Trauma
Working with trauma and traumatic memories
Another topic I have developed is to write about trauma and the fragmentation it generates inside us. I have published a few autoethnographies, which means, pieces that are about my own story, where I explore the intense feelings and the relational aspects of it.
It is a bit hard to talk about it, even if I have written this things in a paper format, as these memories are in a special part of my psyche. I am conscious of them, but they still remain in a place where it feels tender, and vulnerable.
Trauma affect us in many many ways. It locks our body into different tensions, and that triggers many psychosomatic reactions, that we slowly can recognize through working on it for a while. It also organizes our memory differently, highlighting negative and dangerous things over the more relaxed and pleasurable moments. It fragments our identity, as we struggle to put together the intensities that we remember. And therefore it impacts or whole way of living and experiencing every day.
And I say this as someone who works daily with his own trauma, and the trauma of others.
This first paper is about transgenerational and systemic trauma, recognizing the work and pain of my family through the Chilean dictatorship, and its effects on me as second generation:
this paper about transitionality includes many painful moments blended with theory (you can find it without paywall in my Research Gate)
and this co-authored paper about the relationship with my dad and its impacts on my identity:
Facing Father Absences and Troubling Memories of our Fathers
Aug. 5, 2024