(deutschsprachige Version: https://www.planlos-leipzig.org/events/die-kapitalistisch_patriarchalen-vereinnahmungen-ueberwinden/)

Info evening of the APESD collective on planned self-organized therapy “MAST”, skillshares and shared knowledge acquisition

Monday November 13th, 18-20h // Leipzig – W1. Exact location upon request // afterwards possibility for exchange & drinks at the bar

Our anarcha_queer collective has been dealing with the effects of systems of domination (patriarchy_capitalism) on our bodies and psyche for some time. The necessity of an in-depth examination and a search for a way to deal with our wounds comes from lived experiences, our relationships with people close to us, with ourselves, our struggling with and in the society we live in and our desire for extensive resistance against systems of domination that take over our lives, our relationships, our feelings and actions.

What we plan to do: From January 2024 on we would like to start with three regular groups in Leipzig and we want to talk about their content in this info evening. 

1) We want to form a collective weekly reading circle on the topic of trauma. We want to look at what violence, shock and repression does to our bodies and see how we can avoid persistent traces of such overwhelm in our nervous systems as well as find ways of dealing with these traces in case they already exist. We want to come to understand how our current attachments to ourselves and others are influenced by early relational experiences (both positive and negative). We want to understand neurobiologically what structural violence and complex trauma/wounds, such as those of being gendered, do to us. We want to see what awareness and informedness can already open up here in terms of new possibilities for action, and acquire coping skills so that we feel more empowered in the face of helplessness, powerlessness, depression and aggression.     We will read excerpts from the book „Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors“ (Janina Fisher) and „The Body keeps the Score“ (Bessel v.d. Kolk) and research other texts. As part of this we will look more closely at the ‚Internal Family Systems‘ (IFS) method as a resource. In these weekly meetings throughout the year we also want to look at accountability and trauma-informed dealing with conflict, possibly including experiences with Transformative Justice approaches. So it will be quite a hands-on reading circle in a way, in the sense of providing space to engage with our own patterns.

2) In our research we came across the anarchist „Jane Addams Collective“ from NYC, which with the ‚MAST (Mutual Aid / Social Therapy) Program‚ developed a very compact group therapy proposal, which is primarily about making our feelings and actions conscious of unconscious underlying beliefs, so that the latter no longer (or less) negatively affect our feelings and actions.  We would like to discuss this program together on the basis of a zine in which it is described and then, mainly, try it out in practice. We would like to work together on a weekly basis, alternating between the whole group and triads (groups of three).

3) Since neurobiologically informed approaches to dealing with accumulated emotions and trauma point to the importance of conscious mindful sensing in the body, we want to explore practices and techniques every two weeks that can offer us more agency on a somatic level. In these regular meetings we want to „remodel“ existing techniques according to our anti-authoritarian and power-critical claims, so that they can help us in the expansion of our agencies. Preliminary criteria for this skillshare are that the techniques we bring along

• are not esoteric-guru-authoritarian and cannot lead to toxic dependencies, but have anti-authoritarian potential
• can be learned without lengthy, expensive training, – a collective skillshare is possible
• there is already experience from trusted people that these techniques work and/or can be learned

One person from our group has prepared a skillshare to power-critically try out practices from so-called ‚Body-Mind Centering‘ and ‚Authentic Movement‘ together and to make them applicable to concrete situations and challenges. This prepared skillshare will alternate with an open session (both will thus take place monthly), in which all participants can share skills and techniques they find helpful for sustaining or building resistance and aliveness. We want to resist the toxic appropriation of our feelings and sensations and look together at how we can and want to practice this. People from our group bring to these open sessions experiences with the ‚Grinberg‘ method, meditation mindfulness practice, ‚Focusing‘, as well as some experiential stuff that can’t be subsumed under a specific name ;). We want to learn from each other, explore with each other and whatever has to do with freeing our feeling and sensing from patriarchal_capitalist appropriation is welcome to be shared.

If you want to know more about our plans, have ideas, want to get involved, participate, have critical concerns, etc., feel free to come by or write us: apesd@riseup.net (pgp key on request)!  We will also try to prepare suggestions for more concrete days of the week, times and places for the regular events until the meeting. In the beginning we will decide together wether to speak english or german and organize whisper translation.

For further reading: – Text: „Why we think that psychoemotional self- and community defense is necessary“ to be found at: https://apesd.blackblogs.org/ – The Jane Addams Collective: Mutual Aid, Trauma, and Resiliency – The Jane Addams Collective: Mutual Aid Self/Social Therapy both to be found at: https://theanarchistlibrary.org

How we want to treat each other: We desire mindful, caring interactions that allow us to take good care of our own boundaries as well as the boundaries of others. It is important to us that we offer criticism benevolently, with the orientation of supporting each other in our processes of liberation. We also want to try to support each other as much as possible in the acquisition of knowledge and to be considerate of different needs.        

In our togetherness an anti-patriarchal_anti-capitalist attitude is important to us. By this we also mean that we do not consume each other or „check each other out“ based on superficial criteria, that „flirting“ only happens under common consensus and that we want to counteract a culture of interchangeability and randomness. We don’t want any coolness or scene codes that have an exclusionary effect on others.        

We are three white socialized people and, not only based on this experience, we are biased. It is important to us to actively deal with creating a space that is as free of discrimination as possible. We want to meet as equals, aware that we can all learn from each other. We want to weave utopias with all those who share our values, and for this we think it needs a lot of awareness work and above all listening to each other – getting to know each other.        

On this path (with all its contradictions) we want to be mindful of each other, take care of each other, reflect on ableisms and get racism on the screen so that people affected by racism do not feel othered or otherwise marginalized in the group. We understand these endeavours as a process.