Fiction Solves Our Organizing Problems: Magic Transit Always Sucks

The Question: I had to quit a lot of things I am passionate about because of secondary trauma (I’m a social worker working in juvenile detention centers… so… you can see why.) I hate it. It sucks. It feels like all I can do right now is go to work, and barely deal with how shitty I feel. I feel lucky to be able to take a step back from a lot of things that gave me energy outside of work. When is this over? When I can I get back to the things that I care about?

— Bummed Out Organizer Trauma 

Hi Boot. That sucks. I’m sorry. Do you like fantasy? (This is fake question, you told me you did on Twitter.)

I love fantasy, particularly if it’s high drama. I’m kind of high drama. So I love any fantasy television or fiction that compares nervous system activation, trauma to intense magical events. This includes: demonic possession in Jennifer’s Body, magic addiction in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the world’s shittiest time machine in the Bright Sessions.   Probably there are non-teenage girl related examples too. 

But here’s the deal: it seems that magical metaphors for trauma are sort of off-base when it comes to what actually is happening in your nervous system. Instead, a more mundane example might be a better comparison: riding a bike.**

Even better: there’s a whole world of magical transportation tropes and examples that seem to fit this metaphor

Harry Potter and his Firebolt, the Weasleys and that car, Kiki and her broomstick. No matter what fantasy fiction you think of, if there’s magic involved, especially magic related to “getting around in a functional way,” there is a single universal truth.

At some point, your magical transportation is going to malfunction horribly.

I’ve had a fixed gear bicycle for the six years I’ve lived in Chicago. I got it from nearly new bicycles, a place in Uptown that builds new bikes out of used parts — but only parts manufactured in the 80s. Apparently after 1991, they stopped making a certain type of part that can be replaced interchangeably.

Anyway, the guys who run it are great + the bikes that they sell are durable, cheap, and come with free repairs.

But here’s the thing: I never actually learned how to ride the type of bicycle that they build, one that has a very distinct method of shifting gears. So the first time, and let’s be honest, the fifth time, and… well, up until two years ago, I brought in my bike for repairs, the guy who runs the store would cringe. 

“Oh,” he’d say. “Do you ever switch gears, man? “

I didn’t know how to switch the gears on this bike, so I had never actually tried.

He was supportive but also incredulous.

He would fix the bike, switch gears, remove all of the rust from the parts that I wasn’t using, and send me on my way.

When I came back a few months later, with the same amount of rust on the same parts, and similar complaints about how hard it is to shift gears, he was relatively unsympathetic, saying only “well… did you try? “

I hadn’t.

I was so used to doing what I always did, never switching gears and never thinking about it.

And this is why I want to bring in magical transportation. Because personally, the story I just told, makes me tense up a little. JFC, H, the solution to a state of activation and paranoia is not just “try harder.”

It’s scary to ride a bike, but you know what’s even scarier? Riding some ludicrous magical piece of transportation.

One that you know is faulty, dangerous, and often breaks down while you’re in midair, without you being able to fix it.

Of course you’re not freaking shifting gears on your broken firebolt and or magic car.

You’re just trying to get through the freaking trip with as little complication as possible.

You’re focused on surviving the ride.

The nervous system in polyvagal theory, is like a bicycle, or magic transportation.

Or really, it’s how you use your bicycle, your magic car — activation patterns are probably as ubiquitous having a bicycle, but feel as unknown and dangerous as a magic car.

So — Boot.

Do you switch gears easily, frequently, adapting to the speed and resistance that you need for each stretch of the road? 

Or, are you stuck in a really high or low setting, using the same single gear, however ill suited, for hills, flat paths, gravel roads, and steep declines alike?

—

For years, even after recognizing what was going on my nervous system, I spent a lot of time asking practitioners therapists and random people I know when “I would be better”. 

There was of course, as most people know, and all of these practitioners told me, no single solution, no magical and/or demonic exorcism I could look forward to. 

It was really just: well, are you trying to shift gears?

If you have a magical bicycle, car, broomstick, shopping cart inevitably, it’s going to malfunction at some point. The question is just when and for how long. 

So when thinking about dealing with trauma, or nervous system activation, instead of thinking about it as a single transformational healing experience, one that you have to clear a lot of room in your life for forever, maybe it’s worth thinking: how can I make this more mundane?

How can I make space for dealing with this in my day to day, in my weekly and daily to do lists, rather than waiting to finally exorcise that demon once and for all?

So: good luck with your shitty magic car, Boot.

I hope that you give yourself some space to figure out how to keep it in the air.

• H

** this metaphor is from somatic experiencing practitioner Francine Kelley.