intergenerational trauma – Grow Mindfulness

Healing Collective Trauma

Thomas Hübl. intergenerational trauma expert, recently convened the Collective Trauma Summit 2023, designed to share ideas and healing processes “to inspire action to heal individual, ancestral and collective trauma”. The Summit was conducted online from 26 September to October 4 and was attended by 100,00 people which reinforces how pervasive trauma is within the global community. One of the goals of the Summit was to “create a global healing movement”. Thomas is the author of Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds.

Thomas and his colleagues have been conducting these trauma conferences for the past five years to raise awareness of intergenerational trauma and its impacts on individuals and communities. Intergenerational trauma is a form of genetic inheritance of trauma experienced by descendants (typically children and grandchildren) of people who have survived catastrophic traumatic events. The inherited trauma can be reflected in hypervigilance and a wide range of physical and psychological responses to triggers associated with the original trauma experienced by ancestors. While the person experiencing intergenerational trauma does not experience “flashbacks”, as they were not present during the initiating traumatic event, they can experience maladaptive behaviour as a result of the transmission of trauma and trauma responses by their ancestors.

When we speak of intergenerational trauma we often think of survivors of the Holocaust or the devastation of Hiroshima. However, there are many sources of intergenerational trauma such as genocide of Native Americans and Aboriginals, institutional or familial child abuse and or neglect, domestic violence, war, colonisation, civil wars creating refugees, chronic illnesses/diseases (such as zoonotic diseases) and natural disasters (e.g., floods, wildfires, earthquakes, droughts and cyclones/hurricanes).

Developing awareness of collective trauma

Part of the focus of the Summit was to raise awareness of the “collective trauma” that resides in the global community as a result of the multiplicity of traumatic events in our world. It means that individuals and communities are not only coping with the challenges of day-to-day living in our fast-paced world but having to deal with the residual effects of inherited trauma – the “scar tissue of collective trauma”. One of the days of the Summit was thus devoted to “global social witnessing of world-wide uncertainty”.

Robin Alfred, in his usual articulate manner, maintained that awareness of the genetic transfer of trauma can help to reverse the ill-effects of collective trauma. He suggested that developing resonance by listening can enable people to heal through expressing themselves – getting the inside outside and achieving congruence in their lives. Robin contended that trauma clouds our minds so that we see ourself as a micro ecosystem, rather than as part of a global, social ecosystem. The way forward for him is for individuals and communities to plug into the massive, self-healing biosphere. He saw “relational resonance” creating a global healing environment as people around the world became aware of “systemic/intergenerational trauma” and explored their interconnectedness for healing. One of his own awareness practices involves exploring the lives and world of people he does not know, e.g., speaking to undercover police about their psychological distress, isolation and identity crisis. He epitomises the “not-knowing” mindset in pursuing understanding of people who hitherto he “has put far away” from himself.

Healing from the effects of collective trauma

Trauma can have multiple effects on a person’s life and relationships. During the Summit people told stories of their isolation and sense of aloneness, their fear and terror, their anxiety and depression and their disempowerment. One person described her experience of trauma as ”falling into a sinkhole”. People participating in the Summit were courageous and vulnerable in sharing their trauma and how it was playing out for them in their individual lives. Thomas reiterated the healing power of storytelling, especially with the support of a community of people “feeling with you and suffering also”.

Throughout the Summit, presenters and participants shared multiple healing modalities that they have employed to overcome the effects of trauma and intergenerational trauma. These modalities included:

Ceremony
Ritual
Calling in spirits
Dance
Joyful movement
Somatic Experiencing
Experiences of connection

Special attention was given to the arts such as music, poetry, literature, and paintings. Laura Calderon de la Barca, psychotherapist specialising in collective trauma, reinforced the power of art (e.g., poetry) to enable people to share experiences that are extremely stressful. In her view, art creates “an unfolding of space that needs to happen” to enable “ex-pression” (moving the inside to outside). The sharing, in whatever form it takes, creates movement towards healing. Laura noted that writing enabled her to bring order into her own life. She maintained that when people get engaged with the issue of collective trauma, compassionate action is created. She encouraged us to connect much more deeply with nature and embrace our own vulnerability through movement and dance.

Throughout the Summit, Kim Rosen read aloud poetry that spoke to the healing process, including The Song of the Man Who has Come Through by D.H. Lawrence. She also read a number of poems for Summit participants with the music of Jamie Sieber, electronic and acoustic cellist, playing in the background. Kim is the author of the book, Saved by A Poem: The Transformative Power of Words.

