Some insights on individual and collective trauma from the Collective Trauma Summit-2019

One of the first things I had written to post on this site when I was putting it together was about how individual innate trauma responses like denial and dissociation, projection and transmission, and so on, also operate at a cultural and collective level, and that all our experience is embedded in bigger contexts, all the way up to the cosmos.  Our individual and inter- generational traumas are embedded in and informed by larger cultural and collective traumas. We are all situated in social containers where collective traumas dynamics are being played out constantly and which inform our circumstances and thinking. Thomas Hubl talks about a collective trauma web we are all entangled in. We cannot escape this because there is probably no place or country on this planet where, across generations, there has not been massive scale trauma experiences like wars, famine, dire poverty, dislocation and exile, occupation of territories and genocide, dictatorships, oppression and marginalisation of groups, slavery, racism and sexism, to mention but a few. If we add natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis and the massive environmental destruction and climate trauma we humans have been inflicting upon Mother Earth, which is now an ongoing, accelerated experience, then it is easy to understand how trauma is relevant to all of us.

Some valuable insights I gleaned from the talks of this summit from diverse fields are:

Lack of resolution of trauma and loss emerges in children and others, even with the best of intentions. When leaders of countries carry unresolved traumas the consequences can be dire and can create massive suffering and wounding on communities and the planet

Trauma separates and separation in itself causes trauma and disempowerment

Trauma fragments, disconnects, disembodies, creates absence and blindness on the nature of reality

Trauma is an assault on integration, wholeness and presence, which is what health and resilience are made of

We have become blind and often desensitized to trauma because it is ubiquitous and because there is barrier of ignorance we need to break through

Trauma does not dissipate on its own. It is cumulative and is passed on until it is acknowledged, discussed, embraced and resolved

Trauma impacts the development of brain areas and affects epigenetic regulators, which may result in the transmission of trauma responses and behaviours for many generations to come, according to research on mice and observations and qualitative research in holocaust survivor families, and other communities with cultural and collective trauma

Unresolved trauma depletes our physiology and impacts our capacity for secure attachment

Another hallmark of trauma is lack of self-acceptance and self-compassion

Trauma teaches children to shut down their body and it stifles their growth and potential

Trauma narrows our consciousness and has a disembodying effect. Maybe that is why we are so disembodied from nature and blind to the fact that we are part of a living organism. We are not mechanical objects or creatures separate and independent from nature and each other

The importance of somatic approaches, movement, contemplation and mindful stillness to return to embodiment and presence

Trauma tears down our spiritual world, which starts to come alive once we start healing and tapping into a more expansive sense of Self

More in the next post…….