UPDATES & NEWS

By: Beth Cole and Kashi Barbara Carasso MPH, MScPharm

Beth Cole, co-host, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, former USAID, USIP, and veteran conflict and disaster response professional with co-host, Kashi Barbara Carasso @kashicarasso, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and public health specialist (MPH, MScPharm)

Why would dozens and dozens of former USAID personnel and associated implementers affected by the illegal dismantling of USAID gather for six months this year to learn and share? 

I’ll offer three reasons. We named what happened to us as real trauma.  We learned how this trauma shows up in our nervous system. , And perhaps most importantly, we practiced how to keep our nervous systems regulated in the face of continuing trauma impacting our community.

OneAID teamed up with the Somatic Experiencing® Humanitarian Response Committee to offer six webinars between May and October to anyone whose professional career was disrupted.  

After two months of discovery with a hundred or more colleagues, we found that profound numbness (what we call freeze and shutdown) was affecting a large number. Anger (the fight response) was holding people in a stuck pattern. And shame, grief and loss were lying underneath. For many, there was an inability to feel any joy from anything. 

We peeled back the onion and looked at the layers undergirding the physiology of our response to this ongoing trauma. 

We were joined by some of the top faculty from Somatic Experiencing® International. Including Larry Iannotti whose work with HIV victims beginning decades ago helped us understand how shame, grief, and loss are interconnected feelings that bind trauma to us; often preventing regulation of our nervous system. Including Glyndie Nickerson whose work with disaster victims and ex-political prisoners brought expertise on anger to our “room” and how anger can be a necessary self protective response to our environment. And why anger is really from thwarted mobilization. Because we couldn’t stop what was happening to us and the people we helped all over the globe. 

In an emotional final session, two somatic therapists from Somatic Experiencing-Ukraine who are living through the brutal war of aggression by Russia came to help us understand how to find joy during crisis and the empowerment that authentic joy fuels. Inna Khartova and Tetiana Donstova illuminated this path like few others can. We learned that intentionally focusing on an internal sense of “aliveness” and joy connects us to the empowerment we need to survive.  

This work was an important beginning for many who joined us. We intend to conduct a deeper survey of our participants to combine with the survey data we have collected throughout the series. We know from a snap poll that many want us to continue offering something. Our team of volunteer Somatic Experiencing Practitioners (SEPs™) will work with OneAID to determine next steps. In the meantime, the SEPs have offered to continue to provide personal support sessions for anyone who attended the webinars at a reduced rate. To learn more or be connected with a provider, email SEHumanitarian@gmail.com.   

This entire project was a volunteer effort. From the graphic designer who created the invitation, to the OneAID team promoting and helping to host the sessions, to our SEP facilitators leading and holding space for this special community and the guest speakers who shared their expertise. We are deeply grateful to all the participants who came and shared deeply painful feelings in the most courageous manner.  

Because we know that healing happens in community!

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