ABSTRACT
Trauma has largely been framed by many as an individual psychological experience, and therefore as a primarily “private” matter. As a result, less awareness is given to the fundamentally shared phenomena of social and historical traumas, the presence of which fuels non-emergent, repetitive social cycles – pathological patterns of behaviour that include ongoing disconnection, conflict, and other poor social outcomes. Indeed, accumulating collective traumas, based on racism, gender violence, colonialism, genocide, etc., are at the heart of the polycrisis: the impending climate emergency, escalating armed conflict and ongoing war, and continued social inequality. These mounting challenges require a sane and coherent global response; however, social fragmentation and political polarization appear starker than ever. In order to understand these “symptoms” of social dysregulation, we must turn our attention to their deeper root causes. Thankfully, our understanding of the science of trauma has grown exponentially in the last three decades. We must now scale this wisdom to meet the needs of ailing societies and begin to build out an architecture for integrated collective healing. Collective healing principles and modalities are needed for communities to integrate the wisdom of trauma, begin to collaborate on vital systems renewal, and for nations to successfully collaborate on planetary healing. This is a call for government and organizational leaders to take seriously a trauma-informed approach and begin implementing the change a hurting world needs.
