The Inescapable Attack & Surviving Empire

Living within rising fascism carries an experience of the inescapable, even when we aren’t direct targets, as we contemplate if and when we will be targeted — and how and if we can fight it.

Before I continue, a quick disclaimer: I’m not a citizen or resident of the US, so I do not believe it is my place to say what citizens and residents of the US should do in terms of taking action right now. I feel hope seeing the mobilization of community resistance, and I’ve long been inspired by civil rights leaders from the US. As someone who lives in and holds citizenship of Canada, I confess that I often feel like we’re in that slow-boiling pot up here, and every day I consider what actions I will take to stop the spread of fascism here.

Unless you hold a tremendous amount of privilege, you probably know what it’s like to live through experiences that feel inescapable.

When we feel trapped, we become highly vigilant, sometimes even consumed by rage or fear, and yet may struggle to protect ourselves or know what to do to reach safety.

We may feel opposing impulses to push back at those in power, and to survive by submitting to the will of individuals and systems that appear to have more power than we do.

We may desire to run away, and yet feel compelled to stay and fight.

We may want to get involved but not know where to start, and decide that it doesn’t really affect us directly, so we ignore it.

We may end up suppressing any urge to move or take action because no course of action feels truly safe.

In the language of Somatic Experiencing™, we explore the “inescapable attack” or inescapable threat through the context of animal attacks on humans in the wild. But there are so many other causes of the somatic sensations of feeling trapped: systemic oppression, living in a physically and/or emotionally abusive relationship, poverty, sickness and/or disability, war (including civil war), genocide, being bullied, being cancelled — the list goes on.

It’s almost irrelevant what the cause of this experience is: the sensations of it are the same. And, our nervous systems respond accordingly.

Living in compulsory, patriarchal monogamy, I felt trapped. It wasn’t just the structure and form of the relationship; it was the way my husband held me to his expectations of what being married would mean, and the discomfort he had with my creative endeavours, layered on top of my experience as an immigrant who felt reliant on him as I navigated a country and culture I was unfamiliar with (Canada) and waited for my paperwork to come through. My health suffered, my creativity went into a collapse, and I spent so many years dissociated as a means to endure the situation that I have only very foggy memories of my 20s.

When I left the marriage and entered into the freedom of exploring my queerness, my sexuality, and my polyamory in earnest, every day was filled with the ecstasy of at last, I am free to be my self!

But, even in my polyamorous journey, I ran into experiences where I felt trapped. Controlling metamours, emotionally unavailable partners I was deeply in love with, the feeling that I might have to push my needs and boundaries aside if I wanted to be included, and bullying from people who felt that the soloness in my polyamory made me a threat.

More than once, I have squashed my impulses to leave a painful situation in a relationship, hoping that the payoff of continued connection and intimacy would be worth it. The stress of these situations seemed less painful than the pain of being alone. Instead, my nervous system responded by going into collapse. In one instance, I actually physically collapsed stepping off a bus, colliding into the bus shelter as I passed out on the sidewalk. This incident became a catalyst for me, and I began seeking support to understand what exactly was happening within me that made me feel so trapped, when there wasn’t truly anyone keeping me stuck where I was.

Where I had once been frozen and unsure about how to move forward, I got support to get clear on what I needed to do, and take action to set the boundaries I needed for myself, address the stress, and focus on nurturing the relationships and friendships in my life that did not seek to control how I showed up in my life. I got external support to ‘escape’ the perceived threat, and over time, found my nervous system emerging from years of collapse and back into connection.

Navigating our way out of any perceived threat can be complex. It doesn’t matter if the source of that threat is a partner who guilt-trips us when we don’t meet their expectations, someone bullying us on the internet, or a militant force making its way through the streets. We may not know the way out or which direction to take. Even identifying the threat can be challenging, as so many forms of systemic oppression have been normalized. “Boys will be boys” is often used to excuse a man's harmful behaviour. Leftist and radical spaces can sometimes slide into policing people’s behaviour every bit as much as conservative and fascist ones do. And, some threats come on like that metaphorical slow-boiling pot that the frog doesn’t realize is killing him, till it’s too late.

For centuries, colonial, white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist/oligarchal systems have built a structure that is based on threat. It’s this structure that we refer to when we talk about Empire. If you aren’t a rich white, cis-het man (or allied to one), you are a target for being controlled, exploited, enslaved, and killed. It’s been happening for centuries, but social media makes it more visible. Every day for the past few years, we have witnessed that trans rights are under threat, that misogyny continues to affect all women, that patriarchy traps men into increasingly rigid parameters of masculinity, that hate crimes are on the rise, and that in Canada, the USA, and Europe, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and diasporic people (such as the Romani) are murdered and go missing at much higher rates than light or white-skinned people.

