Communities Torn Apart and Attempting to Mend: Understanding and Processing Collective Trauma
We have spoken here before about how trauma effects the individual. What we haven’t spoken about is what happens when trauma effects an entire community.
This is collective trauma.
Collective trauma can be caused by war, natural disasters, mass shootings, genocides, pandemics, and more. It is an event that wounds not only you but your family, your friends, your neighbors, and even the community officials elected or hired to serve and provide for all of you.
The added difficulty of collective trauma is that your extended support system also needs support. How do you nurture others when you have temporarily lost the capacity to nurture yourself? The results of collective trauma can last generations.
What is Trauma, Again?
Trauma is an emotional response to an intense event that either causes harm or threatens to cause harm. It is often a result of an overwhelming amount of stress that outstrips one’s ability to process and cope with the emotions involved with that traumatic experience. Trauma can happen without PTSD ever developing.
How Do I Know if I Have Been Traumatized?
Please see the link at the start of this post for warning signs of PTSD in adults. Partners in Healing, a project aimed at bringing therapy into schools, also has a list of possible warning signs of trauma for various age groups with a focus on children.
What is Collective Trauma, Specifically?
Kaiser Permanente defines collective trauma as “a shared emotional reaction to a terrible event. People often feel powerless as a result of these experiences.” They also add that with a country the size of the US it is unusual for the entire county to experience trauma at the same time, and yet we have had several such events in the past two years including the Covid-19 pandemic, rising costs of living with stagnant wages, and a sharp increase in mass shootings in 2022.
What are the Long-Term Effects of Collective Trauma?
Intergenerational Trauma
Individual and collective trauma can be felt through generations. When your ancestors, whether recent or distant, experienced a trauma and were not able to (or did not have the opportunity to) fully process and heal from that trauma the possibility of inheriting that trauma occurs. We can see this in intergenerational parenting styles, abuse or substance abuse.
When the trauma and/or its effects are passed down from one generation to the next this is called intergenerational trauma. Intergenerational trauma can be devasting because it very often affects a person who has no direct knowledge of the source. Some large-scale historical examples include the:
Holocaust,
Great Depression,
9/11.
We humans are stronger in groups and communities and have an amazing ability to recover from collective trauma; however, sometimes the trauma is too massive or too long-term and the community’s ability to heal is overwhelmed, such as the on-going trauma of unarmed black Americans killed by police. When this happens the impact of the trauma, the aftershocks so to speak, can be felt for generations. This can happen in various ways including:
Parenting styles that were altered by the adults struggling to process and/or compensate for harm
Lasting economic impacts of the trauma
Psychological Distress
Many times, those that experience a community-impacting traumatic event show signs of PTSD. This also includes a decrease in their well-bring, feeling unsafe, and high levels of stress. This can continue for years after an event if left untreated. Frequently, these survivors report permanent changes in their behavior such as avoiding certain places or being on high alert in specific contexts.
Xenophobia
The fear that results from these community-wide events can leave us feeling unsafe around people outside of our immediate group or community. This is especially true for systemic inequities such as police brutality, gender and sexuality-based violence, religious violence, and all manner of other hate crimes.
As a result, survivors may come to fear any person/group they associate with the traumatic event such as the violence and abuse targeted at Asian-Americans during the Covid-19 pandemic or Muslim and Middle Eastern-Americans after 9/11.
Existential Crisis
It is not always easy to make sense of bad things or know how to move on. This can trigger an existential crisis. These feelings can uproot an entire community and leave everyone feeling untethered, doubting their believes, and unsure about their place in the world or even the meaning of their own lives.
How Can a Community Collectively Heal Trauma?
Research points to some specific actions that communities can take to heal together.
One of the most important appears to be meaning making. In the case of collective trauma this is creating a positive shared meaning around the event, as odd as it sounds to create something “positive” out of a tragedy.
Thankfully, communities seem to know how to do this. This can be seen in spontaneous memorials that include flowers, pictures, messages, or organized ceremonies including vigils and prayer circles or other spiritual activities to honor those lost.
Community talking sessions and volunteer healers including mental health and animal-assisted therapy arise. Communities can also establish programs to help others who have experienced similar things.
When people go through these types of experiences, they need to come together to acknowledge what happened and to talk about their emotions.
How Can I Heal?
Healing from any kind of trauma is not easy. In the case of collective trauma here are our recommendations for supporting and healing yourself:
Limit was you see in news/social media (really, stop doomscrolling)
Find solidarity within your community – solidarity promotes healing
Find a trauma-informed therapist
Raise your awareness of how you feel
Take care of your body
Nurture your resilience
Other Resources
Collective trauma is a devasting and complex condition. To fully cover it is well beyond the scope of our little blog here. So please use this list of resources if you would like to learn more collective trauma:
How Collective Trauma Impacts Teen Mental Health
Wisconsin Department of Health Services – Understanding Collective Trauma Handout
Coping With Cascading Collective Trauma in the United States
Consider Trauma Therapy in Chicago, IL
Even collective trauma can feel like an isolating experience but our trauma and EMDR specialist, Kari Holman and our other trauma-informed online therapists at our therapy practice based in Chicago, IL offer therapy directed at supporting you through every step of processing and recovering from trauma via online therapy. We want to help you reconnect with yourself and begin the process of being the whole, happy, genuine you from the comfort of your own home.
Take the steps below to get started:
Fill out a consult form here.
Meet with a therapist to see if online therapy is a good fit.
Start connecting with yourself and experience the healing you deserve!
Other Services at Obsidian Counseling and Wellness
When you work with a therapist at our counseling practice in the Chicago, IL area, you will be met with compassion and authenticity. The team at our therapy practice feels honored to help guide folks, including teenagers, along their healing process. Specifically, we help people in addressing anxiety, trauma, and work stress. One of our more unique services is yoga therapy, which can also be done using online sessions. We also specialize in supporting LGBTQIA+ folks for a variety of issues. We hope that you take the leap to begin counseling with us. You deserve it.