The way forward for healing collective trauma

Thomas stressed the desire for “global social witnessing”, and the Summit was one form of this solution. He emphasised the need for a global movement, a form of collective endeavour, that can work towards “healing the trauma between us”. He stressed the importance of melting the permafrost of trauma by enabling traumatised people to release their feelings, building connection through data sharing and facilitating interconnectedness through growing awareness of the community of people experiencing intergenerational and cultural trauma.

Thomas spoke of our horizontal as well as our vertical responsibility. Horizontally, our responsibility involves moving beyond our “hyper-individualised world” to respond to the pain and experience of others. Vertically, it entails developing awareness of our ancestors and indigenous populations and their collective trauma, as well as consciousness of younger generations and their collective anxiety. He particularly focused on the “fragmentation” of identities and communities caused by trauma and encouraged us “to refine and deepen our capacity to relate” because it is in alive relationships that we find the energy to create, new enabling structures “that are much better for the present point of evolution”.

He encouraged us to find “different ways to experience nature and each other” so that we can develop a more integrated “healing infrastructure” for collective trauma. He suggested that we can better tap into the “self-healing” mechanism of the body through connecting with each other and sharing our stories, power and resources. Storytelling is not only healing for the storyteller but also the listener.

Ruby Mendenhall shared her insights from the Summit and highlighted the motivation and inspiration that the experience provided. She especially noted how sharing in community can heal trauma and loneliness. Ruby argued that we have to become more aware of the cost and impact of unprocessed grief, especially that flowing from adverse childhood experiences. She maintained that a lot of people feel threatened around “gender norms or race” and that we need to take up the solutions that are already present to us but somewhat underdeveloped, such as somatic healing. Ruby stressed the urgency of educating children about adverse childhood experiences, the impact on the body and relationships and the ways to develop resilience with the aid of community. Ruby’s vision for black women who have experienced violence in their community is enunciated in her TEDx Talk, DREAMING and Designing Spaces of Hope in a “Hidden America”, where the mnemonic, DREAM, stands for Developing Responses to Poverty through Education And Meaning.

Reflection

I was particularly impressed with the emphasis on storytelling as a healing modality and the power of writing to facilitate healing. I am currently researching my own memoir that I plan to write as one way to process some of the traumatic events I have experienced in my lifetime – death of a baby brother, 18 months in an orphanage, my father as a prisoner-of-war in Changi prison for three years and absent for the first six years of my life, a serious car accident in the family car at age 12, my father suffering PTSD and becoming an aggressive alcoholic, and my divorce at age 37.

In the past, I have been able to process much of my trauma through living in a supportive community and growing in mindfulness through meditation, prayer and the practice of silence. I found too, that sport and especially playing tennis helped me to deal with tension and anxiety and to focus more on the present moment.

I realised through the Summit that I have had the tendency to individualise the trauma that I have experienced as a result of the traumatic events in my life. The Summit has made me more aware of the collective nature of trauma, especially intergenerational trauma. I am becoming more aware that I am part of the community of adult children of alcoholic parents; the community of children whose father went to war and was imprisoned and experienced physical and psychological injury; the community of children who experienced institutional neglect; the community of people who lost a sibling while growing up; and the community of people who experienced a missing parent in their early childhood. This realisation of different trauma-related communities that I am a part of reinforces for me the concept of “collective trauma”.

I have found it useful to connect with a community of people who share my current issue of chronic injury and who are able to openly share their experience of pain and recovery mechanisms. This community, the Health Story Collaborative, provides story sharing opportunities and mutual support for people experiencing chronic pain, disability or illness. It reinforces the Summit’s encouragement for mutual sharing in a supportive environment – becoming a microcosm of the global healing movement addressing collective trauma. The fundamental message is that we are not alone when experiencing trauma and its negative impacts on our quality of life and relationships. Together, we can muster the energy and creativity to access individual and global healing.

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Image by Big_Heart from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Trauma Resilience

David Treleaven presented on the topic, Resilience to Trauma, at the recent Embodiment Festival 2023. He made the point that while meditation and mindfulness practices can help some people recover from trauma, meditation may not work in individual cases. He argued that suggesting “more” meditation is not the answer – we have to recognise the complexity of trauma and how it plays out in different people’s lives. Individual’s hypervigilance as a result of trauma may impede their capacity to be still and reflect and they may find themselves continuously oscillating between a trauma response and temporary wellness – impeding their capacity to develop resilience.

David commented that trauma can create a level of rigidity in our response to stressors. He noted that in some cultures such as Australia, Ireland, and South Africa, humour plays an important role in helping people to develop resilience. Mark Walsh, Festival organiser and interviewer, commented that after undertaking trauma recovery work in Ukraine, he realised that humour is an integral part of the resilience of the Ukrainian people. It was noted, too, that the current President, Zelenskyy, was previously a comedian and actor.

