askchapo

idk if this is even remotely comparable or helpful, but back in the day I did a lot of larping and we found that many women are heavily, heavily conditioned not to throw a punch (or, in this case swing a sword) under any circumstances. Made it very hard for them to learn to fight. So a big part of onboarding women, among others, was helping them break through this cultural indoctrination that they couldn't hit people. We had hte advantage of using foam bats, and the general thing was "This thing is built so safe that you literally cannot harm me with it as long as you're hitting me in the torso and not the head. Just keep smacking me until you don't have to think about it." Like in our case we were trying to break down this idea that physical aggression was both impossible and, idk, like, a lot of women (among others) had this internalized idea that any physical aggression, sometimes any physical exertion, was "wrong", like a societal expectation that women must be passive and shit, but extremely internalized.

So a lot of it was like "look you physically can do this, and we're going to help put you in a safe, controlled environment where you can practice until it starts to feel natural."

And, honestly, a lot of people, once they started to break down and discard that conditioning, they loved it. Fun fact; Many women, once they throw off the burden of societal programming, turn out to be barely controllable berserkers who need to be politely reminded not to try to actually kill their sparring partners.

So I guess my advice would be to try to find a context that feels safer, and practice until it feels safe, until it doesn't feel like an internal contradiction with your self image. Like, idea, get a rattan stick or a shinai and practice clean, controlled strikes on a soft target like a bag or a sand bag or something. Just do it over and over again, like you're chopping wood or cleaning a rug, and focus on being mindful of the motion, on control and follow through and hte mechanics of twisting your hips and dropping your arms to put power in to the swing, be mindful of that and try to remain present and away from the past. All much easier said than done, but that's the best I've got based on my experience.

I guess another part of it was creating a positive, supporting environment where the idea that everyone could be a warrior, and that was cool and good and supported and respectable, that probably helped too. Like people were in this place where all these weirdos wearing armor or painted green or whatever were being positive and supportive, and it created this space outside society where, for once, you didn't have to do what society expected because society was out there and we were in here making our own world. Idk where to go for that kind of departure from the "real" world though. Well, actually, maybe if there's a LARP group like Amtgard or Hearthlight in your area you could look them up, see if there's anything that clicks. You're gonna find people int hat environment, people who have endured abuse, who can relate to your situation and have gone through similar things. A lot of people end up in combat larps specifically because they're trying to work out how they feel about past abusive situations. That said, if it doesn't feel right bail, there's plenty of shitheads in LARP groups and not every group is chill.