Survive Collective Trauma Through Self-Compassion
Gain Freedom From Existential Terror
Trigger Warning: This reflective clinical assessment uses psychoeducation to explore how trauma is establishing itself as a devastating pandemic to follow Covid-19.
I’ve never read a definition for “trauma” that harnesses its diverse and deeply personal nature. Trauma is largely individualized. It is felt, experienced, endured, and resolved through ever-changing variables, such as per person, per trauma, and per therapist.
Many Existential therapists describe an experience like Pandemic Trauma to share one commonality: a foundation made of existential terror.
Therapists have sought to gently streamline trauma dialogue. For example, a “traumatic event” is used to label anything that is identified as the cause of trauma. The word “event” is purposefully vague by attempting inclusion of all things.
Another example is how trauma gets categorized into 3 main types: acute, chronic, and complex. Acute trauma results from a single event. Chronic trauma forms from repeated and prolonged events. Complex trauma results from multiple and differing events.
“Collective trauma is a cataclysmic event that shatters the basic fabric of society. Aside from the horrific loss of life, collective trauma is also a crisis of meaning.” — Gilad Hirschberger
In 2018, Frontiers of Psychology published Hirschberger’s article, “Collective Trauma and the Social Construct of Meaning”. She explores how Collective trauma occurs when an event affects an entire society. This unique form of trauma transitions into a collective memory, shared throughout the affected society, persisting far beyond the lives of those who originally survived the event.
Pandemic trauma is acute, chronic, complex, and collective trauma. It forces mass populations into prolifically dysfunctional management of an invisible and deadly threat. Reasonable fears of impending economic collapse, experienced individually and as an entire country, manifest extreme rigidity, stinginess, and cynicism. Hope and excitement for a safe and familiar future abandons the psyche, ushering in despair for the future, rage in the present, and mistrust in happy memories. Isolation replaces familial and friendship bonds. Most stark is how pandemic trauma interrupts the way that time is perceived and experienced. Pandemic trauma even causes time distortion, or temporal disintegration, because it interrupts information processing and sequential thinking.
A phenomena that is unique to collective trauma is how portions of the affected population denies having any negative emotions during the long, deadly pandemic. Once the infection and death portion of a pandemic ends, the people who were emotionally unplugged experience a sudden and overwhelming onset of trauma. The pandemic’s length is a reliable indicator of how intense and debilitating the average person suffers from this post-traumatic experience.
During trauma therapy there exists a sweet spot called the “therapeutic window of tolerance”. This term denotes the midpoint between inadequate and overwhelming emotional activation during session. Undershoot this window and the session is a bust. Overshoot this window and the patient leaves session emotionally busted.
The USA has over 300 million people. At this point in the Covid-19 pandemic every single person in our society is accruing trauma. Cultivating self-compassion has a long history of healing trauma.
Through mindfulness, cultivating compassion, love, and tolerance for one’s self is the key to trauma survival — especially when it comes to collective, or pandemic, trauma. To love oneself is to embrace someone else.
Trauma. Blah. Why can’t we just toss trauma into a box and lock it into a big vault? Wouldn’t that be an easy fix?
Maybe healing, even though it is deeply challenging, is the less of painful path to tread than locking it all away? If we ignore trauma, we are stuck in a quicksand of despair. But, if we move ahead, just one little step at a time, then we might just get through all of that suffocating pain.
In order to get through something, we have to go through it.
In Humble Conclusion
You are loved. You are made of star dust. You are powerful beyond measure. You are important. You have a brilliant mind. You are Light; bright golden Light. And that Light surrounds your essence and your body and your mind.
People who allow themselves to hurt, who allow themselves to grieve — that is evidence of true strength.
Not much courage is needed to bottle up our trauma. Those who walk the path of healing from trauma are incredibly strong people.
Love yourself a little bit today. Maybe do something special, just for you. Nobody has to know. Write yourself a little reminder about something really cool, something really loving that you created in this hurting world.
And if you cry, maybe try to really let out a beautiful, cathartic cry. Let just a little bit of that pain out, if you can. Just a smidge. For some people cathartic crying is shedding a single tear while for other people it’s a couple hours of weeping.
Maybe it won’t be as horrible as imagined. Or maybe it’ll be so terrible and frightening that once the cry is over there appears a mixture of regret and exhaustion.
No judgement, no matter the outcome. Just try to love yourself a little bit today. You’re worth every single second of positivity, support, compassion, and love.