In my coaching work in non-monogamy, one of the primary things I explore is how to rewire the mono-normative thinking that often leads us to be controlling or self-abandoning in our non-monogamous relationships. I resonate with the saying, “silence the colonizer in your head,” and apply that to silencing the voice of the monogamy hangover that carries over when people begin exploring polyamory — and that can be very loud when there’s any kind of relationship stress.

To survive the trap of Empire, we have to silence the voice of Empire in our heads. Many of us who dream of a better world still carry with us a colonial hangover that continues to push us into being small, dissociated, disembodied, and to be led by fear. It’s a hangover that can push us to behave like colonizers ourselves, and attempt to get free by hoarding power.

I truly believe that all of us, myself included, have to take responsibility for our own personal work to overcome that internalized narrative that believes we’ll only be free of the cage when we’re the ones holding the keys to its door.

This is why I love somatics and working with my nervous system. Because when the nervous system learns to recognize that safety does not, in fact, rest in holding power over and placing others into positions of power under, everything begins to change. The ways we may have internalized colonized thinking (neurocolonization) begin to unravel, and it becomes much, much harder for the systems of power hoarding to make us feel truly trapped.

If you’ve never thought about your nervous system before, let me offer you some non-jargony ways to think about it. Your nervous system has gears that it shifts into in response to what you are doing and experiencing: connection, mobilization, shutdown, and rest. We move through these four states every day: connecting with loved ones, taking action towards our goals, disconnecting after periods of stress (think of when you’re doomscrolling at the end of the day), and resting when we sleep or meditate.

Each of these states has its purpose and reason. None of them are bad.

But, if we are always mobilized, we burn out. If we are always shut down, we disconnect from relationships. If we are always resting, we lose connection. If we are always orienting to connection, we may surrender our autonomy without realizing we’ve done so. Moving between these states, in ways that are congruent with what’s happening around us, is vital.

This ability of our nervous system to shift between states is the essence of resilience. And, resistance to the systems of harm currently inflicting terror on the world relies on our capacity for somatic resilience. To survive, and thrive beyond the crumbling of empires asks us to resolve the inner experience of fearing that inescapable threat. And that means we need to practice navigating out of the state of collapse and into positive, relationally connected mobilization.

SOMATIC ORIENTING PRACTICE

Next time you feel stuck, try this little somatic practice.

You can do this practice seated or lying down.

Put your feet somewhere comfortable. If having your feet touch the ground is more comfortable, you can sit or lie with your knees bent and your feet flat on the earth. Or if you prefer to sit cross-legged, make sure that your sit bones feel grounded and your spine can elongate with ease.

However your body is positioned, make sure this is a position where you can rest without tension.

Take a moment to breathe in without forcing your breath. As you exhale, invite the parts of you feeling tension to let go. If it’s helpful for you, try an audible sigh or hum as you exhale, to encourage more ease as you let your body drop into the caress of gravity.

Gently place a hand on your thighs or knees, and feel the weight of your hand against your legs. You exist within this body, a body that has journeyed with you through so much. Say outloud, or think about, something you are grateful to your Body for.

Now, place a hand on your heart or your belly, and gently pat or rub the area. Feel the warmth your touch brings to your torso, and notice the sensations of blood flowing through your core, as it does day in and day out. Say, or think about, something that you are grateful to your Heart for.

Keeping your eyes open or closed, cup a hand behind your neck or gently touch your face, forehead, or eyebrows. Allow this touch to be comforting, soothing, calming. Notice how your thoughts become more easeful with this touch, and say or think about something that you are grateful to your Mind for.

Let your hands rest by your side, and gently breathe in and out effortlessly, without forcing your breath. As you breathe in, invite your body to be more open, invite your spine to elongate gently, your shoulders to roll back, and your gaze to move slightly upwards. You might imagine or visualize the air that you are breathing into your lungs, the oxygen given to us by the plants, and then the air that you exhale, containing carbon that the plants will breathe. Paying attention to how you breathe can be a reminder of your connection to the ecosystem around you. You can say or think about anything in your life that you are grateful for. As you complete this practice, gently move your body.

Take your time, and look around you. Drink in your surroundings and pay attention to anything that pleases or is beautiful to you.

When you feel ready, move your body around, shake out your limbs, or dance for a few minutes, and notice if how you feel now is different from how you felt before you did this practice.

Thank you for engaging with Radical Relating. Please follow and subscribe for more on somatics, non-monogamy, and liberatory relationships.

You can also find me at radicalrelating.ca, where you can learn more about my somatic coaching and workshops for non-monogamy and relationship anarchy.

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