on some lipstick and get ready to be all happy and cheerful so that I can do a good job at my presentation. Vicky offered to go along with me to my presentation. We took the sky train, arrived at the hotel, greeted everyone and I conducted my presentation. I and Vicky both slowly got into the mood of enjoying ourselves. At the end of the meeting there was a Karaoke and we both sang the song from the "Sound of Music". We both danced and laughed with everyone. I told her, how we women were capable of going through a range of emotions in just few hours. No one would have believed at that meeting that just few hours ago we were sobbing and sharing with each other, one of the most traumatic event of our lives.

I am posting a video of the song, I and Vicky sang at the rotary meeting and then sang again for our classmates. Our classmates will be seen and heard singing along with me and Vicky! Our Professor has been great and I really appreciate how she integrated music and dancing into this class along with the videos of wars, people and children experiencing trauma.
The video below was shot my Rosamaria, my sister here about whom I will write in my next blog.