When Mark asked David what advice he would give to young people in these present challenging times, David suggested that it is important to undertake a regular practice that builds personal resilience. He maintained that this is very much a personal choice but whatever practice you choose, to do so purposefully and “don’t be afraid to make a mistake”. This wide-ranging discussion increased my interest in the relationship between trauma and resilience. I decided to explore David’s podcast series, Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness, where he interviews trauma experts to explore the intersection of mindfulness, meditation and traumatic stress.

Trauma and Resilience

I was immediately attracted to David’s podcast interview with Anjuli Sherin on the topic, Resilience, Mindfulness and Trauma Recovery. Anjuli is a Pakistani American who specialises in trauma recovery with families, especially members of immigrant families. She is a highly qualified and experienced therapist who offers individual therapy sessions, healing groups, guided meditations, training and her Joy Blog. Anjuli is the author of Joyous Resilience – A Path to Individual Healing and Collective Thriving in an Inequitable World. The interview is very rich in its discussion of resilience and Anjuli’s book, because she shares insights from her own life experience and the resilience journey of her therapy clients. David, himself an expert in trauma and trauma recovery, acknowledged that he learnt some new things as a result of the interview.

Anjuli begins with recounting her own trauma recovery journey, highlighting the trauma she experienced as an 18 year old, female immigrant to America. Not only did she feel totally disconnected from her new cultural environment, she was also carrying the scars of intergenerational trauma resulting from living with her family in the “systems of oppression” present in Pakistan as she was growing up. She found herself alone in America with no “compass”, family or community, while still in her early 20’s.

Anjuli experienced what Bruce Perry describes as a “sensitised stress response” which led to overreactivity and maladaptive behaviour. She describes her trauma as translating into “anger, fear and violence”. She found that she did not cope with the stressors in intimate relationships, partly because she could not access, and express, her feelings and needs. She was experiencing “emotional dysregulation” where she lacked control over her emotional responses. Her reactivity in her relationships led to more stress and feelings of shame. Anjuli describes this trauma experience as the ”cycle of trauma” – the “vulnerable self” experiences stressors that lead to reactivity which, in turn, increases a sense of vulnerability, fear and helplessness that, again, heightens reactivity and maladaptation. The trauma cycle results in negative self-evaluation, avoidance, and questioning “what’s wrong with me?” – creating a further “cycle of suffering”. An alternative mindset explores “what happened to you?” and seeks to understand trauma, its complexity and impacts.

The “circle of resilience”

Anjuli describes the trauma recovery journey experienced by herself and her clients as a journey towards, and into, the “circle of resilience”. This is a process, not a set state, that involves developing or accessing “four aspects of self” that enable the development of resilience and facilitate trauma recovery. These aspects of self replace self-criticism, self-neglect and denial of feelings. Anjuli maintains that people who have experienced trauma are often not able to use the “tools of resilience” (such as mindfulness, yoga, Tai Chi or exercise) in a sustainable way because of their “vulnerable self’ and being stuck in their reactivity and sense of helplessness.

Anjuli noted that in her early stages of arrival in America she ignored advice to seek a therapist to help her with her trauma recovery. It was only after the stressors she was experiencing increased (e.g. graduation and relationship stress) that she heeded advice to seek therapeutic assistance. She had been mired in her negative self-evaluation and her maladaptive behaviour up until that time.

The “four aspects of self” for the resilience journey

Through her own therapy and consulting with her clients, Anjuli identified what she calls the “four aspects of self” that enable anyone who has experienced trauma to undertake the resilience journey. She found that her own therapy “changed everything” and helped her to develop resilience by providing “foundational teaching” to shift from emotional dysregulation to emotional regulation, to move from stress and shame to self-care, and to develop “healthy control and agency over actions, emotions and relationships”. Her reactivity diminished and she was able to understand her own needs and ask for what she needed.

During therapy she developed the “four aspects of self” that enabled her to enter the path, and move along the journey, to healing and resilience, thus enabling her to utilise the tools of resilience, such as mindfulness and exercise, in a sustainable way. The four aspects described in depth by Anjuli in her book are:

Nurturing – self-talk that recognises feelings (naming her feelings) and “turns to those feelings with attunement and loving kindness”, leading to acceptance
Protection – establishing healthy boundaries and limits
Play and creativity – accessing the things that bring pleasure
Awe and Gratitude – through the experience of beauty and “interdependence with the larger world”.

