SCICCHITANO

The responses of traumatized children are often misinterpreted. (...) Because new situations are inherently stressful, and because youth who have been through trauma often come from homes in which chaos and unpredictability appear "normal" to them, they may respond with fear to what is actually a calm and safe situation. Attempting to take control of what they believe is the inevitable return of chaos, they appear to "provoke" it in order to make things feel more comfortable and predictable. (...) Like everyone else, they feel more comfortable with what is "familiar." As one family therapist famously put it, we tend to prefer the "certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty."

It occurs to me now that this was the real joy of dancing: to enter a world unlike the one you find yourself burdened with, and move your body toward nothing but a prayer that time might slow down.