Elections Don’t Resolve Trauma
This election has produced a wide range of emotions for those of us living in the US and folks witnessing the events unfold from afar. On one hand, the outcome is significant and represents a form of closure. On the other hand, so much will remain unresolved regardless of the outcome.
Whether you’re feeling glimmers of hope or experiencing uncertainty and fear, most of us desperately want something this election is unable to deliver — safety and healing.
Folks are already asking the familiar question that gets recycled election after election,
“Can Americans find a way to heal their divides?”
It feels good to vote, and many of us are addicted to hope even when real and sustained change feels like a long shot.
Maybe this year…
Maybe this candidate…
Maybe this shift in power…
It’s important to vote, and elections DO matter. However, when the very fabric of our society is built on and fueled by unresolved trauma, it’s important to remember...
Elections don’t resolve trauma.
We can’t think ourselves out of trauma, and we’re not going to vote, legislate, or govern ourselves to healing.
Two years ago Resmaa Menakem wrote,
“Today we’re at a reckoning. We Americans have an opportunity — and an obligation — to recognize the trauma embedded in our bodies; to accept the necessary pain of healing; and to move through and out of our trauma. This will enable us to mend our hearts and bodies — and to grow up.”
You can read more here: Healing Your Thousand-Year-Old Trauma
Unfortunately, today we’re no closer to resolving our trauma than we were then — if anything, it has become even more embedded in our culture.
There is some hope, and Resmaa and others are addressing this issue and offering an embodied path towards resolving our collective trauma.
The removal of threat is not the same thing as the experience of safety.
I want to share with you something that may be helpful in the coming days as we once again find ourselves with a choice between working towards healing or continuing to reenact our unresolved trauma.
I’m all for celebrating election results that create more favorable conditions for healing. However, when it comes to resolving trauma, Stephen Porges reminds us that...
“The removal of threat is not the same thing as the experience of safety.”
This distinction is important when it comes to understanding trauma. It’s not enough to remove the threat or to escape the abuse — your body needs to feel safe again (or for the first time).
Trauma is often experienced as perpetually bracing or freezing long after the threat is gone. You’re technically safe, but your body is not yet experiencing safety.
The experience of safety is not achieved by logic, reason, or thinking more accurate thoughts. You can’t conjure up the felt sense of safety with a compelling narrative alone. Safety is not earned by thinking positive thoughts or just “getting over it.”
That’s not how trauma works.
If we mistake the removal of threat for the experience of safety, we may find ourselves distrusting ourselves and each other and wondering why we’re holding our breath again after our initial sigh of relief.
It makes sense that our nervous systems quickly adjust to real or perceived threat because of how important these instinctive responses are to our survival. However, after the threat is gone, our nervous systems are slower to adapt to the experience of safety because this too serves an important survival function.
Our bodies don’t immediately trust that we’re safe after escaping a threat even when objectively we recognize we’re in a safe and supportive context. We can’t simply tell ourselves that we’re safe, we need to viscerally experience safety, and this takes time, intention, and practice.
Safety is communicated to your body in the language of sensation.
Sometimes in the whisper of a warm embrace.
Sometimes in a primal roar that gives voice to what you wished you could have said back then.
Sometimes in the pressure of a pen filling in a ballot bubble.
Sometimes in the aggressive force of creating boundaries — arms extended palms out.
Sometimes in the deep rumble of your feet pounding the earth toward freedom.
Sometimes in a subtle yawn, a long exhale, or the spontaneous breath after a good cry.
Often, in the reverberating awareness of physiological shifts as your body begins to trust, “this is what it feels like to be safe.”
Elections don’t resolve trauma, but perhaps they can create more favorable conditions for the difficult work ahead of us. Now is the time to do the necessary and embodied work of healing, so that we don’t find ourselves back here next election reenacting our trauma again and again.
Here’s to the removal of threat AND the experience of safety. Here’s to resolving our collective trauma.
-Brian
Brian Peck, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker specializing in religious trauma and supporting folks with a history of adverse religious experiences. In addition to supporting trauma survivors’ recovery, Brian is passionate about reducing the stigma attached to non-believers, especially those who have exited high-demand religious communities.