Rude Awakening: Trauma as a Portal to Authentic Presence
Ken Bradford, Ph.D. 90 minutes
This will be a contemplative inquiry-conversation considering how trauma – both extraordinary and ordinary – breaks us open to unwanted existential givens of insecurity, unpredictability, and impermanence. Broken-open, we find ourselves at a portal at which we can pause, recoil, or pass through. Daring to closely observe our own and others’ defensive reactions to trauma allows us to better bear what has seemed unbearable. This felt attention is a great power of depth psychotherapy as we know and practice it. Yet, in allowing psychological self-reckoning to deepen, trauma has the further, rude potential to attune us to a more fundamental awakeness as we come face to face with naked, unconstructed, and unconstructing presence.
