The Intersection of Trauma, Healing, and the Human Experience
Across the human experience, trauma is a common occurrence that affects all people, no matter the skin color. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white or pink. Trauma distorts life and hinders one's capacity to experience freedom, and it's something that is experienced by both the so-called oppressor and the so-called oppressed. In this article, we'll explore the ways that trauma impacts the black experience, the white experience, and the American experience as a whole.
For those of us who are descendants of slaves, trauma is a part of our history. Our ancestors were kidnapped from West Africa and brought to the United States during the Atlantic slave trade. As a member of this community, trauma is not something that is distant from me, as my grandparents still carry the fresh memory of Jim Crow.
Many believe that legislative measures can replace the necessary work of healing from trauma. However, trauma is embodied, stored in the body, and cannot be healed through legislation alone. The healing process is messy, long, and complicated.
The desire to dominate space is a defensive mechanism that is not exclusive to the white man. We all share this defensive mechanism as human beings, due to the most systemically oppressive institution of all: the autonomic nervous system, lol.
Bet you didn’t see that one coming did ya?
This system is six hundred million years old, and it's composed of two parts: the sympathetic system, which is biased to see the world as either an opportunity or threat, and the parasympathetic system, which is biased to see the world as completely safe. These two systems are constantly finding balance and adapting to the environment, shaping and being shaped by it.
All of us are the outcome of billions of years of evolution, and we've picked up certain adaptations along the way, some of which are trauma-informed. Trauma adaptations are behaviors we've developed in order to feel loved, worthy, like we belong, and like we matter. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" reveals how many African Americans feel about not being seen or heard or valued. The feeling of not being seen or heard can lead to a sense of not mattering, which can deeply affect one's sense of self-worth.
When we are confronted with rejection, we often become defensive, which is a protection mechanism that can give way to bigotry. Guardedness comes with an inability to trust oneself, and we cannot fully be ourselves if we are threatened with prejudice and death. This leads to a dangerous loop that can be hard to escape.
In other words, trauma is a part of the human experience, and it affects us all. Healing from trauma is a messy and complicated process that cannot be replaced by legislative measures. We must recognize the impact of trauma on ourselves and others, and work to heal from it in order to live our lives more fully and authentically. This requires committing ourselves to a daily practice that re-roots us in the spaces we inhabit, from the community at large to our bodies.
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Chloe, I profoundly appreciate your insight, wisdom, courage, clarity, boldness, and vision. Words cannot express my respect and gratitude for how you integrate and articulate values I hold dear in such loving, strong, psychoactive ways. I see your work as crucial medicine for our society and for us as individuals. How can I help beyond supporting this Substack? I have copy editing and admin skills that I would love to contribute to the cause, or to you personally, Chloe, so you can be more free to pursue and embody your work. Thank you for this marvelous post, and so many others, and your podcast, and ToE, and everything else. 💜
I've just begun to read a book, "The Ethics of Beauty" by Orthodox Christian Timothy Patitsas. I picked it up thinking it was about the theological basis of Christian ethics, probably something along the line of the theology of von Balthasar. To my surprise, in the preface the author describes his concern for trauma victims as the "very center and heart of this book." I am not going to recommend a book I have not even half finished but it does look promising. Early on he writes about "moral injury" which is a subject that caught my interest several years ago when an old friend, who was an AME Zion preacher and also a professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, recommended that I explore the literature on the topic. Dale had just begun to work with this concept in his writing when he unfortunately developed an illness that took his life far too soon. In any event it has seemed like a fruitful concept, especially but not exclusively in the context of the trauma of war. Also interesting to me is that this Patitsas book early on decries common approaches of therapy to trauma. This jumped out at me, as another old friend from way-back-when had just a few years ago told me about research he had done in Israel on the sleep patterns of holocaust survivors--those who had adjusted and had been able to build lives in Israel, with jobs, families etc--and those who had been so fractured by trauma that were incapacitated. The interesting finding was that the survivors who were able to adjust had abnormal dream patterns. They either suppressed dreams or did not remember them. Revisiting trauma is a delicate matter and may be something to be avoided. A very different approach may be warranted. Anyway, that friend--Peretz--had planted in my mind the idea as well that we have some fundamental misunderstandings in our broad perception of how the world and how human nature works and what is the very nature of "healing." I am looking forward to finishing the Patitsas book as it looks as if he is trying to deal with these issues. In any event, I thank you for another well written essay on an important topic.