About Steven Shibuya
When I was nine years old I was in a boat accident. My cousin and I went for a ride on a ski boat with my dad, my uncle, and my dog. We were flying across the lake on the boat when suddenly I was thrown to the floor. I looked up on my hands and knees, the boat was pitched hard left going full speed slamming against the waves and it was empty, everyone was gone. I saw my dog near the front and started crawling towards her. The boat hit a wave and threw me out. Tangled in the ski ropes I landed in the water. The rope went around my chest and I was dragged underwater behind it. The boat was driving in a tight circle, the rope went slack and my head popped up from the water. My cousin helped me out of the rope as the boat continued full throttle making waves in a relentless circle. My dad, my cousin and I were on the outside of the path, while my uncle was alone in the center with the boat circling him. He couldn’t swim, the waves were too strong and he drowned. A rescue boat pulled us out to safety. The next day me and my family went home and we never talked about it again.
Traumatic moments are overwhelming, they happen suddenly and unexpectedly. They don’t have to be as big as my boat accident, they can be subtle and quiet, and just as emotionally paralyzing. The event can literally stop you in your tracks and freeze you, especially when we’re children. That’s what I believe happened to me. Part of me kept going through life, but part of me stayed behind. It’s as if part of me got stuck in that moment. This is an effect of trauma, disconnecting us from ourselves and the world around us. When this separation of self happens, whenever you feel that part of you that got stuck, the same painful feelings arise, because they are still alive inside you. So we push the pain away to avoid the bad feelings and build a survival system around it. We become ashamed of that part of ourselves which creates toxic feelings of self worth. The problem is we may not even know where these feelings are coming from, or why.
These bad feelings led me to art. I could draw a picture, show it to someone, and have an emotional connection. Art was the vehicle that allowed me to express the bad feelings and get them out. However, with trauma, the bad feelings never go away. This journey through art eventually led me to screenwriting. With screenwriting I wrote the boat accident like a scene from a movie. This process allowed me to see myself as a character in a movie. It gave me distance to a traumatic event that shaped my life. I saw a nine year old child who was thrown into a situation he didn’t understand, that wasn’t his fault, and he suffered the consequences for it. This new perspective enabled me to reconnect with that child that got left behind in the water. By doing this I found forgiveness for myself and a sense of wholeness that I had lost.
This workshop will give participants the freedom to express themselves in a supportive, safe environment. Letting them write about an event like I wrote about the boat accident. This workshop can bring deep peace, and it can also stir up uncomfortable memories that have been locked away. But that’s part of the healing journey. The student knows themselves best, they will know what they are ready to write about. The most important element is that they express. Getting those disconnected feelings out of their bodies and into the light.
When Steven was nine years old he was in a boat accident. Dragged underwater by an unmanned ski boat he almost died, then he watched his uncle drown. The next day his family left the lake and never spoke about it again. From this trauma began his journey of reconnection.
Steven graduated with Honors from the prestigious Pasadena Art Center College of Design. A member of the Writer’s Guild of America, he co-wrote “SuckerPunch” (2011) for Warner Bros, a groundbreaking movie with Director, Zack Snyder.
Through screenwriting Steven found a way to heal the ongoing trauma of the boat accident and created the workshop Defining The Moment — A Self-Exploration Through Screenwriting.
He volunteered for a year teaching this workshop at CRDF, a women’s jail in Los Angeles. His personal story and workshop is published in the book “Trauma In Adult And Higher Education — Conversations and Critical Reflections”. Steven is a Certified Peer Specialist, and has taught his workshop online in partnership with Humannovations, a social enterprise dedicated to transforming mental health and suicide prevention.
Steven Shibuya Bio
