Healing in Community?

COLLECTIVE TRAUMA AND COLLECTIVE HEALING:
A Brief

from Healing Collective Trauma by Thomas Hubl
https://www.collectivetraumaseries.com/

Collective Trauma

Past and current state of world and events: COVID, climate, war, colonialism, racism, homelessness, brutality, genocide, WWII, othering, refugee stream, economic collapse, etc.

Trauma has been going on for 1000s of years: We’re born into. We grow up in it. What happened before we came? And what is happening right now? We are all part of a larger system that we cannot fully see.

A large body of research continues to grow about our collective health and societal trauma. We have learned a lot about individual trauma. This is important; equally important to learn about the collective. Some of our world is healthy and some is not.
Trauma symptoms in organizations and society have deeper sources. Like individuals and icebergs. Overwhelming experiences cause fragmentation in our lives to survive. Collective trauma has 2 symptoms:

1.  Numbness/indifference – can’t feel self or others – disembodied/lack of civic engagement or social interaction, separation, isolation
2. Stress/hyperactivation – acting out at self and/or others – over-functioning, regressive behavior, reactive vs. responsive

People become stuck in the symptoms, frozen in the trauma. Forms polarization. Unresolved trauma creates genetic imprints. Transgenerational and collective process. Passed and retriggered into generations.

Example: Refugee stream. Enters Cold War countries. Reactivates trauma.

Without healing, we inflict our pain onto others both individually and collectively. Healing underlying trauma is possible for both. Takes courage and the ability to feel discomfort. The outcome is and can be amazing.

Example: World War I. Joseph Pilates was interned by British as German enemy, worked as nurse and developed body toning system while there. Pilates of today.

Collective Witnessing for Healing

See the system from a larger perspective. Earth from outer space. We are in a time of collective trauma.
Most of us, some less and some more, have been impacted by trauma. Certain unconscious patterns – physical, cultural, political, societal, emotional, etc. – see ourselves as separate. Scars are left.
As we each do our own individual healing we contribute to the collective trauma healing. This is a great and significant contribution. Starts personal. We are not separate. We are connected and interdependent.

Example: musicians in an orchestra.
Compassion enters here. 100s of 1000s of people can come together to heal together. We-spaces become the healing spaces for the world. This is a change in seeing ourselves from individuals to a part of the whole. The more integrated we each are in our own healing work we can see how that healing fits into a greater whole – an inner and outer coherence. There is more space to experience each other and all. Cognitive and emotional witness.

Who am I in relation to a particular event? Who are we? What is the legacy we have been born into?
Collective witnessing happens when a body of people come together in empathic concern. Every conflict is our conflict. Global social witnessing. Am I a witness? A strength? Or a weakness? Witnessing sounds easier than it is. How and where we grow up is a filter in how we see and witness others. Consciously and unconsciously.

Witnessing is an essential step towards collective healing. To become aware and no longer be hypnotized by the symptoms of collective trauma. There are moments when one person speaks and 100s of people are present to that witness. There are 2 components to the witnessing:

1. Safety – to be vulnerable, be open, to relate to each other, to show myself to the collective
2. Listening – to participate in each other’s experience, to feel who you are even if our experiences
   Seeing is being present. And being present means we can see. There are moments when this is so high that the collective can see – a collective witness, a bigger awareness. This creates a collective fuel, an energy, to move forward and beyond the trauma and the legacy of our past – to heal our future.

My own personal healing is a great contribution. And when I participate in your healing, even greater. And when you participate in my healing, even more so. Our healing is interdependent. We are talking billions of people.
Health is our individual lifestyles, but we are interrelated to each other and the planet. Each of our healings ripple out to everyone else. A constant positive spiral that is happening and growing together. This builds upon itself. This is a powerful resource. This resource starts with our bodies. This self-healing mechanism becomes resilience. Our bodies carry this intelligence. We can sense each other.

Building Community Coherence and Resilience

Fight, flight, or freeze. Frozen pasts do not allow us to respond in the present.
We are the remedy. Attune our awareness of trauma to each other. What resilience do we each have? What resilience do others have on the other side of the planet? Resilience is our collective immune system.
Coherence of my inner world and the coherence with others’ world is our relational capacity.

Core elements of healing:

• Awareness and naming of trauma
• Relationship with self, others, and the world; withdrawal is the reverse of healing
• Our bodies are our bio-computers that inform within, between and among us to feel, see, think
• Breath is with us since birth and our most immediate resource of awareness and healing
• Together we have more than 1 bio-computer, more breath, more awareness, more relationship
• Inner work produces self-regulation
• Outer work produces co-regulation; we are social creatures from the womb; our nervous systems can support and provide for each other safety and listening
• Good leadership creates We-spaces – with all the above in community, neighborhood, connected to something much larger than each of ourselves, not just cognitively but feeling it
• Being, feeling and thinking together = collective coherence = global citizen that creates data transfer and flow
• Hate is not the opposite of love – love can include hate but is much more interested in the options of growth, wisdom, listening

Examples: Community collaboratives; COVID Memorial proposal in SA; SA Story & Healing Community gathering on Sept. 11; community gatherings in proximity like PorchFest; Bridges to Care San Antonio