Bridging trauma physiology and what I learned from Systems Thinking, I began to connect the dots in my mother’s life (from the information I could gather). I figured she’s been emotionally burdened for a long time, yet she rationalises herself out of it rather than addressing how she really feels. It’s a trained reflex by now. You could see this stored tension in her general day to day posture if you’ve done somatic work yourself. Mother would always cross her arms over her chest and hunch or sink back into her chair, or she would literally walk away when she didn’t know what to do when directly confronted with unpleasantness. Without distinctions to recognise her emotions are and what they are trying to communicate about her experiences, she is unable to realise her truth and let the tension go. What this sounds like is, “I’m not upset. My stomach/chest very pain” (in Singaporean colloquial speak). Surely it sounds like a logical conclusion, and most likely it is partial truth, just not the full picture of what is happening within.

I took a course on fundamental systems thinking earlier this year and it taught me about the Gestalt cycle of experience (Image 2). According to its theory, humans have the tendency to deflect painful experiences rather than face them and integrate them as part of our identities. Defaulting to the path of least resistance is dangerous. Each experience has its start and end, but if we have not wholly accepted something that has happened to us, in our minds, with our hearts, and by realising it as part of our identity, there would be no closure. Every day, we face new psycho-socio demands like having to deal with another setback, or facing an argument with a friend or family member. These demands add up. We need to do the work to face them. If we sweep these events under the carpet, they start to take up more space and weigh us down because live at the back of our subconscious and we know deep down that they’re still there. That is what happens within a person who does not feel present in the room, who is often "spaced out" or who simply cannot seem to focus. Their mind is preoccupied elsewhere, dealing with those ‘open units of work/jobs to be done’. Carrying psychological weight puts chronic stress on the body. Integrating experiences with the self is the antidote.

If Mother could close and let go of certain past experiences, I suspect she would be better able to dissociate her present life from the past, and set aside her protective anxieties about the future. A sign of this process could be the ability to say something like, “I feel angry because I feel that I’m short-changed. I think that I deserve a [certain standard] that was not met.*” Notice how this sounds different from the soliloquy that “there is no point being angry”. Too often, people deal with difficult situations by setting aside emotions as ‘unnecessary’ or ‘unproductive’, which is fine as a temporary bandaid, but emotions ought to be address because they provide signals and direction on what we need to process from the inside out. Otherwise, the body keeps the score.

*Notice that this step involves taking ownership of how we feel. This is doing the self-work, and it takes courage to be fully honest with oneself.