Anjuli explained that these four aspects of self, enabled her to let go of her “vulnerable self” and to acknowledge that she is able to deal with challenging emotions such as grief and fear. She stated that these four states “are not built outside of relationship”. She reinforced the critical role of supportive relationships in the journey to recovery and resilience. Brooke Blurton in her memoir, Big Love: Reclaiming myself, my people, my country, highlighted the relationship orientation of her Aboriginal culture and its role in helping her through multiple sources of trauma to heal and develop resilience. She experienced intergenerational trauma, poverty, homelessness, sexual abuse and racism, yet throughout she was sustained by the “constant love” of her addicted mother and the love of her family (especially her Nan and siblings), the extended family of “Aunties” and “Uncles” and what she calls “the mob”. Anjuli reinforced supportive relationships as a “source of resilience” in that they provide protection, nurturing and a readiness to listen and positively affirm a person’s experience and emotions and offer reassurance that they “are not alone”.

Reflection

Supportive relationships appear consistently as a key element for trauma recovery and the development of resilience. When I reflect on my own experience of recovery from personal trauma, I am able to acknowledge the central role played by nurturing, protective relationships. Anjuli’s book promotes personal and collective healing and recovery, and offers supportive practices and insightful case studies that facilitate the development of resilience and encourage joyful thriving.

Resources that can help us achieve trauma resilience, and the ability to cope with life’s challenges, include the Healing Trauma Program offered by Sounds True which involves 13 key trauma recovery experts such as David Treleaven. Sounds True also offer a shorter course, Trauma and the Embodied Brain, facilitated by Bonnie Badenoch, PhD. Bonnie is the author of the book, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships.

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Image by Alex Hu from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.

A Compassionate Approach to Addiction

Gabor Maté argues for a compassionate approach to addiction in his book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. He points out that Portugal has successfully decriminalised the personal use of drugs that were previously illicit with the result that they have seen “a reduction in drug habits, less criminality, and more people in treatment”.

However, he maintains that a key success factor in this decriminalised approach is the development of effective rehabilitation processes and comprehensive resources to support them. Such rehabilitation approaches need to be viewed as ongoing and long-term as well as “patiently pursued and compassionately conducted”. Gabor claims too that Portugal’s success in decriminalisation of personal drug use is influencing the development of a more compassionate approach in Norway and Canada.

Gabor contends that addictions. no matter what their form or manifestation, in very many cases have their origins in the pain resulting from adverse childhood experiences. For example, in his book he explains that the self-harm (lacerations) employed by “Arlene” creates pain that obliterates, however briefly, “the pain of a larger hurt deep in the psyche” – a deep pain resulting from sexual exploitation when she was young.

Parents reaction to addiction suffered by their adult child or children often involves hurt or anger, instead of understanding and compassion. This censorious stance is underpinned by self-blame and a lack of self-awareness.

Gabor maintains that parents should not be blamed for their children’s addictive behaviour – they have most likely experienced intergenerational trauma and “unwittingly bequeathed” to their children their “own unresolved or unconscious trauma”. They have tried to cope with their own pain by what Johann Hari describes as “disconnection from childhood trauma” in his book, Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression.

Adopting a holistic approach

Gabor also argues that a holistic approach to addiction in all its forms requires teaching people ways of self-care including meditation and other mindfulness practices as well as what he describes as “body-work” which covers practices such as yoga and Tai Chi and other forms of martial arts. Included in self-care approaches would be training in nutrition and overall stress management approaches such as reconnection to nature.

While Gabor acknowledges the benefits of 12-step approaches like that adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and GROW, he asserts that these approaches are not for everyone and other methods may be more appropriate for some people. He argues for an approach that he calls “compassionate inquiry” which is based on trauma-informed understanding and a depth of inquiry that pursues causal factors rather than just seeks alleviation of symptoms.

The aim of compassionate inquiry is to help the person suffering addiction to identify the trauma/traumas that they have experienced early in life, to isolate the resultant negative self-messaging and to ultimately confront and name the underlying pain they are seeking to alleviate through their ineffectual addictive behaviour.

Reflection

Underpinning Gabor’s compassionate approach is his unshakeable belief, informed by research and decades of field work, that addiction “arises from thwarted love” and that it is “one of the commonest and most human manifestations of torment”. He maintains that the addicted person is constantly seeking external solutions for their internal “insatiable yearning for relief and fulfillment” – a state he describes as the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection, meditation and body-work practices such as Tai Chi we can enhance our self-awareness, reduce self-blame and increase our understanding and compassion towards ourselves and others who are addicted.

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Image by Gisela Merkuur from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group, and the resources to support the blog.